Oh, wasn't there some curfew imposed - an air raid siren - that according to the MI5 guy in control would magically clear the streets and let everyone know they should hunker down? As if that would happen at short notice. Another daft bit was having the imminent beheading of the US President streamed onto Times Square but it's not that kind of film really, to quibble about all this. Butler has his own charisma, it works okay, almost a bit Craig in some scenes.
It's a subject after @chrisno1 's heart but I wonder what gives with Prince Charles cinema? Today that Michelle Yeoh Everything all at once film was on downstairs on the big screen, just a couple of ticket sold - was about to head up there and checked the time only to find it wasn't on anymore. Ditto Looper, on downstairs tomorrow, one seat sold, now I find it isn't it's been moved to Thursday. But if that doesn't sell will it be pulled with a few hours' notice too? Should I risk buying a train ticket to head up to London?
A monumental documentary from Martin Scorsese which attempts to delve into the life, career and spiritual ideals of the Beatles’ George Harrison. Scorsese has form for rockumentaries, having helped out on Woodstock, That’s The Way It Is and helming the marvellous The Last Waltz which said an elegant farewell to The Band. Later on, he did a Rolling Stones concert but to be frank, it came too late for both him and the Stones and is a disappointment.
Not so this three-and-three-quarter hour window into George Harrison’s private life, hopes, fears and meditations. If anything, the doc concentrates a little too much on Harrison’s spirituality. This should come as no surprise, but it does skew the narrative and hence much of the archival footage towards colourful 1960s panoramas of the Fab Four in India or the Fab One in attempting to learn the sitar, learn a mantra, dig his personal beliefs. There is a lot of footage of Ravi Shanker and the like, which seems to be superfluous to the overall story; we establish half-way that Harrison can’t adequately play the sitar. The Indian music clips seem more an attempt on Scorsese’s part to strengthen his subject’s affiliation with all things ‘mystic’ and ‘eastern’ which isn’t exactly the case. Harrison was seeking to identify how his life could remain relevant, to both others and himself, among the material gain he gathered.
Very early on the photographer Astrid Kirchherr remarks “how quickly he understood what it was all about: death and being alive.” This from the time of Stuart Sutcliffe’s death in 1962 and a portent of Harrison’s later fascination with facing his impending passing. Scorsese doesn’t dwell much on this early brush with mortality: he’s already instilled foreboding by running images of the German Luftwaffe dropping bombs on Liverpool. The afterlife can wait a bit. VE Day surges with colour. The young George grows a Gene Vincent quiff and teaches John Lennon to properly play guitar. The Hamburg years are sketched over relatively quickly, so too the Beatles rise. Harrison’s cheekiness is apparent. There’s a problem measuring his contribution to the band’s early success as nobody spells it out. There are no specifics about his fretmanship or work rate in the studio, just a few curt nods. Partly this is because the first five years of the Beatles success is mapped out through the songs of John and Paul. There’s virtually no look in for George until Don’t Bother Me. Paul openly admits he dominated the band’s writing, with John, and later production duties as well. He appears a lot, does Paul, but he singularly fails to offer any comment of interest other than the expected platitudes and niceties, cliches one and all.
If I Needed Someone, from 1965’s Rubber Soul, is the first semblance of the hippy-trippy direction they band would take from late-66 through to 1968, Harrison’s swirling slide guitar attempting to replicate the sitar sound. He did better proper work on Love to You and Within You Without You. The overall LSD effect was achieved achingly on the undervalued Magical Mystery Tour [an LP not released in the UK at the time; it came packaged as two EPs and was adversely priced so didn’t reach No.1; a disappointment, I feel]. Harrison hit his song writing stride in 1968, but Paul – or producer George Martin – kept rejecting his input. It was only John who ensured Something was a single. This song would soon be considered as good a ‘lounge classic’ as McCartney’s Yesterday and was recorded by a host of easy listening singers. A bit late for the Beatles, though, they’d already missed My Guitar Gently Weeps, possibly their best track never to be released as a single. Harrison got so desperate, he farmed his songs out to people like Eric Clapton and Joe Cocker.
There are tons of brilliant photos from this period, none better than a black and white image of Ringo, Paul and John sitting on a couch, with George only visible reflected in the mirror above them; separate but together, perhaps summing up the situation better than any of the commentators. Throughout this period, Harrison’s interest in the Hare Krishna and personal spirituality was developing rapidly, making him consider the trappings of wealth and success as less of a right than a burden. “There’s no point, unless you are God…” he says, “You have to change, to make things better, which is what the physical world is about.”
The documentary doesn’t really dwell much on his post-Beatles music career. It rightly talks up All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangladesh. Phil Spector makes a [now] creepy appearance. So while all the charity and religious stuff is mentioned, there’s no reference to how he was at the forefront of a second British Wave in the early seventies when Bowie, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Gilbert O’Sullivan and all four Beatles were huge solo artists in the U.S. His tours are vaguely dismissed, so too his later LPs. This might be because they and he were shot to pieces. Ray Cooper is the only one to openly say it was drug induced. Even Harrison’s second wife offers no clue to his lack of musical success in the late seventies and eighties, when he became famed as a movie producer. “Being in the world, but not of it,” was how the subject himself describes this fallow period. No indication how he broke the habit or the malaise. The film goes faster and faster through the eighties and nineties, skipping whole periods of renewed success in favour of more spirituality and death premonitions, which is fascinating in its own right, but seems to miss part of the point of a doc about a musician.
We never really learn what inspired Harrison to write, his creative process, his reflections on and opinions of his work. It all sounds like a jolly jam in his basement, which is way too simplistic. Racing driver Jackie Stewart compares Harrison’s guitar playing to driving an F1 car, that the senses are so in tune with the moment that everything else becomes secondary, vanishing into the ether, which is quite poetic.
I saw this documentary many years ago at the BFI and thought it was terrific, but a second viewing has rather dulled its impact. Editor David Tedeschi along with Scorsese and, one assumes, a research team, have pieced together a splendid series of images and some interesting interviews, but I don’t have any more of a sense of George Harrison now than I did when I started watching. The film is short on real depth, surprising given the length. For instance, the almost total eradication of his childhood from the tale seems an oversight, as does his first marriage [they deal briefly with its breakdown]. There’s a politeness to the film which rankles. Nobody has a bad word to say of him. “A scary dad” is about the limit of it. Maybe George Harrison was a totally nice guy, but I think the film – in part produced by his widow – is something of a whitewash.
Nevertheless, Living in the Material World is a sterling achievement in rockumentary terms and I’d probably suggest it’s essential viewing if you’re interested in the Beatles, but it’s not portraying the band or Harrison’s wider impact on other artists, culture and society as a whole, it’s more the other way around, about how he chose to hide from that impact, about how society’s reaction affected him, which is thought-provoking, but doesn’t have an epic sweep as it is an insular, interior story, a monologue rather than a dialogue.
A generous 8 from 10, if I was ranking it, chiefly for the archive music and films.
I've been about to do a review of With The Beatles, the second Fab LP, for ages now - Don't Bother Me is a Harrison song that rocks but despite this he didn't write anything for the next two albums. You'd think he'd have done more in the way of songwriting duties given his debut - an odd comment about the guy who'd go on to write Think For Yourself, If I Needed Someone, Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Long Long Long, Here Comes the Sun and Something, but it took a while for him to get going, Something about his songs don't quite gel with Lennon and McCartney's efforts and Macca openly admitted they spent more time of the L&M pieces than on his, that was just the way it was. Ironically, though Harrison and Lennon were better mates and on the same page with a lot of things - Harrision later played guitar on Lennon's imagine - I think it was Macca who helped out Harrisongs - he came up with the funky riff on Taxman later borrowed by The Jam for Start, and it was he who played the brilliant guitar solo on it. He also came up with the piano intro on While My Guitar... and the bass line on Something improves it a bit (though the Revolution in the Head author disparaged it, there's another story to that).
Harrison was said to be a bit sharp with Epstein given the way he allowed them to sign away their songs - understandable because if you've got just one song on a mega selling album, you really want all the cash you can get from it whereas L&M would still be coining it in with 1p a single or whatever it was. In some ways that's why they went on mega tours - that's how they got mega earnings.
All Things Must Pass is a fab album and there's no song on it I'd have preferred to see on a Beatles album, it just wouldn't fit. I read that it sold massively more than any other Beatle solo record, twice the amount of Band on the Run which is far more commercial and also brilliant. However, some of his stuff has a dirge like aspect to it, I prefer Revolver in mono but I think his Love To You and I Want To Tell You might be better in stereo to alleviate this. The play out song to The Time Bandits is okay but typical of the sort of thing you can't base an album around, ditto Cheer You Down which plays out at the end of Lethal Weapon 2.
Harrison played his part and was very much The Quiet One. It was he who - according to Craig Brown's recent book One Two Three Four - got Ringo in as the drummer, earning a black eye for his pains inflicted by Pete Best fans, for one time when Ringo stood in for Pete, George was the one who felt it was just a good fit. It felt right. Perhaps because of this, there's a story about George Harrison and a pool of sick in his Hamburg room that put my sister off the guitarist for life when she read it and would certainly have cast a shadow in any documentary, on reflection this uncharming anecdote would have come from Pete Best and nobody else, perhaps as revenge. According to Philip Norman's Shout!, it was Harrison who met up with the guy who turned down the Beatles, on a music show, with no hard feelings the promoter asked if there were any other bands he might look out for and it was George who mentioned the Stones 'but when he turned around, the chair was empty' wrote Norman poetically, in other words, he didn't hang around - the Stones got signed on the back of his recommendation.
It was Harrison who greeted Brian Epstein on his first visit to the Cavern to see them with the immortal cryptic words 'What brings Mister Epstein here?' 'Piss off posh nob' might have been the words to nip musical history in the bud. George and his response to George Martin when formally asking if there was anything the band didn't like during the audition: 'Well for a start, I don't like your tie...' and his pals' response - playful fisticuffs to him like kids who'd seen their classmate check the teacher - and other such larks that got them signed, it wasn't down to their music because bizarrely they hadn't actually written many or any useable songs for their audition. They were signed on the basis of their personalities, said Martin later.
The documentary touches upon Harrison's infidelities - Macca says obliquely 'I don't want to say much against him, cos he was a mate, but he liked the things blokes like, y'know?' if memory serves. In many ways, Macca and George didn't get on too well, you can see both sides of it though Macca has had a lovely story about his last visit to see him in hospital.
he probably shouldve got a credit for some other early songs he contributed hooks to, like And I Love Her
Paul was a year older than George, and they were friends first, playing music together. John was two years older than Paul, this really cool older kid Paul started hanging out with, so I think there might have always been a jealousy there. John was dominant songwriter on their early albums, it took Paul a couple years to catch up. Then a couple more years for George to catch up. By the time George was a prolific songwriter, John was on heroin and not very productive. I think Paul was more interested in getting more contributions out of John and less interested in what George was suddenly bringing in, and this was one of the factors in their breakup as well as why George had a triple albums worth of material so soon after.
and these are all second hand theories I picked up reading the Beatles threads in the Steve Hoffman forum, so I could be way off.
@chrisno1 and @Napoleon Plural did you watch Peter Jackson's recent documentary on Get Back/Let it Be? seems a lot of bigname directors have been putting out Beatles docs lately, Ron Howard also did one. I havent seen any of them yet myself.
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speaking of Scorsese: Scorsese filmed an SCTV Reunion five years ago that is yet to be released ! ! !, so I'm mad at that bigname director!
I think Lennon did the chorus bit of And I Love Her - 'a love like ours...' bit.
Didn't catch the Get Back doc, not having Disney. It's a shocker in that the Let It Be film was so different, one could argue it cemented the split because it showed them so miserable and fractious. Oddly of course it wasn't their last album, that was the lovelier, more upbeat Abbey Road but Let It Be came out after so gave the impression they were more at odds than they were. This would be down to the director who cut out all the banter between the band and the technicians and again made its all seem more claustrophobic than it was - I think this guy did the Stones' Rock N Roll Circus which got put on ice for decades ie not released, arguably because Mick thought The Who outshone his band but just as likely because despite the brilliance of the Stones' performance with stuff like You Can't Always Get What You Want and Sympathy for the Devil, watch it on now and a certain depressing gloom hangs over everything, it doesn't feel happy and one wonders if this isn't another example of the Stones palming someone off on the Beatles to their discredit, Allen Klein being another. I could be wrong on all this, didn't the same guy try to film Wham! in China and get sacked because of his approach? I will check.
I saw the Ron Howard doc - that's great though I also saw the accompanying film in theatres, the Beatles just performing at one of their concerts, the moving shot of Brian Epstein standing on the sidelines just watching the fans, as if keeping watch. The movie's been shown on telly enough times, Macca managing to look like an old warthog for this big movie while looking not a day over 40 for his appearance on the Graham Norton chat show with Lisa Perry, he does go big on self-sabotage that bloke, wish he'd coordinate his botox.
Cry for a Shadow was one of the tracks they recorded with Tony Sheridan a year before signing with EMI. It was released by a rival record label at the height of BeatleMania.
I did see the original Let it Be film, I have a bootleg dvd of it. its a real drag for the first hour until Billy Preston shows up and they perform three complete songs, and then the Rooftop concert, the last halfs all great music. but the first half Paul keeps talking and talking and talking, John and Yoko hide in a corner and giggle with each other, George argues with Paul, and Ringo waits for someone to tell him what to do. Depressing as it is, they left out the worst bit: George quit for two weeks before eventually showing up again, and supposedly Yoko immediately claimed his chair.
I gather Jackson edited the same film reels completely different, to somehow make the sessions seem as joyous as A Hard Days Night and Help!
I had to look up Michael Lindsay-Hogg on wikipedia, I didnt realise he also made RocknRoll Circus. I really like that Stones film, theyre doing nice live versions of Beggars Banquet material but much tighter than their usual live shows of the period and its fun to see that circus tent full of rockstars: John and Yoko are in that one too.
but what I learned is that Hogg did work with the Beatles before the Stones. He directed the Paperback Writer and Rainpromo films
According to the Scorsese film, when Harrison pulled out of the Let It Be sessions, there was some talk of Eric Clapton replacing him. Clapton doesn't deny it, but he also said he'd never want to do it, he liked being a free spirit - odd given he was in four bands before he properly went solo in 1970. A lot of interesting information there, guys, thanks.
Spain. Retired criminal Gal Dove is enjoying the fruits of leisure: his villa, his pool, the sun, his beautiful wife, Dee Dee, and their close friends Aitch and Jackie. A loose boulder careers down the hill behind his estate, almost decapitates him and fractures his swimming pool floor. Gal’s luck doesn’t last. An old accomplice, Don Logan, is on his way to persuade Gal to ditch retirement one last time: a jewel heist for London’s gangland boss Teddy Bass. And Don Logan does not take no for an answer.
Tension boils from the opening scenes, as the sun beats on a prone Ray Winstone, sucking up an obnoxious tan and reflecting on his blissful way of life. He’s flabby, out of shape, bleached by the sun, a weariness lurking in his face, but still startlingly good-looking. A young attractive boy [Alvaro Monje] sweeps the patio and the audience wonders about their relationship: is it fatherly, chaste, slave or sexual? We never exactly learn, but the young lad has eyes where nobody else does. A surrogate son, he’s the fixer Gal needs, the crutch for his failing dreams, like Bjorn Andersson in Visconti’s Death in Venice, he represents the purity of nature, a moment that passed in Gal’s life a long time ago. Don Logan brings that life stormily into focus.
The message of doom arrives in a restaurant. As soon as Don’s name is mentioned, director Jonathon Glazer pulls the camera achingly slowly back from the foursome, the reverse of the expected; intimacy becomes broken, now the quietude of Spain is being thrown open to the ailing world. Immediately we Don Logan will be a dangerous man and he will bring violence and fear with him. This is Glazer’s feature debut. He doesn’t make many films [four to date] but they are all interesting visually and stimulating intellectually. Here, he isn’t over interested in an emotional journey, this is a story of villainy, the past and retribution, and Glazer tells is straight and plain. The people have a surface veneer, like the sun or the glowing night lights, the golden bowls of lager, but it’s all swaddled in smoke and obscenities and casual carelessness. Never has the last saloon looked so exotic and yet so tawdry. It is a credit to the cast that we believe in these people and the cesspit they are escaping from, as well as their hopeless existence of perpetual ease.
Not even the earthy language the characters endlessly swat prepares us for Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan, a gangster so frightening, so in control and so brutal he ranks high on the list of cinematic villains., oozing power and menace with every single nuance – a twist of the head, an outstretched finger, a quiver of the lip, a lit cigarette. His words are the right ones, yet his delivery is malevolent, focussed, cruel. It isn’t even the litany of insults he delivers or the physical violence he uses, it is something unpleasant, putrid, lurking, not quite satanic, but certainly psychotic and troublingly mesmeric. We wait for the explosion in the same way Gal and Dee Dee wait, trying to avert our eyes; but we can’t leave the room as they can. It makes no difference Don Logan will cut you down.
We see the story through Gal’s point of view. Almost every scene features Ray Winstone, who commands the stage through his identifiable, defeatist, hang dog posture. This is a man who knows his time is up, who is looking death in the face every time he confronts his past. We never learn what he did, but it couldn’t have been good. He may be out of touch with the underbelly of London, but they haven’t forgotten him. He’s given to flights of fantasy, hunting wild hare, mumbling congratulatory soliloquies to himself, blowing smoke hearts, declaring his love for his wife, and suffering recurring nightmares of demonic monsters. This beastly devil haunts his nights, always one trigger finger away from ending his life.
Forced to carry out the heist, Gal journeys to London, a grey city covered in rain clouds and shadow and where the gangster’s work is carried out under cover of darkness and underground. A private swimming pool provides the break-in point, a sweaty, wet, intense, shake down takes place and the old Gal resurfaces through the water, as if the rupture in his own pool has ironically reinforced his abilities. We know his salvation is not secure. Someone is missing and Teddy Bass wants to know where Don Logan has disappeared to.
If Ben Kingsley displays the sharp zest and viper’s cunning of an enforcer, Ian McShane’s Teddy Bass is a villain as smooth and sure as they come. He won’t let a missing ghoul interfere with his arch plans, in the same manner a little gay sex won’t stop him making the friends he needs to case the exclusive safe deposit facility. Everything has its place and time for Teddy, including dealing with an implacable Gal Dove.
Louis Mellis and David Scinto’s screenplay veers from comedy, to caper, to brutal thriller with consummate ease. The visuals are superb. Full marks to photographer Ivan Bird, who takes us from the blistering heat of Spain, to the steamy, inclement surrounds of London. The editing from John Scott and Sam Sneade is crisp and vital. Gal never really leaves the heat of Spain, swapping it for a sauna of hard, griping drill work. He never leaves the intense combat of sparring with Don, replacing it with a more subtle form of intimidation from Teddy Bass. He never leaves his wife [Amanda Redman], so scared for him she dare not even utter his name on the phone. When Teddy Bass ironically says he’ll come out to Spain and “Pay his respects” we know Gal has been rumbled, but Teddy isn’t about to waste a bullet on a man as insignificant as Gal Dove. He’s the flabby bottom of the pile. We empathise. The lonely bus stop feels the safest place Gal has stood for days.
Back in Spain, Aitch is still making up daft stories for everyone’s amusement, the young boy is still sweeping, Dee Dee is making drinks. That purity just might be accessible after all. And somewhere, Don Logan may just be in hell, but he won’t care, he’s quite comfortable there.
Maurice Binder’s silhouetted cartoon figures catch the eye during the credits of this engaging drama / thriller from Carol Reed, based on a bestselling novel The Ballad of a Running Man, by Shelley Smith. John Mortimer, later renowned for creating Rumpole of the Bailey, wrote the excellent screenplay which confiscates the traditional thriller tropes and replaces them with miscommunication, questions never answered and answers never given. The atmosphere doesn’t so much quell with tension as get heightened above a cradle of filthy lies, some intended, most imagined and each one a falsehood to itself.
Lee Remick is very good as beautiful widow Stella Baxter, whose husband has devised a complicated life insurance fraud. Rex Baxter’s motivation starts off as being payback for a perceived wrong done to him by the Experion Insurance Company, but as he indulges in the fruits of his illegal labour he begins to perfect more elaborate money making schemes. He and his wife reunite in southern Spain and initially all seems well, although Stella doesn’t take to her husband’s new abrasive identity, an Australian millionaire named Jim Jerome. Laurance Harvey audaciously gives Rex a vicious, manipulative, vindictive streak, which gradually asserts itself as the couple become more and more embroiled in deceit and confusion.
Into the mix drops Alan Bates’ holidaying love-struck insurance investigator, Stephen Maddox, and the couple’s strange behaviour seems to arouse his suspicions, except we only see this through their eyes. Mortimer’s script and Carol Reed’s careful direction are full of misplacements and all those wrong questions and non-answers. We, as an audience, are on edge because we want those questions asked, yet like the Baxter’s we are afraid of the answers. Maddox shares a similar point of view, but for personal reasons of his own. As the Baxter’s flee to Gibraltar, Reed cranks up the tension and their whole relationships disintegrates in a gripping car chase and a police pursuit along the Costa del Sol and into La Linea.
Good photography from Robert Krasker, who frequently collaborated with Reed to good effect. An underrated gem of a thriller.
Ropey old sci-fi claptrap based on a Jules Verne novel which is a sequel to both the author’s In Search of the Castaways and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, although not an official sequel to either film version of those classics [in fact Castaways didn't come out until after this 'sequel']. Hard to know if one should take this seriously or not, at least as seriously as one can take sci-fi of this childish, historical kind. A band of American civil war escapees steal a hot air balloon and travel across the continent during the worst storm in history before hitting landfall on a volcanic island somewhere in the Pacific. Michael Craig has the lead. Joan Greenwood is a shipwrecked lady whose related to the British Ambassador to Chile. Not a very useful contact in such a perilous predicament. They all cope remarkably well, but never once query why they are surrounded by enormous animals, including giant crabs, bees and a hilarious goliath sized chicken. Beauty is provided by Beth Rogan, a semi-notorious starlet of the Rank class, who apparently slept her way to a top she never reached and later took up growing cannabis, which may have been more profitable than her half-witted movie career. Her memoirs provided the basis for Terrance Rattigan’s screenplay to Darling. Herbert Lom makes a far more impressive Captain Nemo than James Mason did. When he’s as good as this, you rather wish he’d had a stab at Blofeld. Ray Harryhausen wasn’t troubled much by the rudimentary stop-motion trickery. Oddly likeable tosh.
I love Sexy Beast. It has one of my favourite opening scenes. That and Gangster No . It's such a shame the rest of Gangster No 1 didn't live up to the opening.
Yes, Gangster No 1 is interesting, but pales slightly in comparison to Sexy Beast and Snatch - all the films came out in the same year and are like a triumviri of millennial British crime tropes: violence, foul language, black humour, close ups, swift editing, appalling yet fascinating people, etc etc. It's worth watching them in succession. Sexy Beast is the most 'romantic' and has the best characters. It doesn't glorify its violence or the world these people inhabit, so we share in Gal and Dee Dee's anxieties, retributions and epiphanies. Yes, that opening shot in Sexy Beast is quite something and the scene settles you directly into Gal's mindset and sloth existence.
I had to look up Michael Lindsay-Hogg on wikipedia, I didnt realise he also made RocknRoll Circus. I really like that Stones film, theyre doing nice live versions of Beggars Banquet material but much tighter than their usual live shows of the period and its fun to see that circus tent full of rockstars: John and Yoko are in that one too.
Yes, @caractacus potts I also enjoy The Rock n Roll Circus, it's an avante garde experience, isn't it? I think the Stones sound great on it and have no idea what Jagger was complaining about because frankly The Who are terrible and play one of their least interesting album tracks. Jethro Tull are probably the very best band in it, kicking off proceedings with A Song for Jeffrey. That 'super group' Dirty Mac with Clapton, Lennon, Ono, Richards and Mitch Mitchell diggin' the blues is rather hot too.
A ten year old member of the Hitler Youth who fantasises that his best friend is the Fuhrer begins to question his allegiances when he discovers his mother has been hiding a sixteen year old Jewish girl in the attic.
Polarising comedy drama with two good central performances from Roman Griffin Davis as the titular Jojo and Thomasina McKenzie as Elsa, the girl. The film tackles a difficult subject badly from a comedic angle. Transposing 21st Century ideals and modern sensibilities onto a serious subject for humour, even as satire, is a hard trick to pull off. Despite being based on a well-researched book, this film is inadequately scripted for the task. It’s ham-fisted attempts at hilarity insult the intelligence of the audience, treating the war as something akin to mercilessly parody. It is badly miscast, the two young leads excepted. For me, this was not a gratifying experience. It’s a shameless arthouse daube that handles its themes without subtlety or pathos. Mostly, until the final quarter, it’s simply awful. I suspect a lot of people loved it
I often have problems with films of this kind [witness my review of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood]. While I understand we should not forget the painful lessons of the past and I laud the refrain of comprehension gained by active communication, the spoken or written word – there’s a promising allusion to the poet Rilke which is treated half-pat – it is almost impossible to separate what I am watching with what I know. Some of the war time depictions are fairly accurate, many are not. I was particularly squeamish about the suggestion the Americans made it to Berlin at the same time as the Soviets, a convenient distortion of history that allows the director to not dwell on one of the less edifying episodes of conflict. Berlin was a Russian victory and Elsa, a pretty young thing, would most likely have been kidnapped and raped by the Russians, who were not discriminating. In fact, there’s little suggestion of atrocities on any side, just a few unsubstantiated hangings and a mention of trains and places you never come back from. The Nazi characters are all played softly for laughs and they don’t make us laugh, at least not on this sofa. Commentators have said this is a child’s eye view, and that kids of the moment saw the war, indeed saw the Third Reich, as a playful exciting time. I agree there are elements of this truth represented, but even as the scales drop from Jojo’s eyes, we sense his realisation has been buried under too much strained mirth.
What irks most, is how filmmakers seem to want to make a political and societal point about the plight of the afflicted, yet they are still harking back to the holocaust. And why glamourise the impact with humour? Lazy prejudices abound: the Nazis are all dumb and ineffectual; the Jewish girl is more competent than anyone; the kids are agog at the possibility of a real war on their doorstep. The fact there is no guiding hand for Jojo, no mentor figure, leaves a gaping hole for explanation about anything that was really happening in spring 1945. His mother is there, but she’s an unsympathetic fantasising drunk, a closet communist who has failed to educate her fanatical son. His father figure is an ineffectual, posturing Hitler. All the usual comic notes are trooped out whenever this fantasy figure is on screen. There is no sense of the real Hitler’s mesmeric character or his fall into delusion and despair. I’m not seeing anything new here; it is just dressed up in the Emperor’s Clothes from Saturday Night Live, or wherever.
Why does writer / director Taika Waititi feel compelled to rehash the same oppressive order we’ve seen over and over? Why isn’t he discussing something more contemporary – Afghanistan, perhaps, or Putin’s Russia, or the Right to Bear Arms Brigade in the U.S., or society’s historical treatment of the Māori culture in his native New Zealand? During the war years, filmmakers made satires about the Nazi regime – famously The Great Dictator and To Be Or Not To Be – and made them incisive, relevant and amusing. Yet why is a modern auteur avoiding the world’s and society’s difficult contemporary subjects now, delivering nothing more than a sickly saccharine version of Anne Frank?
Cliches abound throughout. Jojo is a remarkably self-aware kid for someone who is clearly as dumb as a post. The fantasy sequences with his best mate Adolf simply don’t work and topple the exercise into high farce. This isn’t helped by the fantasising of Jojo’s mother and of the boy himself as he pretends to write love letters to Elsa from her fiancé. It is as if the only way to survive the war was through make-believe. Most people were subsisting into a dreadful reality. This truth only rears its ugly head late on in the narrative. The scene where Jojo scavenges for food is good. So too a remarkable encounter with the Gestapo where Elsa impersonates Jojo’s missing sister. Unfortunately it misses the element of genuine danger. The scenario is as see-through a water.
As it stands, modern idioms and idiosyncrasies abound and the ending is heavily romanticised. Tacking on David Bowie’s Heroes for the closing credits is overkill of the most brutal kind, a song whose sentiments aren’t even relevant until the 1970s. I don’t know what to make of this at all. I am seeing more and more of this kind of bleakly personal, off-kilter and introspective work in the cinema these days. I understand Spielberg’s latest is an autobiographical comedy drama homage to his mother, so goodness knows what that’ll be like. I’m just not entertained by these outings, not even the idea of them.
There was a brilliant book and film about the holocaust, communication, the misunderstandings and empathy of youth called The Reader and I suggest if you want to understand the nuances of extremism, the simplicity of young love and the effect of war on individuals, you watch or read that instead of this childish piece of hand wringing.
Hammer Pictures 1959 remake of Universal’s The Mummy has all the prerequisites which made Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein so successful: Terence Fisher directing, Peter Cushing in the lead, Christopher Lee as his monstrous support, a Jimmy Sangster script, decent sets, lurid colour photography. What is lacks is a sense of purpose. This really does feel like a remake for the sake of it. There’s nothing very different happening here than happened in any of Universal’s Mummy cycle and, other than the aforementioned colour photography, it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. Perhaps the intellectual showdown between Peter Cushing’s Egyptologist and George Pastell’s Mehemet Bey, which hints at the moral dilemma faced by all tomb raiders. Horror-wise, there really isn’t much you can do with a man in bandages. The 1932 original figured this, and took its protagonists out of his wrappings, but Hammer prefers the Abbot and Costello route. Christopher Lee’s lumbering monster can’t frighten anyone cinematically. There’s an interesting moment of pathos towards the end of the film which reimagines the humanism of Frankenstein’s monster and is a worthy moment of emotional pull, but generally the film is very leaden and uninspired. Peter Cushing does well and I suppose we should be thankful somebody is acting a part.
THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1964)
Dreadful sequel from top to bottom, starting with its title, which combines two of Universal’s own Mummy movies in one hoary epitaph. Woefully plotted and scripted, third rate acting and appalling design work, topped off by some quite obvious dubbing. The suspenseless exercise has too many flashbacks and features an unintentionally hilarious mummified Egyptian prince committing slow murders in London’s nicest drawing rooms. Most of the shocks involve severed hands. The atmospheric climax in the sewers strives to remedy what came before, but even that medicine can’t raise a flicker of interest, let alone the dead.
Following the outstanding Muppet’s Christmas Carol, the puppet franchise took a severe dip and looked like it would never recover. Muppets Most Wanted is a return to something like the old form. Sensibly the writers return the Muppets to the theatre where they were always best. We watch their already appalling show deteriorate even further as Kermit’s evil look-a-like Konstantin takes over, romances Piggy and neglects his onstage entourage. Fuzzy Bear is as hilariously confused as ever, Gonzo decides to run with the bulls with Salma Hayek , Miss Piggy sings with Celine Dion – a vocal match made in some sort of farmyard hell – and Ricky Gervais perfects a series of jewel heists as the Muppets World Tour circles the globe. Meanwhile, the real Kermit has to produce the Annual Gulag Review.
Plenty of wholesome family fun. A series of great comedy routines familiar and new, all peppered with much acerbic wit. Like all the Muppet films, Most Wanted outstays its welcome a tad, but I can’t fault the entertainment value. The long list of human guest stars starts with Gervais and Tina Fey and rolls on and on and on. Curiously, the climax takes place in a helicopter above the River Thames. Guess who was doing that in the following year’s Spectre?
so can we expect an encyclopedic episode-by-episode Muppet Show review thread next? please? don't forget the Muppets were making appearances on the Ed Sullivan show in the mid60s
the last Mupper Special I saw was a Moulin Rouge parody, so twenty years ago. That one featured an absinthe-hallucination GreenFairy muppet, for the kiddies to ask their parents about
Try "Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" (ignore the generic title). It's far better. Based on a Bram Stoker novel and featuring Bond alumni. It's not as good as it should be, owing to the death of the director before shooting finished leaving the producer to do what he could to wrap things up. There were other problems behind the scenes (eg Peter Cushing's wife died after he had only just started filming, so he had to be replaced at short notice by Andrew Keir), but it beats "Curse Of..." easily.
"The woman king" is how you make period movie with strong black women in the leads and still keep it reasonably historically correct. Not by giving them roles they couldn't have in that time and place and pretend they did, just to be the other kind of correct.
actually better not attempt any detailed prehistory, because you'd then also have to cover Sesame Street and that show ran daily five days a week since 1969 up til this very day. unless of course you're up to that challenge.
I lent a DVD of that film to my friend once some years ago (having not seen it myself) and he actually said that it wasn't as good as he thought it would be. It's good to know the reasons why that was!
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
It had great potential, and some of that can still be seen through what was pieced together after the director's death, but it's still the best Hanmer Mummy movie other than the first which @chrisno1 discussed above (and I'm sure I did too long ago).
@Silhouette Man I was attempting to do Waldorf and Statler, the two old guys from "The Muppet Show". You'd have to have seen them to get the joke.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,692MI6 Agent
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Oh, wasn't there some curfew imposed - an air raid siren - that according to the MI5 guy in control would magically clear the streets and let everyone know they should hunker down? As if that would happen at short notice. Another daft bit was having the imminent beheading of the US President streamed onto Times Square but it's not that kind of film really, to quibble about all this. Butler has his own charisma, it works okay, almost a bit Craig in some scenes.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
It's a subject after @chrisno1 's heart but I wonder what gives with Prince Charles cinema? Today that Michelle Yeoh Everything all at once film was on downstairs on the big screen, just a couple of ticket sold - was about to head up there and checked the time only to find it wasn't on anymore. Ditto Looper, on downstairs tomorrow, one seat sold, now I find it isn't it's been moved to Thursday. But if that doesn't sell will it be pulled with a few hours' notice too? Should I risk buying a train ticket to head up to London?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Don't do it @Napoleon Plural !
cancelling a show at the last minute because of poor sales is really poor business plan, it will only lead to less people trying to buy tickets.
LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD (2011)
A monumental documentary from Martin Scorsese which attempts to delve into the life, career and spiritual ideals of the Beatles’ George Harrison. Scorsese has form for rockumentaries, having helped out on Woodstock, That’s The Way It Is and helming the marvellous The Last Waltz which said an elegant farewell to The Band. Later on, he did a Rolling Stones concert but to be frank, it came too late for both him and the Stones and is a disappointment.
Not so this three-and-three-quarter hour window into George Harrison’s private life, hopes, fears and meditations. If anything, the doc concentrates a little too much on Harrison’s spirituality. This should come as no surprise, but it does skew the narrative and hence much of the archival footage towards colourful 1960s panoramas of the Fab Four in India or the Fab One in attempting to learn the sitar, learn a mantra, dig his personal beliefs. There is a lot of footage of Ravi Shanker and the like, which seems to be superfluous to the overall story; we establish half-way that Harrison can’t adequately play the sitar. The Indian music clips seem more an attempt on Scorsese’s part to strengthen his subject’s affiliation with all things ‘mystic’ and ‘eastern’ which isn’t exactly the case. Harrison was seeking to identify how his life could remain relevant, to both others and himself, among the material gain he gathered.
Very early on the photographer Astrid Kirchherr remarks “how quickly he understood what it was all about: death and being alive.” This from the time of Stuart Sutcliffe’s death in 1962 and a portent of Harrison’s later fascination with facing his impending passing. Scorsese doesn’t dwell much on this early brush with mortality: he’s already instilled foreboding by running images of the German Luftwaffe dropping bombs on Liverpool. The afterlife can wait a bit. VE Day surges with colour. The young George grows a Gene Vincent quiff and teaches John Lennon to properly play guitar. The Hamburg years are sketched over relatively quickly, so too the Beatles rise. Harrison’s cheekiness is apparent. There’s a problem measuring his contribution to the band’s early success as nobody spells it out. There are no specifics about his fretmanship or work rate in the studio, just a few curt nods. Partly this is because the first five years of the Beatles success is mapped out through the songs of John and Paul. There’s virtually no look in for George until Don’t Bother Me. Paul openly admits he dominated the band’s writing, with John, and later production duties as well. He appears a lot, does Paul, but he singularly fails to offer any comment of interest other than the expected platitudes and niceties, cliches one and all.
If I Needed Someone, from 1965’s Rubber Soul, is the first semblance of the hippy-trippy direction they band would take from late-66 through to 1968, Harrison’s swirling slide guitar attempting to replicate the sitar sound. He did better proper work on Love to You and Within You Without You. The overall LSD effect was achieved achingly on the undervalued Magical Mystery Tour [an LP not released in the UK at the time; it came packaged as two EPs and was adversely priced so didn’t reach No.1; a disappointment, I feel]. Harrison hit his song writing stride in 1968, but Paul – or producer George Martin – kept rejecting his input. It was only John who ensured Something was a single. This song would soon be considered as good a ‘lounge classic’ as McCartney’s Yesterday and was recorded by a host of easy listening singers. A bit late for the Beatles, though, they’d already missed My Guitar Gently Weeps, possibly their best track never to be released as a single. Harrison got so desperate, he farmed his songs out to people like Eric Clapton and Joe Cocker.
There are tons of brilliant photos from this period, none better than a black and white image of Ringo, Paul and John sitting on a couch, with George only visible reflected in the mirror above them; separate but together, perhaps summing up the situation better than any of the commentators. Throughout this period, Harrison’s interest in the Hare Krishna and personal spirituality was developing rapidly, making him consider the trappings of wealth and success as less of a right than a burden. “There’s no point, unless you are God…” he says, “You have to change, to make things better, which is what the physical world is about.”
The documentary doesn’t really dwell much on his post-Beatles music career. It rightly talks up All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangladesh. Phil Spector makes a [now] creepy appearance. So while all the charity and religious stuff is mentioned, there’s no reference to how he was at the forefront of a second British Wave in the early seventies when Bowie, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Gilbert O’Sullivan and all four Beatles were huge solo artists in the U.S. His tours are vaguely dismissed, so too his later LPs. This might be because they and he were shot to pieces. Ray Cooper is the only one to openly say it was drug induced. Even Harrison’s second wife offers no clue to his lack of musical success in the late seventies and eighties, when he became famed as a movie producer. “Being in the world, but not of it,” was how the subject himself describes this fallow period. No indication how he broke the habit or the malaise. The film goes faster and faster through the eighties and nineties, skipping whole periods of renewed success in favour of more spirituality and death premonitions, which is fascinating in its own right, but seems to miss part of the point of a doc about a musician.
We never really learn what inspired Harrison to write, his creative process, his reflections on and opinions of his work. It all sounds like a jolly jam in his basement, which is way too simplistic. Racing driver Jackie Stewart compares Harrison’s guitar playing to driving an F1 car, that the senses are so in tune with the moment that everything else becomes secondary, vanishing into the ether, which is quite poetic.
I saw this documentary many years ago at the BFI and thought it was terrific, but a second viewing has rather dulled its impact. Editor David Tedeschi along with Scorsese and, one assumes, a research team, have pieced together a splendid series of images and some interesting interviews, but I don’t have any more of a sense of George Harrison now than I did when I started watching. The film is short on real depth, surprising given the length. For instance, the almost total eradication of his childhood from the tale seems an oversight, as does his first marriage [they deal briefly with its breakdown]. There’s a politeness to the film which rankles. Nobody has a bad word to say of him. “A scary dad” is about the limit of it. Maybe George Harrison was a totally nice guy, but I think the film – in part produced by his widow – is something of a whitewash.
Nevertheless, Living in the Material World is a sterling achievement in rockumentary terms and I’d probably suggest it’s essential viewing if you’re interested in the Beatles, but it’s not portraying the band or Harrison’s wider impact on other artists, culture and society as a whole, it’s more the other way around, about how he chose to hide from that impact, about how society’s reaction affected him, which is thought-provoking, but doesn’t have an epic sweep as it is an insular, interior story, a monologue rather than a dialogue.
A generous 8 from 10, if I was ranking it, chiefly for the archive music and films.
Re George Harrison.
I've been about to do a review of With The Beatles, the second Fab LP, for ages now - Don't Bother Me is a Harrison song that rocks but despite this he didn't write anything for the next two albums. You'd think he'd have done more in the way of songwriting duties given his debut - an odd comment about the guy who'd go on to write Think For Yourself, If I Needed Someone, Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Long Long Long, Here Comes the Sun and Something, but it took a while for him to get going, Something about his songs don't quite gel with Lennon and McCartney's efforts and Macca openly admitted they spent more time of the L&M pieces than on his, that was just the way it was. Ironically, though Harrison and Lennon were better mates and on the same page with a lot of things - Harrision later played guitar on Lennon's imagine - I think it was Macca who helped out Harrisongs - he came up with the funky riff on Taxman later borrowed by The Jam for Start, and it was he who played the brilliant guitar solo on it. He also came up with the piano intro on While My Guitar... and the bass line on Something improves it a bit (though the Revolution in the Head author disparaged it, there's another story to that).
Harrison was said to be a bit sharp with Epstein given the way he allowed them to sign away their songs - understandable because if you've got just one song on a mega selling album, you really want all the cash you can get from it whereas L&M would still be coining it in with 1p a single or whatever it was. In some ways that's why they went on mega tours - that's how they got mega earnings.
All Things Must Pass is a fab album and there's no song on it I'd have preferred to see on a Beatles album, it just wouldn't fit. I read that it sold massively more than any other Beatle solo record, twice the amount of Band on the Run which is far more commercial and also brilliant. However, some of his stuff has a dirge like aspect to it, I prefer Revolver in mono but I think his Love To You and I Want To Tell You might be better in stereo to alleviate this. The play out song to The Time Bandits is okay but typical of the sort of thing you can't base an album around, ditto Cheer You Down which plays out at the end of Lethal Weapon 2.
Harrison played his part and was very much The Quiet One. It was he who - according to Craig Brown's recent book One Two Three Four - got Ringo in as the drummer, earning a black eye for his pains inflicted by Pete Best fans, for one time when Ringo stood in for Pete, George was the one who felt it was just a good fit. It felt right. Perhaps because of this, there's a story about George Harrison and a pool of sick in his Hamburg room that put my sister off the guitarist for life when she read it and would certainly have cast a shadow in any documentary, on reflection this uncharming anecdote would have come from Pete Best and nobody else, perhaps as revenge. According to Philip Norman's Shout!, it was Harrison who met up with the guy who turned down the Beatles, on a music show, with no hard feelings the promoter asked if there were any other bands he might look out for and it was George who mentioned the Stones 'but when he turned around, the chair was empty' wrote Norman poetically, in other words, he didn't hang around - the Stones got signed on the back of his recommendation.
It was Harrison who greeted Brian Epstein on his first visit to the Cavern to see them with the immortal cryptic words 'What brings Mister Epstein here?' 'Piss off posh nob' might have been the words to nip musical history in the bud. George and his response to George Martin when formally asking if there was anything the band didn't like during the audition: 'Well for a start, I don't like your tie...' and his pals' response - playful fisticuffs to him like kids who'd seen their classmate check the teacher - and other such larks that got them signed, it wasn't down to their music because bizarrely they hadn't actually written many or any useable songs for their audition. They were signed on the basis of their personalities, said Martin later.
The documentary touches upon Harrison's infidelities - Macca says obliquely 'I don't want to say much against him, cos he was a mate, but he liked the things blokes like, y'know?' if memory serves. In many ways, Macca and George didn't get on too well, you can see both sides of it though Macca has had a lovely story about his last visit to see him in hospital.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Harrison got a cowriting credit on Cry for a Shadow, the first original track they ever recorded
he probably shouldve got a credit for some other early songs he contributed hooks to, like And I Love Her
Paul was a year older than George, and they were friends first, playing music together. John was two years older than Paul, this really cool older kid Paul started hanging out with, so I think there might have always been a jealousy there. John was dominant songwriter on their early albums, it took Paul a couple years to catch up. Then a couple more years for George to catch up. By the time George was a prolific songwriter, John was on heroin and not very productive. I think Paul was more interested in getting more contributions out of John and less interested in what George was suddenly bringing in, and this was one of the factors in their breakup as well as why George had a triple albums worth of material so soon after.
and these are all second hand theories I picked up reading the Beatles threads in the Steve Hoffman forum, so I could be way off.
@chrisno1 and @Napoleon Plural did you watch Peter Jackson's recent documentary on Get Back/Let it Be? seems a lot of bigname directors have been putting out Beatles docs lately, Ron Howard also did one. I havent seen any of them yet myself.
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speaking of Scorsese: Scorsese filmed an SCTV Reunion five years ago that is yet to be released ! ! !, so I'm mad at that bigname director!
I think Lennon did the chorus bit of And I Love Her - 'a love like ours...' bit.
Didn't catch the Get Back doc, not having Disney. It's a shocker in that the Let It Be film was so different, one could argue it cemented the split because it showed them so miserable and fractious. Oddly of course it wasn't their last album, that was the lovelier, more upbeat Abbey Road but Let It Be came out after so gave the impression they were more at odds than they were. This would be down to the director who cut out all the banter between the band and the technicians and again made its all seem more claustrophobic than it was - I think this guy did the Stones' Rock N Roll Circus which got put on ice for decades ie not released, arguably because Mick thought The Who outshone his band but just as likely because despite the brilliance of the Stones' performance with stuff like You Can't Always Get What You Want and Sympathy for the Devil, watch it on now and a certain depressing gloom hangs over everything, it doesn't feel happy and one wonders if this isn't another example of the Stones palming someone off on the Beatles to their discredit, Allen Klein being another. I could be wrong on all this, didn't the same guy try to film Wham! in China and get sacked because of his approach? I will check.
I saw the Ron Howard doc - that's great though I also saw the accompanying film in theatres, the Beatles just performing at one of their concerts, the moving shot of Brian Epstein standing on the sidelines just watching the fans, as if keeping watch. The movie's been shown on telly enough times, Macca managing to look like an old warthog for this big movie while looking not a day over 40 for his appearance on the Graham Norton chat show with Lisa Perry, he does go big on self-sabotage that bloke, wish he'd coordinate his botox.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Also, I think Harrison began stockpiling songs towards the end of the Beatles rather than putting them forward.
That Anthology track you posted sounds like the play out song from Pulp Fiction!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Cry for a Shadow was one of the tracks they recorded with Tony Sheridan a year before signing with EMI. It was released by a rival record label at the height of BeatleMania.
I did see the original Let it Be film, I have a bootleg dvd of it. its a real drag for the first hour until Billy Preston shows up and they perform three complete songs, and then the Rooftop concert, the last halfs all great music. but the first half Paul keeps talking and talking and talking, John and Yoko hide in a corner and giggle with each other, George argues with Paul, and Ringo waits for someone to tell him what to do. Depressing as it is, they left out the worst bit: George quit for two weeks before eventually showing up again, and supposedly Yoko immediately claimed his chair.
I gather Jackson edited the same film reels completely different, to somehow make the sessions seem as joyous as A Hard Days Night and Help!
I had to look up Michael Lindsay-Hogg on wikipedia, I didnt realise he also made RocknRoll Circus. I really like that Stones film, theyre doing nice live versions of Beggars Banquet material but much tighter than their usual live shows of the period and its fun to see that circus tent full of rockstars: John and Yoko are in that one too.
but what I learned is that Hogg did work with the Beatles before the Stones. He directed the Paperback Writer and Rain promo films
According to the Scorsese film, when Harrison pulled out of the Let It Be sessions, there was some talk of Eric Clapton replacing him. Clapton doesn't deny it, but he also said he'd never want to do it, he liked being a free spirit - odd given he was in four bands before he properly went solo in 1970. A lot of interesting information there, guys, thanks.
Now, back to movies...
SEXY BEAST (2000)
Spain. Retired criminal Gal Dove is enjoying the fruits of leisure: his villa, his pool, the sun, his beautiful wife, Dee Dee, and their close friends Aitch and Jackie. A loose boulder careers down the hill behind his estate, almost decapitates him and fractures his swimming pool floor. Gal’s luck doesn’t last. An old accomplice, Don Logan, is on his way to persuade Gal to ditch retirement one last time: a jewel heist for London’s gangland boss Teddy Bass. And Don Logan does not take no for an answer.
Tension boils from the opening scenes, as the sun beats on a prone Ray Winstone, sucking up an obnoxious tan and reflecting on his blissful way of life. He’s flabby, out of shape, bleached by the sun, a weariness lurking in his face, but still startlingly good-looking. A young attractive boy [Alvaro Monje] sweeps the patio and the audience wonders about their relationship: is it fatherly, chaste, slave or sexual? We never exactly learn, but the young lad has eyes where nobody else does. A surrogate son, he’s the fixer Gal needs, the crutch for his failing dreams, like Bjorn Andersson in Visconti’s Death in Venice, he represents the purity of nature, a moment that passed in Gal’s life a long time ago. Don Logan brings that life stormily into focus.
The message of doom arrives in a restaurant. As soon as Don’s name is mentioned, director Jonathon Glazer pulls the camera achingly slowly back from the foursome, the reverse of the expected; intimacy becomes broken, now the quietude of Spain is being thrown open to the ailing world. Immediately we Don Logan will be a dangerous man and he will bring violence and fear with him. This is Glazer’s feature debut. He doesn’t make many films [four to date] but they are all interesting visually and stimulating intellectually. Here, he isn’t over interested in an emotional journey, this is a story of villainy, the past and retribution, and Glazer tells is straight and plain. The people have a surface veneer, like the sun or the glowing night lights, the golden bowls of lager, but it’s all swaddled in smoke and obscenities and casual carelessness. Never has the last saloon looked so exotic and yet so tawdry. It is a credit to the cast that we believe in these people and the cesspit they are escaping from, as well as their hopeless existence of perpetual ease.
Not even the earthy language the characters endlessly swat prepares us for Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan, a gangster so frightening, so in control and so brutal he ranks high on the list of cinematic villains., oozing power and menace with every single nuance – a twist of the head, an outstretched finger, a quiver of the lip, a lit cigarette. His words are the right ones, yet his delivery is malevolent, focussed, cruel. It isn’t even the litany of insults he delivers or the physical violence he uses, it is something unpleasant, putrid, lurking, not quite satanic, but certainly psychotic and troublingly mesmeric. We wait for the explosion in the same way Gal and Dee Dee wait, trying to avert our eyes; but we can’t leave the room as they can. It makes no difference Don Logan will cut you down.
We see the story through Gal’s point of view. Almost every scene features Ray Winstone, who commands the stage through his identifiable, defeatist, hang dog posture. This is a man who knows his time is up, who is looking death in the face every time he confronts his past. We never learn what he did, but it couldn’t have been good. He may be out of touch with the underbelly of London, but they haven’t forgotten him. He’s given to flights of fantasy, hunting wild hare, mumbling congratulatory soliloquies to himself, blowing smoke hearts, declaring his love for his wife, and suffering recurring nightmares of demonic monsters. This beastly devil haunts his nights, always one trigger finger away from ending his life.
Forced to carry out the heist, Gal journeys to London, a grey city covered in rain clouds and shadow and where the gangster’s work is carried out under cover of darkness and underground. A private swimming pool provides the break-in point, a sweaty, wet, intense, shake down takes place and the old Gal resurfaces through the water, as if the rupture in his own pool has ironically reinforced his abilities. We know his salvation is not secure. Someone is missing and Teddy Bass wants to know where Don Logan has disappeared to.
If Ben Kingsley displays the sharp zest and viper’s cunning of an enforcer, Ian McShane’s Teddy Bass is a villain as smooth and sure as they come. He won’t let a missing ghoul interfere with his arch plans, in the same manner a little gay sex won’t stop him making the friends he needs to case the exclusive safe deposit facility. Everything has its place and time for Teddy, including dealing with an implacable Gal Dove.
Louis Mellis and David Scinto’s screenplay veers from comedy, to caper, to brutal thriller with consummate ease. The visuals are superb. Full marks to photographer Ivan Bird, who takes us from the blistering heat of Spain, to the steamy, inclement surrounds of London. The editing from John Scott and Sam Sneade is crisp and vital. Gal never really leaves the heat of Spain, swapping it for a sauna of hard, griping drill work. He never leaves the intense combat of sparring with Don, replacing it with a more subtle form of intimidation from Teddy Bass. He never leaves his wife [Amanda Redman], so scared for him she dare not even utter his name on the phone. When Teddy Bass ironically says he’ll come out to Spain and “Pay his respects” we know Gal has been rumbled, but Teddy isn’t about to waste a bullet on a man as insignificant as Gal Dove. He’s the flabby bottom of the pile. We empathise. The lonely bus stop feels the safest place Gal has stood for days.
Back in Spain, Aitch is still making up daft stories for everyone’s amusement, the young boy is still sweeping, Dee Dee is making drinks. That purity just might be accessible after all. And somewhere, Don Logan may just be in hell, but he won’t care, he’s quite comfortable there.
A brilliant cinematic achievement.
THE RUNNING MAN (1963)
Maurice Binder’s silhouetted cartoon figures catch the eye during the credits of this engaging drama / thriller from Carol Reed, based on a bestselling novel The Ballad of a Running Man, by Shelley Smith. John Mortimer, later renowned for creating Rumpole of the Bailey, wrote the excellent screenplay which confiscates the traditional thriller tropes and replaces them with miscommunication, questions never answered and answers never given. The atmosphere doesn’t so much quell with tension as get heightened above a cradle of filthy lies, some intended, most imagined and each one a falsehood to itself.
Lee Remick is very good as beautiful widow Stella Baxter, whose husband has devised a complicated life insurance fraud. Rex Baxter’s motivation starts off as being payback for a perceived wrong done to him by the Experion Insurance Company, but as he indulges in the fruits of his illegal labour he begins to perfect more elaborate money making schemes. He and his wife reunite in southern Spain and initially all seems well, although Stella doesn’t take to her husband’s new abrasive identity, an Australian millionaire named Jim Jerome. Laurance Harvey audaciously gives Rex a vicious, manipulative, vindictive streak, which gradually asserts itself as the couple become more and more embroiled in deceit and confusion.
Into the mix drops Alan Bates’ holidaying love-struck insurance investigator, Stephen Maddox, and the couple’s strange behaviour seems to arouse his suspicions, except we only see this through their eyes. Mortimer’s script and Carol Reed’s careful direction are full of misplacements and all those wrong questions and non-answers. We, as an audience, are on edge because we want those questions asked, yet like the Baxter’s we are afraid of the answers. Maddox shares a similar point of view, but for personal reasons of his own. As the Baxter’s flee to Gibraltar, Reed cranks up the tension and their whole relationships disintegrates in a gripping car chase and a police pursuit along the Costa del Sol and into La Linea.
Good photography from Robert Krasker, who frequently collaborated with Reed to good effect. An underrated gem of a thriller.
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)
Ropey old sci-fi claptrap based on a Jules Verne novel which is a sequel to both the author’s In Search of the Castaways and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, although not an official sequel to either film version of those classics [in fact Castaways didn't come out until after this 'sequel']. Hard to know if one should take this seriously or not, at least as seriously as one can take sci-fi of this childish, historical kind. A band of American civil war escapees steal a hot air balloon and travel across the continent during the worst storm in history before hitting landfall on a volcanic island somewhere in the Pacific. Michael Craig has the lead. Joan Greenwood is a shipwrecked lady whose related to the British Ambassador to Chile. Not a very useful contact in such a perilous predicament. They all cope remarkably well, but never once query why they are surrounded by enormous animals, including giant crabs, bees and a hilarious goliath sized chicken. Beauty is provided by Beth Rogan, a semi-notorious starlet of the Rank class, who apparently slept her way to a top she never reached and later took up growing cannabis, which may have been more profitable than her half-witted movie career. Her memoirs provided the basis for Terrance Rattigan’s screenplay to Darling. Herbert Lom makes a far more impressive Captain Nemo than James Mason did. When he’s as good as this, you rather wish he’d had a stab at Blofeld. Ray Harryhausen wasn’t troubled much by the rudimentary stop-motion trickery. Oddly likeable tosh.
I love Sexy Beast. It has one of my favourite opening scenes. That and Gangster No . It's such a shame the rest of Gangster No 1 didn't live up to the opening.
Thank you @Lady Rose
Yes, Gangster No 1 is interesting, but pales slightly in comparison to Sexy Beast and Snatch - all the films came out in the same year and are like a triumviri of millennial British crime tropes: violence, foul language, black humour, close ups, swift editing, appalling yet fascinating people, etc etc. It's worth watching them in succession. Sexy Beast is the most 'romantic' and has the best characters. It doesn't glorify its violence or the world these people inhabit, so we share in Gal and Dee Dee's anxieties, retributions and epiphanies. Yes, that opening shot in Sexy Beast is quite something and the scene settles you directly into Gal's mindset and sloth existence.
I had to look up Michael Lindsay-Hogg on wikipedia, I didnt realise he also made RocknRoll Circus. I really like that Stones film, theyre doing nice live versions of Beggars Banquet material but much tighter than their usual live shows of the period and its fun to see that circus tent full of rockstars: John and Yoko are in that one too.
Yes, @caractacus potts I also enjoy The Rock n Roll Circus, it's an avante garde experience, isn't it? I think the Stones sound great on it and have no idea what Jagger was complaining about because frankly The Who are terrible and play one of their least interesting album tracks. Jethro Tull are probably the very best band in it, kicking off proceedings with A Song for Jeffrey. That 'super group' Dirty Mac with Clapton, Lennon, Ono, Richards and Mitch Mitchell diggin' the blues is rather hot too.
JOJO RABBIT (2019)
A ten year old member of the Hitler Youth who fantasises that his best friend is the Fuhrer begins to question his allegiances when he discovers his mother has been hiding a sixteen year old Jewish girl in the attic.
Polarising comedy drama with two good central performances from Roman Griffin Davis as the titular Jojo and Thomasina McKenzie as Elsa, the girl. The film tackles a difficult subject badly from a comedic angle. Transposing 21st Century ideals and modern sensibilities onto a serious subject for humour, even as satire, is a hard trick to pull off. Despite being based on a well-researched book, this film is inadequately scripted for the task. It’s ham-fisted attempts at hilarity insult the intelligence of the audience, treating the war as something akin to mercilessly parody. It is badly miscast, the two young leads excepted. For me, this was not a gratifying experience. It’s a shameless arthouse daube that handles its themes without subtlety or pathos. Mostly, until the final quarter, it’s simply awful. I suspect a lot of people loved it
I often have problems with films of this kind [witness my review of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood]. While I understand we should not forget the painful lessons of the past and I laud the refrain of comprehension gained by active communication, the spoken or written word – there’s a promising allusion to the poet Rilke which is treated half-pat – it is almost impossible to separate what I am watching with what I know. Some of the war time depictions are fairly accurate, many are not. I was particularly squeamish about the suggestion the Americans made it to Berlin at the same time as the Soviets, a convenient distortion of history that allows the director to not dwell on one of the less edifying episodes of conflict. Berlin was a Russian victory and Elsa, a pretty young thing, would most likely have been kidnapped and raped by the Russians, who were not discriminating. In fact, there’s little suggestion of atrocities on any side, just a few unsubstantiated hangings and a mention of trains and places you never come back from. The Nazi characters are all played softly for laughs and they don’t make us laugh, at least not on this sofa. Commentators have said this is a child’s eye view, and that kids of the moment saw the war, indeed saw the Third Reich, as a playful exciting time. I agree there are elements of this truth represented, but even as the scales drop from Jojo’s eyes, we sense his realisation has been buried under too much strained mirth.
What irks most, is how filmmakers seem to want to make a political and societal point about the plight of the afflicted, yet they are still harking back to the holocaust. And why glamourise the impact with humour? Lazy prejudices abound: the Nazis are all dumb and ineffectual; the Jewish girl is more competent than anyone; the kids are agog at the possibility of a real war on their doorstep. The fact there is no guiding hand for Jojo, no mentor figure, leaves a gaping hole for explanation about anything that was really happening in spring 1945. His mother is there, but she’s an unsympathetic fantasising drunk, a closet communist who has failed to educate her fanatical son. His father figure is an ineffectual, posturing Hitler. All the usual comic notes are trooped out whenever this fantasy figure is on screen. There is no sense of the real Hitler’s mesmeric character or his fall into delusion and despair. I’m not seeing anything new here; it is just dressed up in the Emperor’s Clothes from Saturday Night Live, or wherever.
Why does writer / director Taika Waititi feel compelled to rehash the same oppressive order we’ve seen over and over? Why isn’t he discussing something more contemporary – Afghanistan, perhaps, or Putin’s Russia, or the Right to Bear Arms Brigade in the U.S., or society’s historical treatment of the Māori culture in his native New Zealand? During the war years, filmmakers made satires about the Nazi regime – famously The Great Dictator and To Be Or Not To Be – and made them incisive, relevant and amusing. Yet why is a modern auteur avoiding the world’s and society’s difficult contemporary subjects now, delivering nothing more than a sickly saccharine version of Anne Frank?
Cliches abound throughout. Jojo is a remarkably self-aware kid for someone who is clearly as dumb as a post. The fantasy sequences with his best mate Adolf simply don’t work and topple the exercise into high farce. This isn’t helped by the fantasising of Jojo’s mother and of the boy himself as he pretends to write love letters to Elsa from her fiancé. It is as if the only way to survive the war was through make-believe. Most people were subsisting into a dreadful reality. This truth only rears its ugly head late on in the narrative. The scene where Jojo scavenges for food is good. So too a remarkable encounter with the Gestapo where Elsa impersonates Jojo’s missing sister. Unfortunately it misses the element of genuine danger. The scenario is as see-through a water.
As it stands, modern idioms and idiosyncrasies abound and the ending is heavily romanticised. Tacking on David Bowie’s Heroes for the closing credits is overkill of the most brutal kind, a song whose sentiments aren’t even relevant until the 1970s. I don’t know what to make of this at all. I am seeing more and more of this kind of bleakly personal, off-kilter and introspective work in the cinema these days. I understand Spielberg’s latest is an autobiographical comedy drama homage to his mother, so goodness knows what that’ll be like. I’m just not entertained by these outings, not even the idea of them.
There was a brilliant book and film about the holocaust, communication, the misunderstandings and empathy of youth called The Reader and I suggest if you want to understand the nuances of extremism, the simplicity of young love and the effect of war on individuals, you watch or read that instead of this childish piece of hand wringing.
I really had nothing to do this weekend:
THE MUMMY (1959)
Hammer Pictures 1959 remake of Universal’s The Mummy has all the prerequisites which made Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein so successful: Terence Fisher directing, Peter Cushing in the lead, Christopher Lee as his monstrous support, a Jimmy Sangster script, decent sets, lurid colour photography. What is lacks is a sense of purpose. This really does feel like a remake for the sake of it. There’s nothing very different happening here than happened in any of Universal’s Mummy cycle and, other than the aforementioned colour photography, it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. Perhaps the intellectual showdown between Peter Cushing’s Egyptologist and George Pastell’s Mehemet Bey, which hints at the moral dilemma faced by all tomb raiders. Horror-wise, there really isn’t much you can do with a man in bandages. The 1932 original figured this, and took its protagonists out of his wrappings, but Hammer prefers the Abbot and Costello route. Christopher Lee’s lumbering monster can’t frighten anyone cinematically. There’s an interesting moment of pathos towards the end of the film which reimagines the humanism of Frankenstein’s monster and is a worthy moment of emotional pull, but generally the film is very leaden and uninspired. Peter Cushing does well and I suppose we should be thankful somebody is acting a part.
THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1964)
Dreadful sequel from top to bottom, starting with its title, which combines two of Universal’s own Mummy movies in one hoary epitaph. Woefully plotted and scripted, third rate acting and appalling design work, topped off by some quite obvious dubbing. The suspenseless exercise has too many flashbacks and features an unintentionally hilarious mummified Egyptian prince committing slow murders in London’s nicest drawing rooms. Most of the shocks involve severed hands. The atmospheric climax in the sewers strives to remedy what came before, but even that medicine can’t raise a flicker of interest, let alone the dead.
Still nothing to do:
MUPPETS MOST WANTED (2014)
Following the outstanding Muppet’s Christmas Carol, the puppet franchise took a severe dip and looked like it would never recover. Muppets Most Wanted is a return to something like the old form. Sensibly the writers return the Muppets to the theatre where they were always best. We watch their already appalling show deteriorate even further as Kermit’s evil look-a-like Konstantin takes over, romances Piggy and neglects his onstage entourage. Fuzzy Bear is as hilariously confused as ever, Gonzo decides to run with the bulls with Salma Hayek , Miss Piggy sings with Celine Dion – a vocal match made in some sort of farmyard hell – and Ricky Gervais perfects a series of jewel heists as the Muppets World Tour circles the globe. Meanwhile, the real Kermit has to produce the Annual Gulag Review.
Plenty of wholesome family fun. A series of great comedy routines familiar and new, all peppered with much acerbic wit. Like all the Muppet films, Most Wanted outstays its welcome a tad, but I can’t fault the entertainment value. The long list of human guest stars starts with Gervais and Tina Fey and rolls on and on and on. Curiously, the climax takes place in a helicopter above the River Thames. Guess who was doing that in the following year’s Spectre?
Very good indeed.
so can we expect an encyclopedic episode-by-episode Muppet Show review thread next? please? don't forget the Muppets were making appearances on the Ed Sullivan show in the mid60s
the last Mupper Special I saw was a Moulin Rouge parody, so twenty years ago. That one featured an absinthe-hallucination GreenFairy muppet, for the kiddies to ask their parents about
Try "Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" (ignore the generic title). It's far better. Based on a Bram Stoker novel and featuring Bond alumni. It's not as good as it should be, owing to the death of the director before shooting finished leaving the producer to do what he could to wrap things up. There were other problems behind the scenes (eg Peter Cushing's wife died after he had only just started filming, so he had to be replaced at short notice by Andrew Keir), but it beats "Curse Of..." easily.
@Barbel I have seen it, but not for a couple of decades. My memory is that it was rather good. I'll try to look it up.
"The woman king" is how you make period movie with strong black women in the leads and still keep it reasonably historically correct. Not by giving them roles they couldn't have in that time and place and pretend they did, just to be the other kind of correct.
An episode by episode Muppet review thread - now, there's a thought....
actually better not attempt any detailed prehistory, because you'd then also have to cover Sesame Street and that show ran daily five days a week since 1969 up til this very day. unless of course you're up to that challenge.
The Muppet Show?
"It was great!" "It was terrible!"
"It wasn't that good". "There were parts I liked"
"Bits were awful!". "Some of it wasn't bad!"
"Boo!". "Hooray!"
Sounds like a real curate's egg of a show then. 😉
I lent a DVD of that film to my friend once some years ago (having not seen it myself) and he actually said that it wasn't as good as he thought it would be. It's good to know the reasons why that was!
It had great potential, and some of that can still be seen through what was pieced together after the director's death, but it's still the best Hanmer Mummy movie other than the first which @chrisno1 discussed above (and I'm sure I did too long ago).
@Silhouette Man I was attempting to do Waldorf and Statler, the two old guys from "The Muppet Show". You'd have to have seen them to get the joke.
Yes, I think I know them. That's the two older men who sit up in the theatre gallery and criticise everything?