Transformers / Cloverfield

Time for a dual-review. Watching these films back-to-back highlights their similarities and their differences. Both are CGI-heavy sci-fi blockbusters, featuring mass destruction caused by other-worldly monsters. Both are also a product of a post 9/11 America.

Cloverfield is the most explicit in it's imagery and use of 9/11 - so explicit, it's almost like watching, experiencing it over again. We have New York, toppling skyscrapers, shaky hand-cam footage, crowds fleeing in blind terror and panic, clouds of dust billow through the streets, no-one knows what is going on, sheets of A4 paper float down from above.

The running time is a taught 84 minutes - for the first 20 minutes characters and motivations are established. Then all hell breaks loose. Something is ripping New York apart. For the next hour, we are pinned in our seats by all manner of tense, nervous panic as our party group is whittled down to a few core survivors as they try and make their way across Manhattan. Shocks are sudden and frequent as one tense location gives way to another. The hand-cam footage works a treat (though motion sickness maybe a side effect) as we only know and experience what our heroes experience.

Ultimately, the film has nothing to say, it's all about the experience. But what an experience.

Transformers is a version of future war, and directed with all the sense and subtlety of the American invasion of Iraq. This is the Bush version of 9/11. The American Military is proud, upstanding and supportive of local indigenous populations around the world, only responding to growing threats. The camera lusts over anything American built with an engine, and Megan Fox. But it mainly lusts over a ridiculous number of explosions and military hardware with a fetishism that is creepy.

The original Transformers cartoon series was decried in the 80s as being a half-hour advert for toys. This film takes it to extremes - it is a 150 minute advert for Hasbro toys, General Motors, Burger King, The Strokes, and most importantly, military service.

Most of the film, instead of having a plot moving towards a climax, was filler. Two hours were padded tedious comedy moments, "character development", pornographic shots of US military hardware in a sunset, gratuitous explosions and product placement.

This left half an hour of robot on robot action, by which time I'd ceased to care at watching two groups of pixels pretending to have a fight and which was edited, photographed and choreographed by a 14 year old boy with ADD on a sugar rush as to leave me wondering what the hell was going on.

As for 9/11 reference themselves - it seems that the only thing Michael Bay learned from 9/11 was that really big explosions and planes crashing into buildings (repeatedly) look really cool.

By all means, as a summer blockbuster, the film is entertaining enough. But it watches itself. We have seen this movie dozens of times before. I just felt the need to shower afterwards.

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

Better known as Amelie to UK viewers, this film charmed the world on it's initial release, and it's hard not to fall under the magical spell weaved, even if in po-faced cynical reflection, the film is about two social rejects stalking each other!

But such a critique is to do this film a disfavour. Amelie exudes charm and whimsy from every frame - it lightens the heart and makes one glad that films like this are still possible, in a world awash with cod-epics, torture-porn and other cynical marketing ploys.

Part of the charm comes in the whimsical setting: a sepia-toned Paris recalled from childhood memories, not from reality. It is utterly contrived, but, just like the best Coen Brothers films, you greet the contrivance with open arms and submerge yourself fully into it.

It's hard to think of a film that looks as lovely as this. Every frame is perfectly composed (albeit digitally enhanced) - this is the look and technique that Kurosawa and Kubrick dreamed of achieving, had they had the technology available to Jean-Pierre Jeunet (making a tremendous return to form after clashing with Hollywood on the dire Alien: Resurrection).

The entire cast are a delight - you could quite happily watch a film that centered on anyone of the other cast. A rare feat indeed.

But where this film succeeds most is where so many others would fail: it is kitsch, contrived and emotional, but never slips into being twee, sentimental or fake. That very, very thin line is thankfully never crossed.

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn

In 1980, some kids clubbed some money together and made The Evil Dead. It jumped on the horror band-wagon and told a basic story of some kids staying in a cabin in the woods, beset by demons. The acting, script and special effects were all rather rudimentary. What lifted the film were the humour and the direction: moments of slapstick and a total freedom of camera movement that were utterly inspired.

Some years later, they came back and made essentially the same film again, with a bigger budget. And this time the gallows-slapstick humour and wacky camera angles were pushed to the fore. They threw everything into the pot, nothing was left out. And it works. And it’s utterly joyous, exhilarating bravado film making by some kids that didn’t really know any better.

It’s like watching an 85 minute, gore-soaked Tex Avery cartoon. Every trick they could think of is in this film. The camera is restless – it is either strapped onto the front of a motorbike and chasing Bruce Campbell through the surprisingly large interior of the small wooden cabin, or it’s strapped to Campbell himself. Or in one breath-taking shot, the camera is attached to a crane, with Bruce Campbell on a spinning device hurtling him through every branch Sam Raimi can drive him through. And when the camera isn’t moving, there’s reverse-motion acting, stop-motion animation, speeded-up film. It’s absolutely breathless.

And at the centre of it, is a largely solo performance by cult-hero Bruce Campbell – he may not win acting awards, but this is one of the most enjoyable performances ever captured on camera. Behind the camera, Sam Raimi, never better, and you almost sense him twitching with new ideas for inflicting pain on Ash/Bruce. Film-making rarely ever comes this passionate, inventive, or exciting.

Die Hard

Die Hard is the greatest action film of all time. The end. No debate.

It works wonderfully, through great acting, fantastic set pieces, great cinematography, pre-CGI special effects that look utterly realistic and a barnstorming script.

In every area, the film excels itself, and provides a benchmark for all other action films. One area crucial to the genre is pacing. Films, like Speed, try and keep tension at a high pitch throughout, but often end up burning themselves out three-quarters of the way in. Die Hard takes a couple of breathers, when John McClane has doubts, but the tension remains, largely because of the vulnerability of our hero - he is half dressed and without shoes, never mind being outnumbered and outgunned.

When it first arrived in 1988 (or arrived on VHS in 1989 for me!) it was light-years ahead of the competition. The Hollywood action film of the 1980s seemed to largely comprise of an invincible over-muscled lunk (usually in a jungle) stood on the spot with an enormous machine gun mowing down armies of bad guys running towards him. Not only did Die Hard have a guy with a (fairly) regular physique, it pared down the number of bad guys that enabled you to count them off as the film progressed, it also turned the action into a game of cat and mouse, with Bruce Willis very much the mouse: always on the run from one hiding place to the next. John McClane was no emotionless man-mountain, but a regular guy who realised the odds were strongly against him, cried when in pain, voiced his doubts when in trouble.

Emphasising this “regular guy” approach to the movie, every layer of seniority or management in the film is shown as being wrong, lazy and stupid. Whether it’s the media, SWAT teams, the FBI or Dwane T. Robinson: if you’re earning more than average wage, you’re a jerk. And who doesn’t love to see jerks getting their dues?

On the flip side of the hero, is the bad guys. And Alan Rickman presented no ordinary moustache-twirling villain: Hans Gruber was smart, classy and funny. In fact, if he wasn’t so keen on killing innocent members of the public and police forces, he’d be good enough to be a hero. The henchmen are all equally as good, and even in their brief on screen time, they each manage to create a unique character. This is where Die Hard plays it’s best kept secret. It’s not just an action film. It is also a heist film. And we want to see the bad guy’s do their “one last job”. Part of us wants them to succeed - when they get into the vault, and the music breaks into Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, we pump a fist into the air with them.

And, as a finale, we get a great big tall building blowing up. And a man jumping off it. Being shot at from a helicopter. Which also blows up. What more could you want?

Carry On Up The Khyber

Those expecting Casablanca or Citizen Kane will be depressed by my choice for C, but I feel it is worthy of greater recognition. Of all the Carry On films, this is the only one that actually works on more than the basest of levels. Admittedly, it has all the double entendres, sexism and mugging to camera that you expect for a film series that had become utterly complacent with itself, and in 1968 was about to become utterly outdated by the arrival of Monty Python.

But Khyber works. The cast are all accustomed actors comfortable working with each other, but here they are given roles which push them a little bit further than many of the other entries in the series. The jokes are (largely) funny, and the dining room scene is a comedy classic. Of the cast, everyone is excellent, and Peter Butterworth deserves special mention, but Joan Sims is the standout, as the frustrated and dotty Lady Rough-Diamond.

There is some mild racism in it’s treatment of the Indian and Pakistani peoples, bit I think it acquits itself by applying exactly the same attitudes, and taking them further, to the British. Yes, in spite of all the crudities on display, Carry On Up The Khyber actually gives quite an in depth, self deprecating insight of British-ness, particularly in dealing with the then still fairly new concept of Britain as a small, cold and damp country in northern Europe, and no longer the centre of a world-spanning empire. Obviously, it’s not a lecture from an Oxford don, but a film with a story based around knobs, but nevertheless, it’s that extra dimension that raises it above the other Carry On films.

Bubba Ho-Tep

If there was ever a film that screamed “for the horror fanboys” in capital letters on a thousand and one internet forums, this is that film. Directed by Don Coscarelli (from the Phantasm films) and starring Bruce Campbell (from the Evil Dead films) with a pitch of Elvis vs. The Mummy, this promised to be a fun but inconsequential horror romp, with a fairly small but rabid target audience. That it managed to transcend these expectations and actually be a heart-warming and challenging piece about ageing and death was astounding.

Bruce Campbell plays a man who may (or may not) be Elvis, stuck in a flyblown nursing home with a cancerous penis. His two companions are the sympathetic-but-taking-no-shit nurse played by Ella Joyce, and civil rights activist Ossie Davis playing a man who may (or may not) be JFK. The jokes and monsters are all in place, and satisfyingly funny, but the film challenges it’s audience. How can we be content to abandon our parents and the elder generation in squalid, depressing homes such as these: yesterday’s heroes gave us civil rights, moon landings, rock and roll. And what do you do when you are staring death in the face? Is it possible to die with pride and honour intact?

Bruce Campbell is admittedly no Robert de Niro, but as Elvis he gives a tender performance of an old man who ran away from his heyday, and desperately wants it back. Ossie Davis and Ella Joyce are equally excellent in their supporting roles.

This film also changed my life, as I met the woman who would become my wife at the UK Premiere of this film. And if you’ve got to marry anybody, marry a lass who goes to Elvis vs. The Mummy films!

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Baron Munchausen has baggage. It has a reputation as Gilliam’s Folly, a stinker that at the time it was the world’s biggest turkey. And it has to be said, it is an inconsistent, sketchy film with an ending that makes no sense. But Munchausen has a warmth and charm rarely seen in modern cinema, and even one of Gilliam’s failures is far more interesting than the majority of Hollywood cinema.

Munchausen picks up where Brazil left off – it is a story where the enemy is not the enemy at the gates, in the siege of a Mediterranean city, but the enemy is plodding, unimaginative by-the-book bureaucracy. Ironically enough, this has a modern resonance in our post 9/11 society: who is more destructive and dangerous - the mysterious foreign hordes, or our own fear-mongering government?

But the film is a creative, imaginative delight, with spectacular design, set pieces which you expect from a Gilliam film. What you don’t normally expect from Gilliam is the sheer quality of the acting – everyone is superb, with the exception of Robin Williams playing Robin Williams. John Neville is wonderful as the lead – despite being in his 60s when filming, his transformation in age depending entirely on his mood is entirely convincing, and Sarah Polley’s Sally is a child lead who is utterly delightful – only if half of her skill here had been split between the three leads of the Harry Potter films! The show is almost stolen by an unrecognisable Oliver Reed playing Mars, the God of War as a rough, blustery Yorkshireman doting on his trophy wife, Uma Thurman.

To finish it’s interesting to note that a shot Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is lifted directly from Munchausen. As Saruman addresses his Uruk-hai hordes from Isengard, the camera pulls back from his face, and keeps pulling back through the massed army till we realise the scale of it. Jackson accomplishes his shot with green screen and CGI. With Gilliam, it’s all real. And that’s what makes the difference.

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is either, depending on how you view it, a cinematic masterpiece or pretentious twaddle. Most people these days go for masterpiece, but on it’s initial release the poorer opinion prevailed – indeed the film was only rescued on initial release by exploitative marketing it to hippies as “the ultimate trip” (for the psychedelic Star Gate sequence).

But this film is indeed a masterpiece, arguably the closest mainstream cinema has ever come to being a piece of classical art. It’s leisurely pace disguises provocative themes and raises questions about our existence on this planet, the dehumanising effect of technology and the nature of evolution. For those on the “creationist” side of the evolution debate, it should be noted that this film does in no way exclude the concept of God (if you can accept God to be a black monolith).

The film itself is a staggering achievement, both technically and emotionally – the detail in the special effects as astounding now as they were 40 years ago, the rotating living quarters of the Discovery. The ballet of space-ships to Strauss is powerful, joyful, exuberant cinema.

The film exudes eeriness from ever pore, a key Kubrick trait – the humans are dehumanised by all their technology: birthday greetings and video telephone calls are imbued with a sense of melancholy and despair and the most emotional scene in the film is a man unplugging a computer.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a masterpiece - a film of immense scale and perception perfectly realised.

A Film Alphabet

In this blog, I'll be publishing a Film Alphabet - a guide to films, one beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Confusingly, I'll begin with numbers, but hey, you can't have everything.

This list is not meant to be the 27 Best Films ever made, it just happens to be ones I like. I'll probably get stuck around the Xs and Qs of the alphabet, but we'll see how it goes.

Once I've finished all that, I may start with various albums, books and other bits of culture wot I devours.

I hope you enjoy the read!

Website News

I will be launching a major update to my Fwonk website this Friday, timed to coincide with the new release on Fwonk Records by Flash. The site will now be easily navigable throughout the different areas - Fwonk Records, Heskin Radiophonic, Mechagodzilla etc. and more graphically co-ordinated. It's looking good here, and just ready for Flash's LP to launch.

See you all Friday!

Rocket Dock

Who likes eye-candy? Who likes that fancy zoom-in navigation bar thing on MacOS and wishes they had it on poor lowly Windoze? Well now you can!

This fancy bit of freeware makes your Quick Launch and Start Menu redundant, is easily configured, takes up next to no system resources, and will have all of your work colleagues wondering how you got MacOS onto your PC.

http://rocketdock.com/

Etienne De Crecy Live 2007

I had to feature this. This is one of the most spectacular live shows I have ever seen.


Etienne De Crecy Live 2007 Transmusicales de Rennes from Clement bournat on Vimeo.

Sawteeth Records

I've been reading and researching teh stylee nu trends in web design, and having looked back on my portfolio, realised I needed to revisit some of the older sites I designed to spruce them up.

First amongst these is Sawteeth Records. This is a website created by my mucker Vasko. The basic design and graphics of the old site I linked to above are a bit long in the tooth by today's standards, so I am working on a new update with swizzy new CSS and navigation method.

You can preview the site here.

Society For Safe Migration

Following on from designing a logo for the Society for Safe Migration, I am beginning work on the charity's website, a preview of which you can see here.

The Society is dedicated to promoting and improving the lot of migrants, such as those emigrating from North Africa to Europe who get stranded in a political no-man's-land, and are often feel compelled into dangerous methods of transportation.

Hard to larboard, Mr Warley! Luff, luff, and shake her!

I have to say I'm no fan of Russell Crowe, but I thought Master & Commander one of the best Hollywood blockbusters in the past twenty years.  I loved the way it seemed so immersive - by the end of the film, you really felt as if you had watched a documentary rather than your standard big-budget Hollywood schtick.

Interested, I started reading the book Master & Commander, of which the film only borrows the name and a couple of scenes.  The books do not offer an easy introduction - for the first 60 pages you are bludgeoned over the head with mizzenmasts, foretopsails and a cunt splice.  The technical knowledge is astounding, but after a while you realise that you don't really need to know every sail and yard on the ships, and the language draws you in.  The writing is masterful, and a delight to behold.  The places, characters and scenarios come to life through the slow immersion into beautiful language.

The characters of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin were barely touched on in the books.  Aubrey, born to the sea, is naive and clumsy by land, whereas Maturin blossoms into life as natural philosopher, doctor and spy.

I am currently up to book 10 in the series of 20 (half way there!) and there has not been a bad book yet.  The book The Ionian Mission was a wonderful exercise in maintaining suspense, as various battles and confrontations loom for 300 pages, yet nothing happens.  In the last 20 pages, the author unleashes the most brutal, vivd encounter of the books so far, and finishes the book with the smoke of battle still hanging in the air, forcing the reader to pick up the next installment to discover the outcome.

Patrick O'Brian's literary achievement is quite astonishing.

Latest Designs

I've been working on a couple of things lately, I've redesigned the Mechagodzilla website with fancypants new graphics, been working on a guitar tutorial website for a local guitar tutor and designed a logo for a new charity - the Society for Safe Migration, which aims to promote safe migration for people who often travel in perilous circumstances.

Welcome!

Another hesitant return to the world of blogging from yours truly, the Fwonkmesiter.  Here I intend to basically capture what ever I'm up to - web design, music creation, the Fwonk netlabel, books I'm reading, music I'm listenening to, TV I'm watching.

Like the world needs another blog that does that, but hey!  It's my webspace, and I'll cry if I want to.

Or something.