Top Gun Philosophy
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
I have run out of idea regarding this blog. Therefore, I have decided to do something very savvy. I will base each one of my future posts for the foseeable fguture upon a video that I have favourited on YouTube, and of course then embedd that video into the post at the end so you can see what I was on about, or if what i was chatting about ended up having any correlation with the video what so ever.
EPISODE 1: The Fly-by Menance
Top Gun was one of the greatest films ever made. Fact. Despite some arguably very flagrant homoerotic undertones, Tom Cruise (shock horror) was quite good in it. So was Val Kilmer. So was pretty much everyone to be honest. The aerial shots were amazing, and the soundtrack, 80's and dated as it is, still manages a little frisson of delight when you hear the opening sequence from the aircraft carrier. Let'sbe honest, screw Navy recruitment on television or anywhere else;if this film didn't make you want to be a fighter pilot then...well it did didn't it. I have Top Gun on VHS and DVD, and a HD version recorded on my Sky +. Trust me, I love this film.
Luckily, Top Gun is a film everyone loves for the very reason of it's faults. It's camp, it's silly, it's full of one liners, and Jerry Bruckheimer produced it. So a parody would seem to go down well. Well...maybe, but the thing is with films like Top Gun is that they become completely absorbed into our public consciousness, they form a kind of backbone of reference for our popular culture. And because they are so fundementally important in our referencing of any other film, book, piece of music, sub-culture, whatever, parodies often fall short. Reducing a film which has (*love it or loathe it) become so ingrained in us seems almost exploitative. It's like a kind of scepticism as to whether what we appreciate, and what informs our ideas about media is really worth while, and for me at least, after watching this video, I felt a little bit hollow.
Perhaps I am talking absolute proverbial doggie bits, but gosh, I felt a little bit ashamed of Val Kilmer in this video. What do you think (Cal and possibly Oli, and maybe that guy who tried to sell Cal a t-shirt)? Enjoy the clip:
Labels: film, philosophy, youtube
posted by danny @ 05:15,
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♣ The Holiday
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
In a dramatic twist from only reviewing things which I consider to be of a worthwhile standard, and shying away from the blockbusters so loved by the plebs of Britain, I have decided to write a review about The Holiday, a film which remarkably, was pretty much as bad as I hoped.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a serial rom-com hater. I still think Notting Hill is a truly top film, and Four Weddings and A Funeral would have been a master stroke were it not for that pice of rancid American arm candy Hugh Grant insists on dragging about the film. In fact, my only real grudge against those films would be that they spawned a whole host of quite dreadful films, and for that, they will always carry a black stain of shame with them in my mind. But enough of the rather pointless qualification of my review; I know a good film when I see one, so if you don't braodly agree with this then bully to you sir. Back to the buissiness of critiquing.
It starts off not great. In what has to be the most contrived start to a film I have ever seen, after two women are both heart broken by their respective men, they seek solace, some time away, to gather their thoughts. Remarkably, Amanda from LA (Cameron Diaz) finds a charming little cottage in Sussex, and contacts the owner, the equally man-hating Iris (Kate Winslet). They swap houses, and wham, Bob's your uncle, and we are on the plot treadmill, although not at great speed or much a gradient. There is an inevitable slew of cheap laughs as we find the cosmopolitan Amanda struggling to cope with cold British winter-time in her stilleto's, slipping on ice, having snow fall on her head from low hanging pine branches, and although it's far from brain surgery, nothing is really wrong with the film at this point. (Mark Kermode, easily my favourite critic makes the startlingly accurate but nonetheless hilarious criticism that the English town has less resemblance to a provincial sleepy retreat than to Narnia) On the opposite end, the audience get a host of slapstick giggles as Winslet runs about the house making throaty noises from time to time and rubbing her hands, subtly showing us she is not used to such decadent surroundings. Sadly, her running about the house serves mainly to remind us of Risky Buissness, and how Tom Cruise, even without having the sensual advantage of breasts, still made spontaneous house-running cooler. Is at this point, when we see the two displaced women side by side that things soured for me. It feels so old, this dual reality, seperate lives thing, and in fact, it's extremely similiar to Diaz's own Sliding Doors, which if I might add, was a far better film.
Well, the inevitable happens; as Amanda packs up her things to leave, she meets Iris' brother Graham, who pops in, unaware that the two have traded places. (Incidentally, in a rather revolting act of stereotype, the three major British charachters are called Iris, Graham and Jasper. Presumably the producers simply looked at what names appeared most in the Kensington census and used those). They fall in love, it's great.
On the other side of the pond, Iris doesn't fall in love straight away, and respect to the film for at least making some effort to a) address something other than 'break-up make-up' and b) not mirror each girls experiences exactly. Instead through an act of kindness she meets an old man named Arthur Abbott. She helps him through a number of things, eventually leading to his making good on accepting a prestigious award, which lends the film a nice cute factor. Over a much slower timeline, she also starts to fall in love with Miles (jack Black) Inevitably, both couples fall in love, despite hiccups (paticualrly look out for how accepting Diaz' charachter is of the two children she takes on by courting Graham - obviously a big fan of realism in film).
Miles: [Miles reaches over to grab something on the counter, his arm grazing Iris's chest] Okay, sorry about that. Boob graze.
[both Miles & Iris laughing]
Miles: That was accidental. Accidental boob graze. I'm sorry.
Iris: Changing subject.
Miles: Okay.
Which leads us to the charachters. Cameron Diaz is still quite annoying, but plays her role well enough; a little less slapstick and a little more humanity might have gone down well though. Jude Law does a good job, but then, he doesn't really have to do much, just look good and talk in a cheeky chappy accent. Kate Winslet for me is the most disappointing. We know she can act, and at times in The Holiday it looks like she is going to decide to, but unfortunately these spells are intermittent. As often as she will have a real, honest dialogue with someone, she ruins it with another scene. When Jasper comes round to LA to see her, there are a serious of paticualrly poor scenes; Winslet running around shouting with happiness about the house after liberating herself from her former object of affection's grasp in a ludicrously camp way. Black though is to be commended. His performance is a fantastic mix, warm and emotive at times, yet still with enough banter and comedy to ensure he leaves a suitable mark in the laughter reel. Certainly the star of the show.
Overall, the Holiday is not a great film. The beginning and ending are remarkable in how forced they feel, and though Winslet's acting is controlled and charming at times, Black is consistently capable, with a great mix of comedy and seriousness. Unfortunately, the fact that Jude Law and Cameron Diaz seem so very comfortable in these roles, to the extent that they seem to play themselves in parts of the film, and the fact that the script is really nothing special at all means it's no grand slam. If you do need a holiday romance, go for Love Actually. Alright, it's cliched, but it's well produced, generally better acted, and the multiple story threads are intriguing. Otherwise, I'm not sure why you would pick it up. Fun to an extent, but unremarkable.
Starman gives it a lunar lovely score of 2 1/2 sun flares
Labels: film
posted by danny @ 14:20,
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beowulf
Saturday, 28 April 2007
They made Beowulf into a film? Why wasn't I told until now?
What's next? Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Everyman? Perhaps Mel Gibson will get his paws on them and insist that they be filmed only in Old English. Pass it off as a reminder of the terrible life of the pagans and the importance of finding Christ. Get lost Gibson. I like how I actually feel angry about Mel Gibson doing this even though there is no indication that he will do as much and I merely drafted him in from my imagination.
Just as well it wasn't released here.
posted by danny @ 07:26,
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♣ Dead Man's Shoes
I have read a fair amount of bad press for this film, saying it's not up to scratch. Lewis Beale of the Film Journal International says it, 'Isn't a mess, but it's sure no competition for Winchester 73, Once Upon a Time in the West or even Kill Bill, films in which payback really is a bitch.' I think he somewhat misses the point however. In my mind (and others dispute this) Dead Man's Shoes is more than a simple slasher movie. It is affecting and disturbing, and, led by Paddy Considine, the actor who plays Richard, it manages to pull it off with a fair amount of panache. In short, it has a great deal of depth, paticularly psychological depth which the others simply don't have to the same degree.
As for plot: Richard returns home from military service to a small town in the Midlands. He has one thing on his mind: revenge. Payback for the local bullies who did some very bad things to his brother Anthony. (These bad things are gradually explained in flashback, and with increasing ferocity, making for a climatic realisation of the reason for Richard's killing spree). At first his campaign employs guerrilla tactics, designed to frighten the men and put them ill at ease. But then he steps up his operation, and one by one the local tough guys are picked off by the terrifying angel of vengeance that Richard has become. In the final flashback we come to understand that Richard's brother is actually dead. This is something of a revelation as we see his brother following him in various scenes, with direct dialogue between the two, leading to a Sixth Sense style realisation that he is a part of Richard's memory now. This aspect of the film was an excellent addition. No explanation is made for the brother, the film is too slick for that, it merely expects the audience to understand Anthony is now an intrinsic part of Richard's revenge-set mind. Similiarly, we do not really understand the reason for Richard's vigilante attacks until the final flashback when we see his brither die at the hands of those he now kills. It's something of an ask for the audience to keep up with the action not really understanding the motive, and I appreciate the film not dumbing down for the sake of easy watching. The mysteriousness of Richard's vendetta is a useful device; it echoes the vengeful and animalistic nature of Richard's revenge, implicating the audience in Richard's psyche (as he later says, "Now I'm the monster.")
Richard: [to Mark] You, you were supposed to be a monster - now I'm the fucking beast. There's blood on my hands, from what you made me do.
There is a small but appreciable element of humour noir here as well. At one stage, Sonny, one of the main persecuters of Anthony attempts to kill Richard by shooting him, but only manages to shoot his colleague Big Al in the head. This kind of darkly macabre slapstick only enhances the surreal ambiance of the film. In another scene, Richard meets the wife of his final victim Mark, and she accuses him of giving a knife to her son, which of course he did. Richard's reply is the telling, 'but it was blunt' and here we see Richard at his most childlike; he fails to understand how this is 'irresponsible.'
This was the first film I had seen from Shane Meadows, though his name had been bounded about a lot in front of me, and I thought his direction was actually very good. The film seemed to rise above the simple killings of several men to deal with grander themes: revenge, mercy, the point at which man becomes animal, and the squalid decadance of the bourgeoise pretenders in little England; shifting drugs like small kings. Cinematically, there are some fantastic shots; a good use of filters, perspectives etc lend the film an uncanny air throughout much of it, giving a slightly surreal atmosphere. The film as it's whole is a wonderful package. Film and sound come together incredibly well, complimenting one another perfectly. The harsh electronic sounds of the score provide a chilling backdrop to the murders, and sum up the dystopian view of life in their cacophony.
The film comes in at just 120 minutes. It's short by any standard, but by the end we feel that to have carried on any longer would have been an indulgence. All credit must be given to Meadows for producing a film quite bare bones in terms of production, but so much grander in execution and thematic content. Meadows also has an excellent eye for locations, something reflected in his cinematography. Even in the first opening shots we see a picture of Midlands suburbia, bland in all senses of the word, and yet, in the very distance the powerful silhouetteed intrusion of a castle on a hill. This Gothic incursion into the ordered and banal life of suburbia gives us immediately an impression of the untapped power, the looming threat of more primal elements coming to power. This certainly reflects the cast: in a town of big fish in a small pond, it's the agressive nomad, the troubled outsider who wreaks revenge on his former friends. In one of Richard's early attacks on his victims (at this point he is more concerned with firhgtening and humiliating them rather than actually killing them) there is a terrific shot of two fat men sprawled on couches; near-empty pizza boxes strewn about the room, decorated in the most tasteless way possible. When Richard comes to the scene and spray paints their clothes and hair, we can't help but feel a certain empathy with him. If this life portrayed is what Richard stands against, is it any great loss? There are a number of great scenes showing the contrast between the victims indulgent, stagnant lifestyles, cooped up in dark, drug-filled dens with Richard's own vagrant lifestyle. He stays for the majority of the film outdoors, seeking shelter in an abandoned outbuilding of a farm. There's obviously a great deal of imagery here in terms of the raw strength of nature's fury (Richard's revenge) and his victims weakness, having succumbed to the easy life, a life which is emasculating in it's removal of dignity. There is more than a hint of the Romantic Byronic hero here as well; the nomadic Richard has a definite power, wandering through, seeking something, which allies him even more to the audiences sympathies.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the film is in Paddy Considine's rendition of Richard. It is rare to find in film an anti-hero of such tremendous psychopathic tendencies, and yet one capable of such endearment. Though Richard's murders are graphic and uncompromising, Meadows allows for a look at his complex psychology and allows us to feel more than a little pathos for the man under the mask. (Literally 'the mask' - for a good portion of the film Richard wears an old gas mask to kill his targets, showing not just his military background, but his faceless, driven focus for murder).
Penguin from Penguin's verdict? 4 1/2 Artic Penguino's
Labels: film
posted by danny @ 06:24,
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♣ Easy Rider
Friday, 27 April 2007
from wikipedia:Along with Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider helped kick-start an artistic renaissance in Hollywood during the late sixties and early seventies. The major studios realised that money could be made from low-budget films made by directors with artistic intentions. Heavily influenced by the French New Wave, the films of the so-called "Hollywood Renaissance" came to represent a generation increasingly disillusioned with their government and the world.
No, I mean it, you've got a nice place. It's not every man that can live off the land, you know. You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud.However, it is quite easy to feel that, in a way these individuals, searching for some kind of plug to fill their lives have not quite understood the ethos of living your own way, of ethical libertarianism which the two bikers seem to have found. Instead for them is a kind of going through the motions facade of freedom. The commune seems to have swallowed the image of the hippy itself as free-living, and rather overlooked the spiritual ramifications. When they ask for, 'simple food for simple people' it is hard not to think that they too have taken up a stereotypical role in society quite like the corporates and yuppies they claim to despise. The unavoidable reference to the overpowering tyranny of the state comes in the form, of all things, a float parade. The two protagonists join in and are promptly arrested for not having a liscence. The message clearly is that even in a time of celebration, the government can't allow for the free-spirited and non-conformists to do as they please. Whilst frankly I am too tired to write about the entire story, let's just say Jack Nicholas has a ver convincing and charming role, though sadly is beaten to death in his sleep when sleeping rough with the other two (note, not copulating with them, merely engaging in the act of sleep nearby for all you slight perverts). This mindless brutality of the conformist masses (we are led to beleive that a group seen earlier threataning the travellers are responsible, one of whom is a policeman) is shown to me violent and counter-productive; the only person who survives is a fairly conservative Nicholas, so conservative he very doggedly tries to avoid smoking grass by the campfire in an earlier scene, saying, 'it leads onto harder things.' The ending of the film is the triumph. Having sucessfully transported drugs and as a result made a small fortune, Billy brags of their voctory, whilst Wyatt (Captain America) merely wonders at where they went wrong:
- Billy: We did it, man. We did it, we did it. We're rich, man. We're retirin' in Florida now, mister.
- Wyatt: You know Billy, we blew it.
Fezwearer's verdict? 3 1/2 Feztastic cymbal-clapping monkey butlers
Labels: film
posted by danny @ 17:34,
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♣ The Conversation
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
I started watching this film completely on a whim, and it paid off hugely. I had heard mention of the film before, but Gene Hackman (who plays the main protagonist Harry Caul) had never been one of my favourite actors, and the idea of a film based around the adventures of an audio surveillance expert seemed a little bit to techno-focused and dated for my liking.
Obviously I learnt nothing from the revelation that was Blow Up, a film which incidentally I think The Conversation shares a great deal with. Where Blow Up was concerned with the medium of the still photograph, The Conversation is focused on the medium of audio. The film, which appeared post-Watergate Scandal examines the conflict between the modern intrusions of privacy afforded by the rapid advancement of technology. As a result, a number of postmodern conditions are touched upon. Claustraphobia and isolation, voyeurism, betrayal, paranoia and transcience are all commented upon to greater or lesser effect. But enough of the themes for now, lets move on to the plot proper.
The haunted surveillance expert (Caul) pursues a case (seemingly of marital infidelity) and in doing so discovers that he has become the victim of his own technological profession and intrigue by film's end. (His last name, 'caul', literally means the protective, embryonic membrane that sometimes covers the head of a child at birth.) Well that's it in a nutshell. The film itself is as binary in structure as the polarity of it's themes might suggest. The first half is slow and deliberate, reflecting Harry's own impotence in taking the course of action he feels is needed by the information he finds buried deep on his audio recording. The second half is charachterised by its decision, its assertiveness and its questioning. Harry only realises that he himself is being bugged in the second half, even though a great deal of the first half is spent showing just how protective and closed he is socially and in his work.
At roughly half way, Harry resolves to prevent the murders he believes will inevitably occur as a result of his surveillance attempts. He takes a room next door to the one the couple he first recorded said they would meet at. He listens, as he always does, and crucially, he makes no real move of action, but remains passive. A series of disturbing scenes follow, with Harry seeing blood in a number of different places; though it is never made clear to the audience whether this blood is a result of his paranoia or part of an elaborate deception.
This transition from more deliberate, brooding tones to frenzied neurotic ones works as more than just a charachter development however. It's also an effective device to draw the audience into Harry's own neuroses. As the scenes become increasingly more frantic, we find ourselves questioning our own presumptions about the film, and in a dramatic and even shocking climax, must admit, just as Harry does, that our own perceptions cannot always tell us everything. Even with the best surveillance in the world, we can be duped by ourselves. This is an important message, and one the film shows off quite tastefully. Harry destroys his equipment, searching for the bug we know is in the room, and yet finds nothing. He returns finally to playing his saxophone, a return to the most human part of himself, away from the constructs and artificiality his work afforded him.
We know that you know, Mr. Caul. For your own sake, don't get involved any further. We'll be listening to you. (He hears a playback of his own saxophone playing)
In an expanse on this idea, one of my favourite scenes occurs at the hotel Harry goes to, trying to determine the fate of the couple he recorded. In a series fo shots Harry is filmed through a number of different mediums; a shower curtain, the mottled glass of a patio window, and a mirror. Inviting the audience, no, forcing the audience into a direct involvement with Harry's paranoia of being watched, it works fantastically.
I like to always examine the dimension between charachters in films and texts, and The Conversation, though not presenting a great number of human dynamics, nonetheless has a great deal of thematic content. The subject of relationships are touched upon, in exactly the same way we would expect Harry to deal with them. Harry falls out with his co-worker Stan over the fairly minor issue of blasphemy, and as for more sunsual relationships, we see only two examples. In the first, we see Harry in what seems to be a genuinely tender but rather stifled relationship with a woman he pays the rent for called Amy. Though we never see there relationship develop to a physical extent, there is a warmth between the two which suggests there might be. However, angered by Amy's qestioning, Harry makes his exit. The second encounter with a woman shows Harry eventually consenting to a friend's (Meredith's) pleas that he 'trust her.' He relates the stroy of Amy and him, and asks Meredith's advice. Harry is hurt when he finds his private conversation has been recorded, and still later when after spending the night with Meredith he finds his tapes have been stolen. These relations show the paradox of Harry's human relations. In the first, there is a willing and genuine concern for him his shown by Amy , but he resents this, and cannot keep his guard down, eventually finiding himself unable to trust her. In the second, on realising his mistake with Amy, he breaks down into tears and wears his heart on his sleeve, only to be double-crossed by Meredith. No wonder he puts these boundary's up in front of him. It is a strength of the film to portray a man of such seemingly irreconcilable work and social ethics. For a man whose job it is to become so intimate with other's conversations and relations, he is remarkably inadequate in his own love life.
Meredith: Something is on your mind. I wish you'd tell me. I do, I wish that, I wish that you'd feel that you could talk to me and, and that we could be friends, I mean, aside from all of this junk.
Harry: (after a long pause) If you were a girl who waited for someone...
Meredith: You can trust me.
Harry: ...and you never really knew when he was gonna come to see you. You just lived in a room alone and you knew nothing about him. And if you loved him and were patient with him, and even though he didn't dare ever tell you anything about himself personally, even though he may have loved you, would you..would you, would you go back to him?
Meredith: How would I know - how would I know that he loved me?
Harry: You'd have no way of knowing.
So then, a verdict. Masterfully shot by Coppolla, this relatively low budget film makes an important move forward; tending to focus on the internal struggles of man, rather than focusing more on the battle between social obligation and personal conviction shown so eloquently on The Godfather II. Special mention must be made to the music within the piece. Utilising the squeals and burbles of audio recording eqipment, it really draws you into the paranoi and obsession of Harry, and works remarkably well.
Tintin's Verdict? 5 Mass-hypnotised Gallic Catoon charachters
Labels: film
posted by danny @ 15:29,
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