Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Steve Exeter

I came to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on Blu-ray without prior knowledge of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s 6 volume digest size graphic novel and whilst it appears that the 2nd volume in the series shares the film’s title writer/director Edgar Wright worked with O’Malley to incorporate the key elements contained in all 6 volumes into the screenplay.  I am not an avid reader of graphic novels, in fact the only time I have been compelled to read them is after seeing film adaptations, namely Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen and Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World, this is not a prejudice against comics per se, I just find I have less time to indulge in recreational reading than I did before the pressures of work and parenthood, for shame! 

I am, however, predisposed to admire graphic novels and their cinematic counterparts as I enjoy the telling of fantastic stories primarily through the use of images.  This is why my favourite films tend to be by predominantly visual directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and, indeed, Edgar Wright who directed the groundbreaking TV comedy series Spaced and subsequent feature films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz which, by breaking the structured genre norms, have helped to revitalise the landscape of British Cinema.

Scott Pilgrim is a slacker and bassist with local Toronto band Sex Bob-omb the first obvious nod to the video games of my youth, the Bob-ombs were the little meandering bombs that would stumble into Mario in various editions of the Nintendo Mario Bros. franchise.  Scott is drifting from band practice to band practice and dating Knives Chau a 17-year-old Chinese-Canadian High School girl who he hasn’t kissed yet; he’s been in shock since his ex-girlfriend Natalie ‘Envy’ Adams dumped him and became the lead singer of Sex Bob-omb’s biggest rivals The Clash at Demonhead who have been on a successful tour of New York.

Scott has a dream vision of a delivery girl on roller skates who he believes literally when he wakes up is the ‘girl of his dreams’.  When she appears in real life to deliver his order from Amazon he instantly falls in love with her and loses interest in Knives and the up-and-coming Battle of the Bands contest that Sex Bob-omb had entered.  Ramona Flowers played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, has recently moved to Toronto from New York, she is moody and mysterious but she genuinely seems interested in Scott and continually surprises him by turning up for their dates.  On the night of the first leg of the band competition Ramona comes to see Scott play and whilst on stage he is attacked by Matthew Patel the first of Ramona’s 7 Evil Exes who he must defeat in turn if he wants to be with her.   

Edgar Wright and co-author of the screenplay Michael Bacall, have cleverly blended elements of the original O’Malley artwork, 8-bit jingles from classic console games, multiple references from popular film and television (my favourite being the musical sting from Seinfeld) and extensive fight sequences drawn directly from Tekken or Street Fighter to create an entirely unique visual style for this extremely surreal movie. 

It’s not a case of style over substance though as Michael Cera’s central performance as Scott is totally convincing and the audience truly empathise with his hapless existence and the quest that leads him to exorcise his hang-ups over Envy, end his relationship with Knives maturely and avoid become yet another of Ramona’s evil exes.  Wright has built on the success of his previous collaborations with Simon Pegg and created something profoundly original and invigorating in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World putting him at the pinnacle of Hollywood’s A-List of directorial talent, I eagerly await his next project and hope it shall be every bit as exhilarating.

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Cléo from 5 to 7

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Steve Exeter

From the opening credits of Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, you know this is going to be a stylish and important film of the French New Wave, a period of Cinema history dominated by François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

In the colour credit sequence Cléo (Corine Marchand), a young and beautiful Parisian, is having her future told and the Tarot cards confirm her worst fears as she awaits the results of a medical to detect whether she is suffering from an incurable disease.

The photography switches to the crisp monochrome, hand-held style that is typical of French films of the period.  Varda creates an almost documentary feel as we spend the next 90 minutes following Cléo, a famous pop singer, around the chic streets of  ’60s Paris in real time.

Cléo is very superstitious and sees omens of death everywhere, her maid encourages this, advising her not to wear the new hat she bought because it’s a Tuesday, not to drink coffee and to avoid cats!  That’s not all; the film is split into 13 chapters so it really looks as though her fate is doomed!  Still, she tries to look on the bright side musing, “Ugliness is a kind of death.  As long as I’m beautiful, I’m alive.”  How very French.

We soon discover that Cléo’s songs are going out of fashion, and despite efforts of Michel “Windmills of Your Mind” Legrand (who makes a cameo as her songwriter) to provide a new hit, she is sick of success and her empty existence.  Her current lover briefly visits her but their busy lives don’t allow them enough time to even kiss!

 

Corine Marchand is excellent as the spoilt but tragic rich girl and gives a poignant performance bringing great depth to lines like, “Everyone spoils me – no one loves me!”  Throughout, her tragedy is put into context by the conflict in Algeria; she is not the only person facing imminent death.

Don’t be put off by the gloomy subject matter; Cléo from 5 to 7 is an exuberant and very stylish film that benefits from many lighter moments.  Not least a fantastic Silent Comedy parody, where a man wearing dark sunglasses thinks he’s seen his lover knocked down by a car, only to find that due to his obscured vision he’s looking at the wrong girl, “Damn dark sunglasses, make everything look so black!”  Indeed.

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Jack Lemmon

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Steve Exeter

I hadn’t planned to write about actors specifically, as my intent was to focus on certain key films and directors.  However, as this is also a personal journal it should reflect its author to some extent and those who knew me in my teens surely thought I had an unhealthy obsession with this particular Hollywood star, but with hindsight I would say that it marked the apex of my calling as an actor, which transmogrified by puberty was almost a religious fervour with me in those days.

John Uhler Lemmon III was born in Boston in 1925 to middle class parents, his father was the president of a doughnut company and his mother, in early life, had followed aspirations as an actress in comedy and light opera.  Jack was their only child and from the age of 8 he was convinced that he would become the next George Gershwin and the world’s greatest actor.

Lemmon studied at Harvard majoring in War Time Sciences, he was a member of the Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps. and served as an Ensign after graduation.  Whilst at Harvard he was also active in theatrical pursuits and was the president of The Hasty Pudding Club, a long-standing tradition of which was to put on a Christmas show in drag.

After his brief spell in the Navy Lemmon took himself to New York and worked as a piano player in a beer hall, he started auditioning and got regular work on radio and in off-Broadway productions eventually leading to appearances on live television shows like TV Playhouse and Kraft Theatre.  In 1954 he did a screen test for Columbia Pictures and was offered a contract by legendary tough movie mogul Harry Cohen, with the proviso that he change his name from Lemmon to Lennon.  Thinking on his feet, and determined to keep his own name, he played to Cohen’s business-savvy by suggesting that people might mistake it for Lenin and associate that with Communism, a serious problem for the American entertainment industry in the McCarthy era.

Lemmon made his big screen debut opposite Judy Holliday in It Should Happen To You, a likeable romantic comedy that lightly satirises the concept of celebrity.  The film was lifted by the sure hand of veteran Gone With The Wind director George Cukor, who also had hits with screwball comedies starring Katherine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib.

Whilst cutting his teeth on the Columbia lot Lemmon would meet two young writer/directors, whom he would work with more than once.  Richard Quine was a very solid director with a gift for comedy, he liked to shoot outdoors in real locations.  He made a total of six films with Lemmon, My Sister Eileen, Operation Mad Ball, Bell, Book & Candle, It Happened To Jane, The Notorious Landlady and How To Murder Your Wife, each one well-crafted with a strong narrative and solid performances from a good ensemble cast, often including Ernie Kovacs, Kim Novak and Dick York.

Blake Edwards, who would famously go on to make the Pink Panther series with Peter Sellers, worked as a writer on Quine’s Operation Mad Ball and The Notorious Landlady and after making his directorial breakthrough feature Breakfast At Tiffany’s he teamed with Lemmon and they turned their focus to a serious subject matter in Days Of Wine And Roses, a poignant and powerful character study of young newly-weds whose social drinking escalates into soul-destroying alcoholism, earning both Lemmon and his co-star Lee Remick Academy Award nominations.  Ironically, at the time of shooting, Lemmon, a self-confessed alcoholic, was teetotal.

Edwards and Lemmon teamed up again shortly after to make the epic comedy The Great Race, dedicated to Laurel & Hardy.  Whilst I enjoy Lemmon’s malevolent performance, as the dastardly Victorian villain, Professor Fate (complete with twirly moustache) and the Prisoner Of Zenda detour allowing him to camp it up in the dual role of the lush Crown Prince Hapnik, the movie is overlong, lacks real charm, and is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is.

The first Lemmon film I remember watching, and the one that convinced me, aged 12, that I was going to be an Actor, was Some Like It Hot, now regarded by the American Film Institute as the funniest comedy ever made.  The simple notion of two down at heel musicians having to flee in drag after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, tapped into my sense of the absurd and I marvelled at Lemmon’s incredibly facile performance both as Jerry and his feminine alter ego, Daphne.

This was the first of several films by Austrian émigré, writer/director, Billy Wilder, the others most notably were The Apartment and The Fortune Cookie which first teamed Lemmon with his life-long friend and co-star Walter Matthau.  I shall go into each of those, along with Avanti! which I have a particular soft spot for, in greater detail in future posts.

I was extremely fortunate that my passion for Lemmon’s work coincided with two events both in 1986.  The first was a season of his films at the British Film Institute where I was, not only, able to see some of his greatest films, including The Odd Couple, for the first time, but also saw him interviewed live in the theatre by Jonathan Miller, who was directing Lemmon’s London stage debut Long Day’s Journey Into Night, co-starring Bethel Leslie and newcomers Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher.  I was 15 at the time and I am very thankful that I shared these experiences with my Father who died a few years later, I shall always treasure these fond memories.

Most people only associate Lemmon with his comic work but he also made some superb dramas including The China Syndrome, Missing and Save The Tiger for which he won an Best Actor Oscar in 1973.  In later life he would make tour-de-force performances in David Mamet’s screen version of his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross and Oliver Stone’s JFK.  He was a lifelong Democrat and follower of liberal causes just as much as he was a devotee of golf.

I shall be writing in more detail about Lemmon’s movies, specifically those directed by Billy Wilder, who probably summed it up best when he said, ”Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon”.

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Rango

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Steve Exeter

With Rango, his first completely animated feature film, co-writer/director Gore Verbinski returns to the anarchic spirit of his movie debut Mousehunt as he follows the existential quest of hapless hero Lars, a chameleon voiced by the ever quixotic Johnny Depp.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the suitably of the film for younger children, it has been rated PG and I think that speaks for itself.  If it had wished to be marketed specifically for family audiences it would have strived for a U certificate like the Pixar and Dreamworks movies it’s being unduly compared to.

Rango actually marks the foray of the George Lucas foundered special effects company Industrial Light & Magic into feature length animation; working under the guidance of the Coen Brothers regular cinematographer Roger Deakins they have crafted quite simply one of the most detailed, breathtaking and genuinely beautiful CGI pictures seen to date.

When we meet Lars he is stuck in a hermetically sealed world of his own imagining; an aspiring actor with an identity crisis, confined to a tiny terrarium he improvises scenes of would-be heroics, bouncing lofty dialogue off his inanimate inmates, a clockwork toy fish, a dead insect and a headless Barbie doll.

As Lars has the sudden realisation that the reason his life lacks definition is due to the absence of any real conflict his world is launched into space as the camera pulls back to reveal it’s being carried by a car hurtling at high speed along the freeway which has been sent into a tailspin after hitting an armadillo attempting to cross to the other side.

Despite having a deep tyre tread across his thorax the armadillo (Alfred Molina) doesn’t seem at all fazed by the accident as if it’s a regular occurrence; his metaphysical musings set Lars on a journey far off the beaten path, across the wasteland to the desolate town of Dirt where he shall glean self-knowledge and meet the ‘Spirit of the West’.

Before setting off on his epic quest the film doesn’t miss an opportunity to have Lars nearly run off the road by Johnny Depp’s character from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the delusional paranoiac, Raoul Duke the first in a litany of iconic cinematic references that raise the movie above and beyond the expectations of mainstream entertainment.

On the outskirts of Dirt, Lars meets the outlandishly named Beans (Isla Fisher), the daughter of a recently deceased prospector, who suspects foul play is the cause of the town’s diminishing water rations.  Much is made of the fact that Lars struggles with the physiognomic changes you’d typically expect from a chameleon, this serves as a metaphor for his personality disorder which manifests itself in his efforts to constantly re-invent himself as a heroic figure.

During an extended improvisation the lizard takes on the persona of a fearless gunslinger in order to impress a local bar room crowd, he brags about killing the notorious Jenkins Brothers – all seven of them – with one bullet!  Taking the name of ‘Rango’ from a bottle labelled ‘Made in Durango’ his exalted reputation is confirmed accidently when he takes out a menacing hawk by chance; the townsfolk of Dirt are so in need of something to believe in that they appoint him as the new Sheriff.

Rango is a post-modernist comedy co-written by John Logan (Sweeney Todd) which manages to pay homage to every great Western from the Gary Cooper classic High Noon to the ‘Spaghetti’ variety of Sergio Leone; not content with celebrating cinematic cowboys it also borrows the Valkyrie sequence from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and a mysterious watery plot direct from Polanski’s Chinatown with the malfeasant Mayor of Dirt (Ned Beatty) being a dead ringer for John Huston.

It’s worth mentioning the quartet of Mariachi owls who also act as a chorus in the classical Greek sense whilst serenading the audience with amusing little ditties proclaiming the hero’s imminent death.  Rango sticks to its six shooters and brings the whole metafictional tale full circle with Lars finally arriving on the other side of the freeway to find the ‘Spirit of the West’ embodied by Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name (Timothy Olyphant) from whom he learns that attaining self-knowledge is the ultimate heroic act and that we are all the stars of our own stories.

Despite being every bit as odd as it sounds the film is consistently entertaining and easily held my son’s attention without him needing to be au fait with the many in-jokes or countless movie references.  Rango was obviously conceived as a star vehicle for Depp’s quirkier sensibilities by Pirates of the Caribbean director Verbinski and the pair are clearly relishing the refreshingly surreal sabbatical and have crafted a landmark work of startling originality in the process.

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The Sound of Music: 45th Anniversary Edition

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Steve Exeter

The Sound of Music was not one of my parents’ favourite things so, consequently, I do not have any fond childhood memories of it as I have for the Wizard of Oz or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which were always Christmas perennials in our house.  As a teen I can remember whenever the film came on television the channel being changed rapidly before Julie Andrews belted out the first line of the title song.  It’s easy to understand why because The Sound of Music did not look good in pan and scan on a 24 inch screen and it certainly didn’t sound good through small Mono speakers.

It’s safe to say that the film is often readily dismissed as being too schmaltzy and terribly outdated even for the time it was made in 1965, after all the stage show had first been a hit in 1959 and it would be Rodgers & Hammerstein’s last together.  When I finally got around to seeing it all the way through in my early 20s I had the advantage of seeing it on DVD on a 32 inch widescreen TV and I was totally enthralled by it.  Director Robert Wise, who edited Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, managed to tell the story of the Von Trapps with all of the songs but none of the saccharine.  He also captured the reality of The Anschluß without preaching or oversimplifying the politics of Nazi Germany and its occupation of Austria in 1938.

Now we come to the 45th Anniversary Blu-ray edition and I am totally bowled over by the movie again and this time I have the benefit of watching it with my son who is 5 and I am amazed that he sits enraptured by the whistle-stop tour of Salzburg that is Do-Re-Mi, the stunning 70mm digitally restored print filling the 50 inch Plasma screen with a glorious 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer which has to rank amongst the best I have ever seen.  Each note resonating clear as crystal in immaculate 7.1 DTS-HD quality and you realise that what you saw squeezed onto old TV sets growing up in the 1980s could never do the 1965 Best Picture Oscar winner justice and must be partially responsible for the bad reputation the film had for so many years.

The package comes with a second Blu-ray full to the brim with extras the best of which, for my taste, is Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Movies a feature length retrospective charting the entire history of their successful creative collaboration hosted by the original stage Maria Von Trapp, Mary Martin.  There is also a long interview with screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who also wrote Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, in which he recounts the process of bringing his vision of The Sound of Music to cinema audiences, he is largely to thank for removing a lot of the sentimentality from the libretto and injecting it with authenticity and genuine wit.

I hope that now it has been restored to its former glory future audiences will have the fortuity of growing up with this wonderful story of one family’s struggle through song to journey over the Alps and far beyond the clutches of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich featuring some of the best popular songs written in the 20th century; not only the title song and Do-Re-Mi but also My Favourite Things, Lonely Goatherd and Edelweiss replete with standout performances from the indefatigable Julie Andrews and dryly humorous turn as the stern patriarch from the redoubtable Christopher Plummer.  The Sound of Music looks as sharp and bright as a new pin on Blu-ray and as a testament to its lasting appeal, my son has asked me to put Do-Re-Mi on every day this month!

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show: 35th Anniversary Edition

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Steve Exeter

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has always been something of a guilty pleasure dating back to my days as a teenager appearing in am-dram musical revues inspired by it because the performing rights were always strictly reserved for professional productions until March 2000. 

The original stage show opened in London in the summer of 1973 at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs which ironically only seated 63 people as the subsequent 1975 film adaption has the record of the longest-running theatrical release in cinema history and now must have been seen by audiences of countless millions worldwide ensuring its on-going cult following.

Having watched the film religiously as a kid on worn out video tape and owning at least 3 versions of the soundtrack on vinyl by the time it came out on DVD marking its 25th Anniversary in 2001 I had turned 30 myself and now held it somewhat in contempt, a dirty little secret from my past that I was ashamed to have invested so much time in; Simon Pegg articulated my feelings exactly in the second episode of Spaced - “It’s boil-in-the-bag perversion for sexually repressed accountants and first-year drama students” and for the best part of a decade I have put it out of my mind.

However, my wife is an occasional Glee watcher and by chance I saw the recent Rocky Horror Show themed episode marking its 35th Anniversary and release on Blu-ray and I found my interest curiously reawakened enough to want see whether a hidef revamp would radically improve the notoriously low-budget, almost home movie quality of the film.  I also wished to revisit it to gauge whether it really was morally unfit for the saccharine sweet and virginal members of Glee Club as the series producers would have you believe or whether this was merely an affectation in an attempt to preserve its ‘kinky kudos’ for future generations of camp devotees.

I am happy to report that the 1080p MPEG-4 AVC encode is remarkable, bearing in mind the last time I saw Rocky Horror was on video; the thing that always strikes me most is the impact of the reds and Patricia Quinn’s now trademark lips in the opening credits have never looked so succulent.  The DTS-HD 7.1 soundtrack doesn’t fare quite so well, whilst it marvellously showcases the songs the dialogue in comparison seems thin and tinny but luckily there is also a Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track which I found to be preferable.

It’s worth noting the wealth of extras here, a fine commentary from writer/star Richard O’Brien (Riff Raff) and all of the featurettes from the 25th Anniversary DVD are included, but the stand out hidef exclusive is the Picture-in-Picture ‘shadowcast’ who re-enact the entire show shot in glorious 1080p/24 HDCAM with the option to toggle the inset to fill the screen; this is what the Glee episode should have been like instead of an insipid homage that seemed to miss the entire point of the original by replacing the more risqué lines from the songs with banal alternatives.

I hope the Glee version inspires new audiences to discover what it was about The Rocky Horror Picture Show that appealed to me as a teenager, it encapsulates both a sexual awakening and a loss of innocence and if nothing more encourages young, inquiring minds to think outside the box and embrace diversity, in short to live by the pithy end refrain “Don’t dream, Be it”. 

It also captures Tim Curry’s outstanding charismatic star turn as the gender bending alien Dr. Frank-N-Furter and benefits from the inclusion of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon as the naïve All-American couple, Brad Majors and Janet Weiss.  I suspect it’s yet another symptom of hitting 40 but having spurned it for so long I did feel a genuine warm glow of nostalgia whilst watching but not enough to make me want to get up and do the ‘Time Warp’ again.

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Alfred Hitchcock

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Steve Exeter

In a single decade between 1954 and 1964 Alfred Hitchcock would Produce and Direct a dozen perfect movies, most notably Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, The Birds and Marnie.  Although only accounting for a third of his career, this would be his “Golden Period” and with each decade that passes these films seem to get better and better.

I remember one Christmas, 1988 I think, BBC 2 had a short season of Hitchcock films scheduled between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, I circled them in red marker pen in the Radio Times so not to miss them and bought three brand new 180 minute, highest quality, Scotch Video Tapes.  I would sit with the video player set in pause and record ready to capture these great works of art.  I was 17 years old at the time and I recall wearing those tapes out viewing and reviewing these cinematic gems over and over again.

I intend to review each of these films individually, starting with North by Northwest and Psycho, the only two Hitchcock films released on Blu-ray to date.  I am hoping that Rear Window and Vertigo shall follow swiftly, although I am a tad perplexed that Vertigo hasn’t materialised sooner as it was digitally restored for DVD fairly recently.

Hitchcock believed in what he called “pure cinema”, that is a story that can be conveyed entirely through images and, as someone who trained at the UFA film studio in Germany during the silent era, this is not surprising.  The studio was responsible for the classics of Fritz Lang, Metropolis and F. W. Murnau, Faust and whilst there Hitchcock directed The Pleasure Garden.

Hitchcock returned to Britain making two early classics for producer Michael Balcon, the original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps the first film to use what Hitchcock referred to as the ‘MacGuffin’ which basically was a plot device, usually a search for an object or person that propels the narrative but itself is of little significance to the outcome of the story.  Hitchcock recounted this in a recorded conversation with François Truffaut, which is included as an extra on the recently released 50th Anniversary Blu-ray edition of Psycho.

There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland and one man says to the other, ‘Excuse me, sir, but what is that strange parcel you have on the luggage rack above you?’, ‘Oh’, says the other, ‘that’s a MacGuffin.’, ‘Well’, says the first man, ‘what’s a MacGuffin?’, The other answers, ‘It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’, ‘But’, says the first man, ‘there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.’, ‘Well’, says the other, ‘then that’s no MacGuffin.’

Hitchcock was wooed to work in America by legendary producer David O. Selznick, the man responsible for such classics as King Kong and Gone With The Wind.  They were to make three films together, Rebecca, starring Laurence Oliver as the mysterious Max de Winter, followed by Spellbound and The Paradine Case both with Gregory Peck.  The best, for my money, is Spellbound not least for the dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali, and for Ingrid Bergman’s intelligent portrayal of the psycho-analyst who for falls for her colleague, Peck, whom she discovers has a murderous secret identity.

Now a permanent US resident Hitch produces and directs Notorious, the first of four films to star Cary Grant, including Suspicion, To Catch A Thief and culminating with the Hitchcock film that seems to, at once, parody but still top his others, North By Northwest.  Before making home at Universal Studios, Hitch delivered a string of films for Warner Brothers, most notably Strangers On A Train which explores the notion of sanity when two men undertake to murder each other’s victims to avoid detection.  This brings us to Rear Window and the start of the unbroken golden period ending with Marnie.

There is so much I feel I can write about Hitchcock, that to attempt to do so here would be overlong and unfocused.  I shall, instead, examine his themes and style in detail, discussing the films with illustrative examples.  Hitchcock, must be, without a shadow of a doubt (see what I did there!) the single most influential film Director of all time and it’s impossible to imagine the medium without his staggeringly consistent body of work.

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Spike Lee

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Steve Exeter

After I returned from my tour of America in 1991 I took a job working in a retail Video shop and this presented me, as an avid movie fan, with two key benefits; the first was the opportunity to preview any tape outside of opening hours, the second was the generous staff discount that allowed me to grow my own film collection.  It was at this time that I discovered the work of Spike Lee, starting with his debut feature She’s Gotta Have It for which he was dubiously dubbed “the black Woody Allen” by some for the use of monochrome cinematography in a New York setting and his credits as writer, director and actor in the role of Michael Jordan obsessed, Mars Blackmon, which he reprised for a series of adverts he made for Nike also featuring the basketball star. 

His second film, School Daze, produced by David Putnam, was a confusing blend of Animal House style fraternity comedy, equal parts Hollywood musical and biting satire on the notion of black identity in modern America.  However, it was his next film Do The Right Thing that really put Lee on the map, taking place on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighbourhood, it focuses on the mounting racial tension between the white family inhabitants of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria and it’s predominate black clientele, headed up by Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) who insists that Sal (Danny Aiello) gets some brothers up on the wall, instead of the “Wall of Fame” consisting entirely of famous Italian-Americans, or they will boycott his restaurant.  

Lee plays Sal’s delivery boy, Mookie, who is trying to balance his life as a young father, his relationship and the perceived conflict of working for a white boss by his friends.  The animosity reaches a peak at the end of the day when Sal destroys regular customer, Radio Raheem’s (Bill Nunn) boombox leading to a riot, in the ensuing violence the police throttle Raheem to death whilst trying to arrest him, to dispel the vengeful crowd Mookie throws a garbage can through the pizzeria’s window resulting in it being razed to the ground.  This action is deliberately ambiguous, the audience are left pondering whether Mookie did the right thing and I’ve found my own response to this can change with each viewing.

The next Spike Lee Joint was Mo’ Better Blues his valentine to the Jazz music of his father, Bill Lee, starring Denzel Washington as the trumpeter and band leader, Bleek Gilliam, who we see as young boy in the opening shots of the film practising scales religiously whilst his friends wait for him to come out to play.  The movie cleverly explores the life of an artist having to choose between two muses, one a glamorous and ambitious singer, Clarke (Cynda Williams), the other a teacher, down to earth and maternal, Indigo (Joie Lee), yet ultimately it’s his music that he is wedded to.  It also depicts the struggle of egos within a band when saxophonist, Shadow Henderson (Wesley Snipes) vies with Bleek for leadership, the etiquette of solos versus grandstanding, and having to deal with an ineffective, gambling, manager, Giant (Spike Lee), who happens to be your best friend.

The film is heavily stylised and Lee’s regular cinematographer, Ernest Dickerson, provides a rich, saturated colour palette giving the musical sequences at the Underdog Club almost a cartoon look and feel.  The score, composed by Bill Lee, is performed by the Branford Marsalis quarter, featuring Terrance Blanchard on trumpet and it remains one of my most listened to soundtrack albums.  Ultimately, Giant’s gambling debts catch up with him and Bleek sacrifices his music for their friendship, Shadow takes over both as Clarke’s lover and leader of the band; fate forces Bleek to choose Indigo to save his life and in the long montage featured in the last reel, synchronised to John Coltrane’s Love Supreme, they settle down, get married and have a son, Miles, who also learns the trumpet and so we have come full circle.

Possibly my favourite Spike Lee film is 1992′s Malcolm X, in this movie he displays an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Cinema providing references from a myriad of influences including the D. W. Griffith silent classic Birth Of A Nation, Billy Wilder’s film noir Ace In The Hole, Vincente Minnelli’s musical The Band Wagon, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and countless other movies; it is truly astounding how many visual treats he is able to cram in to what so easily could have been a standard, po-faced, biopic.

Denzel Washington excels in the title role and is on screen almost constantly for the film’s epic 3½ hour running time.  Befitting the Herculian directorial task Lee takes a smaller acting role as Shorty, Malcolm’s barbershop buddy who first straightens his hair and then runs with his gang on a petty crime spree that leads to a lengthy prison sentence.  Whilst inside Malcolm is exposed to the teachings Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam and converts to the Muslim faith taking the name Malik Shabazz.

The early part of the film owes a lot of its look and style to Mo’ Better Blues with Malcolm and Shorty running around in Zoot suits, it has a lot of lighter comic moments which perfectly balance the tone of the second half of the film which is more or less preoccupied with the false promises, corruption and separatism that beleaguers the Nation of Islam and its leadership.  Culminating with Malcolm X’s assassination at the Aubadon Ball Room in 1965 and closing with Ossie Davis reading his original eulogy from his funeral, which reminds me very much of Oliver Stone’s Nixon; here Spike Lee proves he is not just a marginal, independent filmmaker but among the finest of his generation.

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Arizona Dream

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Steve Exeter

Almost 20 years before the overhyped Inception focused on the phenomenon of dreaming Emir Kusturica directed Johnny Depp in the surreal comic fantasy Arizona Dream.  The movie was produced by Claudie Ossard (Delicatessen/Amélie) and is typical of the sort of strange art-house films that Depp used to regularly appear in before finding mainstream appeal as a Disney Pirate.

The plot, such as is it, follows the dreamlike escapades of Axel Blackmar (Depp) a drifter who has taken the obscure job of tagging fish for the New York State Department of Fish and Game.  His cousin wannabe actor Paul Leger (Vincent Gallo) turns up announcing that their Uncle Leo (Jerry Lewis) plans to marry his Polish fiancé Millie (supermodel Paulina Porizkova) a girl more than half his age and that he wishes for Axel to be his best man; reluctantly Axel accompanies Paul back to their Arizona hometown.

In his best role since playing a version of himself in Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy, Jerry Lewis is outstanding as Axel’s Uncle Leo; a successful, infectiously upbeat Cadillac salesman and living testimony to the “American Dream” paradoxically wracked with survivor’s guilt from causing the crash that killed Axel’s parents, he persuades him to stay on after the wedding and try his hand at selling cars.   

Axel’s first potential customers are eccentric widower Elaine Stalker (Faye Dunaway) and her suicidal step-daughter Grace (Lili Taylor) their brazen arrival sparks the interest of both Axel and cousin Paul who’s gift of the gab ensures an invitation to dinner at the Stalker’s home that evening; here screenwriter David Watkins (Novocaine) delivers one of the most flabbergastingly funny surprise scenes I have witnessed and from here on in I was totally hooked.

Axel embarks on an affair with Elaine and despite their madcap behaviour and slim grasp on reality this May to September romance is convincing and genuinely moving to watch, especially his attempts to build the flying machine she has always dreamt of.  The film’s theme of the pursuit of dreams in the face of reality is explored thoroughly; Uncle Leo dreams of stacking Cadillacs high enough to reach the moon, Grace dreams of being reincarnated as a turtle and Paul aspires to be a great actor by reproducing his favourite movie scenes, providing one of the bizarre set pieces when he re-enacts the entire crop duster sequence from the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest for a local talent show.

Kusturica is clearly a master filmmaker and he manages to maintain a dreamlike feel throughout the movie’s 142 minute running time, it is consistently funny but also has a haunting mystical quality making it compelling viewing and fortunately the French Blu-ray release contains a DTS-HD 5.1 English audio master track with enforced subtitles only for the excerpts from Raging Bull and The Godfather: Part II, the full 1080p picture quality is gorgeous and 20 minutes that were cut from the theatrical release have been totally restored.

Arizona Dream is impeccably acted and although it’s obvious that an element of improvisation has gone on the story and script are strong and stay true to their purpose in evoking the absurdist, surreal quality of dreams, an element totally lacking in Christopher Nolan’s Inception the same could be said for laughs of which there is also an abundance here making it a must for fans of Depp’s earlier work.

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Woody Allen

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Steve Exeter

Woody Allen has been writing and directing a new film project each a year for the last half a century, he has also acted in many of them, although in recent years he usually takes a smaller role, providing the comic relief or simply doesn’t appear at all.  Even from behind the camera you know it’s a Woody Allen movie from the opening black and white titles, traditional jazz soundtrack and first lines of dialogue brimming with neurosis and one-liners filled with existential angst about balancing love and life in urban cities, predominately New York.

I had just turned 14 when my parents allowed me to stay up late on a school night to experience my first Woody Allen film.  It was 1985 and we had yet to own a video recorder so this meant watching everything live or missing it.  Around the same time I had discovered the films of the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, Peter Sellers, Mel Brooks and Monty Python so I watched Sleeper for the first time with an appreciation of parody, spoof and satire but had never seen the Woody Allen persona before and wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but I quickly warmed to Miles Monroe as he tried to come to terms with futuristic life after being cryogenically frozen for 200 years. 

Sleeper, like Bananas before it, had a very thin plot, involving a cowardly klutz who ultimately wins the day and the girl, on which to hang gags of all shape and sizes.  It wasn’t until 1975′s Love and Death that Allen started to introduce the philosophical themes for which his films would become synonymous, although its main concern is provoking laughs as it pokes fun at the great works of Russian literature from the Napoleonic era; it remains my favourite of his ‘early funny films’.

Whilst the influences of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini are always apparent in Allen’s films he managed to create his own unique cinematic style with Annie Hall and Manhattan, between the ages of 15 and 18, I must have watched both of these films at least once a month; their focal point of not quite finding the ideal partner whilst keeping alive a romantic spirit provided me, as a somewhat bookish teenager going through a string of unrequited adolescent crushes, with real solace.  With Manhattan began my own love affair with New York City and the pulsating tunes of George Gershwin and crisp, black and white photography of Gordon Willis still give me a rush whenever I revisit it.

Of Allen’s many films if I had to take one with me on a desert island I think it would be 1989′s Crimes and Misdemeanors here he manages to blend comedy and romance with a serious essay on crime and punishment, packing a dramatic punch reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.  Opthalmologist Judah Rosenthal, a towering performance from Martin Landau, was raised in a strictly orthodox Jewish family.  He believes the eyes of God see everything so when he uses his disreputable brother Jack’s mob connections to ‘rub out’ his blackmailing mistress, who’s threatening to destroy his world, he expects to receive divine retribution, however he doesn’t, in fact he prospers and is never linked to the death which is dismissed by the police as the result of a burglary; a serious subject but an equally funny and touching film, for me Allen at his best.

In the coming weeks I shall review Woody Allen’s movies in greater detail and I am hoping that financially troubled film studio, MGM, finalise a salvage deal with Warner Bros. and start to release his back catalogue on Blu-ray because these great movies deserve to be seen in hidef by a fresh audience.

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