A Town Called Panic ***'

Don’t judge a book by its cover?  And don’t judge a film by its milk advert.  A new personal code I intend to live by.  I find this advert quite unbelievably annoying, but 70 minutes of a basically identical premise is somehow extremely funny.

It’s Horse’s birthday, and Cowboy and Indian have forgotten to buy him a present.  They decide to build him a barbecue, but don’t have enough bricks so buy some off the internet.  But, zut alors, they accidentally buy 50 million bricks instead of 50.  This leads to a manic adventure taking in the centre of the earth, the North Pole, and the depths of the ocean, with barely time to breathe.

Watching A Town Called Panic feels a bit like watching Postman Pat, or Pingu, on speed.  By the end I was exhausted.  The animation is delightfully crap, and hides what was undoubtedly an enormous amount of hard work.  It’s not quite Adam and Joe Show levels of charming unsophistication, but it doesn’t feel far off.  (Yes, I know that reference is about ten years out of date now, and isn’t really relevant anyway, but I wanted to link this clip in somehow, just because it makes me laugh).

If you like your comedy clever and highbrow, then this film is not really for you.  If, however, you want to escape in silliness for an hour, with the main thought running through your head being ‘this is actually insane’, then I highly recommend.

I would have given this four stars, but took off half because I think you have to be in a very specific mood to enjoy this, otherwise funny could too easily become being-repeatedly-bashed-over-the-head irritating.

The Secret in Their Eyes ****

On the surface The Secret in Their Eyes is a crime thriller set in Buenos Aires in the 1970s, following detective Esposito as he investigates a brutal case of rape and murder.  But to that we must add the layer that he is looking back from 25 years later, as he is now retired and writing a book about the case.

In re-visiting the case he is attempting to deal with his past, including the fact that he was in love with his superior, Irene, and has been ever since, but has never been able to voice it.  This plays out very subtly and beautifully beneath a tense and tightly crafted murder story involving some stunning set pieces - look out for the chase scene in the football stadium.

The corruption of the justice system at the time is an interesting subtext to the film.  I am ashamed to admit that my knowledge of Argentine history pretty much begins and ends with Madonna, so the political edge went over my head slightly, but ultimately this didn’t seem to matter.  I understood that people could just ‘disappear’, without needing a knowledge of the Dirty War (isn’t it nice, this learning together?).

This is much more than a run of the mill crime thriller, and much more engaging than a dry documentary of Argentina‘s political past, which probably explains why it won Best Foreign-Language picture at this year‘s Oscars.  This is a film about constancy, about friendship, about memory, and about people’s reasons for being.  And about secrets.  Revealed in people’s eyes.  But you probably guessed that.

Charity Shop Challenge #1 - FTW (1994)

Director: Michael Karbelnikoff
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Lori Singer
Genre: Crime/Western/Romance
Charity shop: It was a present so I’m cheating before I’ve even started.  Sorry reader(s?).

Way back in the mists of time, before the advent of internet acronyms that needed googling to be deciphered, when Mickey Rourke’s face was still more flesh than plastic, FTW stood for F**k The World.

Rourke plays Frank T. Wells (see his initials?  How clever), a cowboy who has just got out of prison.  He killed a man but it wasn’t really his fault.  He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  With a knife.  But anyway.  He’s a loner who just wants to be free from the shackles of his past, like the wild horses that run in slow motion across the prairies of Montana.  I think this was a deep bit, but all I could think of was Susan Boyle.  Frank T. Wells just wants to make enough money to buy a ranch, so he competes in rodeos.  Lots of rodeos.  In slow motion.

Scarlett (Lori Singer) is a damaged woman.  She’s the victim of some completely unnecessary incest which only seems to be in the film to be a bit controversial.  She meets Frank T. Wells when she’s on the run from the police, after robbing a bank (in slow motion) and watching her brother get shot.  She has FTW tattooed on her hand, and she and Frank T. Wells realise they’re destined to be together.  They have quite a lot of sex: in the rain, on the car roof, in a hot spring in the middle of a field (do you get hot springs in Montana?).  But their dark pasts, and the police, are always catching up with them.  There’s a beautiful moment where they point guns at each others’ heads, such is the intensity of their love, and the dark pasts are revealed, and it’s very emotional.

Will they be able to evade the police?  Will Frank T. Wells win the rodeo championship?  Where else can they fit in some slow motion?

Highlight:  Frank T. Wells’ Native American friend gives him some advice: ‘We do what we do because something inside tells us to.  And that’s that.’

Interesting fact:  Apparently Mickey Rourke turned down Bruce Willis’ role in Pulp Fiction to write and star in FTW.  Oh Mickey, what a pity.

Conclusion: Glorious nonsense.  FTW  For The Win!

Why Should You Care That I've Seen Things?

I have been wondering, what reason can I give you to read this over the thousands of other film/culture blogs that are out there (unless you‘re my friend or family and you take pity on me)?  Well, I don’t have the contacts to get previews or exclusives (apart from the Goodnight Sweetheart musical revealed below, news I must admit I am pretty excited by).  If you don’t live in Oxford I can’t imagine you’ll be enticed by the theatre reviews (though they are of the utmost quality and are certainly worth a read).  And so, for something a little bit different, I proudly present…

THE CHARITY SHOP CHALLENGE

From time to time I will, for the sake of science, or culture, or truth, or beauty, or something, purchase a random DVD from a charity shop, and tell you all about it.  Thus will we learn about films we would probably never otherwise have heard of, and I will become a good, charitable member of society.

The Rules:
1. I will not spend more than £2 (unless charity shop DVDs are more expensive than I think they are).
2. I will not limit the choice by genre, age, perceived quality, or whether or not I have heard of anyone in it.
3. If I realise that watching random films that no-one has ever or will ever see is a massive waste of time and I should be watching something better, then I am allowed to stop.

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran: Writing for the Stage and Screen - Oxford Playhouse, Sept 17 2010

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran have had a prolific television writing career for the past 25 years, their work including Shine on Harvey Moon, Birds of a Feather, and Goodnight Sweetheart.  But they are not here as television writers, but rather as Olivier nominated playwrights, and the talk takes place on the set of their newest play, written especially for the Oxford Playhouse, Von Ribbentrop’s Watch.


The play is inspired by a true story: Laurence Marks (who is Jewish) bought a watch for $200 and years later discovered that it originally belonged to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister who was hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.  It turned out that the watch was worth about £50,000.  Whether it would be morally right for him to make a profit from Nazi memorabilia developed over three years from argument with his friend and writing partner Maurice Gran, to art.

Aside from very engagingly selling their play (Saturday was unfortunately its last night in Oxford before it goes on tour), they also talk about their theatre career in general.  They say that chance encounters have played a huge role in their success, but how many of us can say that we just happened to sit next to Alan Ayckbourn at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival?  Their television career made these chance encounters, with the right people, possible.

On being a writer, Marks says that everyone in the room will have had a wonderful idea, but only one person will know that they have had it.   Von Ribbentrop’s Watch raises the question, what would you do if you discovered you owned some Nazi memorabilia?  Sell it?  Give the money to charity?  Donate it to a museum?  Or write a play about it?

PS. Goodnight Sweetheart: The Musical is coming.  You have been warned.

Gainsbourg ***

Biopics are a tricky genre. The challenge is to engage someone who knows all the facts already, and someone else who knows none. I fell into the latter category. The only things I knew about Serge Gainsbourg before the start of the film were that he was French, and he wrote the song that was used in the beer advert with the sexy ladybirds. 

Now I know a bit more, though the actual biographical details are quite confusing. Wives and lovers come and go without much explanation. And I have no idea how many children he had. Though maybe he didn’t either. 

This is more than a run of the mill ‘The Life and Times of Serge Gainsbourg’ movie however. It is based on the graphic novel by Joann Sfar, who also directs the film. We meet Serge as a young boy in Nazi-occupied Paris, when he still went by the name of Lucien Ginsburg. He makes up stories for his sisters, and from these stories springs the most surreal, and probably most enjoyable, part of the film. He invents a character, a kind of nightmarish man-sized puppet alter-ego that follows him round into adulthood, whispering to him his insecurities and ambitions. 

This surreal element disappears about half an hour from the end of the film, and with it went my interest. Maybe a huge fan of Serge Gainsbourg would have enjoyed seeing him record a reggae version La Marseillaise, but for me it really added nothing to the complex and interesting character that had been presented for the first three quarters of the film. 

So, basically, I think for a Serge Gainsbourg fan it would be great: a biopic with lots of songs, plus quirky, innovative elements. And lots of beautiful women. No ladybirds though.

Apples - Burton Taylor Studio, 23-26 June 2010

Heartbreaking, and brutal, and funny, and shocking, the stage adaptation of Richard Milward's novel Apples is brilliant. 

A group of six teenagers are growing up and trying to cope with life the only way they can see how - they go out clubbing, get drunk, get high (the apples here are ecstasy), sleep around, anything to escape from being inside their own heads. 

The characters may not want to be inside their own heads but we do, and we are granted access as they tell us their stories via a series of dramatic monologues within the scenes. This works brilliantly as Adam reveals to us his OCD behaviour, his violent home life, and the fact that he can cope with all this because of Eve, with whom he is hopelessly in love. She barely knows that he exists. We are not in Paradise. The Garden of Eden here is a Middlesborough council estate, and behind the poetic and moving attempts to work out who they are lurks the threat of physical violence, and sexual violence, desperation, and bewilderment. 

The difficulties of being not quite an adult and not quite a child are dealt with very cleverly, moving seamlessly between mentions of drug-fuelled nights out and Scooby Doo and jammie dodger-fuelled days in. 

The staging is brilliant: the set is minimal, with just a few chairs and some screens which are used really innovatively. The music is brilliant, the lighting is brilliant, the actors are all brilliant, even the scene changes are brilliant, with them effectively being part of the performance. You may be able to tell, I quite liked it.