You can also find details of a couple of film history courses I'm giving at the Eastern Suburbs Community College if you Google the college's name and hit the link for film.
More coming soon
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Absence and a fond heart
Just in case you thought this blog might have died I want to assure you that force majeure was in operation and prevented anyone getting the benefit of my thoughts. However, I haven't been idle and you can get ready for more soon now that some commitments are cleared. in the meantime just a couple of links might be of interest. In this week's Urban Cinefile I've sent in a short obituary about one of my favourite actors Richard Widmark, a man who played everything from thugs like Tommy Udo in his Oscar-nominated debut role in Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death to US Presidents, cavalry soldiers, and even an American Indian, notwithstanding his blonde main. You can find that at www.urbancinefile.com.au.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Shooting Mr Howard
It’s interesting to speculate on what movies Andrew Dominik might have cast an eye over before embarking on his 160+ minute movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. There have been more than a few that have ruminated over the Jesse James story. The title of the film suggests it might be trying to hew close to the known facts even though it’s based on a novel by Ron Hansen. But there’s not a lot of background. James career as a member of Quantrill’s Raiders is not featured prominently though his continuing aggravation at the outcome of the Civil War and the losses suffered by his family are plain. In an interesting piece in the New York Times which coincided with the US release of the new version Terence Rafferty mentions T J Stiles “excellent 2002 biography Jesse James:Last Rebel of the Civil War and it may be that you have to go the literature to find a complete portrait of an enigmatic figure whose reputation and legend is such that there are almost an infinite variety of representations. In Philip Kaufman’s The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid where the focus is actually on Cole Younger played as a jolly but cunning simpleton by Cliff Robertson, Jesse (Robert Duvall) is reduced to almost cameo staus and at one point acts so oddly for the suggestion to be made by one of the gang that he might be gay.
The background has indeed been portrayed very fancifully over time. In Henry King’s Jesse James, the lead is played by a fresh-faced Tyrone Power whose life of crime is provoked after his mother is ripped off her land by the advancing railroad. In that film most of Jesse’s criminal activity focuses on him taking revenge on the railroad company itself. Nicholas Ray’s The True Story of Jesse James starts with the bungled bank robbery in Northfield Minnesota and presents a series of flashback recollections by third parties before the fateful moment when Jesse has his back to Ford while he adjusts an off-kilter picture on the wall. In a couple of instances the ‘picture’ is in fact one of those embroidered mottos. In Samuel Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James the picture is a portrait of some unknown person. In that film, and in Dominik’s, we are also given the information that Ford made a living for awhile by recreating the assassination on the stage and presenting it over and over again before wide-eyed audiences.
My friend Bruce Hodsdon remarked to me after seeing Dominik’s film that he thought the Fuller offers more ideas and, for its time, stylistic revision of classic Hollywood narrative (right from the start Fuller was creating his own genre) than Dominik does in these post-Malick times. Dominik’s film takes twice the viewing time and somewhere between 50 -100 times the budget (in real terms). To Bruce it seemed that Dominik is seeking to elevate ambiguity into an Art form which certainly has its limits and the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Bruce found the new film a trip not without interest though and thought it may be a suitable requiem for the James legend in the cinema.
It’s doubtful if this is the last word. There is probably already another film-maker out there who has just put his own script in a bottom drawer but may impatiently wait a decade or so before the story is successfully pitched to another money man. Some of those pitches in the past have been most imaginative. Perhaps the most conceited was Walter Hill’s version of the story The Long Riders which had various sets of acting brothers, Keachs, Carradines, Quaids and Guests playing the James, Youngers Millers and Fords who formed the gang that had that ill-fated crack at the Northfield Minnesota bank. The Carradines in fact have a long history with the James legend. John Carradine played Robert Ford in the Henry King version and re-appeared again in the Nicholas Ray film. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then you have to think that Philip Kaufman studied the Nicholas Ray version very hard indeed. The staging of the robbery in Kaufman’s The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is eerily familiar to the way it’s handled in the Ray film.
One element that runs through the Fuller film, the Ray film and the Dominik film is the use of the traditional ballad. I have remembered since my first viewing of the Ray film the lines about the “dirty little coward who shot Mr Howard”. In Fuller's film the song is sing by a bar-room balladeer to Ford hilself and in Dominik's film Nick Cave has a similar duty and sings the whole song before a drunken Ford interrupts the proceedings in a New York tavern. I saw the Ray film again just recently on the American DVD and until then I was unaware that the famous scene in which Jesse and Frank ride their horses off a cliff top into a river to escape the chasing posse lifted the footage of that moment that was shot for the Henry King version way back in 1939.
But back to the present and Dominik’s film. After making a legend of Chopper Read in what was the best Australian film of its year, it’s taken him another seven years to get a second movie going. I presume it was his choice to attempt to deconstruct both the James and Ford legends. I must confess that young directors who wait out these sorts of periods don’t always do themselves a favour when they could be honing their craft if not their art on stuff that is less ambitious and less expensive. But I have no idea how Dominik has been spending his time and so shouldn’t be too prescriptive. As it is, he’s decided to pack a lot in to the 160 minutes he’s taken to tell the story. Part of that length may be related to the fact that commerce requires him to give as much attention to Brad Pitt as Jesse as it does to the far more interesting story of Casey Affleck as Robert Ford. Thus after the assassination we then get a lengthy time devoted to Ford’s activities, his love life and how he did or didn’t cope with his celebrity and notoriety. The story is brilliantly told segment by segment. Each has some wonderful staging especially the scenes of Ford doing his theatre performances. Maybe however you just want to find a key to why Jesse was as he was rather than another incomplete and thus unsatisfactory interpretation of his short life.
The background has indeed been portrayed very fancifully over time. In Henry King’s Jesse James, the lead is played by a fresh-faced Tyrone Power whose life of crime is provoked after his mother is ripped off her land by the advancing railroad. In that film most of Jesse’s criminal activity focuses on him taking revenge on the railroad company itself. Nicholas Ray’s The True Story of Jesse James starts with the bungled bank robbery in Northfield Minnesota and presents a series of flashback recollections by third parties before the fateful moment when Jesse has his back to Ford while he adjusts an off-kilter picture on the wall. In a couple of instances the ‘picture’ is in fact one of those embroidered mottos. In Samuel Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James the picture is a portrait of some unknown person. In that film, and in Dominik’s, we are also given the information that Ford made a living for awhile by recreating the assassination on the stage and presenting it over and over again before wide-eyed audiences.
My friend Bruce Hodsdon remarked to me after seeing Dominik’s film that he thought the Fuller offers more ideas and, for its time, stylistic revision of classic Hollywood narrative (right from the start Fuller was creating his own genre) than Dominik does in these post-Malick times. Dominik’s film takes twice the viewing time and somewhere between 50 -100 times the budget (in real terms). To Bruce it seemed that Dominik is seeking to elevate ambiguity into an Art form which certainly has its limits and the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Bruce found the new film a trip not without interest though and thought it may be a suitable requiem for the James legend in the cinema.
It’s doubtful if this is the last word. There is probably already another film-maker out there who has just put his own script in a bottom drawer but may impatiently wait a decade or so before the story is successfully pitched to another money man. Some of those pitches in the past have been most imaginative. Perhaps the most conceited was Walter Hill’s version of the story The Long Riders which had various sets of acting brothers, Keachs, Carradines, Quaids and Guests playing the James, Youngers Millers and Fords who formed the gang that had that ill-fated crack at the Northfield Minnesota bank. The Carradines in fact have a long history with the James legend. John Carradine played Robert Ford in the Henry King version and re-appeared again in the Nicholas Ray film. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then you have to think that Philip Kaufman studied the Nicholas Ray version very hard indeed. The staging of the robbery in Kaufman’s The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is eerily familiar to the way it’s handled in the Ray film.
One element that runs through the Fuller film, the Ray film and the Dominik film is the use of the traditional ballad. I have remembered since my first viewing of the Ray film the lines about the “dirty little coward who shot Mr Howard”. In Fuller's film the song is sing by a bar-room balladeer to Ford hilself and in Dominik's film Nick Cave has a similar duty and sings the whole song before a drunken Ford interrupts the proceedings in a New York tavern. I saw the Ray film again just recently on the American DVD and until then I was unaware that the famous scene in which Jesse and Frank ride their horses off a cliff top into a river to escape the chasing posse lifted the footage of that moment that was shot for the Henry King version way back in 1939.
But back to the present and Dominik’s film. After making a legend of Chopper Read in what was the best Australian film of its year, it’s taken him another seven years to get a second movie going. I presume it was his choice to attempt to deconstruct both the James and Ford legends. I must confess that young directors who wait out these sorts of periods don’t always do themselves a favour when they could be honing their craft if not their art on stuff that is less ambitious and less expensive. But I have no idea how Dominik has been spending his time and so shouldn’t be too prescriptive. As it is, he’s decided to pack a lot in to the 160 minutes he’s taken to tell the story. Part of that length may be related to the fact that commerce requires him to give as much attention to Brad Pitt as Jesse as it does to the far more interesting story of Casey Affleck as Robert Ford. Thus after the assassination we then get a lengthy time devoted to Ford’s activities, his love life and how he did or didn’t cope with his celebrity and notoriety. The story is brilliantly told segment by segment. Each has some wonderful staging especially the scenes of Ford doing his theatre performances. Maybe however you just want to find a key to why Jesse was as he was rather than another incomplete and thus unsatisfactory interpretation of his short life.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
John and Adam and Rudy and Baz
Coincidences are everywhere and context is everything. On the day when I finally saw Rudolph Nureyev’s and Robert Helpmann’s film version of the ballet Don Quixote, I also saw Adam Shankman’s Hairspray, a major box office hit which needs no recommendation from me.
Nureyev’s dancing was not recorded in many films. Notwithstanding this he still has his devoted band of followers. In Paris a society dedicated to keeping his name alive presents an annual program at the Ciematheque. We attended it’s 2004 screening where an Austrian film version of Swan Lake was the centerpiece. The evening was memorable in various ways. I’d never before seen Nureyev dance in any extended fashion and when you see him in the film you realize how extraordinary he was. His leaps, his athleticism, his grace – it was sheer overpowering animal skill. The film knew what the audience wanted – an obsessive need to see the great man’s art. The film version of Don Quixote was no different. It’s hard to follow any narrative. There’s a Spanish village and a handsome young man played by Nureyev. He seems to flirt with most of the young women but one, danced by the wonderful Lucette Aldous, spends most of her time fighting the others off him. Then Don Quixote played by Robert Helpmann comes into the village and spots the young woman. He converts her into various dream like apparitions, discovers her in flagrante with Rudolph and then moves on. The film was shot in an aircraft hangar at Essendon Airport using the Australian Ballet for all the other roles. Aldous was the star of the day, of a decade or so in fact. Helpmann was co-artistic director of the Ballet in those days. Nureyev is credited with the choreography “after Petipa’. The camera doesn’t miss a beat in keeping you fully informed about the dancing.
Which brings me to Hairspray. I don’t know if Adam Shankman has made anything else. Here he’s credited with the direction and the choreography. His ability to direct his own dance numbers is much less than his choreographic skills. In fact the direction of the ensemble numbers seems to be taken straight from the Baz Luhrman/Moulin Rouge school whereby the dancers’ feet are resolutely kept out of frame and the editing reduces the numbers to shapeless messes. Why this method should be chosen is beyond me but as always with Baz he’s always starting things which have a malign effect when others try to use them. It is quite ruinous in many of what should be exhilarating moments of a film which otherwise has a sweet and positive message about tolerance and racial integration in suburban Baltimore of the sixties. My viewing of it came only a couple of days after enduring our current Prime Minister’s recent set of weasel words about Aboriginal reconciliation and the comparison only served to remind of odiousness and sanctimony wherever it rears its ugly head. Hairspray has some great comedy, some lovely songs, engaging character types played with enthusiasm and some really great musical moments especially with the black kids who seem to be dancing their lives away on permanent detention. But the filming and editing of those ensemble dance numbers really left a lot to be desired.
Hairspray also reminded me that still out there are at least three great shows adapted from movies and transformed into wonderful stage musicals. Why no one has ever got them back onto celluloid is a mystery. It’s also a mystery as to why no one has ever bothered to produce them on stage in Australia. The first is Stephen Sondheim's Passion, adapted from the wonderful Scola film Passione D'Amore. Then there is the fabulous Kander and Ebb version of Kiss of the Spiderwoman which I saw on my one trip to Broadway lo many years ago and which still electrifies the memory and then, much less well-known I admit, is Douglas Cohen’s adaptation of No Way to Treat a Lady a small scale show for four actors and a small band which really has some of the very smartest songs ever written and a great ‘book’. As with the Sodheim I’ve only ever heard the show on CD and even in that form its terrific. An actor acquaintance Ito whom once lent the CD of No Way to Treat a Lady suggested that nowadays people are a bit sensitive about doing shows about serial killers and muderers who top their female victims on stage and that might be the cause of any reluctance to put the before today's audiences. Political correctness rears its head. I dont see it myself so could someone pull the finger out either here or there.
Nureyev’s dancing was not recorded in many films. Notwithstanding this he still has his devoted band of followers. In Paris a society dedicated to keeping his name alive presents an annual program at the Ciematheque. We attended it’s 2004 screening where an Austrian film version of Swan Lake was the centerpiece. The evening was memorable in various ways. I’d never before seen Nureyev dance in any extended fashion and when you see him in the film you realize how extraordinary he was. His leaps, his athleticism, his grace – it was sheer overpowering animal skill. The film knew what the audience wanted – an obsessive need to see the great man’s art. The film version of Don Quixote was no different. It’s hard to follow any narrative. There’s a Spanish village and a handsome young man played by Nureyev. He seems to flirt with most of the young women but one, danced by the wonderful Lucette Aldous, spends most of her time fighting the others off him. Then Don Quixote played by Robert Helpmann comes into the village and spots the young woman. He converts her into various dream like apparitions, discovers her in flagrante with Rudolph and then moves on. The film was shot in an aircraft hangar at Essendon Airport using the Australian Ballet for all the other roles. Aldous was the star of the day, of a decade or so in fact. Helpmann was co-artistic director of the Ballet in those days. Nureyev is credited with the choreography “after Petipa’. The camera doesn’t miss a beat in keeping you fully informed about the dancing.
Which brings me to Hairspray. I don’t know if Adam Shankman has made anything else. Here he’s credited with the direction and the choreography. His ability to direct his own dance numbers is much less than his choreographic skills. In fact the direction of the ensemble numbers seems to be taken straight from the Baz Luhrman/Moulin Rouge school whereby the dancers’ feet are resolutely kept out of frame and the editing reduces the numbers to shapeless messes. Why this method should be chosen is beyond me but as always with Baz he’s always starting things which have a malign effect when others try to use them. It is quite ruinous in many of what should be exhilarating moments of a film which otherwise has a sweet and positive message about tolerance and racial integration in suburban Baltimore of the sixties. My viewing of it came only a couple of days after enduring our current Prime Minister’s recent set of weasel words about Aboriginal reconciliation and the comparison only served to remind of odiousness and sanctimony wherever it rears its ugly head. Hairspray has some great comedy, some lovely songs, engaging character types played with enthusiasm and some really great musical moments especially with the black kids who seem to be dancing their lives away on permanent detention. But the filming and editing of those ensemble dance numbers really left a lot to be desired.
Hairspray also reminded me that still out there are at least three great shows adapted from movies and transformed into wonderful stage musicals. Why no one has ever got them back onto celluloid is a mystery. It’s also a mystery as to why no one has ever bothered to produce them on stage in Australia. The first is Stephen Sondheim's Passion, adapted from the wonderful Scola film Passione D'Amore. Then there is the fabulous Kander and Ebb version of Kiss of the Spiderwoman which I saw on my one trip to Broadway lo many years ago and which still electrifies the memory and then, much less well-known I admit, is Douglas Cohen’s adaptation of No Way to Treat a Lady a small scale show for four actors and a small band which really has some of the very smartest songs ever written and a great ‘book’. As with the Sodheim I’ve only ever heard the show on CD and even in that form its terrific. An actor acquaintance Ito whom once lent the CD of No Way to Treat a Lady suggested that nowadays people are a bit sensitive about doing shows about serial killers and muderers who top their female victims on stage and that might be the cause of any reluctance to put the before today's audiences. Political correctness rears its head. I dont see it myself so could someone pull the finger out either here or there.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Grapple Tackled
I’m beginning to feel like a misanthrope and a curmudgeon. When did I notice I hear you say. The good new movies just aren’t coming at the moment through though the good old ones are. A recent unexpected DVD viewing of Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive reminded me of just how precious is the work of some of those artists whose output consists of just a few small infrequent jewels. The current art house rave After the Wedding comes wrapped in the sort of kudos that indicate a likely certifiable hit. It has won nominations and prizes everywhere including the audience award at the Sydney Film Festival for most popular film. Yet I cant help feeling that what I got from it was a rather large dose of manipulation by virtue of a script whose method seems to be to introduce, at near frenetic pace for such an intimate enterprise, coincidental and/or choreographed script developments designed to cause a shock or surprise at each turn. (At this point be warned I’m not going to bother concealing plot developments). Jacob is working as a schoolteacher in an Indian orphanage. The Director, Mrs Shaw, says a Danish would-be benefactor wants Jacob to go to Copenhagen and explain what the place is up to before a bucket of money will be tipped in to save the orphanage from closure. He heads off reluctantly and has a cursory meeting with the benefactor Jorgen, a big time businessman/property developer, loving husband and good father of young twins and a marriage age daughter. He invites Jacob to the daughter’s wedding the next day and Jacob suddenly sees his old flame who abandoned him in India, not being able to compete with the freely available drugs and promiscuous sex that Jacob enjoyed. We then realize that Jacob is the daughter’s biological father. The new marriage quickly descends into chaos as the daughter works out what’s going on and goes further into instant farce via an episode of philandering, (foreshadowed by some early flirting by the groom when he first meets Jacob). When this is tucked away, Jorgen admits he’s got cancer and very soon dies. But before that he need to settle accounts, as does everyone else. On and on the script goes, working us over, trying to wrench the emotions on ever more flimsily created occasions. Now that I think back to the director’s previous Open Hearts I see the same powers of contrivance beginning to get to work. That film did have some emotional punch and you didn’t get the feeling you were being constantly set up. The Dogma tradition which this film tags along on, is actually rather replete with such methods when you come to think about. And yet the critics and reviewers find this stuff ‘emotional and engaging” and “a captivating, precision-executed relationships drama” and best of all from some stoneheart on the Wall Street Journal, "a thrilling and beautiful celebration of the unpredictability of life." One man's unpredictability is another's script contrivance I fear. Needless to say the film has the sort of ‘happy ending” that apparently sends crowds out into the night with a warm inner glow. I thought, however, I’d been the subject of an artistic grapple tackle and had only just escaped.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Cult Following
The Final Winter has sprung from nowhere. Financed privately, it was a last-minute inclusion in the Sydney Film Festival and has found a (I assume) Sydney based distributor who has put up the money for a dozen or more prints and a good ad campaign to go out mostly through the art houses. It lists, in two groups, seven executive producers, followed by two producers, a director, Jane Forrest, and a co-director. The auteur of the movie is its writer/lead actor and former Rugby League player Matt Nable. Set in the 80s when Rugby League was the cult game that dominated Sydney and Brisbane sport it’s subject is a brutish player Mike Henderson, nickname Grub, who plays for one of the impoverished, underperforming inner suburban teams headed for extinction. Off the field he’s a nice guy who doesn’t cheat on his wife and two kids, but is prone to drink too much and erupt with the same kind of violence he’s known for on the field. (The representation of football’s beer culture is one of its very best elements). His more skilful brother has left the club behind and is playing for one of the fancy teams. The president of the club is trying to woo the brother back to get a ‘marquee player’ for the club to boost its status. (That’s not a phrase I recall from the 80s but there you are). For the first bit of the film there is a long sequence where all the casual brutality of Rugby League, then and now, is on display. It then covers a week in Grub’s life after he assaults his brother on the field, spends much time agonizing as to whether he’ll be suspended, charts his fragile domestic relationship (“I want back the man I married. I want Mike Henderson not Grub!”) examines the future of the team given the President’s ambitions involve a clean-out of the staff and has a sad/happy ending when Grub accepts his life and fate. TV melodramatics abound. They aren’t helped by some of the actors delivering clunky lines without much skill and by some actors going over the top. John Jarratt (or as he’s referred to in the Dendy’s ads John Jarrat, or as he’s referred to in the Palace ads John Jarret) seems to be still under the influence of his role in Wolf Creek and mugs endlessly. Much of the ground was trod once before in Bruce Beresford’s rather slipshod version of David Williamson’s The Club. That film too succumbed to footy nostalgia with lots of cameos by once big names now balding and rotund.
I remain intrigued however as to why Sydney people keep investing in films about Rugby League. This minor cult sport, nowadays played at frequently near empty stadiums for the benefit of large numbers of TV viewers in the two northern states, is an impenetrable mystery to most outside those areas. Despite millions of Rupert’s money being spent on a Melbourne team the matches there are still played in phone booths to almost complete disdain and shown on TV in the early hours of the morning. They don’t play it at all in the west or the south. Listening to Matt Nable on radio yesterday he was no doubt on message when he spoke of its universal values and that this is a film for all sports fans. Hmm. Sports fans actually like going to or watching sport. But this is the second Rugby League film in a year. The last one, Khoa Do’s Footy Legends had buckets of taxpayer funding from the Sydney-based authorities and was without doubt the worst Australian film of the year. That one opened in over a hundred cinemas nationwide and closed after the minimum statutory terms were reached, grossing around half a million. This one is less ambitious but I doubt it will have any greater impact though some will praise its honesty, truth etc and its performances, especially Nable's. I note that the ads are already mentioning three four star ratings given to it.
I sat alone in Hoyts George Street Cinema 3 to watch. Admittedly it was APEC Saturday and the city was deserted thanks to endless police warnings of imminent violent behavior. The only such behavior I saw was the unsavory late tackles, punch ups, all-ins, head highs, coat-hangers, Liverpool kisses and bar-room brawls that characterise Rugby League even after its move from the inner suburbs to the (empty) stadiums.. Now its up mainly to the denizens of the art houses to make or break it. That will be interesting.
I remain intrigued however as to why Sydney people keep investing in films about Rugby League. This minor cult sport, nowadays played at frequently near empty stadiums for the benefit of large numbers of TV viewers in the two northern states, is an impenetrable mystery to most outside those areas. Despite millions of Rupert’s money being spent on a Melbourne team the matches there are still played in phone booths to almost complete disdain and shown on TV in the early hours of the morning. They don’t play it at all in the west or the south. Listening to Matt Nable on radio yesterday he was no doubt on message when he spoke of its universal values and that this is a film for all sports fans. Hmm. Sports fans actually like going to or watching sport. But this is the second Rugby League film in a year. The last one, Khoa Do’s Footy Legends had buckets of taxpayer funding from the Sydney-based authorities and was without doubt the worst Australian film of the year. That one opened in over a hundred cinemas nationwide and closed after the minimum statutory terms were reached, grossing around half a million. This one is less ambitious but I doubt it will have any greater impact though some will praise its honesty, truth etc and its performances, especially Nable's. I note that the ads are already mentioning three four star ratings given to it.
I sat alone in Hoyts George Street Cinema 3 to watch. Admittedly it was APEC Saturday and the city was deserted thanks to endless police warnings of imminent violent behavior. The only such behavior I saw was the unsavory late tackles, punch ups, all-ins, head highs, coat-hangers, Liverpool kisses and bar-room brawls that characterise Rugby League even after its move from the inner suburbs to the (empty) stadiums.. Now its up mainly to the denizens of the art houses to make or break it. That will be interesting.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Selling Out
It would be nice to think that all the attention that SBS is getting is only its just desserts for its wholesale introduction of crassness into a service that was once a stand out cultural beacon in the wasteland of free to air television. There was once nothing like it in the world. During those golden decades when David Stratton was presenting both new films of the highest quality and, in parallel, an unrivalled collection drawn from the greatest films of the past, the station represented something unique and precious. It owned soccer and cycling, its documentaries were as the program called them “Cutting Edge”, it gave us international news reporting each night of the highest order and set new standards for subtitling (see below). Then the management let both the key people and the high standards slip away. They thought they knew best but it’s plain to see of course they really have very little idea. I didn’t mind the channel showing commercials between programs but clearly the advertisers did and the old thin edge of the wedge finally destroyed the channel’s credibility for those of us who welcomed its presentation of the world's best movies.
It has taken a simple dummy spit from a newsreader (who apparently from the news reports alleges breach of contract because she wasn’t given enough prominence or wasn’t treated with sufficient gravitas) to start the process which just may bring the whole edifice down around the shambling buffoons now running the place. They claim success by having raising the ratings from an average of 6% to 7.5%. (one article suggested that they had raised the ratings by 25%, an assertion of innumeracy if nothing else.) This group includes Board Members like former Packer operative Gerald Stone and former Howard acolyte Christopher Pearson. Pearson once assured the readers of his column in a Murdoch rag that SBS would not be placing ads in the middle of movies. I haven’t seen, nor had reported to me, any recantation so maybe he still believes that’s the case.
Now SBS is on the back foot. Its newsreader is having meetings with senior management about exit or, most unlikely, re-entry arrangements and its senior management is drawing headlines like “Mary Kostakidis’ walkout highlights how SBS has been hijacked by deluded management” (SMH, 25/26 August). An ominous note from contrarian Paul Sheehan headed “SBS an indulgence we don’t need” (SMH 27 August) should give us all the shivers. What hope is there for it to revert to its more modest ambitions and its unique programming? Probably not much but there might just be a small moment at hand for someone in the political class to rise up and say enough is enough, that management and the governing board have failed and that they all need to move on and take their failure with them.
I mentioned above the work that David Stratton did in presenting the riches of the world’s film heritage for over twenty years. The program was generally called Cinema Classics and I estimate that David screened more than a thousand films in that time. It was a program replete with everything from curiosities like the Mexican Bunuels (just now re-screened at BIFF) to virtually every film made by Akira Kurosawa. If you made a copy of each you would have a library of unsurpassed breadth and quality. Of course we all forgot the films were on and forgot to set the recorder and went out drinking or whatever. But you have the right to expect that SBS would have retained the unique subtitles that it created for each of these works. (Often those subtitles were the first ever to be done of some films. I’m told there are copies of these films circulating, illegally, in quality US video rental stores. Piracy is a crime but cinephilia trucks no such restrictions.) But has SBS preserved this unique material or have its managers, amongst all the other mayhem they've committed, let this resource be lost or destroyed? It’s a question that needs an answer by somebody competent to examine the channel’s activities in recent years.
It has taken a simple dummy spit from a newsreader (who apparently from the news reports alleges breach of contract because she wasn’t given enough prominence or wasn’t treated with sufficient gravitas) to start the process which just may bring the whole edifice down around the shambling buffoons now running the place. They claim success by having raising the ratings from an average of 6% to 7.5%. (one article suggested that they had raised the ratings by 25%, an assertion of innumeracy if nothing else.) This group includes Board Members like former Packer operative Gerald Stone and former Howard acolyte Christopher Pearson. Pearson once assured the readers of his column in a Murdoch rag that SBS would not be placing ads in the middle of movies. I haven’t seen, nor had reported to me, any recantation so maybe he still believes that’s the case.
Now SBS is on the back foot. Its newsreader is having meetings with senior management about exit or, most unlikely, re-entry arrangements and its senior management is drawing headlines like “Mary Kostakidis’ walkout highlights how SBS has been hijacked by deluded management” (SMH, 25/26 August). An ominous note from contrarian Paul Sheehan headed “SBS an indulgence we don’t need” (SMH 27 August) should give us all the shivers. What hope is there for it to revert to its more modest ambitions and its unique programming? Probably not much but there might just be a small moment at hand for someone in the political class to rise up and say enough is enough, that management and the governing board have failed and that they all need to move on and take their failure with them.
I mentioned above the work that David Stratton did in presenting the riches of the world’s film heritage for over twenty years. The program was generally called Cinema Classics and I estimate that David screened more than a thousand films in that time. It was a program replete with everything from curiosities like the Mexican Bunuels (just now re-screened at BIFF) to virtually every film made by Akira Kurosawa. If you made a copy of each you would have a library of unsurpassed breadth and quality. Of course we all forgot the films were on and forgot to set the recorder and went out drinking or whatever. But you have the right to expect that SBS would have retained the unique subtitles that it created for each of these works. (Often those subtitles were the first ever to be done of some films. I’m told there are copies of these films circulating, illegally, in quality US video rental stores. Piracy is a crime but cinephilia trucks no such restrictions.) But has SBS preserved this unique material or have its managers, amongst all the other mayhem they've committed, let this resource be lost or destroyed? It’s a question that needs an answer by somebody competent to examine the channel’s activities in recent years.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Action Men
The multiplexes have suddenly delivered a small set of films about men in action that provide some interesting turns. Kevin Costner, Anthony Hopkins, Bruce Willis and Tommy Turgoose all give us some variations on men being violent. Costner's Mr Brooks has so much plot and so many characters it takes an eternity to tell its tale of a nice well-mannered serial killer whose alter ego is the real villain. Thus Costner can be a nice guy, mostly, and its left to William Hurt sitting in the back seat to say, or put in front of us, all those nasty guilt ridden things that schizophrenic serial killers may or may not endure. The conception is cute and if it had been made back in the glory days of RKO it may have been genuinely disturning because Jacques Tourneur and De Witt Bodeen may have worked out a way to keep us guessing as to whether Mr Brook's shadowy accomplice is real or imagined. Much may have been made of the alter ego's impotence perhaps. It has only one moment that one might call Hitchcockian when Costner agaonises as to whether he should save his daughter from prison by devising a murder that will get her out of the suspicions of the police. It doesn't last long. Fracture has a similar Hitchcockian moment, better done and with a bit of oomph when Ryan Gosling as the young lawyer tryinjg to nail ultra smart murderer Anthony Hopkins has to decide whether to abandon his integrity and 'frame' the man we clearly know committed the murder for the murder. It doesn't last that long but the film's plot at least has you wondering how the moral dilemma is going to be resolved and what twists and turns it will take to do so. Otherwise Fracture is just a detective story with tricks aplenty, not dissimilar to a John Grisham story. It is entirely devoid of any sensibility that might suggest that it inhabits anything other than a fairy tale world of good guys and bad guys and princesses who's hand is to be won or rejected.
The difference between both of these films and a genuine crime story is the palpable difference where you get involved in the downj and dirty details of the locales and all the people. Admittedly lawyer's offices aren't conducive to such details. To put it bluntly these two are modern film's equivalents of Agatha Christie and what we, at least I, really desire is the modern film equivalent of Carl Hiaasen or George P Pelecanos. Unfortunately the cinema's one attempt to do Hiaasen, Striptease, was a travesty and as far as I know nobody has even attempted to do Pelecanos. I can see why. The details of their stories, the backgrounds, the encyclopaedic knowledge of locale and local custom are too hard to render in a movie where the main action involves getting you from point A to point AA quickly and with a modicum of violence on the way.
That's why the Die Hard franchise is so effective. It does what it does without any great pretension and is far more inventive about the details of its background than the other films. Of course it's all invented and you wonder how on earth a villain could finance the elaborate scheme devised to destroy America's computer networks. Actually you only wonder that afterwards because while it's happening you get a mountain of often ugly CGI effects showing much near incendiary and visceral violence. The Asian bad girl is a terrific villainess and the kung fu kicking she gives Bruce Willis is very good indeed. You actually dont have much sympathy for him at all while it's happening.
And Tommy Turgoose. Well he operates as a sort of mascot to a group of skinheads in the North of England. The group divides into two - one racist, the other not. The other however still thinks that having a good time destroying derelict aprtment buildings is a good thing and quite forgivable. Through Tommy's eyes he discovers the sub-culture that formed as Thatcher thrashed her way through the Fallkands and bands I've never heard of play something the ads called 80s classics on the soundtrack. It's funny to get a piece about this subject which seems to serve only as nostalgia though the moment when Combo and his racist gang, lead by young Shaun stride out in Leone-esque slow motion has a deal of droll fun to it.
The difference between both of these films and a genuine crime story is the palpable difference where you get involved in the downj and dirty details of the locales and all the people. Admittedly lawyer's offices aren't conducive to such details. To put it bluntly these two are modern film's equivalents of Agatha Christie and what we, at least I, really desire is the modern film equivalent of Carl Hiaasen or George P Pelecanos. Unfortunately the cinema's one attempt to do Hiaasen, Striptease, was a travesty and as far as I know nobody has even attempted to do Pelecanos. I can see why. The details of their stories, the backgrounds, the encyclopaedic knowledge of locale and local custom are too hard to render in a movie where the main action involves getting you from point A to point AA quickly and with a modicum of violence on the way.
That's why the Die Hard franchise is so effective. It does what it does without any great pretension and is far more inventive about the details of its background than the other films. Of course it's all invented and you wonder how on earth a villain could finance the elaborate scheme devised to destroy America's computer networks. Actually you only wonder that afterwards because while it's happening you get a mountain of often ugly CGI effects showing much near incendiary and visceral violence. The Asian bad girl is a terrific villainess and the kung fu kicking she gives Bruce Willis is very good indeed. You actually dont have much sympathy for him at all while it's happening.
And Tommy Turgoose. Well he operates as a sort of mascot to a group of skinheads in the North of England. The group divides into two - one racist, the other not. The other however still thinks that having a good time destroying derelict aprtment buildings is a good thing and quite forgivable. Through Tommy's eyes he discovers the sub-culture that formed as Thatcher thrashed her way through the Fallkands and bands I've never heard of play something the ads called 80s classics on the soundtrack. It's funny to get a piece about this subject which seems to serve only as nostalgia though the moment when Combo and his racist gang, lead by young Shaun stride out in Leone-esque slow motion has a deal of droll fun to it.
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