A documentary shot around the production of the September issue of American Vogue. The dramatic tension is provided not through any expose of the woman behind the editorial mask of Anna Wintour, but through the exploration of her working relationship with her fashion director, another British woman, Grace Coddington. While it might be Wintour’s clarity of purpose and decisiveness that makes Vogue not just a brand but an influential force (as shown in Wintour’s matchmaking of designers with brands), it is Coddington’s creative and artistic vision, as well as her lack of the customary deference to Wintour, that gives the film a heart.
The story of the criminal career of American gangster, John Dillinger…or the story of the battle between Dillinger and the recently formed FBI….except it was neither of these. It wasn’t really an exploration of the character and motivation of Dillinger, nor did it really deliver an epic battle between good and evil. It was just one episode after another.
A good cast, Marion Cotillard, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, were nicely shot, but not well supported in script and characterisation.
The best thing about this? The memory of an afternoon spent having a nice lunch and watching this without distraction in a great independent cinema in Edinburgh.
I didn’t dislike the book – in fact it has rather pleasant associations as the result of being a summer read during a trip to Rome. Easier to suspend belief about the story when you’re sitting with a glass of wine looking at the Bernini fountain to which reference is being made.
The film is another matter. Hard to forgive the casting of Tom Hanks rather than Harrison Ford. Hard not to laugh at the physics (no laughing matter that CERN felt obliged to issue ‘reassurance’ to the public about anti-matter). Hard to forget quite how bad Ewan McGregor’s accent is. Last but not least, impossible to forgive the treatment of an archive facility
In a spin-off from The Thick of It, ‘enforcer extraordinaire’, Malcolm Tucker, intervenes to make sure that a decision to go to war receives international support…sound familiar? There’s a lot of that, including a prescient reference to having to avoid watching a hotel porn channel for fear of it appearing on expense claims and being made public.
It’s hard to describe just how funny this film is – it’s also hard to illustrate the wit of the sript, given that one of its features is the most comedic use of cursing since Father Jack…but try the Deep Throatminster blog for a sample of the tone. I have a new hero!
Seeing this film was just one highlight of a wonderful weekend when K came to visit. We did the local tourist thing, and I can thoroughly recommend:
We also went to the Roman fort and start of Hadrian’s Wall at Wallsend . I enjoyed the opportunity to see a portion of Hadrian’s Wall, and was amused by the Latin translation of the local metro signs leading to the museum, but the blurring of historical artefact and recreation within the Segedunum museum itself was a little hard to stomach.
The story of Brian Clough’s 44 day tenure as manager of Leeds United, with flashbacks to the start of his career at Derby County and his relationships with his second-in-command, Peter Taylor, and Leeds manager, Don Revie.
I grew up in the Midlands in the 1970s and 1980s, and was raised with the impression that Brian Clough was some sort of footballing god after his stints at Derby and Notts Forest….an impression helped by Clough’s own self-deprecating contributions to local news programmes. For me, this film captured both the personalities and the period perfectly (dial telephones, TV testcards, fish and chip suppers) – and there is a lovely balance between comedy and drama. Thoroughly recommended – even for non-football fans.
“I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one.”
This is so gloriously bad, it is almost worth seeing!
Not exactly a taxing plot so I had time to formulate a theory – each decade has its ‘own’ vampires. In the 1980s, it was The Lost Boys. Large portions of a year were spent quoting the Frog brothers* and wishing I lived in Santa Carla.
A decade later it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer ( I’m ignoring Bram Stoker’s Dracula using the Keanu Reeves exclusion rule). Thanks to Buffy, I still have evil-Willow envy, I sometimes have the urge to sing about my dry-cleaning, and was almost enough of a fan to buy an Anthony Head album (I said ALMOST!).
If Twilight is the vampire movie of the 2000s, then I think I have to give up on the contemporary vampire movie (poor dialogue and daytime soap acting are forgiveable but heavy-handed abstinence subtext is not), and go retro – time to dust off the DVD of Nosferatu.
*Edgar Frog: You did the right thing by calling us. Does your brother sleep a lot? Sam Emerson: Yeah, all day. Alan Frog: Does the sunlight freak him out? Sam Emerson: Uh, he wears sunglasses in the house. Edgar Frog: Bad breath, long fingernails? Sam Emerson: Yeah, his fingernails are a little bit longer, um, he always had bad breath, though. Alan Frog: He’s a vampire all right. Edgar Frog: All right, here’s what you do: get yourself a good sharp stake and drive it right through his heart. Sam Emerson: I can’t do that; he’s my brother. Alan Frog: OK, we’ll come over and do it for you. Sam Emerson: No! Edgar Frog: You’d better get yourself a garlic T-shirt, buddy, or it’s your funeral.
…(the day he watched the remake of) The Day the Earth Stood Still
A remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor to Earth…with Keanu Reeves.
It’s a truly lousy movie – neither a patch on the original nor an interesting movie in its own right.
The one selling point is that there is a moment when Klaatu (Reeves) stares into the distance and says ‘This body will take some getting used to’. There we have the best explanation yet of Reeve’s acting technique – he’s an alien getting used to his human body.
Otherwise, you can keep boredom at bay by cliche-spotting:
emotional female scientist…did I mention she’s emotional (Jennifer Connelly – who spends most of the movie looking doe-eyed at Klaatu - in the manner of the cat in Shrek)? Check.
annoying know-it-all child who fails to get killed (Jaden Smith). Check (double points here for managing to bring in the single working mother, multi-cultural family)
plagiarism of the Matrix (a double whammy of Keanu Reeves dressed as Agent Smith). Check.
biblical reference (the Ark, boaty rather than covenant version). Check.
established character actor (Kathy Bates) caught looking embarassed at cameo role. Check.
bad CGI. Check.
‘world’ invasion, for which read invasion of the States with some added (bad) stock footage of other places an American audience may have heard of. Check
John Cleese looking like Bernard Cribbins. No, really.
The story of the Red Army Faction’s political terrorism in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.
Some incredible scenes – including a sequence near the beginning of student protestors being attacked by supporters of the Shah of Iran, while the police look on and then join in.
What was less clearly developed was the political and emotional journey made by Ulriche Meinhof, from radical journalist and mother, to being someone who gave up her own children and participated in acts of terror.
A dramatisation of the story of Barbara Daly, her marriage to Brooks Baekeland, heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune, and their tragic relationships with their son, Tony.
Summary: the damage that damaged people do to each other.
Eddie Redmayne (Tony) and Julianne Moore (Barbara) were amazing. The cinematography was hauntingly beautiful – giving a real sense of time and place as the family members drifted from country to country across two decades.
Difficult to say that one enjoyed a film with such disturbing subject matter as this, but it was certainly worth watching.
Shown as part of the Bath Film Festival - my only complaint? The pointless introductions to the movies that are being shown – fine if there are sponsors to be thanked or critique/context to be offered, but pointless if all that is offered is a plot summary of what is to come.
I thought I would compare notes with Oobely Boo on Dark Knight - I certainly didn’t hate it - but nor was I completely bowled over by it. It was too long and took itself too seriously. I also got very irritated by the deep ‘film trailer voiceover’ voice adopted by Batman (as well as by the child sitting next to me in the cinema who seemed unable to be quiet or still. Does that make me very old and grumpy?).
I was struck not by the much-heralded darkness of The Dark Knight, but more by the attempt at realism – the exploration of the humanity of Batman and a rather mundane looking Gotham. I suppose I prefer a more stylised approach – Tim Burton all the way.
This may mark me out as a very shallow consumer but just occasionally it would be nice if the ‘hero’ spent more of his time on saving the world and less on gloomy introspection. To borrow a line from the movie – is the Christopher Nolan version of Batman the hero we need or the hero we deserve? Batman for a psychotherapy generation?
I didn’t dislike the book – in fact it has rather pleasant associations as the result of being a summer read during a trip to Rome. Easier to suspend belief about the story when you’re sitting with a glass of wine looking at the Bernini fountain to which reference is being made.
In a spin-off from 
The story of Brian Clough’s 44 day tenure as manager of Leeds United, with flashbacks to the start of his career at Derby County and his relationships with his second-in-command, Peter Taylor, and Leeds manager, Don Revie.
This is so gloriously bad, it is almost worth seeing!
