Thursday

On the day I posted about the greatest tracking shots, Alex sent me a link to the greatest credit sequences. I've never put much thought into such things, so the list interested me. However, I immediately noticed that all of these films were quite recent. And given the description of the opening sequences as 'kick ass', I imagine this list was compiled by a young gentleman, possibly of the undergraduate disposition. Alex recommended that the comments were just as, if not more, interesting than the actual list. They are revealing, but the first remark suggests Superman - a credit sequence that starts well, but goes on for over five infuriating minutes. I didn't read them all, but couldn't see anyone who proposed a Hitchcock film. For me, North by Northwest and Psycho are some of the best credit sequences ever (created by Saul Bass, with music from Bernard Herrmann), but as I said at the beginning, I had never thought about compiling a list of such things. I'm not sure if I prefer the modest method of Woody Allen - white writing on a black background for all his movies, I believe. I wonder, though, at exactly what point it was that filmmakers started using credits creatively? I wouldn't be surprised if it was with Saul Bass. Anyway, what I recommend you look for at the beginning of a movie is what I call the 'director shot'. Usually, the writer of the music will give you some cue when his name comes up, but for the shot when 'directed by' appears (the last of the sequence) see if there is anything unusual or outstanding about it. This shot will give you a lot of information about the type of film you're about to see, how good the director is, the detail he goes into, and how much control he had over his movie. If it doesn't differentiate itself in any way from what's come before, be cautious. I don't believe it's arrogance to insist on something special when your name comes up, rather a dogged perseverance towards a creative undertaking.

In other news, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is breaking box office records, despite the generally negative verdict of critics. You'll be able to read my review next week.

Wednesday

There were no adverts or trailers preceding Black Snake Moan. This disturbed me. And I was right to be disturbed. This is an unusual film. Not in a formal sense, the narrative was straightforward and simple, but in the content of that narrative. A man (Samuel L. Jackson), who has just separated from his wife, finds a young girl (Christina Ricci) lying on the side of the road, beaten up and abused. She is, as they say, a lady who is free with her affection. The man decides to chain her up in his house and teach her to be a better person. This sounds quite dynamic, which is why I saw it, but there is something missing. I never really sympathised with either character. The script doesn't have that edge that it needs. The performances are good, but not stunning. The relationship between Ricci and Jackson should be exciting, but they don't really interact that well. Perhaps my problems stem from what this film is supposedly derived from: the 1970s exploitation pictures. I don't think I've ever seen such a picture. This film is also slightly descended from Tarantino (certain lines sound very similar to some from Pulp Fiction), but it doesn't pastiche movies in the way he does. It is more of a straight run through of the conventions, a lot like The Good German. In a way, I think they should have been more outrageous with the odd things about this movie, gone way over the top and never reined themselves in. I don't think this is a good film, but it's more interesting than a lot else out there. The blues soundtrack (occasionally played by Jackson himself) is brilliant, but might get annoying if you don't have a disposition for liking it anyway - which I do. And for some reason Christina Ricci is starting to look like Goldie Hawn. Watching the trailer will give you a good idea of the strangeness of this movie, although it has a more comedic tone than I think the complete film does.

Tuesday

I was referred by Alex a few weeks ago to the greatest tracking shots in cinema. It seems to me that this list is missing some brilliant scenes, as well as including some mediocre ones. For instance, as much as I liked Serenity it really shouldn't be on the list. The oeuvre of Max Ophuls, on the other hand, frequently cited as the master of the tracking shot, if not the inventor of it, is entirely omitted here. I remember particularly the long shot of the exterior of the brothel in Le Plaisir, as we circle around the house looking in at all the windows. Brilliant. And what about Hitchcock's Young and Innocent, and the long track across the concert hall to the man playing cymbals? The tracking shot is one of the tools a director can use that impresses me the most - frequently a whole world has to be organised to act and react in five minutes - and as such perhaps I should be happy enough that there is such a list and people are talking about it, rather than complain about its contents. Much better would be to complain about the '100 greatest war movies' that I saw repeated on More4 last night. This list was quite random in its selection. To put Saving Private Ryan as the best ever is surely wrong. It was well-made, but its sentiment is rather sickly. Far better were many of the British films made during the 40s and 50s.

Monday

I said something the other day that I feel needs explaining. When I'm watching a bad film I often ask myself how it got made. How many people actually thought it was a good idea? Because I am sometimes absolutist in my thinking, I ask myself if every single person that went into making the movie agreed creatively with what was being made. Did, for instance, the man who makes coffee on-set decide that it was a project he wanted to be involved with, or did he just do it because it was work? Perhaps this is an extreme example. I could reduce it to everyone who had read the script beforehand. Did they all read it and say 'yes I want to work on this'? Or did they say 'how much is it paying?'. Sadly, I think in most cases it was the latter. The amount of people who creatively say 'yes' to a film is very few - writer, director, and producer only perhaps? Everyone else is either hired, or agrees to work on it, regardless of such considerations - which can include up to several hundred people. This of course is what is great, but also what is hard, about film-making being a business as well as an art. There are compromises. It is the movie 'industry', not 'charity'.

Sunday

I'd often heard about, but never felt compelled enough to see, The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne. It's one of those films that some people quote as their favourite of all time, and so makes it a daunting prospect to watch. At first I was greatly disappointed. Bad blue-screening always puts me off, but here it seemed especially poor. And the music was overly assertive, seeming to try to force emotional moods upon the viewer, rather than enforce already present ones (a topic perhaps worth another post). What I began to notice, however, was that the dialogue was very good, and reasonably authentic to the Irish disposition, although slightly patronising - I suspect this is the type of film a lot of foreigners get their conceptions of Ireland from. Anyway, it did improve, and there were some remarkable moments. When we finally find out about the main character's history, his flaws and his failures, the story becomes gripping (and very similar to the excellent The Big Country, again worth a separate post). The image of the woman's hat stranded on a post in the wind was stunning. And indeed the photography of her, Maureen O'Hara, seemed suddenly striking whenever she appeared in close-up. The issue of her dowry was complicated and fascinating: she refuses her husband's advances until it is paid. For her, it is a symbol of her independence, freeing her from just being a servant passed from family to husband. Interesting. But overall the movie was slightly incoherent and rambling. It seemed to stop and start, and the occasional narrator didn't help at all. There was also an undertone of brutality towards women that was laughed off rather than commented upon. That said, the build up to the big fight at the end was quite brilliant, and had me on the edge of my seat: a drunkard starts humming a tune which is slowly picked up by the whole orchestra, and the action begins. Anyway, I'm sure this film has been analysed a hundred times by better critics, but I just thought I'd offer you my pure and unfiltered, first-hand impressions.

Saturday

I wrote this article yesterday, then dismissed it and posted something different (as you know). But last night I was reminded of its relevancy, and my reasons for believing it. The question was: what do you do when you find yourself watching a film you don't like? Of course, it depends on the situation. If you're in a cinema you may just have to sit there and say to yourself 'well, I paid money for this, I'm not leaving'. But what if you're at home? If you've rented it, the financial impulse is similar, although marginally less. You could just stop watching it, couldn't you? You've given it a chance, after all. It's just not your type of movie. Fair enough. If it was on TV, though, your hands could be on that remote control faster than a hobo's on a ham sandwich. But stop. Haven't you forgotten something? If I find myself watching a film that doesn't emotionally engage me I instead start looking at its mechanics. I ask myself why it doesn't engage, and what it has done wrong on the level of script, plot, direction, photography, editing, music, etc. I make a dull film interesting, or at least I try to. Every movie took a considerable amount of time and skill to put together. Although the number of people who creatively said 'yes' to it was quite small, it still took effort. For me, every film deserves a chance to be analysed. Me personally liking it or not comes later - I don't like to overstate my own importance. A statement the busy critic might say is: 'I just don't have time for bad movies'. That position, though, in the end is untenable. You can't only watch good movies, and you can't really know the full significance of a film until the titles start rolling. Go on, give a bad movie a break.

Friday

Perhaps I've been talking about films that are arriving too far in the future. So what movies are coming out now? Maybe the biggest film this year is released today - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Just to clarify, the plot of this movie does not involve Captain Jack Sparrow stopping in at a pub on King's Road in Chelsea for a quick drink. That might be interesting. Instead, I am looking forward to this film about as much as a man looks forward to having stitches pulled out: i.e. it's something I want, but something I know will hurt. Reviews so far are bad for the film. The problem is that the original was just so good. Although it was a big film, I somehow felt that it was small in scale. The following sequels have attempted to be too grand, too epic. I suppose it was the characters, or the character of Johnny Depp, that first interested us. But he is quite one-dimensional, and three hours of him can get irritating (yes, the latest film is 160 minutes long!). So, what should you see instead? My hot pick for the week is The Bothersome Man, brilliantly described by the Metro's critic as 'like an Ikea catalogue directed by David Lynch'. Great stuff.

Thursday

Some more news from Cannes has developed over the last day. Despite what I was told about critics cheering Tarantino's Death Proof, a lot of them were apparently unhappy. Some of them were calling for the movie to be put back together as Grindhouse, and claiming Weinstein (the producer) had butchered it by demanding they be shown as two separate films. From the U.S. there are stories that audiences walked out either because they didn't like the film, or because they didn't realise there would be another one straight after. Either way, it seems that Weinstein hasn't learnt one of the oldest lessons in cinema history - that Europeans often like movies Americans don't. Tarantino's quote to the press about the possibility of him winning another Palm d'Or is a classic: 'There's only one list more illustrious than the list of directors who won the Palm d'Or. It's the list of directors who didn't.' The critic from theguardian gives the movie 2 stars.

In other news, the Coen brothers have already started planning their next feature: Burn After Reading. To be made in collaboration with Working Title again, this movie is set to star George Clooney, Brad Pitt and John Malkovich. Then, incredibly, they have another planned that seems like a small, personal film: A Serious Man

Wednesday

The news from Cannes this year is interesting. Michael Moore, Quentin Tarantino and Wong Kar-Wai all have new films coming out. Most intriguingly of all, for me, is the offering from the Coen brothers: No Country for Old Men. It sounds like a return to their old style and content of film-making - a drug deal gone bad, the wrong man in the right place, and lots of violence. Tommy-Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson star. I've never really got in to the whole Cannes vibe. It seems to support good films, but sometimes falls horribly short - awarding films just because they're obscure/foreign/pretentious, priding itself on being different. Recently it seems to have turned more commercial, especially with the premiere of some of the Star Wars films. Apparently, yesterday Tarantino's latest movie was cheered by critics, but the important news is that because of its poor reception in the U.S. we won't get to see Grindhouse as two films back-to-back. They've re-edited it and are now going to show them as two full-length features. As always, though, Cannes has been nicely timed with the Monaco Grand Prix. Hmm.

Tuesday

Night of the Sunflowers is a conservative film. I hesitate to call it a 'good' one, although it is certainly worth seeing more than many other movies out at the moment. The story begins with the discovery of the body of a young woman - in a field of sunflowers - who has been raped and murdered. But this is all we hear of that. The rest of the film is concerned with another rape that occurs in a small, insignificant village nearby. This movie is about the small-town mentality, the 'protect-your-own' way of thinking. Later it will be implicitly compared to a hive of bees, who are passive unless disturbed. Here, justice and morality become relative. But I feel as if I am saying more about the movie than was said in it, if you see what I mean. I feel as if I'm extrapolating more meaning than I was given.

The pace was very slow, the dialogue sparse, and the direction conservative. I think there should have been more of an oppressive atmosphere to this movie. It pretends to be progressive - we are given fragments of stories from different perspectives, at different times, all with their own placard - i.e. 'the man on the road', 'the man in the motel', much like a Tarantino movie. But this is very far from a Tarantino movie. What is great, though, is the inevitability of one mistake leading horribly on to the next. The slow pace brilliantly emphasises this. However, towards the end this steady intensification is lost. We have seen what happens and we now have to watch an old policeman slowly figure it out. There is no tension anymore. The ending is slightly unsatisfactory. Things are deliberately left open and undone, but I felt there were too many loose ends. Overall, a promising debut from this director, but definitely perceptible as a debut.

Monday

Over the weekend I bought and watched both Fletch and Fletch Lives. I had seen them before, although I didn't remember large parts of the former. Perhaps I had never followed it to the end? I have a memory of my father and I, late at night, deciding to watch it because it had Chevy Chase in it. I remember being disturbed by how unlike National Lampoon it was. Chevy was making cynical, violent jokes about other people. I didn't really understand. Now, however, I love these movies. I'm not sure how much Chevy ad libs - it seems like a lot, but that might just be great scriptwriting. Overall, though, this does feel like a masterclass from Chevy on how to do comedy. Some of the lines aren't that good, but it's how he delivers them, and how he reacts to other people delivering them, that is brilliant. The disguises he puts on aren't so important as the names he creates, seemingly on the spot, for every person he talks to. Because I can't remember many of the jokes, and I don't want to spoil it for you, I'll just leave you with this taster:
What are you doing here?
I ordered some lunch.
You ordered it here?
Well, I knew this is where my mouth would be.

Sunday

So, apparently Bob and Al have pencilled in doing another film together (that's Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, by the way). They've only shared the billing of two previous movies - Heat and The Godfather: Part II - and actually saw nothing of each other in the latter film, and only two scenes in the former. For this new one, however, called Righteous Kill, they will play alongside each other throughout. Apparently the two men are friends, so it's perhaps strange they haven't done more work together, especially considering the studio pressure there must be for that to happen. Then again, the fact that it's so rare makes it more commercially lucrative, I suppose. The idea of stars matching up in movies is an interesting one. Normally the pairing is male and female, but I think more interesting is two great men opposite each other - I especially liked Pacino and Robin Williams in Insomnia. It's almost like bringing two franchises together: a guaranteed money-maker on that opening weekend. The method of Ocean's Eleven, hire an ensemble cast, is good, but it does dilute the performances somewhat. What was so great about Heat was that you had two great actors playing very familiar characters from their past movies. For this upcoming film - about two veteran cops chasing a serial killer - it seems as if we might get something similar, and more. Let's hope the director is as good as Michael Mann.

Saturday

Another interesting article in theguardian this week came on Friday, and was by Hannah McGill. She was talking about Andrew Bujalski's latest film Mutual Appreciation. I saw his first movie Funny Ha-Ha - which for some reason Hannah doesn't mention - a few weeks ago and thought it was brilliant. Anyway, her point was that indie movies were being made again (rather than being swallowed up by studios), which is great. However, there did seem to be a drawback, with which I agree with her. She said these movies were not really striving forwards, only looking back. They weren't innovating, she claimed, in the way that they used to. If you can call Dans Paris an indie movie as well, then this idea is certainly true. It's a throwback to a previous generation. Indie films, because they rely on no one for production, should be the most experimental - not necessarily in form, but definitely in style. Although we haven't yet planned a full-scale feature, this is what we at Troy Road films are striving towards.

Friday

Marcel Berlins wrote an interesting article in theguardian on Wednesday. He was reacting strongly to the 'greatest foreign films of all time', as voted for by readers of his paper. I hadn't heard about this enterprise, but as soon as I saw the results I reacted along similar lines to Marcel. Pan's Labyrinth was voted in at number nine. Marcel believed, as I do, that this was absurd. People were only putting it there because they'd seen it recently, and he thought no such list should include films made in the last ten years. What Marcel didn't say, though, is what he actually thought of the film. I'm presuming, because he didn't say it, that he thought it was a good film, but just not yet ready to be included in lists. I, of course, would go one step further and say this film should never be included in lists - whether in ten, twenty, or thirty years. It's just not that good a movie. We did agree on one thing, though, and that was our mutual dislike of the sickly Amelie, which readers had put at number two. Incredible. At number one was Cinema Paradiso. I haven't seen this film, but even theguardian's cinema critics thought this was a terrible choice. Nevertheless, when you go down the top twenty, the good ones do start appearing. Although it is strange that the film Halliwell's thought was the best of all time, Tokyo Story, was only at number eleven! (N.B. at number ten was Gordon Brown.)

Thursday

I couldn't decide what film to see. Looking at the showtimes, there was nothing that I desperately felt like watching. Then I realised that they had stopped accounting for the Curzon cinemas. And so it was that I found and went to see Dans Paris in Soho. This film contains some of the greatest moments of contemporary cinema I've seen in a long time. A pretty bold statement? Perhaps. Three or four people did leave during the movie, and I heard one person say afterwards 'I hated that'. So this film will divide opinion. It owes a lot to its French New Wave roots. If you don't get that, you may lose something here. I personally have never quite got on with that particular genre/era. It's sometimes a bit too knowing and pretentious, and the rambling jazz music doesn't do much for me. The beginning of this film seemed to follow a similar pattern. I wasn't too interested. The skips forward and backwards in time were irritating. It seemed to be saying 'you're interested in this', rather than 'please be interested in this'. People were having convoluted, philosophical conversations on the nature of their relationships, as they tend to do in Paris, and I was a little bored. Eventually, however, it settled down into the one day in which most of the rest of the action took place. This was great. From then on I was hooked. The brother, Jonathan, was the most interesting character here with his... well, I won't spoil it for you. You should go see it. It's as post-modern as you'll like: characters speaking direct to camera about themselves as characters etc. I left the cinema thinking 'this was great', and really wanting to watch it again. A refreshing movie.

Wednesday

An appeal for funds*. Just £2 a month could change the life of a Stranded Cinema correspondent. On Tuesday he had to pay £12.50 to see a film - and there was no student discount available. Your donation could also help him buy a small pad of paper, or even a pen with a light on it so he can take notes in the cinema - an increasingly necessary requirement for what is already a highly demanding existence. Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a Stranded Cinema correspondent how to write in the dark, you feed him for life. You will receive regular updates from your chosen correspondent, as well as birthday and Christmas cards with personal messages inside.

Incidentally, what's the movie you least want to see this month? Wedding Daze? The question is, are you going to make me go see it? Vote now!**

*If you have any kind of social conscious please don't continue reading, or don't kill me if you do.

**Voting not actually possible.

Tuesday

I finally saw Shooter today. I say 'finally' because I mean 'finally'. I've been trying to see it for weeks. This is the new film from Antoine Fuqua, the man who directed the brilliant Training Day. Unfortunately, this movie does not live up to that one. In many ways, the plot here is not much better than Rambo, and never rises much above the level of an 'intelligent action movie'. There are contentious issues - genocide, American exploitation of developing countries and their irresponsible use of superior force - but these don't drive the film, they are subsidiary. I also didn't fully sympathise with the characters, and fully hate the enemies. Their choices along the way weren't always self-evident. I was frequently lost as to what they were doing and why they were doing it. The film didn't end, but not in a good way, issues weren't resolved. Someone says at one point 'you can't kill human weakness with a gun'. This, to me, therefore undermines the ending of the movie. The script was good, but somehow lost. There were a lot of great lines, but not delivered well, or emphasised enough by the direction. The music also doesn't help at all here - a kind of faux-epic, sentimental thing. The woman's character seemed fairly irrelevant, and although it luckily didn't develop into a full-romance, it might as well have done. The man who plays the FBI agent, Michael Peña was very good, and I thought that this film would've done better to be centred around him instead. His character, and his story, is more interesting than the Rambo-type one. Wahlberg is great again, but his character was far too one-dimensional: a good guy wronged by the government. So I am still interested to see what Fuqua does next, but not as interested as I was before I saw this film.

Monday

There is a new website called myfilms.com where movies are apparently recommended to you based on what mood you're in, your previous preferences and other such settings. This is a good thing. A long time ago, Alex and I came up with a very similar idea which I think we were going to call goodfilms.com. The essential difference, however, is that at our site films were also recommended to you based on how often you went to the cinema. I think this is very important. If you only see one film a month, your priorities are different to someone who sees one a week. You want the best film of that month, not that week. We were going to have individual reviews for each customer. Obviously this involves quite a bit of work (perhaps why it was never realised), but we suspected that you could break people into around 16 categories of film-going personality, sort of like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The problem with this, though, and all the website ideas I dream up, is that who would use it? I don't feel the need in my life for it, and so I wonder who else would. We'll have to wait and see if myfilms.com becomes a success or not.

Sunday

Did you know George Lucas and Spielberg were turned down by every major studio for Indiana Jones before being accepted by Paramount? I find this pretty incredible. Lucas had just made Star Wars, Spielberg Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind - indeed, they agreed to do the film upon meeting in Hawaii whilst Lucas was escaping the fuss about Star Wars. Spielberg apparently always wanted to do a James Bond movie, and Lucas told him he had a better idea. Studios are strange things. How were they incapable of seeing one of the most iconic films of all time? The casting of Harrison Ford was key, and that did only come later. And then of course there was the music, which no one could foresee. I wonder how films get made at all, and how many possible good films have been thrown away. I had an idea for a movie in which no one in Hollywood actually watches films anymore - they make decisions based on reputations and critical reviews. This might not be too far from the truth.

Saturday

I have a few more things to say about Next. Firstly, I thought Jessica Biel was terrible. There's one scene where Julianne Moore, a federal agent, asks her to get in a car. Biel looks around the street, sighs, and then says something like 'ok'. This is the worst piece of over-acting I have ever seen. If a federal agent asks you to get into a car you do it, you don't pause and think about it. Anyway, Nicolas Cage was good at points, especially with the moments that bordered on humour, although overall he was slightly lacklustre. I think Julianne Moore did some interesting things that hinted toward her being a 'bad' character, and this made me think she might be great as a serial killer, or something. She can look pretty evil when she wants to. I'd like to see her in a role like that. So this film was interesting, but the title is terrible. What other options are there? The Second Hand, The Last Magician, Clock face/off, Dial, Two Minutes, Beforehand. I'm not very good at titles. Incidentally, I forgot to mention the scenery for this film was good - shot as a lot of it was in the Grand Canyon.

Friday

Next is a confused film - not necessarily a confusing one (although one person did say 'what?' as the credits started rolling). It begins too quickly. Firstly there is a bad credit sequence, followed by an unnecessary voice-over, and then we are straight into the plot. There's not a very long period of getting used to the scenario (as I described a few days ago). What makes it worse is that the plot is absurd: terrorists have a nuclear bomb somewhere in America. It's almost James Bond, and the warehouse full of bad guys wondering around with semi-automatics doesn't help the situation. Anyway, this film sets up its own rules and then undermines them. Nicolas Cage can see for two minutes into the future, but then he can see longer. This is only ever half-explained. It never goes into the complexities of the situation - does he see every two minutes? Does that mean he lives life twice? They could have gone really dark with this. It's disturbing. Like Groundhog Day, most human beings would probably start to think of suicide after a while. How do you distinguish between what is current and what is in the future? Towards the end he suddenly starts multiplying himself to view hundreds of different possibilities in one two minute space, and having physical shocks when he sees something he doesn't like. None of this is even addressed, which is perhaps a good thing. The love story is creepy, and unexplained (as in most action films). Nonetheless, I was strangely compelled by this film, and I left the cinema wanting to see it again - which you'll understand is rare. There could be interesting comparisons with Memento here. Perhaps what I thought was interesting was just the book by Philip K. Dick seeping through, I'm not sure. Once again we had a main character who avoided guns, and in a new and interesting way. I suggest you see this, as long as you can avoid analysing the physics and consequences of his ability. The ending is intriguing.

Thursday

Perhaps five of the best minutes in cinema are those that occur in the build-up to the climax of Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1. To the annoyance of the purists among you, I switched on part-way through this film and watched it to the end. The five minutes begin with the cue 'One ticket to Tokyo, please'. There are about four song changes - each one now a classic, over-used in a hundred TV shows. We have a brief car chase, and then what feels like a single camera movement lasting several minutes, panning around the Japanese tavern. The tension builds brilliantly. And then the fight begins - perhaps one of the bloodiest in film history, but I'm not altogether convinced by its impressiveness. The build-up is the most important thing. I wonder if you could make a whole film of such choreographed action? I'm guessing it's necessary to have silence and dialogue in order to pace the movie, but certainly we could see more of what Tarantino does here so excellently: great music, great movement, great script. What are your favourite five minutes?

Wednesday

I like the beginnings of films. I like the moments where we are given the basic rules of a world and the behaviour of the characters that exist in them; the 'home' from which the characters are wrenched, and to which they will always want to return; the structure which we first see them in, and which is consequently broken down. I like Neo in his office in The Matrix, Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward waking up in the morning in Tremors, Alex Rogan in his trailer-park in The Last Starfighter, and Luke Skywalker kicking dust on Tatooine. These are the moments before everything changes. And this doesn't just apply to fantasy films (although maybe all films are fantasy), it occurs in serious drama too. Perhaps I am being too nostalgic. Normally at the end the characters will return to these places, but the places aren't the same anymore. They seem smaller, less important. It wasn't the place that was significant, they realise, but the time and their previous self in that place. This is why the ending to Revenge of the Sith is so good: Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen holding the baby Luke and looking out over the two moons. It ends, but it also returns to the start. I like the beginnings of films.

Tuesday

I like Trisha. No, not that one. On the bus today there was an annoying woman talking on her phone - talking so loud that, sitting at the front, she could be heard all the way at the back (and this was an extendor* bus, by the way). She was telling her friend how to get to Lillywhites from Piccadilly station - for those of you that don't know London, this is about as hard as finding a needle in a needlestack. Anyway, the conversation continued: 'Yes, you phoned me when I was in the cinema with Trisha... I accidentally left my phone on... Trisha was annoyed... It was a very important point of the film... No, she left in a huff... I told her I was going to Piccadilly to see how to get to Lillywhites... She's the kind of person who does her own thing'. From the tone, I'm fairly sure this woman didn't just leave her phone on, she actually answered it and had a conversation. So, I like Trisha. Although I wouldn't go so far as to relinquish friends because they answered their phone in a theatre, I like Trisha for being so absolutely fundamentalist. She does her own thing. This should never really be a criticism.

*I obviously don't know what these buses are really called. In Germany, where I first saw them, we called them bendy buses because they have a flexible part in the middle. Since the design appeared here, I have decided to call it The Extendor.

Monday

Why is Tremors such a good film? I'm sure I've written about this before here, but seeing it again the other night reminded me of its subtle brilliance. At its core is the perfect buddy movie. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward are great together. What revolves around them is then a witty, slightly post-modern, but perfectly pitched horror/monster/disaster movie. It's funny and/or scary when it needs to be, creates an interesting set of rules to follow and then disobey, and builds to a suitably good climax, ending in the exact spot that it began. What happened to the director afterwards in 17 years? He did City Slickers, Mighty Joe Young, and The Adventures of Pluto Nash - to name his most well-known films. So, he hasn't done too well. How is it that these one-hit wonders happen? The right group of people at the right time produce one good movie, then drift away and fail to replicate anything really worthwhile again. Only Kevin Bacon has been able to maintain some degree of quality, but he has had his periods in the wilderness too.

Sunday

My favourite television series at the moment is Supernatural. Yes, the plot is silly, it takes itself too seriously, and sometimes the humour is puerile. It could never succeed as cinema. As light entertainment, however, it is perfect. Now in its second season (here in the UK at least), the characters and the writers have really grown into their roles. The main relationship is between two brothers, Sam and Dean, who travel around America, staying in cheap hotels, hunting the supernatural. One is sensitive and intelligent, the other isn't. It's the classic double-act. They never take anything they encounter seriously, verging on the post-modern, but staying safely the sane side of it. As a taster, in tonight's episode Sam wakes up in a motel not remembering the last week of his life. Dean does some research and discovers that Sam checked-in under the name Richie Sambora, which leads to the great line: 'I don't know what's more disturbing: that you lost your memory, or that you like Bon Jovi'.

Saturday

Your correspondent arrived rather inebriated at the cinema for Spider-Man 3, so what, and how much, I remember may be subject to debate, and not very useful for critical appreciation. However, I shall try to offer a few remarks. I have to admit it was enjoyable. I think, though, that it lacked focus. The ostensible plot is predictable: they break-up, then get back together. What has been an interesting factor in Spider-Man is continued: the bad guys aren't really 'bad', they're lost and angry individuals who in the end see what is right. This time, of course, Spider-Man almost becomes one of these bad guys, but not quite. I have a great problem with the nature of the black goo that overcomes him. In every other element of the films, things are man-made. Although unbelievable, they are still the result of men's actions. The black goo is extraterrestrial, and although attracted to vengeance in people, still has independent action. I think the purity of the metaphor of Spider-Man (that we are responsible for our actions, and always have a choice) is lost here. Anyway, that, once again, is the motto of this film. It is good, but I wish they'd done a more interesting variation on it: we haven't arrived at a new place by the end, just gone round in a circle. Spider-Man going loopy was funny for a bit, but did begin to drag. So I thought this was a good film, but certainly not capable of standing on its own - I found myself reminiscing about the original movie, and how great that was.

Friday

Do we really need Ocean's Thirteen? As you know, I'm a sucker for franchises, but this is one I've never been able to fully engage with. The second film was so terrible that I thought it had been killed off permanently. Not so. I greatly respect the director, Soderbergh, but it seems his 'box office' films are often empty star-vehicles. However, I will no doubt go to see it anyway because it belongs to what I think is one of the most interesting, and perhaps most underrated, genres in cinema: the heist film. I'll write a full article on this in a few days, but for now I just wanted to say that whilst simple in form - a group getting together to rob someone/somewhere - this is one of the hardest genres to pull off. The 'catch' has to be superb, complicated, yet easy to understand, to delude the audience but let them feel like they've figured it out. The great thing about Ocean's Eleven was that, opposite to most of the other great heist films, they succeeded at the end. It would be brilliant if in this third film they fail.

Thursday

To continue the theme of problems for script-writers, I thought I'd focus on cars today. This really is an issue for directors, but it originates in the writing phase: how to do you film two people in a car? There is very little scope for invention here, and any radical departure from what we already know will jar obviously unless the rest of your film is as inventive, and the shot has a purpose other than to avoid monotony. You almost always have to go for the two-shot establishing angle from the front windscreen. The audience needs to orientate themselves to the space the characters are in. It's painful, but is there a way out of doing it? Variations on this are to leave the reflections on the glass - sometimes giving interesting light effects - or to mount the camera on the car - as in Touch of Evil - to make the shot more dynamic. Other than that, as I said, the problem is in the writing phase: don't create any scenes where characters have to talk in (and/or use) cars. Perhaps the only solution is in crass humour: How do you shoot two people in a car? With two guns.

Incidentally, May the Fourth be with you - today is one of the most important days in cinema history, and in every cinema year.

Wednesday

Since there's been some discussion of it I thought I'd ask: are mobile phones as terrible for script-writers as guns? I would like to broaden this question, though, to include modern technology in general, e.g. the internet. When a character is in trouble they can quickly phone the police. When they don't know something they can easily look it up on Wikipedia. Modern technology solves dilemmas quicker than we can create them. So what is a script-writer to do? Most often you'll find a character will lose reception, run out of battery, or drop his phone down a deep chasm etc. Script-writers try whenever possible to avoid the issue. Watching someone read a text message, or write an email, is not good cinema. Talking on the phone can be dramatic, but it normally halves the tension of a scene. Perhaps this is why there has been a great interest with science-fiction/disaster in film? When there's a gun-impervious alien in your living room, phoning someone or looking it up on Wikipedia won't help - likewise for when the earth's core stops rotating. However, as Alex says, you can try to turn phones into a positive force for your movie. I would like to suggest, though, that this is a rare example, not easily replicable in all contexts. The best solution, and the hardest, is to think of dilemmas in which using a mobile phone wouldn't help even if you had one. These, after all, are the best stories anyway: would it have helped Achilles, or Hamlet? (Yes, perhaps it would've helped Romeo...).

Tuesday

I couldn't decide what film to see today because the one I most wanted to watch, Shooter, was either too expensive, too late, or too far away. However, thanks to our man in the field (or rather back in the office), Alex, delivering some quickfire information minutes before I arrived at the box-office, I was able to choose Fracture over Next. We'll never know if I made the right choice. But I thought this was a pretty interesting film. The script and story were good, and the acting impressive. The direction was professional. Although the music was generally quite bland, there were good points. There are some slight issues with the ending - the final 'solution' has some flaws; and we're not taken through it clearly with the main character; and the love interest plot isn't tied up neatly enough - but otherwise I was intrigued all the way through. The question is, would I want to see it again? I'm not sure. An overall problem was that this could easily have been an episode of CSI or Shark. With television programmes making such an improvement in recent years, movies really have to step up and do the same in order to distance themselves, and validate their status as higher works of art - a bigger budget and longer production time is no guarantee of quality.