Friday

I don't like political films. This doesn't mean I don't like films that involve politics - quite the opposite, sometimes they're brilliant. I have nothing wrong with politics. It's extremely entertaining - All the President's Men is exceptional, as are many other movies I can't think of, and The West Wing TV series. Here, it is the characters who are involved in politics, hold certain views and struggle with them. What annoys me is when it is the film itself that is political, beyond the scope of the characters, or when the characters become puppets for a political message. This is what aggravated me so much about Days of Glory - it was art for the purpose of achieving a political end (better compensation for Algerian WWII soldiers). Of course, you might tell me that all art is political, whether indirectly or not. Every artist makes a statement by his commitment to art, by his choice of form, and the choice of story he decides to tell. But there are degrees of political involvement, and for some reason I am averse to films that make direct, explicit statements. Perhaps this reveals more about me than the movies themselves, but sometimes it's helpful to know your critic before you read what he's criticising.

Thursday

The Walker feels stilted and staged at points. The dialogue is exceptionally good - to the level of theatre almost - but it strains and occasionally feels artificial. Perhaps this is the performances, not of Woody Harrelson himself who was excellent, but the three women - Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Kristin Scott Thomas - who I think it would be apt to say 'phoned in' their performances, though I'm not sure. They don't seem natural. The story concerns a gay man who accompanies high society women in Washington to dinner, theatre, etc. when their husbands are away, or even if they're not. He is their confidant and socialite, catching and spreading gossip. Someone he knows is killed, and as soon as he is implicated in the murder, all his friends start to abandon him to avoid scandal on themselves. I didn't think this story, or this character, needed such extreme circumstances (life and death) to show us who he was. It would've been interesting to do a film without any dramatic events - the death when it happened seemed absurd, and the rest of the plot turns into a bit of an ordinary detective story. What was good, though, was that it gave no explanations for itself. The film began, with no introductions, and let you decide what you thought of this man. At first I disliked him, but gradually grew to respect him. There were some awfully staged moments - the kiss through the iron bars - but also some brilliant ones. The music was out of touch with the emotion being displayed, and the direction was bad, giving us jilted camera-angles and awkward zooms at pivotal moments. These two combined made it at times (and in the beginning) feel like a TV movie. I sometimes thought, although this is a harsh judgement, that this was just a film directed by a writer. Paul Schrader has done better than that here, but there is room for improvement I think. Like I said, it is good almost to the point of being theatre, and when it resolves itself at the end you feel like you've just watched a play, which perhaps isn't a bad thing.

Wednesday

The Venice Film Festival is taking place as we speak. Apparently it, in turn, is now focusing more on celebrity rather than artistic endeavour - following the trend at Cannes. The news has all been about how thin Keira Knightley is, although admittedly I have seen some reports on the Oscar-worthy nature of the film she's starring in (with James McAvoy): Atonement. There are some other big names there too, though. Wes Andersen's new film, along with Ang Lee's, Ken Loach, Eric Rohmer, our old favourite Woody Allen, Kenneth Brannagh (in a remake of Sleuth), Paul Haggis, Miike Takashi, and Brian De Palma. Despite my reservations about the last director, his new film, Redacted, has interested me, centering as it does on the Iraq war (something I've been waiting for for some time). The next western, The Murder of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, is also premiering there. It seems the major companies have realised they can get good press from these festivals, and so are starting to send the big stars over there to start generating interest early. It's a good idea for them, although it's sad to lose the critical nature of these festivals - prizes are still awarded, but they mean little for the big studios compared to Oscars.

Tuesday

Last night I watched the first episode of the new US detective series Numb3rs (yes, that's a '3' instead of an 'e'). It involves a professor of mathematics who catches serial killers using (from what I can tell) advanced chaos theory-like equations (so, a bit like Pi meets Columbo). For example, last night he applied an equation to the seemingly random sites of rape victims to deduce where the perpetrator probably lived - and he was right! With the help of his brother, an actual detective, they found and killed the guy. At times it does feel a bit like an elaborate hour-long lesson in maths (annoyingly 'math' to Americans), but it is rather good. The cast is quite low-key: I only recognised Peter MacNicol (the weird guy from Ally McBeal), and Judd Hirsch (the tall guy from Taxi). The reason I mention it on Stranded Cinema, however, is because it's produced by Ridley Scott and his brother Tony (and bears the 'Scott Free' logo at the end). The style of the show bears some of the annoying Tony Scott-isms, direct from his latest films, of fast camera movements, jump-cuts, and montages to portray otherwise dull 'man writing equations on blackboard' scenes. Overall, whilst this is a brilliantly original idea for a detective series, it is still a detective series - and there are far too many of them around at the moment. Plus the title sequence is awful. Hopefully these little problems will get ironed out as the series progresses - so far it appears there have been a further three seasons in the US, so something must be right about it.

Monday

To satisfy the curiosity of those of you piqued by my mention of It Could Happen To You, here's my review of that movie: it's a romantic (comedy) starring Bridget Fonda and Nicolas Cage. Already you can tell there won't be much chemistry, and that one of them (Cage) is entirely unsuited to the genre. I put 'comedy' in brackets because I don't remember laughing once, so I'm not sure that was the director's aim. Anyway, it's one of those films whose sentiment is so sickly you find it difficult to look at the screen. There's so much 'fate' and 'coincidence' and 'it was meant to be' that I couldn't take it seriously at all. The basic premise, that a cop hasn't got change to tip a waitress so promises her half his lottery money if he wins, wins $4m and decides he will share it with her, is absurd. It's awfully played. They could have so easily made it more believable: he doesn't have enough money to buy the lottery ticket itself and therefore offers her half. This would be a slightly more reasonable moral dilemma. Anyway, the logistics of that don't matter too much. I don't suppose I'm the target audience for this movie, but it had very little of any enjoyment in it. The morality displayed here was awful, and the character 'angel' played by Isaac Hayes just about makes this one of the worst romantic comedies ever.

Sunday

In a controversial move for Stranded Cinema, I'm going to review the novel I just finished reading (rather than the film I watched last night, It Could Happen To You). The book was by Enrique Vila-Matas, and is called Bartleby & Co. It concerns a clerk in Barcelona who decides to leave work to write a book about writers who have stopped writing. The problem, for me, was that the elements of this clerk's life that we find out about are minimal - most of the book is taken up relating the lives of those writers who have stopped writing. Admittedly, some of these writers, and some of the anecdotes, are entirely fictional: you have to pick your way through them, forever unsure of what's true or not. But I still would've liked more obvious plot concerning his life, and his successes and failures in attempting to write the book. When they came, they were refreshing, but too little. Aside from this complaint, the book is exceptionally well written (or translated from the Spanish). A very clear and lucid style. The anecdotes are entertaining, and he weaves them together to create a compulsive mythology about why and how writers decide they don't, or can't, write any more. I did sometimes feel that he was making a legend out of the mundane condition of writer's block, but he does it comprehensively enough that you don't mind by the end. Overall, impressive, subtle, and despite the overwhelming literary references, quite a simple, easy novel.

Saturday

There's a film coming out later this year called I'm Not There. Some of you may wonder if there were any intelligent people there when they came up with the idea. It's a biopic of Bob Dylan played by six different actors at various stages of his life - including Cate Blanchett playing him during his 60s high-point, and a black actor playing him as a young man. I personally think it sounds brilliant, but of course we'll have to wait and see. It's directed by the enigmatic Todd Haynes, which may or may not encourage you to see it more. I've only seen his movie Safe, and not the more popular Velvet Goldmine, or the more recent Far From Heaven. I haven't been especially propelled to, though. And as excited as I am by I'm Not There, I don't know if it's going to be able to match the brilliant Don't Look Back.

Friday

Did you know that Quentin Tarantino has directed six films, not five? Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof (coming soon) and, as Alex informed me, My Best Friend's Birthday (not to be confused with My Best Friend's Wedding). How could it be that there is another Tarantino film out there that no one knows about? Well, of course, it's not a major movie - home-made, never publicly released, and only half of it survives. We get so used to knowing and seeing everything these days, that we are surprised to find major gaps of information we didn't know. Frequently, however, with important artists there will be a first novel, or a first movie, that was never published/released. They're never perfect on their debut. You can see what remains of My Best Friend's Birthday for yourself on YouTube. Apparently, the best bits were re-used for Tony Scott's True Romance, and some of the ideas, songs, and actors reappear in Reservoir Dogs. As much as I respect Tarantino, there is something in me that wishes he could apply his style and technique to a serious drama. Perhaps you'll argue Kill Bill, and the upcoming Death Proof, are serious dramas, but I don't think so. You're never really allowed to sympathise with anyone - it's all too plastic. Not that I think that's bad, but I'd like to see him try to apply it to a different situation. He seems to be going the opposite way to Woody Allen, strangely, who started off very unreal and has increasingly become more serious. My Best Friend's Birthday was apparently about a guy just trying to do something right. Death Proof is about an invincible car.

Thursday

As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting quite to schedule, nor have I been seeing many new films at the cinema. I'm attempting to rectify the first today, and the second next week. The reason for the former is that the computers I usually post from have disappeared - literally - meaning I can only do so early in the morning or when I get home at night. The reasons for the latter are monetary, as you can expect. It's not at all that there aren't many good films to go to see. Quite the opposite. At the moment, it seems, in the yearly scheme of releases that I've been monitoring, we seem to be having a flush of more intellectual, or off-beat, films underneath the regular summer blockbusters: The Hoax, The Walker, Eagle vs Shark, the comedy Knocked-Up, and today the western Seraphim Falls. I want to see all of these, plus Harry Potter and Rush Hour 3 before they disappear from theatres. So I have a lot of work to do. And as always, let me know if there's any you want me to see too.

Wednesday

I can safely say you should never watch Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde. I'm not even sure why I watched it. As the film wore on, I felt myself sinking into the sofa, trying to find any excuse to turn away from the screen and avert my eyes from the terrible things happening in front of me. Somehow, however, I made it through. There was something vaguely entertaining about Legally Blonde: a dumb blonde girl goes to Harvard law school in order to win back her boyfriend, but finds out she is good at law and loves another man. It was also, strangely, adapted from a book (like Mean Girls). Some of the jokes, I think, were reasonably amusing, and there was a drive and a purpose to the plot. There was, however, absolutely no need for a sequel. The dumb blonde, now getting married to the man she loves, decides to go to Washington to create an animals rights bill. There was nothing appealing, and very little funny, about this movie. It's possibly the best, or worst, example of a terrible sequel you can find - entirely a money-making device with little or no originality. Perhaps the script-writers did work hard, and maybe some teenage girls like this, but I found it entirely sickening. Tomorrow, I'm going to watch a man film.

Tuesday

Recently, I have very rarely stopped watching a new film half-way through. If it's an old one, I'll perhaps feel justified, but definitely not a new one. Last night I began watching To Die For, and within ten or fifteen minutes I was bored. I drifted away and came back to it again and again, to see if it had become interesting, but eventually turned it over to Family Guy. What's happened to me? To Die For is perhaps a favourite film for many people, but I couldn't find it interesting at all. The acting was terrible, to begin with, and then there was the style of it. It's one of those early 90s films that thinks it's very clever, thinks it's an astute social satire. The problem is they date very quickly. Nothing about it felt relevant at all. It was clearly adapted from a book - and the first fifteen minutes were almost entirely voice-over. But then this film was directed by Gus Van Sant. Isn't he a respected director? I've never seen much of his work: Good Will Hunting, and the brilliant Elephant, but that's it. I was interested in his shot-by-shot remake of Psycho too. Perhaps, then, he isn't a good director, or perhaps I just don't like his style. It will be hard for me to ever sit down to watch To Die For again.

Monday

I wonder if you've ever wanted to watch Mean Girls? It appears, at first, as one of those teen comedies that you could do without in your life. Then, you read a review that says it actually is interesting - although the review was written by a middle-aged man, so you wonder about his intentions. But what's the truth? I'm afraid it has to be the former - you can do without this film in your life. It does, at times, try to rise above the average teen comedy by undercutting high school life, but only infrequently and never explicitly enough for you to feel that this is a satire, rather than a teen comedy (I think Clueless was better at that). A great line is 'I'm kinda psychic. I have a fifth sense. It's like I have ESPN or something', but this is a rare gem. The funny lines criticise certain people, rather than social tendencies, which you can always overlook, or like them for their weaknesses. Otherwise, you can also tell this is adapted from a book - the 'missing element', that lacking richness only a book can develop, is noticeable. Overall, it affirms the lifestyle it at times tries to criticise. Typically, in the end everyone is accepted and likes each other - which is the worst possible solution to the rather ordinary problem (new girl at school) it poses.

Sunday

A few more thoughts on The Bourne Ultimatum. The music is great. I hadn't particularly noticed it in the first two films, but it is there. There's nothing flamboyant about it, just a slow building of tension - somehow a little reminiscent of some of the music from Aliens. John Powell is the writer, and he's had a fairly diverse career, scoring Face/Off, Antz, Shrek, Evolution, Mr & Mrs Smith and more.

Julia Stiles is good again. You see her and you think 'I know her', but she actually hasn't been in that much (not that I've seen, anyway). She's just a professional actress who you recognise and respect instantly. Hopefully she'll get some good breaks, although I've got a feeling she might be forced down the independent/alternative film route, which I guess couldn't be a bad thing.

One last word for the good bit of symmetry at the end of the movie. I noticed it at the time, but forgot to mention it until I saw the start of The Bourne Identity yesterday. It's neatly mirrored in The Bourne Ultimatum. We're back at the beginning - Bourne is reborn, again.

Saturday

Without a doubt The Bourne Ultimatum is the best sequel we've had this summer, but whether it's actually a good film, and whether it lives up to the strength of the other two is a different matter. It was suggested afterwards that Paul Greengrass needed a steadicam for Christmas, or at least some decaffeinated coffee. The movie is incredibly fast - the fight scenes some of the best I've ever seen. They happen as you would imagine they'd happen - the characters have no snide remarks to say to each other, they just fight, brutally. Importantly, too, there are few guns, and almost no explosions. I hadn't realised Greengrass had directed The Bourne Supremacy too. I did feel, however, that he takes the style of the franchise to the maximum here. Action sequences happen so fast - you have to fit together what is happening from brief glimpses (which is in fact a very old technique, notably used in Hithcock's Psycho shower scene). Nonetheless, I stand by what I said earlier this week - Bourne doesn't really have any new motivation. Indeed, throughout the whole film he barely talks. There is no fresh incentive - there isn't much plot to speak of. The only interesting aspect was the development with the character Nicky, played by Julia Stiles. A fitting end to the franchise, I'd say, but not excellent, not (as James Cameron knows) revolutionising the original film that a sequel should do.

Friday

What classic films haven't you seen? Although I don't believe in any kind of academic thoroughness, where you have to watch every critically acclaimed movie in order to be taken seriously, I do think it's helpful to reveal one's weaknesses. I haven't seen La regle du jeu ('The Rules of the Game') or La Grand illusion (both by Jean Renoir). I've never seen The Searchers or The Wild Bunch, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. Nor have I watched The Sound of Music or West Side Story. I haven't viewed Raging Bull or Sunset Blvd. either. There are many more, of course, but I just thought I'd get you started. The great thing about cinema is that it isn't literature - there is no weight of tradition you feel you have to engage with every time you go out on a Saturday night. Movies are always new. You will appreciate them more the more you watch, but I don't feel it's as necessary as it is with books.

Thursday

As Alex pointed out, Matt Damon is fairly astute for an actor. In his recent interviews surrounding the UK premiere of the latest movie, he identifies where the character Bourne is better than Bond. Or, as he makes it clear, where Bourne is better suited to us than Bond - he knows that one day Bourne will be replaced by something else, too. He has said that importantly Bourne feels guilty, and that made me think about this - my crazy interpretation of the week: what if Jason Bourne is a metaphor for America? He suddenly wakes up, unaware of the terrible things he has done, people are trying to kill him and he doesn't know why. He has these amazing strengths and skills but isn't sure what to do with them. One thing he does know, however, is to kill the people that gave them to him. Is it working for you? There are giant weaknesses in it - that's why I call it crazy - but somehow it works a little. The only problem is that the first novel was written before September 2001. Anyway, I also wanted to say that I remember after the release of the first movie overhearing this bit of someone's conversation: 'yeah, I used to think Damon was a bit of a geek too, but he's hard in that film, really cool'.

Wednesday

What is it that was wrong with Die Another Day? Watching it again on Tuesday, I tried to decipher how it had killed off both Pierce Brosnan and that particular type of Bond. I knew it was a bad film, but I had always thought Brosnan was a good Bond, and could recover to make a better movie. However, that was not to be. It seems the problem wasn't with Brosnan, but with the type of Bond he was playing. The film came out in November 2002, and guess what came out in September 2002? The Bourne Identity. Brosnan's philandering, cheeky, invincible English gentleman seems almost ridiculous in comparison. That character was good for Roger Moore in the 70s and 80s, but not for us now. The problem, I think, was that they were trying to make Bond more serious - he gets captured and tortured at the beginning, he does care about some people - whilst still having the meaningless philandering. It doesn't work. They needed a new actor and a new approach. What also didn't help is that Halle Berry acted terribly, and the dialogue was absolutely awful. Roger Moore's puns were always quite crude, but in Die Another Day they seem overly explicit, and not very subtle. The villain is also not very well defined, and we still have the very cartoon like 'evil fortress guarded by henchman in black with guns'. These things can't be taken seriously anymore. Die Another Day was out of sync with itself, and the time it was made in.

Tuesday

I've found out two more reasons for you to go to see The Bourne Ultimatum when it comes out this week: firstly, it's directed by Paul Greengrass which, admittedly, you may have known already, but I didn't. He's the man who directed United 93, and also strangely the TV dramas The One That Got Away (about the SAS during the first Iraq war, which I remember liking) and Bloody Sunday. The second reason to see the film is that, although he isn't credited, Tom Stoppard apparently did three months of re-writes on the script. So, it sounds promising. The dilemma is, of course, that there's no longer much motive in the franchise - his girlfriend is dead and he killed the man directly responsible. I'm assuming now he's going after men higher up in the organisation, but they need to bring fresh motive and drive to the character, otherwise audiences may be a bit bored. When the first Bourne movie came out the stylistics were fresh and exciting, but now everyone is doing it (including Bond) they really need to raise their game again. Also, the news is that Matt Damon isn't interested in a fourth film.

Monday

If I were to offer you a choice of either cake or death, it's probable you'd choose cake. However, if I offered you Failure to Launch or death, you may end up opting for the latter. But hang on. You might actually enjoy this film. A thirty-five year old man (Matthew McConaughey) still lives with his parents, and so his parents hire a woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) to lure him away into independence. As you can already tell, this sounds a little more bizarre than your average rom-com, treading the murky ground between comedy and legal prostitution. And this is, essentially, where it remains. The movie doesn't fit together, or gel, as a whole commercial package. The lead stars have no chemistry, McConaughey is generally annoying, and the minor characters fit too easily into bad stereotypes. But I did laugh, and I was intrigued by the strange dilemma they found themselves in when (of course) they started falling in love. And there are also at least three genuinely compelling scenes as the film switches briefly into unhappiness (before the happy ending) where the serious performances of Kathy Bates and McConaughey work well. The problem is, though, that strangeness of tone. Mind you, I haven't laughed much harder recently than at the scene between Sarah Jessica Parker and Ben Falcone (Howard in Joey).

Sunday

There is one sequence from a film that has always puzzled and intrigued me - and I was reminded of it by the extract from David Mamet's book published in today's paper. It's from the movie Contact: a girl runs towards the camera, and the camera pulls away at an equal speed. She ascends some stairs, sprints down a corridor and then appears to reach past the camera. The picture of the girl then appears to open outwards - we realise we are looking at a reflection of her from the mirror of a bathroom cabinet. We (or the camera) are now behind the girl seeing her reach into the cabinet for some medicines. Perhaps I haven't described it well - you can try to find a clip online, I couldn't - but you should get a sense of the impossibility of it. Wherever they can, filmmakers try to avoid mirrors. So how did they do it? Apparently the mirror was a blue-screen. They filmed the running sequence, then played it onto the blue-screen in post-production. The one problem with this amazing effect, however, is that it isn't entirely relevant to the film. It seems to have been done just because they could, not because it revealed or emphasised the tone or message of the movie. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is still astounding every time I see it. A good filmmaker is also a magician.

Saturday

You may have heard of the film coming out this week called Waitress. Its release is strangely muted. Having seen the trailer I can tell you it appears to follow fairly conventional lines. An independent woman is struggling in a marriage, finds out she's pregnant, and then falls in love with her doctor. She works in a diner and has several feisty female friends. The most original element of the film seems to be that she makes exceptional pies and gives them ironic titles, such as 'I want to have an affair but the bond of marriage is too sacred for me Pie'. So, as you are sensing, this all sounds schmaltzy and cutesy and annoying. What is giving it more than usual, and strangely muted, press is that its writer, director, and actress, Adrienne Shelley, was murdered in her home by an intruder after making it. Undoubtedly people will see this movie because of this added sadness, or tragedy, or poignancy, and some will try to see the film independent of the facts of its creator. They are now, however, intimately bound up with one another. Is this wrong, or right? The reviewer in The Sunday Times today was exceptionally critical towards the film - and I felt he was being heartless, but was he? Perhaps its better than praising a flawed movie just because of the young death of its director.

Friday

In this week's irregular weekly feature in which I think of possible weekly features or additions to this site: I might want to have an alphabetical list of all the films I've reviewed, with links to the reviews (obviously). Is this possible, and how would I do it? The problem is that some (if not many) of my reviews have been quite scrappy, and sometimes associated only with a particular aspect of the movie, rather than a general appraisal. Regardless of this, I think it might be useful to someone (perhaps only me) that there was a list somewhere of every film I've talked about in some way. Of course, you can just search my blog for the title you want using the box above, but somehow that doesn't feel the same. Any ideas?

Thursday

On Tuesday I casually mentioned Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I imagine, upon hearing this title, some of you may have thought: 'what the freak?'. It's a film starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi (Phoebe's crazy brother in Friends, and now Earl's crazy friend in My Name is Earl), Michael Gambon and Laurence Olivier, and it came out in 2004. I don't remember it in the cinemas, but for some reason I bought it on video (note: video, not DVD). It's a trifle odd. I'll watch it again this week and review it properly for you.

Also, after talking about Down with Love on Tuesday I have belatedly looked up its director: Peyton Reed. His other films have been Bring It On and The Break-Up. So, it seems he's an interesting, slightly unconventional filmmaker. His next film, already in production, is going to be an adaptation of Danny Wallace's book Yes Man, starring Jim Carrey. I don't know about you, but this sounds brilliant.

And lastly, from yesterday, what was the film which sounds good but whose star I don't like? It's The Hoax, starring Richard Gere. Hopefully I'll see it next week, although Rush Hour 3 is out...

Wednesday

Yesterday I had to choose between seeing a film that looks good but whose star I don't like, or a film that looks bad but whose star I do like. For some reason, I chose the latter: Sherrybaby, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. There seemed to be two types of audience member: women who had come along for a warming story of a single mother's struggle, and lonely men who had come to see Gyllenhaal naked. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It's a reasonably compelling character study of a woman released from jail trying to re-engage with her daughter, despite the reluctance of her brother and sister-in-law who now look after her, with at least one interesting twist. The performance of Gyllenhaal was excellent, but I also thought that of the daughter was exceptional too - very natural for a kid her age. Sherry is a fairly wretched character, who you don't believe should be allowed to look after the daughter, and I was glad that the ending wasn't sentimentally happy - it's a good conclusion, half-hopeful, and I think some audience members thought 'what? that's it?' at the end. Overall, though, the movie didn't go much deeper than the surface, and glossed over things that needed more emphasis. Some critics have said it feels like a TV movie, and I can see what they mean, but that's a bit unfair. It is much better than that, but it did need a more profound script. As it was, it felt fairly empty, but is definitely worth watching for fans of the brilliant Gyllenhaal.

Tuesday

Down with Love is one of the most bizarre films I've ever seen. Set as a 1960s comedy romance, it's so overly stylised as to be almost sickening. Every joke and accompanying facial expression is given its own camera movement and music. The characters almost dance across sets, choreographed, rather than walk naturally. It's all very strange. Even the sense of humour is 60s, prudish and puerile, like an episode of I Dream of Jeanie, or Bewitched - people defend it as a 'homage', or a 'satire', but I think they're on weak ground. I don't know who thought this film was a good idea. Somehow it reminds me of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's off-putting, and, as I said, bizarre. There are a lot of split screen telephone calls, and at one point, with a lot of clever camera work, the main characters appear to have foreplay and then intercourse whilst talking to each other from different apartments. Very strange, but it makes more sense than my description of it does. Anyway, besides all that, I did strangely enjoy it. The ending is inevitable, but the plot has many un-inevitable twists along the way. Some of the puns and wordplay are actually enjoyable. It's a pity there's not much chemistry between Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger - if you could change one, I think she's the weaker of the two. So, this is perhaps worth watching, but definitely either sober or only slightly inebriated, as you may think you are hallucinating otherwise.

Monday

Sometimes I feel that British cinema is a genre rather than an industry. This is its weakness, I think. People associate British films with a certain type, rather than an ability to make any type. As you know, my patriotism factor is rather low; I don't need to see British films, or prefer them over anything else (normally the reverse, in fact). At the moment, someone somewhere is trying to promote a 'summer of British film' - the BBC are helping, but I don't think they're alone. Lots of home-grown movies are being shown on TV and in the theatres. Yes, there was a time when we made some excellent films, consistently. But that time has passed. Perhaps they're trying to resurrect it? Later this year we'll see the release of St. Trinian's, made by the famous Ealing Studios. I have a feeling, though, that this isn't going to change anyone's mind about British cinema. All our stars and directors immediately go to America. I don't blame them. That's where the money is to make movies. I don't feel it's necessary to erect national boundaries around art. I'm sure Hollywood probably doesn't qualify as 'America' anyway, with all its immigrant filmmakers. If we wanted, why don't we set up a British film company in America? Everything about it can be British, except that it's in California. We get the dollars we need by being there, and maintain the patriotism factor at the same time. Stupid, or stupendous?

Sunday

A while ago a friend said to me that whilst there were many good films, cinema itself was essentially an empty art form. It didn't have the tradition or the richness of literature. I said that didn't matter, or if it did film borrows intertextuality from literature anyway. After seeing a play last night (containing perhaps a good example of a MacGuffin?), I think the difference my friend was hinting at was more correctly between novels/poems and plays/cinema. You cannot get a first person narrator in plays/cinema. You can have an voice-over, or a soliloquy, but it isn't the same. They are talking to you. When reading a book, you are the actor reading the soliloquy. It's in your voice that you hear the words, interpret and pronounce them. This is why my first ambition is to write a narrative novel in the first personal voice - it's what the medium is best at, I believe, and can't be rivalled in any other art form (poetry gives you the first person, but not narrative anymore). Cinema is always the third person, the camera. And, then, what art form best exploits the second person? I don't know.

Saturday

Last week Alex mentioned that The Lady Vanishes contains a great example of a MacGuffin. I didn't know what this was and so looked it up on Wikipedia - it turns out it's a plot device that motivates the characters but has little or no relevance itself. In the case of the Hitchcock film (who apparently popularised the term) it is the tune the old lady is trying to remember - and indeed I remember thinking whilst watching the movie last week 'it's great how you never know what that means'. However, is it a true MacGuffin? I didn't think so, but I felt it would be a bit presumptuous of me - having only two minutes earlier discovered what it means - to tell Alex he was wrong. You see, a MacGuffin drives the plot forward, but the main characters in The Lady Vanishes only find out about the tune ten minutes from the end. What drives the plot forward is instead trying to find the old lady. Of course, MacGuffin is a vague and not very specific technical term, but it does seem that it is normally something that appears at the beginning of a film and slowly dwindles in importance. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is perhaps a better example, but the narrative of that film is famously disjointed, so even then it's not clear. A lot of the time you'll have an object which is important to characters, but not important to the plot or the audience - for example there'll be a love story laid over the top which is more interesting - and this happens frequently in James Bond or Indiana Jones. So, our only conclusion can be that a MacGuffin is something of ambivalent, relational value, of importance to some, but none to others.

Friday

As Alex astutely pointed out yesterday, the Western is capable of telling almost every story. Of course, this is true of most genres - that's what's appealing about them - but I do think the development of the Western has seen it express more from its, seemingly narrow, conventions than other types of cinema. When trying to think of ideas for a Western a few weeks ago, I couldn't pin down where to start. The problem is that the genre has evolved over time. At first it was good guys against bad guys. In the article from The Sunday Times, one critic said the Western was thus nostalgic for a time when things were simple. But then the genre evolved. The Indians were no longer always bad, and sometimes the good guys turned out to be greedy, or bloodthirsty, or immoral. James Stewart, famous for always playing wholesome family heroes, even played an ambiguous bounty-hunter in The Naked Spur. Then there's love stories, and civil war stories, stories about the beginning of the West and the end of the West, films that seem like MTV videos (Young Guns), and films that transport the Western into other times and places (Star Wars). For me, the Western expresses the tension of a place that never really existed - a moment of expansion, and freedom, that soon dwindled into lawlessness and violence, until the pacification of technology (the railway and the telegraph) spread over it. I'm not sure what our connection to that might be, but it still seems strong.

Thursday

Apparently we are on the verge of a Western revival. How true is this? I don't know. I read it in the Sunday Times, so perhaps it is just one critic's interpretation of random events. After all, films like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford have been in the pipeline for some time. Westerns are always being made, but are we now seeing a consistent run of them? And will they be successful and influential? There have recently been several TV shows set in the West, and at least five or six films are planned for release later this year and the next. What's happening? Possibly Hollywood is following the dictum of John Ford: 'when in doubt, make a Western'. Are filmmakers, having run out of ideas (comic books, TV series, kids' toys, Disneyland rides etc) turning to their staple diet? Or is it, as the article suggests, indicative of a new way to approach contemporary politics and warfare? Instead of making films directly about events in Iraq, they make a western. The newspaper critic posits several interpretations of what the Western has meant and now represents, and I'll talk about that tomorrow...

Wednesday

The Simpsons Movie is funny. There's no doubting that. The problem was - and this was always going to be extremely hard to surmount - that it just felt like an extended TV episode. In the series, over eighteen years, they've just about done everything possible. One of the many things that was original about it - that they did epic storylines in 30 minutes - has undermined their attempt to do a film. The Simpsons have already caused mass destruction and/or saved the world - several times. So it was always going to be a struggle to create a plot-line that would be a step above what they've done before. The other options were thus either: explain something new about the characters you didn't know before, or have better jokes than you've ever done before. Again, however, after eighteen years, there's not much left you haven't seen/heard. The jokes were good, but no better than your average episode. The one thing about the film that was appealing was something that might be specific to me. The first ever episodes I watched (from season 2) were Bart's mini-golf tournament and his attempt to jump the Springfield gorge on a skateboard. One of those episodes is tied back into the finale, and it made me think perhaps this is what the film should've been - a homage to the series, rather than an attempt to do something new?

In other news, Michelangelo Antonioni died yesterday.