Friday

It would be hard, if not impossible, to make sense of Quantum of Solace without having first seen Casino Royale. I don't think this should prejudice you against it though. Most Bond films expect you to have some prior knowledge of who Bond is. This movie is, though, very closely tied in with the first and acts as a sequel rather than a separate film. Nonetheless, although I haven't seen Casino Royale recently, I'm going to venture to say this film was better. I always liked On Her Majesty's Secret Service, when most complain it is not a Bond film: he cares too much about one girl, which isn't like him at all. In the two Daniel Craig movies, however, we seem to have returned to that early conception of Bond that didn't work, but now does. There is one element of the film, however, that is worse than Casino Royale (if I remember it correctly) or merely the same (if I don't). Occasionally in Quantum of Solace we return to Bond as doing unbelievable stunts, where I thought the great revelation of Daniel Craig was that he only did 'very good' stunts. The difference is in whether you believe a man can actually do those things. For example, Bond runs across the roof tops of Siena, which is great, but then he jumps on to a moving bus, which is really a bit too much for me. Admittedly, this sort of stunt only happens a few times in Quantum of Solace, but I hope they eliminate it for the next film. In relation to this, there is also a bit too much killing of anonymous bad guys, which seems to return to the Pierce Brosnan days. There is a remote enemy compound, surrounded by men with guns, which I thought we'd got over by now, and there are a few too many big explosions. Nonetheless, this is a much better Bond film than what we're used to. The scene in the opera house, for instance, was incredible. Some might say it was over contrived, or not fitting a Bond film, but I loved it.

Thursday

Why doesn't wine taste of grapes?* Why do some people insist a wine can taste of coffee? When grapes are crushed, fermentation begins. This is a somewhat magical chemical transformation. In simple terms, the constitutive elements of the grape are rearranged. What makes coffee taste of coffee is merely a series elements arranged in certain groupings. Grapes contain the building blocks for these, and much else, and thus when they are broken down in the magic of fermentation, the resulting wine may very well taste of coffee, or liquorice, or cloves. The myriad differences between wines (why there are so many different flavours) depends upon various actions the winemaker can effect. They span from the treatment of the grapes in the vineyard, the land itself, the climate, when the harvest is picked, how long it is fermented for, how it is aged, and much more. No two wines are the same, nor will a wine from the same vineyard in different years be exactly alike. This is what makes wine such a fascinating, and frustrating, subject.

*There are some wines which may taste of grapes, which are an exception, notably those made from Muscat.

Wednesday

When a television channel is going to show a new movie, why doesn't it use the original film trailer to advertise it? The simple answers might be that the studio doesn't let them, or that the channel wants to appear original, but when so much time, money and research has been spent on making the perfect advertisement for the film, why wouldn't the channel want to use it? Trailers are laboured over intensely, often begun before the movie is even finished. Some trailers are better, or suggest better, than the end result will actually be. I try to avoid trailers for comedies, because inevitably they give away many of the jokes. A good comedy will make that joke funnier when you see the full movie. Trailers are a condensation of what is great about films: photography, music, script. In the best trailers you'll see some great, atmospheric shots, listen to some good music, and hear a few good lines. Still, the most original trailers have to be those that completely avoid using any footage from the movie. I believe both Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock have done this, but there may be more.

Tuesday

Not long into Silent Hill I thought to myself 'this seems like a video game'. The credits at the end revealed the film was adapted from a game, but this was hardly an expert analysis from myself. Apparently the director deliberately photographed scenes to remind viewers of the game. I did, however, think there was another element that gave this film away, and it exposes a fundamental difference between what a film goer and a game player expect: narrative consistency. I'm sure the director must have adapted the game somewhat, created extra characters and plot-lines, in order to try to drag the viewer along, but he just wasn't successful. Events happen, or the main character does things, that aren't explained. They seem deliberately done for style, or horror, rather than content. There is no reasonable, narrative consistency. Of course, I don't expect everything in a movie to always be explainable, but it must be consistent within the film, and a lot in Silent Hill wasn't. Is this then the reason that almost every adaptation from a video game has failed as a film? In all, twenty have been made. Did you like any of them?

Friday

Two things you may not have known about Joaquin Phoenix: this week he announced that he will not act again. Two Lovers, also directed by James Gray of We Own the Night, will be his last movie. Apparently he has in the past retired from acting for a period only to return. Perhaps he will do the same again, but for now we can say that it is a great loss to the film world.

The second thing you may not know is that in 2006 he was involved in a bad accident that flipped his car over. Lying in the wreck, he heard someone tapping on his window and a voice say 'Just relax'. Unable to see the man, he replied, 'I'm fine. I am relaxed'. Then he managed to see who it was: the director Werner Herzog, who replied, 'No, you're not'. After helping Phoenix out of the wreckage, Herzog phoned in an ambulance and disappeared.

Thursday

We Own the Night came out late last year. It stars Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg as brothers, and Robert Duvall as their father, in a New York of the late 1980s. Phoenix runs a night club, whilst his brother and father both work as policemen. They begin investigating his club as a place where Russian mafia are dealing drugs from. Tension inevitably rises in the family, and violence soon erupts as a drug war develops. I imagine parallels were drawn by critics between this movie and The Departed, but this film in no sense copies or imitates that one. The beginning is a little confusing and slow, but afterwards this soon picks up into a powerful drama. It's a well-made, well-performed and well-written movie. Phoenix, especially, is excellent. The director, James Gray, lets things happen without overstating them. The gunfight/car chase in the rain, with little or not music, and the rain obscuring the windscreens, was brilliant. Perhaps overall the film tried to include too much, and should have kept its scale small, but I have very little to complain about really. This is a very good movie.

Wednesday

I was surprised by how quickly the Coen brothers produced Burn After Reading after No Country for Old Men. Perhaps this was exaggerated by a late and prolonged release of the latter, and an early release of the former, in order to gain more publicity. They took three years to make a movie after Ladykillers, but before that made four films in four years. Anyway, in looking up screening times on the Odeon website, I decided to start reading user reviews of the movie, and became fascinated by them. The reviewers either hated or loved the film. Many said it was the worst film they had ever seen, whilst some said it was the funniest. I have a feeling that those who hated it were drawn into the cinema by mis-advertising. They were expecting a comedy with Brad Pitt and George Clooney. They did, of course, get one, but it was a very, very dark comedy, with its two stars playing unconventional, bizarre roles. I loved it. The Coen brothers return to the territory of Fargo, but this is much darker, and Carter Burwell's epic music seems even more brilliantly out of place. I am a little uncertain about John Malkovich, but he does get better as the film goes on. Certain scenes did seem that enough time hadn't been spent on them. There were good jokes there, but the actors didn't deliver them well enough, and there were pauses in dialogue when there shouldn't have been. Nonetheless, this is a good movie. I wonder, however, how far such a script would have got without the Coen name attached to it.