Tag Archives: Cinema

Getting Away With Murder

We’ve been experiencing an early summer in Ireland this week, with hardly a cloud in the sky and temperatures remaining in the late teens throughout. On Thursday, however, I decided to heed Noël Coward’s advice about mad dogs and Englishmen venturing out in the midday sun by taking refuge at the pictures. The venue was The Belltable, Limerick’s main arts centre since 1981. The film was Roger Hamer’s 1949 Ealing classic, Kind Hearts & Coronets, the first of two black and white films to be screened that day. I’m a big fan of the films made by Ealing Studios and have most of them on video or DVD. Kind Hearts is my favourite and it was wonderful to see it on the big screen. It was restored for cinema release in the UK last year and had also been released on DVD nearly a decade ago by the Criterion Collection. I don’t know what version the Belltable used, but the image was brilliant even if it was only in 4:3 format. The film is mainly composed of long- and mid-shots and rarely uses close-ups. This was certainly apt for the theatrical surroundings of the Belltable, and the venue was even more appropriate for the film’s strengths – the script, dialogue and the acting

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You Only Live Once

The film composer John Barry passed away yesterday at the age of 77. He’s best known for his work on numerous Bond films but he also won Oscars for Born Free, the Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves. All but one of the songs below comes from a Bond film, with four of them bearing the title of the movie from which they are taken. We Have All the Time in the World originally appeared in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, while All Time High was seen as a more suitable choice of title than Octopussy. My favourite piece of music written by Barry, however, was his main theme for Midnight Cowboy. Despite the title of the opening number, it seems, after all, that you only live once

You Only Live Twice (Nancy Sinatra cover) – The Postmarks

The Man With The Golden Gun (Lulu cover) – Emiliana Torrini

We Have All The Time In The World (Louis Armstrong cover) – My Bloody Valentine

All Time High (Rita Coolidge cover) – Jarvis Cocker & David Arnold

Diamonds Are Forever (Shirley Bassey cover) – Arctic Monkeys

Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey cover) – Santo & Johnny

Midnight Cowboy (John Barry cover) – Faith No More

Image taken from here

Ten Kick-Ass Films From 2010

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2010 certainly wasn’t an exceptional year for cinema, but I went to my local picture house a few times and watched many more new releases on DVD. The ten I’ve chosen are evenly split between those I watched at home and those I saw at the cinema and are also finely balanced between adaptations and original films. Some of my favourite directors followed up on earlier successes, but it was my first time coming across three of the filmmakers below. A common theme in many of my choices was the high quality of the female characters on offer and this was matched by some wonderful acting as well. The first film is from Sweden and it introduces one of recent cinema’s more interesting characters. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was actually released in Sweden early in 2009 and throughout mainland Europe later that year. However, it wasn’t given a general release in Britain and Ireland until last year. It is Danish director Niels Arden Oplev‘s fifth film and is the first of three adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s popular series of crime novels. Michael Nyqvist gives an understated performance as disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist who accepts an offer from the head of a wealthy family to delve back into the unsolved case of his missing niece. He is soon assisted by a young computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander, an enigmatic character who is brilliantly played by Noomi Rapace. She certainly plays her part in making this a rivetting and stylish thriller. Inevitably, a Hollywood remake is on its way, though the good news is that it’s going to be directed by David Fincher. Fincher started out directing music videos before making his big screen debut with Alien 3. He then went on to make five thrillers of variable quality, with Seven and Fight Club being the highlights. This year he directed Aaron Sorkin’s fine script of The Accidental Billionaire, Ben Mezrich’s book about the founder of Facebook. The Social Network could have been just an ordinary teen flick, but becomes a fascinating study of greed and power in the hands of Sorkin and Fincher

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Nowhere Boy

It was thirty years ago today that John Lennon was murdered at the entrance to his residence at the Dakota building in New York City. The three decades since his death have seen the release of a number of documentaries and feature films that focus on certain aspects of Lennon’s life. The post-Beatles period and Lennon’s political activism throughout the early seventies is nicely covered in a documentary by Leaf and Scheinfeld called The U.S. vs John Lennon (2006). From 1988, Andrew Solt’s Imagine: John Lennon chronicles his life as a member of The Beatles and then focuses on his solo career. It features edited performances of his songs and uses interviews and archival footage to tell his story. The actor Ian Hart made his first two film appearances playing his fellow Liverpudlian in Backbeat (1991) and The Hours & the Times (1994). The former focuses on the relationship between Stuart Sutcliffe and Lennon as The Beatles honed their craft in Hamburg in the early sixties, while the latter re-imagines an actual holiday spent by Lennon and manager Brian Epstein in Barcelona in 1963. This year, Christopher Eccleston portrayed the singer’s relationship with Yoko Ono and the eventual demise of The Beatles in the BBC film, Lennon Naked. A year earlier, Aaron Johnson (pictured above) played the pre-Beatle Lennon in artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy

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Mr Mojo Risin’

When I started to get into music a few decades ago, The Doors were one of the bands I listened to most often. As well as the music, I read Jerry Hopkins & Danny Sugerman’s No One Hear Gets Out Alive and also used to have a couple of video tapes on constant rotation: a compilation of music videos and live performances called Dance on Fire and the Live at the Hollywood Bowl concert. The band released six albums between 1967 and 1971, but their music enjoyed a rise in popularity throughout the eighties when their songs were used in a number of films, particularly Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Lost Boys (1987). Oliver Stone even made a biopic of the band called, funnily enough, The Doors (1991). I remember being unimpressed by the film and this may have been due to its casting and because it was directed by Oliver Stone. Their albums and music have continued to be popular over the years, though my own interest in them has waned somewhat in that time. Recently, however, I’ve started listening to their first and last albums again and I also watched Tom DiCillo‘s documentary, When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors

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Play It Again, Woody

One of my favourite funnymen died last Sunday, while another celebrates his 75th birthday today. Woody Allen is best known for films like Annie Hall and Manhattan where he played the self-deprecating schmuck with a pessimistic outlook on life that was usually accompanied by a witty remark or two. This persona formed the basis of a cartoon series based upon an amalgamation of the many characters he played on screen. I first encountered his character when I read these cartoons in the now-defunct Sunday Press. Of course, a lot of the humour went over my head at the time, but it made me check out his films. As well as acting in most of them, he also wrote and directed the majority of his movies. The emphasis on slapstick in his earlier work gave way to more mature drama as the years went by and two of my favourites combine drama and comedy to great effect. I’d advise starting with the two I mentioned above, but Hannah & Her Sisters and Crimes & Misdemeanors are the ones I like the most. He had also been a successful standup comedian and writer of comic prose before becoming a filmmaker and his books and comedy albums are worth checking out as well

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Stop Calling Me Shirley!

An actor who has made me laugh more than most passed away on Sunday. Shirley Leslie Nielsen was born in Canada in 1926 and, after brief stints in the Canadian Air Force and as a radio DJ, he stumbled into acting in his early 20s. He got his first break doing television dramas and you may still catch him popping up on re-runs of Hawaii Five-O, Columbo or Murder She Wrote. He always played the straight guy in these shows and was just as likely to appear as either the villain or the good guy. He reprised these roles for cinema, though his only real successes up until the end of the seventies were in Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). I guess he was destined to be one of those guys you often recognise, but were unable to put a name to the face

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It Might Get Loud

I like all kinds of music, but I’d have to say that rock ‘n’ roll is my favourite and particularly any kind that makes prominent use of the electric guitar. Earlier in the week, I watched a brilliant documentary that focuses on three different generations of guitar players from three different backgrounds. The three are Jimmy Page from England, Jack White from America and The Edge from Ireland. The film follows them as they tinker around in their own studios and each one takes us back to their humble beginnings, their first forays into music and the songs and musicians that influenced them. The film opens on Jack White as we watch him make his own guitar from bits of string, pieces of wood and a few nails. The Edge also reveals that he and his brother both built their own guitar in their early teen years in Dublin. Jimmy Page started playing in skiffle bands and went on to become a session musician before finding initial success with The Yardbirds and later with Led Zeppelin. Instead of focusing on one musician at a time, we move from Jack to Jimmy to the Edge and back again throughout. This approach highlights the differences between the three and also their similarities. White and Page found a lot of their inspiration in the blues, while the Edge was more influenced by punk rock and new wave. Nevertheless, they built on the simple sounds offered by blues and punk to create more interesting and complex soundscapes

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