Tag Archives: film
Understated But Elegant: 2011 In Film
I spent a lot of 2011 reading and watching Scandinavian and Nordic thrillers, but I still managed to find time to catch a few new films on DVD and at the cinema throughout the year. I made it to the pictures about twice a month over the last year, though a few of those visits were in the company of my nephews and none of those films made my final list. On the face of it, 2011 didn’t appear to be a great year for movies, but I still managed to come up with a shortlist of twenty that I’ve narrowed down to a final dozen. Here are the eight films I enjoyed that just missed out on my top twelve: Source Code (Duncan Jones); Captain America (Joe Johnston); Hanna (Joe Wright); The Inbetweeners (Ben Palmer); The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper); Lou (Belinda Chayko); The Guard (John Michael McDonagh); Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance). The latter was one of two films on my list to feature Ryan Gosling and I’ll start looking at my favourite films of 2011 with the other one he was in
All Things Must Pass
George Harrison: Living in the Material World is a return to form for director Martin Scorsese following the 2008 release of Shine a Light, his rather lacklustre concert film about The Rolling Stones. Fortunately, his depiction of the Beatle known as The Quiet One has more in common with Scorsese’s 2005 film about Bob Dylan. No Direction Home was over 200 minutes long and in two parts, but still managed to only cover Dylan’s career up to 1966. Living in the Material World is also a two-parter and is similar in length to the Dylan one, but manages to cover the whole of Harrison’s life up to his death on November 29th, 2001. A major strength of No Direction Home was its newly-recorded interviews with an extremely open and talkative Dylan. Living in the Material World makes up for the loss of its protagonist by drawing on a range of interviews with Harrison at various points in his career. It opens by chatting to two of his uncles who talk about the younger George growing up in Liverpool and also draws upon letters written by George to his parents. These are voiced by an actor and would have been more effective if he sounded like Harrison or, at least, adopted a Scouse accent. Visually, the lack of film footage from this period is nicely balanced by a simple but effective use of black & white photographs. Many of these appeared to be newly discovered and we also get to see a lot of unseen footage from his days with The Beatles
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
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
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
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
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
