The Wrestler

Saw this the other day and thought I'd document a few musings about it.

Firstly, I've been watching Aronofsky from afar with interest ever since Pi. I didn't particularly warm to Pi but I did appreciate it as the expression of a really dynamic and unique cinematic voice. Meanwhile, Requiem for a Dream is the closest I've ever come to walking out of a cinema because I was so disturbed (it was what she had to do at that guy's flat to get the drugs...). That said, I thought it was an excellent film, and, since for me film is all about being moved, that film moved me so far I was nearly out of the door. He's not been especially prolific, but he seems to have chosen carefully, and he has been investing a lot of time in producing as well as directing his work - he actually produced 'The Wrestler', and as you might have read, I'm quite in awe of people who take on both those roles.

But of course, the public hero of the film is Rourke. In truth, I've only ever seen him in Rumblefish and 9 1/2 weeks so I don't claim to have followed his career in detail. I have however, seen various interviews with him, discussing his troubled life, boxing era, and second shot at Hollywood (he seems genuinely humble about being granted another opportunity) - so I'm aware of the autobiographical dimension to the role. In some way, this threatened to impinge on me viewing his performance objectively. Sometimes when I was watching him I just kept thinking, shit he hasn't got the same body as 9 1/2 weeks. There was absolutely something deliberately grostesque about his body and the rest of his physical appearance (that hair!). But this of course complements some of the inherently unlikable aspects of his personality, and is what creates a well-built unsettling feeling as we are challenged to try and warm to this flawed hero. He frustrates us at times, constantly getting his priorities in the wrong order which leads to some catastrophic events including his final nail in the coffin of his relationship with his daughter.

Aronfsky really must be credited for mixing in a quasi-documentary feel at some points - the customers at the meat counter, for example, feel so natural that this could believably be a doc. That really dazzled me.

I'm interested that Marisa Tomei has been nominated as best supporting actress for her role as a stripper/mother with whom Randy (Rourke) has an increasingly warm relationship, which also ends up combusting. This has prompted various outbursts on film forums suggesting that no-one deserves an Oscar for just playing a generic stripper. I did feel that this smacked of misogyny and I must say that when I emerged from the film - and let me preface this by saying I have no underlying feminist sensibility - I was disappointed by the lack of any leading female characters with any depth. Our females are very stereotyped really - the stripper/the angsty teen/the groupie - and I just found that a bit disheartening, but I can't criticise the film for it as it's only derived from the story. However, all in all the film has a very classic Hollywood narrative which is quite predictable. The end leaves us hanging, but I think we know deep down what happened.

Anyway, I found The Wrestler very accomplished filmmaking, with an execution more reminiscent of something independent from Europe. Aronofsky is currentl working on an adaptation of Robocop - I'm not sure how much of an independent sensbility he will be able to retain there, but we'll see.

Postscript: Mickey Rourke might take up wrestling for real - I love it!

Disgraced Lords

So, you may or may not be familiar with the story that emerged yesterday that 4 British Lords have been accused of accepting or suggesting they would accept fees in exchange for pushing through laws/amendments that would be beneficial for their 'clients'. When I read this story I was absolutely appalled. I literally felt the blood boiling up in my body. It's exactly the kind of thing that you suspect goes on, but almost don't want to believe it. It is no wonder there is political apathy in this country - I don't get any sense of democracy here with politicians just serving their own interests and ignoring the voices of their country. Obviously they need to pretend that your voices count, since they won't win an election without it, but I really feel that we are ignored. You can really see why people are drawn to politics - with a long list of perks including the second home and its furnishing with the John Lewis list (can it relaly be justified for Margaret Beckett's to have £2K of garden plants at the taxpayer's expense?)

Dammit I am even more frustrated that reading this back, it feels a bit like a Daily Mail rant.

However, my anger last night was actually abated when one of my close friends called me up with an interesting piece of information. Around 2 years ago, she undertook some 'work experience' with one of the above-mentioned Lords, who happened to be an alumnus of her university. During her few days, the Lord acutally took her out to dinner one evening, and then onto some kind of bar/club, and proceeded to pester her to retreat with him for further 'drinks' at one of their residences. My friend politely declined this offer, although rang me up the next day saying that she wondered whether this had been a missed golden ticket to a lucrative kiss and tell that might have funded her writing career. I said that since there was no actual kissing, and that no-one even knew who this damn Lord was, it wasn't much of a story. However, she would be in a better position now! So that she didn't endure his advances in vain, she is actually including this event in upcoming novel. I feel a PR story coming on for its release...

Scar Tissue

Just learned that HBO will produce an adaptation of Anthony Kiedis' memoir 'Scar Tissue'! This is a great acquisition by those guys - the book was a phenomenal read, totally unanticipated.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/nov/12/anthony-keidis-scar-tissue-hbo-series

Madison County

Quite spontaneously put 'the Bridges of Madison County' on last night, a DVD that's been knocking around the house for some time, which hadn't really interested me, probably because I read the book and felt I knew the tale intimately.

Evidently there were no great revelations in the story for me, but it melted my cold heart nonetheless and I shed a good few tears. It really got me to thinking about this concept of whether an intense love is best left in it's brief, intense state because it may weaken over time, or whether it's worth taking the risk to see if it is worth putting to the test of time. I was most recently probing this thought while watching the enchanting Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Of course, neither film gives us the chance to see what would happen if the great lovers gave it a shot in the long-term, so the answer remains a mystery (obviously this unanswered conclusion is more cinematically friendly too). I think mnay people have someone in their lives who they shared something very intense with, but who, for whatever reason, they didn't establish a relationship with. I certainly know I have - someone for whom a candle still flickers - but I've run over in my head many times the idea that a relationship could never sustain the intensity that our brief time together had.

Back to the film, I thought it was very well executed indeed. I thought Streep's accent might irritate me after a while, but this fear passed. I think that was only my concern until I could stop thinking 'it's Meryl Streep, it's Meryl Streep', rather than, it's Francesca (the dangerous cult of recognisable celebrity...) There wer probably a few too conveniently placed phonecalls for me to feel it was as naturalistic as I'd like - or as you'd find in a European interpretation of the film - but I found their relationship entirely believable and endearing. The weakest points in the film would be the scenes featuring the children - the 'present', if you like. In part, this was because I thought the roles were a bit poorly acted, lapsing into caricature, but also because I generally find this movement between two time frames in a story a little bit awkward. It was the same in watching 'Atonement' and reading 'Birdsong' - two otherwise very strong stories. In putting the story in two time frames, you are asking your audience to suspend disbelief a second time and you really lose the intensity of immersing yourself wholly in one story.

But hats off to Eastwood - in truth, I wouldn't classify myself as a big fan - I'd leave that to the guys who watched Dirty harry and wanted to be him - but after watching Changeling the other week it opened my eyes to how entirely involved he is in so many of his productions: he produced, directed, starred in and wrote some of the score for Madison. To direct and produce on a large feature is a phenomenal challenge - this man must have unbounded energy.

French cinema is now an orphan

So says Gilles Jacob about the death of Claude Berri. It is truly a sad day for French cinema in losing Berri - an iconic figure who changed the French cinematic landscape. I will always remember him most fondly for the Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources pairing - which incidentally I had for Christmas this year (well, I bought them for my mum to give me, and she actually forgot to do so on xmas day until I reminded her). I think Emmanuelle Beart was my first incidence of a lesbian crush actually, I thought she was perfection.

There are only a handful of individuals in French cinema who have been as prolific as he, and who have straddled that art-house/mainstream border like he has. Nathanael Karmitz is another is the same vein who spings to mind. I throughly enjoyed 'Couscous' which he produced recently. I'm also aware that he made a great short with 'Le Poulet' back in 1962 - next quest is to get my hands on that.

Heathrow Protest

Got an invitation to this late yesterday evening:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/jan/12/activists-travelandtransport

from an art group I recently got invited to on facebook. Alas I'm not in London right now so I couldn't have gone, although I probably wouldn't have been up for it last minute (having missed previous messages before I joined the group). However, I think I would have definitely been up for it. I really wish there was a bit more May 1968 spirit in the world today. That said, I did read that the protestors from the last high profile demonstration at Heathrow - many of the students and young people - are being sued by Ryanair amongst others for loss of earnings and damages to reputation. Seems like they've got themselves it quite a mess and may end up with criminal records too. I know that most recruiters in the professional world aren't like me, but if someone had a conviction for demonstrating, it would definitely not put me off recruiting them - more the contrary if anything. There is too much passivity in the UK today - we are consumers in every way - and it's important to make your mind up about what you think is right and wrong sometimes and to stand up for it. It is worth noting that the invitation I got yesterday was an extremely pacifistic one - it would be an art and peace orientated protest with no disruption or annoyance (these are your clasues for arrest). However, they were fully prepared for arrest and gave full instructions for what you should do if this occurred. Sounded quite exciting really...

Not the Daily Mail (Thank God)

Have been getting back into Twitter a bit lately, partuclarly fascinated by the fact that high profile personalities are using it, and intrigued if they really understand the ethos of this social media lark. Will report on findings here in due course.

In the meantime, I must say that I'm highly amused by the user 'Notdailymail_uk' (changed from 'dailymail_uk' at the request of said paper's lawyers). It's a cliche these days, but I've hated this paper and resented the hold that it's venomous bile has over middle England for years. Some of the posts on this spoof page are quite hilarious, and 'twits' are not actually that removed from what you might expect of the official paper's own Twitter feed (yes it's on there). Supposedly, Twitter consents to spoof/parodic pages, so long as the parody is clearly recognisable, but they bowed to the Mail's lawyers in this case.

Take a look: http://twitter.com/Notdailymail_uk

This week I intend to explore what healthy eating options there are on the market for that bit of afternoon grazing when chocolate becomes so tempting. Today I tried Ryvita Minis, salt and vinegar flavour. They are quite disgusting, although I did nonetheless finish the pack. I would however have traded one regular crisp - ideally a sea salt and balsamic vineagar kettle chip - for an entire bag of this cardboard.

The Lives of Others

FINALLY got my mum and Dad to watch the wonderful 'The Lives of Others' this afternoon. I've been banging on about it for ages but I seized my moment as my mum had been enjoying the 'world at war' series about the Nazis on UKTV History this week (an oppurtunistic bit of programming in the light of the current situation in the Middle East at the moment...?) and I was really glad they both enjoyed it. The experience of watching this movie was truly one of the best in my life, especially since the director did an hour long Q&A afterwards at the Curzon Soho where I attended what I think was the first London screening. He revealed some fascinating things about his 5 year research process for the film - the Stasi is still a very touchy subject in East Germany which few people discuss willingly. Apparently Ulrich Muhe was a prodigal young actor in the theatre during the Stasi's reign, and after the wall came down he found out that all of the fellow actors in his troupe has been employed a informers to report on him. But when he revealed this information during the release of the film, he was scorned by many East Germans, and a hate camapign of intimidation was waged against him. Donnersmarck said that Muhe had become a virtual recluse as a result, and as we all know, he tragically died not long after (though I would infer that it was related, i think it may in fact have been cancer). Very sad.

Immediately after watching this I headed to my usual port of IMDB, with a specific interest in what Florian might be doing next. Nothing came up on his 'normal' record so I went into IMDB Pro and was quite shocked to find that he's living in LA and working on an English language version of the film, to be produced by the Weinsteins. A bit of Googling produced this article:

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/03/01/weinsteins-to-remake-the-lives-of-others/

I'm all for a fantastic story like his needing to reach more people (so they defend their decision), but is a Hollywood remake of this really what people want? I very much doubt it will improve on the original. The argument says that people don't enjoy the subtitles, well then let's do them a dubbed version? For the record, I hate dubbed films, but I feel that surely the kind of person interested in learning about the secret police in Germany isn't going to be bothered by the fact that the film is executed in German (tallies nicely actually with this article you might want to read). Or maybe I'm missing the point and they are going to change the story and location? Either way, this story makes me sigh.

One of my favourite haunts is the Guardian website, and one of my favourite pages is its film blog. This story about long shots is typical of their style and I think it's great:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jan/05/1?commentpage=2&commentposted=1


I actually made my own little comment in there revering Godard's Le Weekend amongst others. Must keep thinking about long shots though - I love that experience in a film when you realise you're in the middle of a long shot and you just want to rewind, but also keep going forward.

Feeling overwhelmed with the amount of great stuff I want to share, so will have to pace myself.

This is a truly wonderful site which I don't keep in my bookmarks because I cherish being able to remember about it every couple of weeks, going on there and reading a little backlog of posts which warm my heart and remind me that the best ideas are so often to simplest: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

So, my first blog... my first post... In short, this blog arose out of a wish to collate all the intersting things I watch/read on the internet - or in real life - in one space. I guess if someone has similar tastes to me then they might enjoy subscribing, but otherwise I don't pretend that anyone may be overwhelmed with my writing or curating, prowess. I think it' arisen out of an increasing unease with the size and make-up of audience these postings would have on facebook - I don't want to spam people with these thoughts, and I've also found myself heavily editing my activity feed on there firstly to make it look like I spend less time on there, and also to, well, control my identity in the context of having befriended at least one person who you want to retain a certain mystique towards... I'm sure you know what I'm getting at.