The End Is The Beginning Is The End

As most of you are probably aware, I'm not the biggest fan of The Matrix series. I came out of the cinema four years ago, thinking that I had seen an above-average action movie with a few ground-breaking effects and a reasonable plot, although it did think that it was far more clever than it was in places. So I was a little surprised when people began discussing it as if it one of the greatest films of all time, with people praising it for its originality and inventive story. At long last, I finally understood what it felt like to be Richard, one of my friends at university, who loathed the Star Wars series with fiery passion, and would often forcefully argue the point (I still have a discussion to have with him that it was The Godfather that caused the downfall of American cinema rather than George Lucas, but we'll save that for another time). I didn't hate The Matrix, but I couldn't see why everybody else seemed to fall over to praise it.

I talked about Reloaded a few months ago, and today I went to see the final film in the series, The Matrix: Revolutions. I still can't see it. On the plus side, there's fewer over-convoluted, slightly-dodgy philosophical conversations this time around, plus you finally get to see those hulking robot suits in action. The attack on Zion is easily the highlight of the film; excellent CGI sentinels swirling and swarming around the city, killing everything in their path, while the human defenders act out all the great war film clichés. It's a great hour.

But.

I don't know, it just doesn't seem to hang together all that well. Loathe as I am to turn to the Star Wars films as an example of how to wrap up a trilogy, Return of The Jedi is actually pretty good in that respect. Revolutions isn't. The first twenty minutes is "What Happened To Neo, Anyway?", except it decides to redo the lobby scene from the first film and have a stupid, stupid confrontation with the Merovingian (no, really, it makes no sense. Why didn't they just shoot them after they agreed the deal, hmm?), and then gives us some time with the All-New, All-Different Oracle to explain the plot again. Then the film splits into three, just like Jedi; There's what's going on in the Matrix, the attack on Zion, and Neo's mission to save humanity. Fair enough. But the film, understandably, wants to concentrate on the Zion attack, so Neo disappears from the film for about half an hour. And we're not allowed to see what's happening inside the Matrix until the very end. It's weird, because you'd normally expect these stories to be edited together, and watching them one after another is a bit anticlimactic, especially after the spectacular Zion scenes. The finale isn't that bad, as it at least attempts to move away slightly from the standard fight setup (I won't spoil it, but I will say it's not something that a long-time comic reader will be surprised at, but it's better than nothing).

Also, the acting is a bit weird. Lawrence Fishburne has very little to do after the initial rescue, Keanu looks bewildered most of the time, and Carrie-Anne Moss turns in her best Skeletor impression (honestly, have a chip!). The best performances come from Jada Pinkett-Smith, who seems to channel Harrison Ford during the chase scenes, and the commander of the APU forces; sadly I'm not able to track his name down on the imdb, but he's playing one of those gruff and insane captains that you find in war films. IN A BIG MECH BATTLESUIT, WITH GUNS. Everybody else is adequate enough, but, as you might imagine, this isn't a showcase for acting talent.

So, should you go and see it? Well, it's always nice to see how things end. And I know that I have a tendency to look harshly on the series as a reaction to how popular it is (sorry), so you might not have the same problems that I did, or they might not matter to you quite so much. If nothing else, there's a cool middle section with hulking robot battlesuits shooting robots! They're always good for a day out at the cinema…

Fish Are Friends, Not Food!

Finding Nemo is great, and you should all go see it immediately (and yes, all you lucky Americans should go and buy it on DVD when it comes out early next month and laugh at us, for we shall not see the DVD on these shores until the middle of 2004 at least...)

The Greatest DVD...Ever!

Who do I have to maim to get a copy of this, hmm?

(for Laura: the Daffy Duck cartoon with the artist being mean to him is the first on Disc 2: Duck Amuck.)

The Great Gatsby

The film doesn't quite have the charm and pizzaz of the book, does it?

24 Hours To Save Me

You have twenty-four hours to dissuade me from buying a digital camcorder. Go.

I'm Scared To Say Hello

It's been twenty-four hours, and nobody's dropped dead yet, so I think I'm safe. Okay, Laura is ill, but she was ill before she ate dinner, so it can't be blamed on me. Honest.

The recipient of the divine hammer will remain nameless. I'm building a House of Secrets here.

It took them long enough, but Hollywood finally came up with a way to get me interested in a Jim Carrey film. Damn them. Damn them all! In the end, it wasn't hard. Kate Winslet! With! Bright! Pink! Hair! I'm so easily bought.

Anyway, I went to see Lost In Translation today. After the unfair critical mauling she received for her part in Godfather III (like her father hadn't indulged in nepotism during Parts I and II), it's great to see Sofia Coppola continuing being one of the best directors around. If nothing else, this film is beautiful, showing the chaos and serenity of modern day Japan, and how it impacts on two Americans, Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), and Bob Harris (Bill Murray), both adrift in Tokyo. It's not a gag-a-minute film; the comedy is slight, but deftly handled (as you'd probably expect with Murray being involved), and the film is equal parts sad, uplifting, despairing, and optimistic. Plus! That workshy layabout Kevin Shields does the incidental music! Bill Murray does karaoke to Roxy Music! And if you don't feel a tear coming on during the final two minutes, you don't have a heart (or, I'm a really soppy person who always falls for these sort of scenes. Hmm). If you can find a cinema playing it, I recommend that you give it a chance (it's only 102 minutes long, so it won't take too much out of your life, I promise).

UK-specific news now. Yay! They finally kicked Cox off the Breakfast Show! This is great...oh. Well, I guess I won't be tuning back in for a little while yet, I suppose…

Chained To The Mirror And The Razorblade

Or, thoughts on last night's Britpop documentary on BBC2.

I'm still not sure how I feel about those halcyon days. On the one hand, the Britpop era marks the time when I became interested in music again, when I would listen to the radio all the time, when I would brave below-freezing temperatures just to get a single on a Monday morning, when I finally felt connected to the world around me. Yet, looking back, I can see the harm that Britpop did to the British music industry; killing off independent labels, causing the downfall of the NME/Melody Maker, and, in the end, marginalising the indie/alternative scene even further.

The documentary was a fairly conventional look at the origins and life of the era, tracing the origins to The Stone Roses and a reaction against American grunge. Fairly typical stuff, but at least this film mentioned the important 1993 Select issue featuring Brett Anderson from Suede superimposed on a Union Jack. Instead of trying to cover everything, it focused on a few key events (Spike Island, 'Parklife', Blur v. Oasis, Knebworth, Noel Gallagher meeting Tony Blair, etc.), and only interviewed the main players such as Noel and Liam Gallagher, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, plus a few music journalists. And the editor of Loaded. Don't worry, I've got a complete paragraph of bile saved up for him.

None of the interviews were particularly revealing, although Damon Albarn's strange answer to the Blur/Oasis rivalry does seem to give credence to the Liam - Lisa Moorish - Damon love triangle theory of why the two bands didn't get on. I've warmed to Blur in the post-Britpop years; I now only really hate 'Country House' and 'Parklife', but in this film, Damon came across as a bit of a pompous twit, to be honest. Noel, on the other hand, seemed to be quite honest and amusing (although he has a little chip on his shoulder about his background). Liam was his usual charming self; the segment where he pretended not to know what androgynous means was funny, and the end bit where he outed himeself as a fan of S Club Juniors was enjoyable (as was Noel's Old Man act with the dance moves). Jarvis Cocker was as intelligent and sad as ever. Louise Wener had a book to promote. (Incidentally, why does everybody hate her so much? Yes, Sleeper were never going to set the world on fire, but were they any worse than, say, Northern Uproar or Dodgy?)

There aren't many people on this planet who I really hate, but James Brown, ex-head of Loaded is definitely on the list. I don't think we really needed to hear how people at the ironic-porn-mag-for-people-embarrassed-to-buy-porn had arguments about who was going to get the champagne that morning, or the feature deals he made in the toilets whilst doing coke. Or stupid, vacuous statements like "Americans don't have any talent." Useless, cretinous moron.

The film made a valiant attempt to tie the rise in Britpop with the ascent of New Labour, showing Tony Blair's cringeworthy "Three Lions" speech, and talking to Peter Mandelson about how he tried to reposition the party to take advantage of the new optimism that was supposedly sweeping the nation. Some of the analysis didn't work; Jon Savage suggested that Oasis' first number one, Some Might Say, was a celebration of the Tories defeat in the local Council elections, but then the title card revealed that the single was released a month before the elections took place. It was also interesting to see how Albarn and Wener viewed Noel's visit to Downing Street as a sign that he had been captured by the system, while Noel himself gave the impression that he only went to see what Number 10 was like.

Obviously, a 90-minute film wasn't going to be able to cover the whole era in any depth, but there a few omissions that I felt should have been examined. Firstly, there was very little mention of how, well, conservative Britpop was, both musically and culturally. Almost everybody was white, and a lot of groups mined the musical heritage of the sixties for their songs (The Beatles, The Faces, The Kinks, etc.). In many ways, it was a retrograde step from the days of Acid House and Shoegazing. There's a short interview with 3D from Massive Attack in the film which touches on these issues briefly, but I felt that they could have (and should have) done more. Radio 1 wasn't mentioned at all, which was weird, as the Bannister regime was (to me, anyway) an important part of the era; it was a station that was looking to redefine itself, and so became a major backer of the Britpop bands (going as far as having a week in 1996 where all the daytime records were from UK artists). The fall of Britpop left Radio 1 directionless again, and it's still struggling to redefine itself (an interesting discussion about this is progressing on Usenet, if you're interested). Finally, the film concentrated solely on the major players of the scene: Blur, Oasis, and Pulp. It would have been nice to see some of the myriad of bands that sprung up at the same time, about the Camden Town bands, and how the end of the era left most of these signed to a major label that demanded success (and hence, nowadays, most of these bands are not on major labels). There's only so much you can cover in 90 minutes, however, and as a primer on Britpop, the film does quite well.

I'm still conflicted about that time. It's responsible for a lot of the problems that British music has had for the last decade, but when I see that shot of the Wonderwall video where the lights are reflected in his Lennon sunglasses, I remember what it was like when I thought Oasis were the coolest band in the world…

Arrr!

If you've ever wondered what Hunter S. Thompson would have been like if he was English and a pirate, then go see Pirates of The Caribbean. It's probably unlikely that this thought has crossed your mind, but go see it anyway. AVAST!

When I first heard about this film, based on the popular Disney ride, I thought it was going to be another example of the shameless cash-ins that the studio has been producing of late. Oh, how wrong was I. Fun one-liners, excellent sword fights that don't call attention to the CGI (yes, Matrix: Reloaded, I'm looking at you), and Johnny Depp stealing the film with all the ease of a master thief. It manages to be predictable in the best blockbuster fashion, while the script rewards the audience for paying attention, yet throws in lots of twists and turns along the way. It's also quite amusing, dragging in a touch of Monkey Island yet at the same time remaining relatively free of knowing self-referentialism. HERE THERE BE MONSTERS!

Johnny Depp is wonderful. To the point where he alone is worth the £5/$10 ticket price. Go! See! It! WHY IS THE RUM GONE?!

Picking niggles because I can: it's a bit slow at the start (although Depp's entrance is note-perfect, telling you almost everything you need to know about the character even before he's stepped on dry land), Orlando Bloom's character doesn't seem to do much except act as the McGuffin, and the final five minutes are little more than a very quick and unsatisfying way of tying up all the loose ends and still having a happy ending. But you've had so much fun during the last two hours that it seems churlish to criticise too much. Plus, it features the main title theme from The Rock, and you can't ask much more from a film than that, can you? MONKEY!

Altogether: ARRRRRR!

Gregory Peck: 1916-2003

I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house. And that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted, if I could hit 'em, but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. Well, I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.

Spoliers Ahead!

If you haven't seen The Matrix: Reloaded yet, you'll probably want to skip today's entry.

Today, I finally discovered the problem I have with The Matrix; it's more interesting to discuss the ideas and concepts it talks about than actually spending two-and-a-half hours sitting in a cinema and watching the film. I love talking about the symbolism, the works it derives from, but I have no desire to see Reloaded ever again.

The freeway scenes are amazing; the end of that section has one of the greatest special effects shots that I've ever seen. But everything else seemed fairly limp: an overlong dance scene at the start which, despite the best efforts of the Wachowski brothers, ends up looking like the Ewok party scene from Return of The Jedi, several scenes where the film grinds to a complete halt while new characters deliver all-important expositional dialogue (with! comedy! evil! French! accents!), and some suspect CGI effects.

And then there's the fight scenes. All of which last about five minutes too long. The vaunted million-Smiths vs. Neo just goes on and on; after about three minutes you begin to get bored, because although it looks fairly impressive, nothing is actually happening — they're just swirling about. Instead of ending it there, the fight continues with Smith reinforcements. The CGI work starts to become obvious at this point (the repeated use of certain effect shots doesn't help either), spoiling the scene further. And then, after what seems like ten minutes, the fight…just ends. After such a long scene, I expect there to be consequences more than "ooh, look what the fuzzy elf guy can do now!"

That's not to say that the film was a total disaster; two twists towards the end made things more interesting, whilst at the same time throwing light on certain plot points from the first film, and I liked Persephone's throwaway line of "it's only a game" (which could be an Invisibles reference, but I'm most likely projecting). I also love the way the entire film is drenched in symbolism, from the pomegranate desert in front of Merovingian and Persephone, to the shattered dreams of Morpheus at the end of the film.

Let's hope that in the next film, the Wachowski brothers rein in some of the excess. Yes, I know that sounds silly considering it's a Hollywood blockbuster, but by excess I mean extending the action scenes to the point where they become irritating.

Feel free to post long, point-by-point annihilations of my review in the comment section. As I said, I enjoy talking about it…

Motown Calling

The high point of Standing In The Shadows of Motown occurs during a discussion in the Detroit theatre where the Funk Brothers are playing their reunion concerts. What was responsible for the Motown sound? Was it the arrangers? The producers? The singers? The acoustics of Studio A? The band simply goes to their instruments. First the drums kick in, then the bass, then lead guitar, and finally the piano and percussion. And then there's no need for any more discussion.

Standing In The Shadows of Motown is a documentary focussing on the career of the Funk Brothers, the backing band on most of Tamla Motown's releases during the 1960s. They were responsible for hits such as I Heard It Through The Grapevine, What Becomes of The Brokenhearted, Jimmy Mack, Reach Out (I'll Be There), and hundreds of others. Despite this, hardly anybody knows who they were. The film tells the story of the group, but also contains footage from their reunion concert in Detroit. Sadly, most of the Motown acts who were approached either declined or were too ill to participate; instead we get a mix of contempoary artists (Ben Harper, Joan Osbourne, etc.), Chaka Khan, and the demurely-dressed Bootsy Collins.

I would have liked to have seen more of the documentary side of things, as at times it seems as if the film was glossing over points far too quickly (we're never told exactly why Motown left Detroit, for example), but a major aspect of the film is that these guys can still play, so I suppose we needed all the present-day performances (plus, as a bonus extra, you get to see what Bootsy Collins wears for those 'casual' occasions...). Hopefully, the upcoming DVD will rectify this slight flaw. Otherwise, this is a fascinating look at the most successful band in music history.

What really surprised me was the lack of bitterness. From the final credits, it's clear that they worked on almost every classic Motown song from the late 1950s until the start of the 1970s. When they were dumped by their record label, and left to rot in obscurity. But there's no anger in their stories of the past; they just celebrate the good times, happy that their story is being told at last.

It's a period in music history that I know very little about. I'd like to find out more, but I'm not sure where to start. If you're interested in other music from the 1960s, for example The Beatles or Bob Dylan, it's fairly easy; you buy Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, or Bringing It Back Home, and from there you go on to buy the other albums. But there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for the Motown acts. I can name tens of albums from that era, but I don't know the name of any Temptations album. Was Motown really just a singles outfit, meaning that there's no point tracking down obscure releases?

Standing On David Gale

If someone knows what The Life of David Gale was trying to communicate during its two-hour running time, please let me know.

SPOILERS

The plot is fairly simple; David Gale (Kevin Spacey), an anti-death penalty campaigner is going to be executed for murder on Friday. Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) has five days to prove his innocence, based on three two-hour interviews with Gale, and what her investigative skills can uncover, with the film's narrative splitting between flashbacks representing the interviews and the increasingly desperate attempt to save Gale's life. To help the audience understand the switching, we get awful swirling camera effects and amateur-looking montage sequences in transitions.

As I've said, I really don't understand what the film is trying to say. Is it, as the marketing seems to indicate, an anti-death penalty film? If so, it's a ham-fisted attempt at best; the plan behind the framing of Gale is completely ludicrous, and the final reveal makes it even more so.

Kevin Spacey can do this type of part in his sleep by now, and turns in a decent performance, but nothing outstanding. Kate Winslet is hampered by the dual indignities of having to affect an American accent and dyeing her hair blonde (okay, so that might just be me - and, hey, her accent isn't that bad), but she acquits herself quite well, despite the odd clunky moment that the script throws up. The rest of the cast is competent, but nothing outstanding.

In the end, it just seems very confused. I'm trying not to give any too many details, especially about the ending, but too many parts of the framing plan, supposedly executed by intelligent people (the film goes to great lengths to remind of this), rely on complete chance, or are simply too far-fetched to maintain credibility in the eyes of the audience. As this is an Alan Parker film, I'm expecting Empire to give it wide coverage when it comes out in the UK, so maybe he'll explain things there...

The trailer for Bruce Almighty makes me want to wipe out the human race.

The Rules

One of the most important things to remember about eating in America - no matter how strange it seems, always go for the small option. I'm currently staring at a medium Diet Coke. Which is almost the size of my head. I'm guessing that they just shove a pressure hose down your throat if you ask for large.

Confirmation has come through about next week, so I'm not going to be sleeping rough in the computer building through Thanksgiving. Always a plus.

When I was little, I loved James Bond films. Every Bank Holiday, I'd happily sit down and watch Sean Connery or Roger Moore save the world. As I grew up, the appeal waned, partly because I'd seen them all about ten times before, and partly because I felt that they weren't really all that good. My university friends dragged me to The World Is Not Enough (thus giving the distinction of being the first Bond film that I saw in a cinema), and I was not impressed. At all. Bad effects, a faintly ridiculous plot, the waste of Robert Carlyle, and it seriously attempted to pass Denise Richards off as a nuclear physicist. However, I'm all about the second chances; so instead of doing important work today I went to the mall and made a stop at the cinema for Die Another Day.

Now this is a Bond film. An over-the-top car chase that seems to last for ten minutes? Check. America/British friction? Check. Silly gadgets? Check. A swordfight? You bet. Look, it even manages to make good use of Madonna in an acting role. Yes, it's that good.

Although it stays true to the well-worn formula, there are a few surprises, especially in the opening segment, which ends in a rather different way to all the other films. John Cleese's Q scene is great, with a brief glimpse at gadgets from past films, and a priceless moment when Q shows Bond his new Aston Martin. There are a few niggles; one plot point was so obvious that I'm surprised that it wasn't highlighted with the aid of large neon tubes, and some of the CGI effects are really bad (this is not just my anti-CGI bias; there's one scene which looks worse than some of the composite effects that films were using in the 1960s) . And there's Halle Berry. Okay, she's better than she was in X-Men, but she's nothing special here, and I can't really see why they want to spin off this character into a new franchise (oh, while I'm here. Halle? Your character is almost exactly the same as every other Bond in the series, so please, stop with 'She's the equal of Bond' line. Otherwise we'll bring up Michelle Yeoh).

Despite that, I really enjoyed the film (it has Michael Madsen as the head of the NSA. What's not to love?). Which is just as well, as the trailers beforehand made me want to descend on Hollywood and lay waste to the people who greenlit next summer's big films. Legally Blonde 2? shudder. A poor-looking photocopy of Spy Kids? Yes, that's what we need. I also see that Bill Murray decided to cut his losses, as he doesn't appear anywhere in the trailer for Charlie's Angels II. Which featured a CGI sequence that somehow managed to be worse than the one in Die Another Day. If that's supposed to make me want to spend $8 next year, they're sadly mistaken. The one bright spot was the Catch Me If You Can trailer. This looks like a lot of fun; I'll hopefully be seeing it when I come back after the Christmas break (it's released at the end of Janurary in the UK, but Christmas Day over here).

I arrived back at the hall to find that Amazon had delivered the contents of their warehouse to my room. Christmas presents and the My So-Called Life DVDs. Moohahahahaha. Which I will be bringing home and leaving in the capable hands of my sister, because it would be silly to actually watch them (historical note: I taped every episode of MSCL when it was first on Channel 4. And I saw the first episode, and the last episode. But none of the others. I recorded over them, after they had sat around the house for two years. Hey, ask me about Neverwhere sometime). It's a pity that the pilot looks like the MPEG encoding was performed on a third-generation videotape, but after all the twists and turns that were involved in producing the set, I'm just glad I have it in my hands. Now all I have to do is get my $100 back from AnotherUniverse...

Snapshots

I was going to do this at the end of my last post, but I can't imagine anybody making to the end of that little rant. Trailers that I remember from earlier today:

The Recruit - Okay, so it started out promisingly (Al Pacino and Colin Farell), but it ended up telling me so much of the plot that I don't feel any inclination to seeing what it's like with 100 minutes of padding.

Antwone Fisher - I'm getting cynical. Throughout the entire trailer, with Denzel being a concerned analyst to a troubled young Navy officer, I could only hear "OSCAR! GIVE ME ANOTHER OSCAR!" in my head. I blame my British upbringing, obviously.

The Life of David Gale - Kate Winslet and Kevin Spacey? Can I give them my money now? With me paying double if Alan Parker does a shot for shot remake of the finale from Bugsy somewhere in the film? So it's a serious examination about the death penalty; does that mean that there can't be a song-and-dance number? I think not.

The Emperor's Club - Does the world need Dead Poets' Society II? Really? If it begins with the class committing suicide en masse, I'm in. The trailer doesn't give most hope of that, unfortunately...

Adaptation - Oooh! Nicolas Cage as a moody Southerner writer! With an identical twin! This is about a writer, Charlie Kaufman, who is trying to adapt a book into a film, and puts himself in the film. The actual film is written by Charlie Kaufman, and arose from his difficulties in trying to adapt a book. Should I mention at this point that Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich? And that this is directed by Spike Jonze?

"You know what's wrong with you?"

I was intending on going to Raleigh Airport to get my tickets reconfirmed today, but I made the fatal mistake of stopping off at Southpoint Mall, not realising that the buses only stop there every two hours, instead of the hourly interval everywhere else. As I told my professor that I'd be available at a certain hour, there was no way I would be able to get back in time if I waited for the next bus to the airport, so I decided that the only sensible option was to go to the movies.

Punch-Drunk Love. Paul Thomas Anderson, 90 minutes runtime, and Adam Sandler. An unlikely combination, but strangely enjoyable, even if it was fairly slight on the plot front. And I loved the Philip Seymour Hoffman scenes (if only because twenty or so minutes in, I started wondering, 'where's Hoffman?', and he turned up in the next scene). Anderson has got a lovely eye for beautiful shots, exemplified by the gorgeous Hawaii reunion scene that forms part of the poster for the film. Don't be put off by the presence of Sandler; he's rather restrained here. And quite funny. Shocking, I know. Never underestimate the power of pudding, that's all I'm saying.

Now, I admit that I'm probably not the best person to give an opinion on this film; Charade is one of my favourite movies. It has a great mystery, solid and twisted plotting, superb pacing provided by Stanley Donen's direction, a typically excellent Mancini score, and fantastic dialogue delivered by two actors who light up the screen with their wit and charm. The Truth About Charlie takes all this and manages to produce a dull, soulless facsimile, albeit with the correct copyright notice this time around. Remember Ronan Keating's cover of A Fairytale of New York? Yes. It's that bad.

The structure of Peter Stone's screenplay has been almost completely removed from the film. The cold opening of the original is replaced with a less interesting expanded version of Charlie's death, which manages to tell us as much in three minutes as Donen did in thirty seconds. It then follows the original (roughly) right up until the end of the police station scene. After that, Charlie veers away from Stone's script, sometimes lifting little pieces of dialogue, but not much more. The discovery of the secret is handled very differently (due to some important parts of exposition and foreshadowing being left out of the new film), and manages to lose quite a bit of the impact in contrast to the original. And then there's the ending, of which I'll complain about later.

The worst flaw of the film is that it completely changes the relationship between the two leads. In Charade, Hepburn and Grant spend the film trading barbs and bickering to comic effect. In Charlie, Wahlberg looks like he's having trouble remembering what country he's in, never mind his lines, and while Thandie Newton gives the best performance in the film, the new script saddles her with terrible dialogue (has any British person in the last ten years asked for a 'ciggie'? Do we really need "he was an orphan - an only child"?), and not much to do but look lost, as all the witty exchanges found in the original screenplay have been removed from the update.

So, the leads aren't interesting. What about the bad guys? Well, they've received a make-over, with one now being Asian, and another a woman. No problems with that. Except they seem to do a lot less than they did in the original, and are far less menacing. Ho-hum. It didn't need the part where Regina seems to feel sorry for the woman, either (after all, she had spent most of the film prior to that point threatening her life).

I understand that Demme wanted to recreate the film using the techniques of the French New Wave movement. It even sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea. However, after thirty minutes, I wanted to get a rivet gun and bolt the camera to the ground. There comes a point where it's no longer clever and fun, just plain irritating.

And what about the ending? Now, it would be fairly simple to follow the original ending, wouldn't it? After all, it was fairly suspenseful and entertaining. Or, I suppose, you can construct one of the most ludicrous Mexican stand-off scenes for many years, complete with a ham-fisted resolution. Oh, wait. And, just for kicks, you could eliminate the final surprise of the film, making the coda seem like dead weight. You will? Thanks.

Please go see Punch-Drunk Love instead. I would suggest that you get a copy of the excellent Criterion Charade DVD, which has a wonderful commentary by Donen and Stone as part of the extras. I would, but as part of the making of The Truth About Charlie, Universal revoked the rights to their Charade print from Criterion, so the DVD is now out-of-print. Which, of course, makes me dislike the new film even more, or at least the group at Universal who thought that it would be fun to withdraw the print. The useless, cretinous morons.

Yes, I'm biased. But there were a few other people in the theatre as well, who probably don't have the same interest/obsession (delete as applicable), and they came out saying it was one of the worst films they had seen for a long time. Remember, we need to stop Wahlberg now, before he starts on The Italian Job....

DVD Watch

A shorter entry today, I think. It's time for DVDs Ian will be purchasing over the next few months!, the first in an almost inevitable regular series. Anyway, on with the list:

• We'll get the obligatory Audrey Hepburn films out of the way first. The Children's Hour, War and Peace, and Roman Holiday are all coming out between now and Christmas. Only Roman Holiday has any extras beyond the trailer, but Paramount has gone to the expense of spreading War and Peace over two discs, and I'm impressed that MGM even considered releasing The Children's Hour, so I'll be picking up all three. Now if only Warner Brothers could be persuaded to release Wait Until Dark and The Nun's Story. And Fox has been promising How To Steal A Million for a while now...


• Singing In The Rain: Special Edition. Warner Bros. has supposedly come up with an entirely new process for restoring old Technicolor films, and this DVD is the first title to undergo the conversion. It looks fabulous, and boasts a commentary featuring Stanley Donen. My order is already in with Amazon.


• Reservoir Dogs. No, I don't care what colour the box is. I just need to replace the bad taped-from-Channel 4-on-a-bad-VCD copy I have at the moment, and this edition has a load of extras, so I might as well get this one. Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction are also high up on the video-replacement list.


• The My So-Called Life box set should finally ship later this month. It's been a long and tortuous ride, but Jason Rosenfield has held fast like a rock, even after he was fired from BMG. Thanks to him, not only are we getting a full collection of the series, but we've shown that their is a big interest in collections of old TV shows, hence the myriad of new box sets coming out this Autumn (I'll start buying Law & Order when it hits the fifth season set)


• The Back To The Future Trilogy. All three films, with director's commentary, writer's commentary, deleted scenes, and all-new documentaries? Excellent...


• Sunset Boulevard. God knows why it's taken Paramount so long to release it on DVD, but they make up for the wait with a proper special edition, rather than a bare bones release.


• This is getting quite long, isn't it? I'll finish with my two upcoming Region 2 purchases; Battle Royale: This Time, Tartan Promises it Won't Release Another Version in Three Month's Time edition, which seems to contain all the features that the Japanese special edition had (hopefully with the addtition of English subtitles), and what's hoped to be the definitvie version of John Woo's The Killer. Maybe it'll send the eBay prices for the Criterion edition down a little.

Why is my wallet screaming in pain?

I'm a good girl, I am

The MPAA is currently spreading word about how 'thieves' on the Internet are stealing the livelihoods by sharing movies, and how copyright laws need to be strengthened and extended, to last for "forever minus one day" (The US Constitution demands that limits must be set on copyright terms). Meanwhile, the film companies seem to be sitting idly whilst some of the great works of the 20th century are rotting away in their vaults.

The master camera negative of My Fair Lady was found in a quake-riddled vault in California eight years ago, forgotten, slowly decomposing. This wasn't an obscure film that had been langushing out of the public consciousness. This was a huge, $20 million dollar film, one of the last productions that Jack L. Warner ever undertook, and garnered eight Oscars at the 1965 Ceremony. And yet here it was, disintegrating. In this case, a happy ending was found; a restartion team was formed, and they managed to produce a new, digitally-enhanced print which is almost the equal of the original 1964 print.

However, other famous films have not been so lucky. At the moment, the prints for The Alamo, and It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World will be completely lost by next year. The Nun's Story is apparently in a bad way. And yet, very few people seem to care.

It's galling to see the movie companies clamouring for infinite copyright terms when they're prepared to let some of the greatest works of Western art in the 20th Century rot behind closed doors.

Less than two weeks to go...

The movie marathon continues apace. Latest update:

• The Young Wives' Tale - A typical British farce, not something that often appears in Audrey Hepburn filmographies. It's not very good at all, to be honest; Hepburn only has about five minutes of screentime in the whole film, and her character is almost completely superfluous to the plot. Not worth seeking out.


• The audio commentary of Scream 3 helped me to broaden my dislike of the film beyond 'Kevin Williamson didn't write it'. They only had Neve Campbell for 20 days of filming, and knowing this it becomes clear that Neve's character, the focus for the previous films, has only three real scenes in the entire film, and the rest has to be carried by the comedy-relief haracters of Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Dewy (David Arquette), which doesn't quite work. That the script was still being written as they were shooting didn't help matters either.


• The Secret People - an interesting, if confused 1952 film about terrorism. The moral is smashed into the audience with all the sublety of a jackhammer, and the last fifteen minutes seem to come out of nowhere in particular, but it has a nice style and some interesting scenes. You can get a DVD copy from Amazon Japan (Region 2). Again, be warned - Hepburn isn't really a major character in the film, although she's more integral to the plot than in The Young Wives' Tale.


• Sabrina. I think I love the film a little more every time I watch it. A perfect fairytale, and possibly the least cyncial film Billy Wilder ever made.


• Love In The Afternoon - Whilst I like the central conceit here (international playboy made jealous by imaginary tales of a 19 year old cello student), the fact that Gary Cooper looks like he's three days away from being Hepburn's grandfather completely kills the film for me. If Wilder's original plan of getting Cary Grant to play the male lead had succeeded, I think I would have liked the film quite a bit more than I did.


• In The Mood For Love - Despite the fact that my copy was taped on a dodgy video recorder from ITVDigital's interesting interpretation of high-quality digital video (somewhat akin to watching an out-of-focus projector through clingfilm), the film is simply beautiful, infused with a quiet sadness, with an ending that would not be allowed in Western cinema today. Find a copy (Criterion have a lovely DVD available) today. Wong Kar Wei has done some work with DJ Shadow - have a look here for the wonderful video for 'Six Days'.

In response to our lamentations on Lauren's current TV projects, Simon Tyers sends Flossie and myself to this link, where she defends Mary Poppins's honour and makes the case for seven-year old alcoholics. That's much more like it.