Saturday, 23 October 2010
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Banksy is a mysterious character, a man who goes only my a single name like Madonna or Ghandi, but unlike the aforementioned who’s lifes and identity are well documented and the subject of common knowledge, nobody knows who he is. When I say nobody I talk of the common public, I’m sure his mum knows who he is, but then does she know her son is a world famous graffiti artist. Banksy’s film debut, Exit Through the Gift Shop, is as interesting as the art he creates, the film starts with French man Thierry Guetta, who has a strange obsession of filming everything that he does, and through a visit with his cousin, street artist Invader, ends up documenting the growing street art scene. Starting with his cousin, he ends up following Shepard Fairey, which eventually leads him into the world of Banksy, all under the assumption Guetta is filming for a street art documentary. Guetta eventually ends becoming a street artist, and in turn the subject of the street art documentary he was pretending to make, as Banksy takes the Frenchmen’s footage and turns the camera back on Guetta himself, and his rise as Mr. Brainwash.
Exit through the gift shop has been considered by many as a hoax, some believing it and others not, the main speculation comes from Guetta’s overnight rise to the street art hierarchy, and the fact that he is never seen properly creating any art. But if this a documentary, and not a crafty work of fiction, it has to be the best documentary I’ve seen since Man on Wire, the Oscar winning documentary following Phillippe Petit, an equally mental Frenchmen, and his death defying (and illegal) tightrope walk between the now deceased twin towers. A fixture of interviews, archive footage (filmed by petit and his colleagues), and dramatically shot reconstruction. The film flips between Petit and his associates talking about previous stunts, as well as the preparation and actioning of the twin towers stunt. Its more like a heist movie than a documentary, and the way that Petit recounts every detail of the stunt, captivates you, filling you with a fraction of the excitement he and his team must of felt at the time.
Exit through the gift shop has been considered by many as a hoax, some believing it and others not, the main speculation comes from Guetta’s overnight rise to the street art hierarchy, and the fact that he is never seen properly creating any art. But if this a documentary, and not a crafty work of fiction, it has to be the best documentary I’ve seen since Man on Wire, the Oscar winning documentary following Phillippe Petit, an equally mental Frenchmen, and his death defying (and illegal) tightrope walk between the now deceased twin towers. A fixture of interviews, archive footage (filmed by petit and his colleagues), and dramatically shot reconstruction. The film flips between Petit and his associates talking about previous stunts, as well as the preparation and actioning of the twin towers stunt. Its more like a heist movie than a documentary, and the way that Petit recounts every detail of the stunt, captivates you, filling you with a fraction of the excitement he and his team must of felt at the time.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Four Lions
Chris Morris is no stranger to controversy, rising to infamy during the nineties with news spoof The Day Today on the BBC, which also saw the first emergence of Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, and later with current affairs piss take Brasseye on Channel 4, where each episode would follow a particular topic, and dupe celebrities into railing around these fictional causes, such as the awareness campaign for new designer drug Cake. The show also ranks number three on the list of most complaints, for its paedophile special.
Morris recently made is film debut , serving as both director and co writer, with Four Lions. The film follows the story of a group of jihadi Islamist terrorists from sheffield. The film is both hilarious and scary, but not in an Evil Dead 2 kinda way, the humour comes from the idiocy of the terrorists and farcical way in which they go about everything, in much the way the Home Guard did in Dad’s Army. But the scares don’t come from knife wielding maniacs or ravenous zombie hordes, no the scares come during the humdrum daily grind moments, such as the scene where ring leader Omar is sitting at his kitchen table, and openly discussing blowing himself up with his wife and son. Its these scenes that are scary, scary because to these guys this is everyday life, and they truly believe what their doing is right, in the greater good of God.
But it’s the fact that all of the characters within the group, bar Barry, the white Islamic convert, are all very likable, which brings you to points where your almost routing for them.
The funniest and most thought provoking film of I’ve seen all year.
Also I'd recommend, as follow up reading, The Islamist by Ed Husain, the truestory of Ed's involemnet with extremist islam, what he saw and why he left it behind.
Morris recently made is film debut , serving as both director and co writer, with Four Lions. The film follows the story of a group of jihadi Islamist terrorists from sheffield. The film is both hilarious and scary, but not in an Evil Dead 2 kinda way, the humour comes from the idiocy of the terrorists and farcical way in which they go about everything, in much the way the Home Guard did in Dad’s Army. But the scares don’t come from knife wielding maniacs or ravenous zombie hordes, no the scares come during the humdrum daily grind moments, such as the scene where ring leader Omar is sitting at his kitchen table, and openly discussing blowing himself up with his wife and son. Its these scenes that are scary, scary because to these guys this is everyday life, and they truly believe what their doing is right, in the greater good of God.
But it’s the fact that all of the characters within the group, bar Barry, the white Islamic convert, are all very likable, which brings you to points where your almost routing for them.
The funniest and most thought provoking film of I’ve seen all year.
Also I'd recommend, as follow up reading, The Islamist by Ed Husain, the truestory of Ed's involemnet with extremist islam, what he saw and why he left it behind.
Friday, 8 October 2010
Andy Serkis
Andy Serkis is a British actor much like Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) a brilliant, but overlooked figure with leanings towards the portrayal of real people. Where Sheen has played Sir David Frost, Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams and ex-PM Tony Blair, Serkis has taken to characters with a much harder edge. To date Serkis has taken the form of 60’s child killer Ian Brady, Albert Einstein and Blockheads front man Ian Dury.
Dury first came to fame in the late seventies, a punk and lover of language, crippled by childhood polio, a man who never lets his disability stand in his way, who grew up parentless in a home for disabled boys, and despite all his short comings as a husband, lover, father, friend and band mate, hes still somewhat of an inspiration.
And in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (named after Dury‘s biggest hit) Serkis plays him beautifully, and the film is a much to do with Dury’s rise to fame and infamy, as it is with the relationships around him mainly that between his wife Betty, lover Denise and son Baxter. The film also features a plethora of British talent, many in almost blink and you’ll miss them appearances, such as Ray Winstone, Noel Clarke and Mackenzie Crook among others.
Serkis is obviously best known for his motion capture work with Peter Jackson, bringing to life both King Kong and Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He has also recently ventured back into the motion capture realm, with videogame Enslaved.
Enslaved is a new game available on both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, a game with incredible cinematic credentials. Enslaved has been created by Cambridge based Ninja Theory, and takes the form of a remaining of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West (which was also the basis for classic TV series Monkey, and to a lesser extent the Dragonball franchise), and boasts a script from scribe Alex Garland (28 Days Later), a musical score from Mercury prize winner Nitin Sawhney, as well as Serkis portraying main character Monkey via motion capture.
And Serkis’s motion capture days are still stretched out in front of him with roles in The Adventures of Tintin as Tintin’s sidekick Captain Haddock, as Caesar in new Planet of the Apes prequel Rise of the Apes and will at some point reprise his roll of Gollum in The Hobbit, once that eventually gets of the ground.
Dury first came to fame in the late seventies, a punk and lover of language, crippled by childhood polio, a man who never lets his disability stand in his way, who grew up parentless in a home for disabled boys, and despite all his short comings as a husband, lover, father, friend and band mate, hes still somewhat of an inspiration.
And in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (named after Dury‘s biggest hit) Serkis plays him beautifully, and the film is a much to do with Dury’s rise to fame and infamy, as it is with the relationships around him mainly that between his wife Betty, lover Denise and son Baxter. The film also features a plethora of British talent, many in almost blink and you’ll miss them appearances, such as Ray Winstone, Noel Clarke and Mackenzie Crook among others.
Serkis is obviously best known for his motion capture work with Peter Jackson, bringing to life both King Kong and Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He has also recently ventured back into the motion capture realm, with videogame Enslaved.
Enslaved is a new game available on both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, a game with incredible cinematic credentials. Enslaved has been created by Cambridge based Ninja Theory, and takes the form of a remaining of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West (which was also the basis for classic TV series Monkey, and to a lesser extent the Dragonball franchise), and boasts a script from scribe Alex Garland (28 Days Later), a musical score from Mercury prize winner Nitin Sawhney, as well as Serkis portraying main character Monkey via motion capture.
And Serkis’s motion capture days are still stretched out in front of him with roles in The Adventures of Tintin as Tintin’s sidekick Captain Haddock, as Caesar in new Planet of the Apes prequel Rise of the Apes and will at some point reprise his roll of Gollum in The Hobbit, once that eventually gets of the ground.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
The Godfather Trilogy
I had never watched the trilogy till recently, one of those things you’ve always meant to get round to watching, but never have. So after a discussion , in which this fact arose, I was leant the boxset, and have now spent the best part of ten hours educating myself.
Part I
Number 2 in the American Film Institute’s 100 years…100movies, a list of the 100 greatest American films ever made, second only to cinema benchmark Citizen Kane.
There’s an episode of Family Guy, in which Peter tells his family that he doesn’t much care for The Godfather, and their all shocked, but I think I have to agree. It may have been a groundbreaking film in 1972, but there isn’t any artistic flare, there maybe an impressive cast Al Pacino, James Cann, Robert Duvall and Marlon Brando, a role for which he won an Oscar, but there isn’t anything special about his, or any of the other performances.
Theres also a lot of pointless material in the film, such as Michael’s time in Scilly, this whole sub-plot as no real relevance to the rest of the story, and just wastes half an hour , as all of a sudden hes back in America, picking up were he left off.
Nevermind the second best American film of all time, its more like the most over-rated film of all time, and certainly one of the biggest disappointments.
Part II
This a weird fish, both a prequel and a sequel, making it both brilliant and rubbish at the same time. The Prequel element, which is cut through out the film, focuses on Vito Corleone, his arrival in America, his introduction to the world of crime and eventual rise to crime lord. This section of the film is brilliant, and would have made a superb film in itself. The young Vito being excellently portrayed by Robert De Niro, a role for which he , deservedly, won the Oscar for best Supporting Actor.
Then we have the sequel element, which is frankly as disappointing as the first film. Part II is often called superior to the original, and it’s the prequel/sequel treatment that gives it this edge, because if it was all sequel, I don’t think I could have stomached a third instalment.
Part III
By many this is called the worst of three, or to but it another way ‘the shit one’ , but again I have to disagree with popular consensus, and say that I found this the most entertaining of the lot, don’t get me wrong this is only achieved due to pre-knowledge of all the events that went before it. However the love element between cousins Andy Garcia and Sofia Coppola is almost as laughable as Coppola’s acting, and generally brings not so much as sense of Greek tragedy as Meek tragedy, as we reach the final and Coppola's death, an ending so blatant, You could see it so far off, that not even Nelson holding the telescope to his bad eye could have missed it.
It does have the classic line ‘just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in’, but now I’m out I staying out .
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