Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Film

  • Sunshine

    This is about the recent film Sunshine. Warning: spoilers ahead. If you don’t want to know about the plot, then stop reading now!
     
    I haven’t actually seen the film for myself, but the reviews sounded good. However, Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDGBLG, has just seen it and writes a long critique, in which he also discusses the plot. Now that I’ve read it, I feel much less of a desire to see the film. The trouble is that the plot twist that is thrown in comes across to me as simply juvenile, almost as though the filmmakers did not have the courage of their own convictions. Or perhaps because their previous film was 28 days later, they can’t get rid of their addiction to schlock horror.
     
    Like Manaugh, I think this is a real shame, a wasted opportunity that seems to undercut the grandeur of the basic idea. It’s as though The Seventh Seal suddenly turns into Driller Killer.
     
    For a time, it seems as though Sunshine is going to be a variation on an SF story I read years ago. Alas, I have forgotten the title, but the plot device remains vividly with me. It concerns people who develop the ability to teleport, but who then suddenly disappear. It turns out that they are like moths, drawn inexorably towards the light – in this case they suddenly realise that they have an irresistable desire to teleport into the sun. Their new ability is what ultimately destroys them.
     
    Sunshine, for much of its running time, is proceeding along similar lines to this old SF story; members of the crew become irresistably attracted to the sun. This is ominously prefigured in the very name of the spacecraft – Icarus (I might have thought that someone in the story would have suggested the safer alternative of naming it Daedelus instead). And the idea of the irresistable attraction in itself has so much resonance and depth to be explored.  But then comes the plot device, which I fear is going to make many, including me, go WTF?

  • Proof

    Proof, if any were needed, that Hollywood is still stuck in the days of the stereotype of Stepin Fetchit, only now it’s gays. Didn’t they learn anything with The Gay Deceivers thirty eight fucking years ago? Apparently not.

  • Tears

    As an alternative to "Getting Hot Under The Collar", I offer you an alternative: a collage of tears. The purpose is the same – to draw attention to the money the European Commission gives to film making in Europe.
     
     
    There’s even a destination on YouTube: say hello to EUtube (groan).

  • Getting Hot Under The Collar

    An interesting video from the European Commission to publicise the money it puts into European cinema. It’s getting some people hot under the collar. Perhaps they need to loosen up a little. Make love not war…
     
     

  • Take My Advice…

    …If you love someone, don’t think twice.
     
    Well, I’ve just seen Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto and I am here to tell you that if you haven’t seen it, get thee to a cinema or a DVD shop and rectify that fact immediately. Yes, it may be that the time evoked in the film fits perfectly with my growing up, but… what a terrific, terrific film. Just see it.
     
    I laughed, I cried, I sobbed uncontrollably. Thank gawd for robins – though the scientist in me whispers that they should have been bluetits… Still; thank you Neil for the emotions, and thanks to such a terrific cast to bring the story to life.

  • The Long Take

    I, like many film buffs, find long tracking shots fascinating. Alan Bacchus, over at Daily Film Dose, has collected together an impressive list of examples of the art, many illustrated by clips. The list is headed, quite rightly, by the spectacular tracking shot from Welles’ Touch of Evil (and someone in the comments mentions the comedy homage to that in De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise). There’s some discussion about whether trickery disqualifies an entry from the list, for example where two or more shots are stitched together to make the audience think it is one. Personally, I’m pretty relaxed about it – film as a whole is about illusion, anyway. And it would rule out one of my favourite tracking shots that is the opening of The Birdcage (which no-one seems to have mentioned) – the shot taken from a helicopter far out to sea flying towards the Miami skyline that apparently doesn’t stop until we end up inside the Birdcage club itself. 
     
    (hat tip to Jason Kottke for the link)

  • The Golden Compass

    I see that the film of the first book of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is to open at the end of the year. The marketing has begun with the opening of a web site: The Golden Compass.
     
    The film looks good, but I do wonder whether the resulting trilogy of films can do justice to the books. Having said that, Peter Jackson did a good job with The Lord of the Rings, so it can be done.
      
    Visitors to the site can see what their own personal Dæmon would be after answering 20 questions. Mine is apparently a vixen called Amantha.
     
    Update: hello, the vixen seems to have transmogrified into a tigress – someone must be manipulating the results…
     

  • The Animated Bayeux

    I wonder what the seamstresses of the Bayeaux Tapestry would have made of this version of their masterpiece? I suspect they would have liked it…
     
     
     
    (hat tip to From The Heart Of Europe for the link)

  • Sunshine

    Mark Kermode (the good doctor) writes an intriguing teaser about the forthcoming film Sunshine. It definitely goes on the list of films that I want to see.

  • Not On My List

    A film that is definitely not on my list of films to see is 300. Despite the high coefficient of male beefcake (at least amongst the Spartans, apparently), that in itself does not tip the scales in its favour when the whole raison d’etre of the film appears to be simply an exercise in exquisitely choreographed ultraviolence. Scaryduck has more.

  • Viva del Toro!

    Last Thursday, the postman brought a package. It was the Guillermo del Toro Collection – the DVDs of three of del Toro’s films: Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). A veritable feast!
     
    Cronos is like the eponymous mechanism at its heart – golden, intricate and deadly. It brings a whole new twist to the myth of the vampire. It’s also the touching story of the love between a kindly old man and his granddaughter. I was struck by the fact that the granddaughter often wears a red plastic mac, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a deliberate reference to the great Nic Roeg film: Don’t Look Now?
     
    Now, I should have watched The Devil’s Backbone next. That’s the chronology, and also the sequence recommended by the good doctor. However, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the DVD of Pan’s Labyrinth to be released, so that went into the player on Friday night.
     
    It is simply a masterpiece. It draws on the deep wells of folklore with the characters of the faun, the fairy princess in mortal form, and introduces the spectacular "pale man". The stories too are recognisable ur-tales: the toad with the golden key at the root of the tree, the fairy banquet. But the monsters in the labyrinth are nothing compared to the monster above: Capitán Vidal. The film has heart-stopping moments of terror, horror and beauty. I look forward to watching its companion-piece, the Devil’s backbone, but I think that I have just seen del Toro’s best work to date.
     
    One thing that niggles, however. The original Spanish title of Pan’s Labyrinth is El Laberinto del Fauno (the labyrinth of the Faun). I expect it was some ignorant dork in Hollywood who gave it the English title. It should have been literally translated to The Labyrinth of the Faun. Because I don’t think the faun in the film is Pan, it’s just a faun…
     
    For lovers of trivia, the faun and the pale man are both marvellously played by Doug Jones, who also played the aquatic Abe Sapien in Hellboy (another del Toro film that I enjoyed enormously), and Hellboy himself was played by Ron Perlman, who was also the sadistic nephew in Cronos. I look forward to further films from Guillermo del Toro.

  • Dune

    Carrying on from the previous entry… the next DVD that I think I shall watch again is Dune. I’ve just been prompted by reading an entry on Kevin’s Blog. Like him, I really enjoyed the books, and I like the feel that David Lynch brought to his visualisation of the story. Yes, there’s a lot of voiceover exposition, so those who have not read the book are in danger of feeling lost, but seeing the duel of the House Harkonnen and the House Atreides visualised in such a baroque style is, for me, a real treat. For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!
     
    Update: Out of curiosity, I’ve just leafed through my paperback copy of Dune. It was published in 1965. I was somewhat amused to see that it bears the proud declamation on its cover: "Soon to be a major film!". Well, in fact it was almost twenty years later when Lynch’s Dune reached the silver screen in 1984…

  • When The Cat’s Away…

    …the mice will play. Well, the mouse in this case. Martin’s away visiting friends, so it’s a chance to watch DVDs by myself, with a kleenex box to hand as required.
     
    First up was Tim Burton’s Big Fish. I have a very soft spot for all of Tim Burton’s films. More than one of them have sent me stumbling from the cinema in floods of tears, and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order. I like Big Fish for both the tall tales, beautifully told and visualised, and for the story of a father and son who are reconciled at the moment of the father’s death. I hasten to add that this is nothing like my own story, but I recognise and respond to such basic human motifs. I laugh and cry at the same time during this wonderful film.
     
    Second up was The Iron Giant. OK, it’s a children’s film, but it captured the feeling of growing up in the late 1950s very well. While I would not say that I had the bravado of the film’s boy hero Hogarth Hughes, I knew the world of wonder and paranoia that he inhabits. It’s a terrific film, forget the children’s film label, just see it. 

  • In a Volcano???

    In the light of recent events, Chris Clarke and his partner Becky are in need of some diversion. So he rents a film – a deliberately schlocky film. But he wasn’t prepared for just how bad the science would be…

  • Black Sheep

    New Zealand, the country where men are men, but now the sheep are apparently no longer nervous… The trailer looks good, I hope the film stands up. Shear terror, perhaps?

  • Tears of the Black Tiger

    Walt, over at Inquietudes, draws our attention to the fact that Tears of the Black Tiger (Fah talai jone) is currently showing in New York City. As he says, it is:
    an overwrought, melodramatic western film that is at once so difficult to take seriously it’s bound to make you swoon and fall in-love with it.
    If you haven’t seen it, I can also unreservedly recommend it. It’s out on DVD (at least here in Europe), so you don’t have to wait until it comes to your local cinema.

  • Silent Star Wars

    This is almost as good as the original three films, and has the additional advantage that it takes but a fraction of the time.

  • The Coin Has Two Sides

    I see that the appalling Mr. Gibson has released his latest film: Apocalypto. And like his last film, it’s not one that I have any intention of seeing. Scenes of unremitting violence do not excite me.
     
    However, unlike his last film, Apocalypto has found favour with the film critics. Take this review by Peter Bradshaw for example. Sample: 
    If people have got it in for Mel Gibson, he has only himself to blame. His behaviour has been repulsive. Everyone is prejudiced against his films. I am prejudiced against his films. So the sentence following this is going to take me quite some time to write, because between every keystroke, there will be a three-minute pause while I clench my fists up to my temples and emit a long growl of resentment and rage.
     
    Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is pathologically brilliant. It is bizarre, stomach-turningly violent and frequently inspired.
     
    …
     
    My view is that for all the director’s personal obnoxiousness, the truth is that his mad and virile film makes everything else around look pretty feeble. This is an extraordinary cinematic journey upriver: a worryingly potent Mr Kurtz is sitting in the director’s chair.  
    And that is pretty much the point. Richard Wagner, as a human being, was a complete and utter shit. But he did give us the Ring cycle. It looks like Mr. Gibson is heading in a similar direction. I still don’t think I want to follow his art, though.

  • The Nun’s Story

    You know me – atheist to a fault; not having any truck with any religion and other such superstitious nonsense. Well, today, I sat down and watched Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story, starring Audrey Hepburn on TV.
     
    I must say that the film both impressed and appalled me. I can see that the film would probably appeal to the religious amongst us. The bedrock of the nuns’ "obedience, poverty and chastity" was well conveyed. I could see the attraction of the ritual, of the discipline. The process of becoming a nun (at least at that time portrayed in the film) was clearly a well-designed psychological journey, evolved and honed over centuries for maximum effectiveness. And the desired-for result in a person who lives for others, and lives without the vanities of the world is an ideal worth striving for. But I would try for that without the, to me, totally irrational belief in a god. 
     
    The power of the film was that it was finely balanced. It seemed to me the crux of the story is the question put to Sister Luke by the Mother Superior: Is she to be a nun or a nurse? And for Gabrielle van der Mal the answer is ultimately to drop the prentence of being Sister Luke, and to regain true meaning in her life by being a nurse. It’s the right choice for her.
     
    A good film, I’m glad I finally caught up with it. 

  • Films To See

    There’s a couple of films that have gone on my "to see" list. One is The Fountain and the second is El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth). As you can probably guess, I have a soft spot for the cinema of the fantastic…