Wednesday 23 September 2009

Jolson Story
(1946)

RATING:40%
FORMAT:DVD



Sentimental beyond belief, this refuses to analyze any complex issues, especially the essentially racist nature of minstrelsy when practiced by Whites. Unlike Sacher Cohen's Ali G & Borat creations, this is extremely politically simplistic. Yet Larry PARKS is very good in the central role that briefly made his name and the music is very enjoyable.

Al Jolson's gift was in acting out his songs and not just in singing them. He successfully undercuts the simpering sentimentality of much of his material with light humor and spontaneous wit. At his best when connecting with a live audience, his Freudian mammy fixation becomes a plausible entertainment where you stop asking the uncomfortable questions about a grown man seemingly unable to connect with a woman his own age.

This is a White American Dream type musical where success is achieved with little effort or struggle with the result that the characters are correspondingly thinly drawn. High octane acting only partly compensates for the lack of dramatic conflict that was no doubt motivated by the fact that Al Jolson was still alive when the film was made and contributed to its voice. This fear of defaming a living person also may have effected the film's pacing because it is all on a top note - with very little variation for nearly two hours. The downbeat ending is far too little; far too late in the verisimilitude stakes to compensate for the cloying nature of the proceedings.



Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Forbidden Planet
(1956)

80%

A visually-impressive old-time sci-fi movie hampered by leaden direction and somewhat banal acting: More money was obviously spent on the SFX than the performers. The only exception here is Anne FRANCIS who really enjoys her role of both ingénue and virginal intriguer.

The story is an old one of the alleged subconscious having an effect in the actual world as an old man's daughter discovers her sexuality upon meeting fit young men from the space corps. His id wants to destroy them and tries to prevent them from taking his daughter away because his unconscious mind will not let her go. This leads to an explosive climax that can be beaten by only few modern movies of its kind.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Monday 21 September 2009

Apartment
(1960)

80%

A vigorous and satirical critique of the materialistic hypocrisy usually associated with sexual promiscuity and marital infidelity. Most of the married men here are completely incapable of keeping their hands off women half their age and most of the girls delude themselves into thinking that they will divorce their wives for them. Also a solid satire on the regimentation and routinisation of office life.

As you would expect from Billy WILDER, the humor is sharp and witty and the satire focuses on the choices we all must make between love and career. Much of the comedy centers around a neighbor's belief that Jack LEMMON is sleeping with all and sundry when his apartment is actually being used by five of his senior office colleagues for their amorous trysts. His meteoric rise to the executive suite is purely the result of this sexual sub letting not any relevant business acumen on his part and he finds himself in love with one of the kept women which could upset the whole cosy arrangement. Deep down this is one of the finest romantic comedies ever made because it is grounded in solid monochrome reality rather than fantasy.

LEMMON is his usual nebbish self; while Shirley MacLAINE steals the show with a performance of great subtlety as the depressive elevator girl with a heart of gold. Fred MacMURRAY plays against type as her amoral, married lover.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Sunday 20 September 2009

Salò
(1975)

100%

A vivid depiction of the depravity attendant upon using others as means rather than ends as well of unthinkingly following orders. This movie does not shy away from the implications of its theme: Humanity volitionally cut off from a positive purpose. It skillfully skirts the border between accurately analyzing degeneracy and being degenerate itself; its sordid catalogue of sexual perversions making it a profoundly repellant experience. However, given the charnel house that was the twentieth century, it is not without exceptional cinematic brilliance in its execution in being a film great power to haunt the mind of anyone who sees it.

The extreme content demands to be seen as a serious indictment of the Western world. Its excesses depict a materialistic and wealth obsessed culture that both consumes rubbish while producing great piles of it. The politically powerful have no power over their own desire to evade genuine political issues in favor of the vapid (& issue evading) freedom to consume anything in ever greater quantities. The relationship between sexual promiscuity and consumerism is here made explicit as people metaphorically and literally consume each other's bodies – especially the waste products.

A deeply and profanely political work, it is a call to action for Communists like its director (Pier Paolo PASOLINI) to see what the West as it really is and to do something constructive about it. However, this is the movie's partial failing: It presents the world in all it unpleasantness but without offering a credible alternative. An obsession with attacking the allegedly sacred can often mar great works such as this, nevertheless, the satire on the modern Western bourgeoisie is a devastatingly accurate one.

If ever there were proof that the Marquis de Sade and his followers were fools, madmen and the morally bankrupt, then this is it. It understands the insatiable–because never satisfied nature of those who find no pleasure in human warmth; hence, the emotionally distant shooting style that matches the depraved emotionally distancing themselves from others. They busily conflate pain with pleasure to vainly abolish the difference: 'When I see others degraded I rejoice' – yet they want to be both 'executioner and victim'. They cling to existence because they can achieve worldly success by blackmailing others to betray one another in exchange for preferential (or, at the very least, less harsh) treatment. Here "Rational" means "Unempathetic" in this masterpiece on the essential depravity of social engineering.

The work stands as a heartfelt plea from a man who personally experienced some of the events portrayed in the dying days of Mussolini's Italy. A strangely poetic drama – part self loathing; partly an expression of rage at a world that does not meet ones high ideals – that even the most jaded viewer will find shocking.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Saturday 19 September 2009

Chungking Express
(1994)

40%

A great sprawling mess of a film that starts badly and goes nowhere from there.

Two lovelorn police officers are on the lookout for love but are unable to find it for looking in the wrong places. Their various girlfriends are hard to pin down, as they tend to leave at a moment's notice or without giving any notice at all; reflecting the general fecklessness of the central characters, themselves.

The travel metaphor of one of the policeman's two girlfriends being air stewardesses - who search for fulfilment but only find it at home - is well done, but little else is. The drug smuggling scenes are poorly integrated with the overall design and we appear to be watching two completely different films.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Friday 18 September 2009

Jolson Sings Again
(1949)

40%

This sequel to The Jolson Story deals no more realistically with the price of fame that, again, is a very great pity because Parks is an impressive actor who impersonates Jolson brilliantly.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Thursday 17 September 2009

Comrades
(1986)

RATING:100%
FORMAT:DVD


An impressive achievement on a low budget, this is ultimately a human and humane drama about the human face. They loom large throughout and offer us glimpses into character - and great character acting. They determine our own emotional allegiances and those of the characters surveyed; while forming the basis for the entire plot and story. Moreover, the landscape itself is a character in its own right that supports the human figures in this deeply rural context via the expressive photography.

Unsurprisingly, the Anglican Church is collaborating with the rich to keep the poor subservient and landless; while sermonizing on each man keeping his place that appointed him of god. This is, of course, a film about boat rockers from whom the dramatic conflicts shown spring. This film is a hymn to strong leadership and communal values: A theme of which it never loses sight despite its length. It is also a hymn of praise to the expressive possibilities of cinema itself.

The narrative progression is both parallel and chronological in its poetically non linear way. This is a slow moving and beautiful experience – both in an ethical and in an aesthetic sense. The film is shot as a silent movie with emotions conveyed largely by bodily movement and facial expression. Plus, the different acting styles convey different moods in a movie part of whose brilliance lies in the extremely deft casting choices, particularly Robin SOANS as the rebel leader.

The cheerful anachronisms of the single finger, the poor characters' good teeth, breaking the fourth wall and the modern dialogue are all experimental ways of helping the director (Bill DOUGLAS) make these people real to us now. Furthermore, the movie comments on its own illusionism with the Brechtian leitmotif of an itinerant magic lantern show using the same actor (the brilliantly versatile Alex NORTON) for the characters that comment on the action - and sometimes take part in it. By appearing in various guises, NORTON enables this entire bag of cinematic tricks to cohere into a political masterpiece – all the more effective because it does not ram its various points down our throats.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Heat and Dust
(1982)

80%

An interesting and quiet film about a romantic White Englishwoman abroad in British India who finds the sexual, social and racial snobbery stifling. Her affair with a nawab causes a scandal for others but happiness to herself; vindicating her decision to spend the rest of her days with the Indian governor.

The playing and writing are all subtle and tick all the right boxes even if the film is a little overlong. The underrated Greta SCACCHI, in particular, is excellent as the pretty young thing in love with all things Indian who is seen as vile by those who believe English women should be seen and not heard. The racism depicted borders on treating the Whites as stereotypes yet this manages to convey the strict self repression necessary when one considers oneself better (without evidence) than others. Any such chink in this self imposed emotional armor will always be noticed by someone; leading to immediately being labeled as a non pukka memsahib by revealing that you are just as human as anyone else. The emotional retardation caused by such an attitude is well presented in comic form as an obvious social falseness - especially well portrayed by Susan FLEETWOOD at her Joyce GRENFELL best.

Ultimately a movie about Whites being seduced by the apparent mystery of India - both literally and metaphorically - that implicitly evokes and explicitly critiques the superficial materialism of the Western world.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Meet the Parents
(2000)

60%

An interesting ethnic-, social-class clash comedy that draws clear distinctions between Jewish warmth & spontaneity and WASP aloofness & emotional retardation.

The premise of an untrusting father and his would-be son-in-law is a universal theme that is not, however, fully explored in favor of intricate and amusing slapstick. The so-called circle-of-trust of the WASP family is really an incentive to create a circle-of-deceit as his children lie to him because of his emotionally possessive paranoia - which they hope telling him lies will help them escape.

Snobbery is well represented by the daughter being enjoined not to marry someone who earns less than they think he should to keep her in the style to which she was raised. And Ben STILLER is comical as he tries to compete on equal terms with those who earn far more than he does. Yet the more he lies, the bigger a hole he digs for himself.

Ultimately, the charm of this movie springs from the simple fact that his love for his fiancée is genuine. If only that emotional commitment had been better foregrounded, this could have been a comedy classic instead of a mediocre attempt at a comedy of manners.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Monday 14 September 2009

Cherry, Harry & Raquel!
(1970)

60%

AS LONG AS THEIR FLESH REMAINS FIRM…

Somewhat incoherent plotting but the girls are fetching and the thin drug smuggling plot allows for a lot of bloody gunplay amidst the playful carnality.

Where Russ MEYER gets so much right about human sexuality lies in his Carry On understanding of the essentially libidinous nature of women. And the difficulty men have in keeping up with their insatiable demands. Without this full appreciation, his films would fall as flat as a pancake. And for sheer fleshy exuberance, these girls cannot be beaten.

The film also begins with a political tract against the dangers of both censorship and of trying to control the lives of others through invidious resentment at their lack of anhedonia. It also begins (& ends) with a moral homily about the dangers the young are exposed to through the morally empty and, thus, thrill seeking nature of the capitalist West. MEYER's surreal flair for incongruous – yet somehow fitting – images is well to the fore here as well.

Common Law Cabin (aka How Much Loving Does A Normal Couple Need?) is a mess made by an apparent Russ MEYER impersonator who lacks the wit, style and imagination of the better artist he is pastiching. The usual preoccupations with the desert, sexism, racism, phallic & vulval objects and rapacious women are in evidence but never form a coherent whole that one can fully appreciate or relish.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Ghosts of the Abyss

(2003)

40%



There are too many superlatives uttered by those appearing here to adequately compensate for the simple fact that a sea grave, in itself, is not that interesting a subject for documentary. That this is the Titanic makes little difference since the story is very well known and has been thoroughly trawled for angles before.

To completely save this film from being one about nothing more than a famous ship corroding three kilometers down at the bottom of the Atlantic, CGI superimposes actors as ghosts on the exterior and interior shots of this elegant vessel. This is fun but does not really make up for the fact that the well worn cliches about the titanic are still being replayed: Man's hubris, social snobbery, alleged Edwardian elegance.

If only the filmmakers had had – moreover - the courage to let the images speak for themselves without the relentless barrage of "oh, wows" and "my Gods" this would have actually been an informative piece. The scientists masquerade as big children with expensive scientific toys; conveying little useful factual data save their narcissistic desire for foregrounding their rather trite emotions. Yet the images of the Titanic's interior are spooky enough to convey a sense of a technological marvel laid waste and the sense that, at any moment, a rotted corpse is going to float past the camera. That this never (& could never) happen does not detract in the least from the suspense conjured up by the very thought that it might.

That a film director of James Cameron's stature should associate himself with this dreck is difficult to fathom since he knows pictures speak louder than words. Yet here the old truism is reversed; revealing what a pointless documentary this really is.



Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Barefoot Gen
(1973)

80%

Apart from the repetition, this is high quality stuff indeed.

The characters are amply formed and the politics fully explained – even for the non Japanese; making the social milieu convincing and believable.

The hardships of living in a rapidly declining totalitarian and conformist state are detailed to build up a solid picture of why Japan began the Pacific War and why it – and all militaristic empires – ultimately failed.

Being told through the eyes of a child brilliantly highlights the emotional affect of the story of the atom bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Eighteen
(2005)

40%




An interesting and stylish calling card film that should get the director more work in Hollywood, but not a great movie in itself. The writer lacks insight into human nature leaving the audience with a string of arbitrary plot movements that do not illuminate character while simply presenting rather superficial and wishful thinking ideas about human communication. He is also unable to write idiomatic English such that English characters use Americanisms and swearing comes out of their mouths no matter what the characters' emotional states.

The acting here is variable with only Clarence SPONAGLE and Paul ANTHONY out against the general grayness and sheer naiveté of the plot, themes and basic premise. They are likely well known actor names of the future. The sleaziness is no more than a pose since we are offered no rationale for it; not to mention ideas and dialogue stolen from other, better movies. There is a strong sense that this is not a story that results from any lived truth: A rehearsal for a better drama.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Sunday 30 August 2009

Goldfinger
(1964)

80%

One of the all time best ever Bonds: Solid entertainment of a very high order. Sean CONNERY is at his virile best here as the heroic man of action; the girls are all very fetching; &, the villain and his henchman (Odd Job) suitably threatening.

Crucially all of the females are Bond's counterparts (rather than good looking but vapid) who exist as separate characters in their own right rather than as psychological dependants of the hero. This is crucial in the best 007s since to do otherwise devalues the masculinity of the hero. He is in fact more dependent on their sex appeal to masculinise him than they are on his sex appeal to feminize them. Paradoxically we thus learn more about him through them than about them through him. This is an extremely useful means of counteracting Connery's mediocre acting skills. Moreover and unusually, the leading female role (Honor BLACKMAN's Pussy Galore) is played by someone older than the lead rather than younger; making a nice change from the expected formula.

The pacing of the earlier scenes is refreshingly slow; allowing for more character development, understatement and the all important humor – especially of the self parodic kind.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Stagecoach
(1939)


RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Superior western by anybody's standards despite a deus ex machina ending that eventually became too much of a cliché for its own dramatic good. This one shot John WAYNE to stardom and made westerns respectable for serious dramatic storytelling. The ensemble performances are all excellent especially a framed for murder WAYNE; an aloof gambler (John CARRADINE); a pompous, embezzling banker (Berton CHURCHILL); an alcoholic physician (Thomas MITCHELL); &, a prostitute (Claire TREVOR).

Stagecoach is superbly made in every respect, layering humor and sharp characterization into an exciting plot that includes a spectacularly photographed chase in Monument Valley. Nearly a perfect movie and certainly the first great modern Western. Instead of good-guy / bad-guy conflict, Stagecoach emphasizes characterization, social commentary and moral drama.

This is a true classic because most of the characters are archetypes – not stereotypes – so that we get involved in the lives of these very real people. The greatest enjoyment in watching Stagecoach is in observing how director John FORD builds and populates his moral universe, in seeing complex personalities sketched in simple words and gestures; his great theme: Self respect.

Rock On!!
(2008)

80%

This is about unfinished and unfulfilled teenage dreams that come to haunt one in adult life; by examining the negative consequences of not developing one's talent fully.

This is also the story of a woman trying to understand her emotionally distant husband whom – she discovers – relinquished his rock 'n' roll dream to become an investment banker. She wonders if her unhappy spouse really loves her and the fact that her pregnancy makes her anxiously hesitant to tell him of it. Will trying to rekindle his interest in rock music make him open up, emotionally, and put their marriage back on track?

Here, your dreams stop chasing you the moment you stop running away from them in this well-scripted and well acted drama about the gestalt of friendship and group music creation. The essential dramatic conflict here lies between adult responsibility and obligations - or following one's dreams.

For once, in a Bollywood musical, the music springs naturally and relevantly from the drama since the film is actually about musicians. As well as being about the creative compromises that most negatively affect the most creative and the most talented. One cannot possess everything, but how does one know best what to do before one has enough life experience upon which to base one's choices?

This movie uses its Hollywood cliches imaginatively and makes them work within the context of a different culture; weaving them into the very fabric of the film. Although the characterization is too weak for its length, you find yourself rooting for the protagonists, come what may.

The acting is fine throughout and the music is toe tappingly good. The theme of unfulfilled dreams leading to emotional death is well handled as is that of setting priorities based upon whom one is. The only real problem here is one of length - since the film does begin to wane before the emotionally explosive climax.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Friday 28 August 2009

Black Snake
(1973)

80%

Here, Blacks help Whites enslave Blacks by a process of political divide 'n' conquer; Whites fight among themselves for Most Self Righteous Christian Award; &, Russ MEYER handles more serious subject matter than usual with his customary humorously melodramatic aesthetic. Unusually, his anti Christian bias has somewhat mellowed into recognition of the crucial role played by Christianity in paradoxically wanting to abolish the very institution – slavery – it originally supported. The christianized slaves here are more Christian than the white Christians who initially enslaved them: A subtle point well made.

Despite expository dialogue and a gallery of cost saving and/or deliberate anachronisms – modern rifles in 1835 and modern slang – the latter stresses the contemporary relevance of White racism; making the whole an emotionally plausible race relations' drama. The moral corruption both implied and shown is as endemic as it is mutual since the British Empire was based on racist exploitation with the necessity of Black collaboration.

Appropriately, the white actors are deliriously over the top; visually expressing the emotional hysteria, physical brutality, alcoholism & sexual impotence usually associated with parasitism. Whites are shown as sexually twisted because they have repressed their emotions to enable them to treat other human beings as slaves. Conversely, the Black actors are required to get across the political and moral subtleties involved.

Percy HERBERT is especially excellent; projecting alternately physical fear and emotional sadism. His performance effectively displays the hysteria designed to induce fear of violence in slaves while not actually meting it out on a large scale since, to do so, could create unproductive slaves; that is, dead ones. While Bernard BOSTON as Captain Raymond Daladier perfectly encapsulates the opportunist Black who blows with the White political wind. David WARBECK – not without good reason – acts as if he is in a broad farce which, to some extent, he is.

It is unusual for a White to write, produce and direct something so politically astute and psychologically perspicacious on a subject so shaming and guilt inducing to Whites as this. Nevertheless, he does it rather well by using archetypal characterizations and solid thematic content.

The movie only lets itself down by an absurdly naïve coda referring to the 'firestorm of a new moral [eg, egalitarian] conception'. This clearly implies that the old conception was moral when the film has spent all its running time saying just the opposite!


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Gomorrah
[Gomorra]
(2008)

RATING:60%
FORMAT:DVD

Naturalistic and unglamorous portrayal of the Naples' Camorra where violence can suddenly erupt at any moment and for well understood reasons. The docudrama desire here is to show a world unlike that shown in a typical Hollywood movie by eliminating any suspense. This also has the unfortunate effect of removing any real narrative drive and of not answering fundamental questions such as the Why, rather than what is shown here: The How and the What.

Crucially, moreover, the cinéma vérité style has an emotionally distancing effect that allows for little empathy for the characters and their political and cultural predicament. The five plot strands exacerbate this and do not integrate well – they seem merely designed to make the film longer and wider without making it deeper.

Having said all that, the performances are as committed as they need to be for this breed of tough drama. The kind of drama that blows the lid on the fallacy of With Us or Against Us – a belief that, in the long run, can only serve to get people killed.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Monday 24 August 2009

Troy
(2004)

40%

A milquetoast Paris and a drippy Helen are not really the center of this movie. However, they should have been given that they are the catalysts for all the action following their running away together - from her husband. The eventual hard earned respect in the combative relationship between Achilles and Hector must suffice to compensate for the lackluster love story. Nevertheless, all the performers are simply overwhelmed by the sumptuous production design allied to the fact that their characters are weakly written and blandly performed, anyway, because there is a hell of lot of miscasting going on here.

The morbid pontificating on loyalty, self respect and honor leads to no abundant understanding of the nature of these human qualities. Achilles is a classic anti hero who finds himself lumbered with his inferiors because he has few equals. He possesses no true loyalty and so is essentially self serving and neurotic: One longs for his death while admiring his fearsome martial skills. His glory is bound up with his inevitable doom since he fights for the sake of fighting as well as to prove that personal allegiances are meaningless. Yet, without loyalty, there is no honor and without a full exploration of dramatic themes there is no real drama.

HOMER would have hated it.


Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

Straightforward Guide to Employment Law
(2009)

60%

A more abstract guide to the law in this area that deals with the legal situation as it currently (2007) stands. The title is a little misleading since this is not the practical guide it implies it is. However, legal concepts are clearly explained albeit without representative case law examples. This is a good primer for anyone wishing to gain a broad overview of the subject before moving on to something more substantial and detailed.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Employment Law
(2007)

80%

A practical guide to its subject that deals with the law as it currently (2007) stands regarding employment issues. The legal concepts are clearly explained with representative case law examples, which usefully help to put flesh on the bones of the more arcane aspects of UK law.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.co.uk) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Tuesday 7 July 2009

Jacob’s Ladder
(1990)

80%

Intelligent, literate and sophisticated movie that treats its audience's intelligence with respect; successfully breathing new life into a hoary old premise. The ultimate focus is on a man slowly coming to terms with the accidental death of his young son, as his nightmares slowly become more real than his waking life such that they seem almost a substitute for it.

No great acting performances here; the actors merely play the parts of ordinary people going about their daily lives. Behavioural details make the relationships convincing and emotionally warm (especially Elizabeth Peña as the troubled hero's supportive girlfriend) while the 1970s are unobtrusively suggested without getting in the way of the story.

In retrospect, the twist ending is obvious, despite the biblical clues being subtly dropped into the audience's lap. The red herrings are basic to the structure of a well thought out script yet make sense - in context - as opposed to being just add ons designed to confuse. The religious symbolism here is unusually effective in being evocative of the spiritual pretensions of the movie but without being laid on thick.

This film's only failing lies in not finding a proper balance between its thriller and horror elements. The horror wins partly at the expense of the thriller; suggesting this movie could have profitably been two separate genre exercises rather than just the one.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Blow-Up
(1966)

60%

Metaphysical whimsy asking a question of value only to schizoids and teenagers: What is Reality? A solipsistic murder mystery that we are never sure really is a murder mystery. Rather than being a film in its own right, it is mired in the narcissistic materialism and ennui of a Western culture desperate to make reality fit its desires – rather than the other way round. This explains the essential emptiness of the premise, partly masked by a realistic visual style.

A common flaw in supposedly serious films with little to say, the movie lacks the self awareness to understand its own conceit, so it - and its characters - desperately seek the solace of what isn't there. Reality is not so much being questioned, as being feared, since this film mistrusts the act of seeing - itself - and so, partly, invalidates itself. Do we see things as they are - or as we are? Moviegoing is questioned; this film being an example of the mediated, indirect experience it criticises. Could the photographer merely have imagined the murder and, figuratively and literally, blown it up out of all proportion?

We are presented here with an alienated, unearned pleasures culture; exacerbated by palliative emotional game playing; leading to the bored desire to believe life more sinister than it really is. Most people here possess deluded expectations and, given the choice, tend to reject reality. A murder really happened, but the witnesses do not really exist in their own right because the game is more real than its players to its players.

London is shot as it really is without the usual (Swinging Sixties) tourist trappings that soon date and distract attention from the universal themes explored, as the restless camera eloquently matches the restlessness of the central characters. Sort of puzzling good fun, but the boredom of the characters eventually transmutes itself into a lack of interest in the audience.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Quantum of Solace
(2008)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Bourne, Jason Bourne

A complex plot, with subtle humor, underlies a strange Bond film that comes across as something of an extended trailer - being so abbreviated in length - but a much better thriller than most. This one is somewhat narratively incoherent yet more emotionally engaging than previous 007 adventures. Its plotting jets all over the world in search of a story that is not obviously and self consciously appropriated from the Jason Bourne movies, whose style it copies - mostly successfully.

Smothering itself in humorous asides at present day (2008) power politics and the decline of Western global dominance, it begs the inevitable question of what is the point of such derring do – in both the real and espionage movie world? This is akin to the same entertainment problem for all spy thrillers after the collapse of the Soviet Union: A problem not fully resolved with the advent of Al Qaeda. This movie provides a not entirely satisfactory and naïve answer in the necessity for Western governments to elaborate a more ethical foreign policy.

James Bond is often an agent of Western imperialism. However, here he does not side with the Caucasian version of political hegemony in the Third World, but effectively criticizes it. Such poor nations (in this case, South American) are not so much governed by short lived tin pot dictators, but badly managed from afar as satellite clients of United States' oil interests. This may be a clever analogy to the present state of a culture that sees its international prestige waning in light of worldwide economic recession, but makes for somewhat indecisive entertainment. To get around this, the film moves at high velocity from one set piece to another; while creating the plotlines for future Bond movies in Le Chiffre and Mr White (both from the previous Casino Royale) being conspicuously left alive.

Uniquely, for a Bond film, this one is a direct sequel to its predecessor and continues almost exactly where that story left off. In the process, creating an arch villain of the Quantum organization that could easily appear in any number of successor movies, à la Blofeld of SPECTRE before he was finally killed off.

The featured players are treated with the customary respect, especially Gemma ARTERTON and Giancarlo GIANNINI who are both irresistibly amusing in their own right. However, Olga KURYLENKO fails to make her character believable in spite of it being well written. Mathieu AMALRIC is very good as the principal villain, but the film lets him down as an actor by neither giving him enough screen time nor enough to do.

Although entertaining, the risks the producers are taking with the Bond franchise risk Bond losing what made him Bond in the first place as he begins to resemble a Jason Bourne clone. However, this risk avoids the other one of the Bond formula going stale and the films failing at the box office, while more closely matching 007's risking his life for Queen and country. This one certainly improves with repeated viewings and may one day be regarded as a classic of its kind.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Gran Torino
(2008)

80%

Engrossing movie about the changing demography of the United States both because of immigration and social & geographical mobility.

White Flight of the young leaves Clint EASTWOOD's character as the only White guy in his neighborhood. This then becomes an oblique analysis of what it is to be both American and White; positing both as quintessentially racist formations - insecure about the future.

EASTWOOD plays the curmudgeonly old racist with his customary aplomb – growling and scowling at all the most appropriate moments. The accent is on curmudgeonly here since it is impossible for him, as an actor, to convince as someone who really supports White supremacist politics. This means his fans know that this is going to be a far more life affirming tragedy than that.

The sense throughout the first half is of a White culture in decline from its own ethnic hubris being part replaced by hard working immigrants. The latter need to prove that they have earned their place within the wider economy while also having something to offer, culturally, to enrich it.

The White characters have serious generation gap type problems that are not nearly so pronounced within the Hmong minority shown here. Whites live in the past here in expecting the world to owe them a living while good, old fashioned manners fade into auld lang syne. This implies European Americans have become a cultureless people who mimic other cultures bad habits rather than develop their own. This explains why EASTWOOD's character discovers more in common with the Hmong than his own kids and grandkids.

This is a film about what Community and neighborliness really means rather than what we merely say it does. And also about what it is to be a man when surrounded by so much unmanliness in the form of a culture not coping well with multiculturalism and in decline for lack of any deep, mainstream roots and effective role models. Sin and redemption looms large in the lives of many of the male characters and propels the drama forward to its inevitable climax.

As Clint EASTWOOD gets older, his own mortality has become an enduring and major theme in his work as his characters make the most of life in order to give their death some meaning and honor. While not the best film EASTWOOD has ever made, this is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest stars Italy and Hollywood ever produced.

Hilarious in its own way with EASTWOOD clearly relishing a role that might be his last: The racist epithets fly thick and fast and are as funny as can be. Clearly, Mr EASTWOOD has no truck with the politically correct brigade and those of a nervous disposition should, perhaps, give this a miss. The style is deadpan; lacking the usual meretricious thrills that a film with a gang culture gun rivalry subplot could so easily have fallen prey to. Contrived, yes, but to make a very important point about a multiculture at a political crossroads. The playing of Ahney HER stands out as the spunky tomboy; taking to Eastwood's character like a duck to water.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Persepolis
(2007)

60%

An elliptical memoir of a female Iranian's upbringing set during the 1970s, 80s & 90s. Her outspokenness during the Islamic Revolution leads her into exile in Austria and a culture she neither fully understands nor respects.

The style varies from literal realism to emotional expressionism and is, by turns, funny and grimly serious. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards come across as combined Thought and Sex Police who ensure that women's veils are worn in the correct way so as not to inflame the sexuality of passing males. This is all oddly reminiscent of the stories one heard of Christian Victorians draping piano legs for fear of exciting male ardor. Here Muslim fundamentalism and the Christian kind are compared unfavorably as being the same, in that both are obsessed with the suppression of human sexual expression, the enjoyment of which is essentially considered a vice.

The basic problem with this movie is that it never rises above being anything more than a shapeless anecdote; leading to its thematic weakness. The political analysis is feeble – especially about exactly that which the film constantly visualizes: The position of women in an Islamic republic. It is as if the child in the story never really grew up to properly understand her own predicament. The feeble characterization does not help at all here either.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Friday 3 July 2009

Stalker
(1979)

40%

Worthy attempt at intelligent and introspective science fiction from master stylist and poet of cinema Andrei TARKOVSKY. By dispensing with most of the usual technological trappings of the genre (that is usually no more than scientistic pornography designed to conceal the lack of themes, story or realistic plot) we are left to ponder the deeper mystery.

This is a story of a rural area apparently destroyed by a meteorite where entire populations and investigators (Stalkers) disappear yet flowers bloom – albeit without a scent. In a sense, this is anti science fiction since it is more concerned with fiction than science.

Where this film has its biggest problem leis in the fact that so much time is devoted to revealing as little as possible. This all too easily becomes a frustrating meander rather than a gripping puzzle that we have an emotional investment in solving. Banal philosophical musings do not help much here, either. And the strong sense of everyone living in an emotional prison leads us to assume we are similarly imprisoned as we can only wonder when either a valid point is to be made or the film end.

However, the look of the film is stunning. The portraitist aspect of TARKOVSKY's cinema is well to the fore in close ups of actors who are supernaturally capable of delivering performances without moving their lips; in other words, without appearing to perform at all.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Thursday 2 July 2009

Sleepwalking to Segregation?
(2009)


Although a rather academic text, it is right on the money about how Whites see migration to be a threat to themselves. (There is also a Quick Reference Summary as an appendix that could serve as the basis of a Website and should be read first.)

For example, the myth of minority White UK cities was invented to frighten Whites whose judgement of rights is based on ethnicity. This unfounded racist fear is that Whites would lose rights if they are in the minority, yet Whites rarely advance such arguments when the middle class (or men) are in the minority in a given area. This moral panic also contains the implicit assumption that only Whites can create a cohesive and integrated society because only They are governable - despite the fact that Whites are divided by social class. Moreover, Whites never say with whom They are integrated; making Whiteness the superior culture into which others must integrate. This one way relationship of master to slave cannot work; explaining many of the current (2009) social problems prevalent in the UK.

These problems are the vague ones of parallel communities, segregation and immigration which is subsumed within a White, folkloric 'litany' of labeling inner city diverse areas as ghettos, of asylum seekers & immigrants as freeloaders, of Muslims as isolationists. Yet, if ghettos, freeloaders and isolationists are the real problem then why are they never the targets of political debate instead of diversity, asylum seekers, immigrants & Muslims. Without the moral courage to specifically name perceived problems, Whites perpetuate a polity based on ignorance, prejudice and the abuse of freely available statistics that this book contains in abundance; thereby playing the race card. This proves such problems result from Whites painting them as racial problems rather than long term trends in, say, housing and employment that would happen anyway. Thus, it is demanded of minorities that they must change in order to solve problems initiated by Whites.

And the most interesting aspect of White racism, here, is always the claim that if Blacks behave differently, they are to blame for the racism they experience - as if they were asking for it. Yet, the claim that rape victims were asking for it was long ago dismissed as sexism and so this should now be dismissed as the racism it so clearly is. And, since there are no racist epithets relating to behavior, it follows that behavior is not the real issue here but appearance.

The best indicator of integration with British values (expressed in the common law) is of the existence of mixed ethnicity – the fastest growing ethnicity in the UK. Yet, the quote that forms this book's title comes from the current (2009) chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips who, despite his position, cheerleads the racism of the British National Party and MigrationWatchUK.

The basic problem for Whites living in an ethnically diverse land is one of identity. Because Britishness is impossible to define since it is in a state of permanent flux, the easier option is to define it in terms of what it is not. When foreigners, minorities, asylum seekers and migrants are rejected, the British are asserting their sense of national identity. Belonging means saying who belongs and who does not, and those who are permanently labeled as "not belonging" get no say in altering their social status. This proves that the ideology of race prejudice is historically embedded in British society and ingrained in thinking, culture, institutions, ways of conduct, communications and emotions that is constantly reinforced. 'Postcolonial melancholia' also says something about the uncertainty over national identity characterized by groups like the BNP, who see multiculturalism as 'inverted racism' and migration as a 'reverse invasion'.

This book calls for evidence based social policy and the separation of statistics from their interpretation to avoid the fallacy that facts speak for themselves. However, this is a steep hill to climb because of the enormous vested interests to be challenged.


INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE:
The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America
(1997)

80%

This is essentially an economic history of White racism in the United States since such racism is today largely explicable with reference to the legacy of wider, economic forces. By beginning with the slavery of the past, the book implicitly states that White racism is the theory; Black slavery, the practice.

The "peculiar institution" of race slavery began as a result of a need for social control. Poor whites could obtain the one right denied Blacks – the presumption of liberty – simply by being White. Whites' inevitable resentment at their poverty was thus easily deflected from their class oppressors onto Blacks - who were forced into slavery and thus shown as inferior by a process of self fulfilling, legalized prophecy; ie, racist 17th century laws. By protecting all Whites from slavery, Whites formed a united front against Blacks and a false unity among themselves. The Marxist perspective of this book posits an allegedly classless society where race substitutes for class and class enmities are excised from the mind to create unity of purpose among Whites.

Interestingly, indentured White servants were guinea pigs for slavery. The sexual exploitation of female servants, the whipping post, chains, branding irons, overseers and house servants were all mechanisms tried out and perfected on Whites. Without the support of poor and indentured servants among Whites, race slavery would have been impractical. What Blacks and poor Whites had in common – poverty and the Servant Trade – was emotionally eradicated by the creation of a White race (without biological foundation) to falsely distinguish Whites from Blacks & Indians; thereby avoiding indigent and servile rebellions among Whites. And these Whites became an intermediate social control stratum much like the middle class today acting as a buffer between the lower and upper classes of the West. (Moreover, Christians cannot enslave Christians under English common law at the time allowing Africans to be so enslaved, in principle, because they were not thereby protected.)

This highly detailed yet intensely readable guide seeks to address the gross evasions usually perpetuated by White historians on this all too important subject about the origins of Western culture. Unusually for a White author, this book also actually contains an objective definition of White racism. The very concept of a White Race is inherently oppressive since it allows Whites to see themselves as White first and human second – which can serve no other purpose than to further racist interests; otherwise, why bother?


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wind Will Carry Us
(2000)

80%

A beautiful and fascinating look at some basic metaphysical and existential issues such as life and death and the relationship between cultural tradition and social change.

The ostensible plot involves a mystery as to why an engineer visits a small village claiming to work in telecoms when it soon becomes apparent that he is waiting for a village elder to die. Eventually he becomes partly integrated into this rural culture by virtue of being forced to stay there for longer than he had originally anticipated.

This is a subtly funny and deceptively simple yet profoundly rewarding film about people in tune with nature rather than in conflict with it. This is humorously expressed by jokes about a woman's three daily jobs: Work all day; serve in the evening; and then, more work at night. And by the oftentimes non utility of modern technology when, every time the central character receives a mobile phone call, he must drive out of the Black Valley - in which the village is situated - to get good hilltop reception. This running joke is, perhaps, a little overused and the film's overall length too long, but it makes its point well.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Vixen!
(1968)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:Cinema



Good example of the maturer Russ Meyer style; incorporating adultery, incest, lesbianism, White racism, draft dodging and the great outdoors. The political themes are broadly sketched and well-integrated into the plot without seeming tacked on for effect. Female sexual pleasure is foregrounded in the shape of the lusciously built and insatiably pneumatic Erica Gavin. Take me to Cuba!


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Tuesday 30 June 2009

Traveling Wilburys
(2007)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:CD

This is a collection of very warm music from competent, diverse, old style musicians who get along well and have nothing left to prove and where egos do not get in the way of music making. That the first CD of this double CD collection went platinum is, thus, not a particular surprise.

Not great music by any means but great fun all the same.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.co.uk) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Pajama Game
(1957)

100%

Snappy, catchy tunes, songs and brilliantly choreographed dance sequences in musical comedy mode. A labour relations operetta about the interdependence of management & workers and their generalised failure to work together as efficiently and as effectively as they could, given enough goodwill on both sides. Management refuses to pay promised wage raises; staff throw spanners in the works: A lesson for all would be capitalists.

The sexual chemistry between John RAITT and Doris DAY is effective as their dramatic conflict stems from the fact that he superintends a clothing company at which she is (to all intents & purposes) the Grievance Committee. And DAY is very believable as a workers' activist on the sweatshop production line on which she also works since she can act as well as she can sing. This inevitable conflict of interest drives the drama forward; while successfully mirroring the ups and downs of their sexual relationship and proving the internecine nature of such combats. Thus, their relationship successfully mirrors the industrial conflict shown; allowing us to personally identify with the drama and its characters.

This movie shows that there can be no compromise in sexual ethics – only in sexual politics. That personal relationships involve sharing while business relationships require give and take.


Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.