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.
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Goldfinger
(1964)
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)
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.
Friday, 28 August 2009
Black Snake
(1973)
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!
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.
Monday, 24 August 2009
Troy
(2004)
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.
Science:
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.
(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.
(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.
(1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)