Animation has developed in leaps and bounds since the advent of CG. It was the release of Pixar’s Toy Story back in 1995 that marked the dawn of the new era however, a combination of revolutionary visuals, memorable characters, and a warm, witty and wise script laced with a profoundly humanist subtext (it’s there! really!) resulting in one of the best films of all time*.
Since then of course, very little has reached or even tried to reach similar heights of storytelling magic, the only films coming close being Toy Story II (funnily enough), as well as other Pixar efforts such as Finding Nemo or the magnificent WALL-E. Rival studios such as Dreamworks have achieved reasonable commercial success with flicks like Shrek, but these have generally lacked comparable depth.
9 began life as a short-film created by Shane Acker, one of the CG wizards brought in to work on The Return of the King, and has since been expanded into a feature-length animation with the aid of Tim Burton who receives a production credit for his efforts.
At some point in the future, man has been brought to extinction by all-powerful machines of his own invention – kind of a la Terminator but with a smattering of The War of the Worlds thrown in for good measure.
Into this nightmarish post-apocalyptic landscape awakes 9 (Elijah Wood), a small Pinocchio-esque doll about six inches tall, made of hessian and hand-carved wood with a zipper conveniently running down his middle. Nearby lies the body of a white-haired scientific sort, presumably the genius who managed to animate (haw haw) him, as well as a small amulet covered in mysterious markings.
Venturing into the blasted outside world, he soon meets cheery old-timer 2 (Martin Landau), kindly one-eyed 5 (John C Reilly), action woman 7 (Jennifer Connelly), and the devious 1 (Christopher Plummer, whose animated alter-ego bears a striking resemblance to his gaunt features, as it did in Pixar’s wonderful Up!). Although they’ve polished off humanity, the machines aren’t resting on their laurels however, and soon turn their attention to the above-mentioned dolls.**
Although the animation is generally excellent, the attention to detail does not quite come up to Pixar’s high standards – for example, one is unable to discern the individual fibres of hessian that make up our hero’s body – a challenge that Pixar overcame back with Monster’s Inc. What sets 9 apart however is its darkly unusual setting, the dolls vs machines setup proving to be a remarkably fresh twist on an otherwise tired scenario, with technology in its various forms battling over the earth's depleted reserves of life.
However this isn’t enough to make up for an incredibly cliché-ridden script. The story feels stripped to its skeleton, the bare bones of its archetypal plot acting as an adequate frame over which to stretch the film’s visual skin, but without breathing much in the way of soul into the proceedings. This isn’t helped by the seemingly endless chase sequences which merely succeed in exhausting one’s attention, rather than gripping it. Sadly, despite its beautiful wrapping, 9 ultimately feels hollow, like a doll lifelessly lying on the workbench.
Distractions from the heat: Next weekend - huzzah! New White Denim album Fits now out at a store near you! This recipe. Its the shit.
* as good as Citizen Kane and Casablanca? Yes, absolutely!
** duh duh DUUUUUHHHH!!!!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
oh thank god for Auntie!
I'm up to my neck in nanowrimo at the moment - 18,000 words down, 32,000 to go. Writing a 50K word novel in November is great fun, but there's one thing that is of course even better - procrastinating. In which spirit, thank god for the ABC!
David Hare is the distinguished gentleman who wrote the screen adaptation of Bernard Schlink's novel The Reader that became the award-winning but perhaps slightly underwhelming film starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. He gave this performance quite recently as part of the events marking the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is *very funny* and should be listened to by anyone who has ever been to Berlin, wanted to go to Berlin or eaten a doughnut. Mmm... doughnuts.
Meanwhile, that time of year has rolled round when all the little journalistic sorts scamper out of their burrows, go to a big fuck-off hall, drink a moderate amount of white wine, journalists of course tending to be temperate sorts, and listen to one of their own lecture them about the state of the media. My highlight from years past was listening to John Doyle AKA Ragin' Roy Slaven* but I think that this year's effort by that lovable runaway from Wombledon Common**, Julian Morrow may have given him a run for his money. Check it out - It's important stuff.
In other news, bacon and mushroom risotto is the stuff of kings, Cormac McCarthy is a gloomy old bugger and I'd quite like to meet the man who drew this.
* I've got the recording of it floating around if anyone's interested
** And executive producer of The Chaser
David Hare is the distinguished gentleman who wrote the screen adaptation of Bernard Schlink's novel The Reader that became the award-winning but perhaps slightly underwhelming film starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. He gave this performance quite recently as part of the events marking the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is *very funny* and should be listened to by anyone who has ever been to Berlin, wanted to go to Berlin or eaten a doughnut. Mmm... doughnuts.
Meanwhile, that time of year has rolled round when all the little journalistic sorts scamper out of their burrows, go to a big fuck-off hall, drink a moderate amount of white wine, journalists of course tending to be temperate sorts, and listen to one of their own lecture them about the state of the media. My highlight from years past was listening to John Doyle AKA Ragin' Roy Slaven* but I think that this year's effort by that lovable runaway from Wombledon Common**, Julian Morrow may have given him a run for his money. Check it out - It's important stuff.
In other news, bacon and mushroom risotto is the stuff of kings, Cormac McCarthy is a gloomy old bugger and I'd quite like to meet the man who drew this.
* I've got the recording of it floating around if anyone's interested
** And executive producer of The Chaser
Monday, November 9, 2009
When in Genova, do as the Genovans do - go to the beach and smoke lotsa dope
Michael Winterbottom is one of those directors who seems to make one dud for every bright and shiny gem. I use the term 'dud' loosely of course as even his most gratuitously pointless films - I'm thinking of 9 Songs and Tristram Shandy* here - were at least self-conscious in their gratuitous pointlessness, the humble director trying to stretch the boundaries of gratuitous pointlessness to break through to whole new levels, no, glorious shining vistas of gratuitous pointlessness.
Anyhoo. My point is that when he's at the top of his game, it's usually because the film feeds into some larger socio-political narrative - hence the success of Welcome to Sarajevo, Code 46, and especially The Road to Guantanamo.
His latest, the claustrophobic family drama Genova doesn't come close to either of these extremes. Indeed it at times veers dangerously close towards being something that would normally be unthinkable in conjunction with Winterbottom's name: formulaic. Duh duh DUUUUUHHHHH.
After his wife (Hope Davis) dies in a horrific car accident, Joe (Colin Firth) decides that a year in Italy will be just the thing to help his daughters Kelly (Willa Holland) and Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) recover from the tragedy. With assistance from old flame Barbara (Catherine Keener), the family is soon settled in Genova, Joe lecturing at the university, waifish teen Kelly drawn into easy distractions of the beach, dope and bronzed male bodies, while little Mary, traumatised by her mother's death, begins to withdraw on herself, haunted by possible visitations by her mother.
There is nothing wrong with the performances here - Colin Firth effectively plays on his ruddy, fresh-faced Englishness as the buttoned down widower, while Catherine Keener gives Barbara just the right edge of desperation in her efforts to reignite things with Joe. Perla Haney-Jardine is meanwhile brilliant as the child Mary, heartbreakingly conveying the little girl's helpless entanglement in a labyrinth of guilt, grief and confusion.
Typically of Winterbottom** Genova is shot in very naturalistic manner, the handheld effect dragging the viewer along with the characters at street level. This is particularly effective in the first half of the film, the high-walled alleys in the mess of the old part of the city closing in oppressively on the two girls, the soundtrack lending such scenes a touch of menace.
As the film progresses however the tension established earlier on so successfully begins to ebb, the climax in which the grief-stricken family is drawn together falling flat in a way that doesn't quite resolve the cadence. As a naturalistic portrayal of a particularly painful period in the lives of a middle class family, Genova succeeds in a limited way - there is eventually a path out of the maze, grief and loss are eventually overcome.
The problem is that it doesn't really say that much - in comparison to his other work, there is none of the delightful post-modern gymnastics of 24 Hour Party People, nor the burning anger of his documentary work. It simply feels pointless. Not gratuitously so - just pointless.
On the upside though, at least his adaptations of The Shock Doctrine and Murder in Samarkand aren't too far off - now THOSE will be meaty. Torture? Cover ups? You betcha!
And here's some cunning diversions: This one's about drugs and hypocrisy. Mmmm... drugs; this one's about tragedy and hypocrisy; and this one's about confronting hypocrisy wherever it may lie - including that nice Mr Obama.
* Yes, I realise that gratuitous pointlessness is part of the point of Tristram Shandy. I read it, OK? Well, most of it. I just think that Winterbottom's adaptation, although incredibly courageous, merely managed to suck one into a veritable vortex of gratuitous pointlessness with the force of Sterne's humanism being to some extent lost in translation, not even the few laughs on offer being enough to save it from a blackhole of self-reflexive bullshit. Gillian Anderson was hot though - MW gets brownie points for that. Mmm...
** Not to mention folks like Loach, Leigh and Meadows. What is it about the English and social realism? Bless their dear 'earts.
Anyhoo. My point is that when he's at the top of his game, it's usually because the film feeds into some larger socio-political narrative - hence the success of Welcome to Sarajevo, Code 46, and especially The Road to Guantanamo.
His latest, the claustrophobic family drama Genova doesn't come close to either of these extremes. Indeed it at times veers dangerously close towards being something that would normally be unthinkable in conjunction with Winterbottom's name: formulaic. Duh duh DUUUUUHHHHH.
After his wife (Hope Davis) dies in a horrific car accident, Joe (Colin Firth) decides that a year in Italy will be just the thing to help his daughters Kelly (Willa Holland) and Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine) recover from the tragedy. With assistance from old flame Barbara (Catherine Keener), the family is soon settled in Genova, Joe lecturing at the university, waifish teen Kelly drawn into easy distractions of the beach, dope and bronzed male bodies, while little Mary, traumatised by her mother's death, begins to withdraw on herself, haunted by possible visitations by her mother.
There is nothing wrong with the performances here - Colin Firth effectively plays on his ruddy, fresh-faced Englishness as the buttoned down widower, while Catherine Keener gives Barbara just the right edge of desperation in her efforts to reignite things with Joe. Perla Haney-Jardine is meanwhile brilliant as the child Mary, heartbreakingly conveying the little girl's helpless entanglement in a labyrinth of guilt, grief and confusion.
Typically of Winterbottom** Genova is shot in very naturalistic manner, the handheld effect dragging the viewer along with the characters at street level. This is particularly effective in the first half of the film, the high-walled alleys in the mess of the old part of the city closing in oppressively on the two girls, the soundtrack lending such scenes a touch of menace.
As the film progresses however the tension established earlier on so successfully begins to ebb, the climax in which the grief-stricken family is drawn together falling flat in a way that doesn't quite resolve the cadence. As a naturalistic portrayal of a particularly painful period in the lives of a middle class family, Genova succeeds in a limited way - there is eventually a path out of the maze, grief and loss are eventually overcome.
The problem is that it doesn't really say that much - in comparison to his other work, there is none of the delightful post-modern gymnastics of 24 Hour Party People, nor the burning anger of his documentary work. It simply feels pointless. Not gratuitously so - just pointless.
On the upside though, at least his adaptations of The Shock Doctrine and Murder in Samarkand aren't too far off - now THOSE will be meaty. Torture? Cover ups? You betcha!
And here's some cunning diversions: This one's about drugs and hypocrisy. Mmmm... drugs; this one's about tragedy and hypocrisy; and this one's about confronting hypocrisy wherever it may lie - including that nice Mr Obama.
* Yes, I realise that gratuitous pointlessness is part of the point of Tristram Shandy. I read it, OK? Well, most of it. I just think that Winterbottom's adaptation, although incredibly courageous, merely managed to suck one into a veritable vortex of gratuitous pointlessness with the force of Sterne's humanism being to some extent lost in translation, not even the few laughs on offer being enough to save it from a blackhole of self-reflexive bullshit. Gillian Anderson was hot though - MW gets brownie points for that. Mmm...
** Not to mention folks like Loach, Leigh and Meadows. What is it about the English and social realism? Bless their dear 'earts.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Those in the know Loop the Loop
My most cherished childhood TV watching experience (we all have one), was sitting with my Dad in front of the fire chuckling away at Sir Humphrey Appleby's scheming antics in Yes Minister*. Not that I actually understood any of the jokes of course - they all went completely over my head - but it exposed me to the existence of this thing called 'politics', which to my childish mind seemed as though it was generally taken much more seriously by lots of men in suits than was actually warranted.
It's a principle which has held out well of the intervening years. The BBC certainly seems to think so. In 2005 they premiered the first season of The Thick Of It, a satirical political comedy that self-consciously sought to apply the Yes Minister model to Blair's New Labour. The results were superb, creator Armando Iannucci and his crack team of writing ninjas producing scripts that combined farcical plotlines that were sadly all too believeable**, incisive and strangely affecting examinations of moral weakness, all propelled along by a script that crackled with colourful use of the language.
With In The Loop, the world of The Thick Of It has hit the big screen, Iannucci and Co. using the larger form to launch an all out attack on the confusion, false evidence, war-mongering and out-right lies that led to the US led invasion of Iraq. In a courageous but ill-advised moment of expansiveness, fretful British MP Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) tells a Radio 4 interviewer that war in the Middle East is 'unforseeable'.
He is immediately swooped upon by the PM's permanently belligerent, overbearing enforcer Malcolm Tucker (played with ferocious relish by Peter Capaldi), who blasts him for not towing the company... sorry, government's line. Things become more complicated quite quickly however after a group of visiting American officials latch onto Foster's gaffe, drawing the hapless MP into a behind the scenes Anglo-American tug of war.
Hollander is by turns hilarious and pathetic as Foster, a basically good but ineffectual man, distracted by polls, fixated on appearances and uncaring about his own constituents. In one wonderful running gag Foster is hectored by an angry council flat dweller whose garden wall is falling down, New Labour having long since reached the point of being unable to fulfil basic functions of government, let alone deliver on the lofty promises that got it elected. As Foster dithers along, indecisiveness veers into moral equivocation, before morphing into actual support for the war, the bumbling spinelessness of people like him allowing Bush and Blair to charge ahead.
Capaldi meanwhile excels as the Alaistar Campbell caricature Tucker, who dominates his every scene with volatile displays of the labour machine's ugly face, his performance combining the political wheedling of Sir Humphrey with a gutter-whore's tongue, straight from the streets of Glasgow. Mention should also go to Chris Addison as Foster's rather gormless aide Toby and James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano himself) as the practical and hardheaded anti-war US General Miller.
In The Loop goes far beyond its shared preoccupations with the BBC classic however. Sure there is a similar fascination with governmental procedure, low level nod-and-a-wink corruption, and pop cultural minitae. At the same time the film is much more completely an ensemble effort, reliant on the largely brilliant performances of a large professional cast to immerse the viewer in the culture of those 'in the know', the underlings in a political machine rolling unstoppably towards war.
The film is perhaps limited by the Iannucci's apparent inability to follow the chain of command beyond a certain level, or interrogate the liaisons between the upper echelon of the political establishment and the dominant commercial interests that ultimately drove the push for war. This is a quibble though when weighed against the searing insights that fly out of every scene. In The Loop is a powerful piece of satire - although the fact that it contains the brilliantly creative uses of swearing this side of The Wire is enough reason to see it in itself.
Happy things for happy people: The Lovetones have started work on an as yet unnamed 5th album; the trailer for new Blair Witch Project ripoff Paranormal Activity must be seen to believed. Not because it looks like it'll be any good of course, but because it's hilarious; even better is this little blast from the past.
* also high on the list was Get Smart, for which Dad would literally speed home to catch at 5.30 after he finished work. It was serious business - I think that there were times when he wished that I was the one in the Cone of Silence.
** see the MP expense account scandal that has all but obliterated the Brown government.
It's a principle which has held out well of the intervening years. The BBC certainly seems to think so. In 2005 they premiered the first season of The Thick Of It, a satirical political comedy that self-consciously sought to apply the Yes Minister model to Blair's New Labour. The results were superb, creator Armando Iannucci and his crack team of writing ninjas producing scripts that combined farcical plotlines that were sadly all too believeable**, incisive and strangely affecting examinations of moral weakness, all propelled along by a script that crackled with colourful use of the language.
With In The Loop, the world of The Thick Of It has hit the big screen, Iannucci and Co. using the larger form to launch an all out attack on the confusion, false evidence, war-mongering and out-right lies that led to the US led invasion of Iraq. In a courageous but ill-advised moment of expansiveness, fretful British MP Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) tells a Radio 4 interviewer that war in the Middle East is 'unforseeable'.
He is immediately swooped upon by the PM's permanently belligerent, overbearing enforcer Malcolm Tucker (played with ferocious relish by Peter Capaldi), who blasts him for not towing the company... sorry, government's line. Things become more complicated quite quickly however after a group of visiting American officials latch onto Foster's gaffe, drawing the hapless MP into a behind the scenes Anglo-American tug of war.
Hollander is by turns hilarious and pathetic as Foster, a basically good but ineffectual man, distracted by polls, fixated on appearances and uncaring about his own constituents. In one wonderful running gag Foster is hectored by an angry council flat dweller whose garden wall is falling down, New Labour having long since reached the point of being unable to fulfil basic functions of government, let alone deliver on the lofty promises that got it elected. As Foster dithers along, indecisiveness veers into moral equivocation, before morphing into actual support for the war, the bumbling spinelessness of people like him allowing Bush and Blair to charge ahead.
Capaldi meanwhile excels as the Alaistar Campbell caricature Tucker, who dominates his every scene with volatile displays of the labour machine's ugly face, his performance combining the political wheedling of Sir Humphrey with a gutter-whore's tongue, straight from the streets of Glasgow. Mention should also go to Chris Addison as Foster's rather gormless aide Toby and James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano himself) as the practical and hardheaded anti-war US General Miller.
In The Loop goes far beyond its shared preoccupations with the BBC classic however. Sure there is a similar fascination with governmental procedure, low level nod-and-a-wink corruption, and pop cultural minitae. At the same time the film is much more completely an ensemble effort, reliant on the largely brilliant performances of a large professional cast to immerse the viewer in the culture of those 'in the know', the underlings in a political machine rolling unstoppably towards war.
The film is perhaps limited by the Iannucci's apparent inability to follow the chain of command beyond a certain level, or interrogate the liaisons between the upper echelon of the political establishment and the dominant commercial interests that ultimately drove the push for war. This is a quibble though when weighed against the searing insights that fly out of every scene. In The Loop is a powerful piece of satire - although the fact that it contains the brilliantly creative uses of swearing this side of The Wire is enough reason to see it in itself.
Happy things for happy people: The Lovetones have started work on an as yet unnamed 5th album; the trailer for new Blair Witch Project ripoff Paranormal Activity must be seen to believed. Not because it looks like it'll be any good of course, but because it's hilarious; even better is this little blast from the past.
* also high on the list was Get Smart, for which Dad would literally speed home to catch at 5.30 after he finished work. It was serious business - I think that there were times when he wished that I was the one in the Cone of Silence.
** see the MP expense account scandal that has all but obliterated the Brown government.
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