Not much to add really other than… EXCITED!
Category / Cinema
The Force Awakens – It’s going to be good, right?
Let’s cast our minds back to May 1999. There was a huge amount of anticipation about the upcoming Star Wars prequel, titled The Phantom Menace. There had been a huge campaign in the proceeding years with the original trilogy being remastered and rereleased at cinemas to much fanfare. However, the prospect of a new Star Wars film was on another level.
So what made everyone so excited? Wasn’t The Phantom Menace terrible?
At the time, George Lucas directing again after a long time on the sidelines wasn’t met with derision. Indeed, it was welcomed. The first film, released 22 years earlier, is still considered by many to be the best in the series so there was scant evidence to suggest this would be a stinker.
Secondly, the trailer made it look tremendous.
We all wondered who this Phantom guy was with the double lightsaber. He looked entirely badass and mysterious and looked like a fantastic potential antagonist to our heroes.
Speaking of which, let’s look at who we had on our side. The main characters were to be played by Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson, both freshly popular actors with a lot of talent between them. There was a lot of excitement about how well Ewan would cope with filling the role of a young Alec Guiness. Yoda span some pearls of wisdom in the teaser and the chance to get to see him before he went off to Dagobah was tantalising. Elsewhere, knowing we’d see Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman alongside C3PO and R2D2 meant all ’round there was a huge amount of promise.
Darth “Bad-ass” Maul gave us hope
The pod races looked cool too.
It’s worth noting that on release, The Phantom Menace was by no means a critical flop. Roger Ebert said it was “an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking”, giving it 3.5 out of 4. Even in 2008 Empire Magazine put it in their Top 500 list of all-time greatest movies. The momentum of hatred for it has just grown over time, as the technology has been left behind and the realisation that a film essentially about trade disputes doesn’t quite cut it.
So why mention it now? Well, it’s just a word of warning that we’re in the same boat now. There’s no way any of the big magazines will rate it below 3/5, probably much higher. Everything looks perfect and there’s no reason to think it will be a flop.
Just think twice before you buy that next piece of merchandise. Hopefully you aren’t buying the action figure of 2015’s Jar Jar Binks.
Star Wars Week at Cinema, Etc.
The countdown has begun to Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. It is now just 67 days until the big day. What better time me than now to celebrate the fantastic series with a week dedicated to all things Star Wars?
Check back tomorrow for the first article – a review of Jon Spira’s excellent documentary Elstree 1976.
The Intern (Nancy Meyers, 2015)
Nancy Meyers has a rich history in crowd-pleasing comedies. Her writing and directing credits include What Women Want, both Father of the Brides, It’s Complicated, The Holiday and Something’s Gotta Give. The basic premise of her latest, The Intern, is that a 70-year-old widower Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) signs up the the senior intern programme of a rapidly-growing start-up business, only to be assigned as the personal assistant to company director Jules (Anne Hathaway), a woman seemingly struggling to keep up with the demands of her new-found success whilst balancing it with her house-husband Matt (Anders Holm) and daughter Paige (JoJo Kushner). Initially resistant of Ben, she soon grows to his warm personality and old-fashioned sentiments, leading to doubts over the future of her personal and professional life.
This may sounds like middle-of-the-road schmaltz, but it works. Some softening colour washes, a pleasant-on-the-ear soundtrack, straight-from-GAP outfits, showroom offices and houses. It’s a look at the modern world from the rose-tinted perspective of middle-to-upper-class old people, coming together to appeal to women of anywhere between the age of about 30 upwards. It is easy on the eye and easy on the soul, but to dismiss it as just that would be wholly unfair.
By design, Meyers has created a picture that on the surface is just a pleasant and slow-paced monorail ride through the life of Ben and Jules. However, there is quite a lot of power in the messages it is portraying. First of all, it is telling women to not lie down and take the easy road when it comes to business, despite constantly being told that attempting to be the CEO of a business isn’t correct of a woman. Secondly, just because you have a child, don’t assume that you need to forfeit your career to ensure your partner can maintain his whilst you stay at home and look after your child. Thirdly, don’t feel guilty if your partner doesn’t get any of this.
I’m not sure how this film would fair in the Bechdel Test, which scores films on how sexist the content is by checking how many named female characters are involved with conversations with other women about something that isn’t men. Unfortunately, it would probably score low because the film drowns Jules in a sea of men to highlight the isolation she is experiencing in her career (other key female characters in the office are her emotional assistant and a masseuse). It may also be seen as unfortunate that she relies on a father-figure to guide her through her issues rather than working them out herself, but that’s the nature of the beast and it isn’t at all detrimental to the overall impact of the film in the final act.
There are a few failures. Husband Matt completely loses his essence about halfway through and doesn’t seem fixed in reality, undermining the effect of his actions and Jules’s reaction to them. Too often she brings emotion to the forefront of the company – one scene is obviously playing for laughs but when she’s prioritising the retrieval of a personal e-mail over issues that could destroy the company, the thought can’t be avoided that perhaps she isn’t the right person to sit at the top.
Overall, the film is a success and will no doubt please the crowds to which its box office rivals won’t appeal. It’s slightly early for the Christmas crowds and will not be remembered when the awards season is upon us, but it if you need some surprisingly thought-provoking entertainment there are far worse ways to spend two hours.
The Intern is released at cinemas in the UK on 2nd October 2015.
What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus, 2015)
What Happened, Miss Simone? is a 2015 documentary about American singer and songwriter Nina Simone. Combining archival footage and interviews with close friends and relatives, the film broadly covers the key periods of her life, building up a picture of her off-stage persona in the process.
Such was the nature of her personality, it is a documentary that was destined to be extremely interesting. Indeed, it is quite easy to accuse it as being a by-the-numbers film: get some footage of her onstage, source a few interviews with her, get the close family on board and let them speak from their point of view and build up a picture of her. That may be the case here, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad film.
The film was sanctioned by daughter Lisa Simone Kelly, who is also listed as one of the film’s executive producers. This is a wise move. Not withstanding the access to personal diaries this would have undoubtedly provided to Garbus, this is crucial because Lisa is able to provide a unique insight into her mother from a point-of-view nobody else could offer.
There are several other documentaries that cover the same ground, perhaps most notably Nina Simone: The Legend (Frank Lords, 1992), which offer their own viewpoint on her life. What Happened, Miss Simone? stands alone as a film in its own right, though perhaps lacks the detail needed to offer any real insight into any particular point in her life. In particular, her time as a civil rights activist is given around half-an-hour – enough to whet viewers’ appetites but not enough to explore her involvement and impact. Equally, not a single song is allowed to air from start to finish, diminishing the effect of her powerful performances.
Worth a watch, but it serves only as an introduction to the artist as it only really touches the surface.
What Happened, Miss Simone? is available exclusively on Netflix.
[Note] If you’re interested in what she could do at her peak, here’s a majestic performance of her song “Feelings” live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976.
Vacation (Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, 2015)
The newest addition to the Vacation legacy is an attempt to reboot the previously successful franchise and bring the story to a whole new audience. It’s a shame then that it fails to do either and also tarnishes the memory of the originals in the process.
It stars Ed Helms as the now grown up Rusty, who we know as the son of the old Griswold family. He now has a family of his own to look after. Following in his father’s footsteps, he decides to reboot their family bonds by taking his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) and two sons Kevin (Steve Stebbins) and James (Skyler Gisondo) to Walley World. Hilarity ensues.
The opening twenty minutes or so as they set up the characters is delivered in a very tedious manner and doesn’t really achieve the desired results of showing a truly dysfunctional family. There are some cheap gags as the four family members conform to some stereotypical character traits before the real action gets going and some fun starts, but to have such a slow start to a big summer comedy is a risky move that contributes to the film’s downfall.
The best moments come when the Griswolds interact with other characters appearing in cameo roles. Most notable are Chris Hemsworth as Stone, the well-endowed brother-in-law, and Charlie Day as Chad, a depressive river rafting guide. Both spawn some great moments that are let down by the punctuating gags between about rim jobs and swimming in poo.
The lowest point is when Chevy Chase appears in a wholly unfunny late scene. Watching him attempt to make the removal of a medium sized guitar from a large cabinet look awkward and clumsy for over ten seconds is simply excruciating.
It’s a valiant attempt to bring the kind of humour that made the originals so successful to a new audience but it actually tarnishes the originals as I’m now questioning whether they were all of this quality. Avoid this film unless your main priorities are familiarity with a rehashed storyline and a lack of anything remotely thought-provoking.
The Walking Dead Week – Overview
Over the last week Cinema Etc. has been dedicated to a range of articles on The Walking Dead. Hopefully you enjoyed it! In case you missed anything, here are some links to the articles:
The Walking Dead: The Board Game (Z-Man Games)
The Walking Dead: The Game – Season One (Telltale Games, 2012)
The Walking Dead: Road To Survival (Scopely, 2015)
Top Moments of The Walking Dead TV Show
The Music of The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead: Weird and Wonderful Merchandise
Fear The Walking Dead: Series 1, Episode 1 (Scott Dow, 2015)
Enjoy!!
西銀座駅前 / Nishi-Ginza Station (Shohei Imamura, 1958)
Hidden away on the Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray release of The Insect Woman is the second feature film directed by Shohei Imamura, Nishi-Ginza Station. It isn’t as fondly remembered as the main feature and for good reason, featuring almost none of the hallmarks of a director who would later come to be regarded as one of the greatest in Japanese film history.
The story plays second fiddle to the music, the recurring titular song as sung by Japanese crooner Frank Nagai. You’ll be forgiven for thinking you’re about to watch one of the worst musicals of all time after the first five minutes, though thankfully the support cast only get that one chance to derail both the song and the feature. What isn’t overly evident is that it is for all intents and purposes an extended music video for Nagai’s follow-up to his previous hit “Let’s Meet in Yarakucho”, a result of Imamura’s refusal to give the song a full playthrough at any point of the film.
One of Imamura’s finest hours in film… can be found elsewhere on the same disc.
The supporting story relates in no way to the words of the song, indeed contradicting it in many ways. It tells the story of a man name Oyama (Yanagisawa Shin’ichi), whose suppression at the hands of his wife Riko (Yamaoka Hisano) leads him to bouts of daydreams of his former days in the Japanese army, particularly a dream where he is trapped on an island with a beautiful girl named Sally (Hori Kyoko). When his wife and two children take a short break, he is encouraged by his friend Dr Asada (Nishimura Ko) to go out on the town and have a one night stand whilst he has the chance, under the pretense that he will clear his head, stop daydreaming and concentrate on his life as a family man.
It has its charms at times, but the rushed pace means it is littered with unexpected jumps that are at odds with the subtly developing romance between Oyama and love interest Igarashi Yuri (also played by Hori Kyoko). Imamura’s original screenplay was probably haphazardly chopped to get the running time down. Regardless, his third film of 1958 – Endless Desire – was on the horizon and there wasn’t time to make the film work.
Nishi-Ginza Station is certainly not amongst Imamura’s finest work, but will find a place in the interests of fans of his famed later works.
The Masters of Cinema dual-format release of The Insect Woman and Nishi-Ginza Station is available to purchase now.
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; Or, How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (Ken Annakin, 1965)
On 14th July 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 spaceship performed the first flyby of Mars, returning the first ever pictures of another planet and providing Earth with closeup observations of the surface. It was a time where the world was gripped by the space race, seeing two world powers at loggerheads to prove their technological superiority.
Just one month earlier, Ken Annakin’s epic ensemble comedy Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines hit cinemas globally. A homage to the beginnings of manned flight, the story follows fourteen pilots in brilliant replicas of 1910 aircraft as they attempt to fly from London to Paris (via Dover) to win a £10,000 prize put up by Lord Rawnsley (Robert Mawley), a British newspaper magnate. Mixing madcap humour with a loving recreation of the excitement once felt by the world for the flying machines now seen as highly primative, the film not only captured the essence of 1910 but also the imagination of the 1965 cinema-going public.
One of the main threads that runs throughout the film is the love triangle between the magnate’s daughter Patricia Rawnsley (Sarah Miles), her fiancé Richard Mays (James Fox) and rugged American Orvil Newton (Stuart Whitman), the latter two of which are also competing in the race. This thread serves as a springboard for a small amount of humour but allows the bigger laughs to be built around this central plot.
Many of the other characters conform to the national stereotypes: the Prussian Colonel Manfred von Holstein (Gert Fröbe, fresh from his titular role as bond villain Goldfinger) can’t do anything without a set of instructions; French womaniser Pierre Dubois (Jean Pierre Cassel) spends the whole film flirting with identical women (all played by Irena Demick) from different European countries in one of the film’s best running gags; Yamamoto (Japanese megastar Yujiro Ishihara) is a well-spoken Japanese naval officer who all the competitors fear will easily win the race. Elsewhere there are rewarding cameos from Tony Hancock, Benny Hill and Eric Sykes.
The main theme tune contains a highly infectious melody that has remained in the public conscience far beyond the popularity of the film itself. Ron Goodwin’s music is introduced alongside a humorous caricatured animation provided by Ronald Searle and it serves as the perfect introduction to the film. Beware – it gets stuck in your head and will refuse to leave for days.
There’s a hint of Wacky Races throughout.
Whilst the concept behind Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines closely follows It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World – released two years earlier in 1963 – to dismiss it as a carbon copy is to do it a disservice. There’s more on offer here than a simple rehash.
It also spawned a sequel that would be more easily associated to this film but for the fact its name was changed for most releases from Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies to Monte Carlo or Bust. That film has a nearly identical premise, with many reprised roles, but is set around cars rather than planes.
There’s plenty on offer here to warrant a first viewing and those that grew up with it won’t be disappointed by revisiting it.
Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines is available to buy now from Amazon on extortionate Blu-ray or DVD.
[Note] Huge thanks to Ahoy Small Fry for the recommendation on this!
Comic Con – The Best of the Trailers
So this year’s San Diego Comic Con has come to a close for another year. As usual, there were trailers aplenty. Here’s a selection of some of the more interesting ones.
The Walking Dead – Season 6 trailer
I’ve been reading the comic books of The Walking Dead and I’m currently about six comics ahead of the break point of the last season. Whilst the recent stories in the TV show have held pretty true to the comics, I’m hoping they take a divergence from the original stories soon. The trailer suggests this is the case as I’m having difficulty matching it up. Looks absolutely tremendous, with the focus appearing to be a difference of opinion between Rick and pretty much the entire group.
Fear The Walking Dead
On a similar theme, there’s going to be a new spin-off series to The Walking Dead titled Fear The Walking Dead. It follows a completely different set of characters though is set in the same universe. It’s a sort of prequel to the series and focuses on one Los Angeles family as the zombie apocalypse breaks out. It looks very similar to World War Z, but with Robert Kirkman on board it will doubtless have all the magic required to make it work.
Adventure Time stop motion episode Bad Jubies
One episode from the upcoming Season 7 of Adventure Time is going to be stop motion 3D. Looks pretty interesting. Jake, Finn and the gang are facing bad weather and are also made of play dough! Disaster is imminent. Whether it will be canon or not remains to be seen.
Superman v Batman: Dawn of Justice – Extended Trailer
Expanding on the previous trailer and giving us a glimpse of the finer details of the plot and some new characters (including Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luther), this trailer is huge news. I’m willing to give this movie a chance and I think most are. It is the film that everyone has wanted to see for a long time. And, dare I say it, I didn’t think Man of Steel was a bad film at all.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Comic Con Reel
“Real sets, practical effects” opens the behind-the-scenes footage reel for the new Star Wars film. Those four words are all any fan has wanted since the underwhelming Episodes I-III. Well, I guess “No Jar Jar Binks” comes a close second. This is footage that just gets me massively excited. There is finally going to be a great Star Wars film released in my lifetime, knocking Caravan of Courage into second place.
Ash v Evil Dead
Will it be terrible? Probably. The new TV series puts Bruce Campbell back into the thick of it as mankind’s only hope against the Deadite uprising. It looks corny but will be good for some laughs.
Deadpool – Leaked Trailer
There’s some shady footage of the Deadpool trailer doing the rounds. I’m not going to link to it but it looks tremendous. Go seek it out.
Cinema, etc. 