For those not in the know, Record Store Day is an annual event where independent record stores across the globe release a host of exclusive limited vinyl records with the intention of boosting the popularity of local independent record stores. It’s always a fantastic day where collectors and fans come together to get their hands on something special.
I’ll be down at Rough Trade Nottingham tomorrow morning from a very early hour. I usually go to Rockaboom in Leicester but have been tempted over by the massive events going on in the vicinity. It looks set to be a great morning and a fantastic way to celebrate the wonder that is The Record Store.
I have a number of items I want to pick up, but the priority is the Supergrass 7″ “Sofa (of my Lethargy)”. I don’t really know why it’s being released but it is intriguing. I have every Supergrass vinyl single, including the likes of “Never Heard Nothing Like That Before” and “Rebel In You”, so missing this would seriously damage my internal OCD tendencies.
Elsewhere Gaz Coombes has his latest single “Detroit” available and that should be popular due to its constant playing on BBC 6 Music. I won’t reveal what else I’ll be looking for in case it causes a spike in popularity, but I’ll update tomorrow with how it goes.
Holy motors! I just watched a live-action Street Fighter movie, and it wasn’t bad. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it was… great. Let’s go back in time to justify my surprise.
The year is 1992. I’m seven years old. I’m in possession of a Commodore Amiga and a copy of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. My brother, channelling every ounce of his O.C.D. nature, has annoyingly mastered the character of Ryu, who everyone knows is the coolest character on the game. This was no mean feat, especially on a Powerplay Cruiser. When I say “mastered”, he was actually untouchable on it. Occasionally the computer A.I. would get into hadouken competitions with him, but couldn’t keep up. He was, at this moment, the coolest kid at school, a height he wouldn’t achieve again until he accidentally set off an alarm and the police showed up at school. As we all know, cheaters never prosper. [1] [2]
This was 1992 though, and any child wasn’t worth his weight in Nerdz if they didn’t have a copy of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. Or, later, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. Then Super Street Fighter II. And don’t forget Super Street Fighter II Turbo, if you could convince your parents that the additional £60 spend was worth it for the “thrill” of playing as DeeJay. [3]
Sit down DeeJay. Sit down.
Unfortunately, whilst the games came thick and fast, seemingly adding lots to the gameplay and making sure the improvements were worth the extra investment, the associated media interpretations were mixed to say the least. There were some good things out there. I remember being a huge fan of the comic book, which itself was an adaptation of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, a decent-quality anime version of the game.
Unfortunately, all interpretations of the Street Fighter characters’ back stories were immensely overshadowed by the big-budget, star-studded and hugely hyped film titled Street Fighter: The Movie. After I got over the initial dismay at the idiotic titling of the film, it truly started to sink in – this was possibly the worst film I’d ever seen. [4]
Street Fighter: The Movie starred Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile, Kylie Minogue as Cammy, Raul Julia as M Bison in his final cinematic role and a young Ming-Na Wen as Chun Li, almost 20 years before she’d reappear on our screens as Melinda May in Marvel: Agents of Shield. This hotch-potch of acting talent was gelled together by a flimsy plot and some terrible dialogue and it destroyed in an entire generation any interest in the Street Fighter franchise outside of simply playing the games.
By 2009, studios felt safe enough to release a Chun-Li origin story starring Kristen Kreuk, but this went down almost as poorly as the 1994 movie. In fact, arguably worse. It really wasn’t worth the time and effort, but fortunately not many people put either into it.
So it’s with great trepidation with which ardent fans approach this latest offering, Street FIghter: Assassin’s Fist. It is essentially the origin story of Ryu and Ken, the main characters of the original Street Fighter game and firm favourites in the Street Fighter II series. I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed at all. I was actually rather impressed.
The story takes place in a secluded area of Japan in 1989 as Ryu and Ken learn the traditional ancient fighter technique of 暗殺拳 / Ansatsuken (Assassin’s Fist) from their 先生 / Sensei (master) 剛拳 / Gouken. Ryu appears to be achieving more than the hot-headed Ken, who is becoming increasingly frustrated by the slow pacing of the training. Through a series of flashbacks we learn the true past of Gouken and his relationship to his younger brother 豪鬼 / Akuma as they both trained in Ansatsuken.
Stylistically they get everything right, both in terms of making a good film and also in terms of being respectful to the original source material. There’s very little in terms of deviation from the back-stories generally considered to be canon, and the only extra embellishments comes in the form of explaining answers to previously unanswered questions, for example how Ken ended up in Japan in the first place.
Stylistically they get everything right.
It seems like such an obvious formula: pick out the key characters that people who played the game found interesting, focus on their back story and pick out the meatiest parts, get the story right and tell it in an interesting way. It’s a far better idea than trying to somehow piece together the fabricated back-stories of sixteen unrelated characters for the completion’s sake. This way we are able to see some good acting breathe life into the characters for the first time. It’s not Oscar-winning acting, but it is as good as anything I’ve seen in a video-game-to-film release.
The original release was actually in the form of thirteen webisodes released via Machinima, which was later edited into a full film. Such was the popularity of this, there is a planned sequel that will focus on the シャドル / Shadaloo organisation, which is headed up by M. Bison and also includes the original remaining three final boss characters of Balrog, Vega and Sagat, and the characters in the original game series that had joined the fighting tournament to bring down the organisation (Guile, Chun Li, Cammy and T. Hawk). This has a lot of potential and could be as successful as long as they give the characters as much space to breathe as in this release. Clearly having eight stories to tell is more difficult than four, and the tone of the film would be a huge departure from Assassin’s Fist should this be the route down which they choose to go.
The entire film can be watched here below, though it is also available in HD on Netflix and is available on Blu-ray.
[1] The “cheaters never prosper” line was something the Amiga version threw at you if you keyed in a cheat for invincibility. You could sail through the game but when it got to the post-game conclusion story screens, you instead were treated to a screen reading “Congratulations, but as we all know, cheaters never prosper.” It was harsh but in a way taught us all a life lesson.
[2] Another thing that spoiled my enjoyment of the Amiga version of the Street Fighter II game was that when you loaded up either Ken or Chun Li, the top halves of their bodies were a scrambled mess of pixels. I never knew why this was the case.
[3] Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers / スーパーストリートファイターⅡ -The New Challengers was released in 1994 and featured hugely enhanced graphics and four new characters: Cammy, T. Hawk, Deejay and Fei Long. Whilst it was a neat effect to bring in four new characters to milk the popularity of the existing franchise, anyone who regularly picked any of these four characters was generally treated with dismay in my group of friends. It’s a bit like saying your favourite Beatles album is “Band on the Run”.
[4] Bored of the relentless tweaking involved with each iteration of essentially the same game, we eventually tracked down a copy of the original Street Fighter on the Amiga. It featured Ryu, Ken and Sagat – all familiar – but also characters like Birdie, Adon and Gen. Inevitably none of these featured in the film. Obviously the feature film should have been called Street Fighter II: The Movie, or something similar.
Frank tells the story of Frank Sidebottom, the comedic persona of Chris Sievey who performed as a musician and entertainer for over 25 years from 1984 to Sievey’s death in 2010. At least, I thought that’s what it was going to be, mainly because I didn’t read the synopsis. I was quite confused when one of the main characters started Tweeting.
It turns out that it’s a story only partly inspired by the Frank Sidebottom story, but any fans of the infamous persona will be sadly disappointed. It is based on the memoirs of Jon Robson (author of The Psychopath Test), covering his time in the Oh Blimey Big Band with Sidebottom. Frank in this film is a distant relative of the real Frank, and the action is set firmly in modern Ireland and USA rather than 1980s Greater Manchester.
Frankly a disappointment
It is a big-name cast for what is essentially quite a small story. Michael Fassbender plays the unstable titular role; Domhnall Gleeson plays the ambitious musician Jon (the equivalent of Jon Ronson); and Maggie Gyllenhall plays Clara, a pivotal band member. There are two Academy Award nominees there and the film at times risks feeling a little like it had been over-cast.
I didn’t really enjoy much of it, if I’m being brutally honest. The music around which the story is built seemed a little contrived. I get that they had to replace the original Frank Sidebottom songs for the modern settings, which have ended up occupying a similar plane without using the songs in any way, and I suppose there isn’t a place for “I’m In Love With The Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk” in a film like this. Yet it begs the question: was it relevant to feature the likeness of Frank Sidebottom when the final result has nothing to do with the character? I find it unfair that Chris Sievey worked his whole life to create a celebrated persona, only for the world view of it to be irreparably altered by a film release that essentially has nothing to do with the subject.
Thankfully, a truer reflection of the man inside the mask will be available when Steve Sullivan’s crowd-funded film Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story is released later this year. Inevitably it won’t be as popular – it won’t have Michael Fassbender to help sell it – but at least a truer reflection of the story will be told.
Frank is available on Blu-ray and DVD now, as well as on Netflix.
This is a truly historic film artefact, badly damaged though it is: the very earliest footage of Manchester United, shot months after they changed their name from Newton Heath. The frenetic action shows United (in dark tops) apparently on the back foot against near-neighbours Burnley, although the home team ultimately lost 2-0. The result helps explain why the film was never advertised in Burnley. [1]
This is really interesting for me. I have been a Manchester United fan for as long as I remember, though I grew up in neighbouring Burnley where this film was recorded. I class Burnley as my second team, which generally means I want them to win in all but two weekends of the season.
The ground still stands in the same spot to this day at Turf Moor on Harry Potts Way, though it has obviously undergone a lot of developments. In this video you can see the single-tiered Brunshaw Road end (now the Bob Lord stand), to which a second tier was added a few years later. The ground looks fairly sparse, and a bit of research reveals that the attendance that day was around 4000.
There’s clearly a huge difference between the way the game is played today and how it was 113 years ago. Immediately the attire is completely different, with most wearing their shorts way higher up than their bellies. The pace of the game is much slower, probably due to the thicker clothing, longer grass, heavier ball and general lack of fitness of the players (note Bulldog cigarettes advertised above one of the stands). On the plus side, there are no free-kicks given for soft fouls, no diving, nobody shouting at the referees and no shirt advertising.
So what does it show? Is the game better or worse today? Well, it is certainly different. This is a fantastic early artefact of the game. There is earlier footage available – the earliest of which is thought to be Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion from 1898. It’s also only 1 minute and 35 seconds long, so you might as well watch it.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a faithful interpretation of the classic Japanese fable The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, one of the oldest folklore tales in the history of the country. It is also Isao Takahata’s fifth film as director for Studio Ghibli, following the dark Grave of the Fireflies, the fun ecological adventure Pom Poko, the episodic comic strip interpretation My Neighbours the Yamadas and romantic drama Only Yesterday.
It tells the story of Princess Kaguya, a tiny girl found inside a stalk of bamboo by an aging bamboo cutter and his wife. She rapidly grows in size into a beautiful young lady, though she hides a secret for which she must, eventually, face the consequences.
The first thing that hits you when watching this film is the breathtaking quality of the animation techniques. Putting aside the great storyline, the film is worth watching just for the fact it is so beautiful to view. It really serves to remind us how effective 2D animation can be and we’re lucky that Studio Ghibli is yet to embrace 3D animation in the same way as Disney has, all but throwing away their heritage (though nontheless still churning out mostly excellent films).
My favourite scene involved the princess running away from her adopted home in panic and fear. At this point the art style subtly changed and became more expressive and less controlled, with darker greats and blacks filling the screen, and it was an intelligent way to channel her emotions into the visuals.
There is an immediacy of beauty in the animation style.
The film arrives in North America and Europe with a lot of endorsements, not least the nomination at this year’s Adademy Awards in the category of Best Animated Feature (it lost out to Big Hero 6). I usually prefer the Japanese voice-overs with subtitles and was lucky to find a screening with this option, but the English-language cast is nothing if not star-studded (including Chloë Grace Moretz, James Caan, Lucy Liu, Mary Steenburgen and Beau Bridges). I look forward to being able to hear this version once it reaches home media later this year.
At 137 minutes it might be too long for most children but if youre looking for an intelligent way to entertain your family this weekend I heartily recommend this film.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya is out now at selected cinemas across the UK.
George Kellerman (Jack Lemmon) and his wife Gwen (Sandy Dennis) travel from Twin Oaks, Ohio to New York City so that George can attend an interview for a promotion within his own plastics company. Though the trip is planned to perfection by the meticulous George, the plans quickly unravel when the plane is held up in landing and from then on everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.
The Out-of-Towners was the second time Lemmon worked on a Neil Simon film, the first being The Odd Couple (released two years prior to this release). It’s a shame that The Out-of-Towners doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor in terms of number of laughs delivered, though it is not without merits.
Jack Lemmon is at the forefront of most of the laughs.
Jack Lemmon is in fantastic form as the increasingly irate George, who just wants everything to go according to plan. Ne it the delayed plane, the lost hotel booking or the missed reservation at The Four Seasons Restaurant, Lemmon delivers on a journey of frustration that I’m sure every viewer can associate with.
Sandy Dennis’s Gwen, though, contrasted George with a matter-of-fact interpretation of events, not allowing her anger to show aside from her disappointment with how George was handling the situations presented. It serves as more of a feeder character for more laughs from Lemmon, as her persona understandably makes George even more irate.
I watched this film because it was recommended to me by a close friend. It isn’t going to be something I rush to watch again but I certainly did enjoy it for the most part. At times I found Sandy Dennis highly annoying, but that was the point of her characterisation. I’ll never say no to a Jack Lemmon comedy though, and I can’t imagine the 1999 remake starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn is a patch on this.
The Out-of-Towners is available on DVD now, though the steep price tag for a PAL version may put most people off. It can also be seen currently on Netflix UK for those with accounts.
In 2004, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, the much-celebrated documentary following footballer Zinedene Zidane throughout a 90-minute match, was released. The film featured a cracking soundtrack from Scottish band Mogwai and was overlaid with a one-on-one interview with the man himself. It was eye-opening and served as a fantastic snapshot of one of the greatest sportsmen of the modern era, providing an intriguing insight into a man many consider to be a genius.
33 years prior to this, however, there was made a now-long-forgotten German film called Fußball, Wie Noch Nie. The premise is so similar to Zidane that it really undermines what I thought at the time was a unique concept. In this film, we follow footballer George Best over a 90-minute match against Coventry City, which took place on 12th September 1970. There is no soundtrack and no interview overlaid, just Best doing what he did best – playing football.
George Best was at the back-end of the peak of his career when this film was released.
Of course, it wasn’t the only thing he did well. For a full picture of the footballing legend you’ve got to include women, drinking and drugs in that list. As a Manchester United fan it can be frustrating that nowadays this overshadows what was a fantastic career, even though it was cut tragically short through his alcoholism (he essentially hit decline at the age of 26 in 1972 and spent the next decade never quite achieving the dizzy heights he’d already reached in the early parts of his career, playing in Scotland, Ireland, USA and Australia before retiring). This documentary serves an excellent purpose in that it gives us a chance to remind ourselves just how good he was on a game-by-game basis, and was taken during the back-end of the peak of his career: the 1970-71 season finished with Best as top-scorer and United finishing a respectable 8th; his team-mates included Brian Kidd, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Alan Gowling; Sir Matt Busby was eventually back in charge (though not in time for this game); memories of the European Cup victory were still fresh in the mind of the players and the fans. Manchester United were in transition, but for Best this season would prove to be one of his last memorable ones.
In case you’re wondering (spoiler alert), the game finishes 2-0 to Manchester United, with Best scoring one of the goals. Charlton scored the other. It perhaps wasn’t the most interesting game to select for this subject, but it’s nice to see a United victory and you get to experience what it was like to be in Old Trafford in the early 1970s.
It is by all accounts an experimental film. The half-time whistle goes and we are treated to a bizarre experience of staring directly into Best’s eyes whilst some hypnotic visuals serve as a backdrop. I suppose the aim is to challenge the viewer to try to imagine what goes through a player’s mind during the half-time interval, but it certainly doesn’t feel like that. Essentially, aside from this half-time segment, the film is more of an artefact than anything else.
It’s not particularly easy to get hold of. I had to import my copy from the German Amazon store, though as it’s PAL it will work perfectly well on your UK DVD players. Was it worth the effort? Well, I’m still undecided. It certainly isn’t for everyone, but I got a level of enjoyment out of it. For fans of both foreign, experimental cinema and Manchester United then I’d recommend it. Otherwise, you might be better suited to one of the highlight videos on YouTube.
Fussball, Wie Noch Nie is available from Amazon UK, though it will be cheaper to get from Amazon DE via import. No Blu-ray is available.
The second of two films I saw at this year’s BFI Flare Festival, Dear White People is an American satirical comedy set on Ivy League Winchester University campus. It centres around several students who attend the predominantly white university, in particular: Sam White (Tessa Thompson), a sharp-tongued mixed-race film production major who runs a popular campus radio show called Dear White People, which challenges the university policies and mind-sets of both the school administration and the students in a humorous but cutting manner; Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams), a homosexual black student struggling to fit in and find his voice as an aspiring journalist; Coco Conners (Teyonah Parris), a black student who is secretly trying to land a role on a reality TV show set around campus, whilst simultaneously trying to garner fame through her video blog; Troy Fairbanks (Brandon P Bell), Sam’s ex-boyfriend and current school head of Armstrong/Parker, the all-black house on campus; Kurt (Kyle Gallner), a white student and son of the school’s president, who organises a controversial Hallowe’en party with a blackface theme in response to Sam’s outspoken radio show; and Gabe (Juston Dobies), Sam’s white boyfriend.
Tessa Thompson is a revelation in her performance as Sam White.
I was lucky to see this film. It was the subject of an online petition to raise awareness of the film and increase the pitiful number of screenings it received last year in the UK – just two at the BFI London Film Festival. These Flare screenings were again over-subscribed, which begs the question – why hasn’t it received a wider release? Perhaps it’s the fact it deals with some pretty hard-hitting issues whilst not losing its ability to entertain. Maybe the questions posed were deemed as too sensitive for a large distributor to pick it up. Either way, it’s a massive shame. This is a film that needs to be seen, not just because of its important content but also because it’s a fantastic and hilarious film.
Praise is due for both Tyler James Williams and Tessa Thompson. The former, fresh from his recent role in The Walking Dead as Noah puts in an assured performance as someone who himself isn’t very self-assured for most of the film. However, I’m surprised he is the cover-star of the film as, for me, the central storyline and most interesting character was Sam White. Tess Thompson (recently of Selma) is a revelation in this role, playing the angry student to perfection. It’s a character with some important opinions and without her it would have risked being just a good campus comedy, but without the hard-hitting message. When the cracks in her prickly character reveal her fragility, the results are astounding. As a character, Sam galvanises the same provocative thoughts in the students within the film as it does the viewers of the film, and there aren’t many teen-comedy characters in recent years that I remember asking such important questions of the viewer. Frankly, the performance is a revelation.
The excellent acting performances reach throughout the large cast.
Elsewhere, I felt the tones and cinematography added a lot to Simien’s well crafted script and impressive performances. Topher Osborn channeled elements of Wes Anderson in the beiges and attention to detail that are clearly evident in these well-composed shots.
If you get a chance to see this film, then I heartily recommend it. As a white heterosexual British man, I inevitably felt discomfort as I sat in the cinema being challenged to think about the questions posed by the film. In many ways that was the ultimate goal and it will be a shame if the wider cinema-going public doesn’t get to see this fantastic story.
Dear White People does not currently have a wide UK release date.
I managed to catch a couple of films this week at the BFI Flare Festival at the Southbank. The review for effective indie drama Tiger Orange was posted earlier tonight and the review of the excellent Dear White People goes live tomorrow morning. I also reviewed Peter Strickland’s bizarre but hilarious The Duke of Burgundy when I saw it at the London Film Festival last year.
The festival had a great atmosphere and it was a pleasure to be part of it, even if I only managed to visit it for a day. It looked like most of the tickets sold out but for a handful of seats for matinee performances, so there’s still chance to check out some screenings if you’re quick.
I saw Tiger Orange earlier this week when it was screened as part of the BFI Flare Festival, a two-week festival at the BFI Southbank in London that screens films with LGBT topics at their heart. It’s an effective piece of cinema that makes the most of its limited setting and low budget.
The premise is quite straightforward: openly gay Todd (Frankie Valenti) returns to his small Californian hometown following the death of his homophobic father (Vincent Duvall) and is reunited with his older brother Chet (Mark Strano). Seeking to hide his sexuality whilst running the family hardware store, Chet struggles to accept how open Todd is about something he has spent his life trying to hide from the local community.
Strano (centre) and Valenti (right) bring their characters to life with some really effective performances.
This storyline is a good platform for the exploration of the characters, who are well-developed in a relatively short period of screen time (76 minutes). I think the fact it is such a small community and they are living in an isolated cabin house – and sleeping in their childhood bunk-beds – means that their fast development is also quite believable. Indeed, it’s debatable whether the childhood flashbacks are absolutely necessary, serving only to underline how homophobic their father was. Other than this, it’s a tight story and there’s absolutely no wastage in present-day screen time.
I was impressed by the acting performances too, with both leads actors clearly at ease in their characters, probably drawing on some levels from their own experiences. Strano does well to hold his own in a more understated role, when lesser actors would have allowed Valenti to steal the show with a more immediate and attention-craving character. I was surprised to read that Valenti used to be a pornographic film actor, such was his performance in this film. I’m not convinced the sort of depth of character was necessary in his previous line of work.
Gasque has made the most of what was likely a relatively low budget and created something special. I doubt this will reach a wide audience globally, but those that do seek it out will be rewarded.
Tiger Orange is not currently scheduled for a wide UK release. It was recently picked up for global distribution with Wolfe Releasing.
Stylistically they get everything right.
Cinema, etc. 