Black Sheep

I really, truly hate writing bad reviews. For one thing, there's less to say in such a case; secondly, enough of you folk frame me as negative already; thirdly, and probably most significantly, they don't really contribute as much as a positive review.

So, if you think you'll enjoy Black Sheep, go and see it. Personally, I couldn't stand it and I never want to see a single frame of the misbegotten thing again as long as I live.

The premise is simple/simplistic: a genetic engineering experiment is supposed to create the perfect sheep - at least from a mercantile perspective. A pair of eco-protestors unwittingly release a mutant sheep from this experimentation (or perhaps it's just a mutant sheep foetus, or maybe even just a slightly melted puppet of Lambchop smeared with KY jelly - I couldn't be entirely sure) and it bites sufficient people and sheep to start a pandemic of zombie-vampire-weresheep. And, that, basically is it - bolt onto this the regulation heroes, villains, comedy relief and utterly predictable structure and you have, basically, the entire film laying bare before you and challenging you not to wipe your boots upon it.

The jokes are really baad (See what I did there? Yep, I ripped off an actual example of the film's terrible, terrible gags and threw it back like a hand grenade with twice-chewed gum inside instead of explosive), the interior logic is nothing of the sort, the mise en scene is, at best, perfunctory and there are enough truly, honestly shameful pieces of bad editing and cinematography that, if I'd made this film, I'd now make like Scorsese and Money and pretend it never happened. In particular, look out for the eyeline-match cuts into impossible POV shots of things that are miles away or behind other things - each one felt like a horseshoe dropping onto my head.

Jonathon King seems to think his film reflects some home truths of New Zealand society, much the way Peter Jackson's Brain Dead did but, really, the reflection is purely incidental and rather muddy: they have sheep in New Zealand, and these sheep play a part in the country's economy - and that's about as deep as it goes.

There's nothing more for me to say other than Black Sheep hits UK cinemas tomorrow, Friday 12th October, and is out on R1 US DVD very soon too. Check out the EweTube and MintyMassacre websites if you suspect you might disagree with my opinion and want to know more about this wretched monstrosity. Still not sure? There's a couple of viral videos designed to hype the film - Snig's End and Petting Zoo - and while they don't look or act like the film and only one contains any footage from the film, they might encourage/discourage you and are, at least, not that long.

American Gangster

Expect only minor spoilers in this review. Indeed, you can expect me to dance around a few plot points that have been made public knowledge in a lot of discussion of the film so far. I think you're better off not knowing some of those things before the film gets around to telling you them itself.

Michael Mann's Heat famously culminates in the first onscreen pairing of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, presented as a larger than life cop and a robber duo coming together for a cup of coffee and a chat. It's tempting to see a climactic scene in American Gangster as tipping a wink to this once-historic meeting of method masters but, not to spoil anything, it certainly doesn't take place in a stylised diner and, to be honest, I doubt the combination of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington will generate anything like the same amount of buzz. As the reviews start coming in, however, I expect this to be just one point of comparison between the two films even while, in actuality, they are worlds apart in execution, and therefore effect.

Bookended between 'Based on a True Story' and 'what happened next' title cards, American Gangster is, at the very least, plausibly realistic - sufficiently so that the minor issues of actual realism and minute historical accuracy can be easily discounted without investigation. It tells twin stories, the two threads that come together for something like the Heat moment, of Frank Lucas, the title character as played by Washington, and the cop Richie Roberts, played by Crowe, who ultimately ends up on his case. Before these stories entwine closely, however, they wind away separately - Frank climbing the ranks of Harlem drug dealers and, accordingly, celebrity night club empresarios; Richie going through a divorce and becoming a pariah amongst the bent coppers on the force through his incorruptibility. Thankfully, there's sufficient narrative drive and incident in the long stretch before the ultimate collision between Frank and Richie is inevitable, that nothing much feels wasteful or needlessly expositional, and the film never depends on jaded generic familiarity to tell us 'It's okay, this is all going to a showdown'. Indeed, Frank and Richie could have quite easily spent a good chunk more of the movie in their individual orbits without the audience wishing it would all come crashing to earth. That they are brought together through sensible cause and effect, and that it all reads clearly in the plotting, only guarantees that we're happy tracing the routes laid out for us.

Not that there aren't echoes and points of similarity between the two stories from the earliest opening scenes and, of course, one rather tired argument can still be heard rumbling in the background - that good guy and bad guy have so much in common - but over that relatively uninspiring bassline, there's a whole lot more. One early sequence with a dead junkie in Richie's storyline subtly resonates with a key plan of Frank's that, much later, Richie has to crack and I couldn't help but wonder if it was an invention of screenwriter Steve Zaillian or director Ridley Scott or if they were just highlighting this curious collusion of independent lives.

Overall, Frank's story is ultimately the more compelling - he gets title billing after all, and is, in effect the thing that happens to Richie, rather than Richie being the thing that happens to him. One particularly well-devised set of ups, downs and ups again in his rise to power revolves around ego, high fashion and flash, dramatised with the help of a crazy big fur coat (which is in a way somewhat reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka and her hate-love affair with decadent western hats). Frank ultimately undergoes much more change than Richie, is surrounded with a much more attention-grabbing cast of secondary characters - including the brilliant Chiwetel Ejiofor as one of his brothers - and, in the final evaluation, can be seen as being subject to the film's real lessons. Washington is generally better than Crowe, too - and not only because he doesn't end up delivering a number of his lines in an Australian accent.

As you'd expect for a Ridley Scott film, the production design and cinematography are absolutely top-notch stuff and, in fact, they even rise towards the top in Scott's exceptional pantheon. I could list details of set and shot design all day long, but do keep a close look out for the small church across the street from Frank's chosen place of worship, the phone numbers and notes doodled on Richie's wall by his phone, or the way Scott flaunts the final hiding place (ahem) of Frank's supply in the third-act search scene. This is truly a film of many, many layers, visual, auditory and narrative, most of them quite brilliantly conceived, often very imaginative and fundamentally cinematical. Because of this I think American Gangster has now bumped Matchstick Men aside and taken its place as the best of Scott's films since the incredible early years run of The Duellists, Alien and Bladerunner. Specific mention must also go to editor Pietro Scalia who, a few deliberate jump cuts aside, knocks just about every splice in the film out of the park. A raid on a drug processing operation in a tenement block showcases the same kind of comprehensible chaos that Scalia preserved flawlessly in Black Hawk Down.

My hands down favourite moment in the film comes in a dramatisation of the Ali-Frazier bout of 1971. It's relatively early in the investigation and Richie Roberts is tracking Frank Lucas, still not yet clear on who he is, or quite what impact he is having on the city's organised crime and drug trade. The cop has a camera and snaps a couple of shots of the gangster, flashed up on screen as still images as he does so. As we move from the first to the second, not only is Frank's character crystallized but we understand that Richie himself now understands who this guy really is, and something of what he's going to have to do now. It's awesome stuff - a monumental moment in the story related largely by two still images - if dependent, of course, on their surrounding shots and other info we've been fed here and there in the scene, if not elsewhere in the film. This is why I go to the cinema, for bolts of lightning like this.

American Gangster is released in November in most territories, by the end of January in most others. Do your best to see it, and see it on a very big screen and with very good sound. This cops 'n' pushers film is a genuine classic, easily the best of its kind since The French Connection and, any comparison between Hackman and Crowe or that car chase aside, better even than that.

Once

This review will, by necessity contain some fairly key plot spoilers. I don't think, however, that they will affect your enjoyment of the film.

There are any number of modern Musicals that aren't immediately thought of, across the board, as belonging to the genre. The South Park movie has just about been admitted to the canon, but My Best Friend's Wedding - definitely a Musical - has escaped the label; Tommy O'Haver's Get Over It and Ella Enchanted are each at least two-thirds purebreed tuner, but you ask people to name a Musical featuring either Kirsten Dunst or Anne Hathaway and you're most likely going to be met with blank stares. Are some Musicals going undercover to avoid stigma? Or is it simply that audiences don't join the dots, thinking that a Musical has to have Busby Berkeley stylings, lines of tiller girls or roots on Broadway?

The latest movie that plenty of armchair pundits are bound to mis-tag as 'not really a Musical' is John Carney's Once and this denial, I expect, is something to do with stigma - Once is going to prove almost too cool in quarters where they don't like things tagged as a musical - but it's also got everything to do with a lack of imagination. The songs in Once might be simple, plain and shamelessly straight-to-the-heart like showtunes are, but they aren't theatrical or flamboyant and they don't scream allegiance to the genre that dare not speak its name.

There are a couple of other credentials that will give Once a leg-up to widespread denial of Musical status: not only is it set in Dublin, like previous actually-yes-it's-a-Musical The Commitments, it also stars that film's Outspan Foster, Glen Hansard, latterly very productive as the vocalist, guitarist and song writer for The Frames. Popular music of the kind you could hear on the radio any day, anywhere, always helps the Musical-deniers blinker themselves.

Hansard plays an unnamed busker who performs on the sreets of Dublin. By day he plays cover versions, by night he plays his own compositions (soon to be played by day by real buskers up and down, no doubt). One of his songs attracts a young girl, played by Markéta Irglová, who also works on the streets, selling roses. Taken by the busker's talent, she wants to hear more, they start spending time together and, to cut an already simple fable down even more, they start to make music together and grow closer. And that, really, is just about it.


This simplicity is evoked by the title, echoing the beginning of a fairy tale. Once isn't taking place in real life, no matter how natural the central characterisations or how downplayed the performances. The busker and the girl aren't given names - and, a couple of times this is sidestepped a little awkwardly in the dialogue which ends up feeling for a moment like those endlessly frustrating movie moments where, for example, two characters agree to a date 'on Friday' but never say where, or at what time exactly. Another romantic dimension of the title is less convincing, however, and unfortunately it is one emphasised by the film's tagline: How often do you find the right person? As much as we come to like the busker and the girl, and by extension Hansard and Irglová, there's a play for sadness in the closing scenes that doesn't come off. The film coasts to a conclusion on a residual surf of sweetness, never successfully plunging into tearjerking tragedy. Perhaps they did each only find the right person once and the mistaken assumption is that this meant they found each other; perhaps they're doing the right thing by returning to past partners in the film's closing moments? That's quite obviously not the apparently intended meaning but it seems almost as viable a reading in view of the actual emotional material of the last few scenes.

Two musical sequences are formally quite interesting for students of the genre, and they play out virtually back to back. In the first, the girl is listening to a CD of a backing track, trying to compose lyrics. When her batteries die she heads out to the local shop to buy more, and once she has them, an almost entirely unbroken shot of her walking the streets back home is accompanied with her singing along, putting the song together for us. As it begins, the long shot has a mild whiff of Gondry about it - with a background cast of kids that seem on the verge of providing visual accompaniment to the music - quickly dissolving to something more like a Spike Jonze clip and then, before long, feeling a little empty and repetitive, saved from the onset of tedium only by the song. Then, in the second sequence, the guy is shown watching home movie footage of his ex and, inspired by this, singing a song and strumming it out on his guitar. Of course, in actuality the song would have come first, and the footage then reverse engineered in the making of the film and there seem to be some clearly non-diegetic elements of the arrangement, though I may have missed the tape machine they were possibly coming from. The scene does have a mild whiff of deconstructive exploration, but it certainly isn't the thrust. Most of the remaining musical numbers are generated precisely as they would be in life - a bit of busking, a studio session, a CD played on a car stereo (more ammo for the Musical-deniers there, no doubt).

Once is a consistently engaging and sweet natured film, and the story is largely very well constructed but it isn't without problems. Tim Fleming's cinematography is consistently poor, and the ill-conceived long-lens shots that punctuate the opening scenes soon give way to ill-conceived, badly exposed and occasionally out-of-focus long lens shots spattered across the remainder of the running time. Very often the camera draws attention to itself as a peering, voyeuristic probe, other times it does so by rendering the image a hazy, even ugly aesthetic barrier between the audience and the characters. I can see that the strategy was to be 'fuss-free' as much as possible, but sadly Once is another example of the mass delusion that 'documentary' style camera work makes a film more 'realistic', when in fact, all it does is plant small reminders of the camera, not to mention camera operator, on a very regular basis. Indeed, it's a true shame about the issues with cinematography because the better bits of camera and image-making - for example, the slow track in on the busker that then pulls back to reveal the girl for the first time, or the introduction to the girl's flat, mother and daughter - are even rather commendable.

Don't let these issues put you off too much, however. Glen Hansard alone, as an actor, songwriter, singer and musician, brings enough to the film to make it a must-see; alongside Irglová and Dublin itself he guarantees you'll be coming back for at least a second go-around and very possibly investing in a copy of the soundtrack CD.

Once is released across the UK on 19th October. Deny that it's a Musical if you must, but don't deny yourself the pleasure of seeing it.

Script Review: The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus By Terry Gilliam And Charles McKeown

Don't ask me how, because I'm not entirely sure myself but through a confusing series of clandestine exchanges, film ick have managed to get ahold of Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown's script, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. I don't even know when the script wound up here, but here it is, in the virtual pile. Keep reading - because you'll want to know all about this one. There will be spoilers ahead, but nothing from the latter parts of the story.

The script opens with a typically Gilliam juxtaposition of the banal and the wondrous, as 'four big horses' pull a 'hulking great wagon' - windowless and apparently driverless - down an urban terrace, then on past a couple snogging in a parked car and into a 'dingy backstreet'. This is where the wagon first astonishes us, opening 'like a dark menacing flower unfolding its petals', transforming into 'an old fashioned and very shabby travelling theatre' - the titular Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

We now meet the players of this eccentric show: Percy, the dwarf (yes, of course) ; Anton the clowning, sleight-of-hand expert; the beautiful young Valentina; and her father, Dr Parnassus. Their audience at this first engagement proves to be a rabble of drunks piling out of a nightclub to the rather unexpected sight of the Imaginarium and cast.

While Parnassus meditates atop a glass plinth - to give a cheap, cheesy illusion of levitation - Valentina, Percy and Anton play out a scene and make the audience an offer. As Anton puts it:

Ladies and Gentlemen... Step up! Step up!... I, Mercury, the messenger of the gods, invite you... tonight, for one night only... at this very venue... to enter the mind, the very great mind, of Doctor Parnassus!

And he means that literally. When a young chap called Martin storms the stage in a booze-haze, he swifly finds himself whisked away through a naff-looking prop mirror and into the landscape of Parnassus' imagination.

Martin lustfully chases Valentina through a living forest, but she slips away, back out of the mirror set-piece and onto the stage. Left behind in Parnassus' dreamscape, Martin is lost, confused and vomiting drunkenly. The script goes on:

He falls into a pit. It’s full of spiders. Terrified, he scrambles out only to collide with a giant web. He breaks free and falls into another pit. This one’s bottomless. He continues falling until he reaches... A vast moonlit desert. Nothing. MARTIN crumples to the ground sobbing.

Here he is presented with a fork in the path, a clear choice to be made definitively. On the one hand, Martin might chose to head into a beautiful vista where 'in the distance a light is glowing. It’s the sun, rising above a rocky cactus strewn landscape. The music is beautiful. Ethereal' - or turn instead towards 'a roadside bar/nightclub with flashing neon lights has appeared. It looks like a stage set. Not real'.

Martin choses the nightclub, where he is welcomed by 'a mechanical fairground figure of a jolly smiling man distinguished by a bowler hat and a red waistcoat.' This is Mr. Nick, the devil himself, the villain of the piece. Much more from him later.

Back in the 'real world', the show is disturbed by the arrival of police, so Parnassus and company pack up for the night. The Dr is disappointed in Martin's choice of the nightclub over the serene sunrise, and chastises Anton and Valentina for letting a drunk through the mirror, explaining that "People must be in their right minds when they make a choice."

And so ends our first encounter with the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. As expected, the various scenes we'll enter through the mirror are imaginative and immersive, like the best, most vivid dreams, and the scenes in the waking world, outside of Parnassus' skull, are genuinely original, idiosyncratic and colourful. Of Gilliam's other works, this compares to Brazil in particular, I suppose, with the non-dream scenes being every bit as inventive and striking as the dream-scenes.

The next night, the travelling theatre unfolds at a fairground and a nine year old boy gets to go beyond the mirror. His final choice is between a violent battle-field rendered like a video game, pumped up with agressive music and offering unlimited ammo; and a mountain pathway made of piano keys on which ballerinas dance and piano teachers offer lessons. He makes his choice rather easily - but I won't reveal which way here, for fear of runing the moment in the movie.

At the show's end, there's more trouble with the police, of course - and then the story takes an important step forward. Mr Nick appears to see Parnassus and we learn that the two of them have an old score to settle. It seems that Parnassus is in debt to the devilish fellow, but the price to pay is far too terrible to contemplate...

Plucking a magical snowglobe out of the air, Parnassus begins to show the story to Valentina, to explain their terrible circumstances to her. The camera pushes into the snowglobe, to show us:

A HOODED RIDER moves slowly through the snowstorm, the horse picking its way carefully across a field of virgin snow. In the distance, on a hill, is a monastery. Dim light comes from a couple of windows. Entering via a window and looking down into the monastery dining hall, we see DOZENS OF MONKS sitting at a long refectory table. They are eating their supper and listening to a young DR. PARNASSUS who is sitting on a dais at the far end of the hall, his eyes closed, in a trance, telling a story. The door to the refectory swings open with a crash.
The MONKS look up. Standing on the thresh-hold is the hooded figure, covered with snow. He throws off his hood. It's MR NICK.

According to the young Parnassus in this flashback, the world is kept turning by storytellers, and should the stories end, everything will be over. Mr Nick doesn't agree of course - calling this a 'weak hypothesis'. A fairly typical argument to be found at the centre of a Gilliam film, I'm sure you'll agree.

A wager was made between Parnassus and Nick, back then. Parnassus would offer a quintessential choice to undecided souls, as we have seen in the Imaginarium, and as the Dr explains:

Whichever of us won ten converts first, would win the bet... My argument was the importance of the story, the power of the imagination... His, the power of material things, the supremacy of stuff... Naturally... I won.

His prize? Eternal life.

We skip forward to the late 20th century, where a tramped-down Parnassus and Percy perform on a street corner. None of the passers by show any interest, unsurprisingly - but this is also when Parnassus first spots his bride-to-be, the unnamed 'beautiful woman'. We're nearing an explanation of his debt to Mr Nick - 'I won my bride. I was in love. But at what price?' - but before he can get any deeper into his confession to Valentina, Parnassus is interrupted.

The wagon has stopped in the middle of Blackfriar's Bridge, during a thunderstorm. Valentina steps out to see why...

Here she finds ANTON pointing excitedly down into the Thames.

ANTON
Incredible! I saw somebody dancing in the air.. under the bridge..

VALENTINA looks doubtfully at PERCY who peers morosely out from under his sou-wester and shakes his head.

ANTON (CONT’D)
It’s true! There was a shadow on the water, when the lightning flashed...

Lightning flashes again. We see what ANTON and VALENTINA see. A shadow, on the water, of someone ‘dancing’, hung by his neck with a rope attached to the underside of the bridge.

One rope-swinging rescue later (think: Time Bandits), the hanged man is onboard the wagon. He appears to have lost his memory, and has no idea why he was hanging there; moreover, he has strange symbols written on his forehead, odd weights in his pockets and a little metal tube in his mouth...

Of course, all of this is explained later, but not here. You'll have to wait until the money men of the world come to their senses and give Gilliam the relatively modest budget this film would require.

I'm wondering, in fact, if Gilliam and McKeown haven't deliberately cut prospective costs as much as possible here. By Gilliam standards, this is essentially a chamber piece. Over half of the scenes take place on the wagon or fold-out stage, and those in the other portion that do take place inside the Doctor's imagination seem designed specifically to work well if shot on a small green screen set - as per Mirrrormask, I would say.

When all is said and done, we essentially have a simple fable that dramatises some of Gilliam's long standing concerns really rather well. Much of it might seem a little familiar, particularly if you have also read the script for Gilliam's long-in-limbo The Defective Detective but this is the better script in many ways, however, if certainly far smaller in scale. The satire here feels less dated, more directly relevant, than in the Defective script I read (it has an excuse: it was written in the mid-90s) and there are more, and better, jokes.

As you probably would expect from how things were going, there's a final scene inside the Imaginarium that runs much longer than the earlier ones and is considerably more complex. It gives us a rather dynamic, far-reaching climax without compromising the modest scale of the rest of the narrative. A few brief bits and pieces, like this final Imaginarium episode, seem like Gilliam's reinvention of Being John Malkovich - but only in relation to the pieces of Malkovich that were rather Gilliam-indebted in the first place.

With Kaufman and Gondry also releasing and working on several high profile reality-vs-fantasy stories, this subgenre is no longer so clearly owned by Gilliam. He has competition now, and in some ways, he may appear to have fallen behind. For example: none of the character writing in Imaginarium matches the calibre of Kaufman's best work - but then again, that may hardly be the point in a fable like this; none of the technique behind the fantasy is as joyously idiosyncratic as Gondry's sticky-back-plastic approach - but that's got little to do with quality and more to do with aestehtic taste.

The bottom line is that this script promises a very good film indeed: a simple, clean story with imagination, eccentricity and wit; with clear opinions and the confidence to argue for them; with some very funny gags, astonishing imagery and brilliantly inventive set-pieces. The key roles seem to be crying out for star players, and it might be easy to imagine some of Gilliam's previous collaborators in the parts.

Robin Williams as Mr Nick, maybe? Jonathan Pryce as Dr Parnassus? Or John Hurt, if we're going older? There must be a short queue of dwarves in line for Percy. The small role of Beautiful Woman could be filled by either Uma Thurman or Monica Bellucci (first choice for and eventual player of The Queen in Brothers Grimm) I'm sure.

Cast just a little against type, Hugh Grant would make a great Hanged Man - which might give you a clue as to how his character develops. I'm not sure about Anton or Valentina, personally - Valentina is 15 years old, so we're probably looking at an unknown, Anton needs to be just a few years older and be quite a strong physical performer. A couple of circus kids, maybe?

There are only a smattering of other parts in the film, at least parts that last more than a few seconds, and virtually none that get more than one scene. This is small stuff for Gilliam, but that is by no means a criticism - Tideland was smaller still.

I'm probably looking at what amounts to a first draft here. I dare say some of the minor issues will be resolved in the next pass. If I had a say, I'd certainly bank roll this one. My only reservation is that Nick and Parnassus' relationship feels a little awkward. I think we need to see them spend more time together, probably during the snowglobe flashback, to root their rather arcane wagers and agreements in something more identifiable and relatable. It makes sense as it is, but that doesn't mean it feels entirely believable on any emotional level.

Gilliam and McKeown are clearly a very good writing team; Gilliam and Grisoni are clearly much, much better. This didn't read like a film as strong as Tideland, Fear and Loathing or maybe even The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but it did compare very favourably to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Time Bandits or Jabberwocky.

More on The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus later. Much more - particularly if and when the film gets funding.

Mark Hester Reviews Dreamgirls

I dragged Mark along to Dreamgirls a few days back and neither of us were impressed. Below, you'll find his review - which is, perhaps, somewhat kinder than anything I would have offered and also rather more entertaining and involving than the film he is critiquing..

For a film which deals with such universally loved themes as pop music and rags to riches, Dreamgirls is a film which frustratingly fails to deliver. About its only saving grace is that it models the contrast between artistic integrity and commercial sell-out quite well as it details the conflicts between honest song-writer Cee Cee (Keith Robinson) and the single minded, determined selfishness of svengali figure Curtis (Jamie Fox). Elsewhere the film is marred most markedly by the poor quality of the sixties pastiche songs. Not only are the lyrics vapid, but the arrangements are simply insufficiently echt. Few people can pull off a musical pastiche successfully - Neil Innes and Elvis Costello come to mind - and I was hardly surprised when the credits rolled to reveal two names - lyricist Tom Eyen and tunesmith Henry Krieger - who were complete unknowns to me.

Dreamgirls starts promisingly enough, a talent competition in a theatre in a poor part of Detroit, where various musical acts vie against each other. It is quite easy to suspend disbelief and coast with the film in its initial stages; the theatre seems rather too well equipped, the way the house band strike up the tune for each act in turn with apparent ease. Early events occur at a frenetic pace. Three friends — Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles), and Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) — take part in the talent contest in a singing group called "The Dreamettes", later to be renamed the Dreams. As the smooth talking Curtis signs up the enthusaistic trio and approval beckons, it all seems to go swimmingly and one is left wondering when the pathos will kick in.

Pathos comes soon enough, but director Bill Condon seems in such a rush to get there that he then begins to take stylistic shortcuts to get his point across. As the Dreams’ early career takes off in utile symbiosis with Curtis’s used Cadillac business, the montage device is over-used to painful degree - we see multiple planes and buses as the group go on tour accompanying gyrating, emotive solo soul singer Jimmy Early (Eddie Murphy), we see money accumulating in safes and orders in account books. Seldom since the spinning newspapers of a 1930s ‘Big Broadcast’ movie has this brand of shallow symbolism been so overdone.

Half way through the film, in moments of intense emotion, sung dialogue takes the place of speech. This comes as a surprise and an unwelcome one at that. The film is not billed as a musical, but rather a movie containing songs which are supposedly integral to the storyline. In any case, the sung lines do not come in the form of songs, but rather, are delivered as if improvised on the spot by the actors. If this can be said to resemble any respected artistic form (and thinking of one is a tall order) then opera comes most readily to mind. Few people, apart from opera purists, can recall anything sonic from an opera apart from the overture, but this is not the main problem here. The sung dialogue is quite simply excruciating and more than anything else, unnecessary. The extent of the own-goal is evidenced by the all-too audible “Oh God” from the woman in the seat next to me as soon as Effie opens her mouth to emote for the umpteenth time. When the abandoned Effie is left to pour out her heart for what seems like hours in a darkened theatre in a kind of Houstonesque soliloquy, we share her pain, but surely not in the way the director had in mind.

Just as contrived are the attempts to model the musical style progressions of the time. This is handled most ham-fistedly when a frustrated Early vents his ire at having to perform sad songs by single-handedly and spontaneously inventing funk on-stage. After appearing on stage as James Brown, Early suddenly transmogrifies into Jimi Hendrix as he succumbs to an almost unheralded heroin overdose. The hand wringing, the grief, the issue of how much Curtis is responsible for Early’s death is glossed over, as if his demise was written in as an afterthought.

As for individual performances, Beyoncé’s is respectable but unremarkable. Jamie Fox appears to be having rather too much fun in his portrayal of the manipulative, roguish Curtis. Danny Glover is totally wasted as Jimmy Early’s original mentor Marty Madison. Though the best crafted individual performance is certainly Jennifer Hudson as Effie, it is her shortcomings we notice most, like the sung histrionic dialogue mentioned above which marks her out as the American Idol also-ran that she is. The Michelle McManus parallels do not end with adiposity.

The faintly amusing sight of clean cut white pop act Dave and the Sweethearts covering one of the Dreams’ songs jars uncomfortably with the rest of the film and is quite incongruous here. The fact that Effie has given birth to Curtis’s illegitimate daughter, inexplicably referred to as Magic, is hardly given the attention it deserves and even when Curtis and nine year old Magic end up side by side at the last ever performance by the Dreams, Jamie Fox handles the scene in an uncomfortable ‘what do I do next?’ manner.

The one genuinely poignant scene in the whole film is where we see a despondent Effie, down on her luck and out of music, pass the Detroit car showroom where Curtis had started his career, now dilapidated and abandoned as he has moved on in more way than one. However, that the parallels between Effie’s predicament and Curtis’s former place of work stand out so much only serves to illustrate how little the rest of the film has to say when it could have been so different.

So basically, don’t see Dreamgirls. Watch Grace of My Heart instead, or save yourself £6.50 and listen to the Stax or Motown compilation cd that probably resides in your collection.

Tideland DVD Review - Part One

At the time of writing, I haven't yet received a finally-finished-final copy of the 2-Disc Tideland set, but have been viewing the screener copy with almost all of the special features in place and, for now, will be basing any comments only on this preliminary disc. As a result, I can't comment on the quality of the transfer - it won't compare between the timecoded copy I have and the release version.

As regards the supplements most notably missing is the commentary track for the feature, with Terry Gilliam and screenwriter Tony Grisoni, but I'll certainly be reviewing that in it's own right when a copy of the finished set comes my way. If you're a fan of chat-tracks, I'd imagine this one is on your want list. It's been heading mine since it was confirmed by Revolver before Christmas.

The main supplement that is present would be Vincenzo Natali's documentary Getting Gilliam. Natali is the director Cube, Cypher and Nothing but this is his first released non-fiction film, I believe.

Getting Gilliam was filmed during the making of Tideland and as such, does focus on the making of this one film in particular though it's obvious that Natali's scope and ambitions are bigger. He's interested not only in the construction of one work but in Gilliam's underlying artistic temperment and in the director's approach to making movies generally. While this would be enough subject matter for a very long film, Natali unfortunately has only some forty-odd minutes (despite the film being listed as 60 minutes long on the DVD's print ads and press release) and it's very disappointing when everything comes to such an early end.

Not unlike The Hamster Factor and Lost in La Mancha before hand, Getting Gilliam does feature a number of pseduo-Python animations to link sections, accompany bursts of voice over and illustrate ideas. It's a technique that's already getting a little tired, unfortunately, but at least they're fairly good animations in this instance. Hopefully, however, the cardboard cut-out albatross can now be slipped from around Gilliam's neck and documentarians might seek to characterise him in a new way.

As is always the case in his behind-the-scenes appearances, Gilliam is incredibly candid, not only allowing the filmmakers full access but virtually upending the litter cans so they might have something better and more revealing to snout through. There always comes a time in a Gilliam documentary when you are made to feel like a snoop, perhaps - and the first time that occurs here is right off of the bat. I don't want to spoil it, but if you're an armchair stalker, there's a little sprinkling of suff here you will really enjoy.

Gilliam, of course, has nothing to hide - well, as a filmmaker, at least - and it's no surprise that his best tactic in the handful of dirty fights he's been embroiled in (see Brazil and The Brothers Grimm in particular) has been to pull the sheet right back and show everybody the filthy bed he's been asked to lie in. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your interest, Tideland was not subject to any bitter power struggles, art-versus-commerce wars or rationality-challenging sequences of disaster, so Getting Gilliam might seem a little light on scandal by comparison to Gilliam's reputation...

..but, of course, that's the very best thing about it. Gilliam's widely held reputation is absurd, ridiculous and unfounded. This is no loose cannon lunatic driving movies, crews and millions of dollars recklessly into the ground: any overspend on Munchausen was not of his making; there is nothing overblown or impenetrable about Brazil; most of Gilliam's films have come in either on budget and schedule, or frequently, under budget and ahead of schedule. No, this is a truly great filmmaker, always inspired, inventive and, above all else, responsible.

Gilliam is responsible to the investors, to the audience, to himself - and most of all, to the film, and what the film means.

So Natali does well just to show another (more real) side of Gilliam, and to hint at his creative processes which many, apparently, find inscrutable. There's not a minute in this film that you won't enjoy, even if you do find it only partly lives up to it's own potential. All the same, for a Gilliam fan - or a Natali fan, of which I hope there are may reading (there's certainly one writing) - this documentary alone makes the disc an essential purchase.

Outside of Getting Gilliam, there are numerous interview snippets on the disc too, with Grisoni, Jeff Bridges, Brendan Flecther, Janet McTeer and Jodelle Ferland. While they all have something to say, it's rarely earth-shaking stuff, and a few of the stop-off points on the menu will only be visited once. A few surplus glimpses at Gilliam, cast and crew on set are in one short featurette, but alonsgide Getting Gilliam, it seems particularly slight.

Better, though, is a Q&A; from the Hay literary festival in 2006. This is where Mitch Cullin, the author of the original Tideland novel, makes his big appearance. Cullin has always been a vocal supporter of Gilliam's film, Gilliam always speaking out about the novel and why he loved it so much - but thankfully, this Q&A; does not descend into a mutual appreciation session. Like most things Gilliam it's often irreverent, just a little unpredictable and easily quotable. Again, a rather short feature, but ceratinyl enjoyable and, for many viewers (that is, anybody with a more casual and less rabid interest in the film than us at film ick) informative.

Gilliam appears in a stand alone interview too, seemingly filmed at the same time as his notorious introduction to the film. Outside of the commentary, this is probably the best place to get the official line on Tideland, on how and why it came to be, and came to be the way it is. As ever, Gilliam gives good interview but that virtually goes without saying.

In essence, the disc's special features are only icing, the cake's the thing - and what a rich cake it is. Once you have Tideland at home to watch anytime, I defy you not to gorge yourself upon it, virtually make yourself sick, feel terrible in the morning but then soon enough come crawling back for more. And as soon as I have the full, finished discs in my hands, it's becoming a staple on the menu in my classroom. My students might feel a little uncomfortable at first (generally preferring not so controversial, ire-inducing or challenging material) but I promise, they'll all thank me eventually.

Revolver's 2-Disc R2 UK release of Tideland is in the shops next Monday, 29th January 2007. Hopefully, before then, I'll be able to tell you about the commentary track and a other features not on my early disc - so keep an eye out.

Here's the official run down of contents:

Introduction to film by Terry Gilliam
2.0 Stereo and 5.1 Dolby Sound
Commentary with Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni
Interview with Terry Gilliam
Getting Gilliam, the making of Tideland, a film by Vincenzo Natali
Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
Green Screen
Deleted Scenes
Interview with Jeremy Thomas
Q&A; with Terry Gilliam and Mitch Cullin at the Hay Festival, 2006
Theatrical Trailer

For And Against Zack Snyder's 300

There have been some early complaints that Zack Snyder didn’t keep the tone of Frank Miller in his adaptation of 300. I don’t think this is true at all, but as I had more time to digest the film, I realized Snyder had cut more out of the book than I thought.

While I think the Spartan camaraderie and warrior ethic comes through, I would like to have seen more of it. The movie feels too rushed towards the battles. I wanted to see some of that grueling march to the Hot Gates, I think Miller rightly emphasizes what hell the Spartans go through even before the battles take place. A few scenes would be all it took. I was disappointed the “Stumblios” story was cut entirely, as one of my favorite parts is when Leonidas finally calls him Stelios. I wrote in my earlier review that Leonidas is not necessarily front and center of this film. Perhaps Snyder wanted to keep that tone and that’s why this storyline was cut, but it was a moment in the graphic that really established the awe the Spartans hold their King in. And that’s something that is slightly lacking for Leonidas in the film.

There's some stuff that is just too freaky--those giant orcs/trolls/zombies or whatever are just really out of place and ridiculous. Leonidas fights the big one from the promo poster and all I could see was Aragorn fighting the troll before the Black Gates--it was so obvious Snyder had that in mind. Again, I would have preferred more from the book and less from Snyder's "Whoa, that would look COOL" imagination!

There’s been a lot of hype about the sex scene. I’m not saying this as a Gerard Butler girl, but just about every press report and test review I have read has mentioned how 'hot' it is. I was disappointed. The snippets we saw in that high octane trailer at ComicCon and the various reviews that mentioned it led me to think it was going to be a lot sexier--raw and fierce like the movie is. The love scene is very slow, lots of (for lack of a better word) "flowiness." Basically, what you see in all those trailers is it, there's not much more. It's very romantic and touching, but I wish it had been a little more intense. I wanted it to have the feel of a man who knows he's going to his death--and a woman who knows it's the last night she has with him. Instead, it’s something like you might have seen in Lord of the Rings if Aragorn and Arwen had gotten around to it—albeit with more nudity. For a film willing to go all out in every other respect, I wish it had maintained it when it came to the sex.

I don’t want to sound like I am ragging on the film—I still feel 300 is one of the coolest rides you will have in 2007. It should satisfy just about everyone, from the Gerard Butler lovers to the Frank Miller fans. There’s just no way to hate a movie where a volley of arrows really do blot out the sun.

Black Book Review

Thankfully, this is another BNAT film that I saw completely cold. When Paul Verhoven’s name flashed across the screen, I groaned and whined “I hate Paul Verhoven.” Hollow Man still ranks as one of the most awful experiences I’ve ever had in a theatre, it’s as if the director was behind me yelling “Are you offended YET? How about if I kill a dog?!” I had no idea what Black Book was about, but I expected plenty of breasts, blood and outrageousness.

Well, there’s breasts and blood (it wouldn’t be Verhoven if he didn’t insist on giving you full-on nudity, would it?), but this is an incredibly restrained film. It is a thriller about a Dutch Jew caught up in the Dutch Resistance. Even though you meet a postwar Rachel Ellis at the beginning of the film, you constantly doubt whether or not she will survive. I don’t want to say anything more about the plot because you would hate me for it. The twists and turns of this movie do not let up and there is not one slow moment. There are some moments of true horror in this movie. Much of what happens to Ellis is straight out of a nightmare. This is not the sort of spy/resistance movie where you wish you could work in the underground, this is the kind of story where everything goes wrong and you’re very glad to be in a 21st century movie theatre.

Perhaps the most refreshing part of this movie is that it isn’t your typical WWII film. They tend to follow a very typical pattern, particularly if they have an eye out for the awards. Once and awhile you will get an Enigma or Charlotte Gray which will tap a more forgotten story of the war. Black Book joins that club. I would love to see more directors tackle WWII films like these, rather than making yet another Stephen Ambrose adaptation. There were many heroes of WWII and they didn’t all wear uniforms.

Black Snake Moan Review

Black Snake Moan was a film that I thank BNAT 8 for "forcing" me to watch. I knew very little about it and what I had read turned me off. I knew only that Christina Ricci played a Southern slut and that Samuel L. Jackson played a fiery Christian who chains her to a radiator to reform her. The promo posters and the title led me to believe this would be one sweaty piece of exploitation.

It’s not. Not at all. And while those promotional posters are a lot of fun, I hope they make a subtle change in the marketing because a lot of people who would really enjoy this movie will be turned off by them. Then again, maybe there is something to be said for encouraging people to take a risk.

Black Snake Moan is, to borrow a really apt observation from Buttnumbathon, something out of Flannery O’Connor. The film is drenched in the humid and desperate poverty of the South, those tiny towns you can’t believe really exist. But the comparison only goes so far, Black Snake Moan is O’Connor if she had written with more of a heart and less of the grotesque. That’s not to say the grotesque doesn’t play a bit of a part—Christina Ricci’s “itch” leaves little to the imagination and the town is full of hick stereotypes. But there’s also a lot of tenderness and goodness and while the ending isn’t a fairy tale one, you’re left with hope that these people are all going to make it.

This film boasts the best performance I have ever seen from Samuel L. Jackson. Again, the promotional material sells him as a terrifying individual and that’s simply not true. He’s a genuinely good man, and while flawed and unpredictable, he is still utterly likeable. There’s not very much of the “badass motherfucker” in this film, he may threaten a reverend with a rifle, but he also makes up a gift basket with ginger scented lotion for his lady friend. You are actually rooting for him to chain her to that radiator. If there’s one person who can help the town slut, it’s Samuel L. Jackson. He really should get an Oscar nomination for this film, if only for the taunt scene where he plays the blues to Ricci. There’s your Oscar clip right there.

I would venture to say this is one of the best roles I have seen from Christina Ricci as well. For me, Ricci has the reputation of one of those actresses who believes a daring part is something of pure shock value. This may not be true--I confess, I’m lazy and haven’t seen much of her recent work. I was ready to lump Black Snake Moan in with that. The film even sets you up to expect this—we first meet her having sex with Timberlake and strutting around in hot pants and crop tops. She’s the town bicycle that you just hate. And then the film hits you with who she really is—a sad and self-loathing girl who has had a truly horrible time of it. Cliched? Maybe, but it’s also a tragic reality for far too many women. That’s what is so great about Ricci’s performance. It may start out as a bit of a caricature, but she shines through as someone very real and deserving of your pity.

And Justin Timberlake! Who knew he could act? I did not even know he was in this film and barely recognized him onscreen. He looks like a sad little Army boy and he plays one to perfection. There’s no musician swagger, this is a boy (and I emphasize boy) who has no other option and is just trying to find a way out for himself and his girl. His character suffers a lot of heartbreak in this film and there isn’t one forced or theatrical moment. I am incredibly impressed.

Black Snake Moan is a long way from a sexy, exploitive film. It’s funny, it’s touching and even packs a few scary moments. Every time you think it’s going in a certain direction and will land in cliche, it veers off and surprises you. This will be one of the best films of 2007 and should get double the attention Hustle and Flow did.

Belated Balboa

Blogger has caused many headaches for a new film ick recruit - so, I'm going to pop her Rocky Balboa review up myself, while she irons out wrinkles and gets plenty more ready.

Rocky Balboa review, courtesy of Lady Sheridan:

I will be honest and say I have never seen any Rocky film but the first one, and it was so long ago that I barely remember it. I don’t know the plot of II or III, though I understand he becomes a sell-out and has to find the Eye of the Tiger, or something. Rocky IV I know largely thanks to VH1’s I Love the 80’s series and a fondness for pop culture Communism. To me, Rocky has always been a joke. A pop culture relic. Something you named your dog if you wanted your dog to be made fun of by everyone at the dog park.

So, when I heard they had actually allowed Stallone to make Rocky VI, like most people I thought it was the biggest joke imaginable. There was no possible way this could be good. And when it was rumored it might play at Butt Numb-A-Thon 8, I groaned. I told my friends that I really hoped this didn’t come true. “There’s no way I can get through it without laughing my ass off,” I said. “Harry Knowles will kick me out for mocking it.” But play it did and when that theme came on, it was infectious. I cheered with everyone else and found myself getting way into the final chapter of the Italian Stallion. At the end, I was forced to admit that Rocky Balboa was indeed a good film.

Rocky Balboa is essentially one big homage to Rocky I. Rocky is down on his luck and he’s at the end of his life. He’s lost Adrian and he’s desperate for his son’s attention. His son wants little to do with him because he can’t get out from under his father’s shadow. His old neighborhood is a ghetto, even the pet store where Adrian worked is a landfill. He’s clinging desperately to the past, spending his days with Pauley and his evenings mugging it up in his restaurant for his fans. His restaurant is nothing but a shrine to his glory days, the walls are lined with photos of Ivan Drago and Apollo Creed. It’s just...sad. He’s that guy in a bar you avoid because you might get stuck listening to a pathetic story.

The film begins with his yearly pilgrimage to all the spots he shared with Adrian. The evening finds him in a bar, where meets a woman named Marie. It turns out he had once walked a teenage Marie home from school and lectured her about smoking. She called him a creep and ran off. Now Marie is a single mom, scraping a living as a bartender. Rocky, eager for this tenuous connection to the past, befriends her and her son. He replaces their broken out light bulbs and gives them jobs in his restaurant.

Meanwhile, we get introduced to a cocky young fighter with the improssibly bad name of Mason Dixon. Dixon gets no respect. He knocks out fighters too soon, has plenty of belts but no fans. No one feels he’s ever been truly challenged. On a lark, ESPN puts a computerized Mason Dixon against a computerized Rocky Balboa—and Rocky wins. Dixon seethes. You know where this is going.

So yes, there’s a training montage (“Even Rocky had a montage!”) chock full of references to the Rocky I training montage. Yes, everyone predicts Rocky will lose. Dixon even offers to take it easy on him so he can come out with some pride intact. Rocky refuses.

Does Rocky win? Come on. What do you think? At any rate, I’m not telling you. You’re going to have to buy the ticket to find out. For my own part, that I predicted that Dixon would take a cheap shot, break Rocky’s neck and that Pauley was going to have to do for him what Daddy did for Axel....

Rocky Balboa is no Citizen Kane, but it’s no Rocky V either. It’s a fun movie, a fitting farewell to one of the biggest pop culture icons of the 20th century. I will even go so far to say that it’s almost comforting to revisit, like that battered sports jersey you wear on the weekends. If you’re a Rocky fan, go see it.