Do You See
30 April 2005
Now this makes it unique among film that aren’t already direct by Gilliam, but the comparison doesn’t do it any favours. Mostly because the visual styles are so close, from the beautiful Shynola-made guide animations in between scenes, to the rubbery Jim Henson aliens. But also because it’s an exploration of the eternal battle between the English and the British, between a sensible hero and a surreal bureaucracy, through space rather than time or dream, and because it’s about beautiful English cynicism as it spreads through the universe.
This actually explains the most interesting casting. Zaphod is fanstasically annoyed, Ford is permanently hung-over, Alan Rickman hits the one note of Marvin bang on the head, and Trillian is… well, Trillian is a good reference point for Arthur, as in the books. But Martin Freeman basically plays Arthur as a repeat of his role in The Office, the last great examination of modern English/Britishness. And Bill Nighy steals the show as Slartibartfast, happy and excited to be doing work that he is entirely sure is of no use whatsoever.
Andrew Farrell in Do You See • No Comments
One of Private Eye’s more sanctimonious regular features is “Dumb Britain” – a record of stupid answers given by quiz contestants on telly/radio. Not withstanding the fact that Family Fortunes has been providing such wonders for years (“Name something red” “My cardigan” being my favourite), the implication is that we as a country – or at least the proles who descend to appearing on telly quiz shows – are getting stupider. Because our education system is going to hell in a handbasket of course. Comprehensive education is to blame. etc
Just to ram this point home the current issue has a “Dumb Britain Extra” that contrasts the questions from the two generations of Ask The Family.
Robert Robinson: Which of these calculations gives the same answer: 1/2 x 1/3, 1/2 + 1/3, 1/2 – 1/3, 1/2 ÷ 1/3
Dick n Dom: What breeds of dog do you have to cross to get a Labradoodle?
Ha ha, so so stupid – everyone was so much cleverer when watching ITV was rightly frowned upon and brown and orange were the only colours you were allowed to wear if you went on a BBC quiz.
What’s curious about the implied criticism is how badly aimed it is. More astute sanctimony would have noted that the 70s/80s show did not feature a final round where the family have to eat large cream cakes as quickly as possible to win the game. Unless my memory really is playing tricks on me. Worse still D&D explicity compare the shows by having a round of two questions from the old show on VT. Point being that the old questions and the question-master are self-evidently both demented and fabulously dull. In a bad way. It’s not just the “ha, ha, the past was funny” (though it is of course), Robert Robinson’s burbling is actually a cause for concern. Worse still, the modern families get the questions right as often as the old families do. There was even one stunning example about football strips where the question was contemporary for the old quiz, but the modern-day Dad still got it spot on.
Ask The Family was then, and is now, a very cheap filler show. I watched the old show when I was 9, and I’m watching the new show now I’m in my 30s, but this time I’m enjoying it because Dick & Dom are, no strings, great TV entertainers. The faint Reithian whiff of “educate and entertain” about the old show was a nonsense. What educational value is there in marvelling at the clever kid who got the 1/2 x 1/3 question right? Conversly, what entertainment do you get sitting through the minute of them working it out for themselves? “Labradoodle” was a question that took up seconds of the show (in a quickfire round) and was, in a very real sense, “just a bit of fun”.
Dick & Dom are not the new Ant & Dec. D&D have the potential to be (and often already are) a lot funnier than A&D were, and their humour is more Vic & Bob in its delight in the arbitrary and just plain silly. The regular characters remind me of the regulars on Big Night Out. The “old Ask The Family questions on VT” round is hosted by a James/Lauren Harries*-type character, complete with bubble-perm blonde wig. Piggy Cowell is a knitted pig that thinks it is (and sounds like) Simon Cowell – he pops up to advise D&D about a great new reality telly idea, and is usually cut short by Piggy doing a double-take on Dick eating something. Upon learning that it is indeed a “bacon sandwich” or “pork sausage” or “ham sandwich” or “pie… with PIG in it”, Piggy feints on the spot and the show carries on. The voice of the scores “HA HA HA… RUBBISH!” is equally random in it’s pronouncements, and I’m pretty sure is the cat from “In Da Bungalow” who reported back on his trips to places like Rye, Rochester and Sandwich, picking out unimportant civic buildings and chip shops. Bring on the man with the stick.
Anyone left hankering for more of the “1/2 x 1/3…” questions are referred to BBC4′s Mind Games – a more boring game show I have yet to imagine, who’s viewing figures must be in the low teens. Mind Games regularly trots out Chicken/Fox/Corn/river-crossing type “puzzlers” that if you know them you know them, but the contestants here are obliged to scratch their heads before feigning interest in coming up with the right answer. Not an argument for switching to digital.
*Lauren Harries (and family) were the topic of this old Keith Allen doc
Alan in Do You See • No Comments
29 April 2005
Much has been written about how much Douglas Adams is honoured in the new Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy movie. Nothing has been written about an equally significanct nod to another god of radio. Look at the posters to Hitch-Hikers, the ones on bus shelters. Quickly, and think to yourself the following:
John Malkovitch is Tommy Vance.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
I tend to think that all screwball comedies of the thirties are a priori better written, directed and acted than any comedies being made these days. The awful truth is that this is not the case, and actually the superior batch are a small bunch (Preston Sturges and His Girl Friday amongst ‘em). How do I know this? I just watched The Awful Truth, Cary Grant & Irene Dunne in a flyweight divorce comedy. It has its moments, Cary Grant is as blasé and debonair as ever. But the film lurches from set-piece to set-piece without any real investment from the viewer.
The film starts with Grant trying to hide from his wife that he has actually spent his two week holiday in California rather than Florida. She wanders in late with her Italian singing teacher who she has spent the night with. The pair distrust each other so agree to get a divorce. There is a very artificial plot device of the divorce taking eighty days to take effect, not that it would matter if reunite afterwards. And the film apportions blame very one-sidedly. Dunne’s socialite is shown to be the match to Grant, be she gets to burden all of the blame, there is never any real investigation of his infidelities. In the end the film brings the warring couple to the understanding that for all of (or because of) their flirtations they cannot live without each other. It could be quite a forward looking piece. But it is just the cinematic forerunner of Mad About Alice (terrible Jamie Theakston sitcom), as episodic and on the whole lumpen. Which for all its gaudy screwball trappings, cannot be considered a good thing.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
“Look, this is a movie I was genetically predisposed to love” says Kevin Smith. At no point does he say “It’s daaaaaarrk, innit”
Alan in Do You See • No Comments
28 April 2005
A bit of water can make a lot of difference, and the one separating Ireland (Sky comes with the basic cable package, which also supplies life-giving BBC/ITV/CH4) and England (where I understand it’s a more exotic option) can lead to strange sights. But I couldn’t really get my head around a spot on the BBC morning news show about the new craze that’s sweeping the nation, the local knock-off of Sky’s Donald Trump-fronted The Apprentice. Ten minutes of pretending that this was the most original idea on television, and a complete refusal to even entertain the notion that there might be a naturally-comparable show. “I was down the pub recently, and one bloke forgot a drinks order, and the tother one turned to him and said “You’re fired!”. It’s really catching on!”
Also, while I am behind the times in a lot of ways, when did they start having ten-minute puff-pieces on Breakfast for other BBC programs?
Andrew Farrell in Do You See • No Comments
26 April 2005
And here it is. I’m actually a bit disappointed with it because I was trying to aim at something more which a revision will require. But I hope it’s both informative and interesting, so let me know what you think.
Ned Raggett in Do You See • No Comments
Half way through this afternoon’s Coronation Street repeat on ITV2 came this, the most frightening advert I have ever seen (you have to click on the banner at the top).
Danny Peak in Do You See • No Comments
25 April 2005
Thus could be summed up my experience last night at the Newport Beach Film Festival, the first such formal thing I think I’ve attended. It’s only been around for a few years and is not yet a tradition per se — and the amateurishness evident in the problems they had with advance tickets, well, I won’t go there entirely — but the organizer’s hearts are in the right place and if it isn’t Sundance, then in ways that’s probably a very good thing.
However, for me it was less important than the film I was seeing, Ringers, an offshoot of TheOneRing.net, dedicated to following Three Certain Films by one Peter Jackson that received some attention as of late. Only the second time it was screened and since no deal for formal release had been put together yet I figured why not catch it and see what the shouting was all about? And in sum, it’s pretty good. Enjoyable, and if I’m not shouting from the rooftops about it it’s because I trying neither to damn with faint praise nor to say I found it a mess. Instead it’s a reflective ramble of a film that’s well-edited and had some incredible moments but as a study of fandom over the years is scattershot, following a general chronological bent and sometimes reliant on touches that verged on the gimmicky (having four actors play ‘typical’ fans at various points to illustrate changes over the years was a bit much). If anything, it was a slew of uneven mini-films exploring aspects of the same subject, with a shared narrator (Dominic Monaghan, who did a fine job), a good range of interviews (most of the major members of the cast plus Jackson, various long time Tolkien critics and readers and of course, many different fans) and some flat out hilarious moments — there’s a bit where one fan talking about his favorite character finds Andy Serkis suddenly appearing that can’t really be described easily.
The best film of the night, though, appeared afterward, Instant Credit, a short done for Scottish TV last year starring LOTR actor Billy Boyd, which doubtless is why it ended up on the bill for this showing (both he and the director attended — said hi to Boyd briefly, seemed a cool guy!). And frankly it was a great little treat — if you can’t follow along with swiftly spoken Glasgow brogues then it’ll be a struggle to start with, but the general gist becomes clear enough, as Boyd’s character, a well-meaning but broke chip-shop cook, suddenly finds himself with the company credit card of an egregiously asshole businessman. For a short film it packs in and plays with a lot of ideas, tells just what it has to while still leaving time for some bits of random flair — there’s a way the various locations are described that I won’t spoil, but is handled beautifully — and there’s a happy ending. Plus a slew of constantly funny moments, camera tricks and random touches — a winner, in short.
To top it all off, this was my long overdue visit to the Via Lido Theatre in Newport Beach, which is a class place. Looks great outside and in and if the seats aren’t the standard stadium seating hoohah, it’s still well worth it.
Ned Raggett in Do You See • No Comments
21 April 2005
This joy was specifically to mop up films I had never seen from – ahem – the canon so I feel more confident when I slag them off/talk anout them. Note, that is more confident, I can currently slam down a nicely nuanced argument about why One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a skewed portrait of mental illness happier to be used as a weak lemony squash satire, still having not seen it. A skill picked up from having a slightly earlier bedtime than friends at school, I am embarrassed by it and should stop it.
Which means I should watch the damn things.
But who is going to get Interiors out of the video shop when you can get the most recent Woody Allen film (answer, most people SHOULD). So I have been flicking through Woody’s back-catalogue, dipping into more rarefied arthouse territory and finally getting round to seeing the Three Colours Trilogy. In the wrong order (one thing they have to sort out with LoveFilm).
It also means, that having seen Interiors and Broadway Danny Rose in the same week I saw Melinda And Melinda I have a good grasp on Woody in serious and comic modes. And in Melinda & Melinda, he was in neither.
I have Nothing Sacred in my bag to watch on my flight later today. There is surely a joy of DVD rental.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
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