Do You See
28 November 2011
It was always going to be hard pleasing me with a Thing remake. The John W. Campbell short story it’s based on was the subject of the inaugural episode of A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time and Thou. Not having read it before then, I immediately took to its tight-knit team of scientists whose ability to rationally work through the horrific problems that increasingly beseige them is undermined by the M.O. of The Thing: it can become someone so completely that the victim may not even be consciously aware that he is no longer himself.
Every Thing fan who hasn’t read Ann Billson’s wonderful BFI book on John Carpenter’s The Thing should do so immediately; I quibble with Billson here and there but it’s a pleasure to read a good writer given free rein to create a searching, detailed love-letter to the object of her obsession.
The review you’re reading right now is not, unfortunately, that. more »
Elisha Sessions in Do You See /FT • 16 Comments
24 August 2011
53: The Box (DVD)
I missed The Box in the cinema, it being my year without film. It is the kind of film I would normally jump at, liking claustrophobic paranoid fantasies, films based on Twilight Zone episodes, Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and even not minding Richard Kelly*. And it starts promisingly enough, with a decent period scene setting and some nicely sympathetic leads. And then Frank Langella turns up at the door with the Box. The Box is a nice, cheap, period looking piece of technology – with its big red button under a dome. But the box isn’t the problem. The box and what it leads to may be as preposterous as anything thrown at us in Kelly’s other films but at least has a semblance of fun fantasy storytelling around it. The problem is Langella. Or at least his digital face.
Langella has played some of the greatest villains known to man. Insert Richard Nixon and Skeletor jokes here. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
23 August 2011
51: Super 8 (Cinema)
Super 8 is an homage to Spielbergian kids fantasy films of the early eighties. Its more than that actually, its DNA is plainly on display. Its Mom (correct word in this context) is ET, its Dad is The Goonies. We have a gang of kids (Goonies) who discover something remarkable and alien (ET). And its interesting that the setting, and the characters hark back to a bucolic seeming small town America which I get the sense that JJ Abrams believes doesn’t quite exist any more. You get the sense the turning point was rap music (the music in Super 8 is all over the place, though follows the “if in doubt, use ELO” model). more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • 6 Comments
15 August 2011
Clearly I am massively behind on this project, as is often the way with FT projects. But whilst there is usually something interesting to say about any film, sometimes there is not MUCH interesting to be said. So here is a stab at quickly trying to simultaneously cut my list shorter, and get to the heart of the matter with a lot of these films…
41. The Navigator (Cinema)
Minor Buster Keaton, which has some typically well staged physical humour and innovation. It does seem to be missing Good but it does seem to be missing a whole third act, though I didn’t see its deus ex submariner coming. To be more precise it is missing Act 2 Scenes 1 & 2, all of act three and would probably be considerably better without its somewhat racist (though not at the time of course) canibles. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • 2 Comments
5 August 2011
Whilst the threat of a Double Dip Recession is nothing to make light of, there is at least one aspect fondly remembered from 2008. Like the gurningly beautiful twins on A-Level result day, there is only one way our online news sources know how to celebrate this. Pictures of bankers with heads in their hands. So all day (and feel free to send me links), I’ll be updating this post with just that.
3:08PM The markets are rallying. Like they did three summers ago. Still a long way to go, but I’ll probably leave you with this one from the Evening Standard for now. Early prices Special (there was nothing special about the early prices). If only we could zoom in to see what he is saying in that outlook window. I’d give you good money (which is worth NOTHING now) that it is SELL SELL SELL.
more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • 20 Comments
20 July 2011
38: Hobo With A Shotgun (Movie)
I have no sensitivity to gore. Blood can spurt out of wounds on film like Old Faithful and the more it spurts the less sensitive I am. Guts can fall out of bodies and it might even push a giggle out of me. The moment someone is getting sliced in two and sliding apart like a cartoon, well its like a cartoon. Cartoons never used to be gory, but since the toon within a toon of Itchy and Scratchy, and the gorefest that is Superjail even this is no longer true. There is nothing about gallons of fake blood that bothers me. Indeed the gallons help.
There is an interesting sequence in the faux (but tonally spot on) grindhouse quickie Hobo With A Shotgun that illustrates the difference perfectly. Rutger Hauer’s tramp has turned up in Fucktown, and has been driven to homicidally clean up all the evil he sees on display with his shotgun. Much splatter continues in such a strong cartooonish fashion that even the most egregious nonsense is clearly so far removed from reality that it hold little to no emotional attachment. Except one point where the female lead, the tart with a heart (its that kind of film), is held down by the armoured villains “The Plague” who start to hacksaw off her head. Nearly all the other gore in the film has been supplied by shotgun blasts and swift limb choppings. The hacksawing creates little blood, but is the most shocking action in the film, and proof that Hobo With A Shotgun created a character that I at least cared about a bit. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • No Comments
15 July 2011
37: The Tree Of Life (cinema)
Terrance Malick’s divisive The Tree Of Life is probably my favourite Malick since Badlands. Which isn’t saying an awful lot, me and Malick have rarely clicked, but I was much more engaged with it than I was with even The New World (which I saw in an excellent double bill with Pocohontas so I knew what was going on)*. And I cannot say I particularly liked Malick’s everything but the kitchen sink history of creation / forensic family drama. But it was very interesting, a fascinating watch stylistically but, and this is where I usually part company with Malick, also narratively. Particularly if you top and tail the film, lopping of the National Geographic and the Ten People You Meet In Heaven segments, you are left with a ninety minute impressionistic view of a disfunctional fifties family.
Or at least cinema, and cinematic technique, wants us to feel it is disfunctional. The air of dread around the dinner table and Brad Pitt’s hard, driven father figure all suggest that there is more to this scenario than meets the eye. The undercurrent of tension plays well, the kids are our viewpoint characters and as there is barely a narrative, tension fills the gaps. But even when Pitt’s father explodes, the film suffers from a difficult dichotomy. Film has taught us that aggressive dads are bad, that dramatically there is no smoke without fire and dread has to come from somewhere. But at the same time Jessica Chastain’s mother is so gossamer thin, an angel made flesh in her sons eyes that any comparison with the father will make him feel wanting. The most burning question I wanted to ask others on the way out is if Brad Pitt’s father is a bad dad? Or at least is he abusive, bullying or just the way Dad’s were in the fifties? Because it strikes me that I knew the dread around the dinner table, there was real sanction in “wait til your father gets home“, and the role of the father as disciplinarian was often out of necessity and not seen as a bad one. It was the way that, up until recently, Western families were. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • 3 Comments
12 July 2011
34: Pather Panchali / 35: Aparajito / 36: The World of Apu (DVD)
Of course I tease. Of course I am being deliberately provocative. Satyajit Ray’s trilogy is nothing like the three cack handed George Lucas toy shilling adverts, these are lovely elegaic films, of coming of age, of town and country, of sweeping understated* tragedy. Of course there is a superficial similarity with the lead character Apu losing his family, growing up with an air of mysticism and then in anger rejecting his own child until a reconciliation. Of course Apu doesn’t strictly turn to the dark side in the intermediate sections, there are no clone troopers or incomprehensible battles beyond the stars. Just Benares, Calcutta, countryside and the growing pains of a difficult child. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • 3 Comments
21 June 2011
31 & 32: Ip Man (DVD) and Return Of The Fist: The Legend Of Chen Zhen (DVD)
The cinema shorthand, when I was a kid, was that Nazi’s were evil cannon fodder. Classic dehumanising techniques from a jingoistic media trying to make sense of years of war, and the aftermath. It was handy that the Nazi’s made it pretty easy to portrayed as such, Hitler and his Final Solution still seem objectively much more evil than most wars about territory. And as Mitchell and Webb pointed out recently, wearing skulls as insignia suggest that you might be the bad guys.
I don’t know much about Chinese history beyond some of the bulletpoint bits and Chairman Mao’s really rather versatile jacket. I do know that Japan and China were at war pre-WWII, and that Japan had significant gains within China, such as Shanghai and so on. But Japanese cinema barely touches anything resembling modern history, and Chinese cinema (depending on its provenance) also seemed to avoid films about this time too. Both national cinemas seem to play a lot more on the long history and Wuxia and Samurai type historical films (with their own codified genre tropes). more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • 7 Comments
13 June 2011
Film 2Oh!! is an attempt to write about every film I have seen this year which is really quite tricky. This year I have seen 124 films, written about 25. Its tricky. So lets try and mop a few up with some thoughts on some films I have seen lately.
26: Senna (cinema)
Remarkable how cinematic a documentary made completely from grainy TV footage can be. Remarkable how much the non-stop historical cigarette advertising throughout the film made me want a gasper. Particularly Rothmans, the Williams and my Dad’s formula one cigarette of choice. I remember one Christmas at family gathering racing a packer of John Player Special against a pack of Rothmans on the dining table as we “played” Formula 1. And being mighty disappointed that no-one in the family smoked Marlboro’s.
27. Julia’s Eyes (cinema)
Dear the makers of Julia’s Eyes. I can understand why thematically it may make sense in a film about someone losing her sight, you may want to mirror her failing eyesight with dull fading cinematography. I understand it, but it is as bad an idea as associating “unremarkable” with “invisible”. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • 1 Comment
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