pentimento

(via Kevin Church)

As therapy for the author, proof that not everything has to be Wanted, and not everyone has to be squashed into a tin can.

I saw Wanted. From the ground up, it was Not Good. First: If the film makers are going to truly give not a single shit about the story or the line readings and set out to create something that’s basically anti-fun, then they can’t complain when I throw vegetables at the screen and stick pins in a doll of Mark Millar. Second: James McAvoy has his gifts, but fielding punch lines lobbed his way by the likes of Morgan Freeman and Terence Stamp is not one of them. Third: Will people please stop telling me that CGI human figures are worth a damn, when the shots of Wesley and Fox riding the top of Loop cars look like something knocked together by Ray Harryhausen in his lunch hour.

And fourth, fifth and onward: Angelina. You break my heart. Leaving aside the physical aspects…no, can’t. Showing skin just ensures that the physical aspects are unavoidable. She looks dreadful, her face so drawn it’s a toss up whether it’s worse with her hair up, so you can see the state of her, or down, when she looks like she’s been locked in a washing machine. But much worse than that, there’s no shred of enjoyment of her profession coming from her from start to finish.

Thing is, I was there in 1998, to see a moment in Gia which made me spill my drink onto the carpet and still makes my jaw hang slack in the breeze now, the one where Gia Carangi faces the reality of her drug addiction but can’t stop herself reaching for the fatal foil packet. Jolie, back to camera, reaches behind herself while maintaining an embrace with a lover, and manages to convey deception, desire and total self-destruction from a point somewhere between her shoulder blades. That wasn’t quite enjoyment of the job either, but it was something complex and magnetic and it gave you the shivers.

It was impossible to guess where Jolie might be headed from there. Turns out it was here, squashed into Wanted as comfortably as a neutron bomb concealed in a tin can.

Bad news: My old friend the Millennium Clock is in storage. Ridiculous news: Until 2011.

Five and a half thousand words about the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival over at Cinemattraction and I should really be pointing out that I said nothing about:

Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which shows that not only has Patti Smith grown old gracefully and avoided turning into an wrinkled embarrassment, but she also does a mean Bob Dylan impersonation. The sight of Sam Sheppard busking on guitar like the Marlboro Man’s minstrel sidekick is one to treasure.

Máncora, which did not convince me that Elsa Pataky will do much away from her native language, despite the best efforts of the Spanish bikini industry.

Jason and the Argonauts, which should only ever be watched in the art deco splendour of the Dominion theatre, reclining on one of their leather couches and sat next to Ray Harryhausen’s family.

Just Another Love Story, which as titles go is a poor translation of Kærlighed på Film and misses the deliberate noir pastiche that Ole Bornedal seems to be going for.

and King of Ping-Pong, in which life in Luleå appears to swing from a droll bunch of overweight folk struggling with their indoor plumbing, to pain and gunfire and paternal misery at a moment’s notice. Luckily real life in Sweden is nothing like…actually I’ve lived there and, well…

I should be pointing out all of this. And yet all I can really think about is The Fall, a film that seems to have seeped into my brain and taken up residence there.

*may not include actual plan.

Proper reports from the Edinburgh Film Festival will be over at Cinemattraction again, once I’ve got my journalistic act together.

Overflow (should any be needed) and attempts to remember what the heck just happened (which will definitely be needed) may well go on Onement, the tumblelog that time forgot, now I’ve remembered that it even existed. And found a design I can stomach.

By the half way mark this could be me:

Well this sucks:

She caught up with him again. Roy Scheider was present at a crucial moment in my childhood education, the one when my dad was obliged to try and explain why the harassed guy in Paris nicknamed Doc wasn’t quite the same man as the guy with the shark and outline the basic principles of home entertainment. If the concept of screen acting had crossed my brain at an earlier date, I can’t remember it.

And this really sucks :

Me and Howard The Duck never got on at all, but the ferocious imagining that went on in Steve Gerber’s 1970s Defenders is just unforgettable. Twenty years later I tuned in briefly to Nevada and he was still at it. A mind as agile as that, stuck in a body where the lungs are turning to stone.

“Dear me,

Over the years, I have resented you for not being athletic enough, brave enough, funny enough, smart enough, talented enough, handsome enough, rich enough, admired enough, educated enough, New York enough, out-going enough, quiet enough, old enough, young enough, loving enough and loved enough. I have demanded perfection from you and have found you wanting. The result of this obsession with perfection has been to make you terrified of failure and ridicule, angry at any and all obstacles, and finally, incapable of enjoying the bounty that was not only around you, but within you as well. Well, all that’s about to change. From now on, I’m going to make every effort to love and accept you as you are.

But since bad habits die hard, I’ll start with something easy. From now on, you’re old enough.

Affectionately,

Me.”

(Not for the first time, Chuck Lorre gets there ahead of me.)

Carlos Reygadas, interviewed about Silent Light at brightlightsfilm:

“I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story! The great part of film is to make you feel, not by the narrative.[…]The first shot of my film is cinematic. The light itself is beautiful. In literature, that does not exist.”

If he’s pointing out that movies affect the mind at the same time as several organs lower down with different agendas, well sure. But if he means that narrative and feeling can’t go together on a movie screen, then he should be wearing a tin foil hat.

By making Silent Light into an anti-narrative he turns it from a movie into a stationary, and finding yourself on the receiving end of one of those can be a very odd experience. Here’s a critic having some trouble with the implications.

And if he means that you can’t get beautiful light in literature, then even I, with the book-smarts of a philistine, think he’s missed the point of that whole written-poetry fad. Plus the Philistines made very nice pots.

“Silent Light” is an unhelpful title, since the film’s anything but silent. (My sister caught a showing of The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari which really was silent, as in no accompanying sound whatsoever. By all accounts, madness beckoned.) In Silent Light you’re constantly and very deliberately listening to barks, moos, wails, sobs, songs, giggles, splashes, rustles, and the sound of your companion’s fingers drumming impatiently on the arm rest.

But at least the title doesn’t include the word Quantum. I don’t imagine for a second that the next Bond’s title will actually cause trouble for whoever gets to do the song. They’ll just ignore it. Only madmen would embrace the word Quantum for lyrical purposes.

So step forward They Might Be Giants: the time has come for Cut The Strings to take its place of glory at the front end of a major motion picture.

Darwyn Cooke’s Selina Kyle, sporting classic diamond necklace and bob combo.

Adam Hughes’ Selina Kyle, sporting Victoria’s Secret.

Amber Moelter’s Selina Kyle. Very sporting.