Director
Whit Stillman has notmade a film since
1998’s The Last Days of Disco,and dancing again features prominently is his extremely
funny campus tale Damsels in Distress.
It’s quirky and very charming, even if it doesn’t exactly keep its momentum going
entirely throughout.
It
is refreshingly not full of Hollywood A listers, the cast brilliantly led by
Greta Gerwig as Violet, who organises a small group of American college girls into
trying to save potentially suicidal fellow students. The young women who gather
around her are acerbically
judgemental, as they set out to attract boys who are not good looking or cool. The
action seems to be set in present day, but there are oddly no sign of any
social networking going on.
And
there are some very, very funny scenes, particularly one involving doughnuts. As
the film unwinds, it becomes obvious that Violet is fundamentally unhappy and
as damaged as she thinks the people she is trying to help are. Stillman manages
to create characters who are both comedic and repellent , and with whom his
audience can’t help but empathise with too.
The
dancing is fabulous, and is becoming a Stillman trademark feature. This is an
uplifting oddity of a film which is a delight to watch.
Just out
on DVD is a very quiet and understated road movie/love story from Argentinean director Pablo Giorgelli. Ruben (German de Silva) is a middle aged truck
driver who has agreed to take a woman passenger, Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) with him
from Paraguay to Buenos Aires as a favour for his boss. He obviously prefers
his own company, and is a bit put out, in a silent kind of way, when she
appears with a five month old baby girl in tow.
There is
not much dialogue to speak of, with the noise of the truck’s engine featuring
more prominently than any words. But the way their relationship develops is quite
affecting, and not at all sentimentally done. The film is only 82 minutes long,
but to be honest the long silences make it drag slightly at times. But watching
Ruben’s emotions slowly come out of hibernation, first towards the young baby,
and then to her mother, is very gently and nicely done.
Bob Marley’s charisma shines through in this highly
enjoyable and informative documentary about the man who put reggae music on the
world map. It’s amazing to think that he was only 36 when he died of cancer in
1981, having achieved so much in his short life.
Kevin Macdonald’s impressive film, if slightly overlong
at 2 hours 25 minutes, charts the rise of this gifted and highly influential
man from the dirt poor countryside of Jamaica to the harsh streets of Kingston.
His beauty is striking, and his talent undeniable. What is more surprising perhaps
is just how driven and hard working he was, making his fellow band members rehearse
for hour upon hour, and only getting about three or four hours sleep a night
himself.
Macdonald hints at some conclusions that his audience
might draw from the interviews he shows of many of Marley’s close friends and
family members, without ever really spelling them out. And there is a wealth of
detail that I was not previously aware of, like the impact of his having a
white father, who deserted his mother very early on in his life and was not
around to share his son’s childhood. This, and his mixed race heritage, seems
to have lead Marley to a deep sense of rejection and a feeling of not belonging.
His salvation was the Rastafarian religion which shaped
his life and music, and which grounded him in his core beliefs of peace and
love to all humanity. But some of the more
contentious details are skirted over, like his attitude to his children and the
many women in his life. His daughter, for example, is very visibly still
hurting from not being able to really get close to her father, even when he was
on his deathbed.
Marley comes
across as an ultra competitive person, who was just as capable of being cold to
those close to him, as he was of being extremely warm and generous to the thousands
of people who came to him for charitable hand outs. And the political dimension
to his relationship with Chris Blackwell and Island Records is not really not
explored, just hinted at.
So maybe one day there will be another story told about
Bob Marley, which doesn’t leave out some of the details which his family want
to remain hidden. I am sure it will be equally fascinating, but for the moment
it is enough to enjoy this inspiring man and his uplifting music. This film is
a great reminder of the power and joy of Marley’s songs, and it was good to see
how many of the audience were in their twenties – so his is also music for a
new generation perhaps.
Cards on the table
– I love this play. It reminds me of when my eldest son was 5 and enjoyed
nothing more than dressing up like a knight and watching alternate versions of
it. Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Oliver
were certainly staples in our house for a while about 20 years ago. Happy
memories....
But apart
from my maternal nostalgia, it is a cracking play, and the Globe Theatre have certainly
got a great production of it touring the country before taking it to their home
this summer. Jamie Parker is suitably regal and
commanding as the warrior king. He should be used to playing him now, as
he was the same Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 at The Globe in summer
2010. But his former life of debauchery has most definitely been left behind,
as he inspires his ‘happy few’ soldiers to a heroic victory against the mighty
French armies on the fields at Agincourt.
It must be
difficult to follow in such large footsteps, but Parker largely gets the tone
just right. Not copying the previous deliveries of the more famous speeches,
but stamping his own brand on them. The battle scenes are well played – always tricky
in such a small space – damn that writer!
The whole
cast is excellent, but special mentions should go to Brendan
O’Hea as the amusing and
verbose Welshman Fluellen, and to Brid Brennan as the narrator who persuasively
and gently guides the audience through the fast paced action. Great
entertainment, comedy and drama all rolled into one package.
As the Premier League season draws to its nail biting end
(interest declared now as a 100% blue and nervous Man City fan), you may well be wondering
how teams such as Newcastle United have achieved such great results this year
with a team assembled on a relative shoestring. Well, look no further than the DVD
of Moneyball for all the answers. And
before you ask, no, you don’t have to understand baseball to appreciate it at
all.
This is the true story of how the total underdogs of
American baseball in 2001, the Oakland Athletics, took the league by storm, and
very nearly won it too, by making use of statistics and analysis in a way never
before seen in sport. This film is an adaptation of the book by the brilliant Michael
Lewis, who manages to turn to the credit crunch and the near collapse of the Euro
into page turning thrillers. And it doesn’t harm this film’s cause that it
features Brad Pitt, who gives a simply fantastic performance as Billy Beane,
the failed baseball star turned General Manager of the A’s.
Oakland are really struggling at the bottom of the league
- think Wolves with knobs on – when Billy accidently stumbles across an analyst
with an freshly earned economics degree from Yale, who holds the key to unlock the
winning formula. Jonah Hill is fabulous
as the unassuming Pete, who is able to analyse players records in a totally
unique way, so that a team like Oakland with scant resources, are able to assemble
a team of players that no-one else wants to buy, and turn them into winners. This
goes against everything that is the accepted norm in the sport – when players
are bought according to ridiculous criteria such as their girlfriends’ looks - ‘Ugly girlfriend? = no confidence
– not bought’.
Beane is a complex, bittersweet character, who is
battling not only the club hierarchy, but his own demons. But his partnership
with Pete in finding value in players that are universally rejected using
complex mathematical formulas is a great story. Pitt plays it brilliantly, and the
story is all the more fantastical for being true. And, although as a Man City
fan I really shouldn’t admit this, there is a great morality tale in finding
value in the rejected, and in allowing money not to triumph in the end. Stirring
stuff of dreams. Now, what about those weekend fixtures...
It always amazes me, although
I should know better by now, that comedies written so long ago can still
delight and entertain modern audiences, and have me howling with laughter as
much as the Northern Broadsides current production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost triumphantly
manages to do.
This is a delightful frolic through
the King of Navarre and his three friends’ attempts to be studious and celibate
academics for three years in his Spanish kingdom. They do not bargain for the
delights of the Princess of France and her ladies arriving to tempt them away
from their dry books. The comic timing is brilliant, and Matt Connor especially,
as Berowne, gives a stand out performance.
The colours and styles of the
costumes are delightful, and the musical accompaniment to the merriment is
great fun. Barry Rutter again shows how Shakespeare can be delivered in good, honest
Northern accents, and still be appreciated for the genius he was, brilliantly
accentuated by this hilarious modern adaptation.
Adam Foggerty is also great
as the lumbering peasant Cotsard, who manages to get things wrong in all the
right places. But it feels churlish to point out any more of the performers, as
all round great entertainment and side splitting humour was delivered by each
and every one.
This is
quite a slight offbeat film from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, set amongst the
working class people in the French port of the title. And it’s no advert for Le
Havre as a place, but it is a heart-warming, and gently political story.
Marcel (André
Wilms) isan elderly shoe shine man who takes
pity on a Congolese boy who has come into the country illegally, and managed to
escape the authorities. He helps Idrissa (Blondin Miguel),to escape to his mother in London,
despite his own wife being very ill. Most of his friends and neighbours pitch
in to raise money for the escape, and it is an affectionate demonstration of people
who have the least being most generous with what little they do possess.
There is
quite an amusing performance by aging rock star ‘Little Bob’, and the characters
are all quite touching. It doesn’t set the world alight, not is it meant to I
suspect. And in its own way it’s a damning indictment of the way so called
civilised nations treat people who are desperately fleeing from poverty and war
in their native lands.
