Screenwriter »

• It’s Harry Potter Day. Boo! Boo!

  November 19, 2010 @ 1:06 am | by Donald Clarke

  Well, actually, round these parts, we tend to think of it as Uncle Boonmee Day. On the same date that the 124th Harry Potter film is unveiled in every cinema across the country (and every screen therein), Uncle Boonmee who can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes winner,  sneaks into a few lucky picture palaces. Being a snooty, highbrow paper, we have no compunction in pointing you towards the more difficult Thai film. Read my interview with the director on Saturday. Go and see the film if you’re able. If you’ve perused Ms Brady’s chat with the chap behind the lovely Chico & Rita then you may well view that as another acceptable option.

  

  “Hello? Hello? Sorry, I’d like to ask why this image is being used. Oh I see. Very droll.”

  Now, I call Uncle Boonmee “more difficult”, but — speaking almost entirely without facetiousness — I would have to say I find the attractions of the supposed family film harder to disentangle than those of the surreal, meditative art picture. To my mind, the Harry Potter films, though beautifully made, are constructed for the exclusive pleasure of those who have read the books. Go to any Potter discussion board on IMDb and, despite the fact that the pictures are extremely faithful, you will find endless complaints about supposed divergences from the sacred text. One gets the sense that, like those classical music enthusiasts who bring the score to concerts, extreme Potterologists run their fingers along Ms Rowling’s prose while watching the deliciously expensive images.  I’m with Hitchcock. If, to make a good movie, you have to ditch everything from the source material bar one juicy image, then that is what you should do. Behave otherwise and, when adapting a 32,000 page children’s book, you may end up having to split the blasted film into two not very small units. Heck, they managed to adapt War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, David Copperfield and Gone With the Wind into one film. (Not the same film, you understand. Four different films. Oh, you know what I mean.)

  Anyway, as I mentioned a few months ago, I have, to this point, grudgingly awarded three huffy stars to each Potter film I reviewed. (Michael Dwyer, my late colleague, a genuine fan, was more generous.) My view was that, while narratively leaden, the blasted things did satisfy their core audience. The latest one, however, totally did me in. Martin Amis once said something to the effect that the critic’s job is to decide how something rubs him or her up and then go away and decide why it rubs him or her up that way. Having fought sleep all the way through Deathly Hallows, I duly awarded it two stars and vented spleen upon newsprint.

  Considering the abuse I received for granting a lukewarm, three-star review to the last film, I can only speculate on the fury about to emanate from the Pottersphere. Oh well…

  Comments (21)

• Ho hum, it’s the end of the year.

  December 11, 2009 @ 5:35 pm | by Donald Clarke

  After all the end-of-decade lists, our round-up of the best films from 2009 may seem like a little bit of an anti-climax. At any rate, today’s Ticket features a comprehensive analysis of what’s hot and what’s not from the big ‘09 (as nobody’s calling it). My pal Michael Dwyer makes a welcome return in this article, but please note that — unless it’s been corrected since I last checked — his second “top 10″ of 2009 in the on-line version should read “bottom 10″.  You knew that. It was never likely that our distinguished film correspondent would choose the vile, unfunny, misogynistic, chaotic Observe and Report as his favourite movie of the year.

  

  Stop moping, young lady. You won!

  If you can’t be bothered to click, here is Screenwriter’s top ten:

  1. Let the Right One In

  2. The White Ribbon

  3. A Serious Man

  4. Up

  5. Il Divo

  6. Anvil: The Story of Anvil

  7. Moon

  8. The Wrestler

  9. District 9

  10. Tales from the Golden Age

  Bubbling under were Star Trek, Synecdoche, New York, The Hurt Locker, Encounters at the End of the World, The Hangover, Inglourious Basterds, Orphan and Public Enemies.

  And here’s the poo:

  1. The Boat that Rocked

  2. The Ugly Truth

  3.  Bride Wars.

  4. Couples Retreat.

  5. Surveillance.

  Also in this week’s Ticket, I break ranks with most of my colleagues in the critical fraternity by remaining unconvinced by Where the Wild Things Are. Do still go see it, though. I await the avalanche of complaints.

  Comments (9)

• Elementary, my dear Trailerspotting.

  November 20, 2009 @ 11:49 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Insofar as anything so grand as “controversy” can attach attach itself to the trailer-junkie community, some sort of, well, controversy has gathered round the promo for Guy Ritchie’s upcoming assault on Sherlock Holmes. Recalling the whole Shutter Island furore, the dispute hinges on whether you think the film looks like a steaming pile of turnips or the dog’s best pyjamas.

  

  We must, of course, face up to the problem of Mr Ritchie himself. There are, I guess, three takes on our Guy.

  1. The man’s an idiot and that’s all there is to it. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was Mockney garbage from a monocled-toff whose aunt is the Fourth Duchess of Bufton Tufton and who eats poor children for supper. Snatch was more of the same. And as for Revolver…

  2. The man’s a decent entertainer who went off the rails all too quickly. Lock Stock and Snatch are perfectly good fun. Sadly, Swept Away and Revolver are among the most hilariously wretched films ever made. RocknRolla was a partial return to modest form.

  3. The man’s a genius. Far from being pretentious drivel written, apparently, by a 19-year-old with a railway spike in his frontal lobe, Revolver is intellectual meat of the gamiest type. You just don’t get it.

  Now, I tend towards the second option. As a result, I am rather well disposed toward this apparently unpretentious Sherlock Holmes. I bow to nobody in my devotion to the original stories, but Ritchie is, it seems, making no gestures towards faithfulness. So there’s no real reason to get hoity-toity about the trailer’s lack of Doyleness. This is Holmes as action hero and the promo suggests that penny-dreadful larks will not be in short supply. Okay, Downey Jr — an actor I can overdose on very easily — doesn’t quite have the accent right. Sure, the film seems very reliant on CGI backgrounds.

  But Sherlock Holmes dives out of the Houses of Parliament into the Thames. He has a fight with a big man and his hammer — beside, I’m guessing, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s The Great Eastern — and various people appear to be rising untethered from the dead.  Come on. It’s bound to be a bit of a lark.

  As far as weekly housekeeping goes, the film of the week is, without question, the Coens’ astringent, penetratingly pessimistic, weirdly hilarious A Serious Man. I was much  keener on Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! than many critics. And I remain pretty much on board with the latest episode of the teen bloodsucker mopefest that goes by the name of Twilight. Decide for yourselves, folks.

  Comments (21)

• Baldwin & Martin’s Laugh-In (And weekly notes)

  November 6, 2009 @ 7:56 pm | by Donald Clarke

  So, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are to host the Oscars. Well, that’s almost interesting. Actually, there is something mildly intriguing about the fact that Dr Hfuhruhurr and Mr Conductor are now being flung together as a double act. Note how the reports take it as read that Steve and Alec are equally famous and equally respectable. This constitutes quite an achievement for Mr Baldwin and — depending upon your view of Alec’s standing — a potential source of worry for Steve and his current face.

  

  We first heard of Baldwin back in the early 1980s when, as a member of the Knots Landing company, he blazed trails for an array of similarly boxy brothers — Billy, Danny, Stevie, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Titch — who massed together to form a kind of collective punching-bag for the world’s film writers. You remember how it went. “Why, sir, the only thing this film requires to complete its wretchedness is a few Baldwins about the place. Har, har.” He got caught up in a messy marriage with Kim Basinger and appeared in  movies that were so forgettable I can’t be bothered to make fun of them.

  Meanwhile, Steve Martin was  maintaining his position as the world’s greatest Kafka-reading, banjo-playing, prematurely-greying quasi-physical comedian. Baldwin flashed his teeth at various inflatable nonentities in Knots Landing. Martin raised proper laughs in The Man With Two Brains and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. If, at any point in the following decade, you suggested that Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin were similarly prestigious celebrities you would have been laughed down Sunset Boulevard, out across the desert and back home to Kansas.

  Yet here we are. Once Baldwin realised that, rather than an only modestly good-looking lead, he was an unusually handsome character actor, he powered forward and became the chap every star wants lurking over his shoulder. He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in The Cooler and picked up two Emmys for 30 Rock. A mere five years ago, in Team America World Police, Kim Jong Il noted that “Arec Bardwin is the greatest actor in the worrd” and we all laughed. Now, though he is far from achieving that honour, the joke doesn’t seem quite so funny.

  Martin’s recent films have included Pink Panther 2, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and Bringing Down the House. Actually, come to think of it, it’s Baldwin who should now be outraged that the two men are regarded as equals. It’s a cruel business.

  In other news, the film of the week is The Men Who Stare At Goats. It’s a flawed piece of work, but, thanks to Mr Clooney, it remains diverting throughout. A great many critics liked Bright Star but, the nice Flake-ad photography noted, I found it a little bit thin.

  This week Screenwriter is listening to: Tarot Sport by F**k Buttons. Thump, thump, thump. Crunch!

  This week Screenwriter will be watching the following telly: The Thick of It. Some people (inevitably) think it’s “gone off”. Not me.

  Oh and, yes, as at least one reader pointed out, there is an error in the quiz. See if you can find it.

  Comments (8)

• What’s the film of the week? (And other questions)

  October 23, 2009 @ 8:15 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I make it up as I go along, you know.

  Film of the week is Wes Anderson’s agreeably strange version of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox. It’s not all that faithful to the book and it’s maybe a little too cool for its own good, but it stays true to Anderson’s hyper-geek sensibility. Heck, the hero is even wearing the director’s favourite corduroy suit.

  The Cove, a documentary about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan, is also worth a glance. Maybe they risk a few too many compromises in their desire to make things exciting, but, rather that than another An Irritating Truth.

  Over there in the stinky slops bucket we have Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant and The Goods: Live hard, Sell Hard. As regards the latter film, we, once again, find ourselves asking: what sort of medication is The Guardian’s Mad Pete Bradshaw taking and can I have some? (I should say that Pete’s a very good writer. But he doesn’t half exhibit some eccentric views.)

  Elsewhere in The Ticket you can check out my interview with Jason Schwartzman and read flesh-and-blood Screenwriter on the tricky matter of spoilers in reviews.

  SCREENWRITER’S TOP FIVE OF THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL SO FAR (with one-word review).

  1. The White Ribbon (Austere)

  2. Tales from The Golden Age (Sardonic)

  3. Up in the Air (Suave)

  4. The Road (Grey)

  5. The Informant! (Zany)

  If you’re wondering, I have yet to (officially) see promising flicks such as A Serious Man and Taking Woodstock.

  Screenwriter has been listening to Testament Paris/London by Keith Jarrett. The greatest improviser of the last 40 years delivers his best solo piano record for over a decade.

  Screenwriter has been reading Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. It’s the “accessible” Tom of Lot 49 and Vineland, but, if you want to follow the plot, you may still need to take notes.

  Screenwriter will be watching the following telly: Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, tonight on BBC4. There is no movement more fascinating. Rock on Amon Duul!

  Comments (10)

• Film of the week and stuff.

  October 16, 2009 @ 11:40 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  By the time this message manifests itself, you will have long ago digested your soaraway Ticket and pressed the paper (you do buy the print edition, don’t you?) into the base of a grateful budgie’s cage. My apologies. But, as mentioned below, I am currently stomping about the London Film Festival and do not have much opportunity to hammer out gibberish. Today I met Viggo Mortensen, who was very nice and who didn’t chop my head off with a great big sword.

  Anyway, it’s a decent enough week for movies. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a mess, but it’s an interesting mess. Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst, though flawed, really is the best amalgam of Emile Zola and vampire melodrama you will see this month, and Christopher Smith’s Triangle is an impressively peculiar Anglo-Australian-American horror. There is, however, no competition for film of the week. Katalin Varga, a Transylvanian rape-revenge thriller by some bloke from Reading, is one of the year’s most impressive debuts. Alas, it is currently only on at the Irish Film Institute, but, all going well, it may pop up elsewhere.

  Screenwriter is currently listening to: Black Sea by Fennesz. It goes bleep, sqwerk, fizz in very satisfactory fashion.

  Screenwriter is currently reading: London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins. Screenwriter very much likes books about miserable men in boarding houses.

  Screenwriter will be watching the following telly: Synth Britannia on BBC4. You say “Cabaret Voltaire” to young people today and they have no bleeding idea what you’re talking about.

  Comments (1)