In a way, Naomi Watts has become cinema’s fatalistic Nancy Drew. In both Mulholland Drive and The Ring, Watts allows her curiosity to lead her down dangerous paths to the point of no return. In David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, she does the same, allowing both her curiosity and moral code draw her into an unfamiliar and perilous world. As midwife Anna, Watts takes it upon herself to find the whereabouts of a deceased Russian girl’s family in order to keep the girl’s newborn child out of foster care. This, inevitably, has disturbing results, as she becomes associated with London’s Russian mafia, lead by restaurant owner Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), and must choose between her and her family’s safety or the usually difficult choice of “doing the right thing.”
In many people’s eyes, Cronenberg "returned to form" with A History of Violence, a film with lofty ambitions that I still haven’t decided whether he met or not. Eastern Promises is simpler than A History of Violence in most respects. The film never presumes to dissect the nature and consequences of the violence it depicts, however Cronenberg and screenwriter Steven Knight layer Eastern Promises with so many other levels of intrigue that it poses as almost a more intellectually difficult film than its predecessor. Gone from A History of Violence (and a number of his first films) is the teetering pulpiness of its comic book roots. Replaced is something quieter, less showy, and more mannered. With Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel, and Sinéad Cusack rounding out the rest of the cast, Cronenberg keeps his actors to a level of discreetness without sacrificing competence. In fact, even with the occasional spurts of graphic violence, Cronenberg keeps the whole film from venturing over the top, which pays off in the electrifying naked bathhouse brawl.
A friend of mine commented that if Eastern Promises were released in the 1950s, it would have been simply a pleasant time at the picture show. It has all the qualities of a sophisticated B-movie. One must remember that, unfortunately, we live in an era where most films (A, B, C, or whatever letter you choose to assign them) coast at middle-of-the-road, so in this world, we fall over ourselves when a B-movie succeeds beyond expectation. In regards to Cronenberg’s career over the past decade, Eastern Promises could be regarded as his biggest success as a direct result of its restraint. With Eastern Promises, Cronenberg defines himself as a filmmaker who defies expectation, a man of considerable integrity and the uncanny ability to surprise his audience with each new film.
With: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinéad Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski, Mina E. Mina, Donald Sumpter Screenplay: Steven Knight Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky Music: Howard Shore Country of Origin: UK/Canada US Distributor: Focus Features
Premiere: 8 September 2007 (Toronto International Film Festival) US Premiere: 14 September 2007
Awards: People’s Choice Award (Toronto International Film Festival); Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor – Armin Mueller-Stahl, Best Cinematography, Best Editing – Ronald Sanders, Best Score, Best Overall Sound, Best Sound Editing (Genie Awards, Canada); Best Actor – Viggo Mortensen (British Independent Film Awards)
I think this shall represent the final purging of the trivia rattling around my brain from 2008.
Welcome Miscellaneous Events of the Year: Nicholas Stoller and David Koepp making good use of Russell Brand and Ricky Gervais
I'm not really a fan of either British comedian, but in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Ghost Town both were great, playing to their strengths and their public personas perfectly. It's even made me like them a bit. It's miraculous.
Honourable Mentions: Kate Beckinsale's strong performance in Snow Angels. So much better when not modelling rubber pants. Seeing RADA-trained Shakespearean actor Adrian Lester playing a gun-toting hardass in Doomsday and seemingly relishing it. The arrival of Rebecca Hall as a formidable screen presence. Tim Roth's excellent performance as Emil Blonsky in The Incredible Hulk (usually I'm not a fan of his).
Unwelcome Miscellaneous Events of the Year: Fox being the biggest assholes in the world for trying to ruin the release of Watchmen. Will there be a boycott of X-Men Origins: Wolverine as a result? I'd like to hope it happens.
Dishonourable Mentions: The incomprehensibility of the action scenes in Quantum of Solace and Eagle Eye. The truly disheartening career choices of Al Pacino. Taraji P. Henson's bizarre stereotypical acting choices in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. George Lucas's decision to make the character of Ziro the Hutt a weird lisping cross-dresser with Truman Capote's voice in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. An entire planet says, "WTF?"
Best Poster:The Dark Knight
Worst Poster:Bangkok Dangerous
Best Advertising Campaign of the Year:Cloverfield
After the trailer from last year, the campaign never really put a foot wrong. By the time the movie came out, there was no way even the worst reviews would have stopped us watching it.
Worst Advertising Campaign of the Year:The Incredible Hulk
Slender trailers, a couple of crappy TV spots, an inability to control the grouchy star (other than a funny bit on Jimmy Kimmel), and eventually, just before the release, a huge emphasis on the appearance of Robert Downey Jr., and the end of the movie being re-edited to give that tiny scene more prominence. No wonder the movie didn't make as much money as hoped. It all made the movie look like this rush-job trying to find an empty weekend during the busy summer season, but even a cursory look at the extras on the DVD show the astonishing amount of hard work and thought that went into it. Such a shame. Anyway, here's the Kimmel thing. It's the only vaguely good thing to come out of the shockingly mishandled campaign.
Least Discreet Advertising Campaign of the Year:
Wanted's many trailers gave away pretty much every WOW moment of the film. As the plot (minus the crazy Loom of Fate and exploding rats stuff) was very similar to the comic, it felt like a waste of time actually sitting through the movie. I can see that the movie was a tough sell, but couldn't they have kept some more stuff back for the film?
Most Deliriously Batshit Action Movie of the Year:Rambo
Honourable Mentions:Vantage Point, Eagle Eye, Chocolate
Vocal Sound Effect of the Year: “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” (Clint Eastwood - Gran Torino)
Catchphrase of the Year: "Let! Us! Fuck!" (Zack and Miri Make A Porno)
Most Welcome Trend of the Year (Other Than The Grudging Critical Respect Aimed At The Superhero Genre): The New Horror Renaissance
It's been going on for a while now, but even so, this year we were lucky enough to get Eden Lake, [Rec], The Orphanage, Let The Right One In and, arguably, the interesting adaptation of Scott Smith's horror classic The Ruins, all of which were of varying degrees of quality but definitely in the "very good" column. I feel like adding Neil Marshall's hugely entertaining Doomsday to that list, for being in such debt to John Carpenter, James Cameron, and George Miller, who all know how to make a suspenseful or horrifying movie. Marshall has shown he can duplicate those talents with ease. If I'm going to add that, I'll even make a case for Stuart Gordon's excellent Stuck, which is macabre, ghoulish, nail-biting suspense, as well as being a terrific comment on poverty and the pressures put on the working class, and features an excellent performance from Stephen Rea. It's been a long time since I was excited by the horror genre, and it's an odd feeling.
Least Welcome Trend of the Year: Post-Modern Cinema-Verite Movies about the War in Iraq
Don't get me wrong, it's vital we keep our eye on that war, and never forget that people are suffering there in simply horrible ways, but whereas documentaries like No End in Sight, Taxi To The Dark Side, and Standard Operating Procedure do their best to illuminate by giving voice to as many different observers as possible, Nick Broomfield's Battle For Haditha and Brian De Palma's Redacted try to create a different kind of "truth" by either recreating an atrocity or by staging a po-mo video collage of a fictional atrocity based on a real one. Both movies come from an honest place but mangle the truth through their different approaches; Broomfield with his docu-drama retelling, De Palma with his formalist tricks (fake French documentary footage, YouTube videos, CCTV, hand-held camera shots from soldiers documenting the events). Both movies intentionally feature non-actors playing unconvincing characters (more like avatars) saying clunky expositional dialogue, and featuring some bizarre choices.
For instance, Broomfield invents a composite character who is a major protagonist during the horrifying massacre of innocents. If you don't see the accompanying documentary (the name of which eludes me, regrettably) then you wouldn't know this, and you would assume that somehow that person had given his consent to Broomfield that he could show him in the film, or had had some hand in telling Broomfield what he was thinking and feeling throughout. As he didn't, all of that is now suspect, and whatever horrors the film presents are dulled by that knowledge. Just as annoying, Redacted is not based on a real event, due to legal difficulties, and as such seems like little more than a remake of Casualties of War. Even though we know there was indeed an incident similar to this, the film just muddies the waters and makes it harder for the viewer to figure out what is really going on over there.
As for the hand-held camera, it's not a convention I usually object to. I just think it really only works in movies like Cloverfield and [Rec], where using the participant frame as a method of generating new ways of delivering shocks to the audience is far more tasteful than, say De Palma's use of it. Even more annoying is that is has been proved that a docu-drama can be made that hews as close to the objective truth as it is possible to. Paul Greengrass' astonishing United 93 should be a template to follow, made with as much attention to detail and first-hand accounting as it is possible to. Admittedly Broomfield couldn't get the same level of access to the real participants as Greengrass, but still, there are avoidable choices made that damage his movie.
It's doubly frustrating because these are stories that need to be told and, especially in the case of Haditha, were done with such incredibly good intentions. This article by Broomfield shows how committed he was to telling this story to the best of his abilities. Unfortunately, in the telling of them, by blurring the lines of fact and fiction, and by filling the characters' mouths with words that no normal person would ever say, they have inadvertently distanced the audience from the real horrors. They're still essential viewing, though.
Most Relentless Use of Religious Imagery in a Science Fiction Tale:Dante 01
Dishonourable Mention:Wall*E
Best Hair: Viggo Mortensen's face fuzz (Appaloosa)
He looks like a bit of a dandy but he will fuck you up, for reals.
Worst Hair: Nicolas Cage (Bangkok Dangerous)
Does using shampoo ruin his deadly assassin's aim or something?
Most Improbably Styled Hair: Camilla Belle's pristine dreads in 10000 B.C.
Apparently we're descended from Rasta Valley Girls.
Best Use of Kristen Wiig:Ghost Town
Worst Use of Kristen Wiig: Cutting her entirely out of the cinema release of Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Adorable Screen Couple of the Year: Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man)
Honourable Mentions: Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (Zack and Miri Make a Porno), Mos Def and Melonie Diaz (Be Kind Rewind)
Crap Screen Couple of the Year: Vin Diesel and Mélanie Thierry (Babylon A.D.)
Dishonourable Mentions: Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan (Eagle Eye), Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson (Jumper)
Inappropriate and Just Downright Creepy Screen Couple of the Year: Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson (Let The Right One In)
"Oh Man, At Last!" Couple of the Year: Harrison Ford and Karen Allen (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
"Jesus, Just Split Up Already!" Couple of the Year: Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel (The Happening)
Dishonourable Mention: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road), Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (The Strangers)
Most Awkward and Unconvincing Couple of the Year: Edward Norton and Liv Tyler (The Incredible Hulk)
Utterly Improbable Couple of the Year: James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie (Wanted)
Dishonourable Mention: Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth (21)
Most Gratuitous Kissing Between Two Hotties Just So The Director Can Get His Rocks Off: Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Worst Ending to a Relationship: Kate Beckinsale and Hott Sam Rockwell in Snow Angels
Dishonourable Mentions: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road), Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (The Strangers)
Likeable Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the Year: Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis - Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
Honourable Mention: Chloë - (Clémence Poésy - In Bruges)
Dishonourable Mention: Fox (Angelina Jolie - Wanted)
Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace)
Honourable Mention: Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Unconvincing Lust Object of the Year: Al Pacino (88 Minutes)
Dishonourable Mention: Kate Bosworth (21)
"Kate Winslet In Little Children" Award For Least Believable Unattractiveness: Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler
We're supposed to think Tomei, as stripper Cassidy, looks so old that no one wants her to dance for them? Bullshit. She's looking as good as ever, though kudos to her for selling that plot point.
Most Amusing Critical Crush of the Year: Stephanie Zacharek's potentially compromising soft spot for Jason Statham
At the end of the year, Stephanie Zacharek, film critic for Salon, had her end of year list (somewhat smaller than mine), with a big list of honourable mentions. Among the usual suspects, there was also The Bank Job and Transporter 3, two movies that really are just not that good. When we had a closer look at her reviews for both movies, we found out why: Stephanie + Jason 4evah!
Hilariously, her reviews for both movies (and Death Race, which she was also easy on), were basically mash notes to the Brit Bruiser. Here are some highlights:
"Statham is sexy all right, with that beefcake-pinup chest, but the sexiest thing about him is what's going on upstairs, and his voice alone is delectable: It sounds like a cat's tongue feels." (Transporter 3)
"The look in Statham's eyes reassures [Keeley Hawes] more than his words ever could -- they have a melting quality that counterbalances the rough, masculine raspiness of his voice. In the press notes for "The Bank Job," Donaldson says that Statham reminds him of a British Steve McQueen, and the comparison makes sense. In "The Bank Job," Statham is a sex symbol with a soul..." (The Bank Job)
"Anderson's camera [casts] its unapologetically erotic view on Statham's perfectly chiseled mug -- his stubble is so artfully dappled it could have been painted by Carravagio... There's no doubt he makes a fine physical specimen in any picture: His muscles have that mysterious filmic quality of looking both rock-hard and pillowy at once... Statham moves with such easy grace that you don't have to work hard to believe him. And if he can stand up to Joan Allen, melting her predatory stare with his own molten gaze, then it's clear he's not just the prettiest guy on the prison block, but also the toughest." (Death Race)
I wish she had reviewed In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale as well. I'd wager she definitely owns it.
Okay, I reckon that should be enough. Normal service can be resumed now.
...And I feel blue. There has been a temporary blog slowdown over the last few days, and you can blame Cormac McCarthy for it. Last week I read his breathtaking novel The Road, which paints such a convincing and relentlessly bleak picture of what the world would be like during a nuclear winter that I was propelled headlong into a brainfunk of catastrophic proportions. I can't remember the last time I read something that affected me so profoundly, though I do remember the last film that did; Cronenberg's criminally underrated Spider, doing for my psyche what Cronenberg had previously managed with Dead Ringers many years ago.
Maybe it wasn't just the fault of The Road. Over the last few months I have read Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement (the world has become completely irrational and it's only going to get worse), Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great (religious fundamentalists will be the death of us all), Scott Smith's The Ruins (a metaphor for how we are all doomed due to our ignorance and fear of facing our responsibilities, and a shit-scary horror classic to boot), and Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson's The Gods That Failed (a lengthy and eloquent rant about the forthcoming economic Armageddon that will make paupers of us all). The cumulative effect of all this bleak reading material is to make me even more pessimistic than I previously was.
Maybe if I had followed The Gods That Failed with Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew as planned, I might only be very miserable instead of emotionally washed-out, but it too will be a sobering and downbeat read, even taking into account Frank's deadpan wit. Instead, plumping for McCarthy's novel might have been the worst choice possible. It's all because photos of the adaptation hit the internet last week, showing Viggo Mortenson as the unnamed dad trudging across a blasted and ash-strewn hellscape with his son in tow, waiting for death to take them both before they fall to the hands of marauding cannibal rapists. Well, the photos only showed Viggo looking really miserable, so I went into the book not realising how well McCarthy would paint a picture of a world utterly without hope. Or colour. The inside of my head has been the same ash-gray since finishing the book which, incidentally, I did as quickly as I could in order to get it over and done with.
Though I'm sure most people stumbling across this blog have already read The Road, if you haven't I hesitate to recommend it due to the overwhelmingly negative empathic reaction I had to it. On a non-emotive level I definitely would recommend it. McCarthy is operating at the peak of his phenomenal powers, and with spare poetic prose creates an utterly convincing post-apocalyptic nightmare that has been designed with such rigour that there is no room for hope or optimism (I won't include spoilers that might or might not ultimately qualify that statement. Those who have read The Road will have their own ideas about whether that statement is true or not). It is a totally convincing scenario, and thanks to McCarthy's incredible descriptive facility, there is no escape from his vision of hell on earth. It felt like a mantrap had grabbed onto my soul. So yeah, stunning book, and one everyone should read, but if you don't feel like being really really glum for several days after, skip it.
So, even though I'm not the type to shy away from potentially downbeat material, I figured I needed to take a break from fiction or non-fiction making serious points about how fucked up the world is. Maybe spending the whole weekend watching pretty much the whole third season of The Shield wasn't the best move, but even though it featured nervous breakdowns, beloved characters either killing animals or beating each other almost to the brink of death, rape (perpetrated upon both male and female), dismemberment, moral compromise, racism, homophobia, systemic corruption, unrelenting tension, violence, and a bleak vision of urban decay, at least it was occasionally funny, plotted with astonishing precision, and was never less than riveting. A rewatching of Zoolander was more calming, as was a viewing of the last five episodes of Venture Brothers season three, which would have been an unqualified uplifting triumph if the last two minutes of the finale didn't make me so sad (stupid Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick making me unhappy with the shock ending!).
Nevertheless, the sadness has yet to pass, even with the best efforts of Canyon to cheer me up, which could be evidence that my soul has been tainted by the power of McCarthy's prose even unto its core. After spending some time pootling around the excellent Quiet Earth website, which is devoted to post-apocalyptic sci fi fiction, I realised that that kind of dystopian sci fi can either be depressing (The Road) or kinda fun (they linked to news that a director's cut of the exuberantly daft and entertaining Waterworld is being released, which was one of the few things over the last few days that has cheered me up, and all the Waterworld haters out there can kiss it). As a result, I have gone out of my way to experience less harrowing dystopic sci fi over the last couple of days, in an effort to replace McCarthy's harrowing vision with something that doesn't make me despair, and I shall spend the rest of the week discussing my efforts. If that doesn't appeal to our readers, apologies, but seriously, it beats moaning about Mike Leigh again, folks.
1. Michael Clayton opened in the US last Friday, and box office pundits are shocked and horrified to find that it failed to secure the number one spot. IMDb said:
Michael Clayton, which had been the odds-on favorite among movie pundits to win the weekend box-office crown, not only didn't finish in first place -- it didn't even make third place, as studio estimates had initially indicated. Clayton, it turns out, earned $10.37 million, putting it slightly behind the crime drama We Own the Night, which took in $10.83 million. Equally surprising to some writers was that the film that did top the box office charts was the low-budget Why Did I Get Married, from writer-producer-director Tyler Perry. The film raked in $21.35 million, about twice the earnings of The Game Plan, which placed second with $11.04 million.
Really? This is surprising? I'm psyched that Gorgeous George is committed to making challenging, intelligent, adulty films (not counting Danny Ocean's European Vacation and Danny Ocean and the Amazing Xeroxed Plot From Two Films Ago), and grateful to him for having that ambition, even when it doesn't quite work out: Good Night, and Good Luck was a terrific hour of cinema with an extra pointless 20 minutes bolted onto it. Wow, making even the mildest criticism of Clooney makes me feel like I'm kicking a handsome and debonair puppy. I'm sorry, George! Good Night looked beautiful! And it was really well cast! Please don't hate me! Anyway, Syriana was good enough for two films, so it evens up.
Sadly, his smart, liberal, humanist movies tend to make very little money, and even taking into account the often limited release, the audience for these films is large enough to make the odd small profit, but not big enough to make waves in the turbulent box office waters. Solaris only made $14,973,382 in the domestic market, and $30,002,758 overall. It would have to sell a shitload of DVDs to make up the rest of the budget. Syriana did a lot better, with a worldwide gross of $93,974,620, but it had an opening weekend of $11,737,143. Not earth-shattering. That said, it only opened on about 1500 screens, and Michael Clayton opened on 1000 screens more, but the fallacy is that the relative, small-scale success of his smart movies can be expanded when released on a larger scale remains.
I remember noticing this error years ago, when big and successful action movies (usually those produced by Joel Silver), would often gross around £100-120m, domestic box office. No matter what the budget, the final figure was often the same (and significantly less for the failures). No-brainer jokey action movies would often top out at the same number, but budgets were busted chasing a finite audience. Sure, there were variations from that; Lethal Weapon 2, 3 and 4 could top that (by about $30m), as could the Die Hard movies, and Terminator 2 broke that barrier and then some, but they had a wider appeal. Bog-standard action movies had a fixed audience, and trying to get bigger box office by spending more money was foolish.
You had to appeal to people outside that box to do it. It wasn't just spectacle that made Terminator 2 such a hit; it was the message of hope within it (and the CGI, which drew oohs and ahhs of amazement from the audience when I saw it. Ah, the 90s!). In today's money, the same holds true; Bad Boys II and The Rock, for example, both stopped at about $140m, and Con Air and Gone In Sixty Seconds made $100m each. In the end they're profitable, but the larger the budget, the smaller that profit. It's science. Or maths. Whatever.
So yeah, putting Michael Clayton on more screens and pushing it with more publicity was not going to work. SmartClooney has a fanbase, and they came out this weekend, probably grateful for the release of something meatier than family comedies starring a wasted The Rock. But that's the ceiling for these movies. So why did pundits miss this? And why the hell did they think the new Tyler Perry movie would make less money?
I know very very very little about these things, but right now that guy guarantees boffo box office (yeah, I went there). His films cost a few cents and make around $50-60m each time out. His opening weekends are between $20-30m. His last film opened bigger than this one, in fact, so why would this one not be a big hit? Did they really think the Tyler Perry bubble had burst? He's not going anywhere any time soon. So anyway, I have learnt that box office pundits can often make terrible gaffes, and I have also learnt that the international gross of Diary of a Mad Black Woman was $19,104. I doubt the new film will be appearing in our local Vue any time soon. I'm sure the studio would love to up their take by releasing his films internationally, but I get the feeling they have no idea what the hell Perry's appeal is, so how would they be able to market it? Best to just let it make the modest money it is, rather than admit his unusual shtick perplexes them. (Almost all of the figures here are from Box Office Mojo.)
2. I may love Institutionalised by Suicidal Tendencies (which I first heard on the stunning Repo Man soundtrack many years ago), but playing that shit on a plastic guitar while sleep-deprived like I did this morning can actually cause you to get so addled you might actually end up actually literally instititutionalised, for realsies. It may have snapped my brain right down the middle. Now all I can see when I close my eyes are the coloured dots of Guitar Hero II, relentlessly descending, forever falling, like day-glo blobs of concentrated hand-cramp juice dropping into my eyes. It's a miracle I can type anything other than "Bzzzzt", because of all the rhythm-game induced mind-static. But I cannot stop until I better my score. Is crack this addictive? I doubt it's as entertaining.
3. Two reports on immigration were published yesterday, and while the left wingpress focussed on the positive, the right wing press, predictably, concentrated onthe negative. This is, of course, nothing new, but yesterday I found out that the reason the paper prints such skewed garbage is that Paul Dacre and his vile minions know for a fact that the core readership of the Mail is obsessed with Anti-Logic. This letter is, I promise you, absolutely real.
I have it on good authority that the majority of letters sent to the Mail offices are even more insane than the ones that make it into the paper, but this one must have slipped through. Oddly, there is no evidence of this mountain of work on the internet. Someone should tell this guy that he can publish his staggering, world-changing work on the internet, where it will be lauded and coveted for the rest of time. I mean, what did Einstein ever do for us, other than pull that funny face they keep putting on posters? Screw you, Einstein. Go back to the patent office and shuffle your papers. Did you ever make all of life's intrinsic paradoxes perfectly rational? No, you made them worse! Overrated big-haired jerk.
4. ZOMG NEW LOST PHOTO!!!
What's going on? What does it mean? Is that the cockpit of Oceanic 815? Desmond has resurfaced? How did they get so far into the island since the season 3 finale? Where's Hurley and Jin? Is that writing above the windows of the plane? Why does the clapperboard guy look so pissed? Is he working for The Dharma Initiative? If not, why doesn't he realise he's a lucky son of a bitch to be working on the best show currently on TV, even though it's not actually on TV right now? And what's going to happen with new cast member Andrea "Rescue Me" Roth? She's just been hired to play a therapist, according to TV Guide. I guess she's situated off-island. If she was on the island she'd have been dealing with multiple daddy issues, which would be even less fun than being repeatedly slammed into the ground by Ol' Smokey.
Mortensen plays a mobster working for a Russian gang in London, and to hone his portrayal he travelled to Moscow, St Petersburg and the mountain villages of the Urals.
He refused to take an interpreter, relying on gestures and his own facility for languages - he speaks Danish and Spanish fluently and can get by in four other languages.
“I know everyone was a little bit worried because I disappeared for two weeks,” he said. “They said I should have someone go with me into the underworld, but the whole point was not to get a filtered version of what Russians do and what they’re like.
“I just wanted to draw my own conclusions. I met a lot of people and talked to them. I met people who had experiences in prisons and understood more about street slang. They helped me tweak some of the dialogue.
“Then I found someone who had a car and he took me into the countryside and to these villages. There I saw how these mobsters looked at each other and how they lived. I also drank a lot of vodka.”
It was not until the last day of his trip that his cover was blown. “A little boy started staring at me, then he pointed and whispered, ‘Aragorn?’”
All this and his Amazing Flying Balls of Doom. Counting the days until it comes out.
6. The cook in the canteen where I work is the worst cook in the world. I ended up with a piece of peri-peri chicken that oozed blood when cut into, and after taking it back and having it cooked for a while longer (15 minutes), it had brown skin but pink flesh. I'm amazed I'm not doubled over in agony right now. A colleague bought some scrambled eggs, and they were off. Yesterday this guy made baguette halves with oily, droopy roast vegetables and nuclear-orange cheese. Just thinking about it is making me woozy. Time to start bringing sandwiches in again.
7. Studio 60 just arrived on UK terrestrial Channel 4, and I see that the oleaginous praise has continued. As we've said before, it's not so much the praise that bothers us (everyone is, of course, entitled to their own opinion) [Hold on there -- the praise definitely bothers me, and if you like the show, your opinion is wrong -- Canyon], it's the relentless carping that it failed because the audience (i.e. everyone who watches TV who isn't a fan of the show) killed it. They mean you, if you're not watching it. And if you are watching it, you're not watching it enough! You should be transformed by it like someone rising from their wheelchair at Lourdes, and then you should badger all of your friends and families into watching it. If you're not walking down the high street wearing a sandwich board showing a picture of Danny and Matt treating their womenfolk like teeny tiny toy people who should just damn well shut up and worship their glorious alpha male genitalia, then you are scum! SCUM!!! Much to our amusement/horror, we saw that Andrew Mueller was up to his old tricks at the weekend:
West Wing auteur Aaron Sorkin's series set in the milieu of a late-night chat show is possibly the greatest example of a show out-clevering itself. As well as being a superior soap opera, an intelligent comedy and a brilliantly acted ensemble piece, Studio 60 functions as an insidious critique of a televisual culture in which anything intelligent is hunted down and killed by the agents of mediocrity - as Studio 60 indeed was, cancelled by its network inside its debut season. These first two episodes, which have finally landed on terrestrial, are a tantalizing hint of what's to come.
If he thinks TV is so bad now, how about this 70s gem, from The Laurence Welk Show:
In comparison, I think we're doing okay nowadays. Yes, there is a lot of crap on TV now, and networks are run by craven cowards with no understanding of counter-cultural ideas. We get that. However, there's good stuff too. Someone please hand Mueller (and several other UK TV critics) a few boxsets. Veronica Mars, Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development, everything by Whedon. Then you have the shows on cable: Battlestar Galactica; The Daily Show; The Colbert Report; all of the shows on the HBO roster. There is a point to be made that there isn't enough biting satire on US (or UK) TV, or enough investigative journalism, but it's not like there is no important, worthy work on TV, and besides, Sorkin making obvious points in his risible Studio 60 sketches is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Plus, it was often as emptily jingoistic as a Fox News broadcast, which was either Sorkin speaking from the heart or an attempt to placate his network masters in order to get more "subversive" stuff into the show. Like Crazy Christians. So much for Sorkin's supposed moral courage.
Mueller and his ilk are right; the medium that is TV has an enormous hole in it, and Studio 60 tried to fill it. We will always need intelligent daring comedy and brave satire. But Studio 60 was. not. that. show. Which is why it was such a painful, frustrating, upsetting failure. Dear God, I have to let this go or I'll go crazy. It never seems to end!
ETA: I can't stop watching that Laurence Welk clip. Flap those arms in the xenon-rich air like you and your robot helper just don't care! Then kick, Bobby and Cissy! Kick! Kick! Spin! Flap! Kick! Interpretive brilliance. Why was Spielberg so eager to get an Oscar for all those years when this superb tribute was out there? That's just ungrateful.
Eastern Promises – dir. David Cronenberg
In many people’s eyes, Cronenberg "returned to form" with A History of Violence, a film with lofty ambitions that I still haven’t decided whether he met or not. Eastern Promises is simpler than A History of Violence in most respects. The film never presumes to dissect the nature and consequences of the violence it depicts, however Cronenberg and screenwriter Steven Knight layer Eastern Promises with so many other levels of intrigue that it poses as almost a more intellectually difficult film than its predecessor. Gone from A History of Violence (and a number of his first films) is the teetering pulpiness of its comic book roots. Replaced is something quieter, less showy, and more mannered. With Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel, and Sinéad Cusack rounding out the rest of the cast, Cronenberg keeps his actors to a level of discreetness without sacrificing competence. In fact, even with the occasional spurts of graphic violence, Cronenberg keeps the whole film from venturing over the top, which pays off in the electrifying naked bathhouse brawl.
A friend of mine commented that if Eastern Promises were released in the 1950s, it would have been simply a pleasant time at the picture show. It has all the qualities of a sophisticated B-movie. One must remember that, unfortunately, we live in an era where most films (A, B, C, or whatever letter you choose to assign them) coast at middle-of-the-road, so in this world, we fall over ourselves when a B-movie succeeds beyond expectation. In regards to Cronenberg’s career over the past decade, Eastern Promises could be regarded as his biggest success as a direct result of its restraint. With Eastern Promises, Cronenberg defines himself as a filmmaker who defies expectation, a man of considerable integrity and the uncanny ability to surprise his audience with each new film.
With: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinéad Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski, Mina E. Mina, Donald Sumpter
