Jackson Pollock
20 Jul 06
Jackson Pollock Terrible appropriation of name, but great fun.
Beauty of the English language, wherefore art thou fucked?
19 Jul 06
A friend of mine just went to a meeting and got to twenty playing Buzzword Bingo:
take it offline, stakeholders, deliverables, key inputs, clock starts ticking, ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, timeframes, milestones, critical path, committed to, working model, limited resources, liaise with, walkthrough, empowerment, methodology, dependencies, on-stream, lock that down, go-forward date
BINGO!!!
Update: Thanks top Sarah for pointing out that ‘wherefore’ means ‘why’, not ‘where’. See, you can never stop learning!
Film review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
14 Jul 06
Disney unexpectedly struck gold with this franchise, despite their fears that nobody wanted to see a pirate film (oh come on, Cutthroat Island wasn’t that bad). The second in the trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest delivers the rollicking adventure we all expected, and if there were some of us who were hoping for something a little bit more special, well, I guess we can still just enjoy the ride.
From start to finish we hardly get a chance to draw breath as Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp channelling Keith Richards), Will Turner (the competent Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (an energetic Keira Knightley) and a cast of assorted misfits jump from one action sequence to the other. And like an adventure ride, there’s not a whole lot of concern with rhythm and pacing — Gore Verbinski basically throws every pirate cliche you can think of in a bag, gives it a good shake, and pours it out on the screen with the aid of absolutely stunning digital effects and a cast who are obviously enjoying themselves.
Talking about effects, I have it on good authority that Bill Nighy, who plays Davey Jones complete with squirming tentacles and slimy squid skin, doesn’t actually appear in one frame in this film. Every shot with him in it is completely digital. When you see how well they have captured his performance, you’ll be amazed—despite the covering of tentacles, those are Nighy’s mannerisms to a T. The digital effects work in this film, with a very few exceptions, is absolutely astounding. In fact it’s almost so good it can be distracting; I found my eye sometimes wandering to the myriad of little details in the background as a main character was speaking.
Sure, Bloom’s leading man is as one-dimensional as ever, but this is Depp’s film and he knows it. Flush with the success of his foppish, half-drunken characterisation in the first film, he lays it on thick here. Jack Sparrow has quickly become a loved film character, but if the writers are skilled enough to develop him somewhat further in the third film he could become a classic.
Along with all the running, sailing, swordfighting and rolling (yes, rolling, and lots of it) we do see a little bit more emotional depth, which I found myself hoping for about halfway through the film. It’s a bit of an afterthought but augurs well for the third in the franchise.
But all these quibbles don’t detract from the fact that Pirates is a bloody entertaining film. It could have been something really exceptional, but if you shut your brain off and strap yourself in, you’ll be taken on a fun ride.
Four and a half rubbery barnacles out of five.
Film review: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
06 Jul 06
Self-referential, actors-playing-themselves films have become a lot more common these days, probably since Being John Malkovitch, which I remember at the time seemed so revolutionary with its use of Malkovitch playing Malkovitch (well, a somewhat larger than life version, anyway … and a version whose head you could enter through a little passageway in the wall of an office building).
So faced with filming the nine volumes of Laurence Sterne’s novel, “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Michael Winterbottom in fact gives a pretty light look into the world of film-making, mixed with a bit of the novel here and there. Not having read the book, I can’t tell you if the themes explored here reflect the themes of the book, but if they do, that’s another layer on an entertaining and funny film that can happily be taken at face value.
Steve Coogan, actor and comedian, aka Alan Partridge, plays a somewhat larger than life version of himself as the eponymous hero. You can tell Coogan had a lot of fun with the part, happily sending himself up as an egotistical and somewhat petty actor trying to do a ‘serious’ role. Well let’s hope he’s sending himself up anyway. Rob Brydon plays his genitally challenged cousin (war wound)—and himself as Brydon dealing with Coogan’s ego armed with an array of excellent voice impressions; Gillian Anderson has a brief cameo as the Widow Wadman—and herself; the crew deal with the demands of a tight budget and a nitpicking historical advisor (I bet he plays boardgames), Coogan deals with his wife and baby on set while he is tempted by an affair; and we get a fascinating insight into the ego clashes and compromises in a day on a film set.
Winterbottom keeps all these balls in the air, and more, with great aplomb, and there’s a wonderful fly on the wall feel about the whole film. There are some excellent moments with Dylan Moran as an inept 18th century doctor, and a brief appearance by Stephen Fry who seems to be popping up in a lot of things these days. It’s a post-modern book about a book that was post-modern before there was any modern to be post about … to paraphrase Coogan.
Three and a half powdered wigs out of five. Oh, and stay for the credits.
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