A Small Present, Just for You

May 15, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Good news! This blog is mov­ing into phase 2 of its life. Phase 1 was the slow and method­i­cal build­ing up of the blog from scratch. Phase 2 revolves around my book, which I’m going to be self-pub­lish­ing this Novem­ber.

Before I can do that though, I need to move the blog to a new email sub­scrip­tion service. 

But don’t wor­ry, you’ll still get your month­ly mis­sives, plus the occa­sion­al extra bonus mate­r­i­al and all the excit­ing news about the soon to be pub­lished book. 

All you have to do is to send me your email address so that I can add your name to the new list.

Send your email address to: anthonyokeeffe6@gmail.com

That’s all! Just one, incred­i­bly brief email, and you’re done.

And once you do, and the list is up and run­ning, I’ll send you this month’s post PLUS an Exclu­sive Bonus Chap­ter from the book. 

Your bonus chap­ter, “The Death of Socrates” describes how he end­ed up on tri­al in the first place, and what the likes of Pla­to and Niet­zsche made of his con­trary behav­iour over the course of that trial.

The impor­tant thing is: send me on your email address!

Oth­er­wise, this could be the last that you hear from me. And just imag­ine what an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter that would be.

So send your address to anthonyokeeffe6@gmail.com and, as ever I shall keep you post­ed every month, and more!

And thanks for your con­tin­ued support!

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HBO’s triumphant Watchmen: cinema V television

January 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Damon Lin­de­lof’s Watch­men.

First things first; Damon Lin­de­lof’s Watch­men is some­thing to behold. It’s Back to the Future direct­ed by Lars von Tri­er on a par­tic­u­lar­ly good day, and script­ed by Den­nis Pot­ter. Except it’s been fused in a par­al­lel uni­verse on the oth­er side of the look­ing glass, so that race and gen­der have been reversed.

We’ll come to that in a bit. But to begin with, how has this suc­ceed­ed where so many oth­ers have failed?

Scosese’s Rag­ing Bull.

As has been well doc­u­ment­ed, two fun­da­men­tal changes have tak­en place across the media land­scape over the last cou­ple of decades. On the one hand, we’re in the midst of a prover­bial gold­en age of tele­vi­sion. And on the oth­er, the world of cin­e­ma has become com­plete­ly polarised. 

Super­fi­cial­ly speak­ing, that polar­i­sa­tion has always been there. 20thcen­tu­ry cin­e­ma was made up of Hol­ly­wood films, and inde­pen­dent films. But those two can­vas­es pro­duced a wide vari­ety of dif­fer­ent kinds of films. Hol­ly­wood could mean Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, The God­fa­ther or Rag­ing Bull. Inde­pen­dent could give you The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being, Amélie, Babette’s Feast or Prospero’s Books.

Amelie.

It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine any of those being made today with the aim of screen­ing them pri­mar­i­ly at the cin­e­ma. Because there are only two kinds of films that you’ll find in the cin­e­ma today; fran­chise prod­ucts, and real­ly low bud­get, gen­uine­ly inde­pen­dent fare.

That’s what Scors­ese was com­plain­ing about in those series of inter­views that he gave towards the end of the year just gone, and which cul­mi­nat­ed with that op ed piece in the New York Times, here.

He can’t con­nect, he says, with any of those super­hero movies, because there’s noth­ing at stake. How could there be? They’re super­heroes. And none of the peo­ple mak­ing those movies have the room to take any kind of risks. Because there’s just too much mon­ey involved in the fran­chis­es they fuel. Which is why, if you’re an adult hun­gry to explore grown up themes and ideas, it’s to tele­vi­sion that you today turn to. And not, alas, cinema.

So what would be the biggest risk when explor­ing the com­ic book landscape?

The Wachowskis V for Vendet­ta.

Ignor­ing the super of your heroes and view­ing them instead as grown ups dressed in masks. If they don’t have their super­pow­ers, then there’s no need for all that green screen non­sense. And when you don’t have that to fall back on, you’re forced to explore instead the rela­tion­ships between your var­i­ous char­ac­ters, and how they fit in in the world in which they find them­selves. What would dri­ve an artic­u­late, intel­li­gent per­son to put on a mask and fight crime?

That was why V for Vendet­ta worked so pow­er­ful­ly, and it’s why Lindelof’s Watch­men is such a tri­umph. The DC uni­verse of masked crime fight­ers allows him, and the Wachows­ki sib­lings before him, to explore indi­vid­u­als whose time is out of joint and who feel cursed to set it right. Not because they’ve been arbi­trar­i­ly gift­ed with some neb­u­lous super pow­er. But because they can do no other.

And what, if you are a 21stcen­tu­ry Amer­i­can, are the two most press­ing per­son­al and soci­etal issues? Race and gen­der. So here we are in Watch­men, pre­sent­ed with a cast (and crew) who are pre­dom­i­nant­ly black, and female. And older.

Lin­de­lof’s The Left­overs.

Inter­est­ing­ly, both V and Watch­men orig­i­nat­ed with the peren­ni­al­ly grumpy Alan Moore, who, pre­dictably, has dis­owned them both. I tried read­ing (is that what one does with a graph­ic nov­el?) his Watch­men, and I have to con­fess it sailed serene­ly over my head. I just found it flat, and sta­t­ic, and all too black and white.

Lindelof’s Watch­men is so much more dynam­ic. And relevant. 

You can see the trail­er for Watch­men here.

And if you haven’t already, you should watch Lindelof’s The Left­overs, which I reviewed ear­li­er, here.

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

Filed Under: Television, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

If Beale Street Could Talk, the new Barry Jenkins film.

March 1, 2019 by Leave a Comment


If Beale Street Could Talk.

If Beale Street Could Talk is the keen­ly await­ed fol­low up to the sur­prise hit that Bar­ry Jenk­ins had in 2016, when he won the Acad­e­my award for Best Film with Moon­light. And if that weren’t pres­sure enough, it’s a James Bald­win adap­ta­tion. 

Tish and Fon­ny are child­hood sweet­hearts, but the lat­ter is in jail hav­ing been false­ly accused of rape. And Tish is preg­nant with their first child. So she and their two fam­i­lies are try­ing des­per­ate­ly to some­how raise the cash need­ed to pay for what will almost cer­tain­ly be a fruit­less attempt at legal redress. 

Beau­ti­ful­ly shot and impec­ca­bly craft­ed, Jenk­ins takes an ellip­ti­cal approach to the nar­ra­tive as he moves back and forth through time to con­struct his sto­ry one piece at a time. Essen­tial­ly it’s a love sto­ry with shades of Romeo and Juli­et, as Fonny’s moth­er looks down from a height at the match her son has dis­as­trous­ly made with his unwor­thy mate.

This is bril­liant­ly cap­tured in what is in effect the cen­tral scene, as they two fam­i­lies square off from one anoth­er as Tish’s par­ents announce the hap­py news of her preg­nan­cy. And there­in lies the rub. For this scene is what the first third of the film cul­mi­nates with. And although the rest of the film is per­fect­ly fine, indeed most­ly very good, the rest of the film nev­er quite lives up to that first third.

Maher­sha­la Ali and Alex R. Hib­bert in Moon­light (2016)

This, you’ll remem­ber, is exact­ly what hap­pens with Moon­light, which I reviewed ear­li­er here. That film is divid­ed into three parts, and the first two, and espe­cial­ly the first, are excru­ci­at­ing­ly mov­ing. But the third is ever so slight­ly under­whelm­ing. Well, to put it in Wildean terms, to fail to ratch­et up the dra­mat­ic ten­sion of your sto­ry once is for­giv­able, but to do so twice feels like carelessness.

James Bald­win’s If Beale Street Could Talk.

All dra­ma must needs move through an arc, ris­ing and ris­ing, before final­ly falling. You need to pass through E C C C C; Expo­si­tion, Con­flict, Cri­sis, Cat­a­stro­phe before final Cathar­sis. And dra­mat­i­cal­ly speak­ing, both of Jenk­ins’ two prin­ci­ple films flat­line after the dra­ma of their first halves.

If Beale Street Could Talk is still a very good film, it looks rav­ish­ing and it’s a won­der­ful anti­dote to all that green screen non­sense. But Jenk­ins will need to work with some­one on struc­ture and the build­ing of dra­mat­ic ten­sion if he’s to avoid becom­ing but a bril­liant stylist.

You can see the trail­er to If Beale Street Could Talk here.

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right of below and I shall keep you post­ed every month, on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

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Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, clever video game, dreary drama.

February 1, 2019 by Leave a Comment


Black Mirror:Bandersnatch.

Erst­while tele­vi­sion crit­ic and screen­writer Char­lie Brook­er launched Black Mir­ror in 2011 on Chan­nel Four, and in 2015 he and it moved over to Net­flix for its third season. 

Sort of a cross between the Twi­light Zone and Tales of the Unex­pect­ed, each episode presents a one-off, stand alone fable that explores a tech­no­log­i­cal dystopia set in the very near future.  Invari­ably, the sto­ries revolve around a soci­etal What if ques­tion that is tak­en to its log­i­cal extreme.

The top­ics that each episode explore are momen­tar­i­ly intrigu­ing, and it’s all glar­ing­ly au courant, that is to say trendible, so the first twen­ty min­utes are gen­er­al­ly fair­ly enter­tain­ing. But invari­ably the episode soon fiz­zles out, because Brook­er is not real­ly con­cerned with, and there­fore not much good at, dra­ma. He’s all too eas­i­ly daz­zled by the clev­er­ness of his ini­tial con­ceit. And his lat­est, Ban­der­snatch, con­tin­ues the trend.

Black Mir­ror.

Nom­i­nal­ly a fea­ture film, it’s his and Netflix’s attempt at that much her­ald­ed hybrid, the inter­ac­tive film. The idea of an inter­ac­tive film emerged about 25 years ago as the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion took off, and there were a num­ber of fac­tors that brought it into being.

First, DVDs replaced video, and with them came the advent of the delet­ed scene. At the same time, a new gen­er­a­tion of video game con­soles arrived, offer­ing mas­sive­ly more sophis­ti­cat­ed graph­ics. And the evolv­ing world of Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty promised an even more impres­sive visu­al land­scape, from which who knew what might emerge. 

So view­ers began to ask them­selves, what if we could decide what hap­pens in a sto­ry? Could we choose a ver­sion of the film with those delet­ed scenes, instead of the one that the film mak­ers end­ed up decid­ing on? And if so, what oth­er things could we change about the sto­ries we watch? Ban­der­snatch is the real­iza­tion of that fantasy.

Your first deci­sion, to ease you in.

So, as ever, for the first twen­ty min­utes, you’re intrigued. You get ten sec­onds to make a black or white, Yes or No deci­sion. And the sto­ry pro­gress­es, and ends, accord­ing to the deci­sions you make. Except it doesn’t.

Inevitably, if you make the “wrong” choice or choic­es, the film ends pre­ma­ture­ly, and you’re offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go back to your “wrong” deci­sion, and choose the oth­er option. Of course you could polite­ly decline, turn off your devise and pick up a book instead. But obvi­ous­ly you don’t, you go back to fol­low the alter­na­tive sto­ry lines, with their choice of end­ings, to see what oth­er ways the sto­ry could have gone. 

Our hero’s been offered a deal, what does he do?

Which is an inter­est­ing idea, and it’s all ter­ri­bly meta and fright­ful­ly clever. But as soon as you can go back and change your deci­sion, that deci­sion no longer has any weight or val­ue. So any sense of ten­sion and all the dra­ma is imme­di­ate­ly neutered. 

When one char­ac­ter says to our hero, one of us is going to jump off this build­ing, who’s it going to be…And the action freezes for a jagged 10 sec­onds, and youhave to decide who, that’s exhil­a­rat­ing, and fright­en­ing and thrilling. But as soon as you can go back, and make the oth­er deci­sion, just to see what hap­pens, before you know it, you’ll be glanc­ing at your phone to see what you’ve missed since you start­ed play­ing the game. 

And there’s the rub. Because inter­ac­tive dra­mas already exist. They are called video games, which is what this is. And as a video game, it’s real­ly inter­est­ing. Because what it shows is that the future of video games lies not with VR, but with live action. Ban­der­snatch is what video games will look like the day after tomorrow. 

Which is a real­ly inter­est­ing polemic. And a polemic, like all the oth­er Black Mir­ror episodes, is what this should have remained as. Had it appeared as an arti­cle in Van­i­ty Fair, or in one of the Guardian sup­ple­ments, it would have pro­vid­ed for a real­ly inter­est­ing dis­trac­tion. But as a dra­ma, nev­er mind a 90 minute plus dra­ma, it’s woe­ful­ly dull and pro­gres­sive­ly tedious.

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed on All the very Best and Worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

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A cult classic road movie from the 70s.

January 4, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Two-Lane Black­top.

Two-Lane Black­top is exact­ly the sort of film every­one expect­ed there to be hun­dreds of after the glob­al suc­cess that Easy Rid­er enjoyed in 1969.

Easy Rid­er starred and was writ­ten by Den­nis Hop­per and Peter Fon­da, togeth­er with Ter­ry South­ern, who’d pre­vi­ous­ly worked on the script for Dr. Strangelove and was cred­it­ed by Tom Wolfe as hav­ing pio­neered New Jour­nal­ism. It cost just $400,000, but went on to gross over 60 mil­lion dollars. 

Both a com­mer­cial and a crit­i­cal sen­sa­tion, it ush­ered in the New Hol­ly­wood era that blos­somed through­out the 70s with the likes of Robert Alt­man, Hal Ash­by, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Fran­cis (ex of Ford) Cop­po­la and Paul Schrad­er.

Peter Fon­da and Den­nis Hop­per in Easy Rid­er.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Easy Rid­er has aged remark­ably well and is def­i­nite­ly worth a look if you haven’t already seen it. As is this, its spir­i­tu­al sequel.

Two-Lane Black­top, the black­top being the open road on which our lat­ter day cow­boys face up to one anoth­er on, came out in 1971 and was direct­ed by Monte Hell­man. 

A dri­ver and a mechan­ic prowl the open road look­ing for like­mind­ed loan­ers to race, liv­ing off of the pro­ceeds. Inevitably, they pick up a girl look­ing for a, ahem, ride, and what plot there is revolves around their pur­suit of her, and their con­fronta­tion with the old­er out­rid­er they square off against on their respec­tive steel steeds.

But nei­ther the film nor its prin­ci­ple char­ac­ters seem ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing their objects of desire. Instead, it’s the spir­it of Anto­nioni that reigns supreme. His regal Zabriskie Pointe (reviewed by me ear­li­er here) had come out the pre­vi­ous year, and, as there, the pre­dom­i­nant mood is one of exis­ten­tial ennui. 

Anto­nion­i’s Zabriskie Point.

This is fur­ther accen­tu­at­ed by the cast­ing. The two male leads are played by James Tay­lor and Den­nis Wil­son. The for­mer went on to estab­lish him­self as the arche­typ­al 70s singer song­writer, while Wil­son was the least nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed of the three Beach Boy broth­ers, musi­cal­ly speak­ing. And was so insane­ly young when the whole Beach Boys thing hap­pened – he was 23 when Pet Sounds came out at the endof their hey­day – that inevitably, he spent most of his thir­ties in a drug-addled haze, before drown­ing trag­i­cal­ly at just 39.

Har­ry Dean Stan­ton, in a brief cameo in Two-Lane Black­top.

So instead of the sort of per­for­mances with a cap­i­tal P that you would have expect­ed from a Den­nis Hop­per or a Jack Nichol­son, they amble they way through the film in exact­ly the right state of dis­in­ter­est, not so much by design as by default. Pleas­ing­ly, you sus­pect that their cast­ing was sim­i­lar­ly hap­pen­stance. They just hap­pened to be there when that par­tic­u­lar joint got passed around.

It doesn’t quite give the heady hit that Easy Rid­er pro­duces. But it is a curio well worth inves­ti­gat­ing and is a pleas­ing anti­dote to all that green screen nonsense. 

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very Best and Worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

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