Author Archives: Ben Gould

Apr 12 2018
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Cinema, Film, Germany, Uncategorized, World War Two, WWII

Where Eagles Dare (1968) – Wehrmacht Stormtroopers.

Where Eagles Dare (1968) surely must have been watched on a loop by George Lucas as he was penning A New Hope (1977) and the expanded Star Wars universe.

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Fan art poster.

 

Hohenwerfen Castle is this movie’s Death Star, the German troops the most incompetent ever assembled in what is the peak Hollywood WWII turkey shoot; Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood mow the fuckers down like Stormtroopers. Reducing a complex military operation to the wits and whims of two ‘superhero’ protagonists, it’s this blasé depiction of war that has young lads all giddy (“chomping at the bit”) en route to army recruitment offices.

The Wehrmacht grunt here is a Stormtrooper sans the Arctic clobber, and by the end one could be forgiven for thinking that Messrs Burton and Eastwood casually take out an entire division.

It’s quite the escapist experience, and its influence is rampant – the Medal of Honor video game series, for example, is an unabridged adaptation of the movie’s aesthetic. In an ideal Pentagon monopoly on propaganda, the enemy is devoid of dimensions and the battle a cakewalk.

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War is no messy struggle when you’ve got personality pulling the trigger.

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Apr 04 2018
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Cinema, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, The Americans, Travel, Uncategorized

Gorgie, Edinburgh – the Dickensian aspect.

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Gorgie Road in April – spring doesn’t exist here (and never will). Gorgie is the dark side of Dickens, but with an inordinate volume of shitty cars, manky kebabs, and unwashed tracksuits. The pubs are usually okay if you leave before sundown. Nothing else to see here.

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Mar 31 2018
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Cinema, Film, Movies, Uncategorized

Boris is not impressed.

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Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World (2018) is quite possibly the most boring film I’ve ever seen. I’d like to apologise to the cat for putting the traumatised creature through it.

Absolute shite. No characters, no drama, nothing to say, nothing to be seen. A film about nothing.

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Mar 25 2018
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Film, Movies, Scotland, Uncategorized

Blockbuster Video was the highlight of the ’90s.

Blockbuster-Video

The death of Blockbuster was the home video version of Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. Your standard Friday routine in the Glory Years consisted of rocking up to Blockbuster with a tenner of shrapnel cobbled together by pocket money and paper round wages, emerging from the Pearly Gates with Irn-Bru, Maltesers, and a VHS copy of Goldeneye (1995). The anticipation before the visit was usually better than the evening that followed – a bit like holidays. The YouTube/Netflix/Amazon era has nothing on the joyous grind that was hunting for ex-rentals in the bargain basket. Fuck the Spice Girls (not literally), Blockbuster was the Atlantis of the ’90s.

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Mar 24 2018
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Cinema, Film, Hitchcock, San Francisco, Uncategorized

Vertigo (1958) – a whirlpool of obsession.

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I first saw the unfathomable sensations of Vertigo (1958) on Boxing Day in 2001. I figured Hitchcock this go-to guy for cheap thrills, banal comedic interludes, nonsensical MacGuffins, crop dusters galore, and … trains. Vertigo spoke artistry, something deep and profound (so I heard) from the psyche. Looking at the physiognomy of the great master, one couldn’t help but think he’d spent a career pulling his plonker to his leading ladies; sources inform us, however, that he was no Mr. Miramax.

It’s a deeply unsettling picture, a compendium, in that Mad Men era, of the ‘Male Gaze‘. Novak’s ice-cold beauty is a kaleidoscope onto which John “Scottie” Ferguson projects his hysteria. She’s barely a character, and that’s the point.

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A mastery of pacing, understatement, camera placement, and the semiotics of colour, the movie is your psychoanalyst’s wet dream. A narrative so stilted and sedate just builds and builds, unearthing an unblinkered aggression in every facet of the frame. It helps that the most serenely pacific of cities, San Francisco, acts as the melting pot for James Stewart’s warped solipsistic frenzy.

Vertigo-1958

You watch Vertigo and witness every cinematic trope of the 50 years that followed. No Vertigo, no Brian De Palma. In 2012, Sight and Sound magazine voted Vertigo the greatest film ever made. It’s certainly more engaging than Grown Ups 2 (2013).

Further reading/viewing:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-hitchcock-truffaut-interviews-20151204-story.html

http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/what-makes-vertigo-the-best-film-of-all-time.html

https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/mar/05/martinscorsese

http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486

Scorsese on Vertigo:

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Mar 18 2018
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Air travel, Berlin, Germany, Planes, Transport, Uncategorized

Flight from East Berlin.

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Berlin went apostate after the Wall’s crumble – it is now a free-for-all, one of those clichéd multicultural hubs, the EU’s sociological vanguard. Not so back in the Honecker days, a Stasi-sprinkled 1984.

The audacity of this escape is bonkers, so too the entirely legit video recording of the getaway. Old Skool VHS-C home video footage isn’t half gnarly when the camera roams free in the exterior à la Paul Greengrass. No one wants to see a wee sprog from the States wail like Chewbacca on an ecstacy overdose upon opening a Nintendo 64; mind-blowing vistas is what it’s all about.

Escape artists:

Ingo Bethke, a border guard, fled East Berlin on an air mattress in 1975, crossing the River Elbe into West Germany. In 1983, his brother Holger did one better, using a zip line from an attic to Ingo’s car on the other side of the wall. It was six years later that the two brothers, having learned to fly, dressed in military garb, painted Soviet red stars on two planes, flew over the wall, landed in a park (with one place circling overhead), picked up the third brother, Egbert, and then flew back into West Berlin, arriving at the steps of the Reichstag. They then went off and got pished on a smorgasbord of alcoholic delicacies. Incredible.

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Icarus (x3) they were not. Totalitarianism breeds creativity, just ask Jean-Paul Sartre. And nothing spotlights the stupidity of that lunatic Soviet ideology than getting a free pass to fly around with abandon merely because there are red stars on your plane.

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) so comically captured those last dying days of the GDR. Imagine that mixed with The Great Escape of the Bethke brothers. Why isn’t this a movie yet?

Further reading:

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05-29/news/mn-692_1_berlin-wall-west-berlin-allied-sources

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/berlin-wall-escape-stories_n_6090602.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2009/10/200910793416112389.html

 

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Mar 10 2018
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Tourism, Transport, Uncategorized

Bilbao Baggins.

Bilbao was a laugh. Ah, to go back to a time without bills and responsibilities, when the only struggle was choosing which rancid alcopop to shove down your trousers in a supermarket (in my experience security guards can’t run more than 50 yards without crumbling into a wheezing heap).13882428_10157389370085691_1176700627100006367_n

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Mar 08 2018
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Cinema, Film, Oscars, Uncategorized

Michael Shannon skipped the Oscars and went for a beer.

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I’ve always thought this actor was awesome. The bloke is intense, scary, has a bit of De Niro about him. From Revolutionary Road (2008) to 99 Homes (2014) and Frank & Lola (2016), the man is just incapable of lazy acting.

The Shape of Water (2017) was up for (and won) a handful of gongs. And its powerhouse actor? He was in the pub. Brilliant.

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Mar 04 2018
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Edinburgh, Scotland, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

The Beast from the East – Edinburgh.

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Snow is hell. As Scots, you’d think we would be able to cope with the scenario but evidently not. The whole country is static, with bewildered cattle stocking up trolleys with bread and milk.

Anyway, sometimes there are serene scenes. It looks lovely out there.

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Mar 01 2018
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Air travel, Austria, Germany, Munich, Tourism, Trains, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

On the sauce in Salzburg and Munich.

Back to Salzburg and Munich again for a double-headed session. To think the birthplace of Mozart and Doppler was now the temporary milieu of beer-compromised attempts to retrieve a Snickers bar from a dilapidated vending machine at 4:16 a.m.

 

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Salzburg is a place with many bars, sadly few ATMs (seeking a Geldautomat is depressing), and with a most varied supply of charming newsagents, which appears to my primary interest these days. Somewhere down the line vistas ceased to be of fascination. I couldn’t find a Lidl, though. Gutted.

 

The salient memory of Munich was feigning a limp in order to use a disabled toilet, and attempting to escape the city for the airport. There was “something wrong with the tracks,” they kept barking at me in the station. I don’t think I’ve ever been on so many trains to get to one destination, and so drained of vitamins throughout. I thought I was going to die on that plane home from an overdose of fatigue and amaretto. But I didn’t.  Good times.

 

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