Film | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Jun 19 2019

Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Mark Renton Street, Edinburgh.

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Calton Road this afternoon. It struck me today that I’ve never once snapped this Mark-Renton-gets-run-over spot, the manic laugh he offers to the driver an iconic snippet from Trainspotting (1996).

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I was an employee (an actual ‘trainspotter’, no less) of East Coast Railways a decade ago and used to sneak out the back of Waverley Station to this Renton hideaway for a cheeky fag and a can of Monster, my walkie-talkie in hand just in case my absence was noted. Come to think of it, 30% of my ‘working day’ consisted of either this filmic interlude or listening to Kanye West tunes in the ScotRail bogs.

“Where are you?”

“Just having a shite, I’ll be on the platform in a minute.”

Those were the days.

Tagged Calton Road, Edinburgh, Film, Mark Renton, Movie, Scotland, Train station, Trainspotting, Waverley

May 25 2019

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Architecture, Building, Construction, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Photography, Scotland, Tourism, Uncategorized

Scott Monument, Edinburgh.

Monument final Image with adjusted curves

Took this snap with a Tesco Hudl tablet hoisted on a wee micro tripod, crawling on the floor as some tourists stood bemused at my ‘antics’. It was during this moment that I recalled a troupe of Americans got stuck in the monument’s staircase on their attempted ascent to the top. It was Edinburgh’s own version of In Bruges (2008). What a hoot.

Tagged Edinburgh, In Bruges, Princes Street, Scotland, Scott Monument, Tourists

May 12 2019

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Architecture, Art, Cinema, Construction, Documentary, Film, Movie, Movies, Photography, Soviet Union, Technology, Television, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized, USSR

Chernobyl – TV mini-series.

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Shot in Fabijoniškės, Lithuania, this 5-episode mini-series by HBO is a cracker so far (one episode in). It puzzles me how there’s not, to my knowledge, been a major TV series or film about Chernobyl until now. One wouldn’t expect this would come from the Russian slice of the former Soviet Union, but you’d think Ukraine (its ‘western-oriented’ regions) would have put something together.

Documentaries have been galore, the main theme that the disaster was indicative of the pitfalls of communism, and a metaphor for the swift end of the USSR in the Gorbachev era of glasnost and perestroika.

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This is mind-blowing, though, a real-life 28 Days Later (2002) with wild animals replacing the ‘infected’:

I know a good lad I met in Budapest, a fellow traveller named Paul. He’s the only person I’ve met who’s wandered into Pripyat’s Zone of Alienation with a Geiger counter. I have an epic image of him strolling about in a Walter White biohazard suit, with a beer hat atop the garb.

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Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Leon (1994) is one of the best shot (no pun) movies ever made.

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Leon (1994) is a Sergio Leone aesthetic with a chunk of Lolita chucked in the works. The dodgy-as-fuck paedo spectacle aside, its images are pure art, Widescreen as perfection. Luc Besson is an aficionado for the inchoate screenplay, but as a pure thriller this really reaches the summit. And seldom has a movie set in New York City had literally nothing to do with New York City; it could be set in Marseilles, Edinburgh, Reykjavik. There’s something to be said for that, such are filmmakers’ obsession with the place. Personally, I don’t get it. I’ve been twice and wasn’t overly impressed; it felt like a cauldron of reprobates. And loud people roam the streets clutching fast food. Awful.

It’s just a cool-as-milk film, visuals off the scale. It doesn’t matter that the ‘Italian’ assassin sounds like Charles de Gaulle on methadone; it’s all about the framing. And Gary Oldman off his tits.

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Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

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Scorsese’s last movie of the ’90s is curiously his weakest work. It’s a lazy narrative that seems enamoured with MTV standards/trends of cinematography. It also suffers from ‘The Affliction’: the liberal use of popular music tracks to paper over deficiencies in the script.

It’s a promising concept: Nicolas Cage’s paramedic, physically and emotionally drained, drives around an early ’90s Manhattan – by all accounts a crack-strewn cesspit at that time – in search of the high of saving a life, and a broader redemption as he’s haunted by those he couldn’t save.

By the one-hour mark the picture sadly has nowhere to go. There are a few moments of transcendence, particularly the final shot, but it’s all rather boring, from the cartoon character supporting roles to Cage’s … bored performance. One suspects it could have worked better as a small-scale picture, Mean Streets (1973) with a defibrillator.

The life of an ambulance driver has never looked so torporific. One of the very few Scorsese pictures I’ll pass on should it ever crop up again.

Tagged Ambulance, Bringing out the Dead, Film, Martin Scorsese, Movie, Nicolas Cage, Nineties, Paul Schrader, Scorsese

Apr 20 2019

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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Lost in Translation (2003) is garbage.

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Saw this in the cinema when I was 16 and thought it was incredible, my generation’s bit of peak Bertolucci or something. It’s been a long hiatus but I caught it again the other day. My god, it’s fucking appalling, an arty-farty piece of silly, trivial gibberish, and unbelievably racist. The characters are one-note, self-obsessed twats, and the picture depicts the Japanese as a mass of hysterical idiots. About 20 minutes in I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It’s concocted anthropology à la Nanook of the North (1922). Never again. Sad!

Tagged Film, Japan, Lost in Translation, Movies, Shite, Tokyo

Mar 31 2019

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Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movies, Music, Uncategorized

Edinburgh in a standstill.

A snippet from Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967) came to Gorgie today. An eerie stillness, a surreal chav-free mise en scène. And one car was blasting out ‘The Boys of Summer’.

Traffic jams aren’t always rotten.

Tagged Edinburgh, Godard, Gorgie, Scotland, Traffic jam

Mar 26 2019

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Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Uncategorized

Adjuster – a cheeky short.

A shitty wee movie I have made. Uploading the beast took longer than making the actual thing (seven hours of shooting). The sound ‘design’ is fucking awful, but some of the visuals look decent.

Tagged Amateur filmmaking, City Centre, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Short, Short Film

Mar 22 2019

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Cinema, Film, Movies, Shopping, Television, Uncategorized, United States

The Last Blockbuster.

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Bend, Oregon, houses the last remaining Blockbuster, defeated foe of Amazon and Netflix.

I can see this store becoming a sort of movie Mecca of the future, nostalgia in the present. And there should be just one of them, perhaps the only reason to ever visit Oregon. When Blockbuster ‘died’ I confess I wasn’t bothered. It’s only a few years down the line that you come to lament the absence of such treats.

Blockbuster was ‘da bomb’ back in the day, the Friday night Shangri-La – purveyor of movies and nibbles after a week of school tedium. Granted, there was an annoying element to proceedings, this the desk clerk who, when he didn’t believe he was Auld Reekie’s version of Quentin Tarantino, went into full SS Guard-mode if you didn’t rewind a VHS rental of Rush Hour (1998). It was for the most part a haven, though, and coupled with Edinburgh’s car boot sales a perfect introduction to film.

The internet is of course sublime (you don’t even have to leave the house and speak to anyone) but Blockbuster was where geeks congregated, our own wee social and cinema club. My old beloved Blockbuster in Gorgie has tragically metamorphosed into a Costa Coffee frequented by polo-necked creatures. Gentrification and all that.

Gorgie Road’s Blockbuster, now a hipster hangout.

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Cinema, Film, Germany, Movies, Uncategorized, World War Two

The Das Boot reboot is awesome.

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What an experience this spin-off was.

I first saw the Wolfgang Peterson stunner (1981) in April 2000, purchasing the VHS tape with The Phantom Menace (1999) in HMV, Princes Street. I had no idea what it was about but the movie was £4.99 and Empire magazine called it scintillating in a retrospective. The writer wasn’t wrong, unlike their four-star review of the Jar Jar Binks fiasco.

The movie works within the most claustrophobic milieu of pre-Nuclear warfare. It was apolitical, much like the Kriegsmarine’s attempts to portray themselves after the conflict, this despite them nonchalantly torpedoing ship after ship.

This reboot more expansively amplifies upon the rampant extremism of the submariners, their appropriation of ideology as an alternative to the Allies’ eventual superior resources and sound tactics. There are also thriller elements, La Rochelle, home of the U-boat pens, the backdrop to French Resistance efforts to disrupt the German occupation. This place also has a special meaning for me: on a French exchange trip the police chased us around the town centre because one of our party set off a firework in a gift shop. Ah, the memories.

That score as well, used in both the film and this masterwork. Oaft.

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Category Archives: Film

Mark Renton Street, Edinburgh.

Scott Monument, Edinburgh.

Chernobyl – TV mini-series.

Leon (1994) is one of the best shot (no pun) movies ever made.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

Lost in Translation (2003) is garbage.

Edinburgh in a standstill.

Adjuster – a cheeky short.

The Last Blockbuster.

The Das Boot reboot is awesome.