It’s totally gripping and eerie and surely too adult and atmospheric for TV. One would think for that era, anyway. Denholm Elliott is best known for his role as Dr. Marcus Brody in the Indiana Jones movies, but he was more than capable of going proper convincingly nuts in a Gothic horror.
This is Charles Dickens done right.
Here we are:
‘Tagged’ in one of those ‘memories’ things yesterday on one of our omniscient social media platforms. This snap entered the lexicon a good half a decade ago. How time flies.
The best adventure (thus far) with the holiday lads. Absolute carnage twinned with culture. Tokyo is an extraordinary place to see and experience. In no other country have I felt as if I were on another planet. It’s old and new, a hundred years ahead yet still The Last Samurai (2003). Imagine coming home to Gorgie (Edinburgh semi-ghetto) after this esoteric sojourn.
Japan, I will see you again. But not yet. Not yet. We’re (‘The Unit’) going back, though. And this photo took an hour. I had to sit down afterwards. It’s all about the little details.
P.S. I obscure faces because I know how the world works.
Shockingly (for me as I’ve catalogued most of these ’80s classics) I’d never seen this until last week. It could be made today, that’s how ‘undated’ it is. What an experience – genuinely a hoot and wholly relatable. We’ve all been stuck next to some annoying blabbermouth on what seems like a never-ending journey into the abyss. And who can’t relate to a transportation fiasco.
It’s also a subtle portrayal of class, the difficulties of breaking barriers, and ultimately and reluctantly working together to get where you need to be. A life lesson! This should be screened at office training days or something.
One scene came out of nowhere in its profanity, and it’s quite the spectacle seeing Steve Martin finally crack. He wasn’t going to intimate that rental agent, but he did a wonderful job in articulating the pain of dealing these sorts.
First-class movie.
22 November, 2010 and this ridiculous … thing came into the world.
For me, it’s the Greatest Album Ever Made. And I find Kanye West nauseating, an attention-seeking baby who needs muzzled. Not the tunes, though. These are simply glorious, the album track-for-track mastery without equal. It’s the production, the melodies, the bombast, the deep thinking at work. Like all art, you can appropriate the material and line it up with something personal.
The (Stranded in) Belgium Odyssey of December 2010. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, but it was all very life-changing and I’ll never forget some of the epic moments. And no one died, which is also great. This album was played quite literally 125 times in 11 days and every track I associate with an image.
Once again:
This blew my mind it was so good. On a simple action-adventure level it’s pure Mann, the framing and the cutting all signature style. What further distinguishes it are the connotations, though, the other world beyond the landscape. Mann always does this, always a subtext in the works. He makes deceptively uncomplicated yarns, but look closer and you unearth what he’s getting at.
This is pre-Revolutionary War (1775–1783) sparked by a Boston Tea Party. Get your head around that. The ending is magisterial, a literal crescendo of dimensions. The last shot – old America, current America, future America. It conveys more about American history than thousands of movies.
On a personal aside, I once synced the incredible Trevor Jones score to a panning shot of Edinburgh taken on a VHS-C camera from the top of Hillend. It was fucking pathetic but we can’t all be Michael Mann.
Essential cinema.
I’ve said on countless occasions to anyone and no one that the Bourne films easily supplant the modern Bonds in terms of a ‘hyper-realism’ because they are the right spy for this era – dodgy government agencies who are an extension of those governments, expendable employees prone to paranoia and literal identity crisis, a globalised landscape with overlapping institutions all out to screw you/each other.
In recent pictures, i.e., the Daniel Craig shit-bombs, Bond has essentially imitated Bourne, jettisoning some of the more ludicrous gadgets of the later Pierce Brosnan entries and going back to basics. Unfortunately, the filmmakers have missed the point and also lost the plot. Bond is Bond. Bourne is Bourne. Skyfall (2012) and the like are so schematic it’s embarrassing.
But enough about 007. What the Bourne movies did so well was capture that post-9/11 zeitgeist – expanded government powers, loss of individual freedoms for reasons of national security (or whatever), the sense that the rule of law is entirely flexible. They are also thrillingly unpredictable. You actually believe the carnage on display, and believe in the character and his mission to remember yet atone. It’s convincing.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) is the big one for me. It’s the dazzling city-hopping angle of it, the Berlin centrepiece, the unexpected death of a central character which is ruthless but entirely necessary in motivating the protagonist. And that bonkers Moscow car chase.
These movies are more than mere thrillers; they are as much about a bloke’s weary relation to his time and place as they are his mission objectives. Someone once described the pictures to me as ‘existential’.
I think I know what he meant.
Further reading/viewing:
https://orlandoinformer.com/blog/jason-bourne-stuntacular-story-explained/
Bob Dylan. Not my kind of music. I go for the atmospherics and the bangin’ beats; take me back to the Sensation White Amsterdam era of alcopops and Ajax tops.
I have seen the movie Vanilla Sky (2001) 16 times, though. I know every single facet about the feature and WHY it is incredible yet folk still slate it. Some plebs just hate Tom Cruise; I think he is the best. He puts his all into everything and clearly loves his life. He also gets stick for the Scientology thing, as if every other religion isn’t insane.
Anyway, an album cover from something from Bob Dylan features in the film. I have never listened to the album and never will but it’s a belter of a photo. I feel about Bob Dylan as some do Tom Cruise.
My 2020 massacre of Netflix took in the refreshingly old-fashioned Ronin (1998) the other day. When I say old-fashioned, I refer to the non-CGI (as far as I could deduce) action sequences and car chases, the absence of silly comedy lines or winks to the audience in the dialogue, and the general maturity of proceedings. This is an anti-postmodern movie.
It doesn’t surprise me that the helmsman is John Frankenheimer as it does hark back to his earlier work in the ’60s and ’70s, decidedly ‘masculine affairs’ but which still retained strong female characters (Angela Lansbury, anyone?). Natascha McElhone is the woman calling the shots here, definitely not the damsel in distress among the boys.
And it’s some assemble, particularly Sean Bean who totally convinces as a bullshitter way out of his depth, and Stellan Skarsgård as your buttoned-down ex-Stasi (one presumes) tech expert who just happens to be a complete psycho. De Niro is … De Niro, but De Niro before he became a pratfalling big baby in all those godawful ‘comedies’ from the noughties and beyond.
Rather than simply recommending Ronin for its throwback action and characters, though, there’s a bit more subtextual depth to it, a sense that this is the real world for a lot of folk, independent contractors segueing from job to job, making transient connections but nothing ever more than the odd fleeting bond. It’s a story of existential loneliness and a relatable one.
And regarding the MacGuffin, the perpetually elusive case which drives the narrative. Like Pulp Fiction (1994), we are never privy to the contents. It doesn’t matter.
Further reading:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ronin-1998
https://movie-locations.com/movies/r/Ronin.php
A few snaps from my Rome sojourn popped up on one of those memories/flashback social media feeds that continue to remind me to jettison the silly things. But here I am, to share my profound thoughts and sublime snaps with the world.
This was back in 2015 on a trip which also took in Milan and Venice. Rome was legit stunning to look at, but it could have been so much better without a few garish elements; rather than just have the actual remnants of antiquity remaining as … well, themselves, there loitered a whole parade of local cretins decked out in Praetorian Guard clobber and the like. It stank of tacky tourism.
The Colosseum would have also been that slightly more monumental if the local authorities (or UNESCO or whoever has ‘claim’) removed the shitty parked cars circling the arena. No one wishes to see a banged-up Fiat (or any other variety of motor) plonked outside Russell Crowe’s stomping ground.
I suppose all our venerated treasures are like this; they come with a side order of cringe. And yes, those are needless ‘vintage’ filters I stuck on the images.
2015 was a bad year for me. Clearly.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 