Tag Archives: Movie

Jun 24 2019
Leave a comment
Cinema, Edinburgh, Movie, Movies, Photography, Technology, Uncategorized

Visions of π (1998).

Edinburgh 5pm

Scorching Edinburgh.

Took this snap on a sweltering Friday afternoon in Edinburgh. For days I was trying to pinpoint why I was having … visions of a semi-obscure movie from the late ’90s. Then it finally came to me along with the following almost poetic narration:

‘9:13, Personal Note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn’t know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see, but something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.’

Darren Aronofsky’s π (1998), which is as stylish a movie one could ever make about mathematics. It’s quite something.

Further reading/viewing:

https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2018/07/10/pi-finding-order-in-chaos-20-years-later

https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/14/14923532/darren-aronofskys-pi-pi-day

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Jun 19 2019
Leave a comment
Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Mark Renton Street, Edinburgh.

IMG_20190619_105156163

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).

trainspotting-01-gq-10jun19_shutterstock_b

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.

5

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Jun 18 2019
Leave a comment
Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

The Phantom Menace (1999) two decades on.

1_FfgtHQombT9Ng9Q4NqzYaA

I recall the incident well – HMV, Princes Street came to a standstill as the trailer was broadcast on a Sunday afternoon. “Jesus fucking Christ, this looks epic,” I said to myself. The matter is, I did indeed think it was a belter of a movie, viewing it four times that summer of ’99.

The overwhelmingly negative reaction to the movie is perhaps the first case of fanboys going ape, sending shockwaves through an industry a bit slow to catch on to the power of the internet with its bloggers and keyboard warriors.

It’s 2019 and I legit believe it’s not a bad film, and some moments in it are up there with the first two movies: the pod race, Anakin’s farewell to his mother, the climactic Darth Maul brawl, cracking scenes underpinned by substantive character development. You take out Jar Jar and it’s immeasurably better. And I don’t get why fans were complaining about this childish Binks cretin yet conversely whinged on the detail dedicated to taxation and trade wars, an adult domain buttressing the magic and the wonder.

Star_Wars_Episode_1_The_Phantom_Menace_1999_Teaser_2400x1200_526689992658.0

I treasure it as a nostalgia piece, a cinematic madeleine cake taking me back to a time when my standards were low and I was easily amused.

Further reading:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/23/the-phantom-menace-at-20-star-wars

Tagged , , , , , , ,
May 14 2019
Leave a comment
Art, Cinema, Iceland, Movies, Uncategorized

Arctic (2018) is your proper minimalist survival thriller.

Arctic

I was mightily impressed with this, and it’s most refreshing to watch a flick without a one-liner or a wooden numpty in a cape. No pointless dialogue, no heavy exposition, no pretensions; just life-and-death struggle in a daunting environment, and Mads Mikkelsen’s terrifyingly alluring cheekbones. What a strange occurrence those things are.

The movie reminded me of The Grey (2011) with Liam Neeson, except this one without a sadistic pack of looney wolves.

Tagged , , , ,
Apr 28 2019
Leave a comment
Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

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

leon-the-professional-160-1200-1200-675-675-crop-000000

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.

original

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/leon/review/

https://www.tumblr.com/search/movie%20leon

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Apr 25 2019
1 Comment
Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

Bringing Out the Dead (1999).

1_cICL0z-ezkP3iO71D1QqsA

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 , , , , , , , ,
Mar 26 2019
Leave a comment
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 , , , , , ,
Nov 02 2018
Leave a comment
Britain, Cinema, Film, First World War, Germany, Movies, Photography, Scotland, United Kingdom, World War One

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) – colourised reality.

download

Viewed through the prism of black-and-white, Charlie Chaplin-speed film footage, it’s axiomatic to view actors from the past as otherworldly, alien even, and simply not blessed with the smarts and skills we believe ourselves to possess. We forget they are people of their time using that era’s technology and science and its harnessing of military doctrine.

Then the grainy kaleidoscope of war gets colourised to the max and all hell breaks loose. You’d think this is GoPro stuff sent back to Flanders in a time machine and then propelled back to the future by Marty and Doc, such has been the collective hyperbole over Peter Jackson’s colourised tribute to our great-grandparents.

And that’s the thing – as the red, green and blue is blitzed the more we can relate. Yet war today is some distant thing we flick through on CNN or whatever. Fully realised 3D depictions of car bombs and RPGs ambushing armoured personnel carriers we have decided are too graphic, this in an age when students find clapping traumatic. But the carnage of the Somme is somehow acceptable because it’s a centenary old. Weird.

Perhaps we need a WWIII to make reality (people die, war is hell) more palatable to our viewing tastes.

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/16/they-shall-not-grow-old-review-first-world-war-peter-jackson

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45910189

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/they-shall-not-grow-old-peter-jackson-review-first-world-war-ww1-lord-of-the-rings-hobbit-a8586401.html

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Oct 09 2018
Leave a comment
Cinema, Film, Movies, Oscars, World War Two, WWII

The Thin Red Line (1998) is from another world.

Original Cinema Quad Poster - Movie Film Posters

Fuck knows what Terrence Malick was doing between Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998). Malick goes period again, the slaughter of Guadalcanal complete with a who’s who of Hollywood ‘big names’. One could be forgiven for thinking this a contemporary The Longest Day (1962), a spot-the-star marathon. Malick clearly used these ‘stars’ as a means for making this entirely personal ontological exercise.

The least political war movie ever, the battle starts and ends and the company depart, characters question their place in the grand scheme of things, quite the number die. The cinematography is breathtaking, the score transcendental. It’s the closest ‘commercial’ motion picture to extended movie montage, à la Koyaanisqatsi (1982). There are no stock good guys and bad guys or retreading of traditional war movie tropes.

The+Thin+Red+Line

Martin Scorsese summed it up quite well: “The Thin Red Line” is so important. You could come in the middle of it, you can watch it. It’s almost like an endless picture. It has no beginning and no end. People say, “Well, sometimes I can’t tell whose voiceover it is.” It doesn’t matter. It’s everybody’s voiceover.”

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Jul 03 2018
Leave a comment
Cinema, Film, Movies, Uncategorized

The Truman Show – 20 years on.

close up of the trumania republic of the burbank galaxy 1998 jim carey 2 (1)

The Truman Show (1998) didn’t capture the zeitgeist; it largely predicted it. Much like how Scarface (1983) birthed glorified Gangsta rap – present hip hop artists unaware that Montana was a satire laughing at the emergence of the culture – it was the Jim Carrey ‘serious role’ vehicle which presaged the Big-Brother-by-choice bantz we now have. The eponymous ‘reality’ TV show, a zillion other ‘hidden camera’ programmes populated by tarted-up bimbos (yes, including The Apprentice), the omniscience of social media, the shameless supervision from the NSA and GCHQ. It’s as if Truman is a summation of 20 years of snooping, willfully and not, but before it happened.

I can’t even count the number of times someone has said to me they feel like they’re living a real-life Truman Show, such has been the ridiculousness of their day. Well, if directed actors and MacGuffins aren’t out there to construct the drama, you can bet you’re being watched, often by choice – think of all the selfies at crime scenes, the Snapchatting of break-ins, check-ins at weddings/funerals.

the-truman-show-anniversary-embed-03

The Truman Show nailed the lot – the shallowness, the vanity, the essential neediness of modern society to not only feign happiness in its absence but inject meaning everywhere, to create a drama when none is needed.

And that Philip Glass score lifted from Powaqqatsi (1998) is quite the cracker:

Further reading/viewing:

http://www.vulture.com/2018/06/how-the-truman-show-predicted-the-future.html

http://www.thrillmesoftly.com/2017/07/truman-show-big-brother/

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →