Million Dolar Baby

Really really didn't deserve to win Oscars. A really mediocre film, the first half is competent sports movie then tat ends and there's a whole other film that thinks it's dealing with difficult moral questions but is about as black and white as it gets. In fact throughout the film eschews any subtleties or shades of grey. That's not to say it's terrible, Clint Eastwood is clearly a solid director, solid and unadventurous a kind of meat and two veg safe pair of hands that the studios love c.f. Ron Howard. And Hilary Swank earns her money, but the whole affair is so tiresomely worthy in a very Hollywood way.

I've noticed recently I've been saying Hollywood as if that's a bad thing, Hollywood is obviously where the vast majority of my favourite films get made, or at least get funded and it annoys me when people look down on American films as somehow inherently inferior to e.g. French cinema (esp. as French cinema is so often so bad). So youknow, just saying when I say Hollywood it's not a total diss in fact it's normally that Hollywood films can be more average than other films. Probably because there's so many of them so they kind of define the average. Anyway, enough.

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Ocean's Eleven

Just really average, thoughtless, bland hollywood fare.

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A Touch Of Evil

The version I watched was "restored to Orson Welles' vision".

Man I feel like a total philistine but this film was just dull. There was some impressive technical work but the plot swithced between overly predicatble and totally loopy.

Also: Charlton Heston as a Mexican? No!

Valuable sentiment: police work is supposed got be hard, the only place where it's not is in a police state.

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Marie Antoinette

There's not much story to speak of here; Marie Anoinette gets married, doesn't enjoy the strictures of the French court but gets used to it and lives a decadent and unreflected life, lots of cake and nice dresses, she does all this to a poorly integrated soundtrack of post-punk pop hits.

So Sofia Coppola has made another film about how terribly difficult it is to be an over-privileged young woman (biographical much?). We never see anything outside a very small world. The script, such as it is, could be lifted straight from a film set in 2006 so what's the point in setting this in France on the cusp of revolution? Well mainly so that Vivienne Westwood can really go to town on the costume designs, undoubtedly the films saviour.

The whole film is infected with the dullness and emptiness of it's characters who the cast largely fail to bring to life. There were points at which I though, "this is supposed to be some comment on celebrity or something" but most of the time such comments are banal and really this is a poorly made film which luckily has some nice costumes in it. Also confirmed my suspicions that Kirsten Dunst really isn't a very good actress.

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The Adventures Of Prince Achmed

Hailed as the first full length animated feature this film clearly has an important place in cinema history. The technique used is that of traditional shadow theatre mixed with some crude stop frame stuff. The detail of the cut outs and the composition of the scenes are both impressive for the time but were effortlessly superseded by Disney's Snow White a mere 11 years later.

Based on episodes from the Arabian Nights the story is pretty straightforward stuff; sorcerer invents flying horse, contrives to steal princess, prince with aid of Chinese witch and Aladdin rescues princess. The story itself didn't hold my interest (whenever things get tough for our hero the witch comes a long and magically solves any problems) over an hour and a half it's stretched pretty thin and I probably would have switched off had I not been in the middle of a three hour train journey. The problem is, that in spite of the obvious technical accomplishments, this is essentially a special effects film and like any special effects film once that aspect is worn out things quickly get boring. Snow White still gets watched in cinemas today not because of its animation which, whilst it stands the test of time, isn't up to today's standards but because of the story and the design work both of which are brilliantly realised.

Having said that Achmed's soundtrack is good and there's probably some interesting stuff for people interested in the idea of orientalism. But in the end this is an interesting foot note in the history animation.


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James And The Giant Peach

Tim Burton was the producer here, and his gothic visual sensibilities seem to have rubbed off on the animation style. Which is good. But even so, the screenplay doesn't live up to the source material. The need (presumably Disney's) to turn Roald Dahl's typically rather dark and surreal tale into a neat Hollywood package just doesn't work in favour of the story (incase you don't know: Orphaned boy escapes evil aunts, flies across the Atlantic in giant peach accompanied by friendly insects). Too concerned with tidying up loose ends, the film doesn't fully embrace the fabulous subject matter (in fact there's a rather heavy handed and totally unnecessary bit of metaphor building in the last part of the film, ah so it's all about James dealing with the death of his parents DO YOU SEE?).

Actually this may be a bit harsh. The film is certainly enjoyable, it's just that it's far from a classic children's film which it had the potential to be. Cutting the live action segments which book-end the animation might be a good place start. But hey, it's enjoyable for children I imagine, and they are, after all, the target audience.

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A Scanner Darkley

An alright film. The much hyped rotoscoping isn’t really that great though, and I'm not convinced it adds to the film. If anything it's a bit boring, something that PKD could never be accused of, and the acting is pretty lame a lot of the time. Story-wise it’s fairly faithful to the book (not that I care much about that) but despite all the surface weirdness it doesn’t really manage to tap into the unsettling core of the book. Basically don’t bother, or watch it on video on a Sunday morning or something.

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