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Star Power: Three Examples
Three things we saw last weekend, in reverse order:
Resurrection Blues
You've probably seen the reviews. We hadn't; we thought "Robert Altman directs Arthur Miller: can't be bad". We thought "Matthew Modine and Neve Campbell and James Fox and Maximilian Schell: must be worth seeing". (Ping probably left out Neve Campbell from his list, since he hates the sight of her, but that still leaves three high-wattage actors.)
Well, to quote Opus:
The satire was toothless: Jesus returns to Earth, the bad guys decide to crucify him and sell the TV rights. Not a single moment of insight in the whole two hours. Give it a miss, and go read Gore Vidal's Live From Golgotha instead.
36 Quai des Orfèvres
The French film festival is currently underway, and Ping has booked some tickets. 36 Quai des Orfèvres is a police procedural, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu. Both are corrupt policemen, their boss is about to resign and wants Auteuil to take over, but there is a scandal during which Depardieu gets Auteuil jailed, and (in the dusk with the light behind it) the whole thing more or less resembles The Count of Monte Cristo. It's pretty formulaic stuff. Unfortunately, our policemen are required to behave completely dementedly: at any moment, they'll opt for whichever course of action is most likely to get innocent people killed, for no reason at all other than advancing the plot. So it's beautifully acted, but you don't care because none of the characters is remotely believable and the plot is utter piffle.
Lemming
Another French film, starring nobody I've ever heard of. (Well, OK, Charlotte Rampling in a supporting role. But nobody else.) A yuppie couple are having the boss and his wife to dinner, but alas! the sink in their kitchen is blocked by a lemming. They are not expecting this, not least because they're in the south of France and the nearest lemmings live in Scandinavia. Anyway, the guests arrive and waste no time in laying into each other. They're late because he was with his mistress, she chucks a glass of wine at him, there is a scene, and they leave almost immediately.
By strange and devious occurrences, all this drives the plot into thriller territory. It's all a bit rough around the edges, and I wanted to strangle the sound guy (hint: to raise the tension at key moments, it is not strictly necessary to beat the living crap out of a piano -- in fact, it may even be counterproductive) but it's by far the most successful drama of the three in this post. Worth a look, if you get the chance.
So that was our star-studded weekend. Obscurity won hands-down over fame, rodents took centre stage, and I'm still waiting for Kevin Spacey to stage something worth seeing at the Old Vic.
Resurrection Blues
You've probably seen the reviews. We hadn't; we thought "Robert Altman directs Arthur Miller: can't be bad". We thought "Matthew Modine and Neve Campbell and James Fox and Maximilian Schell: must be worth seeing". (Ping probably left out Neve Campbell from his list, since he hates the sight of her, but that still leaves three high-wattage actors.)
Well, to quote Opus:
Bad plot. Bad special effects. Bad acting. Bad script. Bad costumes. So bad that it created a black hole of badness that sucks all that is good within itself and crushes it within its gravity well of badness. <pause> Well, it wasn't that bad. But Lord, it wasn't good.
Actually, it was that bad. It was a catastrophe. Schell, playing a South American dictator, seemed to have wandered in from a comedy (possibly The Producers). Fox, playing the dictator's cousin, was in some other play altogether, playing -- oh, I don't know -- an English diplomat, probably. Campbell and Modine were wasted. The whole thing was acted as though it were a film (the actors mumbled, they talked across each other). The set looked like a plastic insert for some sort of consumer electronics gizmo: a smooth blobby vacuum-moulded thing, pointlessly revolving. There were green landing lights picking out the edges of the blob, presumably to stop the actors falling off it as it spun round between scenes.The satire was toothless: Jesus returns to Earth, the bad guys decide to crucify him and sell the TV rights. Not a single moment of insight in the whole two hours. Give it a miss, and go read Gore Vidal's Live From Golgotha instead.
36 Quai des Orfèvres
The French film festival is currently underway, and Ping has booked some tickets. 36 Quai des Orfèvres is a police procedural, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu. Both are corrupt policemen, their boss is about to resign and wants Auteuil to take over, but there is a scandal during which Depardieu gets Auteuil jailed, and (in the dusk with the light behind it) the whole thing more or less resembles The Count of Monte Cristo. It's pretty formulaic stuff. Unfortunately, our policemen are required to behave completely dementedly: at any moment, they'll opt for whichever course of action is most likely to get innocent people killed, for no reason at all other than advancing the plot. So it's beautifully acted, but you don't care because none of the characters is remotely believable and the plot is utter piffle.
Lemming
Another French film, starring nobody I've ever heard of. (Well, OK, Charlotte Rampling in a supporting role. But nobody else.) A yuppie couple are having the boss and his wife to dinner, but alas! the sink in their kitchen is blocked by a lemming. They are not expecting this, not least because they're in the south of France and the nearest lemmings live in Scandinavia. Anyway, the guests arrive and waste no time in laying into each other. They're late because he was with his mistress, she chucks a glass of wine at him, there is a scene, and they leave almost immediately.
By strange and devious occurrences, all this drives the plot into thriller territory. It's all a bit rough around the edges, and I wanted to strangle the sound guy (hint: to raise the tension at key moments, it is not strictly necessary to beat the living crap out of a piano -- in fact, it may even be counterproductive) but it's by far the most successful drama of the three in this post. Worth a look, if you get the chance.
So that was our star-studded weekend. Obscurity won hands-down over fame, rodents took centre stage, and I'm still waiting for Kevin Spacey to stage something worth seeing at the Old Vic.