Sky Atlantic

I’ve not been watching many movies recently because I’ve been Sky+ing so much on Sky Atlantic, here’s what I’ve been watching.

Broadwalk Empire
I feel as though I have reached a kind of TV series watching state of nirvana. After having seen all of The Sopranos and The Wire and The Shield, I know how to watch a series from the beginning; how to be patient, how to recognise when I should remember something. I think the writers may have had the previous viewing experiences of the audience in mind as some characters are killed of far more abruptly that I expected, so it’s not as though we can predict everything.

Five episodes in, Broadwalk Empire is picking up the pace. I actually think that the pilot directed by Martin Scorsese isn’t as good as the rest of the series so far. I’ve watched episode 1 twice now and it seems a bit too whimsical. It features a very Scorsese-esque ‘murder and body discovery montage to period music’ which I think was unnecessary.

Excellent as the series is, I think it’s slightly uneven. All the external shots on the titular boardwalk are created with CGI to recreate 1920s Atlantic City, these sequences all have a kind of dream like quality which doesn’t sit well with the internal shots which are filmed in incredibly detailed studios. I’m often reminded of the dream sequences from the Sopranos, like the one where Tony is talking to the fish which has Pussy’s voice.

I’m nitpicking though, coz it’s ace.

Treme
From the braniacs behind The Wire, and how. Only two episodes in it’s still not clear where this is going, but as a Wire vet I know that when all the story lines come together it’s going to be awesome.

I’m glad I went to the effort of watching Spike Lee’s When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts (two would have done) also on Sky Atlantic which documents Hurricane Katrina and the resulting floods. Now that I’m an expert on Katrina and New Orleans, I smugly know the background of the characters and their circumstances better than the average Treme viewer (and isn’t that the point of HBO drama; to feel clever for watching it?)

There is one very annoying character – the DJ guy who keeps fucking up- but otherwise they’re all good, and many are based on real people. One of the characters is played by a Katrina Survivor who appears in When The Levees Broke, as does Wendell Pierce, who’s family lived in New Orleans. Walter is in it too.

Blue Bloods
Hmm...difficult to recommend this one. Blue Bloods sits somewhere between The Shield and all that CSI style bullshit. The episodes are very formulaic: Nasty crime (but not too nasty) takes place, Donnie Wahlberg’s detective character is assigned to investigate, he calls on the help of his district attorney sister and Police Commissioner father to help, in a moment of desperation he gets all Vick Mackey on some guy who he knows did it, but can’t prove it. Then at the end of the episode the whole family of cops gets together over Sunday dinner and debates the morality and legality of how they solved this week’s case. Somewhere in there is an ongoing plot about police corruption. Tom Selleck looks like a walking advertisement for Just for Men.

The Sopranos
It gets better every time.

Battle Star Galactica
I quite like it. I never watched any episodes when it was new but I can understand the appeal. Family friendly Sci Fi drama, some poorly conceived characters but the way the Cylons have been re-imagined is good, and every other episode has a good plot. Future Star Trek series (please) would learn a lot from this. Sky Atlantic is also showing Voyager from the start. I remember liking it first time round but I’ve caught a couple of the early ones and it’s not as good as I remember.

Six Feet Under
I watched the first three series or so when they were on Channel 4 ten years ago(!), much better than I remember. I remember being quite disturbed by the idea of Charlotte Light and Dark back when I was 18.

So,

After years of snobbishly claiming to not really watch TV, I have found myself watching at least 6 programs religiously. But it’s OK, because there are loads of other TV-addicts who consider themselves quasi-intellectuals watching exactly the same stuff. But for how long? It’s only free for six months y’all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/jan/05/sky-atlantic-mad-men-treme

By the way, is anyone watching Outcasts? It seems like something I might dig, but it’s on the BBC, so I dismiss it as being a nice idea but poorly made, mainly due to a lack of script editing by completely un-savvy producers, who stay in their jobs because they’re mates with the right people, and having only produced state funded television for their whole careers are incapable of creating a contemporary drama that is anywhere near as good as foreign commercial offerings.
Rant Rant Rant, But seriously, even when the great Charlie Brooker was given free reign to write a zombie series for Channel 4/E4 it still went a bit wrong. Why can’t we get it right over here? Maybe because UK TV producers/directors/writes don’t work well with each other?

Dead Set had one writer and one director for all five episodes. Over at HBO teams of many writers and directors and script editors and producers ensure that the best ideas/characters/plotlines are kept and the rest voted out.

There’s nothing new about this. Everyone cottoned on years ago when Friends was the most popular show on telly and no one in the UK could write a sitcom anywhere near as popular or consistent.

Shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

True Grit

True Grit – 2010, Joel and Ethen Coen

If you’re into the whole brevity thing, True Grit can be summed up thus; Another great Coen Brothers Film.

Maybe we’re being spoilt by Joel and Ethan. Twenty years of excellent films, some may argue without exception. Who else can boast that kind of record? Wes Anderson had better pick up the pace if he is to be as prolific and successful.

Initial reports that the Coens were making a Western were met with slight surprise in some quarters. ‘A Western? Who makes Westerns nowadays?’ Not many people, and when they do it often result in embarrassing box office failure for the big names involved, eh Mr Costner. But it should be no surprise that the Coens are branching out into genres. What else are they going to do? Make the same darkly comic noir with a convoluted plot involving blackmail and murder? They must be bored of that by now.

And of course the modern Western isn’t the same as the classic Western. Somewhere between Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven, Westerns became costume dramas; all historically accurate and filthy looking. The period western allows the Coens to take their penchant for wordy, articulate, unselfconscious dialogue and apply it to a setting where it might not seem so out of place. Although for the first time ever when watching a Ceon film, I felt that the dialogue got a bit tiresome by the end, especially when Josh Brolin’s moronic character also started employing far too many words in his few lines.

True Grit is very good, just like all the other Coen films, and because they are all so good, any bits that aren’t so good tend to stick out. The weak link in this one is Josh Brolin (who doesn’t deserve equal billing to Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon). His role is just about big enough to support those who argue that he’s one of the most overrated actors out there. Fortunately the role played by Robert Duval in the 1969 version is played here by the vastly underrated Barry Pepper (excellent in 25th Hour and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, worthy of forgiveness for Battlefield Earth). All the supporting characters are as well cast as ever, and Hailee Stenfeld is good, but maybe not deserving of every best actress nomination going.

As for Bridges, I love the guy, though I suppose it’s all because of The Dude. As I peruse his Wikipedia entry I’m reminded of how few of his films I’ve seen. Other than ‘Labowski’ I’m only familiar with Starman, K-Pax, Tron, Iron Man the King Kong remake he was in...time for a dedicated Bridges-athon.

What next for the Coen Brothers?
Space Opera starring Liam Neeson?
Period Spy Drama starring Ralph Fiennes?
Renaissance era Farce starring Ben Kingsly?
(yes I have been watching Schindler’s List)

The Mechanic

The Mechanic – 2011, Simon West

Normally I can watch any film without feeling the need to justify the reason for watching it, but The Mechanic is currently in cinemas, I didn't just Sky+ it like all the other mediocre action films I watch. So I'll just explain how come I ended up watching The Mechanic at the Odeon when there are loads of other films on release right now, in particular all the Oscar contenders; The King's Speech, 127 Hours, The Fighter et all.

My Tuesday evening was planned thus:
4.15pm - meeting with mortgage advisor (65% Loan-To-Value! Gee, no thanks.)
7.00pm - play dodgeball (sport of Kings)

So I had two hours to kill from 5 till 7 and after carefully examining the show times of all the cinemas in Manchester city centre, only The Mechanic was on during the time available to me. It’s a remake of a 1972 Michael Winner film starring Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent, the lead roles now played by Jason Statham and Ben Foster.





The plot may have been original in ’72, but now it’s just an expectable pastiche of action movie standards; Statham is a clinical assassin who works for some shadowy organisation, his contact in the company is an old friend played by an established actor (in this case Donald Sutherland) whose ten minutes of time on screen is an attempt to add credibility to a lacklustre screenplay. As soon as Sutherland appears on screen it’s obvious he’s going to die, and that Statham will probably kill him, and that he’ll find out the truth later and regret killing his friend and mentor and head off to extract bloody revenge. I predicted a John Woo style ending with the good guy sailing away on the yacht he has always dreamed of owning but it didn’t quite finish like that. Also, unusually for a Statham film, there was no car chase.

Englishman Simon West (director of Con Air) seems more concerned with creating something technically polished and at the very least credible than he does with shooting exiting action. I’ve seen a lot of action films me, and in my opinion the good ones fall into one of two categories, which for the sake of this post I will call ‘Die Hards’ and ‘Hard Boileds’

‘Die Hards’ are good films that just happen to be action films, Die Hard being the most prominent example. I include such greats as Predator 1 and 2, Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens and Under Siege (among many others).

‘Hard Boileds’ are films that are kind of ridiculous and technically not that good, but the spectacle makes them rise above all the other crap action films. I don’t mean these films are ‘so bad they’re good’, I mean they are entertaining enough to be considered good. Hard Boiled, Commando, all the Rambo films and almost every Jackie Chan film made between 1978 and 1995 are good examples.

The Mechanic is not a good action film by either definition, but it had a reported budget of $40 million and stars one of the few ‘bankable’ action stars going. I for one am proud of our Jason, he’s out there kicking ass in big American movies, but the question The Mechanic prompts me to ask is ‘How long before Jason Statham goes straight-to-DVD?’ To try and predict let us examine the careers of Seagal and Van Damme.

Steven Seagal
Born – 1952
First Lead role in a cinematic release – 1988 (age 36), Above The Law
Highest grossing film to date – 1992 (age 40), Under Siege ($156 million including international gross)
First successive Straight-to-DVD – 2003(age 51), Out For A Kill

Jean-Claude Van Damme
Born – 1960
First Lead role in a cinematic release – 1988 (age 28), Bloodsport
Highest grossing film to date – 1994 (age 34), Timecop (over $100 million including international gross)
First successive Straight-to-DVD - 2001 (age 41), The Order

Jason Statham
Born – 1967
First major lead role in a cinematic release – 2002 (age 35), The Transporter
Highest grossing film to date – 2008 (age 41), The Transporter 3 (over $100 million including international gross and DVD sales)
First successive Straight-to-DVD – 2017 (age 50), The Transporter 5

Looks like Statham’s career is most like big Steve’s, which means Jason has another six years or so of action in him. Realistically though, Jason will probably stay in cinemas for years to come playing non-bad-ass characters in romantic comedies and heist/caper movies.

Nice one Jase.

Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky is one of those film makers you may never have heard of, but he attracts a lot of admiration from certain quarters:

(cut and paste from Wikipedia)

Notable film director Ingmar Bergman said of Tarkovsky:
"Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream."

I recently endured a Tarkovsky-athon, watching (in chronological order) Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979) over the course of four days. The Mirror is a modest 100 minutes, the other two weigh in at over 160 minutes each (both are an hour too long).

To discuss the plots of these films is almost missing the point or so it seems. Two of them are adaptations of sci-fi novels (something I’m very keen on) but they meander away from the plot and into the realms of ‘The Tarkovskyeqsue’. If Andrei was concerned with holding his audience’s interest, his films wouldn’t be arduous journeys into tedium; I doubt a 90 minute version of Solaris was ever going to win the Prix Spécial du Jury.

Ingmar summed up what Tarkovsky was all about, but from what I gather Bergman and Tarkovsky were each other’s biggest fans. So while the above quote summarises what Andrei was trying to achieve, it’s another question as to whether his efforts were really as good as many a po-faced film critic would have you believe.

This brief clip from the beginning of The Mirror and it shows what Tarkovsky was capable of (I wouldn't agree with whoever posted that video about it being the best sequence ever shot).



Pure atmosphere, but from there the films goes nowhere, slowly. There’s another similar shot at the end, Solaris and Stalker are also book-ended with equally compelling sequences, and all three films are peppered with flashes of genius. But the problem is, for all the dream like imagery and ‘new language’ and glimpses of what may well be the true nature of film, this truth is betrayed by the pondering trite that makes up the bulk of the films.

Tarkovsky is an example of the film-maker who rejected the cinema. He was fully aware that his films were not easily enjoyed. Watching a cast of miserable characters waffle on about the meaning of love (Solaris), life (The Mirror) or desire (Stalker) is not remotely cinematic, it’s not even entertaining. From the three films I’ve seen Andrei was either a poor director of actors; everyone is giving the same morbid, brooding performance, or he was deliberately trying to make the same film again and again. Andrei loved an excessively philosophical, world weary protagonist, but none of them are ever as sympathetic as he thinks they are. The titular Stalker in particular goes through a prolonged crisis of conscience and by the end of the film questions the very worth and meaning of his own life, but by this point no one in the audience will give a govno.

The one thing I did take away from this experience was a desire to read Solaris and Roadside Picnic (the basis for Stalker).

Incidentally, I recently watched the 2002 version of Solaris directed by Steven Sodenbergh which I thought was very good.