Thursday 24 May 2012

Cannes 2012



Oh how I wish I could be at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival (although I hear the weather is uncharacteristically shite this year).

Yes, the festival is a veritable parade of crass excess and solipsistic masturbation; but you get to see new films by famed art-house auteurs, and find out who amongst the pompous attendees will jeer, applaud, or simply walk out of the screenings. A feedback system akin the House of Commons then, only slightly less meaningless.


My top picks of the festival so far (having not attended any screenings or been to Cannes) are as follows:



1. Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (yes, I know only clips are being shown at the festival; I'm excited about this, what can I say):




Glad to see Joaquin Phoenix has come back to do real films again after his mockumentary mis-fire in 2010.

"Agh Agh Agh Agh Agh; I needs me spinach!" Joaquin goes all method for his portrayal of a 50's naval recruit.

Something tells me that Philip Seymour Hoffman as the head of a burgeoning 1950s religious cult that bears "no resemblance to Scientology whatsoever" will be both magnificent and glorious in equal measure.


2. Michael Haneke's Amour:



Another haunting misery-thon from the Austrian angst-master general. My bet for the Palme d'Or is going on this after having reading reviews (edit: I was right!), although with neurotic intellectual funnyman Nanni Moretti (the Italian Woody Allen) as Jury President things could go either way.

As an aside, it's sobering to see a once French New Wave film legend go from this:

Jean-Louis Trintignant

To this:

Oh dear I've sat on my balls again


3. Jacques Audiard's De Rouille et d'Os (Of Rust and Bone):



Yes, the mythic man of Un Prophete (A Prophet) returns with his fifth film, a love story between a bare-knuckle fighter and a killer whale trainer who gets her legs chopped off. A formulaic rom-com then. 

I can't wait, not because Jacques Audiard is a consistently brilliant director/screenwriter (and son of the equally revered screenwriter/director Michel Audiard), and not because of the delirious mise-en-scene and apparently inspired use of music; no, I'm excited because the male protagonist is played by none other than Matthias Schoenaerts, the powerful lead in one of the most barmy yet brilliant dramas of last year: Bullhead.


4. Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt:



Remember Festen? The feel-good family reunion movie? Apparently this provides a similar level of can-only-watch-through-my-fingers awkwardness. Plus it's got the amazing Mads Mikkelsen (edit: he won best actor), who sadly is only known outside of Denmark as the bad guy in Casino Royale.

I have no idea what they're saying in the above trailer, and an "Eng Sub" version in HD does not exist yet to the best of my knowledge. From reading the synopsis and review however, it looks to be thoroughly, thoroughly good.


5. Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly:



Many will know Andrew Dominik from Chopper and The Assassination of Jesse James, who in two movies alone has been able to carve out an impressive niche for elegiac, revisionist films de-glorifying notorious criminals, all filmed in a "gritty-beautiful" aesthetic (legendary DoP Roger Deakins provided the stark beauty on show in Jesse James, and won an Oscar for No Country for Old Men released the same year).

This low-down crim' caper casts Brad Pitt once again as the lead. I'm a little worried we'll all get a bit tired of his affable psychopath schtick; he is remarkably good at the frightening/charming routine though.


6. Ken Loach's The Angel's Share:



Ken Loach, making a light comedy? Next you'll be telling me Takashi Miike's made a high school musical! Oh, wait, he has? And it's screening at the festival? Up is down! Black is white! Cats and dogs will start living together!

Arghhhh!
To be honest, I don't think I could sit through another Wind That Shakes the Barley level guilt-trip about political strife, so an uplifting socially conscious comedy caper comes as a welcome surprise. In fact, it seems this year's Cannes is an overall more cheery affair (Haneke's Amour notwithstanding), as previous years have seen an onslaught of unrelenting misery. I still haven't come round to seeing 2007 Palme d'Or winner 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days simply because I can't bear to do so.


7. David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis:



Perhaps sitting through all of A Dangerous Method was worth the crushing boredom after all, as with Cosmopolis, David "mind-fuck" Cronenberg has gone back to what he does best: warped apocalyptic odysseys through the horrors of modernity (See Videodrome. Long live the new flesh!).

I'm a little on the fence about Robert Pattinson playing the lead, although I'm sure Cronenberg has found ways to pervert those clean looks into something menacing and repugnant.


8. Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love:



No idea if this is going to be any good, and to be fair, Certified Copy was a little self-indulgent and tedious. But it's Kiarostami, the Iranian art-house darling, known for his sensitive investigations of the human condition (innit). The Japanese setting provides intrigue due to its cultural foreignness (if not a little eye-roll inducing pretension). He's not known for giving the audience what they want; 2003's Five Dedicated to Ozu literally consisted of five static shots of a seashore, clocking in at 74 *fucking* minutes. I hope this won't test my stamina in a similar fashion.

If you want to see an excellent Kiarostami film for free check out Close-Up. It's obscure even by film buff standards, so you get double hipster points for bringing it up at parties. You shallow ponce.

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So...that's my list, thanks for reading...What? No Moonrise Kingdom I hear you bellow ironically, flicking your clove cigarettes and rattling your fixed-gear bicycles?

No; no Moonrise Kingdom. Good DAY sir!

Tuesday 8 May 2012

GAY WHITE NEGROES!


That should get some hits on Google... Anyhow, now that I have your attention, I'd like to redirect you to this customarily brilliant article by Adam Curtis on the subject of...gay white negroes!

It's about Norman Mailer's campaign to become mayor of New York.

And gay white negroes. It's also about Boris Johnson, sort of...

Choice quotes:

"This outsider culture had originally been created, Mailer wrote, by blacks in response to racial oppression and violence. But for the "white negroes" that culture was then co-opted in order to give a meaning and grandeur to their psychopathic narcissism."

"Today it is possible to argue that we have all become gay white negroes. We all listen to "edgy urban" music, spend our time in the gym, go shopping and groom ourselves, take lots of drugs, have sex and then spend the rest of the time talking to our friends about the impossibility of finding real love and connection in the world."

"Instead the white negro hipster has actually become one of the central conservative pillars of our time - because their real function is now simply to prop up an increasingly shaky system of credit and rolling consumption."

"And one wonders where are the real outsiders of out time? Who are the new "white negroes" of our age?"

Indeed! WHO?