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tilbageidanmark · 2 years

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Movies I watched this Week - #83

It was another busy week film-watching-wise, and I managed to see a fair number of excellent films. The best of the lot were ‘Mrs. Harris goes to Paris’, ‘The Lacemaker’, ‘A scene at the sea’, ‘Incendies’.

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2 with Lesley Manville + 2 with Isabelle Huppert:

🍿 Another haute couture adjacent role for the absolutely delightful Lesley Manville (After ‘Phantom Thread’) in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022). A Pixar-charming fairy tale with a score mimicking the "Married Life" opening sequence to ‘Up’. Mrs. Harris is Queen-For-A-Day, an older cleaning lady widow, who dreams of buying a Dior gown in 1956 Paris. Huppert plays a bitchy gatekeeper at the high-end retailer, an unusual role for her. This is the kind of pleasant romance for old people that my mom will love, but so did I, very much. 8/10.

🍿 My 5th Mike Leigh film, Topsy-Turvy, (1999) about the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera ‘The Mikado’. Not particularly fond of period dramas, and mostly unfamiliar with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Victorian music hall comedies, this highly-regarded production didn’t connect with me.

🍿 I’ve seen a dozen or so films with Isabelle Huppert, but none was actually from the beginning of her exceptional career. In The Lacemaker (1977) she stars as a shy 18-year-old girl who falls in love for the first time. Even though she was only 24 at the time, she already played at 15 films before. It’s obvious that even at that young age, she was a major talented actress. Subtle, compassionate and reserved, just like Vermeer’s. 9/10.

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A Scene at the Sea (1991), my second by Takeshi Kitano, the one he made right before ‘Sonatine’. A quiet story about a young garbage collector who finds a discarded surfing board on his route and his geeky girlfriend with exceptionally big ears, both mute and deaf. It’s so refreshing to see an action-less ‘sport’ film that doesn’t hit you on the head with it, and where the determined ‘hero’ never gets more than half-decent with his hobby. (Photo Above).

A very lovely score by Joe Hisaishi, reminiscent of Erik Satie. 8/10

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3 by Denis Villeneuve:

🍿 His horrifying Incendies (2010), dramatizing the tragic story of Lebanese fighter Souha Bechara during the Civil War. I resisted watching it for a long time, as I could feel it was too emotionally draining, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Canadian twins are searching to unearth their mother’s middle eastern harrowing secrets. The torture, atrocities and cruelty were indeed tough to sit through, mostly because of Villeneuve's realistic direction, but the power of this extraordinary film gave it universal appeal. 9/10.

🍿 Next Floor, his symbolic, one-note 2008 short about a group of high-society carnivores who gorge themselves on dish after squishy dish at a dark banquet. Is it hell, or are they just modern consumers?

🍿 So After ‘Sicario’ and ‘Enemy’ and now ‘incendies’, I thought that maybe I should cover the rest of Villeneuve‘s works. But, after being discovered as a multi-layered story-teller, the first of the big Hollywood breaks he got, Prisoners (2013), was creepy and utterly unpleasant. Child abduction stories are usually a sadistic guise to dwell in the “worst of humanity”. And gory vigilantes are the excuse for “excising” these demons. But I despise both and don’t need them in my life, especially when they are delivered in degrading slow-motion and without any redeeming qualities (in spite of all the shallow religious symbolism). Fuck him.

David Thomson expressed it well here. 2/10.

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The innocents (2022), my second Nordic Terror (after ‘Blind’) from Norwegian Eskil Vogt (who co-wrote all of Joachim Trier‘s films). It’s about an angelic-faced blond little girl, her autistic sister, and two other children who are afflicted with supernatural powers, one of them uses it for “evil”. The young actress who plays the autistic sister is incredible. And the Ambiance Noir score is superb.

It’s actually my favorite of these two authors’ disturbing work. Unfortunately, I can see him getting a big Netflix production as his next project, which will turn his subtle style into a bombastic, soulless formula.

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Richard Burton X 2:

🍿 Absolution, another 1978 British drama with tortured priest Richard Burton, struggling with the deadly consequences of his ‘Seal of confession’. But, unlike ‘The night of the iguana’ this time there’s no John Huston to guide, and especially no Tennessee Williams to present ‘real’ characters. Instead, the 'Children's Hour’ theme of a strict teacher at a Catholic boarding school and his different treatment of two students is meddled, confused, and unsatisfying. The role of the rebellious student, who snares the priest into a evil web of murder is especially weak.

The best the film has to offer is Burton’s mellifluous, gravelly-deep Welsh voice, which is plenty, really. 4/10 for the 'Voice’ and the 70′s English film style.

🍿 Under Milk Wood, 1972 BBC adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s classic play, about a day and night in a small Welsh village. Burton and Thomas were friends and drinking buddies.

...“From where you are you can hear in Cockle Row in the spring, moonless night, Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper, dream of her lover, tall as the town clock tower, Samson syrup-gold-maned, whacking thighed and piping hot, thunderbolt-bass'd and barnacle-breasted, flailing up the cockles with his eyes like blowlamps and scooping low over her lonely loving hotwaterbottled body”...

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As I am ready to immerse myself in the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, Etc. I watched the documentary Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema (2014), about the Taiwanese New Wave of the 1980s. I’m looking forward to them.

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2 epic Hindi stories from India:

🍿 3 Idiots (2009), a cheesy Bollywood saga about 3 friends at an engineering school. Like many Indian movies, it’s a 3 hour long broad comedy, over-dramatic with exaggerated details and absurd logic. Until everybody burst out singing and start dancing in front of neon-colorful vistas. Every time I see one of them, I say that I need many more Hindi musicals in my life. 5/10.

🍿 “... There are two kind of people in this world, Dicks and Assholes... And this is a game that these two play...”

Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) is a violent 5-hour gangster epic about three mafia families who fight for wealth and control through 3 generations. It’s frantic, bloody, brutal action, aspiring to be an Indian ‘The Godfather’ story, about revenge, greed and power. Unusually profane, with dozens and dozens of characters, and choppy story telling style. Banned in Qatar for violent content!

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My 8th Hong Sang-soo film, Woman on the beach (2006), is the least satisfying of them so far. Probably because the main character is a common jerk. It does not start that way: A youngish director, Mr. Kim, is urging a colleague and his girlfriend to join him at a small seaside resort. There they sit in small restaurants (as per the usual Sang-soo custom), drink lots of Soju and talk endlessly. But slowly he discloses himself to be a deceptive ass, who manipulates the women around him, just so he can sleep with them, while still thinking so highly of his art craft. A disturbing portrait of a male ego, that is surely autobiographical.

And then there’s the unexplainable scenes with a cute white dog, Dori, which is abandoned by his normally-looking owners, just like that! Unsettling!

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2 first-watches starring Paul Newman:

🍿 Hitchcock’s cold-war spy “thriller” Torn Curtain (1966) with Newman and Julie Andrews. Lame, old-fashioned and lacking any suspense, the worst of his films in my mind. However, Hitch’s cameo at the beginning of the film is in Copenhagen at the hotel d'Angleterre, so yeah for that.

🍿Slap Shot (1977), a broad sport comedy that was his favorite role to shoot. About a failing ice hockey team that starts playing outrageously and violently. His only comedy?

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Buster Keaton’s silent cowboy adventure, Go West (1925). Not as inventive or slapsticky as his best stuff, but it ends with a wild herd of cattle stampeding through the streets of LA.

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2 By Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo:

🍿Colossal (2016) was truly a stupid movie: A giant reptilian Kaiju appears in Seoul, South Korea, killing and destroying things in its path. At the same time, alcoholic loser Anne Hathaway discovers that she is actually the one who remote-controls the Godzilla-like monster from a playground in her small New Hampshire home town. And from there, it gets funkier, and less coherent. It’s difficult to imagine how people come up with these moronic concepts. 1/10.

🍿7:35 in the Morning (2003) was his first film, an Oscar-nominated short about a suicide bomber who terrorizes a busy cafe, by singing and dancing and getting everybody to join him. Odd and uninteresting

I actually saw another of his films this year, ‘Time Crimes’ - and all three were no good!

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“...This corn is raw!...”

The perennial Cold War techno-thriller WarGames (1983 - Opening scene with young Michael Madsen and John Spencer).

Doctor Strangelove’s Doomsday Machine with Stephen Hawking robotic voice, and the film that convinced ‘Evil Empire’ Reagan to invest billions of dollars in his SDI Star War wet-dream systems. Re-watch.

"...A strange game. The only winning move is not to play..."

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Leif Gantvoort’s short Passed the Brush (2020) about a man who has a makeup brush fall from the ceiling into his lap. Re-watch.

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I’m finally going to start watching ‘Better call Saul’ this week. But until then, I binged on ‘Slippin’ Jimmy’, a quick animated AMC money-grab, which is basically Saul Goodman spin-off for 9-year-old boys. 1/10.

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Throw-back to the art project:

Under milk Wood Adora.

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(My complete movie list is here)

#movies

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gabrielpardal · 9 years

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Birdman - Prestígio vs Popularidade

Em seu quarto filme produzido nos EUA o diretor mexicano Alejandro González Iñárritu expõe sua opinião sobre a indústria do cinema americano, muito provavelmente a partir da sua experiência por lá. Birdman conta a história de Riggan Thomson, um ator que no passado fez muito sucesso no papel do personagem título, um super-herói que se tornou ícone cultural e comercial em todo o mundo. Desde que ele recusou a filmar o quarto filme da franquia, sua carreira começou a cair. Em busca de refazer sua fama como ator, ele decide dirigir, roteirizar e estrelar a adaptação de um conto do Raymond Carver no teatro da Broadway.

Acontece que a poucos dias da estreia a produção vem enfrentando alguns problemas. Um dos atores se acidentou e foi substituído pelo talentoso e problemático Mike Shiner (Edward Norton); uma outra atriz do elenco, Laura (Andrea Riseborough), revela que pode estar grávida dele; Lesley (Naomi Watts), outra atriz, está insegura na sua estreia na Broadway; seu agente e amigo Jake (Zach Galifianakis) está desesperado com o possível fracasso financeiro do espetáculo; sua filha Sam (Emma Stone), recém saída de uma clínica de recuperação de drogas, sente a falta do afeto paterno e parece estar próxima de uma recaída; e a maior crítica de teatro (Lindsay Duncan) do maior jornal americano mostra-se determinada a escrever uma péssima resenha. Junto à isso, Thomson é constantemente atormentado pela voz de Birdman, que após ter sido abandonado pelo interprete, permanece presente em sua cabeça, lhe atormentando, provocando sua auto-estima, tentando lhe rebaixar.

Há tempos que alguns cineastas americanos vêm se mostrando preocupados com o rumo que suas produções tomaram. Essa preocupação também passa pelos realizadores daqui, já que nosso modelo de produção e exibição é chupado do deles. A internet fez com que os estúdios perdessem dinheiro ao disponibilizar cópias piratas de graça para download. Para não perder dinheiro os estúdios acabaram privilegiando produções que não tivesse risco de lucro como continuações de filmes de herói, filmes 3D, desenhos animados, fazendo de tudo para prender os espectadores na telona. Graças à isso, um outro tipo de filme, considerado mais “artístico”, sofreu junto com seus realizadores e público.

Se antigamente um ator se gabava por nunca ter feito um trabalho taxado de comercial, hoje não é o que acontece. Nem os considerados grandes atores da arte performática escaparam, Ian Mckellen, Cate Blanchet, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, Robert Downey Jr, Philip Seymour Hoffman — assim como também Michael Keaton, Edward Norton e Emma Stone (que estão no elenco de Birdman).

O filme de Iñárritu é uma crônica sobre isso. Não a toa que o seu protagonista é o Michael Keaton, que há duas décadas atrás se eternizou no papel de Batman e que após ter recusado participar de suas continuações deixou de ser convidado para papéis relevantes no cinema. Keaton faz Thomson, ator que não quer ser eternamente conhecido por usar a máscara de um herói, que sente que suas ambições artísticas vislumbram outros trabalhos e, portanto, decide correr atrás disso. É um filme que fala sobre existência, sobre a busca por um lugar e um objetivo na vida — e em como nos enxergamos em nossas próprias vidas.

O objetivo de Iñarritu é discutir a questão Arte versus Entretenimento. Existe mesmo esta divisão? Todos os personagens estão marcados pela dualidade, parecem estar divididos entre duas direções. Mike Shiner é um ator do Método, não quer que o gin seja substituído por água no palco e sugere que usem uma arma de verdade em cena, para dar mais realidade. Em um momento do filme Shiner diz que se sente como que interpretando na vida real enquanto no palco ele é mais livre. Lesley, Sam, Jake e outros também parecem desconfortáveis em suas personas, dando a impressão de que tudo pode despedaçar de uma hora para outra. O filme nos faz acompanhar Thomson no esforço para se reerguer através do prestígio concedido pelo teatro, se relacionando com os outros que buscam a mesma vitória prometida pelo sonho americano.

O desejo de ser amado, inerente ao ser humano, pode ser um elemento auto-destrutivo para o artista embora também possa ser um combustível para a realização de seus trabalhos mais ambiciosos. É a necessidade em ser admirado que move todos os personagens do filme. E no caso de Thomson, através da sua peça ele almeja o reconhecimento ao invés da fama. Não é a peça que lhe interessa, nem o seu conteúdo ou o que ela comunica, mas sim ele mesmo. Na sociedade do espetáculo em que estamos inseridos a imagem é o grande valor e a vida passa a ser um jogo no qual só o que importa é a construção dessa imagem e a transformação do nome de alguém em grife. O avatar se torna mais importante do que a pessoa.

A fama se relaciona com o avatar. Já o reconhecimento, com a pessoa. O famoso é conhecido mas não necessariamente reconhecido. Reconhecer é poder conhecer-se no outro, é se colocar no seu lugar, é aceitá-lo e defender seu direito de existência. Não é simplesmente aceitar, mas compreender e respeitar. Para isso é preciso enxergar no outro algo que seja digno de compreensão e de respeito. Daí existe mesmo a diferença entre Celebridade e Artista. Não são a mesma coisa. O desejo de ser famoso é um fim em si e acaba se tornando um negócio. A imagem é mercadoria e é dela que vivem as celebridades — pessoas para as quais o ser não está em jogo, mas apenas o aparecer.

Em uma cena do filme, Shiner fala para Thomson “A popularidade é a prima promíscua do prestígio”. São dois personagens diferentes mas ambos arrogantes e movidos pelo ego, pela vontade de serem mais importantes do que os outros. O que Shiner tem (prestígio artístico reconhecido por críticos), Thomson não tem e quer. O que Thomson tem (popularidade e poder), Shine não tem e quer. O detalhe precioso é que mesmo com toda arrogância, eles são inseguros. O primeiro é impotente sexual e o segundo frágil em suas convicções artísticas.

O filme escrito por Iñarritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris e Armando Bo não é uma sátira. Em outras mãos poderia ser uma comédia debochada cheia de ironia que acabaria resultando nos mesmos filmes a que critica. Birdman é um filme necessário e não foi feito unicamente para divertir, é um filme que emite uma opinião de assuntos contemporâneos. Um filme para artistas e também para consumidores de arte.

Em um diálogo estupendo Thomson discute com sua filha no salão do teatro. Ele diz que está tentando construir algo importante e ela rebate que o que ele faz não é importante. Thomson reage, “É importante para mim. Talvez não para você ou para seus amigos cínicos cuja única ambição é produzir um viral, mas para mim, para mim é Deus. Essa é a minha carreira, essa é a minha chance de fazer um trabalho que é realmente significante”. A resposta de Sam ao pai é um dos melhores momentos de Emma Stone no cinema: “Significante para quem? Você teve uma carreira antes do terceiro filme do herói dos quadrinhos, antes das pessoas começarem a esquecer quem estava dentro da fantasia de pássaro. Agora você está fazendo uma peça baseada em um livro que foi escrito há 60 anos atrás para umas centenas de ricos e brancos que só estão mesmo preocupados em onde eles vão comer depois. E encare, pai, não é pela arte, é porque você quer se sentir relevante de novo. Tem um mundo inteiro aí fora onde as pessoas lutam para serem relevantes todos os dias e você age como se ele não existisse! (…) Você detesta os blogueiros, você detesta o Twitter e você nem tem um perfil no Facebook! Você não existe. Você faz isso porque tem medo de morrer. Como todos nós. E você quer saber? Você está certo. Nada é importante. Você não é importante. Se acostume com isso.”

Outra cena marcante é da discussão entre Thomson e Tabitha, a crítica de teatro que quer conservar a pureza na arte — parecida com algumas que vemos por aí. Mesmo sem ainda ter assistido a peça, ela diz que vai escrever uma péssima resenha e vai destruir seu trabalho, justificando que Thomson está ocupando o espaço de alguém que poderia ter algo importante para dizer. “Eu vou escrever a pior crítica que alguém já leu e vou acabar com sua peça. Sabe por quê? Porque eu odeio você e todos que você representa. Egoístas, crianças mimadas, despreparados para exercer a verdadeira arte. Entregando uns aos outros prêmios por desenhos e pornografias. Bom, aqui é o teatro e você não pode vir aqui e fingir que sabe escrever, dirigir e atuar na sua própria propaganda sem passar primeiro por mim.” Embora tenha alguns pontos interessantes, a opinião de Tabitha é ultrapassada. Por isso a resposta de Thomson é mais violenta e contundente. Ele a acusa de ser preguiçosa e produzir apenas rótulos. “Você não consegue ver uma coisa se não rotular ela antes. (…) Não há nada sobre técnica, sobre estrutura, sobre intenção! É apenas um monte de opinião de merda. Você apenas escreve uns parágrafos que não lhe custam nada. Seu risco é zero. É nada. Eu sou um ator e nessa peça arrisco tudo!” Ao que ela rebate “Você não é um ator. Você é uma celebridade.” Boa discussão.

A cinematografia concebida por Iñarritu e pelo diretor de fotografia Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravidade, A Árvore da Vida) é espetacular. Filmado para parecer um único plano-sequência, evoca uma continuidade temporal característica do teatro. Aliás, ele é quase que inteiramente filmado num teatro, nos mostrando seus bastidores, coxias, camarins, sala de máquinas, justamente revelando o que há por trás de produções para discutir as produções. Colocando em contraste o Cinema e o Teatro. A trilha sonora do Antonio Sanchez parece improvisada e executada ao vivo. Os atores estão insuperáveis. Edward Norton faz o seu melhor trabalho desde “Clube da Luta”. Emma Stone em uma carreira ainda curta faz seu melhor papel até agora. Zach Galifianakis faz um personagem diferente de tudo o que Zach Galifianakis já fez.

Mas o filme é mesmo de Michael Keaton, corajoso ao usar sua biografia e seu envelhecimento para construir Thomson, se expõe como em uma das cenas em que remove a peruca que esconde sua calvície e fala sobre seu medo de ser esquecido “Você sabia que Farah Fawcett morreu no mesmo dia que Michael Jackson?”. Keaton interpreta parecendo que foi mordido por um mosquito e passa o filme inteiro atrás desse mosquito. Mas não é só ele que está atrás deste mosquito, como também Riggan Thomson. Este mosquito é um pássaro, que é ele mesmo. E todos temos esse pássaro super-herói que pode nos destruir ou nos levar aos céus.

#Cinema #Birdman #Alejandro González Iñárritu

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theuntoldoffcolors · 1 year

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Viktor Morrison. Died at the age of 18, one year after the Thomson incident. He reportedly fell off of a steep unseen ledge on a hike near his then high school. He did not fall he was pushed. Morrison had been the target of violent harassment since him and his boyfriend Percy Wilson had been outed to the town. After a particularly bad incident with Percy, Vikor was upset and started a physical altercation with the bullies which led to him attempting to run but he was followed. The fight continued in the woods where one of the individuals pushed Morrison onto the floor where his head struck a jagged rock and he died. As an act of concealment the ones responsible tossed his body off of a nearby ledge and reported it as such. Morrison had no parents or close relatives, so the police accepted the report at face value. Now he is the most violent vengeful with about a dozen bodies to his name and a dozen more injured severely before his swift capture by W.S agent Lesley Anderson.

He was the second capture of 4.

#original story #original illustration #original comic #original work #ocs #oc stuff #my oc art #oc artwork #narrative

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galleriesmagazine · 2 years

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#NewArtShow 10-09-22 - Fidra Fine Art - Graeme Wilcox - The Lookout FIDRA FINE ART 7-8 Stanley Road, Gullane, East Lothian EH31 2AD Inspired. Sep 10-Oct 30. 32 Contemporary artists inspired by artwork in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland including Lesley Banks, Dominique Cameron, June Carey, Matthew Draper, Henry Jabbour, Phill Jupitus, Simon Laurie, Alan Macdonald, Alice McMurrough, Ann Oram, Jayne Stokes, Peter Thomson, Graeme Wilcox. Tue-Sat 11-4, Sun 12-4 t 01620 249389 e-m [email protected] fidrafineart @fidrafineart FidraFineArt web www.fidrafineart.co.uk https://www.instagram.com/p/CiW0O0do0Qp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#newartshow

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fictionophile · 2 years

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"The Companion" by Lesley Thomson - Book Review @HoZ_Books #NetGalley #TheCompanion #BookReview

“The Companion” by Lesley Thomson – Book Review @HoZ_Books #NetGalley #TheCompanion #BookReview

“Murder slices through our best-kept secrets”. Power Fisheries has been a prominent business in Easthaven for generations. Now, with the business gone and both her parents dead, Freddie Power delivers seafood out of her van – she is the local fishmonger. Freddie (Frederica), the eldest child, was thrown out of the family and the business by her father when she ‘came out‘ to him about being a…

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#England #mystery fiction

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allsortsoffuckedup · 3 years

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Death of a Mermaid by Lesley Thomson

Here’s a pro tip: something evocative isn’t necessarily good.

That’s how I felt after finishing Death of a Mermaid. It appeared to have all the trimmings of my ideal read; an interesting plot, a thriller, multiple narrators, complex women, a lesbian love story. But somehow it managed to embody everything I hate in a read. Welcome to a very subjective review of a book I read. Spoilers obviously.

First off, the typos. Thomson needs to fire her editor. Oftentimes the characters were being called by another character’s name. One chapter had the wrong narrator heading. I get it; authors make mistakes, but that’s why editors exist. Nothing ruins a reading experience more than going “what the fuck” when the wrong name is clearly used for a character.

The second thing was definitely done on purpose but irritated me all the same. Some people might even call it a mark of good writing. I just found it frustrating; as a reader, i always caught on chapters before the characters did. This is a great writing technique when used sparingly but I just felt like the characters never caught a break. It was like watching one big long Murphy’s Law fuckery. In my opinion, the author could’ve given the characters a break on something. Literally just one time. God it’s depressing to read line after line of suffering while you’re silently screaming at them to catch on.

The final and most upsetting thing about this book was the ending. While I understand that people die in crime thrillers (it’s kind of the whole point), it was kind of a slap in the face to end with the murderer getting off with just an anticlimactic death that one narrator truly acknowledges as being too good for him while the protagonist gets no resolution from Mags and ends up settling uncomfortably into life back in bumfuck coastal village. I think after all the shit Mags and Freddy deserved at least resolution if not a happy ending. Instead, Mags died. We aren’t even given a lot of closure on how. It was very bury your gays part 3038584020385.

The most frustrating part of Death of a Mermaid is that it’s so fucking believable. Thomson gives us nothing. The book reads like real life because, in real life, you are a few hours too late to your mother’s deathbed or in a toxic relationship with a woman who’s still interesting and fun sometimes, you do trust the wrong brother or delay a little too long on the missing persons case. Or you wait for too many years to go back to your hometown and find the only woman you ever truly loved so that, by the time, you’ve pulled it together enough to meet her at an abandoned battery, she’s already been abducted by your brother and, despite how you search for her, she gets murdered before you get to her.

Thomson just fucking drives in the knife that real life doesn’t wait for the poetic shit. Real life happens and you wonder what would’ve happened if you got there sooner and you regret. This book is so fucking cynical and it’s needled its way into my very core. I hated it. And I also loved how it succeeded at making me feel.

Something evocative isn’t necessarily good. But good is overrated; after all, isn’t it the horrific things that haunt us the most?

#death of a mermaid #Lesley Thomson #book review #wlw fiction #wlw thriller #wlw #lesbian #lesbian fiction #lesbian thriller #tw murder #books #books I read #book #review

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thedailydetective · 3 years

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The #DailyDetective for 12 June 2021 was John Thomson in The Moonstone.

The appearance of The Moonstone on the BBC daytime schedules of 2016 was a clear reminder that great TV exists outside of prime time. BBC One especially has a way with good afternoon drama on weekdays.

I put Cuff at the head of this post but the heart of the story is really the relationship between courting cousins Rachel Verinder and Franklin Blake, and how it is impacted by the theft of a precious diamond.

Maybe only the Holy Grail trumps the Moonstone for the title of Most MacGuffinest MacGuffin. Both Wilkie Collins' original novel, and this nifty adaptation, by Rachel Flowerday and Sasha Hails, coil all manner of plots and dramatic power-shifts around this prop.

This particular re-telling is structured around Franklin's interview-led investigation into the central mystery of who stole the Moonstone, how and why. It's an on-point way to adapt the epistolary novel but also keeps the drama focused on the stakes as Franklin feels them.

The BBC have adapted The Moonstone four times for TV, including a 1996 version with Greg Wise, Keeley Hawes, Peter Vaughan and Lesley Sharp. It was starry and swish, but missed a lot of the tricks of the witty, multilayered and resourceful 2016 version.

The most recent Moonstone adaptation I know of is a transmedia mash-up of Youtube videos, Twitter accounts and other bits of web bric-a-brac. It's certainly ambitious. The 2016 version is less formally blatant about being a story about stories and storytelling but it very much is, and all without sacrificing the mystery, romance and passion.

youtube

#mystery #moonstone #wilkie collins #john thomson #keeley hawes #greg wise #rachel flowerday #sasha hails #bbc #Youtube

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refreshdaemon · 4 years

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Poster cast of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014):

Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson

Zach Galifianakis as Jake

Edward Norton as Mike Shiner

Andrea Riseborough as Laura Aulburn

Amy Ryan as Sylvia

Emma Stone as Sam Thomson

Naomi Watts as Lesley Truman

#Birdman #Michael Keaton #Zach Galifianakis #Edward Norton #Andrea Riseborough #Amy Ryan #Emma Stone #Naomi Watts

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papapiusxiii · 5 years

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50 Great Thrillers by Women, as recommended by 10 of the UK’s female crime writers

Sophie Hannah:

Summertime by Liz Rigbey. Follows a woman who loses her baby and whose father unexpectedly drowns. When her husband and sister close ranks against her, she begins to suspect they are lying to her.

The Spider’s House by Sarah Diamond. Also published as In the Spider’s House. When Anna Howell discovers that a 1960s child murderess was the previous resident of her old cottage, her marriage, sanity and life come under threat.

Hidden by Katy Gardner. When a young mother’s seven-year-old daughter disappears, she finds herself questioning everything in her life. Then a police officer starts asking about the murder of a woman 14 months earlier …

A Shred of Evidence by Jill McGown. DI Judy Hill and DCI Lloyd investigate the murder of a 15-year-old girl on a patch of open parkland in the centre of town.

Searching for Shona by Margaret Jean Anderson

The wealthy Marjorie Malcolm-Scott trades suitcases, destinations and identities with orphan Shona McInnes, as children are evacuated from Edinburgh at the start of the second world war.

Val McDermid:

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. A teenage war orphan accuses two women of kidnap and abuse, but something about her story doesn’t add up.

Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer. The Booker-longlisted author of Snap follows it up with the tale of a medical student with Asperger’s who attempts to solve a murder.

The Field of Blood by Denise Mina. The first in the Paddy Meehan series sees the reporter looking into the disappearance of a child from his Glasgow home, with evidence pointing the police towards two young boys.

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine. Writing under her pen name, Ruth Rendell tells of the discovery of a woman and child in the animal cemetery at Wyvis Hall, 10 years after a group of young people spent the summer there.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. In the third Jackson Brodie book, a man is released from prison 30 years after he butchered the mother and siblings of a six-year-old girl in the Devon countryside.

Ann Cleeves:

Little Deaths by Emma Flint. Inspired by the real case of Alice Crimmins, this tells of a woman whose two children go missing from her apartment in Queens.

The Dry by Jane Harper. During Australia’s worst drought in a century, three members of one family in a small country town are murdered, with the father believed to have killed his wife and son before committing suicide.

Devices and Desires by PD James. Adam Dalgliesh takes on a serial killer terrorising a remote Norfolk community.

The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina. Heavily pregnant DS Alex Morrow investigates the violent death of a wealthy woman in Glasgow.

Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky. The inimitable VI Warshawski takes over coaching duties of the girls’ basketball team at her former high school, and investigates the explosion of the flag manufacturing plant where one of the girl’s mothers works.

Sharon Bolton:

Gone by Mo Hayder. In Hayder’s fifth thriller featuring Bristol DI Jack Caffrey, he goes after a car-jacker who is taking vehicles with children in them.

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. A murderous revenge is being plotted against the boys’ grammar school in the north of England where eccentric Latin master Roy Straitley is contemplating retirement.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. A time-travelling, murderous war veteran steps through the decades to murder extraordinary women – his “shining girls” – in Chicago, in this high-concept thriller.

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood. Two women who were sentenced for murdering a six-year-old when they were children meet again as adults, when one discovers the body of a teenager.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty. Married scientist Yvonne, who is drawn into a passionate affair with a stranger, is on trial for murder.

Sarah Ward:

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. Journalist Catherine Heathcote investigates the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl in the Peak District village of Scarsdale in 1963.

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway investigates the discovery of a child’s bones near the site of a prehistoric henge on the north Norfolk salt marshes.

The Ice House by Minette Walters. A decade after Phoebe Maybury’s husband inexplicably vanished, a corpse is found and the police become determined to charge her with murder.

The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard. When a body is found in Dublin’s Grand Canal, police turn to the notorious Canal Killer for help. But the imprisoned murderer will only talk to the woman he was dating when he committed his crimes.

This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas (translated by Sian Reynolds). Commissaire Adamsberg investigates whether there is a connection between the escape of a murderous 75-year-old nurse from prison, and the discovery of two men with their throats cut on the outskirts of Paris.

Elly Griffiths:

R in the Month by Nancy Spain. Sadly out of print, this is an atmospheric story set in a down-at-heel hotel in a postwar seaside town. The period detail is perfect and jokes and murders abound. This is the fourth book featuring the fantastic Miriam Birdseye, actress and rather slapdash sleuth.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. A gripping crime novel in which the detective never gets out of bed and the murder happened over 500 years ago. Griffith says: “I read this book as a child and was hooked – on Tey, crime fiction and Richard the Third.”

The Detective’s Daughter by Lesley Thomson. Cleaner Stella Darnell finds herself tidying up her detective father’s final, unfinished case, after he dies. It is the first in a series featuring Stella and her sidekick Jack, an underground train driver who can sense murder.

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid. Griffiths says: “I could have chosen any of Val’s novels, but this book, about a journalist revisiting a shocking 1960s murder, is probably my favourite because of its wonderful sense of time and place. It’s also pitch perfect about journalism, police investigation and life in a small community.”

He Said, She Said by Erin Kelly. An account of a rape trial at which nothing is quite as it seems. Griffiths says: “The story centres around a lunar eclipse, which also works wonderfully as a metaphor and image.”

Dreda Say Mitchell:

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. The Gone Girl author’s debut follows journalist Camille’s investigation into the abduction and murder of two girls in her Missouri home town.

Dangerous Lady by Martina Cole. Cole’s first novel sees 17-year-old Maura Ryan taking on the men of London’s gangland.

The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid. Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill is asked to profile a serial killer when four men are found mutilated and tortured.

Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. A client tells VI Warshawski he is a prominent banker looking for his son’s missing girlfriend. But VI soon discovers he’s lying, and that the real banker’s son is dead.

The St Cyr series by CS Harris. Mitchell has nominated the whole of this historical mystery series about Sebastian St Cyr, Viscount Devlin – master of disguises, heir to an earldom, and disillusioned army officer. It’s a bit of a cheat but we’ll let her have it.

Erin Kelly:

No Night Is Too Long by Barbara Vine. Tim Cornish thinks he has gotten away with killing his lover in Alaska. But then the letters start to arrive …

Broken Harbour by Tana French. The fourth in French’s sublime Dublin Murder Squad series, this takes place in a ghost estate outside Dublin, where a father and his two children have been found dead, with the mother on her way to intensive care.

Chosen by Lesley Glaister. When Dodie’s mother hangs herself, she has to leave her baby at home and go to bring her brother Jake back from the mysterious Soul Life Centre in New York.

A Savage Hunger by Claire McGowan. Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire investigates the disappearance of a girl, and a holy relic, from a remote religious shrine in the fictional Irish town of Ballyterrin.

The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald. Parents Joanna and Alistair start to turn against each other after their baby goes missing from a remote roadside in Australia.

Sarah Hilary:

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin. A sleep-deprived young mother tries to stay sane while her fears grow about the family’s new lodger, in this 1950s lost classic.

Cruel Acts by Jane Casey. Leo Stone, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of two women, is now free and claims he is innocent. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwen want to put him back in jail, but Maeve begins doubting his guilt – until another woman disappears.

Sex Crimes by Jenefer Shute. A lawyer’s New Year’s Eve pick-up spirals into an erotic obsession which leads to graphic cruelty.

Skin Deep by Liz Nugent. Nugent, whom Ian Rankin has compared to Patricia Highsmith, tells the story of a woman who has been passing herself off as an English socialite on the Riviera for 25 years – until the arrival of someone who knows her from her former life prompts an act of violence.

Cuckoo by Julia Crouch. Rose’s home and family start to fall apart when her best friend Polly comes to stay.

Louise Candlish:

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Christie’s classic – with a legendary twist. The best Hercule Poirot?

The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith. A conman on the run with his wife meets a young American who becomes drawn into the crime they commit.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. The author of The Handmaid’s Tale imagines the life of the real 19th-century Canadian killer Grace Marks.

Little Face by Sophie Hannah. Hannah’s thriller debut is about a young mother who becomes convinced that, after spending two hours away from her baby, the infant is not hers.

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane. Newspaper subeditor Frances is drawn into the lives of the Kyte family when she hears the last words of the victim of a car crash, Alys Kyte.

#reference

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latenightcinephile · 5 years

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#890: ‘Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)’, dir. Alejandro Iñárritu, 2014.

Film critics are fond of making sweeping statements, and every time they do, they’re immediately met with a barrage of ‘what-abouts’ that render the original statement pointless. So as much as I want to say that Birdman is one of the five best films made in the 2010s, I won’t - not least because I haven’t given any serious thought to what the other four would be. What I will say is that Birdman is a great film, and one that resonated with me far more than many of the other films I’ve seen in the last decade. It’s ambiguous, imaginative and thoughtful, and I genuinely think the Academy got it right in awarding it (and Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Oscars.

Is my interest in this film because I spent most of my university years in the theatre, and gained a familiarity with the best parts of the art, as well as the worst, most pretentious parts? Partly. Is it because Iñárritu developed the film with the idea of having it appear as one long take? Partly, although the list has no shortage of films that were actually filmed that way, and Birdman lets the effectiveness of this technique slide a little in a few moments where it’s impossible for the actors to have moved between locations. Mostly, Birdman resonates with me because it’s about creative anxiety, and about those two little voices that drag you between doing things that are meaningless but make you popular, and trying to do things that are meaningful but which you suspect you won’t ever succeed at.

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) used to be big in movies - about twenty years ago he starred in a trilogy of blockbuster superhero films - but after rejecting that art as too meaningless, he’s turned instead to putting on a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver short story. When we first meet him, the preview season has just started, and Thomson needs to replace an actor. He immediately thrusts this job onto his producer/lawyer/best friend, Jake (Zach Galifianakis, almost unrecognisable here behind a pair of scholarly glasses), who seems to take an almost masochistic pleasure in solving problems. Riggan’s daughter, Sam (Emma Stone) is wandering around, fresh out of rehab and resentfully acting as her father’s assistant; his girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough) is unsure if she’s pregnant; new Broadway actress Lesley (Naomi Watts) suggests her boyfriend, troublemaker Mike (Edward Norton) as a replacement for the former actor.

There’s not a single weak link in this cast - everyone in the film is at the top of their game - and Iñárritu makes the most of the performances. Working with Emmanuel Lubezki as cinematographer for their first feature collaboration, the director pushes into tightly-framed static shots for the more compelling dialogue sequences. This technique gives the arguments and agreements a greater immediacy simply because we’re tricked into believing as much time has passed for the characters as has for us - which is to say, none at all.

When things go surprisingly wrong for the characters and the play, there’s also nowhere for us to escape: the only thing that ever takes the camera and the audience away from something going wrong is something worse going wrong. At one stage, Riggan is trapped outside the theatre just before his final cue, and with his dressing gown trapped in the door he is forced to take the long way around in his underwear. Bursting in through the audience, after a string of humiliating encounters with autograph-hungry New Yorkers, Riggan gives a cringeworthy performance, gesturing wildly with his fingers until a stage manager gives him the prop gun. Just when we’re expecting to watch the whole embarrassment, Jake is dragged away by a phone call, and we go too. We’re left in the hallway upstairs for one of the few prolonged periods of silence in the film, and then we hear the gunshot, and the applause. It’s a victory - a rare event in Birdman - and we don’t get to watch it.

I’ve been roaming around threatres since I was a kid, and I’ve enjoyed looking at them in the same way Iñárritu does here - from the wings, from the lighting rigs, from the stage. A theatre is a place where things can be made that matter, but they’re also places where it’s easy to get trapped. I’ve been in technical rehearsals that lasted for five hours and in some of the most abysmal public domain school productions. Despite that, I know people who are doing incredible work in the industry. When Jake and Riggan are tossing around ideas for replacement actors, a few names come up: Woody Harrelson; Michael Fassbender; Jeremy Renner. All these actors were doing blockbuster franchise work at the time, and it’s clear that Iñárritu has some thoughts about the relationship between fame and theatre, but these moments also say a lot about what it means to make something that matters. Riggan is upset by the idea that he’ll never succeed at anything beyond the blockbusters he deliberately walked away from, but he’s even more upset by the prospect that those blockbusters mean more in the grand scheme of things than the play he’s working on. He’s surrounded by people who think he’s an egocentric fraud, or those who falsely tell him he’s brilliant, and he’s also haunted, quite literally, by Birdman, too.

In the end, Riggan has to do something stupidly drastic to make theatre that means something. I don’t know if it was intentional, but the glowing review he receives for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is hackneyed to the point of feeling sarcastic.

In other words, Alejandro Iñárritu doesn’t always get it right. There’s a lesbian subplot that lands with a confused ‘thunk’, the sound you get when you hit a steel barrel and find out it’s empty. Some of the ambiguity of Riggan’s character is a bit grating, too - it’s clear that his ‘superpowers’ aren’t real, as they seem to manifest only in moments of emotional weakness, and are never commented on by others, but the ending of the film only really has an impact if these powers are real, if they’ve actually manifested in the real world.

But oh, what we get instead of certainty in this film more than makes up for it. Because of the ‘one-take’ conceit, Birdman had to be scripted in great detail before filming started, and the precision required to film that means that everyone is on top form at all times. Even with the roving camera, the imagery is perfectly-framed and everything, from the hallucinations to the stagecraft, looks like a vivid dream.

Every now and then, we’re lucky to come across a film that feels like it speaks our language. Not in the broader sense, but in the specifics - a film that knows what we look at, what we say and how we say it. For me, that’s a film about being excited and afraid; a film about making art of different kinds and bring one set of skills to bear on another; a film about time passing and not passing at the same time. Birdman is the film that speaks to me. It’s on Netflix right now, so it’s worth spending two hours with: I hope it speaks phrases in your language too.

#1001 movies #birdman #the unexpected virtue of ignorance #alejandro inarritu #genuinely good films #best of the list

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