Speed Kills

I never thought I would say this, but given the option, I choose the new Michael Bay movie over Quentin Tarantino’s latest any day.

While Bay’s sci-fi actioner Transformers is fast and titillating, whatever made Tarantino tick is definitely broken in his stupid-ass grindhouse pastiche Death Proof.

There’s a fundamental difference between giving the audience what they want and giving them what you’d like them to want. It’s the difference between entertainment and ego tripping, between professionalism and narcissism, and between humility and arrogance.

In this regard, shocking as it may sound, America’s top director is no match for the guy who made Pearl Harbor.

Both Transformers and Death Proof are commercial products, made to exploit their audiences’ sensibilities. But where Bay’s movie excels in simply being what it is, Death Proof is all pretension.

Judging by this wet fart of a movie, Tarantino’s fanbase now consists of mostly geeky young men — pimply wankers who may have a vague idea that enjoying sadistic violence is frowned upon unless it has a QT sticker on it, yet, being uneducated in the finer points of cinema, are easily duped into confusing dullness with complexity and empty babble with character building.

It wasn’t always so. Even at his most self-servingly violent, Tarantino has never failed to posit a provocative argument, be it on revenge, remorse, or the nuances of modern motherhood. It was the social commentary that made Kill Bill shine, not the fireworks. By contrast, Death Proof is a shell, a cynical attempt to justify brutality by what in any other movie would be considered just shitty exposition.

Transformers, on the other hand, is a joy to watch, and not because it isn’t one-dimensional, but because it is so clearly proud of not being more. Stripped of the patriotic overtones that made Bay’s previous attempts so unpalatable, the movie is alternately intense, relaxed and funny — an irresistable blend compared to Tarantino’s alphabet soup of tits and gore.

It’s not only that the CGI work is groundbreaking, it’s the verve and ease with which the movie is put together. For the same reason, Death Proof’s “all-natural” car chase amounts to just a lot of huff and puff. If your heart’s not in it, don’t expect us to fall for it.

The Last Oscar Post I’ll Ever Write

A year ago, after my Oscar predictions and a good part of my critic’s self-esteem were ripped apart by the Academy voters, I got to thinking.

Why is it, I wondered, that no amount of expert punditry can forecast the wind direction on moviedom’s biggest night?

The answer, of course, is ridiculously obvious: it’s a secret ballot. There’s no jury, no accountability, no need to explain anything. Behind the veil of political privacy you can be as homophobic, racist, stupid and hostile as you want. No one will ever know.

And yet we keep referring to these guys as “the Academy” — the Academy “snubs”, “honours”, “likes” and “hates”, as if this wildly heterogenous group of over 6000 industry professionals were some kind of a hive mind.

The fact is, on gala night, there is no Academy. It’s just a bunch of people back-slapping their buddies. So let’s stop the cogitating and the ruminating. Next time the wrong movie gets the nod, blame Dakota Fanning. She probably voted for it.

BEST MOVIE & DIRECTOR

My question has five words:

Where. The. Fuck. Is. Volver?

I mean, English as a spoken language can’t possibly be a criterion, otherwise Eastwood’s war criminals and half of Babel would be chucked out. The director’s nationality? Last I checked, Frears was born in Leicester and González in Mexico City. Country of production? This is 2007 for cryin’ out loud, who cares where the money came from.

So I repeat: where the fuck is Volver?

Or, for that matter, where’s Little Children ?

Children of Men?

Relegated to minor categories, where else. After all, this is the Oscars. Who would want a beautifully shot and brilliantly acted humanist drama to mess up the proceedings? Why nominate a subtly terrifying scifi thriller that actually has something to say about the future (and has a hero in flipflops) when you can heap praise on a self-indulgent and predictable sausage of a movie ’cause Brad did it pro bono and it’s, kinda, this year’s Syriana, and that’s, uh, way cool?

And while we’re on the subject of cool, that must be why Little Miss Sunshine, a one-joke wonder wrapped in Sundance clichés, was nominated, because, frankly, I can think of no other reason. It’s not that I mind surprises, it’s just that those 6000 bozos could’ve done so much better. Why not Inside Man, for example? Was it not a spunky reworking of a tired genre? Or Miami Vice? If there was a more original action movie in 2006, it sure as hell escaped my radar. In fact, if Sunshine, why not Dreamgirls? It may not amount to much as an example of cinematic storytelling, but it’s a terrific musical.

So once again: where is Volver?

Why is Almodovar stabbed in the back while del Toro, with his sadistic and gimmicky Pan’s Labyrinth, is suddenly the golden boy of European art cinema?

Well. At least there’s The Departed.

In an ideal world, there should be no competition here. Compared to Scorsese’s virtuoso gangster saga, all the other contenders are puny. Take The Queen: an exquisitely acted TV movie with hardly a cinematic bone in its body. Going against these losers, a true filmmaker like Scorsese should have no problem. Alas, for reasons mentioned above, nothing is written in stone.

(Greengrass, in the Best Director category, is a different kettle of fish, but I have my own reasons for disliking United 93.)

The Hip Pimple votes: The Departed; Scorsese

BEST MUSIC

By and large, music is the Achilles’ heel of modern mass-audience cinema. The traditional operatic score died with the studio system, but the rotting corpse has been cannibalised by composers ever since. Even though movies today borrow visual techniques from documentaries and news reportage to achieve powerful realism, they’re still drowned in non-diegetic orchestral molasses that neither makes narrative sense nor pleases the ear.

If you like to go to the cinema to enjoy movies and not squirm through second-rate opera, you’re out of luck. What’s worse, the assholes responsible get nominated for Oscars.

This year, the list includes two movies that are almost destroyed by an inappropriate score. They’re both British, which makes me wonder whether the scourge that has crippled so many fine American films has finally landed on this side of the Atlantic.

The Queen, a lively little drama that wouldn’t have needed any emotional boost, is the lesser of the offenders, but it’s painful to watch the well-written story being pummelled by Alexandre Desplat’s relentlessly banal auditory barrage.

With Notes on a Scandal, things get seriously messed up. Through poorly handled juxtaposition that equates statutory rape with homosexuality, this perfectly decent thriller manages to come across as virulently homophobic. The choice of music makes the cock-up even worse. There’s not only way too much of Philip Glass’s orchestral sweetener, but when laid on top of pivotal character-developing scenes, the excessively Herrmannian score actually implies there’s something sinister about being lesbian.

None of this apparently bothered “the Academy” — in fact, they must’ve been positively blinded by Glass’s pretension, because they forgot to nominate the ones that actually would’ve deserved it, like Terence Blanchard or Alberto Iglesias.

HP votes: Javier Navarrete, Pan’s Labyrinth

BEST ACTOR & ACTRESS

Queen eats King, and here’s why:

Playing a famous person requires more than just prancing. You need to get under his skin, and for that you need an insightful script that doesn’t waste its momentum on narrative tricks.

I admire Forest Whitaker for his talents, but madness is an inner condition that cannot be captured by posturing, and in The Last King of Scotland he barely scratches the surface of Idi Amin’s lunacy. It’s a passable impersonation, I guess, but way below par for the guy who played the crap out of everyone else in Birdy.

Helen Mirren, on the other hand, not only looks like Elizabeth II but manages to convey her grief and confusion without resorting to cheap imitation. With all the thespian fireworks in her arsenal, this could easily have turned into a misfire, yet thanks to Peter Morgan’s intelligent script, the result is crisply elegant and even funny.

Nevertheless, looking at the list of nominees, a sense of déjà vu persists.

Notice the familiar faces: there is three-time nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, eight-time nominee Peter O’Toole, six-time nominee Judi Dench, five-time nominee Kate Winslet, 14-time (that’s right) nominee Meryl Streep…

Either there is a shocking dearth of Oscar-calibre acting talent, or the same people are recycled year after year because their buddies — that 6000-headed hydra with one brain — just like things the way they are.

HP votes: Ryan Gosling, Helen Mirren, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Hudson

BEST COLOURED PEOPLE

At first glance, you’d think that non-whites have it better than ever. Do the math: of the 20 actors and actresses nominated, five are black. And if you go beyond race, the result is even more surprising: of the nominees, 13 — a clear majority — are non-American.

Alas, the numbers are misleading. All men might be equal, but in Hollywood, some are more equal than others. The difference between black and white actors is that whereas blacks generally star in their own movies, whites generally star not only in their own movies but those about blacks as well. Yes, Djimon Hounsou got a nod, and hurrah for that, but the main attraction in Blood Diamond is Leo DiCaprio. And if you think the role of Idi Amin is a career-defining moment for Whitaker, think again — it’s the inanely grinning white boy James McAvoy, not Whitaker, who The Last King of Scotland, a story about an African tragedy, will make a star.

So yeah, it’s nice to see so many blacks nominated, and one of them, Jennifer Hudson, is so phenomenal it will be truly shameful if she doesn’t win. But let’s not forget the facts: 67 years after Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar, these guys are still playing singers and slaves.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You can blame the Oscars for a lot of things, but you can’t blame them for a shitty movie year. And that’s what 2006 was. Which means that pretty much everything worth mentioning ended up with a nomination. Sure, Volver was left by the wayside, and Kaurismäki refused to enter his Lights in the Dusk, and Casino Royale would’ve been worthy of a nom or two, and you can always argue that Stanley Tucci and Christopher Plummer got a bum deal, but these are just niggles compared to last year’s scandalous omissions.

In 2006, there was no Malick, Clooney spent his time being holier than thou, and Woody Allen went back to directing shit. The result? If you wanna see good cinema, watch TV.

Dead Men Walking

Those enamoured with Clint Eastwood’s war crime apology Letters from Iwo Jima, pay attention: I challenge you to watch Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain and tell me you still don’t understand what’s wrong with Eastwood’s picture.

Both movies portray a beaten army at almost exactly the same point in history (February 1945), yet they couldn’t be more different. Eastwood’s mission is to put a human face to the battle of Iwo by showing, through flashbacks, that the Japanese were family men with good intentions. Ichikawa, in 1959, had no such grand aspirations. We know absolutely nothing about his shamed and depraved soldiers, only their names. We know they’re Japanese, we know they used to be human, and we know they will die. Whatever else there is — places of birth, thoughts on life — means nothing in the context of this pitiless story.

Unlike Eastwood, Ichikawa entertains no romantic notions of fortitude and holds no hope for miraculous survival. A true anti-war film, Fires on the Plain offers no cultural or political explanation for the savagery on display. War has made men mad, Ichikawa says, and those who made war will bear the responsibility regardless of what one movie propounds. So the focus is on the men, and the final question is not whether they will perish but whether they will do so retaining their humanity. This is the movie’s central conflict, the struggle between man and his inner beast, and because it is handled so beautifully, this gruesome tragedy is to me much more uplifting than Eastwood’s Hollywood trickery.

Being Nice for the Emperor

With Japan once again about to embark on a militarist power trip, it must be comforting for them to know that Clint Eastwood is on their side.

That, I’m afraid, is the only conclusion to be drawn from Letters from Iwo Jima, Eastwood’s Japanese-language companion piece to his structurally unsound epic Flags of Our Fathers.

I commend him for the idea. There were two sides to the battle, and after 60 years of Marine hero worship we’re more than ready to hear what the Japanese have to say. After all, they lost 20 000 men in what could quite reasonably be called a desperate struggle to defend their homeland.

Eastwood has said he wanted audiences on both sides of the Pacific to know “what kind of people” these guys were. It is indeed a question worth asking, but it is also a tough one to answer, because General Tadamichi Kuribayashi and his doomed troops were not only good men, devoted and brave, but also very bad men, who worshipped violent death and were as capable of murder as they were of sending cute postcards to their kids.

That they were just men, sons and husbands and fathers, is in itself worth telling, and Eastwood does it with verve and eloquence. But there is more to their story than that. They weren’t just defending their families, they were also defending a fascist dictatorship that had indoctrinated them to accept an extraordinarily nasty military code. This doctrine not only gave them permission to rape and mutilate but encouraged it as part of the subjugation of those deemed less human. They were ordinary men, but so were the SS, and, moralistic as it may sound, to focus on that is to belittle the destruction they wreaked.

Eastwood tells us that they were noble men, pushed to desperate acts by a quirk of history. If it weren’t for the megalomania of their rulers, so the reasoning goes, they would’ve lived their lives happily without bothering anyone, baking bread and making babies in their beloved Nagano or Yokohama. But they happened to be on Iwo, and Iwo happened to be in the middle of the American attack route to Japan, so they had to fight, and they fought valiantly just as others would have. This is the case Letters from Iwo Jima so movingly pleads: judge not decent men forced to kill each other.

Fair enough.

But just so we don’t forget what kind of decent men they were, let’s talk a little bit about Iggy Ignatowski.

Remember him? He was Doc Bradley’s foxhole buddy in Flags of Our Fathers, and ultimately the cause of his nightmares. The Japanese pulled him into a spiderhole and tortured him for three days. According to various eyewitness accounts, some of which I’m sure were exaggerated, his arms were broken and his skull bashed in, and he was bayoneted repeatedly. But before any of this happened, his nails were pulled out, his eyes punctured, his ears cut and his testicles shoved into his mouth. Quite a three days, even by Iwo’s standards.

One might argue that ordinary men don’t commit such atrocities. But Eastwood thinks otherwise. In a brief and chaotic scene, we’re shown a group of Japanese attacking a captured American. This is an obvious allusion to the previous movie, but instead of trying to provide another perspective on Iggy’s murder, Eastwood proceeds to explain it away. The soldiers were just angry, the movie says; it was a heat-of-the-moment thing, a momentary lapse of reason, and we shouldn’t read too much into it.

If so, where does it end? If everyone is a victim of his circumstances, who is responsible for the circumstances? Who is responsible for Iggy Ignatowski’s agony, of the rape of Nanking, of Treblinka and Katyn, if not those wielding the weapons? If we’re just adrift in a sea of blood, how are we to manage our own destiny?

These questions may sound big in the context of a Hollywood war movie, but they’re not. You only have to look at recent developments in Japan, where teaching patriotism to schoolkids is once again mandatory and the army is no longer coyly called defense forces, and you begin to realise that the monster that spawned the rampaging hordes may be in heat again. No wonder, then, that Letters from Iwo Jima has been a hit in Japan. For those worshipping the memory of war criminals at Yasukuni, this movie is a vindication beyond all dreams.

A fuck-up with some fava beans

As a long-time devotee of Thomas Harris’s novels (minus Black Sunday), I’ve lately had far too many reasons to feel unhappy.

First there was Hannibal Rising, the long-awaited prequel to Harris’s previous Hannibal Lecter novels. Of course, they weren’t really Lecter novels at all, since the good doctor, although dominating the plots from afar with the power of his personality, was never a central character. There was no “Lecter story”, hence there was no need for a prequel. But Harris’s feat of literary structural engineering was never honoured by franchise-hungry Hollywood, where Lecter was quickly fattened into a terrifyingly banal cultural icon, his wit and elegance lost in a sea of popcorn mannerisms. I hated this custom-made Anthony Hopkins creation, but Harris, after bravely resisting its lure with the tongue-in-cheek splatter madness of Hannibal, finally succumbed to it in Hannibal Rising. This stylistically kitschy yet shockingly slim offering would’ve made a decent interlude for a larger novel; as a stand-alone, it merely reminds me that not even Thomas Harris is immune to the narcissistic hubris that seems to strike every successful thriller writer sooner or later.

As if this weren’t bad enough, we now have Hannibal Rising the movie, directed by Peter Webber, who made the pretty but meaningless Girl with a Pearl Earring, and scripted by Harris while writing the novel — a sure sign that the author has lost whatever respect he once had for the extra-Hollywood independence of his anti-hero.

Normally I wouldn’t waste valuable blogspace on godawful shit like this, but since Harris himself is at least partly to blame, a vivisection is in order.

First, much like the book, the movie feels like a never-ending flashback, and that ain’t such a good thing. A narrative shouldn’t need the support of a larger story universe to make sense.

Second, although some of the Brit villains are good, Gaspard Ulliel is a terrible choice to play young Lecter. At 23, he is way too old, which means Webber and Harris have had to fast-forward the setting to the mid-50s, losing what was best in the novel, the authentic feel of post-war Paris. Ulliel, who played the lost fiancée in A Very Long Engagement, has a long, slightly weird face which, when lit from below and made to mime evil, becomes a bad caricature of Hopkins’s chianti-sssssipping pretension.

Third, the slapped-on love story is rubbish and betrays what little real-life quirkiness the characters had in the book. If this turkey flies, pigs have wings.

That’s it, Ed

Edward Zwick’s movies are one of my guilty pleasures, but my patience has its limits. I was willing to put up with The Last Samurai, but with Blood Diamond, I’ve had it.

I have nothing against well-meaning Hollywood millionaires dabbling in complex third world issues they can barely grasp; in fact, I’m all for making melodrama out of misery if that helps the world understand what’s happening to ordinary people in places we don’t even have nightmares of. But crappy movies are crappy movies, and for Zwick, this is the second one in a row.

I loved Special Bulletin and admired Courage Under Fire, and I think The Siege, although produced three years before 9/11, is nevertheless the best movie about those events. The Last Samurai, however, was bloated and pretentious, an exercise in Tom Cruise movie star narcissism I could happily have lived without. And Blood Diamond is, if possible, even worse: a third-rate actioner that trivialises its subject and leaves the audience not feeling for the exploited but relieved they can go home. I never expected a Constant Gardener, but this stinker, with its creaky combat scenes and production designed death, makes even Hotel Rwanda look gritty.

The civil war in Sierra Leone was a terrible conflict, and because it involved not only mass murder but diamond smugglers and child soldiers, it would actually have made a good story. Unfortunately, Blood Diamond is not it, and with Zwick’s lack of action skills, never could have been. The only ray of light in this murk is Leonardo DiCaprio, a clever and versatile actor who’s also fun to watch.

Dishonourable Discharge

I so wanted this not to happen. Alas, it did: after five impressive seasons, television’s best spy series Alias went out not with a bang but with a whimper.

In fact, after slogging through the tortuously anemic season 5, just out on DVD, I no longer blame ABC for ditching the show. It soon becomes painfully evident why the ratings plunged. To start with, there’s the pregnancy. With Garner unable to provide physical impetus, the series resorts to seemingly improvised course corrections, all of them off the mark. A whole crowd of new characters is hastily introduced to fill the gap, but they’re poorly written and never have time to develop.
The story itself is a massive disappointment. None of Abrams’s imaginative narrative arcs is given a satisfying conclusion, least of all the Rambaldi myth. After years of tantalising hints, the fans are cruelly left salivating.

As a last resort, the show in its dying moments turns to blood and guts, dishonouring its legacy of clever, light-hearted fun. I never thought it would come to this, but I gotta be honest: I hated every minute of it.

Pilots of Doom

Just a reminder: The Hamburg Cell, Antonia Bird’s brilliant portrait of the men behind 9/11, is out on DVD at last.

Not only was this TV movie made way before anyone else had the guts to tackle the issue, but it is infinitely bolder and more insightful than the two horrible 5th anniversary re-enactments, United 93 and World Trade Center.

Unlike these misfires, The Hamburg Cell is neither voyeuristic nor numbingly sentimental, nor is it in any way sympathetic to the twisted fuckers who thought Allah would find it cool if they murdered 3000 people.

Ziad Jarrah, the young Lebanese who piloted United 93, is Bird’s main interest, since he was by all accounts the unlikeliest would-be shahid of Mohammed Atta’s bunch of losers. The others, Atta in particular, come across as more or less demented, but their progress from engineering students to madmen is charted with such detached elegance that you never doubt this sort of transmutation wouldn’t happen again.

Alternately sad and terrifying, The Hamburg Cell is for all intents and purposes the only real 9/11 movie, bleak and unforgiving as a tale like this should be, and absolutely apolitical. Overlook at your own risk.

I See Dead People

As Jack Bauer sinks deeper into his own private hell, Fox executes a political about turn with Season 5 of 24, just out on DVD. If you ask me, it was high time.

Ever since Day 2, when the series jumped on the Bush bandwagon, I’ve had serious issues with its politics. I’ve dwelled on this at length elsewhere, so suffice it to say that for me, the show has been a mixed blessing. I’ve enjoyed the rapid-fire plot twists and kinetic energy, but I’ve been equally disturbed by the covert racism and shameless promotion of Rumsfeldian techniques of national self-preservation.

But times have changed, and apparently this has finally caught up with Fox. Already before Day 5 of 24, cracks had appeared on Murdoch’s neocon bastion. Or how else would you characterise the pessimistic, anti-government overtones of Prison Break? You don’t suddenly challenge the conservative values you’ve taken such pains to propagate unless word comes from the top that it’s time to jump ship. Hey, Perle and Adelman already have.

So it was time for 24 to switch focus, too, and that it certainly does. The Muslim menace is thankfully gone, and Jack’s Machiavellian methods have been toned down. Most amazingly, with David Palmer out of the picture, the enemy this time is none other than POTUS himself. Charles Logan, played with astonishing intensity by Gregory Itzin, is a Nixon-like gerbil surrounded by scheming advisors and married to a beacon of moral fortitude. There are few decent people in this administration and, implausible as it may sound, none as evil as the President himself.

This, of course, is a mirror image of the Palmer presidency. In the previous seasons the legitimacy of Bauer’s brutality stemmed from the White House. This time, in a scene outrageously delicious even by the standards of this shameless show, the attack dog is let loose on the top guy himself. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Name’s Blond, James Blond

Holy shit. I never doubted Daniel Craig’s ability to rescue 007 from ridicule, but I didn’t expect the franchise to invigorate itself with such a jolt. If Die Another Day seemed like euthanasia, Casino Royale is a miracle recovery, a shock to the heart with Craig’s finger on the defibrillator.

“Origin stories” are all the rage in Hollywood, but that’s just a fancy name for what is basically backstory fluff shamelessly expanded into full-length movies. I’ve vented on this phenomenon at length elsewhere, so suffice it to say it’s not my cup of tea.

In spite of what the producers might have claimed, however, Casino Royale is not a real origin story a la Batman Begins, but an expansion of an existing universe, a character overhaul that wisely plumbs the original literary material for insight rather than letting screenwriters invent incongruous details on the fly.

Superficially, this is the story of how Bond became Bond, but because 007 as portrayed by Craig is so fundamentally different from the previous incarnations, without the music you probably wouldn’t know you’re watching a Bond movie. In a franchise famous for playing it safe for 44 years, that’s no small feat.

To call this a darker, grittier Bond would be trivialising the achievement. Even in the era of Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne, you don’t refurbish a cultural icon just by making him kick and punch. With Craig, Bond has become inherently volatile, a killer on the brink, consumed by his rage. The darkness of Casino Royale is not in set design or cinematography, it’s embedded in Bond’s character, which makes the movie almost outrageously edgy compared to its meek and gadget-heavy predecessors.

Craig, with help from an intelligent script by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, has cleverly chosen to avoid the upper-class mannerisms of the old Bond, relying instead on an inflammable mix of sarcasm and brute strength. His Bond isn’t exactly working-class, but he’s definitely more ordinary than Brosnan and a regular everyman compared to Moore — a typical classless globetrotter of the new century, a guy who likes to drive fast but doesn’t mind a Ford, who knows how to carry a tux but doesn’t shop at Savile Row, who appreciates a glass of shampagne but hates the mingling.

Unlike Connery, Craig is not a natural athlete and at first seems awkward with his newly buffed-up physique. But he’s agile enough to look good in chase scenes and isn’t half bad in close-quarters fighting. And because he’s a real actor with an expressive face, no complex dialogue is needed to convey emotion or purpose.

In fact, for a Bond film, Casino Royale is almost meticulously cast, with the likes of Eva Green and Mads Mikkelsen occupying roles that previously went to last year’s supermodels and guys with big teeth.

In short, this time round there’s nothing even remotely ridiculous about James Bond.