Lawrence of Arabia DVD Review

Not Very Lean

Movie and DVD Review

Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is not the first two-disc DVD set I have bought for my collection; it is, however, the first two-disc set on which the movie takes up both discs. David Lean's 1962 epic is nearly four hours long (so not very lean says you), but it is still a lovingly crafted, brilliantly acted masterpiece.

The story is basically a biopic. It details the life of T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole), a British army officer stationed in the Middle East during World War I. He doesn't fit in with the army brass, so he requests an assignment in the desert assessing the Arab chances of staging a successful uprising against the Turks. Lawrence likes the desert, and seemingly has a slightly sadomasochistic side, because he soon earns a reputation of being able to withstand hardships. He leads a raid on a Turkish controlled town called Aqaba, crossing the hellish Nefud desert in the process. From this his legend grows, until he is in danger of being swallowed by his own ego. Lawrence, it seems, thought of himself as a deity who would shine his love upon the Arab people, giving them control of their native lands as a thank you for their help during the war. The only problem is that the choice may not be his to make. There's a lot going on besides that, but if the summary goes on any longer, there will be no room left for a review.

The seventeen month-long shoot was made even more arduous by O'Toole's constant flatulence.

Lawrence of Arabia was David Lean's follow up to the hugely successful (and long) Bridge on the River Kwai. Lean was on a roll; Kwai had made over nine times its three million budget and the film walked away with a slew of Oscars. Lean secured a budget five times as large and set about making his desert epic.

Filming was notoriously long and arduous. Principal photography lasted for over a year; there were a number of reasons for this, but perhaps the most interesting offered on the DVD is that if a desert scene needed to be reshot, all visible sand which had been stepped on needed to be raked smooth. Now, with that in mind, go and watch the film again (or for the first time), counting every time there is a wide shot of a character walking across endless desert, and marvel at how mind-bogglingly frustrating filming must have been.

Lean really hit the spot here. This is a jaw-droppingly, drool-drawingly gorgeous film, and it's easy to see why directors like Steven Spielberg rave about it. Surprisingly the plot stays on message and rarely tapers off throughout the mammoth runtime, and even though I could make cuts to the film's massive girth, I would rather not.

Peter O'Toole deserved the Oscar for Lawrence. He lost out to Gregory Peck, who got the golden man for To Kill a Mockingbird. It was the first of currently eight losses for the eternal runner up, a record of the wrong kind. Omar Sharif built a career on the back of this film, and deserves a mention in a review rapidly running out of room. His character embodies all of the contradictions of Arab society and, in continually jousting with O'Toole, helps to create a welcome sense of sustained tension throughout what could have been a whole heap of dead screen time.

The two discs of the DVD lack an audio commentary, but atone somewhat with a detailed making of.

Even though I walked away feeling as though I had lived - never mind watched - Lawrence's life, I can't help but recommend this sprawling, immense, but ultimately inspired epic. And we might all get a chance to see it soon, because Lawrence is a perennial Christmas favourite; but don't have your turkey beforehand or you won't last five minutes.

Movie: 8.5/10

Extras: 7/10

Ireland's Michael Jackson Tribute

A Tribute for the King

Ireland's Tribute to Michael Jackson

Retrospective

This past Sunday The Button factory in Temple Bar held a tribute to Michael Jackson. The event entered my radar when a friend pointed out that it should be a good laugh, and recommended we go. I met that same friend this weekend, when she admitted that she didn't have the first idea of what to expect. After deleting her number from my mobile phone, we made our way to the venue.

When we arrived, I was surprised by the lack of crowd. The Button factory isn't a cavernous venue, but ended up being about half full; not necessarily a complaint because I don't like being squashed, although it certainly doesn't foreshadow a thrilling gig.

The first band on stage – called Santorini - belted out some Jackson 5ive numbers, before jumping to Beat It. While they were quite good, they had some sound issues; the drummer was stifling the effectiveness of every other instrument by having his mics set too loud. The most notable aspect of the band was one of the well endowed backup singers, who had a tambourine. What a great piece of marketing; give a busty girl an instrument which needs to be shaken and stick her up front - mesmerising. I settled in for a night of mediocrity.

And that is when Mick and Dusty entered my world. On the way in I had seen two guys in wearing red and black leather jackets (you know, THOSE jackets). Each was sporting a rhinestone covered glove, and had their faces – badly – painted with the Irish flag. I nudged my friend and pointed them out; surely two megafans who would attend the opening of a Michael Jackson-shaped envelope.

The next time I saw them was when I asked their help with directions to the toilet. By that point I thought they were staff, because they disappeared through a side door marked “no entry”. I got my round and no sooner had I sat down than those two random guys strolled out on stage to the strains of Thriller. I was instantly hooked. They were rarely in sync, and their dancing was amateurish at best, but this was surely what a Michael Jackson tribute is all about; ordinary people engaging in a bit of wish fulfillment by trying to emulate the moves of a great dancer and showman. By the time the song ended, I wanted to know when I would get my chance to moonwalk for the assembled half-crowd.

The show plumbed its greatest depth of the night when a Michael Jackson mime did a set. Although he did have a repertoire of MJ moves, he seemed determined to jumble them into the mime standards; rarely have I seen a Michael Jackson video in which he pulls an invisible rope or tries to escape from a transparent box. Utter crap.

Then it was time for the main attraction. Ben Jackson is a Michael Jackson impersonator who is apparently quite well known, in his industry anyway. He arrived with two back up dancers in what represented a lavish production by the standards of the event. Let me get through the good points first; he looks like Michael Jackson, and is able to copy his moves quite well. His set was energetic and he didn't really tamper with any of the original songs which played while he danced.

Now the bad; he went through his set of moves for each song quite quickly and then spent a lot of time repeating himself. I saw each move a dozen or so times and they swiftly became boring. Although he doesn't sing – apart from odd moments asking the audience to repeat his oohs and aahs - he wears a radio mic, with which he fiddles endlessly. Not ten seconds went by between adjustments during the entirety of his set. I understand why he might do this; Michael probably did it. Plus, he doesn't want people to see that his lips don't match the lyrics being sung; but surely the dedication required to learn the words to a small number of tunes is outweighed tenfold by the effort he has already expended in tirelessly learning choreography. The mic touching got so bad that at one point I wanted to launch a Jarvis Cocker-like attack on the stage, and scream at him “TAKE IT OFF IF YOU'RE HAVING SO MUCH TROUBLE WITH IT.”

While Ben did his best to shore up an unintentionally funny evening - and his act was the best produced - my top marks go to Mick and Dusty for being the only act to tap into the true spirit of tribute to the man who inspired a million inept moonwalks.

My Boring-Ass Life Book Review

A Bit Cheeky, But Cracking Fun

Book Review

My Boring-Ass Life

Since the debut of his 1994 film Clerks, director Kevin Smith has worn an ever-increasing number of hats. He is now a screenwriter, producer, actor, author, podcaster, small business owner, president of the Ben Affleck fan club, husband, father, lover, joker, smoker and definitely midnight toker. As My Boring-Ass Life proves, it is the author credit which is the most inadvertent of these.

My Boring-Ass Life - The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, to give the book its full title – is a collection of diary entries posted on www.silentbobspeaks.com. The entries take a number of forms - some more interesting than others. Smith explains in the intro that the book is mainly a product of his laziness – hard to fathom, given that it clocks in at 470 pages of rather small type. He says that the book came about because he was approached about producing a paper edition of his blog. When he found out that only minimal work would be involved on his part, he couldn't sign up quickly enough.

The book itself is a strange beast; it starts out as a very straight account of Smith's day-to-day life. He gets up in the morning and lets his dogs out, which is usually followed by a long toilet break before he begins the tasks of his day. The first half of the book proceeds like this and can begin to grate at times, especially – I imagine - for the casual Smith fan. I found though that there were enough nuggets lodged within the mundanity to warrant further reading. For instance, he discusses his work filming a recent movie called Catch and Release, his thoughts on various movies and TV shows he watches, as well as his regular and eclectic bouts of intercourse with his wife (an encounter between he, his wife and some strippers is mooted at one point, as well as various other sex acts too lewd to repeat here.)

It was during the concluding half though that my interest in the book really caught fire. At the mid point, Smith switches producing a plain Jane current events ticker to writing essays on varying topics, from working with Bruce Willis on Live Free or Die Hard to creating and screening Clerks 2.

The lengthy story about his friend Jason Mewes' (the Jay from Jay and Silent Bob) long term struggle with drug addiction is the highlight in a particularly good crop of essays. If nothing else it shows why Kevin Smith is one of the best filmmakers of his generation; he recalls the most interesting and minute details from a series of events which began over a decade before writing took place, imbuing them with infinite readability along the way. Any description of the story which I give will not do it justice, for the recap goes something like this; Jason Mewes becomes addicted to various drugs, including - but not limited to – heroin. Smith goes through several attempts at making Mewes clean up his act, but he continually relapses. I won't ruin the ending; suffice to say that towards the conclusion of the story – which I read in one sitting - a letter written by Mewes whilst in rehab made me shed a tear or two - in a very heterosexual way, of course.

Even though the change in writing style was very welcome, it does pose some conversion problems. It is in the latter half of the book where the transition from blog to printed page is most keenly felt; the essays are scattered with links to websites. While this isn't a problem online, I didn't feel compelled to spend my time hand copying the long internet addresses to my computer; in fact, it made me wonder why I had spent money on any inferior version of a product available free online.

The structure of the book is the only thing which holds it back from five-star greatness. That said though, it does manage to end with a very exciting and real flourish concerning a Kevin Smith film currently in development. Being boring was never so interesting.

8/10

Maus Graphic Novel Review

Maus

Graphic Novel Review

There is a great trio of graphic novels that are seen by most comic book geeks – like me – as having revolutionised the genre, giving an art form dominated by stories about good-natured men in tights a more gritty, realistic texture. All were released around the mid-eighties in what still remains the most fertile period yet for this most overlooked medium.

The first of these books is Alan Moore’s much publicised – and recently filmed – 12-issue series, called Watchmen. Concerning a group of “masks” (the terminology for superhero in the alternate reality of the books), this was Moore’s self-stated attempt “to explore, amongst other things, the dynamics of power in a post-Hiroshima world.”

Second is Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, in which an aging Batman is called out of retirement for one last hoorah. Miller said he was hired to “give Batman his balls back”, which is just what he did, and a new age of comics began.

The third, and perhaps most groundbreaking of the trio, was Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a tale of survival during the Holocaust, featuring anthropomorphic animals in place of humans. Whereas both Miller and Moore’s books were a new take on what was a tired superhero formula, Spiegelman’s book eschews the cape and cowl to focus on his father’s experiences as a Jew during World War II, recreating in harrowing detail the Nazi rise to power and their persecution of undesirables.

Spiegelman writes in semi-autobiographical style, using meetings with his father as a framing device for the main plot. As Spiegelman extracts his dad’s life story, flashbacks occur, and both narratives progress hand in hand. What unfolds is purely spectacular; parts of this book will make you grip the pages so tight in fear and anger that you will be in danger of rending the book in two before you finish it.

Vladek (portrayed as a mouse throughout) is a Polish Jew called into the army before his country’s annexation by the Nazis. He is captured and lives with his family in gradually worsening conditions until he eventually ends up in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, managing to live through the end of the war.

What really enraptures here is the rawness of the story; no punches are pulled in telling the tale of a society gone mad. The reader suffers alongside Vladek, an ordinary, yet resourceful and resilient young Pole, as he tries to keep his young family together. The flash forwards mainly deal with Art’s relationship with his father, who has become stingy and racist in his old age, and give the overall impression that even surviving through the Holocaust was no great gift.

A perfect example of a “legitimate” comic book.

9.5/10

Die Hard With a Vengeance Movie and DVD Review

Die Hard With A Vengeance

Movie and DVD Review

It seems that the Die Hard franchise has taken a cue from its lead character, John McClane; this is a series of actioners which will lay down for no man. Four parts have been filmed - with an increasing gap between each installment - and while the original is still the standard bearer, the franchise as a whole holds up surprisingly well, particularly the third film, Die Hard With a Vengeance.

Released in 1995, Die Hard With a Vengeance was in many ways the spiritual successor to the first movie. Director John McTiernan returned to the helm for a second time, having been absent from the sequel. The plot neatly dovetails with the events of the first movie, as John McClane struggles to solve riddles set by a bomber calling himself Simon, who has threatened to blow up large parts of New York if McClane won’t dance to his tune.

Bruce Willis is again excellent as John McClane, a role which will surely occupy the first line of his obituary. He plays his character with just the right amount of self assuredness, and seeing him come back from a beating is the guiltiest of pleasures.

Willis shared the screen with a recent co-star from another movie; fresh from filming Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson gave a terrific turn as Zeus Carver, a staunchly pro-black electrician from Harlem. His relationship with McClane is the heart of the movie, and never feels mishandled by either actor.

Proving that English actors will eternally be cast as butlers or villains, Jeremy Irons gives an astoundingly sophisticated performance as Simon Gruber, brother to Alan Rickman’s Hans from the original film.

Director John McTiernan has found hits hard to come by since this movie. He once again got the most from the Die Hard franchise, but 2002’s Rollerball and – as crazy as it sounds - a conviction for wiretapping, have mothballed his career for the foreseeable future.

The real star of Vengeance is the script, written by Jonathan Hensleigh. Based on an earlier, unfilmed screenplay called Simon Says, Hensleigh was just coming to prominence as the screenwriter who would later write Jumanji and Armageddon.

The DVD which I own is a two-disc special edition, with copious extras. An alternate ending and some top-class making-ofs are the highlight of the second disc, while the audio commentary on disc one deserves more than one listen, despite John McTiernan’s boring voice.

There’s only one way to sign off this review, so, as John McClane would say “Yippee ki-yay!,… (Don’t even dare finish that sentence – Ed.).”

Movie: 9/10
Extras: 8/10

The Informant! Movie Review

Unbelievable is Right - The Film is Informative But Flawed

The Informant!

Movie Review

I wonder how the pitch for this movie went. Steven Soderbergh, director of Ocean's 11 through 13, bowls into the office of a besuited studio executive, ready to give the lowdown on his latest feature project. It turns out that the Academy-Award winning director wants to adapt a book called The Informant, written about price-fixing in the lysine industry. The suit nods along as Soderbergh discusses his plans; he's thinking of The Insider, and how that film, although lauded by critics, didn't perform too well at the box office. This movie is going to need something different, something extra. Almost on cue, Soderbergh says the same. The suit is impressed, until he hears that the director wants to make a dark comedy. That's when the nodding stops.

The Informant! tells the story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), who outed a worldwide lysine price-fixing ring in the mid nineties. He confesses one night to an FBI agent (Scott “Quantum Leap” Bakula) who has been brought in to work on an unrelated extortion case. This is unusual in itself because, first of all, the agent didn't know a thing about the conspiracy, but also because Whitacre had a lot to lose from co-operating (he was the highest-ranking whistleblower in US legal history, and was swiftly ascending the company ladder when he confessed). As the agents spend time with their inside man, they begin to find that he has problems of his own, and is not as squeaky clean as he appeared at first blush.

Let me cut straight to the nub of what's wrong with this film; the third act sucks a donkey's nether regions. The first hour or so of the movie trundles along nicely. I was sucked into the plot pretty early and it was holding my interest, despite the fact that the jokes weren't exactly flying. Matt Damon's take on Mark Whitacre is quietly endearing, and his voice-over asides are the most enjoyable element of the film. The small man taking down a big company dynamic was floating my boat, and I was engaged, if not ecstatically overjoyed.

Then the movie fell apart. Whitacre is exposed as a fraudster who has been battling with bipolar disorder, and the focus of the film shifts from his battle with his employer, to a personal fight to keep a grip on reality whilst avoiding prison himself. It's all introspection from there to the credits; in one easy step the forward thrust of the plot stalls, and Whitacre goes from lovable weirdo to pathologic liar.

I'm convinced that the reason Matt Damon is such a good actor is because he seems like he would be a blank slate off camera. He seems to have an uncanny ability to slot the fragments of his personality into whatever character he is currently portraying. I wholeheartedly believe that if I were ever to meet the man in real life, he would speak like a robot.

Soderbergh does his usual slick job here. He seems to have a knack for picking unusual projects, and making them more than they appear on paper; exactly what a good director should do, I suppose. Between the two of them, director and leading man have synthesised a similar comedic style to the Ocean's movies, all pauses and music cues. It works well, and softens the eventual drop-off.

Go to see this movie if you're hard up for unwatched new releases, but be aware, everything from the beginning of the third act is a shocking waste of time. You have been informed.

6/10

The Blues Brothers DVD and Movie Review

The Blues Brothers

DVD and Movie Review

Why isn't Blues Brothers mentioned in the same breath as other great musicals? I'm no fan of the genre, but I feel somewhat aggrieved that Dan Aykroyd's 1980 masterpiece isn't recognised as both a comedic and sonic tour de force.

The Blues Brothers grew from a Saturday Night Live skit. The band, also fronted by the late John Belushi, appeared as a musical act during the 1978 season. They released an album the same year, and then, prompted that there was interest in producing a feature film, Aykroyd set to work on a script.

What resulted was pure gold, from a writer who has since lost his touch. “Joliet” Jake Blues (Belushi) has just been released from Joliet prison, Illinois, into the waiting arms of his brother Elwood (Aykroyd). They attend the orphanage where they grew up, and are told by one of the nuns that the institution will close unless the boys can procure – by lawful means - $5,000 which is owed in back taxes. Jake and Elwood decide to get their band – The Blues Brothers – back together, and earn the money by performing. Throw in some Illinois Nazis, a crazy stalker played by Carrie “Princess Leia” Fisher and a heaping helping of musical cameos, and you've got yourself one enduring musical comedy.

The term “musical comedy” makes me cringe, because it brings to mind movies so disconnected from reality that the viewer may as well be watching a cartoon. The comedy lighter than air, a liberal helping of awkwardly telegraphed musical numbers only serving to make any offering in the genre seem dated from the moment of production. Blues Brothers manages to avoid this pitfall; it helps though that the script was co-written by an SNL alum, and that gritty Rhythm and Blues lines the soundtrack.

The cast is a plethora of perfection. Belushi and Aykroyd are the only main players, the rest of the ensemble being confined to cameos of varying length. But what cameos; no less than Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, James Brown and John Lee Hooker contribute songs to the production. John Candy, Frank “Yoda” Oz, and the aforementioned Carrie Fisher line out for the actors. Thankfully none of Jake and Elwood's backing band have too many lines; they keep to their strengths, concerning themselves with their instruments for a large part of the movie.

I will again go on record as disliking John Landis as a director. I feel that his successful projects have always benefited from powerhouse scripts (some of which, I should fairly point out, he also wrote), and that his direction has ruined a number of potentially decent movies; cases in point Beverly Hills Cop 3.

The DVD I watched was a single-disc affair with scant extras. The one gem I carried away was Dan Aykroyd's story about writing the first draft of his script. Most screenplays are approximately 100-120 pages long (one page of script equates to about one minute of screen time). When Aykroyd turned in his treatment, it was 324 pages in length. Rather than shy away from this fact, he decided to have the script bound to look like a yellow pages book.

So there you have it; Blues Brothers combined comedy and musicality and was equally adept at doing both. Avoid the 1998 sequel; even though it starred the often-excellent John Goodman and Aretha finally got to sing the more popular Respect, it isn't a patch on the original.

Movie: 9/10

Extras: 4/10