humphreybarber

Oh yeah – I thought to myself twenty minutes into the film – this was the same guy that did Sideways. The idea that a cinematic celebration of the mundane is somehow more worthwhile than a great big Michael Bay explosion-fest is questionable.

About Schmidt was the first of this genre that I saw and along with Broken Flowers and that other Bill Murray one with Scarlet Johansson (you know – its set in Japan – that one!). They all make me think that I’m missing something, still am though, don’t get them, perhaps I don’t have enough pathos or feeling for my fellow man. Dunno. Didn’t get them.

Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine reeled me in a bit. Aha! if you replace woebegone Bill with someone you have a chance of caring about, then the film gets interesting. Thankfully, everyone likes George – he is very likeable… and watchable. In fact I could have just sat and watched him, the visual equivalent of a nice cup of tea (or whatever your poison is really). He doesn’t have to say anything, but if he does it will probably be nice… or funny… or cool. And it is. And he is. Well done George.

The rest of the cast were pretty cool – this is Hawaii after all. The wayward daughter undergoes a transformation from girl to woman. Her stoner friend Sid we realise already has. The extended family who stand to lose or gain millions on George’s say-so are pretty mellow about it. It is interesting that we are allowed, almost encouraged to dislike the wife in the coma. But she’s not really there is she? So everyone’s pretty cool and pretty mellow and everything will probably be okay (except for the bad wife in the coma). So thats okay and we feel okay. Not a feel-good movie, but a feel-okay movie – which in the current maelstrom of bad that is modern life, is something to aim for.

OK, a confession to start with… or is it to end with? I have discovered that the idle blogger can cheat (at least when using Blogger software) and set up posts on a certain day to be edited later. So smug have I been in this knowledge, that I have left the completion of this entry (started almost a month ago) until today. So what?

Somehow it seems an easy way to appear prolific and organised, as long as you have a thought for the day, you can go back to it later when you are less inspired by how shit your day has been and make it appear that you have a great idea every day of you waking life.

Anyway, the original purpose of this entry was to pick a few holes in the world of the blog. After all, I’m an expert. I had been blogging for a whole week before I took a month’s sabbatical.

I’m sure that there are many blogs that have started wih the best of intentions and then trailed off…

… this is not the first blog I have started and my good intentions have already waned, but there are a few things about blogging that are inherently annoying:

Blog Stardom:

There is a law which I am going to state, which I guess means that I can name it. Humphrey’s Law states that a blog becomes unreadbly obsessed with its own fame about two minutes after it has reached a readership beyond the immediate family of the blogger and more than two of their pets.

Belle du Jour and the one about cooking stuff are both cases in point. By the time they had come to the public eye their central theme had become being in the public eye. Sort of a Victoria Beckham effect – famous for being famous.

Reverse Entry:

There is probably a way of doing this, but I haven’t found it: the narrative in a blog is always reversed – the last thing to happen is the first thing you read. Being a bit of a meat and two veg kind of reader, I don’t appreciate being stranded at the end of a narrative and having to wade back to the begining to find out what the whole thing is about.

Themes:

Cooking your way through a cook book is not exactly brain science or rocket surgery, but it does create a good blog. Have sales of Mastering the Art of French Cooking rocketed, or are we all living the vicarious pleasure of reading about someone who has? The idea of a serious theme which actually informs the public of serious issues is great, but it is rather worrying that people working in corporate and public sector jobs seem to be being discouraged from writing anything, and indeed their employers have the power to take sanctions against whistleblowers and those who care about their work with the ambulance service and the police force.

Anyway, I’m going to persevere with the form and see how we get on. Perhaps by the time you next read this I will be talking about my publishing deal.

Flags of Our Fathers

8/10

Aware of the fact that the “Our” of the title, does not apply to me because I am a limey, and the fact that this was another Spielberg-produced version of WWII, I was expecting the usual visceral action, combined with some rather sad flag waving (no pun intended) as the last victory that Hollywood can celebrate victory is indeed WWII, over 60 years ago. I was pleasantly surprised, Clint has managed to do a great job of retaining directorial integrity and Paul Haggis has managed to make the script reflect the fact that real heroes do not really accept that there is such a thing as a hero.

The film is beautifully shot; using the actual island of Iwo Jima as well as the volcanic backdrop of Iceland makes the battlefield seem of another world, particularly when contrasted with the stadiums that our heroes go on to tour. All of these Spielberg-produced war epics have this fantastic feel to them, with the colours appearing dull, but beautifully rich in the war footage, and with more saturated colour in the modern footage, this time contrasting the world of the past with the present. So the cinematography is not subtle, but it is incredibly effective, even if we are becoming numbed to these incredible action scenes debuted by Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.

The cast lacks a particular star. These actors are really character actors, but I mean that very positively. The people involved in this whole story are fairly unremarkable individuals who happened to be in a remarkable place at a remarkable time, therefore the low-key casting is great. Ryan Phillippe continues to as an actor each time I see him onscreen, and Barry Pepper is just the sort of company sergeant that every company needs. All the actors are thoroughly believable and get the tone spot on, but the overall impression is that this is the work of an ensemble rather than a couple of actors dragging the rest of a company along behind them.

The anti-war and heroism motifs are represented with the ever-so-slightly heavy-handed brilliance that has won Clint his directorial Oscars. The film certainly makes a point of questioning exactly why nations go to war and why men do such extraordinary things both for and to their fellow man. And these are worthy, weighty themes that should be explored. But they are also worthy weighty themes to which we need some answers. Yes, indeed, you could say that propaganda wins and loses wars, and we should be aware of the difference between what we should believe and what we are being persuaded to believe, but I think, as we enter this new year, we should be presenting a new honesty to believe in rather than treading the old path that tells us not to believe anything we are told, particularly by politicians or the media. We know that, we know what not to believe, but can’t we have something to believe in instead?

This is a great war movie, as are all the best anti-war movies, and it is superbly executed, but perhaps directors as experienced as Clint Eastwood, writers as talented as Paul Haggis and producers as powerful as Spielberg should be providing us with inspiration to improve the world rather than more reasons to be sceptical and world-weary.

While the cinema is full of familiar stories and studios won’t make a film unless the book has sold a gazillion copies, going to see a Spanish fairytale movie is quite a refreshing change.

Of course fairytales are the oldest stories of the lot, and they are actually jam-packed with clichés, but what people seem to forget is that they can be incredibly dark too. Thankfully the makers of Pan’s Labyrinth have not forgotten this. Within the labyrinth are woodlice the size of my fist and a fairy disguised as praying mantis; even in the real world post Spanish Civil War setting there is a fair bit of gore and wince-making surgery. So this is very much a fairytale for adults and as adults we will have seen the themes (your basic good versus evil) a million times. But it is so refreshing to see this retrodden material handled like this, although there is a slight whiff of the awful Jim Henson Labyrinth; this version is lots darker as well as being more uplifting.

The acting is top-drawer; Sergi Lopez is a stunningly proud and evil Fascist captain while the lowly and invisible Mercedes, played by Maribel Verdu is easily his equal as an actor and in terms of her quietly powerful portrayal of the housekeeper. The only slight disappointment, and it is only a slight disappointment, is the performance of Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, the heroine. In any other film she would have been fine, but this film is so strong on so many levels that her slightly lacking performance does stand out more than it would in a less perfect film.

I don’t really like fantasy – Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter left me cold – but this form of fantasy and the way it mixes insidiously with the real life experiences of the small girl is intriguing and beguiling. And you can bet there isn’t going to be a prequel or a Pan’s Labyrinth II, because this was a film made by filmmakers not moneymakers.

I noticed about a year ago, that there are a whole bunch of phrases that I return to in my head.

“Tony Zammit’s pro-street Sierra”
Caption for a hot-rod model in Street Machine magazine.

“Uncle Buckle-Up”
Road safety promoting cuddly toy adopted as a disguise by “Hannibal” Smith in The A-Team