Tag Archives: #films

Sakamoto – Opus

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Live concert films are mostly formulaic. The audience filing into the venue. The performers warming up backstage. The band close ups, the cutaways to the wings, then zooming out to the ecstatic crowd. The sweaty and exhausted atmosphere in the dressing room afterwards. Sometimes the live footage is inter-cut with interviews, location footage, and the “making of” narrative. Occasionally, there will be scenes shot on the road, revealing the inevitable tedium and monotony of live touring.

A few notable exceptions have tried to break with this format, to present something more dramatic, more mystical, even mythical – think of Pink Floyd’s “Live in Pompeii” (knowingly echoed by Melbourne’s own Mildlife), Talking Head’s “Stop Making Sense”, and David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars”.

Often, the concert film becomes a souvenir. For those who were there, it enables them to relive the experience. For those who weren’t, they may get some vicarious thrill, but they won’t get to experience the performance as it was fully intended. These films can make us feel we missed out on an historic event, but they can also remind us why we are glad not to have been there at all (the Rolling Stones at Altamont?).

Many concerts these days (and the accompanying Blu-Ray discs) are all about the spectacle, sometimes at the expense of the actual music. Choreographed to within an inch of their lives, these shows leave very little to chance or the unexpected, with their troupes of dancers, video backdrops, somersaults and acrobatics, multiple costume changes, “forced” audience participation, and the “surprise” guest appearances during the encores….

So the footage of the final live performance by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto goes against this trend. Filmed alone, on piano, in stark black and white, and with no audience, no voice-overs and no talking heads, “Opus” is not strictly speaking a concert. Due to his failing health, Sakamoto was unable either to withstand the rigours of touring or to perform a single concert. Instead, these performances were shot in stages, and edited together to form a seamless programme, with nothing but Sakamoto, a piano, and the music, plus some very subtle lighting and framing. The sound recording is brilliant, and the content covers most aspects of Sakamoto’s illustrious and prolific career. It’s a fitting tribute, and a perfect counterpoint to “Coda”, the documentary he made when he had just come through an earlier health scare.

Sometimes, less is more.

Next week: Severance….

Eat The Rich?

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There has recently been a spate of satirical films and TV series that take aim at the vanity, self-indulgence and sense of entitlement of the uber-rich. I’m thinking in particular of “The Menu”, “The Triangle of Sadness”, “Glass Onion” and “White Lotus”.  You could also include “Succession” on that list (especially in light of the latest revelations from the House of Murdoch), but this is more of a traditional drama than the others, both in terms of format and content.

Nothing radically new in these stories, their themes or the way they plot their narratives. What is perhaps surprising is the fact that these are not small, independent, art-house productions. They have substantial budgets, exotic locations, stylish design, creative cinematography, and some big names in the credits.

Plus, they receive major theatrical releases, or are luring audiences to premium streaming services. So, they are generally commercial. Best of all, they are attracting awards and nominations – which should hopefully encourage studios to invest in more projects like these (rather than green-lighting yet another sequel in the never-ending round of comic book and super hero franchises).

Of course, these particular stories could simply represent a sign of the times, reflecting current world events, and holding up a mirror to our social-media obsessed age. They also resonate with audiences who are looking for some escapism in the form of critiques of the upper classes, the filthy rich, the social elites, the global power brokers, and those hangers-on who hover and follow in their wake.

I wouldn’t suggest these productions are waging a form of class war, but they represent a kind of morality play: why would anyone want to feel jealous of, let alone become, these people?

Next week: A Journey Through England

 

Literary triggers

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Reading for pleasure should be a joy in itself. But to read a book and then be drawn into somewhat tangential (and even trivial) thoughts triggered by personal recollections is an added bonus.

That was partly my reaction when reading Jonathan Coe’s marvelous novel “Mr Wilder and Me”. Ostensibly a fictional account about the making of one of Billy Wilder’s final films, set in Greece and France in the mid-1970s, it manages to incorporate many themes – Hollywood, the creative process, migration, family, the Holocaust, ageing, travel – without selling any of them short. Happily, it’s now being made into a film itself, which confirms the strong narrative at the core of the book. I look forward to seeing it when it is released.

For myself, the novel prompted three travel-related memories:

1. Just like a key time in the novel, my first visit to Greece was also a few years after the collapse of the military junta – currency restrictions, banks only open a couple of hours a day, rationing of hot water in the hostel where I was staying, and construction projects abandoned unfinished because of their association with the military regime

2. The narrator’s love of cheese, stemming from an impromptu visit to a Brie maker, brought back memories of many trips to Paris in the 80s and 90s, and visits to bars like La Tartine, and trying the different types of crottin

3. On my first trip to California, I was fortunate enough to have drinks at the Hotel del Coronado, the setting for Billy Wilder’s most famous film, “Some Like It Hot”, and an iconic resort facility in San Diego Bay.

Seemingly unconnected, yet all evoked by a single work of fiction.

Next week: Let There Be Light

My love/hate relationship with Science Fiction

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Watching the latest installment of “The Matrix”, I was reminded of my love/hate relationship with Science Fiction. I wouldn’t count myself as a huge SF fan, but I dip my toe in from time to time, and occasionally find a sub-genre, eco-system or franchise that draws me in deeper, whether via television, film or literature. Unfortunately, while the original “Matrix” movie (and maybe the first sequel) managed to be original, entertaining and engaging, by the time of “The Matrix Revolutions” both the plot and the characterisation had run thin. When I saw the trailers and the pre-launch campaign for “The Matrix Resurrections”, I was sufficiently intrigued to want to see it, especially in light of recent geo-political events. Sadly, it was a huge waste of time: the plot was banal, and the story-line disjointed; there were awkward flashbacks to the previous films (in large part to remind us of the actors who originally played the current characters?); and there were far too many retrospective explanations to justify the present “narrative”. The whole thing felt like another Keanu Reeves character had stumbled into a dystopian Lewis Carroll landscape – “Wick in Wonderland” would have been a more suitable title.

“The Terminal Man” by Michael Crichton (image sourced from the author’s website)

Growing up in the UK in the 1960s, my school friends and I avidly watched a bunch of TV programmes that found a young and eager audience for SF. These productions also spawned multiple re-boots, spin-offs and imitators, as well as giving rise to the franchise phenomenon that dominates much of today’s cinema. Those early shows included “Star Trek”, “Lost in Space”, “Planet of the Apes” and “Land of the Giants”. All of these programmes were American, which I suppose made them seem even more exotic, and therefore more appealing, to our impressionable minds.

By contrast, British television had produced the “Quatermass” TV series back in the 1950s, and “Dr Who” (launched in 1963), both of which pre-dated their US counterparts by several years. But in my mind these domestic efforts were firmly rooted in Gothic horror – more H.G.Wells and Jules Verne than Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick? – and therefore they felt less futuristic, especially when we were witnessing the real-life events of the Space Race on the evening news. Which is probably why even Gerry Anderson’s puppet creations such as “Fireball XL5”, “Thunderbirds” and “Captain Scarlet” resonated with me more than Daleks and Cybermen. So to me, British television was more successful in producing psycho-dramas founded upon stories of espionage set against backdrop of the Cold War, with programmes such as “Danger Man”, “The Avengers”, “The Champions” and “The Prisoner” being far more evocative of contemporary themes and fashions, notwithstanding some creaky plot lines.

Later, I would watch classic SF films of the 1950s, such as “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “The Blob” and “Forbidden Planet” which, despite their technical limitations, are still key reference points for fans of the genre; they also convey elements of Cold War paranoia, and the perennial fear of “the other”. Then, as a young teenager, I found myself reading SF novels, including works by Asimov, John Wyndham, Aldous Huxley, Michael Crichton, Norman Spinrad, Brian Aldiss and J.G.Ballard. Ballard, of course, preferred to explore “inner space” rather than outer space, and this means his writing contains universal themes that are not constrained by contemporary accounts of futuristic technology. In fact, this theme of “inner space” probably underpins my preferences within the SF genre, as evidenced by 1960s movies I managed to see when I was older, such as “Seconds”, “Alphaville”, and “Fahrenheit 451”.

Despite an aversion for SF that is over-reliant upon technology as a plot technique, I have enjoyed some recent novels that engage with emerging technology such as AI and robotics – great examples would include William Gibson’s “Agency”, Ian McEwan’s “Machines Like Me”, and Jeanette Winterson’s “Frankissstein”.

However, if I was to delineate my personal likes/dislikes of SF in film and on TV, I would probably list them as follows:

  • As a child, I loved the original “Star Trek”, but I’ve never seen a “Star Trek” film or any of the newer TV series
  • I’ve never seen a “Star Wars” film, and have no desire to
  • “Moon” was great, and “Source Code” wasn’t bad either
  • I really enjoyed “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, and I appreciated “Contact”, “Arrival”, “Interstellar” and “The Martian”
  • “Gravity” was somehow plausible, whereas “Elysium” was a stretch
  • “2001: A Space Odyssey” is in a class of its own
  • Same with “The Man Who Fell To Earth”
  • I loved the first four “Alien” movies, but I disliked the so-called prequels, and I’ve avoided the “Predator” cross-overs
  • The original “Terminator” film was great, but the sequels prove the law of diminishing returns
  • I really enjoyed “Looper” and in a somewhat similar vein, “Inception”
  • I couldn’t ever get into the “X-files” – but I was hooked on “Twin Peaks”
  • The original “Westworld” movie was fine, but I have no interest in the recent TV series
  • Similarly, I love the original film versions of “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall”, but see no point in the later remakes
  • And while I used to watch re-runs of the original “Twilight Zone” series, I’ve not seen the later re-boot; however, “Black Mirror” got my attention
  • “Donnie Darko” yes, “Stranger Things” no
  • Overall, I tend to avoid SF that is more firmly rooted in the sub-genres of horror, fantasy, magic, super heroes (with super powers), space westerns, superstition, disaster themes and most tales of the supernatural (and anything with Kevin Costner….)

Finally, there is room for humour in SF, if done well – such as “Dark Star”, “Mars Attacks!”, and “Tremors”; even the first “Men in Black” effort is head and shoulders above “Wild Wild West”….

Next week: Smart Contracts… or Dumb Software