Thor 3D

I like comics and superheroes, but I've never really been into Thor or the Avengers. But then I've never been an big fan of Iron Man or even Superman, wow I guess I'm not that much of a superhero fan. I liked Shazam, Alpha Force and Batman.

So I didn't know what to expect from the new Thor movie. I am a fan of Kenneth Branagh and thought the cast was spectacular, but in my heart of hearts I thought the concept was ridiculous and I was setting myself up for disappointment.

But actually the biggest problem I had with it was the 3D. The film looked like it should have been a visual feast and instead it was a dim, murky blur. At one point I took off my glasses and I suddenly realised that the little New Mexican town where the earth based sections of the the film took place was a pale counterpoint of the mighty fantasy world of Asgard. When you can see the colour this film made more sense.

Thor is full of epic storylines, Fathers and sons, brotherly rivalry and discovering what it really means to be a hero. Thors' father, Odin, banishes him from their home planet after Thors reckless behaviour nearly breaks a very fragile peace treaty. Thrown unceremoniously into the New Mexican Dessert, Thor meets up with Astrophysicist, Jane Forester, and her team researching strange weather patterns which she believes are related to her research into wormholes. Meanwhile Thors brother Loki is plotting to take over in one of the most convoluted, epically evil ways imaginable. In fact I came out of film rooting much more for Loki and his villainy than I did for the slightly buffoonish Thor and his team, and wondering how they are going to work all these villains into this mega mash up Avengers film. I hope Tom Higgletons', Loki makes it.

Is it a good film? I'm going to hold off judgement until I can see it again in 2D. I think I was far too distracted to pick up on a lot of the Shakespearian plot points I've heard about in the interviews with the director and the cast but I do know I came out of the theatre depressed and disheartened, thinking the whole movie far fluffier than it should have been.

The Caves of Forgotten Dreams 3D

Okay, I've stated that 3D isn't really my cup of tea - great for gimmicks but not really adding enough to merit wearing cheap, nasty plastic glasses over my regular specs. So part of me was uneasy about going to see a 3d documentary, but this film had some truly amazing pluses to swing it. The biggest is of course its director, Werner Herzog, the man who voice I hear in my head when I feel my life needs a little narration and it subject matter, a recently discovered cave of Paleolithic Art.

It a stunning film - opening with a crane shot that truly made me rethink everything I've every thought about a 3d film. It's breathtaking. Less than an hour later I was sitting with with my head between my knees battling sea sickness as the camera man ran up a cliff path. Even that doesn't alter the fact that it is a magnificent visual film.

The eco-system of the cave are so fragile that breathing can harm the artwork and archeology inside. The art is so important that there is the suggestion that a reproduction of cave be reconstructed else where for public viewing and until that happens this is going to be your only chance to see inside the network of caves. So Herzog makes the most of the opportunity by taking 3D camera in to emphasise how the artists worked on the undulating wall surfaces into their work

Herzog talks to the scientists who get to spend their time working amongst the ancient paintings and as always he find people who are slightly off centre/unique/who you'd either run a mile from or invite around to tea. But I always find these interludes to be the slowest most uninteresting parts of any Herzog documentery, the man is a true genius who can make a former circus performer and someone dressed as a stone aged shaman take second place to a buffalo drawn on a cave wall.

In the end the 3D paled into the background and the whole audience was swept up in warm fluffy blanket that Bavarian accent casts around you. You start to feel as tiny and insignificant as a tiny grain of sand, but thats alright because you are one amongst a million & millions of tiny grains of sand, some of the grains lived millennia ago and some are sitting next to you, in the dark, wearing silly glasses.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

Indulge me, please, for a few paragraphs while I explain why I was so excited to see 'The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc- Sec': A few years ago, as I was closing down my web browser an ad poped up and caught my eye, but it was too late the button had been pressed and the window closed. It was a ad for a book about a top british Scientist and his dashing sidekick who embarked on daring adventures, and it stirred up some distant memory of a half forgotten childhood story. What I remembered most was that the Scientist was the main character and the handsome athletic guy was most definitely his side kick, as it seemed to take the standard stereotypes and stand them on it head.

Of course I immediately re opened the browser and spend a while refreshing the page in the hope of coming across the ad again, no such luck. I posted the request on a couple forums asking if anyone knew of a familiar story and a few people got back to me with suggestions, Dan Dare, Biggles even Sherlock Holmes, but I knew at once it wasn't one of those stories - they all fitted the standard tropes and my story was different. Then someone suggested perhaps the characters where Tintin and Captain Haddock and, although I knew it wasn't what I was looking for, something fell into place. I remembered that the story came from a book at my then local library which was right next to a whole slew of Tintin books. And that was the biggest break through I had in my mystery, a trip to my current local library didn't help searching online provided me with in the region of 3 million answers and after about a week obsessing over the issue I got back to my regular life.

Fast forward to last year at the Edinburgh Film Festival and a screening of James Hulths Lucky Luke, again a story I remembered from my childhood. I left the theatre trying to remember the general premise of the story and how close it had followed the cartoons I remember watching as a child, so I did what any respectable 30-something does now-a-days. I googled 'Lucky Luke' from my phone.  And thats when the wave of nostalgia hit me; 'Lucky Luke', 'Blueberry', 'Largo Winch', 'Adèle Blanc- Sec' and the pair I'd spent that week obsessing over, 'Blake & Mortimer'. I'd assumed these childhood stories came from English books and had obsessive searched amongst published British literature when in fact they were all European, mainly French, comics. That French Emersion Schooling in Canada was belatedly showing up.

Just like the American film industry, French cinema has been resurrecting some of its comic book heroes recently. Most recently in Luc Bessons 'The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec', which I got to see as part of the Glasgow Youth Film Festival last week. Adèle would make a brilliant Disney heroine, feisty, witty, clever and completely out of place in her world but utterly charming with it.  Based in turn of the century Paris she is an adventurous girl reporter, who travels the world in gorgeous clothes fighting yetis and the like. Doesn't really sound like the usual thing you'd expect from the director of 'Leon' and 'Nikita', does it? But when you also consider he is also the man behind 'The Fifth Element' and 'Arthur and the Invisibles' you can see the correlation and this is most definitely a family film.

While a pterodactyl terrorises the people of Paris, Adele travels to Egypt in the hope of resurrecting a mummified doctor how might have the knowledge to save her comatose sister. It everything it should be, light hearted, humorous and filled with mild perl. The lead actress, Louise Bourgoin, has immense charm the costumes are lovely, there is a hint of romance with Nicholas Giraud's shy naturalist and more risque stuff with Patmosis. Yes the plot is thin in spots and yes the comedy resorts to the scatological in places but please, its just entertainment, sit back and watch the spectacle and I don't think you'll be disappointed.


P.s. I really loved t.he CGI Mummies. Slightly jerky but still my favorite part.

NEDs

Peter Mullans film NEDs is the story of a young man growing up in the 70's, it shows the brutal nature of growing up in poverty, or at least a stark Work Class environment, in the tough urban landscape of the schemes in and around Glasgow. In the early 80's my family moved to the West of Scotland into a suburb commuter town outside Glasgow and therefore much of this film resonates with images from my childhood. While I didn't live in a Scheme, I was warned off of mixing with NEDs (Non Educated Delinquents, there is some debate about if the acronym or the appellation came first) but from school I knew people like John McGill (played with a wonderful understated assurance by Conor McCarron) and his mates, I could also recognize Julian, his rich friend, and I'm sure Mullan had some of the same teachers I had in school.

I have a weird relationship to violence in films, when I'm watching a film I am, no matter how engrossed I become in the plot, watching a piece of fiction and rarely involves any actual harm. So as a liberal person I tend to find myself defending violence, even ultra violent in any medium as a valid expression of an artistic viewpoint, but I often get turned off films with realistic violent because . . . well . . . I don't like violence. So normally I wouldn't go to see a film like this but it my hometown, my people. I felt I had to see it almost as an act of solidarity, not just to the sentiments expressed but to seeing that more film are made here in Scotland, with Scottish casts and crews. I wasn't buying a cinema ticket I was investing in cinema and film making here.

Although I had bought a ticket and was planning on sitting through it in all, I wasn't really looking forward to it. In my head it was going to be a stylistic, vainglorious celebration of the mindless violence I spend my days avoiding in the street. The wonderful reviews it had been receiving since it debuted in Toronto couldn't seem to dent my bubble of misillusion.

Because it does feature a lot of violence but none of it is celebrated, by the time Johns begins to revel in his decent into the violence around him, everyone in the audience is sitting, just routing for his redemption. We know what he is up against, what he can overcome and what is dragging him down, Peter Mullen shows that there is violence always there, just bubbling under the surface, but then so is salvation. Often John McGill just needs to reach out and everything could be different. This tightrope walk that the character is on drives the film and when he slips at the start of the third act the audience tumbles with him.

Nearly everyone I've spoken too has had issues with the final part of the film, yes it let reality slip away into a looking glass phantasm where you are no longer sure if we are in the real world or in John head. I'm not sure how I feel about all the weirdness that happens but I don know I ended up feeling like it ended too soon, that I wasn't real sure I wanted to stop hanging out with these guys; I like them and I wanted closure, but I've said it before sometimes in real life you don't get all the lose ends tied up. I like it when the director gives me all the pieces and lets me make of it what I want, makes me feel intelligent and involved in a dialogue with the creatives behind the medium.

Even if I was too Chicken to ask a question at the Q&A after the showing.

Boudu Saved from Drowning

If I ever win the lottery, I'm buying myself a cinema.

One of the abandoned Art Deco palaces littering my home town. I'm going to do it up and run my own independent cinema. Independent cinemas are the best, places that show more than the big release of the week on six screens (Yes, I'm talking to you, local multiplex) and will quite happily show film that will appeal to only 6 people. I'm lucky to have one of the most marvellous independent cinemas near me. I've done course and workshops and gone to open days there, I've snuck off school AND work to see films there (you wont tell anyone will you?) over a period of about 20 years. Now I feel wicked and old.

I love old films, black and white, silent with bombastic scores or hiccuping scratchy talkies. As a child I remember spending school holiday mornings watching these classics on TV. One of my favorite things to do now to catch a magnificent 1930's french comedy on the big screen, so when my favorite cinema is showing a special re-release of 'Boudu Saved from Drowning', by Jean Renior I had to be there.

It was wonderful, lyrical, meandering film about the tramp Boudu and the havoc he wreaks on the live of his bourgeois saviour. Of course by modern terms the comedy is a little tame but there was still plenty of laughs, enough to one man in my cinema roaring out loud throughout the film. Perfect night out.

Black Swan

I think I picked the perfect time to go and see Darren Aronofsky Black Swan at my local multiplex, 9am on a Sunday morning. Apparently, like 'The Kings Speech' it usually sold out, but I was the only one in the cinema when I went to the movies. To be honest, that's my idea of heaven, no other people around to chat, munch, text or kick and spoil my enjoyment of the film. And it started on time, was projected in the right ratio and sounded good. It seems I'm going to have to make more of an effort to get up early at the weekends.

I'd been looking forward to seeing this film immensely, loving the very graphic posters that appeared in my nearest independent cinema a while back and having something of a school girl crush on Vincent Cassel. A film about a ballarina struggling with her psyche to find the evil with in needed to play the dual roles of the black and white swan in Swan Lake - sounds delicious, like 'Ballet Shoes' for big girls and a slight thriller/horror element for anyone not terpsichorean inclined.

For the first hour or so of the film I was wondering what all the fuss was about, the two young female leads had obviously put in a huge amount of work to protraying ballet dancer correctly. I don't just mean they looked bird thin and wore there hair in buns, they had put in the practice and moved convincingly during the dance routines. But I found Natalie Portmans Nina just annoying, her constant fear and high strung nature was depressing me, and I'm a fan of Almodóvar and melodrama, so I wondered what everyone else was seeing in it. Then almost like switch being turned on the subtle nuances of the how Nina's story was intertwined with Swan Lake became apparent. For me it came when I was able to slot Barbara Hershey character in to cast of Swan Lake, I think it took me longer than most folks, and from that moment on I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how it would all play out or if there would be a brilliant twist ending.

All in all I say I enjoyed the film - but it left we with lots of questions, not so much about the characters, the actors where brilliant, and I'm quite happy with what some friends have seen as unexplained/unresolved points of the story. To me it is a self contained piece and I don't see the point in wondering what next or how did they, I mean sometimes that happens, in life you never get to know all the answers. Mine are more movie geeky about lighting and cameras - how sad am I!

I mean just take a look at this spoil-tastic VFX reel

Tangled

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a preview screening of the new Disney film 'Tangled' last Monday. Now I'm a big Disney fan - Did I mention I like everything? So I was eagerly anticipating this new film, to be honest I'd completely forgotten everything about 'The Princess and the Frog' which was very pretty but not very memorable. Growing up, Madame Medusa was my favorite Disney villain and Dr. Facilier just felt too light weight by comparison. Perhaps it was because I was older.

'Tangled' is getting massive hype from America, a beautiful return to form, a modern twist on the script and in 3D. Now I'm not entirely convinced that 3D is the future of cinema, while I still have to wear 3D glasses it will only be a gimmick. But this is the kind of film that is gimmick worthy.

Based on the Grimms' Fairy Tale, Rapunzel, if your not familiar with the story; Rapunzel is a young women is trapped in a tower, her only visitor a old women who has stolen her away from her real family. The only way to get into and out of the tower is for Rapunzel to lower her extremely long hair from the upper window. Bored with her life Rapunzel takes the opportunity to escape from the tower when a charming thief called Flynn happens to find the tower.

Nothing is new here, the heroine is feisty, the hero dumb but charming, there are several cute animals which will end up as stuffed toys in the Disney Store and villain who wont give kids nightmares. The songs are happy and upbeat, the script peppered with witty remarks and the palette is colourful. For 90 minutes I was entertained and I promptly forgot about most of it on the way home. I'm afraid the only thing I took away from the cinema was the 3D glasses.

I'm taking some family members to see it again next month and I don't find the idea appalling.

127 Hours

127 hours is not a movie I'd usually pick out to see.

The premise is this . . . man gets his arm trapped while rock climbing, and I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say, that to escape he has to cut off his arm. At 94 minutes, my fear was that it would be too long and drawn out, or an extended feast of blood and gore. So I'm not enamored of the premise and James Franco has never actually thrilled me as an actor, if it wasn't my lingering affection for Shallow Grave, which makes me want to see anything by Danny Boyle, I'd probably have given it a miss.

I'd expected flappy, bloated, self-indulgent but instead its a nice compact little film. After establishing the vastness and isolation of landscape we spend the majority of the film trapped in a twisting, intricate burrow in Blue John canyon. It could have been boring . . . but it wasn't fast edits, clever camera angles and shots from inside water bottles, tubes and fridges keeps it visually interesting. Francos performance is very genuine - while I'm not sure I'd ever get on with Aron Ralston I could relate to him, I don't see myself in him but I do know people like him.

THE scene, the one everyone waiting for, isn't too gruesome, take it from a complete coward but with the wonderful Hitchcock-esque build up where everyone knows what's coming and is convinced they can't watch. Its a really great McGuffin.

Overall the film is technically perfect, good cinematography, story, direction, acting . . . I could go on. Your enjoyment of the film is simply down to how much you engage with the character of Aron Ralston, once you buy into to that like him or not you have to see it through to the end.

My biggest issue again was with the cinema, poorly projected and deafening sound. I mean every-time the sound track music came on I had to sit with both fingers in my ears just to make it through it. It was interesting that at the loudest part of the film was also the part where most people left the cinema. (Roughly 10% of the audience left.)

The Way Back

Peter Weir is a probably one of my favorite directors.

His films pepper my life from as far back as I can remember, seriously I've never known a point in my life when I didn't love 'Picnic At Hanging Rock', my Mother snuck me in to see 'Witness' for my birthday after I spent weeks pestering her and my favorite English Teacher announce his retirement the week after I saw 'Dead Poets Society'.

Peter Weir and I have a connection - he may not know it but we do. So I have been waiting years, 7 in total I think since 'Master and Commander', for his new film. Another great adventure story, this time with scenery done by National Geographic, it sounded so amazing and the cast, Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Mark Strong and Saoirse Ronan, any one of whom I'd quite willing pay to see in a film.

Its the story of a daring escape through Russian, Mongolia, China and Tibet by a group of desperate political prisoners. As they travel the 4000 miles across some of the most inhospitable and stunning landscapes in the world, the endure great deprivation and extremes of weather. While the veracity of the story has been doubted the actors give and amazing portrayal of human endurance and courage.

But to be honest the film left me a little disappointed, with less emphasis on adventure and more focus on the amazing courage of the characters and not enough gorgeous scenery, stunning scenery but not enough of the long, lingering 'travel porn' I've come to expect from National Geographic. In saying that it was a good film and like all Peter Weir films I have no doubt I will buy it on DVD, but my biggest problem with it was it wasn't a great film. As criticism goes it pretty minor.

Unfortunately the cinema I saw this in was hosting a meeting of the local debating society - honestly I once went to see a performance at a theatre in China where everyone kept talking during the show, it was like that. My personal belief is people get so used to watching movies at home on their big screen TV they can no longer distinguish between the two . . . Come on people surely you can be quite for 2 hours?

The King's Speech

It's seemed rather fitting that I finally get around to starting this blog with Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech". I've had the opportunity to to see this in previews not once but four times and unfortunately I've had miss all four screenings.

It was worth the wait.

I was starting to dread seeing this film - it couldn't live up to the hype I'd read in the press, heard from friends and built up in my own mind. In the cinema I was getting even more apprehensive as the rest of cinema audience had each been given a list of my personal cinema bug bears and encouraged to partake in all of them. On either side of me couples who alternately swapped saliva and consumed an eight course meal. Behind me a couple who had brought a tin of Quality Street and while one rustled their sweet wrappers the other tried and failed to muffle the sound of the tin opening. I'm not sure they actually managed to eat any of the sweets just rustle wrappers and burp that lid. And there was something up with the projection; usually I'd complain but . . . It's that good.

Based on on the friendship between King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue. It ticks all the boxes required of a historical drama, it looks gorgeous, filled with exquisite actors giving polished performance and it gives you a warm sepia glow in your heart. But 'The King's Speech" also has laughs, lots of them and dialogue witting enough to make you want to co-op it for yourself. Honestly, at points I was starting to figure out which friends I could use the lines on with out them realizing I'd outright nicked them. Of course, most of them only work if you're Royal.

And it does look beautiful, and quite often I'll forgive a film a lot because it looks pretty. So when I get distracted from my observations on the wallpaper because there's an actor in the way then I know they're doing a good job. I know everyone is saying that Colin Firth was brilliant, and don't get me wrong he is outstanding, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the performance given by Helena Bonham Carter. As the Duchess of York, who before her marriage was considered a commoner, she represents the nation and duty. Years of playing over the top characters give her a repressed amusement and tragedy that strip away years of tabloid veneer and made me re-examine that old caricature The Queen Mother. She really deservers her Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Golden Globes.