Spidey spins another web

Spiderman 3... cringe, cringe, cringe. As is always the case, "the effects are brilliant", and indeed they are - in fact, I got dizzy at some points, and didn't have a clue where I was. But the story? Contrived. The acting? Corny. And the whole feel? Cringey. But I'm guessing they knew this all along, and so played into it, and I guess for many people that's the fun. As the stars and stripes unfold behind Spidey when he takes on his final challenge, you expect everyone to stand up and take the oath of allegiance to all things American and all things Marvel-lous. Oh dear!

Bath

A short day trip, piggy-backing off a work visit. A complete tourist trap, but understandably so, even if just for the stone of the buildings. However, I had never seen the Minster displaying its beauty at night before, and it intrigued me that only the modern period has been able to benefit from such a display of light. Its architects and builders would only have received a taste of this during a full moon, and even then the effect and orientation of the light would have been completely different. It reminds me of Oxford as a town in a few ways – oddly placed, slightly small for all its claims, and of course hideous modern shopping malls slammed next to the most beautiful architecture. All with a splash of a river or two added to make it look pretty. Of course I’ll go back.

The Big Blue

In writing about this in the same vein as my posting about Cinema Paradiso, I think I have come to the conclusion that this is my all-time favourite. Bizarre, because I’m still not sure what the film is actually about. Ultra-depth divers, free divers who push their bodies to the limit of human endurance, and to the outer realms of experience; adults who live completely for their sport to the exclusion of everything else, even love; and sportsmen who adopt a way of life which they are prepared to die for. But its also about how provincial life can be, about how boring the rest of us make life, and about discovering love and passion in the midst of bitterness, anger and jealousy. Eric Serra’s music is haunting, carrying in sound the massive depth of the blues so dramatically pictured in the movie. As is often the case, the director’s cut is better, and hence worth looking for. Perhaps we all wish we could still live in the time of polar exploration, of discovering new lands even. But since we can’t do that, we explore our own limits.

The cinema paradise

I have been posting reports about films that I have watched since starting this blog, but I feel I am doing them a disservice if I don’t mention some of my all-time favourites. A film about films has to be very self-conscious, without being precocious, and some of the best ones laugh at themselves, or at the Holywood world. However, Cinema Paradiso is just a good old slushy romantic movie. Yes, the culminating scene with all the movie kisses may be a little too sentimental and over-the-top, but it is lovely, and ever since I first saw this film I have to stop myself getting all weepy when I hear Morricone’s music – some of his best, I think. Also the idyll of growing up in and around a picture house, and enjoying the delights of the silver screen in a beautiful Mediterranean climate, make this film so dreamy. The heartache of the love story is moving, and something which most of us could identify with, and the passing of years adds something realistic to the whole film. It’s not perfect, its not even that deep and profound, but it is just beautiful. I could (and do) watch it again and again.

My place

Been here for a couple of months now, but delighted with it. Given the town, it’s something of a find, and whilst its without a garden and any sort of ‘outside’, it has a relaxed and open feel which I am enjoying. Homebase’s current advertising strap-line is ‘Make a House a Home’, and I guess that plays well into what people think a home should be like… but I have felt relaxed and comfortable since I have been here. Oh, and it’s very photogenic too!

The History Boys

Well, so much praise and so many accolades for this - would it live up to all of that? And it's also sort of trendy to like Alan Bennett, but it's also sort of trendy to pan him. So what would it be like? A film based on a play about 8 boys trying for Oxford, the grammar school system of the late 70s, and lots of pretencious stuff about poetry, literature and history? What would I make of it, when one friend had hated it and one had gone straight out and bought the music CD?

Fantstic, that's what I thought. Sort of Dead Poets Society with brains, and Educating Rita with more attitude. Gay characters that are slightly predictable but believable, teachers that are human and also idealisitc, and writing that is so Bennett - witty, pensive and accurate. Films that pull on the emotions are not a bad thing in my book, and this does that extremely well. I'm going to watch it again, very soon.

Little Miss Sunshine

This is one of those As Good As it Gets and The Royal Tenenbauns movies... life is one long string of disasters, but life is full of real people. Toni Colette is wonderful in this movie, as she is in the many films she has done. There are scenes which are hilarious, and also scenes where you are not sure whether they are funny or should even be considered funny - the final beauty pageant fiasco, for example, but if you think hard about it, the shock nature of the stage show is only making explicit what is underlining the whole idea of such performances. Anyway, the film's beauty is that none of the characters are beautiful. A road movie with a difference (and a yellow VW camper van), and whilst it pretends to be serious at times it is mainly just fun light relief.

Oxford covered market

It has become something of a tourist attraction, but the covered market in the centre of Oxford retains a sense of charm and wonder that most standard retail has lost. Fruit and veg that bursts out of the stalls because of its colour and shape, warts and all; fish that is not suffocated in plastic but that shines and smells and can potentially snap at your fingers; meat which still has heads and legs and that looks like it was running around two hours ago; and a café which isn't a trumped-up coffee franchise but which is a greasy spoon serving good old unhealthy fry-ups. I love the way bicycles are suspended from the roof to keep them out of the way, how the delivery boys still wear white and cycle with their goods in a basket on the front of their bikes, and how so many of the shop owners know their customers. Not quite the old Covent Garden or Spitalfields, but enchanting nevertheless.

Silk

Silk, Alessandro Baricco, translated by Ann Goldstein
It truly is an amazing art to say so much with so little. In a book where no chapter is longer than three pages in length, Baricco paints a beautiful love story focusing on a French silk importer in the nineteenth century. As well as being emotionally vibrant and incredibly colourful, Silk is an antidote to 500 page volumes which seem to try and justify their existence or value because they have so many words. In contrast Baricco demonstrates the power of language, and that the language of love crosses national and cultural barriers. I didn't predict the true source of love in the book, and I was delighted at how something so simple could be so transforming. Thanks for this one Scott.

Going Underground

London is to be enjoyed for so many reasons, but one of the delights is the permission that the tube gives you to watch people. There they are, all lined up for you to look at - where else do you get the opportunity to see and examine so many types and kinds of individual. Race, , orientation, height, nose size... all within the confines of a glass cage with no where else to go but to be looked at. People that you might fancy, faces that intrigue you, sad or happy eyes all with a story which let you see momentarily into another world. It might be a world you envy, one you desire, or one that may even horrify you - but you can have a look, just for a moment. Perhaps 7/11 has changed this ism slightly, so that we are a place where we are more suspicious or judge people more harshly. But we will never know, so I continue to enjoy the delights of people-watching on the underground.

Large Ape Warning...

A marvellous spectacle incredible graphics, true-to-life rendering of an ape... what else can you say about this movie? Well, without knowing it was directed by him, anyone who has seen The Lord of the Rings would know that Kong was also directed by Peter Jackson. He uses the same trade mark methods - slow motion to highlight a significant moment, long aerial shots to show you the amazing panoramas the CGI team have created, silent moments in the midst of battle to heighten the tension, knowing looks from the characters so that we know this is one of their moments of moral tension - these are all Jackson favourites. He has also tried to tell the story of Kong, so that this is not just an effects film. So we feel sorry for the misunderstood beast, and wonder whether the captors should not themselves be caged. The problem is this is just a CGI movie, one which is most impressive, but also one which still has a sort of 'Emperor's New Clothes' feeling. Do these directors think we really can't spot an actor in front of a green screen yet? Or that the character in Kong's hand is a model? The graphics are incredible, and they work best when its just them on their own and Kong is fighting the T-Rexs, but the credibility gap remains because they eye is not always fooled. The movie is good, but for all the fantastic art, it still doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, then this is just a one trick film.

Final Cut

Another futuristic flick with a brain, and like its kin this movie asks its audience to think ethics. If humans were implanted with a device that recorded video of all they ever saw, who would have the right to view and ultimately edit those tapes when the person had died? Robin Williams, who seems to be much more suited to serious roles than his tired comical types, plays a 'cutter' who is so good at creating rememberances of peoples' lives with all the bad bits taken out that he doesn't notice that he is rewriting history. Until, that is, his own past comes to haunt him and he has to find out the truth about his culpability in the death of a childhood friend. Whilst the film doesn't ask you to think that hard (there is truth, after all), it nevertheless questions the value of our camcorder world versus personal memories and the freedom we maintain to remember or forget. Perhaps forgetting is key to the moral of this film, rather than remembering, but when atrocities are forgotten then justice may also be abandoned. This is more Gattaca rather than The Truman Show, and Williams puts in a suitably moody performance (as in Photolab). Worth a gander.

May Day

What a wonderful and yet bizarre tradition. Up at 4.00 am, drive into Oxford to get a good spot and take some early photograps as the light breaks on the city.


Students are drunk, or have just got up and are very serious. Police presence to stop the jumpers, but generally a wonderful atmosphere, and the groups of international research students steady the mood. And then just in time the locals pop out of the woodwork, ready to hear the choristers at the top of Magdalen bridge.


They sing three times, and there is a prayer and then the pealing of bells. A pagan festival that has been baptised in the traditions of the Church, and yet when I walk back to the car the pagans are peforming a most entertaining jig on the steps of the Bod!


A beautiful morning, and strangely I have to stem tears when the first chorus gets into full swing. Next time I know I won't have to get up so early!