The Glidd of Glood Blog

Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps: snore

I don’t know that I’ve ever walked out of a film that I had paid good money to go and see. I got perilously close to it watching Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, one of the most tedious films that has ever been. After the interval (you nearly always get an interval in Switzerland so that they can sell you more ice-cream and popcorn), I debated going back in and finally did. The second half was less boring than the first, but only marginally so.

The return of Gordon Gecko in Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps, however, is also truly soporific. That is a strange title to have chosen for such a dull film. It even makes you wonder whether there isn’t some studio executive in Hollywood with a sense of irony, as the title does lay the film open to quips, which haven’t been missed by some commentators, that although money never sleeps, the audience probably will. 

Make no mistake, this is a deeply and undeniably boring film. There are several reasons for going seeing a film on the big screen. The best, is that cinematographically, you need a wide screen to get a sense of the scale of the action. You might be able to look at Apocalypse Now on your iPhone, but there really isn’t any point. Then there can be films in which the darkness of the cinema, and the proximity of other people, can add to the tension. David Lynch’s Eraserhead, perhaps the most frightening film of all time, could fit into this category. But there are other films, and the new Wall Street is one of them, where the big screen adds nothing. There is no tension and you might as well be looking at it on your TV or laptop. Or better still, not waste your time looking at it at all.

The action in Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps, such as there is any (there isn’t, much) centres around the relationship between a Jake, a Wall Street trader played by Shia LaBoeuf, and his girlfriend Winnie, played by Carey Mulligan, who fortuitously happens to be Gordon Gecko’s (Michael Douglas’) daughter. This could be an interesting scenario – or at least not intrinsically tedious – if these characters were remotely interesting. They aren’t.

How did Shia LaBoeuf ever become Hollywood hot stuff, given the competition in that town? He is slight, puny and bland-looking and, if this performance is anything to go by, entirely lacking in charisma or passion. If Oliver Stone’s intention was to show Wall Street bankers as bland, unexceptional and uninteresting people (probably all true) then he succeeds spectacularly here. But if this was his intention, why show them at all or make a film about them? LaBoeuf, though, is brilliantly matched by his girlfriend who is the quintessential “chieuse”, a word that is hard to translate but indicates a girl who is rarely happy, a wet-blanket and a complete pain in the arse. Winnie Gecko is all these things, and a lefty website writer to boot. What is she doing with Jake? Who knows. They are like chalk and cheese with clearly nothing in common apart from their lack of spark. These are people who, if they lived in the flat across the landing from you, you would never invite round for a drink. Carey Mulligan’s acting is brilliant, assuming that she is not at all like her character. But I have no proof of this. Were she wildly alluring, then you might have some interest in Winnie Gecko, but the gamine haircut completely eliminates this possibility as far as I am concerned, meaning that I have no interest whatsoever in spending a couple of hours in her company. Jake and Winnie’s relationship is thus of total indifference to the audience. If you have based your film on the premise that it contains dramatic tension, it’s about as solidly anchored as a Bangladeshi hut.

And Michael Douglas’ Gecko? Not bad. Chastened by his time inside, Gecko is now a prophet crying in the wilderness about the absurdities of the financial system. Or is he? Nasty guy, turned nice guy, turned nasty then nice, the character is actually more nuanced than he was in the first film. Douglas got an Oscar for that one, you will recall, which I always thought a travesty, seeing as he was playing a caricature, which, for a professional actor, can’t be that difficult. I wouldn’t give him an Oscar for this one either, but it’s a decent bit of acting. In any case, he isn’t going to have any difficulties shining in the company of such tarnished “co-stars”.

And the plot? Put it this way: if you understand nothing about share dealing, markets and financial trading, you are going to have a hard time knowing what is going on. Do you really know what shorting a stock is and how it works? Do you even care? And if you do know about it, then the film’s superficial razzmatazz will just seem like another day at the office, devoid of any tension at all. The real life story of Lehman Bros and its megalomaniac CEO would have been a lot more interesting than this fiction, very loosely inspired by the recent financial melt down.

The fact is, that audiences are coming to this film with a certain mindset. That mindset probably sees bankers and traders as parasites on society who get rich at the expense of genuine working people. Does this film do anything to dispel that view? No. Do you really want to spend a couple of hours worrying about whether they will lose their jobs or their bonuses, or make another ill-gotten million? No. Right then, no need to go and see the film, because there isn’t anything else.

The only interest I found in the film (slight at that) was the marketing angle. Product placement is king here, with Johnnie Walker Blue Label prominently displayed (how much did Diageo pay for that?) and the world’s coolest motorcycle brand Ducati also featuring heavily. Actually, I couldn’t help having a chuckle to see Jake giving his girlfriend Winnie a lift into work on the back of the Streetfighter. If you read my review of this bike, you would know that the last conveyance you would choose to run your girlfriend into work, subsequent to a pretty major tiff, would be this one, unless you never wanted to see her again. There is also a farcical “ride-off” between Jake, mounted on the mouthwatering Ducati Desmosedici vs his new reptilian banker mentor, mounted on A.N. Other motorcycle (which seemingly doesn’t appear to need headlights). Jake has already warned the slimy James Bretton (Josh Brolin), that even were he to devote the rest of his life to riding a bike, he could never achieve the Valentino Rossi-like heights of Jake’s motorcycling ability. Tough words, the truth of which are unlikely to be decided by a quick squirt on a damp, leaf-strewn forest road, which is what they do. Why not get on a track if they really wanted to find out? This is pretty typical of Hollywood. If you know anything about either banking or motorcycling, you aren’t going to be impressed, but for the less informed, maybe it works.

My advice: start from the premise that it doesn’t and go and see something else.

 

Edge of Darkness - Mel does goodies and baddies. Again.

 I went to see the new Mel Gibson film on Sunday, Edge of Darkness (sounds like a Bruce Springsteen track). Talk about a spontaneous purchase. I had finished at the gym and fancied seeing a film, but had no idea what was on. So I just rocked up to the cinema and decided to see the first film showing in English that was about to start and which I didn’t have any negative preconceptions about. Edge of Darkness fitted the bill as I didn’t know what it was about, who was in it, who directed it or even what sort of film it was. I was pleased to see, as the opening credits appeared, that it has been partially financed by the BBC, so I assumed it wouldn’t be rubbish.

 

As it turned out, I thought it was excellent, but my opinion doesn’t seem to be shared by the cognoscenti. The tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes.com gives it a miserable 59%, which means a pretty poor film. In other words, only 59% of reviews are favourable. Hardly a classic then.

 

So what is it about? Well, you can’t say it is wildly original, I’ll grant you that. A rather lined and sandpaper-faced Mel Gibson plays a Boston detective who lives all alone in an unprepossessing flat and whose day is brightened up by his only daughter’s visit. At least it would have been, had she not started to vomit, bleed from the nose and then to cap it all, got blown away by a shotgun on Mel’s doorstep as they set out for a doctor or hospital to get her seen to. She manages to die a great, “I wanted to tell you…..aaaugh…” death. Mystery. So we have a dramatic situation and an intrigue. Drama is made of this.

 

The rest of the film is all to do with uncovering unscrupulous nuclear companies, dodgy senators, shadowy hitmen and frightened activists. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. But what I enjoyed was the overriding sense of poetic justice. The bad guys are all bad (with one exception) and Mel is all good. Consequently, as he storms through the film in a poor mood seeking justice for his daughter’s death and not overly bothered about using the legal profession to get it, the audience is rooting for him. Wipe the bastards out Mel! Go on – let ‘em have it! And he does. Shadowy corporations, corrupt government – dontcha just hate them? What better way to tell them what you think of them than via the barrel of a handgun?

 

Pace is assured by unexpected (and often violent) sequences being suddenly hurled at you when you were least expecting them. This is guaranteed to make sure you don’t fall asleep. And you can’t help identifying with Mel, who seems to be good guy with a crap life.

 

There is one character, Jedburgh, played by Ray Winstone (he looked familiar, but I’ve never heard of him) who almost makes the film. For a start, he’s a cockney geezer – and it is always fun to see a geezer in an American film. It’s not often that they juxtapose their thugs with ours. Not only is he highly amusing, he is the only character who is not black and white. Apparently a Mr. Fixit for the CIA – ie, he makes inconvenient people disappear and the like – he seems to have a soft spot for Mel whom he has clearly been tasked with rubbing out. Jedburgh philosophises and drinks wine with Mel while smoking cigars. If he’s a hitman, he seems to be taking a long time about it.

 

So there you have it. Edifying? Not really. Original? I hardly think so. Big screen entertainment, certainly, although to be honest, this is not the sort of film that is going to suffer a great deal from being seen on your TV via DVD with a pizza. Maybe you should just get it out of the video club. But 59%? That’s a bit harsh.

40 years after Jacques Cousteau - Océans

I’ve just been to see Océans.

You wouldn’t call it a documentary. There is barely any dialogue and no explanation of what is going on. What it is, is about two hours of the most spectacular and beautiful film you will ever see of life in the oceans.

The same team have already made Microcosmos – about the insect world, and Le Peuple Migrateur which is all about birds. I missed both of those. I don’t know that I want to look at bugs for a couple of hours, but I was sorry to miss Le Peuple Migrateur. Both were reputedly amazing.

It’s bound to come to the UK (surely?) and you don’t want to miss it. This is “big screen entertainment” – a DVD is not going to give you the same effect.

I almost blubbed when the walrus cuddled the baby walrus (sweet!) and the saddest moment was a shark being thrown back into the water, alive, with all its fins cut off, and plummeting to the bottom. Devastating. Interestingly, there is a disclaimer at the end saying that no animals were hurt and that any fishing footage was a reconstruction. Well, that is one lifelike rubber shark is all I can say.

The film is 95% astonishing footage and 5% reminding you that Man is fucking everything up, or just about to. When you fly over an ocean, it takes for hours, even at jet speeds. They seem just too big for us to be able to destroy. Wrong. I think I may have to get involved with saving whales/dolphins/sharks. It may be a cliché of the environmental lobby, but they keep dwindling and nothing concrete seems to happen. I think I’ll kick off with a rant to the Japanese (I’m sure the Chinese won’t even listen). Shark’s fin soup anyone? Non merci.

If I could buy shares in Tabrett Bethell, I would

Unfortunately, Tabrett Bethell is not a company, or at least not a company you can buy shares in. She is a starlet. Even this might not be true. A starlet is apparently a young actress promoted as being a future star. I am not sure that she is being promoted at all, but I’ll start: she will be a future star.

 
 

Currently playing in a sword and sorcery series screened in the States – Legend of the Seeker (dubbed by one wag as "Legend of the Cleavage") - she has just too much sex-appeal and charisma to remain unnoticed. Unlike many starlets, there is an intelligence in Tabrett Bethell’s eyes that, together with her phenomenal beauty, set her apart from nearly all other women on screen, big or small (screen that is...). Intelligence + sex-appeal is a sure passport to the top. I confidently predict that she will feature shortly in some major films. She and her agent are going to make lots of money.

 

Of course, in a couple of years, she will feature in the BBC’s Celebdaq game and you will be able to buy shares in her. But by this stage, she will be too expensive, which is sad. After all, what’s the point in discovering something and then having to wait until everyone else is in on the act and the price has quintupled before you can buy it? This sounds very mercantile of me. Just take it, like Celebdaq, with a few handfuls of salt.

 

Why mention her at all? I have three very good reasons for this:

 

The first is so that I can do some self-aggrandising “Ha! I told you so!” in a couple of years time, when she is a household name. After all, I may doubt the existence of God, but we aren’t really likely to find out one way or another any time soon, so no one will tell me how wise I was. Whereas when Taberett Bethell is famous, this post will be there in black and white.

 

Secondly, this blog needs more readers. As Tabrett Bethell is so far little known, there is a much better chance of this blog page coming up if anyone searches the web for her, than there is, say, if you search the name Thierry Henry, or “furniture”. So it is a subtle advertising ploy for the blog. Of course, I suspect that the sort of people who do search the web for Tabrett Bethell will find the rest of this blog completely uninteresting and thus will soon move on. But I want to see the uptick in the stats… (You will notice the clever repetition of the name Tabrett Bethell in this post, in order to convince Google that this page is extremely relevant for those looking for information about Tabrett Bethell….)

 

Finally, this blog needs spicing up with a little sex-appeal. There hasn’t been any at all yet, apart from the James Bond with Ursula Andress photo somewhere. It’s about time this changed.

 

If you are one of the roughly 95% of visitors to this blog with a dominant interest in Tabrett Bethell, you can see another post in which she features (and more pix!) here.
 
 

Angels and Demons - carved out of wood

It was a toss up yesterday evening : watch the Eurovision Song Contest or go to the cinema - and the cinema won. The Eurovision has been disappointing of late. Clearly the songs have always been appalling and this is part of the appeal. But the voting, ever since the arrival of all the ex-communist bloc countries, has been even sillier than the songs and costumes. Last year it was essentially a sex-fest where you wheeled out your Barbie-doll singer, zipped her up into the most revealing or scantiest costume you could find, and then had her warble some tuneless euro-rubbish for the delectation of the flag-waving public. Then the eastern-European countries voted for whichever doll from their countries they found the most alluring. Essentially a sort of eastern-European MTV really.

So this year, I decided to go to the cinema. Having just seen the rather good State of Play with Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren, I elected to spend a couple of hours at Angels and Demons.  Just in case the three people who may read this are short of time, let’s get straight to the point. Unless you are suffering from insomnia and are in need of some extra kip, you needn’t bother going to see the latest cinematographic interpretation of the Dan Brown best-seller. Dull ? Mind-numbingly tedious would be closer to the mark.

I didn’t see the Da Vinci Code on the big screen – or any screen come to that. This was because I had read the book. And the only reason I had read the book, was because that everyone else had read the book and it was staring at me from a checkout in the HMV shop where I had not gone to buy books. When a book is as popular as The Da Vinci Code and has made its author very rich, it is not unreasonable to give it a read so that you can be in tune with what the book-buying public wants to read thesedays. Call it market research. My view of the Da Vinci Code was that the story was good – albeit completely cribbed, apparently, from some other conspiracy theory authors, but that the writing was utterly hopeless. Every chapter ended with a ta-dah ! cliffhanger, instantly resolved on the first page of the next chapter.  It was as if the thing had been written for Jackanory. Everything was plot and nothing else was. So what you ended up with was a page-turner designed for people who never read books. We could debate the merits of this – ie. is it a good thing to get people to read anything at all resembling a book when so many people don’t, even if it is rubbish ? And as the thing gave pleasure to millions, who am I to say that they shouldn’t read it and that the book is bad ? But frankly, I just can’t be bothered. All I know is that my life is too short to read books like The Da Vinci Code.

Still, as I said, the plot was good, so it would probably make a good film, where you would get all the plot and none of the Janet and John writing. So whilst vowing that nothing would make me turn the first page of Angels and Demons, when Jonathan Ross started plugging it, I thought, hmm, Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor in a pseudo religious thriller set in Rome ; that could be good entertainment. Tom Hanks is a great actor ; of this there can be no doubt. And judging from his performance on Jonathan Ross, he is also a thoroughly amusing and charming person who would be a delight to invite to a dinner party. Ewan McGregor also comes across as an agreeable person, although the jury is still out on his acting ability.

But let me assure readers, that the script and the direction of Angels and Demons is so dreadful that not even Hanks can save it. The plot is ludicrous from the start – ludicrous as in actually insulting one’s intelligence. A phial of anti-matter, held in suspension between two electrodes and powered up by a mobile phone battery (from what you can make out  - don’t bother looking for the detail here folks, as nothing stands up to scrutiny) is stolen and some terrorists calling themselves the Illuminati are threatening to turn the battery off and blow up the Vatican. They also want to bump off four cardinals, one an hour, unless…er what ? This isn’t even blackmail. They just want to do it. Well why not, eh ? So many of us are bored of the Catholic Church these days. This farcical excuse for a plot is all there is. Tom Hanks is press-ganged into helping out the Vatican decipher the symbols in order to save it.

This is the sort of thing, ie American sci-fi TV shows, that I gave up watching 20 years ago, having figured that I had by then witnessed all the permutations of psychos, monsters and crazies that it was possible for scriptwriters to dream up. The film isn’t so much wooden as leaden. The dialogue is limited to information, with the cast of characters explaining to each other what is going on. Understanding of clues and symbols come instantly ; everyone’s an expert. What this made me think of was a corporate treasure hunt, where you are given a clue which leads you to another clue etc so that you can visit a city you don’t know. In this case, we get a good look around Rome. Thank God for that, because if it had been Bolton, I reckon I would have walked out after 20 minutes.

So there they all are, having just discovered a corpse, and with the next one coming up an hour away, standing around drinking coffee, without any sense of urgency at all. That Italian coffee is an exquisite delight is unanimously agreed, but surely there is a time and a place for everything. The Vatican officials are all nasty and unpleasant to Tom Hanks, which makes you wonder why they asked him to come in the first place. No frankly, the whole movie is just so implausible that your disbelief is not suspended for an instant. Another cardinal about to get the chop ? Oh, go on then. Who cares ? Vatican to be destroyed ? Pity about the Sistine Chapel, but hey, shit happens.

Tom Hanks looks suitably earnest, which is pretty much all he can do, as there is nothing else in either the script or the direction for him. Ewan McGregor, on the other hand, is as if carved from a broom handle. Did I say wood ? I have had my doubts about Ewan for some time. Cheeky and good-looking Scottish chappie turned major movie star – could it be precisely for his agreeable countenance rather than his acting ability that he is making it big ? I though he was good in Trainspotting, though it was so long ago I can barely remember it, and awful in the Star Wars films where once again, his performance could have been turned on a lathe. As a supposedly Irish cleric he can’t even do an Irish accent. There is just nothing to his character at all. But let’s not get too worried about this. It’s not as if his non-performance is spoiling a good film. The whole thing needs flushing down the toilet.

And although you don’t get the chapter-ending cliffhangers, in a sense you do, because the time – 3 minutes to the hour of the next atrocity – is continually being flashed up on the screen in a series of ta-dah ! moments. Dan Brown is stamped all over this one, there is just no getting away from him. Unless of course, you stay away from the film altogether which is my hearty recommendation.

There you go, that has to be at least £10 I have saved you.