The Vaguest Ideas

Wild At Heart Redux -- Part 1 Cannes 1990 Dread and Victory

 

In 1990 I was working as an IT Consultant in London.  On a project in Paris, with some creative use of extra holiday time I headed down to the Cannes Film Festival for its last five days.  Barrett, a London acquaintance and fellow ex-pat was working as PA to the publisher of Screen International, had initially offered me floor space on their boat or their "office" in the Carlton, but I ended up in a hotel down the coast in Juan Les Pins.   I experienced a night without accommodation, wandering streets and bars the festival's jaded party. I blagged my way into the Palais to look at distributors stands where I met a would be indie film producer, IP lawyer Carl Person, and his singer/actor/writer wife Lu Ann Horst Person (star of their own film "Ramblin' Gal").  I ran into my English Teacher from Penn who'd taught a Hitchcock course.  I even got to see a couple of out of competition / out of festival films (a Soviet/American coproduction about Chernobyl called Raspad). I spotted Danny Aiello looking annoyed and tired in the American Pavilion.  And I hoped against hope that I might get myself into a screening of the new David Lynch film, Wild at Heart.

What follows is an excerpt from the account I wrote for my friends.  Readers, whether you read just this excerpt, or the whole tale in the link, please be charitable to my mid 20's self.  He's guile, clue and hap free, a hopeful hopeless romantic, shy, desperate, neurodivergent.  He may seem slightly creepy on paper, but I'd leave that to the judgement of those who were there.  They always told him he was a good listener, which may have only been kind.  I ask you extend your kindness as they did.

Saturday, May 19th: Wild Thing

I'm not about to give up. The press screening for 'Wild At Heart' is at 8:30 this morning. There's no way that everyone is going to be there after all the late night action. The sun is strong, it gives everything a rigid edge, I'm toned and energized as I stride from the train station. There were only two trains that could have gotten me here on time, and I ran for the second. I'm in by 7:40. There's no one in front of the Palais yet.

The Film Societe offices are closed, and I weigh the wisdom of giving up on the Lynch and sticking with this more assured way of at least getting into something. In one of the windows a dozen monitors are set up as an advertisement for European Cable, each tuned to a different channel, some of which are giving Festival coverage. I learn of the deaths of both Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. (I flash on the day at College a few years back, when I thought I had heard a rumour that Henson had died of a virus - deja vu?).

I return to the steps of the Palais. A crowd has started to form. With some bravado I join the crowd in line and wait. After listening to the conversations going on around me, I start to chat up a few of the Americans. One of them, Joan Cohen, develops some film festival for, of all places, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She works for the Broward County film commission, whose offices are in LA. She's sort of a fortiesish slim overtanned Jewish maiden aunt, with what anti-feminists look on as a hobby-career. I mention that my parents live down there half the year; on hearing she's looking for indie productions, I go so far as to tell her about "Ramblin' Gal". I stop short of trying to sell it to her, but I promise her the information on how to contact the Person's. She tells me that you get the tickets to the official screenings at the Unifrance desk in the Grand Palais, but I don't have the credentials for it. It also turns out that she has an extra ticket to this morning's screening.

She starts ransacking her handbag for it. I try not to show my nervousness. An American couple have joined in the conversation, one of them thinks she misplaced her ticket, can she have the extra one. Joan says its been promised to me, and she's not sure she can find it. Almost at once, both women find their missing tickets. Wheww!

Joan hands me the ticket. Selection officielle. I experience an ungodly rush of endorphins. I remain calm, keeping the party to myself. This is it!

I am horribly and unbearably impatient. When are they going to let us in? They wouldn't start the film precisely on time without letting everyone in? How inefficient the French are, that would be just like them. I'm so tense I don't even look for famous people.

We're going in. WOW! Apparently the tickets designate whether you're on the floor or in the balcony. I'm in the balcony, more prestigious, but less to my taste, who's complaining. I find a seat, they are filling up at an amazing rate. I scan the audience. I have that half-awake mid-morning lustful-hope, it would be the crowning achievement if some ravishing Lynch fan were to sit by me, and there are plenty here, but, Ok, so I get some strange looking Europeans, fine, I'll be able to watch the film better. OHMIGODIMHERE WOW!

Wild At Heart. The film washes over me. Lynch's over-the-top strangeness, violence and sex, with sprinklings of incoherent allusions to Elvis and Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed immensely, but I'd really have to see it again to tell you whether I liked it (the more I think about it, the more I like it). And this is a REAL audience, a congregation of the church of mine own, they applaud before it starts, they stop talking and only make mostly group responses (I was one of the few people guffawing at the Wizard of Oz stuff), and they cheered and applauded enthusiastically at the end. No celebs showed up, they are to go to the screening this evening, but that doesn't matter, we're here for the MOVIE.

Afterwards, although in a contented, sated daze, my instinct manuevers me as quickly as possible past the security, to get my Day card, and straight down to the Unifrance line. I can't actually get tickets here, but maybe I can talk someone into giving me one of theirs, it worked once already. And magically, again, I'm standing next to two American women, thirtysomething New Yorkers, one manages one of the major art house cinemas, is basically here to shop for films, and the other just finished an MA at NYU film school, is trying to flog her school project to distributors, and get money to produce her next. They both seem glad to talk to someone who is here because they love film, they seem tired of the industry, show-the-"product" people. One of them has a few extra tickets to the screening of Cyrano De Bergerac which starts momentarily (a bunch of her friends desperate to get a break from the festival drove to Monte Carlo, and aren't making it back). I weigh the opportunities, take the ticket, stay here and hope to get something better, when we make it to the beginning of the line, I also hear that there's going to be a 'Wild At Heart' Press Conference in about an hour.

The way the ticket system works is that you apply for a certain number of tickets for each of the screenings ahead of time. Depending on your status in the pecking order, Industry, Market, or Press, you may or not get what you want. All the REALLY important people are just given theirs outright.

I opt for Cyrano. I probably couldn't BS my way into the press conference, there's nothing much else that I want to specifically see. So why not, by the time I get out, it'll be just about time to get in touch with Barrett who's been trying to introduce me to some PR girl all week because we're both film buffs (sure, I'll bite).

Cyrano was excellent, one of Depardieu's best, and a real surprise given that I'd seen him in mostly inarticulate roles previously. The adaptation captures both the literary zeal of the character as well as injecting some enjoyable swashbuckling. I later find out that Anthony Burgess did the verse translation for the subtitles.

I wander around the Palais again, picking up souvenirs like a tourist. Things are definitely winding down, only half the booths seem open. I contemplate asking for or stealing film posters, one for 'Comic-Book Confidential' with examples of various cartoonists, and one for some dutch film the poster was done by one of their better graphic artists. Moral and practical reasons prevail... how would I transport them? I buy the T-shirt with this year's Festival Poster on it. I buy the official program (an outrageous 120 francs). I buy a pin.

Meeting Barrett at the boat, she finally introduces Angela, the American PR film-buff she wants to fob me off on romantically. O.K. by me, Angela is very cute: petite, sleek short dark hair, and a Lynch fan to boot (I'd never met a woman who not only liked, but loved Blue Velvet), but unfortunately, Barrett has failed in her well meaning research again, Angela is meeting her BOYFRIEND down in Italy in a few days. On top of this Barrett has arranged to meet up with some Navy guys on leave, who she takes a perhaps sisterly interest in being a Navy brat herself.

There are four Navy guys, two pairs of buddies from different ships, they seem alright. They are good old boys, but without the clichéd patina that exudes from many of the military I've met. They all seem to be chasing Barrett in a surprisingly mellow, laid back fashion (considering that they've been at sea for three months). We troop about the harbour, passing Karreem Abdul Jabbar, the second and last famous person I saw that week. Angela is going to the big gala screening of Wild At Heart that night, I balk at asking her to get me in (what would I wear, do I want to see it twice in the same day?). She does offer to get me into one of the films her company is promoting. We all split up 'til later.

American Pavilion - I'm trying to leave Joan Cohen a message to get her hooked up with Carl Person - returning her favour. I barely recognize her as she comes to the desk while I'm writing it. She thanks me and goes on her way. I look for materials and food to scrounge, then I go to L'Ambassades to the screening that Angela gets me into.

The film is called 'The 4th Reich' it is pretty much at TV movie level, but it is interesting because it tells about the foiled Nazi coup attempt during WWII in South Africa, which adds to my pitiably small store of historical knowledge of South Africa.

Finally grabbing my first meal of the day (Quick, again), I chat up a trio of Scandinavians, who oddly hold English as the common language between them. I then meet up again with Barrett and the navy guys. We go to an open air bar attached to a condo where the Screen International people are hanging out, they disdain the American Navy personnel, and while I had been interested in getting to know a bit more about the film journo scene, their pretentious black garbed artsyfartsiness goes a long way to putting me off. We sit there for quite a while as its getting dark drinking our beers and rum and cokes.

I'm waiting for Angela to show up again, having fixated mildly, and wanting to discuss the Lynch with her, she's the only person I've talked to since I got here who seems interested in movies the same way I am. Even to most of those who are interested in the films themselves, its just commerce. The journo's are modishly blase, they don't mention the films, just the stories, or the pictures they're doing, they don't talk about the content, they talk about the work. Gossip here is all money related, who's backing whom. The film reviews in the dailies here seem as much interested in appraising a movie's marketability as itself. No one talks about what films they've seen, they drop which parties they've been to what execs they've met. I've seen no celebrities here because they aren't really here, they are just part of the product... producers and their money are the real matin-fuckin-ay idols.

Angela appears modestly dressed to the nines, just being at the gala showing of Wild at Heart, I'm somewhat awed, she has been to the promised land.

The evening degenerates from here. We walk down one end of the Croissette to find a bar near the Carlton where we're supposed to be meeting yet another navy guy. It becomes like a long march after that we troop all the way over to the other side of town, wandering up into the old port, a hilly area, with great Saturdaynightlife. Along the way we lose Barrett and one of the guys, we spend too much time looking for them and finally sit down to eat at a pizza place by the docks, the fugitives show up while we're just on our drinks, and tear us away from the restaurant. After much more walking and drinking, Angela and I peel off for dinner at a place called Cannibal Pizza.

The rest of the staff of her company have left town, she is alone in the apartment they've rented. I beg a place to crash because its too late to catch a train back to Juan Les Pins. She takes me in. I fight the urge to make a pass at her which I don't think would be a welcomed response to her generosity (she's mentioned her boyfriend just once too often). Exhausted and fed I collapse happily onto the bed, thinking irrelevant thoughts of a pretty film buff in the next bedroom. Frustration and contentment merge in a quiet pleasant buzz as I fall asleep.


Sunday, May 20th: Retreat

I wake first and, after a shower to remove the crud of another Mediterranean swelter night, I head off to the bakery to find goodies. Back in the apartment we manage leftovers breakfast and coffee. I step out on the balcony, complete with its trellis with fake plants and large plastic crustaceans (a wall which would have been at home in any Seafood Shanty restaurant). I survey Cannes below me, an overblown dream; harsh, Sunday morning sunlight glancing of beige yellow and white condominiums. After cleaning up breakfast, I head out, arranging to meet Angela and Barrett at lunchtime.

I laze my way through the streets, I can hardly be bothered. I've peaked and the festival is winding down around me. I try to go into the Carlton to visit their booths, but suddenly there is security, and they won't let people in - there was no security before, and by now everybody except the judges and the competitors have left town. I go to the American pavilion, looking for Int. Her. Trib., I scrounge the last one for the crossword. I look over the last of the promo materials, on one table I see a postcard announcing 'Nazi Zombies - we have the title, we have the story' and a contact for interested investors. I go by the Palais, but I don't bother getting a daycard. I've decided to change my plans and leave as soon as possible. I meet up with Angela and Barrett to say goodbye, they're on their way to lunch with the Navy guys. Barrett says she'll contact me when she got back to London, I never heard.

Trained to Juan Les Pins, changed flight. Haggled with the hotelier as I'm checking out late. I don't pay the extra, but the French hotels get their own back when I arrive in Nice too late to retrieve my deposit for the hotel there. Grab lunch at Freetime (the dubious bernaise burger). I make the airport with so much time to spare, I change my flight again. Nothing to do but browse the airport shops, I see the commemorative festival watch, ridiculous (film canister face, movie clapboard hands), but handsome, I buy it, my last strange souvenir.

Boarding the plane I argue with the guard who insists on putting my loaded camera through the x-ray machine, I want a handcheck in the end he tears it from my hands and throws it onto the conveyor belt. I relent, the French thug cops. (a photojournalist friend of a friend has an unpublishable photo he took of a French cop shooting and killing an unarmed suspect falsely accused of shoplifting)

I sit next to an elderly couple from Boston on the plane, they spend time in Nice every year, they don't know anything about this 'festival thing.' I turn to the last daily festival issue of Variety. The back cover has a still from Basketcase II, a picture of the gloopy monster grinning, large caption underneath 'GOODBYE'.


Epilogue: Victory
Safely ensconced in my apartment far from the madness, after an exhausting day back at work, I tune in the very end of the presentation ceremonies. I see 'Wild at Heart' Win the Palme D'Or - now I know how it feels to see your team win the World Series....

Addendum 20 Years Later:
Never saw Barrett again. While when I wrote this I implied that I hadn't heard from her, I vaguely recall finding out, too late to matter, that she had left a message for me at my work in London, which I didn't receive until I returned from Paris.

My beloved Cannes watch stopped working after about five years, and even after the drastic replacement of its workings it still is only correct twice a day. Attempts to find other copies on Ebay have been fruitless.

The Fourth Reich strangely has disappeared from IMDB, although this article (The Cinema of Manie van Rensburg) esteems it one of the director's best films. This may be an oversight by IMDB, but perhaps it is an issue of data confusion as there is a new film by the same title coming soon to our screens which is not about South African National Socialists, but is about.....
Nazi Zombies! (The 4th Reich at IMDB, not to be confused with the 2009 Norwegian skiing Nazi Zombie flick Død snø). Even great ideas take a long time in the movie business.

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, My Life in the Movies, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 6:10 pm 0 comments

All Wind, No Willows (tasty, tasty willows…)

This previously unpublished excerpt of a lost chapter from the classic story is from a newly discovered manuscript found in a disused corner of {a local library} [the Christopher Tower Library in the New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst].  It was unearthed beneath a spare copy of the 1814 Wyld edition of the Drivers Map between minutes of the New Forest Committee of 1994 and a recently discredited account of the Assassination of William Rufus in what is now a disused layby on the A35.

Despite the fluctuations in storms and seasons, Spring had tenuously arrived all the same.  A spate of fine and glorious days had tumbled one after another like dominoes.  All the clocks had gone forward, excepting those of dandelion, and Rat and Mole had not missed these opportunities for having a good scull in the boat.  Mole had even occasionally been allowed the oars with growing confidence, trailed slightly by competence.  Mole had sensibly paused and allowed the current its way to drift them down to Toad Hall, where and when they were surprised to see a large stranger, looming next to the boathouse in a smart but overstuffed tweed jacket with elbow patches and wearing a brown beaver skin hat, gesturing at the river bank and conferring with Toad.

On closer inspection, there was no hat, for indeed it was Beaver.  Toad made the necessary introductions.

“Hullo, Rat… Mole” said the Beaver, looking hopeful, if a little weary.

“Hullo, Beaver,” said the Rat, looking wary, but hopeful.

“Hullo, Beaver,” said the Mole, looking sun-dazed and content.

Toad added curtly that the Beaver had already met the Otter and Mr. Badger.  Then explained,  “I summoned Beaver here to help me with Rewilding Toad Hall.”  An explanation that begged more questions.

“Re? … Wilding?”  Rat cast Mole a quizzical look with a raised eyebrow he hoped that Toad wouldn't see.  Mole gave an inconsequential shrug and wondered silently if he had a bit of dandelion green stuck between his front teeth.

“Yes, for far too long the countryside has suffered catastrophic loss of biodiversity!  Time for us to do our bit!  It’s about reinstating the natural processes, reintroducing missing species, like Beaver, here, and restoring ecosystems.  It’s really the thing to do if you’ve inherited land that has been abused by agriculture for centuries.  I think they call it Kneppotism.”

Ratty wasn’t sure that the Wild Wood required any of that, but withheld his judgement.  Beaver seemed a nice enough fellow, and apparently knew his engineering.  Toad had already done some good things in his streams, such as put in brush passages to help elvers upstream past the culverts his father had unwisely proliferated.  Both Otter and Ratty appreciated the eels, however divisive that subject might become.  They hotly contested the eels best uses and preparation, this tended to bore the rest of company, especially Toad, with their endless squabbles.

“He's here to put in a dam, or two,” Toad announced casually.

“Now see here, Toad,” said Rat, “I quite like the river as it is now.  Its riffles and pools with Yellow Water Lillies, Crowfoot and Starwort.  The stream edge by my house where Marsh St John’s-wort meets the Purple Sedge, Pillwort and Bog Myrtle bushes. Further upstream in the slow bits there’s Southern and White-legged Damselfly.  Near the common where the ponies graze, there’s Fool’s Watercress, Blinks, Forget-me-not, Watercress, Floatgrass, and Water-pepper.  Under the Alders the trout like to shade, and even Otter tends to reverie in such beauty, that he doesn’t pester them unless he’s really peckish.”

Rat pivoted to Beaver, “meaning no disrespect, I’m sure you do good work, but we’re fond of what we have.”  Then back to Toad, “We've had enough problems from those outfall pipes you let them install by the headwaters!”

“Outfall pipes at the gates of dawn,” Toad envisioned proudly. Shiny and steely they had been too when they had arrived, before they began operation.

“Toad has been rationalizing thoroughly since he bought stock in Southern Water,” Rat said to Beaver.

“Last time the river flooded, I had to move into hired lodging.”  Rat complained to Toad, of course non-plussed Toad had no understanding whatsoever of the cost, inconvenience, not to mention the indignity involved.  “What does Otter have to say about this?”

“I can’t tell you, he stopped speaking to me.”  Toad averred uncomfortably, looking as though his neck had dried out.

“That bad?”

“He showed me his teeth first!”  Otter had a sanguine side, and was slow to rile.  He must have felt strongly, even if Toad was quickly dismissive in his ecstasy over Wilding.  Badger, too, Toad went on to explain, was also in a bit of a huff.  He’d managed to fend off that Exxon Pipeline which had threatened his underground demesne, only to have found himself in the uncomfortable gaze of the Planning Inspectorate, who were less than fond of his laissez-faire attitude to extending and demolishing his digs ad-hoc.  They were historically listed (possibly a Saxon settlement, or the site of the lost Toad Abbey), and it had meant a mountain of paperwork – although Mole had offered to help make it a hill, his eyesight didn’t suit (indeed, Toad had come a cropper when he’d allowed Mole to file the forms for his Land Management Stewardship with DEFRA).  Badger thought the very fact that Toad could get away with all and any works done courtesy of the Beaver, without a lick of Planning permission, “unbelievable!!!”

Despite Otter and Badger’s distaste, Toad was clearly undeterred. 

Rat was no stranger to Toad’s projects and enthusiasms, and only occasionally had had to put his oar in, just as he was skilled in messing about with boating.  Rat had put Toad off his grand plan to level a swathe of the Wild Wood for a Solar Panel array by toying with a pocket watch to reflect a sundry ray of sunshine that had gently intruded through Toad Hall’s transom.  Bouncing that beam at Toad’s eye while casually mentioning “the glare of publicity” and “hazy plans” and “dawning realizations”, had given Toad the impression that the view from the dining hall would be ruined, and that his bedroom window might be assaulted by a more intense and earlier sun-up which might startle Toad awake, unwelcome any given morn, let alone the state of grogginess Toad was swimming through as Rat focussed the gentle shaft until it was bright as the fall of Icarus glinting sharply in Toad’s eye.

“Have you told Beaver about the effluent?”

Mole piped in “What's effluent?”

Toad proffered sagely, “Proficiency in the languages of other countries.”

“Are they smelly countries?”  Mole inquired.

Beaver put down his theodolite and turned from surveying the river bank, consulted his slide rule and scratched his head.  He then proceeded, almost theatrically, to glance frustratedly back and forth between the bank and the logarithmically lined device.  “Not sure I can make this work,” He grumbled to himself, and then appeared momentarily to have barely resisted  the urge to knaw the end of the mathematical stick, a battle won, but ended with a sigh.

“I’ve just the thing!” interjected Toad proudly.  “I’ll go fetch my pocket calculator from my study.”  And off he went to rummage through the study in the depths of Toad Hall.

“He’ll be some time, then” Rat offered knowingly.

When Toad was out of earshot, Beaver furtively confided, "you gentle animals must help me out.  I'm here under duress.  I've been kid-knepped!!  There I was, minding my own business, munching on a bit of willow – part snack, part make-work – for the pool at the top of my catchment, when I was grabbed up by this stout aggressive fellow, I think he’s called Dow, who brung me here….”

Rat eyed the door to the hallway, he knew that even though Toad’s quest for any object within the clutter of his study would be an endeavour of archaeological proportion, he also acknowledged that Toad’s zeal, however brief, for the Casio FX-31, it was likely he’d purchased at least four other pocket calculators, and a whole Kraftwerk box set.  This limited the time in which they could freely conspire to solve Beaver’s predicament, which, to wit, he was continuing at some length.

“The same thing happened to my cousins.  This Erek fellow, press-ganged them to the Land of Nap to give to some Dryad...”

“Dryad?” Mole asked.

“Tree-woman.”  Beaver looked stricken,  “The first pair, one was ill to begin with and died, and the other ran off because the water quality was so poor.” 

“Effluent?” queried Rat.

“Slurry and pesticides,”  Beaver reflected sadly, “it killed off their veteran trees when they lifted the floodplain before my cousins could get to work.”

“Surely this Merrick fellow must have known what he was doing...” Mole presumed.

“He certainly thought so!  He tried speaking French to me, to check if I was Canadian,” Beaver said with some bemusement, “some of us in Finland are fond of poutine.”

Rat, quite aware that Otter would have lost patience with this segue by now, “Enough gents, Toad will be back in a moment, and I’ve an idea.”  Rat went on to swiftly instruct Beaver in the ways of Toad’s gadget mania, and how he might be usefully taunted.

Toad re-appeared waving a TI-81 (the disposition of the Casio had been elusive) clearly pristine, its display glinting in the spring afternoon, most likely only un-boxed moments before.  Beaver brusquely grabbed at it and set to prodding its black, light grey and blue buttons.  As he fumbled at the trigonometric functions, the poor device slipped from his paws and shattered on the reclaimed Welsh slate paving that ran from the boathouse to the side kitchen door of Toad Hall.

“So sorry, I’ll just sweep that up…” Beaver guiltily turned to brush the newly formed detritus with his formidable tail.

Toad, taken aback by the conflict between his hospitality, interrupted show-offery, and inconvenient fury, nevertheless rose to the moment to further complicate the matter, “No, sir, think nothing of it, I’ll just get the Dyson out.”

Luckily, or not, as it transpired, this was nearby inside the foyer.  And Toad was even prouder as he wheeled it out, extension cord trailing behind.  “This is the De Stijl edition!”  Toad proclaimed.  Indeed it was a purple and yellow testament to incongruous modernity.

Beaver persisted to attempt to tidy the mess with his tail, which seemed better at reducing the shards of the TI-81 to fragments, than to resolve the unsalvageable mess.  Before Toad could press the “on” button of the DC-04: “No, no, no, you must allow me to sort the mess I made….” and here Beaver launched Rat’s gambit fully, “besides, I’ll implore you not to use that thing in my presence!”

“Are you an anti-Vaxxer?” Toad was incredulous that Beaver, a devotee of engineering, and thus of good design and science, should be stuck in the past.

“It’s their sound.  Can’t stand them.  Send me all flight or fight ‘til I’m speechless, I’m literally afraid to say.”

“Just Dysons?  What about Hoovers, Sharks?”

“Hate them.  All.”

“Why ?”  By this time Toad was quite worked up.

“Nature abhors a vacuum.” Beaver laid this as a trump card on the field of play.

This sent Toad into a frenzy, he was more than re-wilded – he was livid!  There was nothing for it as Toad instantly banished Beaver beyond the Weir.  Despite everything, Rat was sorry to see him go, as Beaver seemed a solid chap, and might have made up a good fourth for whist.

“Thanks ever so,” said the Beaver to Rat and Mole as he departed, shuffling past the new iron bridge on his way downstream past the Weir, his tail far too large to tuck betwixt his legs, “I’ll be sure to stop by that Ladgemoor place Otter told me about.”

 “A Pine Marten offered Beaver a pinch of snuff”

Our local expert of biblio-antiquity is feverishly working to deduce the authenticity and provenance of this work, updates forthcoming. UPDATE: At 12 pm today, a rather rumpled antiquary book expert had a chance to glance over the manuscript to find that not only was it not on period paper stock, but had been typed on an Olivetti Praxis 35, although a magnificent designed machine worthy of Toad Hall, not manufactured until 1984. The Olivetti Windsor font, installed via daisy wheel in that model, is proportional and rather like typefaces of Grahame’s day. Although inauthentic this piece may be published yet in a future expose, “Tales of the River – Debunked”. Thanks and/or apologies to Kenneth Grahame, E H Shepard for liberties taken with their prose and images. If you’d like to indulge our previous year’s silliness, a 2018 report on leaked plans for the Recreation Management Strategy. this 2019 article detailing an unusual rewilding proposal from Chris Packham and this 2024 announcement offering a still timely proposal for generating Forestry England revenue from car parks (no, not what you’re thinking). On a more serious note our ecologists have produced a paper looking at the possible issues which would arise from Beavers arriving in the already established high value biodiverse habitat of the New Forest. FURTHER UPDATE: The local library in question has been in touch to dispute the notion that they have any “disused corners” in which such a fantastical find might have been unearthed. We look forward to their newly announced circular shelving system which will eliminate corners altogether. CONSUMATE UPDATE: Due to the above furore, this piece was banished from its original posting location in an act of rather bizarre censorship, which we'll investigate further, at some point.

 

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 7:57 am 0 comments

Petra Haden -- Petra Goes To the Movies

Petra Haden is a prodigious singer, violinist and collaborator with the likes of The Decembrists, Yuka Honda and Bill Frisell (amongst others).  In her solo career, she is a major proponent of a capella vocalese.  If you found the Swingle Singers doing Bach over precious, you can banish that feeling forever by dipping into her 2005 Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out, a full multi-tracked voicing of one of The Who's best albums (complete with silly advert send ups).  Her 2007 recording of Journey's Don't Stop Believing was ripped off wholesale by the tone deaf stunted thirty year old autotune dependents of Glee.  Here she aptly tackles a wide range of movie themes from Rebel Without A Cause to The Social Network.

I say aptly because as track 5 played out, Ennio Morricone's A Fistful of Dollars, with a beautifully pure delivery which brought tears to my eyes, I realized that this is exactly what we all try to do this as we watch our favorites with their iconic scores.  Unfortunately I didn't inherit my grandfather's perfect pitch, and I can only carry a tune in the same manner and distance as a New Jersey wise-guy carries a stiff from the trunk of a stolen limo to a shallow grave in the pine barrens.  Her treatment of the Psycho main theme is just the gravy, and her Superman theme is absolutely singalong (despite aforementioned vocal challenges), and reminds us that the John Williams music is really the best thing in that film which rides a stupid script (a hissy fit reversing the spin of the Earth would not turn back time, but likely tear the planet apart) kept afloat by Christopher Reeve's canny boyish charm.

She's not shy about tackling another great Herrman, his Taxi Driver score, or Nino Rota, the gallop from 8 1/2.  She stoops to adding instrumentation for three of the four songs, absolutely elevating the Stephen Bishop hit penned by Dave Grusin and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Tootsie's It Might Be You (with the great Bill Frisell on guitar); also Calling You from Baghdad Café, and the Bowie / Metheny This Is Not America from The Falcon and the Snowman.  She strips back to vocal for Goldfinger, which needs a few listens to overcome the hold Shirley Bassey has on our ears.

Like a great marathon movie matinee, this album certainly sends you out into the daylight, blinking and humming the tunes.

Labels: Musicalia, Reviews

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 10:41 am 0 comments

Mike Leigh's Lord of the Rings

On set report, East Hobbiton
No film is shrouded in so much secrecy and anticipation as a new work from Mike Leigh.  After a much publicized slip of the tongue from a now disgraced Jim Broadbent, it was revealed that the quintessential English director would be rounding up one of the twentieth century's most popular and thoroughly English author's most beloved work.  Mike Leigh is preparing his film of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

"Some see Tolkien's achievement as a stunning work of imagination, but that is only the foreground of a complex subtext of middle class manners and working class aspirations." Leigh avers, although he is otherwise somewhat taciturn in discussing the direction of his film, preferring to focus on the process he uses with his actors.  "This has been one of the toughest films to develop, we spent nearly four months wandering around in circles in a mire in Norfolk, just to come up with twenty pages for the shooting script."

Timothy Spall, who spends nearly thirty minutes in make-up to achieve the look for Frodo, tells me that he wants people to know the real Frodo, "he's essentially repressed, he's wanted adventure, but been stuck, literally a square peg in a round hole by society.  When he has his chance, he's terrified of the responsibility."

"Galadriel, could easily just come off as one of those housewives who becomes a do-gooder out of boredom." says Imelda Staunton, "but she feels everyone else's plights deeply, leaving no time for herself.  She frets over Arwen (played in the film by Sally Hawkins) because of the relationship with Aragorn (David Thewlis), who is of a different character class."

Eddie Marsan (The Balrog) "the Balrog is mistaken for a terrible fire breathing monster, I see him as someone isolated, downtrodden, forgotten, left deep in the mines after Thatcher shut them.  He just wants someone to hear his pain.  He's just that bloke that complains too loudly in the pub and everyone ignores out of embarrassment."

Leigh discusses casting one of the key roles "I worked with Andy on Topsy-Turvy and Career Girls, and thought he just has such a rubbery face and physicality, he'd be able to do Gollum without us resorting to loads of make-up, or those special effects that no one understands and always looks a bit uncanny."  Serkis chimes in, "I wanted to give the truth of Gollum," but, sidestepping actorly pretention, he adds with a twinkle, "it don't half hurt my throat."

Labels: Alternative Cinaverse, Life Irritates Art

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 11:12 am 0 comments

Review: Under the Skin -- Green Men are From Mars, Redheads are From Venus

When did Scarlett Johansson become so sexy?  Her voice is enough to make Joaquin Phoenix fall in love with an operating system in Her.  She is the cat suited kick ass assassin Black Widow in Marvel's Avengers franchise.  In Under the Skin she crawls the streets of Glasgow seducing young men whom she literally drives to abstraction.

I'll tell you when.  It was in Match Point.  Yes, the dreadful crime without punishment thriller in which Woody Allen totally misreads the British class system as a stand in for his usually privileged New Yorkers (jarring example: they faun over a tennis player because he's read Dostoyevsky -- the exact opposite of the practically cliché pre-Thatcher product of great British education proudly well read working class Trotskyite).  Jonathan Rhys Meyers believably puts his social climbing at risk for a tortured affair with Scarlett who, for the first time for me, was fully glamorous.  Up 'til then she'd been cute, kinda pretty, kinda gawky, usually deadpan funny.  Match Point shifted her gears up to full va va va voom.  This discovery was the one intriguing element to that film.  Unfortunately, my new found appreciation of Scarlett's charms was shared by a grubby old man a few rows in front of me, who grunted lustfully every time the camera cut to her (on each and every cut, like a perverted Thelma Schoonmaker).

Under the Skin is.... hold on... I'd like to say having seen the film, I'd been told things about it I wish I hadn't... things the film itself resolutely never explains.  So... dear reader... if you fancy a film that mixes themes of death, sex and alienation, lightly plotted, opaque, but filled with a series of arresting images, and with ostensible smatterings of weird/horror/science fiction genres... or, if you just need an opportunity to grunt at Scarlett looking tantalizing in a faux rabbit fur coat and tight jeans... then read no further and go see it with my recommendation but for the caveat that it is Arty with a capital A.  You have been warned.


The Things which didn't spoil, but I'd have soon not known going in:  Under the Skin is based on the Michel Faber novel in which an alien, in a Scarlett Johansson skinsuit prowls in a van using her wily femininity to lure young men back to a stylized demise featuring nudity and black goo.   Also, some scenes were filmed with "non-actors" by hidden cameras (I didn't waste time trying to spot which ones, and difference in the end is purely academic).

The film begins with a Kubrickian sequence of lights and shapes, the 2001 monolith/stargate/light tunnel given a utilitarian re-design by Steve Jobs (and indeed it is shortly followed by a transformation sequence so filled with white light and silhouettes I thought we were briefly in an early Ipod ad). This wink to the audience (complete with the full 2001 eye close-up) is the only indication of interstellar travel.  Mica Levi's nervy box of violins being rattled soundtrack stands in superbly for Ligetti (at time of publication this link will let you stream it http://pitchfork.com/advance/384-under-the-skin/).

The fate or purpose of her victims is never revealed, although some appear to be "harvested" by the sexual encounter.  So, more Liquid Sky meets Eyes Wide Shut than The Man Who Fell to Earth meets Species.  Although, to be perfectly fair, it is thoroughly infused with that sense of "other" that liberally peppers the works of Nic Roeg.  Scarlett for her part puts this across as beautifully as Bowie did, her detachment complete as expression falls from her face each time she stops interacting with humans.

The otherness is intentionally exacerbated by the thick Gorbals accent of most of her men (amongst other Glaswegian Scots thoroughly English obscuring accents available).  She doesn't try to blend in, and sports an accent between "posh-bird" and BBC Received Pronunciation.  Apart from one conversation, hinting at a difficult to process sympathy, the sparse dialogue may as well be in an alien language.  This is a film about images and sensations, not a pithy script.  It's edifying if you let it wash over you without looking for much in the way of engagement or story.

Regardless of what you may think of director Jonathan Glazer's previous output, Sexy Beast (what's not to love? Gandhi made terrifying gangster!) and Birth (boring, preposterous, ponderous, some points for atmosphere), he does have strong visions and for better or worse carries them to fruition.  This is better.

Under the Skin may leave you perplexed, intrigued, unsatisfied, suspended in black goo, or some combination of the above, but at the very least, it will leave you wanting more Scarlett Johansson, and more Jonathan Glazer.  That's not so bad, is it?

Sidebar:  In my particular screening a woman sitting two rows behind me, perhaps believing herself to be an alien, or a spiritual cousin to the dirty old man of Match Point, made inappropriate noises throughout.  Giggles and gasps, but most strikingly, a cry of pain at the moment when a fork penetrated a slice of cake.

EXTRA CREDIT [look back at this next sentence AFTER seeing the film] : Is the hilarity of the "she doesn't always walk on water" and "so that's what that hole is for" moments intentional?

Labels: Reviews

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 6:00 pm 0 comments