Tales of Times Square: The Tapes (podcast)...

Recently I came across a new podcast called Tales of Times Square: The Tapes, which details the sleazy world of New York's old Broadway before the Disneyfication of the area occurred in the 1990s. The podcast takes the form of old cassette tape interviews with various figures from the era, from big time adult stars to well-known denizens - colourful characters and behind-the-scenes raconteurs - all of whom were interviewed for Josh Alan Friedman's superb book Tales of Times Square (available from all good stockists - I highly recommend reading it).

Punctuated by music, reminiscences, and background details from Friedman himself - along with some new tales that were never published in the book (on account of the statute of limitations, you can't help but wonder) - each episode is a brisk and fascinating detour to a version of New York's theatre district that once was. The release schedule seems to be weekly on Wednesday/Thursday. Find more info on the podcast HERE.

Octuple Bill Mini Musings: October 2010 catch-up...

Midnight Cowboy:
It's thoroughly of its time, from the drugs-fuel of the 1960s obsession, to the cutting edge of the New Hollywood era where daring-do was the order of the day. It's a shame that such risk taking is rarely seen these days - could you imagine a film being made today about a country boy looking to 'make it big' in New York as a male prostitute, only to fail miserably and end up living in squalor, and at the same time be weirdly funny about it all? I don't think so.

Cat People:
Part of BBC4's horror season, and in-connection to the first episode of Mark Gatiss' "History of Horror" documentary, I was really surprised by how utterly, utterly dull this film is. Aside from a couple of decent scenes of suspense (the bus, the pool, the office), three-fifths-of-sod-all happens for 70 minutes. The opening half an hour is painfully dull, and painfully dated - in that 'oh my darling, I've known you for five minutes and I love you so, let's get married' kind of way that's unbelievable rather than charming. Each to their own and what not, but I think I'll side with John Carpenter on this one - it's naff.

I Walked With A Zombie:
From the people that brought us the dreadfully dull Cat People the year before (Director Jacques Tourneur and Producer Val Lewton, but with different screenwriters), comes this tale (again with corny 'oh I hardly know you at all, yet I want to marry you' tacked-in 'love' subplot) of a nurse brought to a beautiful-but-deathly island to look after a rich white man's zombified wife. The rich white folk view any suggestion that the native rituals and beliefs might actually hold sway over this woman's plight with condescension and mockery, but the curious nurse is keen to investigate. The pacing is far, far superior to Cat People. Stuff actually happens for one, we also see things for two, and the emaciated, bug-eyed zombified local who appears twice is genuinely creepy. The lush visuals and the intriguing plot smooth over any out-dated world views, and it was well worth a watch. I was quite charmed by it.

The Battle of the Bulge:
Only a few years after the genuinely brilliant and involved epic that was The Longest Day, came this cheesy epic. It's nowhere in the same league as the former, it's too long-winded and far too "movie!" about everything. It feels more like a kid's action man comic book than a revered take on true-to-life (and, then, recent) events.

Planet 51:
The trailer made this look genuinely funny and entertaining, but the set-up is only good enough for a trailer really as it is stretched mercilessly thin across 90 minutes. The 1950s-on-an-alien-planet-where-a-homosapien-astronaut-is-the-actual-alien angle is charming, and initially quite amusing, but then a wafer-thin 'run around for a bit, get into some scrapes, get captured, escape, run around some more, learn a lesson, say goodbye' plot turns a nifty idea for a short subject into far-from-Pixar fare. It has some nice moments and a few good chuckles, but it's undercooked and disappointing in the end.

A Serious Man:
Unapologetically Jewish, if you don't know your goys from your barmitzvahs, then too bad (but it's all the better and individual for it). Fortunately the classically-Coens plot filled with dilemmas, oddballs, and morals galore keeps things moving for the uninitiated. I much preferred the likes of No Country For Old Men, Fargo and The Big Lebowski, but the Coen charm holds it all together. Not one of their greats, but quite possibly one of their most personal efforts.

Away We Go:
An indie-vibes comedy drama from Sam Mendes filled with supporting oddball repulsives and depressed drones, about a young couple who aren't far from becoming a family for the first time, and they're looking for a place to settle. There's not an awful lot of meat to chew on, or gravitas to engage with, but it's just a really nice film to watch. The central pairing are sweet and nice. Their problems aren't demanding to the viewer, their happiness isn't overplayed or saccharine, but aspirational and a perfect balance for a succession of guest-star segments, the most notable and entertaining of which features Maggie Gyllenhaal as a mind-numbingly awful, smug, rabidly left, and forceful hippy. Do you want a happy little flick with two charming protagonists? Have a gander at this.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard:
Featuring a whole host of "oh that guy/chick from that comedy show/movie" actors and actresses, the first half an hour is slick and fast paced with 'the funny', but the remaining hour gets slower throughout as the basic plot movements have to get untangled, solved and wrapped up inside the 90 minutes running time. A decent comic diversion for a Friday or Saturday night - it's the sort of film you'd rent or watch on Sky Movies with a couple of friends and a couple of cans.

Flavours of the Month: April 2010...

Continuing on from the end of March, I finished off the DVD for Tremors: The Series - it was an enjoyable show, if a bit under-funded, and you do miss Burt Gummer in the last couple of episodes (presumably off filming Tremors 4 at the time), but yeah - it's a fun show for the Tremors franchise fans.

In full-on Tremors mode I toured through the four movies again - the original is a classic with perfect pacing and brilliant lines of dialogue, the second is a riotous action-packed romp, the third is weak on the production front but affords us plenty of quality Burt Gummer fun and returns us to Perfection all these years later. Tremors 4, meanwhile, was a flick I didn't like at all the first time around, but six years later giving it a second chance I do like it. It is a bit of a let down in some respects, but the production value is great (and kicks the ass of Tremors 3 in that respect) and on its own terms it's actually pretty good. I do hope that Tremors 5 does happen ... I'm eagerly awaiting a new slice of Burt Gummer action!

Other viewing experiences this month have included The Mist (ruddy good monster movie Stephen King adaptation, which has gotten me in the mood for Alan Wake, oddly enough, and The Walking Dead, which is being brought to us by Darabont) ... then Funny People (enjoyed it more on its own terms this time around, and the DVD is plenty enjoyable), then Poultrygeist (gory Troma fun - although from the making-of I'm still astonished they're this disorganised and prone to production-haulting bickering after 35 years of filmmaking) ... *gasps for air* ... and then, plucked from my DVD shelf and blown-free of dust, the Soderbergh movie Full Frontal, and all-over-the-place Japanese zombie movie Wild Zero.

I watched Full Frontal as part of my film degree when we were discussing the Dogme 95 Manifesto (we also watched Festen), and Soderbergh's flick while initially slow to get going, and only vaguely living up to the Dogme 95 mindset, is actually quite an intriguing movie. The first twenty minutes bored the pants off me, but then I found myself getting quite into it ... so it was fun to have a bit of a nostalgia trip back to 2002/2003.

I finished off Assassin's Creed 2, which was ruddy good fun ... aside from a few niggles - including all those annoying NPCs carrying boxes, or playing guitars and getting in your way, or that your Villa chest can only carry about 55,000 florins but I can lug about 650,000+ just fine on my person ... silly, silly, silly. However, as I said, aside from a few dodgy little things here and there (including some small, but undercooked gameplay mechanics or the odd mission - such as "CTF"), it was a ruddy fun game - and a breath of fresh air into my sandbox gaming, being that you're yomping around 15th Century Italy.

Naturally, being a Brit, there's also been a lot of General Election based chit-chat, and I've found myself exhausted by it all quite quickly (as have friends of mine who are interested in politics - cue endless and fruitless political arguments between us all, which we all decided were more annoying than anything productive - best to remain friends, you know?) ... anyway, I've found myself utterly turned off by BBC News and Sky News - their obsession with the three leaders and nothing else (*ahem* what about the hundreds of constituencies and local issues up and down the nation?!) ... indeed, Sky News' coverage of their hosted debate was ludicrous and nothing short of masturbatory ... ... the "meeja narrative" has also been extremely evident in the last couple of weeks. How about reporting FACTS, rather than the opinions of the 24 hour news channels? The constant re-framing (or "spinning") of what's actually going on - into some warped, non-sensical hodge-podge of time wasting - has been a total turn off. As such I'm sticking with newspapers and blogs, because 24 hours news is (mostly) just pathetic and self-involved (and it has been for a very long time).

Finally, I got to check out In The Shadow of the Moon on telly the other day, and it was a really compelling examination of how mankind got to the moon, and the men who took us all there. Fascinating stuff. If only mankind still did things as boundary-pushing as that these days...

Funny People...

Judd Apatow - he's a funny bastard, isn't he? Naturally, anyone with any common sense, would say "yes, yes he is" to such a question. The 40 Year Old Virgin was a seriously funny flick, with a lot of heart to it - although I had no idea from the trailer I saw in the cinema when it was about to be released. From the trailer, 40YOV looked like a poor man's American Pie cash-in for middle aged people ... thankfully I did eventually see it, and a whole world of Apatow comedy was opened up to me.

Knocked Up was, similarly, filled with jokes and raw human emotion and honesty - helped in no small amount by the casting of his real-life wife & kids in the movie ... just like he did here in his latest flick as writer/director.

However, although Funny People has a lot of raw human emotion and honest running throughout it ... but it's not as funny as 40 Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty damn funny (you'd have thought the Apatow gang would have run out of dick jokes by now, but nope, they're still going strong). Unfortunately the film indulges in Apatow-style meandering comedy too much.

Virgin and Knocked Up were both long films (for comedies anyway), especially in their extended cut forms, but Funny People is seriously long for a comedy, and feels too unrestrained - it feels flabby and in serious need of a diet. This is really the only thing harming Funny People though, I feel. For such a long running time, with this amount of raw human reality and impending-death depression, you really could use a few more jokes ... or a shorter running time with the same amount of gags.

It doesn't go for the knock-out punch that his previous two flicks have delivered, but it does an admirable job of pummelling through the full fifteen rounds (if I dare labour this boxing metaphor any longer, that's come from out of nowhere).

Character wise, however, Eric Bana plays a good loveable bastard, Leslie Mann plays a complex house wife having to balance love, life, marriage and commitment ... and then, Adam Sandler.

I've never been a fan of Sandler, I've not disliked him, but I've not been bothered to watch any Adam Sandler movie - I've seen a couple, but I've generally been "meh" about the whole Sandler thing. However, here he gives a cracking performance - the man needs to do more of this kind of raw, open and honest comedy, rather than the sort of gimmicky shite he usually does (which is sent up here in Funny People with "Re-Do" and "Merman").

Apatow fans, like myself, will most likely dig this movie ... not as much as his previous efforts, but it's easily in-line with the better quality Apatow-produced spin-offs (such as Pineapple Express, or Forgetting Sarah Marshall). If only it had entered the ring in full fighting shape, rather than being a bit pudgy around the midrift ... yep, there's that boxing metaphor again ... where did that come from today?

Yet more summertime movie musings...

In A Lonely Place:

I'm a fair bit of a fan of Bogart, and still consider The Maltese Falcon to be a fantastic slice of Film Noir (indeed, it was the first proper Film Noir I ever saw, back in my first semester at university).

So it was quite interesting to see him as a screenwriter with a violent streak. One minute he's charming, the next you think he might be a psychopathic murderer, the next he's charming, then he's beating up people, then he's desperate, then he's calm and so it goes. It's all rather spiffing ... although I was surprised to see the 180 degree rule broken at one point during a conversation scene. Although that's really only the sort of thing film type will see rather than the average punter, but still ... it surprised me a bit that nobody spotted that during shooting.

Regardless of that tiny technical error though, classic Bogart.

...

Be Kind Rewind:

I've not seen much of Michel Gondry's work to be honest, and I've only just got around to checking out Be Kind Rewind - the main attraction for me being the celebration of the VHS medium (heck, I've made two shorts related to the format). It's all rather quirky, and it's quite clear that a considerable chunk of his work comes from his dreams.

BKR champions the oddball and the out-there, the strange characters you might very well find in some run-down area like that which is in the film. Mind you, the length of time it took for one of the characters to figure out Danny Glover's writing (who must have gotten some ill-fitting veneers/false teeth lately), which was steamed onto a window, was in fact backwards ... for some reason that wound me right up, the sheer length of time it took the guy to figure it out just pissed me off ... odd.

Anyway, it's at times joyfully inventive (Jack Black's idea of camouflage is ingenious) and at least just a good slice of pretty darn original fun. Mind you, the 'little guys VS the big guys' message is occasionally strong-armed into the script, and is ultimately left dangling as the credits begin to roll.

Also, Jack Black continues to do no wrong, and Mos Def's insistent mumbling continues to grind on me (check out 16 Blocks, he pissed me off so much in that film ... but he's still rather good at this acting business when he finds the right role).

...

Aftermath: Population Zero:

Indeed, not a film, but a National Geographic 90 minute special that's almost identical to Life After People (which was by the Discovery Channel, if memory serves). Identical in execution (stock footage mixed with lower-budget CGI, and specially shot stuff), and identical in its flaws.

The script is similarly ham-fisted and relies on often boring and uninspired writing - you'll constantly hear sentences begin with, for example, "After two-hundred-thirty years..." (yes, no "and" between the 200 and the 30 ... that annoyed me, ha!). The CGI shots are used over and over again, often just relying on two angles for one sequence - such as the Eifel Tower collapsing - so you'll cut back and forth between two shots and get thoroughly bored.

This also brings me to the issue of how America-focussed this, and Life After People, were ... but at least LAP ventured to Chernobyl and Pripyat to look at a real-life example of what was being talked about. Globally speaking, there's not much to the world beyond the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben by the looks of things, you'll maybe get a glimpse at the Pyramids or the North Pole, but otherwise it's all focussed on America ... which is a bit cheeky, lazy and isolationist. It's not like these aren't being shown outside of America, heck, Life After People was just on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago.

So indeed, it's all the usual stuff. Amidst the overtly dramatic, deep-voiced narration (which is a stone's throw from a movie trailer, replete with glutinous use of "in a world where..." type talk), you get battered over the head with idiot-friendly obviousness.

Really, untreated metal structures, concrete and tarmac will all crumble and collapse over time?! My God, I never knew! Really, animals can live even without mankind around?! Shocking stuff indeed ... but in reality, my sarcasm allowance for the day had swiftly gone way over the top.

Also, they seem to think that all cars are automatics ... so, when the earth's population (well, America, London, Paris and Egypt by the looks of things) literally vanishes, all the cars just keep running. Well, unlike the lazy Americans who made this 90 minute long mankind guilt-trip, who obviously drive nothing but automatics to burn as few calories as possible, there are a considerable amount of manual transmission vehicles out there. Their engines would cut out without people to control the clutch ... it was just something that annoyed me while watching.

So it's all rather grim, according to Population Zero, the entire power supply of the entire planet will conk out within hours (something I don't recall Life After People discussing, or at least not to this level of immediacy), and mankind are a bunch of bastards arrogantly holding back nature, whose existence will be wiped out almost entirely within 1000 years of our disappearance.

Like I said, a guilt-trip ... with a silly, dumb-dumb narration ... and reused CGI shots ... quite.

And yet shockingly, despite my rather negative summary of it, it's still worth seeing - much like Life After People - as long as you can trudge through all the dumbing-down, economy CGI use, and guilt-tripping, it can be quite interesting.

...

Batman Begins:

After watching Tim Burton's 1989 movie, I simply had to dig out Christopher Nolan's 2005 fantastic franchise life-saver. It's still bloody brilliant, gripping and even goes to great lengths to justify Batman's life. How he got so buff and good at fighting, how he ended up with all that fancy gear, how his lair under Wayne Mannor came about. Everybody involved was doing a damn fine job, and by the time it gets to the end and Batman turns over a playing card to reveal The Joker, you've got such a massive, anticipation-fuelled grin all over your face.

The Dark Knight can't come soon enough!