February 23, 2012 New The Front Line
by Caulorlime
The Korean War is an historical obscenity so absurd that it feels like it was created for propaganda purposes. We are, in the west, well used to the hideous idea of people dying in the First World War right up to 11 o-clock on the eleventh of November, and the utter pointlessness of those deaths. In the Korean war (or as the Koreans call it, the war)* the same thing occurred, only the truce talks went on for two years after the fundamental desire for ceasefire was agreed, with the added piquancy that the fighting that occurred in the last few months and weeks was actually the most vicious, the most deadly of the entire conflict. Areas devoid of mineral richness or any natural strategic importance, hills too steep for farming and too bleak for settlement, became the focus of horrific and sustained fighting. Some small and pointless territories changed hands over 30 times in 18 months at the cost of countless Korean lives, as well as a significant number of Chinese, American and other troops. The perceived importance of these areas was due to their proximity to the 38th parallel, an entirely arbitrary line drawn at the end of WWII partitioning the country into North and South Korea, and sparking the inevitable war. In 1953, as the interminable armistice talks dragged on, these hills became a flash point merely because the owners of a hill could move the arbitrary border to the other side, gaining about three kilometers of extra territory. Thousands of people were killed and maimed fighting over them. The damn things are in the demilitarised zone now, and no one owns them.
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- Posted under Asian Cinema, History, New Releases
February 22, 2012 Wild at Heart
Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage, relaxing on-set
by Jim Eaton-Terry
Wild at Heart seems to be the one universally accepted dud in David Lynch’s back catalogue. There are the early oddities (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune), his masterpiece Blue Velvet, then the nightmarish trilogy of Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. Wild At Heart is dismissed as Lynch lite, his one attempt at a mainstream lovers-on-the-run movie fatally flawed by compromises to commercial acceptability in the wake of Twin Peaks.
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- Posted under Classic Films, Cult Movies
February 21, 2012 Mostly Pop – February 2012
by Mr Moth
Welcome to the future. Now, where's that Katy B comeback?
I last wrote Mostly Pop back in September 2011. It’s 2012 now – how things have changed! We have jetpacks and robot servants, I’m writing this while tucking into a bowl of food in pill form (mmm… roast chicken and yorkshire pudding pills!), the NHS is finally going to be destroyed (at last, eh?) and the pop scene has moved on to an unrecog… oh, wait, it’s One Direction again.
One Direction – One Thing
So, the band with the biggest hair in the world, what do you have for us? A video packed with studied wackiness. Marvel! As we follow the boys around in their open-top bus for some impromptu, heavily-rehearsed, zany goofing around. Look at them jump! Bounce bounce bounce! They’re such fun! They do that walk like the Monkees do! Wow, they must be as fun as the Monkees*! Look at how they’re dressed! Well, ok, I guess it’s an improvement on their former look. I can imagine the meeting with the stylist now: ‘You! You’re dressing like Doctor Who! You! You’re dressing like one of those blokes from that Richmond sausages advert! You! You’re also Doctor Who, but the other one! You! You’re… you… I… er, DOCTOR WHO!’.
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- Posted under Music
February 20, 2012 Hadewijch
by Yasmeen Khan
Before 2009’s Hadewijch, Bruno Dumont made three exceptional feature films – La Vie de Jésus (1997), L’Humanité (1999) and Flandres (2006) -and one terrible turkey – Twentynine Palms (2003), not to be confused with 29 Palms (2002), which is also the only one to be set outside France. So it’s encouraging to see him return there for Hadewijch. His style suits contemporary French cinéma du corps much better than it does the Californian thriller. Dumont’s films are bleak and powerful explorations of personalities in crisis, set against the barest outlines of plot, naturalistic, drawn on drab streets or brutally beautiful landscapes, concerned with extremes of emotion, with setting and atmosphere rather than narrative.
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- Posted under New Releases
February 17, 2012 Mostly Links – 17 February 2012
by Indy Datta
Gosh, The Simpsons is 500 episodes old (and marking the occasion with an episode featuring antipodean secret-spiller Julian Assange), whodathunk, etc? There have been grand claims made for the cultural significance of Matt Groening’s creation – although such claims have decreased in frequency as the quality of the show has, so the consensus has it, declined. That consensus may be considered harsh, but if you were to ask people for their favourite episodes, few would come from the last ten years.
February 16, 2012 Love, Sex, Betrayal & Spoons – A Night With Tommy Wiseau
by Philip Concannon
Who the hell is Tommy Wiseau anyway? That was the question foremost in my mind as I made my way through the dark streets of London’s West End for a midnight screening of The Room. Normally it would take a screening of an all-time classic or a new film by one of my cinematic heroes to tempt me out on such a freezing night, but here I was lining up for a film I knew by reputation only – that is, its reputation as one of the worst films ever made. When I reached the Prince Charles Cinema, it quickly became clear that my ignorance of The Room and its director put me firmly in the minority. The queue, which was already stretching around the side of the venue, was full of people in tuxedoes or wearing neckties around their heads, brandishing plastic cutlery or tossing inflated American footballs to one another. They regaled each other with random lines of dialogue that sounded bizarre or banal shorn of their context – “Johnny’s my best friend!” “I have breast cancer!” “You’re tearing me apart!” Everyone appeared to be in on a joke that I didn’t yet understand.
- 4 comments
- Posted under Cult Movies
February 15, 2012 Fire Walk With Me
by Uncle Frank
Before its release in 1992, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was possibly David Lynch’s most eagerly-anticipated film yet. When it was released, it immediately became the most bitterly criticised work in his filmography. It has subsequently been re-evaluated by many, and now occupies a rather peculiar place in his body of work. A prequel to the TV series that Lynch co-created with Mark Frost, it was accepted at the time as forming part of the series’ narrative; but anyone thinking about watching the film for the first time in 2012 may never have seen a single episode of the TV show. If that includes you, please note that this article contains major spoilers. And also that the entire series is available on DVD.
The series was ostensibly about an FBI agent, Dale Cooper (Kyle MachLachlan) who is sent to the town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of a teenage girl, Laura Palmer; yet the whodunit element was only ever intended to act as a backdrop to the story of the town’s variously eccentric and/or sinister inhabitants. As the series went on, elements of outright fantasy were introduced, heralded by a much-spoofed dream sequence featuring a dancing, backwards-talking dwarf:
At first, the series was a phenomenon, but ratings took a nose-dive mid-way through the second season. Having revealed the identity of the killer, at the network’s insistence, the series floundered in a run of tedious episodes. The series found its feet again toward the end of the season, but too late to escape cancellation.
Like a lot of Twin Peaks fans, I was initially disappointed with the news that the film was to be a prequel rather than a continuation. We already knew what had happened to Laura Palmer; we wanted to find out what happened next, after the cliffhanger that closed the second and final season. But any new Peaks was better than no Peaks at all, so of course I went to see it.
- 1 comment
- Posted under New Releases, Television
February 14, 2012 Valentine’s Quiz – Guess The Film
by Mr Moth
Hello. My photo manipulation skills aren’t great, but, well, who doesn’t like teddies doing charades? So – the key here is that these photos are depicting romantic movies. For Valentine’s Day. So, say what you see. With love.
Mystery Film number one
Got that? Good. Let’s move on. Continue reading this article ›
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- Posted under Games
February 13, 2012 Easy Rider, Raging McQueen
by Tindara Sidoti-McNary
A New York story: Steve McQueen's 'Shame'
Back when I realised that artists were making movies, I felt a real frisson of excitement. Films! Only in a gallery where you can watch as long as you like. Reminds me of the old days at the cinema when dad took us to see Annie and we got there half way through. We went to the next showing and stayed till the exact moment where we got in; remember when you could do that? For many going to galleries these days, the moving image artwork has become normality; the reassuring familiarity of film or television never far away. There’s a palpable sense of relief when you get to the part of a show where there’s a film, particularly one you can sit down in front of. Ah, I know what to do here. Sit down on this hard bench, let the flickering pictures wash over, let your mind drift to a place where images of Hollywood or European films sit like better-looking family photos. They hook you in a much more visceral way than a painting or sculpture.
Continue reading this article ›
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- Posted under Art
February 10, 2012 Mostly Links – 10 February 2012
by Indy Datta
Ewan McGregor and Eva Green in "Perfect Sense", released in America today
Mostly Links is a bit jetlagged this week, so is outsourcing the first part of this week’s blog to a joke-generating bot, which has been programmed to deliver witticisms about this week’s 3D-retrofitted re-release, on both sides of the Atlantic, of Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace:
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- Posted under Links
