It's alive! The most splendid Splendor podcast yet is here!

It’s finally here! After a technical hitch that involved the host thinking he’d accidentally deleted the entire recording, the latest Splendor Cinema/Duke of York’s podcast is up. Of course you already know that if you subscribed to it on iTunes. For everyone else, what’s keeping you?

This time around Jon and I talk about the Oscar nominations and discuss who should win and who will win the coveted awards in March. It’s pod gold. Sadly, it may also be the last podcast for a few weeks as Jon is off to Berlin to catch the festival, the lucky devil. On the bright side he will be back with news of the latest films from Scorsese and Polanski, as well as insights on a whole host of other interesting movies and events. So watch this space for that report.

'Precious' Review: A 'Precious' thing?

'Precious’, or ‘Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire’, to use its full US title, is a big Oscar contender and a new film from Lee Daniels, best known as the producer of ‘Monster’s Ball’. Set in Harlem in 1987, ‘Precious’ tells the story of a sixteen year-old African American girl who suffers horrendous domestic abuse (of both a violent and sexual nature) at the hands of her parents. Claireece Precious Jones, played by Oscar nominated newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, is illiterate, obese and has twice been made pregnant by her father. Her mother, excellently portrayed by a terrifying Mo’Nique (pictured above), has not only allowed her daughter to be repeatedly raped, but also regularly subjects her to the most appalling physical and mental abuse. She force feeds her daughter and then torments her about her weight. She knocks Precious unconscious by throwing frying pans at the back of her head, all the time sitting watching television game shows and misleading well-meaning social workers in order to collect her welfare cheques.

Mo’Nique (a famous comedienne stateside) really makes this role her own and it is no surprise that she is the odds-on favourite to take home the Best Supporting Actress award at the Oscars in March, having already been honoured by Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild – she would certainly be a worthy recipient. Not only is she a truly frightening presence, but she also manages to round her character out, avoiding making her a two dimensional villain. Mo’Nique imbues her character with enough insecurity and disappointment at how her own life has turned out that when she does irredeemably cruel things they are rooted in her own history of abuse and neglect. In this way the film avoids taking a complicated social problem and attributing one individual with the blame.

Gabourey Sidibe is equally good in what is essentially a thankless role as the young Precious. She is reduced to brooding silence or painful inarticulacy for most of the film – and to vapid smiles during the relief fantasy sequences. Her character is, by necessity, unable to really express herself due to her reluctance to confront the reality of her life. But she convinces and instils Precious with her own aura of violent menace, whilst crucially maintaining an air of vulnerability. Among the supporting performers is a decent turn from Lenny Kravitz (in a minor role as a male nurse) and a really brilliant performance from Mariah Carey (pictured) as the social worker looking over Precious’s case. A lot has been made of Carey doing without make-up and being prepared to be unglamorous, but to focus on that aspect ignores a very solid performance. She absolutely nails her role with an air of authority and keeps the emotional distance required in that sort of profession, without seeming cold. She is stern and authoritative and at the films climax she brushes away a budding tear with quiet dignity in a wonderful moment. Helen Mirren, who was originally cast in the role, could not have done better. In fact in many ways she may have felt less authentic.

The film has some interesting racial politics as Precious mistakenly calls Mariah Carey’s Ms. Weiss “Mrs. White” and later questions her about her ambiguous ethnicity. In an earlier scene, Precious sees herself in a mirror as a thin, white girl. It is also constantly repeated during the films monologues that Precious desires a “light-skinned boyfriend”. This could be seen as supportive of some statements made by US critics that the film paints a negative picture of African American life, with Precious wishing to escape being black as if it would end her problems. But I think the many times we see smiling white people on television taking part in aspirational television shows we are being shown an alien world quite different to the one that Precious experiences in Harlem. If anything this aspect of the film links its social issues to poverty and highlights how, in America, the urban poor are often ghettoised ethnic minorities.

The one exception to the overall excellence in the cast is Paula Patton in the clichéd role of the inspirational teacher. The ludicrously named Ms. Blu Rain delivers the film’s most cumbersome and sentimental lines (“I love you precious...” adding with a whisper “your baby loves you.”) Her role is admittedly overwritten and heavy handed, but Patton fails to bring anything to it, let alone carry it off with the same effortless hard edge as her co-stars. It feels a little as if she has strolled in from a different, more obvious, movie.

Another criticism I could direct at the film is at the contrived level of misery befalling its protagonist: Precious is sexually abused by her father and physically assaulted by her mother; she is illiterate; she is obese; one of her two children has Down’s Syndrome; she lives in poverty and off welfare. As if these difficulties were not hard going enough the final act sees Precious again dealt another horrible blow by fate, which I won’t go into here so as not to spoil the film. It feels a little like it’s actively courting Oscar attention. I would also agree with many critics who have taken issue with the fantasy sequences. Although I understand (and admire) their intended purpose to relieve the viewer of too much distress (such as during a rape scene) and also to give us a glimpse at how Precious copes with her situation, I found the sequences themselves to be poorly shot and cheap looking compared to the rest of the film. They don’t fit stylistically with the rest of the piece, which is a problem.

Despite these flaws, ‘Precious’ is a film worthy of attention, especially for the performances. The films last scene is flawlessly executed and many of the scenes between Precious and her mother are tense and suspenseful. I wouldn’t award it Best Picture, in March, but then neither will the academy. However, it is an interesting film worthy of consideration.

For a preview of Mo'Nique's inevitable Oscar win, watch her excruciating Golden Globe acceptance speech below:


'Precious' is certified 15 by the BBFC and is playing until Thursday 11th of February at the Duke of York's Picturehouse in Brighton.

Why I still care about the Oscars

Unfortunately a technical error has delayed the latest ‘Splendor Cinema/Duke of York’s’ podcast. In it, Jon and I, discuss the Oscar nominations predicting who should win and who will win. It should be up this week. However, there are friends of mine who would question the wisdom of devoting as much (or any) attention to the Oscars. Some really hate the Academy Awards and will say that they don’t care who wins on the big night. To them, I say, there are so many reasons to care.

Obviously the Academy Awards can rarely be looked at as the definitive summary of that year in film, especially as they ignore foreign language film in the major categories to such a degree. But the awards are of interest because they interest the industry itself. It matters who wins because they will find it easier to get work, and if a film you like wins an Oscar then more people will be encouraged to go to see it. OK, ‘Avatar’, a likely winner of Best Picture this year, doesn’t need a boost to its box office. But imagine if ‘A Serious Man’ won. It would probably more than double the number of people who see that film. In 2008, when Paul Thomas Anderson was nominated for Best Director, I was thrilled, because that sort of recognition counts for something in Hollywood. Maybe he’ll find it a little easier to make his next film, or to attract the actors he wants or whatever. I care if films I like win awards because I want to see more films like them. Mostly though, I cover the Oscars, not because of what they say about art, but because they impact upon cinema as a business in a way BAFTAs, Golden Globes and SAG awards just don’t.

In an earlier post I predicted who I thought would be nominated this time around (and was fairly accurate). Today I thought it would be a bit of self-indulgent fun to hand out my own awards for last year in film. Now, if I were a one-man award academy, ‘A Serious Man’ would win Best Picture, with ‘The White Ribbon’ and ‘A Prophet’ nominated in the category. I would also include the mumblecore gem ‘Humpday’ and the brilliant British satire ‘In the Loop’. The Best Director would be Lars Von Trier (already self-proclaimed greatest in the world: why not make it official?) for ‘Antichrist’, the beautiful and haunting movie that became so notorious last year. ‘In the Loop’ would win the screenplay award it so richly deserves (and is really nominated for) and ‘Ponyo’ would win Best Animated Film (for which it isn’t even a nominee). In terms of actors, I would award Michael Stuhlbarg and nominate Max Records (the little boy from ‘Where the Wild Things Are’). Both are intense and interesting screen performers. The actress category would be won by Carey Mulligan, for ‘An Education’, who is deservedly actually nominated outside of this fantasy.

If, somehow, you aren’t all Oscar-ed out by now, stay tuned for the aforementioned podcast later this week to hear Jon and I predict the winners and losers for the real event.

Armageddon as directors top Hollywood rich list for 2009

An interesting fact emerges from this year’s Vanity Fair “top Hollywood earners” list: the top five places go to directors. Todd Phillips comes in at five, fresh from directing ‘The Hangover’ (subject of a recent Oscar snub), a surprise hit which must have seen Phillips claiming a proportion of the box office gross to earn his reported $44 million last year. At four, Jim Cameron (subject of Oscar buzz), comes in with some of that sweet ‘Avatar’ money. ‘Avatar’ was only released in the last couple of weeks of 2009, so Cameron’s place at four on this list shows just how much money he/that film has made in such a short space of time. I’d expect Cameron to be at the top of next year’s list with the same film. Three sees Roland Emmerich taking $70 million home for directing the disaster movie ‘2012’ (never linked to Oscars). Emmerich is probably another one seeing a healthy proportion of the box office as part of his fee.

That leaves, in second and first place, respectively, father and son duo (as pictured) Spielberg and Bay. They have (depressingly) been raking it in from the recent ‘Transformers’ movies. Say what you will about ‘Avatar’, but it is a coherent film at least – and with its heart in the right place. Michael Bay reportedly made $125 million last year so it's no wonder he doesn’t care what people say about his films. The full break down of this figure is available in the original Vanity Fair article, but interesting highlights include: $75 million from directing/producing the film, $25 million from sales of the DVD (yes, if you bought it, you’re lining his pockets, happy?) and $12.5 million from toys and video games etc.

I really, really wanted to come at this list from the perspective that, regardless of who they were and what they had made, directors had claimed the top five places in this poll, where usually actors dominate (as indeed they dominate the remaining thirty-five places). The thing is that there isn’t really a single person on the list who is there because they directed a film: rather all the directors on the list are also producers. Or they made $50 million from theme parks last year (Steven Spielberg).

Anyway, check out the entire top 40, and all the details therein, here.

Ozu monogatari: Mark Cousin's stares into the void

According to Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu made films of “dignified severity”. He meant it as a criticism. In terms of the films they gave us, the two men could hardly have been more different: you certainly couldn’t confuse the horse chase sequence in ‘The Hidden Fortress’ or the titular ‘Seven Samurai’ running through the tall grass to save the villagers (both conveying an urgency and a sense of speed) with the famous stillness found in Ozu’s work. The most famous examples of his work are slow, small-scale family dramas like ‘Early Spring’ and ‘Tokyo Story’ (though, as Tony Rayns points out in last month’s Sight and Sound, he made many other types of film in his long and prolific career at Shochiku).

Yet Ozu’s films are no less compelling than Kurosawa’s. They delight with their attention to detail. In Ozu’s films, pauses are emphasised, shots linger, often with the camera close to the ground or looking in at the “action” from another room. External shots of trains going by are a common occurrence and seem simply to mark the passing of time and require patience. They are formal, beautiful and poignant: emotional, yet never mawkish or sentimental. Ozu never had wife or family of his own, yet he told stories about families which speak a universal truth, such as when the well-meaning elderly couple of ‘Tokyo Story’ find themselves to be an unwelcome inconvenience when visiting their (now grown up) children, who have jobs to attend to and children of their own to raise. None of the people in these stories are wrong or bad: they just are.

I am writing about Ozu because there has been a lot of attention paid to his work recently. This has partly been due to the fact that this month sees a programme of Ozu films playing at the BFI Southbank (until February 27th) and partly because similarities between Ozu’s work and that of Hirokazu Kore-eda are being drawn in reviews of his new film ‘Still Walking’ (Sight & Sound’s Film of the Month for February). Noted film historian David Thomson has also seen fit to contribute a snobby and pompous article about Ozu versus ‘Avatar’ for the Guardian newspaper. But the piece that caught my attention was a tribute paid to the great man by Mark Cousins during BBC Radio 4’s Film Programme. During the programme, Cousins described not only his appreciation for Ozu, but also his experience visiting Ozu’s grave recently. He describes how the man he sees as the “centre of film history” is represented by a tombstone without a name or any dates, but simply the Chinese character “Mu” which he translates as “emptiness” or “the void”, but which can also be read as “the space between all things”. "Dignified severity" indeed.

Surrounded by tributes of alcohol (like Kurosawa, Ozu was a notorious alcoholic) this grave is somehow the ultimate monument to a man whose films faced the facts of human existence, however apparently bleak, without any need to sugar coat them. He didn’t even want to romanticise his own passing from this Earth. That takes a special kind of dedication to the “truth” so often talked about by artists. Yet Ozu was not a pretentious artist. He was a company man. He was loyal to one studio his whole life and made a great many films (from the silent-era onwards) as a hired gun. He was disciplined and demanding, a perfectionist, but not at the expense of his humility. And whilst his films are not sentimental, they are not without sentiment (‘Tokyo Story’, for one, is a real tear jerker). He was, for me, a real humanist with a deep understanding of, and affection for, life’s smaller moments. He is survived by his films and not by a piece of stone.

Apparently Mark Cousins visit to the grave was made as part of an upcoming documentary on Ozu’s life and work. I, for one, look forward to a closer look at this fascinating 20th century artist if and when it is released. I will keep an eye out.

The award for Best Trailer for a Motion Picture goes to...

Movie trailers: they can make you laugh, they can make you cry. Well, maybe not cry (that is unless the words ‘Transformers 3’ appear somewhere) but trailers can certainly make a very compelling case for themselves as an art form in their own right. They may not have an award dedicated to them at the Oscars, but here are three examples of trailers from the last year that would be in contention if they did (incidentally there is an industry award for trailers: see The Golden Trailer Awards):

Where the Wild Things Are had a superb early teaser trailer, helped in no small part by its use of an amazing song by Arcade Fire to really which really helps to invoke the spirit of the film:


Possibly my favourite of last year, A Serious Man had an amazing trailer which was a masterpiece in editing:


Finally, A Single Man, which has a very slick trailer and opens at the Duke of York's cinema from Friday 12th February. It looks stunning:


I hope you enjoyed the trailers. Please post some of your own favourites below and come back later in the week, when the latest Splendor Cinema/Duke of York's podcast will be up. It's our fourth episode and we will be looking at the Oscar nominations, picking our winners. It can't be missed!

My predictions for the 82nd Academy Award nominees are...

The nominees for the 82nd Academy Awards are due to be revealed today. I thought it would be worth jotting my predictions down here so I can refer to them at a later date, hopefully with regards to their accuracy.

As many readers may know, the Best Picture shortlist has been doubled from five films to ten. This makes my life a little easier as I’m bound to get one or two guesses correct now! I reckon we can expect to see the five features which were nominated for the same honour at last month’s Golden Globe awards, those being ‘Precious’, ‘Inglourious Basterds’, ‘The Hurt Locker’, ‘Up in the Air’ and, of course, the winner ‘Avatar’. They could be joined by the BAFTA best film nominee ‘An Education’, the highly-rated and commercially successful Vegas comedy ‘The Hangover’ and Pixar’s splendid ‘Up’. I don’t have too much confidence in the final two guesses, but I’m going to go with ‘The Blind Side’, a sentimental American football “you can live your dream!” movie, for which Sandra Bullock has been winning all the actress awards this year, and ‘It’s Complicated’ because it has Meryl Streep in it and also stars this year’s ceremonies co-hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. There will be a lot of good will in the room, as they say.

In terms of Best Actress, I have already mentioned two obvious contenders: Meryl Streep for either ‘It’s Complicated’ or ‘Julie and Julia’ (at the Globes she was nominated for both) and Sandra Bullock. I expect to find Carey Mulligan on that list (or at least I hope to find her on it) for her dazzling turn in ‘An Education’. ‘Gabourey Sidibe’ may get a nod for her part as the abused and illiterate Precious in the film of the same name, whilst Julianne Moore is a possibility for her co-starring role in ‘A Single Man’.

Colin Firth is the hot favourite for Best Actor, with his portrayal of a homosexual University professor in Tom Ford’s upcoming film ‘A Single Man’. Jeff Bridges was a popular winner of the equivalent Globe last month, so he’ll surely be a contender for his role in ‘Crazy Heart’. To be honest, one of those two will win the award, so the remaining three are a formality: George Clooney (‘Up in the Air’), Tobey Maguire (‘Brothers’) and Morgan Freeman, perhaps a good outside bet for his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood’s ‘Invictus’. I would like to see ‘A Serious Man’ star Michael Stuhlbarg get a nomination, but that appears unlikely, though I’d be surprised if that film isn’t nominated for some minor awards (you know, little things like Editing, Sound and Writing!).

The supporting actor prizes will be won by Mo’Nique for ‘Precious’ and Christopher Waltz for ‘Inglourious Basterds’, without a shred of doubt in my mind. The two female leads of ‘Up in the Air’ (Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick - who would both be worthy winners in my opinion) may also be nominated in the supporting actress category, whilst Waltz is likely be competing against Matt Damon and Stanley Tucci (‘Invictus’ and The ‘Lovely Bones’ respectively). Best Director is being billed as a tussle between a former husband and wife: James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow (‘Avatar’ and ‘The Hurt Locker’ respectively). That category may be fleshed out by the likes of Jason Reitman (‘Up in the Air’), Lee Daniels (‘Precious’) and, possibly, Tom Ford for ‘A Single Man’. You heard it here first!

I now lie in wait to see if my predictions are given any credence by the actual nominations later today. Please share your thoughts and predictions below.

****UPDATE****
I just thought I’d update this post in response to the Academy Award nominations having been announced now. Earlier I predicted the nominations and I am pleased to say I was (mostly) accurate. I predicted eight of the ten Best Picture nominees successfully. I was incorrect when I suggested ‘The Hangover’ (winner of Best Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes) and ‘It’s Complicated’ might be included. However, I was happy to be wrong as two of my favourite films of last year were nominated instead: ‘District 9’ and ‘A Serious Man’. Whilst neither will end up winning the award (‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Avatar’ must be considered favourites, and both are nominated for nine awards overall) I am glad to see both making the list and earning themselves that honour. I was very pleased to find Carey Mulligan in the Best Actress category, as predicted. In fact, in that category I only got one guess wrong (Julianne Moore was not nominated, but Helen Mirren instead). It’s the same story with my picks for the actor category, with one wrong guess, in this case Tobey Maguire was not nominated and Jeremy Renner, of ‘The Hurt Locker’ was. A good mistake again. I guessed correctly with the nominations for both supporting categories, though I only guessed three names for each in that case. I was incorrect about Tom Ford being nominated for the director category for ‘A Single Man’, with Tarantino the preferred choice in the final shortlist.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen a foreign language film slipping into the Best Picture category now that the shortlist has been expanded. 'The White Ribbon' is certainly a better film than many that made the list. And whilst 'The Hangover' wouldn't have been my pick for Best Film, it would have been good to see comedy being acknowledged. However, it was pleasing to see an animated film successfully able to escape its sub-category this year, and 'Up' is deserving of the honour. All in all I'm pleased with the nominations. Whilst 'Avatar' will probably win the Best Picture and Best Director awards, I am really happy to find that six of my top ten films of 2009 (see the list in the right-hand margin of this blog) are nominated for awards, with three nominated for the main prize.

The "Worst Movies Ever"?

It's official! A new poll has found to be true what we'd hitherto only suspected: Joel Schumacher's 'Batman & Robin' is the worst film of all time. That is, at least, according to the readership of the UK's Empire Magazine, the votes of whom have formed the basis for a "50 Worst Movies Ever" poll on the magazine's website. Aside from the winner, the list includes the likes of 'Transformers 2', 'Year One' and 'The Pink Panther 2' from the year just gone, aswell as high entries for the 1980 film 'Raise the Titanic' and 'Highlander 2'. Ok, now I know that such reader polls are to be taken with a pinch of salt. But I'm not going to diminish this list, but instead I think it is worth our consideration for a number of reasons.

Firstly, if anything this list is more interesting as an indication of what is currently very unpopular rather than what is really historically the "worst movie ever" as the title claims. Most bad films are, of course, seen by very few people (Michael Bay's output seemingly acting as the exception to the rule) and hence a really bad film will only appear on the list if it has achieved a certain notoriety as "so-bad-its-funny", a type of film ably represented on this list by such camp favourites as 'The Room' (must-see trailer below!), 'The Avengers', 'Battlefield Earth' and 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. Generally, though, the films on this list are of a certain technical standard, with reasonable levels of acting and direction (though sadly not in the winner's case). Therefore the list is really "which big studio movies didn't people like?"

Secondly, the list provides an insight into the watching habits of readers of the magazine and gives a decent impression of the publications target demographic. Aside from the aforementioned "Plan 9", there aren't any films on the list which pre-date the 1980's (that's right: the first eighty years of cinema were near faultless). It's really gone downhill since the eighties though: a whopping thirty-seven of the fifty films listed (that’s 74%) were made in the last decade! However, this is an understandable lack of perspective in the list, given that Empire’s readership are probably reasonably young and have seen more films from this period than any other (or at least remember them more vividly). We can see this "last thing you saw" syndrome in full affect in earlier lists too. Michael Medved's reasonably famous book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way)", published in 1978, features numerous films from the 1970's, including films like 'The Omen', 'Exorcist 2' and the innocuous disaster sequel 'Airport 1975'. Doubtless a similar poll conducted ten years ago would have included ‘Waterworld’, a film absent in this new list and seemingly forgotten (or reclaimed) now. Of course, these lists need to have well-known, contemporary films on them if they are to appeal to a wide audience, so in that respect they are brilliant for their publishers. A reader who finds some obscure, straight-to-video horror film or a forgotten silent movie in the list is likely to feel alienated and may stop reading altogether.

Thirdly, it is perhaps most interesting to consider the oldest films on the list as being there on merit, as enduring examples of bad film. George Lucas's ill-fated 1986 adventure film 'Howard the Duck' features, as does 'Superman IV', 'Jaws: The Revenge' (the one starring Michael Caine) and the disastrous 'Heaven's Gate'. The 1990's throw 'Showgirls' and 'Street Fighter' (one of four video game adaptations on the list) into the mix. These films seem to have earned their place on this list. There also seems to be a number of people who have used this list to express an agitation with the diminishing returns offered by many sequels, a sort of protest vote: 'Spiderman 3', 'Matrix Revolutions' and 'Blade Trinity' are all examples of instances where a once-popular franchise has run out of goodwill from the cinema-going public the third time around.

Finally, if the films on this list are representative of which sort of bad films people have paid to see, and not simply the definitive "worst ever", then it paints a depressing picture for UK cinema. Only two UK films make the list ('Swept Away' and 'Sex Lives of the Potato Men'), whilst the remaining forty-eight are American imports. You could see this as evidence that American films are inferior to those imported from elsewhere, or to those made on these shores, but in reality this seems to confirm the dominance that Hollywood enjoys at the UK box office. Yes, it seems funny to decry UK film and wider world cinema not making more of an impression on this list, but it would have been encouraging to find that people had been drawing from a deeper, more-varied pool of movies.

All in all, an interesting list, whatever you think of the choices.
To read the full list for yourself visit Empire's website here, and then kindly return and share your thoughts on the results on this blog!

It's official: 'Avatar' IS the king of the world

How about that then? 'Avatar' has overtaken 'Titanic' to become the highest grossing movie of all time. Of course, the ticket prices have gone up since 1997 (and 3D ticket prices cost even more) so this doesn't necessarily mean more people have seen 'Avatar' (yet), though I'm sure it's still got time. After all, it has only been out for six weeks and it will get a boost after it wins all the Oscars in March. It may even benefit from increased replay value due to the fact that we are yet to have true 3D in our homes, with some seeing this as the last chance to experience the film in this way.

I didn't think 'Avatar' would be as popular as 'Titanic'. Sure it has had a lot of publicity and then there is the 3D which will have peaked a lot of people's curiosity, but 'Titanic' arguably had an equal balance between romance, action and historical interest, whereas 'Avatar' is more skewed towards the action. Well, I was very wrong indeed, and not for the last time, I'm sure. Whatever you think of the film it has surely been good for the industry and should be praised for getting people into cinemas at least.

Apparently it is the first part of a planned trilogy. Will it go the way of the 'Star Wars' prequels where the first film grossed the highest and people didn't come back for more? Or will it do what Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings have done and gross more and more with each release? In other words, will James Cameron have the top four highest grossing movies of all time on his hands in the next decade? We will have to wait and see. We shall also have to wait and see how 'Avatar' affects the world of film production in general. Will Hollywood studios greenlight a whole raft of 3D, live-action movies in the next few years? Is 3D here to stay? I'm sure the debate about the future of 3D movies has really only just begun.
My short review of 'Avatar' was published on the Splendor Cinema blog and can be read here.

The latest Dukes/Splendor podcast is here!

That's right, it's that time again. Last Friday Jon Barrenechea and I sat down to discuss 'A Prophet' and 'Up in the Air' and, as usual, there was some general chatter about film distribution. You can listen to the episode here or by downloading it from iTunes (where you'd be a fool not to subscribe).

Jon also makes some interesting points about protection and exhibition of domestic cinema, which he goes into in more detail on his blog (with regards to the "banning" of 'Avatar' in China). The man makes a lot of sense.

Apologies for some issues with sound quality this week. I have found an external mic, and it will hopefully be better next time.
Finally, for those with an interest, I have just started a "sister" blog to this one with a focus on video games. Please give it a look, if you are so inclined.

'A Prophet' and racial tensions in recent French cinema

Yesterday I listened to a radio interview featuring the French director Jacques Audiard, whose prison drama 'A Prophet' was Sight & Sound magazines film of 2009 after topping their annual poll of international cinema critics, ahead of such films as 'The White Ribbon' and 'The Hurt Locker'. What struck me about this interview was Audiard’s response to questions about the films scenes of violence, as he stated that it was not so much the violent acts themselves that had shocked viewers in his native France, but that an Arab (Malik [left] as portrayed by Tahar Rahim) was committing them. It was this statement which has caused me to wonder whether there is a movement in modern French cinema, united by its depiction of racial tension in an ethnically diverse modern France.

Indeed other recent internationally successful French films portray a similar picture of France to 'A Prophet', whether it’s within the inner-city classroom depicted in Laurent Cantet’s 'The Class', or a middle-class, white Frenchman’s journey through a seedy Muslim criminal underworld in the thriller 'Anything For Her' or in the frequent depictions of racial abuse and violence seen in last year’s 'Mesrine' films. And whilst Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s 'Amelie' was criticised upon release for doing to Paris what 'Notting Hill' had done to London in terms of racial representations, his latest whimsical fantasy comedy, 'Micmacs', depicts France as a place where socially marginalised misfits (amongst them a black Muslim) must do battle against nefarious arms dealers, who we learn via an amusing office desk photo reveal, are chums of Nicolas Sarkozy. If these films, when viewed together, form a picture of a modern ethnically diverse France which is divided along racial lines (as well as economic ones), then perhaps they have a point. You need only look back to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s surprise rise to prominence in 2002, as his Front National party (in many ways the French equivalent of the BNP) polled second in the Presidential election, or to the huge race riots of 2005, to see some recent historical evidence to support the version of France represented in these films.

Is this view of France a hallmark of modern French cinema? I must admit I am living in a vacuum with regards to French film en masse. The French film industry is responsible for a great many films which receive little or no international distribution, the content of which I cannot assess with any authority. Perhaps the films which tend to be exhibited outside of France are the ones which seem to offer some kind of commentary on modern France for outsiders.

So what of British film? Aside from the odd film like 1999’s 'East is East' or 2007’s 'Brick Lane', British cinema seems not to share French cinemas preoccupation with issues of racial difference. Is this because Britain is more tolerant than France? Or rather, is it because we are still more focussed on social class (as in the work of Andrea Arnold, for one example)? Or is this simply because we are not engaging with the issue? I’d be extremely interested to read any views you might have.
'A Prophet' is screening every day until Thursday the 28th of January at the Duke of Yorks Picturehouse in Brighton and is rated 18 by the BBFC.

My big important opinions

I must admit I'm a little self conscious writing this: my first transmission into the blogosphere (surprisingly spell check agrees that it’s a word). This is mostly because having a blog in the first place sounds like I’m shouting “come and read my big important opinions”. I feel a bit arrogant and a little presumptuous to be writing my thoughts on here. So why am I doing it? That’s a question I’ve just asked myself.

There are many reasons why I am writing this blog. Partly it’s because I see this as something to keep me thinking and writing (since graduating from University it has been easy to do little of either). Partly it’s because I usually feel at odds with what I read in film journalism. I love to read Sight and Sound every month and I listen to my fair share of film podcasts, so I’m not against hearing other people’s point of view on film at all, but I disagree so often with so much of it that this blog is hopefully going to be a healthy outlet for some (until now) impotent rage. Mostly though I need this forum because I almost take it personally when I hear someone dislike a film I am really attached to. For instance I could scarcely contain my bewilderment when a film tutor told me she had walked out of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 'Punch-Drunk Love' in the cinema. It is this indignation which is to be the driving force behind much of what I write on this blog. Well, that and my sincere love of the art of cinema.

It is with this in mind that I humbly, scratch that, egotistically invite you to hear my big important opinions.

Also, stay tuned for the latest Duke of York’s podcast. As always I’ll be talking with (and sometimes over) art-cinema manager, and the author of the excellent SPLENDOR CINEMA blog, Jon Barrenechea.
Thanks for reading!