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Nine
5th January 2010 | 1 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
First a confession. I dislike musicals. No, that’s untrue. I loathe musicals. I loathe them in much the same way that I loathe Ryanair baggage charges. Or root canal surgery. Or the post-pub, Cro-magnon wank-a-thon, Danny Dyer's Hardest Men. I just cannot see the appeal. All that breathy over enunciation. The razzle. Yeah! The dazzle. Yeah! YEAH! The big, lungy singing and the high kicking and the weary and ultimately...
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The Master Trickster
18th December 2009 | 2 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
While on holiday last week I re-read the toast of the Signifying Monkey (here), an African-American reworking of African mythology depicting the survival strategies of the trickster (the titular monkey) attempting, in the face of oppression and discrimination to defuse the powers of exploitation and undermine (racial) misrepresentation. He does so not through violence or aggression but cunning and wit. It is a powerful poem with a strong resonance in... -
Top 10 films of 2009
11th December 2009 | 1 comments | 1 person likes this
What’s in a list? Probably little more than an opportunity to show off, indulge in a some lazy cultural showboating and maybe even a chance to stir up a dash of barroom provocation. Perfect. So, in no particular order, here is my attempt to do just that. Any disagreements, disputes, outraged contempt, please feel free to comment.....
1. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)Haneke’s latest masterpiece. Beautifully scripted, shot and acted it... -
DVD review: Soul Power
7th December 2009 | 3 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
If the eyes of the world were on Zaire’s capital, Kinshasa, in October 1974 they were, perhaps understandably, focused more keenly on Muhammad Ali’s world heavyweight title challenge against the indomitable human wrecking ball, George Foreman - a fight for which The Greatest displayed his characteristic bombast and preternatural confidence but which many educated observers feared might end in tragedy for the Louisville Lip - than on the three-night music...
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A Serious Man – the ‘Jewish film’
30th November 2009 | 2 comments | 2 people like this
The latest film from the prodigious Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, their ‘Jewish film’ as it seems to have become known, is an absolute triumph of rich humour and pathos and is, for me, their finest and most accomplished to date. With its release the Midwest brothers have firmly established themselves as two of the sharpest, and darkest, observers of American life, as well as the most prolific, and consistently...
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In Loving Memory of Moviedrome
30th November 2009 | 2 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
It will be no great shock to hear that living in London has both advantages and disadvantages. It is true that the cost of a 200 yd train journey may be the equivalent of a small flat in Hull, and rather like rats in New York it is said that you are never more than 100 metres away from a Premiership footballer or someone "in media", but the capital does...
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Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon: Disturbing, mesmerising and wonderful
30th November 2009 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon is the latest film from a ferociously gifted and no less provocative filmmaker at the very height of his considerable powers. Troubling, beautiful, unerringly calm yet intensely confrontational it is a film of such towering authority and icy detachment that it might go down as one of the most commanding by any director from the last decade. I have certainly seen nothing like it for...
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A Yearning for Creativity, Or Why We Should All Embrace a Little Madness
20th November 2009 | 1 comments | 1 person likes this
"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free” (Nikos Kazantzakis)
“There is no genius free from some tincture of madness” (Seneca)Three things this week made me think extensively about creativity. Its importance, or its absence, today feels more relevant than ever among the deluge of numbing sequels, remakes and imitations that congest our screens and airwaves. They may seem a tangential trio... -
Standing Eight Count
2nd November 2009 | 1 comments | 2 people like this
Yesterday I sat down once again to watch Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull, taking my viewings somewhere into double figures. I consider it to be the director’s finest film (just edging out Mean Streets), and De Niro’s titular Bull, Jake LaMotta, the actor’s premier performance. It is a film that exercises an extraordinary hold, drawing me in time and again in search of new meaning. And it never fails... -
Citizen Kane? Of course I’ve seen it!
23rd October 2009 | 4 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
In a recent survey commissioned by Orange, in association with Orange Wednesday, it was revealed that - shock! horror! - people sometimes lie about the films they have seen….especially if someone from Orange collars them in the street and asks them what films they’ve lied about seeing.
Dirty Dancing, Taxi Driver and Gone With The Wind are all in the top ten, while 1 in 5 people have apparently lied about...
CONTRIBUTOR
Nick Clarke
Working in advertising, writing for a number of national newspaper and magazine titles and currently clawing his way through his PhD in film, Nick has nurtured a passion for media and the arts for over a decade. He tries not to take himself too seriously but finds it difficult. As such he harbours the faintly ridiculous belief that one- day he will write a definitive, universally lauded book on a subject that he thinks he knows something about. Given that he is fanatical about Soul music, 1970s cinema and boxing, it might be about one of those. Given that he also is very indecisive and non-committal it also might not be.
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