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• On Woody Allen in Rome

  April 4, 2012 @ 10:24 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Ah, Woody Allen. Everybody has an opinion about the great man. Three or four malcontents still argue that he was only ever any good when he was making “the early funny ones“. These maniacs date his decline to the release of Annie Hall. That is to say they believe that the last time Allen was worth watching was when Jimmy Carter was president and Smokie were still in the charts. More sober analysts reckon he began slipping at some point in the 1990s. Bullets Over Broadway was good, but, after that, unfunny hell took over. A few nutters claim that he was never amusing at all.

  I remain a fairly unshakable enthusiast. Yes, there have, in recent years, been atrocities such as Cassandra’s Dream and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. But there have been funny oddities such as Whatever Works, overlooked gems such as Anything Else and half-decent films such as Small Time Crooks. If this year’s Woody doesn’t suit you then hang around for another 12 months. He continues to churn them out with same regularity that Cadbury’s bring to their Creme Eggs.

  Midnight in Paris was an odd one. I was lucky enough to see the film at its premiere in Cannes. “Well, this isn’t bad,” I thought to myself. “It registers as decent — if unspectacular — late Allen. It’s a little better than the unfairly trashed (indeed, unreleased in these territories) Scoop. But it’s not as funny as Anything Else.” You know what happened next. The picture became his most successful ever and secured an Oscar nomination for best picture (something it might have managed even if there were still only five nods).

  The picture was, of course, the latest of his adventures in Europe. Here we run up against an interesting anomaly in the world of criticism. The “foreign” pictures tend to get much better reviews in the United States than they receive on this side of the Atlantic. The absurdly sunny depictions of European capitals — most conspicuously London — jar with us, but continue to win over those in the US. Here’s a question that you won’t be bothered to answer: Has any film ever received such diverging reviews in the US and Europe as those handed out to Match Point? It got the living tar kicked out of it in the UK and Ireland, but was praised as a kind of masterpiece in the New World. I recently heard Barry Norman on the radio describing it as the worst ever Woody Allen film.

  Anyway, the pattern was broken somewhat by Midnight in Paris. We weren’t quite so keen on it. But it got pretty good reviews everywhere. Now, we move onto Italy for the film that was first titled The Bop Decameron, then Nero Fiddled and now To Rome With Love.

  We have a trailer. First things first. It is a delight to welcome Allen back as an actor. Even in his worst films, the Woodster raises a laugh. I chuckled out loud at the euro joke in the first few seconds of this promo. The fearsome Judy Davis has fared well in previous Allen projects and looks to offer a good foil to Mr Konigsberg in the new piece. If you object to Woody’s habit of employing younger actors to play versions of himself then you probably gave up on the career years ago. (Kenneth Branagh had a go in the fitful Celebrity. John Cusack played the part in Bullets Over Broadway. Owen Wilson was on hand with the “ums” and “ahs” in Midnight in Paris.) If, however, you’ve got used to the idea then you’ll surely agree that Jesse Eisenberg fits the bill quite nicely. I’ll buy that.

  The most worrying part of the trailer comes with the arrival of the guttural Penelope Cruz. No, no. no. He’s not back with the dubious trope of attaching a coarse, saucy sex worker to an erudite embarrassed intellectual. The joke at 1′ 38″ is among the worst he has ever written. I worry about that. I also worry slightly about experiencing another grossly romaticised version of a European city. That worked in Midnight in Paris because the film was, to some extent, about the notion of idealising cherished places and periods.

  Anyway, on balance, I retain my optimism about Woody Allen. The film may very well turn up at Cannes in May. But, surely, it would make more sense to postpone the June release and premiere it at Venice. That’s in Italy. Isn’t it?

   

• Trailerspotting scowls at The Dictator

  March 4, 2012 @ 10:59 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Am I alone in not finding the trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film particularly hilarious? When I spotted the lady breaking bricks with her bosoms a sudden, terrible realisation hit me. We now think of Sacha as the creator of the (to my mind) outrageously funny Borat and the fitful (but amusing) Bruno. But he also created the extraordinarily terrible Ali G Indahouse. That film really was bad enough to call up, for olders viewers, reminders of the films made from such TV series as On the Buses and Are You Being Served? during the 1970s. Nothing in this promo does anything to disabuse me of the notion that Sacha might be drifting back to the dark side.

  Now, before anybody else says it, I will, once again, allow that you can’t tell all that much from trailers. But it is not unreasonable to expect that, when making such a beast, the producers extract some of their best jokes. Indeed, comedy is the genre whose trailers most often promise more than they can deliver. Remember, also, that the promo for Borat was one of the best ever released. By the time the film emerged, punters were gagging for that Asian loon.

  I hope I’m wrong. But I do not approach the May 11th release with any great enthusiasm

• Trailerspotting ponders Will Ferrrrrrrelllll

  January 20, 2012 @ 10:11 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  It is a completely insecure rule of thumb that any film whose trailer is thigh-slappingly amusing throughout is bound to be a dead loss. But I state that principle anyway. You suspect that the film-makers have panicked and thrown all their best jokes into the promo. One becomes even more suspicious if that film is directed by an alumnus of the consistently dreadful Saturday Night Live. (On an aside, can anybody think of another phenomenon — cherry-flavoured soft drinks aside — that translates so badly when exported across the Atlantic?)

  Anyway, Casa de Mi Padre looks really, really funny. If nothing else, it attracts interest for being a mainstream film shot entirely in Spanish. I love the opening gag that plays very nicely with the visual grammar of standard the melodrama. Will Ferrrellll talks to his lover’s back. Then, when she turns, he turns also. Ferrell is admittedly a bit erratic. His films generate as many groans as laughs. But the picture does feature one of cinema’s most underrated comedians. As a heartthrob, Gael Garcia Bernal is not wanting for admirers. But he doesn’t get enough credit for his exemplary comic timing. If you want evidence check out this fine promo. If you want more extensive proof then rent the superb Rudo Y Cursi, a picture that somehow slipped through the cracks in 2008.

  Can they keep the joke — a pastiche of Mexican telenovelas — running for the full 90 minutes? We should find out in March. Or will we? This has the look of a film that might not get distributed in these territories. That would be a small outrage.

• Trailspotting rubs chin at The Avengers

  October 17, 2011 @ 10:25 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Over the last year, I have made a few smart Aleck comments about The Avengers. Let me just clarify my position. I’m not particularly down on the project. Quite a few of the recent Marvel adaptations — Iron Man and Captain America notably — have been rather nifty and Joss Whedon, who’s helming the project, is a very clever man. He is, of course, the brains behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the super Firefly. What’s been getting me down is the endless sneaky promotion for the thing — all those tedious cameos by Samuel L Jackson, in particular.

  The trailer is a classic of its kind. That is to say it features enough explosions, enough blaring rock music and enough rapid quips. Frankly, you will learn nothing at all from this promo. But who cares? It includes two superb one-liners from the indestructible Robert Downey Jr. “Big man in a suit of armour. Take that away what are you?” Cap asks. “Genius, billionaire, philanthropist,” Bob replies. The one about the Hulk is even better.

  Marvel knows what it’s doing. The trailer for Iron Man generated an enormous amount of buzz. One could argue that it probably earned the film an extra $20 or $30 million.  And that promo was driven by Downey’s dry wit. The film wasn’t bad either. So, who knows? The Avengers could be okay.

  Don’t go away yet. Samuel L Jackson will be along in a moment to say something enigmatic.

• Sue the studios over misleading trailers

  October 11, 2011 @ 10:25 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  You have to love this story about the lady in Michigan who is suing the distributors of Drive for issuing a misleading trailer. Now, in a sense she’s right. If you look at the footage above — I assume this is the relevant clip — you could, indeed, be persuaded that the film features much more action and intrigue than Nicolas Winding Refn actually delivers. The lady said that Drive “bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film … having very little driving in the motion picture”. (She also accused the film of being anti-Semitic, but, even if that were true, this is surely an entirely different issue. Did she want men in white hoods in the promo?)

  But here’s the thing. The film is actually better than the trailer suggests. Rather than being another Fast ‘n’ Furious crash ‘em up, Drive turns out to be a sly, insidious take on the traditions of the existential western (and existential samurai film and existential gangster flick). This is rather like suing Moet and Chandon for serving champagne in a bottle marked “English Sherry”.

  If you have too much time and too much money, you could sue the makers of such films as The Lives of Others or the original Girl With a Dragon Tattoo for issuing trailers that offer no clues those entertainments are not in English. Out there on IMDb, you will find punters complaining that the promo for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy suggests the film is packed with cheap thrills and mindless violence. Why not send a writ to Studio Canal for that outrage? The problem is, of course, that by doing so, you are just advertising your own low-brow inclinations. This film wasn’t dumb enough for me. How dare you force me to read subtitles or puzzle over a plot that doesn’t spell everything out in crayon.

  That said, I am considering taking an action against the makers of the upcoming The Three Musketeers 3D. There’s nothing misleading in the merchandising. But there must, surely, be some law against foisting something so aggressively awful on decent hard-working people who just want a nice evening in the cinema. Mind you, the dread words “Orlando Bloom” do appear on the poster. That offers fair warning.

• Trailerspotting considers J Edgar

  September 20, 2011 @ 10:21 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Okay, let’s get the most obvious complaint out of the way first. Where’s the footage of Leonardo DiCaprio prancing around in a pink frock shouting “Chase me! Chase me!”? Seriously! I know that the stories about J Edgar Hoover’s cross dressing are often dismissed as urban myth, but this is one of those myths that all decent people will — noting the galloping ironies — stubbornly choose to believe.

  Oh, never mind. Old Clint Eastwood is a strange film-maker . As everybody knows, he famously just points the camera at the actors and, as long as it doesn’t fall over, does little else until until the bell goes for tea time. No criticism is intended. Sometimes he ends up with a film as fine as High Plains Drifter or Gran Torino. We can forgive thim the odd Firefox.

  Scored to Max Richter’s oft-trailered November (almost certainly not in the film), this promo doesn’t do a great job of allaying suspicions that we’re dallying in HBO territory. As is too often the case with such back-of-an-envelope psych assessments, the origins of the patient’s difficulties look to concern his relationships with hizzz mozzer. Given that the old lady is played by nice Judi Dench, this seems most implausible. Then again, maybe it’s Judi Dench out of Notes on a Scandal. Ooo! We forgive you Edgar.

  My real problem with this is DiCaprio. I don’t mind him so much in the early scenes. Just as we’ve got used to seeing the young Henry VIII in recent years — avast trim Rhys Meyers! — we should, perhaps, remember that Edgar was once as fresh and beautiful as your current correspondent. But the later fat stuff looks really dodgy. Is that make up or is it digital jiggery pokery? Either way it doesn’t seem terribly state of the art.

  As always, we clarify that it’s just a trailer. But I still need convincing that this is going to work. We won’t see it until January 20th. Thanks, Hollywood.

• Trailerspotting handbags The Iron Lady

  July 10, 2011 @ 10:31 pm | by Donald Clarke

  We’re not really giving it a handbagging. We’re merely expressing a few reservations. Look, I understand that it’s outrageous to offer any meaningful assessment of an upcoming project on the basis of a teaser trailer. But I am, nonetheless, going to go even further than that. I’m going to criticise one insignificant gesture. The subject under discussion is Phyllida Lloyd’s impending The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as the titular Prime Minister. Here’s that teaser:

  

  Roger Allam turns up as Gordon Reece, the PR wonk who honed that fearsome image, giving Mrs Thatcher a few tips on how to deport herself. Nicholas Farrell — uncredited so far, but surely playing a version of Tim Bell — offers supplemental advice from the sidelines. While the music from (of all things) Moon plays in the background, they discuss hats, pearls and vocal pitch. Then Thatcher speaks.

  It hardly needs to be said that Streep has the voice down to a (hem, hem) Mrs T. There’s just the right hint of vague, midlands-based social mobility. She’s not quite posh. But she’s certainly not working-class. Ms Streep looks a little bit too glossy and well-fed, but we can’t blame her for being raised in a wealthier, less rationed nation than wartime Britain. After all, Streep didn’t look much like a concentration camp inmate in Sophie’s Choice either.

  The problem for me comes at 42″ with that wry, ironic smirk. If we know anything about Mrs Thatcher it is that she has almost no sense of humour and that she was about as home to irony as she was to militant Trotskyism. The implication is that she finds the creation of La Thatcher a bit of a lark. No first-hand accounts of the grocer’s daughter suggest that any such levity would be forthcoming.

  Still, as I say, it is madly unfair to draw any serious conclusions from this wee clip. We’ll have to wait to stupid January to see the completed project. If Streep doesn’t get an Oscar nomination I’ll eat a bucket of sand.

• Trailerspotting has chickens over Tinker Tailor

  July 1, 2011 @ 10:01 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  It’s here everybody. It’s here! The very first teaser trailer for Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has made it into cyberspace. This writer has not tired of boring you about his enthusiasm for John Le Carré’s great spy novel and for the BBC TV series that it generated. So, it hardly needs to be said that Screenwriter is — despite all his objections to overly faithful adaptations — somewhat protective of the source materials. Well, this is only a taster promo, but you must admit that it doesn’t look half bad. The atmosphere seems sufficiently muggy. The cast all look suitably miserable. It is often the case that the music used on trailers is culled from other sources. I don’t recognise the screeching chords used here, but they certainly do the business very nicely. If you know it from elsewhere then please do not hesitate to spill the beans.

  Look, there’s no way around it. I often give out about internet-bound maniacs objecting to supposed changes in beloved texts. But the Tinker Tailor fan is bound to ponder — not necessarily complain about — alterations from book and TV series. The first thing to observe is that very few of the lines seem directly lifted from Le Carré. Of course, they are plucking phrases that tell the story succinctly, but it would be nice if somebody said “There are three of them and Alleline”. It is also interesting that — though Gary Oldman’s Smiley does get to stand in a peeling kitchen — the film (as is often the case with films) seems more suavely designed than the series. Look, for example, at the Circus meeting round about 38″.  In the series they were (probably quite accurately) sitting in a sparse, starkly painted space that looked rather like the waiting room for a provincial dentist. The current suspects get to bicker in a stylish basement with insulated walls.

  Real nuts will note some slight changes in plot. The fact that Jim Prideaux — in the ubiquitous form of Mark Strong — is clutching a rifle signifies a tiny tweaking of the film’s last act. (No spoilers there I hope.)  More significantly, Ricky Tarr’s meeting with the Russian operative Irina — who alerts the agency to the threat — takes place neither in Lisbon (the series) nor in Hong Kong (the book), but in the busy streets of Istanbul. The BBC couldn’t afford to send Hywel Bennett to the far east for the classic serial. It looks as if the movie’s producers have been able to stretch a little further and get Tom Hardy to the western edges of Asia.

  I could go on, but I’d run the risk of disappearing completely into the darkest jungles of Sadville.

  One quick revelation. I can announce that, just last week, I got to talk to Gary Oldman about the movie. Annoyingly (and most unusually) the distributors were not able to show me the film beforehand. Also, the substance of the interview is strictly embargoed until shortly before release date. But I’m sure I won’t be told off for revealing that Gary was quietly raving about the piece. I suppose he wouldn’t do anything else. But he seemed fairly sincere.

  Before going, I will allow myself one more personal indulgence. I mentioned in one of my several hundred posts on this subject, that the opening shot of the series appeared to have been filmed from a building in which I used to work. Ben Campbell, an ex-colleague and occasional commentator in this place, confirmed that this was almost certainly the case. If you’re out there, old man, answer me a question. Are Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones standing next to the The Palace Theatre’s roof at 13″? It could be. Couldn’t it?

• Trailerspotting on A Dangerous Method

  June 23, 2011 @ 8:22 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Which film are you looking forward to the most this year? Readers will be aware that Screenwriter is eagerly anticipating Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But the prize for most promising feature might just go to David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Cronenberg has long been a student of Sigmund Freud, so a film detailing the relationship between that still controversial figure and eccentric, semi-crackpot C J Jung is surely an intriguing one.

  The trailer scares up mixed emotions. As we have said a thousand times, such promos rarely tell you anything worth knowing about the quality of the film. Quite often a promotional silk purse is made from a festering sow’s lughole. I half suspect that the opposite is the case here. Fan my oxters and mop my brow. They really are selling the thing as some sort of careering romp. Viggo Mortensen is characteristically solemn as Freud. Our own Michael Fassbender is sinister as Jung. All well and good. But with all that spanking, all that pounding music (probably not from the film) and all that breathless dialogue, the trailer comes across like an advertisement for a particularly vivid Victorian melodrama. Watch out Russian Keira Knightley. If you’re not careful, Professor Jung will tie you to the train tracks while twirling his moustache.

  I wouldn’t be too fearful. We can trust Mr Cronenberg. Few film-makers of his generation have done such a fine job of maturing gracefully. The creepy wizard of trangression who made early exercises in revulsion such as Shivers and The Brood still shows his face from time to time. But the older Cronenberg has, with cracking films such as History of Violence and Eastern Promises, shown himself to be a master of the steady build. The casting all seems pretty sound — Knightley is at her best when fragile — and the screenplay is by the bright (if erratic) Christopher Hampton.

  It is, perhaps, surprising that we haven’t had more Freud on film. He was in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He turned up in that diverting Sherlock Holmes variation The Seven Percent Solution. Montgomery Clift played him in an interesting biopic by John Huston. And then, of course, there were his dog food commercials. Hang on. Do I have this right?

  

• Ho Hum, it’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

  June 5, 2011 @ 7:52 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I suppose the time has come for Trailerspotting to address the promo for David Fincher’s upcoming adaptation of Stieg Larsson‘s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. We don’t get to see the film until Christmas, but enough has been shot for Mr Fincher to issue an undeniably nifty teaser trailer. If I hadn’t seen the original picture this would — despite the fact that teasers tell you nothing about the forthcoming product — have got me modestly excited about Finchy’s take on the Scandinavian detective tale. I have never really “got” Trent Reznor and that mumbly Karen O from the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs drives me positively barmy (Oh Lord, that horrible up-itself soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are), but their take on Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song proves to be a quite satisfactory accompaniment to a film that seems, on this evidence, to be a sub-Arctic version of The Dark Knight. Look at it. James Bond runs through the woods while your one out of The Social Network speeds on her bike and the indomitable Christopher Plummer lurks sinisterly in the shadows. Hang on. It’s Stellan Skarsgård. Why, the only person more at home to entertaining scenery chewing is Steven Berkoff. There he is! It’s Berko! This is bound to be a lot of fun.

  Yeah, maybe. I haven’t read the book, but, on the evidence of Niels Arden Oplev’s Swedish take on the tome, the text comprises yards of endless exposition loosely bolted to a detective plot that — until the second of its eight endings — would have worked modestly well for an episode of Inspector Morse. The Scandinavian film wasn’t bad. But it didn’t exactly break any new ground.  Now, you couldn’t say that about the sequels. The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest were so smothered in uninteresting plot that they ended up seeming vaguely experimental. And let’s not get started on the dubious representations of sexual violence and the dated, bourgeois notions of what constitutes outsiderdom (oh, that crazy Lisbeth with her “punk” hairdo and, good grief, tattoos).

  Anyway, if, when Fincher’s film is released, folk start going on about how the stupid American version cannot compare with the more intelligent, more subtle Swedish picture then I will take to screaming crazily at the uninterested clouds. I mean, obviously, it might be a worse film. We currently know nothing worth knowing. But there really was nothing big or clever about the Nordic version. Just because it’s in Swedish doesn’t mean it’s Cries and Whispers.

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