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5th December 2012: Sherlock Holmes and The Spider Woman (Roy
William Neill, 1944)
Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of so-called "pajama
suicides". He knows the female villain behind them is as cunning as
Moriarty and as venomous as a spider. (IMDB)
I’ve seen a couple of these now,
and while they do not really stick in my mind, I wouldn’t mind seeing all the
films in this 40s series of short length adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes
character. This film feels weaker than the others, its mixing of different
stories and plot twists creating a sense of ridiculousness to the film, but at
the same making it feel erratic in nature and liable to fall into drops in
quality during certain scenes. Basil
Rathbone as Holmes does a tremendous job even in this film, and I can’t
help but think there will be people out there who (understandably) view him as
the best actor who played this character. I cannot say the same for Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson, in all the
films I’ve seen hung out to dry by a really irritating decision to make the
character a bumbling old man; he gets a moment to help Holmes in this film thankfully,
but it really comes off as a terrible idea for portraying this very famous
literary character, especially when the jokes fall flat most of the time.
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| From http://indieethos.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/film-socialisme-still-2-image-courtesy-of-wild-bunch.jpeg |
6th December 2012: Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, 2010)
& Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, 2010)
A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise,
numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost
all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger
brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their
childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false
myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona. (IMDB)
What does it mean, what does it
mean? What I had to learn, so I could go from viewing Godard as an overrated director to a great one I admire, is that he
is probably one of the greatest practitioners of improvisation in filmmaking
and that, especially in his later years after Week End (1967), the sense of being overwhelmed by his work is clearly on purpose, where even
what you think is a problem with the actual DVD is actually Godard playing with
the audio and pace of the film to pull you out of your comfort zone and make
the disparity noticeable. First segment of the film is quite obvious in theme,
Europe represented by a cruise ship where nothing has been learnt from an
entire century of war, where a casino can look like a church and, thanks to a
rough camera phone recording, a disco sounds like a bombing raid is taking
place. The third part (possibly a fourth within it too) is continuing his essay
work with Historie(s) du Cinema but
tackling on global issues such as the state of Greece fully, and emphasising
the idea, as in all the parts of the film, of how it’s up to the youth of the current
era to improve the world around them. The second half is a bit more difficult
to fully grasp as it continues Godard’s habit
of not sign-posting clear ideas in his dramas and forcing the viewer to think
for themselves. Even without the infamous Navajo English subtitles, where he
only keeps choices words and makes them almost into abstract poetry, and viewed
with a full translation of the dialogue, his mix of musings coming from the characters
mouths actually can hide and distract the viewer from thinking of the ideas
clearly hidden underneath the dialogue. It is a very free flowing film, certainly
not for everyone, but one wonders if some critics, especially British critic Mark Kermode who viewed it as the worst
thing at that year’s Cannes Film Festival in 2010, were actually willing to be
patient with the film before criticising it or, to be crass but blunt, couldn’t
be arsed to do so going into that first premier of the film.
This criticism came apparent with
the Navajo subtitles which got their infamy from the anger many English film
critics threw at them, Kermode
himself believing that Godard was
purposely trying to alienate English speakers from the film. Godard has major issues with the
dominance of the English language, if you research interviews and quotations of
him online, but the Navajo subtitles are actually far more accessible, especially
compared to the content of the film, than one would believe. Yes, large
subplots and tangents of impossible to catch unless you are bilingual, but
there are other moments where the connections and connotations I made with the
words kept in the subtitles were the exact, if not close to the same, as that
of the full translation of the dialogue and onscreen text, watching the Navajo
English than full translated version of the film one after the other. A third
hybrid of both versions would be interesting to see; the full translation of
some parts of the film is incredibly useful, but the Navajo English subtitles
are for the most part far superior. Godard effectively cuts out the incidental
words needed to make up sentences, and some pointless pieces that do knock the
film down a little in quality, and almost makes a rudimentary system to allow
English speakers to watch foreign films into an elaborate E.E Cummings poem. This is the same with the film itself, the
melding of various different styles of image – cameras on phones, video, the
blisteringly, beautiful colours of an electronic paintbox effect, even YouTube
with a hilarious joke about two cats seemingly being able to communicate –put into
a vast collage with various choices of music with manipulation of both aspects
throughout the running time. It does feel like the creation of a young, first
time director, flawed but effortlessly creative and full of ideas of depth,
which made by a veteran director in his eighties is an intellectual spectacle
that is incredible to see.
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7th December 2012: Mardi Gras Massacre (Jack Weis, 1978)
Police try to capture someone who is commiting ritual murders of women
during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. (IMDB)
Pretty dreadful film from the
Video Nasties list, its main problem is that it has a complete aversion to its
killer plot. Instead it pads out its own length with a subplot between the main
cop character and a prostitute that never goes anywhere, and long drawn out
scenes around the locations or dialogue exposition that means very little to
what you watch. It could have worked in an anti-narrative sort of way unintentionally,
if it wasn’t for the fact that you can feel that few people in front of or behind
the camera have any idea how to push the film onwards. One person who
thankfully did get some inkling of what he should do is William Metzo as John the killer. It’s not just that he goes into
bars asking what women are ‘evil’ or pronounces even his orders to a Chinese
takeaway on the phone in a sinister voice, but that as the following dialogue
is spoken he also includes an elaborately long pause involving a head moment to
the right of the screen....
“This is 6-20 Madison Street, apartment four. I would like you to
deliver an order of shrimp rolls, lobster Cantonese, Char Siu Din....................
[Long Pause to look off screen]....................and a fortune cookie.”
This is also one of those films
that no matter how tedious it can get it is partly saved by having a
legitimately great soundtrack of disco and funk music, cutting through the
tedium of certain scenes including those Metzo
isn’t involved in.
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