Top Ten Films

In the tradition of Sight and Sound's top ten films of all-time lists, I have decided to come up with one of my own. So, in no particular order, my top ten films of all time:

Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Heat (Michael Mann)
Angel Heart (Alan Parker)
Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
This is England (Shane Meadows)
Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
Once Upon A Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci)

Down with Hollywood!

Long live British Social Realism!

The Genius of Photography (and ways it puts holes in your pockets)

Ok, so I'm sat in the library on campus contemplating whether or not the wide-angle lens I've just bought from eBay was actually necessary. Well, no it wasn't and yes it was. No because I can't really afford it and don't really need it, and yes because it wasn't that expensive and I do really need it. I blame television.

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Last night I watched one of the programs in a series called The Genius of Photography. It's one of them historically-informative documentaries, this one charting the beginnings of said technology and it's subsequent developments over the last 150 years or so. This particular chapter talked about the period between the 1950's and 1970's, including street photography and the use of colour photographs as 'art' as opposed to commercial uses.

Seeing the photographs of Stephen Shore and Toby Ray Jones for example, inspired me to get up out of my seat right there and then and go out and snap people. Well, it was like night and stuff so I didn't. But seeing that programme last night and seeing these photos made me want to run out in the street and shoot....

Actually, I haven't at all thought this blog entry through and I don't really know what I'm trying to say. Basically I'm planning on taking my camera everywhere from now on and I needed a wide-angle lens to evolve my photos more to include 'the bigger picture', and not a condensed image that a 50mm lens offers. 28mm is the 50mm in my camp. Street photography would be so much simpler.

This Short Film is called It's About Bloody Time!

I've been too slack with this blog lately. It's not so much that I don't have the Internet (although that's a factor), it's more to do with the fact I have nothing to write about. Pretty much nothing has gone on in my life since the last post, apart from starting back at Uni and Suzy moving in with me. I did go to Amsterdam a few weeks back though, for the day.

Every so often I get the urge and motivation to do a project of some sort. Whether it be a bit of photography or an idea for a script. This time it's a short film. It's something I've been playing with for about four years, and it was probably four years ago I last thought of making one.

The inspiration behind this urge of creativity is Lars Von Trier. Recently I have rewatched Dancer in the Dark, as well as watching Epidemic, and Images of a Relief, and it's inspired me to want to pick up my DV camera and shoot something.

My idea is to mix documentary-style reality with filmic, story-driven characters - in the way that Von Trier did in Epidemic, which tells the story of two screenwriters writing a movie about a plague (shot in a Dogme, documentary-style), intercut with scenes from the movie they are writing, which is shot in dreamy, filmic style by Henning Bendtsen with overdubbed sound. I would be shooting with a DV camera but using a proper microphone to capture sound and dubbed it over in editing, so it gives it an unusal quality. I would probably use red lighting too.

Whether I will or not remains to be seen. I lose motivation quite quickly when I think to myself I won't be able to make the film I have in my head quite the way it should be made. I'm either a perfectionist, or just plain lazy. Hopefully it's the first reason.

Movies That Could Have Been, Part One

Blood Diamond

Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan star in this true-story of Africa’s bloody diamond trade. Danny Archer (Chan) goes on the hunt to retrieve a particularly huge diamond with Solomon Vandy (Tucker), after the latter buried it whilst working as a slave for the rebel army, RUF, following his son’s kidnapping by said revolutionaries. Steve Carrel’s military colonel, meanwhile, is also after the diamond to bring into the hands of the government.

Cue hilarious, but clichéd buddy-flick consequences. In one sequence, whilst Vandy is seducing the rebel leader’s chick in a mud hut, Archer is busy dealing with over one hundred bad guys outside with his handy set of nunchucks – with some clever editing, each of the girl’s moans are matched with Chan’s vicious blows.


The Terminator

With first-choice Paul Reubens (AKA Pee-Wee Herman), out of the picture due to anal-bleeding, James Cameron reluctantly decided to cast aging Oscar-winner Sidney Poitier in the role of the cyborg killing-machine in this blaxploitation-come-MTV-style-video. Poitier is sent back in time to assassinate the mother of John Connor, the leader of a future war between humans and tin cans. Sarah Connor (Grace Jones) is forced to abandon her everyday life as a call-girl, and go on the run with Prince-wannabee, Kyle ‘The Cool Cat’ Reese, ironically played by Prince. Although even before you could say ‘Gimmemymoneybackyousonofabitchbeforeislugyouinthechops’, there was tension on-set. Reports that Poitier accused Grace of being a ‘n****r lover’ caused her to walk off the movie for a fortnight, thus halting production. It was then said that Prince wouldn’t come out of his dressing-room until every cast member wore at least one of his custom-designed winklepickers during shooting.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Forget Jim Carrey and Monica Cox-Arquette-Cox-Arquette, think Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Hanks plays the role of the pet-dick like he would later play one of his most memorable characters, Forrest Gump – like a lovable buffoon. Down-on-his-luck and fired from his job as a golf caddy, Ace Ventura sets up a pet detective agency, finding lost or stolen pets (or your money back). That is, until Meg Ryan’s Melissa Robinson shows up, and the sad-sack falls in love whilst on his hottest case yet. It’s all pretty shit until the final reel, when Ace rides bareback, literally, on a horse all the way to New York City to halt Melissa’s wedding to a landscape gardener. He doesn’t actually retrieve many lost or stolen pets in the entire movie, and when he does he eats them with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Still Life in Mobile Phones

No mobile phone, no home phone, no Internet, no television - I may as well be sitting cross-legged and blindfolded in the middle of the Sahara desert, constantly shouting ‘nar nar nar’ with my fingers in my ears. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve shelled out another £45 in train fare to Hull, which is twice in a week (not that boredom is the only reason).

My phone should have come back to me in Lancaster this morning, which it hasn’t, so as I’m on my way to the other side of the Pennines, my phone should be arriving back in Lancashire tomorrow. That is, unless it’s gone forever, lost in the mail system until the end of time, or until the Royal Mail employee who nicked it realises it isn’t worth two-bob and chucks it in the dog bowl to be chewed on by Fido. So, no phone for at least another three days.

I’ve found it almost completely devastating in not having this small, communicable device in the last two days alone. It’s not that I use it that much anyway unless I’m receiving calls, but it’s the security that comes with it. It is also the fact that it’s a way of telling the world you are available, whether it be for drinks at your local, or a sympathetic ear for your dumped best-mate.

I can remember a time, four or five years ago in college to be exact, that I was the only Neanderthal not to have a mobile phone. In a year meeting one day, a tutor asked those who do not yet own a mobile phone to put their hand up – no one did. Not even me. I wasn’t going to put my hand up and admit it, like being the kid in school whose complete uniform had been handed down from his older brother (mine was new by the way). Those were happy days. Days when you didn’t necessarily need a mobile to function in everyday society. Having a mobile in this new millennium is as essential as say, eating or breathing. And that's just wrong.

Remake That Genuinely Would Be Amazing, Part One

North by Northwest

Instead of choking on your sausage roll at the thought of remaking such a classic film, put it down and imagine this: a fast-paced, edgy thriller from a competent action director (Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93)) and two huge, young actors (Di Caprio and Rachel McAdams). Not to mention Brian Cox in the James Mason role. The script could be written by the guys who wrote Casino Royale (Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, and Robert Wade).