Cinephilia

Wong doings

Wong Kar-wai is a tall guy.  Most photos show him nonchalantly slumped in a director's chair, trademark shades on whatever the light conditions (thankfully he has Chris Doyle or more recently Darius Khondji on hand for those visuals), so you can't gauge just how tall he is.

But, Wong stands a lanky 6ft, and it was this tall frame that strolled onto the stage at the NFT London last week.  The appearance had been confirmed nary a week earlier with tickets selling out faster than

Glastonbury

.  And yes, he was wearing sunglasses indoors, and managed to make it look cool.   

Over 100 minutes, Wong and interviewer/friend/devil's advocate Richard Jobson traced the director's career from a writer on early cops and robbers movies to his recent Cannes-opener My Blueberry Nights, which is also Wong's first English language film (and hasn't survived the translation if some reports are to be believed). 

But, this wasn't a night for recent rubbish reviews.  Wong Kar-wai is the director of such classic films as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love and the little-seen Ashes of Time.  In near fluent English he conversed on a variety of topics from John Woo and Martin Scorsese's influence on his debut movie As Tears Go By, to shooting in Argentina for Happy Together (the producers weren't pleased with the scuzzy locations he sniffed out) to his Kubrickian shooting schedules (In the Mood for Love shot for fifteen months, and a completely different film could be made from the outtakes).

Given that his films concentrate on loss, regret and wasted opportunities Wong himself was a convivial speaker, brimming with praise for his collaborators (actress Gong Li can "hold" the camera i.e., fix it with a look, for as long as you please without breaking character, Chris Doyle is cripplingly shy but drinks himself sociable), and showed no signs of fatigue after almost two hours talking.

Highlight of the evening must be the news that Ashes of Time's negative has been released from the vaults after years of legal wrangling, and Wong is currently re-mixing the sound, presumably for a re-release.  Too long unseen apart from on a shoddily transferred Hong Kong DVD; this could be the year's most exciting news.  Keep this in mind if My Blueberry Nights really does put the why into Wong Kar-wai.

Rob Daniel

The New Joker?

They say this is the new Joker, soon to be seen in Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight.

Looks like the bad guy in Manhunter to me.

The UK Top Ten

Judging by the laugh-free stinkers occupying rungs 5 to 8 of this week's ladder, it appears that the global comedy famine has reached these shores. Analysts are advising British cinema-goers to stay indoors and turn on the cricket as the blight continues with next week's American Pie knock-off Wedding Daze to be followed by an excruciating outbreak of sequelitis in Ice Cube's Are We Done Yet?

1. Spider-Man 3 - Sam Raimi gets tangled up in his own sticky web of underdeveloped villains, samey set-pieces and the staggeringly uninteresting romance between plonker Peter Parker and wishy-washy Mary-Jane Watson. If you've seen one... play the videogame.

2. 28 Weeks Later - If zombies dismember and devour everyone who gets in their way, how come there are so many of them? Just one question to ask of a movie set in a London that doesn't exist in any A-Z and sees the new Wembley stadium completed in 2001 (it's 28 weeks later, right?).

3. Zodiac - Ironic that the only sign of life in the cinematic graveyard is all about death. David Fincher picks himself up after Panic Room to recreate 1960s/70s San Francisco in all its polyester-and-serial-killer-plagued finery.

4. Bridge To Terabithia - Narna-Narnia, Narna-Narnia; hey hey; good-bye!

5. Magicians - Taking its place alongside Cannon & Ball's Boys In Blue and Smith & Jones' Morons From Outer Space, this national embarrassment sees Mitchell & Webb showing all the comedic qualities of Marks & Spencer.

6. Lovewrecked - Look, American teen non-entities like Amanda Bynes don't just go away by themselves. You have to stop buying tickets to their movies.

7. Wild Hogs - A mid-life crisis caper... pitched at kids. Are we missing something here? John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and Tim Allen deliver all the hilarity you'd expect from them.

8. Mr Bean's Holiday - Blair or no Blair, the fact that 90 minutes of Rowan Atkinson at his least amusing can make nigh-on £22 million at the box office is undeniable proof that there is absolutely no future for this once-proud nation.

9. Next - Nic Cage in an all-action thriller with a hint of sci-fi and Jessica Biel wearing nought but a towel. What could possibly go wrong? Stump up £7 to find out.

10. This Is England - Aw, look at all the cute little skinheads. Despite an excellent first hour, Shane Meadows pulls too many punches with his rose-tinted recollections of the Doc Martin brigade.

Alf sees zombies, and 28 minutes later...

All of a sudden, life int s'bad. Blair's buggered off, global warmin's over, an' God's own county's top cricket team in t'land. I've not been this suited since I found 'alf a crown next t' mother-in-law's coffin.

28 WEEKS LATER
At last, somebody's seen fit ter wipe London offert map. Pity there were nobdi there bar a lorryload o' zombies. What's 'appened is that every bugger what's not a slavverin' cannibal lives in a safe bit o' t'East End (there's irony for thee). Obviously, it all guz crackers cos some bugger put bloody Yanks in charge. Then there's an hour's worth o' folk gerrin shot, burnt an' ripped ter bits. Guts'n'gore all ovver t'shop. Not bad like, but if tha wants ter see real zombies, get thi sen down Elland Road on match day.

ZODIAC
We're no strangers t'serial killers up north (Gail Tilsley marries most of 'em in Corrie), but this Zodiac lad were top dog when it came t'givin' coppers t'runaround. He certainly put kibosh on all that 'free love' claptrap what were goin' on in San Francisco back in t'70s. This is abart 'ow a cop (Mark Buffalo) an' a writer (Jake Haagendaaz) tried ter catch 'im, but there's no 'appy ending cos bugger gorraway scot-free. Still, I've nowt against anyone what keps Yank population in check... an' there's some reet natty shirts on show.

BLACK SNAKE MOAN
I can remember that Christine Ritchie when she were abart ten year auld in t'Addams Family... so it seems all sorts o' wrong t'be watchin' 'er flashin' 'er knockers abart in this barmy pervorama. She's this Tennessee tart what gets chained to a radiator be a bible-bashin' blues bloke, played be Samuel Pulp Fiction. 'E reckons it'll save 'er soul. I reckon it's time fer a walk. Where's me mac?

Strummertime Blues

We like a mouthy, bourbon-swigging rebel here at Cinephilia.

Especially if they're a diplomat's son who lived all over the world and attended a boarding school notable for the amount of pupils who hung themselves.

Not for us some spotty working class oik who gets a bit lippy after donning the ripped T-shirt and safety pin through the earhole look beloved of the Seventies punk revolution.

Nah - we're down with a dude who wrote one the best rocks anthems ever - White Man in Hammersmith Palais - and was never happier than when chewing the fat in his twilight days around a campfire at Glastonbury.

Ladies and gentlemen...we give you Mr Joe Strummer!

Guy Richtoy's TW*T!

Guy Richtoy has made some of the best films of the last hundred years.

Following the critical success of his directorial debut "Lock Stock & Two Barrels of Smoking Monkeys", he met and married the international singing star Madogga but returned to his roots as a cockney villain for his second film "Twat":

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Phillippe Francais culturally dissects 28 Weeks Later

I was violently taken aback (see pic) when I deduced - as you will no doubt concur - that the plot from 28 Weeks Later owes more than a smidgin to the fever that consumed a quarter of the Athenian troops in the Pelloponesian War of 430BC.

This outbreak fatally weakened the dominance of the Greek empire, but the sheer virulence of the disease prevented its wider spread. The exact cause of the plague was unknown for many years. However in January 1967, researchers from the University of Penrith analysed teeth and old copies of The Observer recovered from a mass grave underneath the city and confirmed the presence of Robert Carlyle's spittle.

Idly sauntering (as much as my arthritis will allow) through the National Portrait Gallery, I perchanced upon a preliminary sketch by R Harris of Brisbane. It conveyed - by virtue of a striking use of charcoals - the sheer destructiveness of the Bubonic Plague which cursed Europe in the late 1300s.

Starting in Fishguard the disease reached Mediterranean and western Europe in 1348 (possibly from Italian merchants fleeing fighting in the Crimea. Possibly not.), and killed twenty million Europeans in six years, a quarter of the total population and up to a half in the worst-affected urban areas, particularly the maggot-infested swamp of human despair that is London's East End.

Anyway, to return to the film, I was particularly...(hold it there, Phillippe - Ed)

The UK Top Ten

es They don't give you much credit, do they? The movie makers, I mean. The guys in suits that greenlight movies at studio level. They think you're stupid, so they make sure films are dumb enough for you to understand. They don't greenlight a movie if they don't think you'll get it. The problem I have is, why are you in agreement with them?

1. Spider-Man 3 - So a three-year-old could tell you that a surefire way to screw a movie like this over is to cram it full of characters, the director's kids, a crap British actress and too many repetitive scenes. Raimi apparently didn't have the blueprint to failure handy, else he might have noticed he had f***** up. Bad.

2. Bridge To Terabithia - So, how on Earth did this end up in the top ten? I have a theory... you saw the trailer didn't you? The one with the CGI and the Narnia-like storyline? So when you got in there and found it out required a degree of thought, you must have wondered what the hell you had got into, right? I knew it.

3. Next - Almost anyone who has seen a Nic Cage movie in the last 5 years is asking, "why is he still making movies?" - BECAUSE YOU STILL GO TO SEE THIS CRAP. That's why.

4. Wild Hogs - City Slickers 2 was better than this. Watch Home Improvement again and you'll realise Tim Allen should never even have had a career in the first place. 

5. Fracture - The fact that Anthony Hopkins turns into Father Ted halfway through the didn't bother you too much then?

6. Mr Bean's Holiday - You have direct to video, but this is should have gone direct-to-airplane and stayed there.

7. Blades Of Glory - Put Napoleon Dynamite in lycra and watch the money roll in! It really is that easy for them.

8. Alpha Dog - If it really was any good, they wouldn't have needed to hire Timberlake to get your attention.

9. This Is England - Really? I didn't know it was so suicide-inducingly depressing here.

10. The Painted Veil - This is the cinematic equivalent of being 12 and having to watch your sister's school piano recital.

Phillippe Francais's film de la semaine

Spider-Man 3

Running time: 148m

Certificate: 12A

This week Phillippe detects a post-modernist strand connecting the situationist antics of Peter Parker and the 17th writings of English essayist Joseph Addison. 

Only the most cursory glance at the canon of Addison would fail to register the link between the Charterhouse educated man of letters and Manhattan superhero Spider-Man. Addison was a founder of The Spectator magazine while - as everybody knows - its American counterpart is The Daily Bugle. An old Varsity chum of mine - Samuel Pepys - actually occupied the post of freelance photographer on the Bugle (Latin Buglae) before Parker enjoyed a successful run around the fin de siecle.

Another extraordinary coincidence concerns the origins of Spider-Man's The Sandman, a convict who shared a cell with renowned author and Tory politician Baron Archer of Western-super-Mare. The sharp-eyed and intellectually-astute among you will no doubt have noted the exquisite irony, namely the sands of time running out on Mr Archer's literary career.

In Spider-Man 3 Peter Parker finds... (that's your lot - Ed)

Alf skins up

Aye I know these 'ere reviews are out late doors but wife got inter some bother on a mystery tour at weekend. Bus got t'Scarborough (Len's Mystery Tours allus end up in Scarborough) but she were so busy bungin' 'er bloody pension in t'one-arm bandit, she got left there, the dozy pillock. So muggins 'ere 'ad t'pay fer a Senior Citizens Weekend Apex Standard Supersaver Special Single t'pick 'er up. She'll think on afore doin' it again, mind.

THIS IS ENGLAND
Aye it might be England, but I'm buggered if I know what town this were s'posed t'be. Accents were all over t'place - it were like United Colours O' t'National Front. Any road, I 'eard that it were gonna be a real 'ard-as-nails affair but it were all a bit tea 'n' fairycakes, like. Like Kes wi' crewcuts. It's abart this nipper what falls in wi' a bunch o' spotty 'erberts then meets a proper wrong 'un. Coupla scenes are quite nasty but I reckon it paints too pretty a picture o' skin'eads. I don't care 'ow many reggae records they 'ad, they were nowt but bloody 'ooligans.

NEXT
Not 'appy wi' one dose o' the silly buggers this year, Nicolas Cage 'as follered up Ghost Rider wi' summat even more bloody stupid. He's this magician what can see t'future. Juliet Moore's a miserable FBI agent what thinks 'e can stop a nucular bomb from goin' off. She's terrible, but not as bad as special effects. They're six shade o' shyte. Any road, I'm not sure what's more ridiculous - film or t'director. 'Appen the daft sod got three years' probation fer chattin' up a copper while dressed like a woman. Pity they didn't stop 'im from makin' films fer three years.

THE BREED
There's summat up when Next is only t'second most idiotic film o' t'week. This masterpiece is abart some dozy Yanks what pitch up on a tropical island what's swarmin' wi' mad German Shepherds. An' I don't mean blokes wi' reinforced wellies called Gunther. Bring back Barbara Wood'ouse.