#ryan & oliver to give the performance of a lifetime i am here for it!!

[ice-sculptures]

OH OKAY SLEEPOVER TIME. umm. would u rather.....have bucktaylor endgame and for buck and eddie's friendship slowly drift apart.... OR for buck to die in eddie's arms and taylor is never heard from again. sorry love u

hey spencer you are evil for both of these BUT the mere idea of buck and eddie's friendship slowly drifting apart is fr my worst nightmare so give me the dramatic death scene any day!! i'd readily take one of them dying and haunting the other one for life shaunajackie style if the alternative is the two of them becoming strangers. and if it's ANYTHING like the shooting or the well collapse i just know that ryan & oliver would kill it and i would eat every second of it up 🙏🏼

it's a sleepover!!

[ethenell]

Best Films of 2017, Part II

5. Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

“Mere data makes a man … A and C and T and G … The alphabet of you, all from four symbols.”

Making a satisfactory sequel to a widely beloved masterpiece like Blade Runner is a borderline impossible task – the weight of expectation is oftentimes simply too great. In keeping with that wisdom, Blade Runner 2049 is not at all a satisfactory sequel - Luckily for fans of the groundbreaking original, it is much, much more than that. A daringly-conceived blockbuster epic that flies in the face of today’s rapid fire genre filmmaking rulebook, 2049 is the kind of bold, visionary sequel that Blade Runner has always deserved, but most of us lacked the optimism to hope for.

With a gargantuan runtime and an average shot length dwarfing that of the average blockbuster, it’s hard to understate the sheer ambition of what director Denis Villenueve has brought to the screens with 2049. But the true miracle is that the magnitude of 2049’s ambition is matched by its achievement every step of the way, thanks in no small part to the partnership of Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose Oscar-winning work (!!) on 2049 deserves consideration alongside the best of his unparalleled career. Their collaboration is central to the hypnotic mood and texture of the film – a significant departure from that of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film. It would have been easy for Villeneuve and Deakins to replicate the look and feel of the original – many have done it over the years, with varying degrees of success. But rather than do what was easy, they took the original’s oft-imitated cyberpunk world and filtered it through their own creative lens – coming out on the other side with some of the most indelible imagery the year in cinema had to offer. That the film also treads novel thematic territory in the well-worn debate on the existential border between man and machine, cements 2049’s status as one of the all-time great film sequels. 

In keeping with the film’s heavy Tarkovsky influences, Villenueve focuses more on finding the right way to ask the hard questions than on constructing tricky ways to answer the easy ones. But Tarkovsky, as brilliant as he was, never made a film that looked anything like this. It’s with this delicate marriage of grand imagery and even grander ideology that Villinueve has defied the odds and done what most thought was impossible … He’s made a brilliant follow-up to an undisputed masterpiece.

In doing so, he just might have made one of his own.

4. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

- Lady Bird. Is that your given name?

- Yeah.

- Why is it in quotes?

- I gave it to myself. It’s given to me, by me.

All too often, authenticity in filmmaking is synonymous with directorial transparency - passive camera and observational direction have become the du jour techniques to achieve a realist aesthetic. But there is a special authenticity to crafting a film that fully and authentically inhabits a specific point of view. Greta Gerwig’s splendid semi-autobiographical debut Lady Bird is just such a special film. Far from being passive and observational, Gerwig’s distinctive voice as an actress transitions beautifully behind the camera as she bottles up all the emotional tumult of high school and unleashes it through a powerhouse performance from one of cinema’s best young actresses.

Though a realistic Oscar push never quite developed, Soairse Ronan has now delivered two performances more than worthy of the honor - at 23, she is already far overdue for greater recognition. As Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, she works in perfect harmony with Gerwig to deliver big-time laughs and well-earned tears while casting even the most tired coming-of-age tropes in a fresh new light. And, while it’s not clear whether it’s even possible to steal the show from a performer of Ronan’s caliber, leave it to the reliable character actress Laurie Metcalf to give it her best shot. Her big-hearted but overly-critical mother is career-best work that often serves as the film’s emotional backbone. She’s the perfect foil to Ronan’s bursting-at-the-seams teenage rebel, and their fraught relationship is the crux of Gerwig’s film.

The best thing that can be said about Lady Bird – and there are more than a few great things to say – is that it simply rings true. It’s earnest portrayal of a young girl clashing against the boundaries of her world, and herself captures something deeply true about the contradictions of young adulthood. Despite it’s modest packaging, Lady Bird is a genuinely moving and supremely confident debut, bursting with creative ambition and boasting immaculately-realized characters expressing ideas that resonate with audiences beyond the film’s pointedly narrow scope. If that’s not the sign of a brilliant filmmaker, then I don’t know what is.

 3. Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

“Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.“

On the heels of Moonlight’s stunning Best Picture win, few would have expected another masterpiece of LGBTQ cinema to emerge so quickly. But the consensus best film from the Sundance Film Festival’s 2017 iteration was just such an effort. Luca Guadagnino’s entry to the festival was immediately pegged as one of its more buzzed-about titles. His previous two films, 2009’s I Am Love and 2015’s A Bigger Splash - both featuring characteristically excellent performances from Tilda Swinton, with the latter boasting a very uncharacteristically off-the-walls and thoroughly underappreciated turn from Ralph Fiennes - established Guadanigno as a premiere actor’s director. But Call Me By Your Name showcased a newly-subdued directorial style, giving his impressive cast of players even more room to shine.

On this note, it’s hard not to point to Guadignino’s pairing with 2017 breakout Timothee Chalamet as a gift of fate. Working with Guadanigno, Chalamet is revelatory. He delivers a performance with nuance and complexity far beyond his years. As the film follows Chalemet’s Elio finding first love, he projects confidence only to be betrayed by moments of utter vulnerability, hitting those extremes – and every note in between – with absolute perfection. In this year’s Best Actor category, Gary Oldman had the perfect industry narrative, but Chalamet gave the most deserving performance – no one will ever convince me otherwise. Surrounding Chalamet’s masterful work is a stellar ensemble, of which Michael Stuhlbarg is the clear standout. In hands-down the best moment in the year of film, Stuhlbarg delivers a monologue for the ages with his voice hardly rising above a whisper. His is an absolutely brilliant performance that, like most of his unerringly impressive character work, has been criminally ignored.

Call Me By Your Name is destined to join the ranks of the all-time great LGBT romances, but it’s thematic reach and the appeal of its characters are universal. It’s a masterpiece of storytelling that perfectly captures hesitant intimacy blossoming into the kind of love that burns bright and leaves marks that last a lifetime. Guadagnino guides us gracefully through the tender connection at the film’s center without sacrificing the complexity of Elio and Oliver’s emotional journeys. These moments of self-discovery – and discovery of a part of yourself in another – are never straightforward endeavors, but Guadagnino’s warm camera conjures the melancholic beauty in every intricate detail as though he’s recalling a fond memory. Times like these call for films as tender, earnest, and full-hearted as Call Me By Your Name. It’s unmissable.

2. Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan)

“You can practically see it from here ...

What?

... Home.”

Leave it to Christopher Nolan, who already revolutionized the superhero movie, to produce a war film unlike any I’ve ever seen. Like Saving Private Ryan before it, Dunkirk throws out the playbook and finds great power outside the bounds of convention. An absolute masterclass in structure and formal editing – in many ways more ambitious even than the groundbreaking structure of Nolan’s grandiose mindbender, Inception – Dunkirk juggles three different storylines, all of which occur over different timeframes, until they all converge in a breathlessly tense climactic sequence. Weaving these threads effectively is a gargantuan task, but Nolan proves himself more than up to the challenge.

From a directorial perspective, Dunkirk is not far removed from Nolan’s previous efforts. His precise technical command and vision for spectacular set-pieces is nearly unmatched in modern studio filmmaking – but this isn’t news for anyone who’s familiar with his previous work. Where Dunkirk improves dramatically over Nolan’s previous efforts – particularly his more uneven films, like Interstellar and The Prestige – is on the page.

One of the biggest knocks against Nolan as a filmmaker has always been his over-reliance on expository dialogue. (Honestly, how many different perfunctory monologues did it take for him to explain Inception’s dream-within-a-dream structure? Or wormhole travel in Interstellar?) So how did he respond when writing Dunkirk? With a ruthless editorial pen, he chipped away at each bit of dialogue until all that remained were the truly essential elements. The result is the most sparse film of Nolan’s career – it also happens to be the best.

Even with the lack of dialogue Nolan’s cast is given to deliver – or perhaps precisely because of it – Dunkirk is filled with memorable ensemble performances. Cillian Murphy’s shellshocked sailor, Tom Hardy’s steely, resilient pilot, Mark Rylance’s calmly resolved civilian, and yes, even Harry Styles’ fearfully cruel foot soldier, all leave a lasting impression despite limited screen time. It’s a testament to the efficacy to the show-don’t-tell philosophy when embraced by a director as immensely talented as Nolan.

Filling in the gaps is composer extraordinaire Hans Zimmer’s droning score, which might very well be the best, most thematically effective work of his career. Propelling and underlying the cacophonous atmospherics is the simple tick of a clock – so ubiquitously present that you only notice it when it suddenly drops away. It’s a simple gambit that makes for one of the most thrilling moments of the cinematic year. Without Zimmer’s score, it never would have materialized. His work elevates the film – there’s no greater compliment that a composer can be given.

Like The Dark Knight before it, Christopher Nolan has also crafted Dunkirk to be uniquely resonant in the present geopolitical landscape. It’s a morally resolute film, firm in its assertion that certain battles are worth fighting and unambiguously optimistic about the willingness capacity of good people to do so, no matter the cost. It’s an empowering message, harkening back to a day when Western civilization was left with no choice but to do away with equivocations and rise up to face an unambiguously evil force at work in the world. As we see hints and shadows of that same fascistic ideology re-emerging in our present politics, Dunkirk reminds us that we are capable of defeating it, but only at a terrible cost.

1. Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

“Kiss me my girl, before I’m sick.”

With each subsequent entry to his already-legendary filmography, Paul Thomas Anderson further stakes his claim as American cinema’s greatest living auteur. His latest, Phantom Thread marks a particularly fascinating step along his journey to filmmaking greatness. As with all of Anderson’s films, there’s more to Phantom Thread than initially meets the eye. What initially appears to be a peculiar period romance slowly reveals itself to be a devilishly subversive take on power dynamics and love. The film’s austerity and elegance belie it’s prickly subtext, but (of course) it is this exact contradiction that makes Phantom Thread so damn interesting ... There’s not a film this year that has more frequently occupied my thoughts.

In what is reportedly his final role, Danial Day-Lewis is as impressive as ever, doing away with the towering theatrics of his best-known performances (there’s hardly a hint of Daniel Plainview or Bill the Butcher, here) in favor of the meticulous character work that initially brought him to critical esteem. In his hands, Woodcock’s cartoonish mannerisms feel thoroughly organic with nary a false beat to be found, while bringing Anderson’s words to life with extraordinary skill. Lines that could feel like throwaways to another actor take on legendary status as delivered by Day-Lewis. If it is indeed the final time that he will be gracing our screens, then he’s picked a finale befitting his storied career.

As if taking cues from his star and uncredited co-writer, P.T. Anderson directs his latest masterpiece with an uncharacteristically gentle hand. Thrown to the wayside is the visionary flash and technically prodigious camerawork that defined his earlier greats. Instead, Anderson hones in on his unmatched sense for interweaving character and theme and lets his actors the heavy lifting in largely still frames. Unsurprisingly, the results are brilliant, the product of an assured and confident master working at the very height of his powers while refusing to lean on his past successes.

But while the continued collaboration of Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis sits at the center of any assessment of Phantom Thread, it’s greatness is often solidified by the masterful contributions outside of this titanic duo. Another frequent PTA collaborator, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, turns in his best work since his groundbreaking score for There Will Be Blood. His lush piano work and elegant strings match the film’s beats to perfection, rooting out its subtleties and amplifying them beautifully. And Day-Lewis’ co-star, the previously unknown Hungarian actress Vicky Krieps, may well be the most exciting discovery of the year. Acting alongside Daniel Day-Lewis must seem a daunting task to even the most experienced of thespians, but Krieps fearlessly matches him step for step.

Phantom Thread, though it’s the director’s most austere film to date, is a P.T. Anderson film, through and through. By that I mean that it’s deeply strange and continually surprising, but ultimately narrows its gaze on something uncomfortably and fundamentally true about our common human condition. It’s gorgeously made and subtly provocative cinema from a virtuoso filmmaker … What more could you ask for?

[bloggerblagger]

78) A lifetime’s secret revealed at last.

I have a confession to make. Something I have bottled up for 50 years and more. One of those dirty secrets that dare not speak its name.  Stand by to be shocked.

I. Like. Musicals.

There. I’ve said it. Phew..blimey….you just don’t know what a relief that is.

And now that I’ve finally got that much out, I’d better get it all off my chest.

When I was seventeen, the film of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, ‘The Sound of Music’ came out - to coin a phrase - and I went to see it about five times. At least.

I remember going on my own to the Regent Cinema  by the Clock Tower in Brighton to revel in my guilty pleasure. I had a crush on Charmian Carr, who played the eldest Von Trapp  daughter, Lisl - as in ‘I am sixteen, going on seventeen’.

It was the beginning of the end of the era of the musical and people of my generation were definitely not supposed to like them. They represented everything that the baby boomers were determined to reject.

It was 1965, and the Beatles and Stones and Dylan were all up and running - and I with them. In 1964, my last year at Brighton Grammar School,  I used to sit next to a chap called Phil Sutton for GCE history and most ‘lessons’ were spent arguing about whether the Stones or the Beatles were better. He was an early Stones fan, I was with the Beatles. At the time it seemed impossible, but I was living proof it was possible to like both  ‘she was just seventeen, well, you know what I mean’ AND ‘you are sixteen going on seventeen’.

Not that I would ever had admitted that to Phil.

The wilderness years.

At best, musicals  were thought us of camp and quaint. At worst, as silly and saccharine and hopelessly out of date, and, damned to hell by that most scathing of put-downs - uncool.

Although fast withering on the vinyl, it wasn’t quite the end of the musical. At least two of the very best came after -  ‘Oliver’, 1968, and ‘Cabaret’ 1972. And every so often, there was an exception  to the rule that musicals were cinematic history -  ‘Chicago’, ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, ‘Sweeney Todd’, ‘Mama Mia’ come to mind. (Though ‘Mama Mia’, because it was a juke-box musical,  doesn’t really count for me.)

There were, too, Milos Forman’s version of  ‘Hair’, a film that seems to have been largely forgotten but which I remember as liking a lot; and ‘Fame’ and ‘Evita’ which had their moments; and ‘Grease’ which was a million times repeated joy for my daughter if not for me; and, more recently, ’Les Miserables’ which, with its silly operatic pretensions and monotonous dirgey music proved there is always an an exception to every rule - it was the one musical I really, really didn’t take to.

But when you consider the vast number of films pumped out in the nearly half a century since the sixties,  the musical as a Hollywood species, if not exactly endangered, was rarely spotted, and, during that long winter, those of us who secretly loved them have had to be very, very  careful not to be caught saying so for fear of being thought of as crazy or weird or worse, gay. (For a bloke, admitting to  liking musicals has been particularly difficult. They have been seen not just as unfashionable, but almost unmanly.)

Click here to drop jaw.

But adore them I secretly did. My absolute favourite piece of film ever is Donald O’Connor singing ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ from ‘Singin’ In The Rain’. Pure untrammelled genius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SND3v0i9uhE  I defy you to watch this and not be awestruck. I have counted only nine ‘cuts’ in this piece of film of well over four minutes of the most complicated, intricate dancing and slapstick comedy. I wonder what it must have been like to have been there on the set to witness, ‘live’, such astonishing virtuosity.

Watch too, the movement of the camera - panning along, tracking in and out,  jibbing up and over. Each movement must have involved several people working on camera equipment much cruder than we have today; everything and everyone as perfectly and painstakingly rehearsed as the performance they were shooting. And then these two halves - performers on one side of the camera and crew on the other - fitting together to make a seamless, stunning whole.

‘My Fair Lady’, ‘West Side Story, ‘Damned Yankees’, and all those Fred and Ginger musicals on telly, I lapped them all up. And  I always loved almost any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical - ‘Oklahoma’, ‘Carousel’, ‘South Pacific’. At the heart of any musical has to be the music and the music was magical. ‘Oh What a Beautiful Morning’, ‘June is Busting Out All Over’, ‘Surrey with the Fringe on Top’, ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’…To me, they are all gems, wonderful hummable tunes with with witty, tricky lyrics that fit that them so perfectly they feel as though there could never have been any alternative.

And every so often the songs in musicals are are more than just hummable and witty;  they can, occasionally, be truly profound. Not for the first time in BloggerBlagger I refer you to the scarily stirring and simultaneously horrifying ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ from Cabaret. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co

La La Land to the rescue.

Despite all this great stuff,  for all these years it simply   hasn’t been okay to admit to being a fan of the musical.

I remember going to the NFT not so long ago to see a screening of ‘Kiss Me Kate’, Cole Porter’s 1953 work of wonder. (If you think I am exaggerating check out ‘Brush up your Shakespeare’ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPduoU826ew) Post modern irony was all the rage and I got really hacked off at a couple of smart-arses sitting behind me who were clearly of the mind that it was okay to laugh at the film but not with it. Twats, I thought, pathetic.

But the truth is I was no better than the rest. That I have framed this piece as a confession, albeit supposedly ironically,  is proof of that.

And, of course, what gives me permission to now confess is ‘La La Land’. Suddenly it seems post-modern irony is dead and in post-post-modernism it is okay to admit to liking a musical. The musical is, believe it or not, almost cool.

I say ‘almost’ because I think some of the supposed backlash to the critical enthusiasm for ‘La La Land’ has been the reaction of people who can’t quite get their heads around the idea that, after decades of being programmed to dismiss musicals as being embarrassingly passé,  they are now supposed to embrace them.

Not that I am without the odd nagging doubt myself. Although, broadly speaking,  I liked ‘La La Land’, and  grateful as I am for its crucial role in bringing the musical back into the zeitgeist, I do have some issues with it. The singing and dancing are manifestly not in the same league as in the good old days, and the music, though pretty enough, is unlikely to make into the great American songbook.

I have read that the  flaws in technique - Ryan Gosling is very obviously no Fred Astaire  - were deliberate, or, at least, that perfection was never the intention. In a sense, or so I believe the theory goes, the amateurishness is an essential part of  the updating of the form; that a Marni Nixon would never have been asked to redub  Emma Stone’s singing (à la Natalie Wood in West Side Story) because in 2017 the authenticity is what makes it work. I have to say  it is a theory that I don’t quite understand and that, personally, I would have preferred it if Ryan’s dancing had looked a little more fluid.  

However I refuse to  countenance any criticism of  Emma Stone, no matter how tremulous her voice. I fell for her completely and utterly.  

*Charmian Carr, move over.  

*(A possibly inappropriate expression since she died last year.)

POST SCRIPT 

Since I wrote this, a couple of readers (Dawn Culmer and Allan Gold)  have pointed out a couple of glaring omissions of mine from the pre-sixties period, ‘Guys and Dolls’ and ‘High Society’. Click here to see  what I missed,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Umq4dK95c

And

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kq1JQUhwVQ

Footnote on the rest of the Oscars

In 2014, ’12 Years a Slave’, you will remember,  won the best picture Oscar. There was never any doubt that it would. It had built up a critical head of steam through the year, told a story - the horrendous capture and re-enslavement of a previously freed black man  - that was bound to engage the sympathy of any awards voter, and was directed not by some tainted-by-trade  ex-commercials director like J C Chandor but by Steve McQueen, not just a movie director but an actual bone fide artist who had won the Turner Prize. It ticked every box.

I saw it at the London Film Festival in late 2013 and privately had my doubts - very impressive in parts, but some wooden dialogue, an unconvincing cameo by producer Brad Pitt as the only good white guy in it, and an oddly sanitised version of New York in the early 19th century.  

Still  the  awards tide was running in its favour and it was never going to be denied. ‘All is Lost’ the brilliant and effectively word-free Robert Redford one- hander about a lone yachtsman in crisis, a truly original piece, which was written and directed by the aforementioned  JC Chandor in the same year, didn’t make it on to any Oscar awards shortlist at all except for 'sound editing'. Talk about being damned by faint praise.

The next year came Ava du Vernay’s ‘Selma’,  another film about black issues and for my money a far superior one. I hate it when audiences clap at the end of films - seems absurd when there’s no-one to take a bow - but when John Legend’s closing song ‘Glory’ played I was so moved I really wanted to applaud.  If you haven’t seen ‘Selma’ you should. David Oleweyo does a fantastic turn as Martin Luther King.  But it didn’t win and I never thought it would. Two ‘black ‘ films were never going to carry off the Oscar in successive years. (The chorus  of the song goes, ‘One day when the glory comes, it will be ours.’ Sadly not for Ava, not just a black director but a black woman director.)

Then last year came the furore over the 2015 Oscars being almost exclusively white. And this year, at least partly as a reaction to that, the pendulum predictably swung back the other way and  no few than four films  dealing with American racial issues were in the running in one category or another - ‘Moonlight’, ‘Loving’, ‘Hidden Figures’ and ‘Fences’.

Of these, the one that received the least attention, ‘Loving’  - a best actress nomination for Ruth Negga was all it got - impressed me the most. Fascinating story, superb, restrained acting and noticeably fine photography.  ‘Moonlight’, on the other hand,  which  famously received the Oscar for Best Picture after the great presentation debacle,  left me pretty cold - as I saw it, a thin story that took a painfully long time to tell. As a tale of a young  man coming to terms with his homosexuality, I thought ‘Brokeback Mountain’ beat it into a cocked hat. (To coin another phrase.) Without all the Oscar fuss, I doubt more than three people outside London would have seen 'Moonlight’ in the Ukay. Now there will be a few thousand more, most of whom will leave the cinema scratching their heads.

Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote and directed ‘Manchester By The Sea’ looked to me distinctly unimpressed that his effort hadn’t won the big prize. Can’t say I blame him. It most definitely should have.

(If your life is so impoverished that you really have nothing better to do you, you can listen to a podcast of two of my erstwhile  colleagues from Colourful Radio and I discussing the Oscars at length. The level of debate will probably go a long way to explaining why we got chucked off. https://soundcloud.com/jammiemedia/sets/the-oggscars-2017 )