Radio On

I watched this not in the cinema on its re-release but on the Region 1 DVD.

I was drawn to the film by the premise: a road movie set in England and shot in Monochrome. I was however, a little disappointed with the result.

I respect the film a lot but my main problem lies with the protagonist. He can at best be described as wet. His character is so mute and passive that at times you want to reach in and slap him. Perhaps this lack of character can be attributed to the fact that Christopher Petit had never directed a feature length film before.

For example, at one point the character is verbally abused by a girl in a bar who takes a disliking to him. It escalates to a point where she sweeps his bar-stool from underneath him and what does he do? Does he strike her over the head with her own pool cue? No, he lies there on the floor, prone like a fish. It's all rather frustrating after a while.

I know this is part of the character he represents; the immobile, the dysfunctional, the mute, but it becomes increasingly difficult to empathize with him. He is strikingly similar in look and character to the central protagonist in Christopher Nolan's "Following" and equally unlikeable.

Despite this, the film has many redeeming qualities. The most notable is the cinematography. Seldom nowadays is Britain committed to film with such deliberation. Here we must thank the German cinematographer, Martin Schäfer. Schäfer began his career as Robby Muller's assistant, Robby Muller being Wim Wenders DOP of choice, Wim Wenders being one of the producers of Radio On.

In particular, a high angle cityscape shot of a car leaving London for Bristol is breathtaking. Fortune smiled on the filmmakers for just as the car exits frame, an elevated train crosses over the motorway. Later, another high angle shot shows the protagonist driving his car around a disused quarry. The quarry is awash with rain and it makes a wonderful composition. The camera mounted on the car is reminiscent of Robby Muller's photography in Wim Wender's "The American Friend". A haunting tracking shot from a car reveals a woman standing alone in the window of a dilapidated hotel. All these shots go to make this film a must for anyone wishing to see what can be achieved photographically in the often undervalued landscape of Britain.

Music plays a central part in the film. Not only because the main character is a radio DJ with a passion for old British rock n' roll but the filmmaker truly understands the power of image and sound. The film opens with David Bowie's Heroes/Helden, the same version used two years later in the outstanding German film, Christiane F. Kraftwerk feature throughout to emphasize the synthesized, radioactive, dystopian nightmare the filmmaker wishes to project and also of note is one particularly noisome scene with Sting as a guitar playing petrol pump attendant.

There is clearly a huge German influence on the film. A quote at the beginning sites Fritz Lang, the hero becomes involved with a German woman (who he endlessly asks, "How would you say that in German?" No wonder she quickly decides that she doesn't want to sleep with him), the music of Kraftwerk, Martin Schäfer and Wim Wenders, the very fact that the film is set in a post-war England where all previous values have been erased and replaced with shelled out, derelict institutions and a disparate people.

Although the film is bleak and seemingly pessimistic, one cannot help but feel nostalgic for a Britain that is clearly lost in the past. A much freer and more trustworthy time. A Britain where one would stop to pick up a hitch-hiker (even if they did turn out to be Scottish ex-soldiers with serious mental issues) a time where one could drive ones car to the very edge of a quarry without some busybody calling the police, a time without CCTV, where everyone smoked in pubs, where it was OK to drive without a seatbelt and drink a can of Guiness whilst doing so and a time where hopping down onto railway tracks to catch a train on the other side was perfectly legitimate and caused nobody to fuss or fret.

Perhaps the character in this film should have realised just how good things were back then and lived a little, expressed himself more.

Perhaps we should learn from his mistake.

London To Brighton

I know this film came out a while ago but I've only just got around to seeing it. It was highly praised at the time but I knew exactly what it would be like and having just watched it, absolutely nothing surprised me or differed from my imagined view.

I was led to believe that Paul Andrew Williams was a mere 24 when this film came out (2006) but according to the IMDb, he is actually 34. I know it's hard to get films made in this country but for how long should we hold someone's hand? 33 last year, that would be the same age Coppola was when he directed the Godfather. You're a big boy now Paul so you have to play by the big boy rules.

This film is riddled with plagiaristic clichés. For example, the sequence where bodies are stuffed into the boot of the car and are driven out to a field, the "Goodfellas" style red tail-lights illuminating the graves that the victims must dig themselves. Yawn, yawn, yawn... Blood Simple did it better, and so did Shallow Grave for that matter.

The fact that London To Brighton is yet another gangster film crossed with the other British staple, the 'estate-dwelling marginalized fuck-up' genre, makes for really uninspired viewing. Don't get me wrong, the construction of the film is such that even though the dialogue mostly consists of the, "Woziz name anyway?' 'Oi, mate, you got a light?' 'Fuck off ya cunt' type dialogue, it still ticks along at a nimble pace, keeping you not so much wanting to know what's going to happen (that's already pretty obvious) more not wanting to know what's on the other channel. This is after all, no more than a television film. It's like an episode of Cracker but without Jimmy McGovern's excellent writing. (The Cracker special "Cracker 'Nine Eleven' excluded - what a fucking travesty)

So many moments ring untrue. In particular, the scenes at the Brighton safehouse and in particular, the safehouse occupants. They all look like students; nice well-to-do students like you or I would know, yet they live with an ex-prostitute, who still has connections with London thugs and gangsters but they don't seem to care much. I guess that's because they're too stoned to notice. One of them, a nice clean looking young man, is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to knowing all the choice spots for our prostitute heroine to go work some Johns for a bit of scratch. Nah, I don't buy it.

Then there's the Mr. Big character who likes to sleep with little girls. He's so rich and powerful, that as we track through his palatial and tasteless home, we listen to none other than the first movement of Beethoven's The Moonlight Sonanta. Yep, that's because he's rich (so would obviously be a classical fan) and fucked up (so would obviously listen to sad classical music). This music was used equally successfully in the bullet-time assassination sequence in Guy Ritchie's Revolver.

The little girl was not right for her role. She was clearly from a higher social class than her character, not unlike the lead roles in Tom Harper's short film, 'Cubs'. She bore a striking resemblance to the 12 year old character Mathilda played by Nathalie Portman in Luc Besson's Leon. I'm sure this must have been an influence on the casting, conscious or unconscious as Paul Andrew Williams strikes me as the sort who would still think Leon a good film.

Being British, and street, and gangster, it has of course it's fair smattering of the old D&B dotted throughout - hey, this is Britain, how can we not have some Drum & Bass in our film, Britain invented D&B! Even though er... most people stopped listening to that shit 10 years ago and I can't think of a single film where it hasn't helped but pull it down to a level of ridicule?

I'll stop here. I suppose the fact that I viewed it directly after watching Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro didn't help much but I doubt it would have made a difference. British films need to stand up on their own two feet, they shouldn't be given exemption. There are many British films of the past that serve to remind us that we once knew what we were doing and it's time to claim back that heritage. Until we do so, we will continue to be mocked by our superior international peers.

To finalize, let us see what Adrian Hennigan of the BBC Film Network had to say:

"If you can imagine Mike Leigh shooting a thriller set in the seedy underworld of London, you're part-way towards conjuring up Paul Andrew Williams' directorial debut."

Like for instance... ooh I don't know, Mike Leigh's thriller set in the seedy underworld of London, called "Naked"?

Cubs

Cubs, by Tom Harper... It doesn't get much worse than this. How does a film like Cubs receive such acclaim from so many institutions? Have any of them actually watched this film? This film is a piece of shit. A film so typical of Blair's Britain and the sort of accepted PC bullshit that has such a strangle-hold on the film industry, that it inspired me to begin this entire blog in the first place!

It stars Ashley Walters of 'So Solid Crew' fame as the gang leader of a pack of inner city fox hunters. I know! I can hear the groans at the mere suggestion that this might be a good idea for a film. Apparently this is a real phenomenon but who gives a fuck?

The casting is abysmal. Could they have found two more stage-school trained actors to play the parts of the unfortunate housing estate kids? This harks back to old British films where RADA trained actors from the home counties would play all the East End parts. It's like a bad episode of Biker Grove, its stench reeks of television drama made by dramatic workshops for kids.

Listen to what dim-wit Adrian Hennigan had to say about it on the BBC Film Network site:

"Starring Ashley Walters (Life & Lyrics) and Harry Eden (the Artful Dodger in TV's Oliver Twist), Cubs is a rites-of-passage short about urban fox hunting. That's right: urban fox hunting, complete with dogs, blooding ceremonies and distinctive dress codes (we can't wait to read the Countryside Alliance's review)" (cue winking emoticon ;-)

"Distinctive dress codes"? Is that all 'Dim-Wit' Hennigan could find to say about it?

Only when you hear plummy voiced Tom Harper being interviewed will you realise why fox-hunting might have struck him as good subject matter for a short film. After all, they say to write about what you know, and I bet Plummy Tom has been on a few hunts in his time. How he must have struggled with the idea, "How? How can I get the important issue of fox-hunting into an award winning film..? Aha! I know, set it on a council estate with a bunch of hoodies and a black leading role...Yes! They'll lap that up at the Film Council!"

And they did. They gave him money from the Pulse Digital Shorts Scheme, it won the BBC New Filmmaker Award, it won the BIFA short film award, (shame on you Raindance) it was shortlisted for the TCM prize, it won the fucking Soho Rushes competition! This is industry people who work in film and television every single day, and they judged it to be the best out there? I can only assume it was because every other entry was so poor. It was in the top three for the MySpace Movie Mash Up (thankfully not winning) and recently went to Sundance. I guess if you roll a small piece of shit down the side of a very large mountain, it's gonna pick up a lot of stuff on it's way back to down to the bottom.

Tom Harper claims his influences were films like City of God and La Haine. Fuck off. I know it's only Tom's first short film but there is no similarity whatsoever. Each of those films addressed real issues of poverty and were told with great originality and heart.

I am at a loss for what to say about this film. It does not move one emotionally. It is redundant. It says more about the people and culture that sponsored it than it says about anything itself.

Please watch it... arm yourself against your own bad ideas. Don't become another perpetrator of crime like Tom Harper.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A16624334

Genesis

I have reached a point of nausea from which there is no turning back.

The British film industry is on its knees, administered and infiltrated by a pack of lacklustre idiots who know nothing about good cinema.

This blog will unflinchingly address this issue. It will pull no punches as so many have to do in order to protect their jobs and good standing within the community.

There is an unhealthy 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' attitude that is responsible for such poor films ending up on the screen.

The British don't know cinema, they know television and the television they know is tripe.

I feel a voice is needed, an honest voice that has no loyalties to anything other than good films and to the masters of the past.

Without further ado, let us move onto the the real deal, the tearing apart of actual product and people...