Tag Archives: London

Skyfall

I think it might be something to do with it being Year End, but I’m struggling to find much to say about the new Bond movie Skyfall. Of course, I’ll not have a word spoken against Daniel Craig (who seems to have shrunk) – plus Naomie Harris as the capable new Moneypenny is just delightful. It does open quite brilliantly – the high-octane scenes in Istanbul are some of the best adrenalin-pumped, Craig-era Bond yet….

But after that it all becomes a bit silly. There are no grand ideas, there’s no dastardly genius out to destroy the world, there aren’t even gadgets. Aside from Istanbul, even the locations look more like studio sets than real places. I felt I’d seen everything before – even Javier Bardem just looked like Anton Chigurh with dyed hair. (And let’s not get into the decision to play gay-as-camp.) Given the amount of time the film takes to set up the new characters that’ll populate the franchise in future, it felt a bit like the second part of a trilogy – interesting enough but no resolution. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it or anything. I was just a bit disappointed.

My Week With Marilyn

I don’t do mental illness well (ok: at all) and just 24 hours with the kooky Miss Marilyn Monroe would’ve scared the bejezis out of me. The movie though – concerning Marilyn’s brief visit to London to film The Prince and the Showgirl reveals her absolute inability to be alone, turn up on time or remain vaguely drug free – is kind of depressing. But it’s perfect little filmgoing experience, actually, and Michelle Williams is really quite astounding as Marilyn Monroe herself.

What I did love though was the locations, with instagram-esque styling inspired by New York photographer Saul Leitner. The production was given the same sound stage at Pinewood where the original 1957 shoot took place, and Michelle Williams was given Marilyn’s actual dressing-room, which must have been inspiring (but also a bit spooky?) There are evocative scenes at Windsor and Eton College too.

Anonymous

On the plus side, Anonymous offers enough of a dynamic, vividly realized world of late Elizabethan England to make my inner geek backflip. Shot in Babelsberg Studios in Germany, the movie presents a pretty pungent portrait of muddy streets, stylised court life, and most excitingly, the immediacy of the Globe Theatre where theatre-goers are close enough to be spattered with action. The scenes of rich and poor alike moved by the power of words is mesmerising and fantastic, and the good actors – Ifans, Richardson, Redgrave, Thewlis, Spall – are worth every cent of their pay cheque (they fortunately make up for the weaker, usually younger, ones.)

But it’s the minus side that you’ll probably remember – the reduction of contemporary literary giants Ben Jonson and Kit Marlowe to simpering side-acts, the historical revisionism of Good Queen Bess’ multiple pregancies (s’true!), and of course most central to the entire film, the conceit that Shakespeare was in fact a wenching, illiterate wide-boy chancer, whilst the aristocratic Earl of Oxford was in fact the Bard responsible for the plays and poems and sonnets.

Having studied English Literature and Drama for my Batchelor’s Degree, and being something of a history buff for the late Elizabethan era, I don’t abide that kind of “literary birtherism” generally – and in this case it has the added insult of class-ism. I understand there’s little/no actual proof that the working class actor William Shakespeare wrote the jewels in the crown of English literature (indeed cultural achievement) but that doesn’t mean that Edward de Vere (poor little rich boy!) did either. Besides, who’s actually going to take seriously the historical interpretations of the same bloke who made 10000 B.C?

Children of Men

In Children of Men, it’s the near-future and society has collapsed following the startling infertility of the entire human race. Duck-footed Clive Owen plays Theo, an unambitious academic who becomes embroigled unwillingly in the idealistic plans of his terrorist ex-wife. It is one of the most visually striking, thought-provoking films of recent years, with some of the most visceral action scenes yet seen, but also threaded with incisive social commentary on everything from immigration policy to income disparity. It’s a fascinating and thoroughly intelligent movie.

I was reminded of it again when I came across this truly groovy set of fake ads and news footage – from suicide pills to expensive doggy clothing – created by an obviously very bright and clever team, that help establish a phenomenally vivid sense of a dystopian, nightmarish time and place as well as any film location. Excellent.

World Travel Market

And now for something completely different. Along with my fine colleagues from the USAID Serbia Competitiveness Project, I’m attending World Travel Market in London. According to the blurb, “World Travel Market is a must-attend four-day business-to-business event where the global travel trade meets, networks, negotiates and conducts business under one roof.” Last year, 187 countries & regions were represented, 5121 companies exhibited, and 14221 trade professionals participated.

We’re here to work on a City of Belgrade City Breaks program, that we’re producing in co-operation with the Tourism Organisation Belgrade, on the bright-and-white Serbia stand. Our goal here is to have direct face-to-face access to top European tourism professionals, be exposed to the latest developments in the travel industry (which will influence our activities in Serbia), build relationships with potential business partners to develop City Breaks Tourism in Serbia, and position Serbia for competitive advantage within the tourism sector. So there.

So far, we’ve met with Destination Management Companies, Group Travel Organisers, Tour Operators and Travel Agencies. Interesting though; there’s not a great deal of product differentiation in the European market. Whether that’s because they’re all basically selling the same product, or because that’s how the market likes to receive its information, is something I hope to discover over the next couple of days.

Green Zone

Green Zone takes place in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam and the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Baghdad. Of course, it turns out that WMDs – on which, you’ll recall, the case for war was made – are notable only by their absence. But rather than continuing just to ask the boring where? question, Chief Roy Miller (stubby Matt Damon) starts asking something much more tricky: a why? Why, exactly, are their no WMDs to be found in Iraq? Ain’t that the 740 billion dollar (and counting) question……?

So I won’t give away the plot, but suffice it to say that once the question is asked, a whole heap of troubles begin for Chief Miller. The film has of course been slammed as being anti-American, but I have to say, I didn’t see it that way. I saw it more against those kinds of Americans who thought that marching into a foreign country about which they knew little and cared less, on the flimsiest of pretexts, and with the scantest of plans, in order to drive “regime change” in the name of Democracy was a really chipper idea. People like that don’t come off terribly well in the film. But really nor should they.

Obviously the toppling of Iraq’s government has not yet resulted in the creation of a peaceful, progressive, democratic, Western-leaning, forward-thinking, oil-producing hub in the Middle East (well, the oil bit’s happening, which, if you were cynical, might be cause for comment) so there’s zip chance in a billion that anyone’s going to be filming on location there any time soon. (save of course for knife-wielding Islamicists, chopping the heads off aidworkers over the internet)

So given the above, where would you go to film Iraq? Well Morocco’s served well in the past. So lock that in. And bits of Spain (Murcia and Valencia for instance.) But I loved most of all that the interiors of Saddam’s Palace of Nouveau Richenesse were recreated from the completely gilded and soulless Marriott Renaissance Hotel at Heathrow Airport. Even if it’s not a property owned by that unrepentant old hypocrite Doug Manchester, the Renaissance clearly deserves a boycott based on its criminal interior decor alone. So now you know.

Otherwise, UK On Screen has a list of the goodies.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

A silver dollar moon, flanked by wild, apocalyptic, Dali-esque clouds emerged over Sarajevo Film Festival’s famous outdoor cinema yesterday; an apt counter-point to Woody Allen’s more mundane, kitchen-sink comedy “You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger” appearing on the massive screen.

It’s an ensemble piece about a group of disgruntled Londoners. These are all glass-half-full kinds of folks (maybe that’s what comes of living in London?) but they’re driven by some new-agey persuasion that they deserve better. So they try to change their lives, mostly by ditching hopeless and uncooperative partners along the way. In doing so, however, not one of them gets what they want and few of them even get what they need. Actually, in spite of the last part, it sort of reminded me of real life, except with Woody Allen narrating. And since it is in fact a Woody Allen film, it’s quirkily and steadily entertaining enough. Smiley rather than laugh-out-loud. I doubt anyone other than Woody Allen could have gotten this film to the big screen though, or attracted such an all-star cast.

Cleveland Square and the Notting Hill areas were external locations, but London itself also seems like a bit of an unloved spouse here; it’s always present but not much is made of it.

RocknRolla

Brash, bold, chaotic – and that’s just the location……

Guy Ritchie’s latest film RocknRolla, feels like it’s the third part in a trilogy of cockney-esque crime capers (see. Lock, Stock etc.) – and that’s no faint praise. Back in London again, the Wild Bunch – a loose group of small time conmen handsomely lead by One Two (Gerard Butler) – try to break into the property market by borrowing money from Lenny Cole. Lenny’s a well-connected local mobster (the excellent, slime-bally Tom Wilkinson) and of course he almost immediately double crosses them. At the same time, Lenny’s trying to play with the big boys by fixing another property problem for a new-monied, football-club-owning Russian gangster. Thandie Newton is the Russian’s suave but crooked accountant who gets the Wild Bunch to steal the Russian’s cash. In the meantime, there’s an odd and jarring subplot about a lucky painting and a rock star (suddenly, just when you think it’s the Wild Bunch, it turns out he’s the RocknRolla of the title) who happens to be Lenny’s step son. If anything, this is about the only time the convoluted plot kind of goes off its rails.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie: it’s funny, entertaining, and the intimidating, surreal, almost cartoon world the characters inhabit is palpable. Several London icons are featured heavily: the Barbican for one, and there’s a great scene at Wembley Stadium. The dvd has apparently has a featurette called Guy’s Town, which is all about the locations he chose, and actually there’s another London View from the former Mr. Madonna (well rid, mate) at CNN: My City My Life.

The Bank Job

The only thing I can actually remember about the Seventies are the electricity blackouts (no homework!), the shooting down of the Viscount Hunyani and ABBA. Evidently I missed the joy of Afros, Swinging, Toffs, Cockney Gangsters and espionage. Fortunately the Bank Job movie starring Jason Statham and an unusually plausible Saffron Burrows recreates the whole Lifebuoy-Nylons-and-no-Deodorant period quite admirably.

In September 1971, petty thieves working on a too-good-to-be-true tip off, tunnelled their way into the vault of a bank in London’s Baker Street and looted safe deposit boxes of cash and jewellery worth millions of pounds. None of it was recovered and nobody was ever arrested. Professing to be the actual truth of what happend – and what was actually hidden in those boxes – Bank Job is a rollicking tale that involve black power, MI6, madams, police corruption and Princess Margaret. Even Lord Mountbatten comes along for the ride. Low tech it may be, but it’s actually great stuff.

The Baker Street scenes were re-created on a purpose-built set at Pinewood Studios which allowed the producers to better control the 1970′s environment. But the scenes from the roof tops were filmed from the site where the lookout actually waited during the robbery itself, and from where his ill-fated walkie-talkie communications were intercepted. I LOVE that about the movies.

28 Weeks Later

As if day-to-day reality wasn’t quite scary enough, a lot of South African literature focuses on the what-ifs? of a post-apocalyptic Azania. By that, I don’t mean post-nuclear apocalypse as it might normarily apply to you good folks in the rest of the world. I mean post-liberation, post-independence, post-ANC apocalypse. Time and again, books (though rarely movies, which rely on government funding) imagine a future South Africa as a horribly failed state where corpulent, corrupt, vicious officials casually oversee a weakened and disease-ravaged populace, and where unfettered crime and violence have driven white Africans either to flee to Australia or (for those without the European passports) to barren and arid farmsteads out in the waterless bush.

I wonder if my South African alertness to the potential that ordered little life may suddenly take a very different track means that I am particularly receptive to the chilling alternatives offered by Danny Boyle’s movies 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. The first is set in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak of a plague-like cataclysm that turns its victims into soulless flesh-eaters that can chase you really really fast. The second – which I caught on tv the other night - takes place once the virus has been contained (with no one left to kill, the zombies starved – nice) and a mission, lead by the American military, has begun to repopulate Britain.

Both movies have remarkable, mesmerising images of a hastily-deserted London - Cillian Murphy’s solo walk through the deathly quiet streets of Westminster in 28 Days is a complete wondrous thrill to anyone who’s ever been nearly flattened by a big red bus, or (worse) by a gaggle of Italian language students in brightly-coloured backpacks. 28 Weeks Later though trumps even that imagery; beautiful, shiny, devastatingly, hauntingly empty, it films London a lot from the air (which adds to the queasy sense of dislocation.)

Says producer Allon Reich on the FilmLondon website: ”The unique selling point with the 28 idea is London, it really is a character in the film. Without London, the film would be something else entirely.”

Locations include Canary Wharf (massively expanded since I lived in London), Charing Cross tube station, CityPoint, Greenwich foot tunnel, Hyde Park, Wembley Stadium, the Millennium Stadium, Parliament Square, and Shaftesbury Avenue – and it’sno mean feat that the film makers make this overcrowded megapolis seem entirely desolate. Incidentally, the escape from the cottage that opens the film was filmed at Stokers Farm, south of Rickmansworth; the waterway that Robert Carlyle’s character escapes along is actually the main line of the Grand Union Canal.

Like 28 Days, 28 Weeks Later works well – in parts. The zombies are rip-roaringly scary and the action is driven by a nerve-jarring soundtrack and the kind of grim lighting that makes you feel part of the action. Yet in this movie too, there’s that dumb child cliche again; the only two kids allowed back in Britain decide to break out of the secure compound (why?), unleashing the raging havoc all over again. It’s almost criminal that they’re the only two allowed to survive.