Shoes want to be adored

I think I’ve hit a new record, I’ve received 147 spam messages in the last 70 hours. Thankfully I now know everything about soma and underwear. Also, a lot of you seem to have arguments with your older sisters and thanks to the handy information on the Avenue, you now have one extra argument for when the subject will pop up again. Always glad to be of assistance…

Maybe you and your older sister don’t know this, but Dr. Martens exist 50 years. And to celebrate this, they’ve asked a couple of musicians to cover a song. Because nothing says “shoes” more than covering a song. There’s a hideous cover of “Buffalo Stance” (in fact, so hideous only Benicio del Toro will like it), but some of the covers are quite good and all you need to do is give your mail address and you can download the song for free. And every song gets a video as well.
Speaking of which, time for The Raveonettes reinterpreting The Stone Roses.

You can download the track here or watch a “making of”.

Was this the best movie of the year?

Mister Deeopey mentioned in one of the comments he hadn’t seen the extravaganza ad starring Benicio del Toro. Well, we won’t feel responsible for keeping people from the best movie of the year. Not only does it star del Toro, director Bryan Singer is also behind it. (Is this more proof that working with Tom Cruise really makes you go bonkers?) It lasts nearly three minutes of your life you’ll never get back, but thanks to the fast forward button you can skip some bits. Which is impossible if you have to sit through this in the theatre.

P.S. In case you hadn’t figured out the answer to the title of this post, the answer is “no”. Actually, they should mention this ad on every dvd sleeve from now on… starring Benicio Del Toro (Usual Suspects, Magnum Gold ad), directed by Bryan Singer (Usual Suspects, Magnum Gold ad).’

El Topo

This has quickly become a busy week, so no time to update the Avenue. Luckily, there are still a couple of old reviews I never published and they sure come in handy in times like these. My review of El Topo, the famous cult film by Alejandro Jodorowsky, is definitely one of the shortest I’ve ever written. Rather than rehashing the story it’s an attempt to capture the film’s spirit. So here it is. In full.

There aren’t many movies that totally weird you out in almost every scene, but El Topo is definitely one of them. It is best to give up during the first scene and to let your eyes be the guide for the next two hours. It’s biblical, it’s mythological. It’s likely that everything means something, but I am not the right person to consult here. It’s a test for an open mind, a test to see at exactly which point your brain explodes. This is Jodorowsky’s movie as he did so much in it. Only he could guide you, but he doesn’t want to. So all you have to do is put the tape in your VCR, sit or lie down and absorb the next two hours. This is a tale of the ‘condition humaine’. This is us, in the middle of the desert. This is El Topo. Don’t expect any sense. If you read this till you got to this last sentence, El Topo might be something for you.

Great moments in cinema: Ator III

You know you’ve struck gold if you’re watching a film and aren’t sure if it’s a comedy or not. I’d say Ator III: The Hobgoblin came from the brain of Joe D’Amato, but that would be an insult to the man’s brain. Here’s a clip from this wonderful masterpiece (a.k.a. Quest for the Mighty Sword). It’s a vital lesson for anyone wanting to do something in the film industry: action scenes only need to exist of some vague waving around of weapons, build-ups are overrated.

Dead Like Me

Today we pay tribute to one of the most underrated shows of the last decade. Dead Like Me lasted 29 episodes, spread over two seasons, but then the network (Showtime) pulled the plug. The final episode was shown on Halloween night 2004. Five years later, the fans’ calls to tie the loose plot knots were answered in a straight-to-dvd movie, Dead Like Me: Life After Death. Not a bad title for a series about the grim afterlife of Georgia Lass.

Georgia (Ellen Muth) is 18 years old and a school drop-out. Her mother has had it with her lazy child and kicks her out of bed for her first day of work. It’s a horrible filing job, the result of Georgia’s sarcasm against Dolores Herbig of the temp office. That’s not the worst part of the job… the lunch hour only lasts 35 minutes and during her lunch break Georgia is hit by a toilet seat that came loose off the space station MIR. Georgia is instantly killed, but that’s not the end of her. It turns out there’s such a thing as Grim Reapers, whose job it is to touch those about to die. The gang of four is led by Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the calm leader who insists the Reapers have breakfast as Der Waffle House. This is where everyone gets their post-it notes, containing the name of the nearly deceased, the place and estimated time of death.
However, it’s not the Reapers’ job to kill people. This is caused by accidents and occasionally these accidents are helped by Gravelings, a kind of monster that can only be seen by the Reapers. Reapers can be seen by the living, but they can’t be recognised. To the living, a Reaper looks different than they used to do. Which is why Rube often tells Georgia not to hang around her parents’ house.

Georgia’s parents are Joy (much like the character in Drop The Dead Donkey an ill-chosen name as Joy is bitter and sarcastic), Clancy (a teacher who seems to have been sleeping with one of his students) and Georgia’s younger sister, Reggie (Britt McKillip). In her first scene, Reggie is represented by a floating pair of glasses. As far as Georgia was concerned, her sister might as well have been invisible. Something she regrets in her afterlife: not only did Reggie look up to her older sister, Georgia’s death causes Reggie to become a troubled kid with weird hobbies and more sarcasm and bitterness than is good for an eleven-year-old. Clancy’s adultery causes Joy (Cynthia Stevenson) to become even more sarcastic towards her husband and overprotective to Reggie. Who’s absolutely not amused. In fact, what keeps Reggie sane (at least to herself) is the belief that, albeit deceased, Georgia is still hanging around. She may not be wrong there: Undead George even shows up at Joy’s yard sale, where she hopes to sell George’s stuff. Which is painful in many ways: it makes George talk to her mum (who doesn’t recognise her) and Reggie upset because she felt a need to cling to her sister’s stuff.

This scene very much embodies the spirit of Dead Like Me, it’s a dark comedy with a lot of tragedy. There isn’t a main character that doesn’t have a couple of layers. Rube is a bit of an enigma, equally to the viewers as to the other Reapers. Reapers don’t age, by the way. Rube still looks the same as he did in the 1920s, when he died. Reapers keep their function till they’ve touched enough nearly dead. Which means that George will have to stay eighteen for the rest of her afterlife. Something she isn’t too happy with, a sign the writers actually remembered how most 18-year-olds felt.

I have mentioned the other Reapers, so it’s only fair to introduce them. You’ve heard of Rube and George, then there’s Roxy (Jasmine Guy) who makes a living writing parking tickets and hopes everyone will swallow her rock-hard façade. Mason (Callum Blue) died in the 1960s during a drug experiment and has been testing every kind of drugs every since. It’s not as if anything can kill him… The most familiar looking Reaper will be Betty, who’s played by Rebecca Gayheart, the daring woman George looks up to. Not for too long… after a couple of episodes Betty grabs a chance to leave the Reapers and follow the Big Lights (I’m trying to make it sound as unreligious as the show managed to portray it). Taking over from Betty is Daisy Adair (Laura Harris), former extra in the movies, who died during the making of Gone with the Wind.
As mentioned above, Roxy has a job and she isn’t the only one. Rube advises Georgia to get a job as well. Which is why Georgia Lass creates Millie, who gets a job as the helper of… Delores Herbig of the temp agency Happy Time. Of all the jobs in the world… actually, Millie has a much better relationship with Delores than Georgia ever had.

The first season of Dead Like Me, fourteen episodes including a feature-length pilot episode, is remarkably strong. There’s only one weak episode, which mainly exists of flashbacks and a bit of filler material to make it look like an episode, but overall it’s a very strong series. I’ve mentioned before that the show is also funny and most of that is in a brainy sort of way. But there’s also the recurring pleasure of certain deaths, engineered by the Gravelings, which look like the better moments from the Final Destination movies. Not that every death is funny, one of Georgia’s first death is a young girl, played by Jodelle Ferland (Tideland, Silent Hill). We’ve once said that Jodelle had a nose to end up in the better horror movies. Looks like the little girl was also a guest actress in one of the better series of the noughties. Overall the show may have earned eight nominations (including two Emmys), but it never won an award and you’ll have a tough time finding people who’ve seen the show.

Which is a bitter shame. Try and find the show on DVD and have a look at the show’s opening credits:

Another batch of 2010 movies

Lately the site’s been swamped with underwear spam. You have no idea how many variants there are: we get links to teen underwear, brand underwear (name a brand and we’ve seen it), boys underwear, girls underwear, sexy underwear, gay teen underwear and – quite the twist here – Britney Spears without underwear. Don’t know if this means the spammers think the Avenue is pants. Definitely not okay is the amount we’ve spent reviewing recent films. So here, provided you’ll accept our apologies, is a round-up of some of the recent films we never got round to…

CLASH OF THE TITANS
First up, a movie I never got round to seeing. I’d heard it was bad, that the 3D was awful and that the actual film didn’t resemble the director’s original idea of the film, but still Clash of the Titans was a movie I was prepared to give a chance. That is until I watched the trailer. Trailers can be misleading, but overall they do give some idea of what the film will look like. Absolute pants in this case, so I gave it a miss. Not the worst decision of the year, it seems: Lauren Laverne gave this review of the film after having endured the first hour: “So far: Part Duran Duran video, part “Flash” out-takes. The most ridiculous film since Avatar.” Her opinion hadn’t changed after the film was over, so let’s be glad we didn’t “treat” ourselves to this one. (Weirdly enough, it managed to achieve a staggering 6.0/10 on the IMDb.)

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is a delicious indie comedy we mention here because a) it was the first film of 2010 I watched (sure, it was released in 2009, but who’s hurrying us?). Here’s a film which had an awful trailer: it made the film seem tacky Hollywood fodder, but this was nice and melancholic. The film jumps up and down the 500 days the main character (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was with a girl called Summer (Zooey Deschanel). The film opens with the lamenting phase you’re in after being dumped, so you do know from the start it won’t end good. In a rare thing for the Avenue, I’ll tell you the final scene of the film (because it doesn’t spoil anything): the guy meets a girl and her name is… Autumn. Right there and then, the film dropped a few points. 7/10 is the final verdict.

THE GHOST WRITER

Somewhere between all the stories of his sexual past, Roman Polanski managed to release a film. The Ghost Writer sees Pierce Brosnan as a thinly disguised clone of Tony Blair in this adaptation of a Robert Harris novel. Ewan McGregor is freshly appointed as ghost writer of Prime Minister Lang and, luck’ll have it, it’s just about the time a scandal concerning Lang breaks loose. Due to the scandal around Polanski, people started seeing the film in a different light, but even without these similarities, The Ghost Writer is a thriller with depth and drama. During the film, I even noticed myself thinking I wouldn’t say no to going with friends to another showing. That never happened – we are busy, busy people – but I still think this film will hold up to multiple viewings. 8/10

THE BAD LIEUTENANT – PORT OF CALL: NEW ORLEANS
Well, at least we know which movie will get the Worst Title award of 2010, come December 31. A dispute between director Werner Herzog and a producer who wanted to start a Bad Lieutenant movie franchise (oh, and Worst Idea 2010) led to the film having to carry around Herzog’s title after the producer’s title. Compromising can be shit. It also led to Herzog having to explain 7429 times that this wasn’t a remake, but a transportation. What would happen if you took the Bad Lieutenant from New York to New Orleans? This sort of idea is often more interesting on paper than on screen. Hal Hartley did it in 1995 with Flirt, which gave three couples in New York, Berlin and Tokyo the same dilemma. It’s one of Hartley’s lesser accessible films, but easily beats the Herzog film. Part of that is because I’ve seen enough of Nicolas Cage‘s schtick for the moment. Remember how Kevin Spacey was always the baddie fifteen years ago? Well, that’s how Cage’s washed-out cops feel to me. The direction is good and the iguana scenes are brilliant, but for me the film didn’t stick. Worse even, I had to endure this one in the cinema with a couple of a**holes who acted like they were watching the latest Ta****ino. Even I am not sure whether the film is a comedy or a tragedy. 5/10 because Herzog is a good director and, if you’re paying attention, you even see it in this film.

George Clooney

It’s already August and there haven’t been too many updates in our Film 2010 section: apparently there wasn’t enough time to go to the cinema as well as write about the films. Let’s make up for lost time by combining a couple of smaller reviews. Today two films starring George Clooney.

Like it or not, Clooney is the James Stewart or Cary Grant of our times. Well, I never spotted Stewart or Grant doing a commercial for Nespresso or that drink that gets you into parties. But other than that, he’s the hunk of our times. Which is why it’s such a great pleasure to see Clooney in dirtier movies. Clooney seems to have a thing for the Middle East. After Three Kings and Syriana he returns for Men who stare at goats. “Men” seems to be an update of Three Kings, but this time it’s not about soldiers looking for a treasure, but about a journalist looking for a remarkable story. And what can be more remarkable than the military technique of staring at goats till they have a heart attack or staring at walls so you can walk through them? It’s a great technique that comes in handy if you don’t want to open a door to murder a goat that’s at the other side of the wall.
Men who stare at goats combines wackiness with social criticism, but the pace isn’t always right and sometimes the film tries to be cleverer than it is. But it’s daft and you’ll like it for as long as it lasts. Stare all you like, but this one won’t get more than 6.5/10.

Next up, Clooney in Up in the air, the latest offering by Jason Reitman (who became a household name after Juno). More social awareness here: in these times of global recession, Clooney’s character Ryan Bingham  has a lucrative job: he goes up to workplaces and tells people they’re fired if their boss doesn’t have the courage. Ryan has a verbal showdown with Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) who wants to change the profession to firing people over the internet and has a fling with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), who seems to be as much of a loner traveller as Ryan is. Meanwhile Ryan has to drag a cardboard cutting of his sister and future brother-in-law around the US, an idea for a wedding gimmick Ryan’s sister picked up from Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (or “that French film”, as it’s known in Up in the Air). Jason Bateman returns, only this time he’s not the adoptive father who teaches Juno the kinks of old rock and Suspiria, now he’s Ryan’s boss. The internal loneliness of Bateman has gone over to Clooney for this film.

All in all, Up in the air is a comedy, it’s a sign of our social times (in twenty years people look at this as “that comedy from the economic depression”) and it’s a tale about travelling and loneliness. I did find the film occasionally dragging on in the second third, but bear in mind that Juno had a slow start too (if you find my old review, you’ll find I hated that film for the first fifteen minutes). Remain seated for the credits as there’s a fitting song for the soundtrack. Up in the Air ends up with a firm 7/10.

Music from Der Schweigende Engel

And when the flowers have already hung their heads out of fatigue, you should still (still… still) be thinking of me… but then sung in German and with a woman’s voice.

Last year (September, to be precise) the Avenue talked about a German film that only seems to pop up every now and then on tv. It’s not out on dvd and there are no signs that’ll change soon. The film is called Der Schweigende Engel (The Silent Angel) and it was a crossover between a Heimatfilm and a film noir, according to our resident reviewer (which sounds better than “me”).

But something regarding the film has popped up: in the last year we’ve seen the cinema booklet of the film being auctioned on the internet (needless to say, we were outbid) and YouTube has a track from the film. The title is “Ein Strauss Vergissmeinnicht” (read: a bouquet of forget-me-nots). Seems like the Avenue isn’t keen on forgetting soon. We’ll go on mentioning this film until someone has the wonderful idea of releasing or rebroadcasting it…

The Anniversary

Tonight the Kurtodrome Vault is opened once again, this time to put a comedy in. Not the sort of genre that dominates the vault, but rest assured, The Anniversary is not out of place here. For here we have one of the most vicious comedies I’ve ever seen.

Actually, to call it a comedy seems to do the film injustice. Most of the characters are either deeply flawed or vile, or maybe both. The film opens quite normally, three brothers work in a construction business and, all of a sudden and completely unannounced, a girl pops up, asks for Tom (the youngest of the brothers), claims she’s engaged to him and before the other brothers can adjust to what’s happened, the girl called Shirley and Tom drive off, leaving the house unfinished.

But in the sixth minute of the film, The Anniversary shows its true colours for the first time. Shirley, who’s arrived with Tom at mother’s house, visits the hothouse, admires the caged bird, who promptly falls dead on the ground. Welcome to mother’s house, you’re just in time for the anniversary.

Mother, a one-eyed Bette Davis, has made a habit of celebrating her wedding anniversary with her three sons. Family traditions include a toast to the deceased father of the house and a bonfire. Sounds cozy? Think again, because the mother of the house has a habit of figuratively suffocating everyone who’s attending. There’s Tom, the youngest of the boys. There’s Terry, the hardest worker of all three and the one who’s married. To Karen, who’s given Terry a flock of offspring. And then there’s Harry, the oldest son and the one’s who’s a bit of … well, Karen calls him a “pervert”. That should suffice for the moment. And this is the environment poor Shirley is dropped in.

As Karen warns her, Mother will look for Shirley’s weak point in an attempt to crash her spirit. Think that’s an exaggeration? At one point, early in the evening, Mother asks Karen to come and sit next to her, only to adress her once more a minute later: “Shirley, would you mind sitting somewhere else? Body odour offends me.”

It’s just one of the many examples of cruel humour from the film. If you’re offended by that, avoid The Anniversary at all costs. If you’ve noticed a smile on your face, sit back and relax, you’re in one hell of treat for 91 minutes.

One of the few nice things you can say about Bette Davis’s character is that the rest of the family isn’t the best example of virtue either. Almost everyone seems to have a hidden agenda, the least of all Harry, but then again he’s crippling himself because of his perversion. Hal Hartley, director of Trust and already in the Vault because of Surviving Desire, once said: “A family is like a gun. Point it in the wrong direction and you’ve got yourself a deadly weapon.” As far as weapons go, The Anniversary is an automatic.

As far as the actors go, Davis is clearly the biggest name involved. The only other name standing out is the actress who plays Karen, Sheila Hancock, who’s renowned in the UK. Cult fans may also remember Jack Hedley (Terry) as the luitenant from Fulci’s slasherfest The New York Ripper.

The Anniversary was made by Hammer, a company predominantly known for their horror films starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. It’s not the sort of film you’d expect from Hammer, even though this one is on a psychological level more horrible than most of Hammer’s output. Though not in the cast, a lot of Hammer familiars pop up in the credits. The film was directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Jimmy Sangster. Directors may have been swapped between companies like Hammer, Tigon and Amicus, but Sangster’s name is seemingly married to the Hammer company. Summing up his entire Hammer filmography would keep us here for hours, but just to give you an idea, here’s a sample of his work: X – The Unknown, The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, Nightmare, The Nanny (also starring Bette Davis) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Sangster continued writing well into the 80s. In 2000 a German film, Flashback: Mörderische Ferien, was released. Though Sangster’s name appears on the credits as a writer, he wasn’t involved in the project. Instead, the Germans had bought an old script by Sangster and gave him the credit he deserved.

It’s true that Davis is very much the star of the picture and noone can match her, but let us not forget that it’s Sangster who gave Davis these glorious lines. Time to raise a toast, to Sangster, to Davis and to 91 minutes of vicious comedy. Cheers!

P.S. Instead of a trailer, which spoils some of the fun, here’s the moment mother comes down the stairs to meet her loving family. Mind you, she hasn’t seen Shirley before and the first thing she does is walk straight past her.

Millennium 3: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

Welcome to post n°300 of Avenue Kurtodrome. Not that I was counting, the directory informed me of this joyous occasion. Seems like about the time to catch up with unlucky Lisbeth Salander. How would she be faring these days? After all we left her almost dead at the end of Millennium 2: The girl who played with fire. The final film is upon us, but – given Lisbeth’s troubled past – are we sure there’ll be an happy end?

The future doesn’t look too promising: in this third film Lisbeth is jailed for the things that happened in the second film. She’s about to be sent to court and almost every sign shows she’ll be sentenced for a lot of years. On the other side of the court, Lisbeth has to face the corrupt people that got her in this situation in the first place.
The future may look bleak, but Mikael Blomquist doesn’t seem eager to give up. Lisbeth was one of the few people who backed him when he was in jail (see film 1), now he can do the same. Whether Lisbeth likes it or not.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest has other titles. In some countries the book is called “Justice”, which is an a-typical title for a Millennium book (given that they’re usually longer). The original title, Luftslottet som sprängdes, translates as “The Air Castle That Exploded”. Can Blomquist and Salander blow up the cover of corruption? Can they expose the criminal tentacles? Questions that’ll make you hope: yes. Because the Millennium books take a stand against injustice. Whereas the first book (Men who hate women) mainly tackled the subject of misogyny, the final film is fighting social injustice and corruption.

This makes this third chapter, together with the first, the most critical of our society. The second film mostly gave us a better insight into the troubled past of Lisbeth Salander, but now the focus is on Lisbeth, Blomquist ànd society.

This makes The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest a somewhat better film than the second chapter, even though it – like its predecessor – does show it was made for tv (unlike the first chapter, which was modelled as a mainstream European movie). Still, there’s nothing wrong with being made for tv (some of the best films were made for tv). The ending does drag on a little too long, but this may have been because of the theatrical version. The television movies were shortened for a theatrical release and there are just too many ties that deserve a knot before the trilogy can be closed. It seems likely that the extra 30 minutes of the tv versions will add extra material that’ll make the end’s length seem more in proportion to the rest of the film.

And now that the good things have been mentioned: what a shame that the Belgian movie company decided to postpone the film, allegedly because the Easter holidays weren’t the best time to show bleak mainstream films, but actually to have the third film’s release coincide with the dvd release of the second film. The third film flopped and here (as well as in several other countries) journalists declared the Stieg Larsson franchise virtually dead. We, as experienced admirers of the movies, know better: promotion may help or kill a film’s lifespan in the cinemas, but it doesn’t say anything about the film’s qualities.

The third and final film has something to say. Forget the hype and listen to the message.

7/10