Quite often when you hear (or read) people's opinions on classic films, especially Hollywood ones, you will frequently come across the phrase "they don't make them like they used to". Now invariably that sentiment is probably extremely accurate but recently (and especially following a couple of recent viewings) I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it entirely depends on who "they" refers to.

The other night I finally caught Ordinary People, it's a film that's been on my online rental queue a few times (but, in all honesty, never that high) and I've been intrigued to see what the geriatric movie professional's film society (that's the oscars to you) thought was so much better than Raging Bull. I'm really not sure what to say about it. It's in the middle of a long line of kid in therapy films (Equus, which preceeded it was probably better, Good Will Hunting certainly wasn't) but the big plus is a couple of very fine performances from Timothy Hutton and Judd Hirsch. Donald Sutherland was his usually solid self, but the disappointment was Mary Tyler Moore (who I've never seen in anything else) who was excessively mannered and I caught "acting" in every scene she was in. The film's utter character assassination of the mother leaves a bad taste in the mouth and the script is better on dialogue than anything else.

So what does that have to do with making them like they used to? I'm getting there, I just saw that one first and had to get it out of the way. Yesterday I caught Dual in the Sun, which is another one I've had on my online rental queue but never that high. David O. Selznick uber-fest, trying to do another Gone With the Wind but failing to realise he just didn't have the subject to merit it. Jennifer Jones is wildly miscast and her overwrought hand-wringing and diving on the floor left and right is indicative of a complete lack of control over her performance (Selznick got through 7 directors, including himself, and it shows in the overall tone). Nice seeing Gregory Peck playing the git for once, but I didn't buy his central relationship with Jones for a second. Lionel Barrymore was an absolute hoot as the father and Joseph Cotten as reliable as ever but while entertaining and nice to look at there's not a tremendous amount of quality here.

So that was one example of how they "used" to do it where it's actually probably not a bad thing that they don't make movies that way. I did though, straight after that, get to see a film on the big screen that I've waxed lyrical about on this blog before - La Antena. It holds up months later as one of my favourite films of this decade. This is a prime example of what can happen when you make them "like they used to" but do so with a modern take to it or approach. For those who missed the earlier review it's an Argentinian film, in black and white, which is mainly silent and has the speech of the characters come up in the environment, enabling characters to crumple up words or push them out of the way. I won't recap it all again, but the allegory does deepen and it does make you think a lot whilst utterly teasing the senses with the beautiful inventiveness of this wonderful film.

But the real reason I think sometimes "they" do make them like they used to is pretty much a culmination of a lot of Oriental films over the past decade. South Korea in particular is the hub of the "genre" film, they make the most wonderful chick flicks and rom coms and tear jerkers, as well as top notch war and action films. I was already getting into South-East Asian cinema (or "Oriental", or "Asian", however PC or not you are - delete as applicable) when Jonathan Ross did a 3 part "Asian Invasion" series on BBC Four two and a half years ago. On the back of the Korean one they showed Take Care of My Cat, which I adore and then I bought Failan, starring Cecilia Cheung on the back of that. After the Hong Kong show I also looked everywhere I could for a copy of Lost in Time as the Korean tearjerker I'd bought was so magnificent I wanted to see Cheung's most acclaimed performance (which was in this Hong Kong film I couldn't find). I've looked for it for over 2 years and never found it.

Well, someone put it up on youtube last week and having watched it ... this is EXACTLY the kind of film that Greer Garson or Barbara Stanwyck would have been doing in the 30s and 40s. It's just a very nice, simple, gentle film with the culmination towards an incredibly emotional moment, before wrapping it up afterwards. Failan is the better film, but here Cecilia has a much better role (as the fiancee of a man who dies, left struggling to raise his child and take over his business driving a minibus around the city) and it's the best I've seen her. The film follows a colleague of Cecilia's dead fiancee who increasingly helps her and the child out more and more. Nothing revelatory, just a lovely little film. And that is exactly what the region has been churning out for the last 10 years, especially South Korea. When people say "they don't make them like they used to", it's more accurate to say "Hollywood doesn't make them like they used to" because there are parts of the world where very simple, effective storytelling in well made films is alive and flourishing.

In the 1960s Jirí Menzel made a film which is regarded as one of Czechoslovakia's finest. In a poll ten years ago of a hundred Czech film professionals, his 1966 effort Closely Observed Trains (which I rented from lovefilm a year or two ago and enjoyed) was voted the 8th best Czech movie. So in seeing that his latest film was submitted by the Czech Rep.  to the oscars for the foreign language film category (and more importantly the very fact it was on at a cinema near me) I decided to check it out.

The story is basically that of an old man who gets out of prison after 15 years inside. We then see a bit of him resettling by the German border (doing up a dilapidated pub and befriending a man and a woman who are in the area) but the majority of the film is in flashback chronicling his rise as a waiter (and aspiration to be a millionaire) in pre-war Czechoslovakia.

The film is quite surreal. It is consistently funny, at times it's bordeline farce, the job of balancing the tone here is an extremely challenging one for Menzel and I think as a director for the most part he gets away with it. The acting is uniformly solid. All of it is played with straight faces, but Martin Huba as our character's superior does an especially fine job as the all knowing (he, after all, served the King of England ) and staunchly Czech maitre d'.

My problems with the film? For me it came off as quite sexist and borderline misogynist - every single female character in the film is a sex object and it becomes a little tiresome after the 3rd woman he's had sex with via his job. Also while I said the tone for the most part comes off, if there's anywhere it doesn't then that's in trying to throw in the very occasional reference to the Holocaust. Throughout it seems nothing more than the odd token gesture, but when you get into the level of character study at the end (hence, the point of the film) it's not as powerful as it could or should have been. That's probably because it's a comedy and it's very difficult to balance the two as a screenwriter. Thirdly there isn't much connection for me between the old man and the younger version of himself. Perhaps because he distances himself and says he doesn't recognise him, but if you're not going to show how he changed (being in prison) then you miss out on any catharsis at the end.

So, several opportunites missed but had they taken them it would have been a very different film. As it stands it is a consistently amusing, surreal film with several laugh out loud moments (and it must be said a few misguided ones too - cutting between him masturbating and showing the downfall of his fellow countrymen is just as weird and unnecessary as the sex scene was at the end of Munich) and the occasional touch of directorial brilliance (especially the opening silent scene). The balance of the film though both in terms of narrative and character isn't quite there (and I think that's more a screenplay than direction issue, but then again ... Menzel did both) and it personally left a slightly bad taste with the seemingly endless bevy of naked women, but it's trying to make a point as well as make you laugh as well. Got to admire the ambition at least.

It seems almost mandatory when talking about this film to talk about the failed attempt to start the franchise 5 years ago when Ang Lee got hold of Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly ... and nobody really cared. It's a common myth that that film "bombed" - while it clearly was not as good as it could have been and was undoubtedly a disappointment both financially and artistically, it still made almost double its budget in theatres alone, but was a very underwhelming film (I skipped it at the cinema and watched it on tv years later ... smart move on my part).

This is the second attempt (which, frankly, smacks of desperation) to cash in on this particular superhero's possibilities and while a better and a more satisfactory experience than its predecessor, it's hardly the stuff to get anything approaching excited about. The set up is that Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is on the run, which we find out what for via a very economical opening title sequence (which sadly is probably the best piece of direction during the entire film) - it's been 5 or 6 months since he last transformed into the Hulk and he's chilling out down in Brazil practicing relaxation techniques and wasting away doing manual labour in a bottling factory.

William Hurt is a top member of the Army who wants to capture Banner and Tim Roth is a Russian-born English raised soldier "on loan" from the marines (how ridiculous, what, will he be cup-tied against West Ham and he's just killing time before his big move to Real Madrid? ) who are the main guys after him. Hurt's daughter is Liv Tyler (who, as the person I saw the film with noted, is looking more and more like her father every day and that is NOT a good thing), who is also Banner's former sweetheart and they all come together in a series of action sequences.

What's good about the film? The pace. It rattles along and doesn't feel anything like nearly 2 hours. Another good thing, in the main (barring the scene in the campus) is the special effects and the action sequences. They're well done for the most part and deliver what you'd expect. The problems though are numerous and most arise from the script.

Firstly, the tone is all over the place. They throw in scenes here and there just for the hell of it (there are at least 3 scenes which are shameless cameos and serve very little purpose other than to put the people - who you only know if you have the inside knowledge - into the film), one scene in particular in a taxi in New York was complete comedy and sticks out like a sore thumb and bears no relation to the rest of the film.

Secondly, the characterisation is a complete joke, there's none at all. Norton's Banner ... we have no idea who he is and that he distances his character from the Hulk only serves to highlight the chasm that exists between the two personalities (I'll get into that later). Tyler's character is even worse, she has a boyfriend who ... gets dropped and is never heard from again to which she never bats an eyelid. Also while I'm all for shorthand with characters who have a previous relationship ... the actors don't even fill in the gaps and there's nothing like the scenes in House of Flying Daggers with Andy Lau and Zhang Ziyi, or Cat Power and Jude Law in My Blueberry Nights to show the body language former lovers have, the level of intimacy coupled with the distance as they've moved on. Roth tries his best but his character is nothing more than a fight-loving hooligan and while Hurt has probably the most developed character of the four ... that's like saying Jessica Alba's latest film wasn't *as* bad as her other ones.

The third big problem is there is very little continuity between Norton's Banner and the creature we see on screen as the Hulk. When you see him battling away, you're detatched, there's very little relation between that creature and the "character" we've been following apart from the odd look to Liv. Maybe it's because Norton's character is so paper-thin, maybe it's because he denies the Hulk is anything to do with his personality, maybe it's a bit of both. What you don't get though is something like the end of Iron Man where you absolutely feel for and like and care about the guy in the suit, even when he's doing battle. It's a big negative.

Despite all that, despite some clunky lines (They make the point that Roth's character is English then have him naturally talking about throwing "softball"s around? ), despite the allusions to countless other films, it's really very watchable. Not very intelligent, requires a vast suspension of disbelief (especially in the "how did he get there/do that/that makes no sense he can go for a run but not have sex/if he doesn't know if he's going to change or not why doesn't Liv just give him a handjob to test? etc., etc., etc.), despite all of this ... it works, because it's a stupid comic book movie and it does everything it says on the tin. Doesn't make it a great film, not even a good one, but it's fast moving and the action does what you'd hope and expect. All the criticisms above are what stop it being a good film, but none of them ensure it's a bad one. It's alright and probably worth seeing if you like this sort of thing. Just turn your brain off and forget everything you can while you're in there and it'll be an entertaining enough 2 hours which will absolutely fly by.

... basically, instead of flooding this blog with a new entry every day about the tennis and clogging it up, I'm just going to keep re-editing this one. I'll try to break it up and play around with the fonts, etc., but I have pretty much exclusively (apart from the occasional exception) kept this about films and I intend to keep doing so. I have a new entry to talk about so I'll get on with that and keep re-editing this over the next fortnight because ... well, I want to talk about it and that's how I roll .

Day 1

Well first off I ignored any national urges and watched Sam Stosur of Australia play the Romanian Ioana Raluca Olaru, because I saw Olaru play Justine Henin in the US Open last year and was impressed with her fighting abilities even when being totally outclassed. Had Ioana's serve been working then this match would have been close, but it wasn't, so it wasn't. Sam served and volleyed her way (so nice to see) to victory 6-2, 6-2, but Olaru did show that patented fighting spirit, twice coming back from 0-40 down on her serve in the second set to get back to deuce.

After that I caught the end of the Elena Baltacha/Angelique Kerber match and it was a very tight, emotional affair. I cannot stand it when people don't apologise for luckily hitting the net and Baltacha annoyed the crap out of me for not apologising once, even though it happened 4 or 5 times. Everything was on her racket and she absolutely deserved to win, but the manner in which she did with the net repeatedly influencing her winning points ensured she did so in a very fortunate manner.

Then came the complete surprise and early contender for match of the tournament. Svetlana Kuznetsova can either be brilliant or beyond atrocious and today she was playing a French girl (via Sweden) called Mathilde Johansson. I thought I'd never seen her play before but as soon as Mathilde served I knew I had as she has such a distinct action (she puts her arm into a back-scratching position and just lets rip) and it turns out it was at the US Open last year against Martina Hingis when the Swiss Miss played out of this world and blew Mathilde off the court, thus ensuring she didn't make much of an impression.

In this match though she was utterly brilliant and has made me an instant fan. Stayed with Sveta with the power at the back of the court and had the ability to keep the power and switch play with ease, she's a good mover and was extremely competitive. This was like the Jankovic/Safarova match from last year, just two girls going after each other and bashing the ball all around the court at pace, it was so much fun. The standard also was ridiculously high, they combined for 74 winners and only 46 unforced errors. The final 5 games where Sveta just went into overdrive and hit winners left and right and cruised away with the match were a tad anticlimactic, but after the competitive match which had preceeded it I could have no complaints. Wonderful stuff, now a genuine fan of Mathilde (who has no right not being in the top 100 if she can play like that) and hope to see more of her.

After that I saw the ends of Bartoli/Lisicki and Mauresmo/Harkleroad, both of which with the French girls just playinig far too well for their opponents, I also caught the end of Anna Chakvetadze hanging on against the hapless Stephanie Dubois - she's in appalling form and this going 8-6 in the third is just more proof of that.

Lastly though was the 2nd british player of the day, Melanie South who dumped out the #1 doubles player in the world last year in the mixed doubles before losing to eventual champions Jamie Murray and Jelena Jankovic. Mel was playing seeded Alona Bondarenko (with a HEAVILY strapped right knee) and I thought she had a genuine chance of winning as Mel is so attacking and everything is on her racket - if she played well she had every chance. Sadly though, it was a bridge too far, despite winning the second set she just couldn't quite keep the errors down and hit something like 48 winners and 51 UEs while Alona hit 21 winners to 19 UEs. Those 5 points basically were the difference between the two players. So many times South looked down and out in this but competed beautifully and gave an excellent account of herself despite the tough draw (you have basically a 1 in 4 chance of getting a seed in the first round ... and she did).

Oh well, 1 Brit through, I expected 2 (it's weird typing this a day later as I know what's happened on day 2, but it's what I thought so it is what it is) with either Mel or Katie O'Brien tomorrow to win along with Elena and so far Elena's proved me right and I expect Katie to do well against a totally out of sorts Shahar Peer tomorrow. We'll see. Oh and Dani's playing so that's brilliant (as she's been injured) and Magdalena Rybarikova, who I really like the look of, is 2 games away from victory with them having stopped for bad light. Good luck Slovakia (and bad luck Cibulkova who lost today but she is NOT a grass court player)!

Day 2

This was a very truncated day for me as I got an offer to go and see Hulk, which took a huge bulk of the tennis watching day from me. Firstly ... Magdalena lost the remaining 4 games and the match. God, it's so frustrating but I've seen a picture of how dark it was last night during the Mauresmo match (the tv always has filters on the cameras to make it as watchable as possible) and they couldn't have gone on. Small consolation that apparantly her opponent played flawlessly this morning, but it's a horrendous thing to be denied the chance yesterday to finish the match.

Before the cinema I watched the first set of Anne Keothavong (british #1, in the top 100 who unfortunately SUCKS on grass) against Vania King and both were in poor form but Anne even more so. I detest her demeanour on court. One game at 3-4 when serving her opponent hit 3 unforced errors and Anne shouted "COME ON!" after every one of them. Pathetic. I bet she won't try that disrespectful crap against Venus Williams in the next round (as somehow Anne turned it around and won the match).

When I got back there wasn't much interesting on, Nadal versus a schlub, Tursunov and Mahut, so I watched a bit of Lindsay Davenport (stuggling away against a girl outside the top 100, Renata Voracova) then settled on Vera Zvonareva against Aiko Nakamura. Nakamura is an interesting one because like last year's finalist Marion Bartoli she hits double handed off both wings and I thought she could do some damage. The first set Vera was pretty much unplayable but Nakamura came back strong and deservedly won the second on a tie break. The third though was a bridge too far.

After that I was snubbing Andy Murray (because ... while his game is nice he's a moody git on and off court and I don't like him at all) and left to go and play football just as he clinched the second set. Daniela won though! Thank God. She has 140 pts to defend for her 4th round appearance last year and this win (her first match back on tour since the start of the clay court season) gets her 60, so even if she doesn't get too far in her first tournament back she's already ensured the drop won't be too much. Hopefully she gets on a court covered by BBCi for her second round match, Kleybanova is not a name, but she is top 50 and that thing should get on one of the bigger courts.

Turns out I was wrong with saying one of Katie O'Brien and Mel South would get through as Peer won in straight sets (wow, not playing to form there) and considering Katie took a set off Daniela in an exhibition a week ago she must be very disappointed. Oh well, 2 British girls through, Elena the only one with a shot at the third round, which would do wonders for her ranking. She's up first on day 3, but I think I'll watch Nicole Vaidisova and Sam Stosur and then dip in to Elena at the change of ends.

Day 3

Well I chose the right match to start off with. What a ridiculous match. First set Nicole was returning brilliantly and Stosur serving terribly, thus ruining her tactics. Then at 5-2 serving out the set Vaidisova was getting extremely frustrated and even broke a racket (I have no problem with that strangely enough, I've broken many a badminton racket over the years ) but somehow pulled through. I was thinking "If only Stosur could get her serve going this would be a contest". Then in the second set she did and Nicole completely fell apart, going for increasingly low percentage shots as the set progressed. By 4-0 down in the second she stopped trying, it was incredible, she gave up on points and literally tanked the set, it was disgraceful. In the third she was trying but still losing and Sam raced out to a 3-0 lead and had break points for 4-0 ... then out of nowhere Stosur missed a couple of returns and suddenly Nicole's confidence came flooding back. By the end she was the absolutely deserving winner but it was a shockingly unprofessional stint in the middle there.

So after that, the daddy of them all, you may have noticed I've been gravitating towards the women (I just have much more of an interest at a lower level, hence the first week of a grand slam I prefer the women and in the latter I watch the men more) but Ivanovic on a show court had *nothing* on the prospect of Novak Djokovic taking on Marat Safin. What ... a ... match. Djokovic just couldn't handle him and the upset (rather than surprise, as we ALL know what Safin is capable of) win was delightfully impressive. He just owned Novak in every department. It's so sad his motivation has never been the best, especially on grass, but it's great to see him rise to the occasion and put in a performance for the ages. Only area of Djokovic I was especially disappointed in was the serve, which was particularly poor today. Fair play to Marat though, obviously he doesn't like his little sister getting all the headlines.

Thereafter I saw Ana Ivanovic making a complete meal of a match with Nathalie Dechy. She ended up winning it 10-8 in the third after 2 tiebreaks and had a huge slice of luck from the net on a match point against her. Absolutely should have lost, incredibly fortunate. Let's be fair, she's the world #1 and even losing a *set* off a player like Dechy is poor, let alone taking 3 and a half hours and having match points against you. Her on court demeanour is getting beyond a joke with her incessant shouting, which is frankly intimidation and completely unsportsmanlike. She's handled herself increasingly poorly this year and Henin's retirement has left a very questionable person to be the figurehead for the game on the women's side both in terms of quality and behaviour.

That match left a very bad taste in my mouth and thereafter I stopped watching. Came back an hour or so later and dipped into Chakvetadze's match a bit, finally she was playing well and was in complete control. Ended up watching the Cricket and that was extremely controversial too, then following that with Germany's appalling performance which I cannot believe got me to actually feel sorry for the Turks. They kill English fans and Germany had me pulling for them, *purely* on the performance of the sides. That's actually impressive. Oh well, Hantuchova on Court 3 tomorrow so weather permitting I should get to see her. Finally, it's been months.

Day 4

Or maybe I should call it "Black Thursday", because so many seeds got sent packing today, both on the male and female sides of things. My experience started with Sania Mirza and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez. I went for that rather than Venus vs. "plucky brit" because with Sania coming back from injury I thought it would be a contest. It started off nothing of the sort as Mirza snoozed her way around (not making mistakes but playing to her opponent's strengths) and Martinez Sanchez served and volleyed her way to 8 straight games. Then when Mirza woke up it became a thrilling encounter. MJ got really tight at the end of the second set and Sania figured out the serve-volley by lobbing her opponent countless times. The third set turned into a titanic battle, which Martinez Sanchez won 9-7, after saving 4 match points on her serve with blistering groundstrokes and an incredible inside-out forehand volley which she made look STUPIDLY easy. Sania's coming back from injury and her forehand is getting more power by the day but a great contest which has only been bettered so far by Mathilde and Svetlana.

After that I didn't catch much other than the occasional bit of Nadal/Gulbis. Thereafter while waiting for Daniela to come on (because that incompetent mutt James Blake went to 5 sets and lost) I saw the end of Maria Sharapova being unceremoniously dumped out by Alla Kudryavtseva (say that 10 times really fast ), which was flat-out hilarious. Then I caught the opening set of resident tease Jelena Jankovic against the very promising Carla Suarez Navarro, who made such a splash at the French Open a few weeks ago. JJ was just WAY too good, really solid, power off both sides and the speed to chase down everything. Carla didn't even play badly and still lost the first set 6-1 (and the second 6-3, which I didn't see). Jelena is the *only* top player in the draw who's looked solid in every match so ... I guess that means she's guaranteed to slip up soon.

So on to Daniela and it was eerily similar to the Mirza match. She was playing Alisa Kleybanova, who is a top 50 player but it's her first year at the top level and she's been doing very well. Her game is so brainless, it's just power, power, power, whack, whack, whack ... and for a set and a half *everything* was going in. It was ridiculous and was an impossible standard to keep up. She was a set and 4-1 up with Daniela playing about even winners-UEs and then the wheels fell off and she got tight and Daniela ended up taking the set 6-4 with Alisa double faulting 3 times in a row to hand her the set. Third set though after a LONG service game at 2-1(which included questionable calls - no hawkeye out on court 3 - shanks, miss-hits and liberal use of the net from Kleybanova) of about 5 or 6 deuces Alisa got the breakthrough and from then on never looked back and took the set 6-1 and with it the match. A disappointing result for Daniela but considering she's 2 weeks behind Mirza in the comeback stakes a very understandable one. As for Alisa, quite often when someone beats one of my favourites by playing well I end up liking them, but her game is so ugly (she literally throws herself into groundstrokes and at times resembles Quasimodo on court) and devoid of finesse she's a player I find it impossible to take to.

That loss will be overshadowed though by the likes of Sharapova and Andy Roddick being dumped out. The Roddick one, well, it's mildly amusing,  but I do quite like his personality and he was VERY honest and forthright in his interview afterwards, which is nice to see. Tomorrow then I'll probably stay with Vaidisova as her matches have been interesting and I may watch Mauresmo/Serena, but to be honest I may find Agnes Szavay (who is playing straight after Nicole and Casey Dellacqua) too much of a draw as her game is great to watch. We'll see. Should be another ladies' day for me but there are some very tasty men's matches on the horizon.

Day 5

Again, I'm writing this after knowing what's happened on the next day but I'll get it down regardless. Watched Vaidisova/Dellacqua and ... it was like Nicole's twin sister had turned up - she hit 2 unforced errors in the first set and raced away with the match. Rain came with 2 games to go, but 105 minutes later she closed out the match. Played beautifully, controlled, but aggressive. Casey way too many errors and got down on herself repeatedly.

After that I decided to watch Serena and Amelie (because they killed the court 18 stream after the Vaidisova match so I couldn't watch Agnes Szavay) and ... it was a very sloppy match. Neither could string points together, both lacked confidence but both came up with some sparkling shots when necessary. Shame it was so hit and miss. First set ended up being tight when it shouldn't have been then Serena walked away with the second. The match was so uninspiring the BBC dumped it with three games to go to concentrate on the other court.

Where Ana Ivanovic got dumped out by Zheng Jie, which was hilarious. Ana's had a problem with Chinese players over the years with some notable losses to them, but today Zheng just played way too well far too consistently and was the deserving winner (I watched the 2nd set live and the highlights later). Earlier in the day I'd caught glimpses of Bartoli before she got injured and lost and she was playing well. First chance I've had to see Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (what a NAME!) who I've known about for a while for being so dominant as a junior (she'd won 3 junior grand slams by the age of 15). She was missing a lot against Radwanska today so I'm not surprised she lost but she looks very promising.

Before the end of play though I saw a fair amount of Mario Ancic (famously the last person to beat Roger Federer at SW19) playing David Ferrer and it was a very good match. Ancic was just playing ridiculously well, but even in spite of a 2 set deficit David Ferrer is a guy who is never going to give up and he swashbuckled his way to winning the 3rd on a tie-break. Didn't see the end but no surprise Ancic won, hope to see a lot more of him next week.

... I've been watching a lot of sport with the European Championships coming to a climax and the grass court tennis season kicking off but ... I guess there hasn't been much on tv and I've been watching a lot of stuff I've seen before. I will though be getting to the cinema a lot more in the next couple of weeks (I'll see In Search of a Midnight Kiss this week and La Antena next weekend and maybe I Served The King of England if I can be bothered to drive to Warwick) so the blog's pace should quicken even with Wimbledon starting tomorrow (p.s. COME ON ANYTHING SLOVAKIAN!!!)

So I'll do a round up of some films I've seen just to keep things moving here even though they're not the most inspired bunch I've ever written about. I caught a couple of 80s films to do with space on television, but from very different perspectives. The first was Starman, which was a John Carpenter film about an alien (Jeff Bridges) who kidnaps a woman (Karen Allen) after taking the form of her dead husband to help him rendez-vous with his people otherwise he dies. It's a decent watch, but Bridges' oscar nomination is very perplexing - Allen is the best thing about this film, she imbues her character with such honest emotion and plays it completely straight, thus lending the movie a lot more credibility than it probably deserves. Nice enough film, but nothing spectacular, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

Keeping with the Americans in space theme, I saw The Right Stuff on TCM and ... boy is it long. It chronicles the development of the American space programme from test pilots breaking the sound barrier through to the "Mercury 7" group of men and their journies into space. The special effects are excellent, I'm not even sure if I need to qualify that with an "especially for the time", but it's additional praise so I'll throw it out there. The story though, well, there isn't really one, it just hops from one thing to another and there's no real smoothness to the narrative, you don't care for the characters, it's just "this happened, then this happened, then this happened" and there's no through-line between the events to make you care. That said it is well acted and has some impressive set pieces but ... screenplay issues abound.

In another twist there is actually another film that I saw for the first time recently that fits the Americans in Space theme and that is "the worst film of all time" - Plan 9 From Outer Space, which I watched solely because a/ I love the Tim Burton film Ed Wood which is about the director of this film and features recreations of it and b/ somewhere on the internet was hosting it. It's not the worst film of all time, but it's clearly not in any shape of form anything approaching a decent film let alone a good one. You can see shadows of boom mikes in the shot, parts of the set move, there are shocking and actually laughable moments of just incompetent filmmaking. But (and I LOVE that there's a but) the finale actually was not that stupid and the point and message was rather a good one so I cannot hate the film entirely because of that. At least it got me to watch Ed Wood again (albeit with the commentary on) and it made me appreciate him a lot more.

So finally, I caught about 45 minutes of Rushmore, why only 45 mins? Because I turned it off in a haze of apathy. Chortled twice and laughed out loud once, this is a film so in love with itself and so self regarding it's impossible to have any time for. Wes Anderson is a filmmaker I have no particular love for (nor his contemporaries Noah Baumbach and Alexander Payne, making precisely one very good film between them - Sideways) and this was the nail in the coffin. Not that it's a bad film, it's not, it's competently put together but it's nowhere near as funny, nor the music anywhere near as cool as Anderson clearly thinks it is. I'd heard praise for Bill Murray but sadly it's probably his most overrated performance in one of his more uninteresting films. Just not my thing at all.

Finally got back to the cinema (was supposed to see Gone Baby Gone last weekend but may see it this week, relying on other people), this time for Audrey Tautou's latest film to be released here, Hors de prix. The set up of the plot is Gad Elmaleh (so wonderful as Pignon in The Valet) works at a hotel and one night when supposed to be behind the bar, the golddigging Tautou mistakes him for a rich man. They make use of the Imperial Suite for the night and Audrey is gone by sunrise. The film then follows the shenanigans a year later where they get together again but her sugar daddy dumps her when he finds out.

This is a nice little film, Elmaleh is wonderfully natural and provides the bulk of the laughs as his sweet, helpless, naive man gets drawn into playing Audrey at her own game by becoming a gigolo to an older woman. Audrey is on top form and an added bonus is it's the first time I've seen her be *sexy* rather than merely "cute" for the best part of a decade (Venus Beauty Salon being probably the only other time).

It's not a relentless laugh-out-loud comedy, but it's very silly and is consistently entertaining. It also gets better the longer it goes with the laughs coming more frequently the further into the film you get. By the time Elmaleh is in full gigolo mode the film really takes off but there is probably about 10 minutes or so of exposition they might have got rid of to tighten up the film and get into the meat of it as quickly as possible.

In the trailer there was a comparison with Breakfast at Tiffany's (not a film I care for by any stretch of the imagination) and I can see why, in that there it was the whore and the gigolo (albeit toned down) and here it's not too far off though. Difference here and why I liked this particular film more was the characters were much more likeable (probably because they're funny) and the performances and chemistry rang true more. Not an amazing cinematic masterpiece, but a very nice way to spend a couple of hours.

So, I returned to my former place of employment for the second time in a fortnight (as I took a spare ticket my brother had to see The Black Keys, a band who I'd only listened to their album once but ... I wasn't paying ) and saw Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, aka the best thing about My Blueberry Nights. I've had her last two cds since March and I've heard stuff before that for the last 6 months, caught her on Jools and she looked very interesting live so I picked up a ticket and went down and am very glad I did.

First thing that was good is it was upstairs in bar 5 (that's my insider description ), so you have about 500 people in a very intimate setting. I didn't even have to try to get about 4 people back from the rail. Second good thing was her voice, it's just absolutely there from start to finish. They did about 1hr 45 mins as best as I can gather and even without encores (I bet she was on a 10.30pm curfew) there could be no complaints as to the show given. She basically played the whole of Jukebox, plus the bonus disc, one off The Greatest (Lived in Bars) plus a handful of new covers.

The latter was the really inspired stuff. As you can tell from her version of New York (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpFwnf6F_GY), it's not always apparant what she's covering, it's that level of inspired. She did a version of Tracks of My Tears which sounded like The Rolling Stones doing Satisfaction. I also only clocked she was doing a cover of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams about a minute and a half into the song. Much easier to pick out The Dark End of the Street, I must confess. The best of the bunch was her singing Blue Moon, then slipped into Try a Little Tenderness then back again, it's just genius what she does with some of these.

Watching her is best described as watching a tigress prowling up and down in her cage, although the longer it goes the more she gives you indications she's actually enjoying her captivity onstage. She didn't thank the audience for applause until wayyy past the hour mark, but either it was the way the set list was put together (completely different to her last show, as it seems) or just how her evening went but she started brooding less and smiling a lot more the longer the show went. Her guitarist was good and her drummer excellent, and the bassist and keyboard player were fine. Really nicely balanced too, only very seldom did her voice not carry over them.

Exactly what I hoped for, very glad I made the effort. Oh that I can be bothered to do the same tomorrow with the womens' tennis on in Birmingham, it's a bitch to get in but I may even book now online just in case I can't get them on the door. Oh well, it's past 1.00am, I may as well see if I can get them online, anyway, rambling, if there's an entry tomorrow it won't be about films.

Rather weird double bill I had tonight, I got tickets to see Cat Power (which I'll do in my next entry) at the Academy (one of the select few establishments I have ever condescended with my services ) and seeing as I wanted to pick up the tickets from the box office before 5pm, I decided to catch Mongol inbetween getting the tickets and seeing the gig.

So, the film. Well ... it's alright. It does drag a bit, the drama is simplistically told and the battle scenes are fairly low-rent with some laughably bad cgi-splashes of blood. That said though, I don't think it's a bad watch, the subject matter is interesting (I just spent a good 10 minutes wikipediaing the topic) and it's certainly a cinematic experience.

Part of the problem though was my personal cinematic experience - there were two people with special needs who were at the front accompanied by carers and one was howling and moaning throughout most of the movie. At the hour point it was at its height and a girl in front of me left to complain. A guy overlooked from the side but they had piped down a bit by then. To be fair, with the amount of wailing and groaning on the soundtrack it wasn't always immediately apparant they were doing it. I'm glad they didn't get kicked out, as I left I saw the one woman hugging her charge so I hope they enjoyed it because they certainly tested the patience of the rest of the audience.

So because of this I had a little bit of trouble fully immersing myself in the film. I'm not sure the storytelling would have done that even if I was the only person in the cinema though. The score and sound I'm not really sold on, at times it was very stirring and evocative, at others it was just intrusive and there for the sake of it.

The narrative isn't exactly strong, but then it is a true story, but then also they're taking the odd liberty here and there. It's not really an action film because the battle scenes aren't that good, it's not a normal biopic because you don't really get to the heart of the man and it's not a historical document because of the mysticism involved. So it doesn't really know what it wants to be and in the end it's almost like a three ring circus - if you don't like the battles there's the love story, if you don't like the love story there's the historical intrigue, it's all very well and good but not very focused.

So deserving of its Oscar nomination for foreign language film? Absolutely not. Worth checking out? Maybe, I'd be slightly reluctant to recommend it as I can't really see who would thoroughly enjoy it, but on the other hand it does aim for multiple audiences so a lot of people may get something out of it. I didn't get much, but it was a decent way to kill time pre-Chan.

Lots of reasons why I haven't written recently, way too much to do so I'll keep it incredibly brief for everything.

Caught Two for the Road on sky - good film, both leads are charming and while I don't think the structure works it's very watchable. Saw the new Indy film, Cate steals it, it's quite good but nothing more than National Treasure if you're not a fan of the franchise. Another Audrey Hepburn film I saw (after Two for the Road) was Robin and Marian which was entertaining but nothing to take too seriously. Also saw The Brothers Karamazov on tv which had an excellent cast and was an interesting, if over-long film.

Following on from the Dostoyevsky nicely is Cassandra's Dream as just like Match Point it covers very similar ground of crime and guilt. The accents are poor, the narrative sloppy at the beginning and the score doesn't quite fit, but Allen creates some very good moments and crafts a nicely arced tragedy (in the classical sense) by the end. Doesn't deserve the slating it got and I hate Woody Allen.

Since that I've got seriously into a classics mood. It started with my wanting to see Wife vs. Secretary purely for the title and the cast. Wasn't a flat out comedy as I expected, but a gentle drama which was well done all round with Myrna Loy standing out over Jean Harlow. That was reversed though in Libeled Lady which was a delightful screwball comedy with everyone acquitting themselves nicely. Staying with Loy and her main leading man William Powell (also in Libeled Lady) I saw Love Crazy, which got a little too silly for my liking in the second half, but I really enjoyed the beginning as Loy and Powell have such unparalleled natural chemistry together.

I saw Garbo's first American silent film, Torrent and had to improvise as there was no score (Alexandre Desplat's score to The Painted Veil came in very handy as a substitute) and it was very worth doing so. Garbo her usual excellent silent self, so expressive. Less excellent was Rob Roy which I watched for Tim Roth's acclaimed limp-wristed performance and came away from this decidedly trashy baggage far more impressed with John Hurt and laughing at the fact that Jessica Lange will seemingly never miss a chance to overact when given the opportunity.

Biggest disappointment of all was L'Atalante, which some claim to be one of the finest films ever made. Maybe if it were Insomniacs Anonymous doing the claiming they might begin to have a point. Thinly drawn characters, annoying performances, turgid direction, scant plot, my copy died with 20 mins to go and I was nothing other than relieved at the blessing to end this snooze-fest. Also found Made For Each Other, which is a Jimmy Stewart/Carole Lombard film from David O. Selznick. Another gentle drama, but Lombard doesn' have the dramatic acting chops to jerk the tears the way Irene Dunne or Barbara Stanwyck have proved themselves capable of doing. Sub-par all round.

Finally, someone put The Constant Nymph on youtube (it's been unavailable for years due to a rights problem) and I checked it out for Joan Fontaine's oscar nominated turn. More than worthy, it's a very nice melodrama, her performance is rather similar to that of hers in Letter From an Unknown Woman in terms of character and also body language (all that running around to appear childish seemed much more natural here than when she tried it when she was past 30 in that other film). Charles Boyer is fine and Charles Coburn an absolute hoot in support, well worth digging up.

So another batch of movies I've seen that I'll attempt to whizz through before I go out to see Indy later. Seeing as Cannes is in full flow and Phillipe Garrel has a movie there, I took an opportunity to see one of his older films, Le vent de la nuit, because it has Catherine Deneuve in it and she's one of my favourite actresses. Now, my problem with it was she wasn't in it very much (about 35 out of the 90 minutes) and whenever she wasn't on screen the relationship with the two other men is very uninteresting and dull as they're not very good actors with very little to do. Deneuve excels though in her depressed, anxious state, but sadly she is the only reason to recommend the film (which I saw online).

I rented "the best french film in all of history", namely Les enfants du paradis, and I must say that while I don't believe in hype effecting reception (you either like a film or you don't, doesn't matter what anyone tells you before), it can effect the perspective within which you frame your reaction and I don't think this one lives up to the billing by any stretch. For long periods, I just don't know what this movie was about or trying to do, very often you've got these characters and ... they just won't shut up, they keep yapping on about nothing of consequence and at 3 hours long it becomes tiresome very quickly. That said though, luscious technicals and some fine performances, but this never integrates the on-stage performances to what's happening off stage the way we see in something like Topsy-Turvy. The second half is MUCH better than the first as it finally narrows the focus and gets interesting, but then everything is left in the air at the end and they haven't earnt the right to do that. I did think it was good, but, just a lot I'd change and get rid of in it.

On the same day I saw Mommie Dearest on tv, I've been intrigued by the prospect of seeing this for years and finally got around to it as I'm a fan of Faye Dunaway and it's interesting to see something which "killed her career" that some consider to be truly awful, but others think she's excellent in. The film, obviously, is not good - it's a trashy character assassination with absolutely no restraint whatsoever and is lurching in tone, which makes the outbursts that appear even more divorced from the rest of what's going on because they're so amusing. You can only laugh at it, it's impossible to take seriously. Also, it's very thin on the ground, skating over things to cram as much in as possible, there's a distinct lack of consistent focus. Dunaway is fine for most of it, but then horrendously over the top in the big scenes, she's let down very badly by her director who failed to show any restraint or balance of tone whatsoever. I'm not sure how many great roles there were for women in their 40s in America in the 1980s, thus meaning I don't think Dunaway's career would have been too different anyway, but this can't have helped.

Dunaway was always a very mannered actress and roles like Chinatown and Network brought out the best of that quality. What happened, even in the non-screaming scenes in Mommie Dearest was there wasn't a frame where I wasn't aware I was watching Faye Dunaway being Joan Crawford. I had a very similar reaction (albeit in a much more postive way) watching Denzel Washington in Malcolm X.

The film itself, for the most part, is a very generic biopic which distinguishes itself solely through the attempted epic nature of it all. Spike Lee has never been one for subtlety, but from the 2 1/2 hour mark on in it's very good stuff, oh that he hadn't spent *so* much time on unneccessary exposition prior to that. Washington gives a good performance, but like Dunaway, I'm always aware I'm watching Denzel act rather than naturally feel Malcolm X the person. The ending, showing real photos and clips of Malcolm has the equivalent of Jamie Foxx taking his glasses off at the end of Ray, it highlights this fact - the thing is, despite the power and change of Malcom's message, Lee revelled in the previous era and comments that Malcolm later regretted far too much to make that satisfactory in terms of the overall tone of the movie. So an average biopic with some plusses, but a lot of minuses.

Last I'll talk about (aside from Paper Moon, which I watched about 45 minutes of then switched off because it was just so meh and the girl so annoying) is The Swan, which was one of Grace Kelly's last films. It's about a family hoping to marry off their daughter (Kelly) to the crown prince (Alec Guinness), who in his 4 day visit seems to want to do anything except spend time with the daughter. I liked this much more than I thought I was going to, it's very entertaining at times and the ensemble cast are all very nicely played. Nothing revelatory, but very watchable indeed, with the obligatory excellent art direction and costumes to represent the setting.