As I mentioned in an earlier tv thread I've been watching Band of Brothers, which I coincidentally started watching on Remembrance Day. With a quite literally ridiculous budget of $120m and a reputation through the roof it could seem a rather daunting watch, but as I had been assured "Once you see one, you'll want to see them all" and I do find that to be the case (I was basically watching two episodes a day). It takes a while for all the characters and cast to be fleshed out just from the very nature of the huge ensemble, so I think a rewatch would be very rewarding, but certain episodes flirt with brilliance. The second episode chronicling the attack on a fixed position was a stunning piece of work and I greatly enjoyed the episodes in Bastogne which show the worst they had to go through. I could personally have done without the interviews with the real people involved which preceed the episodes as I don't think it adds anything that's already there in the drama and obviously given the 10 part nature of it some episodes are better than others. David Schwimmer, Shane Taylor, Scott Grimes and of course Damian Lewis were the standouts for me.
I videoed Onibaba on the newly restored (to Virgin subscribers) SkyArts and watched it the following day. At first I thought this was a trashier version of something like Woman in the Dunes as it has savage women living in a visually striking but obscure location. Surprising amount of nudity, violence too, it seemed as if it were almost a precurser to exploitation but there is something so relentlessly hypnotic about the film it's extremely seductive. The basic story is during a civil war a woman and her daughter-in-law kill soldiers who cross their path (in the mass of reeds where they live) and sell their armour for food. A man (who was a friend of the one's daughter and other's husband) returns alone saying their man is dead and throws their lives into disarray. This is an examination of sensuality, supersition and manipulation and a pyschological horror in the way something like Rosemary's Baby is. The direction is what really elevates this though as it could have so easily been so trashy but is made to be so worthwhile through the artful approach to this very strange tale.
State of Play is a BBC miniseries which is getting the Hollywood treatment next year. It was never on my radar when it came out in 2003 so all I basically knew was Bill Nighy had won a BAFTA for it. The set up of the plot is that a young boy is shot on the same day that a woman who was having an affair with a politician apparantly commits suicide. We then follow the politician (David Morrissey) and his journalist friend (John Simm) as they work both sides of the apparatus to clear the politician's reputation and to find out the truth of what happened. It's extremely well structured and the drip-feeding of information at a pace is everything I'd hoped 24 would be but wasn't. The overall pacing is very good, you feel continually involved and in the moment but it never feels overlong. There's a cracking supporting cast (from James McAvoy to Kelly Macdonald and Nighy) too, it's just quality stuff from the king of British tv and new Harry Potter helmer David Yates. Nighy's BAFTA win is puzzling, it must have been on the back of the country falling in love with him for Love Actually, but the prospect of a gender-switch with Helen Mirren taking the role in the Hollywood version does smack of genius even if the rest of it looks quite underwhelming.
Sadly from a couple of such quality tv efforts I moved on to the excreable ode to pointlessness that is Boy A. This tv movie repulsed me intellectually even more than Hunger and The Baader-Meinhof Complex. It's about a child killer (in both senses of the term) who is released into society and given a new identity. The massive problem here is the filmmakers try so desperately to get you to like the main character it cuts the film and any possibly meaningful message they might have off at the knees. They use every trick from casting a Michael Cera-esque level of cute actor to play the lead to finding every justification imaginable for the crime to actually making him save a girl's life when he gets out. It's pathetic. The actual point as to whether he has rehabilitated is taken as read, as is his right to the new identity - he is told he has earned that right but we don't see it so have no investment in that - he's just a killer with a boyish smile. What it actually means is "If it was actually the other kid's idea and you just went along with it and the girl you killed was a bitch anyway and the justice system is biased and you're actually really cute and women want to have sex with you and you can now save a little girl and be a hero ... then that's all good". It's repugnant.
They completely miss any possibly interesting drama (if he were actually portrayed as heartless a killer as say, his accomplice then any rehabilitation might have been interesting character-wise, but they crap all over that by making him as unendingly nice as possible and ignoring said rehabilitation). Andrew Garfield was fine in the lead role but he was probably the fourth best performer on show here and his BAFTA win is a complete joke and makes Bill Nighy's win look inspired in comparison. Add to that there is a finale that is quite literally ridiculous and totally implausible due to the current laws of this country and you are left with a film with almost no redeeming features I would find it impossible to even comprehend thinking about recommending to anyone. Total waste of everyone's time.