The London Film Festival began on Wednesday.
I LOVE the London Film Festival. Two of my favourite things, London and Film, rubbing shoulders, ripping each other’s clothes off and violently bringing each other off in a fortnight of frenzied, hungry rutting, with blood, sweat and celluloid sprayed in all four corners of Leicester Square.
This is the first time in four years that I haven’t had press accreditation for the festival. I couldn’t really justify it with the new job and new baby. But I used to love the whole thing. In the lead up, there’s two weeks of back-to-back press screenings, three movies a day, starting at around 9.30am, leaving you on the verge of deep vein thrombosis by the late afternoon, squinting into the icy winter sky over the South Bank.
And then when the festival begins, there are more screenings. And interviews. And far too much coffee. And parties. And free beer. And you end up starting the day at 9am, and finishing at 3am in an after-hours dive in W1, arguing about movies with your peers, in slurred, nonsensical, fractured sentences. And sometimes, there’s a bit of journalism thrown in there too.
I’m going to miss it.
But to mark this occasion in my own special way, I’ve been reflecting on great London movies. And I’m struggling. It’s much easier to think of the London movies that suck.
Notting Hill is a bad, bad London movie. So is Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. None of those films are any kind of London that I know. It’s dishonest fakery, a counterfeit London for an international audience who don’t know any better, and don’t care either.
And the Carry On films and the Ealing comedies and Brief Encounter are all interesting in an historical sense, or as entertainments, but it’s a London that predates me, and it doesn’t matter how much I like Sid James or Terry Thomas or Trevor Howard, these aren’t people I recognise from my London life.
So, here are the top three London films that I can think of at the moment:
An American Werewolf in London – It took the objective eye of the great and underrated (American) John Landis to conjure up this perfect confluence of horror and comedy. The gore and laughs are piled high to dizzying levels amidst some of the great London-on-film moments, like the werewolf’s-eye-view of a rampage around the London Underground, or the porn cinema showing “See You Next Tuesday”, where David is confronted by all his victims (in reality the now-closed ABC cinema on Piccadilly which is currently a ticket booth that I never, ever see anyone using), or the decapitated head bouncing down Piccadilly.
28 Days Later – Not strictly a London film, but this is up there for the startling opening shots of Cillian Murphy wandering around the abandoned zombie-ravaged capital, all shot on the fly, guerrilla-style, in the early hours of daybreak by Danny Boyle. Burning cars, littered streets, and toppled-over double-deckers. Just like the real London after the Poll Tax riots.
Dirty Pretty Things – “We are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms. And suck your cocks.” My favourite London film ever. Superficially, it’s a thriller. But it resonates because it's really about how we live our London lives today. Stephen Frears has a meticulous eye for detail, and every scene rings true. This film opened the London Film Festival a couple of years back. And I do believe that is where I came in...
Friday, October 22, 2004
Monday, October 18, 2004
Writer's blog
One of the advantages of the multifarious Sucker Punch, for me at least, is that it helps to kick loose the inarticulate, the inchoate and the incoherent from my seething psyche, and strings it all together into a series of sentences that perpetrate the idea that I am a witty and intelligent man. Sometimes.
This blog frequently helps me win the battle against procrastination and, that bane of all wordpeddlers, writer’s block. It can be a pretty handy warm-up before the more arduous workout of my “professional” writing: the film reviews, the feature articles and, when I’m really rolling sevens, the contributions to books. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. But it ain’t always easy.
I can come on here and spray paint my graffiti on the electronic wall without any of the performance anxiety of the other writing in my life, and sometimes I surprise myself with stuff on here that is far superior to the supposedly “real” writing that I sign my name to. And I’ve been wondering why that is. Partly, I suppose it’s because there are no limitations here. I can write as much or as little as I want, as often or as infrequently as I want, about whatever I want, without the straightjacket of editors, or house style, or deadlines, or anxiety about my professional reputation (such that it is).
Another factor must be subject matter. On here, I invariably write exclusively about topics about which I have an opinion. With, for example, a film review, I sometimes find that I have nothing that I really need or want to say about a movie, but I still have 500 words that I have to fill, and I hate to just hack something out if I can avoid it, so I punch it repeatedly in my mind until it acquiesces and says something vaguely meaningful, informative or entertaining.
You see, lately, I’ve been able to come to the blog, write away happily, post an entry, and then I go off, fire up a Word document, and gaze at a white screen for a long time waiting for some kind of inspiration. Admittedly, the demands of fatherhood make it difficult to think clearly sometimes, but this is something I’ve noticed before the arrival of the little poo-factory Buttercup.
And in some ways, the blog becomes another avoidance tactic to postpone the other work clamouring for my limited mental attention.
Not sure that there is any conclusion or solution for this one. I’m just thinking out loud. But I really am going to go off and try to finish a feature article I should have put to rest months ago.
By the end of the week.
Maybe.
This blog frequently helps me win the battle against procrastination and, that bane of all wordpeddlers, writer’s block. It can be a pretty handy warm-up before the more arduous workout of my “professional” writing: the film reviews, the feature articles and, when I’m really rolling sevens, the contributions to books. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. But it ain’t always easy.
I can come on here and spray paint my graffiti on the electronic wall without any of the performance anxiety of the other writing in my life, and sometimes I surprise myself with stuff on here that is far superior to the supposedly “real” writing that I sign my name to. And I’ve been wondering why that is. Partly, I suppose it’s because there are no limitations here. I can write as much or as little as I want, as often or as infrequently as I want, about whatever I want, without the straightjacket of editors, or house style, or deadlines, or anxiety about my professional reputation (such that it is).
Another factor must be subject matter. On here, I invariably write exclusively about topics about which I have an opinion. With, for example, a film review, I sometimes find that I have nothing that I really need or want to say about a movie, but I still have 500 words that I have to fill, and I hate to just hack something out if I can avoid it, so I punch it repeatedly in my mind until it acquiesces and says something vaguely meaningful, informative or entertaining.
You see, lately, I’ve been able to come to the blog, write away happily, post an entry, and then I go off, fire up a Word document, and gaze at a white screen for a long time waiting for some kind of inspiration. Admittedly, the demands of fatherhood make it difficult to think clearly sometimes, but this is something I’ve noticed before the arrival of the little poo-factory Buttercup.
And in some ways, the blog becomes another avoidance tactic to postpone the other work clamouring for my limited mental attention.
Not sure that there is any conclusion or solution for this one. I’m just thinking out loud. But I really am going to go off and try to finish a feature article I should have put to rest months ago.
By the end of the week.
Maybe.
Monday, October 11, 2004
You’ll Believe a Man Can Fly!
“Say, Jim! Whoo! That’s a bad outfit!”
Towards the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, I would have been in the early stages of my sixth year on the Planet Earth, around the time the last son of Krypton crash-landed into my life. Whilst my peers were obsessing over George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, I was awed by a different fantasy. To this day, Superman remains the finest superhero movie ever made, and I’m convinced that, regardless of advances in technology, it will never be bettered.
From the jagged, opaque, crystalline refuge of his Fortress of Solitude, to the urban sprawl of Metropolis and the spinning globe atop the offices of the Daily Planet, everything was perfectly realised as a world just like ours, but not. And the moment that crackled along my synapses and irrevocably changed me, in the split-second when I pledged my heart to the cinema forever: The bumbling, well-meaning Clark Kent rips his shirt asunder to reveal that S, before diving into a telephone booth and appearing in the bold red, yellow and blues, his cape billowing in the city night. And then his feet leave the ground.
“Easy, miss. I've got you.”
“You, you've got me? Who's got you?”
Perfection.
And it wasn’t perfection because of the now-primitive special effects, or the word-perfect screenplay, or the confident, assured direction, or the all-star cast, or the point-of-view of a six-year-old boy witnessing miracles (although all those things played a part). It was all down to Christopher Reeve. He was Clark Kent. And he will always be my Superman.
For someone as insanely devoted to comics as I am, I’ve never been into Superman comics. The character on the page never did it for me. I was spoilt from a tender, young age, because I saw the real thing. A bulletproof man who could jump buildings in a single bound, and was more powerful than a locomotive. Part of me never stopped believing that Christopher Reeve was really Superman. Clark Kent was just another fake identity in Superman’s Russian doll identity. When you peeled off all the layers of artifice, Christopher Reeve was a genuine superhero.
In 1995, the man who could fly was no longer able to walk. When he appeared at the 68th Academy Awards ceremony on stage in his wheelchair, I cried in a mixture of delight, joy, and sadness. Since then, he fought tirelessly for medical research to help cure the causes of paralysis, with limited, but by no means insignificant, success, hamstrung by political bureaucracy.
And now he's gone. And I can't think of a suitable goodbye that will do him justice, or that won't sound trite. But maybe I'm just not ready to say goodbye to him yet. So I'll leave it with these words from Jonathan Kent to his adoptive son, that could just as well apply to this greatest of American heroes:
“You can do all these amazing things, and sometimes you think that you will burst wide open unless you can tell someone about it, don't you? There's one thing I know for sure, son. And that is, YOU ARE HERE FOR A REASON. I don't know what it is, exactly, but I do know this much: it's NOT to score touchdowns.”
Towards the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, I would have been in the early stages of my sixth year on the Planet Earth, around the time the last son of Krypton crash-landed into my life. Whilst my peers were obsessing over George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, I was awed by a different fantasy. To this day, Superman remains the finest superhero movie ever made, and I’m convinced that, regardless of advances in technology, it will never be bettered.
From the jagged, opaque, crystalline refuge of his Fortress of Solitude, to the urban sprawl of Metropolis and the spinning globe atop the offices of the Daily Planet, everything was perfectly realised as a world just like ours, but not. And the moment that crackled along my synapses and irrevocably changed me, in the split-second when I pledged my heart to the cinema forever: The bumbling, well-meaning Clark Kent rips his shirt asunder to reveal that S, before diving into a telephone booth and appearing in the bold red, yellow and blues, his cape billowing in the city night. And then his feet leave the ground.
“Easy, miss. I've got you.”
“You, you've got me? Who's got you?”
Perfection.
And it wasn’t perfection because of the now-primitive special effects, or the word-perfect screenplay, or the confident, assured direction, or the all-star cast, or the point-of-view of a six-year-old boy witnessing miracles (although all those things played a part). It was all down to Christopher Reeve. He was Clark Kent. And he will always be my Superman.
For someone as insanely devoted to comics as I am, I’ve never been into Superman comics. The character on the page never did it for me. I was spoilt from a tender, young age, because I saw the real thing. A bulletproof man who could jump buildings in a single bound, and was more powerful than a locomotive. Part of me never stopped believing that Christopher Reeve was really Superman. Clark Kent was just another fake identity in Superman’s Russian doll identity. When you peeled off all the layers of artifice, Christopher Reeve was a genuine superhero.
In 1995, the man who could fly was no longer able to walk. When he appeared at the 68th Academy Awards ceremony on stage in his wheelchair, I cried in a mixture of delight, joy, and sadness. Since then, he fought tirelessly for medical research to help cure the causes of paralysis, with limited, but by no means insignificant, success, hamstrung by political bureaucracy.
And now he's gone. And I can't think of a suitable goodbye that will do him justice, or that won't sound trite. But maybe I'm just not ready to say goodbye to him yet. So I'll leave it with these words from Jonathan Kent to his adoptive son, that could just as well apply to this greatest of American heroes:
“You can do all these amazing things, and sometimes you think that you will burst wide open unless you can tell someone about it, don't you? There's one thing I know for sure, son. And that is, YOU ARE HERE FOR A REASON. I don't know what it is, exactly, but I do know this much: it's NOT to score touchdowns.”
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