The Weekly Review: 04/06/2012

A weekly round-up of what I have been watching, listening to and discussing. Inspired by Ryan's 'Days of the Week' posts, this is a bit more all-encompassing as I think my interest in cinema and art crosses over and between a variety of sources...

End of Half-Term. Results sent off. This holiday is much deserved and with good friends staying for the weekend, I already feel like I have relaxed alot. Hence the lateness of this post. My brother and I spent a night in, whereby we scanned over some classic scenes of Jurassic Park too on Blu-Ray - it is simply unbelievable how well those SFX stand-up. Its only the pastel-colours that haven't stood the test of time. Even Malcolm's 'leather-and-glasses' combo is out-of-date.

Highlight of the Week:

Waste Land - I watched this at The London Film Festival in 2010 (and you can still listen to the episode) and bought the DVD only recently. Sarah on the other hand, had never seen it before. It really is an incredible documentary - better than Inside Job (The competitor which won Best Documentary at the Oscars) and, in my opinion, it is much stronger than Exit Through The Giftshop, another art-documentary released the same year. As playful and 'fun' as Exit Through The Giftshop is, Waste Land shows how profound and life-changing art can be. The art pieces Vik Muniz creates change the lives of his models - it changed some of their goals in life. Art is not expected to control others - but it should open peoples eyes to something. Something they haven't seen before. A brilliant film.

DVD's/Blu-Rays/Cinema

Men In Black 3 - Ready for discussion on the podcast. Next up? The Batman franchise ...

Waste Land - See Above

Super 8 - I'm watching this with the kids in FILMClub. They are all enjoying it, but one student confidently stated how - after watching the film at home - he thought it was great "until the end". I guess I could agree with that.

Music/Podcasts

Tom Jones - Yeah, after last weeks The Voice, I cracked and bought a 'Best Of' Tom Jones. Turns out 'It's Not Unusual', 'She's a Lady' and 'Help Yourself' are the only good tracks. Maybe it'll grow on me.

LAMBcast - The Lammy nominees have been announced. I haven't got a single one. I'm comfortable with that. Well done to everyone who did get nominated!

The Matineecast - Two-time Lammy award-winner - opossibly three... - and its still a great show. Ryan's birthday meant that they discussed High Fidelity with feminist-writer Joanna Chlebus. I can see what Ryan means about the way Rob Gordon (Cusack) becomes a less-likeable guy as you get older. I should rewatch the film but, from what I recall, he cheats and is pretty harsh to the women he has dated. Fact of the matter is, the best sequence is in High Fidelity with Tim Robbins: "So ... shall we leave it at that then..."

David Cross - I had a desperate urge to listen to some of his live stuff. And he remains my favourite stand-up comic. Ever.

TV/Theatre/Art Galleries/Books/Misc

Art Against Knives: The Print Shop - For TQS, I covered this exhibition which is on in Shoreditch. Great cause that highlights some of the truth in East London.

I need to start a new book...

Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

"Bad things happen... but you can still live"

Introduction

We know from the trailers how Spielberg and the 80's films he produced is what has prompted this creative project. JJ Abrams, director of Star Trek and Lost, had the idea of combining a Sci-Fi story he has had for many years with his childhood joy of filmmaking with a Super-8 Camera. Can he pull the modern audience back to the eighties to reclaim our love for Spielberg's films? Because, lets be honest, the last time Spielberg went retro by taking us back with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ... I think we can agree that it wasn't that successful.

Super 8 tells the story a group of kids who, as they attempt to create a zombie-film on a super-8 camera, find themselves to be witnesses to a huge train crash. Much-like E.T., our lead character Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is in a single-parent family with a personal 'hole' to fill when this crash happens ... and due to this train-crash, there is an unknown creature on the prowl...

Incredible Actors

In the first instance, the film rests on the performance of the kids and the child actors in this film are truly incredible. Riley Griffiths plays the film-obsessed friend of Joe and he is half-Home-Alone's-Kevin-Mcallister, with his huge family and red-decor kitchen and half Goonies-Chunk, with his oafish prescence and chatty-demeanour. The range of other actors, including Dakota's sister Elle Fanning, are equally strong forcing you to buy into this story and the world they inhabit. It's a small community they live in and if you could not buy into it, the film would fall flat. It doesn't - these are exceptional child-actors and the future looks bright for them.

Inspired by the Best

Abrams direction is equally strong. The whole film is clearly his own - though paying homage to many sequences by Spielberg it never feels like a parody or obsession. You would never see the enourmous train-crash sequence in an 80's film. The crash is truly sublime - huge pieces of train and metal exploding on every part of the screen and smashing into the ground is, on the one hand a great set-up, but something that is pure Abrams. Like Lost and Mission Impossible 3, he gets us hooked at the beginning with huge special effects and a what-the-hell-has-happened question ensuring you are sat in your seat for the duration of the film. The Spielberg influence remains consistent and the huge budget of Super 8 is clear from the outset - compared with Gareth Edwards Monsters from earlier this year. Whilst Edwards played with a very low-budget take on the same genre, both Abrams and Edwards owe a huge debt to Jurassic Park, as both films have van-attack sequences that vividly recall the same sequence in Jurassic Park - and they both hold back for as long as possible in showing us the big creature itself.

The New Generation

The film raises questions about cinema today. Whilst the theme of 'the acceptance of death' fits neatly alongside Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two and Toy Story 3, the film harks back to a time whereby the sense of community, family and friendship appeared much closer and creative. Despite the range of different ways that films can be made and produced, it seems strange to neccessarily pre-date this film in the context of the eighties. Is that the only thing it has going for it? Cloverfield, I imagine, is your modern take on the same theme - is it not? Monster-films truly seem to be 'in' at the moment with the likes of Monsters, Skyline and Battle: Los Angeles so is this eighties connection and childhood wonder the 'unique take' on the same story? I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but I wonder if part of the problem of setting the film in the modern day is because you don't find groups of young children creating films in their back yard, instead they shoot down aliens on PS3 and chat via Skype. The fact that we now look at the world in Super 8 with a warm fuzzy feeling, in wonder, as if we can relate to that generation may say more about our wish to go back to the past - and therefore raises our concerns about the children of today.