Double Review: The Princess and The Frog, and Ponyo

Never have I had two more perfect days of cinema than the two that have just passed. I am a total animation fanboy – I love all things 2D, and I feel that animation, when done well, has an ability like no other medium to transport you to a different place, time or world. So when John Lasseter announced that Disney would be returning to 2D animation I was ecstatic – they should never have left, and had no good reason to. I’m not sure why the head honchos in the studio at the time felt that they could only move forward with CG animation, but I’ll not start writing about that, as it will only make me angry.

Meanwhile, another director on the other side of the pacific was still creating masterpiece after masterpiece in the second dimension. Hayao Miyazaki is a hero of mine, and so bear in mind that this review will be directed entirely from a bias, and I don’t intend to try and hide that. Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro are amongst my favourite films ever, whilst the rest of the studios output could hardly be classed as mediocre. The man is a living genius, and the release of one of his films is something that made me salivate with anticipation. Then, here in the UK where the releases of both were delayed, they came out at approximately the same time. So I was in a state of frenzy at the prospect of seeing both The Princess and the Frog and Ponyo. And I left both with that anticipation justified.

I started with Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, directed by masters Clements and Musker, the men behind Aladdin. From the start to the finish, I was in love with this film. It has an energy and joy that is just infectious, and rarely have I left a film smiling as much as I did after this. What Princess does is take classic Disney tropes, use them, lightly poke fun at them and then create something entirely new and brilliant from a tried and tested formula. You’ve heard the plot before, which involves some transmogrification shenanigans, ending up with the two central characters being frogs, befriending a musical crocodile and a cajun firefly. But it is so much more than that.

The characters at first appear to be straight from an old princess film, only this time the princess is a fiesty, likeable waitress who knows the value of hard work. Tiana is engaging throughout, and is a marvellous step up from saps like Cinderella. Forget the fact that she is a black princess – that’s hardly an issue as she spends most of the time green – what’s really a progression for Disney is her actual character and this leading lady is truly someone we can root for. Prince Naveen is also more than just a prince charming, he’s a playboy ukulele player. The comic reliefs – Louis the trumpeting crocodile and Ray the firefly – are perfectly pitched and genuinely funny as well.

But all this is without mentioning the villain. The most terrifying thing since Scar, Keith David’s Dr. Facilier lifts the film whenever he is on screen. Slimy, menacing and hiding a horrifying secret, Facilier is the dark heart of the film, and indeed scenes with him and the mysterious shadow creatures from ‘the other side’ are perhaps too scary for younger children. But as a villain he is an unstoppable force that is an absolute pleasure to watch. It’s just one of the many, many things that is so right about the film, and another reason that Clements and Musker should be praised.

The music of the film has faced some criticism, and while there is nothing to match the timeless songs of the Lion King, the songs are ridiculously catchy, and have a wonderful jazzy feel to them akin to the Jungle Book’s ‘King of the Swingers’. Drafting in Randy Newman to write the songs was an excellent choice, and the film thrums to the beat of the period New Orleans setting. Facilier’s ‘Friends on the Other Side’ does almost rival ‘Be Prepared’, and is even more sinister. It’s one of the ones you’ll be humming once the credits have rolled. My personal favourite, however, is ‘Dig A Little Deeper’, sung by the brilliant Mama Odie. This is the song that will enter the pantheon of all time Disney Greats. It’s magnificent.

The whole film is just so full of a happiness that is hard to quell, and I can’t wait to revisit Disney’s vision of a classic fairy tale again. If there is any justice in the world (which there isn’t) this will win the best animated Oscar.

Yet the biggest crime of the Academy awards this year was the total absence of Ponyo. Perhaps it’s a little too trippy for the academy’s tastes. Maybe it’s just too foreign. Either way, it’s a crime that it didn’t make the shortlist. The clearest thing on show in Miyazaki’s film is the director’s thrilling, vivid imagination. It sets the screen ablaze with vibrant imaginings of an underwater kingdom, or a wall of water that is dragging ships towards it. His worlds are always awash with invention, and Ponyo is no different.

It’s most similar in tone to My Neighbour Totoro, in that it is a loosely plotted ramble through childhood, with an almost unbearably cute lead. Ponyo is an endearing character, even when voiced by Miley Cyrus’ sister. The joy she expresses when seeing things above the water for the first time is palpable, and you can’t help but smile with her. As a new human, she is a hilarious little creature, running round with a lamp, or helping a little baby with a cold. As the 5 year old ‘romantic interest’, Sosuke is equally engaging and fun, whilst his mother (voiced decently by Tina Fey) is believable in everything except her driving ability.

I put romantic interest in inverted commas, because that is not what Ponyo is about. The love seen here is more to do with affection, familial bonds and responsibility. As the absent father breaks promises to his family, Sosuke feels an equal burden to look after Ponyo. It’s dealt with so subtly and beautifully, you know you are watching a master at work. Whilst it may not have the energy of Princess, there is still huge amounts to enjoy in this meandering look at childhood. It’s not Miyazaki’s finest hour, but this director is so good that even films that are in the middle of the list of his best films, its still twice as inventive or heartfelt as the majority of what the multiplexes churn out. The song at the end, however, is terrible.

And it goes without saying that the animation in both of these films is phenomenal. The swamps of the bayou thrive with life in Princess, and the sea is given a character as important as anyone else in Ponyo. When films as good as these are released, it really is dumbfounding why the market relies so much on CG. Their gloss is shown up to be hollowness next to these two. So 2D animation has made a glorious return to our screens, and has done so with such joy and brilliance that I can only hope it is here to stay. But then again, I was bound to say that.

Review – The Wolfman

There is something so unnaturally unnerving about mist. It’s a frequently employed idea in horror, most obviously in The Mist. But why on earth does a weather pattern create such a creepy atmosphere? Perhaps it’s metaphorical for an unclear path, or something hidden. Or maybe it’s just because it’s convenient for something that is literally hidden. Such as a giant werewolf. Needless to say, Joe Johnston’s revamp of the classic Gothic horror genre has swathes of the stuff. It starts and ends in misty woods, Benicio del Toro is often seen brooding in fog, and even London has a certain cloudy feel to it.

The way the film creates atmosphere is actually one of it’s strongest points. There are moments in the film of true Gothic splendour, and Johnston has absolutely nailed the eery aesthetic. By muting the colours to an almost monochromatic palette, Wolfman looks and feels like the black and white films it is homaging. It’s to the director’s credit that this monster-pic is not as ugly as Universal’s previous horror re-boot Van Helsing.

However, beyond the beauty of the mansion and the moors, the film is a rather tepid series of clichés that, whilst diverting, never quite grips in the way it should. We have the grizzled old men in the bar spouting theories on the beast in the woods, and lone men wandering with torches only to swiftly disappear in a blur of black. There doesn’t feel to be anything truly original here. The result is that the action, whilst well staged, gets dull rather quickly. It does have moments of fantastic entertainment (SPOILER: A werewolf Anthony Hopkins on fire) yet it fails to consistently thrill.

This is also down to the performances. Del Toro is admirably restrained yet too often just seems bored, and Emily Blunt isn’t given much to work with. Anthony Hopkins, meanwhile, seems to flit between accents randomly, which is rather distracting from an otherwise completely bonkers, ambiguous character. The film, however, is worth seeing for Hugo Weaving alone, who is just brilliant as Abberline, the Scotland Yard detective who is called in to deal with the case. His deadpan cool as he argues with a bar owner is just one of the high points of an excellent performance.

So The Wolfman isn’t quite the glorious return to the days of classic Horror that universal were hoping for. It’s entertaining enough and it looks great, but a clunky script, old clichés and a reticent central character mean that it never quite transforms into the beast it should have been.



Castles built in secret: the death of Britain

When I launched this blog, I promised something to do with News and Politics. But every time I felt inspired to write about something, I just felt hopeless. I’m no expert, and while I have opinions on things such as MPs expenses (time for complete political overhaul) and Obama (give him a chance, America, instead of nitpicking and infighting), other, more knowledgeable people are writing much better blogs on these same issues all around the blogosphere. So I decided, when stumbling across an amusing yet somewhat tragic article in The Times, to bring to you some of the smaller pieces of news that generally get forgotten yet should not be ignored. And so in this new style, I bring to you: the man who built his castle in secret.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7013978.ece

For those of you that can’t be bothered to read the full article, I’ll give you a short summary. A farmer decided he wanted to do some building work, and create a castle. Only, the United Kingdom hates innovation* and has a system in place for destroying interesting architectural ideas. It’s called planning permission. You can’t make a sand castle without someone from the local council coming round to tell you it breaks several different conventions and laws. It’s a whole load of bureaucracy that no one likes to fill out, particularly for fear of rejection. So this farmer, Mr Fidler, decided to… avoid it. He built a huge pile of hay bales, and from within these hay bales he constructed a castle. No seriously. Check out the link for pictures. He made a castle, underneath a stack of bales. Genius. And he was aware of a loop hole in the law that states that planning permission can’t pull down  building if it has been up for over four years. Or something like that. So he lived in this castle, under the hay, for four years and recently removed the bales, thinking he would now be immune.

Only he wasn’t. Planning permission obviously got ticked off by this, and so in a court case have fought to have this castle knocked down. They have found a loophole within the loophole, and are claiming that the removal of the bales was part of the construction, therefore construction had not been finished for four years, therefore they could pull it down. Fidler lost the case. The castle is going to come down.

Now whilst I do not advocate breaking the law, I am entirely on Fidler’s side here. He has fought a crippling, oppressive system of bureaucracy and has come out on top with a rather pretty little castle. It isn’t ostentatious or ugly. It’s in the middle of a field. No one objected to it. By my reckoning, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Not only that, but he has shown a certain amount of ingenuity in building this, and maybe that should be rewarded. But what is really irritating about this whole story is how anally retentive the planning regs people are being. Surely they should just give him an angry glare, send him a warning, and then leave him to live in his castle. But no. They fight him in court, insisting that the building be brought down. How joyless and uptight does someone have to be to do that? I mean, how soul-destroyingly boring must this jobsworth be, to be so determined to bring this castle down, that you take the farmer to court, launch a case against him and then find a ridiculous, minor thing such as removing the bales in order to make sure that the glorious council have their way? It’s depressing, isn’t it?

Sadly, there is nothing we can do about it. We cannot fight the system. The building must come down, the black-hearted people at the council must win. Yet I will ask you all to take a moment’s silence to remember not only this farmer’s courage, but also to remember what was once a great nation, Britain, that has been brought low by paper, forms and red tape. Britannia, RIP.

*This article may feature certain exaggerations…

Review – Precious

Precious is one of those films that you never want to watch. It’s not exactly a fun night’s entertainment to see an overweight girl get abused by her family. And the uncomfortable gut-punches keep coming, each blow made more painful by the flashes of her imagined world as a diva model serving to acutely highlight the horror of reality. In case you haven’t seen any trailers, or don’t know anything about this film, take this as a warning: Precious is far from easy viewing. In fact, this is probably the film’s greatest flaw. Whilst sometimes it is important to show up the social injustices in our apparently comfortable society, Precious does it in such a heavy handed manner it leaves the film feeling a little too… obvious. The several moments of a blank screen with just the noises to tell you what is going on, combined with frequent flashback moments of severe abuse mean that subtlety is hardly the aim here. It’s occasionally like having your senses assaulted, as if the director, Lee Daniels, is standing in the wings shouting ‘Look! This is SAD!!!!’ Last year’s The Soloist, whilst lacking the emotional punch of Precious, dealt with social inequality in a much more even-handed way.

Thankfully, saving Precious from being a totally miserable affair are a series of brilliant performances. Mo’Nique is the one that everyone is talking about, and she seems unstoppable on her way to win an Oscar. Yet that is probably because she is the most obviously ‘oscar’ performance in the whole thing. Her monologue at the end will undoubtedly be played over and over again come March 7th. But Precious should be remembered for introducing Gabourey Sidibe, who is brilliant in what could have been simply reduced to a victim role. The look in her eyes, her posture, her voice: it all means that she is entirely believable, and that we smile when she smiles, and cry when she cries. Sadly Sandra Bullock already has a space on her mantelpiece spared for her inevitable Oscar, yet Sidibe deserves it more.

Yet perhaps the most plaudits should go to the least expected recipient. Mariah Carey only has a small role, yet she makes the most of it, and is so good that maybe the film world can let her forget that she was ever in Glitter. As Precious tells her ‘You can’t deal with this,’ we believe her entirely, and that is all thanks to Carey’s stunning, selfless performance.

So in short, Precious is a film where some great actresses deliver performances that are better than the film itself. It isn’t deserving of all the hype surrounding it, but most films rarely do. You may also leave wondering what the point of it all was.

Classic Film to Check Out: Days of Heaven

Just a quick blog here because I’ve been kind of busy. I meant to review Up in The Air, and I probably still will, but writing this late kinda destroys the point of seeing a film the first day it was released. Anyway, to keep your appetite suitably whetted, here is a slightly older review I wrote to kick off a series talking about Classic Films that you must* watch.

The work of Terence Malick is certainly an acquired taste. To some it may be dull, pretentious and far too slow. For others it’s captivating, beautiful, and probably a bit too slow. Having seen three of his four films, I stand firmly in the latter category. Days of Heaven is not so much a film, more of an ode to nature, a testament to the beauty of America and a deep, involving study of love. All of which either adds up to a mesmerising experience, or a butt-numbing one.
It tells the story, in a rather roundabout way, of two lovers, Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams) posing as brother and sister, and the Bill’s little sister, Linda (Linda Manz), who follows them as they find work in the fields of the USA. But problems arise when the farmer they are working for (Sam Shepard) falls for Abby, thinking her only to be the sister of the Bill. Bill thinks the farmer is dying, so persuades Abby to marry him to gain the fortune. It’s a fairly simple plot, but as opposed to the even looser The New World, it’s reasonably compelling, especially come the climax. Naturally it’s downplayed to the extreme but enough happens to actually make you feel for the characters.

The main character (excluding nature), despite the billing, is actually Linda. An exceptionally mature performance elevates her character from a girl with an irritating, whiny voice, to a hugely sympathetic, profound and intelligent leading lady that is the drive behind the whole story. Leading the story onwards with a thoughtful, literary narrative, we see the world through the eyes of a child. She makes observations on the situation that surpass her years, making her a slightly odd but irrepressibly likeable protagonist. It’s easily the strongest aspect of the plot, but that does nothing to detract from the main theme of the love triangle. Gere and Adams are attractive leads with not much to do, yet still manage say so much through a lingering touch, or a longing glance. Sam Shepard (recently seen looking a lot older as Frank James, Jesse’s brother) is the standout of the three. His is an agonising, heartbreaking that clearly expresses exactly who the victim of the whole plot is. As biblical judgement is wreaked on his farm, and he begins to realise the motives of the whole sorry story, anyone who doesn’t feel sorry for him should probably check in with a psychiatrist. It’s a marvellous performance.

But in spite of the surprisingly gripping story with slow building tension, and an array of strong actors, that’s not really why anyone would watch Days of Heaven. It’s quite clearly for the cinematography, and if you go into the film expecting this then you will not be disappointed. Terence Malick is truly a master of the landscape, finding beauty everywhere he points his camera. Well, with the obvious help of cinematographer Nestor Almendros. You can feel the sense of awe the two of them have for what it is they are filming. Nothing is taken lightly here – it took Malick a year to film it, and this dedication pays off remarkably. Rarely has a film been so beautiful, or something as simple as a field of wheat been so lovingly portrayed. Not only this, but it is accompanied by a haunting score from the master composer Ennio Morricone. It’s almost as if they were trying to test the limits of how much splendour and elegance they could cram into one film.

It’s really not to everyone’s tastes, but for those who enjoy a slow burning plot playing second fiddle to the landscape it takes place in, then this is quite simply one of the most magisterial, moving and beautiful films ever made.

In Short: Sublime.

*well, you don’t have to.

Golden Globes – Reaction

Just a quick reaction here – It’s a sign of what kind of a writer I am that I have a lecture to go to very soon, so I can’t write for long. This means there will be bad grammar and poor writing all over the place.

And so the Globes have kicked off the awards season, bringing with it a couple of surprises. The Hangover can now release a DVD with “Golden Globe Winner” emblazoned above it, as can Sherlock Holmes. These two unconventional award winners were the only real shocks of the night, as the rest were not exactly taxing to guess. Despite some evident emotion, you could see that Meryl Streep was beginning to get a little bored with all the mantelpiece extensions she keeps needing, and Jeff Bridges was this year’s Mickey Rourke in terms of older actor playing a grizzled nostalgic trying to reconnect.

And it was with a certain sickening inevitably that Avatar hurtled towards its best picture Globe. It’s not that I didn’t like Avatar. I’ve seen it twice now, and I stand by my opinion that it is audacious, beautiful filmmaking from a master. But I just didn’t feel it deserved it. Cameron had an astronomical budget to play around with, and state of the art effects. He could have farted at the screen and it still would have looked amazing. Whereas films like Precious and Up in the Air have done a lot more relative to what they had to work with. It’s extremely difficult for younger, brighter filmmakers to get ahead if the biggest budget, biggest profit films scoop up all the major awards. It would have made more sense to me to award it to someone like Lee Daniels who is obviously ready to take the film world by storm, rather than giving it to someone who already has. Avatar isn’t even Cameron’s best film – Aliens has that title.

There is possibly a reason for this though. Three of the contenders for Best Drama were all relevant dramas that very much fit in with the here and now. Precious is a searing social commentary, Up in the Air a tragicomic look at 21st century life and The Hurt Locker addresses an ongoing war that many would rather forget is happening. Perhaps the HFPA found it a little too uncomfortable to be reminded of the world they live in, so they opted for an admittedly glorious piece of escapism. Yet I can’t help but hope that Oscar will be brave and go for something different.

And this is all without mentioning the criminal loss of Michael Stuhlbarg, who should win any award going for a Serious Man.

Here’s the list of winners for films. For an opinion on TV, find another blog!

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Avatar

Best Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
The Hangover

Best Animated Feature Film
Up

Best Foreign Film
The White Ribbon

Best Actor, Motion Picture – Drama
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Best Actress, Motion Picture – Drama
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Best Actor, Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
Robert Downey Jr, Sherlock Holmes

Best Actress,  Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

Best Supporting Actor, Motion Picture
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress, Motion Picture
Mo’Nique, Precious

Best Director, Motion Picture
James Cameron, Avatar

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture
Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, Up In The Air

Best Original Song, Motion Picture
T Bone Burnett, ‘The Weary Kind’,  Crazy Heart

Best Original Score, Motion Picture
Michael Giacchino, Up

Cecil B DeMille Award
Martin Scorsese

What’s going to happen in 2010 – FACT*

So the new year is upon us, and is ripe with potential for failure, moaning and another terrible Twilight film. This may make me sound like a miserable guy, but we Brits seem to complain about everything. I know that my year will be exciting, as I’m hoping to travel a bit, carrying on with my course and who knows what else. But in the world of the media, it will undoubtedly be doom, gloom and pointless celebrity gossip. So here’s the next twelve months written out in entirety**, so you are prepared. I’m nice like that.

1. Michael Jackson will amaze everyone with ‘the comeback tour of the millennium’ as it turns out he isn’t actually dead, but hanging out with Elvis in a Lithuanian mansion. Elvis, meanwhile, also attempts a comeback, but crippling arthritis means that he moves like Indiana Jones fighting aliens, and no one watches.
2. A miracle cure-all is discovered that vanquishes every known disease.
3. 317 more diseases are discovered. All incurable.
4. New Moon wins 13 Oscars, breaking all records. It later transpires that the academy voters were paid off by a bunch of hormonal teenage girls, Mormons and desperate middle-aged women. This is dubbed, rather lazily, as ‘Moongate’.
5. Terence Malick’s next film will come out. 3 people will watch it.
6. Global Warming is discovered to be false. This is then refuted. This refutation is refuted. This next refutation is discovered to be only partially correct. It then turns out it was all started as a rumour by a 16-year-old on the internet. This is dubbed, even more lazily, as ‘Warminggate’. A writer at The Sun gets a pay rise.
7. This blog will gain astronomical views, becoming bigger than Wikipedia, Facebook and Google combined in terms of site activity. I will fail to notice.
8. Arnold Schwarzenegger is revealed to be a cyborg created by Barack Obama. They both win prizes for this. When Obama is asked why he did this, he just smiled and everyone cheered.
9. A Romanian peasant stumbles across huge gold deposits underneath his village, they all become ridiculously rich and Romania rises as a superpower to rival China. An obscure cult in Utah claims they saw it coming, and this is why you should pay them lots of money and why they should be allowed ten wives each. Tom Cruise joins.
10. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider goes horribly wrong and causes a black hole that envelopes all of europe, but due to Hollywood science only causes a Zombie apocalypse in the states. Roland Emmerich makes a film out of it, calling it 2010. Meanwhile, God wins a smug victory over the atheists as the smoking remains of europe simply spell out ‘I Told You So’.

So there it is, the facts of the coming year. I know it to be scientifically true as recently a star rock fell from heaven with these truths engraved on it, signed by Xenu. I carbon dated it with my Home Chemistry Set Jr.!, which revealed the date of origin to be tomorrow. It was then natural to see that the alignment of Mars and Mercury*** had been right all along. See?

That, and my cousin told me so.

* Not actually, in any way, shape or form, fact.

**Not even close to an entirety.

***Not only that, but anyone born in March should be open to romance this month.