Monument

Back to work on a momentumless Monday morning. Fully rested from the weekend but always craving more. Right now I remain resentful of the bus-ride that jostles and jolts and keeps me awake. I could have caught another 10 minutes kip if it weren’t for these fucking roads. Someone should do something about that.

The bus screeches as it slows and I lift my head to meet one of Marble Arches statues, one of its many monuments. Among historical figures and battle horses stand more artistic endeavours, a little more surreal and expressive. A circus act: a man with a wide stance to accommodate the weight above him, his outstretched arm meeting the equally rigid trunk of an elephant balanced above.

This had stood out initially but you grow indifferent to even the most beautiful sunset should you sleep on the horizon – and the commute is inextricably cuffed to work. With such norms accepted it didn’t surprise me when I lifted my head that morning to see a large black figure standing taller than the double-decker’s top deck from which I viewed it: a winged feline, a deranged beast. A wild eyed, open jawed demonic cat, cutting a hole in the sky with its towering stature and razor tipped wings.

At a glance the beast was nothing more than another battle animal – something like the impressionist feral lions that decorate our most culturally significant grounds – but what caught me after a couple of seconds was it’s crazed expression. It looked as though the flesh had burnt away from its face, left frozen in a black maniacal scream.

I was left staring at this creature until the bus creeped forward once again, revealing the base of the monument – there standing a vicar with a train of suited folk behind him. Just on the outskirts a couple dozen Romanians lay unconscious in the morning sun, fallen at the feet of this behemoth as some kind of sacrifice. I am no longer tired. I am paying full attention to a world I no longer understand.

The bus pulls forward once more and reveals a little more to this already burgeoning picture – a camera crew. Okay. This grounds everything in a reality I can comprehend. Although in the coming days the monument remains and so too do the crowds collapsed below. A shrine for a Satanist religion perhaps. Only fair that all are represented I guess. I wonder where I apply to join.

May 11, 2015 0

A Most Violent Year (2014)

A Most Violent Year moves with a steady and deliberate pace, captivating with an intensity that feels like it could turn at any moment – much like the self-made businessman at the centre of the story.

Abel Morales is an oil man. A Columbian immigrant who has striven to succeed legitimately and carve out a piece of the American Dream for him and his family. The first things we see in the film are Abel (Oscar Isaac) his lawyer (Albert Brooks) and one of his trucks emblazoned with Standard Heating Oil – the same name as Isaac’s character in Drive in which he starred alongside Brooks. Where Drive had the garish stylism of the 80s, A Most Violent Year – set in 1981 – couldn’t be more different: it mutes its colours and completely tones down the style to create a dulled wintry New York more in line with Sidney Lumet.

A more mature and meditative film that carries the measured approach of its cool-headed protagonist. Where Gosling’s Driver was liable to crash the film into sudden chaos, Abel exercises a control that keeps the film levelled, intent on maintaining his companies growth and keeping his hands clean. This is becoming something of struggle however, considering that his growing success is making him the target of multiple hijackings, and subject of criminal investigations simultaneously.

Another film promising blood – delivering oil

The films title, though misleading in terms of genre, references the peak crime rates of New York in 1981, the climate in which Abel’s drivers are hunted down. Abel, a man of morals, knows that he must resist the temptation to retaliate, especially whilst being monitored so closely by the assistant DA (David Oyelowo) and whilst he tries to secure a sizeable loan for a property in which he has invested everything. This doesn’t actually seem to be the prime motivator for Abel though, a first-generation immigrant who is defined more by his principles: a resilient man tested only by his wife, a steely Brooklyn mob-daughter who threatens constantly to take things into her own hands – her emasculating shadow captured perfectly during a roadside incident with an injured deer.

In the pursuit of power there comes the exchange of exposure and vulnerability, which is communicated through the lighting in each scene. Most deals take place inside under heavy-set shadows, or with curtains drawn, or silhouetted against the sun. Only when someone is exposed are they lit from the front – it’s almost jarring the first time this happens as it feels so out of place in the film. It seems the pacing and filming style are intrinsically tied to themes within the film and work subtly enhance the performances, which are impressive in their own right.

A Most Violent Year is a boldly confident film – and it deserves to be.

April 22, 2015 0

Bugsy Malone (1976)

DVD Review – Written for RAF News Apr 2015

Bugsy Malone is a children’s classic that tells the story of two rival gangs in prohibition era Chicago where a new weapon has arrived on the scene.. a child friendly Tommy gun.

Shot in 70s London and set in 20s New York, Bugsy Malone remains a unique film that at times looks like utter chaos, with children standing in for adults and cream pies taking the place of bullets. Scott Baio is Bugsy, a wisecracking charmer who comes to the aid of speakeasy proprietor Fat Sam, our adolescent Al Capone, whilst under attack from a new outfit kitted out with Splurge guns.

Jodie Foster, considered a veteran actor at 13, stands out among many first time actors – fresh off the set of Taxi Driver working with Scorsese and De Niro, to working in this miniature mafia musical with a cast all under the age of 16. At times it feels like a school play – but with unbelievable production value. Costumes and sets have been shrunk down to create a world for our half-pint hero Bugsy, peddling around in custom built cars with a bicycle beneath the frame – said to cost just as much as a regular saloon car.

Bugsy Malone has a bizarre concept that is made all the more strange by the musical numbers – sung by adults with mismatched voices and danced by kids with no previous experience – but it holds onto an otherworldly charm. It really is a parody of the gangster genre, or of film in general, by showing the nature of acting as merely playing pretend. The only difference is that the industry as well as its actors take themselves too seriously, but Bugsy Malone doesn’t hide the fact that it’s just a bit of fun. Sickly and cringe-worthy at times but high spirited and harmless.

April 17, 2015 2

Eclipse

This was the morning of the solar eclipse, apparently. We were taking their word for it: the professionals. The astrologers and that new breed of scientist-celebrities – whether the fame concourse was being corrected or simply devouring every facet of culture in order to stay alive, who could say..

There were warnings of the ‘selfie phenomena’ – this being the first eclipse to occur since everyone has a mobile device appropriated for the sole use of taking self-portraits in various settings and surroundings. This, apparently, could lead to people accidentally looking at the sun for minutes. This is the level to which we have sunk as a species.

Despite all the excitement stirred up by the risk of blindness, we were left taking their word for this cosmic event when the mornings weather drifted into a dreary overcast haze. An opaque heavy fog blanketed the sky and prevented us from seeing anything, even after applying the usual Instagram filters.

An elderly woman beside me on the train looked up out the window, ‘No eclipse for us’ she says to me with a smile, ‘I remember the last one – I imagine you were very young but I remember it very well. It wasn’t so much the way it looked, but the chill that followed. How dreadfully cold it became so quickly. It made you realise you wouldn’t get far without the sun’. Humbled by her previous experience you could tell she longed to feel it again, chasing the dragon on the 08:38 Victoriabound.

She paused in thought, now with the attention of the neighbouring seats – ‘When is the next one? 2026? Hmm I’ll be very old then..’ her soliloquy trails off, bleary blighty has forced the question of morality on this poor woman – not the best start to this Friday morning.

March 20, 2015 0

Blame it on the Pop

Pop music is pretty abstract when you think about it. Working in an officespace beside a radio has forced me to think about it, and how much a value my life as a result. It gives artists poetic licence to spout absolute nonsense so long as it’s catchy. To tread the well worn path of those that came before, and to leave their mark as an empty looping jingle in your brainspace. One that makes you want to go through your eyes to scratch them out. Songs about love ~~and~~… that’s most of them. New love, lost love, love locked-down etc. There is something truly bizarre about pop music (how bizarre?) – something that everyone seems to buy into and chooses not to acknowledge: the clotheless emperor that appears to you in the car, in shopping centres and in the background of adverts; every time you look around he’s dancing there with his bare naked body right in your face. At first it was my patience being tested now I fear it’s my sanity.

As a genre the defining feature is popularity. So really it shouldn’t be a particular style but an evershifting trend. It becomes somewhat paradoxical to consider how a pop band would start out, or how a pop song is released. How do you predict popularity? It seems many a boardroom has been filled with executives working out how to capitalise on the interests of the public; how to turn an artform into a cashcow – like a team of robots trying to work out the allure of a flower for the sole purpose of catching bees. Continue reading “Blame it on the Pop” →

March 14, 2015 0