Tag: performance

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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Tokyo Stories

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

*****

Japan generally and Tokyo specifically are viewed through that city’s art and photography – out in UK, Irish and worldwide cinemas on Tuesday, May 23rd

The refreshing thing about this latest entry in producer Phil Grabsky’s excellent Exhibition On Screen series is that it breaks the mould. Like Vermeer The Greatest Exhibition (David Bickerstaff, 2023), it is centred around a particular art exhibition, in this instance 2022’s Tokyo: Art + Photography show at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. That event sought to give a perspective on the country of Japan generally and the city of Tokyo specifically through its art, both historical and contemporary. The Ashmolean is well-placed to do this, given that it already houses a wide-ranging, historical Japanese collection. Sadly, it means that if this film whets your appetite and makes you want to visit the exhibition, you can’t then do so because it’s been and gone. In a way, though, that’s not so dissimilar from the Vermeer exhibition, which had sold out before the documentary about it appeared.

While the film is swift to acknowledge areas of Japanese culture as diverse as manga (one of the first shots of Tokyo features a giant image of manga and anime favourites Dirty Pair) and traditional Japanese music (a stringed and a woodwind instrument are shown being played by musicians without any explanation or even naming of the instruments), such elements remain largely in the background.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lust, Caution
(Se, Jie,
色, 戒)

Director – Ang Lee – 2007 – China, Taiwan, US – Cert. 18 – 158m

*****

A Chinese student joins an assassination plot against a high-up Japanese collaborator, for which she must sleep with him – originally published in Third Way, to coincide with 4th January 2008 UK cinema release.

Some will consider this erotic espionage thriller a no-go area, while others will want to see it for its director. Mandarin Chinese language outing Lust, Caution is based on a short story which highly regarded Chinese author Eileen Chang spent decades honing. Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee (award winner for both Brokeback Mountain, 2005, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000) claims he hasn’t so much adapted Chang’s tale as, in collaboration with his cast, re-enacted it. Given her story concerns the activity of a troupe of actors, perhaps this isn’t so surprising.

Shanghai 1942. Mrs Mak, waiting for a rendezvous in a café, is not who she appears. She recalls how in China 1938 she was shy Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) who as a university student got involved with a drama group to encourage patriotism under Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom). Acting before an enraptured audience, she realises she has found her métier.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

In The Court
Of The
Crimson King:
King Crimson
At 50

Director – Toby Amies – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 86m

****1/2

Life behind the scenes members of the latest iteration of the band King Crimson, the revolving door institution helmed for half a century by musician Robert Fripp, as they rehearse and perform a tour – out in UK cinemas from Friday 7th April

Rather like the band King Crimson, what you see here is at once what you get and something entirely different.

The phrase “Toby’s camera” (which I’ll use later) seems apt. One doesn’t usually speak so personally of a director, and it’s not the case that I personally know Toby Amies or anything like that. Yet there’s a beguiling intimacy about this documentary. From the evidence here, King Crimson founder, guitarist and keyboard player Robert Fripp is a perfectionist liable to be thrown if something isn’t quite right: he describes all previous iterations of the band, something of a revolving door in which he’s been the sole constant member over the years, as painful and tells us that the current version of the band (together since 2013) is the one with which his experience has been happiest.

At one point, Toby mentions that he feels like he’s interviewing for the job of making the film as he’s shooting it.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Mary Cassatt:
Painting
the Modern Woman

The Tea (c. 1880)

Director – Ali Ray – 2023 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

*****

A look at an often overlooked member of the Impressionists, a US-born, female painter and printmaker who moved from Philadelphia to live in France – out in UK cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, March 8th (International Women’s Day)

I had never heard of Mary Cassatt when I came to this documentary. I’m not really sure why not (apart from the obvious reason, the widespread exclusion of numerous women artists from the annals of art history until recently) and feel indebted to this remarkable study for introducing me to her work. It comes as no surprise that the film was produced by Phil Grabsky for his excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art, although what IS a surprise here is that all the interviewees in this instance are women. Nothing at all wrong with that if they have something of value to say, which they clearly do.

One could argue that the piece has a very strong feminist leaning with its emphasis on women being free to live their lives as they choose. It’s tempting to say that one could forget the gender bias here and simply say that all the interviewees have important insights to share and do a good job.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Rimini
(Rimini)

Director – Ulrich Siedl – 2022 – Austria, France, Germany – Cert. 18 – 114m

*****

A singer of romantic songs performs to elderly female fans (in more ways than one) in an off-season seaside town as his past catches up with him – in cinemas from Friday, December 9th following its screening in the BFI London Film Festival 2022

An old man (Hans-Michael Rehberg, who died in 2016 and whose last lensed appearance on film this performance, split between this film and Siedl’s Sparta, 2022, represents) is lost in a care home where he’s a patient. None of the doors will open. His son (Michael Thomas) arrives and takes him to the man’s wife’s funeral.

His son travels to the off-season, Italian seaside resort of Rimini for bookings as Richie Bravo (presumably his stage rather than his real name, although this is never clarified) at hotels to sing romantic songs to his admiring, elderly, female fan base. The dull, monolithic hotel buildings have exotic names like Soleil and 007 belying their inherent blandness.

In between those performances and traipsing around through heavy rain and snow, he engages in sexual congress in hotel rooms with a small number of his most devoted fans including the single Anna (Claudia Martini) and the married Emmi (Inge Maux).… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

One Piece Film: Red
(One Piece Film: Red)

Director – Goro Taniguchi – 2022 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 115m

***1/2

A girl who wants to sing to the world and usher in an era of happiness has been possessed by a dark power which has other plans – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 4th (IMAX, subbed), Saturday, November 5th (dubbed)

A female voice promises “a great genesis of happiness for all”. There is great anticipation at the prospect of the beloved singer Uta performing live for the first time. Like her “genesis of happiness” sound bite, this teenager’s songs are full of phrases that sound superficially attractive but, for anyone pausing for a moment to think about them, are pure, contentless fluff. As she belts out phrases like, “you can’t stop magic” to adoring multitudes that revere all this like some utopian manifesto (which perhaps is already implied by the name Uta) and the rather more cynical pirate section of the audience (for this is a world in which pirates operate) plan to kidnap her and make a pile of money, a teenager throws an organic looking rope-like extension which attaches itself to a spot near her as if it were as grappling hook and allows it to pull within a few feet of her, to the annoyance of the pirates whose plan it disrupts.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Hallelujah:
Leonard Cohen,
A Journey, A Song

Directors – Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine – 2021 – UK – Cert. 12 – 118m

***

The career of writer-turned-singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, with particular emphasis on his best known song Hallelujah – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 16th

There have been films about Leonard Cohen before, hardly surprising given his status as one of the major singer / songwriters of the twentieth century. This one falls between two stools.

Leonard Cohen

On the one hand, it’s an attempt to document his career, and as such comes across as another Leonard Cohen movie which is fine as an introduction if you don’t know his career and music and I suspect fine for Leonard completists. As someone in the middle, this aspect seemed to be all talking heads treading mostly predictable ground.

On the other, it explores Cohen’s best known song Hallelujah, his struggles in writing it and how the piece ultimately took on a life of its own. This second aspect hasn’t been explored that widely to the best of my knowledge and proves a far richer seam into the mind, workings, practices and artistry of Cohen, making you wish the filmmakers had dumped much of the other material and explored this area at greater length.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies Music

Elvis

Director – Baz Luhrmann – 2022 – US, Australia – Cert. 12a – 159m

***

Elvis Presley’s career from the mid-1950s through to his death in 1977, and his complex business relationship with his manager Colonel Tom Parker – out in cinemas on Friday, June 24th

Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), having a heart attack, reminisces to himself about his career. Many considered him the abuser and exploiter of the singer Elvis Presley, but that wasn’t the way it was. In the early 1950s, when Parker was managing the touring show of country singer Hank Snow (David Wenham), he heard Presley’s first recording on Sun Records though Hank’s son Jimmie Rodgers Snow (Kodi Smit-Mcphee), a singer in his own right who Parker didn’t think was anything like as good as his father.

Parker, an old time carnival showman, is always on the lookout for that one act that’s a little bit different, affects audiences and might well clean up at the box office. When he first sees Elvis (Austin Butler) perform, and notices young girls and older women going wild at the singer’s dance moves, he is convinced there’s money to be made and determines to sign him before someone else does.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Get Carter
(1971)

Director – Mike Hodges – 1971 – UK – Cert. 18 – 111m

*****

A London gangster takes the train to Newcastle to find out who killed his brother… and why… in a defining film for both Michael Caine and British cinema – back out in cinemas on Friday, May 27th

Fifty years old, Hodges’ first feature has aged well in the main. Viewed today, this gangster film has a lot going for it. It reduces London to seedy, windowless rooms where men watch pornographic slide shows or their unfaithful wives service their lovers’ sexual fantasies over long distance phone calls. After the opening London to Newcastle train journey to the strains of Roy Budd’s memorable score, It quickly settles into its Newcastle milieu of pub interiors, terraced houses, rented rooms, back to back streets, pedestrians, cars, harbours and ferries. It has a memorable finale in which one man pursues another across a beach to a coal heap.

There’s a background about prostitution which turns out to be highly significant to the plot, with histories of men luring girls into pornographic movies. Few of the women (Britt Ekland, Rosemary Dunham, Petra Markham) seem happy – they are sex objects to service the men, or prostitutes, or victims of male trickery.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

a-ha The Movie

Directors – Thomas Robsahm, Aslaug Holm – 2021 – Norway, Germany – Cert. 12a – 108m

***

The rise and career of the enduring, three-piece, Norwegian band a-ha – out in cinemas on Friday, May 20th

Norwegian trio a-ha are arguably best known for two songs. They swept to fame on the strength of their first hit Take On Me, which features extensively in this documentary. They were later asked to do the title for Bond movie The Living Daylights (John Glen, 1987), which gets only a few minutes screen time somewhere in the middle here, so I’ll get that out of the way first. The band write their own material and found themselves having to work with legendary Bond composer John Barry as their producer on this gig who, as they saw it, was used to having musical input and getting his own way. They talk about recording the song in such a way as to get round him.

Perhaps what this best illustrates is that musicians (artists, composers, bands) often work and operate within their own sealed worlds and if they have to work with rivals, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. In this instance, it doesn’t sound a good experience for either party.… Read the rest