Review: This Must Be the Place

This Must Be the Place is Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s first English language film and it certainly does not disappoint. A little slow-moving but never dull, this comedy drama is a highly amusing and watchable film, featuring another spot-on performance from method actor Sean Penn.

Penn plays Cheyenne, a washed-up Goth rocker living in his Dublin mansion with Jane, his cheerful and understanding wife of thirty-five years (Frances McDormand). Having given up music twenty years previously due to the suicide of two young fans inspired by his songs, Cheyenne now spends his days shuffling around Dublin, doing the odd bit of shopping, hanging out with teenage fan Mary (played by a gothed-up Eve Hewson, daughter of U2 singer Bono), and avoiding the overtures of local bands who vie for his attention.

Despite his happy marriage and lazy life, Cheyenne is still deeply troubled and is in the throes of a possible mid-life crisis. Everything suddenly changes when his father dies. Cheyenne heads back to New York for the funeral of a man he hasn’t spoken to in thirty years, only to discover that his father had become obsessed with hunting down Aloise Lange, a Nazi war criminal who persecuted him in Auschwitz. Cheyenne takes up the hunt for Lange, embarking on a road trip with a difference to try to discover the last hiding place of the man his father hated so much...

Head over to Movie Farm for the rest of the review...

Dario Argento's Suspiria to be Remade

So, it looks like we're soon going to be treated to a remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria. At the risk of falling into the old 'this film really doesn't need remaking' trap - this film really doesn't need remaking.

I mean, it really doesn't. Suspiria, with its bright colours and strawberry jam blood and crazy death scenes and dubbed English and rooms full of barbed wire - it was perfect the way it was. We don't need to see it again in a new and worse light. This is precisely the sort of film that should never, ever be remade. It's directed by Dario Argento. You want to try to remake a Dario Argento? The whole point of a Dario Argento is that it is directed by Dario Argento. Who the hell else could have come up with this:

Or this:

Or this:

Also, is there ever anything more pointless than remaking a horror film? Especially a horror film which has such a great storyline/cinematography anyway that anything you do to it is undoubtedly going to make it worse? It would be like remaking The Wicker M-. No, it would be like remaking Psyc-. Straw D-. The Texas Chai-. The Ome-. Jesus.

OK, it would be like remaking Jaws with a big CGI shark. Even Hollywood is not dumb enough to have tried pulling that shit yet. But they will, won't they? Even as I type there's some besuited executive somewhere trying to think of how he can make the most possible money doing the least possible work. Let's face it, if they can remake Psycho, nothing is safe. Jaws is already on a list somewhere, I guarantee it: 'Films Whose Graves We Plan to Tapdance on in the Next Ten Years Or So'.

I suppose there's no point in even getting angry about it anymore. I'm sure that David Gordon Green's verison of Suspiria won't be all bad. After all, speaking to Den of Geek last year, Green said:

"I've written it with the sound designer, so we've really written it from a unique perspective. We've come at it not from the traditional narrative way, but from the perspective of sound. It's a fun experiment for me, to see how it works out."

Interestingly, given that this version is going to be sound-based, Green has managed to secure the rights to the soundtrack of the original: the surreal, creepy (really creepy) instrumentals written especially for Argento by Italian prog-rock band Goblin.

Wait, hang on a minute here. He's going to remake the film "from the perspective of sound", but the first thing he does is nick the soundtrack (an integral part of the identity and atmosphere) from the original? Yes. Yes, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. That sounds like it's going to be "a unique persepective" alright.

Je renonce.

Top Ten: Pedro Almodovar Characters Part 2

Here's part two of my Top Ten list of Pedro Almodovar characters for Subtitled Online...

In part one, we met some of the most colourful characters that director Pedro Almodóvar has to offer, including Spain’s friendliest taxi driver and a psychotic plastic surgeon played by our old friend Antonio Banderas.  In part two, we have five exceptional women (one of whom used to be a man) who are all shining examples of how to survive when all the odds are against you…

To read the rest of the Top Ten, head over to Subtitled Online

Fashionable Film: Hitchcock's Vertigo

Just come across this great article: Costume and Identity in Hitchcock's Vertigo by Iris Veysey. It breaks down all the various costumes and disguises worn by Kim Novak as Madeleine/Judy, and the hidden, or not so hidden, meanings that the clothes have in the context of the film.

Film and Fashion can sometimes fit together to great advantage, as Hitchcock certainly knew - it was his and his costume designer Edith Head's work on Vertigo that inspired me to write Bloody Footprints , a short look at the role of the blonde in film.

All of Novak's wardrobe from the black dress to the white coat to the iconic grey suit, is simple, even plain, but undoubtedly spectacular when combined with the icy blonde ghostliness of Madeleine (who, as Veysey points out, does not really exist, not even in the fictional world of Vertigo).

Iron Sky: The First Four Minutes

Hotly anticipated sci-fi comedy Iron Sky, which has already divided critics at this year’s Berlinale Film Festival, will soon be coming to UK cinema screens. To whet the appetites of potential viewers, the first four minutes of the film were posted online. On YouTube, the opening has currently received almost 500,000 views.

Asked to recommend a favourite but little known horror movie, comedian and film buff Mark Gatiss amused an audience at a Q&A session by plugging a film he called ‘Nazis On Ice’. He was talking about The Frozen Dead, a British sci-fi horror from 1966, in which a mad scientist freezes the decapitated heads of Nazi war criminals until he can find bodies to attach them to, thereby reviving the Third Reich.

The return of the killer Nazi has been a recurring theme in novels, films and television shows for quite some time. However, it has perhaps never been attempted on such a grand scale as in Timo Vuorensola’s Iron Sky, otherwise known as ‘Nazis In Space’...

Read the rest of the article at Subtitled Online...

Game of Thrones | Season 2, Episode 2: The Night Lands

Again, this review contains SPOILERS

Ironically, with Winter trudging ever nearer, the second season of Game of Thrones is just starting to heat up. This second episode is similar to the first in that it spends most of its time building tension for the coming snowstorm, and instroducing a few new characters, but it ends on quite a bang - one that makes us wish we didn't have to wait another week for episode three.

While episode one gave us only a glimpse of Arya, this week she gets more than her fair share of screen time. Ned Stark's tomboyish daughter seems to be in her element as she pretends to be Arry the orphan boy on his way to the Wall with the other Night's Watch recruits. Her friendship with Gendry the armourer (also bastard son of Robert Baratheon) is going from strength to strength, but when soldiers from Kings Landing turn up to dispatch him as part of the biblical bastard-culling ordered by Joffrey, Arya assumes they are looking for her, and subsequently gives her identity away to Gendry. Luckily, he seems to be one of the good guys, and promises to keep her secret - unfortunately for Gendry, when playing the game of thrones, it's the good guys who tend to find themselves without their heads sooner or later.

 

Dany is still toiling away in the desert, and gets more than a little pissed off when the head of one her bloodriders is returned to her in a bag (presumably by one of the other Khals, who don't seem to like the idea of a female leader). Stannis and his cohort Mellisandre are still plotting away, and babbling on about some mysterious 'fire god'.

Tyrion is diving head first into the swamp of intrigue that is King's Landing; when Varys the Eunuch shows up uninvited to drink tea with Shae (whom no-one is supposed to know about) Tyrion makes it very clear that, unlike Ned Stark, he understands how the game is played and will not put up with passive aggressive threats. Tyrion also boots out the head of the guard following the baby massacre, and slots his man Bron into the job, much to the chagrin of Cersei Lannister. Cersei herself seems to be having trouble adjusting to her new role as Queen Regent; she is losing control of her inbred son, King Joffrey.

The most intriguing new character to be introduced this week hails from the Iron Islands. Yara, the younger sister of Theon Greyjoy, took over the responsibilities of soldiering when Theon was fostered out to the Starks. When he shows up with Robb's message to his father, Theon is astonished to discover (after a bit of misplaced groping) that his sister has certainly not been idle in his absence. It looks as though the Greyjoys are unlikely to come quietly.

Beyond the wall, Jon, Sam and co. are still partaking of the hospitality of a Wildling man who marries his own daughters (all of them) so that he can then father more daughters (and marry them). This week, Jon and Sam discover the fate of any male babies; after spying a baby being carried out into the snowy night, Jon follows. Creepily, the baby has been left as some sort of offering for a creature Jon only manages to catch a glimpse of before the Wildling smacks him over the head - a tall, spindly-looking thing in a hooded cloak. Did someone say...White Walkers?


Episode 2 Best Moment: When Theon Greyjoy finally recognises his sister.

Episode 2 Best Line: The whole 'fish' conversation between Varys, Shae and Tyrion.

Game of Thrones | Episode 3: What is Dead May Never Die

10 Life Lessons from The Princess Bride

Princesses, farm boys, pirates, torture, swordfighting, the fire swamp, rodents of unusual size, and Grandpa - there must be some important words of wisdom in there somewhere. Here are ten life lessons you can learn from watching the Princess Bride.

1. Try to keep old traditions alive.

"When I was your age, television was called books."


2. Don't be afraid to correct your boss.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."


3. Names mean everything.

"No-one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley."

4. Always have something to fall back on.

"I just work for Vizzini to pay the bills. There's not a lot of money in revenge."


5. Always make the best of things.

"It's not that bad. Well  I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely."


6. Always give fair warning.

"Goodnight Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

7. It's OK to skip over the boring bits.

"They're kissing again. Do we have to read the kissing parts?"


8. Learn to accept the harsh truth.

"Life is pain highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."


9. Always have an answer for everything.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

10. Sometimes, when people say one thing, they actually mean another.

"As you wish."