The blogpage - a 10 year missive

It's been, to my surprise and minor delight, 10 years since I started this page devoted to films - since then the whole term "film" has taken on a rather antiquated form, when so much of it is actually digital - in America, of course, they have always been called "movies". An astonishingly large number of those movies have been watched only mere inches from where I am blogging now - on a computer. Without YouTube or the like, we would without a few interesting cinematic gems or oddities.

Movies are still movies, thank goodness, for all their cliches and their flaws. In spite of certain popular notions that franchises and blockbusters rule everything, a look back over the last 10 years shows that there are still interesting films being made, at just the same ratio as they used to be made in relation to commercial studio product. The growth in the number of multiplexes and mass distribution are two key factors that make it look that the popcorn movies are taking over, when this may well be an illusion. The popcorn films still by and large get passed over for the more highbrow choices at awards' time.

Cinema is definitely becoming the minority interest, despite, we are told, increased cinema attendances. It proves that the appetite for movies is still there, but the diet is rather limited. Fast food cinema outweighs quality eating, although noticeably some of the arthouse circuits are trying to make cinemas boutique and leisurely experiences, almost akin to sitting in living rooms on sofas than gathering with a mass audience. And just sometimes, those big movies have a more than a crumb of intelligence behind them.

One heartening aspect of the last 10 years is to compare the number of new cinema venues (especially at a local and community level) that have outweighed by far the number of older venues visited in this blog that have since had to close:

OLD (now closed)                                           NEW

Empire Leicester Square (Screen 1)           Apollo West End/Vue 
Notting Hill Coronet                                                                    Piccadilly
Odeon West End                                                Hackney Picture House
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith                Headgate Theatre
                                                                                 Manifest Theatre
                                                                                Regent Street Cinema
                                                                                Rich Mix Centre, Bethnal 
                                                                                                                  Green
                                                                                Showcase De Lux
                                                                                South Hill Arts Centre, 
                                                                                                             Bracknell
                                                                                Wymondham Ex-
                                                                                Servicemen's Club (former 
                                                                                                                      ABC)

With hopes for the next 10 years, whilst the good ship cinema still sails bravely on, in spite of its many competitors and secret enemies.

Odeon Leicester Square, just after seeing Rogue One

Dec 22nd  
Carry On At Your Convenience*   
(GB 1971)    

Sub-titles: Down the Spout, Ladies Please Be Seated, Up the Workers, Labour Relations are the People Who Love to See You When You're Having a Baby

The staff at W.C. Boggs and Son struggle to cope with new bidet production and constant strikes.
Surprisingly endearing semi-satirical series of toilet jokes from the Carry On team, which are actually more amusing than the familiar blue jokes, with the regulars giving their usual value for money and some pleasant interludes such as the psychic budgerigar and the outing to Brighton.

Written by: Talbot Rothwell.
Producer: Peter Rogers.
Director: Gerald Thomas.
Starring: Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Cope, Bernard Bresslaw, Richard O'Callaghan, Jacki Piper, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Patsy Rowlands, Renee Houston, Bill Maynard.
Photography: Ernest Steward.
Music: Eric Rogers.

Dec 15th  
Rogue One** (12A)      
(Odeon Leicester Square)                                  

(US/GB 2016)

The daughter of an Imperial scientist leads a rebel force to steal the plans to the Death Star.
A poignant and powerful immediate precursor to Star Wars, rather more gritty and character-driven than its original, with some excellent ensemble performances, and cleverly but not always easily integrated into the fabric of the George Lucas film (including even some of the 1977 cast), but compelling as a general assault on the senses, with Disney throwing its additional weight and expertise away from the director's original vision, at the expense of some of the human element.

Written by: Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, from a story by John Knoll, Gary Whitta.
Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Allison Shearmur, Simon Emanuel.
Director: Gareth Edwards (and Tony Gilroy).
Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelsohn, Peter Cushing (re-digitized, with the assistance of Guy Henry), Riz Ahmed, Donnie Yen, Wen Yiang, Alan Tudyk (voice of K-2SO), Genevieve O'Reilly, Jimmy Smits, James Earl Jones (voice of Darth Vader), Valerie Kane, and others.
Photography: Greig Fraser.
Music: Michael Giacchino.
Production Design: Doug Chiang, Neil Lamont.
Editing: Jabez Olssen, Stuart Baird.

ROGUE ONE. A galactic Seven Samurai of sorts to take on the mighty Empire, with its element of homage to Kurosawa as well as George Lucas. From left: Riz Ahmed, Diego Luna, the feisty Felicity Jones, Donnie Yen, Jiang Wen, and (unseen) Alan Tudyk as scene-stealing robot K-2SO.

Dec 12th  
Bulldog Drummond**      

(US 1929)                                

A bored ex-soldier advertises for adventure and answers a call from a girl in distress whose uncle is held by a gang of crooks.
The first of a series of Drummonds for the new Sound medium, displaying a fair amount of slickness with some quirks (there are a couple of song interludes for no good reason), together with settings and performances that are also sometimes stilted but rise above the slender nature of the material.

Written by: Sidney Howard, Wallace Smith, based on the stories by "Sapper" (Herman C. MacNeile).
Producer: Samuel Goldwyn.
Director: F. Richard Jones, Leslie Pearce.
Starring: Ronald Colman, Joan Bennett, Claud Allister, Montagu Love Lawrence Grant, Lilyan Tashman, Wilson Benge.
Photography: George Barnes, Gregg Toland.
Musical Direction: Hugh Riesenfeld.
Production Design: William Cameron Menzies.

+ see also Deadlier Than the Male, from the other end of the Drummond film chronology

Preceded by:
Tom and Jerry in
Tee for Two**
(US 1945. 7m.; d: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera; p: Fred Quimby.)

Dec 2nd  
The Impossible**    

(Spa/US 2012)                            

A family holidaying in Thailand battle to find each other after the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami.
The one film of note to have captured the horror of this famous storm most effectively; a quintessential old fashioned disaster movie but with the benefit of real life experience, vividly filmed in places, although a simple enough plot in itself with no real dimensions - beyond the simple drama of the characters searching for each other like needles in an apocalyptic haystack.

Written by: Sergio G. Sanchez, based on the memoir by Maria Belon.
Producers: Alvaro Augustin, Belen Atienza, Enrique Lopez Lavigne.
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona.
Starring: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Johan Sundberg, Geraldine Chaplin.
Photography: Oscar Faura.
Music: Fernando Velazquez.
Editing: Elena Ruiz, Bernat Vilaplana.