Be Still!

Ok, i know its geting a bit excessive now, but here are just a coupole of really beautiful photos that should get you even more excited about Where The Wild Things Are.

If i wasn't kind of in Love with Spike Jonze already, just photos of him from the making of this film would do it. He's so cute, and so damn talented.



Only 4 days to go!

all is love.

I know you all already know i can't wait for this, but really, I CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS!
(For some very annoying reason my embedding feature isn't working, and neither is copy and paste, so i can't embed videos or paste the code, so you'll just have to follow the link. Enjoy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V35M2lW5mQ

The soundtrack is amazing, i got it a couple of months ago. The anticipation is almost killing me.

These bitches are hardcore!

OK, so i don't normally do this, but since th emain people who read this are my parents and i think they would be interested, and because i'm proud of myself, i'm posting the essay i just wrote. Its the first one in my degree that actually counts and i got a 1st for it, so go me. Feel free to skip this post if Shakespeare isn't your thing.

“Their wives have sense like them...” An argument for the importance of female characters in Shakespeare’s plays.

Shakespeare’s female characters have a hard time. Vastly outnumbered by male characters, often marginalized in the plot, and originally written to be played by men, it is easy to see why many critics have either focused on their flaws or disregarded them entirely. Shakespeare named no play named solely for a woman; no female name appears except as the second part of a male-female couple. This could be an indication of a dislike of women on the part of the playwright, perhaps an (incorrectly) perceived inability to write women strong enough to carry a play, or simply a sign of the time and culture in which the plays were written. This essay will, I hope, address the question of why Shakespeare’s women are still regarded as inferior to his men, and put to bed the idea that “most [of Shakespeare’s] women have no character at all”.[1]

A.C. Bradley stated that “it is only in the love-tragedies, Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as the hero. The rest,” as he puts it “are single stars.”[2] By this I assume he is taking the view adopted by many before and since, that the female characters serve more as an impetus for plot progression than as fully formed characters in their own right. The characters can certainly be read that way, Ophelia is simply weak and mad, Lady Macbeth only wants power, Cleopatra only sex, but reading in this way is entirely uneven; why subject the male characters to intense Freudian psychoanalysis and take the women purely on face value? Upon closer reading all of the female characters have emotions, motivations, flaws and strengths equal to their male counterparts, or as Emilia from Othello puts it, “their wives have sense like them: they see and smell,/ and have their palates both for sweet and sour / as husbands have” (4.3.93-95).

For centuries Desdemona has wrongly been considered naive and weak-willed, as a “helplessly passive”[3] girl going to her death without a fight, despite the huge amount of textual evidence to the contrary. The statement that “everyone in the play fails to understand her, and fails her”[4] seems far more apt. The woman described by the men who surround her, the “maiden never bold”[5] (1.3.95) whom every man puts on a pedestal, is banished as soon as Desdemona herself enters the stage. We see before us a woman unafraid to stand up to her father and the heads of state in order to marry the man she chooses, regardless of the consequences. Neither is she the “cunning whore of Venice” (4.2.88) described in the latter half of the play; in fact, Desdemona throughout treats everyone she speaks to exactly the same, honestly, politely and openly. In a play as male dominated and set in such a feminine free environment as this, we are given a heroine who cannot be dismissed as a peripheral character or simply a catalyst for action. She has more lines than anyone excluding Othello and Iago, and shares a dramatic position equal to either of them. The play would quite simply not exist without her. Unlike other tragic heroines she seems to have no great flaw; she is not a shrew, nor maddened by ambition or blinded by love. Desdemona presents to us a fully rounded character, a creature of intense tenderness, but also of wit, humour and courage.

These characteristics are far more common for female characters in Shakespeare’s comedies, where the women are given more scope and are allowed to direct the action in a different way. I think this is summed up best in the introduction to ‘The Woman’s Part’ by stating that “in the comedies women are most often nurturing and powerful; as their values educate the men, mutuality between the sexes may be achieved...In tragedy...their roles are at once more varied, more constricted, and more precarious.”[6] If the values of the tragic heroines, Desdemona’s understanding, Cordelia’s level-headedness, even Lady Macbeth’s guilt, had influenced their male counterparts there is a sense that the outcomes of the plays could have been quite different. In the comedies the heroines bring about the resolution in a way entirely absent from the tragedies. The men of the comedies listen and are influenced by the women, in the tragedies “the men’s murderous fancies are untouched by the women’s affection, wit and shrewdishness”[7] and thus a peaceful resolution is never reached.

The heroine most in control of any Shakespeare play is almost undoubtedly Rosalind from As You Like It. Rosalind’s actions direct the play; it is her choice to hide in the Forest of Arden, her idea to adopt disguises, her agency which brings the four couples together at the end. Shakespeare gives her character all that she needs to do this, “in wit and energy, Rosalind has no male rival”[8]. Even this wit is unlike other Shakespeare heroines. As opposed to Catherine or Beatrice, Rosalind’s wit has no hint of shrewdishness, and is directed solely at lovers and women. Rosalind being both a woman and in love, she makes herself the butt of her jokes as much as anyone else, thus making her seem both self aware and self deprecating in a way that other heroines are not. Orlando’s character pales in comparison, he appears almost one dimensional, and were Rosalind not so persistently in love with him the match would seem dreadfully uneven.

The adoption of disguises, especially men’s clothes, allows the comic heroines a freedom never afforded to their tragic counterparts. These disguises gain a woman entrance to places she would never normally be allowed and let her act in a way which would be unthinkable for a respectable lady. It is by dressing as a man that Viola gets Orsino and that Rosalind gets Orlando. In disguise they are allowed to speak as men, and are spoken to openly, as friends. Orlando looks to Ganymede for advice where he had “Not one [word] to throw at a dog” (1.3.) upon his first meeting with Rosalind. She is free to tell him what she really thinks, rather than being constricted by propriety, “male dress transforms what otherwise could be experienced as aggression into simple high spirits”[9]. The element of disguise is denied to the women of tragedies, and consequently they are never given a platform to discuss their true feelings with the men of the play without fear of retribution. Had Desdemona been able to adopt a disguise and convince Othello of his wife’s fidelity the play might have ended in a different manner. When Emilia stands up to Othello and Iago in the final scene she is threatened and eventually killed for her trouble, despite tempering her outburst with an explanation, “’Tis proper I obey him, but not now” (5.2.195), and speaking nothing but the truth. Had she been a man there is a greater chance she would have been listened to and gone unpunished.

This gender bias on the part of the characters undoubtedly has something to do with the time in which the play was written, where “the employments of women, compared with those of men, [were] few; their condition and of course their manners, admit of less variety”[10]. Men expected their wives to be subservient, and even though Queen Elizabeth’s power and influence are undoubted, the society was still dominantly patriarchal. It is interesting to note that the women of the comedies, with all their wit, charm and influence, are all unmarried, whereas the stifled, thwarted and ultimately destroyed women of the tragedies are parts of couples from which they cannot or will not escape. Being spouses, they are controlled by the will of their lord, which inevitably brings about their downfall.

The question of whether female characters are unimportant in Shakespeare’s plays is, to me, one with a fairly obvious answer, but perhaps I am being obtuse. There is no question that the plays would not be the same if the female characters weren’t there, if Romeo or Antony were plays in their own right. Replacing the female characters with male ones would also entirely change the elements of the drama; undoubtedly Romeo and Julian would find an audience, but the essence of the tale would be altered. I find the accusation that “Shakespeare did not bring forward his female characters into a full and striking light”[11] to be entirely without merit. Working within tighter parameters than the male characters and hampered by the constraints of society, gender and class, these women are still written as complex characters, both gifted and flawed, each of them “capable of passion and pain, growth and decay”[12].

---

[1] William Richardson, Essays on Some of Shakespeare's Dramatic Characters to which is added an Essay on the Faults of Shakespeare (London : J. Murray and S. Highley, 1797), 5th edition, p.361

[2] A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 2^nd Edition (London, The Macmillan Press, 1905) p.7

[3] Bradley, p.179

[4] Philip Edwards, Shakespeare and the confines of Art (London, Methuen, 1968) p.123

[5] William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. E.A.J, Honigmann (London, Arden, 1997). All subsequent quotations are from this same edition.

[6] Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz and Gayle Greene and Carol Thomas Neely, The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1983) p.6

[7] Neely, Carol Thomas, ‘Women and Men in Othello: “What should such a fool/Do with so good a woman?” in The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, p.215

[8] Claiborne Park, Clara, ‘As We Like It: How a Girl can be Smart and Still Popular’, in The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, p.107

[9] Claiborne Park, p.108

[10] Richardson, p.341

[11] Richardson, p.339

[12] Lenz, Greene and Neely, p.5

Aren't i smart?! I promise the fashion, man-boobs and film-geekery will be back very soon.

"You're so buff..."

I mean Really, is this necessary?

New Moon

If you’re expecting a review slating this film you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This film is far from high art or great film making, but it isn’t trying to be. The filmmakers know they’re making a film for horny teenage girls and their equally horny mothers, and they deliver exactly that. This isn’t deep or meaningful, it has no message or moral, but it’s fun, silly, and annoyingly engrossing.

However hard you might be trying to avoid it, you probably know the story. Bella Swan (Stewart) is madly in love with vampire Edward (Pattinson), but he dumps her for her own safety. She becomes severely, pathetically and a little comically depressed until she gets back in touch with Jacob (Lautner), her super hot friend who happens to be a werewolf. It’s hardly Shakespeare.

The film sticks faithfully to the book, adopting its strange pacing (the climax takes place in about 10 minutes right at the end of the film, after an hour and 40 minutes of build up), but sucking out most of the intentional humour. Most of the laughter comes from the copious amount of bare male chests in gratuitous slow motion. Not that I’m against buff men wandering around topless, but after 2 hours all those nipples start to detract from the action. And then there’s the creepy aspect of it. If it makes you more comfortable, try to forget that Jacob Black is supposed to be 16, so every time you let out an involuntary moan at his spectacular chest you could potentially be put on some sort of register. Edward is supposed to be 17, so you’re not allowed any of that either, sorry to disappoint.

There are some nice shots, but all in all the cinematography is un-dynamic, and the same goes for the soundtrack. The film is not supposed to rattle any cages, it’s for the fans, and it knows what the fans want. Clocking in at just over 2 hours, it takes time to cover every aspect of the book, but does so without losing momentum. If you hate the books, it stands to reason that you’ll dislike the film, but if you are a Cullen fan then you won’t be disappointed. If you’re ambivalent then you could do worse than spending a rainy afternoon staring at R-Pattz man-boobs, who knows, you might even enjoy it.

"The house is called Dionysus...and they're not kidding"

Cine-city, the Brighton Film Festival, is in full swing, and i'm getting press tickets to as much as possible. I just watched Humpday and i advise you to do the same, it was utterly charming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMr_LQDlYH8&feature=fvw


The first thing that strikes you about Humpday is how homemade it feels. The aesthetics, the dialogue, the acting, all of it, make it feel like a movie you and your friends could have made, only a hundred times funnier, more tender and quite simply better than you could ever hope to achieve. From the first shot you feel for the characters. Each of them are written and acted with such subtle perfection that it feels like you're watching some kind of absurdly funny docu-drama.

The basic story follows two college friends who have grown up and taken very different paths, one settling down with a wife and prospective children, and one travelling the world trying to be an artist. Over the course of a drunken night they decide to enter "humpfest", and amateur porn festival, with a film pushing the boundaries of art, namely two straight men having sex.

The premise might sound like a Will Ferrell vehicle, but stick it out. The natural-ness of the actors and the low-key beauty of the cinematography make this one of the most human films i've seen in a long time, as well as one of the funniest.

You wrote a bad song Petey...

I could have written so much more, but i'm 100 words over the limit already. Just go watch it, you'll love it, i promise.



Fantastic Mr Fox


People who haven’t seen this film have issues with it. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, but it seems like every time I bring it up someone pipes up with a contrary opinion. True, the voices are American, the directors and writers and producers are American, only the bad guys have English accents, but really, are we so closed minded as to reject a film based on the fact that it’s an American adaptation of a British story?

True, Wes Anderson is American, but so what? Fantastic Mr Fox was the first book he ever bought, he begged for the rights to it over 10 years ago, he gained the approval of Roald Dahl’s wife, and he lived in Dahl’s house whilst writing the screenplay, all of the sets and props in Fox’s home are exact replicas of the furniture in Gypsy house. What more do people want? Yes the story is fleshed out, but it is a short story. As Dahl’s wife puts it, “it had to be embroidered.” Anderson and Noah Baumbach retain the core of the story, stating that they “wanted to write a Roald Dahl movie,” rather than just taking the story and running away with it.

The story follows Mr Fox (Clooney), his wife (Streep) and his teenage son, Ash (Schwartzman) as they move to a new tree near the farms of Boggis, Bunce and Bean, the three meanest farmers in the world. Mr Fox has given up his bird thieving ways to become a newspaper man, but the proximity to the farms proves too tempting to resist, and he’s soon back to his old ways. What follows is a kind of Ocean’s Eleven meets The Animals of Farthing Wood, but far more whimsical.

The stop-motion animation in the film is wonderful, lending the film a handmade, old fashioned quality. It isn’t slick, but it’s not supposed to be. Seeing the workings behind it, looking out for the imperfections, is what makes the whole film work. It’s not perfect, but it is created out of love, its flaws are what make it special, a theme reflected through the story and the characters.
What I love about the film is that it is still so obviously a Wes Anderson movie. The direction and the storytelling hasn’t changed to fit the animated genre, he adapted the genre to perfectly fit his own directorial style. The dysfunctional family dynamic recognizable in all of Anderson’s films is still there, as is the trademark shot composition and the hilarious deadpan dialogue. If anything it works better animated than it does in live action.

A fantastic vocal cast, stunning visuals, hilarious dialogue, and genuinely captivating set pieces, could you really ask for anything more from an adaptation of one of the most popular children’s stories of all time? This is an adaptation for people who grew up with the story, it’s a kids film for adults, and i urge everyone to go see it right away.

Probably a very bad idea.

My new laptop, Joe Kavalier, has a built in camera. I abuse this feature regularly by annoying my friends on facebook, and i thought i'd try posting a video on here too. In retrospect, i probably should have thought of something to say before embarking upon this exercise. Sorry for that.

Wow, the image is completely messed up, i have no idea why that happened, it was fine when i reviewed at after filming. Also, i think the sound is a little bit off, giving me a king of freaky ventriloquist effect. All in all i think the experiment failed, but i'm still posting it because i think if i sort it out it could be kind of a fun addition.

Anyway, tell me whether this is a good idea or a bad one and i'll react accordingly.

My brother can write things too.

Hitler Moustache is Richard Herrings 25th Edinburgh show on the trot, and there is a reason he is a fringe favourite. His current mission is to reclaim the toothbrush moustache for comedy , “taking it away from Hitler and giving it back to Charlie Chaplin, two contemporaries whose careers, it's fair to say, dropped off after the Second World War."

To this end he has taken it upon himself to grow the offensive ‘tasche and has been parading it about for many months risking possible violence from the general public for appearing to be a Nazi crackpot, but generally just appearing to be “a bit of a dick”. The show opens with his musings about why the moustache and seems to have taken the blame for Nazism, the effect his new moustache would have upon those he met, and more importantly what affects it might have on himself; “was it the toothbrush moustache that was evil? Would I become evil if I grew one” The program is full of his thoughts on the subject, but the show rapidly moves onto more substantial material.

Herrings satirical point, that a racist is less racist than the rest of us, because a racist sees the world as only a handful of different skin tones, where as the rest of us feel the need to divide the world into 195 different nationalities, is possibly his finest work. "If only the people of India and Pakistan could see themselves the way a racist sees them – 'What are we doing? Why are we fighting? I'm a Paki, you're a Paki.'" He is able to construct this argument so well into his candour that any inappropriateness is forgiven.

As Herring himself wrote to the Guardian, defending his show from reviewer Brian Logan “The show examines our attitudes to ethnicity and questions whether the way humans choose to divide themselves is obfuscating their essential similarity. It challenges racism, but also liberal assumptions about cultural identity”.

A trait that is common in Herring’s stand-up, is the clear feeling that they don’t have to pander to an audience. Just over half way into the show Herring embarks on a good 10-15 minute, largely jokeless, tirade against any member of the audience who did not vote in the last European election, thereby allowing the BNP to gain 2 seats in the European Parliament.

Using this to point out that fascism is not dead and gone, but “it is, and always has been, inherently ridiculous, and it can be damaged and even destroyed by laughter”. If every photo opportunity Nick Griffin has for the BNP had a backdrop of people wearing a toothbrush moustache (Herring helpfully hands out square inches of Velcro after the show from a bucket marked with a swastika, the Hindu symbol of peace) they will never be taken seriously again.

At points the performance does start to lag, but all in all the show is often hilarious, constantly thought provoking, and a highly complex take on the attitudes of the society surrounding us, with a bit of silliness thrown in for good measure.

"men so skinny that i like to think this date could be their last"

Simon Amstell and I have the same love life. During the course of his show I came to realize that he and I not only have the same taste in men, but the same pathetic way of not getting them. His comedy is personal, heartfelt and sincere, far removed from the acerbic barbs for which viewers of Never Mind the Buzzcocks know and love him. His routine started off with a lament to the amount of sinks in his bathroom and how they daily mock his loneliness, a point he circles back to on a couple of occasions, heightening the idea that what he is telling us is not a one off, bad dating story, but instead a pattern which dictates his romantic happiness, or lack thereof. There are several moments where the audience aww him instead of laughing, a new experience for me at a comedy show, but a very pleasant one. Throughout Amstell’s show, through his nervous stance and slightly hesitant delivery, the audience is entirely on his side. He is a comedian it is almost impossible to dislike, a comedian our generation has grown up with on Pop world and Buzzcocks. We feel we know him, so to see him in such a different and revealing setting is both refreshing and strangely unsettling. I’m sure I’m not the only one in the audience who wanted to run on stage and give him a hug.

His show leads the audience through his romantic failings on a charming journey of self discovery through repeated mistakes. Amstell talks us through ideal men, falling in love with fantasies, and how not to chat up movie stars (upon meeting Jared Leto, his perfect man, at a full moon party in Thailand, he apparently uttered the immortal words “Your beauty in Requiem for a Dream detracted from the narrative.” Mr Leto walked away.).

An idea which lingers throughout is that life is short and that everybody dies, perhaps not the richest vein of comedy gold, but a surprisingly uplifting one. Amstell convincingly argues that in order to be happy, and get your requisite amount of “rumbly-tumbly” you have to live in the moment. Perhaps it’s time for he and I to take control our identical love lives. The worst that can happen is we create some new material for a stand up show. If I get rejected, I’m blaming you Mr. Amstell.

"It's just a house."

Up

Pixar’s latest offering, the story of Carl, an old man who flies his house to South America to fulfil a lifelong dream, has already garnered a huge amount of praise. No doubt it will win Oscars and be held in the hearts of young and old alike. This is Pixar and that is what they do best. The amazing thing is that every film of theirs is better than the last. You think they’ve hit their peak with Ratatouille, and then Wall-e comes out. You think Wall-e is animated film perfection, and here comes Up. The company seems unable to do wrong, and in my opinion Up is their greatest film to date, which automatically puts it as one of the best animated features in cinematic history.

This is, of course, a very strong statement, and one that I do not make lightly. Almost everything about the film is pitch perfect. The vocal talent is outstanding, the animation is beyond compare, and the set pieces in either 2d or 3d (yes I did watch it both ways, more on that later) are breathtaking. Pixar know how to make a film that will delight every single audience member, and they do it by never talking down to their audience.

The writing of the film is extraordinary in its subtlety. The opening montage, which by now you will undoubtedly have heard about, takes the viewer through the lifelong relationship of Carl and Ellie in less than 5 minutes, leaving not a single dry eye in the house. The sequence contains no dialogue, and yet effortlessly portrays the enduring love, hardships and heartbreak of this couple’s life. This may be the first children’s film to deal with infertility, ageing, death and abandonment, and it does so in such a way that children will understand and empathize with, without having it spelled out for them. A similar display of restraint is in a scene where Russell, the chatty yet charming Junior Wilderness Explorer accidentally brought along for the ride tells Carl about his Dad. No description of his situation is given, but in a few well chosen words his whole home life is revealed. It is this saying so little which says so much.

This is not to say that the film is all tears and intensity, it’s also one of the funniest Pixar have ever done. The cast of supporting characters, including Kevin the giant bird and Dug the talking dog (a clever plot device wherein the dog’s master creates computerized voice boxes for all his pet dogs sets up some of the funniest dialogue in the movie) are all hilarious without pandering to kids film clichés. Again, the comedy comes just as much from the writing as from the visuals.

The look of the film is absolutely stunning. There are moments that are almost photo-real, especially smaller details which, when put in the picture lend a sense of reality to the whole film. The lead characters are allowed to be more caricatured when put in this realist setting without us losing any connection with them. In 2d the film is breathtaking, beautiful and fun, but in 3d it becomes real. As with a lot of the 3d films coming out at the moment, the extra dimension isn’t used for thrills so much as to add depth and realism. Things don’t jump out of the screen at you as much as gain due prominence whilst others fade into the background. The only downside of 3d is the lack of vibrancy of colour. Because the glasses are tinted at times it feels like watching a film with your sunglasses on, but the loss is hugely outweighed by the gain.

So Pixar have done it again, they have made a beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking film which leaves you uplifted and wanting more, and they do it by respecting their audience both young and old. This is a lesson other animation studios need to learn if they are ever going to try to compete. Pixar are so far ahead of the game that it is difficult to imagine anyone else come close, but if it means more films of this calibre then I, for one, would like to see them try.