Notes on Pain and Glory

Almodovar’s memory piece about mortality was the melancholy movie of the week earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

Antonio Banderas, made up to look more like Almodovar than he does, and living in a flat made up to look like Almodovar’s actual flat plays Salvador Mallo, a film director who may or may not be based on Almodovar. He is a physical wreck after spinal surgery and cannot countenance directing or even writing because it makes him too aware that he is in no shape to direct. Living the life of a recluse and popping medicine for pain like Gregory House MD, Salvador is also haunted by memories of his youth in Franco’s Spain and his failings as a good son to his recently deceased mother. An invitation to present a classic film from the 1980s reunites him with the leading man, and soon Salvador has found an ill-advised way to cope with his back pain even as he may accidentally be about to make a comeback as a confessional playwright.

Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory” was the Film of the Week on the Sunday Breakfast Show @dublincityfm and @fergalcasey discussed the links between it and the writing of John McGahern ☘️ #film #spain #cinema #writing #ireland pic.twitter.com/y2aqcqUvy1

— Patrick Doyle (@patricksdoyle) August 25, 2019

So tonight I’m going to party like it’s 1999

It’s now twenty years since I passed on the Pierce Brosnan remake in the cinema because I’d recently seen and not loved the Steve McQueen original, and because I found it disquietingly salacious how much of the publicity focused on fortysomething Rene Russo’s bare breasts.

Having recently got round to watching it I was struck by how I would never have thought the director was John McTiernan, above all because of the boring opening to get to what we already know. It strikes me that this film suffers from this more than anything else I can recall, and I think there might be three reasons for that. It is a remake so we all know that Mr Crown is a dilettante criminal. It is clear from the trailer that Mr Crown is a dilettante criminal, that is the reason to see Brosnan play the role with his customary insouciance. It takes damn near twenty-five minutes to reveal that Mr Crown is a dilettante criminal, that is too long in a film under two hours to faff about structurally on something the audience already knows twice over.

From the Archives: The Bratz Movie

Another dive into the pre-Talking Movies archives pulls up a deservedly forgotten shameless live-action cash-in distinguished mostly by a nose.

‘Best Friends Forever’ Yasmin, Cloe, Jade and Sasha drift apart as soon as they start high school. A session in detention, however, sees them decide to rebuild their lost friendship by destroying the suffocating clique system imposed by student body president Meredith.

This film does not start well. The spectacle of 18 year old girls playing characters just starting High School and acting far more immature than that is a horrendous sight. Thankfully things pick up after those ghastly introductory scenes as soon as we arrive at Carry Nation High School. The school is, joyously for those who like their visual humour, run like a prison by Principal Dimly (Jon Voight). Voight is having fun wearing a false nose yet again, which is referenced in a wonderfully silly in-joke. Dimly’s daughter Meredith (Chelsea Staub) assigns all freshmen their clique, complete with seating chart… All this owes a lot to Mean Girls but Bratz doesn’t aim that high. Indeed you can’t help but suspect that the screenplay by Lizzie McGuire writer/producer Susan Estelle Jansen tones down substantially the story scripted by Adam De La Pena and David Eilenberg. Their resumes are chock full of Ali G and animated shows for grown-ups, not fare calculated to sell toys to tweenies, even if it would help parents to retain consciousness.

For those unfamiliar with Bratz there’s great comfort in how much The OC informs the dialogue. Indeed Jade (Janel Parrish) seems to be a very thinly disguised Asian version of Summer Roberts. Hardly surprising really, as Parrish appeared in The OC. The cast is chock full of Nickelodeon regulars while Skyler Shaye who plays Cloe was in Veronica Mars, from which one of the best lines of this film is stolen. There’s also hints of The OC’s Taylor Townsend about Meredith, though the writers choose to go more with Rachel McAdams’ Mean Girls queen bee persona. Such steals are actually of great service in making this film better than one would have expected. Director Sean McNamara at least partially justifies this film appearing in cinemas and not television with some big set-pieces. A beautifully choreographed food-fight sequence takes place to the strains of the Blue Danube. This film though is far too long. It is two excellent musical numbers, performed by Broadway star Chelsea Staub, that really sustain its flagging final forty minutes.

For those tired of the Barbie image of perfection, which has led to such idiocy as shoehorning Jessica Alba into an Aryan model of beauty in the Fantastic Four movies, the Bratz dolls have done the world some service in pushing beauty ideals of mixed ethnicity. Parents though should note that breaking apart a clique system seems to involve a suspiciously large amount of expensive shopping led by the fashionista Jade. Oddly enough the Bratz cartoon series in which the BFF’s are crusading student journalists is probably more empowering and definitely more succinct than the live action version.

3/5

At least we still have… : Part VIII

The eighth entry in an occasional series in which I try to cheer myself up by remembering what still exists in the world and cannot ever be taken capriciously away.

Bran Van 300 forever

21 years later this still sounds like summer. And is there ever a better song to listen to when working on some writing? “Whaddya think we got done, son? – We’ve got a conclusion, and I guess that’s something”

Epic Love

When I had to catch up Elliot Harris with Veronica Mars from scratch before going to see the Veronica Mars movie in the one cinema in Dublin showing it I sent him six clips which I thought would give him a flavour of the show, and would act as the most cursory of ‘Previously on Veronica Mars…’  I told him if he only watched one of these YouTube selections that this was by far the most important one. Logan and Veronica 4EVER!

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Any Other Business: Part XXXVI

As the title suggests, so forth.

Catch-22: it’s not the best one Hulu have

It was all Friedrich Bagel’s fault. It was he who sent a link to a Guardian piece raving that George Clooney had broken the curse of the unfilmable novel. But why talk about filming an unfilmable novel when it’s a TV series? You might as well call Brideshead Revisited a triumphant 13 hour movie adaptation. Only in early 1970s France or the increasingly addled BAM would that make pretend sense. And why give the imaginary credit to Clooney? He directs as many episodes as Ellen Kuras and he’s barely in it as an actor, while every episode is written by the series developers Davies and Michod. And they sort of write the same episode again and again. A little comedy gets thru each week, but what a slog to get to it. And then the same ‘shock’ ending, week after week. Things got distinctly SJ Perelman:

The murders follow an exact, rigid pattern almost like the ritual of a bullfight or a classic Chinese play. Take ‘Veiled Lady’ in the October, 1937, number of Spicy Detective – Dan is flinging some woo at a Mrs Brantham in her apartment at the exclusive Gayboy Arms, which apparently excludes everybody but assassins:

“From behind me a roscoe belched “Chow-chow!” A pair of slugs buzzed past my left ear, almost nicked my cranium. Mrs Brantham sagged back against the pillow of the lounge… She was as dead as an iced catfish”.

Round up the most young actors you can find who look alike and then dress them all alike and don’t flesh any of them out and leave the audience baffled, until they realise that if someone finally gets individuated a bit as we head into the last 20 minutes of an episode that means they’re about to die and it will probably be Yo-Yo’s fault. As The Engineer said after it was all over: “You don’t have to watch it if you ask not to watch it because it wasn’t very good, but if you ask not to watch it because it wasn’t very good, you’ve already watched it.  Catch-22. It’s the best one they have.”

The Avengers begins with Honor Blackman

It has been a disconcerting experience watching True Movies’ extremely scrambled late night re-runs of The Avengers. I had only ever seen a handful of Cathy Gale episodes late at night on RTE 1 over 20 years ago. As True Movies jumped between episodes and seasons of the first three years of the show it became evident that it was something of a miracle this ever became the classic show it did. It is only when Honor Blackman shows up for season 2 episode 1 ‘Mr Teddy Bear’ that things really start to click, and then she keeps disappearing in favour of Julie Stevens’ Venus Smith and her wretched musical numbers, or the second iteration of Dr King who is no more interesting than the first. And let’s not forget that the show was supposed to be about Dr King! A nigh unwatchable first iteration Dr King episode didn’t even feature Steed. It is unfathomable using IMDb to straighten out the running order to see that the writers apparently didn’t realise they’d lucked into gold with Steed and Gale. I’ve rarely seen such huge swings in quality between episodes; from touches like a man at an auction being shot on “Going… Going… GONE!” to overwrought gibberish about a mole hunt with Steed being accused while everyone ignores the world’s most obvious mole spending money like water beside him. All the while the chemistry between Steed and Gale defines the show as The Avengers.

Notes on Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood

Director Quentin Tarantino’s eleventh movie was the film of the week much earlier today on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

This movie, like so much post-Pulp Fiction Tarantino, is aggravating. It’s bloated running time of 2 hours 40 minutes is completely unnecessary and could be trimmed; first off by getting rid of the preposterous amount of driving while listening to the radio, dancing around to music at parties, and dancing around listening to vinyl at home. All of which music is present simply to allow Tarantino curate his obscure cuts for 1969 music. You’re not going to be troubled by The Beatles, The Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival or The Who here. Secondly you could save time by cutting all the material involving Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate because QT has no interest in giving Robbie anything substantive to do as Tate or in depicting the gruesome Manson Family murders which allegedly this film was meant to revolve around. Charles Manson makes one appearance, and there’s an extended sequence with Brad Pitt visiting the Manson Family at home, but that’s not what this film is about – it’s 1960s Birdman. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are at the top of their game as fading star Rick Dalton and his loyal stunt double Cliff Booth; DiCaprio playing an incapable character, and Pitt a very capable one.

Listen here:

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