The Age of Attenborough

The Age of Attenborough can be said to have begun on the 16^th of January 1979 with the broadcasting of the first episode of Life on Earth. Attenborough, before his stint as director of BBC 2 where he pioneered Wimbledon coverage and Monty Python, had of course been presenting Zoo Quest, and he presented other programmes, even delivering the Royal Instution’s Christmas Lectures in the mid-1970s. But Life on Earth was a self-consciously landmark series in the manner of Civilisation and The Ascent of Man, which Attenborough had commissioned for BBC 2 to show the ambition of the new channel.

1979 was coincidentally also the year my parents bought a humble cathode-ray tube television which has been faithfully broadcasting Attenborough’s explorations of the natural world since Life on Earth and will remain his faithful servant, as RTE 1 prepares to screen his Dynasties programme, until the 6^th of August at which point the analogue signal will be turned off and this technical marvel bow out after 40 years of service.

The series that Attenborough has made over those 40 years are astonishing: The Living Planet, The First Eden, Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives, The Trials of Life, Life in the Freezer, The Private Life of Plants, The Life of Birds, The Human Face, The Blue Planet, The Life of Mammals, Life in the Undergrowth, Planet Earth, Life in Cold Blood, Life, Madagascar, Frozen Planet, Kingdom of Plants, Galapagos, Africa, Micro Monsters, Life Story, Conquest of the Skies, The Hunt, Great Barrier Reef, Planet Earth II, Blue Planet II, Dynasties, Our Planet.

Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XIV

As the title suggests here are some short thoughts about the movies which aren’t quite substantial enough for each to merit an individual blog posting.

Edge of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

I blundered into the middle of Edge of Tomorrow aka All You Need is Kill aka Live. Die. Repeat. recently, at a time when I couldn’t commit to watching something, but was a bit annoyed that I couldn’t catch the first 20 minutes before turning off. Then realised that I could do something better, because it was showing on a channel with a +1 option. So I started switching between the two channels, one of them about 15 minutes in, the other 1 hour 15 minutes in. Back and forth, back and forth, even as Tom Cruise tried to explain to Emily Blunt how all this had happened to him before and how he’d got better at navigating this world, death by farcical death. An exposition lecture I was illustrating by channel-hopping. There is a peculiar joy to be derived from rewatching temporally trippy films in such a temporally scrambled way. I have fond memories of watching Interstellar with my Dad two years ago when RTE premiered it at a time of critically low DVR capacity. As a result of something running over we were forced to tape and watch, tape and watch, until eventually we found ourselves fatally behind, and forced to watch live until an ad-break because we couldn’t tape. And once the ads came we were able to finish the few minutes of taped material we needed in order to delete that chunk, setting us back nearly an hour in the story, and then we could start taping again while beginning the remaining 30 minute chunk of taped material. Dad complained at the end, not unreasonably, that he couldn’t make heard nor tail of the last three hours of gibberish.

The MARVELlous Mr Renner?

It’s slightly depressing to think that Jeremy Renner, despite having been pretty vocal about the shoddy writing of his character Hawkeye after The Avengers, is going to spend part of a second decade chained to him. As has been noted hereabouts the cinematic Hawkeye is a pale shadow of his immediate comic-book antecedent in Mark Millar’s The Ultimates. As indeed are all the cinematic Avengers, which is what makes the Marvel Studios juggernaut so very depressing when it exists at the same time in history as Fast & Furious 5-thru 8. Looking back at this decade, as is becoming depressingly unavoidable, it’s clear that what Renner did when he jumped off the Marvel juggernaut was when he really shone: The Town, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, The Bourne Legacy, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, The Immigrant, American Hustle, Kill the Messenger, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Arrival, Wind River, The House, Tag. Renner lights up the two M:I movies, with Christopher McQuarrie dubbing him a fantastically funny ad-libber. His supporting turn in The Town is a masterpiece turning what is often a one-note character in heist movies into a wonderful imp, and in Arrival and Wind River he is superb at grounding sci-fi and Western noir in humanity.

Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part VIII

As the title suggests here are some short thoughts about the movies which aren’t quite substantial enough for each to merit an individual blog posting.

Did you just ask me who I am?…

Humphrey Who?

Patrick Doyle asked an unnerving question on his Sunday Breakfast show a couple of weeks ago. How many people know who Grace Kelly is anymore? … How could people not know who Grace Kelly is?! Then I started to worry… I am interested in history in general, and this extends into burrowing with curiosity and sympathy into the back catalogue of cinema. But I have to admit that for many people, probably I fear the vast majority, they frankly couldn’t give a damn. (And would only have the faintest idea that that was a reference to the most popular film ever made) A particularly dispiriting display of wilful ignorance of the past came at the Lighthouse Hallowe’en screening of Halloween back in 2016. The very young, very very drunk audience, mostly in party later on fancy dress costume, was hooting in derision from the get-go. At anything and everything, any detail of dialogue or costume or reality (like a 70s car) that revealed the movie as having been made in 1978. I couldn’t understand this attitude of unbridled contempt then, and still struggle with it now. Do they not think people as yet unborn will hoot in self-same derision in 2046 at the films they hold precious now? For heaven’s sake most of these people were sporting the Snowflake hair-do whose sheer omnipresence and ostentation means, as I wrote some months back, that it will be as embarrassing on Jan 1^st 2020 as bell-bottomed jeans were on Jan 1^st 1980.

Censor and be damned!

Channel 4 has got my goat recently by showing films too early for its own purposes. Dante’s Peak saw a trio of deaths removed, presumably for fear of upsetting younger viewers. But then why show it in early afternoon?! Instead we got the build-up to the trio of grisly deaths, and the emotional fall-outs of the other characters reacting to the grisly deaths, and but no actual deaths so people seemed to be reacting to nothing. It’s all too reminiscent of the time that RTE decided to cut Raiders of the Lost Ark, and left out Indy getting shot, but kept in Indy in great pain attempting to bandage the bloody wound that he’d acquired mysteriously while driving without incident. Channel 4 also decided to censor Romancing the Stone. They snipped the full bloody detail of the animatronic alligator pulling off the villain’s hand, but then kept in his sustained agonised screams and fumbled frantic one-handed bandaging of the bloody stump where his left hand used to be. I don’t know whether it could be said to be more disturbing to show consequences after eliding the actions, but it is frustrating. Channel 4 should take a page from the book of the censor in Malaysia; who banned a film altogether after he’d had to make so many cuts it was left an incoherent mess that did nobody any favours. Show these films later in the day or just don’t show them!

Rub and … Scrub

So Scarlett Johansson, having better things to do than fight Twitter mobs, has pulled out of playing a transsexual in Rub and Tug. Some of the self-same people who mercilessly bullied her online now (incredibly) hope she’ll continue producing the movie. But… clearly she’d been producing, guiding the screenplay, hiring a director she’d worked with before, in order to win an Oscar; following in the footsteps of Jared Leto in 2014, as she noted in her initial response which the usual cyber-bullies dubbed ‘toxic’. Why actively produce this movie now its purpose for her has been gutted? Why would the financing stay in place when an Avenger is to be replaced by a transsexual player like… And there we hit the customary avoidance of specifics in such campaigns. Who? Daniela Vega? Candis Cayne? Films like this don’t make money without star-power and prestige traction. Dallas Buyers Club made 55 million, Moonlight made 65 million, Mysterious Skin made 2 million, Love is Strange made 2 million. Scarlett Johansson starring probably makes it likely you have a just slightly better than 50/50 shot at hitting the Dallas rather than the Skin end of that spectrum. Scarlett Johansson not starring reduces yours odds of hitting pay-dirt so substantially the only reason not to pull financing would be the same masochism expected of her to produce a film to benefit the people who bullied her.

Reflect. Remember. Reimagine. … … Celebrate?

On New Year’s Eve I posted a lengthy piece on my misgivings about how 1916 was being handled, and now with a Luas strike timed to disrupt the commemoration things have turned out even worse than I feared.

The official tagline for marking the centenary of the Rising is ‘Reflect. Remember. Reimagine.’ It took me a while to figure out what sounded off about that. ‘Reflect’ seemed odd from the get-go, because it put me in mind of RTE’s Angelus visuals; the idea of people actually praying is verboten, so instead people stare off into the middle distance like so many Ingmar Bergman characters. The Irish Times and RTE do enough navel-gazing as it is, we don’t need as a nation to start ‘reflecting’ about 1916; indeed it encourages passivity, rather than activity – the endless refrain of ‘Oh, isn’t X awful, how can the Rising have be said to have fulfilled its promise?’ needs to be answered a bit more with a sharp ‘So, what do you plan to do about X, beyond using it as a rhetorical gambit?’ ‘Remember’ seemed odd, yet also oddly familiar. Then it hit me, ‘The Nation Remembers’, every year at the Cenotaph in London on Remembrance Sunday. What on earth are we doing remembering? Do the French remember Bastille Day? Do the Americans remember the 4th of July? Or could they be more correctly characterised as celebrating? By all means if you lost millions of men to a war that was not quite the ‘great war for civilisation’ that the medal given to Robert Fisk’s father had it. But if you kickstarted an end to monarchy and colonialism then you celebrate; just ask the Americans if they feel the need to solemnly reflect on and somberly remember Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration. ‘Reimagine’ meanwhile sees RTE recast 1916, in a jaw-dropping cinema advert, as an event that jumps straight to its logical conclusions: Mary Robinson’s election, the Good Friday Agreement, and Panti winning a referendum. History, once its got that embarrassing patriotic glitch out of the way, literally starting in 1990 with the election of the first Labour President, the prelude to Labour’s signature referendum, is beyond a parody of the Labour party’s self-serving narrative of Irish progress. History qua history is to be glossed over to get to the glorious present, all of a piece with the downgrading of history in schools, and above all we must never actually place 1916 in the sort of context Ronan Fanning does in Fatal Path – actual history.

Celebrating the Rising is something that’s not acceptable, apparently. We must wring our hands, not set off fireworks. And so we come to a moment, where patriotism has been so deliberately discredited that the Luas drivers are prepared to destroy a once in a century event in a manner that would have been unthinkable for MTA workers in 1976 during the American bicentennial. SIPTU have been only too happy to cloak themselves in the garb of James Connolly of late, but it’s to be doubted that a man who gave his life for Ireland would endorse the galling obliviousness of their posturing: “The proposal itself contains a very, very regressive concept, which is the idea that the people who are recruited between now and when the Luas extension is ready to go, that they would be paid on a new entry lower rate – which is considerably lower than the lowest rate which applies to workers when they join the company at the moment and this is a concept which has been objected to strenuously.” It is to be applauded that Jack O’Connor has finally realised that this concept is regressive, not to say abhorrent. Perhaps now, instead of trying to traduce the 1916 centenary and the best public transport operation in the country, he might share his misgivings with his friends across the union movement who spent the last 5 years mercilessly pulling up the ladder on new entrants to protect their own privileges.

“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave”

ADIFF: Behind the Scenes

Audi Dublin International Film Festival’s “Behind The Scenes” strand will consist of Industry Panels, Seminars and Master Classes. Thi­­s strand enjoys a broad focus, whether you are a filmmaker, film student or film enthusiast, touching on subjects from film programming, screenwriting and cinematography to history on film, emerging technologies, classification and music composition. Notable guests are Oscar-nominated screenwriter and celebrated playwright David Hare, Oscar-winning composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek and double Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges.

History on Film is a key theme throughout the programme and will be the subject of a panel discussion hosted by Pearse St. Library. Seen, but Unnoticed is a reunion event for those who took part in the production of Michael Collins, reuniting 20 years on to share memories and anecdotes from their time on set. 1916 At The Pictures will see City Hall turned into a cinema for a triple bill of Charlie Chaplin films that were screening in one of the many cinemas on O’Connell St at the outbreak of the Rising.

This year ADIFF is presenting not one, but two exhibitions of photography. Patrick Redmond, 25 Years will celebrate the work of the Festival Photographer and his extensive catalogue of wonderful guest portraits dating back to the early 1990s. The second photography exhibition #Setlife aims to highlight and celebrate skilled and hardworking crews working on location and on set for very long hours through key moments snapped to allow audiences a view of life in production.

 

MASTER CLASSES in association with Screen Training Ireland

David Hare: “Telling Details” – A Writer’s Master Class

Saturday 20^th February at 11:00am

The Teachers’ Club, Parnell Square West, Dublin 1

Tickets: €25 apply via Industry@diff.ie

Host: Malcolm Campbell

A unique opportunity to hear directly from one of Britain’s most prolific writers for both stage and screen. This is a fantastic opportunity for writers both of original screenplays and anyone seeking to adapt works for the screen. As part of this Master Class the components of plot, character and structure will be dissected and explored. This Master Class will focus on approaches to screenwriting and delve deeply into the various elements that are integral to the delivery of a quality screenplay.

 

Chris Menges: “Scenes Being Believed” – A Cinematographer’s Master Class

Sunday 21^st February at 12:00pm

The Lir Academy, Pearse St, Dublin 2

Tickets: €25 apply via Industry@diff.ie

Host: Irish Society of Cinematographers

This Master Class will draw on Chris Menge’s vast experience working across different genres, formats, locations and environments (including The Mission and The Killing Fields). The aim is to bring this knowledge to bear in a context that will teach the participants about collaborative dynamics between a director and their cinematographer. It will also aspire to touch on a cinematographer’s tools of the trade, traditional methodologies and how story and character should influence the look of the piece as opposed to format or the latest technological toys.

SCREENTEST in association with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI)

Rebellion: From Script to Screen

Monday 22nd February at 13:30

The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Street West, Dublin 1

Tickets: €7 / Book Online at diff.ie

The divisive television production Rebellion marked the beginning of RTE’s 1916 centenary programming. Boasting a starry cast led by Charlie Murphy and Sarah Greene it focused on various female protagonists from different backgrounds, loyalties and ideals, in the days surrounding the Rising, occasionally weaving in the actual heroes of 1916 amidst locations such as Dublin Castle, the G.P.O. and Collins Barracks. Writer Colin Teevan, Producer Catherine Magee, Costume Designer Alison Byrne, as well as some of the key crew, look back on the shoot and discuss the various production stages beginning with script, casting and scheduling right through to principal photography and post-delivery, including location shooting during the summer in Dublin’s city centre.

 

BYOD: BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE

Wednesday 24th February at 13:30

The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Street West, Dublin 1

Tickets: €7 / Book Online at diff.ie

It has been said that constant mobile device usage is isolating and restricts human contact. But, like it or not, mobile devices are now an integral part of daily life. While some people simply long for a time when phones simply made and received calls, the reality is fast moving toward the virtual, or even the augmented. Google Cardboard, vlogging, 360° video, mojo journalism, even the film industry itself with films like Tangerine, are all now extending the use of mobile devices and pushing boundaries daily. Hell, you can even buy a camera drone for £50 and give your short film aerial photography now. A panel of experts will discuss how new cutting edge apps will rapidly become the thing you cannot live without.

 

Explicit Content

Friday 26th February at 13:30

The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Street West, Dublin 1

Tickets: €7 / Book Online at diff.ie

With the landscape of broadcast and cinema constantly changing, approaches to classification and content regulation require constant appraisal. This panel discussion aims to take an in-depth look at the various factors that must be applied to both film classification and content regulation for broadcast. Issues like classifications on youth targeted films, depictions of violence on television, or codes of fairness will be explored in a unique opportunity to see how and why decisions are reached. Experts from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, the Irish Film Classification Office and the media will discuss the various aspects of managing complaints, adhering to regulations for youth audiences and freedom of expression. Just don’t expect a serious discussion of why Rebellion opted for a hard R-rating thus invalidating its use as an educational tool unlike either HBO’s John Adams or BBC’s 37 Days.

 

SPECIAL EVENTS

Cinema Snapshots / With Sunday Miscellany & Dublin City Libraries

Sunday 7th February at 09:10, radio broadcast and online podcast on RTE.ie

Going to the cinema is a unique and sometimes magical experience. It can transport you out of your seat; at Q&As your mind can be opened up to the worlds of the director, the actor, the screenwriter. Writers and poets involved with Dublin City Libraries writing groups shared their experiences of cinema in Dublin. Sunday Miscellany on Sunday the 7th February at 9.10am is a special edition that will hear the winning submission from those Library groups and also feature well-known Irish filmmakers, lecturers, presenters and writers (including John Connolly, Ciaran Carton and Ruth Barton) providing their own perspectives on what the cinema and film in Dublin means to them.

 

#SetLife / Photography Exhibition

Thursday 18th – Sunday 28th February

Lighthouse Cinema

#SetLife is an exhibition of photography from behind the scenes of various Irish film and television productions. Presented in association with Lovemovies.ie on behalf of the Industry Trust for IP Awareness, this exhibition will run in the Lighthouse and will display a selection of photographs taken on Irish sets by various cast and crew members of day-to-day life on set. #SetLife aims to capture the scale of work that goes into bringing something from script to screen, and the army of people across various departments who work tirelessly to make it all happen.

 

Dublin Here, Dublin There

Saturday 20th February in Dublin Public Library, Dublin Texas

Friday 26th February in Dublin Arts Centre, Dublin Ohio & Pulaski County Library System, Dublin Virginia

ADIFF has a strong history of successful outreach programmes and has a fantastic reputation of working with festivals around the world. In 2016 ADIFF has allied with the communities of Dublin in Ohio, Texas and Virginia – who have each offered their knowledge, resources and venues to help share a programme of the best Irish shorts with audiences in the US. The project aims to strengthen Dublin’s connection with these communities to bring awareness, as well as Ireland’s love of cinema, to the greater worldwide diaspora.

 

Programming for Programmers

Friday 19th February at 14:00

The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Street West, Dublin 1

Tickets: €7 / Book online at diff.ie

Chaired by Hugh Murray (Pavilion Theatre).

Mark Adams (Artistic Director, Edinburgh Film Festival), Nashen Moodley (Festival Director, Sydney Film Festival), Gregg M. Schwenk (CEO and Executive Director Newport Beach Film Festival) and Ania Trzebiatowska (Artistic Director PKO Off Camera & Manager of Acquisitions for Visit Films) will provide insight into the world of programming as an international Artistic Directors. From the moving puzzle of international distribution to inviting guests and the challenges of the red carpet, these experts will discuss the subtlety of programming. This event is a networking opportunity for new and advanced programmers to meet each other and to gain perspective from top festival professionals.

 

Pat Redmond, 25 Years / A Celebration

Tuesday 16th February – Wednesday 16th March

The Georgian Society, 58 South William Street, Dublin 2 and The Powerscourt Centre, 59 South William Street, Dublin 2

In a world increasingly dominated by the snap, selfie and speed shot, this exhibition will celebrate the work of a true master of the art of film portrait photography, who has provided Dublin’s film festival, in its numerous guises over the past quarter century, with an indelible photographic record of the eclectic array of filmmakers who have graced the festival.

HISTORY ON FILM

 

Seen But Unnoticed / A Reunion of the Background Artists and Extras of Michael Collins

Saturday 20th February at 12:00

The Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Street West, Dublin 1

Tickets: Free event / Please email industry@diff.ie to register your interest

They came by the busload, graciously offering time for free (in a move that saw Hugh Leonard award Neil Jordan his ‘Cute Hoor of the Year’ Award) and supplementing the period costumes with clothes they brought themselves in order to participate in one of the most ambitious undertakings of Irish Cinema history, Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins. To celebrate the 20^th anniversary of this remarkable production ADIFF invites those who took part in the production to join a special reunion and retrospective of the amazing shoot.

 

History on Film / Film on History

Tuesday 23rd February at 17:00

Pearse Street Library, 144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2

Tickets: Free event, book online at diff.ie

In this year of anniversary and commemoration a panel of filmmakers, academics and journalists will discuss the relationship between cinema and history. A full list of films included in the ‘History on Film’ strand will be accompanied by talks and discussions. The nettle that might not be grasped is the baneful effect of films like Zero Dark Thirty on popular understanding of historical events even as they attempt to win Oscars by virtue of their historical cachet.

 

1916 At The Pictures

Wednesday 24th February at 14:00 (81 minutes)

City Hall, Dame Street, Dublin 2

Tickets: Email info@diff.ie for ticketing information

ADIFF will recreate the cinema of 1916 as it was, by representing the films which would have been shown in the cinemas of Dublin on that fateful Easter week. Archive research has uncovered cinema listings from April 1916, including screenings at old venues on O’Connell Street such as the Picture Pillar House. From within the list of archive titles a restoration of some classic Charlie Chaplin films from his early career shows the beginnings of some of his most beloved and remembered characters including the Tramp.

The Bank: Charlie the janitor loves Edna, the pretty bank secretary, but her sweetheart is another Charles, the cashier.

The Champion: This comedy has Charlie finding employment as a sparring partner who fights in the prize ring and wins the championship match, with the help of his pet bulldog.

The Tramp: Charlie saves a farmer’s daughter from some thieving toughs and subsequently stops their attempt to rob the farm.

PUBLIC INTERVIEWS

 

Interview with David Hare and ‘The Hours’ screening

Saturday 20th February

15:00 Interview (60 minutes)

16:30 The Hours (114 minutes)

IFI 1

Tickets: €9 each or €15 for both events. Tickets also available from IFI Box Office, www.ifi.ie

Host: Sean Rocks

David Hare is well known for his work in theatre, having written more than thirty plays including Plenty, Pravda, Skylight, The Judas Kiss, snd a version of Ibsen’s The Master Builder currently running in the Old Vic. He has also been widely honoured for his long list of credits for the screen. He has written more than twenty screenplays for film and television including Plenty, Paris by Night, Weatherby and Damage. As a screenwriter he has twice been nominated for Oscars for his adapted screenplays on The Hours and The Reader, each of which also earned him nominations for a Golden Globe.  His haunting drama Weatherby won him a Golden Berlin Bear in 1985 and he has directed many actors to win awards for their work across his formidable back catalogue. ADIFF will present a screening of his adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, where he will participate in a pre-screening interview with Sean Rocks of RTE Radio 1’s Arena.

 

Jan A.P. Kaczmarek / Composing For Film Seminar

Saturday 27th February

Royal Irish Academy of Music

Tickets: €15 Book Online at diff.ie

Host: Bill Whelan

Jan A. P. Kaczmarek is a composer with a tremendous international reputation that continues to grow. His first success in the United States came in theatre. After composing striking scores for productions at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and Los Angeles’s Mark Taper Forum, he won an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for his music for the New York Shakespeare Festival’s 1992 production of John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore, starring Val Kilmer and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Having composed music for films in Poland, he achieved recognition with scores to Total Eclipse, Bliss, Washington Square, Aimée & Jaguar, The Third Miracle, Lost Souls, Edges of the Lord, Quo Vadis and Unfaithful. In 2005 he won a Best Original Score Oscar for Finding Neverland.

 

 

1916 without 1916

By now we’ve all seen the Government’s video about the 1916 Rising that somehow forgets the Rising. I’m not sure I’ve seen something so straight-facedly absurd since Brad Dourif preached “The Church of Christ … without Christ” in Wise Blood.

From the suggestively chosen imagery it’s tempting to conclude (apropos of Interstellar) that we’re commemorating when David Cameron, Ian Paisley, and Queen Elizabeth II travelled back via a handily placed wormhole to Dublin 1916 in order to ensure a docklands fit for Google and Facebook to live in. Sadly the truth is less imaginative, and depressing; because this fiasco was entirely predictable. The Proclamation being rendered as Gaeilge via Google Translate was a perfect statement of intent. Nobody cared enough to flag that it ought to be double-checked before it went live. It is unthinkable that in 2004 a Polish text could have been given such haphazard treatment while our government was hosting the EU’s big expansion into Eastern Europe; Bertie Ahern cared deeply about that Farmleigh event. It is unthinkable that a German would text would not be excruciatingly parsed if Angela Merkel were to visit next week; because Enda Kenny would care deeply about such a visit. But for the literal genesis of our political consciousness as a modern state? To appropriate the current Rabobank ad’s stylings: “Any translation” “Any translation?” “Any translation…” That attitude expresses a political weltanschauung: Labour gives the distinct impression of being embarrassed by our Constitution; which Eamon Gilmore liked to dub outdated (ignore the awkward fact the Americans are still using their 1780s constitutional settlement); and Fine Gael, despite their self-definition (as Pat Leahy has put it) as the party of “Law and Order. Law’n’Order and the Foundation of the State!”, are ashamed of 1916 – which is to primarily be remembered, whereas they celebrated the 75^th anniversary of winning the Civil War…

Labour’s Aodhán O’Ríordáin, while insisting that the video was a preview of what the entirety of 2016 would be like (apparently a never-ending bacchanalia of Macnas and BOD coming out of retirement to score tries), offered a non-apology apology: “If we got it wrong, we got it wrong and we should look at something else.” (If? If?? IF?! Yes, ye got it wrong. This has been made abundantly clear by now, so lose the “if”.) He went on to offer the official version of the mindset behind the video: “The point is that we’re trying not to present a very stiff and stale and unimaginative and cold depiction of what happened 100 years ago, which can almost turn some people off immediately.” Maybe he sincerely believes this, maybe not; to my mind this defeatist insistence that marking the events of 100 years ago is impossible because it’s all deathly dull so let’s just talk about the Queen’s visit in 2011 is a disingenuous cover for the fact that it is the government itself who are the people turned off immediately by the idea of celebrating 1916. The BBC spent 2014 producing radio and television documentaries and fictional serials about WWI. If you could watch 37 Days’ dramatisation of the failed diplomacy of July 1914 and find it very stiff, stale, unimaginative, and cold, then the problem lies not with history or its recreation but with you. If you could watch Niall Ferguson’s provocative arguing for WWI being a mistake and the hostile reaction of his academic audience and find it very stiff, stale, unimaginative, and cold then presumably you find newspapers insupportable because they’re about events from distant yesterday. It is telling that the video’s themes; Remember, Reconcile, Imagine, Present, Celebrate; visually remove ‘celebration’ from the revolutionary past…

The video’s visual cues for ‘remember’, ‘reconcile’, and ‘imagine’ taken together imply sorrow for having had the bad taste to rebel against Britain, and a desire to plot how to go forward together. As approaches to celebrating a country’s independence from its colonial masters go it’s got the merit of originality. But it cannot go uncontested. How does marking 1916 by mentioning Ian Paisley and not Padraig Pearse make sense? How is it even acceptable to prioritise, over a man who gave up his life as a blood sacrifice (of the type Rupert Brooke valorised) to start a fire whose flame would burn a hole in the map of the British Empire, a man who became a big avuncular bear once he’d made it to the top of the greasy pole having first done considerable damage in his life-long climb to the top in his capacity as venomous firebrand? (When Seamus Mallon dubbed the Good Friday Agreement ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’ who did he have in mind?) I have walked some of the battlefields and cemeteries of the Western Front, where Irish and British soldiers died together in 1914, and remembered them. It does not preclude me from celebrating 1916.

French historian Francois Furet rescued 1789 from the grasp of communists who wanted to make it a proto-1917, by instead inflecting 1917 as the culmination of 1793’s Terror; and the Terror as the betrayal of the Revolution. Terence Brown has argued that Kevin Whelan’s The Tree of Liberty was vital in allowing 1798 to be celebrated here as a good thing, instead of mumbling embarrassedly about it. We need something of the same now. It doesn’t matter that we’re an indebted country who’ve signed away our sovereignty to the Troika. America in 1976 was hardly in a wonderful state. Vietnam, Inflation, Watergate, Roe V Wade: if ever a country was having a crisis of confidence and identity it was America then. And they still pulled off a celebratory bicentennial instead of sitting around bemoaning lost opportunities and how the Brits would have given them parliamentary representation if they’d just waited longer…

The government’s video suggests that we celebrate the future, and take inspiration from … whatever. That’s completely wrong, but completely in character. We should celebrate the past, and be inspired by it. We should not look back at 1916 and be embarrassed by it, we should look back at 1916 and be embarrassed by ourselves. We need to mark 2016 as a combination of July the 4^th and Gettysburg. It is both a cause for celebration, and a time for serious discussion. And if there’s anything in our national poet’s complicated canon that best sums up conflicted Irish identities in a triumphal way it’s this watchword for the coming centenary year:

“Sing the peasantry, and then

Hard-riding country gentlemen,

The holiness of monks, and after

Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter;

Sing the lords and ladies gay

That were beaten into the clay

Through seven heroic centuries;

Cast your mind on other days

That we in coming days may be

Still the indomitable Irishry.”

Don’t Mess With Veronica Mars

The second novel in the Veronica Mars mystery series has been published, and creator Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell are talking about reviving the TV show for an 8 episode run in the vein of True Detective. What better time to fondly remember one of the last decade’s best shows? Here’s a teaser for my HeadStuff piece on Veronica Mars.

Logan: I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me.

Veronica: Epic how?

Logan: Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, blood shed. Epic! But summer’s almost here. And we won’t see each other at all. Then you’ll leave town, and it’s over.

Veronica: Logan…

Logan: I’m sorry. About last summer. If I could do it over…

Veronica: C’mon… Ruined lives? Blood shed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?

Logan: No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.

It may seem odd to talk about Veronica Mars as a romantic show, but there’s a reason the ‘epic love’ scene was reprised in the 2014 movie; the show could be swooningly romantic, as evidenced by the giddy crane-work when Veronica kissed Logan for the first time in season 1. That was also one of the most shocking moments of season 1, not only because it felt like Veronica was betraying her dead best friend Lily by moving in on her boyfriend, but also because the pilot had introduced Logan with Veronica’s caustic voiceover: “Every school needs its psychotic jackass. Logan Echolls is ours”. Veronica’s on-off romance with Logan was not unlike Rory Gilmore’s with the equally charismatic but erratic Jess. There were nicer boys than Jason Dohring’s movie-star scion Logan, like Teddy Dunn’s Duncan Kane and Max Greenfield’s rookie cop Leo, but Leo’s fate was the voiceover gag; “It’s the old story. Girl meets boy. Girl uses boy. Girl likes boy. Boy finds out, girl gets what she deserves”; while Duncan’s entanglement with the ill-fated Meg saw Veronica nobly sacrifice her own relationship with Duncan to help him and his baby daughter evade the FBI and the Manning family, sadly pinning to her mirror a note saying ‘True love stories never end’. Season 3’s ‘nice boyfriend’ Chris Lowell’s Piz was the nicest boyfriend of all, and, in incredibly revealing commentary on the season 3 finale, Thomas noted that when Logan extravagantly apologises to a bruised Piz for beating him up earlier over a leaked sex-tape, Piz looks totally defeated; because he knows that Veronica, well-intentioned but ruthless, is the kind of girl who will only ever end up with the kind of guy who, repeatedly, has beaten people to a bloody pulp with his bare hands for hurting her.

Click here to read the full article on how Veronica Mars handled female friendship, a father-daughter detective agency, and how the sunny setting belied a dark heart of noir cynicism.

Sky Road TV & Film Festival

The inaugural Sky Road TV & Film Festival drew to a close today, following a weekend of screenings of Irish TV and film-making talent across features, shorts, documentaries and new media in both English and Irish languages, at The Station House Theatre in Clifden Co. Galway. Highlights on Sunday included a screening of The Field, with special guest Jim Sheridan, 25 years after it was first filmed in the locality and the world premiere of Tommy: To Tell You The Truth with comedian Tommy Tiernan in attendance.

The festival brought unexpected stories to audiences throughout the three days, both entertaining and thought-provoking from a broad range of emerging and established filmmakers, all of whom were in the running for the Festival awards which were announced following the closing film.

“It’s been an exhilarating and exciting first festival” said Eamonn O Cualain, Festival Chairman. “The quality and quantity of submissions for our first programme enabled us to deliver what we hope has been a unique festival experience. The support and positive feedback has been overwhelming from both the film industry and our audiences. The local goodwill and enthusiasm has been particularly reassuring and encouraging.”

There were nine awards in association with industry organisations TG4, RTE, BAI and the Irish Film Board. The judging panel included a range of figures from the Irish film Industry including Jim Sheridan, Bob Quinn, Ross Whitaker, Martha O’Neill, Paddy Hayes, Jill Beardsworth, Barbara McCann, Loretta Ni Ghabhain and film journalists Daniel Anderson, Tara Brady, Gavin Burke, Donald Clarke, Brogen Hayes and Nicola Timmins.

The winners were:

Best Short Film in association with The Irish Film Board 

Winner: The Abandoning

A film about the memory of a house where the past and present are not separate places

Director: Vanessa Gildea. Producer: Se Merry Doyle

 

Best Short Film, First Time Director in association with The Irish Film Board 

Winner: The Swing

A coming of age story about two young brothers who find themselves in a perilous situation that kicks up memories of their past

Director: Damien Dunne. Producer: Nora Windeck

 

Best Feature Film

Winner: A Nightingale Falling

Set in Ireland during The war of Independence, two sisters’ lives are changed forever as they care for a wounded soldier in their home.

Director: Garret Daly/Martina McGlynn. Producer: Martina McGlynn, Gerry Burke, Garret Daly, PJ Curtis

 

Best Feature Documentary in association with TG4

Winner: John Sheahan – A Dubliner

A revealing and beautifully made portrait of a man who was an integral part of the national institution that is The Dubliners.

Director: Maurice Sweeney. Producer: Liam McGrath/Ceoladh Sheahan

 

Best Short Documentary in association with RTE

Winner: Seamus Heaney – Iarscribhinn – Imeall

This special edition of Imeall celebrates the life and poetry of Seamus Heaney as we visit the farmlands of Bellaghy, Co. Derry that inspired so many of his poems.

Director: Paschal Cassidy. Producer: Maggie Breathnach

 

Best Documentary Series in association with BAI

Winner: Ceolchuairt Iamaice

Belfast troubadour Gearoid Mac Lochlainn embarks on a reggae pilgrimage to Jamaica to see if the message of one love that crossed sectarian boundaries in his teenage years in Belfast is still alive in 
Jamaica.

Director: Paddy Hayes. Producer: Laura Ni­ Cheallaigh

 

Best 3 minute short, New Media, filmed on a mobile or smart device

Winner: Turnaround for Little Terns

A news report for RTE which was filmed on an iphone 5S. Wicklow farmer Michael Keegan is hoping to restore the tractor which helped his grandfather win the 1964 World Ploughing Championship.

Director: Philip Bromwell

 

Best 1 minute short, New Media, filmed on a mobile or smart device

Winner: iday

One minute video concentrating on energy and power

Director/producer: Ivor Carroll

 

The Spirit of the Festival Award was presented in recognition of a film, television programme or event that encapsulates the spirit of the Sky Road TV & Film Festival each year.

Winner: It Came From Connemara!!

This feature documentary tells the unique story behind Roger Corman’s film factory in Connemara.

Director/Producer: Brian Reddin

 

TG4 Pitch an idea to make a 25 minute documentary worth €25,000

In a unique and exciting opportunity TG4 offered aspiring filmmakers a chance to pitch their ideas to make a 25 minute documentary worth €25,000. Fifteen original pitches were shortlisted from a total of sixty one entries to pitch to commissioning editors on stage at the Festival in either the Irish or English language. Participants travelled from Dublin, Meath, Clare, Cork, Galway and Connemara.

The winner was Barry Ryan, a native of Clifden with ‘Beyond Reach Of Our Pity’. His idea for a short documentary, about a young boy who died in Letterfrack’s industrial school, was inspired by a line of poetry from Paula Meehan.  He will receive an initial €1,000 to develop a detailed written treatment from the synopsis, under the guidance of an experienced TV director. If TG4 considers this treatment of an acceptable standard for production the budget awarded will be €24,000.

 

“The standard was excellent, very clear pitches were delivered with great passion and belief. The range of ideas was truly amazing from highly personal stories to historical concepts to contemporary social commentary, across a broad geographical spread. While we chose ‘Beyond Reach Of Our Pity’ as the pitch winner we will also request a number of participants to submit their ideas for the next TG4 commissioning round on October 6th. All in all a very stimulating and exciting session.”  Proinsias Ni Ghrainne, Commissioning Editor, TG4

Any Other Business: Part V

What is one to do with  thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not nearly long enough for a  proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into  a fifth  portmanteau post on television of course!

RTE  Heart Hans  Zimmer

Have you noticed a  tendency for everything to be drowned in Hans Zimmer music lately? I think it was when I  was watching a serious and rather good RTE documentary on the bank guarantee in  2008 that I  first got annoyed at the tendency to plaster Hans Zimmer scores over everything.  I don’t need the Joker’s musical theme shimmering over tales  of dodgy American sub-prime mortgages and CFD problems in Anglo-Irish Bank to know  that someone is engaged in villainous double-dealing. I don’t need to have the  pulsasting  Batman goes to war music playing over accounts of frantic meetings late at night  to know that action was being taken to avert a crisis. There has to come a point  where talking heads in a documentary are allowed to speak and the audience is  treated as intelligent enough to grasp the implications of what they’re saying without needing a musical cue  of the most bombastic sort. And that’s the other problem. Does everything need to  have The  Dark Knight  or Inception backing  it? These are  very recognisable and quite well-known soundtracks whose constant intrusion into  a serious documentary can pull you right out, as you think about the  Nolan movie instead of what you’re watching. The one free pass I’ll  give anyone regarding use of Hans Zimmer is TG4 booming Inception music for their rugby  coverage  because at least it’s a change from Kasabian (see below…). It’s time to stop  spoon-feeding the audience, and subsidising Mr  Zimmer.

Kasabian:  Born to Rock/Soundtrack Sport

Kasabian are one of  those bands who appear to have the stars aligned in their favour. I went to see  their show in Marlay Park a few weeks ago, only knowing the The West Rider Pauper Lunatic Asylum, and was taken aback at  just how many of their songs I actually knew. There is a story told that Richard  Linklater wanted to use ‘Immigrant Song’ for a scene in his 2004 film School  of Rock and  was taken aback to be asked for 10 times as much money as he’d had to fork over  to use Led Zeppelin for his 1993 film Dazed  and Confused; indeed the amount  asked for ‘Immigrant Song’ equalled the budget for his entire 1993 movie, and  only after much begging was he able to get the price down to a reasonable  level.  Kasabian emerged at a moment when industrial illegal downloading had so  decimated traditional revenue streams that licensing music for TV and cinema was  becoming not just a clever way of getting exposure (a la Moby with Play) but damn near the only  way you could be guaranteed getting paid when people listened  to your  music. Enter Kasabian, whose breakthrough single ‘Clubfoot’ was used on TV spots  for Smallville and 24 and damn  near every action film for a year. Since then they’ve carved out an incredible  niche. I  don’t know how they do it but damn near every song Kasabian release as a single  seems to have the potential to become the  soundtrack to TV sports. ‘Underdog’, ‘Vlad the Impaler’, ‘Fire’, ‘Days Are  Forgotten’, ‘Velociraptor’, and others have all popped up. They provide the  title music for rugby on RTE, the theme tune of football on Sky, and the  background music for fixture lists and league tables while pundits converse at  half-time on several channels. Kasabian have established their music as the  default setting for TV editors. This is both remarkable and financially  lucrative – how do they do it?

Alice in Funderland

The Abbey stages its first musical in 20 years, but if decades long moratoriums are the cost of keeping atrocities like this off the stage then it’s a price well worth paying…

Thisispopbaby bring their Project work-shopped contemporary musical take on Alice in Wonderland to the stage with Talking Movies favourite Sarah Greene in the title role. Her Alice is a hopelessly depressed Corkonian whose unfaithful boyfriend recently died from eating a peanut. Upset by the demand of her materialistic sister (a catty Susannah de Wrixon) that she be her bridesmaid, Alice has a bad reaction to a wedding rehearsal curried prawn and dreams herself stranded in a queered Dublin. As she stumbles across the city in search of Warren (Ian Lloyd Anderson) she encounters Carroll characters. The Caterpillar is a Dublin taxi-driver obsessed with British oppression, the Cheshire Cat is a corrupt politician, Tweedledee and Tweedledum are drug dealers, and… I don’t know what the Duchess is supposed to be. “I’d rather take advice from a f****** caterpillar sitting on a mushroom” is the level these references operate at; crude, unfunny.

Composer Raymond Scannell pens some memorable melodies. ‘We’re all going to Hartstown’ is nicely jaunty, the Duchess’ entry has nice shuddery techno under Carroll’s actual verse, and there’s a wonderfully poignant duet between Alice and The Gay (Paul Reid). But the fact that a character is actually called ‘The Gay’(!!) clues you that it’s not the music that’s the problem here. The first act’s wearying campiness is actually self-defeating. The Cheshire Cat as crooked politician sets up a rousing James Brown style number for the grinning Mark O’Regan about playing monopoly with the country’s future, but what could have been great satire can’t soar in this context and the attempt is quickly abandoned. Instead satire is directed at brave, original targets: The Pope, Blaithnaid Ni Chofaigh, Mary Harney. Satire punctures the pomposity of the powerful. Does a religious figure unlikely to be defended by the audience, a presenter who hasn’t been on air for over a year, and a retired politician strike you as powerful? Swift would guffaw derisively at attacking Harney not Phil Hogan, or singling out Blathnaid as the most scandalous element of RTE’s recent troubles. Attacking those targets is just pathetically easy, and that’s easily just pathetic.*

Philip McMahon’s book also irritatingly nods to the presence of the audience frequently for, again, no particular reason. Fourth wall breaches should be used sparingly (Tom Jones) or to the point of meta-textual madness (Slattery’s Sago Saga), but such pointlessness is hardly surprising as Alice runs for nearly 3 hours (including the interval) yet Sarah Greene is hopelessly upstaged by Kathy Rose O’Brien and Aoibhinn McGinnity because the script gives her nothing to do. McGinnity’s madly enthusiastic Chloe is one of the second act’s few saving graces, while O’Brien is hilarious impersonating Blathnaid and Fassbenders the Bob Fosse homage second act curtain-raiser number which is the closest this production ever feels to an actual musical…

The second act is unbearable. All the previously baffling campiness builds towards Tony Flynn’s domineering presence as Dolores, the Red Queen of Hartstown. I’ve seen the Rocky Horror Show. It’s joyous, and 90 minutes. I’ve seen Cabaret, working off Sam Mendes’ queered revival. It’s devastating, and 2 hours. Alice in Funderland fails by its own yardsticks… It’s 3 hours that degenerates into endless unfunny drag queen humour; line after line of witless comedy, whose staggering coarseness becomes incredibly tedious. The late appearance of the ‘Scissors Sisters’ is an amazing low point. I actually considered walking out, but figured such diva behaviour would only encourage the performers. The repeated chorus “We’re all torsos in the banal” is the most tasteless thing I’ve ever sat thru. It’s embarrassing to watch this on the stage of the national theatre in the same way that it’s embarrassing to see Mrs Brown’s Boys on primetime BBC. You urgently want to buttonhole the rest of the world and assure them, “All this…it’s not us. Underneath, we are more…”

If you see Alice, and don’t, feel free to leave at the interval if you’ve disliked the first act; the second act is ‘wretched beyond belief’… As I’ve tweeted, #Thisiscrapbaby.

1/5

Alice in Funderland continues its run at the Abbey until May 12th.

*If you think I’m bluffing about attacking the powerful then tune in next week when I stick it to hackers extraordinaire Anonymous who can break my poor blog like a twig.