PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life.
I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).
FAVE FILMS DEAD MAN What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...
THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.
NIGHT ON EARTH Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.
ORLANDO Quiet, passionate, time travel.
PITCH BLACK Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.
RESERVOIR DOGS Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...
ROMUALD ET JULIETTE Truely lovely romance comedy.
THREE COLOURS TRILOGY Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.
My work intranet keeps showing me things that are happening that I want to see. Saw this before in Clissold Park. Its a circus performance which is a bit Tom Waits and a bit burlesque. Rope acrobatics, hula hoopers, trapese, high wire. A man peels an apple while sitting in an old barbers chair, swallows the peel whole and brings it back out again. Contortion. Woman with a whip snapping back and forth. Man in a bath high high in the tent blows bubbles. Tumbling. Frilly knickers. Accordian. Juggler in victorian men's bathers and huge high heels. Then the cast leaves through doors with light on dry ice like the end of Close Encounters.
A failing labour council is advised by central government civil servant in how to make strides to recovery. Local politics entrenched with local counsellors being ineffectual, marginalising new communities. Diverse but segregated communities, racial tension. Far right groups and radicalised ethnic groups emerge. Somehow incidents lead to a riot.
Seems to be making an anti-Blairite statement about how bad centralised, one-fits-all solutions are - no room for local knowledge and flexibility leads to career politicians being flown in (good intentions perhaps, but without the knowledge that could lead to good solutions specific to the situation) and making a hash of it.
Was fairly absorbing although sometimes hard to hear when the actors intonation was poor.
7 September 2005 Julius Caesar directed by David Farr Lyric Hammersmith
BANG. Lights flash. Cast runs out, put on jackets. The populous, modest clothes. Sort of like the Sopranos - leather bomber-style jackets (touch of the 80s) and 3 button stretch tops (with collars). Caesar, wealthy, black suit, large entourage, glamourous ladiees. Reminded me of Christopher Walken playing mafia - slightly shaky voice. Brutus and Cassius somewhere inbetween.
Sparce set but use of smoke and flourescent lighting created differences to space and atmosphere. Interesting use of video - sometimes recorded, sometimes playing a large version of what was going on onstage (like huge screens at a political rally), enabling closeups of the stage. Caesar was suffering from the megalomaniac's compulsion to have enormous icons of self around him.
Shakespeare is kind of talky - lots of monologues, and long speeches. I find my attention span has dwindled to frighteningly short proportions. However, this version helped to keep me interested - there was enough action and acting of the non-shakespearean type to animate the play and keep me engaged. No togas. A nod to american TV cop dramas, and armies in fatigues - the conspiritors vs the UN. The stabbing scene was violent, and bloody. Frenzied.
I've never studied the play and I'm not sure who's side I'm supposed to be on. Caesar seemed dictatorial, autocratic. Which is what the conspiritors are afraid of. Cassius was slippery, never quite sure of his intentions and prone to affected subserviance, which is never trustworthy. Brutus, a conflicted character, had a slightly flaky voice. His intentions are good, but the act which he takes part in leads me to have no sympathy - perhaps, because politicians are untrustworthy and we no longer watch public executions in my world, its harder to relate to the actions of the characters.
Its like the theatre itself is part of the play. You pay £5 for a standing ticket and lean with your elbows on the stage, staring up at the painted ceiling, surrounded by a tight circle of balconies topped off by thatched roof. Lovely.
This play is part of a series of Persephone Projects. This particular one is written and devised by Jack Shepherd and Oliver Cotton. Jack Shephard introduced it saying its a work in progress and this is where they'd got to. A masked play, all sorts of different kinds of masks used, to great effect.
It was based on the story of Adam and Eve's fall from grace when they are thrown out of Eden. Firstly taking us through the story as read from the bible, Adam and Eve in fleshtone pajama pants and t-shirts with nude 'bits' drawn on. Then they eat the apple. In the middle of this fairly typical biblical story an old woman come through the crowd and retells the story from Eve's point of view as an elderly woman. Adam and Eve are then thrown out of paradise.
They are then refugees in the second half. Adam and Eve as illegal aliens arriving in a foreign land, encountering sleasy rip-off merchants who take them for a ride and trick them into seedy jobs pole dancing. They are caught by the police, held and tried.
Marcello Magni was fantastically awful, a sleasy grotesque.
And just as my legs were getting tired Adam and Eve were up against a judge (they got deported) who was wearing an oven glove over his head instead of a wig (well it was pretending to be the wig). Bails and I cried laughing, that silent shoulder shuddering laughing, hiding our face in our sleeves with tears rolling down our faces.
Almost before I'd recovered my decorum the play ended with the merciless god and cast singing Lord of the Dance (hateful hymn).
Interesting to see the actors using the masks and their own faces (when wearing half masks) - their expressions altered in a mannered (affected) but most effective way.
