Sundance London 2012 - SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS

So I walked into the screening of SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS having never heard of the band LCD soundsystem nor caring that it was a super influential synth rock group that had apparently retired at he top of its game with a show at Madison Square Gardens last year.  

And this new concert film by British directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (BLUR: LIVE IN HYDE PARK) made no concessions to viewers who Kent not know what the fuss was about.   We get a short clip from the Colbert Report where the schlubby middle aged front man tells us he wants to retire and do non specific stuff. He likes coffee. And then we're into songs from the last gig interspersed with the random clips of the post concert wind down. 

This, it turns out, is a genius choice. The music, and the lead singer James Murphy, speak for themselves. The music, it turns out, is amazing. A kind of David Byrnes-esque synth pop. And the footage makes you feel like you're right in the mix of the concert. And the off stage footage gives you an idea about the crazy-sane decision to quit. 

Watch this flick.  It doesn't matter if you've heard of the band (and I'm sure everyone but me has!). This is great music, and a great doc.

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS played Sundance and Sundance London 2012.  It will be released in the US this summer. 

Sundance London 2012 - UNDER AFRICAN SKIES

In 1986 Paul Simon went to South Africa, and collaborated with black South African musicians to create Graceland, an iconic album that introduced the West to the vibrant South African music culture, and arguably did more than anything to raise consciousness about the disgrace of Apartheid - then at its violent height.

Problem was, in going to South Africa, he broke the UN cultural boycott, and despite sound advice from Harry Belafonte, failed to go under the auspices of the ANC. Unsurprisingly, when the album came out, the praise for the music was almost drowned out by the political controversy.  Was Simon exploiting African musicians? Were they right to tour with him? Was his project well-meaning but ultimately destructive of the anti-apartheid struggle?

Joe Berlinger's documentary explores these issues in depth thanks to unlimited access to Paul Simon, Belafonte, Dali Tambo (Simon's most vocal opponent, and son of the former ANC leader) and the musicians who played on the album. Berlinger uses video footage of the original sessions and 2011's 25 year reunion concert to frame interview footage, and to take us through the timeline of the controversy.

Paul Simon comes across as devastatingly honest, but slippery in his reasoning.  He knew he wanted to go record with these musicians - it was an obsession - and he knew he was on thin ice so didn't tell Harry.  He claims again and again that he was invited to go - as if the volition of the South African artists over-rides the ANC - but he was the one who pushed his record label for introductions, and most of the artists had never heard of him.  To my mind, Simon is on more solid ground when he points out that the boycott twice punished the oppressed.  It was designed to isolate white South Africa (hence the importance of maintaining the cricket and rugby boycotts) but the black South African musicians were effectively cut off from cultural exchange too.  That said, Simon remains ambiguous to the end, even through the Q&A.

The documentary is provocative and Joe Berlinger is admirably even handed - allowing the opposing sides to present their arguments clearly and calmly. But it's almost too cool - too detached - too focused on the politics and not enough on the power of the music.  The near two-hour run-time felt long (longer than the fast paced 150 minute MARLEY), and I was impatient for the documentary to end.  For me, this is a movie that's really a 60 minute TV political doc. 

UNDER AFRICAN SKIES played Sundance, Newport Beach and Sundance London 2012. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

MARLEY

Kevin MacDonald (THE EAGLE) returns to the documentary format with this insightful, beautifully edited documentary about Bob Marley. MacDonald inherited this "troubled" project after Scorsese and Demme left, apparently during the editing process, but it's clear that MacDonald was able to go back and shoot extra footage because his voice is occasionally heard interviewing Marley's family and friends. As a result, this is a project very much in the style of TOUCHING THE VOID. MacDonald comes to the material with a clear, curious head, but stays in the background - letting Marley's contemporaries (to whom he has exceptionally good access) speak for themselves.  MacDonald does not flinch from emotionally and politically tough issues - Marley's multiple girlfriends - the difficulty his children had in breaking through the entourage to his get to their father - Marley's political naivete - often playing for the "people" but hijacked by nasty political factions, and African dictators. 

The documentary begins at Nine Mile - up in the verdant hills of Jamaica - far away from the cliched image of Montego Bay.  Marley grew up in rural poverty, doubly cursed by being of illegitimate and mixed race parentage.  An outsider, he becomes fiercely competitive (even with his own children), strongly disciplined about his music, his route to escape. He followed his mother to Trenchtown, the Kingston ghetto, and made his early forays into the music business with the Wailing Wailers - a kind of Motown clean-cut boy band influenced by local ska and mento music. After a brief excursion to the US, following his mother, frustrated at his lack of success, he returns to Jamaica and his musical style and philosophical self-confidence seems to turn on his becoming a Rastafari.  The documentary spends a good amount of time examining what this religion meant to Marley, and why an outsider might have felt drawn to a minority "cult", itself the subject of prejudice, which preached "one love". 

But for me, the movie really became compelling when it got to its final hour, and Marley's final years.  When Marley was such a potent icon that he was being used by politicians. When Jamaican politics descended into gang violence between crypto-Communists and crypto-Fascists.  When Marley ships equipment to Zimbabwe at his own expense to celebrate independence, but sees his audience tear-gassed.   I love that MacDonald manages to open out from a music documentary into a sad documentary about the tragedy of independence - so many former colonies descending into political chaos or tyranny. That for me, is what makes this documentary, and Marley's life and early death, tragic. (So much so that I wasn't the only person crying in the cinema.) This clash between his harsh experiences; his idealism; and the contested politics against which he had to operate. Even the images of Marley over the final credits are problematic.  Is his music an evangelical rallying cry that has touched people across the world, even today? Or has he become another icon exploited by the merchandising men, like Che Guevara - a face on a T-shirt?

MARLEY played Berlin  and SXSW 2012. It is currently on release in the UK, USA and Ireland. It opens in Belgium on May 9th, in the Netherlands on May 10th, in Germany on May 17th, in Portugal on May 24th and in France on June 13th. 

MARLEY has a runtime of 144 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 15 in the UK. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - HUNKY DORY

Minnie Driver is the only recognised name in Marc Evans' musical drama HUNKY DORY.

Welsh director Marc Evans (SNOWCAKE, MY LITTLE EYE) bravely takes on a "concept" film with his new musical coming-of-age flick, HUNKY DORY. Minnie Driver (with impeccable Welsh accent) plays a teacher in a Welsh school, putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that incorporates the popular music of 1976 - David Bowie, Nick Drake, The Beach Boys - the year in which the movie is set. And while Driver is the only recognised name actor, she's actually not the person carrying the film. Rather, the young cast of talented kids steal the show, with the lead schoolboy Aneurin Barnard making an impressive debut. 

I found the movie earnest, joyful, but uneven and unsure of what it wanted to be. French writer Laurence Coriat (WONDERLAND) has penned a script that isn't an out-and-out big dance number musical in the manner of GLEE or HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Indeed, it seems to want to be one of those authentic realist teen flicks of the US indie movement - AMERICAN GRAFFITI or DAZED AND CONFUSED. And even then it can't resist one of those plot devices that seems totally out of scale with all that preceded it - stupidly clumsy deus ex machina. Combining social realism and musical numbers is a hard trick to pull off, and HUNKY DORY is no BILLY ELLIOT.

HUNKY DORY had its world premiere at London 2011 and has no commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 12 - SURPRISE FILM - DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

Carrie MacLemore (Heather); Megalyn Echikuwoke (Rose); Greta Gerwig (Violet);
Analeigh Tipton (Lily) and Adam Brody (Charlie) in Whit Stillman's
charming DAMSELS IN DISTRESS.

In recent years, the Surprise Film at the London Film Fest has swung between the uncontroversially superb (THE WRESTLER) to the uncontroversially bad (CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY) to the boringly undiscussed (BRIGHTON ROCK). But with this year's selection, the Festival's Artistic Director, Sandra Hebron, threw a stick of dynamite into the audience.   Her valedictory choice, DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, is like the cinematic equivalent of Marmite - you either love it or you hate it.  And, dear readers, I absolutely adored it!  It's a movie with a very particular visual style, and a very particular type of dialogue - but its concerns are relatable, touching and occasionally hilarious.   I simply floated out of the screening, and to my mind, this is the *real* stand-out feel-good movie of the festival, even surpassing THE ARTIST.  I defy anyone who has seen it not to have a wry smile when thinking about Cathars, to introduce the phrase "player-operator" to their vocabulary, or to try The Sambola. This is simply a hands-down wonderful movie that is an absolute delight to watch.  Not to mention the fact that it's a worthy successor to Whit Stillman's iconic early 1990s flick, METROPOLITAN, and the Sally Fowler Rat Pack.

What's the movie about?  Stuff everyone can relate to.  It's about going to college and trying to reinvent yourself. It's about deciding what kind of person you want to be - what ideals you want to pursue - and how to cope with sharky boyfriends, frat-house idiots, bad break-ups, and what happens when the person on whom you have a crush likes your best friend instead.  It's about how good friends can get you out of an emotional tailspin.  And it's fundamentally an uplifting tale of good friends trouncing the mean blues - and how simple things like a wonderful song or a dance craze can make a big difference. Yes it's earnest, yes it's sunny, but it also doesn't shy away from some really serious stuff - handled with a light-touch and comedic air that belies their truth - towit, the "Cathar" incident.....

I simply loved the casting.  Greta Gerwig (GREENBERG) is simply charming as "Violet", the emotionally fragile, but outwardly self-assured leader of the group of girls who see their mission as civilising the male-dominated great books college that they attend.  As Lily, Analeigh Tipton (CRAZY, STUPID LOVE) perfectly captures the way in which new kids try on a new group of friends before having the self-confidence to pull back. In the smaller roles, Megalyn Echikunwoke (CSI MIAMI) steals scenes as Rose, with her deliberately cod English accent and catchphrase about "player-operators". By contrast, Carrie MacLemore, as Heather, is rather short-changed.  And before you think this is an entirely female affair, be assured that the guys garner plenty of laughs too, particularly Billy Magnussen's hilarious dumb frat-boy, Thor. But even more than the performances and the classically deliberate, almost archaic, and yet bitingly acerbic Whit Stillman dialogue, I just loved the look of the film. All crumbling college buildings, pastel pretty dresses and sunlit dance routines in gardens.  

I'm not denying that DAMSELS IN DISTRESS is a very unique and particular movie. I can't deny that it's unique look, dialogue and style will be anathema to many a mainstream audience member, and particularly men.  But for anyone who delights in the quirky, unique Stillman style, this movie is a welcome return to our screens.  For anyone who welcomes a darkly comic look at universally relatable material, DAMSELS IN DISTRESS is a pure delight.

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS played Toronto and London 2011. It does not have a commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 12 - LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA

LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA is about a real British musician called Lawrence - no sirname - who had a glimmer of success in the underground rock scene in the late 80s and early 90s but never really troubled the charts and has since faded yet further into obscurity. Living on the poverty-line, a recovering addict, scrabbling for a gig, and yet still convinced he has that one great record - Lawrence is a tragicomic figure. It's quite astonishing to see how far a man can fall - and yet still have a complete sense of self, and a righteous indignation about the fame the world owes him. The result is that Paul Kelly's documentary is at once terrifyingly specific - rooted as it is in Lawrence's particular personality - but also a cliché. The intimacy and access afforded to the director, and an editorial style that focuses on an unwitting punchline, gives the movie flashes of SPINAL TAP humour. We like Lawrence, but we also laugh at him. 

The problem is that the movie has little to offer other than the innate charm and comically monstrous ego of Lawrence - and that begins to bore after a while. I also felt that the movie, which assumes the audience already knows and loves Lawrence, lacked context and objectivity. I would have loved to have seen people other than Lawrence describe why his bands - Felt and Denim - were significant (or otherwise). I also wonder whether a non-British audience will understand the significance of Lawrence claiming that he was never a success because John Peel didn't like his music. Without context, will they know the importance of the BBC Radio 1 DJ in championing new bands? And I would have liked Paul Kelly to press Lawrence on his years of addiction, rather than just coolly presenting it as fact. Because in a sense, where this documentary could have been really great - could have had an impact beyond hagiography - would've been in presenting Lawrence as a warning to all young aspirant musicians who want it all, never get it, and whose frustrations leads them into a downward spiral. Sadly, Kelly chooses to play it for laughs - albeit fond rather than nasty - instead.

LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA has no release date.

Overlooked DVD of the month - AMERICAN HARMONY

AMERICAN HARMONY is a lovely little documentary that follows a handful of barbershop quartets as they compete in the annual international competition in Indianapolis. I came to the movie with all the prejudice of one who's sole experience of barbershop was the satirical depiction of pretentious East Coast yuppies in TRADING PLACES. I had images of hearty East Coast brahmins, self-consciously anachronistic. And to a certain extent, I wasn't wrong.  There are almost 50 quartets who qualify to get to the international final each year, and I didn't see a single non-white male among them. And the stadium full of fans watching them were, shall we say, similarly racially homogeneous. Still for all that, you can't deny that the music is catchy, the humour gentle and harmless, and the vocal technique impressive.  And even if you don't give a damn about barbershop singing there's something compelling about watching these otherwise unremarkable people devoting so much time, energy and emotion to their craft. 

Almost against myself, I found myself completely enthralled with the competition, and feeling tense as we got to the final round.  And that has to be the proof of a successful documentary.  At their best, documentaries take us into niche worlds that we would never have known about, and give us insight and empathy. That's exactly what AMERICAN HARMONY does. Is it perfect? No.  The video quality is lo-fi (the movie was shot  by director Aengus James), and there isn't enough on the history and context of barbershop singing for my taste. But these are quibbles. AMERICAN HARMONY is a good time, it's insightful, and something of a relief after the relentlessly over-produced caterwauling of Glee.  

AMERICAN HARMONY played Boulder, Sedona and Nashville 2009 and was released in the US in 2009. It is available on DVD.

Overlooked DVD of the month - CHICO & RITA

CHICO & RITA is an absolutely wonderful movie - beautifully animated; honest in its depiction of sex; centred on a timeless story of love; and wrapped around Bebo Valdez' jazz score that takes in some of the greats of the post-war jazz scene - Thelonius Monk, Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. It's a crying shame that the flick hasn't had the crossover success of a film like BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (a movie it elegantly references in its final act, thanks to a cameo by real-life chanteuse Estrella Morente) - but hopefully the constraints of a limited release (narrow-minded distributors unsure about an R-rated animated flick?) will be broken by DVD popularity.

Chico is a gifted piano player, looking back from a run-down 1980s Havana to his "glory years" in the 50s and 60s. He meets the beautiful singer Rita and falls in love - or erotic/musical fixation - at first sight. The two lovers are destined to be together and not together - kept apart by pride; fiery tempers; betrayal; and an entertainment business happy to give a contract to a pretty singer but not her piano player. Their journey starts in Havana, but soon Rita achieves success in New York before making a Hollywood movie and ending up in Vegas. Chico crosses paths were her, often acting as her voice of conscience - reminding her of what she is giving up - how inauthentic she is having to be - to achieve success in America.

The three directors - Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba - deserve big props for daring to produce an adult-themed animated movie; for the ambition of their scope - across continents, musical styles and forty years; not to mention delicate references to post-war racial politics. One might argue that the genius of Ignacio Martínez de Pisón and Fernando Trueba's script is that the movie Shows rather than Tells us about the changing political climate - and wears its profundity very lightly.  That said, when the political themes culminate in a moving, half-drunken, outburst by Rita - the movie really does pick up notch - and I defy anyone not to glow with good-will during the final scenes.

CHICO & RITA played Telluride and Toronto 2010 and was released in the UK in 2010. It was released earlier this year in Spain and Greece. It will be released in Poland on July 1st and in France on July 6th. It is available to rent and own in the UK.

TANGLED - lovely!

So the first thing to do is forget the Brothers Grimm tale of Rapunzel, the peasant girl taken by the witch next door in exchange for the herbs that saved her mother's life. Locked in a tower as she reached puberty, Rapunzel was knocked up by a passing Prince, enchanted by her voice, but cast out by the witch in disgust. Of course, there was a happy ending. The Prince, blinded on thorns by the scheming witch, wanders into Rapunzel, who's tears of sadness heal his sight, and he takes her to be his princess.

Naturally, in Disney's version of the tale, we can't have a naive girl fall pregnant, and we can't have something as simplistic as true love conquering blindness. Moreover, in the post-modern, post-Shrek age of animation, we have to play up the modern social angle. Rapunzel is now a captured Princess who falls for a commoner (just as in SHREK and THE KING'S SPEECH - what is with it Hollywood's obsession with royals falling for commoners?) and while the teen rebellion survives, it is now cast less as a tale of hidden puberty than of fighting for independence from an over-bearing manipulative mother. Rapunzel is less a fairy-tale than an animated version of THE FIGHTER! (Not to mention the fact that she really can handle herself!) Every musical number borders on pastiche - from Riverdance style folk dances, to Mother Gothel's Big Momma Morton inspired "Mother Knows Best". There are quotations from cinema, there's teen-angst slang, there's "talk to the hand" attitude from the side-kick comedy chameleon. Basically, this movie may be a fairy tale about an innocent girl, but it's very very knowing indeed.

Still, for all that, I rather enjoyed it! Mandy Moore's Rapunzel is charming; Zachary Levi's handsome commoner, Flynn, is very witty; Donna Murphy's Mother Gothel is absolutely brilliantly manipulative, and I simply LOVED the blood-hound horse, Maximilian! There was annoyingly modern verbal humour, yes, but even better, good old-fashioned slapstick humour and a wonderfully old-fashioned visual look to the film. It may have been made on computers, but it feels a lot more painterly than recent films, and has the lush colours, deep woods and medieval castles of SNOW WHITE. The 3D added nothing, and some of the songs were soupy, but overall, TANGLED was well worth watching. I was genuinely engaged by the movie, and moved by its ending. So, after the serious mis-step with BOLT 3D, and the side-track into the American dream with THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, I can honestly and gladly say that Disney is back to what it does best: fairytales. Beautifully drawn, moving, funny fairy-tales.

TANGLED was released last year in the US, Canada, Israel, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Venezuela, Belgium, Egypt, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Slovakia, Ukraine, Australia, Turkey and Chile. It was released last month in Croatia, Argentina, Greece, New Zealand, Brazil, Panama, Romania, Serbia, Peru, Estonia, Iceland, India, Slovenia, Ireland, Lithuania and the UK. It opens this weekend in Denmark, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Norway, Spain and Finland. It opens on February 11th in Finland and on March 12th in Japan. It has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song.

BURLESQUE - nonsense

BURLESQUE is a Hollywood song-and-dance movie that exists entirely as a vehicle for Christina Aguilera and consists entirely as a collage of cinematic clichés, over-singing and over-acting. Debut writer-director Steve Antin should be ashamed to have so blatantly tried to rip off the style of the non-pareil musical, CABARET, harnessing Fosse's dance-steps to a plot so vacuous as to make a barbie doll look real.

Aguilera plays a wannabe who leaves rural Iowa for LA, stumbles into Cher's gorgeously appointed but dangerously over-mortgaged nightclub. By sheer irritating perseverance she works her way from waitress to chorus-line dancer to Star, allowing Cher to double the entry fee and potentially save her club from the twin clutches of the bankers and an oleaginous property developer called Marcus. Meanwhile, Christina, piqued that her room-mate Jack already has a fiancée is seeing the aforementioned Marcus, and risks losing her soul for fame, or something.

Everything here is hokey and unimportant. Of course the wannabe comes from the country! No aspiring singer in a movie of this sort comes from down the street, otherwise where would our greyhound bus scene be?! Of course the room-mate she thinks is gay turns out to be hot and fit and straight and to have a massive crush on her! Of course there's a richer older man waiting to tempt her away from true love! Of course Cher is a battleaxe with a fag hag best friend!

I couldn't care less. The reason why musicals like CABARET and CHICAGO work is that beyond their glitz and jazz there's some pretty serious satire and politics in there. And in musicals that are pure romance - Butterfly, Boheme, Camille etc - the romance is pitched at such a level that it transcends schmaltz and becomes tragedy. BURLESQUE has neither of these qualities. Rather, it's emotional concerns are straight from a Sweet Valley High novel.

Oh, and by the way, the reason why great musicals work is because, au fond, they have great showtunes. Even OKLAHOMA!, which I find really quite sinister and disturbing, has amazing numbers and set-pieces. The music in BURLESQUE is simply to weak - too forgettable - too paint-by-numbers.

So what do we have in the end? A threadbare plot of no consequence. Plenty of opportunity for Christina Aquilera to shriek. A complete waste of Cher's acting talent. Stanley Tucci reprising his fag-hag role from DEVIL WEARS PRADA. And dear lord, why on EARTH did they bother casting Alan Cumming not to use him at all. That man has more pure acting, dancing, singing and genuine CABARET instinct and talent running through his veins that the rest of this cast put together. And what does he get? Barely two scenes.

Shame, shame, shame.

BURLESQUE has somewhat bizarrely been nominated for three Golden Globes.

BURLESQUE is on release in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Japan, Belgium, France and Switzerland. It opens this weekend in Latvia, Romania, Vietnam and Denmark. It opens on December 30th in Portugal; on January 1st in Taiwan; on January 5th in Egypt and Jordan; on January 6th in Austria, Bahrain, Germany, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Thailand, the UAE and Turkey. It opens on January 13th in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Ukraine, Brazil and Lithuania. It opens on January 21st in Argentina, Ecuador, Estonia, South Africa and Uruguay. It opens on January 26th in Indonesia, Bulgaria, India, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and the Philippines. BURLESQUE opens on February 3rd in Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Slovenia, Finland, Iceland and Poland. It opens on February 11th in Slovakia, Colombia, Kenya and Nigeria. It opens on February 17th in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Italy. It opens later in February in Bolivia, Russia, Serbia and Venezuela.

London Film Fest Day 2010 Day 13 - LEMMY

LEMMY is an infuriating documentary. The directors have an all access pass to Lemmy Klimister - legendary Motorhead front-man/bassist; obsessive fruit-machine player; drinker; womaniser; and general all-round bad-ass - and they squander it by producing an unfocused, over-long, indulgent documentary. You can tell this is a bad film because you leave the theatre wanting to know more about Lemmy - about his childhood, his style of playing, how influential he was on other musicians, how far he regrets not knowing his adopted son - and you KNOW that the documentarians could've asked Lemmy about all this stuff - but they didn't. Nope - they were too busy hanging out, filming concert footage and being so co-opted by the icon that they didn't dare make him really delve into his past or his rather disturbing fetish for Nazi memorabilia.

I came out of this flick with as much respect for Lemmy as I went into it with - which is a lot - but no real extra knowledge. We all know how he started off in the Rockin Vickers with a pudding bowl haircut - how he roadied and dealt for Hendrix - how he played space-rock with Hawkwind - got kicked out for being busted by narcs - and then founded Motorhead, wrote Ace of Spades and became a rock legend. And even if we didn't think he was a rock legend, the film-makers give us a parade of contemporary greats - from Dave Grohl to Slash, to tell us that he is. What they don't do, with the exception of Slash, is really talk about his singing style or his playing style, and the mechanics of why he's so good. In other words, no one really gets under the skin of the music.

The result is a documentary that advertises itself as getting behind the iconography and controversy to the truth of Lemmy, but that in reality just glories in that iconography. In other words, this isn't a documentary at all, but hagiography. And superficial hagiography, at that. No one really cares, technically, why Lemmy is great. They're more interested in the legend.

LEMMY played a bunch of festivals and will be released in the UK on December 7th.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 12 - UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY

UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY is a deeply dull piece of pop hagiography created by fanboys and insiders for nostalgic middle-aged former floppy-fringed Brit-pop hacks. It is basically an homage to Alan McGee, ginger-haired rock impresario who came to London in the early eighties, started putting gigs together, and eventually formed a record label that put out acts that were typically acclaimed in the pages of the NME but sold precious few records. The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine are the most recognisable of the bands, and even there, you don't get the idea that McGee's haphazard, drug-fuelled, indulgent mentorship did them any real good. Yes he signed them but often as not he let them drift along before imploding.  The Scream put out one genuinely great album and then disappeared in a whirlwind of their own hype. That's something though. Most of McGee's acts barely got a hit single. 

Creation - ramshackle, do-it-yourself, rude-and-loud - stumbled through the eighties and nineties until something truly amazing happened - and that thing, ladies and gentlemen, was Oasis. Oasis was a rare thing for a Creation Records band: they put out records chock-full of Good Songs. Strong hooks, catchy choruses, stadium-fillers, snarling frontmen. Sure, it might've been good luck to have come onto the scene just at the moment when Britart was causing a sensation. London was swinging again, and the kids from Madchester benefited from the inflated war with Blur. But underneath it all, there were some damn fine songs. And what did Alan McGee have to do with this? Bugger all. He was in rehab, and by the time he got out, the label was wound up. Managing a major pop act needs people who actually turn up to work, sober, and know about the money. You can't both be anarchic and rebellious AND be a mainstream record label making serious cash. Oasis is the best thing Creation ever discovered, but they were the beginning of the end.

Somewhere in all of this is an interesting story about the impossibility of harnessing raw indie energy in a mainstream record label. Somewhere, there is a story about a band who became successful despite the shambolic label they were signed to. Somewhere, there is an honest assessment about how bloody indulgent and forgettable most of these bands were. Because, let's face it, when it comes to seminal acts of the eighties and nineties, Factory kills Creation every time. But we never get that. This documentary badly needs opening out. It needs more context. Director Danny O'Connor doesn't have to agree with me that Factory was more important than Creation, but he needs to talk more about the wider musical context of Creation, as opposed to just showing McGee remembering getting high in the Hacienda. O'Connor needs to remember that he is a documentarian not a hagiographer - he needs distance, cool assessment and to attract an audience beyond the nostalgic core.

As it is, this film is basically not edifying to those of us who were there, and not interesting, I suspect, to anyone who wasn't. If you really want to know what happened, you'd be better off reading John Harris' superb book, "The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the demise of English Rock."

UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY has no commercial release date.

CRAZY HEART - sanitised

CRAZY HEART is an earnest and handsomely made film from debutant director Scott Cooper. It's a simple story about an old country singer, reduced to playing small gigs while his mentee plays stadiums. He falls for a well-meaning, likeable young woman, and is finally compelled to seek help for his alcohol addiction when he imperils her son. The movie has an air of intimacy thanks to Scott Cooper's predeliction for warm tones, close-ups and lingering shots. It has an impeccable country score, masterminded by T-Bone Burnett, and played out by Jeff Bridges as the ageing Bad Blake and Colin Farrell as Tommy Sweet. But there is no "wow" factor - nothing that makes you think this is an Oscar-winning movie or an Oscar-winning performance. Sure, Jeff Bridges turns in an affecting performance, but where's the savage psychological daring of THE WRESTLER? Where's the hurt and hopelessness and sheer Sisyphian pain or endurance? Nah. CRAZY HEART is soul-bearing-lite. It's grinds through its gears, and we reach the end, still basking in the honey glow of an all-too-easy conversion to sobriety, as cheerful as the cute little kid. It's too easy. Too sanitised. Too forgettable.

Additional tags: Barry Markowitz, T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton, James Keane, Thomas Cobb, Scott Cooper.

CRAZY HEART was released in 2009 in the USA. It is currently on release in the UK, New Zealand, Mexico, Norway, Belgium, France, the Philippines, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Malta, Argentina and Turkey.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG - the best of both worlds

Watching THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is a deeply nostalgic experience. It reminds you of how wonderful the old Disney classics were, and the simple delights and warmth of hand-drawn animation. Just as in the good old days, this movie doesn't depend on post-modern pop-cultural references or 3-D gimmicks. Nope. Here we have a lovely story, charming characters, true love and some sweet songs. A charmingly earnest, hard-working waitress called Tiana kisses a charismatic but lazy Prince turned Frog. As they journey through the Bayou to have the voodoo overturned, the Prince learns that for the woman he loves, he'd be willing to work, or to sacrifice his own happiness. And so, true love blossoms, inspired by a sweet little Cajun firefly called Ray, who is in love with a star in the sky - an absolutely adorable side-plot. The lovers are aided in their journey by a trumpet-playing alligator called Louis - who is clearly inspired by Balou the Bear from THE JUNGLE BOOK, and wants to be human a little bit like King Louie from the same film. There's the aforementioned firefly Ray, who is so wonderful, and the wise old Mama Odie.

If nostalgic in style and feel and look, the movie is also nostalgic for a time when New Orleans was the old Big Easy, associated with beignets, Hot Jazz and A Streetcar Named Desire, rather than being a symbol of Federal incompetence. But at the same time, the movie is rather modern. It's not just that Disney has finally given us a coloured heroine, (though sneakily still sidestepping issues of economic inequality by setting the film in the 1920s). It's that it supplements the traditional wishing on a star with hard graft and shaping your own destiny. I like the new empowering Disney. But I like the old-fashioned hand-drawn Disney even more. Long may it continue!

Additional tags: Randy Newman, Anika Nonie Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael Leon Woolley, Ron Clements, John Musker

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is on global release bar Japan where it is released on March 6th.

DVD release - THIS IS IT

THIS IS IT is a masterpiece of editing. HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL director, Kenny Ortega, cuts down hours of concert rehearsal footage into the skeleton of a live show. We have two further things to be thankful for. First, that the rehearsals were shot on hi-def Red One digital cameras with rich sound. Second, that Michael Jackson is so astonishingly talented that even watching him marking out steps and singing every other line is fascinating enough to sustain our interest. The resulting movie is a pretty simple film documenting what would surely have been a remarkable live concert - combining Michael Jackson's superlative choreography, extravagant sets, and intensive use of CGI rich video footage. As a film, I can't fault THIS IS IT. It does what it's meant to do: it provides ticket-holders with a vicarious experience of the concert they will never attend; and it provides the concert-backers with some financial recompense. Everyone goes home happy. And if you go home with the Blu-Ray disc you get the video shorts for Thriller and Smooth Criminal that would have been played before the performances and further behind the scenes footage of the casting process and production design. You even get members of the production reminiscing about Michael - a video eulogy. Stuff to keep the fans happy.

Still, my experience of watching this film was conflicted. Once again, that's nothing to do with any flaws in the film-making, but rather to do with the complex nature of our relationship with Michael Jackson as a media object. I grew up in adoration: going to the Bad tour concert at the Milton Keynes bowl was by far the best concert experience of my youth; we played the Thriller cassette on constant loop for about a year, so much so that we bought about 5 versions because they'd wear out or get caught in the car cassette player; my cousin Miguel had a mini Beat It jacket and new all the dance steps. Michael Jackson was just part of what it was to be a kid in our house. But by my late teens, Michael was already Wacko Jacko - a man who had too much money, too much fame, and was surrounded by too many yes-men. His music didn't seem relevant. His persona was just weird. And then, as the nineties continued, he became sinister. Even if you didn't believe the worst of the allegations, his apparent erasure of his racial identity through plastic surgery, his bizarre marriage and child-rearing - it was all too tragic to contemplate. There was something hypocritical and patronising about Earth Song and Black and White. So when Jarvis Cocker mooned Michael at the Brits, I was with Jarvis, not with Michael. In later years, as he became even more reclusive, paranoid, persecuted, one couldn't help wonder why someone didn't just take him in hand and tell him to stop. And finally, in La La Land, Michael bought access to anesthetic drugs and died.

So, when the movie came out in theatres I didn't want to watch it for the same reason that I didn't want to go to the concert. I wanted to remember Michael as the sweet kid in the Jackson Five, or as the charismatic young man in Off the Wall, or as the icon in Billie Jean live at Pasadena for Motown 25. I didn't want to see a financially desperate man forced into touring - who died during the preparation - pimped out by his concert promoters, who were shamelessly exploiting the grieving fans. The film gave me another chance to marvel at Michael's talent. But it wasn't happy viewing because it just makes you think, yet again, how wasted that talent was in his final two decades, and how corrupted our memory of that talent will always be by the controversies surrounding his private life. You look at the concert footage and you see him direct everything just as he wants it, but never raise his voice. Sure. He doesn't have to. The deference, the worship, is palpable. No wonder he ended up in the mess he did.

THIS IS IT is a deftly edited concert rehearsal video of a superlative talent. But it's also documentary evidence of the hermetically sealed world in which a megastar was allowed to indulge his every fantasy to whatever end. As such, I found it a profoundly sad film to watch.

THIS IS IT was released in October 2009 and is released in the UK on DVD and Blu-Ray on February 22nd.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Spasticus Autisticus

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is a fast-paced, manically inter-cut biopic of Ian Dury, New Wave singer, genius wordsmith, ladies man and radical. Born working class, crippled by polio, trained by Peter Blake, married to a middle-class portrait painter, father to two kids, living in suburbia. That's how we meet Dury - a punk radical playing shitty pubs with a dodgy band, desperate for fame, and deeply at odds with his suburban home life. Somehow his wife puts up with his shit, even when he shacks up with a pretty West Indian girl much younger than him and moves out. Somehow the Kilburn and the High Roads turn into The Blockheads, the seminal songs are written, and the money comes rolling in. Before you know it, Dury and his crew are in a swanky rented country house, generally pissing about and not getting much work done. His girlfriend and wife are both simultaneously in love and at wits end with him. His young son is much loved but exposed to drugs and not much schooling. His young daughter is basically ignored. The End.

If the plot summary above seemed to have no structure, well, neither does the film. It survives as entertainment purely on the strength, charisma and sheer bravado of Andy Serkis' (best known as Gollum) leading performance. You get a good sense of Dury as wordsmith but you don't really get how he became famous. One minute he's playing pubs, the next he's famous. You never get how his character might have changed. His girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris) complains that fame has changed him, but the audience doesn't see it. He just seems as much of an egotistical but charming arse as ever. His wife (Olivia Williams) evolves - moves on - but Dury never changes. He's just too clever by half, too selfish by half, and a lot of fun to be around.

If you love Ian Dury's music, you'll get a kick out of this film. Serkis is genius, and ably supported by Olivia Williams and Naomie Harris. But if you don't know who Ian Dury is, this film isn't going to help. You get a lot of stuff about his early life, but it doesn't tell you about art school and how he became a radical performer. You get the starting point (the film posits that being crippled was the defining change) and the final product, but nothing inbetween. You don't have a clue why he's married to an RA.

So, all in all, this is a great little film that could've done with a bit more substance, and a bit more exposition, a little more context.... As it is, it's unlikely to get an audience beyond the core fanbase. Still, anything that makes you dust off your old vinyl, it's no bad things.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is on release in the UK.

NOWHERE BOY - suprisingly conventional Lennon biopic

NOWHERE BOY is a beautifully written, beautifully acted, sensitively directed biopic of the young John Lennon, directed by the reknowned British artist, Sam Taylor-Wood. Set in a perfectly rendered 1950s Liverpool, the film shows a 17 year old Lennon groping toward the truth of why he lives with his Aunt Mimi rather than with his mum and dad, not to mention taking his first steps toward becoming a Beatle.

Aaron Johnson (THE THIEF LORD; ANGUS, THONGS AND PERFECT SNOGGING) is assured as the young Lennon, complete with rock-n-roll quiff and iconic Scouse accent. He pulls off both the cockey laddishness and the vulnerability. His John is witty and playful; promiscuous and arrogant; occasionally violently angry; but also desperately adrift. Kristin Scott-Thomas also gives a nuanced performance as John's Aunt Mimi - both stiff and severe in her middle-class home, but also undoubtedly very loving toward John and possessing a wicked sense of humour. (And to those reviewers criticising Scott Thomas for being too posh, Mimi really didn't have a broad Scouse accent. Indeed, Lennon later commented that he had to broaden his Scouse accent for PR purposes.)

The character that jumps off the screen is John's mum, and Mimi's younger sister, Julia. Anne-Marie Duff's Julia is so full of energy and fun that she simply sweeps you up in her love of life and rock'n'roll music. But like John you can't help but feel something is forced in such buoyancy and we're right to distrust it. Despite being remarried with two small children, Julia obviously suffers from depression and can only truly relate to men through flirtation. This extends to John and his band members, and the delicate way in which Sam Taylor-Wood and her script-writer deal with this is both honest and elegant.

The resulting film is a moving emotional drama that is interesting on its own terms, let alone because it formed an iconic musician.

NOWHERE BOY is a very good film. It reminded me a lot of Tom Ford's feature debut A SINGLE MAN, in that it was both apparently conventional in its structure and visual style but also wonderfully brave in tackling uncomfortable subjects head on, without judgement and without cliché. The conventional style is even more surprising from Taylor-Wood given the nature of her graphic art, and her bizarre short film.

NOWHERE BOY closed London 2009 and is currently on release in the UK and Australia. It will play Sundance 2010. It opens in New Zealand on March 4th; in the Netherlands on April 1st; in Russia on April 15th and in Norway on September 10th.

NINE - a series of songs sung by women who are basically in love with a shit

Rob Marshall directed two movies before NINE and I didn't like either of them. His movies are pretty on the surface and are obviously the product of much care and attention to detail. But somehow they miss the essential point of the story, not to mention any subtlety or subversion. And this is a major flaw in movies that deal with the the appearance and reality of sexual domination (MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA) and sexual and judicial corruption (CHICAGO).

And yet, still flush with the some-time success of CHICAGO, Marshall had the ambition to tackle NINE, a movie adaptation of a Broadway musical that was itself an adaptation of Fellini's seminal movie - perhaps one of the greatest movies of all time - 8 1/2. How can I explain to you what a technical, psychological and dramatic achievement Fellini's film was? It was a movie that dared to depict the impossibility and insanity of trying to create art in a commercial, celebrity-obsessed environment. Even more daring, it was a movie that threw its own director's psyche onto the screen - his narcissism, his eroticism, his conflicted relationship with his childhood, his relationship with his mother, his wife, his lovers....8 1/2 was a movie so radical and so brilliant that it redefined cinema. It was a movie so great that other directors tried to compete with it and came up short - Henri Georges Clouzot, with his INFERNO, had a heart attack trying.

If great artists have tried and failed to match Fellini, what can we say about Broadway composer and lyricist, Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston? Sadly not much. Yes, they have gotten the bare bones of the story - the narcissistic movie director battling writer's block and a kind of personal crisis - running between his wife and his lover - but never finding the pure adoration that only an Italian mother can give. But they fail to translate Fellini's daring and subversion to the Broadway stage. Worse still, the songs are rather anonymous. "Be Italian" has a decent melody but the rest are utterly forgettable. Worse still, the lyrics have none of the rapier-like wit of CHICAGO or CABARET. No, this is a poor vehicle indeed on which to hang a Hollywood film.

Rob Marshall takes poor fare and does nothing to improve it. Yes, there are a couple of new songs but none of them have any more punch than the originals. Indeed, the 60s pastiche Cinema Italiano, is truly bad. Worst of all, Marshall didn't have the balls to change the incredibly weak opening number. And, after all, what's a song and dance show without a bravura opening number? Catherine Zeta Jones in CHICAGO gripped the audience.

Okay, so the music is weak - hardly Marshall's fault. What about the purely cinematic choices? The casting is variable in its success. Daniel Day-Lewis is either miscast as the director, Guido Contini, or mis-directed by Marshall. Day-Lewis' attempt at an Italian accent distracts from his perfect physical embodiment of the distracted, harrassed, hunch-shouldered director. Penelope Cruz and Judi Dench have a lot of fun and perform with gusto as Guido's lover and loyal friend. Marion Cotillard is superb as Guido's suffering wife. Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas is the best singer and performer by far in the best song in the piece, despite Marshall saddling her with frightful hair and make-up and entirely missing the eroticism of the encounter with the kid. Less happily, we have Nicole Kidman doing nothing special as the Anita Ekberg inspired movie star Claudia. Sophia Loren survives on her iconic status. Kate Hudson is entirely out of her depth but luckily only has to do a MTV dance routine before she's off stage. Her part is entirely disposable.

Most importantly, Marshall doesn't attempt to translate the complexity at the heart of the piece. And without that, Guido comes across as merely annoying, unsympathetic and whiny - a big kid with a mamma complex and an over-extended libido. The women, with the exception of the wife, are not really developed. As a consequence, when one of them does something dramatic, it seems not so much out of character, as we don't know what her character really is, but out of the blue. It's just hard to care. The movie becomes a series of songs sung by women who are basically in love with a shit. And frankly, there's nothing entertaining about that.

NINE is on release in the US, UK and Slovenia. It opens next week in Greece and Canada. It opens in January in Israel, the Netherlands, South Korea, Cyprus, Denmark, Brazil, Italy, Australia, Spain, Taiwan and Romania. It opens in February in Argentina, Hungary, Sweden, France, Finland, Belgium, Germany and Singapore. It opens in March in Japan.

NATIVITY! - Lo-fi, irritating, but pulls it back at the end

NATIVITY! is a low-rent, shamelessly schmaltzy family film directed by Debbie Isitt, of whose previous film, CONFETTI, I wrote "it may be 'sweet' on occasion, but it fails in its central mission to make us laugh". I could say exactly the same thing about NATIVITY! It's a poorly written film that hangs upon a ludicrous premise: loser primary school teacher (Martin Freeman) tells a white lie that his Hollywood producer ex (Ashley Jensen) is coming back to town to see the school nativity play. The "town" of Coventry gets wind of this and the hype grows so large that the hapless teacher is forced to fly to LA to persuade his ex gf to really show up, before an all-singing, all-dancing, cutesy finale. The acting is as notable as one might imagine given the absurd script, with the exception of a rather bizarre performance from Marc Wootton as a teaching assistant. Production values are similarly lo-fi. Directorial choices are ham-fisted. Why go to the trouble of setting up a visual gag wherein a whole street of houses is decked out in Christmas lights with the exception of the house of the grinch-like school-teacher, if not to pull back and actually show the whole street? And so it goes on. Basically, this film is rather mechanical, poorly-made, and utterly forgettable. The only redeeming feature is the final segment in which we see the kids put on the actual nativity play. After all, it takes a really mean critic to actively decry the efforts of a bunch of six-year olds giving it all they've got.

NATIVITY! is on release in the UK.

Random DVD Round-Up - ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL

Sacha Gervasi's debut documentary ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL reeks of a reality TV set-up in the way in which the narrative arc has been edited together from all the hours of footage. Gervasi tries very hard to make the story of ANVIL a "true underdog story" in the tried-and-tested Hollywood formula. First, you take a love-able loser, Anvil lead guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow. Second, you establish that they have been held down by some arbitrary force. In this case, bad management apparently prevented Anvil from progressing beyond initial success into truly successful Metal recording artists. Third, you have the protagonists start arguing under the stress of pursuing their dream. Finally, the love-able losers achieve success against all odds! We all love movies where Johnny Nobody makes it big because it makes us think it might happen to us too. But it's rare to see a director so blatantly try to manipulate us into that empathy. Just look at how he intercuts footage of Lips et al stressing about whether anyone's actually going to show at their Japanese come-back gig with footage of an empty stadium. And then watch him build to a crescendo - the camera panning out to the packed auditorium of Japanese metalheads.

This documentary has won a lot of critical acclaim and it has made a lot of money. People are describing as a feel-good doc - as Spinal Tap for real - as a heart-warming comedy. But it's not. It's a shameless and exploitative exercise. Gervasi exploits Anvil - posing them in scenes that recall SPINAL TAP. Gervasi exploits his audience in engineering the underdog-does-good climax. The tragedy is that Anvil are presumably all too happy to be exploited - finally getting some publicity after all these years. The only thing that saves this film is that the guys in the band are nice, so it's easy enough to spend time with them.

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL played Sundance and Toronto 2009. It opened in the UK, US, Australia, Iceland, Japan and Canada in 2009 and is now available on DVD.