David Simon, producer of “The Wireâ€, in the New Yorker:
Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did.
I tried “The Wire†a year or so ago and gave it a few episodes before giving up but now I have nearly kicked my “West Wing†addiction I think I should give it another go.
Let me take a moment to salute one of the great entertainers of the modern game, Craig McMillan who has announced his retirement from all cricket.
McMillan launched himself on the international scene in 1997 by hitting Shane Warne back over his head in the first over of his first test innings and never took a backward step again during an international career that saw him score nearly 8,000 runs and take 77 wickets.
McMillan has cited health reasons as the primary cause of his retirement and he has always struggled with the debilitating effects of diabetes, often leaving the field for treatment and suffering cramps and strains. Keeping a constant blood sugar level in the tough environment of international cricket (incessant touring, hot weather, etc) must have been a challenge and his struggle to control his weight in recent years is testamant to those difficulties.
I think, also, that McMillan’s problems with concentration (the “rush of blood to the headâ€) that prevented him from achieving all that his talent and confidence allows can possibly be blamed on his medical condition.
In any case, his enthusiasm will be missed; his commitment to the cause no matter what state the game; and his genuine enjoyment at being out on the park. Tonight I’ll raise a cup of tea to McMillanus – bowler of bouncers and hitter of sixes.
I fully intended to bring some intellectual acuity back to film commentary this week; maybe toss around terms like Mise-en-scène and cognitive dissonance; maybe name drop Bresson and his thematic austerity and formal rigour. Then I saw little Kiwi battler, The Devil Dared Me To, a hand-made low-brow entertainment from the vodka and Becks-fuelled imaginations of Back of the Y’s Chris Stapp and Matt Heath, and I realised that high-falutin’ cinema theory was destined for the back burner for another week.
Stapp plays wannabe stunt hero Randy Campbell and Heath is his malevolent mentor Dick Johansonson. The Timaru Hellriders are about to collapse under the weight of invidious OSH attention and Dick’s lost nerve. Oily promoter Sheldon Snake (Dominic Bowden) bails them out so they can take on the North Island and get Campbell closer to his dream of being the first man to jump Cook Strait in a rocket car. Wildly uneven but often very, very, funny The Devil Dared Me To contains possibly the worst acting (and worst spelling) of any recent New Zealand film.
It’s entirely appropriate that The Devil has come out while we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs; another back yard, oily rag feature with a similar larrikin approach towards the production process.
2007 has been a great year for good films but a poor year for great films; very little of what I’ve seen in 2007 belongs in the very top echelon. The most serious contender so far is Atonement, adapted from Ian McEwan’s novel about a lie told in innocence that has far reaching and terrible consequences.
In a blissfully beautiful British country house in the summer of 1935, precocious 13-year-old Briony Tallis (luminous Saoirse Ronan) is jealous of the attention her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) is getting from handsome Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) and impulsively accuses him of a terrible crime. The accusation tears the young lovers apart and leaves Briony consumed by a grievous guilt that she takes a lifetime to come to terms with. Virtually faultless.
A Mighty Heart is an arms-length version of the true story of the Karachi kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl in the aftermath of 9/11. Actually, arms-length isn’t a terribly fair description: it starts that way but slowly reels you in thanks to assured direction from Michael Winterbottom and good performances from an ensemble cast led by Angelina Jolie.
I really wanted to give The Brave One the benefit of the doubt until its absurdity and consistently poor narrative choices overcame my resistance and I simply had to hate it. Jodie Foster plays mild-mannered Erica Bain, a radio producer in New York, engaged to handsome doctor Naveen Andrews from Lost. Walking the dog late one night the couple are brutally attacked by thugs leaving her badly beaten and the boyfriend dead. Overcome by fear and grief she buys a gun for protection but finds herself taking on a much more malevolent role. Terrence Howard is the good cop on her trail.
There’s nothing so objectionable on offer in Conversations With My Gardener, a French charmer starring the ubiquitous Daniel Auteuil as an artist returning to his family home in the country while his divorce goes through. He employs wily local Jean-Pierre Darroussin to knock him up a vegetable garden and, over the summer, the two embark on a friendship that involves (as is the way of things in French films) the simple local giving life lessons to the sophisticated townie.
Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 17 October, 2007.
Full disclosure: I have known Ant Timpson (producer of The Devil Dared Me To) since 1994 when I did publicity for the first Incredibly Strange Film Festival and I look after the Wellington leg of the 48 Hours Furious Filmmaking Challenge which Ant has run since 2003. The 1st AD on Devil was Jeremy Anderson, who has been a very close friend and Black Caps fan for nearly 18 years. He is a top man and I’m stoked to see his work on the big screen. If you need a 1st, give him a call.
