'Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex'

Quite a challenging, unsettling film and one that forces the viewer to confront their attitudes toward the concept of terrorism - or at least, for my own part, insofar as it has been constructed in the consciousness of my generation in England. Some may find it an affront to their politics; I found that I had to watch it with a certain amount of detachment. Nonetheless it's a fine film in many ways, not an easy one however, and following on from the likes of 'The Lives of Others' and 'Downfall' it represents another step in the steady advance of German cinema which has impressed me greatly of late.

'The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft'

Many thanks to my good friend and fellow Apocrypharium contributor Ad Zu for making me aware of this potential monstrocity:


"Universal and Imagine Entertainment are gearing up for "The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft."

The studio has bought the film rights to Image Comics’ graphic novel, with the project a potential directing vehicle for Ron Howard. The book bows April 8.

U sparked to "Lovecraft" because its take on classic horror fits in well with the studio’s library of monster fare featuring Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolf Man, the last of which is being brought back to the bigscreen later this year.

Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, book borrows elements from Lovecraft’s life, such as his family’s struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer’s block, and transforms the young writer’s darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world.

Lovecraft, who died in 1937, is considered one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century.

Carter, a commercial director, will pen the script and serve as executive producer alongside Blitz.

Carter and Blitz both helmed commercials for Anonymous Content, working on spots for such clients as McDonald’s, Yahoo, Coca-Cola and Toyota. Carter has since gone solo and has helmed more than 100 ads for clients.

Imagine’s Brian Grazer and Howard are producers. David Bernardi, shingle’s senior VP, and director of development, Chris Wade, will serve as co-producers.

Image Comics also publishes the popular "Spawn" books, as well as "Witchblade," "WildC.A.T.s," "The Walking Dead" and "Youngblood.""


To say I'm unenthusiastic about this would be an understatement. A "directing vehicle" (what a great choice of words!) for Richie from 'Happy Days' whose previous pictures include Most Boring Film EVAR 'Apollo 13'. Scripted and produced by people notable for doing Coca Cola commercials. That isn't even the worst part though.

It's not as if the big screen's seen much in the way of HPL adaptations in the first place, certainly very little that's been any good. In the face of that, then, I'm not exactly greeting this news of what looks to be some kind of comedy biopic with much hope. Would Lovecraft approve? Probably not, he was a bit of a dour sod by all accounts. I don't either.

Movie Roundup - 'What Just Happened?', 'Timecrimes', 'Fears of the Dark'

Keeping it brief because I'm a bit busy...


'What Just Happened?' is a bit of an odd one. Tries to be a quirky exposé of the Hollywood shark-pool, comes across as a bit of a smug Hollywood in-joke. Bruce Willis typifies this, and reminds me of Charlie Sheen in 'Being John Malkovich': yeah, we know, you can laugh at yourself. What a good sport.

Another phoned-in performance by DeNiro who's shown us of late that, like Al Pacino, he'd play a ham sandwich if someone paid him enough and would still give the impression that he wasn't really trying.

When the film ended I didn't feel like I'd gained much from the experience really, or indeed been on much of a journey during it.

The soundtrack's nice though. Buck 65 and Nick Drake feature among others.



'Timecrimes' (or 'Los Cronocrímenes') is, without wanting to sound patronising, actually a fairly good achievement for what appears to be quite a low budget film - especially seeing as it's Science Fiction of a sort, dealing with time travel. You'll have to suspend your disbelief a bit here, as the characters do not react in a particularly natural way to a lot of the events, and sometimes the time-travel is used as a quite clumsy narrative device that at times becomes predictable - you're meant to think "ah, so that happened because he did x when he went back" but it's no great stunning revelation. All in all, there are worse ways of spending the hour and a half-ish that it takes to watch this movie.

'Fears of the Dark' ('Peurs du Noir') is a collection of black and white animated shorts of a Horror pursuasion that's not too bad at all. The first and last segments are definately the strongest, the latter in particular using the format's sense of light and dark most effectively. It was also nice to see (although not throughout) what looked like traditional, rather than CGI, animation. Of the three films I'd say this is the one I'd most recommend.

FIN.

Terminator - Salvation

Looks good. Hopefully there won't be too much superfast, ultra-shiny CGI à la Transformers.

I've always liked the Terminator movies, especially the first. It'll be good to see the future in that universe, after The Machines have 'smashed the world' (to use a Lintian phrase).

Meanwhile, here's a Drum&Bass tune that's essentially a remix of the original Terminator theme:

Love & War

Last weekend I was very kindly invited to an event at the Institute Of Education that took place as part of Jewish Book Week - a talk/Q&A session with "emotional/moral philosopher" Professor Aaron Ben-Ze'ev entitled 'In The Name Of Love'. It was in part a promotion for his book 'In The Name Of Love - Romantic Ideology & Its Victims' which I have since begun reading.

The book examines romantic love from a curious perspective: on one hand it examines its changing nature and impact upon our lives in the modern day, and on the other it examines statements made by a people who have committed murder "in the name of love" - more specifically the killing of a partner or former partner. Each chapter begins with quotes from songs, poems, and the like regarding love but also those taken from interviews with murderers - and of course the interesting part of this is how utterly alike the sentiments expressed are.

As I'm currently grappling with a fictional character who is impelled toward terrible acts by the loss of love, this is all very interesting and useful stuff - all food for thought and the creative process. The canapes and miniature duck wraps at the reception afterwards (courtesy of the British Friends Of The University Of Haifa) were very tasty as well.

Tonight I finally got around to watching 'Waltz With Bashir'.

It has that odd look of a lot of today's computer assisted animation where everything's perhaps a little too fluid. That's not really a criticism, just an observation really.

I'll say what you're probably expecting me to say, because it's true: in visual terms it's beautifully done. I did feel however that for a film so concerned with the trauma of war it didn't entirely go as deep as it could have done into that theme/issue but instead preferred to skirt it with images, little allusory remarks, and so on. I'd tentatively suggest that it may be a case of 'style over substance' to an extent. I think I also miss a lot of nuance and feeling through watching it in subtitled form - but then I don't speak Hebrew and my co-viewer wasn't fluent either. All this aside, as a series of vivid snapshots of war though it definately succeeds.

The film's climax is shocking and extremely sobering, one of those times when everything goes a bit quiet in the room for a while afterwards. The abrupt switch (I won't go into specifics, you'll know if/when you watch it) brought to mind Theodor Adorno's dictum that there can be "no poetry after Auschwitz" - in the face of such horror, artifice is meaningless.

This sunday: 'Night Of The Living Dead' - introduced by China Miéville

Screening of the Night of the Living Dead
China Miéville introduces George A. Romero’s classic zombie film

6.30pm, Saturday 31 January
Prince Charles Cinema
7 Leicester Place
(just off Leicester Square)
London WC2

"It was 1968, man. Everybody had a message… I think the anger and the attitude and all that’s there is just there because it was 1968." – George Romero

Since its release in 1968, critics and film historians have seen Night of the Living Dead as a subversive film that critiques 1960s American society, international Cold War politics and domestic racism. Others see the film as a grotesque echo of American involvement in Vietnam, or even of American capitalism with the zombies' victims symbolising the repression of the 'other'.

I'm tempted to go. I'd really like to, but in all likelihood I'll be too hungover. I missed an opportunity to hear Miéville speak at Brixton Library (I used to live a stone's throw from there) a while back and have been kicking myself ever since.

Tickets can be booked here.