Films you've seen lately

[alywin]

I've been looking forward to seeing the 'West Side Story' especially after Belgove's post last month. Mrs C and I headed into Dundee this afternoon and both came out agreeing that it was wonderful. As someone who loves the original, I have to say this was even better. Terrific performances throughout. 'America' was so vibrant, similar yet different from the first version. My favourite scene was as the Jets and Sharks headed to the rumble, while Maria was singing 'Tonight' en route to the underground and Anita was also singing. The way the four sets came together was a delight. Also really impressed by 'Officer Krupke'...so funny, so clever. Two and a half hours flew by, and we left with the soundtrack running round our heads. A delight!

I couldn't agree more: caught up with it finally last week and really enjoyed it.

[johncorrigan]

Last night, Mrs C and I went to see Sir Ken's latest film, 'Belfast', which in some circles is being touted as Oscar material. Have to say that I found it rather dull, and despite being only ninety minutes long, it dragged, and I thought it was a bit of a mess, to be honest. The Van Morrison tunes were great, although I found them unconnected from the film itself most of the time; it was just great listening to them. The acting was absolutely fine, but it just didn't seem to know what kind of film it was.

[ardcarp]

Persian Lessons shown on BBC4. Deeply moving, brilliantly acted in authentic settings, both historically and scenically. The best film I've seen in ages.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001494x

[Nick Armstrong]

Caught this, broadcast earlier this evening on BBC Four - I can only echo what you say jayne. A haunting watch.

"THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD"

Heartbreaking, ruthlessly truthful, the story of Björn Andrésen, teenage star of Visconti's Death in Venice.
Extraordinary footage from the disturbingly voyeuristic audition before Visconti himself as one of many boys who applied, through the shooting of the film in Venice itself, the ill-managed and destructive effects of his cinematic stardom (he was used with merciless, mercenary insensitivity to make money for others) to his present reduced circumstances. He had a very upsetting, broken family background, and was raised by a grandmother who seemed concerned only to bask in his reflected fame.
He looks much older than his mid-60s would suggest, like a weary Gandalf after too many struggles.

It will speak to anyone really, but perhaps most of all to those who have experienced solitude-within-the-crowd, rejection, no-one listening, that feeling of life just not making sense.

As this Review concludes, one hopes he can achieve some closure, at least a glimpse of some inner peace....
https://www.theguardian.com/film/202...bjorn-andresen

[RichardB]

Nightmare Alley: really not bad at all, incomparably better than either Crimson Peak or The Shape of Water, although, not having seen the 1947 film it's a remake of, I could well imagine that it doesn't add so very much to it, despite impressive performances from pretty much the whole cast - comes across as a period piece, a homage to noir rather than an addition to it, says nothing about the time in which it's been made apart from exemplifying a parasitic kind of nostalgia which might be thought of as typical of the present period.

Drive My Car: masterpiece. Certainly the most Murakami-esque of any Murakami-based film so far, despite or because of being very loosely based on several unconnected short stories which aren't particularly distinguished by his standards - it inhabits the film medium without feeling as if it's an adaptation of something else and it isn't really like any other film I've ever seen, although the leisurely rate at which it unfolds is more typical of Japanese films than of Western ones. It's three hours long because it needs to be.

[johncorrigan]

I loved 'Get Back', Peter Jackson's eight hour documentary about the Beatles in 1969. Yesterday I went to see 'The Rooftop Concert' in the Perth IMAX. It was so great to see on the big screen - great music, lots of laughs and wonderful cinematography from the film crew in '69, and then stitched together so brilliantly by Jackson and his crew. 1969's central London was brought alive by the cameras on the street, and the interviewers gathering voxpops from outside in Saville Row...a great cinema experience.

[Nick Armstrong]

Nightmare Alley: really not bad at all, incomparably better than either Crimson Peak or The Shape of Water

There’s a quite interesting section towards the end of this edition of Sound of Cinema:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0013ryl

where the composer talks about how he went about scoring the film.

It’s one I mean to see

[RichardB]

Thanks Nick, I will check that out. I hope you like the film.

[Petrushka]

I happened to chance upon part of a 1950 film called 'Prelude to Fame' on Talking Pictures TV this morning (the complete film is here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3x8n5t
According to Wiki, it's based on a 1924 story by Aldous Huxley about a musical prodigy.

I joined the film just at the point where the young boy, played by the 12 year old Jeremy Spenser, conducts Weber's Oberon Overture (played in full too) and found Spenser's conducting of it very convincing indeed. Wiki says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_to_Fame that the young boy was coached by Marcus Dods with the result that his conducting scenes caught fire. I stayed with the film to the end and saw some great shots of a 1950 Royal Albert Hall including in the corridors and artist's entrance, all perfectly recognisable. The orchestra in the RAH is led by David McCallum who some on here may remember,(and was the father of the Man from UNCLE actor). The orchestra in the Oberon Overture is led by Dora Hyde.

It's a typical British film of the period and I see that Jeremy Spenser is still going at the age of 84 having retired from acting in 1967.

[johncorrigan]

A while back I picked up a copy of 'Youth' in a charity shop. I didn't know anything about it, but was attracted by Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and the reasonable star ratings on the front cover. Looking for something to watch, I put it on last night and Mrs C and I both thought it was excellent; nicely strange and very funny. Caine plays a retired composer/conductor; Keitel, his friend, a film maker - both now in their eighties and holidaying in a spa in the Swiss Alps. It looked great - apparently the first English speaking film of Paolo Sorrentino - I was not previously aware of him. Terrific soundtrack...I think I would happily watch it again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7CM4di_0c

[HighlandDougie]

A while back I picked up a copy of 'Youth' in a charity shop. I didn't know anything about it, but was attracted by Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and the reasonable star ratings on the front cover. Looking for something to watch, I put it on last night and Mrs C and I both thought it was excellent; nicely strange and very funny. Caine plays a retired composer/conductor; Keitel, his friend, a film maker - both now in their eighties and holidaying in a spa in the Swiss Alps. It looked great - apparently the first English speaking film of Paolo Sorrentino - I was not previously aware of him. Terrific soundtrack...I think I would happily watch it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7CM4di_0c

Well, if you liked "Youth" (and by inference Paolo Sorrentino), I strongly recommend, "The Great Beauty" - one of my favourite films of recent years with the "Beauty" of the title being the city of Rome. It has Fellini-esque elements to it but is very much a product of a director with an acutely developed visual sensibility. "The Consequences of Love", is also highly recommendable. His two series for Netflix with Jude Law, John Malkevich, Diane Keaton - and the wonderful Silvio Orlando - "The Young Pope" and "The New Pope" are a bit more marmite-like (I enthused about them to a friend who hated the first of them - more fool him) but make for gripping watching, full of leaps of imagination and stunningly well filmed. If his almost-contemporary Luca Guadagnino might be said in many ways to be the Visconti de nos jours, I can't think that there is anyone quite like Sorrentino - so, rave over, delighted that liked "Youth".

[Stanfordian]

'The Two Popes' (2019)
film directed by Fernando Meirelles
Starring Anthony Hopkins & Jonathan Pryce
Watched it on Netflix and I loved it!

[Serial_Apologist]

Buster Keaton stunt clips, sent to me yesterday by a friend, to cheer me up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ilfp2AxK8

I hope they will you, too.

[Hitch]

From an interview in the Guardian with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode:

Q: You have been very professional and diplomatic in what you have not said about the BBC, but from your lengthy experience working for the corporation, what one change would you make to sustain it for the future? (Nick Taylor, Culcheth, Warrington)

SM: [Sighs, looks at the ceiling] We’re just presenters, I don’t know. The BBC gets enough advice.

MK: I’m still at the BBC, I’m still doing Screenshot on Radio 4 and I’m still doing the News Channel film review, and there’s an outside possibility that there’ll be another Secrets of Cinema. The only thing that I would say is, trust programme-makers a little bit more. In my experience, people who make programmes actually tend to know what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. And they thrive with as little interference from on high as possible.

SM: I would say probably the BBC has to do less, and to do the things that it does, better. Staff programmes properly. Don’t make them scrimp and save and get them to work all the hours God sends just because the budget has been cut again. And that will mean there’ll be some areas that the BBC has to decide not to do. If I was still on 5 Live, and the director general had come on, I always had this question in mind: “How many orchestras does the BBC need?”

Film discussion and criticism is apparently deserving of public funding, but orchestras less so. One wonders how much money Radios 1, 2 and 5 have paid certain presenters over the years while venerable musical institutions had to "scrimp and save".

Normally, I wouldn't comment on something like this but it is frustrating to see classical music used as a punching bag by someone who should know better.

[Ein Heldenleben]

From an interview in the Guardian with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode:

Q: You have been very professional and diplomatic in what you have not said about the BBC, but from your lengthy experience working for the corporation, what one change would you make to sustain it for the future? (Nick Taylor, Culcheth, Warrington)

SM: [Sighs, looks at the ceiling] We’re just presenters, I don’t know. The BBC gets enough advice.

MK: I’m still at the BBC, I’m still doing Screenshot on Radio 4 and I’m still doing the News Channel film review, and there’s an outside possibility that there’ll be another Secrets of Cinema. The only thing that I would say is, trust programme-makers a little bit more. In my experience, people who make programmes actually tend to know what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. And they thrive with as little interference from on high as possible.

SM: I would say probably the BBC has to do less, and to do the things that it does, better. Staff programmes properly. Don’t make them scrimp and save and get them to work all the hours God sends just because the budget has been cut again. And that will mean there’ll be some areas that the BBC has to decide not to do. If I was still on 5 Live, and the director general had come on, I always had this question in mind: “How many orchestras does the BBC need?”

Film discussion and criticism is apparently deserving of public funding, but orchestras less so. One wonders how much money Radios 1, 2 and 5 have paid certain presenters over the years while venerable musical institutions had to "scrimp and save".

Normally, I wouldn't comment on something like this but it is frustrating to see classical music used as a punching bag by someone who should know better.

As far as I know from friends there The BBC orchestras have been pretty much protected from the 25 to 30 percent cent cuts that most other departments have experienced over the last decade. Though I suspect there will have been cuts on the office support side - I don’t know for sure but that would be consistent with every other department . I think there’s also quite a bit of external partnership funding for the national orchestras though
Most factual programming (outside News) is now done by indies or in-house by freelances. His comments on the working conditions of producers and researchers (particularly in Radio) are pretty much in line with what I’ve heard.TV Drama is almost entirely made by indies . Orchestra players though are still on staff and getting all the perks associated with that. It’s a complex argument because in-house orchestras also save money on copyright and , most importantly, have an intangible political importance when it comes to justifying the licence fee . That I suspect is what lies behind the comments - albeit made by (in Simon Mayo’s case ) very well paid freelances.
I know this won’t be a popular opinion on this forum but given the general level of support and interest in classical music in the UK the BBC’s support to me is very generous. When musicians complain about public subsidy they also need to ask themeselves why many Classical and opera performances don’t sell particularly well - and why so many are in London.