Film
Rough Cuts
I Docspace’s excellent Nobel Peace Season of documentaries is on at Edinburgh Filmhouse and Glasgow Film Theatre throughout June. Highlights include AL Kennedy introducing the classic Oscar- winning anti-Wetnam War documentary Hearts & Minds, foreign correspondent David Pratt introducing Al Jazeera documentary Control Room, Rabbi Nancy Morris talking about inspirational WWII documentary Power of Good and writer Kathy Galloway introducing Peace One Day (pictured). See www.docspace. org.uk for details.
I Indian documentary filmmaker Rakesh Sharma is holding a masterclass and introducing his epic film Final Solution at Filmhouse, Edinburgh on Wednesday 8 June. Investigating the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat, it offers a rare insight into the details of democracy in India. Go to www.filmhousecinema.com for information.
I Rough Cuts has gone giveaway crazy this issue. To mark the new stage production of Guys and Dolls with Ewan McGregor, we’re handing out ten copies of the MGM classic on DVD, starring Brando and Sinatra. Send us an email headed GUYS AND DOLLS to promotionsOlist.co.uk by no later than 9 June 2005. Usual List rules apply.
W I N SIN CITY GOODIES
I To celebrate the release of Sin City The List has two copies of Frank Miller's book Sin City: The Making of the Move and five copies of the Sin City soundtrack to give away. Send us an email marked SIN CITY to prOinotions’ailist.co.uk by no later than
46 THE LIST 2b May-J.) Jun 200:3
L9 June 200:3. Usual List rules apply.
COMEDY DRAMA
IT’S ALL GONE PETE TONG
(15) 92min .0
The only notable feature of Michael Dowse's film is that it breaks a few cinematic taboos involving firework abuse. as a suicidal Frankie Wilde (Paul Kaye) attaches a selection of rockets to his head then sets them alight. Other than this genuinely arresting dramatic frisson. Dowse‘s follow-up to headbanger mockumentary Fubar is a sentimental story of a DJ losing his hearing. then reclaiming his career through his growing appreciation of vibration and pattern. How much. if any. of this shaggy DJ story is true is hardly worth debating. because It's All Gone Pete Tong displays a drug-addled self- pityingly shallow approach to every aspect of Wilde's life.
This element is explored in soul- withering detail as Kaye declines into a
GRAPHIC NOVEL ADAPTATION SIN C TY (18) 14min 000..
Sin City elevates the current mania for graphic novel and comic book adaptations to previously unattained heights, blending the strengths of both mediums in a virtually perfectly realised film. Transcribing the dialogue of three of Frank Miller’s acclaimed hardboiled crime books to produce a screenplay and using the cartoonist’s noirish black and white strips as storyboards, filmmaker and comic book fan Robert Rodriguez (here giving Miller the writing credit and sharing the directing one) has fashioned a film that’s truer to its source than anything else to date (only Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World collaboration comes close).
The dazzling white and black images, crafted using a make-up-enhanced cast playing against blue screen with computer animated backdrops added in afterwards, are punctuated by splurges of scarlet - lipstick, blood, etc, used to emphasise emotional peaks. One scene bounces to the next like a pinball caught between the bumpers - pow! pow! pow! It’s astonishingly beautiful. And horrendously violent, with body parts being beaten, blown and hacked off like a psychotic Tom and Jerry cartoon. Despite being rendered mostly in black and white, this isn’t a film for the squeamish.
near comatose state. eventually reaching for the fireworks in a bid to end the pain of being a music lover who can't hear. This vague stery of personal hell and redemptive love is further confused by mockumentary- style interiections by various dance music personalities. including Tong himself. which create the air of an
obSCure in-ioke. alienating everyone except the filmmakers themselves. On the upSide. there's a Sunny sense of depraved life in Ibiza. plus some half decent dance leSIC. but ultimately this whole DJ saga is more Dave Lee Travis than ManumiSSion.
(Eddie Harrisoni
I Selected release from Fri 27 May. See profile. page 48.
TRUE CRIME STANDER (15) 116mm 00.0
This swaggering true-life crime caper might be all over the place in terms of tone. theme and plotting, but it's a real blast. It opens in 1976 Johannesburg. and a lengthy aerial tracking shot during the credit sequence begins looking down onto the walled compOunds and S‘.‘/|lllllTlng pools of the city's white elite then tracks across various urban iieigthurhoods to overlook the shantytowns of the
Alongside the super stylisation, Sin City also boasts deft storytelling, ballsy performances (from a to-die-for ensemble cast) and a line in bruising humour that’ll leave you black and blue and lovin’ it. The three tales, transcribed from The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard, are cut and pasted so as to overlap by flashing forwards and backwards in time and in some instances replay the same scenes from different perspectives. The Hard Goodbye tells the tale of man- mountain Marv (Mickey Rourke), a beast on a mission to avenge the murder of his beauty. The Big Fat Kill has a psychopath named Dwight (Clive Owen) attempting to head-off a turf war between warrior women hookers, the mob and the corrupt cops. That Yellow Bastard has retiring cop with a dodgy ticker Hartigan (Bruce Willis) doing his best to take down a child murderer.
As with the images, so too are the characters extremes of black and white: honourable brutes and sluts with hearts of gold. But while the sexual politics of Sin City might appear questionable, there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Miller’s creations are in their extremities deliberately provocative, while behind the ‘tits and ass‘ sex and S&M violence there are deceptively simple morality tales at work. Brutal and brilliant.
(Miles Fielder) I General release from Fri (3‘ Jl/i"t?. See feature. page .3-1
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