Film
Rough Cuts
Film news to keep you amused
I Red Road, Andrea Amold’s first film produced by a Scottish company, has won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, starring Kate Dickie and Martin Sweet Sixteen Compston, is partly produced by Sigma Films, who are based in Glasgow (see also News in Brief, page 9).
I Muir Mathieson. Stirling-born composer and conductor of over 1000 film scores. has released a book on his work. The celebrated musician conducted some of the most recognisable scores of all time. including the 49th Parallel and Vertigo. I Robert Carlyle has been announced as one of the stars in a new BBC film drama marking the 40th anniversary of Ken Loach’s landmark docudrama Cathy Come Home. The film, also starring Colin Firth, Julia Davis and Anne-Marie Duff, is not a remake of Loach's social document, but a study of the morals and choices faced by people in temporary accommodation.
I The current head of talent and creativity with Scottish Screen will shortly leave her job to take up a new post representing the UK film industry to the United States. Claire Chapman has overseen several successful projects in her three years at Scottish Screen. including Red Road and Festival.
WIN HIDDEN ON DVD
We have 5 copies of the compelling psychological thriller Hidden from Michael Haneke — one g of cinema's “Inncl most daring,
original and 0 controversial
directors. Released through Artificial Eye ($219.99) on 19 June. this DVD includes an interview with the director, a theatrical trailer, filmographies and the making of documentary. To be in with a chance of winning. just send an email marked ‘HIDDEN' to promotions@list.co.uk no later then Wednesday 21 June. with your address and daytime phone number. Usual List rules apply.
44 THE LIST 8—22 Jun 2006
Reviews
GANGS TERTHRlLLER ELECTION (18) 100min m
Not to be confused with the Alexander Payne film of the same name, this slick, ambitious and engrossrng Hong Kong crime offering casts a refreshingly sober eye over the inner workings of one Triad group.
The set up is simple. Dignified family man Lok (Simon Yam) has been democratically chosen to run the gang. The trouble is, if he wants total control he needs to wrestle it from the sadistic grip of gambling crazy psychopath Big D (Tony Leung). Talk and debate slowly falls to violence as their confused minions go from minor skirmishes to something much more bloody. and the stage is set for numbing tragedy.
Filmmaker Johnny To (The Heroic Trio, Fu/ltinie Killer) is certainly one of the more interesting directors currently working in this genre. and his game here. as ever, seems to be a constant. wilful shift of sympathies between the two main characters. Big D (brilliantly played by Leung) may be a crazed loose cannon but at least he is truthful about the sordid business he is so inured to. while stand up guy Lok fools himself into believing he represents
DRAMA/THRILLER HARD CANDY (18) 104min roe
A thirtysomething man chats up a 14-year-old girl over the Internet, meets her in person at a coffee shop and takes her back to his Los Angeles hilltop home. There, he plies the Lolita-esque nymphet with vodka and photographs her in provocative poses. And thereafter events do not take their expected course.
Instead, this didactic and divisive drama, the screenwriting debut of theatre academic and playwright Brian Nelson, plays with audience assumptions, twisting the narrative this way and that and teasing our sympathies for the protagonists. Anyone who has seen Ariel Dorfmann‘s play about a
some kind of status beyond that of the Triad world. It's like watching two wasps slowly sting each other to death. (Paul Dale)
I Selected release from Fri 76 Jun.
DRAMA
THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE
(15) 111min mo
Scotsman Jack (Daniel Day LeWis) has the prrncrples of an eco-warrior and uses inheritance money to move to a small island. He spends 1986 shooting bullets at property developers. accompanied by his 16-year-old daughter Rose (Camilla Belle). Trouble brews when her unbridled hormones lead to several moments bordering on incest. Jack. concerned about his daughter's infatuation, pays his girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) to move into his home With her two sons. In response Rose starts to rebel. Writer/director/actress Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocrty, Angela) has created an arresting lullaby to human imperfections. Featuring evocative camerawork (reminiscent of Malick's Bad/ands) by the great cinematographer Ellen Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind Kuras. this sad tale is told in the American
indie tradition that Miller speCIalises in. I The world premiere of this film 1 occurred days after the death of i Miller's father, playwnght Arthur Miller.
a fact made all the more porgnant because Jack and Rose works best as
a study of awkward familial bonds.
This Visceral verse of a film does however suffer when it panders to Hollywood narrative conventions — the cheesy epilogue being particularly unnecessary. (Kaleem Aftab)
I GFT. Glasgow from Tue 73— Thu 15 Jun. Filmhouse. Edinburgh from Fri 30 Jun—Mon 3Jul.
THRILLER LOBO (WOLF) (15) 124mm coo
Based on a true story, Miguel COLirtOis' movre was a box-office smash in Spain. Set in the 1970s. it tackles the end of Franco's
dictatorship and the inner w0rkings of
Spain's ETA movement. Txexma (Eduardo Noriega) is a construction
worker from the Basque region of l Spain. Arrested iii connection wrth a
murder rap. the police offer him a plea bargain on condition that he infiltrates the terrorist group ETA. Hesrtantly he adopts the name Lobo (Wolf) and starts rising through the ranks of the terrorists. In the process, he discovers a group that is divided between those who seek a solution to the Basque problem through discourse and those advocating violence.
Somehow. Courtois manages to tell this enticing tale in the most ponderous fashion. Despite going to desperate lengths to present a plethora of Views on the Basque situation. Courtors fails to consider whether terrorism is justified in a country run by a fascrst dictator or to challenge orthodox views on
torture victim turning the tables on her former abuser, Death and the Maiden (or Roman Polanski’s film
adaptation thereof) will recognise this increasingly hysterical scenario.
The leads, Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page, give their all, but the decreasineg believable chain of events and the increasingly histrionic performances that go along with them eventually mire the film in TV movie territory, complete with naff moralising. Commercials and music promos director David Slade, here making his film debut, piles on the visual styling, which serves only to detract from the domicile-bound drama. Not enough, though, to distract us from the ridiculous action movie knife and gunfight rooftop finale. (Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 16 Jun.