FILM BOOKS ROUND UP
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COMEDY VEGAS BABY (15) 86min (Momentum DVD rental/retail) 0
One of the problems With Eric Bernt's wannabe lad comedy is that there's a twrst in the tale that even the planners for Heathrow Terminal 5 could spot in advance. But it's not the
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There is indeed nothing to salvage from this lamentable sex farce. the dlm. episodic structure of which leads to nowhere good. The dialogue is ab0ut as funny as the Gallipoli Campaign and some of the attitudes displayed to female bodies that are anything less than those of pern stars is distasteful. The plot. for what it's worth, Involves a bachelor party in Vegas going spectacularly wrong. as well as casmo robberies. FBI arrests and menaCing hardmen. But who cares? Unlike more notable contributions to the genre (Bachelor Party. Porkies. etc) there
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isn't enOugh Characterisatioc. to give a hoot about these unlikeable beys There's a ‘Making Of' documentary among the extras. lSte‘.’€ Crameri
DOCUMENTARY
A VERY BRITISH GANSTER
(15) 98min
(Contender DVD retail) .0.
A strange amalgam of fiction film devrces and impresswe access. Donal Maclntyre's look at the life of infamous Manchester gangster Dominic Noonan is compelling VieWing. As he follows the Noonan crime family over three years. we watch as Noonan helps the local
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The debate about US cinema from the late 19605 continues with Yale graduate Mark Harris' Scenes from a Revolution (Canongate coco ). It starts with the fairly flaky premise that the 1967 Academy Award ceremony was the night that the new Hollywood was born thanks to the nomination of then radical films as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate alongside the usual studio pap (Dr Doolit/e. Guess Who '8 Coming to Dinner?). From this supposition. however. Harris builds a fresh and detailed portrait of counter- culturalism on the move through American cinema. Harris' style is easy and lucid and well spending time with. Kamera Books continue their commendable series of books dedicated to encapsulating film genres of the world. DK Holm's Independent Cinema and
Brian Mills' Horror Films (Kamera m
) are solidly written if fairly simplistic
introductions to complex often osmotic genres. They do. however. both come with a DVD of interesting shorts.
For those looking for more heavyweight fare there's always the newest Projections (Faber 0000 ). This. the 15th collection of articles and interviews with leading film folk is dedicated to the work of the European Film Academy. a body founded in 1988 as a cinematic brotherhood to bring together filmmakers from across the East/West divide. With an introduction by the mighty Derek Malcolm. some really tasty essays by Wim Wenders and Liv Ullman, and interviews with Jeanne Moreau and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. this is worth anyone's pocket money. The best film book out anywhere in the world at the moment, however. has to be Tarkovsky (Black Dog Publishing com). Edited by film writer Nathan Dunne this beautifully designed. annotated and written hardback is a collection of critical theory essays about the work of the great Russian filmmaker (pictured on the set of Nostalgia). With illuminating contributions from filmmaker Marc Forster and Evgeny Tsymbal and some quite stunning pieces of re-evaluation by academic film theorists James Quandt. Bhaskar Sarkar, Robert Bird and Dunne plus poems by Tarkovsky‘s father. Arsene. and an old letter from Jean- Paul Sartre to Tarkovsky. this is a seminal text. At almost 230 it is a coffee book table investment but one you will not regret. (Paul Dale)
60 'I’H‘ LIST 10-24 Apr 2008
community. threatens those he beliet es are giVing him grief. and. [)OSSIDIV. bribing km Witnesses and the members of the Jury when he's on trial for various perceived misdemeanours. Playing almost like a cross between This is England and John Boorman's The General. but more ‘underclass' than either. the film may be a dOCumentary but it has aspirations to be a fiction film. featuring a plethora of high angle and overhead shots. and a soundtrack crammed With Charlotte Church, Nina Simone and others. it even has Noonan telling a story that's straight out of The Godfather. and a funeral that invokes Coppola's film. The value of a film like this is another issue. and one worth an extended debate. Extras include a documentary on its making. (Tony McKibbin)
ACTION/THRILLER JANE DOE
(15) 90min (Metrodome DVD retail) .0
Resuscitated almost-ran Teri Hatcher gets the gun and an action vehicle in this re- released 2001 TV movie. After the desperate housewife is fired from her Job at Cy- Kor. a major arms dealer, her teenage son Michael (Trevor BlumaS) kidnapped. In order to get him back alive. Jane must follow a bizarre set of instructions —
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;ncltidir‘.g learning hoe. to use a gun — that lead ner to being framed fer the murder of her boss \'.’riter-d:rect0r Kenn Elders hits the grbund running, immersing Jane in breakneck actioit from the get go. but the film's white knuckle charms wear thin preth quickly. Stars Hatcher and Rob Lowe ias Michael‘s shady father) are both uncontinCing. Ludicrous plot tvrists and enough cheesy one»|iners to make Arnie cringe aside. them are a few decent action sequences here. Minimal extras. (William Henshavvt
DRAMA
IN MEMORY OF ME
(U) 114min
(Artificial Eye DVD retail) .0.
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What happens when life no longer tastes so sweet? One option is to undergo a period of spiritual training that will eventually lead to the priesthood. As With much of the best Italian Cinema in recent years. Saverio Private Costanzo continues the hushed. vaguely or concretely Spiritual fascmation with the quietly familiar from Marco Bellocchio's My Mother's Smile. Paolo Franchi's The Spectator and Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room.
Here it becomes the core of the film. as Andrea (Christo Jivkov) enters a Venetian Monastic order and finds out whether he is up to the task of a clOistered life. Utilismg a Visual geometry to express the 'inner elusweness'. Costanzo wonders whether the pristine rooms. the long corridors and the white walls can help a man find his faith 0r leads him to lose his psychological coordinates. So much. it seems. depends on the
=ndi\idua' Fer some it‘s the dlSk‘tW en 0t inner purpose. ‘Ol others the realisatiob at an internal beli. Extras iitclude a ‘n‘aking of' film and an inteniev. \‘.itb the director
(Tent Mt‘Kit‘ttin)
TEEN DRAMA NAKED YOUTH (15) 97min
Mime DVD retail) C...
As Noel Burch in his key tome on Japanese Cinema. To The Distant Observer, has noted, the disaffected youth film was popular in the aspirant years of the late 50s and early (30s. This film, Nagisa Oshima's 1960 contribution to the genre is impressive if not especially radical. Compared to films he would make almost a decade later. such as Death by Hanging and The Man Who Left His Will on Film. Naked Youth seems almost conventional — and could easily be shown in a ‘heavy petting' double bill With Yasuzo Masumura's 1957 film Kisses. And yet Oshima is crueller than most as he shows peer pressure and cynicrsm more powerful than love. The deVious delinquent Kiyoshi (Yusuke Kawazu) at the centre of the film may have strong feelings for a girl but that does not stop him allowrng MakOtO (Miyuki Kuwano) to be pimped while she carries his child inside her.
Oshima also shared with his French new wave contemporaries a feel for the inexplicable action - Kiyoshi's behaViour isn't simply exploitative. it seems caught between the pragmatic and romantic. and Oshima's creates as a conseCJuence an ambivalent anti-hero, framed in often offbeat widescreen images. Minimal extras.
(Tony McKibbin)