Right I have had it with typing about music and movies and because my illness is bring me down so much, it's time to get back to what is important. If you don have your health then you have truly nothing.
At 4am I typed a long email to my MS nurse begging for some help. As I am now known in the MS world as progressive, I get no medication for it, as everything medicine wise is considered hopeless at this stage.
This is my last through of the dice. I have armed myself with every book and piece of literature. I will stick to the diets 100%, will do everything in my power. I'm going down with a fight. Keep checking back to see how I'm doing.
I'm not only doing this for me but I owe it to my boy.
Sunday, 15 June 2014
The All American Rejects: It Ends Tonight - Song Meaning
I really like this song, probably my favourite by The All American Rejects. Here's my take on it:
It's about being in a relationship where he realises they are both unhappy, and he is tired of playing games with her. He's tired of trying to fix the problem because it's unfixable, he just wasn't meant to be with her. He can't be happy with her, even if she does have some great qualities, and he realises he has to be miserable alone for a while in order to EVER be happy again.
"Your subtleties, they strangle me"
The little things about you, the games you play, they kill me.
"I can't explain myself at all
And all that wants and all that needs
I don't want to need at all"
I can't explain where we went wrong or exactly what is wrong with this relationship. I can however tell you that I'm tired of needing you or the things you give me, because in the end, you only make me miserable.
"The walls are breathing
My mind's unweaving
Maybe it's best you leave alone"
Things are getting intense, but you have to leave tonight. I am breaking up with you now, I need to be alone.
"A weight is lifted on this evening
I give the final blow"
I'm taking the weight of our relationship off our shoulders as I give the final blow aka break up with you, tell you it's over.
"When darkness turns to light
It ends tonight, it ends tonight"
Darnkess turning to light represents not only the night turning to day, but his life going from being dark (with her) to being light (happy again) when he's alone.
"A falling star, at least I fall alone"
It hurts to be alone, but it feels better to be alone than to be with her.
"I can't explain what you can't explain
You're finding things that you didn't know
I look at you with such disdain"
He doesn't know where they went wrong (as mentioned above). She's also finding things in him she doesn't like anymore, and when the two look at each other, they don't feel love, they feel disdain.
"Just a little insight won't make this right
It's too late to fight
It ends tonight, it ends tonight"
In relationships, usually someone will say "or we're fighting because I've been jealous lately/started my new job today/whatever", or they think one little solution will fix their problems. Here he says that nothing can fix their relationship. It's broken beyond repair. The only solution is to leave.
"Now I'm on my own side
It's better than bein' on your side"
Now he's single but it's better than being with her.
"It's my fault when you're blind
It's better that I see it through your eyes
All these thoughts locked inside
Now you're the first to know"
It's his fault for ignoring all the problems the relationship had. She maybe yelled at him and was a bitch, but it made him realize how much he didn't want to be with her. He's been keeping these feelings forever and now he's letting them out, and she's the first to hear about it.
Fathers Day
Well I got a whole half hour with my son today, on Father's Day. So it's safe to say I had a shit day filled with a whole host of emotions mainly stupidity, anger and hurt.
I am so proud of my beautiful baby boy, he is soon to be 8, very clever and talented. He excels at school, takes piano lessons and can read music. As well as being able to swim, he is also good at football.
I love you Connor McKay x
I am so proud of my beautiful baby boy, he is soon to be 8, very clever and talented. He excels at school, takes piano lessons and can read music. As well as being able to swim, he is also good at football.
I love you Connor McKay x
Coldplay: Magic - Song Meaning
It is about a couple who keep coming together and falling apart. The guy keeps swaying from breaking into two to being next to you (his Significant other). And he doesn't understand why this happens, why every time they fight, then why does he still want her only and then why they always get together again and then again fall apart. Hence, he calls this whole sequence of events as magic. With her magic she can make him or break him. It is like he doesn't exist at times. And the guy questions sometimes his love, sometimes he thinks maybe because they fight so much, maybe aren't meant for each other, and then when they do get together, he feels she is the one he wants. Hence, even though after all that he has been through, he loves her and believes such love can only be magical and hence he believes in magic.The way it means to me anyway.
Coldplay: Magic - Music Video
Coldplay: Magic - Music Video
My online horror group - All Things Horror
I created an online Facebook Group at the start of 2013 called 'All Things Horror' which quickly to over 25,000 members....if you like Horror Movies etc.. then please join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/allthingshorror1/389552691185420/?notif_t=like
I also created a website www.allthingshorror.org
I created an app too.
I also created a website www.allthingshorror.org
I created an app too.
Friday, 13 June 2014
Movie Review - Taxi Driver
"Are you talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here".Travis Bickle in 'Taxi Driver'
It is the last line, "Well, I'm the only one here," that never gets quoted. It is the truest line in the film. Travis Bickle exists in 'Taxi Driver' as a character with a desperate need to make some kind of contact somehow, to share or mimic the effortless social interaction he sees all around him, but does not participate in.
The film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong. He asks a girl out on a date, and takes her to a porno movie. He sucks up to a political candidate, and ends by alarming him. He tries to make small talk with a Secret Service agent. He wants to befriend a child prostitute, but scares her away. He is so lonely that when he asks, "Who you talkin' to?" he is addressing himself in a mirror.
This utter aloneness is at the centre of 'Taxi Driver', one of the best and most powerful of all films, and perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes. We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are just better at dealing with it.
Martin Scorsese's 1976 film is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis's underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness and anger.
In 'Taxi Driver', Travis Bickle is also a war veteran, horribly scarred in Vietnam. He encounters a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster), controlled by a pimp named Sport (Harvey Keitel). Sport wears an Indian headband. Travis determines to "rescue" Iris, and does so, in a bloodbath that is unsurpassed even in the films of Scorsese. A letter and clippings from the Steensmas, Iris' parents, thank him for saving their girl. But a crucial earlier scene between Iris and Sport suggests that she was content to be with him, and the reasons why she ran away from home are not explored.
The buried message is that an alienated man, unable to establish normal relationships, becomes a loner and wanderer, and assigns himself to rescue an innocent young girl from a life that offends his prejudices. In 'Taxi Driver', this central story is surrounded by many smaller ones, all building to the same theme. The story takes place during a political campaign, and Travis twice finds himself with the candidate, Palatine, in his cab. He goes through the motions of ingratiating flattery, but we, and Palatine, sense something wrong.
Shortly after that Travis tries to "free" one of Palatine's campaign workers, a blonde he has idealized (Cybill Shepherd), from the Palatine campaign. That goes wrong with the crazy idea of a date at a porno movie. And then, after the fearsome rehearsal in the mirror, he becomes a walking arsenal and goes to assassinate Palatine. The Palatine scenes are like dress rehearsals for the ending of the film. With both Betsy and Iris, he has a friendly conversation in a coffee shop, followed by an aborted "date", followed by attacks on the men he perceived as controlling them, he tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Palatine, and then goes gunning for Sport.
There are undercurrents in the film that you can sense without quite putting your finger on them. Travis's implied feelings about blacks, for example, which emerge in two long shots in a taxi driver's hangout, when he exchanges looks with a man who may be a drug dealer. His ambivalent feelings about sex (he lives in a world of pornography, but the sexual activity he observes in the city fills him with loathing). His hatred for the city, inhabited by "scum". His preference for working at night, and the way Scorsese's cinematographer, Michael Chapman, makes the yellow cab into a vessel by which Travis journeys the underworld, as steam escapes from vents in the streets, and the cab splashes through water from hydrants...great visuals.
The film has a certain stylistic resonance with 'Mean Streets' (1973), the first Scorsese film in which Keitel and De Niro worked together. In the earlier film Scorsese uses varying speeds of slow-motion to suggest a level of heightened observation on the part of his characters, and here that technique is developed even more dramatically, as the taxi drives through Manhattan's streets, we see it in ordinary time, but Travis's point-of-view shots are slowed down. He sees hookers and pimps on the sidewalks, and his heightened awareness is made acute through slow motion.
The technique of slow motion is familiar to audiences, who usually see it in romantic scenes, or scenes in which regret and melancholy are expressed or sometimes in scenes where a catastrophe looms, and cannot be avoided. But Scorsese was finding a personal use for it, a way to suggest a subjective state in a shot. And in scenes in a cab driver's diner, he uses closeups of observed details to show how Travis's attention is apart from the conversation, is zeroing in on a black who might be a pimp. One of the hardest things for a director to do is to suggest a character's interior state without using dialog, one of Scorsese's greatest achievements in 'Taxi Driver' is to take us inside Travis Bickle's point of view.
There are other links between 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver' that may go unnoticed. One is the overhead shots, which Scorsese has said are intended to reflect a priest looking down at the implements of the Mass on the altar. We see, through Travis's eyes, the top of a taxi dispatcher's desk, candy on a movie counter, guns on a bed, and finally, with the camera apparently seeing through the ceiling, an overhead shot of the massacre in the red-light building. This is, if you will, the final sacrifice of the Mass. And it was in 'Mean Streets' that Keitel repeatedly put his finger in the flame of a candle or a match, testing the fires of hell but here De Niro's taxi driver holds his fist above a gas flame.
There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's "heroism", and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true?
I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level character. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters. They despise themselves, they live in sin, they occupy mean streets, but they want to be forgiven and admired. Whether Travis gains that status in reality or only in his mind is not the point; throughout the film, his mental state has shaped his reality, and at last, in some way, it has brought him a kind of peace.
Taxi Driver - Trailer
It is the last line, "Well, I'm the only one here," that never gets quoted. It is the truest line in the film. Travis Bickle exists in 'Taxi Driver' as a character with a desperate need to make some kind of contact somehow, to share or mimic the effortless social interaction he sees all around him, but does not participate in.
The film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong. He asks a girl out on a date, and takes her to a porno movie. He sucks up to a political candidate, and ends by alarming him. He tries to make small talk with a Secret Service agent. He wants to befriend a child prostitute, but scares her away. He is so lonely that when he asks, "Who you talkin' to?" he is addressing himself in a mirror.
This utter aloneness is at the centre of 'Taxi Driver', one of the best and most powerful of all films, and perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes. We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are just better at dealing with it.
Martin Scorsese's 1976 film is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis's underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness and anger.
In 'Taxi Driver', Travis Bickle is also a war veteran, horribly scarred in Vietnam. He encounters a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster), controlled by a pimp named Sport (Harvey Keitel). Sport wears an Indian headband. Travis determines to "rescue" Iris, and does so, in a bloodbath that is unsurpassed even in the films of Scorsese. A letter and clippings from the Steensmas, Iris' parents, thank him for saving their girl. But a crucial earlier scene between Iris and Sport suggests that she was content to be with him, and the reasons why she ran away from home are not explored.
The buried message is that an alienated man, unable to establish normal relationships, becomes a loner and wanderer, and assigns himself to rescue an innocent young girl from a life that offends his prejudices. In 'Taxi Driver', this central story is surrounded by many smaller ones, all building to the same theme. The story takes place during a political campaign, and Travis twice finds himself with the candidate, Palatine, in his cab. He goes through the motions of ingratiating flattery, but we, and Palatine, sense something wrong.
Shortly after that Travis tries to "free" one of Palatine's campaign workers, a blonde he has idealized (Cybill Shepherd), from the Palatine campaign. That goes wrong with the crazy idea of a date at a porno movie. And then, after the fearsome rehearsal in the mirror, he becomes a walking arsenal and goes to assassinate Palatine. The Palatine scenes are like dress rehearsals for the ending of the film. With both Betsy and Iris, he has a friendly conversation in a coffee shop, followed by an aborted "date", followed by attacks on the men he perceived as controlling them, he tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Palatine, and then goes gunning for Sport.
There are undercurrents in the film that you can sense without quite putting your finger on them. Travis's implied feelings about blacks, for example, which emerge in two long shots in a taxi driver's hangout, when he exchanges looks with a man who may be a drug dealer. His ambivalent feelings about sex (he lives in a world of pornography, but the sexual activity he observes in the city fills him with loathing). His hatred for the city, inhabited by "scum". His preference for working at night, and the way Scorsese's cinematographer, Michael Chapman, makes the yellow cab into a vessel by which Travis journeys the underworld, as steam escapes from vents in the streets, and the cab splashes through water from hydrants...great visuals.
The film has a certain stylistic resonance with 'Mean Streets' (1973), the first Scorsese film in which Keitel and De Niro worked together. In the earlier film Scorsese uses varying speeds of slow-motion to suggest a level of heightened observation on the part of his characters, and here that technique is developed even more dramatically, as the taxi drives through Manhattan's streets, we see it in ordinary time, but Travis's point-of-view shots are slowed down. He sees hookers and pimps on the sidewalks, and his heightened awareness is made acute through slow motion.
The technique of slow motion is familiar to audiences, who usually see it in romantic scenes, or scenes in which regret and melancholy are expressed or sometimes in scenes where a catastrophe looms, and cannot be avoided. But Scorsese was finding a personal use for it, a way to suggest a subjective state in a shot. And in scenes in a cab driver's diner, he uses closeups of observed details to show how Travis's attention is apart from the conversation, is zeroing in on a black who might be a pimp. One of the hardest things for a director to do is to suggest a character's interior state without using dialog, one of Scorsese's greatest achievements in 'Taxi Driver' is to take us inside Travis Bickle's point of view.
There are other links between 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver' that may go unnoticed. One is the overhead shots, which Scorsese has said are intended to reflect a priest looking down at the implements of the Mass on the altar. We see, through Travis's eyes, the top of a taxi dispatcher's desk, candy on a movie counter, guns on a bed, and finally, with the camera apparently seeing through the ceiling, an overhead shot of the massacre in the red-light building. This is, if you will, the final sacrifice of the Mass. And it was in 'Mean Streets' that Keitel repeatedly put his finger in the flame of a candle or a match, testing the fires of hell but here De Niro's taxi driver holds his fist above a gas flame.
There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's "heroism", and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true?
I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level character. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters. They despise themselves, they live in sin, they occupy mean streets, but they want to be forgiven and admired. Whether Travis gains that status in reality or only in his mind is not the point; throughout the film, his mental state has shaped his reality, and at last, in some way, it has brought him a kind of peace.
Taxi Driver - Trailer
Movie Review - Drive
The Driver drives for hire. He has no other name, and no other life. When we first see him, he's the wheelman for a getaway car, who runs from police pursuit not only by using sheer speed and muscle, but by coolly exploiting the street terrain and outsmarting his pursuers. By day, he is a stunt driver for action movies. The two jobs represent no conflict for him: He drives, pure and simple.
Played by Ryan Gosling, he has no family, no history and seemingly few emotions. Whatever happened to him drove any personality deep beneath the surface. He is an existential hero, I suppose, defined entirely by his behavior.
That would qualify him as the hero of a mindless action picture, all CGI and crashes and mayhem. 'Drive' is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep. Sometimes a movie will make a greater impact by not trying too hard. The enigma of the driver is surrounded by a rich gallery of supporting actors who are clear about their hopes and fears, and who have either reached an accommodation with the Driver, or not. Here is still another illustration of the old Hollywood noir principle that a movie lives its life not through its hero, but within its shadows.
The Driver lives somewhere next to his neighbour Irene, played by Carey Mulligan, a template of vulnerability. She has a young son, Benecio (Kaden Leos), who seems to stir the Driver's affection, although he isn't the effusive type. They grow warm, but in a week, her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is released from prison. Against our expectations, Standard isn't jealous or hostile about the new neighbour, but sizes him up, sees a professional and quickly pitches a $1 million heist idea. That will provide the engine for the rest of the story, and as Irene and Benecio are endangered, the Driver reveals deep feelings and loyalties indeed, and undergoes enormous risk at little necessary benefit to himself.
The film by the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, based on a novel by James Sallis, peoples its story with characters who bring lifetimes onto the screen, in contrast to the Driver, who brings as little as possible. Ron Perlman seems to be a big-time operator working out of a small-time front, a pizzeria. Albert Brooks, plays a producer of the kinds of B movies the Driver does stunt driving for, and also has a sideline in crime. These people are ruthless.
More benign is Bryan Cranston, as the kind of man you know the Driver must have behind him, a genius at auto repairs, restoration and supercharging.
I mentioned CGI earlier. 'Drive' seems to have little of it. Most of the stunt driving looks real to me, with cars of weight and heft, rather than animated impossible fantasies. The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we've grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgable moviegoers. There were moments when I was reminded of 'Bullitt' which was so much better than the films it inspired. The key thing you want to feel, during a chase scene, is involvement in the purpose of the chase. You have to care. Too often we're simply witnessing technology. And of course he drives a Mustang!!!
Maybe there was another reason I thought of 'Bullitt'. Ryan Gosling is a charismatic actor, as Steve McQueen was. 'Drive' looks like one of those kind of movie in the ads, and it is that kind of movie.
Drive - Trailer
Played by Ryan Gosling, he has no family, no history and seemingly few emotions. Whatever happened to him drove any personality deep beneath the surface. He is an existential hero, I suppose, defined entirely by his behavior.
That would qualify him as the hero of a mindless action picture, all CGI and crashes and mayhem. 'Drive' is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep. Sometimes a movie will make a greater impact by not trying too hard. The enigma of the driver is surrounded by a rich gallery of supporting actors who are clear about their hopes and fears, and who have either reached an accommodation with the Driver, or not. Here is still another illustration of the old Hollywood noir principle that a movie lives its life not through its hero, but within its shadows.
The Driver lives somewhere next to his neighbour Irene, played by Carey Mulligan, a template of vulnerability. She has a young son, Benecio (Kaden Leos), who seems to stir the Driver's affection, although he isn't the effusive type. They grow warm, but in a week, her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is released from prison. Against our expectations, Standard isn't jealous or hostile about the new neighbour, but sizes him up, sees a professional and quickly pitches a $1 million heist idea. That will provide the engine for the rest of the story, and as Irene and Benecio are endangered, the Driver reveals deep feelings and loyalties indeed, and undergoes enormous risk at little necessary benefit to himself.
The film by the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, based on a novel by James Sallis, peoples its story with characters who bring lifetimes onto the screen, in contrast to the Driver, who brings as little as possible. Ron Perlman seems to be a big-time operator working out of a small-time front, a pizzeria. Albert Brooks, plays a producer of the kinds of B movies the Driver does stunt driving for, and also has a sideline in crime. These people are ruthless.
More benign is Bryan Cranston, as the kind of man you know the Driver must have behind him, a genius at auto repairs, restoration and supercharging.
I mentioned CGI earlier. 'Drive' seems to have little of it. Most of the stunt driving looks real to me, with cars of weight and heft, rather than animated impossible fantasies. The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we've grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgable moviegoers. There were moments when I was reminded of 'Bullitt' which was so much better than the films it inspired. The key thing you want to feel, during a chase scene, is involvement in the purpose of the chase. You have to care. Too often we're simply witnessing technology. And of course he drives a Mustang!!!
Maybe there was another reason I thought of 'Bullitt'. Ryan Gosling is a charismatic actor, as Steve McQueen was. 'Drive' looks like one of those kind of movie in the ads, and it is that kind of movie.
Drive - Trailer
Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Movie Review - Goodfellas
"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States".
So says Henry Hill in the opening moments of Martin Scorsese’s 'GoodFellas', a movie about the tradecraft and culture of organized crime in New York. That he narrates his own story, and is later joined by his wife, narrating hers, this crucial to the movie’s success. This is not an outsider’s view, but a point of view movie based on nostalgia for the lifestyle. “They were blue-collar guys” Hill’s wife explains. “The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners.” Their power was intoxicating. “If we wanted something, we just took it", Henry says. “If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again".
At the end of the film, Henry (Ray Liotta) still misses the old days. His money is gone, most of his friends are dead, and his best friend was preparing to kill him, but after he finds safety in the federal witness protection program, he still complains. “We were treated like movie stars with muscle", he remembers. “Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else".
The rewards of unearned privilege are at the heart of 'GoodFellas'. There’s an early scene introducing Henry’s partner Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), and he enters the shot in a sort of glowing modesty; his body language says, “no applause, please”. Henry’s other partner is Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who makes the mistake of over-exercising his clout instead of letting it go without saying. In one of the great buildups and payoffs in movie history, he believes he’s going to become a “made” man, realises his mistake too late, and says “Oh, no” before being shot in the head. He never learned to relax and enjoy his privileges. He always had to push things.
The early scenes of 'GoodFellas' show young Henry Hill as a gofer for the local Brooklyn mob, which has its headquarters in a taxi garage right across the street from his house. In a movie famous for violence that arrives instantly, without warning, the most shocking surprise comes when Henry is slapped by his father for missing school. He had to “take a few beatings” at home because of his teenage career choice, Henry remembers, but it was worth it. Violence is like a drumbeat under every scene.
Henry’s sells stolen cigarettes out of car trunks, torches a car lot, has enough money at 21 to tip lavishly. In the most famous shot in the movie, he takes his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to the Copacabana nightclub. There’s a line in front, but he escorts her across the street, down stairs and service corridors, through the kitchen area, and out into the showroom just as their table is being placed right in front of the stage. This unbroken shot, which lasts 184 seconds, is not simply a cameraman’s stunt, but an inspired way to show how the whole world seems to unfold effortlessly before young Henry Hill. Total class!!
There is another fantastic shot, as Henry introduces us to his fellow gangsters. Henry leads the camera through a crowded club, calling out names as the characters nod to the camera or speak to Henry. Sometimes the camera seems to follow Henry, but at other times it seems to represent his point of view, sometimes he’s talking to them, sometimes to us. This strategy implicates us in the action. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, did not get one of the film’s six Oscar nominations, but was a key collaborator. Following Scorsese’s signature style, he almost never allows his camera to be still; it is always moving, if only a little, and a moving camera makes us not passive observers but active voyeurs.
The screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi and Scorsese is based on Pileggi’s book about Hill, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. It is equally based, probably, on Scorsese’s own memories of Little Italy. It shows a mob family headed by Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), who never talks on the phone, dislikes group conversations, disapproves of drugs (because the sentences are too high), and sounds like a parish priest when he orders Henry to return home to his wife. That doesn't mean he has to dump his mistress; all the guys seem to have both a wife and a mistress, who are plied with stolen goods of astonishing tastelessness.
'GoodFellas' is unusual in giving good screen time to the women, who are usually unseen in gangster movies. Karen Hill narrates her own side of the story, confessing that she was attracted to Henry’s clout and fame; after she tells Henry the guy across the street tried to hit on her, Henry pistol-whips him and then gives her the gun to hide. She tells us: “I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I got to admit the truth. It turned me on.” It is reasonable to suggest that 'The Sopranos' finds its origin in the narrations in 'GoodFellas', especially Karen’s.
Underlying the violence is a story of economic ambition. Henry and Karen come from backgrounds that could not easily lead to Cadillacs, vacations in Vegas and fur coats, and she justifies what he has to do to pay for the lifestyle: “None of it seemed like crimes. It was more like Henry was enterprising and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while the other guys were sitting on their asses waiting for handouts.”
The story follows Henry’s movement up into the mob and then down into prison sentences and ultimate betrayal. At first the mob seems like an opening-up of his life, but later, after he starts selling drugs, there is a claustrophobic closing-in. The camera style in the earlier scenes celebrates his power and influence with expansive ease. At the end, in a frantic sequence concentrated in a single day, the style becomes hurried and choppy as he races frantically around the neighborhood on family and criminal missions while a helicopter always seems to hover overhead. This is filmmaking!!
What Scorsese does above all else is share his enthusiasm for the material. The film has the headlong momentum of a storyteller who knows he has a good one to share. Scorsese’s camera caresses these guys, pays attention to the shines on their shoes and the cut of their clothes. And when they're planning the famous Lufthansa robbery, he has them whispering together in a tight three-shot that has their heads leaning low and close with the thrill of their own audacity. You can see how much fun it is for them to steal.
The film’s method is to interrupt dialogue with violence. Sometimes there are false alarms, as in Pesci’s famous restaurant scene where Tommy wants to know what Henry meant when he said he was “funny”. Other moments well up suddenly out of the very mob culture: The way Tommy shoots the kid in the foot, and later murders him. The way kidding-around in a bar leads to a man being savagely beaten. The way the violence penetrates the daily lives of the characters is always insisted on. Tommy, Henry and Jimmy, with a body in their trunk, stop at Tommy’s mother’s house to get a knife, and she insists they sit down at 3 a.m. for a meal.
Scorsese seems so much in command of his gift in this film. It was defeated for the best picture Oscar by 'Dances with Wolves'. It explains crime’s appeal for a hungry young man who has learned from childhood beatings not to hate power, but to envy it. When Henry Hill talks to us at the opening of the film, he sounds like a kid in love: “To me, it meant being somebody in a neighbourhood that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else. I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.”
A fantastic movie that stands up to multiple viewings
So says Henry Hill in the opening moments of Martin Scorsese’s 'GoodFellas', a movie about the tradecraft and culture of organized crime in New York. That he narrates his own story, and is later joined by his wife, narrating hers, this crucial to the movie’s success. This is not an outsider’s view, but a point of view movie based on nostalgia for the lifestyle. “They were blue-collar guys” Hill’s wife explains. “The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners.” Their power was intoxicating. “If we wanted something, we just took it", Henry says. “If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again".
At the end of the film, Henry (Ray Liotta) still misses the old days. His money is gone, most of his friends are dead, and his best friend was preparing to kill him, but after he finds safety in the federal witness protection program, he still complains. “We were treated like movie stars with muscle", he remembers. “Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else".
The rewards of unearned privilege are at the heart of 'GoodFellas'. There’s an early scene introducing Henry’s partner Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), and he enters the shot in a sort of glowing modesty; his body language says, “no applause, please”. Henry’s other partner is Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who makes the mistake of over-exercising his clout instead of letting it go without saying. In one of the great buildups and payoffs in movie history, he believes he’s going to become a “made” man, realises his mistake too late, and says “Oh, no” before being shot in the head. He never learned to relax and enjoy his privileges. He always had to push things.
The early scenes of 'GoodFellas' show young Henry Hill as a gofer for the local Brooklyn mob, which has its headquarters in a taxi garage right across the street from his house. In a movie famous for violence that arrives instantly, without warning, the most shocking surprise comes when Henry is slapped by his father for missing school. He had to “take a few beatings” at home because of his teenage career choice, Henry remembers, but it was worth it. Violence is like a drumbeat under every scene.
Henry’s sells stolen cigarettes out of car trunks, torches a car lot, has enough money at 21 to tip lavishly. In the most famous shot in the movie, he takes his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to the Copacabana nightclub. There’s a line in front, but he escorts her across the street, down stairs and service corridors, through the kitchen area, and out into the showroom just as their table is being placed right in front of the stage. This unbroken shot, which lasts 184 seconds, is not simply a cameraman’s stunt, but an inspired way to show how the whole world seems to unfold effortlessly before young Henry Hill. Total class!!
There is another fantastic shot, as Henry introduces us to his fellow gangsters. Henry leads the camera through a crowded club, calling out names as the characters nod to the camera or speak to Henry. Sometimes the camera seems to follow Henry, but at other times it seems to represent his point of view, sometimes he’s talking to them, sometimes to us. This strategy implicates us in the action. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, did not get one of the film’s six Oscar nominations, but was a key collaborator. Following Scorsese’s signature style, he almost never allows his camera to be still; it is always moving, if only a little, and a moving camera makes us not passive observers but active voyeurs.
The screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi and Scorsese is based on Pileggi’s book about Hill, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. It is equally based, probably, on Scorsese’s own memories of Little Italy. It shows a mob family headed by Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), who never talks on the phone, dislikes group conversations, disapproves of drugs (because the sentences are too high), and sounds like a parish priest when he orders Henry to return home to his wife. That doesn't mean he has to dump his mistress; all the guys seem to have both a wife and a mistress, who are plied with stolen goods of astonishing tastelessness.
'GoodFellas' is unusual in giving good screen time to the women, who are usually unseen in gangster movies. Karen Hill narrates her own side of the story, confessing that she was attracted to Henry’s clout and fame; after she tells Henry the guy across the street tried to hit on her, Henry pistol-whips him and then gives her the gun to hide. She tells us: “I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I got to admit the truth. It turned me on.” It is reasonable to suggest that 'The Sopranos' finds its origin in the narrations in 'GoodFellas', especially Karen’s.
Underlying the violence is a story of economic ambition. Henry and Karen come from backgrounds that could not easily lead to Cadillacs, vacations in Vegas and fur coats, and she justifies what he has to do to pay for the lifestyle: “None of it seemed like crimes. It was more like Henry was enterprising and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while the other guys were sitting on their asses waiting for handouts.”
The story follows Henry’s movement up into the mob and then down into prison sentences and ultimate betrayal. At first the mob seems like an opening-up of his life, but later, after he starts selling drugs, there is a claustrophobic closing-in. The camera style in the earlier scenes celebrates his power and influence with expansive ease. At the end, in a frantic sequence concentrated in a single day, the style becomes hurried and choppy as he races frantically around the neighborhood on family and criminal missions while a helicopter always seems to hover overhead. This is filmmaking!!
What Scorsese does above all else is share his enthusiasm for the material. The film has the headlong momentum of a storyteller who knows he has a good one to share. Scorsese’s camera caresses these guys, pays attention to the shines on their shoes and the cut of their clothes. And when they're planning the famous Lufthansa robbery, he has them whispering together in a tight three-shot that has their heads leaning low and close with the thrill of their own audacity. You can see how much fun it is for them to steal.
The film’s method is to interrupt dialogue with violence. Sometimes there are false alarms, as in Pesci’s famous restaurant scene where Tommy wants to know what Henry meant when he said he was “funny”. Other moments well up suddenly out of the very mob culture: The way Tommy shoots the kid in the foot, and later murders him. The way kidding-around in a bar leads to a man being savagely beaten. The way the violence penetrates the daily lives of the characters is always insisted on. Tommy, Henry and Jimmy, with a body in their trunk, stop at Tommy’s mother’s house to get a knife, and she insists they sit down at 3 a.m. for a meal.
Scorsese seems so much in command of his gift in this film. It was defeated for the best picture Oscar by 'Dances with Wolves'. It explains crime’s appeal for a hungry young man who has learned from childhood beatings not to hate power, but to envy it. When Henry Hill talks to us at the opening of the film, he sounds like a kid in love: “To me, it meant being somebody in a neighbourhood that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else. I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.”
A fantastic movie that stands up to multiple viewings
Monday, 9 June 2014
Movie Review - Robocop (2013)
The movie begins with what it believes constitutes some kind of wit: A television program of the near-future called "The Novak Element" in which a loud-mouth opinion-mongering host—is he right-wing? is he left-wing? the movie won't really make that clear, the character is played by Samuel L. Jackson—expresses grievances over the fact that law-enforcement robots developed by "Omnicorp" are now being used in every country in the world but America. To demonstrate how egregious this is, Novak shows his remote camera crew in what appears to be U.S. occupied Tehran, guarded by robot drones that keep it safe as suicide bombers run rampant in the streets. This depiction of a "future" Iran is either remarkably crass, or remarkably ignorant, or some combination of both (I'm thinking it's the third option), but it's entirely emblematic of where the movie's head is at.
For the rest of the picture, the script (by Joshua Zetumer, although the screenwriters of the 1987 original are also credited) feeds the audience little bits of what it presumes to be social commentary and/or political satire, and cast members such as Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman are sufficiently skilled to almost sell these sops as insights, but ultimately it doesn't wash. This "Robocop" is the sentimental story of a Good Cop transformed into an Emotionless Robotic Killing Machine but whose Ultimately Human Spirit Triumphs to Enact Justice and Heal A Family. So yeah, it's kind of like every other 15 rated action movie of our time, except, you know, the Emotional Robotic Killing Machine part is something this potential franchise owns.
Director José Padilha stages and shoots the smash-bang action with what some call chaos-cinema chops. The set pieces are bountiful, and the better ones involve weasely Jackie Earle Haley as a robot tech who's not too thrilled that his perfect machines are going to be replaced, if evil Omnicorp has its way, by humanity-tainted cyborgs, the first of which is our title character (played by Swedish-born "The Killing" star Joel Kinnaman, who evinces both professionalism and height). But Padilha, here directing his first English-language feature, doesn't really have a flair for dialogue. I noticed this most pointedly near the end of the movie, when one character said in a panicked voice "We have a problem—Alex is violating protocol," and then maybe three minutes later, in the same panicked voice, the same character says "We have a problem—Alex is violating protocol." Maybe there was a slight variation in the "we have a problem" part, but we definitely got the point that Alex (the first name of the movie's title character, in case you haven't guessed) was violating protocol.
All that being said, I enjoyed the movie. Anything Gary Oldman is in I love. Plenty of action. The "disengage your brain type of movie".
Robocop - Movie Trailer
For the rest of the picture, the script (by Joshua Zetumer, although the screenwriters of the 1987 original are also credited) feeds the audience little bits of what it presumes to be social commentary and/or political satire, and cast members such as Michael Keaton and Gary Oldman are sufficiently skilled to almost sell these sops as insights, but ultimately it doesn't wash. This "Robocop" is the sentimental story of a Good Cop transformed into an Emotionless Robotic Killing Machine but whose Ultimately Human Spirit Triumphs to Enact Justice and Heal A Family. So yeah, it's kind of like every other 15 rated action movie of our time, except, you know, the Emotional Robotic Killing Machine part is something this potential franchise owns.
Director José Padilha stages and shoots the smash-bang action with what some call chaos-cinema chops. The set pieces are bountiful, and the better ones involve weasely Jackie Earle Haley as a robot tech who's not too thrilled that his perfect machines are going to be replaced, if evil Omnicorp has its way, by humanity-tainted cyborgs, the first of which is our title character (played by Swedish-born "The Killing" star Joel Kinnaman, who evinces both professionalism and height). But Padilha, here directing his first English-language feature, doesn't really have a flair for dialogue. I noticed this most pointedly near the end of the movie, when one character said in a panicked voice "We have a problem—Alex is violating protocol," and then maybe three minutes later, in the same panicked voice, the same character says "We have a problem—Alex is violating protocol." Maybe there was a slight variation in the "we have a problem" part, but we definitely got the point that Alex (the first name of the movie's title character, in case you haven't guessed) was violating protocol.
All that being said, I enjoyed the movie. Anything Gary Oldman is in I love. Plenty of action. The "disengage your brain type of movie".
Robocop - Movie Trailer
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