My 600th Blog Post

Okay... so that’s 600 posts. Partially because I don’t have much time to do anything else and, partially because I already wrote a painfully honest 3 year anniversary post last week... I figured I’d use this opportunity to go through my blog a bit and pick out eleven of my favourite posts. The ones I’m most proud of so far, for one reason or another. Hope you like. Click on the links to go straight to the reviews...

Attack Of The Crab Monsters - June 2012
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/attack-of-crab-monsters.html
This is one of my favourite reviews because it was such a great and hugely incompetent movie to discover. I had a whale of a time watching it and laughing at the unintentionally funny parts (which were pretty much the whole darn movie) and I also had a blast responding in kind when I was reviewing it.

Delicacy (La Delicatesse) - April 2012
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/delicacy-la-delicatesse.html
This one because it’s a) not the kind of movie I usually write about... b) treats love like it’s for grown ups (which it is) instead of derogatising it and turning it into “just” a series of funny incidents and c) because it seemed to have a good response and, like some of my other posts, a little bit of a life after the initial posting.

Doc Savage: The Desert Demons - January 2012
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/doc-savage-desert-demons.html
I picked out this review, not because of my actual verdict on the novel (which was the least rave review I’ve given to any of Will Murray’s brilliant Doc Savage continuations) but because it’s one of a few early snapshots of myself as a kid captured in this blog which gives the people who I personally know, and who might read my blog, a little more background into me as a human being.

My 300th Blog Post - Faces Of Caroline Munro - August 2011
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/my-300th-blog-post.html
This will probably always be my favourite post (and also one of my most popular in terms of hits) because the great Caroline Munro herself mentioned how much she liked it at the time on her website. When I presented her with a larger, canvas print of it when she was doing a signing, some months later, she seemed thrilled to bits and it put a smile on my face for a very long time.

Haunting Of Winchester House 3D - February 2011
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/rifling-secrets-of-winchester.html
My most scathing review of one of the worst movies I’ve ever had the mispleasure to watch. This is really not “bad in a good way” either... but it is probably the most “fun poking” I’ve done on this blog.

Black Belt Jones - August 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/please-fasten-your-black-belts.html
I liked this one... partially because it was Jim Kelly doing his thing but mostly because I really liked the little Jim Kelly with nunchucks picture I cam up with to illustrate it.

The Final Programme - August 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/lives-and-times-of-jerry-cornelius.html
Because it’s a film I've absolutely loved since I was a teenager (even though most people haven’t even heard of it) and because one of my writing heroes, Michael Moorcock, was at the screening I reviewed. So it’s a nice little virtual memento for me to look back on.

My 100th Blog post - July 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/my-100th-blog-click-to-embiggen.html
This comic strip on the birth of my blog and how much writing and promoting it meant to me was also a sly tribute to the, then recently, deceased Harvey Pekar. It meant a lot to me at the time and, well, who doesn’t want to see a picture of me naked? :-)

Claire Dolan - June 2010 
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/katrin-cartlidge-is-claire-dolan.html
Because it reminded me how poorly off we are after the tragic, early death of Katrin Cartlidge and made me cry.

Fellini Vs Fosse: When Cabiria Meets Charity - June 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/fellini-vs-fosse-when-cabiria-meets.html
This comparison piece between my favourite Fellini movie Nights Of Cabiria and the American musical remake, Sweet Charity, is something I was quite proud of at the time. I’ll always prefer the Fellini but I actually like both takes on the story. It just seemed like a good idea to pit them against each other in an exploration of their intent at the time.

Giallo Fever - June 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/giallo-fever.html
My defence of the Italian giallo movies as an artform in their own right, and not something to be merely “derogatised” as something reminiscent of the trashy American teenage slasher movies which were informed and influenced by them, is something I wish more reviewers of exploitation movies would read. Art is art... don’t try to defend it with wishy-washy excuses... defend it because it’s a more than valid genre in its own right!

And that’s 600 posts done. I hope you enjoyed my little trip down my recent memory lane and maybe even clicked on one or two of the links to see what an earth I was going on about. Either way, thanks very much for reading. More reviews to follow soon and it’s back to business as usual.

Career Girls

Leigh Huggers

Career Girls

UK/France 1997

Directed by Mike Leigh

Film 4 Region 2

The last time I watched Mike Leigh’s Career Girls was on its initial cinema run back in 1997. I remember thinking it was a fine film but, for some reason, I never caught back up with it on any home video format up until now. I wanted to rewatch this again on DVD, not because I admire Mike Leigh so much (Naked is one of the great achievements of 20th Century cinema as far as I’m concerned) but because I wanted to see another performance by the late, great Katrin Cartlidge, who died tragically in her early forties due to complications from pneumonia (if memory serves).

Looking at Career Girls now, I was surprised to find myself casting a more critical eye on the production than I had when I initially viewed it in a cinema and, startlingly, it’s not necessarily a criticism of Leigh (although I’m sure it probably should be) but a criticism of how the general performances are handled by the actors involved. Before delving into that train of thought, however, I should probably point out that, whatever you think of the performances in this one, these are all absolutely gobsmacking actors and actresses who really know how to apply their craft. That being said, I think I had a problem with a certain part of their performances but, you know, that may be just my problem and not theirs. They should know what they’re trying to achieve, after all.

The film starts off with a girl called Annie (played by Lynda Steadman) returning to London to stay with her old University friend Hannah (played by Cartlidge) and the film examines their relationship by frequently flicking back to their university days and cross cutting these with how the girls are now. There are layers of emotional heartache and poignancy in spades in this movie, which are enhanced by the juxtaposition of the two time zones layered against each other and, well, I was moved by this but also think this is possibly one of Mike Leigh’s most devastatingly depressing and bleak movies... even though the girls are able to relate and articulate their attitudes and feelings now more than they ever could in the “old days”.

The problems for me mainly lay in the way all the characters are acting when they are students. They are maybe the oddest and most eccentric bunch of students I have ever seen in my life. Beyond quirky. My student days were never like this and, believe me, I knew some odd characters. It just seems to me that all the younger characters (with the exception of one who seems to have autistic traits) are all wired to the gills all the time and have more nervous ticks and twitches than you could possibly believe... especially when you see these characters as older versions of themselves and all these little characteristics are almost all gone. This is not subtle stuff and I’m currently living in a modern cinematic landscape where every action movie characterisation is a dumbed down, hyper exaggeration of what it could be in real life merely as a short cut... but I wouldn’t expect this kind of attitude in a Mike Leigh film. Maybe I’m just missing the intent here a bit but it seems like everyone has just drunk too much coffee in the student sequences.

The other problem I have is with the plausibility of the story itself and it’s something which Leigh (and the actors if I’m not much mistaken about the way a “script” is developed on a Mike Leigh film) has had to address by commenting on it a few times in the film itself... and each time it’s addressed it feels to me less and less plausible and more like the film is trying to justify itself. Some of the wonderful and, at times, quite harrowing dramatic moments of Career Girls come when, in the space of a day, the characters accidentally bump into various people they knew from “way back” who happen to be either living in London or just “down for the day” and coincidentally happen to be walking by the same bits of London where our two main protagonists are walking on their travels. Seriously, I know it’s good for the drama to have this happening but the level of plausibility drops every time it happens. If the timescale of the modern scenes had been a month or two then maybe, just maybe, I would have bought it... but a day or two is something much different and I just can’t, personally, suspend my disbelief to the degree that Leigh requires me to do so to not question why this is happening. And it doesn’t help mend matters by having the characters freak out about the chain of coincidences as meetings happen... it just beggars belief I’m afraid.

But, having said all that, I would have to say that for me, other than those two issues, Career Girls is another in an amazing series of films that Leigh has given the world. You will be both charmed and moved by all the characters in this movie... and you’ll possibly weep at and with them, just as I was doing the other day when I watched it again. This is a very strong film and will leave you thinking yourself how people’s lives and connections to each other are a kind of alchemistic magic that we should embrace more fully, or at least take time to stop and ponder in our everyday lives. We all have people who we really click with and this film is a dark celebration of that kind of camaraderie and understanding. If you haven’t seen this one then you really ought to add it to your “to watch” list. It’s a flawed but thoroughly entertaining piece of work from one of my countries leading creative geniuses. Give it a go.

Katrin Cartlidge is Claire Dolan

Claire Dolan 1998 US

Directed by Lodge Kerrigan

Artificial Eye DVD Region 2

Call me a cold bugger but it’s not that often that “movie star” deaths leave any emotional mark on me. I love seeing the people up there on the screen bring the light alive with their presence, but I really don’t know them so when various deaths are announced... I might feel a little shocked for a couple of minutes but usually I’ll just register it in my brain as a little “factoid”... useful for movie quizzes and bus shelter conversations and there’s really not much of a response in me at an emotional level. Would I pass Deckard’s empathy test with this stuff? Probably not but I can fake it as well as a Nexus 6. I am who I am.

Over the last decade, however... two actresses died who passed well before their time and their work always hit such a chord in me that their passing still causes me some major sadness in my heart when I think of them (Brittany Murphy almost made it three... but I’m not nearly as worked up over her). One of these two was the late, great Adrienne Shelley. Her murder sucker-punched me so much that I never quite got to see the last film she starred in and directed... Waitress (maybe it’s time I got around to seeing that one now).

The other actress who died in 2002 at the age of 41 due to complications rising from pneumonia and septicaemia was Katrin Cartlidge. I hadn’t seen a lot of her work but she was absolutely electric in Mike Leigh’s films, especially as the head-over-heels-in-love-with-David-Thewlis flatmate in Naked. She was suitably and typically gobsmacking as Jack the Ripper victim Dark Annie Chapman opposite Johnny Depp and Heather Graham in the Hughes’ Brother’s From Hell and when she put on a posh accent for her take as an out-in-the-field news reporter in Danis Tanovic’s No Man’s Land, another facet of her absolutely flawless acting talent was revealed. She also worked with Lars Von Trier in Breaking the Waves but that is another one I have yet to see.

I’ve been wanting to see her starring turn in Claire Dolan for a while... I think this is probably the only movie where she is the actual star and most of the footage on screen is of her. Finally saw it last night and I was not disappointed.

I’ve not seen any other films directed by Lodge Kerrigan but I’m going to have to take a look at some of his other stuff on the strength of this amazing film. Absolutely stunning framing throughout. Lots of geometrically composed shots using strong verticals and horizontals across the screen including some absolutely stunning shots of buildings which are very reminiscent of some of the building shots that Hitchcock used to use (see if you can watch the opening titles of this movie without being reminded of North By Northwest). I saw Cameron Mitchell talk about Mario Bava once on an interview. He stressed that when Bava used to shoot a film, every frame of the film was like a perfectly composed still photograph. I think the same could possibly be said of this director’s work... certainly in this movie anyway.

Claire Dolan stars Katrin Cartlidge as an Irish prostitute in the US trying to get out from under her pimp (Colm Meaney in an absolutely chilling performance that definitely puts paid to his Star Trek image) after the death of her mother. She tries to do this by earning as much as she can while getting her new “boyfriend” pregnant. Men are treated as interchangeable, sexist, mysogynistic pigs in this movie apart from Vincent D’Onofrio who she chooses to father her child (another wonderful actor who will always be remembered by me for his portrayal of Conan creator Robert E. Howard opposite Rene Zellwegger in The Whole Wide World).

This is not a dialogue heavy film. This is a film where the camera broods on the contemplation of Katrin Cartlidge as she immerses herself in the role of Claire Dolan. This is absolutely fantastic work. The dark, sombre movie is further enhanced by a moody, understated score by Simon Fisher Turner and Ahrin Mishan.

The movie culminates in a completely ambiguous ending which leaves you in a lot of doubts as to whether you should be feeling good or bad. It takes two shots/scenes - one of Claire Dolan on a positive note... but this is juxtaposed with another scene with her pimp some time after. Rubbing these two sequences together makes you ponder the things which have gone before. This is no easy resolution.

When I watch this actress at work I am always reminded of the tragedy of her death at the age of 41. So I’ll leave you now a reminder of her in her own words, with a quote from an interview a couple of years before she died...

“"I actually love getting older. I hated my 20s; I couldn't wait to be 30. I'm really looking forward to turning 40, if I get there. And not just because things are more successful now, but because I think the older you get, the more you find life interesting apart from your own problems. So roll on. I can't wait."