My first oil painting

This is my oil painting of our Westie, Eddie, which I did a few weeks ago. I’ve framed it and put it on the wall. I still haven’t signed it yet. I think maybe I’m a bit like George Lucas never quite being convinced something is finished. This photograph is one from my phone, I’ll try to replace it with a better one taken with my proper camera when I can.

It was the first piece of artwork that I’ve done in almost eight years now. Eight years since putting pencil to paper, brush to paint, etc. , which is an unforgivable length of time, really. When I was a kid growing up, the only other person in my family who loved drawing and had much talent was one of Dad’s younger sisters, my Aunt Lydia, and she never carried on with it or developed it. She didn’t have much chance, a girl growing up in a working-class family getting married and raising kids, real life and all that, and I always thought that was a little sad, but look at me, I’ve repeated that myself.

Naturally I wondered what kind of mess I would make of it after such a long time, but it seemed to come out pretty well, all things considered. Part of that ‘all things considered’ is that its also my first painting in oils, something I always wanted to try someday. To that end, several years ago my parents bought me a box of oil painting equipment – a set of paints, brushes, thinners, palette knife etc-  but I never got around to it, which I always felt guilty about. Losing Dad last year only made me feel worse about it, but at least I’ve gotten to painting again at last. This one’s for you Dad. Thanks for the paints, they come good in the end.

So anyway, I’m intending to keep it up, this oil painting lark, even if it does stink out the back room (there’s a reason why people have sheds/buildings at the bottom of the garden for this stuff). Time as usual is the biggest issue (isn’t it always, for all of us?).  I always figured I’d never get bored when I someday retire because of all the paintings I want to do, books I have yet to read etc, but there’s no time like the present. If the last few years have taught us anything, its that we shouldn’t take our tomorrows for granted. So my back room is three days my work-from-home office and the weekend my art studio (looks like my blogging is from my old laptop in the kitchen, I kid you not).

I think my next painting will be something different, a landscape painting in oils, inspired by some old holiday photographs from Scotland that I took over the years. There’s a few of Glen Affric that look the likeliest candidates (Claire wants a canvas of a Scottish landscape over the mantleplace to remind her of past holidays) and I’m also keen to do a coastal scene, there’s some nice photographs from Durness that look ideal for that.  I’ve never done a landscape before and certainly never a coastal scene with surf etc. so likely lots of experimenting coming up. We’ll see how all that turns out- give me a month or two to get a few weekends together and we’ll see what kind of mess I can conjure up.

An Avatar Paradox

Here’s what I can’t quite work out regards James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of the Water. Visually, its quite astonishing, no doubt.  The level of work involved in the technology, realising it onscreen, the water simulation, the underwater motion capture, as well as the thought and attention given to all of the film’s simply gargantuan art direction, all the environments, character and creature designs, costumes, props, future-military hardware, it cannot be denied. Its phenomenal worldbuilding. We’re so used to big, spectacular and (largely) photorealistic visual effects now that we can get quite blasé about it, and sometimes its good to step back and just appreciate the immense work and cost involved.  How far film has come and where it might yet go.

But how frustrating that for all this attention to detail and hard work, the story itself doesn’t get anything like the same attention, no matter how much Cameron may crow about scripting four movies at once. Its clear that, just like with the original Avatar, Cameron is  trying to build a mythology here, and I don’t quite mind all the liberal borrowing and inspiration from other sources – its nothing George Lucas himself didn’t do, after all- but really, its so stupendously lazy and ill-reasoned such a lot of the time. I could give the first film a pass, but second time around, when Cameron should be making his narratives and myth-building deeper, more reasoned and complex, Cameron’s instead just keeping things depressingly silly and simple. All humans are bad, all native Pandorans are noble, honest and strong. We don’t see any humans objecting to the invasion or destruction of Pandora, or questioning the brutal methods of their military, and likewise there seems no shades of grey regards the Na’vi, so even his protagonists are woefully underwritten and one-dimensional. Cameron clearly isn’t interested in Terran politics, or perhaps wondering how colonies on the moon or Mars might impact things, or showing perhaps how the starving millions on Earth are so desperate to live they just don’t care who humanity tramples on?

Its all just black and white, just the broadest strokes. Most of the narrative arcs are telegraphed right from the start (some repeated ad nauseum, like one of Jake’s kids always ignoring his orders- you can tell that won’t end well). As for just swapping one hilarious McGuffin for another- Unobtanium (I still can’t quite believe he had the nerve for that) now seems to have been suddenly forgotten, replaced by some space-whale brain juice that, get this, seems to grant immortality for humans, naturally giving humanity an all-new excuse to behave like a race of total bastards.

So how come so much is so silly while the visuals just soar in ways someone like Kubrick could only dream of? Imagine Kubrick with Cameron’s toybox…

The Blockhouse is beyond grim

The Blockhouse, Directed by Clive Rees, 1973, 93 mins, Talking Pictures TV

Oh boy- this was so unrelentingly depressing that ‘brutal’ doesn’t come close.  Based upon one of the most distressing (albeit obscure) true stories of WWII,  while the film actually tries to soften the blow regards how it ends (even though that is horrible enough), the truth is actually even worse.  I can imagine the film’s producers panicking,  adding text that bookends the film to assure viewers of some kind of positive ending, as if to make the film worth enduring. Sadly, the film isn’t really worthy of that ordeal, and the actual truth (damn you, Internet, I shouldn’t have looked) just makes everything all the more horrifying in retrospect.

The film begins with several prisoners of war out doing manual labour for their German captors when the area is struck by Naval and aerial fire: it is D-Day, and the prisoners run for their lives amongst the chaos of the Allied attack. They seek safety in a bunker but it is struck by shelling; forced to retreat further inside the shelter, the entrance collapses behind them, trapping them deep under the surface. Exploring deeper into the unlit catacombs they discover stores and provisions for a garrison – wines, cans of food; after living as POWs their initial spirits are high, having escaped captivity and enjoying a veritable feast.  But they do not appreciate their true predicament. Content they will not immediately starve or die of thirst, they wait for rescue. They wait. Days pass. Then weeks…

Starring Peter Sellers, Charles Aznavour,  Jeremy Kemp,  and Peter Vaughan, who are all very good (Kemp is quite excellent) one would expect this film to be more famous (or infamous) than it is. I’d only even heard of this film when it was released on Blu-ray last year by Indicator (how typical of them, such an obscure film!), and became intrigued by some reviews. I suspect that the Blu-ray would be better quality than the print being shown on Talking Pictures, but then  again, with a low-budget film like this, who knows, maybe not. In some moments the audio was quite unintelligible, and the unrelenting darkness of the film (lit at best by candlelight, sometimes plunging into total dark) made it tricky to tell exactly what was happening.

The film is flawed- the pacing doesn’t really work, so even though its quite a short film it drags pretty badly, and the passage of time during the narrative is hard to distinguish. Films these days tend to lean towards exposition, explaining plot via dialogue and while I’d normally commend a film for failing to do this (hey, have more faith in viewers!) unfortunately in this case it doesn’t really work.  Sadly for this film the script and/or direction isn’t as sharp as it needs to be. It almost feels like there are scenes missing- as if not all the script could be filmed due to production/finance issues. An unfinished film?  Maybe it is. It was possibly because of its flawed nature that although it was made in 1973, it only got an extremely limited release some years later (so limited it was never actually released in British cinemas).

But for all that, its still worth a watch, if one can manage the almost unique demands the film makes: patience, for one thing, obviously, considering its pacing issues, but other than that, its a tough one to recommend. Its so damn true to its source, Intellectually fascinating but so emotionally cold and unrelenting. Its not a great film; more a daunting curio, especially considering the pedigree of its cast. It borders on being an arthouse horror film, and this is possibly the best way to approach it.

…and alas (for me); Jaws 3

Jaws 3, Directed by Joe Alves, 1983, 99 mins, Amazon Prime

Crikey this was really, really, terrible- actually one of the worst films I have ever had the misfortune to have seen. I can’t think of any redeeming features at all. The fact that its theatrical release was titled Jaws 3-D and that its an early-‘eighties film is likely sufficient to sum up most of what’s bad about this film, watching it now in 2D. Before James Cameron’s take on the format with Avatar, 3D films were most always pretty poor exploitation flicks, full of cheap tricks of distracting stereoscopic shots that added nothing to the plots, and Jaws 3 is absolutely no exception. There also  seems to be focus problems everywhere, particularly on the edges of shots and in the middle-distance (this isn’t a pretty film). The film also features some of the worst optical effects I’ve seen this side of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, with some shots (including a lengthy ‘beauty shot’ of a submarine moving past the camera  ruined by horrendous bluescreen bleed-through) that are simply unacceptable. The fact that such shots were included in a ‘finished’ film displays shocking contempt for the audience.  But if terrible 3D converted to 2D with broken optical effects work wasn’t bad enough, the story, the acting, the direction are all woefully sub-par too.

The direction is appalling, its no surprise this was Alves’ only stab at directing a film, its just a pity this blights his otherwise fine record as an art director and production designer on films like Close Encounters, Escape From New York and of course the original Jaws,  There’s no evidence here that Alves had any talent for working with actors or encouraging anything near a good performance, but one wonders if it was down to Alves or more simply that the actors weren’t interested. Maybe they knew what kind of movie they were in and realised it wasn’t worth any effort. I’ve never seen Dennis Quaid so bad – quite bizarre to think this came out the same year that he appeared in Phillip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, and Lea Thompson is so wooden in what I think is her first film that its a wonder it wasn’t her last.

As for that script (Richard Matheson had a hand in this, incredibly), it features the Brody boys again, now grown up (sort-of). Quaid plays the eldest, Mike, now working in SeaWorld (younger brother Sean pays him a visit early on and decides to stick around once he’s seen bikini-clad Lea Thompson is one of the parks water skiers). In what curiously becomes almost a precursor of Jurassic Park, visitors at the amusement park become terrorised by a Great White shark when the shark’s offspring is captured by the park and dies before it can become an exhibit.  Momma shark ain’t happy. The film eventually degenerates into less a Jaws knock-off and more an Irwin Allen disaster movie, visitors trapped in an underwater tunnel taking on water after its head-butted by a giant shark. Utterly preposterous. We’re a long, long way from Spielberg’s classic original.

I’m told that the fourth Jaws film (Jaws: the Revenge) is even worse. That’s a pretty scary thought…

Jaws 2, finally.

Jaws 2, 1978, Directed by Jeannot Szwarc, 115 mins, Amazon Prime

Somehow, I’d never seen this film before. Well, it turns out that I’d actually seen the ending before- it must have been a television broadcast that I’d walked into many years ago and afterwards forgotten (probably seeing that ending just made me more convinced to never watch the actual film). So as the film drew to its close I had this weirdly surprising moment of déjà vu when I thought, hang on….

Jaws of course is one of my very favourite films, and the first time I saw it, back in 1976 here in the UK, remains the scariest cinematic experience of my life. Whenever I have re-watched the film over the years, I always feel like that ten-year old in the darkened cinema being scared witless (Jaws gave me nightmares for weeks). So in hindsight its perhaps surprising I didn’t get someone to take me to see the second film, but really, the truth is by the time the sequel arrived a few years later, I’d moved onto other things, like Star Wars and Spielberg’s own Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Kids are such a capricious lot.

The one pleasure of Jaws 2 (other than its very good John Williams score) is seeing so many returning faces of the original film’s cast, and its wonderful island setting, again, in another film.  It feels a little unreal; on the one hand, its something of a treat, and rather magical- especially now, all these years later in 2023.  So when I started watching it, I thought, hey, this is fun. Its actually pretty neat seeing Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton again. With the familiar 1970s-era Williams music playing, that familiar setting, so many known faces, there’s definitely a certain pleasure to it, but of course, it doesn’t last.

I’m soon reminded of why we used to be so suspicious of movie sequels back in the day, when they were rarer (franchises not such a common occurrence as now) and more routinely cheap cash-ins. No wonder people were so amazed that Godfather Part 2 proved to be so good; filmgoers were more used to the diminishing returns of Planet of the Apes films etc. and Jaws 2 follows that trend; this one is a much shallower (sic) affair, much less intense. Characters are more one-dimensional, there’s less tension in the script, the shark attacks clumsy and predictable. The dark intensity of the original is long gone, and with it any impact. Of course the biggest headache for the film is just the sheer contrivance of the same characters, the same island, getting subjected to another great white shark just a few years later, and repeating so many of the first film’s arcs. Chief Brody investigates strange events and fears there is a shark, and again, no-one believes him (when Murray Hamilton’s mayor prevaricates over acting on Brody’s warnings I almost shook my fist at the screen; doesn’t this dolt remember what happened last time?). I’ve read that Scheider didn’t want anything to do with the film and only did it to get out of a contract with Universal; at least that explains why he was in it. The other guys, well, it was a pay cheque, few if any of them had illustrious movie careers to protect (but how curious to see Keith Gordon in his first film role, yikes).

I’ve also never seen the other Jaws sequels. Maybe I should dip my toes in the water and give them a go, while they are on Prime…

Ballets of extreme violence

Two of the films that I’ve most recently seen are John Wick 4 and Extraction 2, and I thought I’d just comment on how daft both films were regards the levels of violence in them. Action films are quickly bordering on self-parody these days… well, okay, its pretty clear that maybe we’re past that point now. I’ve always enjoyed the John Wick films, the first was like a breath of fresh air at the time, but successive films in the franchise have raised the stakes re: scale and violence to levels that are just, well, almost comical. There is little in John Wick 4 that seems at all realistic and its clear that it isn’t intended to be, its like an in-joke that fans are expected to go along with (like avoiding getting shot by raising the lapel of your bullet-proof jacket) but with this fourth film its just going a wee bit too far; the disengagement threatened by all the silliness risks boredom at best, ridicule at worst. John Wick can get shot, fall from a high building, bounce off metal grating, hit by a speeding car, stabbed etc and seemingly shrug it all off. Maybe realism such as showing him brain-damaged, badly scarred or paralysed isn’t in the interest of furthering the narrative of an action movie, but, you know, some kind of consequences would be nice.  I’m not even sure death can stop John Wick at this point (not when there’s money to be made from John Wick 5, at any rate).

But it was kind of funny thinking that John Wick 4 had taken things to the limit, and then watching Extraction 2 a few nights later just bludgeoning that limit senseless. This film is utter madness. Sure its kind of fun all the same, the stunts and action choreography remain impressive, but my goodness it made John Wick 4 look positively sanitized, like some tv edit. Extraction 2 starts with a dead hero (or so near to death he can surely hear the harps of the Angels) and within a few weeks/months he’s kicking ass like he wouldn’t be phased by a T-800. Evidently the writers were given a problem (‘the heroes dead but we need another movie!’) and didn’t intend to go the prequel route.

I’m reminded of the original  Robocop, and a battered Nancy Allen observing “I’m a mess!” and Robocop wryly telling her “They’ll fix you. They fix everything” but the black satire of that commentary seems lost on writers now.  What I’m wondering is, how far does this all go? Where does it end? Have we becomes so accustomed/bored by the antics of superheroes in DC/Marvel films that we think ordinary folks can get up to the same, like being thrown through walls or hit by cars etc and just shrug it away, straight into the next stunt? Action cinema is fast losing the drama, the tension, the cost, of just simply being human and realistically surviving against the odds.

Its possibly a sad indictment of our times that no-one is screaming in the papers about screen violence in the way some politicians got their knickers in a twist regards Rambo, say, in 1986. I’m not in favour of any censorship but I’ve read that Wick violently kills 140 people in a multitude of imaginative ways in John Wick 4 (and I actually thought it had been far more than that). I suppose there is an argument that as the violence becomes so cartoony and over the top, it reduces its intensity and not showing realistic consequences makes it more… palatable? I don’t know, maybe I’m getting old and soft but I suspect there is an argument to be had, that that’s actually more dangerous?

Halloween Ends

Halloween Ends, 2022, 111 mins

One has to admire Jamie Lee Curtis’ earnestness, her conviction for the cause, because she turned up for this thing and even seemed to make an effort. The cynic in me thinks its likely something to do with the pay cheque, but the optimist in me would prefer to think its her loyalty to those die-hard fans of this horror franchise for whom Halloween will always be something immensely important, even if it ends in, well, Halloween Ends. Its just so sad that over the years it has degenerated into such a tired parody of itself, but after thirteen films, is this really any surprise?

After the excretable Halloween Kills, I doubted I’d be able to stomach another of these, but my curiosity regards how it all gets wrapped up and actually, well, ends, finally got the better of me.  Curiously enough, the film actually starts in fairly interesting, actually quite promising fashion, but it can’t hold its nerve, and rapidly starts to fall apart – predictably its when our old buddy Michael Myers is awkwardly brought back to wreak bloody mindless carnage yet again, only to eventually fall foul of good old Laurie Strode in a finale that borders on Police Squad! comedy. Its almost as if the question of how do you kill Michael Myers and how do you make sure he stays dead? is taken to such a crazy level of preposterousness that it becomes the stuff of utter farce. How anyone onscreen maintains a straight face is bloody astonishing, really.

Can I risk a spoiler here, or is that even a thing when the title of this film is Halloween Ends? I can’t imagine anyone might really care, but skip to the next paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers regards this daft ending.  Still here? Okay. So anyway, Laurie and Myers have a finale battle in the kitchen, and Myers suffers an almost Christ-like death by numerous cuts that is so extreme it becomes less a horror movie and more  a comedy sketch and then, when its all over, I didn’t know whether I should groan in despair or titter when the town parades Myer’s corpse on the roof of a police car down the street and he is shoved into an industrial shredder so we -and all the town- can see him shredded to bits in gory detail . The only way they bring this guy back is to have his vengeful spirit pull a Killer Bob from Twin Peaks and possess people from beyond the grave -and hey, at this point that wouldn’t surprise me. Well, either that or another reboot….

Its just a little sad… well, actually its VERY sad, when I think of Halloween back in 1978, its impact, its low-budget simplicity, its lack of self-awareness, it just being a good horror movie…  Who could have imagined thirteen movies spawning from that little movie?  Or that young Jamie Lee Curtis, so bloody good in that film, still being around for the final film, all these 44 years later?  Or indeed how unlikely it is, even now after this terrible film, that its really the end of this franchise. The studios and the rights owners… they won’t be able to stop, will they?

Brotherhood of the Film Collector

When I was at work in the office a few days ago, we were chatting about what we’d been doing/watching etc, and I mentioned that I’d recently rewatched Brotherhood of the Wolf, to which I was greeted with puzzled faces. Seemed nobody in the office had ever heard of it, never mind ever seen the film. Well, a French-language film, a period piece set in the 18th-Century, originally released in 2001, back in the days of DVDs and VHS…  of course they’d never even heard of it. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, but it nonetheless alarmed me; the film always seemed something of a big deal to me- I imported a Canadian DVD of it, loved the film, loved the soundtrack, bought the CD, naturally- and I always looked out for a good Blu-ray release over the years, which never really happened until this 4K UHD from Studio Canal came out as if from nowhere.

My surprise at my colleague’s blank faces was tempered by an often recurring concern that I must seem a bit odd to them, what with all these ‘old’ films I watch and mention. There’s a few in the team who weren’t even born when I got married, never mind when I went to the cinema as a teenager, so I often get made to feel even older than I already do when talking about seeing Jaws in the cinema back in 1976 or Star Wars in 1978. On the one hand, movies simply aren’t that important to most of them, and while they might go to the multiplex to see the latest blockbuster, they have no interest at all in ever watching anything that doesn’t show up on Netflix,  will probably never have a Blu-ray player in their homes if it isn’t a games console (and certainly never watch films on it).

Its utterly anathemic to any of us who love films, but for many people, films are clearly disposable pieces of entertainment to be watched and then be largely forgotten, something to pass the time and nothing more. I wonder if they are being influenced by how simple and one-dimensional so many blockbusters are now: films largely made with a global audience in mind, so often no longer culturally focused on any particular ethnicity or religion, preferring to be blank slates easily sold worldwide, deliberately written with less dialogue requiring translation (everybody understands explosions and stunts/spectacle). As the films all become more like that, they tend to blur from one to another, and sequels ad nauseum probably only reinforces that familiarity. So is that eventually reflected by peoples atitudes to those films, and film in general? Its all just popcorn to be consumed?

Sure, a few of my older colleagues -albeit they are all at least twenty years younger than I, so its all pretty relative- will join me in praising films that they themselves grew up with, like Predator or Robocop, even if they were too young to see them at the cinema and only caught up with them on video. The details behind the films, names like Paul Verhoeven, Douglas Trumbull, that I might sometimes mention, just aren’t important though. And why would they be? The guys might remember the films with affection and sometimes rewatch them if they are on a streaming service, but actually buying films or investigating how and why they were made or by who… that’s simply not a thing.

These days, I feel that for many Out There in That Strange World Beyond This Blog it becomes increasingly odd for someone to collect films on disc. I might find some kind of reassurance in YouTube videos of other collectors and their reviews/comments about recent releases, but out in the Real World, I feel increasingly marginalised by a changing landscape. I am so curious that these days it could be argued that films are more available than ever, through streamers like Amazon or Netflix or, say, on YouTube, certainly more than they ever were back in my day, growing up with just three network channels and no home video. Looking back, I can see that I seized upon the opportunities of VHS and DVD to see films when I wanted to (itself a wonder!), and see films I otherwise never could have. That’s progressed through Blu-ray and now 4K UHD, but I often remark upon my profound curiosity that in the face of so much now being available, most people just aren’t interested in watching that content.  Its as if their rarity back in my day made the films more important, special.

I’ve mentioned this here before, but thinking along these lines my mind often turns to that issue of TV Times back when Jaws had its first network screening here in the UK, and the film was on that week’s cover. It was such a Big Deal. Can you imagine a tv guide having a film on its cover today? Its clearly not that world anymore.

I used to pore over film magazines back in the 1970s/1980s, stuff like Starburst, Fantastic Films, Cinefantastique etc, reading about how films were made, the stories behind them, the people who made them. The Internet largely made those magazines redundant (I’d actually argue the opposite, but clearly it led to people no longer buying them, so hey, they disappeared). I remember very clearly reading a retrospective in Starburst about Forbidden Planet, a film I’d seen on television a few times growing up,  and becoming fascinated by how it was made back in the mid-1950s, the technical limitations of the time, how the film reflected atitudes of the time. A later double-issue of Cinefantastique went into even greater detail, and nobody is doing that kind of thing anymore. I think I was lucky, growing up when I did. Back in my day, it was fascinating to read about building and filming miniatures, creating matte paintings on glass… hard to get excited by articles or books about workstations and CG programs. Funny how films have become so impressive and sophisticated visually but so boring to read about. I used to get excited seeing pictures of film footage of the Millennium Falcon miniature in front of a bluescreen being filmed. My goodness- I’m currently as much of a mind to dig out that ‘Making of Star Wars‘ documentary that’s buried amongst the extras of a Star Wars Blu-ray boxset as I am watch a ‘new’ film on Netflix. I am really getting old.