Demob Happy

Love and death in a cold climate 5/10 In a recent bitch about Danny Boyle’s ever more frenetic visual style and expressing general irritation at the hyperactive mode of storytelling employed on his recent hit ‘Slumdog Millioanaire‘, my learned colleague David H. Schleicher posted the comment: “give me properly framed sustained panning long shots on [...]

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Cuba libra 8/10 I was going to start this post with a summary put down of biopics and it’s many crimes against good filmmaking. From pointless impersonation (‘Ali’), to line-towing, officially sanctioned dross (‘Ray’), to films of such massive pretension that you suspect the filmmaker to be covertly, deliberately assassinating the credibility of its subject [...]

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The stuff of nightmares 9/10 Jung Chang’s autobiographical story of three generations of women living through China’s tumultuous 20th century is fascinating and terrifying. Given that it is a subjective account of the key events in modern Chinese history, ‘Wild Swans‘ provides a compelling and informative narrative that brings to life complex socio-historic transformations in [...]

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If it ain’t broke… 6/10 The trend of the director’s cut has long become a dubious exercise in profit-making. Hilariously, a quick Amazon search of ‘director’s cut’ reveals extended edits of such dizzying filmmaking classics as Troy, The Chronicles of Riddick, Daredevil and Welcome to the Jungle! And for the few good examples that I [...]

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