I'm writing about a film that I
didn’t finish watching. I think of the utter and complete tosh that I've
managed to sit through in my life and realise just how special this film, Cowboys
and Aliens, is. I mean, I've finished Spiderman 3, Catwoman and Batman and
Robin. The latter was so bad that the director, Joel Schumacher apologised for the film – yet I've watched that film many times.
The only other film that I abandoned midway was You’ve Got
Mail in 1998. My uncle took me, my sisters and our cousins to see that film. I
was so mystified by how bad that film was that I walked out and spent half an
hour in the arcade.
But Cowboys and Aliens is different, this Jon Favreau
joint should have been a good, if nothing else, fun film.
…
I sat and watched the
first hour of this film and not once did I smile. For a film called Cowboys and
Aliens not to rise one smirk from my face suggests that there is a fundamental
flaw in its DNA.
The warning signs were there from the very beginning –
Daniel Craig scowled far too much and Mr Ford played the grumpy old man too
well for my liking. I found myself getting angry at Daniel Craig for playing
his character just as he would Bond and that isn’t what I signed up to watch.
But
for me it was Sam Rockwell’s character which indexed the very reason why this
film didn’t work. I assume that Rockwell’s Doc was supposed to be the comedy
relief of this piece and that relief never materialised. I felt for Rockwell in
this film because given the right material he is a fantastic actor, but you get
the impression that he and the film itself was just weighed down by a need to
be taken seriously.
…
The blame for the faults of this film has to be put on the
door of the director. Jon Favreau should have known better – why on earth he
thought this film should be a straight and serious movie is beyond me. The
title and premise is Cowboys and Aliens for crying out loud.
You honestly wouldn’t be able to tell that this film is
related to Iron Man, Elf, Zathura and (little gem of a film) Made. You couldn’t even tell that it was
a second cousin of Swingers.
This film should have been light, fast moving and silly –
but it plods along at an excruciatingly slow pace. This film should have been bogged down with stupid jokes, not tired western-film cliches.
…
At the end of the day it comes down to me losing my
patience, something that I rarely do when it comes to films.
The hour that I
watched of this film didn’t intrigue me or give me sufficient reason to hang on
beside my better judgement – many films have made me make that poor decision.
Not only is Cowboys and Aliens a bad film (I can handle and
enjoy bad films), it is a disappointing film that feels very lazy and that is
something I cannot stomach.
As an aside, this film made me appreciate the much panned Wild
Wild West. WWW and its stars knew that the films was ridiculous.
Ridiculous is fun to watch. Ridiculousness is an ingredient that this film sorely needed.
This lovely little piece was written by my friend Jess Everett. One of the few sad things about being a new father is the fact that I haven't had many opportunities to go to the cinema - first world problems and all that, right? But there is something special about being in an enclosed space with smelly strangers, as Jess explains below.
As an aside, Jess has one of the best speaking voices known to man.Just saying.
...
Attending the movies is a communal
experience and some movies were just meant to be seen in the theatre. Much like
music aficionados who claim the only way to really know a band is to see them
live, or sports fans who travel continents not only for the joy of cheering on
their team but also to experience being part of the crowd, when you go to a
theatre and watch a movie you become part of something.
Inspiring films move us more when watched
with others. The dread in a horror movie becomes more real as the person behind
you gasps and screams. Jokes are more enjoyable when others are laughing with
you. And epic moments are more memorable when you high-five the stranger next
you (this actually happened to me during the first screening of Attack of The
Clones. Apparently the gentleman really enjoyed a good Yoda fight).
Movies are a defining moment for
generations. Anyone who experienced the first Star Wars trilogy in the theatre
has an immediate connection. Growing up and watching every Harry Potter movie,
waiting in anticipation for the next Lord of the Rings, and knowing every song
lyric to The Lion King are moments that connect us all.
We all remember our first movie. The thrill
of watching the screen light up and seeing larger than imaginable characters
flood your view. The goosebumps that leave you feeling nervous and excited, and
the joy of having your very own popcorn and sneaking ninja cuddles*with your
movie date.
Although cinemas have been pricing
themselves out of relevancy for years, I will continue to make the sacrifice as
long as I can afford it. Why? Because for me there is nothing like a night out
at the movies.
*The phrase “ninja cuddle” and its adorable relevance to movie theatre watching is borrowed
from the film loving @8bitbatman
Secondly and more
positively, Idlewild was important because it was the first time I heard
Janelle Monae. She was the silver lining on that album. We both heard the death
of one of black music’s greatest and most innovative bands and the birth of
fearless young artist.
Fast forward to 2010 and
Janelle Monae showed that I was right to take notice. She released an album
which left my jaw on the floor. Although I am 26 years old, I feel like an old
bastard and regularly complain about the quality of music today – especially
black music. The ArchAndroid was all my complaints answered. It was ambitious,
expansive and it took risks jovially – sometimes it missed the mark
spectacularly (Make the bus, for example) but most of the time it hit highs
that left me in goosebumps (Oh, maker).
The ArchAndroid is a
modern day classic. I genuinely thought Monae did a Nas, she made her Illmatic
and would be hard pressed to repeat the trick.
…
With Electric Lady,
Janelle has proved how special she is. Monae has grown remarkably as an artist
and it shines blindly through on this album. Electric lady doesn’t manically
bounce from genre to genre like its predecessor, this is more of a traditional
R’n’B album.
When I say R’n’B, I am not talking about her contemporaries such
as Beyonce or Rihanna, I am talking the R’n’B of Prince, Stevie, Michael and
Aretha and Marvin – that is who you must compare Janelle to after hearing this
album. I can give no greater compliment than that.
Suite four is where all
the fireworks are stored. It tells you a lot about Janelle’s confidence when
she starts the album off with His Royal Purpleness. What makes ‘Give em what
they love’ spectacular is not only the appearance of Prince (by the way, this
is the Controversy, Dirty Mind, Sexy MF Prince and not the jut found religion
Prince), but the fact that Monae isn’t an afterthought once the song has
finished. She stands toe to toe with the great Purple one and this prologues the
greatness in the album.
In fact, every guest
appearance on this album manage to sprinkle a little bit of magic to the
proceedings and threaten to overshadow the headliner – but every single time
Monae manages to rise above them. When Badu strolls silkily onto the funky-ass
Q.U.E.E.N like a panther, Monae has a fierce rhyme reminiscent of Chuck D and
KRS-1 to bat her off with. Janelle response to Solange’s irresistible 90’s TLC
vide with a grin-inducing serenading rap-verse that makes you ache for Left
Eye.
When Primetime, featuring
Mugel, rolls around you start to appreciate the change in Janelle Monae’s
attitude and you suddenly realise a great flaw in her previous album. This
Monae is much more open than the one listeners met on The ArchAndoid. “Tonight, I don’t want to be mysterious with
you”, she says on what can only be described as a bedroom jam, a song which
would have never appeared on ArchAndoid. She no longer strictly sticks to her
alter-ego Cindi when she is performing, in Primetime you feel like you are
getting your first glimpse of Janelle.
…
Although Suite four may
have all the headliners, the best of the album is found on Suite five. This is
the Suite which propels this from just being a great album to being a jaw
dropping one. Suite five shows you that Janelle wanted achieve more on this
album other than catch people’s ear and show them how many different genre’s
she can pull off.
If you close your eyes,
you can see a young Michael Jackson shuffling around and singing It’s Code with
his brothers backing him up. Ghetto
Woman could happily sit in the middle of Stevie Wonder’s classic Innervisions
and not be out of place at all. This isn’t to say that Janelle Monae is trying
to imitate these artist, you don’t get that impression at all – you feel like
she understands what made the greats great and she taps into that and makes
their style her own.
In this regard, Ghetto
Woman is an extraordinary extraordinary song. She updates a sound which is
timeless and familiar and entirely owned by a legendary artist and claims it as
her own (I would kill for Stevie to cover this song). This is a worthy
successor to Living in the City and after Kelindo does his usual fantastic
guitar solo, Monae’s Andre 3000 like rap lifts this song into a stratosphere
that I thought modern day R’n’B would never reach. I would love to know what
Wonder thinks of this song.
Victory is my personal favourite.
Again, this song shows how much more willing Monae is to open up to her
audience. She feels vulnerable on this song, something that I never felt on her
previous album. It is a song for when everything in your life has gone wrong
and you need to find something, anything, to make you get up off the floor
before the count. Again, there are shades of the greats on this song – Aretha
and Ms Hill come to mind – but this song is totally Janelle’s own.
…
By the time the closer
comes to your ears with its 80s synth chords, you feel exhausted. It is a
different exhaustion to the one you feel at the end of ArchAndoid – here you
succinct impression is that Janelle has given you all that she can emotionally
as well as talent wise.
Some listeners will be
disappointed with this album for not being The ArchAndoid and not being as
experimental – I can understand that but I don’t feel that way at all. I have
someone I can champion after the untimely death of Amy Winehouse. Janelle could
be the woman to take black music out of its oversexaulised, boring and risk
adverse state that it has been in for years.
I am not naïve enough to
believe that this album will be a commercial success. I do think that people
will come to this album and this artist slowly throughout the coming years and
will see her for the innovator and trail blazer she is.
Janelle Monae is the real
queen of the new school and at 27 I don’t think she will let go of that crown
anytime soon.
One of the memories that still haunts me is when my family
were moving my father into a hospice. My dad was barely recognisable at the
time of the move. Gone was the strong and proud African I once knew and in his
place a silent, frail and delicate man holding on to the last flickers of life.
Just when we were about to leave him in what I can still
remember to be a pleasant but eerily place, my dad began to cry. I swear,
nothing has made me sadder or more helpless in my life – not even the day when
my mum rang to tell me and my sisters he had gone. I transferred all of my
frustrations and anger to my mother – how could she leave him in such a place?
Why couldn’t he be at home? Why couldn’t he die with his family around him?
I had this anger weighing me down after my dad passed until my mum started
telling me stories about the life she and my father had - the life I knew nothing
about. How they met, how they courted in the strange way Africans do, the
trials they faced once they were in the UK. I saw my mum trying to keep our
grieving family together with every fibre of her being and began to realise
what a remarkable woman she actually is.
I write all this because the film Amour reminded me of my
parents and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s Georges made me realise what a child I was
for blaming my mum during the latter stages of my dad’s life. Being a carer is
a ridiculously difficult job.
...
Amour is a film about an elderly couple, Georges and Emmanuelle
Riva’s Anne. The latter has a stroke and it is up to Georges to look after his
wife – especially after she makes him promise never to hospitalise her. The
film chronicles the couple’s lives as Anne health worsens.
...
Amour is a truly extraordinary film – for the first time
in a long time I can say that I haven’t seen or experienced a film like this. It’s
a harrowing film but extremely and utterly beautiful at the same time.
All my life I have been obsessed with Disney and the
interpretation of love that they have helped to instil in the films of today. Watching
Amour I realised the film was answering a question that I never realised needed
answering – what happens after the happily-ever-after?
Watching Georges look after his wife is the purest and
most striking representation of love that I have ever seen in a film. Usually
cinema will give outlandish scenario’s where characters prove their love by
committing criminal acts but, fuck, would the Prince push Cinderella to the
toilet, lifted her on it, wiped her when she was done and pull her pants up? And Aladdin do the same everyday while watching Jasmin's soul slowly ebb away?
...
Amour is a very difficult film to watch – so difficult
that Mrs Bear couldn’t bear to finish it. “Why is this enjoyable? Why would you
want to carry on watching?” All fair questions to ask. Why would
you want to watch an elderly woman struggling to read a book? Why would you
want to watch an elderly man struggling to feed his wife? You wouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop watching.
Every credit in the world has to go to the two main
actors in this film. I never once felt like I was watching a film, rather that
I was watching the intimate and very private moments of two people that loved
each other deeply. Not much is said about the two main character’s history but
somehow you seem to understand what they mean to each other and what they have
gone through.
...
I only saw a fraction of the stuff my mother did while dad was ill and never had the chance to glance at the really grim activities.
This film made me understand a little better what my mother had to endure and,
frankly, it made me proud that my mother held out sending him to a hospice for
as long as she did. I now understand how it can be overwhelming to care for someone who has been your
life for most of your life.
Happily-ever-after doesn’t end happily – Amour made me
realise this. It always ends in sadness, one way or another. The only solace
that I take from this new piece of information is that I want someone who will
nurse me and love me, like Georges loved Anne, if times get pitch dark.
Eddie Murphy is a legend. That seems like a controversial
statement to make nowadays, but it is true. He is probably one of the most talented men in
Hollywood and has films on his CV which are among some of my most beloved of
all time. But something tragic happened to his career.
Speak to any soul that knows an ounce about black
(African-American) comedy and they will let you know that Murphy sits upon a
tall pedestal. Comedians speak of Eddie Murphy with the same reverence they
give to Bill Cosby or, better yet, Richard Pryor – Murphy is truly of that
stature.
But think of Murphy now and I’d bet a lot of money that the
embarrassment that is Norbit or Scary Spice comes to your mind – not Raw or Delirious
or Boomerang. That is a tragedy.
…
The reason why Eddie still deserves to be held in such high
regard is simply because of what he achieved. He blazed the trail that allowed
other great comedians to walk the path to to superstardom. I still haven’t
forgotten the skinny (er) and goofy (er) Chappelle with his terrible hair cut
telling terrible “you’re so fat” jokes in the Nutty Professor.
I personally haven’t seen any of his earlier Saturday Night
Live Stuff, I only know Eddie Murphy through his film work and it wasn’t until
Beverly Hills Cop that I really started to take notice. It may sound like an
over-exaggeration but Axel Foley felt like the first black superhero to
me. I saw him do things and talk to
(white) people in a way that I had never seen a ‘brother’ do before. And
importantly he was funny, extremely funny but as well as that, he was strong –
this felt important.
…
And then there was Coming to America – a film which is so
important to me that it would take more than just a blog to clarify. As an
African kid in a stranger’s land, I could absolutely identify with Prince
Akeem. The film left me in awe of the world it created to a point where I
stupidly asked my father whether such a kingdom where beautiful servants woke
you up in such a wonderful way existed.
Coming to America is to me a classic and displays Murphy’s
talent in the brightest of light. His many disguises add to the comedy and wonder
of the film rather than distract from it like in his later exploits. The Randy
Watson scene (damn it, the whole church scene) is a slice of joy. Clarence the
Barber still raises a smile out of me.
Murphy also puts in a much understated performance as Prince
Akeem. He plays the royal as a charismatic and dignified young man who is
childlike in his excitement at being in an environment different to his
extravagant home life. Like all great
leading men you believe in the premise of the story because of Eddie Murphy’s
performance.
…
I believe it all went wrong when Eddie made a conscious
effort to stop making ‘edgy’ films and cater to the family audience instead. As
much as I love(d) the Nutty Professor, I believe that film was the start of the
ebbing out of Murphy’s creative talent.
Unlike Coming to America, Eddie Murphy’s prosthetics didn’t
add much to The Nutty Professor – in
fact they enabled him to tell lazy fat jokes and lean on ill thought out toilet
humour.
I have absolutely no issue with the film Shrek, I actually
think Eddie Murphy is great in it but the following inferior sequels are lazy
(there’s that word again). I am not naive enough to say that Eddie was wrong to
make those films – they generated a donkey dung (sorry) full of money but I can’t
help feeling that Murphy could have done more with his time. He could have
pushed himself.
The majority of films that he has had top billing in after
the Nutty Professor have been tragic (there’s that word again) save from a few
surprises. Eddie was actually ok in Tower Heist but this could be me giving him
a petty pass.
…
I still believe that there is genius still left within Eddie
Murphy. That genius has shown flashes of returning (Dreamgirls) but I am hoping
that it makes a permanent reappearance in his future projects. Is the Beverly
Hills Cop television show the right platform for his fight back? I don’t know,
I have my doubts. I also shuddered when I read that Murphy was writing the
Nutty Professor 3.
All I can hope for is for Eddie Murphy to be bold again – to
be brave. Forget the family films, forget the fat suits – find that Eddie who
wanted to push black comedy further than it has ever been before. There is a
reason why Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jamie Fox and Kevin Hart consider Eddie
Murphy to be god like and hopefully the miraculous performances are not in his
past.
