A couple of years ago, Doctor Who Magazine ran a contest in which you could win the chance to commentate on an episode of Survival. Foolishly, I decided to enter with a less than glowing review of Black Orchid. Needless to say, it didn't win, for one of the possible reasons. A) Peter Davison et al came up with a more scathing review on the accompanying DVD commentary; B) 200 words isn't enough for me to write everything I want, since there's more waffle in my writing than the entire output of Bird's Eye; and C) It was rubbish anyway.
Another potential reason is that in theory, Black Orchid shouldn't warrant such harsh criticism. It's a mid-season diversion with a down time, holiday feel – Doctor and co travel back to the Roaring 20s to play cricket, eat food and dance at the swanky Cranleigh abode. That's all.
But then having seen the thing again,...
Another potential reason is that in theory, Black Orchid shouldn't warrant such harsh criticism. It's a mid-season diversion with a down time, holiday feel – Doctor and co travel back to the Roaring 20s to play cricket, eat food and dance at the swanky Cranleigh abode. That's all.
But then having seen the thing again,...
- 12/27/2010
- Shadowlocked
People being terribly nice to each other. What is that again? In today's day and age, where people go around bitching behind other people's backs, slagging other people off, bankrupting, happy slapping, swearing etc, people being terribly nice to each other is about as alien as a horde of Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Autons and Plasmatons.
It is however, a concept rife on the tranquil planet of Traken. People seem happy. They are invited to each others' weddings. They may drink too much, but hey, it's a celebration.
Unfortunately, as soon as a statue called Melkur lands out of nowhere in the Grove, that's when things start to go wrong. Trust a certain emaciated Time Lord to put a spanner in the works, he's the sort of person who would gatecrash a birthday party, eat all the cake, break the DJ's records, drunkenly snog the girls and then scuttle off again,...
It is however, a concept rife on the tranquil planet of Traken. People seem happy. They are invited to each others' weddings. They may drink too much, but hey, it's a celebration.
Unfortunately, as soon as a statue called Melkur lands out of nowhere in the Grove, that's when things start to go wrong. Trust a certain emaciated Time Lord to put a spanner in the works, he's the sort of person who would gatecrash a birthday party, eat all the cake, break the DJ's records, drunkenly snog the girls and then scuttle off again,...
- 12/13/2010
- Shadowlocked
CANNES -- With the precision of a sharp, cold surgical knife, Martha Fiennes dissects her characters in Chromophobia. Save for one sentimental subplot, the writer-director clearly doesn't care for these people very much. Nor is there much reason for viewers to care, either. The strangely chilly melodrama-cum-satire made an odd choice for the closing night film at the Festival de Cannes. Its strong cast probably ensures North American distributor interest, but this misanthropic take on neurotics in the British professional class will certainly challenge marketers.
The married couple around whom subplots swirl is fast-rising attorney Marcus Aylesbury (Damian Lewis), the son of a distinguished judge (Ian Holm), and his anxious wife Iona (Kristen Scott Thomas). Having been made a partner in a powerful London law firm, Marcus finds himself drawn into an illegal scheme by his boss. Meanwhile, Iona, who suffers from low self-esteem and sexual frustration, deals with her dissatisfactions through a shrink and shopping sprees for clothes and modern art. Her new worry is that their hyperactive, small son might be spending too much time with his gay godfather, Stephen (Ralph Fiennes).
Marcus runs into an old mate from his youthful days in a rock band, Trent Masters (Ben Chaplin), who is now a tabloid journalist. When Marcus drunkenly confides in Trent about his firm's corrupt dealings, Trent can't help investigate a story that could make him a media star.
Meanwhile, in a maudlin and seemingly unrelated story that only connects -- and unconvincingly so -- to the main one later in the movie, ex-cop-turned-social worker Colin (Rhys Ifans) becomes emotionally involved the lives of his only seeming case, that of a seriously ill prostitute (Penelope Cruz) and her beloved small daughter.
Much of what you need to know about the characters -- or, to be precise, about how Fiennes feels about them -- can be gleaned from the production design. Fiennes and her designer Tony Burrough give the married bourgeois couple a sleek, severely modern and ultimately soulless house. At times, when the camera glides down sterile hallways or peers at characters through walls of glass, you can almost feel the director mock her characters.
The judge and his wife occupy a country manor stuffed with the furnishings of satisfied privilege, while Stephen's townhouse brims with lovingly collected art fastidiously displayed. Only the character who inhabits scruffy digs, meaning the prostitute, does the director's attitude soften. Soften, unfortunately, to the point of sentimental mush.
The acting is crisp, but no one's plight in this turgid soap opera gets through to you. Having dissed her characters for more than half the movie, Fiennes cannot turn things around and ask an audience suddenly to sympathize with their predicaments.
Tech credits are certainly pro but insulate the film's characters behind the well-upholstered trappings of wealth and privilege. And what on earth does it mean for the credits to insist that the film's cinematographer, George Tiffin, provided "additional screenplay material?"
CHROMOPHOBIA
Tarak Ben Ammar presents a Rotholz Pictures production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Martha Fiennes
Additional screenplay material: George Tiffin
Producer: Tarak Ben Ammar, Ron Rotholz
Executive producers: Robert Bevan, Steve Christian, Charlie Savill, Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson
Director of photography: George Tiffin
Production designer: Tony Burrough
Music: Magnus Fiennes
Costumes: Michele Clapton
Editor: Tracy Granger
Cast:
Trent: Ben Chaplin
Gloria: Penelope Cruz
Marcus: Damian Lewis
Iona: Kristin Scott Thomas
Colin: Rhys Ifans
Edward: Ian Holm
Penelope: Harriet Walter
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 135 minutes...
The married couple around whom subplots swirl is fast-rising attorney Marcus Aylesbury (Damian Lewis), the son of a distinguished judge (Ian Holm), and his anxious wife Iona (Kristen Scott Thomas). Having been made a partner in a powerful London law firm, Marcus finds himself drawn into an illegal scheme by his boss. Meanwhile, Iona, who suffers from low self-esteem and sexual frustration, deals with her dissatisfactions through a shrink and shopping sprees for clothes and modern art. Her new worry is that their hyperactive, small son might be spending too much time with his gay godfather, Stephen (Ralph Fiennes).
Marcus runs into an old mate from his youthful days in a rock band, Trent Masters (Ben Chaplin), who is now a tabloid journalist. When Marcus drunkenly confides in Trent about his firm's corrupt dealings, Trent can't help investigate a story that could make him a media star.
Meanwhile, in a maudlin and seemingly unrelated story that only connects -- and unconvincingly so -- to the main one later in the movie, ex-cop-turned-social worker Colin (Rhys Ifans) becomes emotionally involved the lives of his only seeming case, that of a seriously ill prostitute (Penelope Cruz) and her beloved small daughter.
Much of what you need to know about the characters -- or, to be precise, about how Fiennes feels about them -- can be gleaned from the production design. Fiennes and her designer Tony Burrough give the married bourgeois couple a sleek, severely modern and ultimately soulless house. At times, when the camera glides down sterile hallways or peers at characters through walls of glass, you can almost feel the director mock her characters.
The judge and his wife occupy a country manor stuffed with the furnishings of satisfied privilege, while Stephen's townhouse brims with lovingly collected art fastidiously displayed. Only the character who inhabits scruffy digs, meaning the prostitute, does the director's attitude soften. Soften, unfortunately, to the point of sentimental mush.
The acting is crisp, but no one's plight in this turgid soap opera gets through to you. Having dissed her characters for more than half the movie, Fiennes cannot turn things around and ask an audience suddenly to sympathize with their predicaments.
Tech credits are certainly pro but insulate the film's characters behind the well-upholstered trappings of wealth and privilege. And what on earth does it mean for the credits to insist that the film's cinematographer, George Tiffin, provided "additional screenplay material?"
CHROMOPHOBIA
Tarak Ben Ammar presents a Rotholz Pictures production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Martha Fiennes
Additional screenplay material: George Tiffin
Producer: Tarak Ben Ammar, Ron Rotholz
Executive producers: Robert Bevan, Steve Christian, Charlie Savill, Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson
Director of photography: George Tiffin
Production designer: Tony Burrough
Music: Magnus Fiennes
Costumes: Michele Clapton
Editor: Tracy Granger
Cast:
Trent: Ben Chaplin
Gloria: Penelope Cruz
Marcus: Damian Lewis
Iona: Kristin Scott Thomas
Colin: Rhys Ifans
Edward: Ian Holm
Penelope: Harriet Walter
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 135 minutes...
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, where the heroism of firefighters became amply clear, a film such as Ladder 49 makes sense. The film is less of a drama than a tribute -- an ode, even -- to the spirit and tenacity of firefighters. Its makers hardly bother to explore the lives or motives behind their actions: The firemen are simply heroic, and the film is content to leave it at that.
Spread over more than a decade, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix as a dedicated fireman and John Travolta as his mentor/captain. With those two above the title, Ladder 49 is poised to post average numbers at the boxoffice, appealing more to men than women, obviously. Nevertheless, the film is unique among studio releases in its avoidance of anything smacking of conflict. The film relies entirely on fires to provide tension. Otherwise, this band of brothers hangs out at the station, engaging in pranks and dwelling in a world of familial harmony and brotherly love. In other words, it's woefully short on drama.
As hokey as it was, Backdraft, Ron Howard's 1991 tale of firefighting brothers, had a B-movie soul that permitted an interplay of jealousies and rivalries against the backdrop of horrific fires and derring-do. Ladder 49 mutes even a whisper of fear or animosity. Would any Hollywood film tackle a police department, the military or any other such organization of skilled fighters without a dose of verisimilitude? The makers of Ladder 49 insist that halos remain above its firemen/heroes, which is not the way to humanize them.
The story begins with a spectacular nighttime fire raging in a Baltimore warehouse. Fireman Jack Morrison (Phoenix), part of the search-and-rescue team, enters the building to look for victims trapped on the 12th floor. The team successfully rescues a man, but the floor beneath Jack collapses, hurling him deep into the smoldering caldron. Outside, Captain Mike Kennedy (Travolta) desperately strategizes to save his friend. The movie then flashes back and forth from this climatic sequence to trace Jack's life in the Baltimore Fire Department.
We learn that this particular engine company loves practical jokes, admires its sterling captain and shows up for all weddings, baptisms and birthday parties while always maintaining camaraderie. The courtship of John and his wife Linda (Jacinda Barrett) is treated with such decorum as to make James Stewart's wooing of Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life look downright racy.
This paradise on earth gets brutally interrupted, of course, by terrific fire sequences, which serve mostly to demonstrate the really bad things that can happen to firemen. Jack's first buddy, Dennis (Billy Burke), falls through a roof into a furnace. His next best buddy, Tommy (Morris Chestnut), gets blasted by scorching steam. Teaming with Lenny (Robert Patrick), Jack does win a heroism badge by rescuing a little girl.
Yet we get no sense of what's going on inside these heroes. How does it feel to save someone's life? Do they feel like gods? Do their egos ever get the better of them? Given the number of scenes set in an Irish tavern, are we to assume they drink to blunt the sorrows and fears?
Writer Lewis Colick reportedly spent days with firefighters, and director Jay Russell has a documentary background, which serve both men well in recording the routines and skills of their heroes. One gains an inkling of what such lives are about but not, unfortunately, what these characters are about.
Phoenix and Travolta do a fine job at portraying a mentorship that is really more of a friendship between men, who respect and admire one another without making a big deal out of it. The other actors make do with characters that lack dimension.
Cinematographer James L. Carter, visual effects supervisor Peter Donen and designer Tony Burrough perform extraordinary work in safely recreating the very dangerous-looking environments in which fireman often labor. William Ross provides a serviceable score, ranging from militaristic tones and sentimental asides to pulse-pounding beats.
LADDER 49
Buena Vista Pictures
Touchstone Pictures and Beacon Pictures present a Casey Silver production
Credits:
Director: Jay Russell
Screenwriter: Lewis Colick
Producer: Casey Silver
Executive producer: Armyan Bernstein, Marty Ewing
Director of photography: James L. Carter
Production designer: Tony Burrough
Music: William Ross
Costumes: Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
Editors: Bud Smith, Scott Smith. Cast: Jack Morrison: Joaquin Phoenix
Chief Kennedy: John Travolta
Linda: Jacinda Barrett
Lenny: Robert Patrick
Tommy: Morris Chestnut
Dennis: Billy Burke
Ray: Balthazar Getty
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time -- 114 minutes...
Spread over more than a decade, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix as a dedicated fireman and John Travolta as his mentor/captain. With those two above the title, Ladder 49 is poised to post average numbers at the boxoffice, appealing more to men than women, obviously. Nevertheless, the film is unique among studio releases in its avoidance of anything smacking of conflict. The film relies entirely on fires to provide tension. Otherwise, this band of brothers hangs out at the station, engaging in pranks and dwelling in a world of familial harmony and brotherly love. In other words, it's woefully short on drama.
As hokey as it was, Backdraft, Ron Howard's 1991 tale of firefighting brothers, had a B-movie soul that permitted an interplay of jealousies and rivalries against the backdrop of horrific fires and derring-do. Ladder 49 mutes even a whisper of fear or animosity. Would any Hollywood film tackle a police department, the military or any other such organization of skilled fighters without a dose of verisimilitude? The makers of Ladder 49 insist that halos remain above its firemen/heroes, which is not the way to humanize them.
The story begins with a spectacular nighttime fire raging in a Baltimore warehouse. Fireman Jack Morrison (Phoenix), part of the search-and-rescue team, enters the building to look for victims trapped on the 12th floor. The team successfully rescues a man, but the floor beneath Jack collapses, hurling him deep into the smoldering caldron. Outside, Captain Mike Kennedy (Travolta) desperately strategizes to save his friend. The movie then flashes back and forth from this climatic sequence to trace Jack's life in the Baltimore Fire Department.
We learn that this particular engine company loves practical jokes, admires its sterling captain and shows up for all weddings, baptisms and birthday parties while always maintaining camaraderie. The courtship of John and his wife Linda (Jacinda Barrett) is treated with such decorum as to make James Stewart's wooing of Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life look downright racy.
This paradise on earth gets brutally interrupted, of course, by terrific fire sequences, which serve mostly to demonstrate the really bad things that can happen to firemen. Jack's first buddy, Dennis (Billy Burke), falls through a roof into a furnace. His next best buddy, Tommy (Morris Chestnut), gets blasted by scorching steam. Teaming with Lenny (Robert Patrick), Jack does win a heroism badge by rescuing a little girl.
Yet we get no sense of what's going on inside these heroes. How does it feel to save someone's life? Do they feel like gods? Do their egos ever get the better of them? Given the number of scenes set in an Irish tavern, are we to assume they drink to blunt the sorrows and fears?
Writer Lewis Colick reportedly spent days with firefighters, and director Jay Russell has a documentary background, which serve both men well in recording the routines and skills of their heroes. One gains an inkling of what such lives are about but not, unfortunately, what these characters are about.
Phoenix and Travolta do a fine job at portraying a mentorship that is really more of a friendship between men, who respect and admire one another without making a big deal out of it. The other actors make do with characters that lack dimension.
Cinematographer James L. Carter, visual effects supervisor Peter Donen and designer Tony Burrough perform extraordinary work in safely recreating the very dangerous-looking environments in which fireman often labor. William Ross provides a serviceable score, ranging from militaristic tones and sentimental asides to pulse-pounding beats.
LADDER 49
Buena Vista Pictures
Touchstone Pictures and Beacon Pictures present a Casey Silver production
Credits:
Director: Jay Russell
Screenwriter: Lewis Colick
Producer: Casey Silver
Executive producer: Armyan Bernstein, Marty Ewing
Director of photography: James L. Carter
Production designer: Tony Burrough
Music: William Ross
Costumes: Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
Editors: Bud Smith, Scott Smith. Cast: Jack Morrison: Joaquin Phoenix
Chief Kennedy: John Travolta
Linda: Jacinda Barrett
Lenny: Robert Patrick
Tommy: Morris Chestnut
Dennis: Billy Burke
Ray: Balthazar Getty
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time -- 114 minutes...
- 10/14/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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