Filmism #2

A financially lean holiday season sees Art In Macro turn to the television for comfort. Later, a conversation about this turns into debate between friends. The debate?

NICOLAS CAGE IS/IS NOT THE WORST ACTOR EVER
Critical roundtable reconvenes

As there are so many people in the world, it is naive to think that any thought you have is entirely original: no matter how crass, wrongheaded, cruel or narcissistic it is, someone else thinks it too. Back at my parents, I am watching Face/Off, a mildly entertaining action film with a flimsy premise (though plenty high-octane thrills and spills), and Con Air, a mildly entertaining action film with a flimsy premise (though plenty high-octane thrills and spills). I am in awe.



Let us understand the concept of what £10-14m can buy in terms of the movie-making business. The best cameras, access to the most suitable locations, extravagant sets, rafts of extras, hundreds of cars to load with gelignite and set ablaze. The finest editor, cinematographer, crew, catering and a high-quality second unit for those boring reshoots and landscapes.

Alternatively, you can hire an actor who is routinely out-performed by his own haircut. Art In Macro reconvened the roundtable to investigate this modern phenomenon.

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MEET THE ROUNDTABLE

- MM is a civil servant in his late 30s.
- I don't know what RC does, but he's about the same age.
- JE is a music teacher in his mid-20s.
- DR is a producer in his 30s.
- CM is a CAD designer and drummer in his early 20s.
- LH is in her late teens and is a student.

RC: He really does have the worst face in history. Looks like somebody else is controlling it...and they've forgotten they are controlling it.

MM: [produces list of seven or eight films] To be honest, I think the above list would still be good films if he wasn't in them i.e. there's nothing particular about him that makes them good films and so someone else could've played his role.

RC: I'm sure Cage has a pair of creaking, ancient bellows powering his voice, he seems to go loud and then inaudible as some withered old hag pumps his next line out of him. I'd sooner watch my couch for and hour and a half.

DR: I don't mind him. He's a complex character as he can be brilliant but I think he's a bit like Michael Caine in the Seventies. When asked about Swarm, his killer-bee film, he admitted that it was shit but it also bought him a new house.

CM: I dont give a shit about how his acting rates overall. The films he is in are awesome and granted you know whats coming when you see his name and a few explosions underneath it... but that's not always a bad thing.

JE: National Treasure 2 has the single worst face ever pulled in a film. It's awful. It must last all of about 18 frames of film, but it was amazingly bad.

LH: I don't mind him.

JE: In all seriousness, I could talk for ten minutes to an audience about those 18 frames, seriously. Seriously. Seriously. It's that bad.

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If Art In Macro aims to prove anything, it is that a media that represents only one argument is not only doing a disservice. Sure, this writer thinks that Nic Cage is a horrorshow, a film cancer, a curse on motion picture - 26 consecutive stinkers attesting to this. But look at the gross of said stinkers. This guy is bankable for whatever inconceivable reason. He outright deserves his place in the pantheon of highest paid actors because his name is big money, so enough of your socialist suggestions of subjective worth - all that matters is the bacon, and how much of it you bring home! Hard-working Joe and Suzie Lunchpail flop their dollars down for the Nic Cage flick, not the new Bruno Ganz one!

A begrudging New Year salute to you, Nicolas Cage. You are not the worst actor ever. Heck, the way you made The Wicker Man into a comedy was Kaufman-esque.

Popology #2

Art In Macro gathers up some folk to take a look at the new Kings of Leon record.

'JOSHUA TREE DENIAL'
critical roundtable gears up

We know the drill by now. The template was put down by The Strokes and until we enter a new paradigm shall forever be so.

A young band of dubious provenance arrives on 'the scene'. Talk of their sound; simultaneously retrograde and yet the sound of the absolute now. 'Classic'. We are assured of their 'realness' despite the abstract/absurd nature of this concept.

The debut record (possibly after some impossibly hip limited EP or 7" is 'dropped') is released to vast critical aplomb - heck, even Robert Christgau likes it! It makes the top 100 albums ever despite having only been released four months prior in a traditionally lean spot in the year. A successful tour of the world's dumps and festivals and relax.

The second album dichotomy; more of the same or something different. History shows to err on the side of caution for sales and go for broke to be remembered fondly. It sells well and gets good reviews (critics don't like to think they were fooled, ever) but ultimately there's nothing to trumpet, especially when we have new feed coming in at the beginning of this cycle. Perhaps start to think about solo projects or a clothing line.

The third album tanks but you're still a live draw. Now you have the unenviable task of touring knowing you're pretty much creatively spent as a unit, playing these same chords every night despite the 'stripped-down' and 'mature' record you have inside. Even the groupies look kind of spent and redundant. Often, there is no fourth record, and if there is then it sells so poorly as to be the almost physical manifestation of one hand clapping.



This template works for so many bands; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Music, The Stills, Interpol and Franz Ferdinand to name a few. Enduring the process over the next year or so will be CSS, Glasvegas and Klaxons. So why have Kings of Leon, forged through the same processes, endured to see a zenith of popularity in the run up to album #4?

Art In Macro have a suspicion that Kings of Leon endured because people simply forgot to listen to them first time around, so their third album was essentially their first to many.



This writer was at a karaoke party and the above song ('The Bucket') came on at random for me to sing: it was pleasant enough without developing (at all) and easy enough to perform despite never having heard a note before. Like good pop songs, it had an enduring and non-annoying quality to it. I mentioned this to a couple of 'music fan' friends. "Oh, they're pretty good, they've changed a lot. It's not just 'Molly's Chambers' going ba-ba-na-na-na-na-na all the time. You should have a listen."

And listen Art In Macro did. And the experience was neither pleasant enough to purchase anything, not terrible enough to incite rage. Kings of Leon had done it! They had run the gauntlet and were now primed to make 'a statement'.

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MEET THE ROUNDTABLE
- ML is a singer in a rock and roll band and by day, he writes copy for his employers in the construction sector. He is 27.
- KD is a journalist on the local newspaper in her mid-20s.
- DG is a student and musician. He is 20.

ML: I found their stripped down hick rock they had on their earlier stuff really fucking patronising. That opening track, I think it was ‘Knocked Up’ - if you forgive the hamfisted lyrics, really shocked me. It’s like they’d found another couple of emotions. Or had stopped wearing sandals if you get my drift.

DG: The epic atmospheres that made Because Of The Times great have gone too far. The songs sound wet.

KD: I got a bit bored after about four songs to be honest, but then I do have musical ADHD.

ML: Where the delayed guitars on the last one sounded like a band branching out, they sound really fucking cynical on this. Take the single as a shining example. It’s like they wandered into a big room on their last album, metaphorically and literally, and have stayed there - wide eyed and complacent. Like The Joshua Tree never fucking happened. Joshua Tree denial.

DG: Caleb's voice tends to slide into power ballad mode from time to time, and each time he does this - while it fits with the song - it just contributes to the vast empty spaces, instead of filling them up. It's a shame sometimes because you can't help but feel his indie cred slowly draining out of him and ergo his band, into the realms of, well dare I mention other once rock and roll pioneers turned purveyors of radio friendly stadium capacity rock?

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Art In Macro first heard the record whilst out purchasing DVDs in the local HMV, playing as it was at full volume over the speakers and delaying the thought process of purchasing, creating an internal digression of whether to stay or flee. On the bus home, I sent a message to a friend.

Just heard the new Kings of Leon record. It was like some bizarre medieval torture crossed with a terrible U2 record.

For the record, Metacritic have them as nearly a 7 out of 10. Other noteable reviews from Allmusic who give it 7, Observer Music Monthly give it full marks and finally Pitchfork, who give it a mid-three.

Please make up your own minds though. Perhaps let us know what you think.

Filmism #1

Enough of the pseudo-Marxism for the time being, I was never one to develop a shtick.

A TRIP TO THE CINEMA RESULTS IN CRITICAL ROUNDTABLE AT THE BUS STOP
post cryptically indicates future direction

The last time I saw Gavin was in 2004. He was carrying a mattress across the grey, run-down site of the poor kid halls in Moss Side, his hair loosely tied in a ponytail and a casual Irish brogue to his voice.


Manchester's second best voyeurism spot

I'm sitting in my second favourite spot in Manchester, on the stone front at the Cornerhouse cinema. All of life passes by this spot on a warm late-summer evening such as this. Mature folks in bespoke office wear, young art kids, entry-level freshers dressed in OR scrubs, nervous cinema buffs who never quite got over the fashion statements made in My Dinner With Andre. They clutch copies of Cahiers du Cinema and tut irritatedly when we talk through the pre-trailer advertisements.

All of life indeed, and of past life too, as Gavin from 2004 arrives dressed and sounding and looking exactly as memory had left him. Apropos of afternoon boredom we'd stuck a pin in the newspaper listings and come up with Jar City. With the upswing in the quality of police procedural on television, it finds itself increasingly pressed for cinematic real estate unless it can find itself combined with a shlocky, sepulchral or perhaps metaphysical element. The whodunnit is secondary to the whydunnit.

Jar City is a traditional whodunnit. The kind that Columbo, or even with the medical element of this picture a more serious Quincy, might encounter. There's a nice three-act structure, a denouement, a subplot and a man eating a sheep's head with his fists. Iceland itself plays a stunning role as the backdrop, at turns spellbindly mundane and jawdroppingly fantastic. I used to stare at these webcams at an old call-centre job as a way to elevate myself above the monotony.

The characters are realistic and satisfying and there's never a real jarring or overtly oblique moment to debate questions of technical competance. It is not the world's most original work, nor would it claim to be. The film never tries for your affection and never pushes you firmly away; it offers reasons for its austerity and apparent coldness. MVP award goes to the soundguys by a short head.


A still from Jar City

We leave the cinema in that familiar unusual silence, which Gavin immediately punctures. "Well, I thought the whole premise fell apart after ten minutes." He explains his reasons (this blog is a no-spoiler zone) and whilst reasonable, they did speak of an inate scientific approach to cinema that doesn't entirely sit with my cinema as art viewpoint. "You could at least suspend your disbelief", I say.

Liam, the third member of our party, seeks the role of diplomat. "Well, I kind of see what you're saying Gavin but it didn't ruin the film." We offer marks out of ten. I give it eight. Liam gives it seven. Gavin says it gets a five. Metacritic has it as a seven, as does IMDB.

A fair assumption of popular approach to mainstream cinema is that we seek a tale told efficiently with its artifice concealed - perhaps displaying an epistemelogical level of 'truth'. But what of cinema conscious of its nature as 'art cinema'? Certainly I could see the hole in the plot but dismissed it as inconsquential to the entirety of meaning to be felt through the whole film coming together at the end. For Gavin, he sought a tale told as if watching with detective's eyes; to give a thumbs up would have meant all the pieces in consonance and harmony. He admitted 'he'd quite like to go to Iceland' after seeing it, so certainly the cinematography was compelling as well as murmuring praise for the soundtrack. But the central focus was still on the plot, the story, rather than anything above it. I'm not saying he's even wrong, but just different to the way I experience film.

So, what I'm slowly getting at is this; there will be no individual reviews where I can avoid it. There will be some kind of critical roundtable of different kinds of people. I could attempt to jam my opinions down your throat but I think that 'one man with a blog and I'm gonna tell it like I see it' is so incredibly old (but hey, that's just my opinion) as to be put in a time capsule and studied in future days.