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The Soloist

Andrew Vance — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:08:22 +0000

May I recommend the film The Soloist. This is a truly lovely and thought provoking film. It is directed by Joe Wright who also directed Atonement and Pride and Prejudice. He manages to steer clear of the sentimental traps that a film like this could have. It also feature two of the best performance I have seen from Robert Downey Jnr and Jamie Foxx. Downey plays Steve Lopaz, a Los Angeles Times columnist who in 2005 starts writing a series of articles about the musician Nathaniel Ayers, played by Foxx. He was once a Julliard cello prodigy, but suffering from severe schizophrenia did not complete the course and ended up on the streets. Lopaz feels he can help Ayers by getting him into LA’s Lamp Community providing shelter and medication. But this is not the best way to help him. During the film you ask yourself is Lopaz just trying to exploit Ayers for his own career or genuinely trying to help him. At the end of the film they both gain something from this symbiotic relationship, but is perhaps Lopaz who has gained the most. There is a real communication and bond between the characters, who can never truely connect.
The film also gave the shocking statistic that their are 90,000 homeless in LA a town that has at the other end of the spectrum so much wealth.
The score was also excellent with music by Dario Marianelli.

The Time Travellers Wife

Andrew Vance — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:53:48 +0000

This film was a disappointment to me. I had read the book over the summer. It was a book I could not put down much to the annoyance of my wife. The book was a love story over time, but also much more. It had elements of Lolita and was quite violent at times. Its ending was very tragic. The film although very beautifully shot lack a soul. I could not believe in the characters as much as I did in the book.

Rachel Mcadams was good in the part but I hate to say it, but I grew tired of her smile. Eric Bana played the part in a daze. The children who played the part of the young Rachel and their daughter were excellent. The film began to drag towards the end and it seem longer than the 107 minutes. Benjamin Button which dealt with the passage of time much better and the 166 minutes seemed to go much quicker.

This film has had some good review, but to me it was no Ghost. The ending did not have the impact that the book had for me

Cheri and Star Trek

Andrew Vance — Sun, 17 May 2009 10:02:28 +0000

What an interesting selection of films. Friday night was 92 minutes of Cheri with Michelle Pfeiffer and direct by Christopher Hampton. It seems amazing that it was 21 years ago that the two of them worked together on Dangerous Liaisons. They use a picture of her from Dangerous Liaisons in the film, showing her younger self. The film is based on the 1920’s novels by Colette set in 1900 Paris. Pfeiffer’s character Lea is asked by an old friend played very well by Kathy Bates to ‘educate’ her immature 19 year old son. There begins a 6 year affair between them, until his mother finds him a bride. Neither can live apart from each other. The story is very sumptuous to look at. The costumes particularly Michelle Pfeiffer’s. In the end the story with the ending is very unsatisfactory. It is very slow and the film seems very long.
Star Trek on the other hand goes very quickly. The film is shot with a lot of lighting flare, which does add to the action but makes a lot of the scenes indistinct. The story is well told, directed by JJ Abrams who wrote Lost on TV. My wife who knows nothing about Star Trek enjoyed it and so did I as there were a lot of references back to the old series. Simon Pegg played the part of Scotty adding a touch of humor to the film.
This film has given new life to the old franchise which is now over 40 years old.
Now to get on with the Newsletter!

A Bunch of Amateurs

Andrew Vance — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:56:23 +0000

What a lovely film. All about a dried up old action hero played by Burt Reynolds! who thinks he is going to Stratford upon Avon to act in King Lear for the RSC. It turns out that he is acting with an amateur group in Stratford St John. The theatre is in the middle of a farm. Derek Jacobi Samantha Bond and Imelda Staunton play the Amateurs. The film follows a tried and tested formula, Ian Hislop was one of the scriptwriters. It is a quaint British film and I haven’t laughed so much in ages.

The Last Cigarette

Andrew Vance — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:15:19 +0000

This is a new play by Simon Gray and Hugh Whitmore, based on Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries and his final book Coda. He is played by three actors, including Felicity Kendal, not at different time periods but all at the same time. It is as though he is having an inner conversation with himself. He talks about life from his early years to being diagnosed with cancer. It could be melancholy, but due to Grays sharp wit it is ofter hilarious. You did feel what a waste of a life. But he knew what he was doing. He was warned by friends to give up smoking many times. He also drank heavily, consuming several bottles of champagne a night. He also had the habit of working through the night and sleeping in to midday. This did cause problems with his co author Hugh Whitmore, who had more sociable hours. But they have managed to construct a very enjoyable play about a man who lived life the way he wanted. At the end of the play he is told that instead of one year to live it was more likely going to be two. He then died, last August, not from the cancer caused by the smoking but from an aneurysm only a couple of months into his two years. He did not live long enough to complete the play.

There are some lovely passages in the play – “I regret the hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of cigarettes… pause, as if to denounce the weed, but ends … I’ve never experienced.”

My favourite is when he was talking to Harold Pinter, who also died last year, ”We can’t die yet, we haven’t grown up!” They were in their 70’s.

In the end it left me wishing to know more about this extraordinary man.

I also saw “The curious case of Benjamin Button”. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is nearly 3 hours long, but it kept my attention throughout. It was a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which I had never read and never heard of before. It seems to say that your course in life is the same, whether you grow old naturally or are born old and become young. This is what happen to Benjamin. In growing up this way he had only a short time with the one woman he really loved before he grew too young for her. It was a sad and thoughtful film worthy of its Oscar nomination.

Work Out

Andrew Vance — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:06:11 +0000

I have just crawled back from the gym. They haveall new equipment at Goodwood. On the treadmill you can connect your IPod and watch any music or videos you have recorded. You can also chose to watch TV including the news if you want to be depressed. (Its interesting to note that my bank has in theory been nationalised. Who would have thought this would happen a year ago!) The machine also shows in graphic form myheart rate. The best thing I can say about that is that it recovers fairly quickly. On the spinning bike you can watch a video of a male blond very fit Californian fitness instructor. Not my type. I won’t be watching him again.

The whole experience is quite addictive which is good as I spend more time oin the machines without the boredom factor.

I have seen two films in the last week. Slumdog Millionaire and Young Victoria. Both enjoyable fils for different reasons. Slumdog nearly ended up as a film going straight to DVD thus excluding it from the Oscars. It was brave of the Academy to give it the best picture Oscar. The film does deserve it and even though it is uplifting at the end, it depicts a very violent underclass in India.

Young Victoria is quite a different film. It is semi truthful depiction of the young Victoria prior to her becoming Queen and her relationship and eventual marriage to Albert. It has stunning scenery including Arundel Castle, but there is no real depth to the film.

This is a talk in the TED series about the computer grahics that went to make ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. I will be seeing this film next week.

Revolutionary Road

Andrew Vance — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 12:32:37 +0000

What a happy film! This is not a good film for the end of the week Friday evening relaxation. It is based on Richard Yates’ classic novel. The film is a riveting and stark marital drama with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet acting together again, this time as husband and wife. How different their parts are compared to the ones in Titanic. It is directed by Sam Mendes Kate’s real husband.
It is set in 1955 New England. They have a picture perfect house, but become increasingly resentful of the path their lives have taken. She wanted to be an actress but never made it. She became pregnant with their first child and so they settled down into their mundane lives. Neither fulfilling their dreams.
April, played by Kate Winslet tries to improve their life by suggesting they go to live in Paris. She feels that she will be able to get a job to support them. Unfortunately she falls pregant with their third child. Frank, played by DiCaprio, is also offered a better paid job.
We follow the internal journeys of these two people through the way they punish each other for failing to make the American Dream work the way it should.

The performances are mesmerizing from all the cast but it is not an easy film to watch.

Couscous

Andrew Vance — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:54:42 +0000

It takes will power, courage and determination to realise a dream. But most of all it takes family. This is the tag line of the French film Couscous. It is about a Father who is made redundant in a small port in the south of France. Not knowing what to do, he decides to follow his dream of opening a restaurant in a boat, which serves couscous and fish. He does this without any professional or financial help. It is in the end his disjointed family, he is divorced from his wife and it is she who makes the couscous, and friends who save the day. As with all French films they manage to get characters who are real characters. The Americans think we have bad teeth, but these people could keep me in business for many years! It is perhaps overlong at 151 mins. The ending is sad but you do feel you have met real people.

Monday Morning

Andrew Vance — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:22:56 +0000

I wish to thank the patient who sent me last Mondays Telegraph. There was a very interesting article on the opening, to rave reviews, of Billy Elliot on Broadway. The article is written by the creator Lee Hall. I quote from Oct 2 ” After the euphoria of the first preview night, I came to the theatre and wonder why the audience are still being seated at 8pm – the show was supposed to have started. I am told that the whole of downstairs has been taken by the American Arthritis Society and the Upstaires by the seniors of the Westchester County Country Club. Most of them are octogenarians and there is a buzz of hearing aids. The play eventually starts. Not a titter. It is a disaster. They clearly don’t get it. Yet at the end the place erupts. With immense difficulty they rise to their feet and applaud just like the first night. They had been watching it as a play, not as a comedy.”

I survived the sing along Mamma Mia at the Chichester Cinema on Saturday. It was good fun. I just hope the rest of the audience did not suffer too much from my singing.