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Square Eyes articles Saturday, May 26, 2001
Hype Springs Eternal - the coming of The Lord of the RingsIt’s now less than a month until the first film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy opens here, and the amount of attention it’s getting is staggering. Last weekend, pretty much the whole of the Sunday Times magazine was given over to an analysis of the film and the books, with interviews, plot synopses and a Middle-Earth A-Z to help those who have forgotten the differences between Faramir and Boromir, and couldn’t tell Weathertop from Helm’s Deep.
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Temples of FilmSometimes the cinema is more memorable than the film: last week I watched ‘Pearl Harbour’ in a run-down seaside cinema in Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex (don’t ask what I was doing there). It had clearly not been renovated since the 1960s, and as I bought my ticket (for ?2.50) the guy taking my money said, ‘The last film’s not quite finished yet. If you’d like to take a seat.’ Sure enough, the foyer boasted a row of seats. It was beginning to feel more like a doctor’s waiting room than a movie temple, but I figured that the seats were merely window dressing - when all the other Essex filmistas turned up, people would be milling around with their popcorn and drinks, just like anywhere else. Friday, May 25, 2001
Bowled Over - TV sportMy summer is shot to pieces: just when I thought I was regaining some control over my time with the end of the football season, televised sport has claimed me entirely again with the knockout combination of cricket and cycling. These events go on all day, for weeks - I am so screwed. It’s my curse to be fascinated by sporting events that take a long time - sometimes I wish I was more into the 50m freestyle. First there’s cricket. I know this is something of an acquired taste - for example, try telling an American that the games last five days, have frequent tea breaks and can still end in a draw - but it’s something I was born to. Friday, May 18, 2001
Reheated Leftovers - The Dish reviewedEarly on in ‘The Dish’, the lads running the radio telescope start playing cricket actually in the dish, and I realised I’d already seen the film. It was called ‘Local Hero’, or ‘State and Main’, or was it a TV show called ‘Northern Exposure’, or ‘Hamish Macbeth’ or ‘Ballykissangel’? Either way, it was clear that I was being manipulated in a pretty crass way, and I settled down in my seat knowing there weren’t going to be any surprises from here on in. For all those working on their own similar gentle comedy screenplay, here are a few elements to include. Friday, May 11, 2001
The real deal - Faking It reviewedThere was a great moment in this week’s ‘Faking It’ (Channel 4, Tuesdays), when Alex, the frightfully posh, 5’6”, gay student from Oxford University, looked straight to camera and said in his new bouncer brogue, ‘I AM a doorman’. He wasn’t faking it any more. The format is brilliantly simple - take an unlikely candidate, give them four weeks’ training in a new discipline, then set up a competition where experts try and spot the imposter. So we’ve had a classical musician taught to be a club DJ, a painter and decorator taught to be an artist, and the fey student taught to be a bouncer. Friday, May 04, 2001
Those who can’t - Teachers reviewedEarlier this week Tony Blair announced to the world that he needed glasses for reading, and would be wearing them in public from now on. He explained when it was he realised he couldn’t go on bluffing in his speeches any more. In one address he had got to a line which went, ‘There’s been a huge increase in problems of drugs, social exclusion and crime amongst teenagers.’ But instead of ‘teenagers’, he said ‘teachers’. He doesn’t need glasses - he’s just been watching Channel 4 on Wednesday nights. Thursday, April 26, 2001
Build your own TV stationTV schedules, who needs them? Shouldn’t I get to decide when I want to watch my favourite programmes? In the last week, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing and it’s been great. Using the rather low-tech method of an aging VCR, I’ve been creating my own schedule, working my way through series one of ?The Sopranos?, plus all my current favourites whenever I felt like it. Need a bit of Tony S to start the day? I got your episode right here, buddy. Want to watch Simon and Jenny in the ‘Teachers’ stationery cupboard instead of Richard and Judy? Go right ahead. I don’t think I’ve watched a programme in its own timeslot all week. I feel liberated and in control of my addiction. Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Forever England - Bridget Jones’s Diary reviewedWhat are the hallmarks of an English person? Ask the English and they might say a stiff upper lip, a sense of fair play and a gutsy determination to get the job done. Ask other people from around the world, and you might get hypocrisy, bad food and imperialism. (Here, in the interests of full disclosure I must tell you that I was born and raised in England, but I’m feeling much better now). But as the film version of ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ shows us, the real attributes that describe the nation are embarrassment, understatement and friendship. Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Forgive us our trespasses - review of State and MainIn an early episode of ‘The West Wing’, a character remarks, ‘There are two things you don’t want to see being made - laws and sausages.’ It’s a nice line, but I’d add a third thing - films. David Mamet’s ‘State and Main’ is a satire on movie production, and he shows us underage sex, rampant egos, bribery, towering hubris, incompetence and more scheming than the average GAA Congress. Of course, this is Mamet’s territory (the nastiness, not the GAA), but his story of a small Vermont town overrun by a Hollywood film is also surprisingly warm and tolerant. There is the usual rapid-fire dialogue and spiky characters, but we also get a sweetly natural romance and more compassion for people’s faults than you might expect. Friday, March 23, 2001
sex, lies and mobile phones - UK advertisingAn approachably handsome young man sits on a tram in a snowy city. With a friendly English accent he tells us that in Helsinki it gets very cold (no shit, Sherlock- he’s wrapped up nice and warm, anyway). Finns embrace new technology, he continues, and HP are working on a wireless system that will let people know exactly when their tram is coming so they don’t have to wait outside in the cold (we cut to a bunch of blond kids checking their mobiles indoors). Thursday, March 15, 2001
Celebrity Confusion - UK reality TVIf ordinary people are on TV, does that make them celebrities, or just the subjects of documentaries? What about famous people doing ordinary things? Or people that start out ordinary and become famous? It’s been quite a time for celebrity confusion. First ‘Popstars’ showed us ordinary folks being turned into celebrities with dramatic success, culminating in their number one single in the UK over the weekend. Then ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ sought to turn famous people into ordinary folks by allowing us to see what they looked like in their dressing gowns. Thursday, March 08, 2001
Touching EvilIt’s a staple of the police drama on TV that the hero has some flaw in him - he drinks too much, his marriage has broken down, he’s jaded by the crap he deals with every day. But in the end he gets the job done, and in doing so acts as a necessary buffer between polite society and the more disturbing world of crime. He might be tainted by the work, but it’s a dirty job and someone’s got to do it. Thursday, March 01, 2001
Frankie Says - British nostalgia TVI was a child of the 1980s, and the pop culture of the time scarred my naive teenage years. My first slow dance was to “Careless Whisper”, and I wore the checked shirts and braces of a devoted Big Country fan. Howard Jones went to my school, and for a while everyone I knew had a haircut like his. Including the girls (not that I knew any). So the Saturday night BBC2 series, ‘I Love the 1980s’ should be right up my street, reminding me of the delights of ra-ra skirts, Bros and BMX bikes. Looking at one year at a time sounds great, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s a complete waste of time. Thursday, February 22, 2001
Shining Surface, Hidden Depths - review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon‘It looks great, I like the fight scenes, but it’s unbelievable and the story is really thin.’ Heard this judgement on Ang Lee’s ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’? Yeah, me too. It’s both right and so far wrong that it demands a closer look.
‘It looks great’
Thursday, February 15, 2001
Survivor of the Fittest - Survivor 2 reviewedForget the fly on the wall drama of The Hotel or The Airport, forget the social engineering of Castaway 2000, forget even the claustrophobic hype of Big Brother. You want reality TV? Survivor 2 is the real deal. Two teams of gung-ho Americans are abandoned in the Australian outback with little more than the clothes they stand up in. As well as building shelters, trying to make fire and avoiding the scary bugs, the teams compete against each other for possession of the Immunity Idol. It sounds pants, but lose immunity and you have to vote off one of your own team. |
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