Case in Pointe

Yes I have used the same pun from the title of my ballet blog which is yet to be kicked into motion, but it's the only relevant semi-intelligent title I could come up with for this post, so deal with it.


The trailer for Darren Aronofsky's latest, Black Swan was released yesterday evening. Since hearing about the upcoming release, I have already been brushing up on my ballet films, but thanks to the trailer, I can now bore you all with reasons why you should or should not see the following films.

Billy Elliot
I have something of a love/hate relationship with this film. I love the soundtrack. I love the boy who plays Billy's gay friend, Michael. I love Julie Walters in it. The plot of the film (namely young working class boy caught up in the strife of Thatcher's north-east England struggles against his father's bigotism to convince the world ballet is a manly passtime and finally makes it) should be loveable, but unfortunately, because Jamie Bell was so horribly bad at dancing, it becomes almost wholly unbelievable that Billy would have been trying to be a dancer at all. Yes as a "dancer" myself I am going to be far more critical of this aspect than the average viewer, but a simple instruction to Jamie: "point your fucking toe" would have raised his level of dancing at least 50%. I can point blank guarantee that the Royal Ballet School would not accept a potential candidate if they couldn't even point their toe. Soz. Another gross inaccuracy which only those who give a shit about ballet itself would have noticed and been aggrieved by is the ending. Billy's father and big brother make their way to to the Royal Opera House (something which is highlighted frequently through shots of the famous building) to watch Billy in his first leading role. Except his first leading role appears to be lead swan in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Which has never been performed by the Royal Ballet in that Matthew Bourne has his own company of dancers, and when he does employ other artists, he uses the English National Ballet. The reason why this particular production was chosen to feature in the film, I'm guessing, is because the actor who played Billy all grown up was Adam Cooper, the star of Matthew Bourne's production. Ah well at least they used a real dancer for that role.

The Red Shoes
This 1948 classic is one of my all time favourite films. Moira Shearer (an actual dancer) plays Victoria Page in this adaptation of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. The film to me, possibly because it's one of the first films I ever really fell in love with, is a perfect example of classic cinema at its best. There are lovely extended dancing scenes featuring excerpts from Swan Lake and Giselle as well as the ballet, The Red Shoes itself. Moira is pure perfection in the film, and even though she starred in other films, and danced many other roles, she was always remembered as Vicky.

The Company
This 2003 film about the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago is sheer modern dance-film excellence. Shot in almost a cinema-verité style, the film follows Neve Campbell among other real members of the company, with a lovely romantic subplot between Campbell and verified amazingness James Franco. Don't worry, Franco doesn't dance. Campbell herself trained with at the National Ballet School of Canada, and in this film gets to put her at times exquisite dancing skillz to use in the extended scenes of contemporary ballet. The film offers a funny, touching and informative insight into the lives of those within a major company. Basically The Company is the holy trinity of a good dance film: well written, well acted and well danced.

The Turning Point
Another film which has managed to capture my heart, The Turning Point is pure 1970s cinema. Depicting the growing conflict between aging ballerina Emma Jacklin and ex-member of the company and best friend, Deedee Rodgers. Emma is fictitious lead principal of the American Ballet Company and begins mentoring Deedee's daughter, Emilia who herself becomes a prominent member of the company. The young dancer falls for Yuri, played excellently by Mikhail Baryshnikov, who in case you didn't know, is one of the greatest ballet dancers ever (and also went on to star as Aleksander Petrovsky in Sex and the City...) The emotional conflict between Emma (Anne Bancroft, who received an Oscar nomination for the role) and Deedee (Shirley Maclaine) is believable and heartfelt, and the dancing, which features heavily but not enough to impose on the narrative, is both spectacularly choreographed by the créme-de-la-créme of history's choreographers and danced by some of the world's greatest dancers of the time including Antoinette Sibley, Leslie Browne and of course Baryshnikov. Baryshnikov is in fact, in my opinion at least, the highlight of the film. When he takes to the stage in his solos, your jaw will literally hang open and I guarantee you will both well up and feel aroused - (maybe don't hold me to that...) Sometimes the dialogue is a bit dodgy, but the sheer splendour of it all, and the laborious efforts made to keep it realistic and yet enthralling make this one of the greatest dance films ever made. Watch. It.

Meat Grinder

Meat Grinder is probably one of the most poorly titled films I've ever come across. The title has dictated the film's marketing angle: a torture-porn flick for the "gorehounds". As someone who's not easily affected by such gore, and am always seeking a film which will do the unthinkable and actually shock me, I was eager to see whether this would manage to.
It didn't. Yes the graphic scenes may turn a weaker stomach than my own, but they were nowhere near as disturbing as the likes of Antichrist or even Hostel's gorier moments. In actual fact, Meat Grinder is a far more effective film than its title might suggest, for reasons completely unrelated to its gore content. The depiction of protagonist Buss' eventual psychological breakdown, largely helped by the cut away flashback scenes, is alarmingly subtle for film which one might expect to be a balls-out bloodbath. The cinematography is at times spectacular, and the plot a lot more slowburning than I'm sure anyone will be expecting when they first switch on. What we have here is a Thai psychological thriller akin to Park Chan Wook's films though not quite as competent perhaps. Pathos for Buss, the owner of the noodle bar where extra tasty treats in the form of human body parts get added as a delicacy is achieved surprisingly deftly, but at times the obvious desire to shock the audience doesn't sit comfortably alongside the drama and narrative while others like Lars Von Trier managed this almost nonchalantly. It's a shame, because I feel if the film had only been tidied up around the edges, Tiwa Moeithaisong could really have proven something for Thai cinema.

Night of the Demons

I was going to tell you to go and see this film when it's released on 17th September because I was told the following line of dialogue featured in it:
"Eat a bowl of fuck, I am here to PARTY!"

And then I found out that it doesn't. So honestly? Don't waste your time or money on this. Unless you want to see a demon reportedly put a lipstick into her breast and have it come out of her "pussy". Which of course, you do.

22 Bullets

I somewhat jumped the gun when I tweeted "22 Bullets is a solid 3.5 stars film" on Tuesday evening. It isn't. At best I'd award this fairly-mundane-but-glossy-in-the-same-way-all-French-films-appear-to-be film 3 stars. I'd been in the office between 9 and 7 and was then expected to make coherent conclusions about a 2 hour film? Dream on pal. The opening and closing sequences of the film, in all fairness, are worthy of 4 stars in themselves, and these are clearly what tricked my tired and sensitive-to-such-trickery brain into believing the distinctly average 75% of the film sandwiched between these sequences was also good. There's nothing necessarily bad about the rest of it, there's just very little which is actually commendable. Having said that, Jean Reno is extremely watchable for the enitrety of the film, and his son is possibly the most freaking cute kid I've seen in a film ever. This may be enough to distract you from the sheer mundanity of it all at the time of watching, but in the stark light of hindsight, you'll realise you've spent an hour and a half watching Jean Reno kill people in fairly unimaginative ways and some fairly unimaginative police-investigation scenes preceeded and followed by 10 minutes of awesomeness. I'm still deciding if these 20 minutes make it OK for me to recommend the film to you. You decide.
22 Bullets is released in cinemas on September 3rd.

Cherrybomb

Cherry Bomb is one of those films which I have been trying to watch for a ridiculous amount of time, mostly because it stars Rupert Grint and Robert Sheehan. In fact I think the only interest most people of the female persuasion even had in the film, was to see what Ron Weasley would be like when swear words, an Irish accent and partial nudity were thrown into the equation. The answer? Average at best. His Irish accent was less reliable than a [insert Harry Potter spell here because I can't think of one...] though his ginger hair and alabaster skin for whatever reason are enough probably to keep most girls interested for at least half the film. Robert Sheehan on the other hand is far more capable - granted he plays a role pretty much bang in the middle of the two roles he is most admired for here in Britain: BJ in Red Riding and Nathan in Misfits, so the role wasn't exactly a huge challenge, but he still possesses more talent and charisma in his little finger than poor Weasley could dream of. At the moment at least. As for the other two leads, Kimberley Nixon (you might know her from such hits as Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging and er Wild Child) is confusingly plain for such a commotion to be made over her, and James Nesbitt is potentially the least effective "bad father" I've ever seen. All in all, the film was about as believable as an episode of Skins, and less emotionally engaging, if at all possible. Still, I'm glad I got to see Weasley like this.

Angel

Just when I thought the impossible had happened and I had fallen out of love with the mighty Fassbender, I suddenly "got" Angel. The script is garish, the sets kitsch and the soundtrack beyond melodramatic, but it's meant to be like that you see? Michael Fassbender's role as the "heroine" Angel (either Romola Garai at her very best, or very worst - I haven't decided)'s husband explains in wonderful technicolour exactly why Tarantino saw fit to cast him as the hilarious parody of an English soldier in the role of Lt. Archie Hicox. And now that I feel I'm in on Francois Ozon's laboriously constructed joke, I am back to being all gushy about Michael (are first name terms appropriate?). Should I ever meet him, and there is a very dangerous possibility that I might, words wouldn't be on the menu let me assure you. Especially after this - ding dong. After seeing that he can pack a punch in a "period piece" such as this, I eagerly await his performance in Jane Eyre.
I have nothing really of any use left to say about the film, other than to correct a mistake made in an earlier entry about Ozon's upcoming film Le Refuge. It isn't out on DVD at all, it is indeed hitting cinemas - potentially one near you.