FILM
John Carter
(12A) 131mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
The right people will learn to love this ambitious but flawed epic based on the daddy of many sci fi tropes.
REVIEW
A lot of bad things will be said about Disney's $250million epic sci fi adventure.
Most of the bad things will be true but they don't necessarily add up to a bad movie.
The bad elements are frontloaded, like a sampler dish, so you can follow their horribleness through the rest of the film.
They are: the bad acting (oh, Dominic West - why?), the ghastly post production 3D, the convoluted geopolitics, the confused motivations, and the lack of charm and magic.
The story is taken from a series of early 20th century novels from Edgar Rice Burroughs (who makes a fictional appearance). He also created Tarzan so is adept at the monosyllabic hero (and what a thundering dunce is John Carter).
But let's not escape the fact that, from inauspicious beginnings, this film has legs and, in the case of the Tharks, many, many arms.
It is lovingly crafted with immense attention to detail by director Andrew Stanton (Wall.E), the visuals are superb and the story somewhere along its 131 minute length, starts to have traction - generally when superstition gives way to spectacle.
This Boy's Own tale (filmed in stereoscope by the looks of the 3D) sees the Civil War veteran sent hurtling to Mars where he lands in the middle of multiple conflicts between the Tharks, Zodangans, Heliumites and Therns.
His super strength makes him something of a trophy and the beautiful princess Dejah Thoris - pledged to Sab Than (West) for political purposes - sees the grizzled Earthman as a useful ally in her one-woman rebellion.
There is something of a drinking game to be had in spotting the derivations from classic screen sci fi.
Star Wars, obviously. Cowboys And Aliens, conceptually. Superman for the jumping, Indiana Jones for the dusty relics and glyphs, Star Trek for the dry, rocky planet stuff, Avatar for the tall CGI aliens, Dune for the politics, Lord Of The Rings for the battles. All a tad ungrateful, perhaps, considering Burroughs' series was arguably the daddy to many of them.
The one that sticks with me is Flash Gordon because of the portentous camp and boyish galumping. That John Carter is played by someone called Taylor Kitsch seems deliciously appropriate.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Stage review: All New People, Duke Of York's
STAGE
All New People
Duke Of York's
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
A quirky and promising set-up quickly loses its way in Zach Braff's brash but unfocussed tale of anguish, drugs and death.
REVIEW
Zach Braff is not John "JD" Dorian, zany doctor of Scrubs fame.
This much we know from his thoughtful indie hit Garden State in which he showed a propensity, not for pratfalls and antics, but introspection and self-destruction.
Such themes have not evaporated between that debut film and this Broadway transfer - and if that were in doubt the opening scene (the best of the lot actually) provides evidence.
We find the introspective and brooding Charlie hanging by the neck from an electric flex in a Long Island beach house, only saved from a ghastly fate by a fast-talking Brit estate agent (Eve Myles).
From this promising opening, matters descend somewhat into a humdrum and routine to-and-fro between the embittered Charlie, Myles's estate agent, a druggie firefighter called Mylon (Paul Hilton) and a hooker (Susannah Fielding) whose back stories are briefly but ineffectively told on film.
Lots of themes are raised and then dropped (religion etc) and everyone bellows their pain when faced with some catalyst or other but nothing really hangs together to form any kind of narrative and none of the characters is particularly likeable.
Braff, it seems, jotted down some ideas and then attempted, rather feebly, to link them together.
There are decadent laughs, fine performances and gruesome bits but this black comedy fades to grey and is quickly forgotten.
Until April 28. Go to atgtickets.com
All New People
Duke Of York's
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
A quirky and promising set-up quickly loses its way in Zach Braff's brash but unfocussed tale of anguish, drugs and death.
REVIEW
Zach Braff is not John "JD" Dorian, zany doctor of Scrubs fame.
This much we know from his thoughtful indie hit Garden State in which he showed a propensity, not for pratfalls and antics, but introspection and self-destruction.
Such themes have not evaporated between that debut film and this Broadway transfer - and if that were in doubt the opening scene (the best of the lot actually) provides evidence.
We find the introspective and brooding Charlie hanging by the neck from an electric flex in a Long Island beach house, only saved from a ghastly fate by a fast-talking Brit estate agent (Eve Myles).
From this promising opening, matters descend somewhat into a humdrum and routine to-and-fro between the embittered Charlie, Myles's estate agent, a druggie firefighter called Mylon (Paul Hilton) and a hooker (Susannah Fielding) whose back stories are briefly but ineffectively told on film.
Lots of themes are raised and then dropped (religion etc) and everyone bellows their pain when faced with some catalyst or other but nothing really hangs together to form any kind of narrative and none of the characters is particularly likeable.
Braff, it seems, jotted down some ideas and then attempted, rather feebly, to link them together.
There are decadent laughs, fine performances and gruesome bits but this black comedy fades to grey and is quickly forgotten.
Until April 28. Go to atgtickets.com
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Stage review: Bingo, Young Vic
STAGE
Bingo
Young Vic
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Emmerdale meets King Lear as an ageing and bitter Shakespeare ponders divided lands.
REVIEW
There is much meat and merriment, surely, in creating a character out of that hidden myth of a man William Shakespeare.
Such opportunities are passed up by Edward Bond whose 1970s play about the playwright in his Stratford dotage arrives at the Young Vic.
Instead he tells a reductionist story of an old misery guts who has plenty of anguish but very little life.
Bond, a hardline left-winger, was keen to muse wantonly on the theme of the artist in society and his Shakespeare worries and frets, head in hands that he was outside the society that is cruel and unyielding.
Shakespeare signs a deal with land owner William Combe (Matthew Marsh) that sees his own finances secured but those of his peasant neighbours upended.
Among the froth and insurrection that enclosure brings, Shakespeare is a passive figure, rarely roused from his introspection and his repeated question: "Was anything done?"
The charismatic Patrick Stewart makes the most of the meagre pickings as the playwright, railing against inhumanity and his wordless old age but mostly he is a distracted observer of the bothered locals.
He quarrels heartlessly with daughter Judith (Catherine Cusack) and shows only glimpses of the humanity that brimmed in his plays. He casually helps one impoverished young woman but injustices elsewhere make no impact. The quality of his mercy is not trained.
A strong cast - which included excellent performances from Ellie Haddington as an old maid and Tom Godwin as clownish Wally - relish the language, all delivered in an Old English drawl - but the politics is heavy-handed and ponderous.
A show-stealing turn by Richard McCabe as mad cherub Ben Jonson enlivens proceedings for all too brief a time, offering hints of a crowd-pleaser left unwritten but Bond is determined to keep wealth in his crosshairs.
Bingo
Young Vic
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Emmerdale meets King Lear as an ageing and bitter Shakespeare ponders divided lands.
REVIEW
There is much meat and merriment, surely, in creating a character out of that hidden myth of a man William Shakespeare.
Such opportunities are passed up by Edward Bond whose 1970s play about the playwright in his Stratford dotage arrives at the Young Vic.
Instead he tells a reductionist story of an old misery guts who has plenty of anguish but very little life.
Bond, a hardline left-winger, was keen to muse wantonly on the theme of the artist in society and his Shakespeare worries and frets, head in hands that he was outside the society that is cruel and unyielding.
Shakespeare signs a deal with land owner William Combe (Matthew Marsh) that sees his own finances secured but those of his peasant neighbours upended.
Among the froth and insurrection that enclosure brings, Shakespeare is a passive figure, rarely roused from his introspection and his repeated question: "Was anything done?"
The charismatic Patrick Stewart makes the most of the meagre pickings as the playwright, railing against inhumanity and his wordless old age but mostly he is a distracted observer of the bothered locals.
He quarrels heartlessly with daughter Judith (Catherine Cusack) and shows only glimpses of the humanity that brimmed in his plays. He casually helps one impoverished young woman but injustices elsewhere make no impact. The quality of his mercy is not trained.
A strong cast - which included excellent performances from Ellie Haddington as an old maid and Tom Godwin as clownish Wally - relish the language, all delivered in an Old English drawl - but the politics is heavy-handed and ponderous.
A show-stealing turn by Richard McCabe as mad cherub Ben Jonson enlivens proceedings for all too brief a time, offering hints of a crowd-pleaser left unwritten but Bond is determined to keep wealth in his crosshairs.
Film review: Rampart (15)
SCREEN
Rampart (15)
(15) 108mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Woody Harrelson is captivating and charismatic as the corrupt cop sinking beneath the weight of his own moral degradation.
REVIEW
In a wired and mesmeric performance, Woody Harrelson creates a colossal character that occupies director Oren Moverman's hovering lens for the length of the film.
So sprawling is Harrelson's self-destructive cop Dave "Date-Rape" Brown that the impressive roster of support acts can barely entice the fidgety camera their way.
Which is a staggering accomplishment considering the roster of A-listers lined up to appear in this edgy, raw study of man trying to maintain his balance in a world built on soft rot and mushy degradation.
The smokily dissolute attorney Robin Wright (in shattering form), Sigourney Weaver, Ice Cube, Ned Beatty, barely-there Steve Buscemi as well as his former wives Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon become mere buttress for the grand crumbling edifice of Harrelson's cigarette-chomping charmer as he stares oblivion in the face with a bull-headed confidence in his own longevity.
Oren Moverman took a script from James Ellroy about the Rampart corruption scandal in late '90s LA and found a man who seemed to encapsulate the good, the bad and the ugly of power gone wrong.
When he gets caught on tape beating on a suspect, Brown becomes the focus for the city-wide fury. Rough, tough and with his own code of conduct the politics begin to take their toll and Brown's increasingly wild thrashing only serves to sink him further.
He can quote the law, win the lady and strike a canny deal but he has survived beyond his time and the tar pits, you sense, are a-calling.
That Harrelson has us rooting for this foul-mouthed bully at the same time as we want to hose off his slime is some achievement.
Ultimately, though, Moverman provides no answers and no resolution and the fate of Dave Brown, natural born killer, is just another scrap caught in the swirl of a busy, careless city.
Rampart (15)
(15) 108mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Woody Harrelson is captivating and charismatic as the corrupt cop sinking beneath the weight of his own moral degradation.
REVIEW
In a wired and mesmeric performance, Woody Harrelson creates a colossal character that occupies director Oren Moverman's hovering lens for the length of the film.
So sprawling is Harrelson's self-destructive cop Dave "Date-Rape" Brown that the impressive roster of support acts can barely entice the fidgety camera their way.
Which is a staggering accomplishment considering the roster of A-listers lined up to appear in this edgy, raw study of man trying to maintain his balance in a world built on soft rot and mushy degradation.
The smokily dissolute attorney Robin Wright (in shattering form), Sigourney Weaver, Ice Cube, Ned Beatty, barely-there Steve Buscemi as well as his former wives Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon become mere buttress for the grand crumbling edifice of Harrelson's cigarette-chomping charmer as he stares oblivion in the face with a bull-headed confidence in his own longevity.
Oren Moverman took a script from James Ellroy about the Rampart corruption scandal in late '90s LA and found a man who seemed to encapsulate the good, the bad and the ugly of power gone wrong.
When he gets caught on tape beating on a suspect, Brown becomes the focus for the city-wide fury. Rough, tough and with his own code of conduct the politics begin to take their toll and Brown's increasingly wild thrashing only serves to sink him further.
He can quote the law, win the lady and strike a canny deal but he has survived beyond his time and the tar pits, you sense, are a-calling.
That Harrelson has us rooting for this foul-mouthed bully at the same time as we want to hose off his slime is some achievement.
Ultimately, though, Moverman provides no answers and no resolution and the fate of Dave Brown, natural born killer, is just another scrap caught in the swirl of a busy, careless city.
Film review: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (12A)
SCREEN
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
(12A) 124mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Heavy-handed and predictable, but this tale of grey-haired grouches "on a gap year" possesses a matchless ensemble of British talent.
REVIEW
Crumbling ruins seeking a new lease of life - such is the story of both the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its inhabitants in this genteel comedy drama with the cream of British acting talent showing the whipper-snappers how it's done.
The eponymous hotel is not as the seven retirees saw in the brochure but the chutzpah of naive owner Sonny (a joyous Dev Patel - "let me through, my brother is a doctor") and the vibrancy of the lifestyle of Jaipur is sufficient to persuade our magnificent seven to give it a go.
Each have left something behind, each is looking for answers and escape and, in a rather clod-hopping and formulaic fashion, they each get what they want or, at least, what they need.
The fact that the epiphanies come by rote and fall into place like a lock mechanism is down to the sheer practicality of events - seven people, seven journeys, seven moments of truth - make that eight if you include Sonny's soapy love story.
It necessarily means that everything is hurried, life-long prejudices vanish in an instant, everyone talks in urgent home-spun truths, the natives are poor but happy and culture clashes become culture cliches.
But if the story, unlike the cast, doesn't go anywhere unexpected, what better companions than these with whom to stand and stare at the dizzying joys of Jaipur.
Relish these names sharing the screen - Judi Dench, Maggie Smith ("I can't plan that far ahead. I don't even buy green bananas"), Tom Wilkinson, feuding couple Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, Celia Imrie.
If anyone can go deeper than an easy-going script will allow it is these folk who scoop out crumbs of melancholy and hope and regret from unpromising cracks.
Director John Madden presumably sat back and watched these craftsmen and women go to work, safe in the knowledge that no-one would misfire.
And with a host of unselfish performances in the bag, he could concentrate on capturing the teeming riot of colour and noise that so frightens and charms the dry Brits.
From a land of call centres, health and safety and rain to this - a spice market of spirit and optimism where, as Wilkinson's Graham puts it "life is a privilege not a right".
Expect all your neighbourhood Shirley Valentines and Calendar Girls to be booking tickets east this year.
Yes, the film would have been better as a longform TV series. Yes, it meanders wildly and re-states the obvious as something insightful. Yes, everything gets too easy too quickly and sorted too smartly but there is no escaping the genial charm of this life-affirming story that sees gap year grouches discover that, yes, there is a chance of new life before death.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
(12A) 124mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Heavy-handed and predictable, but this tale of grey-haired grouches "on a gap year" possesses a matchless ensemble of British talent.
REVIEW
Crumbling ruins seeking a new lease of life - such is the story of both the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its inhabitants in this genteel comedy drama with the cream of British acting talent showing the whipper-snappers how it's done.
The eponymous hotel is not as the seven retirees saw in the brochure but the chutzpah of naive owner Sonny (a joyous Dev Patel - "let me through, my brother is a doctor") and the vibrancy of the lifestyle of Jaipur is sufficient to persuade our magnificent seven to give it a go.
Each have left something behind, each is looking for answers and escape and, in a rather clod-hopping and formulaic fashion, they each get what they want or, at least, what they need.
The fact that the epiphanies come by rote and fall into place like a lock mechanism is down to the sheer practicality of events - seven people, seven journeys, seven moments of truth - make that eight if you include Sonny's soapy love story.
It necessarily means that everything is hurried, life-long prejudices vanish in an instant, everyone talks in urgent home-spun truths, the natives are poor but happy and culture clashes become culture cliches.
But if the story, unlike the cast, doesn't go anywhere unexpected, what better companions than these with whom to stand and stare at the dizzying joys of Jaipur.
Relish these names sharing the screen - Judi Dench, Maggie Smith ("I can't plan that far ahead. I don't even buy green bananas"), Tom Wilkinson, feuding couple Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, Celia Imrie.
If anyone can go deeper than an easy-going script will allow it is these folk who scoop out crumbs of melancholy and hope and regret from unpromising cracks.
Director John Madden presumably sat back and watched these craftsmen and women go to work, safe in the knowledge that no-one would misfire.
And with a host of unselfish performances in the bag, he could concentrate on capturing the teeming riot of colour and noise that so frightens and charms the dry Brits.
From a land of call centres, health and safety and rain to this - a spice market of spirit and optimism where, as Wilkinson's Graham puts it "life is a privilege not a right".
Expect all your neighbourhood Shirley Valentines and Calendar Girls to be booking tickets east this year.
Yes, the film would have been better as a longform TV series. Yes, it meanders wildly and re-states the obvious as something insightful. Yes, everything gets too easy too quickly and sorted too smartly but there is no escaping the genial charm of this life-affirming story that sees gap year grouches discover that, yes, there is a chance of new life before death.
Stage review: Singin' In The Rain, Palace Theatre
STAGE
Singin' In The Rain
Palace Theatre
4/5
IN A NUTSHELL
Jonathan Church's faithful adaptation of the Hollywood hoofin' classic brings sunshine on a rainy day.
REVIEW
Turns out beyond the gaudy portals of the Palace Theatre it ain't rainin' so much.
There's pavement gum and grey skies and gurning multitudes with duelling elbows but none of those colourfully clad hoofers eager to impress with their fast feet and 100 watt smiles.
So best stay indoors, with them, with the glamour and escapism and the gee whiz and the joy.
Only a grouch could resist such a carbon-copy homage to the Hollywood classic, delivered with such attention to detail and genial brio that it makes Glee look like Les Miserables.
In this no-expense-spared adaptation, the fiddle-de-dee and tra-la-la coincides with the clippety-clop and splish-splosh to make an unalloyed treat that brings the audience to its feet après le deluge.
So the pantomime of the silent era is passing and the legendary screen idols of Lockwood and Lamonte find themselves behind a mic and behind the times as the talkies expose their technical weaknesses.
Some are better equipped for the revolution than others. Don Lockwood (Mad Man-a-like Adam Cooper) is smooth as a lubricated zoot suit on Broadway but Bronx bird Lina Lamonte (Katherine Kingsley) with a voice like fingernails on a blackboard discovers a "doig eat doig world".
Enter simple songbird Kathy Seldon (a winning Scarlett Strallen) who has the voice - and the heart of Don - but not the billing or the pulling power.
A brainwave from music man Cosmo Brown (a scene-stealing Daniel Crossley) introduces dubbing and double crossing which makes for much of the preppy drama.
The romance is as convincing as a dancing dodo in a field of flattened corn but this is a world where people burst into song when most would chunter into their kebabs so hyper-realism isn't a deficiency that mars proceedings.
And, frankly, who cares. There's a songlist to get through and director Jonathan Church knows why we put our penny in the jukebox.
He tees up the songs with aplomb and then lets rip to a cavalcade of classics - Make Em Laugh, Good Morning, You Were Meant For Me - all delivered with a stylish side order of choreography from Andrew Wright.
Singin' In The Rain is accompanied by screeches from the front rows who got a log flume soaking and Gotta Dance is a dreamy extravaganza that parades the masterful costumes (Bill Butler) and set design (Simon Higlett).
Generally, I am the nut in the nougat, hard-bitten and resistant to all forms of sweetness - but, hey, where'd that soppy grin come from?
Sequins and raindrops, snazz, jazz and romance, flapper girls and slick umbrella action. The forecast predicts a splash hit.
Singin' In The Rain
Palace Theatre
4/5
IN A NUTSHELL
Jonathan Church's faithful adaptation of the Hollywood hoofin' classic brings sunshine on a rainy day.
REVIEW
Turns out beyond the gaudy portals of the Palace Theatre it ain't rainin' so much.
There's pavement gum and grey skies and gurning multitudes with duelling elbows but none of those colourfully clad hoofers eager to impress with their fast feet and 100 watt smiles.
So best stay indoors, with them, with the glamour and escapism and the gee whiz and the joy.
Only a grouch could resist such a carbon-copy homage to the Hollywood classic, delivered with such attention to detail and genial brio that it makes Glee look like Les Miserables.
In this no-expense-spared adaptation, the fiddle-de-dee and tra-la-la coincides with the clippety-clop and splish-splosh to make an unalloyed treat that brings the audience to its feet après le deluge.
So the pantomime of the silent era is passing and the legendary screen idols of Lockwood and Lamonte find themselves behind a mic and behind the times as the talkies expose their technical weaknesses.
Some are better equipped for the revolution than others. Don Lockwood (Mad Man-a-like Adam Cooper) is smooth as a lubricated zoot suit on Broadway but Bronx bird Lina Lamonte (Katherine Kingsley) with a voice like fingernails on a blackboard discovers a "doig eat doig world".
Enter simple songbird Kathy Seldon (a winning Scarlett Strallen) who has the voice - and the heart of Don - but not the billing or the pulling power.
A brainwave from music man Cosmo Brown (a scene-stealing Daniel Crossley) introduces dubbing and double crossing which makes for much of the preppy drama.
The romance is as convincing as a dancing dodo in a field of flattened corn but this is a world where people burst into song when most would chunter into their kebabs so hyper-realism isn't a deficiency that mars proceedings.
And, frankly, who cares. There's a songlist to get through and director Jonathan Church knows why we put our penny in the jukebox.
He tees up the songs with aplomb and then lets rip to a cavalcade of classics - Make Em Laugh, Good Morning, You Were Meant For Me - all delivered with a stylish side order of choreography from Andrew Wright.
Singin' In The Rain is accompanied by screeches from the front rows who got a log flume soaking and Gotta Dance is a dreamy extravaganza that parades the masterful costumes (Bill Butler) and set design (Simon Higlett).
Generally, I am the nut in the nougat, hard-bitten and resistant to all forms of sweetness - but, hey, where'd that soppy grin come from?
Sequins and raindrops, snazz, jazz and romance, flapper girls and slick umbrella action. The forecast predicts a splash hit.
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