News Hour, with Jerry Caesar

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FILM: If you're in black and white, are you less real?
2010-10-23 11:40:00
‘The past is another country’, said someone, probably – possibly in Star Trek VI – and at first, it’s true. Yet the more you study something the more contemporary it feels. The people stop feeling mannered; the actions stop looking forced. This is just how people are, and you get used to it.Whether it’s because you become better at projecting yourself onto them, or whether it’s a genuine demystification, this is a real process. You get this when studying history, and having watched a lot of 1930s movies over the last six months, I’ve been feeling it deeply.The moment that sparked the recognition was the break into colour during Hell’s Angels, when Jean Harlow suddenly seems utterly real. She’s no longer a character, remote until her close-ups - but a living, breathing being. The transition back to black and white is rather jarring, but does this mean that the more movies resemble real life, the more real they are? Does that mean after we get used to 3D, colour wi...
More About: Film , White , Black , Real

FILM: Three On A Match - good if gimmicky
2010-10-23 11:19:00
The story: The lives and fates of three schoolgirls - one naughty (Joan Blondell), one popular (Ann Dvorak), one smart (Bette Davis) are told against the backdrop of an evolving America, from 1919 into the 1930s.Is Three On A Match a feminist picture? One of the characters pays for her early mistakes, but earns a second chance – another keeps her head down, works hard and reaps the rewards of being a productive member of society (a house, good complexion, mental stability). Another is punished, but why? It’s not for going off and sleeping with a lot of men; plenty of women in pre-Code movies do this - Norma Shearer won an Oscar for it in The Divorcee - but for mistreating others in the process. Buoyed along by its good-time theme tune, the movie frames the ladies’ lives against the backdrop of events in the US – prohibition, women’s suffrage, the introduction of the bikini. This, combined with the superstition of ‘Three on a Match’ (one person will die if three people ...
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FILM: The Divorcee - Shearer rules supreme
2010-10-23 10:53:00
The story: A husband (Chester Morris) is unfaithful to his wife (Norma Shearer, on Oscar-winning form) who decides to 'settle the account' by sleeping with another man. In Red-Headed Woman, Chester Morris is the man undone by his dalliance with an unrelenting Jean Harlow - in The Divorcee, he's undone by his drunken affair with a heavy-browed no-looker. Morris was still early in a long career at this point, so audiences wouldn't know what to expect - but we're set up for a fall by the fact that he looks like a dependable silent icon. It's the darkness around the eyes. He couldn't possibly be a cheater.When his bit on the side horns in on their third wedding anniversary it's a rude shock that plunges Shearer into an utterly compelling performance. This woman is always acting, always bringing something else to the scene, something physical that takes you beyond the lines and focuses your attention on exactly what that moment is about; yet without detracting from...
More About: Film , Rules

FILM: Female - fantasy entertainment with emotional reality
2010-10-23 10:39:00
The story: A female motor tycoon (Ruth Chatterton) moves in a man’s world, and ruthlessly seduces the men she works with – what would happen if she were to meet her equal?Ruth Chatterton is perfect for the lead in Female . She’s classy, unstoppable and flew planes in real life, which is why her character reminds you of one of those women who piloted Spitfires during World War II. She sounds English, she multitasks, says things like ‘ unethical my foot, what’s that got to do with business’ and her expressions makes you think that she’s taller than she is.She’s a fantasy figure in fantasy world, with an office that overlooks unreal acres of industrial activity - she has a dog that's practically a horse, a huge swimming pool, and a palatial house with and a button in every room to call for the vodka she uses to seduce her male workers. Then the next day, she ignores them.Female is played as a comedy, possibly so the men in the audience didn’t get too uncomfortable. Bu...
More About: Entertainment , Reality , Film , Fantasy

FILM: A Free Soul - in the middle, it's great
2010-10-23 10:28:00
The story: The posh daughter (Norma Shearer) of an alcoholic defence attorney (Lionel Barrymore) falls for a crook (Clark Gable) despite being engaged to a polo champion. Which relationship does she value the most?It starts out looking like a simple choice - will the high class dame marry the rogue or the stiff - but the relationship that matters in A Free Soul is between Shearer and Lionel Barrymore as her dad. They're both addicts, and A Free Soul features a surprisingly complex ride into the world of his 'disease', anchored by a bargain between the two of them that, once struck, launches the film onto another level of emotional complexity. None of the characters are quite what they seem. Shearer is a warm and deceptively classic presence, oozing sex appeal. She lolls on chaise longue with a predator's gaze, practically daring Gable to put his arms around her. At times she overacts, but she also registers passion with an unnerving ferocity, and from beneath a knowingly co...
More About: Film , Great , Middle

POLITICS: Miliband refutes 'weak ass' cuts
2010-10-22 23:40:00
New Labour leader Ed Miliband has branded George Osborne ‘a major wuss’ for not implementing the 40 per cent cuts that were revealed not to be part of the Comprehensive Spending Review.‘This guy, he’s lost his nerve’, said Miliband, dragging on a cigarette as Mr Osborne gave his speech inside the House of Commons. ‘He’s got no balls. No cojones. No guts. He wants to spend a week in my shoes, I tell ya,’ rasped Miliband, crunching out the spent cigarette with his boot. ‘I’d have cut the a$$ outta this government. 40 per cent? Me and my boys, we’re looking at 80, 90, 100 per cent. Scorched earth mother ******. Back inside, boys.’Mr Miliband re-entered the chamber minutes later, but was observed by colleagues to be getting ‘seriously pi****’ at the ‘weak-ass-sh**' coming from across the house. After a time, he left surrounded by a grumbling posse, with an air of irritation.
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POLITICS: Prime Minister's Questions, Oct 20 2010
2010-10-22 23:11:00
There were definite themes to Prime Minister’s Questions , what with the Spending Review only minutes away. There was a keen sense of anticipation, and plenty of questions needling Cameron in committing to ideas that his Chancellor may not have considered (not closing certain hospitals, that sort of thing). It was only when these needles came from his side of the house that Cameron looked even remotely vulnerable – Ed Miliband’s opening volley of questions barely having troubled a hair on his head. This exchange was like watching evil, posh Fonzie savage the new boy. Miliband’s sentences took ages to come out, and he frequently became  diverted from his train of thought by what must – at the time – have seemed like witty asides. But it just looked snide at best, and must have felt like a slow motion car wreck. That poor man. Still, credit where it’s due – Miliband (E) stuck with his point, slight as it was, and managed to make it stick. And his fro...
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Actor Franco ‘uncovers reason for living’
2010-10-18 15:56:00
The actor, poet, artist and Renaissance man James Franco has uncovered the secret of life, according to reports. The Spider-Man star was at a spiritual retreat in the Rocky Mountains when the answer came to him, and has since brought his message to every person in the United States, going door-to-door and explaining the meaning of life in a friendly and easy-to-understand manner. ‘He was so nice,’ said Montana resident Miriam Biggs. ‘He just sat me down and said “Miriam, it’s going to be OK. Here’s why.� Then he told me why and I thought – well that makes sense. Such a nice boy, he even took his shoes off at the door.’ Franco, 32, has single-handedly removed the need for both religion and philosophy, according to analysts, who say there is ‘nothing more to understand’ following the revelations from the General Hospital stinter.(Picture: David Shankbone)
More About: Reason

FILM: Piranha 3D - comes at you from all sides
2010-10-08 18:04:00
The story: A small American coastal town deals with the arrival of two dangerous groups – hundreds of drunken spring break students, and some prehistoric killing machines.A high-functioning genre movie that shreds nerves with pace and spectacle, this is horror in overdrive, proving that playing to the lowest-common denominator – showing T, A and gore in pointy 3D – should never be underestimated for its effect, especially when you’ve got a good cast to back it up.Elizabeth Shue is perfect as the cop trying to keep tabs on her family, a great blend of steel and emotion, and apparently poured into her sheriff’s outfit. Jerry O’Connell plays a man who seems to be acting most of the time, a porn director whose sleazy charm masks a vicious underside – and Kelly Brook manages well as one of his stars, considering the camera starts at her chest and moves upwards. You’ve even got Christopher Lloyd to inject a bit of mad scientist wonder into the story.Cast aside, what you re...
More About: Film , Sides

FILM: Blonde Venus - Dietrich wears the trousers, but does she like it?
2010-10-08 17:57:00
The story: A German actress (Marlene Dietrich) marries a poor scientist and has a child with him. When her man falls sick, she makes a sultry return to the stage to finance a life-saving treatment, ultimately prostituting herself to a local bigwig (Cary Grant). Will her husband find out?Shorn of the usual exotic settings for his Marlene Dietrich studies (Morocco, China, Imperial Russia), director Josef von Sternberg creates an altogether more layered product against the backdrop of the US night club scene. As in Mae West movies, you go in knowing that Dietrich is a woman with near-mystical powers of attraction. But, unlike in the Mae West movies, somehow these powers are being constrained. Here, it's a marriage that has her washing her son at bedtime, rather than weaving a spell on the stage of the city's nightclubs.You know Dietrich has arrived at the peak of her powers in Blonde Venus when she turns up on stage wearing trousers, something she's already doing at the start of Mor...
More About: Film , Trousers

FILM: Hell's Angels - with colour, and Jean Harlow
2010-10-08 17:27:00
The story: Two brothers and their friend are pulled into World War I on opposite sides, and their characters are tested - both by the war and the charms of Jean Harlow.Boy, Howard Hughes knew how to spend money. The aerial combat scenes in Hell's Angels are stunning even by today's standards. The explosion that blows up a German base, flipping a truck in the process, doesn't look like a model shot - so it doesn't matter if it is. Hell's Angels went into production at the tail end of the silent era, and when talkie technology came along, Hughes reworked the movie to incorporate it, bringing in James Whale to 'stage' (as the credits put it) the dialogue.There's even a long colour scene at a society ball, featuring the only colour film footage of Jean Harlow, then barely into her 20s and specialising in leaving an impression rather than actually acting. (During the ball, she emerges from the bushes with a unkempt solider and welcomes one of the brothers, whom she is supposedly ...
More About: Film , Colour

FILM AWARDS: Virgin Media Shorts 2010
2010-10-05 13:41:00
Another year, another Virgin Media Shorts (film) competition. The results are revealed tonight, but here’s our pick of the crop ahead of that. Bus Baby A disturbing little piece about a teenage mother whose baby complains about his treatment to her on a bus. It wavers between horror and social commentary - the horror comes from his expression of real fears about her own shortcomings, ones that any mother might have. Truth is a powerful motivator for fear, and the baby’s sharp Scouse accent and creepy animated lips make it all the worse. Teenage mums, of course, have other people’s kneejerk judgements to contend with in the first place – and there’s the social commentary. Babies are a nightmarish paradox in themselves, at once utterly vulnerable and capable of wielding enormous power. (SEE IT HERE)Sign Language A feelgood comic piece about the profession of sign men, one that treads into similar territory as fellow entrant Pickle – getting the girl, or worrying about it â...
More About: Film , Awards

FILM: Baby Face - a fantasy where it's hard to see what's true
2010-09-22 21:36:00
The story: A young woman (Barbara Stanwyck), sick of being pawed over by the men in her dad's illegal bar, adopts the teachings of Nietzsche and moves to the big city, where she sleeps her way to the top.The problem with Baby Face is that, for most of the movie, it feels like there's nothing at stake. And by the time you realise what is actually at stake - Barbara Stanwyck's ability to love, feel any kind of emotion, etc - it's almost too late to engage with it.After the opening scenes at her father's bar, an expert study in dysfunctional upbringing that even weaves the teachings of Nietzsche into its fabric with passing plausibility, the movie turns into what seems like an a elaborate post-feminist fantasy, as Stanwyck sleeps, lies and manipulates her way into a heavily subsidised, highly luxurious existence (one of the people she shags is a young John Wayne). After that the story takes a left-turn, a much-needed one as there's only so many times you can watch Stanwyck doing ...
More About: Film , Fantasy , Hard

FILM: 42nd Street - where Depressions aren't depressing
2010-09-22 21:26:00
The story: In the depths of the Depression, the sugar daddy of star Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) finances a grand musical production with Brock in the lead. As the rehearsals continue, relationships are fancied, forged and broken backstage, and the director's health nears breaking point.Plenty of Depression-era pictures, even the sharp ones, are downbeat - it's all about getting what you can in the smartest way possible, and to hell with the authorities. Now wiseguys and gals are clearly fun to watch, but it's refreshing when you see that they're also capable of being nice people, and that's where 42nd Street really scores.The rehearsals for the chorus line are a case in point. Apparently full of venom and back-stabbing, there's also a healthy smattering of gutter-mouthed camaraderie, and some fun eccentrics: one girl, nicknamed 'Anytime Annie' (Ginger Rogers) poses as a British aristocrat, complete with a store of monocles. She's got a mouth on her, but has chari...
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FILM: The Other Guys rocks, if you roll with it
2010-09-22 21:14:00
The story: When the city's two most courageous cops (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) are taken out of commission, unwilling partners Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell ('the other guys') step up and try for crimefighting glory.Don't watch this buddy cop comedy with a critical mindset, because if you do, you start to notice things. Chiefly, how many of the scenes feel like really good improv - this is fine, wonderful even, but if you don't like the groove between the characters then you're stuck as, after the first half, this is the film's sole velocity.There is not a plot that makes any kind of sense beyond this point - you think it's going to, but it doesn't. And the point you thought it might have wanted to make is transplanted into an utterly compelling end credits sequence that feels like something Michael Moore would do, if he worked on Saturday Night Live.If you enjoy the banter between Ferrell and Wahlberg though, you're set. Ferrell is locked down in...
More About: Film , Roll , Guys

FILM: Red-Headed Woman shocks, but with substance
2010-09-22 20:11:00
The story: A woman from the wrong side of the tracks (Jean Harlow) tries to improve herself by breaking up the marriage of her boss (Chester Morris), and uses him as her ticket into high society. What's remarkable about this pre-code movie - supposedly one of the big reasons for the Code's introduction - is Jean Harlow. Not only how she looks - the film opens with a montage of hair dye, garters and see through dresses - but the way she behaves. She steamrollers sexual opposition, ruthlessly winding men around her finger, blackmailing them if necessary to seal the deal.Her motivation is getting ahead in a Depression-ravaged America, although unlike James Cagney in the gangster equivalent of such roles, she's not a sympathetic character. Unlike Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face, we're given no explanation for Harlow's one-track mind other than the general conditions of the times. In fact, the only sympathetic character is the wife of the man she seduces, something we're forced ...
More About: Film , Woman

FILM: You, The Living - happy, sad, beautiful
2010-09-19 23:36:00
The story: A collection of inter-connected scenes - some real, some based on dreams - of life for everyday Swedish folk. Some scenes are funny, some are sad – but in all of them you notice the framing. It's beautiful. Every scene looks like an Edward Hopper painting, and it's a comparison that's all the stranger when you look at how profoundly, determinedly ugly the subjects are, and how long they take to do anything, even cross the room. It's a non-professional cast, and they chat and argue about their lives, some to the camera and some to each other. It’s a feast of naturalism told with a tragicomic surrealist's palette. In one scene, you get a teacher collapsing in her class after an argument, in which her husband called her a hag. In the next, you meet the husband – he's a carpet salesman, and you learn that she called him an old fart first. One man tells us about a dream he had, a miserable dinner party with relatives who aren't his, but where he felt responsible ...
More About: Living , Film , Beautiful , Happy

FILM: Agora - it's all about ideas, for better or worse
2010-09-19 22:57:00
The story: The philosopher Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) tries to divine the motions of the heavens as Alexandria's pagans are driven out by the Christians, who in turn persecute the Jews, and everyone else who doesn’t agree with them.Agora opens like a science fiction picture, introducing us to 4th century AD Earth  from space. This is for a couple of reasons. It forces us to look at the world from a new perspective, and it reminds us how it actually, physically, is – it’s a reality check against the dogmatic musings of the less open-minded characters. Although there aren’t many of those.Even Hypatia the philosopher is so dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom that she cuts everything else out – advancing knowledge is all that matters to her, as enforcing moral law is all the matters to the Christian religious police.We’re not used to seeing Christians as the bad guys, especially in a middle east setting. When they’re taunting the pagans, you think you’re watching a...
More About: Ideas , Film

FILM: Extract - like Office Space, but better
2010-09-19 22:44:00
The story: A factory owner (Jason Bateman) is on the verge of selling his plant when a tragic accident occurs, a con-woman arrives in town, and the advice of a dodgy barman (Ben Affleck) leads to a tricky situation with his wife.Extract is a bit like Office Space , Mike Judge’s workplace comedy of frustration, except that it maintains its appeal across the full running time. The closest point of comparison is the irritating character who keeps saying ‘If It could just, go ahead, and get that (fill in blank) from you’ – in Office Space , he’s played by Gary Cole. In Extract, it’s Anchorman’s David Koechner.People turn up in unexpected roles. Ben Affleck plays a barman who seems to be into everything under the sun, and steers factory owner Jason Bateman – who’s diving into some form of midlife crisis – into the the realm of drugs and prostitutes. Gene Simmons from Kiss also pops up as an ambulance-chasing lawyer with a bilingual advertising campaign, and this kind of...
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FILM: Hot Tub Time Machine - a sleazy fantastical attack on the senses
2010-09-19 22:39:00
The story: Three middle-aged friends find their lives haven’t turned out as they hoped, and go for a lads' holiday to relive past glories – only they find a magical hot tub, and are whisked back into their 1980s selves. Can they change the past - and should they?Bone-headed but not heartless and better scripted than you think, Hot Tub Time Machine takes its emotional cues from its subjects – embittered, middle-aged men transported into the bodies of their teenage selves. It is what it is, knows it, and does what you’d expect decently enough at little over 90 minutes..The big joke is the 1980s, which is fast becoming the 1960s of easy-reference parody. One character even mistakes the 80s for the decade of ‘free love’, but John Cusack’s character is quick to correct that all they had was ‘Reagan and Aids’. Overblown at the time, the 80s have become cartoonish in retrospect – all neon brightness, Alf, and Commie paranoia (what future comedies will make of our decad...
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Wham, bam - and thank you
2010-09-15 15:49:00
ITV’s fledgling morning strand Daybreak carried a marvellous story this morning, in which a reporter wandered about speculating what it must be like for George Michael in the big house. Someone was even wheeled on to testify that prison isn’t a very nice experience, and headshaking footage of the singer dressed up as a copper was thrown in for ironic measure. This, by itself, was almost enough. But the kicker came later, as the reporter visited the scene of the crime – where the Wake Me Up Before You Go Go singer had druggedly crashed his car into a branch of Snappy Snaps. The straight-faced reporter noted that a ‘fan’ of Michael had etched ‘Wham’ into the spot where the car struck the shop. A fan, or an opportunistic comedy genius?

Capital FM: Expand the brand, change the meaning?
2010-09-14 23:06:00
What does 'capital' mean? Capital letter, capital city...it means 'important'. Comes at the HEAD OF, from the Latin caput (which also gives us capital in the architectural sense, decapitate etc). But in the context of Capital Radio, it clearly means London. Or does it? The brand 'Capital' is being expanded to represent city pop stations across the nation, or at least in England and Scotland. In this context, could we now imagine that it means 'very good', in the sense that Carleton Hobbs's Sherlock Holmes used it?WATSON: 'Cabbie...221B Baker Street, cabbie.'HOLMES: 'Capital, my dear Watson. Let us return to our humble abode.'Let's hope so, because it makes a lot more sense.
More About: Change , Meaning , Brand

FILM: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World - good, but suffers from overdrive
2010-09-12 15:06:00
The story: Twenty two-year-old Toronto dweller / aspiring rocker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), meets the girl of his dreams (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) - but, to win her, he must first defeat her seven evil exes in a series of Street Fighter-style challenges.Plenty of men will empathise with Scott Pilgrim's experience of the early 20s. He is 'grown-up' yet everyone else seems to be more mature; he's a 'nice guy' except he's actually been pretty unpleasant to his lady friends, more through emotional apathy than deliberate action; and he's adrift, unfocused and still with one foot in the creative romanticism of his teens.The part of his condition he's aware of is blamed on his own evil ex, whom he longs to replace with the dream girl, Ramona Flowers (Winstead). The pink-haired Flowers is a familiar fantasy figure to nerdish males - cool but looking to be less so, aloof but secretly vulnerable, and alluringly 'male' in that she doesn't require lots of emotional chitchat to pr...
More About: Film , World , The World , Good

FILM: Dinner At Eight, a revolving feast of tragicomedy
2010-09-12 10:52:00
The story: A number of Manhattanites and visitors, many in declining  or precarious situations, come together for an illustrious dinner party at the home of shipping line owner Oliver Jordan.The trailer pitched it as ‘dwarfing Grand Hotel with its stars’ and Dinner At Eight is one of those movies - an all-star extravaganza, but not in the flamboyant sense. It's sad, funny and thoughtful by turns, with John Barrymore (as in Grand Hotel) providing a strong dramatic spine to the story. George Cukor's picture is about looking back, and the reflections and regrets of its characters are almost as a much a product of age as they are of the Depression, the effects of which spread out like echoes of a tsunami in the background.What the Depression has done is made old industries vulnerable, including the shipping line of the family hosting the dinner. Its owner, Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore) and an ageing actress (Marie Dressler) mull past glories in an early scene, and they’r...
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The marketing of Cyrus
2010-09-11 22:55:00
What exactly is Jonah Hill doing with his hand? Is it a punch? Or an obscene gesture related to the sins of onan? The odd thing about Cyrus is that it's been marketed as if it were a gross-out comedy, whereas its more of an indie study of an awkward, unnatural relationship triangle - there's Marisa Tomei as the mum, John C. Reilly as the man who fancies her and Jonah Hill as the son who might do, to.A twist on the classic Oedipal set-up. The first of these gestures sits better with the reality of the film, the second more closely with films like Superbad (where Hill hit it big with audiences).
More About: Marketing