A Gentle Symphony - Review of "Quartet"

Plot:

Every year on Giuseppe Verdi's birthday Beacham House, a retirement home for musicians, holds a concert to raise funds. This year the house is in particular trouble and the residents are reliant on the success of the concert. Lifelong friends and house residents, Wilf (Billy Connolly) and Reggie (Tom Courtney), step forward with former colleague Cissy (Pauline Collins) to put on an especially important performance. They wish to end the show with a quartet. Reggie is a hugely respected singer, matched only by his ex-wife, the former grande dame of the opera house, Jean Horton (Maggie Smith). Jean joins the home wishing to respectfully leave her career behind, but Wilf and Cissy know her presence in the quartet alongside Reggie will create enough public interest to save Beacham House. Reggie is still heartbroken from Jean's admitted affair and Jean has no desire to sing long past her prime. Meanwhile Cissy's dementia becomes ever more evident. Can Wilf's energy and good humour prevail upon the true spirits of his friends?

Stick to the Path - A Reflection on "The Company of Wolves"

Plot:

Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is a young girl asleep in her bedroom. As her angry older sister (Georgia Slowe) bangs on her locked door for stealing her make-up, Rosaleen dreams of living in a fairytale village where her sister is killed by wolves. Here she lives some of her time with Granny (Angela Lansbury) who tells her about werewolves and how to avoid life's dangers. Based on several of Angela Carter's short stories, contained in her "Bloody Chamber" compilation and her radio play, "The Company of Wolves", this is a hugely symbolic film dealing with various themes regarding a girl's journey into womanhood.

The Wolf-Pit - A Review of "The Wolf of Wall Street"

Plot:

Based on the autobiography of the same title by Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), “The Wolf of Wall Street” is a black comedy about the self-made millionaire who rose to fame through the stock market and founded Stratton Oakmont. Jordan Belfort begins his career in 1987 working for a big city stockbroker firm only for the firm to go bust due the Black Monday Wall Street crash. He discovers the penny broker business and builds up his own empire. However, Belfort’s life of excess, fraudulent enterprises and pursuit of money have some dire consequences…  

Review:

“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”

Zig Ziglar

The above quote was randomly generated on one of my email servers today and I thought it was very apt for the theme of the film I viewed yesterday. Ziglar’s quotes seem to be in the very fabric of modern American ideas about success. So much so, that I have found myself tripping over them in my dealings with various aspects of cut-throat business and self-help culture. I doubt this guru of both respective fields would care for me associating him with this review, but nevertheless the life story of stockbroker Jordan Belfort is provides the archetype for the alpha salesman in the modern age who eventually became a motivational speaker. Ziglar’s quote is echoed in the lessons Belfort tells his trainee brokers. The myth of the equal relationship between the client and broker is destroyed within the early stages of the film, and we see its principles laid raw in drug-dealing, stockbroking, money-laundering and self-help.  

Remembering "Extreme World Warfare" Part III

Stu and I stood in the middle of Madison Square Gardens, our sense of wonderment restrained only by the shared knowledge that we'd earned this moment. All the lonely cold nights in the morning loading up equipment with the remnants of grease paint on my face had been worth it. All the days walking through the miserable November showers from premises to premises only to be refused at every stop by people who wouldn't display our advertising posters had been worth it. All the let downs and false promises we had absorbed had been worth it. All the ridicule and insults we had taken from both the wrestling world and the wrestling sceptics alike had been justly endured. All the money my grandfather had left me in his will had been invested well because of this moment. This moment of glory… that never happened.

I didn't actually dream of our show performing at any famous venue. I don't think Stu did either. We had nightmares about arriving late for the show, forgetting essential equipment and wrestlers not turning up. Stu had one reoccurring dream about the whole show not getting caught on film. These were warranted concerns because on different occasions such things nearly and actually did happen. With the exception of our final show together our debut, "The Declaration", was perhaps the most nerve-wrecking experience in the history of our business partnership.

The "Hitchcock" Institution - A review of "Hitchcock"

There are many ways to approach a biopic and "Hitchcock" goes for the easiest one. It's a choice that results in success for the most part. By opting for a pivotal moment in the main protagonist's career, writer John J. McLaughlin was not forced to wade through Alfred Hitchcock's imposing career, cherry picking what would make for a good dramatic narrative. Life, not being a piece of dramatic prose, is rarely a linear path. It takes a bold director and writer to tackle the full biopic approach and the result is usually what seems to be little more than a dramatized resume that fails to deliver an interesting central theme.

Punk Gothic - A Retrospective on "Hellraiser"

My review of the 1987 horror classic, "Hellraiser". The film's enduring legacy is assured, but the brilliance of the first instalment is often overshadowed by the iconography of the "Pinhead" character. Here I have a closer look of what establishes this film above most of its contemporaries and puts it in the running against today's horror...

The Christmas Jumper (or How Sadistic Fashion Designers turned a Familial Festive Punishment into a "Desirable" Object for the Incurably Trendy)

The Christmas Jumper
(or How Sadistic Fashion Designers turned a Familial Festive Punishment into a "Desirable" Object for the Incurably Trendy)  

 
And lo the child did feel the Christmas parcel with dread and he knew it was soft. The child's feelings of horror did fill his very soul. For he knew that this was a knitted Christmas jumper his grandmother had made. He knew that he must weareth this garment as if he were a medieval monk burdened with a cilice or hair shirt. Worse still, these garments did bear revolting images of the festive season designed to inflict their jolliness on the rest of us. The boy did feelith like the village idiot, marked out by this curse, his chest bearing a stupid looking reindeer or images of Christmas trees that looked like the graphics from a ZX Spectrum computer game. A feeling of guilt would force the poor boy to wear this burden throughout the day, although it did mortify his tender skin and near garrotte his infantile throat.