Tristram Zedex Eighty One

OK, so in the past I’ve made sweeping predictions about things that will and won’t be big/happen in the entertainment world. When my flat mate at university first introduced me to the audio offerings of Bloc Party, I said it was “scenester shit” that no one will remember in a year. Cut to twelve months later, they’d hit the big time with three top 10 singles while I had become a convert and proud owner of Silent Alarm, their brilliant and beautiful first album.

About a year before the release of Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration, a comedy spoofing the world of awards-baiting in the movie industry, and reeling from LOL-errific-ness of his previous movies A Mighty Wind and Best in Show, I predicted it would be 2007’s ‘Sideways,’ an indie-comedy turned money making hit, and would, ironically, suck up all awards in it’s path come Oscar season. Upon it’s release the film grossed $5m in the US, a whopping 7% of Sideway’s $71m in American box office takings, and went on to get nominated for an incredible NO Oscars.

Basically, I get things wrong. But never one to shy away from throwing my two cents in before we’ve even converted from a barter economy to a banking one, here’s my prediction for 2009. Avatar, the new film from James Cameron, will be the most commercially successful film of 2009, and on a technological level, a cinematic milestone.

Cameron has spent the twelve years since the release of his last film, Titanic, developing the necessary 3D technology to make this new blockbuster, reported to be a sci fi action film about a war on a lush jungle/oceanic alien planet. The reason I’m excited about this film is because Cameron seldom makes a film that doesn’t push the envelope of movie action and special effects, whether it be the moving water aliens of The Abyss, shape shifting T-1000 of Terminator 2 or gargantuan, arguably tasteless but nonetheless cinematically stunning carnage of the Titanic’s fate in the eponymous hit. Even True Lies, an enjoyable if slight 90s spy thriller, has an incredible, unbroken shot where Arnie appears to land an actual harrier jump jet - at a time when other directors were still doing blue screen with the thick black line around the actors.

For the record, I’m not really an FX junkie - I can’t stand films that forgo plot for effects (eg. Transformers) but Cameron usually has just enough of a plot and decent characters (plus the recurrent inclusion of a strong female lead) to make his films enjoyable between-the-bangs. (Bangs as in explosions, not DiCaprio and Winslet steaming up car windows). By getting immersive 3D technology right (in the same way that Cameron was the first director to fully realize the potential of CGI as a tool to  cinematic storytelling), Avatar will fundamentally change the cinema going public’s opinions on 3D cinema, and ultimately all blockbuster filmmaking that immediately follows. (How’s that for making a sweeping prediction that will ultimately come back to haunt me?)

I’m putting my stamp on this now so that when it is released and audiences marvel at how immersive the technology of 3D is, I can go “told you so.” Or alternatively, if it’s a big flop that no one wants to see because it’s about alien plants and fish, I can go “told you so. I’m just a bit pants at predicting things.”

And there’s a nice article here by someone who has actually seen some of the film in question.

Recently I watched two films, one so bad it was good, the other so (to a fashion) good it was bad; both in the space of one week.

The first was surprise box office juggernaut Mamma Mia! It’s very enjoyable, largely because the cast and crew don’t seem to care that what they’re making is an artistic abomination. Just as Basic Instinct is either low art or high porn (original quoter forgotten), plays/films which string a musical together by contriving a plot around the greatest hits of a recording artist barely qualify as art, either because no one has yet figured out how to do it properly, or because the creative output of any given artist over a 10-15 year period doesn’t lend itself to lyrical cohesiveness, and by proxy a working plot. So for now, this genre remains high porn. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t see the film of Mamma Mia; it misses the mark so much it could well be a masterpiece.

A positive difference between Mamma Mia! and other ’so bad it’s good’ classics such as Rocky IV is that’s that there is an odd self-awareness to the film. Rocky IV is enjoyable due to Sylvester Stallone’s epic displays of self-delusion . Here is a film star who writes, directs and stars in a sports blockbuster about an American boxer slugging it out with a Russian superhuman at the height of the cold war and which he really believes has something to say about the political climate of the time, when really the film is just an advert for over sized male physiques (one of them his own). The actors in Mamma Mia (with the possible exception of Pierce Brosnan) seem to know that the project won’t be taken seriously, and even that the director isn’t really a director at all (at least of cinema anway), so just go with it for the laugh.

The film I saw which was “so good it’s bad” was playwright Neil LaBute’s 1999 indie-dramedy Your Friends and Neighbours. Unlike Mamma Mia, this film has a sense of the cinematic. LaBute, despite hailing from the world of theatre like MM’s helmswoman Phillipa LLoyd, knows how to point a camera at an actor and fill the cinema screen. In the scene from MM where Meryl Streep sings The Winner Takes It All, Lloyd spends the entire three minutes struggling to settle on a camera angle that will sell the moment, which would be pointless (as Streep isn’t acting or singing it convincingly anyway), if it wasn’t so damn funny. Which brings me onto my second point - the cast of YF&N is great. They can act. They convince you that they are the characters they aspire to be. The problem is that the characters are such a hateful group of self-absorbed, pretentious  pricks, you can’t help but resent the director for forcing you to spend time with them. Every one of the three couple’s in the film is cheating on their respective partner. As a result, when one of the characters finds out that they’ve been lied to, you feel no empathy for them whatsoever. And then get bored. One character, played by Jason Patric, has the saving grace of being single, so can’t be guilty of adultery. Although vein and sexist, he offers the film’s most enjoyable moments, such as a scene where we see him working out to a taped recording of himself talking dirty, and as such becomes, relatively speaking, the film’s most likable character. And then (spoiler alert!) we find out he participated in the gang rape of a fellow male student while at high school. Making him the worst human being in the film. LaBute’s will would be forgivable if he offered a greater insight into the character’s traits than “aren’t people despicable?”, but he doesn’t. Which is fine, I just wish he’d done it in a short film rather than a full feature.

Your Friends: Good cast, good director, good dialogue. Utterly hateful from beginning to end.

Mamma Mia: a director who can’t direct, songs which have nothing to do with the story and starring a cast who can sing and act, but no one who can do both. Highly recommended.

Once upon a time there was a band called Mellow Gold… and they didn’t get anywhere. Perhaps it was bad music, perhaps poor management… or perhaps it was that we were named after a supermarket coffee. Who knows. In case it was the latter, Jim, Ben and I would like your help in christening our new band. There is a link below, simply go to it and click on the name you like best. In true ITV style, we might not pick the winner of the poll, but it’d be good to see what you think. Cheers for helping out, and feel free to voice your thoughts in the comment section below.

I was at a house party two weeks ago and saw this.

Excuse the camera-phone quality. The person who owns this DVD collection arranges it, more or less, by spine colour! Isn’t that amazing? Most people anal enough to arrange their DVDs into a discernible genre (and I am certainly one of these people) tend to go for the classic straightforwardness of the alphabetical or by type methods. (I actually go for both, first separating them into TV and film, and then from A-Z within these respective sub groups). Of course most people actually go for either the not at all or pot luck methods, the latter being a system where by you select several cases and open them all in the hope one of them will actually contain the correct DVD title, if a DVD title at all.

I personally don’t quite see how the pictured method helps you to select a specific title quicker, but then if you are selecting a DVD to watch then it probably means you have some time to kill, and so can afford the extra time spent searching in favour of the aesthetic superiority spine color method offers.

Sorry to do this to you, but imagine you’re on a honeymoon with David Cameron. I did say I’m sorry.

Anyway, you’re on your honeymoon with the leader of the opposition, and he’s been annoying you. You really have a bone to pick with him – maybe he’s been kicking you in bed. Maybe he chews his food too loudly. Maybe you didn’t like that off hand comment he made about your mother’s dress at the wedding. You decide to let it go. It’s your honeymoon, after all, and you don’t want your special holiday ruined by petty bickering. Oh, and while you’re at it, you vote him and the Conservative party in for five years of government rule. Come on, how could you not? He’ll be in a mood all the way back to Heathrow otherwise. It’s your honeymoon!

We British have become so cynical in our attitude to politics that we welcome any change, no matter how superficial, as a good thing…

Click here to continue reading this article.

Election watchdogs are reporting that 9 million ballot papers were ordered for the 5.9 million registered voters in Zimbabwe. News of this comes in the same week that Jack Straw, the UK’s Secretary of State for Justice, proposed plans for electoral reform that would see, amongst other things, the introduction of compulsory voting in Britain. If our eligible voters, only 61% of whom voted in the 2005 general election, showed half as much as enthusiasm as their Zimbabwean counterparts, who aren’t just voting once, but one and a half times, then maybe we wouldn’t have the same problem with turnout that we’ve had for the last decade or so.

Yes, voters in Zimbabwe are so enthusiastic about the democratic process that in their general election they’re voting not just once, but one and a half times. Zimbabwe’s government has responded to the election fervour by stepping up production on ballot papers, struggling to produce enough to match their people’s insatiable thirst for voting, even if it means allowing them to come back for seconds. It’s a far cry from 61%. Try 152%. Those mathematics tell me one thing and one thing only: Those Africans sure know how to vote. They’ve got democracy down to a T (even if that T arguably stands for ‘tampering’). Let’s compare the mathematics of this enthusiasm to that of other countries around the world…
(Click on the below picture to continue reading this article).

Last month I spent two weeks in China. I found the Chinese to be kind, hospitable and excited to be hosting one of the world’s most celebrated sporting events. As British cynicism towards the 2012 Olympics starts to grow, I long for some good old fashioned, state controlled TV to inject some enthusiasm into the British public. Well, almost. Read my latest Club Relaford article here.

To improve his Chinese writing Tom, who is studying the language here in Beijing, has started to write a daily diary. He showed me an entry. I understood it all except for one word. No, sorry, I meant to say I didn’t understand any of it except for one word, and that was my name, Aidan, and it was written in English, so I’d have been hard pressed not to score at least one point in the reading Tom’s diary game. I asked Tom how would you spell a foreign name like Aidan using Chinese characters. He explained that you’d probably do it phonetically, taking the Aye-dan sound and using the words it most sounds like in the Chinese spoken language. So my name would translate back to English as Love Egg. I asked Tom what his would be. He said Soup Mother.

Two days after I arrived in Beijing, Soup Mother’s brother Tim and his girlfriend Manchi landed and we spent the next week ticking off the tourist boxes around China’s capital, as Tom introduced us to the ways and whys of Chinese culture. We ate and drank far too much than is good for us, especially as most of the food consisted of baozi (pronounced bow-sa) and jiaozi (pronounced jow-sa), meat filled Chinese dumplings. When I landed I asked Tom what cultural etiquette I should be aware of. He said none, and that in China there’s a lot of spitting and throwing things on the floor at meal times anyway. This pleased me, as I can be an embarrassing enough meal partner even with a knife and fork, let alone chopsticks. When we went for a meal with Tom’s “dad in China,” one Professor Yuan, I proceeded to make a series of Chinese social faux-pas, thus reminding Tom that there is indeed a lot of etiquette to be aware of, and I was breaking many of them.

One of these was quite charming: In China, it is not proper to thank someone too much when they take you out for a meal, as it shows the other person that you are not as good a friend to them as they are to you. He pointed this out as I was thanking Prof. Yuan every 60 seconds, whether for beer, food, or opening the door for me. I pointed out to Tom that I would probably never get to repay the debt to the Prof., so I was justified in presenting myself as an unworthy friend. Although that wasn’t why I was dribbling food down my chin. That was because I am an oaf.

On February 14th, Tim and Manchi flew back to England, so Tom and I decided to do what best befits single men on Valentines day: we took a 28 hour train ride to the South of the country, polished off an Economist (available in China) and stuffed our faces with pot noodles all the way there. Sadly, at some point between consuming my first pot noodle around 12pm on VD, and my third and final one at 10am the following morning, I caught a case of man flu. Now, I’ll be the first to accept criticism that men play up colds. But when we arrived in Guilin and settled into our otherwise comfortable hotel room, Tom explained that the reason the room was cold was because in south China there is no such thing as central heating. So in the absence of a hot cup of tea and something resembling heated walls, my man flu did indeed prove justifiably debilitating. However, that didn’t stop our ‘holiday within a holiday’ from being fun, as we repeatedly and unwillingly found ourselves guests to unstoppable Chinese hospitality, meeting people on our days out and ending up being guests as they paid for meal before we could protest.

These people showed me that China, although cold on the outside, is warm and hospitable on the inside. Unless you’re a victim of human rights abuse. But for the sake of niceties we’ll brush them under the rug for now.

I’ve got a new article up at Rooster Talk. It’s brief and to the point and says that, basically, what British general elections need to sex themselves up is private jets and helicopters. Read it here.