"yea nit~wits ..fucking STOP going to em ! & STOP watching the "garbage" on TV ...i am goobber & i approve this msg !!!! ...now give me yer vote " :0 ..producer ~ (in my ear piece during the ass~bate) " um sir you can't say THAT on Live TV "..... ~ (me) putting my hand up to my ear & saying) " the fuck i can't" ...these ~meaning dummycocks & republipoubes " i'll fucking vote fer a "terd" wearing an tie or ,or a dress " mean while back in the control booth ~producer KILLLLL the mike KILLLL it !!! & back to me~ " i could walk around & stick my thumb up their ........silence ???????????
As an inveterate film fan, I turn to the listings every week and
try not to lose hope. I search the guff that often passes for previews,
and I queue for a ticket with that flicker of excitement reminiscent of
matinees in art deco splendour. Once inside, lights down, beer in hand,
hope recedes as the minutes pass. How many times have I done a runner?
There is a cinema I go to that refunds your money if you’re out the door
within 20 minutes of the opening titles. The people there have knowing
looks. My personal best is less than five minutes of the awful Moulin
Rouge.
This article first appeared in the New Statesman, UK
Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger
Why Bad Movies Keep Coming Out And What To Do About It
The other day, I saw ‘Blue Jasmine’, written and
directed by Woody Allen. The critics’ applause was thunderous. “A work
of brilliance” … “Pure movie-going pleasure” … Smart, sophisticated and
hugely enjoyable” … Brilliantly funny”. One journalist called it a
“miracle”. So I queued for a ticket, even conjuring the wonderful scene
from ‘Annie Hall’ (1975) when Woody Allen, standing in a movie queue,
meets his hero, Marshall Mcluhan: he of “the medium is the message”.
Today, he might as well call up Hans Christian Anderson’s parable
about a naked emperor, which applies to his latest “work of brilliance”.
By any fair and reasonable measure, it is crap. Every character is
cardboard. The schematic “plot” is crude. Two adopted sisters are thrown
together, implausibly. There is a wannabee politican whose name should
be Congressman Stereotype. The script is lazy, dated and patronising.
Clearly, Allen wrote it during a night sweat. “If Cate Blanchett doesn’t
receive an Oscar nomination,” wrote The Times critic, “then I will eat a
Chanel hat.” Actually, Blanchett deserves a Lifeboat medal. By sheer
dint of her acting, she tries and ails to rescue this wreck.
PR has subverted much of our lives, making unconscious
acolytes of those who once might have operated outside the pack. The
drumbeat of crap movies with big promotional budgets, mostly from the
US, is incessant. The US market share of cinema box-office takings in
Britain is more than 70 per cent; the small UK share is mainly for US
co-productions. Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a
tiny fraction. Ironically, in the US, quality film-making has absconded
to television.
The hype of public relations – Edward Bernays’
euphemism for propaganda – is now regarded as truth. The medium has
become the message. Prime Minister David Cameron, himself a former PR
huckster for a media asset-stripper, saw the hyped ‘The Fifth Estate’,
and declared: “Benedict Cumberbatch – brilliant, fantastic piece of
acting. The twitchiness and everything of Julian Assange is brilliantly
portrayed.” Neither he nor Cumberbatch, nor the makers of this fiction
have ever met Assange. Based on a dodgy, axe-grinding book, the
DreamWorks juggernaut is a perfidious, unethical exploitation of a man
fighting for his freedom, if not his life.
Not surprisingly, Cameron’s government is slashing at the budget of
the British Film Institute, keeper of the world’s greatest film archive
and one of this country’s most liberating institutions. Like the
National Health Service, it would not be established today. If you yearn
to avoid Hollywood’s “babbling brook of bullshit” (to borrow from
Richard Lewis in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’), join the BFI. As a longtime
member and supporter, I am often found in one of its
acoustically-excellent cinemas, seeing films, past and present, classics
and unknowns, that are reminders of how pleasurable an hour or two in
front of celluloid can be. For more than 30 years, my own films have had
their premieres here.
The antithesis of ‘Blue Jasmine’ and ‘The Fifth Estate’
has just ended a run at the BFI. This is Nothing but a Man, one of only
two fiction features directed by Michael Roemer, a German Jewish refugee
who grew up in England before emigrating to the US. Made in 1964 and
set in the Deep South with an almost entirely African-American cast, it
is the story of Duffy (Ivan Dixon), a tormented young black man whose
life is consumed and distorted by his refusal to accept his “boy”
status. Aware that only collective action can beat racism, he is
constantly looking for solidarity and failing to find it.
Is Duffy’s anger the product of an obstinate nature or a principled
struggle against The Man? In keeping us guessing, Roemer (he wrote the
script with Robert M. Young) ensures the anger is real, almost a
presence in the cinema. Yet it is masked behind smiles; almost everyone
in this remarkable film smiles as a way of trapping if not containing
their despair. The jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, who plays Duffy’s wife
Josie, is brilliant at this emotional and political sleight of hand.
There is hope, too, but not a driblet of sentimentality.
None of the main cinema chains in the US wanted to show
Nothing but a Man. No major distributor picked it up. Like Peter
Watkins’ ‘The War Game’, which the BBC banned for 20 years, Roemer’s
film did the rounds of church halls, youth centres and later video
recorders. The point about the film is that it is as timeless as its
director is ageless. At 85, Michael Roemer still teaches at the Yale
School of Art and worries that he could not make “commercial” films that
people wanted to see.
He need not worry. A film is judged by how or whether we remember
it. Unlike the babbling brook of Hollywood – with its suppression of
truth, fake heroes and warmongering – a masterpiece, or just a good
movie, is unforgettable. Join the BFI.This article first appeared in the New Statesman, UK
Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger
No comments:
Post a Comment