BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Jose Padilha’s ‘The Elite Squad’

Posted on February 12, 2008 by admin

'Elite Squad' 2008 x650

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – In Jose Padilha’s crude and violent film “The Elite Squad,” the pope is visiting Rio de Janeiro and he needs a good night’s sleep so the local police commander sends his crack troops into the closest slum to kill everybody.

Well, not everybody, but all the drug-dealing scum his specially trained officers can find and by any means possible, preferably a high-powered rifle. It means there will be blood and lots of it, all captured by a dizzying hand-held camera racing through some of the worst cases of urban blight on the planet.

Poorly structured and at times incoherent, what box office appeal the film has will rely on its sheer pace and the amount of torture and killing that goes on, so it should do fine.

The basic assumption of the script by Padilha and Rodrigo is that everyone in Rio is corrupt and especially the authorities. Policemen accept bribes for whatever pays the most: do their jobs or turn a blind eye. They even steal the engines from their own squad cars, sell them and put a piece of junk under the hood instead.

Capt. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is a cop with integrity but it’s driving him crazy as he risks his life daily battling bad guys in and out of uniform. Plus he has a pregnant wife at home who wishes he would quit.

He’s trying hard to accommodate her wish but he needs to find a replacement to take over command of the elite squad. Since everyone else has been compromised he settles on two rookies who have been best friends since childhood, the brave but hair-triggered Neto (Ciao Junqueira) and the cautious but shrewd Matias (Andre Ramiro).

For some reason their work involves getting second jobs so that Neto works at the police auto shop while Matias goes to law school. Neto’s commitment leads him to devise a way of intercepting payoffs drug dealers make to the local commander and using the money to supply the squad cars with desperately needed new parts.

Matias hides the fact that he’s a cop from the other students including pretty Maria (Fernando Machado) and takes no action when they fire up joints.

Both situations lead to dangerous complications although the story is told in a confusing mix of time-shifting flashbacks and at the end there’s still no sign of the pope.

Before they can join the elite squad, however, Neto and Matias have to make it through an odd sort of training camp that involves ritual humiliation. Then, they’re handed high-powered rifles and sent into the slums to kill everybody.

Well, not everybody.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, In Competition; Cast: Wagner Moura; Andre Ramiro; Ciao Junqueira; Milhem Cortaz; Fernando Machado; Maria Ribeiro; Paulo Vilela; Fernando de Freitas; Andre Mauro; Fabio Lago; Producers: Marcos Prado, Jose Padilha; Director: Jose Padilha; Writers: Jose Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel, Braulio Mantovani; Director of cinematography: Lula Carvalho; Production designer: Tule Peake; Music: Pedro Bromfman; Co-producers: Eliana Soarez, James D’Arcy; Costume designer: Claudia Kopke; Editor: Daniel Rezende. Executive producers: Maria Clara Ferreira, Bia Castro, Genna Terranova, Eduardo Constantini; The Weinstein Co.; No MPAA rating; running time 118 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: ‘Heavy Metal in Baghdad’

Posted on February 12, 2008 by admin

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – The fate of four would-be head-bangers in the crazy world of Iraq may not add up to a hill of beans but it’s fodder for an engaging documentary by Canadian filmmakers Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi titled “Heavy Metal in Baghdad.”

It should play well at festivals and become a collectors’ item on DVD.

'Heavy Metal in Baghdad' 2008Tipped off by a magazine article about a band called Acrassicauda (black scorpion) attempting to play heavy metal concerts in the war-torn capital, Moretti and Alvi tracked them down and helped stage a ragged concert before a small group of dedicated fans.

All hell broke loose after that and they lost touch but the film shows their attempts a year later to track down the four young men who want to be like their heroes in Metallica, Slayer and Slipknot.

What the band lacks in musical talent it more than makes up for in enthusiasm although the film wisely keeps their playing to a minimum. Moretti handles the camera while Alvi asks the questions onscreen and it probably helps that his manner is jaunty as the places they visit in shell-shocked Baghdad are very scary.

The city’s terrifying lack of security and the awful existence that Iraqis of all creeds are suffering become abundantly clear even after the foursome make their way to Damascus in Syria.

Their thoughts and observations about life in Iraq today are expressed in near-perfect American accents with endearing obscenities and mistakes in syntax. They seem much closer to the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll than the Rolling Stones in Martin Scorsese’s “Shine a Light.”

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: Penelope Cruz in ‘Elegy’

Posted on February 11, 2008 by admin

'Elegy' 2008 x650

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – With some fine naturalistic acting, Penelope Cruz just about saves Isabel Coixet’s gloomy drama “Elegy” from drowning in the drippy male fantasies of author Philip Roth, on whose short novel the film is based.

Cruz plays a dignified and sheltered student from Cuba named Consuela whose vulnerability is exploited by literary professor David Kepesh, played by Ben Kingsley, in order to get her into bed. Common to Roth’s fictional delusions, the clever and wildly attractive young woman falls for relentless flattery and what the ageing roué believes is sparkling banter with a virile bedroom manner.

Coixet takes the love affair at face value, larding it with plenty of Bach and Vivaldi to give it depth, but as revealed by Roth’s original title, “The Dying Animal,” it is all about him.

Cruz’s performance deserves to be seen widely and it should place her again in line for prizes but the story’s pretensions and downbeat mood will not endear the film to audiences.

Kingsley does not help, either, with a performance that is mannered and stagy, especially when paired with the apparently effortless grace of his costar. Miscast in a role that requires a great deal of charm to make the character something more than a randy old goat, Kingsley sometimes appears to forget there is another person in the scene.

Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer is unable to raise Roth’s story, which is narrated by the professor, beyond the author’s typically risible worldview. “When you make love to a woman you get revenge for all the things that defeated you in life,” Kepesh gloats. “Can you find anybody that enchanting without sex? Nobody,” he salivates.

Kepesh has a mistress (Patricia Clarkson) closer to his own age who visits his bed every three weeks and a fellow intellectual (Dennis Hopper) with whom he shares tomcatting tales. There’s also a doctor son (Peter Sarsgaard) that he can’t stand and seldom sees.

“She knows that she’s beautiful, but she’s not yet sure what to do with her beauty,” Kepesh says early on in the certain belief that he’s exactly what she needs. Cruz obliges the director and cinematographer Jean-Claude Larrieu by undressing frequently — Coixet poses her on a couch naked apart from stiletto shoes — but the sequences lack the sizzle that Pedro Almodovar would have given them. Not that he would have come within a mile of this story.

Cruz breathes life into every scene she’s in but she cannot overcome the lack of chemistry with Kingsley to show what Consuela sees in him. When their story takes an inevitable sad turn, the script requires that she ask her lover to validate her beauty and only the actress’ sublime skill prompts tears rather than inappropriate laughter.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival In Competition; Cast: Penelope Cruz; Ben Kingsley; Dennis Hopper; Patricia Clarkson; Peter Sarsgaard; Deborah Harry; Director: Isabel Coixet; Writer; Nicholas Meyer; Producers: Tom Rosenberg, Gary Kucchesi, Andre Lamal; Director of Photography: Jean-Claude Larrieu; Production designer: Claude Pare; Costume designer: Katia Stano; Editor: Amy Duddleston; Production: Lakeshire Entertainment; No MPAA rating, running time 108 mins.

A version of this review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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BERLIN FILM REVIEW: ‘Lemon Tree’ by Eran Riklis

Posted on February 9, 2008 by admin

'Lemon Tree' 2008 x650

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Taking its cue from the old song, the fruit of Eran Riklis’ wise and poignant film “Lemon Tree” is as unpalatable as the age-old and relentless friction between Israel and the West Bank.

It’s a simple tale of a Palestinian woman who refuses to allow her lemon grove to be destroyed by the Israeli military, which claims that it might harbor terrorists. Its universal story of a stubborn individual who resists powerful forces and the two lonely women who connect as a result will resonate with grown-up audiences everywhere.

Hiam Abbass (pictured), who appeared in Riklis’ 2004 picture “The Syrian Bride,” stars as Salma Zidane, the sorrowful owner of a small lemon grove full of trees planted by her late father. Her husband died 10 years earlier and her children have grown and moved out.

Riklis and co-writer Suha Arraf take time to establish Salma’s relationship to the lemon trees as she tends them lovingly, sleeps in the shade of their branches, hears the fruit fall one by one, jars pickled lemons and makes very tasty lemonade.

Trouble comes along fast, however, when Israel’s new defense minister Israel Navon (Doron Tavory), who makes political capital with bold statements about defending his nation from terrorists, moves into a house on the West Bank border right next to Salma’s lemon grove.

Barbed wire fences are swiftly erected along with a watchtower manned with machine-guns. Deciding that’s not enough, the Secret Service declares the lemon grove to be an immediate and deadly threat and orders the trees to be hacked down.

Determined to protect her family heritage, not to mention only source of income, Salma seeks the help of a lawyer, Ziad Doud (Ali Suliman), from a nearby refugee camp, to represent her and their case goes all the way to the Supreme Court.

As someone says in the film, happy endings are only for Hollywood movies and Riklis sustains a kind but unsentimental tone as the story develops several threads. Among these are a slow-burning love interest between the widow and her counsel, and the revelation that all is not well in the defense minister’s household.

His wife Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael) misses their grown children as well as her frequently absent husband. As her loneliness grows, she begins to identify with the plight of her neighbor even though they remain virtual strangers.

The cast is uniformly fine but Abass and Lipaz-Michael shine as two women who bond in the fear that the best of their lives is over and neither of them is happy with what the future holds. It’s not a gloomy film but in his parable of the tiny differences than can separate nations, Riklis suggests there’s no great reason for optimism.

Venue: Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama; Cast: Hiam Abbas; Ali Suliman; Rona Lipaz-Michael; Doron Tavory; Tarik Copty; Amos Lavie; Amnon Wolf; Smadar Yaaron; Ayelet Robinson; Danny Leshman; Director: Eran Riklis; Writers: Suha Arraf, Eran Riklis; Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann; Production designer: Miguel Merkin; Music: Habib Shehadeh Hanna; Co-producer: Ira Riklis; Costume designer: Rona Doron; Editor: Tova Ascher; Producers: Bettina Brokemper, Antoine de Clermont-Tonnierre, Michael Eckelt, Eran Riklis; Executive producers: Moshe Edery, Leon Edery, David Silber; Production: Eran Riklis Productions; No MPAA rating; running time 106 mins.

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A musical tale of ‘Atonement’ and a special typewriter

Posted on February 8, 2008 by admin

'Atonement' Cliff

By Ray Bennett

LONDON — Writing plays a major role in Joe Wright’s Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated feature “Atonement”, so composer Dario Marianelli decided that the sound of a typewriter went perfectly with what he had in mind for the score. He needed just the right typewriter and he knew exactly who would find him one.

Maggie Rodford has been solving film composers’ problems for nearly 20 years, working on such productions as “Gosford Park”, “Bridget Jones’s Diary”. “Gladiator”, “Hannibal”, “Beyond the Sea”, “Great Expectations”, “Pride & Prejudice” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”.

As managing director of the Air-Edel Group in London, Rodford is involved in all aspects of music production and publishing plus artist representation. Her job title changes from film to film and on “Atonement”, as the music coordinator, she worked with Marianelli and Wright and liaised with the film’s producer Paul Webster and Working Title’s music supervisor Nick Angel.

She says, “Before they started shooting, Dario called me and said he needed to sample an old typewriter. I had a portable Corona that my grandfather owned. He was a doctor in Cumberland and he used it so pharmacists could understand his prescriptions.”

Marianelli was delighted: “It was a beauty of a machine right from the 1930s. It worked perfectly, and that’s the one you hear on the soundtrack.”

The British composer, whose score for “Atonement” won a Golden Globe and also is up for an Oscar and a BAFTA, first encountered Rodford on “I Capture the Castle” in 2002, he says: “She kept coming up with brilliant suggestions about ways of doing things.”

Later, when he felt overwhelmed by all the musical demands of Terry Gilliam’s “The Brothers Grimm”, he turned to her again: “It was just too big an enterprise for me alone, and I realised that I was beginning to panic even before I had written a note. In the space of half an hour, she managed to lift a huge weight off my shoulders with her unfailing and contagious optimism.”

Rodford comes by her musical understanding naturally. Her father, Malcolm Garrard, who died when she was 8, was a music engineer who pioneered stereo broadcasting at BBC radio. Rodford joined the BBC, too, and also trained as a musical engineer before she joined EMI and then Air-Edel.

She says the key to successful film composing is individuality: “Composers need a deep understanding of what’s going on onscreen in the drama, but they need to have an individual sound. It can take some many years to develop but in others it’s inherent early on. It’s a very competitive area and the ones who succeed all have that individual voice.”

This story appeared in The Hollywood Reporter on Feb. 8 2008. Marianelli went on to win the Academy Award. 

Corona Typewriter Cliff

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Berlin 2008: Too much moss on Scorsese’s Stones

Posted on February 7, 2008 by admin

Rolling Stones Berlin 2008 x650

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – The Rolling Stones’ concert documentary “Shine a Light,” which had its world premiere tonight at the Berlin International Film Festival, is a major disappointment for anyone who hopes to see a film that captures the band’s live shows and reveals how they’ve kept going all these years.

Although he has a team of prizewinning cinematographers at hand, director Martin Scorsese does a lazy job of tackling the Stones legend and he uses tired old interview footage from decades ago instead of asking fresh questions.

It’s a not-bad TV concert show but as a document for the cinema it’s all wrong. It was filmed at the wrong venue (a small theatre) with the wrong crowd (for a Clinton benefit). The set list is boring and the sound mix distances the band from the crowd in the theatre and the movie audience.

Kirk Honeycutt in The Hollywood Reporter is right to compare it unfavourably with not only the current concert movies that feature U2 and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young but especially Taylor Hackford’s expert 1987 film “Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in which Keith Richards really shone.

Scorsese is content to film him as Widow Twanky while Mick Jagger hogs the show.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Lucinda Coxon’s ‘Happy Now?’

Posted on February 4, 2008 by admin

 

By Ray Bennett

An attempted out-of-town pickup prompts an overburdened wife, mother, daughter and businesswoman to question her grasp on happiness in Lucinda Coxon’s new play, “Happy Now?”

In its world premiere on the National Theatre’s Cottesloe stage, the play is a laudable attempt at finding the cracks in supposed contentment, and there are some well-made scenes and entertaining dialogue. But Coxon has not acquired the necessary skills with scalpel, ice pick and dental drill that suggest she’s anywhere near Pinter or Albee in dissecting marriage.

'Happy Now?' 2008 x325Kitty (Olivia Williams, right, with Anne Reid) is surprisingly intrigued by the out-of-town hotel room cynicism of Michael (Stanley Townsend), who is the kind of oleaginous creep who asks every woman he meets to sleep with him.

She turns him down, but his snide depiction of the everyday nature of relationships is enough to make her begin to second-guess life with Johnny (Jonathan Cullen). He has left the rat race to pursue his dream of being a teacher and be closer to their kids only to discover it’s not much different.

The couple’s closest married pals, Miles (Dominic Rowan) and Bea (Emily Joyce), are little help. Miles is a drunk, and Bea is obsessed with whether the walls of their home should be beige or off-white. They each envy what they believe is the carefree life of gay friend Carl (Stuart McQuarrie) while not really understanding anything about him. Kitty also must deal with her divorced parents — an unseen but very ill father and a mother (Anne Reid) — whose lifelong resentment is all too present.

The play touches on many of the things that tend to cause anguish in marriage, and the cast gets into the spirit of disillusionment with Williams especially relishing the best lines. But it’s all a bit shallow and naive.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through March 15; Cast: Stanley Townsend; Olivia Williams; Jonathan Cullen; Dominic Rowan; Emily Joyce; Stuart McQuarrie; Anne Reid; Playwright: Lucinda Coxon; Director: Thea Sharrock; Designer: Jonathan Fensom; Lighting designer: Oliver Fenwick; Sound designer: Paul Arditti.

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So long, Marko

Posted on February 1, 2008 by admin

 

Ray Bennett & Mark Schwed at Dan Tana's 1998

My friend Mark Schwed has died.

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
Corky’s bar at 11th and Broadway.
Dan Tana’s, Stoli rocks.
Poker nights, Marlboro Lights.
Enough laughter for a lifetime.
The best kind of newspaperman.
The best kind of friend.

Here’s the story in the Palm Beach Post:

Mark Schwed, a features and news writer for The Palm Beach Post for the past three and a half years, was found dead in his apartment Thursday. He was 52 years old.

Schwed had been in apparently good health until Monday, when he called in sick. A friend in California emailed him on Tuesday and never received a response. After two days of silence, a co-worker entered the home and found his body. A cause of death has not been determined.

“We were crushed by the news,” said Post managing editor Bill Rose. “Mark was a bright light in the newsroom, a kind and helpful soul who wrote smart stories and endeared himself to those who worked with him and, often, to those he wrote about.”

Here’s a guest book for his friends

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THEATRE REVIEW: Eileen Atkins, David Haig in ‘The Sea’

Posted on January 25, 2008 by admin

 

'The Sea' 2008

By Ray Bennett

A curious blend of Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wilde and M. Night Shyamalan, Edward Bond’s eccentric play “The Sea” brings together drawing-room comedy and alien conspiracies in a storm-laden English setting in 1907.

In the second production of Jonathan Kent’s new artistic season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, it’s a combustible mix that would implode if not for the wonderful acting on display.

Bond is known for such earthy and provocative 1960s plays as “Saved” and “Early Morning,” but “Sea,” first produced in 1973, is more ambitious. It aims at worldly insights and cosmic truths but succeeds only in providing an excellent cast with some incongruous but very entertaining characters to play.

The imagery works well, too, with a bleak and rocky shoreline well rendered and the roiling sea depicted in video on a vast canvas. It begins with a huge storm in which a young man is lost at sea while his best friend Willy (Harry Lloyd) tries desperately to save him, not helped by the recalcitrant Hatch (David Haig, pictured with Eileen Atkins), a draper on nightwatch duty.

It turns out that Hatch — in what is perhaps intended as a foreshadowing of World War I — believes an alien invasion is taking place and that the dead man and Willy are in on the plot. Hatch bullies the locals, including a dolt named Hollarcut (Russell Tovey) and the gullible Thompson (Jem Wall), into accepting his wild imaginings.

Meanwhile, he must do business with the aristocratic and domineering Miss Louise Rafi (Eileen Atkins), who rules the village ladies with expert eyebrows and a punishing vocabulary. She torments Hatch with her demands for expensive cloth and fashionable gloves, often later rejecting her selections and leaving the poor man in debt to his suppliers.

Scenes shift from the draper’s shop to Miss Rafi’s parlor to the barren shore with an abruptness that is sometimes hard to follow, but the set pieces are often very funny. In one, Miss Rafi leads her pliable throng, including her addled companion Jessica Tilehouse (Marcia Warren), in rehearsals for a local dramatic society reading of the Orpheus myth. In another, the increasingly demented Hatch scissors an enormous amount of cloth to pieces while excoriating his pitiless customer. And there’s a priceless scene involving the scattering of the dead man’s ashes on a windswept clifftop.

It doesn’t add up to much, but it looks great, and the performances of some gifted players, especially Atkins and Haig, make it well worth seeing.

THE SEA

Venue: Theatre Royal Haymarket, runs through April 19; Cast: Eileen Atkins; David Haig; Harry Lloyd; David Burke; Marcia Warren; Russell Tovey; Mariah Gale; Selina Griffiths; William Chubb; Jem Wall; Emma Noakes; Sarah Annis; Philippa Urquhart; Playwright: Edward Bond; Director: Jonathan Kent; Set designer: Paul Brown; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Sound designer: Paul Groothius; Music: Steven Edis; Projections: Sven Ortel.

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Suzy Bogguss on the road in the UK

Posted on January 21, 2008 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Country music radio in the United States has never known what to do with its mavericks, as Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle can attest, and among the brightest talents to suffer from its blinkered ways is Suzy Bogguss.

Suzy Bogguss sweet dangerSteeped in country tradition but with a musical sensibility that draws from many different sources, Bogguss has a crystal clear voice that reflects her wit and intelligence. She put out many albums and had some hits before first radio and then her big-time label dropped her.

But parting ways with a major record label these days doesn’t mean much to someone with immense talent and a loyal fan base. Boggus continues to put out albums and tour. Her latest release is titled “Sweet Danger” on the Loyal Duchess imprint and she’s at the Round in Newcastle Jan. 26, Memorial Hall, Sheffield Jan. 27, the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank Jan. 28 and the ABC Glasgow Jan. 29.

Every Bogguss CD is on my shelf and having seen her perform at the Troubadour in Los Angeles a few years back, that Purcell date would be a can’t miss, but MIDEM beckons in the south of France.

Paul Sexton wrote about her and Shelby Lynne in the Sunday Times:

“You don’t have to be Willie Nelson to be a country outlaw. For any Nashville cat or kitten with a broad musical palette, the current rules of the genre are just begging to be broken. They may have burnt their bridges to country radio in the process, but Shelby Lynne and Suzy Bogguss are two of the artists proving what can be achieved.”

Read more about Suzy Bogguss

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