Remember When You Bought CD's?

Another slightly straying blog entry today, but one that holds some nostalgia to those who used to wait for new releases and save up your pocket money to buy them. Those days are gone my friends, and here are my thoughts on why.

HMV have been dominating the headlines and water-cooler chit chat for a couple of days now as it faces going in to administration. Even though hope is on the horizon for the ‘Top Dog’ music retailer, one can’t help wonder where it all went wrong?

HMV certainly was Top Dog back in the 80’s and 90’s when it first opened and was the place to buy music vinyls. The introduction of CD’s only fuelled their already booming music selling business. The company went global and opened up stores all over the world, the biggest being in Oxford Street in 1986. In the early 2000’s HMV bought Waterstones and Dillons and grew bigger than ever before, but in an article written by Philip Beeching, an accountant for HMV for 25 years, he says HMV were blind to the threats on the horizon. In a meeting with HMV’s Managing Director Steve Knott, he recalls pitching the ideas that HMV could suffer from online shopping, supermarket chains and music downloads. Ideas that were dismissed completely and unfortunately, it was this that eventually led to its downfall.

Major online retailers like Play.com and Amazon are by an large cheaper than HMV, I often see something for sale in HMV for say…£12 and I know I can get it for less on Amazon and Play.com, second hand. The only problem with buying it online is I have to wait for it to arrive, HMV have a shoe in there, especially for DVD’s. However, there are countless avenues to go down if you want to watch a film without leaving the house, the first and most taboo is obviously pirating. It takes a matter of minutes to find anything you want and you could be watching it on your TV in full DVD quality later on that day without even putting your coat on or counting out your pennies. The majority of people will risk the mythical fines that claim the bank accounts of some unfortunate downloaders because it feels so legal to do it. It easy, its heavily used and the websites are well known and established. If you want to go to heaven however, there are other  legal ways and means of watching movies with the help of LoveFilm and NetFlix, which if you have an internet connection and a game console, you have access to hundreds of films and television shows on your TV which you can access anytime you want for a small monthly fee that comes straight out your bank account. The case is the same for music. If you don’t mind the odd advert you can download Spotify for free where you have instant access to thousands of songs. Or, if you want to buy a digital album you can get one from iTunes for less than you’d pay in the shops and with only a couple of clicks of the mouse.

Films and music are so easy to obtain without leaving the house it’s no wonder that it’s the traditionalists who like the idea of a CD or DVD being a material possession, or those who enjoy browsing the isles of shiny new products that were keeping the business alive. However, even this can still be done in the form of other retailers such as CEX, the multimedia company who buy your old stuff off you and sell in in the'r shops for a very reasonable price, including videogames. So that’s the big three, CD’s, DVD’s and games all available online or for a lot less than being sold in HMV or Game, even with the addition of pre-owned products in both major retailers, it’s just not working.  HMV even sell other products; books, t-shirts, headphones, posters, iPod docks and all manner of accessories but the problem again is that they can be bought for less online, or in other places.

People don’t have the money they used to and things are so expensive if bought new when second hand are just as good. There isn’t even the promise of a new fangled multimedia system on the horizon that will replace blu-rays. Everything is digital, even the cinema is slipping from our fingers as being a materialised projection. The art of film itself is so old and so forgotten that if it were to make a comeback it would probably be considered retro, even though its only been gone for a couple of years. Paul Thomas Anderson’s revival of the 70mm film for his film The Master was certainly a promising move, and perhaps other film makers, the ones with an emotional attachment to film work, will follow in his footsteps.

‘It’s all for the best!’ They all keep saying, but is it? Do we have to kill one thing in order for something else to flourish? In the case of multimedia high street retailers vs. The Internet, I think we have an obvious winner. HMV will be saved but how long will it last? In answer to my original question, I think it’s clear to say that even though it is sad another high street retailer has sadly fallen into the depths containing Woolworths, Dixons and Comet, it’s not really going to have much of an impact on the entertainment industry. It’s easier to showcase and publish your work online be it a film, a song or even writing and instantly access millions of people with it. It’s easy for those people to get your work and even easier if they just want to sample it. The box office reached an all-time high last year with record numbers of people flooding into our multiplexes to watch the latest flick in all kinds of different formats, does Bilbo Baggins look better in HFR, IMAX or 3D I wonder? The industry is very much alive, but the retailers need to adjust to that. Trying to flog the ‘Friends’ box set for £50 is preposterous when it is shown on repeat every single day, 4 or more times a day on Comedy Central. HMV should stick to new releases, special editions, exclusive editions and pre-owned goods to be in with a chance of making it. Hit the online retailers where it hurts and sell something they don’t. People will still go to HMV, the queues at Christmas are enough for you to question this administration business, as the majority of people over the age or 25 will still want to buy a hard copy of a film or a song, to play on their CD players, HiFi systems or, hold your breath, turntables.

Here’s hoping the buyer of HMV will allow it to succeed, as our high streets really wouldn’t look the same without it. Where will we all go and kill some time on Sunday afternoons if HMV has closed down? EH?

Getting Nostalgic for The Oscars.

I have a real gripe with the Academy Awards, I thought I would stray slightly from my path of reviewing something old, and instead discuss the misfortunes faced by so many talented souls at the great big popularity contest that is The Oscars. I'm quite new to this game, and so far, i'm not sure I like what I see.



Brad Pitt in Fight Club

As an appreciator of fine film work, I have often found myself watching some incredible films and thinking to myself ‘Why hasn’t this won any awards?!’ The perfect example of this is David Fincher’s Fight Club – a film that was nominated for TWO Academy Awards for Best Effects and Best Sound Editing and in terms of notable statuettes to claim, this was pretty much it for a film that appears in most institutions lists of top 100 films of all time. I suppose the obvious reason why this happened was the competition of that year, so 1999 lets see…The Academy Awards only had 5 slots for Best Picture back then belonging to American Beauty, Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider and The Sixth Sense. Fair enough, American Beauty, The Green Mile and The Insider were great movies, deserving a place here but Cider House Rules?! How could ANYTHING starring Toby Maguire even get a sniff in?  Moving on to Best Actor, a category that Edward Norton deserved recognition for Fight Club, with his portrayal of ‘The Narrator’ AKA Tyler Durden? Alas, it isn’t so. Losing out on even a nomination to Kevin Spacey (American Beauty), Russell Crowe (The Insider), Sean Penn (Sweet and Lowdown), Denzel Washington (The Hurricane) and Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story) - the slot surely should have gone to Norton instead of Farnsworth but I’m pretty sure he only got it because he was about to die. Fair enough, he was outstanding in The Straight Story.

How about Director then? Undeniably, Fight Club is exceptionally directed by David Fincher helped in the most part by the critically acclaimed novel to which the film is based upon by Chuck Palahniuk.  The intensity of the fighting scenes, the emotional struggle for Norton’s character to adapt to the soap fuelled lifestyle of his alter ego, the pacing, the slow motion sex scenes, the filthy energy that fills their crooked house is nothing short of pure genius and at the time was so refreshing to see. So why didn’t he even get nominated? Again, the addition of Cider House Rules, The Insider, The Sixth Sense and American Beauty were real sticklers, but not even Frank Darabont got nominated here for The Green Mile – a film that so deservedly appeared in the Best Picture category which is a serious miss judgement on the Academy’s part. Yeah,  Being John Malkovich was good but was it as good as The Green Mile? Absolutely NOT.

Jude Law in The Talented Mr Ripley

Surely Brad Pitt, the Hollywood Heart Throb would get a nomination for Supporting Actor as the good-looking, sweet talking, womanising soap maker Tyler Durden? What’s that you say? Not even nominated? What a surprise. Pitt lost out on a nomination to Jude Law (The Talented Mr Ripley), Michael Caine (Cider House Rules), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile), Holey Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) and Tom Cruise (Magnolia). Jude Law most certainly does not deserve to be here instead of Brad Pitt which for me is the final and most disappointing shun I’m allowing myself to discuss. Oh, by the way, it didn’t even get nominated for Adapted Screenplay…

Members of the Academy choose who wins what, and these members are a combination of people from every aspect of film making; Actors, Directors, Cinematographers, Producers etc.  I guess they can’t nominate everyone, and there certainly is such a thing as an ‘Academy Friendly Film’ whether a film be successful or not, if it is ‘Academy Friendly’ it will get nominated. This years Oscar nominations are a great example of this, as the greatest and biggest films of 2012 – Prometheus and The Avengers received a nod for their visual effects but The Dark Knight Rises received a grand total of ZERO Oscar Nominations, but that’s just the tail end of a long line of snubs for Inception director Christopher Nolan. Innovative and original film making just gets you nowhere these days, eh Nolan?

However, we all knew Spielberg’s Lincoln would walk into an Oscar nomination because its about the achievements of a great American President, which is fine. I guess. The rest of this years Best Picture nominations create a competitive lists of 2012 great films including Haneke’s Amour and Benh Zeitlin’s debut Beasts of the Southern Wild, which were two surprise additions to the list of nominees, but we all know that Lincoln will probably win. We’d love to see Silver Linings Playbook win or even Tarantino’s Django, but it’s just not going to happen because why would the Academy not let a film about Abraham Lincoln win? It stars Daniel Day Lewis, is directed by Stephen Spielberg and has Oscar written all over it.

The category suggests clearly the best film of 2012 will walk home with a gold statue, and I agree that a compilation of professional film artists are best equipped to make such decisions.  Which is why Argo should win, but Ben Affleck has been denied a slot in the Best Director category which is a huge injustice for him.  I suppose that’s the trouble with having 10 best picture slots and only 5 best director slots, there is always going to be serious upsets here, but regrettably I think Affleck’s spot was stolen by Zeitlin. The Academy probably feels pretty stupid this morning though after Affleck deservedly and defiantly won Golden Globes last night for Best Director and Best Drama Film. In your FACE Academy!

Perhaps winning an Oscar isn’t the be all and the end all for Directors and Actors alike, but it is the ultimate recognition for doing a good job.  But sometimes its bewildering to see the Academy offer nominations to people like Denzel Washington for his emotionless and shallow portrayal of a vulgar Pilot in Flight and to ignore the brilliance of Rian Johnson’s original screenplay for the time travelling marvel Looper.  However, as frustrating as some of the categories are, others are spot on perfect. Especially Best Actress comprising of Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Naomi Watts (The Impossible), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) and Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild). Chastain has this one locked down, but the category certainly hails the great actresses of the year, which is exciting.  If I had my way though, I would sort out these lists and make a couple of worthy additions (Looper, Lawless) and remove the pointless, meaningless, emotionless trash that is Flight.

Here is my personal list of unsung heroes from 2012, take note Academy.

Writers/Directors:

 

·         Rian Johnson – Looper

·         William Freidkin – Killer Joe

·         Ridley Scott – Prometheus

·         Christopher Nolan – The Dark Knight Rises

·         Stephen Soderburgh – Magic Mike

·         John Hillcoat – Lawless

·         Paul Thomas Anderson – The Master

·         Martin McDonagh – Seven Psychopaths

Actors/Actresses:

·         Michael Fassbender  - Prometheus

·         Tom Hardy – Lawless & The Dark Knight Rises

·         Guy Pearce – Lawless

·         Matthew McConaughey – Magic Mike & Killer Joe

·         Joseph Gordon –Levitt – Looper

·         Javier Bardem – Skyfall

·         Scoot McNairy – Killing Them Softly & Argo

Yeah – kicking yourselves aren’t you?

 

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

I thought I would kick off 2013 with a sureealist avant-garde film from the 1920's. Why not eh?   Here goes...

 

This year marks the 30 year anniversary of the death of Spanish director Luis Bunuel. A unique film maker who lead the avant-garde surrealist movement with his work with the moving image.  While in education he became very close with surrealist painter Salvador Dali who he would later work with to make one of the most respected short films of the surrealist movement called Un Chien Andalou, translated as ‘An Andalusian Dog’. Don’t be fooled by its romantic title which falsely promises the tale of a Spanish pooch, what lies within is something quite different; a hand crawling in ants, a woman having her eyeball sliced open and a man dressed  as a nun riding a bike. It is definitely the work of two avant-garde artists and has been persistently studied by academics since its creation in 1929. Chiming in at only 16 minutes long, it certainly packs a punch and is not for the faint hearted.

A consistent feature of the film is a pattern of black and white stripes which appears in almost every scene, whether it be on some clothing or an object in a room or furniture. It was used by Bunuel as a device for creating some sort of solidarity and consistency throughout the film for the sake of the audience. Bunuel also used a series of title cards stating a progression of time, however these jump around from ‘eight years later’ to ‘around three in the morning’ to ‘sixteen years later’ which in itself is confusing. This kind of narrative structure, where an audience is shown a sequence of images loosely linked together was known as ‘dream logic’ and was favoured by surrealists at the time.

Time frames and narratives aside, there are reasons why this film is so famous, the number one reason probably being the infamous eyeball scene. At the beginning of the film, we see a man sharpening a cut throat knife while gazing at the moon. A woman is sitting looking straight into the camera and the man takes the knife, pulls open her eyelid and brazenly slices her eyeball in half, spilling all kinds of horrible fluid on to her cheek. For years people speculate how Bunuel and Dali constructed this scene arguing about where the eyeball came from, but in 1975 Bunuel came out with the truth and said it was the eye of a baby calf and he bleached the fur of the calf so much that it would look like human skin. He certainly did a good job of making this look convincing, even now almost 90 years on it looks real and is probably just as harrowing as the day it was premiered. 

As famous as this scene may be, it is probably not the weirdest thing you’ll see in Un Chien Andalou. How about a man pulling on some ropes with the tablets of the Ten Commandments attached? What if the ropes were also attached to two priests being dragged along the floor? Better still, what if they were then attached to a piano with a dead donkey laying on it? Yes, this all happens. Bunuel and Dali were certainly on a roll when they came up with that little sequence of events.  Overlapping frames and bizarre images makes Un Chien Andalou interesting viewing, whether you like it or not, you certainly won’t see anything else akin to it. Unique in name and nature and edited in Luis Bunuel’s kitchen, he deserves a round of applause for creating such an unforgettable film which has gone down in film and art history.