Tiger's Tales

Filmstar, we hardly knew ye...

Something I've been meaning to post about for a while....not a specific filmstar, but Filmstar, a rather fine magazine which sadly came to a halt about a month ago after just five issues. A great blend of incisive, witty and thoughtful reviews, wide-ranging news (focussed on more than just Hollywood) and some interesting features, it was starting to feel like a fabulous alternative to the two main players in the UK film mag market.

The fact that the production team were also looking for writers/designers etc with enthusiasm prized over acres of experience couldn't have failed to pull me in, and I sent off my CV and sample reviews with a small dose of hope. Perhaps not hearing anything back from them should've sounded more of an alarm bell than it did. So alas, it appears it wasn't to be, and as the magazine's Twitter page says, it won't be, not for the foreseeable future. I hope there'll be some sort of future for it, but we'll see.

>sigh<

But the last issue of Filmstar did get me thinking about something else. Throughout the five issues, one constant feature was 'Five Easy Pieces', a section of five two-page articles which focused on such diverse topics as Jenny Agutter and the Video Recordings Act (which followed the apparent moral panic over 'video nasties' in the early 1980s).

In issue 5, one of the articles was about the evolution of Dracula on film. Basically, how the character began as a creepily monstrous bloodsucker in F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, and has eventually become a darkly romantic anti-hero, with Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula rounding out the piece. There's a soft spot in my heart for Coppola's lush period piece, mainly down to Gary Oldman's multi-faceted, terrifying yet winningly sad and soulful Vlad Dracul, and Anthony Hopkins' scenery-chewing turn as Van Helsing. The fact that the film looks so damn beautiful, even in its darkest moments, doesn't hurt either. 

As you'll have gathered, I'm not averse to vampires by any stretch of the imagination :) A courtly vamp-man always works for me, so I've been loving True Blood on FX, and Filmstar brought another one my way in a roundabout fashion. Frank Langella is best known of late for his portrayal of Richard Nixon on stage and, more recently, on screen, but back in the late 70s he gave us a different kind of darkness as the inimitable Count in John Badham's Dracula. The article talked about how the film brings the romance and passion of the ol' neck-biter to the fore, and intrigued, I dug around online. Yowza...is all I'll say.

For some, the love scene will look Mills and Boon-esque in its outwardly fairly demure approach, but you don't need acres of skin and explicitness to get the point over - i.e. the absolute sense of how much Dracula and Lucy want each other. Very sensual and sexy - me like ;) Langella's Drac is extraordinarily handsome, in a truly saturnine way (intensely brown eyes, black hair, a cruel yet delicious mouth) and has an utterly mellifluous, seductive purr for a voice. The only actor I can think of who hits the same sort of high on that scale is Timothy Dalton - who never played a vamp but perhaps should've.

I think I have to go find the full film sometime soon and enjoy the whole thing, but meantime, a quick pic of Mr L from around that time....lovin' the intelligence and the dark glitter in this fellow.

"Do you follow my drift?" "In technicolor, sir."

Hello...:) More catching up here..a film review will follow shortly but by way of an opener, today is 1st wedding anniversary for hubs and me...:D With some of the things we've had to cope with in the past year, this isn't how either of us would've envisaged spending our first 12 months as man and wife, but we're happy bunnies otherwise, and probably stronger together as a result of the difficult stuff. 'Nuff said...and on to the review...(NB - this was originally written back in May but for a whole bunch of reasons it's taken me till now to finish it and get it uploaded.)

LA Confidential (1997)takes James Ellroy's sprawling tale of cops, corruption and the seamy side of sunny Los Angeles and gives us an elegant thriller, often brutal, frequently witty and packed with fantastic performances. One of my favourite films of all time, for a whole raft of reasons, and (for anyone who knows me :D) not just for Russell Crowe's blistering turn as Wendell 'Bud' White.

Although I've got it on DVD (and VHS), when it turns up on the TV I like to try and watch some if not all of it, for old times' sake and because it's one of those films that stands up to repeated viewings - there's enough subtlety to offer up something different every time you see it.

Yet again LA Confidential never fails to suck me in: the story, the keenly depicted atmosphere of 50's LA, none of the characters quite conforming to the moulds they've come from, and the key officers - White (Crowe), Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), and Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) trying to get to the truth, with varying degrees of success and personal cost. The glamour of Hollywood is undercut by the grimy reality - tabloid magazines create scandal from thin air, apparently respectable businessmen sell smut and skin, and the cops are all compromised; some willingly, others by circumstance.

It is a beautiful film to watch - director Curtis Hanson and his team have really gone to town to ensure the look and feel of the City of Angels in a time of both prosperity and transition is near-perfect (although IMDB will keep you right about a few goofs here and there!) It's also an intelligent piece of cinema; the story unfurls without fuss, but keeps you gripped to the conclusion - there's no excess fat of action sequences, just enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and, as the finale approaches, hurl you headlong towards it like a rollercoaster passenger who's just twigged the brakes are broken.

Somewhere a while back I read that LA Confidential the novel was considered a difficult prospect to turn into a film and, having read the book AFTER I saw the big-screen version, I can only agree. Ellroy's known for his heavy-duty, intertwined plotting, and LAC the book is no exception. The film covers some dark material, but (without spoilerizing things) the novel goes considerably further on that front, so it's understandable why some of the plot strands there didn't reach the movie.

It's understandable why Kim Basinger won the Oscar for her performance as Lynn Bracken, the Veronica Lake lookalike - a character with wit, vulnerability and humanity in spades - and I would never begrudge her that accolade. That one award for acting in LAC perhaps doesn't quite paint the whole picture of the film though - the performances are consistently excellent across the board, and it undoubtedly played its part in bringing Pearce and Crowe to wider mainstream attention. On that front, if you've been watching The Mentalist on TV, you won't have failed to notice Simon Baker as lead character Patrick Jane. By way of a mini Six Degrees of Separation, under the name Simon Baker Denny, he has a small but important role in LAC...but again, to stay spoiler-free here, you'll need to see the film.

Overall, 10 out of 10 for LAC - definitely one of my top 10 films of all time.