Vinyl buying

Some Vinyl

 

Bought some vinyl at the London Film Fair.

 

I am a sucker for those odd Japanese 7-inch releases of film tie-ins that quite often don’t make sense. For example, in the James Bond section is the Nancy Sinatra single of ‘You Only Live Twice’ – a favourite song – with Sean Connery Bond emblazoned prominently on the cover. And the b-side is… ‘Jackson’, her duet with Lee Hazelwood? It's true that I am more an admirer of Bond Music than the films themselves (although 2006's 'Casino Royale' is the pinnacle for me) and I am a fan of the Sinatra/Hazelwood output, so it's all good.

 

 

 

And how about singles of the themes to coming-of-age classics ‘A Swedish Love Story’ of ‘Forbidden Games’? The latter especially gives 'The Third Man' competition in its jangliness.

 

 

 

And to ‘Melody’, which I have written about here. To repeat: I’m not a Bee Gees fan but can’t deny this song gets to me, where the orchestration swells and threatens to overwhelm with its longing; although it’s the Nina Simone live version that devastates. Must be one of the greatest songs of unrequited love ever written in an endless list. And it comes with a mini lyric sheet? When did we ever get that with our 7-inches?

 

 

 

And also Fumio Hayasaka’s score for ‘Seven Samurai’. This is the sound directly transferred from the film and put on vinyl (rather than taken from recordings), so plenty of dialogue clips. Reminds of when I used to record scores from VHS onto tape. The music ranges from percussive to choral to wind instruments. 

 

Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3

Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3

Writer & Director – James Gunn

2023,     United States-New Zealand-France-Canada

Stars – Chris Pratt, Chukwudi Iwuji, Bradley Cooper, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillen, Will Poulter

 

Humorous banter, lashings of CGI and overwhelming sci-fi visuals, needle drops, down-to-earth characterisation of crazy protagonists, equal parts sentimentality and horror detail. In this final volume, with Rocket’s history being central, never has the horror/sentimental mash-up taken such precedence in‘Guardians’. The whole vivisection-animal-experiments angle veers the narrative into darker terrain than before, giving pay-off to Rocket’s reluctance to talk about his past in previous volumes. It’s like ‘Toy Story’s Sid for adults, plus eugenics and genocide, topped off with a genuinely unhinged turn by Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary (achieving psychosis even more than scenery chewing).

 

Gunn delivers an arguably overlong final instalment without once taking the foot off the pedal, although all the oddball pathos of the Rocket flashbacks inevitably ends in an explosive CGI space-free-for-all. The rapid tonal changes might cause “emotional whiplash” but Gunn knows how to juggle. In fact, there such an Anything Goes element to Gunn’s writing that it’s entirely possible that some major characters might get killed off. Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) is arguably superfluous but inevitably setting up something else (there’s a lot of hints of that); there’s a great corridor fight feigning one-take (those are always highlights and Gunn has elsewhere hat-tipped to ‘Oldboy’); arguably too many characters, yet Gunn gives them all their due, mostly (maybe not Warlock though); excellent detail gives way to broad character arcs and declarations. 

 

And the most gratifying and unexpected needle drop for me was The Flaming Lips ‘Do You Realise?’; and there’s another outing for The The’s timeless ‘This is the Day’ (been listening to that one for nearly all my life), but Faith No More too.

 

It's a lot of fun that probably won’t win over those bored of super-hero hi-jinx, even if in space, but proves again that Gunn is one of the consistently best at this. After all, it’s the genre trend to emulate the ensemble funny banter that the first ‘Guardians’ pretty much pioneered, though few are as good (see Gunn’s ‘The Peacemaker’ series for even better, more hilarious banter). It’s all much of a muchness, and it ain’t subtle, but there’s a genuine core centred on the characters rather than just performative drama hitting the marks. Something to do with believing in the ragtag rough-and-ready group of outsiders, which he excels at, and spinning out everything from there. It’s just as scrappy, motivated, all-over-the-place and charming as its central team.

 

 

FrightFest Halloween 2022

FrightFest Halloween 2022

 

Tripping the Dark Fantastic

Director: LG White.

With: Simon Boswell, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dario Argento, LG White.

UK 2022. 93 mins.

 

Simon Boswell in concert at Earth Theatre, London in 2021, with each track coming with some backstory from Boswell and interviews with a few director cameos. I have always loved ‘Santa Sangre’ and ‘Hardware’ scores (the former being one of my all-time favourite films) and the performances here are impressive with Boswell’s 12-piece band, Caduta Massi. Stepping in for Goblin – who had to cancel due to COVID – Boswell sticks a coffin on stage and concentrates on his horror scores. I still don’t care for ‘Demons’, and there’s some dodgy lyrics, but it’s a wonderful mix of rock-out and classical approaches via circus tunes, because Boswell covers a lot of ground and styles.

 

I thought a concert film/documentary was a curious/audacious way to start the Frightfest Halloween day, but I was thoroughly entertained. LG White – Boswell’s wife – is still editing and throws in lots of overlapping visuals to try to capture the stage activity and live video backgrounds featuring cameos (Iggy Pop! Argento!) and film clips. It’s a fine presentation.

 

Freeze

Director: Charlie Steeds.

With: Johnny Vivash, Ricardo Freitas, David Lenik, Jake Watkins.

UK 2022. 90 mins

 

Starts out promising a low-budget ‘The Terror’ Lovecraftian monster movie, which is all good. There’s admirable ambition, the Norwegian ice-scapes are breath-taking, but there’s some dubious acting and, worse, the monsters are somewhat ill-served. Not only is the fun design given away immediately (no build-up here - but just look at it!), and perhaps we can step back from questioning their logic (assumedly they are amphibious monsters that get their fishy food diving under the ice? Seals? Bears?), but their squat-walking really doesn’t seem to be any sense (I mean, they’re in a cavernous environment).

 

Gnomes

Director: Ruwan Suresh Heggelman.

With: Moïse Trustfull, Duncan Meijiring.

6mins.

 

I can report that Paul McEvoy, once of the FrightFest founders, sat near me and laughed his socks off to this. The main source of humour to this swift and hilarious short is the splatter excess. The designs of the gnomes and their attack machines are delightful. It’s a show-piece kill segment that doesn’t waste time in being outrageous.

 

Mad Heidi

Directors: Johannes Hartmann, Sandro Klopfstein.

With: Casper Van Dien, David Schofield, Alice Lucy, Leon Herbert

Switzerland 2022. 92 mins.

 

A parody frontloaded with its best gags, but then gets districted by women’s prison satire and then weighed-down by increasingly leaning on plot rather than jokes. Nevertheless, agreeable enough fun, powered mostly by Casper Van Dien’s consistently funny villainous performance.

 

Outpost

Director: Joe Lo Truglio.

With: Beth Dover, Dallas Roberts, Dylan Baker, Ato Essandoh.

USA 2022. 84 mins.

 

Takes a moment to settle down and make sense, but soon settles in to a seemingly straightforward tale of a woman trying to escape a troubled past of domestic abuse by becoming a fire marshal atop a forest lookout. A film unafraid to takes its time, strong on empathy and performances – Dylan Baker as the prickly neighbour and Ato Essandoh as Kate’s taciturn boss were personal favourites.       

 

It was obvious from the Q&A afterwards that Joe Lo Truglio wanted to be as sympathetic to his approach to PTSD with a potentially conventionally conventional thriller, and it is this that distinguishes ‘Outpost’ and motivates as well as allows for its narrative surprises.

 

On The Edge

Directors: Jen & Sylvia Soska.

With: Aramis Sartorio, Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Mackenzie Gray.

Canada 2022. 114 mins.

 

Aramis Sartorio gives his all while the Soskas pose and pout their performances. Any message about female empowerment is filtered into sadism-revenge fantasy as a family man that books a dominatrix in a hotel gets more than he bargained for. This sadism-revenge agenda also guided the Soska’s far superior ‘American Mary’ but the body-horror fascination there is replaced by two-bit Catholic morals here. Anal rape is the main source of humour. But even more egregiously is the badly recorded diagetic dialogue and amateurish sound mix that makes much incomprehensible. Which is problematic for a film that is constantly talking at you. Eventually it devolves into strobe lighting and bible verse and a simplistic morality play that makes a nonsense of any of its transgressive and feminist intent.

Look to 'Promising Young Woman', 'The Beta Test' or even 'The Special' for more nuanced, troubling and fun interrogations of these themes.

 

The Offering

Director: Oliver Park.

With: Nick Blood, Allan Corduner, Paul Kaye, Emm Wiseman.

USA 2022. 93 mins.

 

Introducing the film, director Oliver Park said it portrayed beat-for-beat terrifying nightmares he’d had since he was a toddler. One can only imagine that his nightmares came with bangs and blares and musical stings. Certainly I anticipated a more surrealist, nightmare-logic to the film, but what followed was a far more conventional horror. It relies too much on jump-scares, which quickly become tiresome, despite being distinguished by its Jewish family drama and folklore context, good performances and funeral home setting. 

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Favourites: ‘The Outpost’, ‘Gnomes’.

Surprised I liked: ‘Tripping the Dark Fantastic’.

Sad that: I ended up being a little indifferent to ‘Mad Heidi’ after the opening had been such parody bonkers and fun.