Film
Towards the end of Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold’s most recent contribution to the film world and winner of the Jury’s award at the Cannes film festival, the heroine whips down her oversized tracksuit bottoms and urinates all over the carpet. Hurtling along at an unrelenting pace, the film has been building to this moment of release. It is an image so poignant that the viewer recoils and yet does not lose the thread of action even for a moment. We are held forcibly in this inner city concrete backwater for better or worse.
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In addressing the concept of ‘performativity’ in relation to Kimberly Peirce’s 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, I think it essential to first discuss Judith Butler’s ideas about gender performativity and particularly how they relate to discourses surrounding ‘Queer’ theory. The idea of gender being essentially performative emerges from Michel Foucault’s assertion that the ‘self’ is not pre-existing but rather is constructed only through our relations with others and through structures of power and knowledge. In other words we embody and are constituted by the discourses that make up our culture. Leading on from Foucault’s idea that there is no essential ‘truth’, Butler proposes that gender is not a ‘natural’ element of ourselves or inherently linked to our biological sex, but is entirely performative.
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The Golden Globe award winners, just incase you lost the plot half way through Kate Winslet’s speech. A glamorous and weepy night was had by all.
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Is it just me or does the Fresh Prince seems hell-bent on heroism these days? Let’s see- ‘The Pursuit of Happyness, ‘Hancock’, and now most recently ‘Seven Pounds’ all feauture our favourite man in black as the ultimate do-gooder, a man that suffers for the sake of others, an isolated other-wordly being that saves us all from the clutches of fate. Well that’s lovely Will but how about some old fashioned Christmas cheer during the- all be it recession blasted- season to be jolly?
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Watch closely the next time you see someone enjoying a cup of coffee in a film. Most of the time, the cup will actually be empty and certainly very rarely will you see someone actually drink from it. This is because of the nature of filmmaking. An actor might be required to do the same take eight or nine times -to actually take a sip of coffee each time would put a strain on the strongest bladders. How many of these takes are done depends on the director -Clint Eastwood has been said to be to satisfied with any shot in which the camera did not actually fall over while the notoriously difficult filmmaker Stanley Kubrick sometimes forced his actors to do the same take a hundred or more times over.
The Irish Critic (whoever he or she may be), recently made the long and treacherous journey to Hollywood, and boy were the expectations high. ‘Hollywood‘, the critic thought, the historical iconic home of the studios and stars, where Julia Roberts paraded down Hollywood Boulevard in ‘Pretty Woman‘. The place where all your dreams come true.
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Of course, it is absolutely impossible to discuss ‘Righteous Kill’ without mentioning its stars- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have reunited for the first time since ‘Heat’- but boy would I love to do just that (and I’m going to do it for just a second).
Happily, monolingual English-speakers such as myself only ever get to watch the ‘good’ French films: translation into subtitling takes time and money – so why bother with anything but the worthy? Two new imports worth your time and your money are as follows:
Claude Chabrol’s latest do, A Girl Cut in Two, and Guillame Canet’s sophomore (but never sophomoric) release, Tell No One. (A Girl was originally released in France in 2007, and Tell No One as far back as 2006. They’ve only just hit American theatres – different time zones, remember – and that matters only because the New York Times recently listed them among ‘this year’s’ best films.’)
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Apologies to all those die-hard Seth Rogen fans (are there any of those?), but am I the only one who wishes the Rogen-express, constituted by a series of films either starring, or written/produced by Rogen and his gormless looking partner in film crime Evan Goldberg, would come to a halt? It is undeniable that ‘Suberbad’, ‘Knocked up’ and now ‘Pineapple Express’ are essentially the same movie, slightly reformatted and with different actors. Hence from the moment ‘Pineapple express’ gets going you get the sneaking suspicion that you might have seen the movie before.
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