Very bad or very good? I really don't know. Smokin’ Aces – could there really something which might be called ‘abstract filmmaking’? Oh, odd stats

What with the unprecedented unrest sweeping the Middle East, it would be perverse of me not to add my two ha’porth worth. So let me instead ignore the issue entirely and tell you about I film I watched on DVD last night which was either very good or very bad. These judgments are, of course, subjective, and on the IMDB website there are plenty reviews which claim the film I’m talking about, Smokin’ Aces, is ‘awesome man’ or, for variation, ‘awesome dude’. I am, I should admit, inclined to think it is rather good, but I’m really not sure, and I am quite aware that that sounds ineffably daft. Let me start at the beginning.

A few years ago, a guy called Joe Carnahan, who had made two or three shorts, persuaded several people to part with their money to back a big independent production of his called Narc. The budget was only just over $7 million, which in film terms, I understand, is not a great deal. The film also got the enthusiastic support of Ray Liotta, who I have always thought to be a great actor, and for the part he plays in Narc he gained several stone in weight. You always know an actor is serious and sincere when he or she agrees to look like a repulsive fatty in a film. Robert De Niro did it for Raging Bull, Toni Collette did it for Muriel’s Wedding and Charlize Theron, something of a looker, did it to play a lesbian serial killer in Monster. (Incidentally, time will one day be when a man or woman’s sexuality is so utterly irrelevant that it will not be mentioned. So the above would then read ‘did it to play a serial killer’. However, that time has not yet come, more’s the pity. Oh, and Sue and Jaime, two women who already have two children - Jaime giving birth to them – now also twins. Good luck, Sue and Jaime.) But back to Narc and Joe Carnahan.

Narc was fresh and different, but not different in a way which was wilful as in ‘hey man, look how different this film is. Awesome’. It was obvious that, given the relatively small budget, a lot of thought had gone into it in order to get the necessary effects at bargain basement prices. It seems to be a rule of Hollywood that the bigger the budget, the more likely a film will tend to the mediocre. I made a mental note of Joe Carnahan’s name and soon found out that a follow-up to Narc was Smokin’ Aces. That film, however, was reputed by many not to be very good, and by some to be something of a stinker. I was intrigued, but accepted that that was possible. After all, a guy called Robert Rodriguez mad a film called El Mariachi, which must have defined the concept of made on a shoestring – it is reputed to have been made for under $5,000. It was a joy.

Rodriguez was then picked up by Hollywood, who know very well how to spoil a talent when they come across one, and financed a remake of El Mariachi to the tune of several million dollars. It starred Antonio Banderas and was, to put it bluntly, not very good. But young chaps being young chaps and enjoying seeing macho gunslingers blasting other men to buggery, it made money, so RR got to make more films. The last of these I saw was a complete abortion of a film – starring George Clooney and Harvey Keitel, no less – called From Dusk Till Dawn. By all accounts the same had happened to Joe Carnahan with Smokin’ Aces. So I didn’t bother getting it.

Every so often I saw it for sale at either Asda or Tesco, but just couldn’t chivvy myself up to buying it. I only did so yesterday when it had come down in price to £2. And as you can’t really even get a decent cup of coffee for £2 these days, I decided it was now cheap enough to have a punt.

Well, as I said it is either rather good or rather bad. If, as many assume, it was intended as a more or less conventional thriller, which these days means quirky characters are obligatory, then it is simply not very good. It begins in a welter of confusion with the ‘plot’ and the film’s characters – rather a lot of them and almost all of them hired killers – being introduced. These include a pair of lesbian hitwomen, a master of disguise, of Spanish hitman who is apparently so hard, he chewed off his fingertips so that he could not be identified by his fingerprints, a trio of brothers who are utterly whacky neo-Nazi hitmen, a Mafia godfather on his death bed and a Las Vegas magician who fancied himself as
a Mafioso but is now on the brink of turning stool pigeon and a trio of bondsmen. Oh, then there are two tough FBI G men (pictured), Ray Liotta, being one, who are tasked with getting to the Mafioso turned would-be informant before anyone else. Well, so far, so much complete bollocks. In fact, I was so utterly bewildered by the initial exposition (all done in that ‘cool’ buddy-buddy cop jive which Hollywood created and – a la life imitating art – young hipsters about town imitate) that I watched the first 15 minutes twice. But there was something about Smokin’ Aces which kept me watching, things such as the camera angles, the colour, which made me think that even if this guy has sold out and can’t really tell an interesting story anymore, at least he can film interesting film.

You might have gathered that I had already concluded that the horribly convoluted storyline and what passed for a plot really weren’t bothering with. For some odd reason, for some very odd reason, Andy Garcia, as a deputy director of the FBI affects a southern drawl. Why? But I had kept watching, not least because I have a lot of respect for Ray Liotta’s acting and just couldn’t work out what he would be doing in a duff film, especially as he was doing it pretty prominently in Smokin’ Aces. And there were some rather
witty scenes, as, for example, the one with the three bondsmen and a scumbag lawyer who like dressing up in women’s clothes. He only figured in two scenes, but those two scenes are priceless. Or what to make of the bizarre young lad with utterly manic attention deficit disorder at whose house one of the bondsmen (the three had all been gunned down by the trio of neo-Nazi hitmen for no reason whatsoever and dumped in Lake Tahoe) washes up. These scenes seem to play absolutely no part in the plot. He, however, survives though the fingers of his left hand don’t.

And then the penny dropped: the film wasn’t supposed to be taken at face value at all. The horribly convoluted, not to say completely ludicrous storyline, was intended to be beyond the pale. Smokin’ Aces was – is – pretty much film for film’s sake. And in that sense it made perfect sense. And if that really is the case – I must admit, the jury really is still out on that one – it is rather good. In fact, very good. It struck me as what I might call ‘abstract filmmaking’, filmmaking which celebrates filmmaking, but using all the conventional strokes at a director’s disposal and applying them, though not in the way you might expect.

At this point you might think me as a pretentious prick and Smokin’ Aces as just another piece of OTT Tinseltown schlock. Well, I would like to deny I am pretentious, or at least I don’t mean to be, but as for Smokin’ Aces being … I honestly do not know. It is either pretty good or pretty bad. To be honest, I think the odds are that I am reading a little too much into it, but I still like to think I am right. Narc was very good, and I would be surprised if this was very bad. I would be interested in hearing other opinions.



What is this mess? Or is it good? Jeremy Pivens as the Las Vegas magician turned would-be Mafioso (or something, sort it out for yourselves) tackles one of the weightier questions facing the human condition in the Year Of Our Lord 2011

. . .

Courtesy of the ‘stats’, which I am addicted to as it tells me how many people are inclined to read all this shit, I have discovered that someone happened upon this blog via Google. Nothing particularly startling in that, but what makes it a little odd is that the search terms he entered which brought him or her here were ‘Paul Dacre’ and ‘Oratory School’. Now, I went to the Oratory, which we knew as the OS, but Paul Dacre didn’t. But I work for a newspaper of which Paul Dacre is the editor. And I am bound to ask myself: what exactly was he or she (or, if you like, she or he) hunting down by entering those search terms.

Bloody Blair off the hook as – ironically - defector admits ‘it was all a lie’

Irony of irony: there’s great excitement in the media that an Iraqi defector has come clean and admitted he lied about Saddam Hussein having a stockpile of biologicial weapons. This will finally nail Blair and Bush, they say. Well, think again. What it means as those two will actually get away with it.
A chap called Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was known to the West’s security services as Curveball, made the claim to German secret service agents after he sought asylum in German. He was told that his wife would not be granted asylum if he did not cooperate and give then inside information about the Military Industries Commission for whom he had worked. So he spun the line about the biological weapons and mobile factories producing them which could be swiftly moved to evade detection by UN weapons inspectors. According to the BBC, the BND (Bundes Nachrichten Dienst – the Federal News Service, a title which deserves an Oscar for imagination in the cause of euphemism) checked with al-Janabi’s former boss who told them it was all complete cobblers, but the Germans carried on believing he was telling him the truth, most probably because they wanted to, and passed on the info to the US and Britain.
So – and this comes as no surprise to anyone over the age of four – the invasion of Iraq was justified by an untruth. Thus there is great jubilation among hacks and hackettes in the Western world that ‘Tony Blair can finally be nailed’. Poor saps. He can’t be nailed at all. On the contrary he is now finally off the hook. All he need to is stick to his line that what he decided was done in accordance with military intelligence and in good faith, and if that military intelligence was now shown to be of no more value than last month’s laundry list – well, he can’t be blamed can he. End of story.
It all naturally begs the question as to whether the truth about the claim came out a lot sooner than now – or indeed not – and why alarm bells didn’t ring at the time when it could not be corroborated – which, being completely untrue, it couldn’t of course. But that wasn’t the point. Bush wanted to go to war, for whatever reason – and it is still a mystery – and the bullshit invented by al-Janabi came like manna from heaven. Blair was intent on supporting Bush – again for whatever reason that might have been (I think it was something as shallow conceit and vanity to be seen playing with the big boys. I’m afraid I’ve concluded that conceti and vanity are more or less the sole motivation for almost all of Blair’s politics), so he wouldn’t have been too hard to be persuaded that the bio weapons bullshit was the long-sought for smoking gun. But the upshot is that he has finally and irrvocably got away with it. From now on it is between him and his conscience. And as I have also concluded that he is the sort of conman who succeeds by believing his own bullshit, that, I’m sorry to say, will be no contest. Al-Janabi says his motive was straightforward: to topple Saddam and his regime. In that he succeeded. But unfortunately more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis have lost their lives because of him. I wonder how that makes him feel?

The new planet, hoax or not, and my dream about Evelyn Waugh (in tweed)

Interesting news this week about a possible ‘giant planet’ being discovered. It is said to be apparently part of our solar system but is so far away and hidden in something called the Oort Cloud that it hasn’t been spotted before. The report I read comes from the impeccably po-faced Independent, which is not known for sensationalism (it’s readers are far too well-behaved to fall for that kind of thing, and anyway as almost all of them – 52 at the last count, according to ABC circulation figures, although doesn’t included the editor’s extended family – can tell a shiraz from a merlot merely by the way it moves in the glass, they are naturally more accustomed to higher stuff).
You can find another report here and here.
The planet, which has been called Tyche, is said to be made of hydrogen and helium and has a surface temperature of -73c, although quite how they can know all this stuff if they haven’t yet even seen it is beyond me. It’s rather like all those claims about dinosaurs: we can apparently tell what its diet was, whether or not it lived in groups and how ferocious it was just from a 2cm slither of shin bone. Yeah, right.
The discovery – make that ‘discovery’ – is excellent news for those who believe in ‘aliens’ and suchlike, because although the planet Tyche is said to be wholly made of gas, it is likely, claim Bill and Ben Tugendhat, from the Wichita Academy of Space Exploration, Cancer Cures and Stem Cell Research Inc., who are behind all this nonsense, that it will have loads and loads of moons. And where to the aliens come from who spend most of their waking moments visiting the third rock from the Sun? Got it in one: the moons of various planets in our solar system. Case closed.
You’ll have gathered that I don’t believe in little green men or any other kinds of aliens, but I must confess that I find it utterly implausible, which is to say, a complete certainty, that life has evolved elsewhere in the universe, given its size. By life, of course, I include the kind of single-cell life forms from which we (and, I’m told even Tony Blair) evolved. And given the size of the universe, I think it is also highly likely that somewhere out their such single-cell life forms have also evolved into what we laughingly called intelligent life. However, and there’s always a however, given the size of the universe and given, for example, how long intelligent life has been around on Earth – the common comparison is that if the time life has existed on Earth is compared to a 12-hour clock, intelligent life has existed hereabouts for the last minute of the last hour of the day – it is also highly unlikely, not to say downright impossible, that one such form of intelligent life will come into contact with another form. The chances are that we do not coincide, and if we do, we are so bloody far away from each other, there is no danger that we will come across each other by chance. Many folk, of course, talk of ‘travelling through dimensions’ which would, if true, solve the problem of our astronauts dying out (and most certainly of boredom) before they got anywhere close to anywhere else, but I think it is complete cobblers.
According to the Independent’s report, more data on the new plant Tyche is due to be released in April, and in the meantime Bill and Ben Tugenhat, of Wichita, wonder whether they couldn’t interest you in a little more life insurance.

. . .

Alongside the report in the ‘Indy’, was a little feature as to why claims that the Apollo Moon landing were faked are bollocks. It goes through ten common charges, for example how come the astronauts’ boots left footprints on the Moon’s

surface then there was no moisture around? I once again belong firmly in the sceptics camp about claims that the whole thing was faked and was filmed in a huge warehouse in Wichita which Nasa rented from Bill and Ben Tugendhat, but looking at the pictures, I was struck by one anomaly. I have included one here: from the astronaut’s shadow, it is clear that the Sun is behind him, though at an angle. Yet from my life as an unsuccessful photographer I know that if the light source is behind your subject, it could well end up being completely underexposed, and unless some form of fill-in flash were used to illuminate the astronaut from the front, we should not be able to see anything at all. He would be an outline and nothing else.
However, we can see quite clearly. In fact, it is rather a good photograph. So some form of flash was used. But for some reason that strikes me as a little implausible, because the astronaut is almost opposite the camera i.e. not at an angle, and if flash had been used, there would most certainly have been a reflection of it in the astronaut’s visor. But there isn’t. One explanation is that flash wasn’t used, but another kind of light source. An objection to that, however, is that it, too, might well be expected to be reflected in the visor and also that it would have to be a light source of the magnitude of a studio arc lamp to cast that much light. On the other hand, the same objections apply if, as the conspiracy theorists claim, the whole thing was photographed in a studio. Then, too, given the strength of the light source behind the astronaut, another light source, whether flash or arc light, would be needed to fill in the detail of the astronaut. But again there is no evidence of it in the man’s visor. So, so far, even stevens. I suspect it’s those bloody little green men again.

. . .

Many years ago, I had a very vivid dream. In it, the novelist Evelyn Waugh was cooking m a fry-up. He was dressed as you see him in the picture, and was obviously at the end of his life (he died at 66 from too much good living). In the
dream he was a very friendly man and very pleasant. I was just an ingénue pleased to meet a writer I whose work I liked a great deal. This would have been in the mid-Sixties, more or less around the time he died. Apart from having read all his novels up until that point (and having had the very good fortune of starting with Decline And Fall, his first, and then, fortuitously, more or less reading them in the order in which he wrote them, I had read nothing about Waugh. So I didn’t know much about him. I later found out that he wasn’t always very nice, although there is often the suggestion that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, but that if you were courteous to him, he could also be courteous and charming. I find his humour to be unique, and I do think he was able to laugh at himself, which is a trait not quite as common among the famous as it might be.
That dream has always puzzled me. Undoubtedly, by the time I had had it, I had come across the picture I have supplied or a similar one below, or else I would not have dreamed about him wearing a tweed suit. And why did I dream it. Who knows?

An ego writ large? Two of them? And Egypt: perhaps it’s best not to hold one’s breath

Rather a silly situation at work today, with which you might well be familiar even if you don’t work for a newspaper. The situation on the travel desk ever since the then travel editor was promoted to a commissioning editor (but has now left to become deputy editor of a very well-known magazine for genteel women and those who regard themselves as genteel women) is that a freelance journalist is employed as a part-time travel editor, and when he is not there at the beginning of the week, the role is taken up by a woman who was one the travel desk assistant. Before coming to the Mail, she had never worked as a hack and had no journalistic experience. In fact, I don’t know what she did. That she is not pug ugly (though I don’t fancy her – she is one of those tall, willowy types who don’t float my boat and never have done), is impeccably middle-class and graduated in fashion design will not have hindered her first being taken on as the travel desk assistant. She might well have remained in the position for some time to come had management decided not to appoint another full-time travel editor and would have carried on doing what the assistant always did, hunting down pictures, liaising with travel companies and generally – metaphorically – keeping the travel desk tidy. But these days, on Mondays and Tuesdays, she is acting travel editor which means she oversees the paper’s midweek travel feature. That she started in a relatively lowly position doesn’t, of course, mean that she must therefore be incapable. But the converse is also true: that she fulfils the role of travel editor for two days a week doesn’t necessarily mean she is any good. And I’m afraid her lack of previous experience does show time and again. That is not necessarily a bad thing in that the page is read and seen by many people, especially the deputy editor of the day, and they often make changes. But it would help if she didn’t think she could write well and it would help if she could write a headline, which she can’t. I used to get on with her OK, but when she was bumped up a notch to the role she now fulfils after the full-time travel editor left, she developed a bad habit of taking long lunch breaks, often ‘at a meeting’, delivering her ‘marks’ to us late, and then urging me to hurry up because she wanted to go home. I suppose it was that which first got up my nose. I also get rather fed up with women who reckon try to get their way around men with a false smile and by laying on the femininity. I prefer to work with women who are good at their job. Today she read through the page, made her changes and then I read through it, and it was pretty bloody awful. The secret to any feature is to make it interesting, and what she had sent through read like a bus timetable and was even less interesting. There was little I could do about it, but start from scratch, which I did. And this rather got to her. So she decided she ‘wanted the picture to be bigger’, which entailed a cut in the copy, and she set about rewriting again, reducing the piece once more to its previous yawn-inducing state. The whole episode was bullshit from start to finish, because had she ‘wanted the picture bigger’, she could have made it bigger before I set to work and I would simply have had less space. The Mail being the Mail – actually, the Mail being a newspaper, but the Mail has its particular quirks – there’s this idea that the Wednesday travel feature is ‘her page’ and that we subs should bow to her decisions. That would be all fine and dandy, and I would have no problem with it at all if she was any good at what she does, but she isn’t. But I suspect she rather thinks she is. Oh well

. . . .

On a lighter note, the ‘British travel industry’ (or whoever speaks for the ‘British travel industry’) today announced that the ‘troubles in Egypt’ will probably reduce this year’s profits by 20 per cent. My heart bleeds. The turnout in Cairo’s equivalent of Trafalgar Square surprised everyone by being far larger than expected. Until last night many of the media pundits were fearing that the protest movement was running out of steam. Despite today’s turnout, I have a terrible feeling that it will: unless the army in Egypt decides enough is enough and kicks Mubarak out, he can more or less hang on until the time suits him to leave, all the while ensuring that the current regime changes its clothes but then it is business as usual. And so far the army has stayed clear of everything. I heard on the radio last week that things will not be that straightforward anyway, as the army ‘owns’ something like 25 per cent of all ‘private businesses’ and will not want to lose that (although I must admit I am baffled as to how the army can ‘own’ anything). But unless the army decides to throw in its lot with the protest, the regime simply has to sit tight, make all the right noises (i.e. form several ‘committees of investigation’) and wait – it won’t be long – until the rest of the world’s media gets bored and shifts its attention elsewhere There’s lots of woolly talk about the winds of change blowing through the Near and Mid East as they did through the former Communist bloc countries, but that strikes me as mere journalism, cacking up the story to keep it on the boil. I’m not the best informed on either topic, but it does strike me that you can only compare like with like. And given that countries such as Romania and Bulgaria have got the same thugs in charge merely whistling different tunes while they count their fortunes, these winds of change – if the same ones are blowing - don’t necessarily mean the outcome will be any better.
The U.S. is coming horribly unstuck over the upheaval in Egypt and gives the impression it is finding it very difficult distinguishing between its arse and its elbow. (I would write ‘the Obama administration’ instead of ‘the U.S.’, but that would sound far too partisan given the George Dubya wasn’t exactly Mr Competent when it came to foreign affairs and I have no axe to grind.) But all those Brownie points Obama gained over the mass shooting in wherever (there are plenty to choose from) and ‘uniting the nation in its moment of grief’ or whatever miracle he achieved are well and truly down the tubes given his and Hillary Clinton dire and utterly incoherent performance over whether Murbarak should stay, leave or simply buy everyone a round or two, tell a few jokes and go home to his palace. Is the U.S. in favour of democracy or not? Well, actually, the real answer is: only when it suits U.S. interests which would be despicable, except that every other country in the world is equally hypocritical. But it has now lost a great deal of credibility over Egypt.
In a sense it is, in fact, quite unfair of me to single out the U.S. over its response to the crisis in Egypt. The rest of the West has also behaved like a one-legged drunk at a hoedown and in a way you can see al Qaeda’s point when it suggests that bombing’s too good for them, squire, and we had that Satan in the back of our cab once, not as bad as he’s made out to be, quite the reverse, really, got some good ideas, has that Satan, no sorry, I don’t go south of the river. (That last bit will be truly incomprehensible to each and every non-Brit reading this, but do I care? Do I fuck.)

UPDATE — We all like a happy ending but it seems that is not what is in store for Egypt. According to the Guardian, the army, which made great play of ‘remaining neutral’ over these past few weeks has ditched that position and is now firmly playing the regime’s game. It did all seem to good to be true.

Let me clear up a slight misunderstanding...

After I told the anecdote I had heard about Piers Morgan lording it over his one-time deputy, a regular reader has commented that she was glad I had given Piers a write-up as she has a soft spot for me – though she put it far more bluntly and regretted the fact that he is married – and that and very much appreciates his wit. Were I feeling more jaundiced, I would write ‘wit’, but it is the end of the day, I am due off work soon and I’m feeling reasonably mellow. Unfortunately, I am not feeling mellow enough to put my reader straight: sorry, K., but my piece was not intended to be complimentary. As far as I am concerned Piers Morgan is a 24-carat pillock. (‘Pillock’ might be very much an English expression with which non-English readers are unfamiliar, but I’m certain they get the gist of what I am saying.) Morgan’s comment to his former deputy – along the lines of look where all his deputy’s hard work had got Morgan – might well have been funny, but unfortunately a sense of humour is no guarantee that a chap is a straight-up guy, especially in our industry. I have met many lawyers who have had me in stitches but who were also complete bastards. Stalin had a tremendous sense of humour, but no one insists what a lovely chap he was. So, sorry, K., I’m not Piers’s greatest fan (make that second-greatest, as you are claiming the top spot). Nor, I should imagine, is the first Mrs Morgan. Incidentally, a columnist for this paper who I chat to regularly and who once co-hosted a TV programme here in Britain (and who is also no great fan of Piers’s) tells me that the new Mrs Morgan, a Celia Walden, is said to be very nice and sweet, but not the sharpest blade in the box, which explains why the gal hasn’t yet rumbled Piers.

. . .

Like many people, I am rather fond of the very long list of colourful expressions we have in English, but, of course, all languages have their colourful expressions. Not the sharpest blade in the box is one, and along similar lines there are a sandwich short of a picnic, the lights are on but no one’s home and the lift doesn’t go to the top floor. Expressions with other meanings I’m fond of include referring to a man’s wedding tackle and describing a practice men engage in on their own (well, usually, I suppose) as the five-finger shuffle. Then there’s describing shoplifting as a five-finger discount. A neighbour once said of my father-in-law, a retired Cornish farmer who would rather not spend money than spend it, that he would skin a turd to save a penny. Of course, there are all the standard expressions and phrases which you will have heard – a great face for radio, fur coat - no knickers, and up and down faster than a whore’s drawers. Then there’s describing someone one knows who has a tendency to corpulence as having more chins than a Chinese phonebook.
I’ve got to get off now, but if I think of any more, I shall record them here.