Well, today (Saturday 7th June) has been nothing more than a miserable wet boring day, a bit like a sunday really.
So, to relieve the tedium and try to resist the urge to blow my brains out, I decided to watch a couple of DVDs I bought the other day from Poundland.
Yes, yes I know, Poundland isn't the most respected place in the world, but on the odd occasion, amongst the cheapo plastic bits of tat and low quality clothing imported from far eastern sweatshops they do occasionally have something half decent, which more often than not ends up being either some sort of food item, or something which was previously expensive but somehow ended up being bought in bulk during a liquidation sale or something.
Todays purchases are, as per the title of this scribbling, 2 DVD films entitled "Manborg" and "Shopping".
Manborg (2011 - Astron-6 Films)
A little reading up on this film shows that production began in 2009 and completed in 2010, finally being released after nearly 2 years worth of post production. Astron-6 is a low, low, low budget film studio that specialises in sci-fi/comedy/horror type films, all starring people you have never heard of, sort of like Asylum films, except with a much lower budget.
Speaking of budgets, this film was made with a budget of approximately $1000 Canadian dollars (thats roughly £550) , but, we cant hold that against them.
What attracted me to this film was its tagline, which is prominently displayed on the box in big letters "NAZI DEMON UPRISING" ........ "hmmm", thought I, "now if thats not worth a quid, I dunno what is".
I wasnt disappointed either.
From the minute you press "play", you are treated to about 90 minutes of pure, unadulterated silliness, with nazi demon creatures fighting stereotyped human heroes in a bizarre futuristic landscape (all of which is achieved via an excessive but somehow strangely satisfying use of green screen filming techniques). The storyline, or at least what there is of it, is fairly coherent and does just enough so you know whats going on, but doesn't bog your viewing experience down with to much boring exposition, after all, at heart, this film is an action movie.
There's a lot of humour in there, although said humour has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek and relies mainly on one liners, visual gags and comic book esque situation comedy pieces which will leave you with a slight grin at the least and/or a groan followed by a *face/palm* at the most, but trust me, you'll enjoy doing it.
Action scenes take place within a bizarre hybrid world of 80s-esque action movie sequences and anime inspired martial arts fighting as the heroes machine gun, karate chop, stab and flying kick their way through hordes of stop motion created monsters, culminating in a final "Mortal Kombat" esque battle to the death with the main bad guy of the film, "Count Draculon".
Seriously, this film is well worth the quid, trust me, its a nice bit of sci-fi cheese that although its visuals aren't as slick as Hollywood, or even Bollywood, efforts (it pretty much watches like every homebrew fan film you've seen on youtube) but it more than makes up for it with its heart and its ability to effectively make a film in 1980s Hollywood action film style without being too pretentious or just downright bad.
8/10
Shopping (1994 - Film 4 international)
Remember back in the mid to late 90s when the British film industry finally started making films that werent shite for the first time in nearly 20 years?, classics such as "Trainspotting", "Shallow Grave" et al?, well "Shopping" was one of the early ones that no one really remembers.
Starring Jude Law in his first major starring role, along with his future wife Sadie Frost, "Shopping" is one of those films which lets the audience know that being a theiving toerag is glamourous and awesome.
At the time the film was made, the British film industry couldn't make a film without making some mention of criminal activities, Shopping is no different, as it focuses on a group of teenagers who enjoy nothing better than stealing cars, driving them around at high speed before ramming them into shops and stealing anything their little mitts can grab before the rozzers turn up and give them a stern talking to with their bushy moustaches.
For its time, its subject matter was quite relevant, on the one hand, the rise in youth crime was becoming concerning, and the phenomena of "ram raiding" was a particular favourite way for ne'er do wells to get their hands on phat lewt without having to make too much of an effort (today, ram raiding is almost unheard of, due to the fact that most shop keepers and insurance companies found that simply by installing roller shutters and concrete bollards in front of shop doorways and windows, it would prevent scrotes from ramming them down)
So, right at the beginning the film lets you know it fits into the "gritty urban drama" catagory by having the opening credits show you a series of helicopter shots of various industiral factories and such pumping out flames and smoke and so on, all to the background score of some early 90s dance music, we then get introduced to the main character, Billy (Jude Law) who is being released from prison after a 3 month stint for car theft by the local chief inspector (Jonathan Pryce), he thumbs his nose at the establishment by saying the only thing he has learned in prison is not to get caught.
He quickly falls back in to his old habits and goes back to thieving cars so he can drive around various decaying locations in urban London (albeit they tried to disguise said locations to make them appear "generic") whilst spouting 90s youth related expletives such as "booyaka" and so on.
Billys friends are all stereotypes of what film directors though the "disaffected youth" of the 90s were, whom he meets up with in a smoky backstreet to the sound of thumping drum and bass while some other characters spout car engine characteristics the script required them to memorise so you can understand that all these kids care about is living fast and dying young etc etc etc.
Billy and his mates, sorry, "m8s", soon run afoul of the local 10 bob gangsta (a very young looking Sean Pertwee) who is trying to break into the big time by doing jobs for a much more organised and slick mobster (Sean Bean) culminating in Billy planning a big heist by knocking over a massive swanky shopping centre, however this scheme goes awry when it turns out that Billy and his mates have been dobbed in to the police, and find a load of rozzers waiting for them when they try and break in to get their lewt.
Throughout the film, Billy is somewhat childishly obsessed with making a name for himself amongst the ghetto kids by doing feats of daring do and pissing off the local police, even though at numerous points he is offered the opportunity to leave all of it behind and move on, he chooses not to, and the film ends with him and his girly companion laid in the wreck of a car after he tried to prove how much more badass he was than the police.
The character of Billy is somewhat believable, given the context of the film and the time when it was made, but Jude Law manages to make the character proper out of place due to the fact that the urban hero that is Billy speaks in BBC english while everyone around him speaks in ghetto innit.
While this is still a good film, it is chock full of proper dodgy cliches, over exaggerations and stunted awkward dialogue that was very obviously written by someone who had very little clue about "da yoof" were up to in those days, much less any idea about how "gangstas" work.
still, not that bad, but not that good either.
6/10
Showing posts with label jonathan pryce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jonathan pryce. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 June 2014
Monday, 31 March 2014
"Selling Hitler" - 1991
"Selling Hitler" is a 5 part 1991 mini series, based on the non fiction book written by Robert Harris .
The plot of selling Hitler is a dramatisation of the events leading up to and surrounding the 1983 "Hitler Diaries" affair, albeit changed in places to add more comedic and satirical overtones, however despite these changes, the events shown actually happened exactly as they are presented.
Plot:-
In the late 1970s, journalist Gerd Heidermann (Jonathan Pryce ), a down on his luck German journalist with a burgeoning obsession for Nazi memorabilia (despite ownership of such items generally being illegal in Germany) comes across the rotting hulk of the Carin II, Hermann Gorings personal yacht , moored in a harbour. Although the vessel requires extensive repairs in order to make it seaworthy again, he somehow manages to get the money together to buy and restore it.
His employers, the well respected German news magazine "Der Stern" ("The Star") are skeptical when he states that his purchase and restoration of the vessel will allow him to coax former Nazis to come out of the woodwork in order for him to interview them, the results of which interviews will form the basis of articles and possibly books about the Third Reich which Sterns parent company can market worldwide, cashing in on the bizarre obsession the world seems to have with Nazism. Sterns management reluctantly agrees to this and advances him several thousand Deutschmarks.
Years pass and Heidermann restores the Carin II and interviews many old Nazi military officers, albeit while they are under the influence of drink while at parties hosted by Heidermann on the ship, however the material he produces for Stern is of extremely poor quality, and not worth publishing in any form. Heidermann finds himself almost bankrupt when Stern pulls his funding for the Nazi project, however Heidermann, whose interest in Nazi memorabilia has now become more of an obsession, refuses to give up on finding some sort of story relating to Nazis. A chance meeting with one of his Nazi contacts brings Heidermann into contact with a relic that he believes will give him the story he is looking for, as amongst his contacts extensive (and illegal) Nazi memorabilia collection is a diary, reportedly one of several volumes penned by Hitler himself in the years between 1932 and 1945.
Heidermann becomes fascinated by the idea that there are more of these books hidden somewhere, and immediately begins a painstaking investigation to firstly authenticate whether the diaries are real, and secondly to track down the source of these diaries, so that he can acquire them for himself.
His searches reveal that in the final days of the war, the German high command organised for planes to carry documents from Berlin to Hitlers alpine retreat. The ninth plane in this flight carried the Fuhrers personal archives, however, this plane crashed en route, its cargo presumably lost.
In 1981, Heidermann tracks down and visits the crash site and is overjoyed to find that it actually existed, and there is a strong possibility that some of the planes cargo survived, including the diaries which he covets so much. Further investigation leads him to the home of a "Dr. Konrad Fischer" (Alexei Sayle ), who is the source of the diary he had seen some months previously.
Heidermann is delighted that Fischer says that he can get him more diaries, but their cost is substantial, due to them having to be smuggled into West Germany by his brother who is a general in the East German army. Heidermann, eager to get his hands on the books whilst making a substantial profit at the same time, returns to the offices of Stern and gets the CEO of publishing, Manfreid Fischer ( Tom Baker ) to agree to give him 200,000 DM in cash in order to buy the first three volumes.
By the beginning of 1983, Stern has made nearly 3 million marks worth of cash payments to Heidermann, of which a sizable portion he has kept for himself, using it to purchase more Nazi memorabilia for his own personal collection, as well as spending it on an extravagant lifestyle, however, problems start to occur when the secrecy of the arrangement that exists between him, Fischer and the new CEO of publishing at Stern is threatened when it is requested that the documents he has bought thus far be authenticated.
Copies of several documents are sent to handwriting experts who state that the handwriting (written in almost unreadable Gothic script) is definitely Hitlers, however forensic tests on the documents begin to show anomalies, such as the paper containing bleaching agents which weren't used until the 1950s.
As it turns out, the "Hitler Diaries" are in fact not smuggled out of East Germany by Fischers brother, they are in fact crudely forged by Fischer himself (His real name being "Konrad Kujau") simply by writing in books bought from Woolworths, which are then artificially aged by soaking the pages in cold tea and battering them on his desk before adding embellishments such as official looking seals and lettering, again, made by using cheap plastic items. Kujau pretty much copied everything written in the diaries from other source texts, occasionally embellishing them with bits of his own personal opinions, many of which ended up being anachronistic.
After being given limited access to the books (as well as being told outright lies by Stern staff) the books are authenticated by noted historian Hugh Trevor-Roper ( Alan Bennett ), however another noted but disliked (due to his antisemitic views and holocaust denial) expert on Nazism, David Irving ( Roger Lloyd-Pack ) casts doubt on the books authenticity when he sees copies of some materials purchased from Kujau from the collection of one of his neo-Nazi contacts and finds them to be fakes, thus casting doubt on the veracity of Trevor-Ropers authentication.
Everything comes to a head when three separate forensic experts finally get to fully test the documents, and find them all to be bare faced forgeries of pretty low quality.
Both Heidermann and Kujau are arrested, the senior staff at Stern, The Sunday Times and Newsweek are forced to resign in shame, Hugh Trevor-Roper is branded an idiot by the press and Rupert Murdoch ( Barry Humphries ) enjoys a field day with "I told you so" style headlines (despite himself bidding nearly $5 million for the international rights to Sterns "scoop").
In the end, Heidermann was ruined and spent four and a half years in prison for fraud (owing to his use of monies given to him by Stern to buy property and memorabilia, most of which were fakes made by Kujau), Kujau served two years for forgery, which was cut down due to his openness and co-operation with police once he was arrested.
"Selling Hitler" is a wonderfully crafted bit of satirical-docu-comedy-drama (its getting harder to classify things these days innit?) , with the "Best actor" award going to Alexei Sayle in his portrayal of Fischer/Kujau as a drunken buffoon who gets so wrapped up in enjoying the money he is getting paid for his forgeries that he doesn't realise the consequences of such a large scale fraud.
Many themes are touched on throughout the series, such as:-
Id well recommend watching this series, which is available on DVD, although it is hard to come by, it can be viewed by other means.
The plot of selling Hitler is a dramatisation of the events leading up to and surrounding the 1983 "Hitler Diaries" affair, albeit changed in places to add more comedic and satirical overtones, however despite these changes, the events shown actually happened exactly as they are presented.
Plot:-
In the late 1970s, journalist Gerd Heidermann (Jonathan Pryce ), a down on his luck German journalist with a burgeoning obsession for Nazi memorabilia (despite ownership of such items generally being illegal in Germany) comes across the rotting hulk of the Carin II, Hermann Gorings personal yacht , moored in a harbour. Although the vessel requires extensive repairs in order to make it seaworthy again, he somehow manages to get the money together to buy and restore it.
His employers, the well respected German news magazine "Der Stern" ("The Star") are skeptical when he states that his purchase and restoration of the vessel will allow him to coax former Nazis to come out of the woodwork in order for him to interview them, the results of which interviews will form the basis of articles and possibly books about the Third Reich which Sterns parent company can market worldwide, cashing in on the bizarre obsession the world seems to have with Nazism. Sterns management reluctantly agrees to this and advances him several thousand Deutschmarks.
Years pass and Heidermann restores the Carin II and interviews many old Nazi military officers, albeit while they are under the influence of drink while at parties hosted by Heidermann on the ship, however the material he produces for Stern is of extremely poor quality, and not worth publishing in any form. Heidermann finds himself almost bankrupt when Stern pulls his funding for the Nazi project, however Heidermann, whose interest in Nazi memorabilia has now become more of an obsession, refuses to give up on finding some sort of story relating to Nazis. A chance meeting with one of his Nazi contacts brings Heidermann into contact with a relic that he believes will give him the story he is looking for, as amongst his contacts extensive (and illegal) Nazi memorabilia collection is a diary, reportedly one of several volumes penned by Hitler himself in the years between 1932 and 1945.
Heidermann becomes fascinated by the idea that there are more of these books hidden somewhere, and immediately begins a painstaking investigation to firstly authenticate whether the diaries are real, and secondly to track down the source of these diaries, so that he can acquire them for himself.
His searches reveal that in the final days of the war, the German high command organised for planes to carry documents from Berlin to Hitlers alpine retreat. The ninth plane in this flight carried the Fuhrers personal archives, however, this plane crashed en route, its cargo presumably lost.
In 1981, Heidermann tracks down and visits the crash site and is overjoyed to find that it actually existed, and there is a strong possibility that some of the planes cargo survived, including the diaries which he covets so much. Further investigation leads him to the home of a "Dr. Konrad Fischer" (Alexei Sayle ), who is the source of the diary he had seen some months previously.
Heidermann is delighted that Fischer says that he can get him more diaries, but their cost is substantial, due to them having to be smuggled into West Germany by his brother who is a general in the East German army. Heidermann, eager to get his hands on the books whilst making a substantial profit at the same time, returns to the offices of Stern and gets the CEO of publishing, Manfreid Fischer ( Tom Baker ) to agree to give him 200,000 DM in cash in order to buy the first three volumes.
By the beginning of 1983, Stern has made nearly 3 million marks worth of cash payments to Heidermann, of which a sizable portion he has kept for himself, using it to purchase more Nazi memorabilia for his own personal collection, as well as spending it on an extravagant lifestyle, however, problems start to occur when the secrecy of the arrangement that exists between him, Fischer and the new CEO of publishing at Stern is threatened when it is requested that the documents he has bought thus far be authenticated.
Copies of several documents are sent to handwriting experts who state that the handwriting (written in almost unreadable Gothic script) is definitely Hitlers, however forensic tests on the documents begin to show anomalies, such as the paper containing bleaching agents which weren't used until the 1950s.
As it turns out, the "Hitler Diaries" are in fact not smuggled out of East Germany by Fischers brother, they are in fact crudely forged by Fischer himself (His real name being "Konrad Kujau") simply by writing in books bought from Woolworths, which are then artificially aged by soaking the pages in cold tea and battering them on his desk before adding embellishments such as official looking seals and lettering, again, made by using cheap plastic items. Kujau pretty much copied everything written in the diaries from other source texts, occasionally embellishing them with bits of his own personal opinions, many of which ended up being anachronistic.
After being given limited access to the books (as well as being told outright lies by Stern staff) the books are authenticated by noted historian Hugh Trevor-Roper ( Alan Bennett ), however another noted but disliked (due to his antisemitic views and holocaust denial) expert on Nazism, David Irving ( Roger Lloyd-Pack ) casts doubt on the books authenticity when he sees copies of some materials purchased from Kujau from the collection of one of his neo-Nazi contacts and finds them to be fakes, thus casting doubt on the veracity of Trevor-Ropers authentication.
Everything comes to a head when three separate forensic experts finally get to fully test the documents, and find them all to be bare faced forgeries of pretty low quality.
Both Heidermann and Kujau are arrested, the senior staff at Stern, The Sunday Times and Newsweek are forced to resign in shame, Hugh Trevor-Roper is branded an idiot by the press and Rupert Murdoch ( Barry Humphries ) enjoys a field day with "I told you so" style headlines (despite himself bidding nearly $5 million for the international rights to Sterns "scoop").
In the end, Heidermann was ruined and spent four and a half years in prison for fraud (owing to his use of monies given to him by Stern to buy property and memorabilia, most of which were fakes made by Kujau), Kujau served two years for forgery, which was cut down due to his openness and co-operation with police once he was arrested.
"Selling Hitler" is a wonderfully crafted bit of satirical-docu-comedy-drama (its getting harder to classify things these days innit?) , with the "Best actor" award going to Alexei Sayle in his portrayal of Fischer/Kujau as a drunken buffoon who gets so wrapped up in enjoying the money he is getting paid for his forgeries that he doesn't realise the consequences of such a large scale fraud.
Many themes are touched on throughout the series, such as:-
- Sterns naive eagerness to acquire the diaries on a no questions asked basis without checking their authenticity.
- Heidermanns obsession with Nazi memorabilia, despite living in a country where the ownership and trade in such materials is pretty much illegal for private collectors.
- The eagerness in which all concerned have to use the forged materials to get the history books rewritten in order to portray Hitler in a much more flattering light, thus ignoring and/or excusing the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war.
- The eagerness of all concerned to use the diaries to make ridiculous amounts of profit.
- The casual attitude which nearly all concerned show towards Nazism.
Id well recommend watching this series, which is available on DVD, although it is hard to come by, it can be viewed by other means.
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