Northern Bites

Morsels of Belfast-based life and culture :: by Conor Smyth :: mail or tweet in your words/ pics ASK ME / RSS / FOLLOW / FACEBOOK / BROWSE TAGS

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"IT'S THE WOODS THEMSELVES... THEY'RE ALIVE!"

The annual Halloween horror week's starting. Queen's Film Theatre will have a special screening of Sam Raimi's gorgeously fucked-up The Evil Dead on Saturday 26th. Before the remake, before Cabin in the Woods, before the phenomenon of "Bruce Campbell", there was five teenagers, a creepy-looking book, and Raimi's frenzied, foul film-making.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Enough Said

In our romantic lives, are second acts possible? The difficulties imposed upon new relationships by muddy personal histories and future uncertainties are the focus of Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late James Gandolfini as a pair of divorced L.A. singletons feeling out a new connection. With all the critical hand-wringing over the state of the rom-com following the death of When Harry Met Sally screenwriter Nora Ephron, it's a comforting reminder that astute, funny and empathetic entries of the genre are still possible in the cinematic mainstream. 

After meeting at a party, Gandolfini (Albert) and Louis-Dreyfus (Eva) get on like old pros, their flirty banter shot through with a dose of the real. Louis-Dreyfus proves again what a starlet she is, playing Eva, a masseuse dreading her daughter jetting off to college, with a nervous goofiness reminiscient of Elaine Benes but with less of her hallmark role's emotional selfishness (the script has a sly, observational tone which gestures towards the Seinfeldian). Veep has given Louis-Dreyfus a second act in TV comedy, but Enough Said proves she deserves more straight, empathetic roles. On the other side, it's wonderful and heart-breaking to watch Gandolfini in one of his final performances. For those who only know him as Tony Soprano, his affable, rumpled Albert will be something of a revelation. 

After a summer of being bludgeoned by super-punching and robo-smashing, it's an immense relief to see an identifiable adult relationship played out on screen, albeit one filtered through Holofcener's goofy rom-com sensibility. Apart from a Shakespearean twist in the story structure which most will see coming (it's in the trailer, but spoilers are best avoided), it feels easy and unaffected. There was only six other people in the screen when I saw it: people are missing out on something quietly special.

Enough Said is showing at Moviehouse and Odyssey Cinemas.

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WATCH THIS: Out now on UK DVD, A Pervert's Guide to Ideology reunites director Sophie Fiennes and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek for a second round of Marxist-psychoanalytic musings on modern cinema and the capitalist order which it embodies. The conventional wisdom of the post-Nineties political bubble is that we are now beyond ideology - that the "old" battles between Western capitalism and Eastern socialism have ceased - but what if the opposite is true: what if it is when we feel most independently-minded, most free of ideology, that its grip is most subtle and all-grasping? In pursuit of this idea, Zizek riffs on popular films like They Live, Taxi Driver, The Matrix and Titanic, eschewing typical documentary worthiness for a more clownish delivery of unexpected, provocative readings on cinema and culture.

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Spotted in North Street in the city centre. Stencilled by visualwaste.

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To celebrate the release of Filth, based on Irvene Welsh's novel, Red Barn Gallery (43b Rosemary Street) will be screening the ratty, dirty, wonderful Trainspotting, followed by Tarantino's stone-cold classic Pulp Fiction. Things start at 8pm -- it's £5 for the night or £2.50 for a single screening.

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Teaspoon Travails #2: Starbucks, The Lisburn Road (Posh End)

One of the most baffling things about Starbucks is that with all their resources and man-power, what is basically the corporate equivalent of the Ottoman Empire continues to fail at the task of producing a cup of tea that doesn't taste like pish.

With all the time and energy expounded on coffee and its infinite sub-sections, a satisfying combination of hot water and an English Breakfast teabag in a porcelain container still eludes its committees of taste designers. 

Presumably a teapot would ruin the aesthetic, so you get a teabag dumped in a mug of hot water, forcing a terrible compromise between flavour and temperature. Do you let the mixture brew for a bit, while heat evaporates like jailbreak felons streaming into the night, or do you act swiftly, stirring quickly to lock in a bit of taste and guarantee the thing doesn't go cold halfway through the mug. Inevitably, even the most diplomatic solution saddles you with the double unfortunateness of a weak sauce brew briskly approaching tepid nothingness. Forget about a leisurely drink while you chat with a mate or watch lolcat videos on your laptop; ain't nobody got time for that, as the webs say. I'm not sure I know what the bottom of a Starbucks mug looks like any more. I assume there's something down there.

Altogether speaking, it's a thoroughly miserable cup of tea. Anemic. Washed-out. Pathetic. Like it's not even there. Like a ghost of a tea rather than the real thing.

Sticking with the spectral theme briefly, one does wonder if there is something deliberate about this persistent botching of quality, a sort of Freudian 'return of the repressed', in which the fine drink is unconsciously sabotaged for its perverse, goading simplicity. Tea, good tea, feels uncomplicated and sincere, qualities rarely associated with the coffee giant and its sprawling, insular lexicon of bean-based ballbaggery. The phrase "grande tea" sticks in the throat like a swear word. The faux-jazz, the careful exposed-brick browns, the smiling benign black farmers; it's not just a bland insincerity, it's also a dated insincerity. I mean, who's still into wooden primary school seating?

Is all of this really so difficult?

Comes in Porcelain cup with teabag / Price 1.70 / Refills No / Wifi Yes

Teaspoons out of Five Two

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STREAM THIS: Brooklyn Nine-Nine

There's a bit more on the new shows of the just-starting TV season coming in a bit, but I wanted to give special mention to new single-camera comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine which, three episodes in, looks like the perfect remedy for those of us mourning the loss of the skewed sitcom sensibilities of The Office, Happy Endings and Bitch in Apartment 23 and the near-future retirement of Parks and Recreations. It's the child of Michael Schur and Dan Goor, who were instrumental in early-years The Office and the creation of Parks and Rec, and even in these early episodes Nine-Nine is displaying the kind of amiable workplace ensemble (here it's a New York police precinct) and world-building weirdness that made those shows unmissable.

Nine-Nine manages the tricky task of channeling Andy Samberg's weird energy into something that can work week to week without being exhausting (an ability lacked by BBC 3's Cuckoo earlier in the year), and his cocky, Die Hard-loving Detective Peralta is nicely balanced by a supporting cast strong enough to carry future stories on their own or in creative team-ups. Jake's immediate colleagues Detectives Santiago and Diaz are both sharply drawn as "uptight" and "tough" but they're started to get some good lines. There's Joe Lo Lugio (who you've seen in something - he was the squeaky L.A. Galaxy fan in I Love You Man) as the nervous, awkward Detective Boyle; Terry Crews is the scary-but-soft Sergeant Geffords, with his usual hilariously expressive face (random character note: he used to be overweight, earning him the nickname "Terry Titties"); Andre Braugher (who did fine work in the under-watched Men of a Certain Age) is the stone-faced authority whose dryness plays well off Samberg's mania; comedian Chelsea Peretti is sure to be the show's breakout star as administrator Gina, who's like April Ludgate's stranger, more sardonic older sister. 

The show is building a nice rhythm, full of the kind of cut-aways, reaction shots and off-kilter conversations that helped make Parks and Rec unpredictable and hysterical. It's working towards a consistency and sense of assurance that Schur and Goor's previous shows developed over that first season or two. Plus the precinct has two "Jerrys". This could be very good.

Note: Brooklyn Nine-Nine is apparently coming to E4 in January.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Prisoners

The most forceful impression left by Prisoners, Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to 2010's Incendies, is the hard-to-shake sensation of autumnal dankness; the hearty vulnerability summoned by grey rain and vivid cold. This thrilling grimness is well-suited to the mystery-thriller material of the film, in which the young daughter of carpenter Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and her friend vanish unexpectedly on Thanksgiving, spurring a police investigation led by the accomplished Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal). Keller is man who, with his basement of tinned foods and sermons on self-reliance, thinks of himself as prepared for any disaster, until the very worst thing possible happens. While Loki's faithful police-work turns and stalls, the uncertainty, bewilderment and desperate, frightened rage of Dover fill the film.  

No other recent release so richly and sharply captures a sense of time and place, an achievement due in large part to the keen eye of Skyfall cinematographer and long-time Coen brothers collaborator Roger Deakins. The open spaces and fierce weather evoke an American mid-West which is bare, earthy and frightening. It is also very, very handsome to look at. There is, though, an element of the confidence trick to this. The plot, with its twisty diversions, sordid revelations and blue-collar cop melodrama, is standard b-movie fodder whose final act really stretches the viewer's clemency. And it is littered with exasperating moments of hacky cop-movie logic (spotted a suspect? Don't call for backup - just chase him in the dark!). But in the hands of Deakins, and powered by the intense, macho performances of Gyllenhaal and Jackman, it all pulsates with a dark, inviting gleam. It's pulp paperback with literary aspirations. 

Much of the post-festival buzz around Prisoners took the tone of "it's a cop movie - but it's also About Things". The problem with this line is that by any standard generic metric, it's not that good a cop movie; and I'm also not sure it's About much at all. Keller's rabid and increasingly brutal persecution of local weirdo and kidnapping suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano) gestures at issues around vigilantism and torture in the American psyche, but it doesn't seem to be getting at much beyond the old warning about the corrupting dangers of the pursuit of evil. Still, it's thrilling and, while it doesn't quite all hang together, there are flashes of real, violent feeling.

Showing at the Moviehouse, Odeon and Odyssey.

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It's on. Tonight on AMC; tomorrow on Netflix. Will Jesse finally give total creepoid Todd what's coming to him? Is the machine gun for Grey Matter after all? And where on earth did Huell end up?

Don't forget the special screening of Breaking Bad's finale at the Oh Yeah Music Centre, Monday night, 8pm.

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This Week at the Pictures

According to the critical establishment, Blue Jasmine is a return to some form of form for Woody Allen. The brittle and shining Cate Blanchett stars as tragic, high-flying fantasist down on her luck, who moves in with her sister Sally Hopkins. Supporting cast includes Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard and Louis CK (!). Exciting. Showing at the Moviehouse.

Hugh Jackman is a survivalist carpenter who always prepares for the worst thing that could happen to him... until it happens. In Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners his daughter and her friend go missing on Thanksgiving; Jake Gyllenhall is the detective assigned the case and Paul Dano is the local weirdo who falls under Jackman's radar of rage. It's macho, intense and shot through with the blues and grays of an autumnal mid-West. Moody as. Showing at the Moviehouse, Odeon and Odyssey. 

  Kristen Wiig continues to search for that post-Bridesmaids role in Girl Most Likely, in which star stars as a playwright who stages a suicide attempt to win back her ex and ends up living with his gambling-addict mother Annette Bening and hanging out with her oddball friends. "Improbably, lamentably, Wiig never gets to wig out; not even a fledgling night of drunken abandon brings out the real wild woman in her" sighs the A.V. Club. Showing at the Moviehouse, Odeon and Odyssey.

No bees, no bear suits. For its fortieth-anniversary, Robin Hardy's going back his British horror classic Wicker Man: The Final Cut for the 'director's cut' treatment, presenting the longer version of the film based on his 1979 US release cut. Edward Woodward's religious pious police sergeant travels to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl and encounters a strange, cultish community with flair for the pyrotechnic. The legendary Christopher Lee also stars. Showing at Queen's Film Theatre.

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One-off final episode tonight, Channel 4, 9pm! Don't let us down, Linehan.

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Last Friday night was the annual Culture Night. I only got to see a few events, spending the bulk of the evening wandering around the cathedral quarter supping raw rum from a Coke can (CULTURE), but it was nice experiencing a crowd of people drinking in the city centre without an implicit threat of violence. Here's a showreel of the night.

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The folks over at Loyalists Against Democracy have done a fine job of skewering the controversial new Martin Luther King-quoting UVF mural (top), painted over the George Best portrait in Sydenham. More pictures, and a video compilation, at their page.

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MOVIE REVIEW: White House Down

Early in Roland Emmerich's White House Down, the building's tour guide shows Capitol Police Officer (Channing Tatum) and his precocious daughter (Joey King) a painting of America's seat of government burning down in 1814 during the war with the English. It's an ominous portrait of destruction and rejuvenation. The feeling that this has happened before, and this will happen again, is only heightened by Emmerich's pedigree as a bulldozer of capitol landmarks (Independence Day) and the strangely-timed appearance of the similarly-built compromised-castle shoot-a-thon Olympus Has Fallen.  

As the principled and ice-cool President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) gears up to broker a monumental peace treaty with Middle Eastern counties and expel American troops from their land, a dissident group of terrorists highjack the Capitol building and the titular residence. Superficially, this is a sort of Die Hard in the White House: a rumpled, white-vested everyman with a shaky family situation stalks terrorists in a locked-down building, with a radio/phone as his only communication to the outside world (and security official and former flame Maggie Gyllenhaal). But the film lacks the commanding wit and spatial precision of the 1988 classic, and while Tatum does well with his buff, grumbling persona, he's far from the pissed-off steeliness of Willis' John MacLean. With the rampant, casual violence and CGI explosions, White House Down is a much more conventional Hollywood affair. Barely any summer action cliche is squandered: the slightly fey hacker-genius who listens to classical music while pounding code; the whip-smart kid caught up in the action who films the terrorists for her Youtube channel; the sugary domestic resolution (if we've learned anything from the Emmerich canon, it's that there is no disaster so terrible that it cannot double as a fortuitously-timed parental bonding session); the way important narrative moments call back to earlier, seemingly minor, conversations.  

Still, it's not without stretches of low-IQ entertainment. When Tatum and Foxx are running round the building bantering and quipping, there's a nice lightness, and Foxx's prez-with-attitude is fun in an almost farcical way. A 90-minute over-the-top buddy flick with lots of presidential puns would have been a blast. It would have least been something different. What White House Down probably resembles mostly is the sort of historical tour the terrorist group interrupts: a recitation of dusty characters and narratives whose endings we know by heart. We've been here before.

The film is showing in the Moviehouse, Odeon and Odyssey Cinemas (times).

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This Week At The Pictures

Stephen Finnigan's documentary Hawking tells the well-known but still incredible story of the Simpsons guest-star and scientist Stephen Hawking, who was given a few years to live after being diagnosed with a degenerative disease at the age of 21, but went on to a brilliant scientific career and the publication of A Brief History of Time. Showing in the QFT Fri 20 - Sun 22 Sept (times)

We're all familiar with the portentous, deep-throated, heavily parodied trailer introduction "in a world..." (until his 2008 death, these were generally done by voice actor Don LaFontaine). Lake Bell's In A World... is a good-natured comedy about a young woman (played by Bell) trying to break into the macho world of trailer voice-over work. The A.V. Club reckons that "Bell seems to forget her premise entirely... but there are enough solid gags". Showing in the QFT all week (times).

  I'm on the fence about A Belfast Story, Written and directed by Nathan Todd, and shot largely on location in the city, it's a reflection on The Troubles starring Colm Meaney as a hardened detective investigating paramilitary murders in a fictional near-future Belfast. I think we've all got a little Troubles fatigue when it comes to Belfast on the screen (one of the refreshing things about The Fall), but Meaney is generally a solid anchor. Total Film gave it 3 stars but noted the "leaden pacing and overwritten dialogue".  Showing in the Moviehouse all week (times).

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I just discovered today that Russell Brand's tour "Messiah Complex" is dropping by Belfast's Waterfront on 13th November. 

The blurb explains:

Messiah Complex is a mental disorder where the sufferer thinks they might be the messiah. Did Jesus have it? What about Che Guevara, Gandhi, Malcolm X and Hitler? All these men have shaped our lives and influenced the way we think. Their images are used to represent ideas that often do not relate to them at all. This show looks at the importance of heroes in this age of atheistic disposability.

At £30, the tickets are a bit pricey, but it would be interesting to see how Brand's stand-up material has kept up with the performer's evolving sensitivity and political outrage. In this muchly-clicked video Brand has a go at explaining what the show is about to the witless hosts of insufferable American morning show Morning Joe.  

Shit like this is why no-one watches TV anymore.

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The Oh Yeah Music Centre will be screening the final two episodes of Breaking Bad as part of their regular Monday night "Breaking Bad Support Group". It's final-moves time for the characters of this superlative show, and after the catastrophes of this week's "Ozymandias" it's hard to imagine what comes next. Except that at one point or another, out comes the M60.

Vince Gilligan has our hearts in his viscous, viscous hands.

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