WRONG! The Academy Awards 2011

I used to get excited about the Oscars, but that was before I discovered, in a big way, non-mainstream and foreign language cinema. For the past decade, as I've seen more new films year on year - 212 in 2010 - The Oscars has seemed ever more like a hugely expensive salute to cinematic mediocrity, and last night was, depressingly, no different. So, let's take a look at some of the results and see why they're WRONG!

Original Score
Winner: The Social Network; Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross

Right because: This was easily the best nominated score. It's a brilliant piece of music that marries up perfectly with the film it is soundtracking, and is also an interesting and highly listenable piece in isolation.

WRONG! because: The best original score of 2010 was not even nominated. The fact that Daft Punk's score for Tron Legacy - a score so good it's more memorable than the film - didn't get nominated isn't a surprise from a body as conservative as AMPAS, but it does make a mockery of this category. The same thing is likely to happen next year; however good The Chemical Brothers' score for Hanna is I'd bet against a nomination.

Cinematography
Winner: Inception; Wally Pfister

WRONG! because: It's not that Inception had bad cinematography, in fact, as in all the other tech departments, the film excelled there. Seriously though, what the Hell does Roger Deakins have to do to win, blow every Academy member individually the week prior to voting? (legal note: I am not saying this is what Pfister did). True Grit is a truly beautiful film, and Deakins earned this with his opening shot alone, to say nothing of the last 20 years of his career.

Foreign Language Film
Winner: In a Better World

WRONG! because: I have only seen one of the nominees in this category, and I'm sure the others, including Susanne Bier's latest, are good films. I am, however, equally sure that none is as complete a masterpiece as Dogtooth. I am still yet to see a single better film since I first saw Dogtooth in October 2009 (and since then I have seen over 500 films for the first time). Yorgos Lanthimos' challenging work was never likely to win, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have.

Film Editing
Winner: The Social Network; Kirk Baxter / Angus Wall

Right because: Again this is the correct answer from the list of nominees, a beatuiful, unshowy, job from Baxter and Wall... but...

WRONG! because: No nomination for Lee Smith's editing of Inception? Has AMPAS lost its collective mind? (note: yes). If there was only one category in which Inception deserved to win (note: there was) then it was this one, if only for Smith's astonishing feat of cutting together action scenes on four separate levels of reality in a way that was easy to follow throughout the film's last half hour.

Original Screenplay
Winner: The King's Speech; David Seidler

WRONG! because: Of the four nominees I saw in this category, not one stood out as a screenplay, and certainly none even held a candle to the fantastic writing for Four Lions. Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain took a difficult subject (terrorism) and made it funny, while creating characters who were rounded, interesting, even bizarrely sympathetic at some levels. It's a beautifully executed balancing act, and it gets overlooked for an overgrown TV movie.

Director
Winner: The King's Speech; Tom Hooper

WRONG! because: Look at the competiton. EVERY other nominee delivered a better directorial job than Hooper, as did many who weren't nominated (Lee Unkrich, Danny Boyle and Debra Granik for starters). Actually the direction is the worst thing about the stodgy and inert The King's Speech (to say nothing of the fact that giving the nod to Timothy Spall's awful cartoon of Churchill should have disqualified Hooper all by itself). AND he beat David Fincher, cause, yeah, what's David Fincher ever given us... only four indisputable modern classics, including the film he was nominated for, but forget that, let's give it to the man who pointed a camera at the most ridiculously average and personality free film nominated. THIS is why I hate the Oscars.

Supporting Actress
Winner: The Fighter; Melissa Leo

WRONG! because: Well let's begin with the fact that Melissa Leo (a fine actress) is flat out fucking awful in The Fighter - not middling, not occasionally pushing the boat out too far - AWFUL. Her performance is hammier than the buffet table at a world pig farmers convention. So there's that. Then let's observe that everyone else in her category was better, especially Leo's co-star Amy Adams (along with the unnominated Mark Wahlberg the best thing in The Fighter) and Hailee Steinfeld (whose nomination here was naked category fraud, to be fair) whose remarkable performance in True Grit deserved the statuette.. Then let's remember the dignity shredding neediness with which Leo reacted to this, her second nomination. I may have hated this performance, but before those vomit inducing ads I had respect for Melissa Leo. Not so much now. A horrible result, and one that may set a bad precedent for Oscar campaigning.

Supporting Actor
Winner: The Fighter; Christian Bale

WRONG! because: Christian Bale is a great actor, and he's given many Oscar worthy performances. The Fighter is his best work in a while, but it's still sometimes a very cartoony performance. It's a shame Bale had to win for this rather than, say, American Psycho (though let's not pretend that this Oscar isn't more an expression of 'whoops, Christian Bale doesn't have an Oscar yet' than approval for this performance). It's also a shame that he had to beat the much more interesting, much more internalised work of John Hawkes in Winter's Bone, to say nothing of Andrew Garfield's two unnominated turns in The Social Network and Never Let Me Go.

Actress
Winner: Black Swan; Natalie Portman

WRONG! because: The perfect example of what often happens with Best Actress; the award being given because it's just someone's turn. I understand that I'm in a minority hating Black Swan, and all the ludicrous histrionics of the acting, but I'm just baffled by how often AMPAS looks on over acting as great acting. Again of the nominees I'd have gone with Winter's Bone, and Jennifer Lawrence's strong, understated, showing, but again my real winner; Agelliki Papoulia, who plays the elder daughter in Dogtooth, was never even in with a shout for a nomination. I've no problem with Natalie Portman having an Oscar (she earned it in, at least, Leon, Beautiful Girls and Garden State), but for THIS performance, really?

Actor
Winner: The King's Speech; Colin Firth

WRONG! because: This is the most obvious and most egregious make up Oscar in a long while. Firth so obviously deserved the golden baldie last year for A Single Man, but lost out, thanks to a combination of being way too subtle in that movie and the fact that Jeff Bridges was overdue for his own 'we're sorry we didn't get round to it before' Oscar. Firth's decent enough in The King's Speech, but he's capable of so much more than is asked of him here (see Genova and A Single Man). Firth's performance doesn't hold a candle to the less gimmicky work of Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network or Oscar co-host James Franco in 127 Hours, but their time will come, and when it does it will likely be for a middling performance, and rob a more deserving actor of their trophy, and so the cycle will go on.

Picture
Winner: The King's Speech

WRONG! because: Okay, so it's not my least favourite of the nominated films (Black Swan, since you asked), but here's the bottom line: If The King's Speech really were the best film (even one of the 20 best films) of the last 12 months I wouldn't be writing this, because if that were anything like the pinnacle of what cinema could do then it wouldn't be worth the time I spend on it. The King's Speech is oversized TV with ideas above its station. It's not a bad film, it's not a good film, it's a relentlessly average film; decent and completely unchallenging in every aspect. It doesn't come near the transcendent emotion of Toy Story 3, the generation defining drama of The Social Network or even the genre mastery of True Grit, it's a film that, were it not for this unwarranted awards attention, I'd have forgotten on rising from my seat when it ended. Ladies and Gentlemen; your Best Picture. KILL ME.

Blu Ray Review: Summer Wars [12]

DIR: Mamoru Hosoda

The Film
Summer Wars is quite the genre bender, part family drama, part romance, part apocalyptic sci-fi, it ends up working better than any film that seems so scattershot really has a right to. The film focuses on Kenji, a 17 year old high school student. One day the most beautiful girl in school, Natsuki, hires Kenji for a job; posing as her boyfriend at a family reunion. While this is going on, some unknown force hacks into OZ, an online community that seems to combine functions of Facebook, Second Life and Skynet. The hacker could destroy worlds both real and virtual, and Kenji and Natsuki's family may be the only ones who can stop it.

Summer Wars is quite astonishing to look at. The design is stunning, be it the simple but effective real world character design or the frankly jaw dropping complexity of the online world of OZ. OZ begins the film as an expanse of white, filled with a multitude of avatars interacting in endless specialised cells, it's a vision of data in a virtual world that is as developed as that of Tron or Ghost in the Shell, and at least as beautiful. It also bears mentioning that, without actually using the gimmick, Hosoda and his team also give the whole film (which is largely hand drawn) a very 3D feel, especially within the virtual world, where the rules of physics bend. OZ may make most sense to Japanese audiences, as the look of both the world and the avatars that live, play and fight in it seems to be very much based on Japanese pop culture. However, the story is strong enough to paper over any gaps in cultural understanding.

The conflict inside OZ takes up the bulk of the running time, and Hosoda manages to take what initially seems a low stakes conflict and build it into an epic battle with a genuinely menacing villain. The silent 'Love Machine' goes through three separate looks, all individual, but all with a defining jagged mouth to connect them together. The most impressive is perhaps the look that it takes on towards the end of the film; a sort of demonic black cloud made up of hundreds of millions of individual avatars, the detail and character in the animation here is just stunning.

Another highly impressive aspect of Summer Wars is the fine balance between the story within OZ and the comic drama of the story that sees Kenji interacting with Natsuki's family at the reunion (for the 90th birthday of Natsuki's Great Grandmother). Here Hosoda retreats from the action driving the other story and deals in character and interaction. The characterisations are a little broad, given how extended the family is, but the design and acting are strong enough that even the smallest parts are afforded personality. The performances are also strong, with leads Ryûnosuke Kamiki (Kenji), Nanami Sakuraba (Natsuki) forging a connection in very few scenes, as well as being individually engaging, and Sumiko Fuji gives a perfectly pitched performance as Natsuki's stern but caring great grandmother. This is an ensemble piece though, and the cast manage to create an organic feeling family, which considerably raises the stakes in the more action heavy second half of the film.

If I have a complaint of Summer Wars it is perhaps that it could have benefited from spending just a little more time growing the relationship between Kenji and Natsuki, but in an already jam packed narrative it is easy to see why Hosoda might have felt there just wasn't time, and the film works very well as it is. I liked Summer Wars a lot. It's a film that manages to have ideas, that engages on multiple levels, but that never forgets to be entertaining. It's beautiful to look at, and it is a great shame that it is coming out direct to DVD and Blu Ray, rather than having a cinema run, especially given the crap that DOES come out at the multiplexes. Seek this one out, you won't regret it.

The Extras
I have only dipped into the extras so far, but there seem to be a decent spread. All the extras are interview based, talking to the main Japanese voice cast (there is a very cute moment when Nanami Sakuraba, who plays Natsuki, asks how an animated film is made). There is also an extensive interview with director Mamoru Hosoda from the Locarno Film Festival. There are also the expected trailers on the disc.

The Disc
The HD picture is detail rich, and works especially well in rendering the last incarnation of 'Love Machine'. Colours are vivid without seeming oversaturated and the animation is smoothly rendered. As far as I can tell, this image is near perfect. I can't comment extensively on the True HD soundtrack, but dialogue comes through clearly and the sound effects seem punchy. Certainly the sound seems to serve the film well.

My only complaint about the Blu Ray is that the thin yellow subtitles are often quite hard to read, but there is the option of an English dub if they present a real problem.

Get It
SUMMER WARS is released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK on March 28th, if you'd like to buy it, and support 24FPS at the same time, please use the links below. Thanks!


Also on the 28th of March, there will be a boxset available containing SUMMER WARS and Mamoru Hosoda's previous film THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME. To buy that, and support 24FPS, use the links below. Thanks!

Animal Kingdom [15]

DIR: David Michod
CAST: Ben Mendelsohn, James Frecheville,
Jacki Weaver, Guy Pearce

Animal Kingdom arrives in the UK having spent most of 2010 on the festival and international release circuit, building up a reputation as one of the best films to come out of Australia in some time. I wish I had been able to see and evaluate the film without that long lead (and, perhaps especially, without hearing it described as the best film of 2010) because then, although I doubt it would have been outstanding, Animal Kingdom might have been less disappointing.

Let's be clear, this is by no means a bad film. David Michod's screenplay and direction are solid (though both have the odd leaden moment), and promise much for the future. He establishes a gritty, down to earth, but also well designed, look for the film, and he draws some excellent performances from a cast consisting of a mix of Australian stars (Mendelsohn, Pearce), up and comers (Frecheville, Luke Ford and Laura Wheelwright) and an actress making a striking comeback (Weaver).

The problem with Animal Kingdom is more in concept than execution, as well as it is told, the story of 17 year old J (Frecheville), who goes to live with his criminal extended family when his mother dies of a drug overdose, and finds himself torn between loyalty to his family, fear, and the Police offer of witness protection, really can't help but feel a bit hackneyed. It's a story that has been gone over and over in cinema, and Michod's take on it offers few surprises or fresh ideas.

The film does come up trumps as far as the acting is concerned. Ben Mendelsohn impressed me last year in Beautiful Kate, and if anything he's even better here as menacing patriarch Pope. There is real layering to Mendelsohn's work; Pope might easily have been a caricature of villainy, but he underplays the role, making the character's barely repressed malevolence genuinely chilling, never more so than in the scenes with J's girlfriend (Wheelwright), who he always holds in what seems to be a dangerous gaze.

Much of the attention on the film has focused on Jacki Weaver's performance as J's grandmother Smurf. Weaver has been a fixture in Australian cinema since the mid 70's (like many of her generation of actresses she first made a splash in Picnic at Hanging Rock). For a while I was really wondering what all the fuss, to say nothing of the Oscar nomination, was about. Yes Weaver gave the relationship between Smurf and her brood of boys a creepy, incestuous undertone, but there wasn't really much to the character or the performance. Then comes the film's third act, and Smurf takes on a much bigger role, allowing Weaver many juicy scenes to play, all of which she knocks out of the park. Slowly, inexorably, she becomes the most corrupt, and the most frightening, person in the film. Weaver's intense performance becomes a mini masterpiece in those scenes.

The rest of the cast is also strong; Frecheville makes a creditable debut as J, as does Laura Wheelwright, overcoming a very underwritten role with a strong performance as J's girlfriend Nicky. Guy Pearce is his familiar solid self as the cop trying to get J to turn and Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton and Mendelsohn combine to create a realistic criminal fraternity.

I'd like to recommend Animal Kingdom more whole heartedly, but for me the film never quite caught light. The script is the main offender; familiar and predictable, despite having some well conceived scenes and excellent dialogue. Some of the characters also feel under developed, a particular problem towards the end of the film, when the lack of connection with Nicky, and the limited import J's relationship with her is accorded in the first two acts, making the ending ring a little hollow. I would certainly still say that this is a film worth seeing for the performances, and because I suspect that David Michod does have a great film in him somewhere down the line, this isn't that film, but it's a solid start on the road to it.

Drive Angry 3D [18]

DIR: Patrick Lussier
CAST: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard,
William Fichtner, Billy Burke

Well, that was stupid. It was, of course, always intended to be stupid (of course it was, it's a film about a man (Cage) who breaks out of Hell to drive across America, seeking vengeance on the cult (led by Burke) that killed his daughter, with a waitress (Heard) in tow and the Devil's right hand man (Fichtner) in pursuit). Unfortunately, for the most part, it's not quite the kind of deliriously stupid stew it needs to be in order to be fun.

That's one of the things that hobbles Drive Angry, the other is 3D. To begin with the technical issue... the film's trailers boast that it is 'shot in state of the art 3D', well, if this is the state of the art then the art is completely worthless, because Drive Angry looks like crap. If there is one thing that 3D struggles to do well it is fast moving action, so what better story to apply it to than one that largely takes place in cars and seldom has more than five minutes downtime between action scenes? The action is hideous; a blurry, indistinct mess, robbed by the broken process of what tiny scintilla of tension it might otherwise have possessed. Stillness is little better, the 3D is catastrophically poor, rendering the screen like a viewmaster, presenting each shot in distinct layers, and only the middle ground ever in focus - PROGRESS! Worst of all is an odd effect that I haven't seen before from 3D. There is a distinct impression here of viewing the film through glass, as if every shot were in a glass case at a museum. Far from drawing you in, as modern 3D is supposed to do, it actively excludes you as a viewer.

Sometimes Drive Angry hits just the right lunatic tone, notably whenever William Fichtner's dry 'Accountant' is on screen (especially when we see him driving a tanker full of hydrogen fuel into a Police roadblock, while singing), but it's also frequently guilty of taking itself too seriously and ending up being not dumb fun, but just plain dumb. Amazingly it is Nicolas Cage who is the worst offender, this is the perfect vehicle for Cage to fly completely off the handle and give a performance of enormous hammy lunacy, but he doesn't do it. With the exception of one scene, in which he engages in a gunfight while having sex with a waitress, Cage's performance is abnormally downbeat (well, for him, and for a film like this) at times you suspect that he's actually trying to give real character and meaning to John Milton, to actually make us feel something here. It's a nice effort, but the script just doesn't support it.

The aforementioned Fichtner nails the tone perfectly, and for the too few minutes that he's on screen Drive Angry sputters to life. Amber Heard also knows exactly what this film is, and what she's doing in it; her tough girl waitress is often a lot of fun, though the relationship between her and Milton never develops enough to make the film's rather soggy ending play.

At the end of the day, Drive Angry is nothing like as bad as Patrick Lussier's last film, the terrible My Bloody Valentine 3D, but it's also not very good. It's just so much less fun than it should be. Robert Rodriguez nailed the tone of a modern exploitation film with both Planet Terror and Machete, and I'd suggest looking out either of those rather than suffering the appalling 3D of Drive Angry for an experience that will be much less entertaining.

Just Go With It [12A]

DIR: Dennis Dugan
CAST: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker

I've mentioned before, I think, how much I love my job, and I mean it. I get to watch movies, talk about movies and write about movies and call it work, which it barely is. Except on days that I end up sitting through the likes of Just Go With It, a film so hideous that it undermines, if only briefly, not just my faith in cinema but my faith in humanity as a whole.

Just Go With It is another in the long recent lines of so called romantic comedies which are neither romantic nor funny, and whose main characters, whose relationships we are supposed to be interested in, are among the top 8 percent of the planet's most loathsome non-genocidal people. Adam Sandler (never a good start) plays a plastic surgeon (remarkably this is not the joke) who, after being jilted, wears a fake wedding ring in order to seduce a succession of young women who he never has to call again - RELATEABLE! NOT AT ALL DESPICABLE! Only, guess what, he's fallen for latest one (played by the lovely Brooklyn Decker, who somehow escapes this stinkbomb with a smidgen of dignity). Anyway, she thinks Sandler's married, so he has to get his receptionist (Aniston, more entirely plausible casting then) to pose as the wife he's divorcing, and her children to pose as their children. 'Laughs' ensue.

I despise the characters in this film. I hate Sandler's character, yes we've all exaggerated things about ourselves to get close to people we're attracted to, but this guy's entire life is a tissue of lies. Then there's the fact that he's perfectly happy to bribe others into perpetrating this colossal fountain of bullshit with him (all, let's remember, so he can fuck a woman 20 years his junior who thinks he, and everyone in his life, is someone else entirely). The relationship that Sandler's character has with Aniston's children is also troubling; the whole premise of what he involves them in is mentally abusive, and there are a few incidents too where his behaviour comes close to crossing the line into physical abuse - child endangerment; LOL.

Aniston's character is painted as the point of identification for the film's female audience, yet she's just as bad. Not only does she go along with this plan, and her children's participation in it, but she also ends up inventing one of her own when her old college rival (played by Nicole Kidman, demonstrating the comic grace and timing of a smashed cuckoo clock) also happens to be in Hawaii at the same time as Sandler, herself, 'their' kids, Decker and Sandler's cousin (pretending to be Aniston's new German boyfriend - something else she goes along with) are there. It might not be so unbearable sitting through this turgid load of old shit if Sandler and Aniston demonstrated even a scintilla of magnetism, charm or chemistry, but they don't. I don't believe that they even like each other, not least, in Aniston's case, because the script gives her no reason to like Sandler.

This is also a problem when it comes to Brooklyn Decker's character. Decker, a model, works hard in her first substantial role, and she comes off okay; she's great to look at and if the script weren't so fundamentally broken she might be somewhat engaging on screen. Unfortunately... Decker and Sandler have the chemistry of oil and water (best evidenced by the extremely small amount of actual contact they share in the film) and, again, the script gives no reason for these two to be so drawn to each other. They have less than nothing in common, and yet the script insists they are in love, as if it were magic fucking fairy dust that got sprinkled on them (actually, that makes MORE sense than the idea that these people are organically attracted to one another). Of course Decker's character doesn't matter anyway (hence the lack of personality beyond a slightly simpering niceness and a parade of late-90's pop culture jokes - take THAT, 12 years ago!) and as soon as the laughably unconvincing romance between Sandler and Aniston starts brewing she's shunted aside like the magnificently breasted macguffin she is.

The jokes just depress me. Pratfalls, 'funny' accents (including one that pretty much destroys the performance of the usually excellent child actress Bailee Madison) and the expected parade of non-sequiturs and gross out bits (how is it that in less than a year I've seen two movies with a 'comic' set piece revolving around one person shitting in another person's hand?) all make their dreaded regularly scheduled appearances with both the predictability and the comedic effect of a metronome.

Every time I see a film like Just Go With It (a title, or what Dugan said to Sandler about the script?) I die a little inside, because I remember that romantic comedy used to mean The Philadelphia Story, or Sabrina, or When Harry Met Sally, or Say Anything... and now it's not so much a genre as it is a pit into which Hollywood vomits all the worst jokes from decades worth of chewed up scripts, before pouring the resulting slop into 100 minute moulds and excreting them monthly into cinemas. Yeah, sometimes I hate my job.

24FPS on Superpodcast

I'm back on Superpodcast, with Marcey, Bede and fellow guest AJ Hakari. This time out we're talking about obscure movies that you (probably) haven't seen, and should. We cover about 20 movies in the 107 minutes of this podcast, pretty good I think. Give it a listen below.

24FPS Top 100: No 63

Because this film is out of copyright you can watch it free and legally in full on Youtube by clicking the link below.

63: HIS GIRL FRIDAY [1940]
DIR: Howard Hawks

WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
Radio 5 Live critic Mark Kermode's rule for current comedies is that he recommends those with six laughs or more. It's a sad, sad state of affairs when one laugh roughly every 17.5 minutes can be considered as a recommendable ratio. To say that, given that qualification, His Girl Friday is a recommendable comedy would be to drastically understate things. This film doesn't have a laugh every 17.5 minutes, hell I'd be surprised if the ratio weren't better than 1 laugh every 17.5 seconds, so fast and furious is the comedy.

His Girl Friday came about when Director Howard Hawks, trying to demonstrate why he believed that the play The Front Page, on which the film is based, had the best dialogue he had ever heard. He took one of the male leads to read, and asked a female guest to take the other, soon realising that changing the gender of one of the characters had great effect on dialogue and story. So, the male editor and reporter of the play become a crack female reporter and her editor and ex-husband, lending an entirely different chemistry, and new comic possibilities, to the story.

Hawks' frequent collaborator Cary Grant rejoined him for this film, and he's at his urbane best here, making Walter Burns, who is a manipulative and pretty awful character if you stop and think about for more than about two seconds, charming and hilarious. Opposite him, in place of the intended Jean Arthur (with whom Hawks apparently didn't hit it off on Only Angels Have Wings the year before) Hawks cast Rosalind Russell, not the most beautiful leading lady of her time, but a talented one, and able to hold the screen, even with Grant at his most charismatic and funny.

Russell is the anchor of the film, and her rich voice and crisp delivery bite into the many hilarious lines in Charles Lederer's screenplay. She talks (as does everyone) at 100 miles per hour, but we never miss a word of it, and her comic timing is impeccable. There's a particular skill too in making the story play in a screwball comedy, and Russell's dramatic background serves her well there, she's able to turn on a dime and play the films various relationships (with Grant and with her new fiancé, played by Ralph Bellamy) believably without letting the laughs flag.

Cary Grant may seldom have played anyone but Cary Grant (and he's really not stretching much here) but he did it with such assurance, such skill and such charm that you can't help but be drawn in. There's a surprising economy to Grant's performance here; he doesn't actually move much, giving the impression of Walter Burns as an utterly assured man who knows that everything is certain to work out his way. He's also capable of some wonderfully ridiculous moments. Grant plays the film's last twenty minutes at more or less constant fever pitch, becoming funnier with every passing second. Also to grant's credit he improvised perhaps the film's funniest line, when Walter is asked to describe Hildy's fiancé and says "He looks like that fellow in the movies... Ralph Bellamy"

This isn't to say that the quality stops with Grand and Russell, there is an endless parade of funny supporting performances, fro me the most notable is from Billy Gilbert, who has two hilarious scenes as a messenger named Mr Pettibone. Hawks, for his part keeps a light but firm grasp on the madness, never drawing attention to the camera or editing, but never letting the energy drop and the film begin to feel like a filmed play.

Honestly though, His Girl Friday is on the list because it's funny.

MEMORABLE LINES
Walter Burns: There's been a lamp burning in the window for ya, honey... here.
Hildy Johnson: Oh, I jumped out that window a long time ago.

Bruce Baldwin: [Concerning Walter] I like him; he's got a lot of charm.
Hildy Johnson: Well he comes by it naturally his grandfather was a snake.

Walter Burns: [on the phone] Well Butch, where are you?... Well, what are you doing there? Haven't you even started?... Listen, it's a matter of life and death!... Well, you can't stop for a dame now! I don't care if you've been after her for six years. Butch - our whole lives are at stake! Are you going to let a woman come between us after all we've been through?... Butch, I'd put my arm in fire for you, up to here. Now you can't double-cross me... Put her on, I'll talk to her.
[talking to the woman]
Walter Burns: Oh, good evening madam. Now listen, you ten-cent glamour girl. You can't keep Butch away from his duty!... What's that?... You say that again, I'll come over there and kick you in the teeth!... Say, what kind of language is that? Now look here you. -
[makes a noise like a horse, hangs up]
Walter Burns: She hung up! What did I say?

Walter Burns: Look, Hildy, I only acted like any husband that didn't want to see his home broken up.
Hildy Johnson: What home?
Walter Burns: "What home"? Don't you remember the home I promised you?

Hildy Johnson: A big fat lummox like you hiring an airplane to write: "Hildy, don't be hasty. Remember my dimple. Walter." Delayed our divorce 20 minutes while the judge went out and watched it.

To buy the movie, and help 24FPS out at the same time, please use these links. Thanks!

Ad-pologies

As some of you have doubtless spotted by now I have, finally, decided to put a few advertisements on 24FPS. I hope that you find them, as I do, to be unobtrusive enough not to interfere with your browsing experience here.

I have also joined the Amazon Associate programme, and I want to let you know a little about a couple of things you'll start to notice at 24FPS because of this. From now on many posts (including older ones, as I get round to editing them) will have an Amazon purchase link. If you buy the linked product through that link then, though there will be no extra cost to you, a little of the purchase price will go into my pocket.

I've been writing 24FPS for over two years now, and in that time I've written more than 450 regular reviews along with many features and other articles. Overall I've written several novels worth of content for this site, and so far I haven't seen (or asked) any return for it. As writing is now becoming a full time occupation I would ask regular visitors and fans of the site, every now and then, click on an ad and, if you're wanting to buy it anyway, buy a DVD through one of my links. Every little will help, and be much appreciated.

As for my side of the bargain... here it is. You'll still get all the same reviews and articles at 24FPS, and they will always be free and you'll NEVER see a purchase link for a film I wouldn't buy myself. That seems fair to me.

I hope you won't mind these small changes at 24FPS. Thanks for listening, and thanks in advance for your help.

Sam

Nasi goreng pedas ala saya

Bahan:

3 siung bawang merah, iris tipis

3 buah cabai rawit, iris tipis

2 buah sosis ayam

½ kornet ayam

1 buah telur

Merica secukupnya

Bumbu instan racik nasi goreng sesuai selera

Minyak goreng secukupnya

Nasi putih sesuai selera

Cara membuat:

Panaskan minyak goreng, masukan irisan bawang merah dan kornet ayam. Aduk hingga bawang harum dan kornet terlihat setengah matang. Lalu masukan sosis ayam, tumis hingga benar matang. Kemudian masukan irisan cabai rawit yang sebelumnya sudah di iris tipis dan di cacah. Tumis hingga semuanya matang, aduk hingga merata. Lalu masukan merica secukupnya dan telur. Aduk hingga semua bahan tercampur. Setelah merata, masukan nasi, aduk hingga nasi tercampur rata dengan semua bahan. Terakhir, masukan bumbu instan racik nasi goreng. Aduk dan diamkan sekitar 2 menit hingga merata. Bisa di tambahkan garam secukupnya, aduk rata dan sajikan selagi hangat.

This is it…

Nasi goreng pedas ala saya

Bird's Eye View 2011 Preview: Orgasm Inc.

DIR: Liz Canner
Orgasm Inc. is a more serious and less salacious film than its title might suggest. It's a personal film from director Liz Canner, who apparently spent nine years working on this project, beginning when a drug company contacted her to ask her to edit together pornographic footage for use in a clinical trial of a cream designed to treat a newly defined condition 'female sexual dysfunction'.

Canner clearly started out pretty simply, documenting what she was doing for Vivus, and talking to various people at the company about the drug and about FSD, but the film expands with its director's horizons, as she begins to ask questions about whether FSD is a medical condition, and what the drug companies motives are for pursuing a treatment for it. Orgasm Inc. becomes, if not a full assault advocacy film, a sceptical exploration of the commodifying of disease and cure, especially in the US. Canner isn't Michael Moore, and her film is enquiring rather than hectoring, but no less disturbing for it. Perhaps the most troubling sequence takes place in a private FSD clinic run by Dr Laura Berman, where we are taken through the process by which, day by day, perfectly normal sexual issues are being medicalised, with a bill of $1500 at the end of the day.

There is also a fascinating insight into the way a drug gains FDA approval for use in the US, with Canner's footage of the meeting to decide whether a testosterone patch to treat FSD should be approved providing a genuinely intimate and edifying (and surprisingly heartening) glimpse of this process. If nothing else, Orgasm Inc. raises some important questions about how we classify and treat disease in the 21st century.

It doesn't all work though. While she's not hectoring, Canner's interviews can feel a little lightweight, and you'll want to hear the answers to questions that she apparently doesn't ask. It's also a little scattershot, and though it's just 79 minutes long some sequences feel extraneous,none more so than one that opens the film, then recurs later, in which Canner sets up a camera to film a woman's face as she masturbates to orgasm. There's no real purpose to this scene, it doesn't say anything, and all it did for me was remind me that I should rewatch the video for Romantic Death by The Sun sometime soon. There's also an animated sequence depicting four FSD drugs in a race for FDA approval which seems out of step with the rest of the film; it's silly, and far too on the nose for my liking.

Orgasm Inc. could be much more developed, but as a primer on an important and under recognised issue, it certainly has merit, and is well worth the 79 minutes it will take to watch it.