RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is a Christmas movie about a very bad Santa. It is not for children. This is a review of it.
Release date: 3 December
Directed and written by: Jalmari Helander
Starring: Onni Tommila,Per Christian Ellefsen, Peeter Jakobi, Tommi Korpela, Jorma Tommila, Jonathan Hutchings
Cert: 16
Running Time: 82 mins
A few years ago the 16-certification was introduced in Ireland after a bunch of disgruntled parents kicked up a kerfuffle about the film BAD SANTA. These parents brought children to PG15 movie, expecting God knows what, but were offended by boozing, womanising and a generally dismissive attitude to political correctness. The children had the magic of Christmas tainted forever and Joe Duffy got an earful.
If BAD SANTA hadn’t brought about the inception of the 16s cert, then RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE would have. This film is technically a Christmas movie but, for the love of all things snowy, please don’t bring your children, unless you want them to be sat at the foot of their bed with a shot gun on Christmas Eve.
For all intents and purposes this plays out like a children’s movie. The main protagonist is a little boy who lives in Lapland. His only friends are his teddy bear and slightly older boy who has outgrown all the Santa stuff. Some American capitalist types come in to search for Santa’s tomb, the local village industries get affected and it’s all a little spooky, without being scary.
There are some sinister tones running through the picture, but that could just be the Finnish way of telling a story (The movie is in Finnish by the way). The little boy is Pietari. Pete’s Dad is a butcher and there’s a bit more blood than one would expect from a children’s movie, his mother is dead and according to Finnish legend Santa wasn’t nice at all, he was in fact a demon of some sort. This Santa thing becomes the central theme of the movie and a never quite see the baddy game of cat and mouse develops.
This Santa thread gets progressively ominous and by the end things have turned utterly dark and there’s no chance of anyone who hasn’t entered their 20s being a little traumatised at the sight of mince pies once they’ve left the cinema.
As a story, it’s a good tale, told well. There are a few contrived plot points that are wedged in to add drama but fail to do so, but they aren’t so bad that it leads to frustration.
The CGI isn’t quite up to Hollywood standards, but it’s a lot better than I would have expected from Finland.
The problem for RARE EXPORTS is that it will struggle to find an audience. Hipsters or stoners could potentially stumble across it and give it a cult status, but grown ups will find the early parts too childish and children will never sleep again if they see it. It’s hard to know who this is for, but it definitely isn’t for kids.
The South African World Cup has come and gone. Now arriving a few months later like a postcard lost in the post, AFRICA UNITED has arrived to offer a children’s adventure movie with more than a splash of football. This is a review of it.
Release date: 22 October
Directed by: Debs Gardner-Paterson
Starring: Eriya Ndayambaje, Roger Nsengiyumva, Sanyu Joanita Kintu, Sherrie Silver and Yves Dusenge
Live action kids movies have left a lot to be desired in recent years. 3 High School Musicals, 2 Band Camps and a Hannah Montana have left the current generation thinking that life is all singing and dancing and blonde wigs.
AFRICA UNITED takes a different approach. The film opens with one of its main protagonists explaining how to make a football out of a condom (insert Miley Cyrus joke here). It’s clear from this scene that this won’t be your typical kids film.
These fears are allayed however, when the story gets going. On the way to the trial, Fabrice is led onto the wrong bus by his manager, Dudu. The two lads, along with Dudu’s sister, thought they were heading for the capital of Rwanda but in fact end up in a refugee camp in the DR of Congo – without any papers. When a fellow resident informs them that there are men who will snatch them from the camp and force them to join the army, they adopt an in for a penny, in for a pound attitude and decide to head for South Africa. Needless to say they have lots of adventures along the way, and pick up a few stragglers as well.
What sets this movie apart from other kiddie flicks, is the fact that the dangers they face are very real. Fab, Dudu and their gang aren’t on the run from fictional baddies like a dragon or a wizzard. Nor are they running from statistically improbable villains like burglars or a government agency. These kids have to overcome real problems that the whole of their continent has to face on a daily basis. Child conscription to the military, HIV, sex trafficing, it’s all there, but handled in an unexplicit fashion and delivered at a level that children will understand. It’s a narrow walkway, but the makers negotiate it perfectly.
The dark aspects of the storyline are in sharp contrast to the brigt colours of the visuals. While the story depicts all that is ugly and undesireable about Africa, the camera shows all of the natural beauty and colour, as yet unspoilt by human hands.
The film uses mostly live action, but there are number of cut sequences featuring funky digital marionettes. These are the visualisation of a story Dudu is telling his sister, and act as a way to simplify the story and make it more accessible to younger kids, who might have all the war and prostitution go over their heads otherwise. The colour gets ramped up to eleven during these scenes and they provide a sugary respite from all the horribleness.
The thrust of the story comes from the journey from Congo to South Africa, but football is always present. The crew keep a football with them at all times and the script is littered with references to players, managers and teams that should snare the interest of young football fans. A reference to Thiery Henry is likely to draw a few boos during Irish screenings though.
The benefits of football (team spirit, never say die, it doesn’t matter where you come from, etc) are all present, but the ugly side of modern football also raises its ugly head. The consumerism that distracts from said benefits appears through corporate slogans scattered throughout the dialogue, with the lines “impossible is nothing” and “Kodak moment” being particularly grating.
Live action kids movies have been suffering for the last decade. Computer animated movies like Shrek and The Incredibles look to have snapped up the good writers, leaving kids with only lightweight Disney Club nonsense if they want to see real actors – Harry Potter doesn’t count because it is based on books. AFRICA UNITED however, returns to the late 80s/early 90s era of The Goonies, Problem Child and Uncle Buck, when children were given a view of the world that wasn’t necessarily middle class and secure. The kids in this film have more to worry about than choosing between the basketball team and the glee club, and that extra layer of hardship makes the smiles they provide all the more contagious.
Given its title, if I told you that BURIED was a movie about a man in a box for an hour and a half you may retort that there are many such films on the internet, and that watching that sort of thing in a cinema would be inappropriate without a long coat and a pocket pack of handkerchiefs. BURIED is in fact a movie about a man trapped in a coffin and not, as its name and synopsis suggest, a dirty film. The only dirt here is the dirt the box is buried in.
Why is the man in the box though? Well, Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is a truck driver for an American firm working in Iraq. While going about his daily drivery, he and his coleagues were attacked by some insurgent type fellows, who killed the rest of convoy and knocked out poor Paulie. The film begins at the point where he wakes up with only a cigarette lighter to illuminate his cramped surroundings. That is until a phone rings. Don’t bother asking how he can get coverage underground, you will only end up frustrated by the lack of a logical answer.
The first thirtyish minutes of the film consist of wee bit of panicky screaming followed by Paul ringing home to trying to convince anyone who’ll listen of the situation he’s in. Most are rightfully suspicious about his ability to make an international call on a cell phone from underneath Iraq.
This thrity-minute spell is the result of a box that the inventor of this piece put himself in. Similar to Paul’s situation, there is very little wiggle room for a story when there is only one character in a coffin. Eventually however an FBI agent believes him and they have a chat that gets the action – if you could call it that – moving. Soon after that call another involving Paul’s captor informs us that he is being held for a ransom of $5 million. The rest of the film involves the terrorist trying to get Paul to be as public as possible and the FBI agent trying to keep hush hush. Paul flip flops between listening to both out of desperation.
Your enjoyment of this movie will largely depend on your feelings towards Ryan “Marmite” Reynolds. If you liked his backchatting in Van Wilder, you will like his comic reposts to the officials on the phone. If you didn’t like his smartass attitude in Wolverine, you may hate the fact that he gets lippy with the people capable of helping him. If you found him attractive in anything he’s been in, you’ll like the fact that, apart from a very short MMS, his is the only face on the screen for the entire film. If you’re girlfriend finds him attractive, you may not.
If you don’t like him there won’t be much here for you. Visually, it looks as good as a film set in a box can look. The double standard of how “I’m just doing my job” has different connotations depending on whether you are an American or an Iraqi is questioned. Also the issue of what would you do to feed your family if your country was turned upside down by a foreign power is raised. The story is passable and there are moments of tension, but ultimately the film is just Ryan Reynolds in a box.
BLACK DYNAMITE is spoof of 70s Blaxploitation movies. This is a review of it.
Release date: 3 September 2010 (exclusively @ Screen d‘Olier Street)
Directed by: Scott Sanders
Starring: Michael Jai White
Cert: 15A
Running Time: 84 mins
In 1971, MGM released a little film called Shaft about an African American private detective who was cool, rightgeous and not too bad in the sack. The era of Blaxploitation was born. Shaft was a major crossover success and spawned a number of woegeous sequels and ridiculous copy cats, with disco, kung-fu, pimping and the ills of drug dealing developing as the main themes. The genre pretty much died at the end of the 70s with The Avenging Disco Godfather.
Black Dynamite takes Blaxploitation, holds a mirror up to it and has a damn good chuckle. All of the boxes are ticked: Dodgy soul music. Check. Wooden acting. Check. Awful production values. Check, check, check – rogue boom mics, unsynced dialogue and stray clips of file footage all pop up. All of these mistakes are obviously deliberate and the script is delivered with deadpan briliance.
The plot – for what it’s worth – revolves around former CIA agent, Black Dynamite trying to wipe a wave of heroin off the streets and out of the orphanage. Added spice comes from the fact that BD’s brother has been killed by the mob boss responsible for the wave. Don’t worry If this story doesn’t appeal to you because it is abandoned at the end of the second act, as BD learns that there is a boss above the boss, and above that boss is another boss, and so on for the rest of the movie.
Michael Jai White stars as the eponimous Black Dynamite and is also the primary writer of the piece. MJW has been plugging away in Hollywood since 1989 without making any big impact. Nobody was writing a part that called for a big black martial artist with impeccible comedic timing, so he wrote one for himself. He fits the role like a glove, as you would imagine. He has done such a good job that there is likely to be a raft of movies featuring big black martial artists with impeccible comedic timing.
Black Dynamite will spark of a twinge of nostalgia from anyone who enjoyed the work of the Zuckers on Airplane and The Naked Gun movies, or the Wayans Brothers’ work with Don’t Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood and Scary Movie. The parody aspect is clearly central to the comedy, but is offset by gags and observational comedy too.
A heavy dosage of farce is also present and when BD and his crew play six degrees of separation with the clues from the case the result is a level of ludicrousity that would make Monty Python jealous.
The film is full of cod pathos with BD often delivering heartfelt soliloquies explaining how horrible the world is. You can’t take any of these outbursts of heart seriously though, as they are so overdone and are sandwiched in between healthy doses of racial and sexual political incorrectness.
The pacing of the movie is perfect. Scenes last the length of a good sketch but don’t feel separated from each other. It all zips along quite well and knits together perfectly.
The movie also gets bonus points for having an almost exclusively black cast without any rappers. There’s nothing wrong with rappers acting, but they too often get roles ahead of trained, talented black actors. This film breaks this trend without drawing attention to it.
This is an action packed, rib tickling, motha lovin’, slice of soul, and if that sounds like your bag then you will most definitely dig it.
Not many bands would allow their warm up act to be more famous than them, but when the Courteeners played in Dublin’s Acaedmy on March 30th they let the likes of Wayne Rooney and Franck Ribery play to their fans via big screen. It would have been an excellent gimmick too, if Bayern Munich hadn’t snatched a last minute victory from their beloved Manchester United.
Shortly after the final whistle, the screen went up, the lights went down and Oasis’s Rock and Roll Star started pumping, and the crowd started pumping right along with it.
The band’s lead singer, Liam Fray reckons he knows the exact date that he became a rock and roll star. “August 31st, 2007. I think it’s when you put pen to paper, and you sign a record deal, and you get paid for playing guitar. I used to work in Fred Perry in Manchester and I was part of the management team there and I got my last pay cheque – cos even though the band was doing really well I was still working there a couple of days a week – and I got my last pay ceque on 31st of August of Fred Perry on the day that we signed. I’ve still got it, it’s brilliant. That was the hand over, it was like Yes! Fucking freedom from shop work!”
That’s when he knew he was a rockstar. He got a clue that he was becoming famous when he heard one of his songs used on Match of the Day 2. “That’s game on that, mate. It’s a good feeling. It’s nice. It’s like, you know you’ve made it then.” It was a nice surprise that he didn’t see coming “It’s strange ‘cos I think it was like the first week of the season, and you’re like ‘awh brilliant’. When you heard it the second week you were like ‘fuckin hell’. I think they changed half way through the season though.”
The Courteeners’ first album was the kind of album that doesn’t get made in the iTunes age. Most artists can only manage a few singles and a bit of filler. St Jude however was a complete album with no skippers. This resulted in the lads reaching number 4 in the UK album chart, but the singles barely making a dent in the singles chart.
Liam isn’t too concerned about the charts though. “I don’t worry about it. But at the same time you know, you’ve got to sell a certain amount of records to have a record deal. I think 15 years ago you could make four crap records before you made a good one. Now if every record doesn’t sell a certain amount, it’s like your getting dropped, and if you get dropped you’ve got no job. I think bands who say they don’t worry about that have either got fucking really rich parents or they don’t give a shit. And I’ve not got rich parents and I DO give a shit. If you do well on the back of being yourself, then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
The songs that would become St Jude saw the band build up a name for themselves before the album got released. “It’s weird. I think a lot of bands get hype because they’ve got a great PR person. We were getting hyped because we were selling out thousand seater venues when we were unsigned. You can write a good magazine article, but you can’t sit a thousand people in a room in bar next door asking where’s Bide Your Time before it’s even out. The fans were exchanging accoustic demos and stuff like that, and it just takes one journalist in one magazine to go ‘the gig was mental, blah-di-blah’ and then other journalists don’t want to miss out.”
“In terms of living up to the hype, we’ve just got on with our jobs. The fact that we’re still going after a lot of people wanted to kick us down. That’s what happens, as soon as people get hyped, other people go ‘no, there shit them’. You don’t expect that when you’re starting out. You just expect people to be nice to you. It’s difficult to get across seriousness and toungue-in-cheekness in interviews. I said early on I want to be a big rockstar, and you do wanna be a big rockstar don’t ya? You want to sell out big venues and play to beig crowds. But at the same time, if that comes at the cost of the music then there’s no point. I’m quite happy where we are. We’re doing alright. Playing good venues and the album’s great. You make a good album and don’t worry about anything else. Whatever happens is going to happen, so just concentrate on the record”
The boys looked to build on the success of St Jude with the release of their second Album, Falcon in February. It went in at number 6 and Liam thinks that just being professional musicians for a few years has brought their sound to a new place. “I think that just comes with doing your job for a longer time. We’d only just got started when we got signed so I mean ask anybody in their first year of work how good they are something and they’ll go ‘mmm yeah, pretty good.’ And that’s any job; builder teacher brick layer. After 3 or 4 years, you get better at it don’t you. We know our way round a studio and stuff now. We never set out with a plan saying ‘look let’s do this record’. Everything happened pretty naturally and pretty organically.”
The lack of warm up band in the Academy led to some problems with sound levels during the early part of the show but the crowd didn’t seem overly put off and by the end they were belting every chorus right back at the band. Liam has been impressed by the reception the new tunes have been getting from audiences. “Unbelievable. We were taken aback by it ‘cos we weren’t sure. I think that when you have an album that’s, not necessarily like comercially successful – it did okay – but our fans are very intense, so we knew St Jude meant a lot. We were confident ‘cos we knew how good the songs were, it was just a case of are they gonna have it live? ‘Cos its one thing making a good record, but it’s got to be good live, cos if it’s not good live it’s game over. But it’s been unbelievable live, mate. They’ve been buzzin’ off it, and us in turn, buzzing off them.”
The band had faith in the songs, and even put their own money into getting it recorded. “We kind of used everything up and it was like we’re gonna go for broke. It’s weird because a lot of bands spend 2 years doing albums and stuff and it’s like, yeah, we wish. We had six weeks to do it in and if you don’t do it in them six weeks and get everything cut then it’s game over. But it was good that, it was like a pressure on us. You listen to some people who say they’ve been in a studio for 2 years – doin’ what? What have you been doing for 2 years? It takes 3 days to record a song. It could take a month to get a certain sound, but 2 years in a studio is ridiculous. You’d just start throwing things away and you’re not concise enough and you don’t work hard enough. A lot of bands spend a lot of time on the Playstation, I like to spend time on me guitar.”
The Courteeners have a passionate following and their audiences can sometimes get a bit rawkus. He cites a gig in Whelan’s in 2008 as one of the wildest. “Whelan’s was up there. Definitely. The first time we played Dundee, I didn’t think I was getting out alive. And it was a big room, it wasn’t like a tiny room, it was about a thousand capacity. Didn’t think I was getting out alive. T in the Park, King Tut’s Tent, that was mental. Scotland and Ireland are definitely the most insane crowds. Definitely go a bit mental – but in a good way.”
It’s not all moshing and crowd surfing though. Halfway through each gig, the rest of the band take a break, leaving Liam and his guitar to have a mini accoustic set with the audience. Part of the Courteeners’ appeal is their ability to mix hard edged rock and roll stompers and anthems with melodic, lyric driven love songs. “It’s funny cos I don’t take a lot of time over the lyrics, I remember reading an interview with the Roses saying that sometimes they’d wait for a couple of days until they had the perfect rhyming couplet or whatever. It tends to come, not necessarily easily – cos that doesn’t mean it’s better, if you can write it quicker – I just think it’s morea train of thought. I don’t think about what I’m gonna write. I can’t think unless I write. If I write it down that helps me. It’s pretty much stream of consciousness. I think that’s just the type of person I am; romantic but not soppy.”
When Liam had finished showing his softer side, the rest of the lads returned for a few more anthems. Despite the late start caused by the footie, the band were on stage for nearly and hour and a half, with no breaks. “We’ve been doing 18, 19, 20 song sets. We’re absolutly knackered when it comes to the end of it. It’s like an hour and 25 minutes. I think we’ve done too much really, but, fuck it, give people their money’s worth.”
A week prior to the Academy gig, the lads had been supporting Noel Gallagher for two nights at the Royal Albert Hall, and Liam really seemed to enjoy it. “Amazing. Amazing, man! It was like one of those things you dream of when you’re a kid. He was just such a fucking geezer. Just a nice guy. He came and watched the sound check, watched the gig from the side of the stage, came and said hello and stuff. He was he really top. It was amazing. I was fuckin’ shittin’ it doing the gig but it was a really great experience.”
Although the Academy may have been a bit of step doen from the Royal Albert Hall, the boys didn’t seem too bothered. They looked like they really enjoyed Dublin, and Dublin, in turn, enjoyed them.
