They may not make them like they used to, but musicals were alive and kicking during the first 10 days of the 49th London Film Festival (LFF), which ended yesterday. Country singers, township operas, a rap drama and a new dance craze; maybe it's personal preference lurking beneath the impassive critical
surface but, amid the myriad choices available to the
bemused LFF-goer, I seemed to be drawn to tales of ghetto oppression and indomitable musical spirit.
Let's start with the highest profile film, James Mangold's Walk the Line, which tells (a bit) of the life story of Johnny Cash, in much the same way Taylor Hackford told us the story of Ray Charles last year. Indeed, the lives of the two iconic and recently deceased musical subjects run remarkable parallels -- or could it be the exigencies of the biopic form that breed such similarity?
Cash, like Ray, never recovers from the death of a sibling for which he's made, in golden-hued flashback, to feel partly guilty; he has father issues; he meets other famous people; he has hit records; he takes drugs; he is unfaithful to his prissy wife; he sweats through cold turkey and emerges a better man.
Jamie Foxx made his career with his Oscar-winning Ray impression and we can expect similar accolades for Joaquin Phoenix's impersonation of the "Man in Black" although, for me, Reese Witherspoon, who plays his second wife, June Carter, gives the film its spark. She's electric here, cute, funny and brittle, and I pined for her every time she left the screen.
Most people seemed to love the film, but it left me cold, simply because the musical side of it was botched. Where Hackford had the ingenuity (and fortune) to use the actual voice of Ray Charles, Mangold has to use Phoenix's Stars in Your Eyes turn and he doesn't convey the compelling, gravelly intensity of Cash's sprechgesang.
Those thrills were, however, in abundance elsewhere. David LaChapelle, the fashion photographer, has turned documentary-maker with Rize, about a new dance called krump he's discovered in Los Angeles. In fact, krump is more than a frenetic dance and "ghetto ballet"; it's a verb, a noun, a state of mind.
LaChapelle takes us into the lives of various ghetto residents, including Tommy the hip hop clown and star-in-the-making Miss Prissy, and draws us brilliantly into the physicality of the dance, tracing a history of movement and pageantry from African tribes, through to the Watts riots of 1965 and the Rodney King riots of 1992. An uplifting ghetto picture emerges, climaxing in a typical, hyper-colourful LaChapelle tableau of sinewy, sexy black bodies writhing in the sunshine. The screening I attended was full of nodding heads and hoots of approval.
Hustle and Flow is also a hip hop musical of sorts, capped with a tremendous performance by Terrence Howard playing a Memphis pimp trying to get a break as a rapper. The music is exciting, the story involving and the milieu and lifestyle
confidently conveyed.
The festival's biggest thrill and the one piece of true genius I've seen is U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, an adaptation of Bizet's Carmen, translated into Xhosa -- all your favourite tunes, with clicks! -- and transplanted to a cigarette factory in a Cape Town township.
Music is also a vital factor in the success of The Proposition, a film written and scored by Australian singer-scriptwriter Nick Cave.
It's a ferocious outback western, about Ray Winstone's police captain (`I will civilise this place') and his attempt to defeat devilish outlaw Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) by sending his brother, Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), to kill him.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
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