In Bruges in three words: well worth seeing.
It’s pretty slow at the start and some of the acting jarred for reasons I can’t put my finger on, but the characters are a lot of fun to watch and the story does draw you in. I think I’d enjoy it more on a second viewing – it’s one of those films that isn’t quite what you’re expecting it to be, so it can be hard to just relax and enjoy it the first time around.
I’m not sure what exactly constitutes “an Irish film”, but the writer/director and the two main* characters** are Irish and that’s good enough for me. So I feel comfortable saying: In Bruges is unusual for an Irish film, in much the same way that a book that isn’t about cottages in the 50s, that chick-lit story we seem to like, or The Seedy Underbelly Of The Celtic Tiger is unusual for an Irish novel. I mean, are we really allowed to write this kind of stuff? Are we allowed to… have fun?
* Warning: Poncey website.
** Warning: Impressive beard.
Trent Reznor’s latest wheeze, much like his previous, has been described in many quarters as “doing a Radiohead”. I don’t know, did people describe every CD release for the first few years as “doing an ABBA“?
It’s worth noting that Yorke & Co. never intended to revolutionise distribution, whereas Reznor most certainly does. The system in place for Ghosts I-IV represents a return to the drawing board after the disappointing results of the Saul Williams experiment; in other words, Reznor is committed to figuring out how to make this work. If someone with his profile can make a proper financial success of such a venture, who knows what it’ll kick-start.
Now obviously, NIN had a hefty fanbase in place before they came within shouting distance of a self-published album, and it’s true that anyone can start vomiting content onto the internet without a hope of meaningful success, but once the trails are blazed it will start to become a more and more viable route for emerging artists. Grim tidings abound, but it seems to me that should the new models be proven, the changes in the cultural landscape will be hard to predict.
As part of the Dublin Book Festival, Maybury and I have recorded some inserts for tomorrow night’s edition of the abovenamed, in which we talk about our experiences on the UCD Creative Writing MA. You can listen to it on the show’s site. Sources tell me it may also be listened to on a device known as a radio.
While I have your attention: is this the stupidest film poster ever?
In “When Film Gets Good…” Terry Southern maintained that it was “wasteful, pointless, and indeed in terms of art, inexcusable, to write a novel which could, or indeed should have been a film.” There were subtleties to his argument that I won’t go into – his point was that film, being more of a direct appeal to the senses, can run rings around novels when it comes to portraying straightforward dialogue and narrative. Now, being a writer himself he naturally didn’t leave it there, but insisted that prose writers needed to pull their socks up in terms of originality and offer something that films could not.
I mention this because I’ve just finished Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade, which is one of those novels that’s infatuated with written language. Continue reading ‘Fun with words’
Very, very good. It’s incredibly focused – a simple setup, believably basic character motivations and very little exposition. This annoyed the crap out of me while I was watching it, because why doesn’t everyone write like that? Rule number one: only include what you need to include.
You can tell that the effort of avoiding the genre cliches got to the makers, because as soon as the end credits start rolling (which is the one and only time the film breaks character) the most epic, giant monster-est piece of music ever composed kicks in. It’s called “ROAR! (Cloverfield Overture)” and it lasts twelve minutes. It’s almost unbearably awesome.
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