Saturday, June 17, 2017
Guns N Fn Roses
I would say this image is a fair visual metaphor for the Guns N Roses band dynamic. The presence of Duff added poignancy to proceedings but the inimitable swagger of Slash in all his iconic glory elevated the whole affair to another plane. It has been said that the mark of a well drawn cartoon character is that you can always recognise them by their silhouette alone and with him existing in this age as more myth than man at a ratio of about 70/30, he plays the role as flawlessly as his double guitar.
None the less there was always going to be one presence looming over proceedings from start to finish and love him or loathe him, there is arguably no one still alive that does it like Axel Rose. His all too public persona over the years may have rendered him more human than his axe wielding counterpart but he has a voice that melts all those flaws away. And in case you were wondering if he's still got it, the answer is yes. Yes he does. He is a larger version of the man who was already larger than life, decked out in a rotating array of rock roll accessories reflecting every step of his journey from the gutter to the stars you could never mistake him for anyone else.
You can almost accept his arrogance over the years, his lateness for shows legendary for practically being longer than the actual performances, all the while knowing his fans would forgive him a whole litany of sins when he takes control of a stage. Now it seems he is giving back to the faithful by finally realising that the only thing more important than being Axel Rose is being in Guns N Roses. Or at the very least being Axel Rose in Guns N Roses. You can allow him that when they deliver on the scale that they achieved last night. And boy did they deliver.
It was the performance of a lifetime that most predicted they would never witness it in. Their respective ages may make the band members 'classics' in their own right but their craftsmanship combined on one stage creates something greater than their already talented parts.In the decades that have passed, their appetite for destruction has always seemed to slightly outweigh their appetite for glory so to see them put that aside for one last lap of victory in between the floodlights and the spotlights.
To sing along to Sweet Child of Mine alongside Duff, Slash and Axel but to be in a crowd, in a stadium, in the moment, arms aloft covered in the splatter of warm spilt beer, as opposed to being at some rock night at about 2am as the DJ plays the last easy crowd-pleaser before closing . Albeit still with arms aloft, covered in the splatter of warm spilt beer.
For fans that have waited for as long as these people had to hear such timeless songs played as they were originally intended it's almost hard to know what to do. The riff kicks in and you have 4-5 minutes (or in the case of November Rain 9+) to lose as many of your marbles as you can muster. Then when it's all over you are left thinking, where do we go now? Quite literally. When 80,000 people all pile out of a station at once towards one station, finding a feasible route hope becomes all important.
When all was said an sung, all those fans left satisfied and with a smile on their face. Those who were sober enough to retain full control of their facial features that is. It was a feat of excess and spectacle truly befitting a group of people once dubbed 'the most dangerous band in the world'. Can they keep it together long enough to do another round? Given the ever present ego required to command a stage in the manner of Axel, I would have to question it but if they are only going to manage it once, that is how you want to see it done. The roses were in full bloom but there is still no question who is top gun. I'm sure he wouldn't have it any other way.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Logan
In 1998 I enjoyed a
delightful evenings entertainment at the National Theatre. With the
company of my family I was taken to see a revival of the Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! Let me tell you, a grand old time was
had by all. My initial youthful scepticism of this
southern fried song and dance schtik was thwarted immediately by the
promise of a bright golden haze on the meadow and a good old
fashioned hoe down. The cast gave us their best Oklahoma hello and we
left with a spring in our step and a song in our hearts. When asked
if I had enjoyed it afterwards, my enthusiasm was taken in a positive
light because, as I was shortly told, the star of the show was about
to play a lead role in a Hollywood movie that I wanted to see! “Oh
yes?” I asked, “and what would that be?” Well...
Ladies
and gentlemen, I give you the embodiment of grizzled snark and
bezerker rage. If I could go back in time to observe my reaction I
would tell my younger self to have a healthy glug of water first
because it would have created a spit take for the ages. This prancing
cowboy was going to play Wolverine?! Luidcrous. How could anyone have
conceived this? You could have marked my words, it would surely never
work.
Well
that first X-Men film came out in 2000 and here we are, 17 years
later with Logan, the concluding chapter to the epic saga of The
Wolverine. The James Mangold directed film takes it's inspiration
from the comic arcs of Old Man Logan and X-23 and once more finds
Hugh Jackman bringing Wolverine, aka Logan, to life, but not in quite
the same familiar fighting fettle.
Set
in the near future where the world is slightly further along its
natural progression towards becoming a dystopic wasteland, the ageing
mutant now finds himself as a full time limo driver and part time
care assistant to the even more decrepit Professor Charles Xavier,
played with crotchety grace as ever by Patrick Stewart. Given the
combustible results of aged degeneration on Xavier's dangerous brain,
Logan is doing his best to maintain a low profile, but trouble
inevitably has a funny way of finding them and when his path is
crossed by a battalion of mercenaries, he suddenly finds himself
tasked with the care of a mysterious young girl who possesses some
uncannily familiar vicious traits. Soon enough the trio find
themselves on a road trip to find a safe haven, from the Mexican
border in Texas all the way to North Dakota, and along the way
traversing the treacherous terrain of... Oklahoma. Yes really.
Logan
is a film about legacy. The legacy of a past you can never escape and
a thankless future left for the next generation. This is the case
both on and off the screen, not simply serving as the conclusion for
the character but for the man playing him. You can not overstate the
significance of Hugh Jackman's history with this role. Superhero
films are so significant in the realms of 21st
century cinema and he was the figurehead of the film that started it
all. DC well and truly dropped the baton in the pile of dung that was
1997s Batman and Robin but Marvel picked it back up, polished it down
and took off sprinting. Whilst 2002s Spider-Man was the bigger box
office hit, the fact that within the same time frame we are now on
our third on-screen iteration of that character, speaks volumes.
Jackman and Stewart's laudable longevity just goes to show there is
something to be said for getting in right the first time.
Thankfully,
if this is indeed to be his last outing in the role, he is certainly
going out in blaze of gory glory. Unshackled from the restrictions of
family friendly film making, thanks in no small part of the success
of last years gleefully obscene Deadpool, Logan gives the character
free reign of self expression and when he is let loose, well you
better hold on to your sideburns because he does not hold back.
Whilst the proliferation of profanity and blood splatter is notable,
it doesn't feel jarring. It flows so seamlessly in to his aesthetic
of hard bitten cynicism that the surprising aspect comes only in
remembering that we haven't seen him portrayed like this before.
This
is definitely striving to be regarded as a grown up film, and it
largely succeeds. Much has been made of this 'new direction' for a
superhero movie but it achieves this largely by not limiting itself
to simply being a superhero movie in the first place. Whilst the
archetypes of a superpowered individual coming to the aid of someone
in need are still in place, this film is far more interested in
reflecting on a blood soaked past. The classic 1953 western Shane is
used a repeated touchstone, from the hero's moniker serving as the
title right down to the closing speech. If the film has a weakness,
it can be that it almost leans too heavily on this at times. It gains
so much heft from the evident burden of the violent legacy of bodies
in his wake and this is given an extra dimension through the
investment of the audience in to the history of Wolverine over all
these years. The balance between the styles of film making is handled
with commendable delicacy on the whole but occasionally feels like in
its quest to be taken seriously it slips slightly too far from its
roots in the Western territory and this can occasionally leave it
feeling close to earnestly mawkish.
Overall
though the film feels like a great achievement by being a great film.
X-Men showed all those years ago what a superhero film could be and
now Logan shows what it doesn't have to be. Whilst the version of the
character he is playing may be weakening after years of toil, the
hold that Hugh Jackman has over him is only getting stronger. It is a
bittersweet farewell as this only goes to further demonstrate his
capacity to break ground and this would never work if the audience
believe in him so fully. The film serves a testament to the legacy of
the character and the overall body of work serves as testament to the
legacy of the performer. It is naïve in this day and age to think
that film studios would consider any character portrayal untouchable
so there will inevitably be a reboot in time. That said no matter how
many times we get a fresh take on the role, you can sure as hell bet
your adamantium claws that his will always be the definitive one.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
The Founder
On more than one occasion whilst mentioning the imminent release of
The Founder, the biopic of the man
who brought fast food to the world, the same joke was cracked. “So
it's a film about Ronald McDonald then?” Oh how we chuckled. Whilst
you can argue there may have been a great missed opportunity in not
telling the fictional tale of the custard coloured
clown's ascent from clown college to the pinnacle of an obesity
empire, that question does hit on a deeper point. Who is this is Mr.
McDonald then? The man who brought us the Happy Meal toy, the
Fillet-O-Fish and the McRib. Everyone knows the name, but the only
face they know is crimson cropped and pallid with an ever so slightly
homicidal glint in his mirthful eyes.
The Founder, directed by John Lee
Hancock, is in fact the story of one Ray Kroc. I can't say for
certain whether or not his descendants ever leant their name to a
line of rubber sandals whose comfort and practicality are outweighed
only by their abhorrent aesthetic but I can say for certain that the
man did not lend his name to a fast food chain. Instead, when we meet
him he is a professional salesman trying to flog milkshake makers.
When he one day receives a bewilderingly large order for these
devices from a restaurant in California he is lead to the door of the
McDonald brothers revolutionary burger stand. The film then follows
his journey from inspiration to success with just a pinch of
persistence, a dollop of determination and a liberal sprinkling of
skulduggery.
The tale itself is certainly
intriguing. Whilst the outcome is never in question, this is a film
about the journey more than the destination. The brothers
themselves were happy just running an efficient and successful
restaurant with little concern for the bigger picture when all of a
sudden their lives are turned around by a man with capitalism
coursing through his veins. What starts off as a rose tinted paean to
a company founded on family values and a quality product gradually
gets warped in to something far less nourishing. Kroc sells them on a
yarn about how the grand golden arches can be the symbol of the new
American church. The film acknowledges this moment safe in the
certainty that history would eventually prove him right and knowing
just what kind of a god complex it would take to pull it off.
Whilst production line delivery is
key to McDonalds success, it unfortunately proves to be a slight
downfall for the film. Tales of devious capitalism have proven strong
cinematic fodder in the past with everything from oil in There Will
Be Blood to cocaine in Blow, but this film relies too much on being
an easily consumable product. You have the early struggle, the flash
of inspiration, the initial adversity and the eventual glory that
comes at a cost. It ticks all the boxes but loses a bit of the flavor
in the process. It may be a bit much to expect this particular story
to deal in subtlety but as you see the man being lead to betray both
his wife and his business partners through the medium of a
seductively stirred milkshake, you can't help but feel they are
laying it on a bit thick.
There is a lot to be said though for
Michael Keaton's lead turn as the eponymous 'founder'. His
re-emergence in recent years as an actor synonymous with performances
of prestige is a story almost worthy of a film in its own right. He
perfectly captures the megalomanical glint of a man who when
presented with his break ultimately chooses to break bad and hits all
the right notes of empathy and villainy to keep the audience with
him. It is a performance big enough that all other characters are
very much relegated to the minor supporting category. Nick Offerman
and John Carroll Lynch are very effective in capturing the tragedy of
the hard done by McDonald brothers where as Laura Dern has little to do but suffer on the sidelines as Kroc's forgotten
wife. You can't help but feel there was a better performance in there
that for a story which film wasn't particularly interested in
telling.
Overall there is a lot of
entertainment to be had in the most nefarious tale of name branded
meat this side of a Trump steak. The film benefits from a feeling of
fortuitous timeliness; the slice of sepia tinged Americana corrupted
through an avaricious figurehead. As a piece of film making though it
settles for being good when it could have been great. Hollywood loves
stories of desperate men willing to succeed at any cost and this one
came coupled with the strongest brand recognition you could possibly
ask for. It's just a shame it was assembled with efficiency when it
could have used just a little more inspiration.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
xXx: Return of Xander Cage
Ever want to see what
$1.5 Billion dollars buys you? Look no further than xXx: Return of
Xander Cage. Return of who? You may well ask. This film is the second
sequel (yes really) to the successful, if not exactly lauded
action/spy film from 15 years ago. So why now, a decade and a half
later, are we getting a sequel to a film people didn't remember
heralding the return of a character people didn't care about? Who is
this film for? Well the answer starts with one person. Mr Vin Diesel.
Whilst people were
hardly expecting the last Fast and Furious film to flop, even its
most ardent fans, myself included among them, were likely a little
surprised when its box office gross veered headlong in to the billion
dollar stratosphere. With that financial clout and the support of
over 100 million facebook followers, It can't come as too much of a
surprise that a film studio was willing to finance him to relive his
glory days onscreen. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow him to
present The Great Vin Diesel Vanity Project.
Directed by DJ Caruso,
the little plot there is revolves around our eponymous hero being
coerced out of self imposed retirement after an anonymous villain
uses a mysterious device to, and stick with me here, pull discarded
satellites out of orbit and crash them in to earth, with one hitting
a little too close to home. This amounts to scenes of a 49 year old
man (look it up, its true) escaping armed guards on a skateboard, I
repeat, a skateboard, to bring a digital tv box to
impoverished villagers to they can watch the football. The children
praise him! The ladies love him him! The audience remembers he
actually produced the film himself. You get the sense that he
believed he was making James Bond for a modern generation. It
actually reminded me more of this:
Booourns indeed.
That reference may seem
dated but that fits with the overall feel. If they were aiming to
make a film that was 'down with the kids' I guess he succeeded in a
way. A scene which features a mass of scantily clad women apparently
unable to keep their hands off him feels akin to a teenage boy
bragging about all the girls he totally made out with. Jay from the
Inbetweeners would likely reject it as too self-aggrandizing.
As for the climactic
action sequence, well that has all the dramatic gravitas of a bunch a
5 year olds in a playground making machine guns noises and explosion
sounds with their mouths. If that sounds like a criticism, well
that's because it is, but with one minor caveat. I have been told
that watching kids play is moderately more endearing if they are your
kids, and sure enough this films aims squarely for global box office
domination by stocking its supporting cast to an almost cynical
degree with an action star to appeal to any affection. From Bollywood
actress Deepika Padukone and Thai marshal arts star Tony Jaa all the
way to small screen standouts such as Orange is The New Black's Ruby
Rose and Game of Thrones Rory McCann aka The Hound, all tastes are
catered for.
I can't deny that I got
a certain thrill from watching England's own UFC middleweight
champion Michael Bisping just about hold his own on screen, albeit in
a role that wasn't exactly a stretch. The stand out though has to be
Hong Kongs Donnie Yen, fresh from a rightly attention grabbing turn
in Rogue One. His presence and charisma only served to show that he
is the kind of star studios should be building franchises around and
let Vin get back to playing with his cars.
There is no denying that in an age
where the traditional action star has long since been on the decline,
there is still some fair currency in the Vin Diesel brand but this
project does him no favours. You are never going to appeal to the
widest audience if you are your own biggest fan and in the case of
this film, he may well be the only one.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
The People's Panto
With another festive
period now firmly in the non-corporeal grip of the Ghost of Christmas
past and all eyes focused on the wealth of dazzling promise and
opportunity lying just over the horizon, I am going to start the New
Year off in the most pertinent manner possible. By looking backwards.
Yes whilst everyone else is sitting comfortably with their feet up
having wiped the last trodden in remains of the previous annual cycle
on the doormat of NYE, I am lagging behind and have a few bits of
catching up to do. The first of which is to reflect back on one of
the highlights of my Christmas, a trip to the Panto, an experience
that was by parts joyous, hilarious and mildly traumatic.
Theatre
Royal Stratford East
In a culture rife with curious yuletide traditions,
Pantomime is up there with the best of them. It is as quintessential
a part of the British Christmas as mincing your pies and mulling your
alcohol with a weirdness factor pitched somewhere between satsumas in
stockings and wassailing. The general basis is that of an all
singing, all dancing rendition of a classic fairytale being brought
to spectacular life in a lively theatre production featuring a
healthy dose of universal humour, audience
interaction and gender swapping.
Done poorly it resembles the Les
Dennis episode of Ricky Gervais' Extras; a minor celebrity death
rattle of antiquated innuendo as former entertainers try to keep the
lights on by laughing to save from crying in front of audience whose
desire to be there is only marginally less than that of the
performers themselves. Done well it is a gloriously unifying
laugh-along for all generations of a family to experience together
without anyone secretly wishing to be somewhere else. Thankfully for
all, The Theatre Royal Stratford East's production of Sinbad the
Sailor falls firmly in to the latter category.
With a format so steeped in tradition, trying something
new can always be a risk. The sheer fact that they did not opt to go
for the millionth rehash of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk or
Dick Whittington was already an encouraging sign. Indeed Sinbad the
Sailor is a fresh production without a hint of dust on its cover.
With a mixture of comfortably familiar tropes; the deliciously corny
humour, the daring adventure, the larger than life dame; fleshing
out a slightly less familiar story with surprisingly relevant
messages that couldn't be more appropriate for the age we are living
in, the show hits a laudable balance of the timeless and the timely.
Whilst it is all well and good having your heart in the
right place, it certainly helps to be backed by a strong creative
team and there is no doubt that people behind Sinbad have sound sea
legs. Paul Sirett has written a script generous on battle tested gags
without seeming tired and with a positive message that never becomes
preachy. Likewise director Kerry Michael keeps the energy high and the show sailing along
at a rate of knots to keep the kids from fidgeting in their seats,
the parents from checking their watches and the grandparents from
falling asleep.
The ensemble cast are uniformly impressive, with a
mixture of new talents and seasoned veterans all delivering
accomplished performances. Special mention must go to Michael
Bertenshaw whose villainous Prince Naw-zee Uss is a serving of
gourmet ham, earning and clearly relishing every boo drawn from the
audience. Another standout is Johnny Amobi whose grand dame Nurse is a highlight as a devourer of both men and scenery.
All in all, from a singing monkey to a tap dancing
sultan by way of a Genie-of-the-ketchup-bottle, there is amusement in
abundance for all facets of the audience. As for interaction, well
just because Panto is normally about being warned over what's behind
you, also be sure to keep an eye out for whats in front of you. I
don't want to spoil the surprise but if, like myself, you find
yourself sitting on the end of a row then keep your game face on
because you may find yourself involved in a very public man hunt. My
advice, just go along with it. Trying desperately to hide yourself
and avoid eye contact is futile, you can't fight the tide! In spite
of the lingering psychological scars, it only added to the overall
experience. This is family entertainment done right, from a venue
that calls itself “A Peoples Theatre”, this is very much a
Peoples Panto.
Whilst Christmas may be over, the show is still running
until January 21st so go and catch it whilst you can!
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