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Saturday 31 May 2014

The Star Spangled Banner: at least it's better than God Save The Queen

I’ve been listening to The Star Spangled Banner recently, largely because I’ve finally realised that the lovely tune featured at least once in every American blockbuster is in fact the national anthem of the United States (and because of its use on the My Chemical Romance song Goodnight Dr Death, in which that wonderful, building ending is replaced by a startling interrupted cadence. Yes, I’ve been revising for my music GCSE too). I’ve never been a patriot, but for all my well honed cynicism The Star Spangled Banner makes me want to rise from my seat, cast aside my revision notes and sing to the heavens in a passionately tuneless voice, God bless America.  Every time I hear it, I’m struck to the bone by a sudden epiphany and I truly understand why every American seems so proud of the country.  And yet, I’m from England. I’ve never even visited the states.

So what culture-connecting power does the American anthem have to inspire me to such an extent? The sheer quality of music is one thing; The Star Spangled Banner is just under two minutes of nationalistic oral bliss with potentially racist undertones. More important however is the dismal, dreary halo surrounding my own nation’s anthem, currently entitled God Save The Queen (until good old Queen Liz decides to snuff it and pass the title on to Prince Charles, perhaps the only person in the country who’d be less competent as head of state than the Queen herself. At least she behaves).  Not only does God Save The Queen lack the booming, stately aurora of The Star Spangled Banner, its “born to reign over us” tag rings hollow in a time where the monarchy has been cheapened by the media and inevitably become irrelevant.
Perhaps it’s the simple fact that music holds more power over the human mind than the confines of a country that makes me prefer the American national anthem to our own, as the Yanks clearly have the edge on the songwriting front. Maybe it’s my age old hatred for the monarchy which has disillusioned me with God Save The Queen. In any case, the chances of changing our anthem to something more interesting are about as remote as Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats winning a landslide majority in the general election next year, so I’ll just stick to foreign imports for my nationalism fix until the revolution comes.

Thursday 29 May 2014

X-Men, Days of Future Past review: A Superheroic Symphony of Entertainment

Seven titles into the series (Wolverine films included), it's fair to say Marvel have been milking the X-Men cash cow with alarming vigour over the past decade. But while it's easy to dismiss the franchise as a gold plated horse flogged to within a bare inch of its life, it's an unfair suggestion when this latest instalment is such a brilliantly entertaining picture. It's not without its inevitable flaws, but Days of Future Past is a superhero movie of the highest calibre, explosive with great performances, thrilling set pieces and sharp humour, which stands head and shoulders above the flatter tones of Marvel's Spidermen and Captain Americas. 

As the last remnants of the mutant group known as the X-Men face destruction at the hands of the robotic Sentinels, Professor X (Patrick Stewart) launches an audacious plan to save the team. By sending Wolverine (Hugh Jackman on steroids) back to the 70's to prevent the epoch of their opponents, the group aims to prevent the war between humans and mutants from ever beginning. Taken directly from the comic book series, the plot, with its themes of paradox and the manipulation of time, is far from original. It's a shame that the story and its structure mark one of the few atmospheric collapses in the movie, as a superb, frantic opening half hour result in a more stuttering and scrambled pace throughout. Even for a Marvel film, the plot tests the limits of plausibility, and is at times simply too dumbed down and predictable to be taken seriously. Fortunately, a $200 million budget allows for a cast that can truly be called all-star, with the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page and Ian McKellen reprising their roles. These characters becomes a major factor in holding the shaky storyline together, with screen time split between present and past to allow for an expanded and increasingly charismatic set of characters. Jackman is excellent as the grizzled Wolverine, but it’s the chemistry between James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, who portray the young Professor X and Magneto respectively, which largely steals the show. The power struggle between this pair of geniuses comes to dominate the midsection of the film, and proves far more memorable than the myriad of special effects and set pieces thrown in to keep the action flowing. On the subject of effects, the mega-budget technology does help to create some of the finest sequences the picture has to offer, including a breathtaking slow-motion scene shot in 3,600 fps featuring the underused Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and the blitzing action opening. Jennifer Lawrence also excels as Mystique, a role she plays with such wit and vision that you can’t help but wonder if an origins film could be on Marvel’s cards in the near future. As always with a cast on this scale, there’s huge potential wasted with the lack of use for the supporting characters, but the leads are so compelling that this is more of a gripe than a serious problem with the film.

Despite an inconsistent pace, where Days of Future Past truly succeeds is in its masterful grasp of what superhero films are all about: entertainment value. The film’s action sequences are, it must be said, some of the most thrilling in recent memory. Powered by the experience of X-Men master director Bryan Singer, these sections are more incendiary than ever, and mark some of the best moments in the film. The need for emotional development is realised too, and better still it’s smartly executed and devoid of the usual superhero sentimentality which has so devalued the genre from a critical perspective. Singer creates a tectonic whirlwind of a crescendo as the film reaches its peak, culminating in a heart-thumping ending and a satisfying conclusion. Despite the lack of the classic supervillain, this more intelligent and politically aware effort feels like a step in the right direction for an evolving studio. It’s a wonder that Marvel, with its access to resources others can scarcely dream of, fails to hit this winning formula of entertainment and awareness with all of their films.  

Days of Future Past is surely the finest X-Men outing to date, an edge-of-the-seat trailblazer of a movie packed with jaw-dropping moments and exceptional cast performances. Its small failures in plot and pacing are more than made up for by a symphony of entertainment rarely evoked by even the strongest of Marvel’s superheroic pedigree.

7/10


 

Sunday 25 May 2014

The Wind Rises review: A fitting finale for animation's greatest visionary

Goodbyes are never easy. For legendary establishment in Japanese animation Studio Ghibli, The Wind Rises represents the loss of Hayo Miyazaki, one of the most visionary directors of all time and co-founder of the studio, as he retires after 35 years at the forefront of animation. For everyone else, Miyazaki's retirement begs the question of how Ghibli will continue to produce pictures of equal innovation and intelligence, after the loss of the mind which created the beautiful My Neighbour Totoro, the awe-inspiring Princess Mononoke and the Oscar winning Spirited Away. But while we wait for this question to be answered, there's Miyazaki's swansong to enjoy in The Wind Rises, a film every bit as intelligent, compelling and powerful as the finest of his vast pedigree of work.

The Wind Rises is, in many ways, a departure from the usual structure of a Ghibli film, primarily in its biographical nature. The film follows the life of Jiro Horikoshi, a brilliant and pacifistic aeronautical engineer responsible for the creation of  the Mitsubishi Zero Fighter, an aircraft used to deadly effect in the Second World War. Through this close study of a single character, Horikoshi becomes one of the most detailed figures in Ghibli history, as the mental conflict between his own love of aircraft and a frustration at the use of his creations for slaughter is portrayed to great effect in character development. His close relationship with his wife Naoko receives equal exploration, buliding a tragic emotional connection between the couple. The cast of supporting characters puts the studio on more familiar territory, almost to the point of homage, with a number of faces being remarkably similar to past Ghibli favourites. These references don't end at the characters either; there are a number of subtle references to Miyazaki's past work throughout the film; my favourite being an image of a distant blaze which appears as a near-identical shot in the 1984 classic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; albeit with the fires replace by hundreds of giant insects known as the Ohm. Fortunately, past references don't push the film too deep into Ghibli history, as in fact the animation here is perhaps the studio's best since Spirited Away, with a number of glorious new techniques employed (look out for a phenomenal heat shimmer) in addition to some truly masterful shot selection. It all makes for a fitting to end a career dominated by truly stunning art.

Never one to skimp out on deeper meanings, Miyazaki has outdone himself here. Rather than stick with his usual pro-natural, anti-industrial ideals, more measured and complex ideas has been opted for in The Wind Rises. Instead of starkly juxtaposing natural imagery with human constructions as he has so many times before, Miyazaki blends Horikoshi's aircraft designs with the natural world in order to defend technological innovation and development, a standpoint rarely taken in Ghibli pictures. It's made all the more effective when images of warfare are introduced, as the futility of battle becomes even more shocking when both the carcasses of Horikoshi's planes and the tatters of torn plants and animals lie slain together. It's unfortunate that what really lets the film down is not ambition failing to deliver, but basic filmmaking error. The Wind Rises is, without a doubt, one of the worst edited of all Studio Ghibli films, resulting in an uncharacteristically poorly paced picture featuring an excess of throwaway scenes and characters. An often less than chronological structure also does no favours for a movie in which the events are occasionally left unexplained, rendering it at times difficult to follow.

It's certainly a same that Miyazaki's farewell film is let down by problems which have rarely plagued him before, but these issues don't take too much away from an animation stuffed with poignant meaning and brilliant art. It's not quite the finest of his pictures, but The Wind Rises is still a touching ending to one of the greatest careers in cinematic history.

8/10

Tuesday 6 May 2014

A quick note of apology

Hello chaps,
due to my rapidly impending exams and the swiftly imploding state of my brain, I'll be taking a break from Worldwide Reviewer over the next few weeks. They'll perhaps be the occasional post, but this site will largely be quiet. Fear not though, come summer I'll be back with more reviews, and I'm pencilling in a list of my favourite albums of all time too!