Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

The best work Tom Hanks has ever done is in classic Money Pit moments. Watch two comedy scenes from the film.

Labels: film, funny, video

Al Pacino starts his speech with, "I don't know what to say really ...", and proceeds to say it perfectly. On the eve of Germany's World Cup semi-final against Italy one can only hope that the talismatic "Golden Bomber" Jürgen Klinsmann has similar words of wisdom for his inspired troops.

"Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I Mean one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that's going to make the difference between winning and losing."

Watch the video ...

Labels: film, sport, video

Ridley Scott has a habit of making entertaining movies. I felt my first real chill watching a film, I mean genuinely scared, in the eerie silences of the crashsite in the original Alien (in space no-one can hear you scream).

And in a virtuoso performance of swashbuckling drama and entertainment, who doesn't get tingles down their spine thinking of the mighty Gladiator bringing his fellow slaves together in a protective circle of shields to thwart their Goliath enemy.

So it was with great expectations that I lined up at Marble Arch, London to see his new film, Kingdom of Heaven, not least because of the subject matter. Anyone who has spoken with someone from the Muslim world will know the esteem in which Sultan Saladin, hero of Islam, is held. And the Crusades are host to some of the most captivating storylines in human history.

The purpose of this review is not to analyze the plot or quality of the film (you can find that here, here, here, or here). The Muslim community warmly received the release of the film. According to Professor Jack Shaheen in his book Reel Bad Arabs, only Native Americans outdistance Arabs and Muslims in being vilified by Hollywood. But Muslim viewers were pleased with the balance in the film.

But a debate has raged over the film and the history it portrays. Some Christians welcome the questions raised by the film but others react with angry rants, call it propaganda, or Osama Bin Laden's version of history.

"Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, a Cambridge academic and expert on the Crusades, has labeled it 'Osama bin Laden's version of history'. He questioned its historical accuracy, saying its basis lies in the romantic thrillers of Walter Scott, though screenwriter William Monahan has the support of academic experts in pointing to real-life figures and events as the basis for the major characters and events in the film." (Observer)

Of particular interest to me was the historical context of the film, squeezed between Crusades and just prior to the story of the 3rd Crusade, perhaps the most dramatic of them all, when Richard the Lionheart marched on Jerusalem. This is alluded to at the end of the film and several of the stories described are recounted by James Reston Jr. in Warriors of God, a book recommended to George Bush in the wake of Sept. 11. It's not clear if he read it or not but it is encouraging to see how easily people are making connections between events in the 12th century and those currently unraveling.

What is clear by watching the film is how relevant the issues causing the strain in relations between people of different faiths remain today. It doesn't take very much imagination to see how Muslim people may view activities in the Gulf as nothing more than continuity of history, another Crusade. Nor is it difficult to imagine how Christians can loop together Bin Laden and Saladin as faces of Islam, though very different men.

This contrast is embodied by Saladin's remarks in the film, when explaining to Ballion, defender of Jerusalem (of all the historical characters in the film Ballion seems the most invented), why he is willing to allow the people sheltered within the walls safe passage in exchange for the city instead of murdering them all as was done in a previous Christian crusade: "I am not like those men."

And in Reston's captivating text we find reference to Richard the Lionheart allowing safe passage for the Muslims inside the walls as Christians took the city. This is the kind of precedence that can inspire reconciliation. For surely the easiest thing to imagine of all is the idea that all humans on earth are linked in a shared humanity. We must respect each other to respect ourselves.

Kingdom of Heaven may be open to many criticisms from many perspectives but it deserves applause for making an effort, in a historical epic movie kind of way, to promote reconciliation between people and faiths. By reducing the contrast between the two sides of the conflict it effectively shows the similarities. And instead we find the distinctions in the characters of the men involved, not the skin or religion.

Other recent Media Project reviews:

Theatre of the New Ear - Coen Brothers and Charlie Kaufmann one-night-only sound play
Dispatches - Michael Herr on Vietnam

Labels: film

Some events live up to the hype.

The arrival of the Theatre of the New Ear ("Leave Your Eyes at Home!") in London's Royal Festival Hall was loaded with anticipation. Two original sound plays by the writer/director Coen Brothers (Raising Arizona, Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo) and writer/director Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The cast featured mainly former stars of their work including Meryl Streep, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hope Davis, and Peter Dinklage. Carter Burwell set the plays to music and Parabola provided the orchestra.

The tickets for the event sold out in a day as fans of the critically acclaimed and populist directors flocked this one-night-only opportunity. In the only other previous or scheduled performance, the plays were staged three times to packed houses at St Ann's Warehouse, a converted industrial space in hipster Brooklyn.

In the program notes Carter Burwell (composer on many of the Coen Brothers films) further sets the stage:

"You're watching a movie, in a theatre at home, and starting to doze. You can't keep your eyes open, but the sound of the film still seeps through your ears, which sadly are never closed. Your mind paints the picture itself in that meaningful but not quite visual way that dreams play out. This is the experience I'd like you to have now."

All true except you couldn't keep your eyes off the stage. A performance like this one could herald the return of the sound play as a popular art form. Broadcast on Digital Radio I'm sure it would be fantastic to hear as radio drama, but it was electric in person. Sawbones featured a rapid-fire dialogue and Oh Brother Where Art Thou style score. And as one of Charlie Kaufman's characters in Hope Leaves the Theatre says: "I'd watch Philip Seymour Hoffman read the phone book."

But it was Kaufman's play that stole the evening. He is a master of the narrative within the narrative, or "the play within the play within the play within the play, all right we get it Charlie Kaufman" as a critic in the play comments. He has a wonderful talent for shifting perspective, often poking fun at himself, and this play is no exception. From the program notes: "Kaufman wrote Hope Leaves the Theatre in 1997 during his last year at Windsor Prep, where he was just embarking on his now famous struggles with issues of identity, weight gain, and pornography addiction".

Meryl Streep is an incredible actress. Watching her live on stage is an engrossing experience. She reads across a range of Kaufman's characters shifting voice constantly from a black woman to a radio man and sailor. She has a wonderful rapport with the audience, at one point climbing to sit on the edge of the stage and discuss her lament on the direspects shown by modern theatre audiences. Peter Dinklage is introduced by a Hope Davis character sitting in the seats waiting ... "Peter Dinklage ... Isn't he that dwarf? ... Oh Ya. He was in that movie Train Station." ... Once again to the program notes: "redefined leading man in The Station Agent". All of the characters have fun at each other's expense and the story has a wonderful flow, caressed by Streep's magnetic personalities, Dinklage's booming voice and charm, and Davis' tour de force as the lead female character, who when her cell phone goes off in the theatre gets told off by Meryl Streep, a claim to fame for her mom. You get the picture. I mean the sound.

Bravo to both the Coens and Kaufman for reintroducing an art form to mainstream consciousness and doing such a good job while they were at it. And the obvious enjoyment the actors got out of playing their parts on stage bodes well for creative collaborations like these in the future. It might even turn out to be a great way to stage a screenplay in the interests of getting it produced into a film. You need a band, some actors (call Meryl and she if she is available?), and a screenplay. Oh ... and a director, preferably one with a habit of writing irresistibly stimulating prose.

Some more links to reviews of the play:

Ain't it cool news
Aussie James
Being Charlie Kaufman forum topic
Chocolate and Vodka

Labels: film, theatre

There's a part in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (a nice piece of partisan editing but little more) where soldiers on screen admit to listening to the Bloodhound Gang's Roof on Fire (Burn Motherfu**er Burn) while shooting to kill Iraqi soldiers that I assume is meant to shock us that soldiers should behave in such a fashion. For those who have read Michael Herr's masterpiece Dispatches this is pretty tame stuff. Herr, who also wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket, takes you inside the fray of fear, fire and fufilment that is the bloody hell of war like no other.

"Two hundred meters away, facing the Marine trenches, there was an NVA (North Vietnamese) sniper with a .50 caliber machine gun who shot at the Khe Sanh Marines from a tiny spider hole. During the day he fired at anything that rose above the sandbags, and at night he fired at any lights he could see. You could see him clearly from the trench, and if you were looking through the scope of a Marine sniper's rifle you could even see his face. The Marines fired on his position with mortars and recoilless rifles, and he would drop into his hole and wait. Gunships fired rockets at him, and when they were through he would come up again and fire. Finally napalm was called in, and for ten minutes the air above the spider hole was black and orange from the strike, while the ground around it was galvanized clean of every living thing. When all of it cleared, the sniper popped up and fired off a single round, and the Marines in the trenches cheered loudly. They called him Luke the Gook, and after that no one wanted anything to happen to him."

Imagine not wanting anything to happen to someone who is trying to kill you day and night, trying to give you some. There is nothing simple or straightforward about being a soldier at war. Pick up a copy of Herr's war correspondence to catch a glimpse.

I must admit I am not the first to trumpet this underappreciated text. In the words of John Le Carre, it is "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time". And no less of a trubadour for the 60s than Hunter S Thomspon admits: "We have all spent ten years trying to explain what happened to our heads and our lives in the decade we finally survived -- but Michael Herr's Dispatches puts all the rest of us in the shade."

Read about Daytripper and lucky Orrin, Mayhew and the standoff against 40,000 invisible VC, lots of tracks going in, none coming out. Spend three weeks trying to take a hill where you believe 4,000 enemy are battling, take the hill and find four spooky bodies on the top. I'll let you read the rest.

Warning: Not for the feint of heart or the easily indignant.

Labels: film, literature