vendredi 15 août 2003

'Johnny English': a cross-Channel bof! Unless you're a diehard Rowan Atkinson fan, spoof spy thriller 'Johnny English' is hardly a film worth taking any trouble to see. Sure, the man wants to shed the 'Mr Bean' image a little, but it will take more than this. Still, if the bungling British secret agent tasked, for lack of anyone else, with protecting the Crown Jewels and saving the nation from a wicked French pretender to the throne comes your way, you might like some uneven entertainment. An absurd London car chase apart, the movie remained stuck on the tarmac for me until at least halfway, when a predictable twist of the plot opened the way to rather less foreseeable and sometimes funnier muddling through. John Malkovich lets down more hair than I've seen in his serious roles and assumes an outrageous accent to occasionally comic effect as the villain of the piece, private prison entrepreneur Pascal Sauvage. The film, mainly a vehicle for this odd couple, is directed by Peter Howitt, who last took a swipe at corporate America and rather evidently Bill Gates in particular with the 2001 cyber-thriller, 'Anti-Trust.' With that, Howitt had pretentions to delivering a message, if not an original one. 'Johnny English' has no such ambitions, but once again left me reflecting that Britain's creaking monarchy is a fabulously expensive tradition to keep going for the sake of a spectacularly ceremonial day every now and then. Ben Miller gets a mention for braving it out as English's long-suffering deputy, Bough. The girl is Aussie composer-singer Natalie Imbruglia, who is getting hitched, my pop culture source of the day tells me, to Silverchair's Daniel Johns. (I presume the purloined picture, widely used without a credit, belongs to Rogue Male Films; a main distributor is Universal -- 'Johnny English' Flash site.) Certainly no more than 4/10, which is about the rate at which the jokes amused me anyway. I was told this film was irreverent, but the humour is stale both there and with regard to the French. When it comes to having a seriously dark go at British institutions, I've yet to see this better done than in 'If...' (director: Lindsay Anderson) and 'The Ruling Class' (director: Peter Medak, with a superb Peter O'Toole). And both of those date back to my latter school years: 1968 and 1972 respectively. (Yes, I know I said we were going to see the pirate thing. But this one was nearer. In English, anyway...) 10:54:27 PM  link   your views? [] Once we climbed back on our chairs... This is a message to Natalie: "You had better not let her off the hook. "The pair of you are very dangerous and your © stricture is so stern and intimidating that I shouldn't have helped you out at Blogcritics. "I don't think you wanted anybody to rise to the bait anyway... "So. "For now, I've left your 'Interview 4: Saddam (Part One)' where it is. "Stolen, but on my desktop. "I will not incite people to swim across the 'Manche' (the sleeve, for the ignorant) from my place to yours, where they could have read on. "There will be no health warning about how seriously funny you are, representing a danger to the weak of stomach. "No daring to suggest that joining the 'Creative Commons' might (or might well not) suit you both. "No more mention of 'more power to the woman cartoonist' and all that PC bullshit. "(As bad as my daughter, who also does wicked art, you seem to need two blogs, both in incomprehensible language. This may be your solution, rather than so callously eliminating poor Augustine. "(Also like my maddening daughter, you appear not to have heard of the 'permalink'.) "I will not declare the virtually simultaneous comment-link-post a new feature of the Blogosphere as of this afternoon. "You will not both be going into my 'Blogroll'. Even if you did, I wouldn't know where to put you: 'politics, pundits & piss-takers' or 'playfully weird'. "I thought I had a 'category' for everthing, but quite evidently I don't. Especially schizophrenics and alter egos." Until Natalie replies, meet Augustine. Worse than liking France, she's part of something which also likes Americans. Conceived in a brain that was born here, and now has dual nationality. It's terrifying. Rather than run the risk of posting Augustine's chats with Saddam and others and being made to walk the plank, we're going to see the 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. Or whatever it's called. I also need to discourage Marianne from pursuing her photolog (heavens, a permalink, of sorts). Next thing we know, she'll be dragging me into it. Or the wildcat! She'd claw my eyes out! We'd be ruined. 4:33:08 PM  link   your views? [] Enchantment in the kingdom of the cats ('The Cat Returns') "It wasn't long enough" was all Marianne objected to in 'The Cat Returns' ('Neko no ongaeshi'), the latest fine fable from Hayao Miyazaki's Ghibli studio to reach the French capital. At 75 minutes, the story of Haru, a schoolgirl who is only too richly rewarded for saving the life of a cat, lacks the epic sweep of a 'Princess Mononoke' but clearly it mainly targets a younger audience. The Miyazaki magic shines through in this humorous screen-poem by Hiroyuki Morita, henceforth another name to watch. The small children in the cinema thoroughly enjoyed themselves, as all cat-lovers will. They were too young to notice how the sorcerer's apprentice more than tipped his cap to Lewis Carroll. The elegant feline Haru rescues from the wheels of an articulated truck proves to be an eligible prince, whose grateful and decadent father decrees that the girl deserves to visit the Kingdom of the Cats and will make the ideal spouse for his son. Light as a child's dream, the fairy tale packs in plenty of adventure. Haru finds allies in the most aristocat Baron (on the left in the Ghibli pic) and in Muta, the bruiser tomcat with a heart of gold. These characters apparently made a first appearance in 'Whispers of the Heart', drawn from work by the same manga artist, Aoi Hiiragi, which we missed. Music, as ever, plays a big part in the film. Yuji Nomi's score can be sweeter than syrup at times, there's a funny chase and a wonderful waltz, and fans of the more "modern" classics will enjoy picking out pastiches of Prokofiev, Richard Strauss and others. It works very well. Those who fell for 'Anastasia' will know what I mean, but the only song comes with the credits. For the youngsters, there's also a gentle moral presented with the humanism characteristic of the bigger productions from Ghibli (a Sahara wind). Haru can only avoid a marriage she doesn't want by "becoming herself". The French called this one 'Le Royaume des Chats'. Let's hope it's a prelude to longer, more developed plots from Morita, who hitherto animated some of the key passages, according to Allociné, in films by the master himself. The art director here was Naoya Tanaka, whose style is pure and often pastel. If Haru herself is little different from many a Japanese screen child, Tanaka is very attentive to the portrayal of the cats ... and pulls off a stunt I've not often seen in a 2D movie with a venture into slow motion. 1:56:18 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.