Broken Lines

Sallie Aprahamiam directs her debut feature, Broken Lines is an emotional journey of loyalty and love set against the multi-cultural diversity of London's growing suburbia.

The film is co-written by cast members Doraly Rosa and Dan Fredenburgh and is a romantic tragedy that accentuates the very best in contemporary British cinema and seeks to answer an ultimate truth: to whom do we owe loyalty and why?

After the sudden death of his father, a newly-engaged Jewish man, Jake (Dan Fredenburgh) plunges into a charged love affair with an attached young waitress B (Doraly Rosa). Both are searching for happiness and don’t want to give up on their life long dreams, but are trapped by their existing responsibilities to the lives they have already created.

Co-starring Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams - two fine actors who do not take the leading roles and instead take the supporting characters who are portraits of what the lead pair may become - the film is acted wonderfully most especially by Bettany who as Chester, B's boyfriend, plays the crippled ex-fighter with this mixture of charm and trauma.  Demasculinised by his paralysis, his behaviour has led to B willing to indulge in an affair.  Williams plays Jake's uptight fiancee, Zoe, who although cold does not play her totally inhuman.

Whilst it is noble of Bettany-Williams to give the film some notable cache by having their names above the title, their roles are peripheral and not central to that of Fredenburgh and Rosa, who although they wrote the screenplay, do give the impression that they do not totally know the characters they have created with Jake being too self-absorbed to get our sympathy and Zoe, not fully formed to warrant our resentment.  Also the semantics of calling Rosa's character B (as in plan B for his life) is a little bit sloppy and fails to give her a full identity apart from a letter.

Worryingly, this film was made in 2008 and received a screening at the London Film Festival the same year, before a limited release in 2011 and now this DVD release before the start of 2012.

Whilst Aprahamiam whose previous TV credits include Teachers and This Life, shows herself more than competent with her eye of London, thanks in part to the work of DP Jean-Louis Bompoint - the film is actually a work of 2008, there is a lot of colour and visual flair, which looks odd compared to a lot of London-based films of the post recession.  Compare this film with its bright moments to that of the duller pallete of Dexter Fletcher's Wild Bill, whereas that film wears its morbidity on its sleeve, in Broken Lines the darker content is all underneath.

Leaving the film as one which is flawed but nevertheless admirable thanks in part to the resounding success of Bettany's performance.

Broken Lines is released on DVD on Monday 5th December by Axiom Films

Conflict of Interest

The Carling Cup or League Cup to give it its more traditional title has suffered in the last 20 years more than any other competition due to the growth of football in England and the growing wealth of money available to successful teams in the Champions League.

As teams strive for success and glory in Europe - certain teams attempt to win four seperate titles - alas one competition has to take a backseat in terms of affection.  After the League, European and the tradition of the FA cup - something has to be given short shift.

Reserve sides, youth players, second XIs have all been picked by major sides most famously Manchester United and Arsenal - who use early round games as a chance to breed fringe players and give second choice goalkeepers a full game in case injury thwarts the first choice.  While these two sides have been criticised, they have nevertheless still reached major finals and even won on occasion; while for other teams it is seen as an opportunity to win a major piece of silverware in an otherwise disastrous season - Birmingham City, last year who surprised Arsenal.

Yet this week the Carling Cup is back in the spotlight owing not to negative team selection but poor scheduling by the governing bodies.  We have reached the quarter final stage and there remain 5 of the top 7 sides in the Premier League (Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea) and Cariff v Blackburn along with Crystal Palace.

Oddly, Blackburn who are suffering under the stewardship of Steve Kean are one game away from a cup semi-final;are they like Birmingham did last year going to have a day out at Wembley.  You expect Man Utd for all their poor finishing of late to still see off the challenge of Championship Palace.

However, the intrigue lies in the other two matches: Chelsea v Liverpool and Arsenal v Man City, less than 48 hours ago Liverpool played Manchester City to a 1-1 draw at Anfield on Sky Sports.  Both teams have had to travel to London for their respective quarter finals, both managers Kenny Dalglish and Roberto Mancini have bemoaned the fact that they have been subjected to poor scheduling whereas Man United who played Saturday afternoon have an extra day of rest and preparation.

Mancini has more reason to moan as this would be his team's third match in a tricky week which started with a defeat in Naples which jeopardised progress to the Champions League knockout phase - and due to suspension he is without Gareth Barry and Mario Balotelli.  Back ups and reserve players will get a runout amongst them - Costel Pantilimon, Owen Hargreaves, Denis Suarez, Karim Rekik and Stefan Savic.

Liverpool however are not playing European competition so the Carling Cup should be seen as a real incentive for a team and club in need of some glory.  To ask his squad to play another game is not so much a big ask - the problem has been the travelling south to London which would have occured on Monday morning, they may well have stretched and run out late afternoon and rest until late morning today to wipe cobwebs.  Liverpool are capable of fielding a competitive side with Jamie Carragher expected to get a first start in a month; Dalglish is pretty miffed by the whole thing.

What must be remembered is that the League cup is not the property of the Premier League it is run by the Football League the governing body of the Championship and its two lower tiers and the 72 clubs that play in those divisions.  Yet they invite the Premier League clubs to play as they need the exposure and allure of these clubs to take it seriously, otherwise the competition would become a bigger version of the Johnstone Paints Trophy.

Solutions would be to distinguish set dates for the competition, luckily none of the Europa League teams (Spurs, Fulham, Stoke, Birmingham) made it to this stage as they would have had to have their games rearranged to next week, which would have made further headaches.  Another would be to reduce the teams in the Premier League to 18 and therefore less games in total per club, this would mean more money from television deals yet the Football League would not like more teams to drop down to the lower divisions.

The solution must be sought by better dialogue between the Premier League clubs and the Football League body otherwise this will not be sorted and will just happen again; as for Dalglish's threat of playing youth players, someone should tell him that never hurt the progress of Arsenal or United players in gaining experience.

Poetry

Lee Chang-Dong is hardly the first filmmaker to send a protagonist on a journey of discovery that changes their perception of the world, but no one’s ever put a sixtysomething granny in the early stages of Alzheimer’s through an adult-education poetry class as a way of crafting a social statement about a self-absorbed patriarchy’s paucity of human insight.

We watch and learn – about South Korea certainly, but about ourselves too – though this never becomes a duty, since Lee’s is a filmmaker with a conscience, who deploys it in an astringent challenge to our assumptions rather than sentimental pandering.

Lee is esteemed at home and on the festival circuit (he’s a regular in competition at Cannes), but this is the first of his five features to secure UK theatrical distribution. It’s fair to say that the subject-matter, encompassing poetry, dementia, sexual abuse and suicide, is likely to be a hard sell, but the quality of the film is such that it simply demands an airing.

Here the elderly Mija reacts to news of her irreversible Alzheimer’s by signing up for a poetry class,so  why even enter an arena that’s about shaping enhanced perceptions through the skilled command of language? In essence, that’s the puzzle which drives the story forward, as the viewer tries to make connections between poetry and the unfolding dilemma whereby the old lady is happens upon some blood money, and the other narrative string involving a rape.

Leading lady Yun Jung-Hee, a Korean screen legend who emerged from 16 years of retirement to provide the latest in a series of truly remarkable female performances in Lee’s filmography, proves uncannily adept at showing how Mija’s meek exterior hides a stern interior that can challenge the male dominated environment she comes upon.

The film is a companion to Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother (where the social observation stems from the matriarch’s determination to deny her slow-witted son’s guilt in a murder case), whereas that story took on the conventions of a crime thriller and procedural detective genre, here Lee is more of a naturalistic director who makes you think you have stumbled upon a real life conversation.

The results are powerful, and not just in the way we come to sense how Mija’s misadventures with the local poetry group that is frequently hijacked by men egotistically parading their would-be sensitivity – effectively dovetail with the rape storyline by highlighting the male sense of entitlement seemingly running through every layer of Korean society.

Lee proves himself to be an astute and delicate filmmaker who is able to make a film that is both beguiling and yet politically conscious of sexual politics in a very restrained nation.  The film was lauded at Cannes in 2010 and fully deserves this wide release on DVD.

Poetry is released on DVD by Rabbit Publicity on Monday 28th November, who I thank for the check disc.

Parked

Darragh Byrne's feature debut tells the story of Fred Daly (Colm Meaney) who having returned to Ireland after working in England has no fixed abode and so takes to living in his car in a seaside car park.  He seems settled and contented enough, while still winding up the local welfare services hoping for help with housing and benefits.

Then a young drug user, Cathal (Colin Morgan), arrives in his beaten up yellow car and they slowly bond and build a friendship.  They take to going to the public swimming baths, where Fred befriends a Finnish woman, Jules (Milka Ahlroth) and they have a sort of romantic courtship - whilst Fred is eager to engage with her, he is nonetheless shy about his current living environment.

Cathal is convinced Fred can sort his life out, and it works with Fred's story garnering some press attention; and so Fred wants to return the favour but his ever worsening drug habit starts to hit Cathal as drug dealers come in search of money.

Ciaran Creagh's first feature length screenplay is a brilliant work of characterisation and place - so little is told to us about the character's reasons for being were they are and why they are here that it is given subtexts of mystery and enigmatic qualities.  It is no surprise to hear that Byrne counts as his influences the two films from Tom McCarthy, The Station Agent and The Vistior

The film is helped in no small amount by the superb pairing of Meaney and Morgan as the male protagonists, Meaney that warm hearted soul and Morgan all fire and hostility - Fred and Cathal should not be friends, and yet sometimes in adversity the strangest friendships can ferment.  Both actors are able to shed themselves from their most famous roles; Meaney and his Star Trek association and Morgan and his eponymous role in BBC's Merlin.

Shot with a stream of lo-fi independent quality, lots of close-ups shot by John Conroy but Byrne is able to really shoot a sensethe cold environment and there is this lovely piano led melody - composed by Niall Byrne - searing throughout the film, a nod to Jules' character as a piano tutor. Yet this tinge of melancholy reminded me of Aki Kaurismaki's Lights in the Dusk (2006) - a story of impossible friendships with a tinge of bitterness.

It may not be original and the third act may go against all the goodwill of the previous two acts yet Parked's narrative about homelessness and outsiders from this angle is produced with a real tenderness and conviction rarely seen in British and Irish productions.

A Model of Consistency

Tottenham Hotspur, following their dominant 2-0 win over Aston Villa on Monday evening, sit in 3rd place in the Premier League.

A position that after the first two league games against both Manchester clubs would have been unimaginable - two games, two defeats, one goal scored, eight conceded. Tottenham looked brittle next to the two juggernauts of the North West.

Yet, slowly but surely Tottenham have turned the corner and navigated the fixture list with assurance. Admittedly during those two August fixtures there were still some unanswered questions concerning player personnel - the future of Luka Modric was uncertain due to the interest of Chelsea; Scott Parker was not signed until the penultimate day of the transfer window and there was a spate of injuries in defence meaning combinations like Bassong and Corluka were having to fend off the might of Manchester City - Nasri, Dzeko, Aguero and Silva ran riot at White Hart Lane.

The change seemed to come following the signing of Parker and the first game at Wolves - the sort of fixture last season Spurs would lose, this time they left with a 2-1 victory and then followed it up the next weekend with a resounding 4-0 home win over Liverpool (who admittedly ended with 9 men).
Then came the crunch game against Arsenal, who although had their chances it was their own defensive and goalkeeping frailties that led to Kyle Walker scoring the winner in a 2-1 victory.

Spurs have only drawn one game out of 9 games, a 2-2 draw away to Newcastle where they conceded only in the last five minutes to drop two points otherwise it would have been 27 points out of 27 and Tottenham would be only two points behind Man United in second place. Spurs still have a game in hand (home to Everton) which was unfortunately cancelled following the civil unrest in mid August.

A reason I feel that Spurs are doing so well is down to a consistency of selection and also not having the headache of serious European competition to worry about. Tottenham are in the Europa League but Harry Redknapp and his staff are using those games against Rubin Kazan, PAOK Salonika and Shamrock Rovers as breeding ground for his reserve team players - Jake Livermore has especially shone on these occasions. The same would have been said of the Carling Cup but they lost in a lottery of a penalty shoot-out away to Stoke.

However, the lack of fixture congestion and use of squad depth is helping one Ledley King especially. Ledley plays one game and he knows he has a week to sustain and regain his fitness before the next encounter. King's presence at the bag and coupled with the signing of veteran Brad Friedel in goal has led to youngsters like Younes Kaboul and Kyle Walker allowed to express themselves. King did the same trick with Michael Dawson, he has this unbelievable ability of making the man next to him look like he is having a blinder.

Spurs are benefiting from a fixed and settled starting XI - it has been the same men starting the last three and four games. The American in goal; Walker, Kaboul, King, Assou-Ekotto; Bale, Modric, Parker, Lennon; Van der Vaart and Adebayor.

This settled selection means the team knows they must perform to keep their places and their are players who can and will come in to do a job if necessary - Corluka, Sandro, Defoe and Bassong. Tom Huddlestone and Michael Dawson remain on the injury sidelines but will be welcome upon their return.

In contrast, Manchester City with all their highly publicised signings have made a rod for their own back. The constant requirement to keep everyone happy and the forging forward on four trophy hunts means that their is no fluidity in selection. Case in point, at the weekend Micah Richards and Gael Clichy had blinding games going forward in the 3-1 win over Newcastle from their respective full back positions. Yet in Napoli they were dropped for Kolarov and Zabaleta. This more defensive line-up belittled their attacking instincts and negated a negative performance away from home, where they went to not lose the game they did. Now City and their millions must fear the prospect of having to play Thursday night football like they did last year. It will be a big kick in the teeth to fail at the first attempt in the Champions League.

Arsenal after an early season collapse at Old Trafford are profiting from a steady line-up and a full season from Robin Van Persie, who is scoring for fun. The return of Tomas Vermaelen has helped.

Manchester United due to injuries to both central defenders Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic have also suffered from a lack of continuity, and the nervousness surrounding David de Gea's debut season means those in front of him might not fully trust him.

Chelsea are really suffering - a new young manager is struggling to impose his ideas on an old guard of senior professionals - they have lost four out of seven and themselves are struggling to reach the knockout stages of the Champions League, having to defeat Valencia at home in their final game to avoid the Europa League.

In contrast, Tottenham in their first foray into Europe did not change their tactics and kept on attacking even when 4-0 down away in the San Siro - a 4-3 loss that galvanised that campaign and led to Gareth Bale being christened the best left back in the world. Whereas many people adored Tottenham's ability to adapt to the scheduling and challenges - there appears to be a certain type of pleasure in seeing City struggle as they attempt to keep as many plates spinning at once. They will be the most dominant side in English football perhaps for the next five years - but they need to get a more consistent system in place and like they have done with Tevez, if people do not want to fit the bill or play their necessary role, show them the door. As there will certainly be people willing to replace them.

NFL - Week 11 roundup

Whenever you survey the NFL landscape you are sure of one thing - you can never be sure of anything in the NFL.  Teams win convincingly on the road, yet lose humbly at home the next.  Injuries burden teams with insurmountable odds, heroes turn into villains from one week to the next.  Myself and other bloggers like picking the game results, no-one can ever be perfect as more than likely you will cock up somewhere, I myself went close to perfect but for two games. 

I picked the Jags to win in Cleveland, alas Blaine Gabbert could not convert four opportunities from within the five yard line to get the go-ahead touchdown; and the Vikings could not make up the half-time deficit though their future looks good as they played incredibly well -making that comeback without the influential Adrian Petersen.

Elsewhere, teams roll on though nothing is certain.  The Packers had their closest game of the season since playing the Saints in week 1 with the Bucs young team coming close to the upset, always staying tight and even intercepting Aaron Rodgers, though 35-26 was probably a fair result.

The Giants lost their second straight game this time in a divisonal match-up versus the Eagles who oddly won without Michael Vick under centre, this time Vince Young putting together a winning drive that gave the 17-10 victory in the MetLife stadium.  This was an ugly game, and could be a costly defeat for the Giants who now look like not being a 2 seed cos of the consistent Packers and 49ers, if they win the NFC East they will be a 4 seed cos the Saints will probably be ahead of them.

The most action packed game was Detroit v Carolina which ended 49-35 to the Lions though they were way behind at the half, yet the Lions who are slow starters in every game came alive behind Matthew Stafford's 5 TDs and they were helped by Cam Newton's 4 picks. The Lions play the Packers this Thursday on Thanksgiving, the Lions have a chance but they need to start early otherwise they will find it harder to overcome such a deficit against the Superbowl Champions.

The Cowboys are building momentum and it continued as they overcame a resilient Redskins 27-24 in Overtime in Washington, Romo connected well with Jason Witten for a huge TD and thanks to the Giants loss they are tied atop the division.

The Bengals suffered another defeat to a division rival as they went down to Baltimore 31-24 on the road, although they have winnable games remaining on the schedule (Redskins, Rams, Browns) so they can still grab a wildcard spot and with Andy Dalton playing some good football (24-45, 373), one pass to Andre Caldwell (49yds) was inch perfect as the receiver caught it in stride and sauntered into the endzoen.  The Ravens remain unbeaten at home, yet they need to sort out their road form as there three costly defeats (Jags, Seahawks, Tennessee) have all been on the road.

Chicago stayed in the hunt for a wildcard spot by defeating the Chargers 31-20 at home, yet it came at a price as Jay Cutler has reportedly suffered a fractured right thumb (his throwing hand) which rules him out for the remainder of the regular season.  Whilst Matt Forte has been getting the numbers and spotlight in a contract year, lately Cutler's impressive leadership and being able to stay upright has dictated the outcome of the games like the dominant win over Detroit last week.  Yet without him, the Bears will struggle down the stretch although four winnable games against west opponents (@ Raiders, Chiefs, @ Broncos, Seattle ) are not now and they finish with a brutal road double at Green Bay and Minnesota - from 7-3 to 10-6 might be good enough but if the Lions keep winning it might not be, depending on the Falcons, Giants, Cowboys.

Kudos to the Dolphins in my pick of the weekend as they destroyed the sinking Bills 35-8 at a near empty home stadium.  Miami became the first team in NFL history to start 0-7 and then win their next three games, standing at 3-7 they are now a team full of confidence, Matt Moore not making mistakes and they are getting results off of turnovers.  And to think Tony Sparano (head coach) would not have made the bye week after a 0-4 start to comeback and get this sort of result.  There last six games are at Dallas, Oakland, Eagles, @ Buffalo, @New England, ending with Jets at home, the playoffs may be out of reach but each team they play has those postseason ambitions so they can certainly influence the playoff standings and seedings.

I am liking the 49ers but they were lucky they were only playing the Arizona Cardinals who completely stunk after winning in Philadelphia last week.  In the first half, Alex Smith marched his offense down the field yet they only held a 9-0 lead at the half as they could not convert redzone possession, David Akers could even afford to miss two attempts.  Better teams would not give you so many chances, so something to keep in mind.  San Fran have a short week travelling to Baltimore as brothers go head-to-head but I feel the 49ers may come up short here.

Tonight the Patriots are at home to the Chiefs who have lost Matt Cassel for the season, expect a big win for the Patriots and a great opportunity for a young defence to get some consistency and force some turnovers.

I hope for a big win, but as week 11 like every other week shows Bo Diddley was right,'you never can tell'

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen.

Alex Gibney is most famous for his Oscar winning documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Client 9, his take on the end of Eliot Spitzer's governorship of New Jersey.  Gibney is at times prolific yet his ability to be almost Winterbottom-esque to his output does not mean the quality of the material is diminished.  Gibney is versatile - overtly political most of the time, he is not an angry documentarian like Michael Moore, nor attempts to be front and centre like his fellow American.  Gibney remains firmly away from the camera, he chooses to use generic documentary conventions like voiceovers and interviews to tell the story.

For Magic Trip, all the material to tell the story has been assembled for some time.  The problem has been one of synchronisation between the visuals and the audio track.  For years, the tapes of film were put into a vault for decades until Gibney and his colleague, Alison Ellwood come to restore pride to the work, they were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history.

The whole essence for the cross-country trip stems from a post-1963 funk that the author Ken Kesey has gotten himself into following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of that year.  The story goes that Kesey was in New York with friends to visit the forthcoming site of the World Fair in 1964 (archive footage of JFK phoning/dialling '1-9-6-4' is particularly poignant), and he hit upon the idea when driving in his Station Wagon and listening to news from Dallas of the President's death, Kesey fell upon an idea to drive cross country in a bus with friends and aim for the World Fair.

The film uses archive interviews with now older travellers reflecting upon their trip as they reminisce and view the footage for the first time in years.  So instead of a narrator, Gibney uses the actual passengers to tell the story and paint the picture along with the masses of visual evidence.  This is an engaging type of direction for this type of picture - instead of talking head interviews with people sat in a dark room, you have this alternative type of director's commentary going on that places you right in the action, making you feel a part of this alternative voyage of personal discovery across America.

Unlike other road trips that have characters who become crazy on the trip, a lot of them admit that they are not all there and are not helped by the doses of LSD they ingest on the journey.

The film apart from a solid documentary about the craziest bus ride it is also a potted history of the use of recreational drug use.  The document also notes about how America is slowly changing and when they arrive in New Orleans, they note how music changes there, how the feminist movement began and how the Civil Rights movement was slowly beginning to rumble as Dr. Martin Luther King made his speech in Selma.

At times the comedy can be a little forced as the group having lived, driven and slept together for so long do struggle for entertainment purposes, Neal Cassady becomes the entertainment chair of the group and at times the joke falls on deaf ears.

Yet that criticism is itself a minor one, as the film is cleverly about more than the trip but about the creation of friendships and life-long bonds between people who may not ordinarily have been grouped together during a monumental change of the American landscape as music, society and politics were changing forever - with the spirit of Kerouac and the first people who headed out west in search of new frontiers as wind in their sails, or petrol in the bus perhaps.

This group decided to go and see the America they thought they knew, their document stands up as a vital part of the counter-culture Sixties.

The film is in cinemas from 18th November and will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray from 28th November and is distributed by Organic Marketing.