Tomorrow sees the UK release of the film “W”.  All about George W. Bush.  And boy, following the ground breaking, earth shattering, all emotional, change of the world’s fortunes, after the US election and the success of Obama winning the US Presidency, we can now watch this film with a more relaxed demeanour.

It is  good film, directed by Oliver Stone, who is known to tackle controversial topics. It is very well casted with Josh Brolin, recently in American Gangster and No Country for Old Men, acting as the president. He plays him expertly, we even like him. He is potrayed, from the beginning as having behavioural and drink problems, he plays second-fiddle to his brother and is constantly chasing the affection and approval of his father, Bush senior.

It is interesting that Bush junior realises the American dream and fights for his position and manages to receive the ultimate accolade, the US Presidency.

Perhaps, this is why at this moment Bush can admire how far Obama has come. 

Bush has been portrayed as a “nice” guy, albeit with issues, which makes him even more human, a bit bullish and headstrong, he is not evil as such, but he makes mistakes because he’s misguided and shallow and maybe a bit simple and stupid. He unfortunately encompasses all that America is today. A disaster!

We see how his close advisers such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, orchestrate the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  They don’t really care about weapons of mass destruction, but are clearly intent on grabbing all the world’s oil lands and creating world domination. Bush himself looks dismayed and even admits it all sounds a bit scary but he goes along with it.

The main message throughout the film is that Bush has made a big mess, he knows it, but doesn’t know what to do, and the ultimate humiliation is that his father is ashamed that he has ruined the Bush legacy.

George W. Bush never seemed in control, he is portrayed as a charicature of a southern US President, and at the moment the most powerful country in the world is a joke, a parody of itself.

It’s good to hear Obama talk about founding fathers, democracy and liberty and truth. 

The US really does need to back to the drawing board.

Let’s hope Obama can save the world!

Yesterday I attended an large event hosted by The Times BFI London Film Festival. It was called “Power to the Pixel”.

Its director, Liz Rosenthal, described the event as looking ahead to the “power of the Internet and digital platforms” and how it can “offer new opportunities for those creators and companies that can no longer effectively function within the old film business”.  Apparently some of the big players acknowledge “the sky is really falling” in the independent film business.

This event indeed was a focussed insight into the world of the internet, which as the day proceeded, it became very apparent was a very different animal to that of the movie making world of old.

The internet is highly accessible, democratic, unsupervised and free whereas the traditonal film-making world is elitist, closed, favours the well-off, and is very regulated and is highly monetised.

How can the two world possibly mix.

The event opened with a very competent but lateral description of the various platforms that any film-maker now has to be able to address, before even writing a script. Be it, film, online, gaming, virtual reality etc, etc. Its all exciting if you enjoy all these mediums but if you just want to shoot a movie it is highly distracting.  Other speakers on the stage were Brian Newman of the Tribeca Film Institute, who gave us a detailed description of how the back catalogue of TFI was now available through Amazon.  Its interesting how he viewed Amazon as an OK place to sell high quality material.

On Friday, I attended the event “British Film Boom” which was held at BAFTA as part of the Times BFI London Film Festival.

I have to say it was a bustling event with many ‘filmy’ types with dark clothes and big specs. Of course, not everyone looked like this but get the picture.  I was squeezing it in before a friend’s birthday dinner so wanted to meet, greet and go.

It was basically a panel discussion with the panelists consisting of directors and producers to four of the British films featured in the film festival; “Shifty”, “Telstar”, “Franklyn” and “I Know You Know”. www.TheScreen.Biz website actually showcases these films as well.

I have to say the panel discussion was a quintessential British affair with each panelist having their very own identity, completely different to the one sitting next to them, diverse, eccentric, interesting but all were passionate, engaging and were oh so enthusiastic about their art.

The “Shifty” team were young and keen, and were very excited to be in a position to be telling us their story. And it was a good story.  Eran Creevy the director was not shy in sharing his experiences and they were not at all clean and straight cut, and definitely not traditional BAFTA fodder.  However, he was probably the most passionate and articulate in sharing his love of film. The Telstar team were equally interesting in that their producer Simon Jordan was a little like a character out of “The Business” in that he had a healthy glow, very blond hair and a slick South London accent.  He was in fact a manager of Crystal Palace football club and did indeed own bars / restaurants in Spain.  However he was sharp and businesslike and was not prepared to entertain the very experience Sally Hibbin because she had had a few too many wines. His director Nick Moran was equally refreshing in the indie film world in that he was also very down to earth, could tell a good story and was full of energy.  The Franklyn team were the more stereotypical filmy types in that the producer, Gerald McMorrow, was the more seasoned filmer with a history in music videos and commercials.  His director Jeremy Thomas was quite thoughtful and pensive.  Then finally there was the I Know You Know team consisting of director, Justin Kerrigan, who told a father/son story which he was very passionate about following the death of his own father.  His producer was the emminent Sally Hibbin, a regular producer for Ken Loach, who as mentioned above was a bit slurry.  So this team was the most poignant but one has to say this all completely added to the colour, flavour and diversity of British film.  

I was very energised by the energy and originality stemming from these characters and will definitely look forward to seeing who might be featuring in the British Film Boom next year.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be able to attend the opening gala of The Times BFI London Film Festival - “Frost/Nixon”.

This film, like many of the London Film Festival films, there is an underlying intellectualism and politics as opposed to either sheer glitz or on the other side sheer grime.

I find this pitching of films very comfortable as in, if either the photography or the script or the acting is not quite fully polished at least one will be engaged in a world event of some significance.

This could somewhat describe the film “Frost / Nixon” where ironically we are looking at the biggest scandal of all the Presidents of the United States of America, yet we come away feeling more emotional about this criminal on the world’s stage than enjoy the fact that he gets exposed.

I am too young to fully know the ins and outs of Nixon’s Presidency but my mother is American and the word Nixon was mentioned quite a lot in the home in a derogatory way, so I always grew up with an ingrained idea that he was a very bad man.  We also had a game at home called “Watergate” - to this day I still don’t know what it involved but I knew that it wasn’t nice and wasn’t for kids.

This is why I was very confused at this depiction of the Frost / Nixon story.  Frost was portrayed very weakly character.  Although he probably had more celluloid miles than Nixon, I never came away supporting him, sympathising with him or particularly wanting him to win.  If I had never heard of Nixon before I surely would have wanted him to win.  I began to think that maybe the history books and all those investigators and journalists had it all wrong.  That really he was a really nice man, a down home American boy, with the US population in his heart and didn’t really understand the difference between legal and illegal.  Looking at how things go on today it seems a bit small fry.

I guess this is all down to the actor behind Nixon, Frank Langella, who has already won awards for playing this role on stage.  I have to say that whether his depiction is realistic or not, he steals every scene.  He is a dangerous mixture of All-American, homely, charming, charismatic, yet also the underdog in that he’s not particularly good-looking, he’s self-effacing, doesn’t seem particularly confident, yet has a killer argument and a killer instinct.  Our hearts warm to him because he is portrayed having a heart.

I don’t know if this should be allowed, because I’ve never heard of Nixon being charismatic or having a heart.  But then again why should a film portray us having more sympathy with a British chat show host, albeit well educated and able, than a president of the United States.  Surely the President is the higher being.

Michael Sheen, who plays Frost, never grabs the viewer more than Langella, Perhaps, this is intended, but I would have preferred to like Frost more and wanted Nixon to be an evil being.  Sheen did not score many points with me, he seems purely interested in making a superficial name for himself, not concerned with world issues and only interested in parties and pretty women.  This does not equal nailing Nixon.

The film portrayed this as only working because Nixon wanted to give himself up.  His conscience was playing on him and suddenly he was lulled into a sense of confession by a bumbling British interviewer.

Nevertheless, the film was well shot, well executed, other performances such as Frost’s girlfriend, Rebecca Hall and Nixon’s right hand-man, Kevin Bacon, were particularly notable.

However, I came away wishing I had met the real Nixon, he seemed a charismatic, clever, and sentimental man especially as he left the stage stroking the ear of fluffy brown dog.

He was definitely the bigger man.

This weekend sees the national releases of two British films, Guy Ritchie’s “Rock N Rolla” and Saul Dibb’s “The Duchess”. They are both accomplished, polished and sellable films.  But are they really great examples of British filmmaking or are they just falling into the stereotypical, period drama and comic book ganster film?  Can’t we do better than this?

This film has been called Guy Ritchie’s return to form, following two flops, namely “Swept Away” (starring his wife Madonna) and “Revolver”.  It is indeed a well produced and directed film. It tells the story of how property has become the biggest commodity in the London crime scene.  A Russian mobster orchestrates a crooked land deal which puts millions of dollars on the plate for any and all of the London underworld.  And indeed they all creep out from the woodwork and fight and scrap for their share of the pie. 

Guy Ritchie is very experienced in this genre and has been successful with his earliest two films, “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch”.  Ritchie captured the mood at the time where British culture was ruling on both sides of the Atlantic, including its small gangster credentials.  But this was ten years ago and surely the genre has been ‘done’.  Ritchie maintains his previous writing and directing style in creating cartoon-like gangsters where they all have moniker’s - as in “One Two” and “Mumbles” and there are many mockney accents in flow. 

This makes this a slightly patronising portrayal of crime in the big city, it’s clear that Guy Ritchie has very little real contact with this lifestyle.  Can’t he write a film about his life with Madonna - surely there is enough subject matter and resources to make a dramatic, gripping film that would surely supersede any ‘pretend’ gangster film. 

Another release this weekend that also just scratches the surface of UK filmmaking is “The Duchess”. Directed by Saul Dibb, this is a slight departure from his usual subject matter, in that he previously directed “Bullet Boy” - a gritty urban tale about gun culture.  Saul had previously worked on documentaries and tv mini series and so he must have felt under pressure to deliver the goods in making a complicated period drama with a big cast, namely Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes and Charlotte Rampling. 

He does indeed rise to the occasion and it is a well made film.  It tells the story of Georgina Spencer, an eighteenth century society woman.  Georgina is married off to the wealthy, well connected, Duke of Devonshire.  But the Duke never seems to love Georgina despite her beauty and charisma and he ends up having an affair with her best friend.  She in turn goes on to have an affair which results in bitterness and scandal.  The story has been compared to that of Princess Diana, and it is indeed one of the film’s selling points that Georgina Spencer was a distant relation of Diana.

Of course, the film orientates around the lead actress, Keira Knightley, and it is a big role to carry. Keira is a beauty and is cute playing in films such as “Pirates of the Caribbean” - but she still hasn’t achieved the depth to leave any impression on more complicated roles.  It’s getting quite boring that she keeps getting cast in quite big films because one feels that it is basically the same performance.

Despite these criticisms both “Rock N Rolla” and “The Duchess” are well made films and will certainly be entertaining audiences over this coming weekend.