A fantastic, moving and historically fascinating British drama chronicling the gay community of London’s attempt to help the Welsh miners picketing in 1984 as part of the larger nation-wide miner’s strike, one which encapsulated a major attack on the Thatcher government of the day and whose outcome would affect the fabric of British commerce forevermore. The community see a commonality between their struggle for the promotion of gay rights and the fight that the miners are engaged in, and when their good intentions are originally rebuffed they decide to take their money direct to the source – rural Wales, where not everyone is quite as liberal and pleased to see them as they would have hoped.
Lots of good performances from the likes of Dominic West, Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton, and a particularly strong one from Ben Schnetzer playing the leader of the London group whose single minded determination drives forth the entire narrative. The story also introduces some of the earliest diagnosed British victims of HIV, and the contrast between what happens to the people it mentions is worthy of a film in its own right. This is one of the best treatments of inclusivity and equality in recent memory, with great moments like when one of the local Welsh girls breaks out into song in a crowded hall and everyone feels compelled to join in, as well as a fascinating political backdrop that certainly has strong echoes with the Tory government in power now, as well as interesting titbits of information, like how the same seam of coal runs along the Atlantic connecting Wales, Spain and North America.
A Scottish film from Edinburgh based production company Theatre Workshop, focusing on the 1926 Miner’s strike in Fife (the East coast region between the rivers Tay and Forth), which was in itself part of a larger worker’s strike throughout the United Kingdom playing a hugely important role in the Labour and trade union movement in the 20th century. The film manages that most difficult of things for any historical drama – balancing the importance of the event from a socio-political standpoint, and also relating the events to us in a believable and human way, evoking genuine emotional empathy for the characters onscreen.
The cast seems to be comprised of a mix of experienced and new actors alike, but they all unanimously do a great job – Jokie Wallace in particular as both the local magistrate and the principal organiser of the strike. In fact, for anyone wanting to gain more exposure to the Scots language, this is a very good film to practice with as a lot of the vocabulary that features is in common usage throughout the land and here both the pronunciation and the sound quality are excellent (the film is subtitled in English, much like ‘Trainspotting’ 96 was for American audiences).
Initially, and for the close of the film, we are shown interviews with the cast, talking about the impact the events told had on their forefathers and how they, by extension, have had an effect on their own lives and their shared heritage. The dramatisation that forms the movie’s heart focuses on the friendly local community that brings the strike to the fore, a community where nobody felt the need to lock their doors and who immortalised the slogan ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’ after mine bosses attempted to squeeze them for all they were worth.
It’s a story that is incredibly relevant for today, with the right wing eroding worker’s rights up and down the country once again, all in the name of their own profit with the ‘economic crisis’ the perfect excuse for a carte blanche attack on civil rights and liberties, and the continual extension of privatisation allowing the few to abuse the many who enjoy worse public services charged at ever higher rates, although this is something that Scotland has the opportunity to end in tomorrow’s independence referendum … Films like this are wonderfully educational with regards to the long fight people had for the rights that we now take for granted, the same principals that the Tory party in Britain, and the right wing further afield, are doing their best to obliterate. I don’t really understand why this didn’t get a much bigger general release when it came out (political reasons?) but for very good companion pieces to this see Ken Loach’s wonderful ‘The Spirit of ‘45’ (13) and the recent Polish film ‘Walesa – Man of Hope’, and to be honest there were moments in this that brought me uncomfortably close to actually shedding a tear.
The trailer for this made it look a lot more melodramatic than it is, a shame as it’s a solid film with a strong political context and an actual historical trial as framework for its main protagonists to flit around. Although the court case was real and seminal for the law of England and Wales, taking place in 1783, very little is known about the main characters other than their existence and their familial setup, so director Amma Asante and writer Misan Sagay had a lot of leeway with where to take them and the two pictured above are most famous for a painting of the pair of them, which can currently be seen in Scone Palace in Scotland.
Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the heroine of the piece, and as the daughter of a rich white man and a black slave she is raised by the family of the former whilst he goes off around the world never to return. She is accepted into the family, the rest of whom are played by Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Penelope Wilton and Sarah Gadon, but she must always know ‘her place’ until her and her sister reach the age of coming out, when they must quickly be married before consumption gets them or they decide to go frolicking in the rain and then die, often the fate of females in British period dramas.
The pace is perfect, the costumes are rich and the locations suitably grandiose with burgeoning bosoms in abundance – did ladies really wear corsets to breakfast? Doesn’t seem particularly conducive to digestion, nor so for their male companions who must have found it tricky to concentrate on their food, especially with the visible threat of explosion and the potential loss of one’s eye. The trial of the deplorable Zong massacre, which forms the backbone of the story, concerned the drowning of all the slaves onboard the Zong and her captain’s subsequent insurance claim against loss of earnings through unavoidable jettison of cargo – his claim being low water supplies only sufficient for his crew necessitated the killings. This presented the law with a rather thorny moral and monetary point to consider, and the head of Belle’s household, Lord Mansfield, is the man who must make the ruling.
In terms of film, it supplies a nice backstory to that of the fight for the abolition of slavery in the UK detailed in ‘Amazing Grace’ (06), but it is dangerous to think of it as a relic of the past as it still rears its ugly head in modern day Britain with recent rulings against the government in the high court in England to try to curb it. This refers to the forcing of those out of work for a certain amount of time (it was originally to be one year, but reports abound of less time than this) into work, which in principle I’m not sure many people would argue against, but work that they weren’t paid for, instead they just continued to receive state benefits working out at two pound something an hour (the legal minimum wage for anyone over 21 is more than six pounds an hour) – often for large companies like Tesco (who did at least eventually pull out of the scheme on moral grounds) immediately demonstrating that they could have in fact offered the individual a paid position, but would rather take on slave labour. If people didn’t comply, they were left with nothing and, as far as the government were concerned, to die.
Orchestrating this were middle men, private agencies, modern day slavers who did the same thing in Australia before they came here, where I believe their schemes were eventually brought to an end. Meanwhile here the high court ruled it wasn’t slavery but that it had been delivered in an illegal manner, which was a cop-out for the state really, but it did mean those affected could claim money back for any welfare suspension borne from refusing to comply with the system – and it was an individual who stuck her neck out to fight the Conservative government and achieved partial victory (The Red Dragon himself broached this issue with no less than two parliamentarians, with what can only be described as very limited results, proving the old adage ‘If you want something done, you have to do it yourself’).
Belle then is both a fascinating footnote in this story of human bondage and a well balanced drama with good performances from old hands and new faces alike, and it would be a wonderful idea indeed if the powers that be took heed of the more emotive and full of gusto speeches it delivers, since they can’t even muster a whimper in opposition to evil today unless they consider it to be within the purview of their own interests.
Universally panned by critics and booed by the Cannes audience that were, ahem, graced with its world premier. Despite ostensibly being about the life of Grace Kelly, one of the biggest movie stars of all time – who married Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956 to become Grace, Princess of Monaco, this is really just a short, albeit eventful, chapter of her life and centers around the politically charged cauldron of intrigue that the principality found itself in with Charles de Gaulle of France, who threatened to extinguish the nation’s sovereignty if he did not get his way (according to the film at any rate). Likely, this political context strongly influenced the negative reaction in Cannes, a mere 42km or so down the French Riviera from Monaco.
It is interesting – detailing an event in history that was certainly new to me, and indeed presenting one of those moments when you think to yourself, ‘how come I’ve never heard about this before?’. Well, part of the reason for this is that huge swathes of its ‘history’ are fabrications. The personal goings on are of course speculation and invention, with a few events which did occur but a decade earlier than shown, in fact the Royal Family of Monaco have suggested people simply obliterate the lot of it in a press release about the movie, but whilst artistic license with unknown material is to be expected the liberties taken with the facts are simply too egregious to be ignored – like showing de Gaulle being politically outmanoeuvred by Grace by her contriving to have him show up for an event that he never in reality actually attended, and portraying the French as almost pantomime bad guys in order to have the audience sympathise with the protagonists without properly explaining the debate at hand. It’s a shame, Tim Roth as Rainier and Nicole Kidman as Kelly are good to watch, the story flows fairly naturally with the idolisation of the central heroine feeling appropriate rather than gratuitous, although director Olivier Dahan certainly stumbles and falls on more than one occasion.
An effort has been made to mimic to a degree the cinematography of the films Kelly herself starred in – even using obvious studio screens for the backgrounds as Kidman drives around the winding precipitous upland roads of Monaco. Indeed, there is a nod in the direction of what oddly stands out as one of the most memorable scenes in ‘To Catch a Thief’ (55) as we watch Hitchcock (played by Roger Ashton-Griffiths) being driven up to a cliff edge overlooking the whole of the city and, by extension, the entire nation – in the movie Cary Grant and Grace Kelly drive up to the same spot and it’s memorable for both the view and the moment, but it’s also very obvious this scene takes place within a studio and then suddenly, when Grant gets out of the car and walks to the boot, it cuts to location footage with, presumably, body doubles, before once again cutting back to the studio when he gets back into the car. It’s good to know even one of the world’s most famous and revered filmmakers wasn’t afraid to fudge it when he had to …
The film also fits in nicely to this era in the life of Hitchcock and the stories told in both ‘Hitchcock‘ and ‘The Girl‘, in fact chronologically this should be watched in between the two if you intend to see all three. The ending continues to cause problems – the very end bizarrely feels more like that of ‘The Return of the King’ (03), but during a climatic speech from Princess Grace the camera zooms in way, way too much on her face. We can see globules of mascara collecting, the scar from Nicole Kidman’s nose job and the insides of her nostrils in high definition, her bloodshot eyes focused by collecting tears – it’s about as far removed from a classical edit as you can get and it does detract from the moment but, having said that, it does make even the very glamorous and beautiful Nicole Kidman herself look, well, the very opposite of that – perhaps it was an attempt at vulnerability, and to humanise the glamour? Perhaps …
With Frank Langella, Parker Posey and Derek Jacobi in support.
Based on the true story of James Gralton (Barry Ward) who returns to his native county Leitrim in Ireland in 1932, after having previously fought in the Irish Civil War and then lived in New York for a decade, and, at public bequest, he then sets about resurrecting the town hall for all sorts of social events like dancing and lessons, things that inject a new lifeblood into the heart of the community. Not everyone, however, is thrilled about this, and the local Catholic priest sees naught but Lucifer at work in the Jazz hands that are shaking in the night (I’m making this sound like ‘Footloose’ 84, it’s not), and thrown into the mix are the thoughts of the IRA with the hall labelled as a Marxist hub, as well as the Devil’s playground.
Of course, we are shown that what the protagonist has created is not only innocent and devoid of any overt political or religious intent, but is also a spark of something worthwhile for the people, rejuvenating the young and old alike in an area where opportunity rarely deigns to show its face. Unfortunately, the opponents of the gatherings have such strong views that they make its very existence political, and what begins as an isolated thing becomes the focus for something much bigger, as Jimmy ends up involved in what is voiced as a major problem throughout the land – that of an enormous divide between the landed gentry and the working class and the resultant eviction of poor, hard working tenants from their family homes that they’ve lived in for years as they can no longer afford the rates.
Where the film finds its main success is with its discussion of the role of the church regarding events and its influence over matters at the time, as well as its attitude towards them, and it highlights the issue well. Where it is less successful is in detailing the political makeup of Ireland at the time – we are given a mention of the background of the Civil War, and the IRA, and get a feel for the what the situation is, but it’s not as clear as it could be, and it feels like a slightly missing segment, nor is the emotional connection to the story as strong as you perhaps might want it to be, but it still resonates enough to hold interest throughout.
This is the latest film from director Ken Loach, who also so happens to be one of The Red Dragon’s top three directors of all time, and who has pulled a bit of a Miyazaki by announcing he was to retire from feature film work after this film, and then hinted he might change his mind – which was wonderful news, but he must never retire as he is one of the few directors who constantly carries a torch for the common man, often using real local people in his films as well as actors, and dramatising real events or social concerns – social realism as it’s called, and although this isn’t for me one of his best films, his work is always of value and always has a relevance for the present day.
The kind of social enterprise at work here, for example, is still something that is largely lacking in many places, even in a city the size of Edinburgh where there’s lots going on, you can easily find people at something of a loss as to what to do with themselves to socialize and just meet people, other than the standard drinking in bars and clubs. There are lots of groups and opportunities to be found online of course, and Ceilidh culture is thriving which is great, but the idea of a centralized hub that everyone is aware of where they can find all sorts of activities and events to just turn up to and then join in with, regardless of who they are or their experience, kind of just doesn’t exist. Seems like a bit of a societal oversight to me …
Written and directed by the animation legend that is Hayao Miyazaki (who retired after the film’s completion, although he also did the same thing after releasing ‘Princess Mononoke‘ …) this latest from Studio Ghibli returns to a familiar motif for the company – that of aerial flight, portraying a fictionalised biography of Jiro Horikoshi who we see literally dreaming of becoming an aeronautical engineer in Japan in the decades leading up to the Second World War, and we watch as he realises his dream, creating planes far greater than anything Japan had to offer previously, but at the same time they are perverted by the powers that be into machines of death and destruction. With the time and setting such as they are, there are constant haunting echoes of the disastrous future awaiting everyone, again a theme not new to the animation house. The film is very heavily burdened by a lacking narrative that really tests the audience’s patience, but it does just manage to salvage itself via, eventually, the introduction of a love story with a girl Jiro once saved when they were both younger, and who is now suffering from TB. This adds to the whole transient snapshot of creativity and life we’re watching, before the billowing flames of war burn all, and the variety of the skilled animation together with a very fitting score and sound design ensure it’s still a film of merit, but it probably should have been quite a bit better.
This really couldn’t be any more derivative of ‘Gladiator’ (2000) if it tried – you can imagine the execs behind it .. ‘hmm polls show that audiences loved Gladiator, and that films with lots of explosions in them do pretty well, so what we’ll do is make another Gladiator and then half way through it we’ll blow the shit out of everything!!!’. Which is exactly what we see as Vesuvius, the volcano that buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 79AD, detonates like a well timed nuclear explosion for the second half of the film, showering the audience with meteors, tsunamis, earthquakes, surprisingly little lava, and dreadful escape sequences with that horrible trope of action and disaster films – characters fleeing with disaster literally just one step behind, something we have largely been mercifully spared from of late, possibly after it was taken to excess by M. Night Shyamalan with his central characters managing to outrun the wind itself in ‘The Happening’ (08).
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who actually has done some really good films (well, one anyway – ‘Event Horizon’ in 97), but also has a series portfolio of lead weight B movies, here he’s not only copied the plot from Gladiator, but also tried to mimic the way it was directed, alas he is no Ridley Scott and it really shows. We see the warrior forced into slavery and the life of a gladiator (played in a wondrously wooden way by Kit Harrington, who seems to think he’s in a Vidal Sassoon advert for the film’s duration, see the picture above), who vows vengeance against the Roman ruler (Keifer Sutherland, attempting a posh English accent for some reason) that he will defy in the arena, cue thumbs up or down moment, but not before he’s befriended the nearest large black man to do a lot of the fighting for him (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who is the only one that can hold his head up high with a strong performance here) and managed to turn what was supposed to be a massacre for the slaves into their victory (battle against the Celts here replacing Carthage, although interestingly Scotland remained one of the few places the Romans failed to conquer – eventually opting to build not just one, but two walls to actually try and keep us out from the rest of their domain, ha!) and also captivating the sexual desire of the same woman that the Roman patrician also has his eye on (not the Roman’s sister on this occasion and played by Emily Browning, she is also sporting an English accent, so maybe she began as his sister and then they changed it).
The effects are fine, but it fails in pretty much every other department. We even see our leading man make a getaway from Pompeii with girl in toe on his horse’s back behind him (he can talk to animals and befriend any horse as well incidentally, which is no doubt what attracts the virginal attention of his mistress, whose previous sexual encounters will all have been on horses) and they are clean off into the night, when our hero decides he doesn’t want her to be a fugitive and he had best give himself up and say he gave her no choice. Or they could’ve kept on going and lived happily ever after. In fact they perform this same routine of complete stupidity not just once, but twice. Sigh. Despite the carnage and annihilation suffered by all around the two lovers make sure to always have enough time to fix their hair and deal with all their side plot elements, but at least Vesuvius doesn’t disappoint on the destruction scale, indeed this particular eruption is historically estimated to have emitted an amount of thermal energy many thousands of times that produced at Hiroshima and also buried several other cities in the region under ash – with tens of thousands of fatalities incurred by the roiling clouds of hot gas and rock (pyroclastic density currents) that swept the area at enormous speeds, something the film does represent, at times, really well (I don’t believe there were any meteoric asteroids though, I was there you see, chortling away to myself).
Vesuvius is currently one of sixteen volcanos being closely monitored around the world which are all volatile and present a serious threat to large populations, Naples for example is only circa 10km from Vesuvius.
The timing of coming to write this review couldn’t be any more topical. This is a well acted and well executed Polish film focusing on the real life exploits of Ryszard Kukliński, codename Jack Strong, who, throughout the 1970’s, used his position within the Polish military to pass on Soviet secrets to the CIA. The story has a strong connection with that of the rise of the Solidarity movement, documented in Walesa – Man of Hope, as both historical narratives were largely generated by the brutal and lethal suppression of the 1970 riots in the Polish north, riots begat by a crippling rise in food prices.
Marcin Dorocinski gives a wonderful and sympathetic central performance as Kukliński, and the rest of the cast, including Patrick Wilson, Maja Ostaszewska and Dagmara Dominczyk all do a convincing job of selling a tension fraught scenario of espionage and political consequences. The language oscillates between Polish, English and Russian, with Wilson’s verbal adroitness in Polish a bit of a revelation (until I realised he’s married to Dominczyk – interestingly, commentary has been made in the media of late on the dramatic rise in the number of Scottish men learning Polish, a rise no doubt directly proportional to the large influx of incredibly beautiful Polish ladies to our shores …) and the most poignant aspect of the plot involves one Russian general’s secret plan to effectively use Eastern Europe to start World War III, and how the plan was thwarted.
How many of the facts have had liberties taken with them here is difficult to tell, but in light of Russia’s recent belligerent activity in the Black Sea, it hardly sounds fanciful. This, then, is very much an important political film of our current time and not just a dramatic retrospective of what the whole world thought was a bygone era. Indeed, it seems like Putin regards international politics as markedly similar to a game of Diplomacy (wherein Sevastopol is one of the most hotly fought over areas for its strategic port) and comparisons with Hitler’s annexation of Austria are not only merited, but quintessential to the furore of debate going on. In the game of Diplomacy it’s vital early on to get the territories you want whilst seeming as reasonable as possible to the other players in the vicinity – if you take a look below at Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur interviewing Putin’s spokesman and long time major player in the Russian government’s media machine Dmitry Peskov, aired just a few hours ago, you don’t have to be an expert at reading people to tell he’s not quite the full shilling.
Indeed, if Peskov was playing the board game he would be promptly laughed out of Europe on the basis of this interview. It was interesting too that Sackur makes mention of the recent referendum and how not only did it take place under the threat of Russian guns, but that the people had no option in the vote to the keep the status quo in place. This is a pretty major point that the BBC have elsewhere repeatedly not made mention of in their regular updates – in fact they actually seem to be giving the impression there is a level of legitimacy to the vote, with one of the correspondents asking a Ukrainian politician if he didn’t simply have to now accept Crimea has become a part of Russia, which is way, way off the mark for independent journalism.
There would seem to be, at this juncture when tensions and military aggression are rising, a rather opportune way out for the Ukrainian leadership. They should first settle and unite the rest of the country, using every ploy they can think of and perhaps with the timely bringing forward up of the upcoming May presidential election, and simultaneously the majority in their parliament, the Rada, should unite in promising a new referendum in Crimea should the Russians leave voluntarily as speedily as they arrived – a referendum that would be fair and monitored by the international community, including Russian delegates. This would put the ball back into Putin’s court and throw their claims of legitimacy right back at them. It’s very unlikely Russia would back down now given Putin has signed the papers accepting Crimea, but it would make their position much more difficult and buy the Ukrainians more time, and if they somehow did retreat even if the Crimea still went and joined Russia, it’s still better than bloodshed and the escalation and destabilisation that most likely Moscow is hoping will arise. Plus it would give Russia a graceful way of regaining some international favour, as they’d surely fancy their chances at Crimea willingly joining them, and indeed it could set a favourable precedent for them with other Russian speaking areas along their border, but a diplomatic battle to win over the people of a region, is always a million times more preferable to an armed struggle against vastly superior military forces, so it’s kind of a win-win given the current powder keg sizzling away on the peninsula.
Interestingly, toward the end of ‘My Perestroika’ one of the interviewees voices his concern that the current Russian government is heading back down the path of the old Soviet ways of repression and indoctrination, a view which seems to be borne out by events. It would perhaps be telling to see a fair and free independence referendum taking place in Chechnya, or indeed throughout many of the other constituent parts of Russia …
George Clooney not only directed this, but also co-write the screenplay with Grant Heslov not long after the pair of them co-produced ‘Argo’, and frankly listening to Clooney’s character here talking about the importance of history after he and his buddy completely raped a well documented event in their last collaborative effort, is a sick joke. No doubt they were hoping to replicate their charm offensive that somehow seen Argo take home the best film Oscar, but happily this film, even without the various cries of historical inaccuracy and complaints that the lives of people who actually died as part of the team (the monuments, fine arts and archives {MFAA} unit) have been ignored, is complete rubbish in almost every respect.
The unit’s task was to enter war torn mainland Europe just after D-Day and try to ensure wherever possible the safety or repossession of the most valued works of art and monuments that may otherwise be in harms way from bombing campaigns and the retreating German army as well as Hitler’s known fondness for nicking national and private treasures. It should be a fascinating and exciting tale, and indeed its only success is the relation of some events which were not really common knowledge and highlight the importance of these men’s work, and yet – can we believe these events? Sadly, because Clooney is involved no we can’t, not without embarking on a truth finding exercise of our own.
From a screenwriting point of view there is no real film here – it’s just a series of disjointed scenes stuck together with absolutely no characterisation, horrible, horrible jokes and no real concept of what they were trying to achieve. It amounts to little more than ‘let’s get lots of big name actors (Clooney, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett) and send them off on a jaunt through the Second World War, and then we’ll stick in some bits of drama and emotion and then people will love it and we’ll get another Oscar like last time’, and it is simply terrible. Rather than wasting any time on this, better to get hold of a copy of ‘The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History’ by Robert Edsel, the book upon which the film is loosely based.
Despite the very, very worthy story being told here, I found it difficult to properly engage with the gritty way in which it is delivered to the audience. The mostly true story of AIDS victim Ron Woodroof who finds he cannot afford the drugs which is believed would keep him alive (he is given approximately four weeks to live) and who ends up in Mexico trying desperately to get a hold of this life extending elixir. Whilst there, fate introduces him to a doctor who explains what he has been told about this miracle drug simply isn’t true, and instead he prescribes him several much simpler and much healthier substances, all of which were legal in the United States although not FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved. Seeing not only a way to help his own health and that of others, but also a nice way to make a lot of money, he heads back up north to set up the eponymous Dallas Buyers Club.
We bear witness to the legal ramifications of his club and those like it, whilst the pharmaceutical companies still ram their product down the throats of the medical professionals and the lives of many thousands of patients are put into the balance. Some liberties have been taken with the personal story of Woodroof and his personality, there is no mention of his daughter in the film, for example, and two central characters, fellow AIDS sufferer and transsexual Rayon (Jared Leto – pictured above on the left) and romantic interest/doc with a conscience Eve (Jennifer Garner), are entirely fictional. Matthew McConaughey gives a very committed performance as Woodroof, initially a homophobic, drug abusing electrician/rodeo cowboy and general scallywag and both he and Leto are not only up for Academy Awards this season but also lost an unhealthy amount of weight for their roles.
In a way this highlights both the eerie quality of the film and yet some of its strength – when we see these two actors who do very much appear that they are not far from death’s door, there is a part of you that is shocked and forced to consider that reality for people with the disease not just then but now too, despite the improvement in our medical understanding, and yet we are simultaneously aware in the back of our minds that these two people do not have AIDS and have in fact done this to themselves. There is a sickening quality to the deed, and we have to ask – was it necessary? When Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier starred together in ‘Marathon Man’ (76) they were preparing for a scene when Hoffman declared that he was off for a run – responding to the quizzical look from his co-worker he explained that his character had been on a run just before the scene and so he had better go for one too, to which Olivier’s response was ‘There’s a reason they call it acting’. In the scenario of this film he certainly has a point, especially in the age of computers when some weight for the naked torso scenes could probably be digitally removed. Tom Hanks last year attributed his current Diabetes condition to gaining and losing weight for some of his roles in the past and one wonders if that’s true and if so just how much he regrets doing it. McConaughey has gone from strength to strength over recent years and so it’s great to see him nominated at the Oscars and it is deserved (as is Leto’s nod) but, should the industry really be encouraging this kind of thing? How long before someone goes too far and ends up seriously ill or worse, all for the sake of a film role?
I’ve posted the clip below a few times before but it’s worth repeating here due to its relevance and also to show just how much corruptive power drugs companies still wield in today’s world, with not only the medical profession but also large parts of the sports/recreation/therapy industries being driven by chants of ‘Sell, Sell, Sell’.
