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Tuesday, 29 November 2011
A hunting dog stares moodily into the middle distance. A man on horseback thunders across a misty field. A naked woman runs like hell. From these elements, director Michel Lemoine fashions a not particularly suspenseful three and a half minute opening sequence. Then pulls the rug. It’s a daydream, which our protagonist Count Boris Zaroff (Lemoine, starring as well as directing) snaps out of as his secretary asks him to sign some papers. The day’s...
Monday, 28 November 2011
Friday, 25 November 2011
It’s never been definitively proved, but it’s a fairly safe assumption that a lot of the so-called “video nasties” ended up on the Department of Public Prosecutions’ radar for no other reason than their titles or their packaging. The process was probably as arbitrary as this: SCENE: the back office of a government building. Several SELF-RIGHTEOUS OLD FARTS sit around a table drinking weak tea, smoking cigarettes from long silver holders and flicking...
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Still unavailable on DVD – presumably because it’s largely crap, although that hasn’t stopped a bunch of other largely crap movies blighting the good name of the digital versatile disc – the VHS cover of ‘Rolling Vengeance’ boasted the awesomely awful tag line “use the right tool for the job”. The job, in this case, being the despatching to redneck hell of some, well, right tools.Here’s the set-up: Big Joe Rosso (Lawrence Dane) has just made his...
Monday, 21 November 2011
There are films that pull the rug in the first reel. The credits roll, the narrative begins, things get very weird from the outset; the protagonist’s situation seems to be spiralling out of control; imagery and logic twist in upon themselves. Then – bang! – the whole thing’s revealed as a false start. A dream sequence. Or the main character’s imaginings.Then there are films which bide their time, patiently and subtly fool the audience, then pull...
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Kicking off a tad later than anticipated – thanks to a combination of (a) social engagements, (b) illness and (c) the vagaries of my internet service provider – 2011’s Winter of Discontent starts here. Assuming the dearth of (a), the forbearance of (b) and the cooperation of (c), we’ll be seeing out the year on The Agitation of the Mind with a smorgasbord of horror, controversy, violence, filth, revenge and general nastiness, every bit of it selected to demonstrate the bilious depths of man’s inhumanity to man and the reprehensible lengths that...
Friday, 18 November 2011
Karel Reisz’s classic film version of Alan Sillitoe’s ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ is the subject of two articles by Kimberly Lindbergs: one on the indispensable Movie Morlocks, the other on her equally essential blog Cinebeats. Myself and David Sillitoe, Alan’s son and the Chairman of the Alan Sillitoe Committee, were interviewed by Kimberly and the resulting article is a terrific appreciation of a great work of post-war British cinema that...
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Virginie Ledoyen, already an Agitation of the Mind poster girl courtesy of her beautifully underplayed turn in ‘Saint-Ange’ …… is 35 today. A large glass of rioja is being raised at chez Agitation and a triptych of deluxe cheesecake shots are being posted on this blog.Bon anniversaire, madamoisel...
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Heard the one about the Anthony Hopkins-Toni Collette-Ben Mendelsohn-Russell Crowe movie about a time and motion expert called in to fuck over the workforce of a small family-run business, directed by the guy who made ‘The Man Who Sued God’, that’s arguably one of the best movies you’ve never seen?No joke. I saw ‘Spotswood’ at Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema – the East Midlands’ beacon for independent and arthouse cinema – on its first release in the...
Friday, 11 November 2011
Dear Everyone on my Link ListI have been checking out your blogs. I have been enjoying your reviews. I haven't been ignoring you. I haven't fallen out with you. If I haven't been leaving comments anywhere near as frequently as I used to - if, in point of fact, I've barely left a comment on anyone's blog in the last couple of weeks - it's not for anti-social reasons.I recently got my mojo back for writing fiction and have been working on a couple...
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Posted to coincide with Fernando Meirelles’ 56th birthdayReviewing ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ got me thinking about how well-served John le Carre has been in terms of adaptations. The seven-part TV adaptation of that novel, starring Alec Guinness, is one of the small screen’s finest achievements. It’s big screen counterpart is arguably a classic-in-waiting. Martin Ritt’s ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ is one of the bleakest, most compelling...
Monday, 7 November 2011
Possibly the hardest challenge an actor can face is to take on a role already synonymous with someone else. ‘The Prisoner’ with Jim Cavaziel instead of Patrick McGoohan, for instance – it just didn’t work for me. It was as unthinkable as Inspector Morse not being played by John Thaw or Rumpole essayed by anyone other than Leo McKern.So, despite the glowing reviews it opened to (glowing? incandescent, more like!), I approached ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier...
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Taking a short break from the blog till next week while I put the finishing touches to a new short story and attend this event at the Nottingham Contemporary tomorrow night. In the meantime, a friend of mine asked if I was going to start reviewing “normal” films again, pointing out that between Black Valentines, Giallo Sundays, Summer of Satan, 13 For Halloween and the forthcoming Winter of Discontent – and with Video Nasties in the lead for next year’s big retrospective – Agitation is in danger of turning into a repository for sex ‘n’ violence...
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