Author: BRWC

In which people jump over things at high speed.

If you’ve not heard of Nitro Circus before it’s basically a toned down version of Jackass where the majority of performers are skilled at other things besides skateboarding. The crew is run by Travis Pastrana, a multi-talented adrenaline junkie who can ride most things with wheels really fast over tall things.

Comparisons to Jackass are inevitable. Both follow the same structure of ridiculous dare-devilry performed by a bunch of kooky characters that the makers go to great lengths to distinguish. The film was born out of MTV series as well. Compared to Jackass Nitro Circus feels like a family-friendly version. The Nitro Circus crew look like they know what they’re doing for the most part, despite showing clips from the TV series where some broke their legs in stunts gone wrong. They miss the overall mischief and ramshackle fun of Jonny Knoxville and gang. That’s not to deny that some of the stunts performed aren’t impressive. The bike/tricycle jump over a very big fall in Panama doesn’t look like the biggest distance but it made me feel sick watching it. Motor bikes being driven across water is also kind of impressive. My main issue with watching these “lovable” scamps defying the laws of gravity was that I didn’t particularly give a toss about them. Travis Pastrana is an affable host but by the end of the slim 80-odd mins he starts to become hugely grating.

The film is directed by two of the crew; Gregg Godfrey and Jeremy Rawle who decide to pepper the light hearted tone of the stunts with talking heads which stress the dangerousness of these stunts (Channing Tatum appears for some reason). Most of the time they pop up to say things like “remember these guys are putting their lives on the line” to which part me of me thinks “I didn’t ask them to”. The inclusion of an intro which shows children playing on bikes attempting smaller stunts tries to crowbar some dramatic tension into the film as though we’re watching the crew finally achieving their dreams of riding bikes in front of a crowd in Vegas. The effect of these scenes are spoilt when we cut back to the crew gurning as they fly through the air of ramps into water (I’m pretty sure Jackass did that one a few times but it was funnier).

The film also claims to be in 3D. I only watched the 2D version but I could only spot a couple of moments that may have actually used 3D effects and they look like they would have been basic at best. This is one of those films that doesn’t really need a review. If you’ve not heard of Nitro Circus chances are that you won’t be fussed. If you like them you’ll be planning on seeing it. Some of the stunts are genuinely impressive and fun. Others you may think “I really don’t care”. It all depends on whether you love adrenaline or Agatha Christie novels.

Space Precinct Legacy is a documentary of gradual disappointment. Not only does it chart the slow death of Space Precinct, one of the most ambitious british TV projects of its day, but as the documentary progresses, its microscopic production value and an increasingly negative tone sap all sense of enjoyment from the film by its conclusion.

Space Precinct could have been something special. Created and produced by the late, great Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons – a whole childhood is contained in these closed brackets), it was the tale of Brogan, an ex-NYPD flatfoot who finds himself transfers to a new precinct… in SPACE. Combine this huge premise with a mixture of live-action police drama and Anderson-brand animatronics and marionette trickery, and you have all the potential in the world for greatness. Executive producer of Space Precinct, Tom Gutteridge even originally pitched the show as “the next Star Trek.” It wasn’t.

Space Precinct Legacy is very honest about this. During the opening minutes Precinct’s visual effects director Steven Begg ‘fesses up “I had very high expectations of it, but I don’t think we quite got there.” It’s initially refreshing to see talking heads in a retrospective with a candid – and typically British – sense of honesty. There’s nothing more tedious than a rose-tinted, self-congratulatory clinics in nostalgia that have been known to accompany shows of yesteryear, but this honesty is also an undoing. As the doc progresses things get much more sour, more embittered; the financial woes of the poor Tom Gutteridge remain entertaining stories throughout, but the rest of the film makes for increasingly uncomfortable viewing. The scripts are rubbished, as is the lighting, the model design, the production design, the acting, the final product, even beloved Gerry Anderson’s creative direction. What started as an entertainingly candid cautionary tale crosses into wall-to-wall whinging and it’s a little unpleasant.

This isn’t helped at all by the tiny scope of production. Only a single actor – Mary Woodvine – makes an appearance, and there are only 7 talking heads in the whole piece, most of which are from the visual effects department. This makes some sense considering Gerry Anderson’s legacy is that of a visual effects pioneer, but we hear nothing from the production design crew, the scriptwriting crew, the live-action directors, and when their work is belittled without defence it only fuels the film’s negative vibe. We hear that the lead actor Ted Shackleford didn’t like to be associated with the show, but we never hear from Shackleford himself. It’s frustrating incomplete stuff. Perhaps saddest of all, there’s nothing from Gerry Anderson. While I’m well aware that Gerry Anderson sadly died before this film was made, it remains disappointing to see no archival or interview footage of the great man, something wherein he talks about his work, anything to shed light what he tried to achieve with his stories, even when they fail.

But there is an omission greater than that, and this is what ultimately kills Space Precinct Legacy. It contains no footage of the actual show its documenting. None. Anywhere. There are painted storyboards and backstage photos aplenty – of some wonderful looking visual effects work I’ll freely admit – but when so much of the insight comes from the visual effects department, it’s flabbergasting to find that we never actually get to see these visual effects in action. There’s much excited talk of the animatronics used throughout the show, frustrating us further and further when we don’t get to see anything move. When I have to search Youtube in order to actually see the show about which I’ve just watched a 90-minute retrospective, that is damning.

I’m sure this all had to do with limited budget and limited access to copyrighted material, but if that’s the case, is the film worth making? The doc’s director Paul Cotrulia must be a great fan of the material, but being endlessly told that Space Precinct was in so many ways disappointing without ever really showing the audience this makes for a documentary that doesn’t fully document.

The film ends with a tribute to Gerry Anderson, but this is possibly the most jarring direction of all. After such a heap of bad feeling – at one point it’s even said that for a second series of Space Precinct to exist, Gerry Anderson might have to have been taken off the project – to end extolling the virtues of the recently departed creator just doesn’t gel. The film’s structure runs a little like this: Gerry Anderson created Space Precinct, Space Precinct was dreadful, we miss Gerry Anderson. Now I’m ill-informed and sad.

All in all, Space Precinct Legacy is a fitting tribute to the show. It’s made with love, but through one production limitation or another, it comes up short.

You can can buy the documentary on amazon.co.uk.

Night Train is a Polish drama that was directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz and originally released in September 1959 under the title Pociąg.  It stars Lucy Winnicka, Leon Niemczyk, Teresa Szmigielowna, Helena Dabrowska and Zbigniew Cybulski.  Ostensibly a thriller, the film tells the story of a man on the run – who may or may not be a murderer – boarding a crowded train and being obliged to share a sleeping compartment with an unhappy young woman.

Towards the end of the film, one of the characters says “Nobody wants to love.  Everybody wants to be loved”, a statement which neatly encapsulates Kawalerowicz’s central theme.  Although the current DVD release from Second Run pushes the film as a Hitchcockian thriller I’d say that it has much more in common with Ingmar Bergman’s work, being far more concerned with the relationships between people – or, to be more accurate – the spaces between people than it is the plot.  Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that there is no plot to speak of; rather, there is a situation into which various characters, or pairs of characters, are introduced.

The central pair is Jerzy the fugitive and Marta his sleeping carriage companion.  Both are fleeing but it is not clear whether they are in flight to or from something or someone.  Nevertheless, each recognises the other as a lost soul and they make tentative steps towards attempting to understand one another.  A number of other pairings within the film overlap with one another, a case in point being Marta and her ex-boyfriend Staszek.  Similarly, Jerzy finds himself the subject of attention from an unhappily married woman (known in the script simply as Lawyer’s Wife).  In some respects the film is structured like Max Ophüls’ masterly La Ronde (1950) although one might equally say that it is the obverse of that film in the sense that it concerns a series of overlapping unsuccessful relationships.

There is a useful extra on this DVD release in the form of an insightful, if brief, documentary about the Polish new wave of film-makers.  My guess is that most film buffs will know the work of Andrzej Wajda but fewer will know Jerzy Kawalerowicz; that’s certainly true in my own case, I’m ashamed to say.  However, the documentary makes clear that Kawalerowicz is regarded, by Poles at any rate, as the father of their new wave and goes on to explain that his interest in character as opposed to narrative set him apart from his predecessors as did his immense technical skill.

Whatever his place in Polish film history may be, Kawalerowicz’s film is incredibly accomplished visually.  While some of the footage was shot on board a real moving train, some was shot in a real train carriage on a set with rear projection providing the moving background.  The quality of the technical work in this regard is exemplary and, dare one say it, far in advance of what Hollywood could manage at that time.  Indeed, it’s often the case that the rear projection work even in Hitchcock’s films is terrible.  And as if to indicate how far ahead of its time Night Train was there is a sequence towards the end of the film, set to music, which reminded me of no-one as much as Jim Jarmusch; given Jarmusch’s fondness for European cinema that may not be as strange as it sounds.

The cast contains a few actors who may be more familiar than you would initially think.  Leon Niemczyk was in Roman Polanki’s breakthrough feature Knife in the Water (1962) and also had a small part in David Lean’s Inland Empire (2006).  Zbigniew Cybulski, who plays Staszek, was terrific in Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds (1958) and was a hugely influential in Polish screen acting.  Tragically, and ironically considering some of the shots he’s in in Night Train, he was killed at just 39 when he fell beneath the wheels of a train he was attempting to board.

God Man Dog, or to give it it’s proper title, Sad Taiwanese People Are Sad, can be charitably described as a melancholy meditation on the curative powers of religion in multi-faith Taiwan, and uncharitably described as more relentlessly miserable than a plague pit on Christmas Day.

Drawing water from the same well as Magnolia, Crash or Happiness, G.M.D. is an ensemble piece comprised of initially disparate characters and stories, all of whom inevitably collide and tangle together as the film draws to its conclusion. Each of these characters are fundamentally broken in some way, grappling with an unfathomable emptiness and the cast list covers all the big archetypes of the We That Are Sad canon of maudlin melodrama. We’ve got the Alcoholic, a deadbeat dad downing cloudy liquor surrounded by sports trophies of yesteryear (in an admittedly nice twist on the cliché, these turn out not to be his); the Catatonically-Depressed, a new mother whose two favourite things are staring into the middle distance and hating her baby; the Homeless One, a teen orphan who crashes eating contests just to get a decent meal; The One Just Filled With Rage, a teen boxer sent away from home by her parents.

The only character who appears to be at any sort of peace is that of Yellow Bull, an amputee (physically broken rather than spiritually) whose job is to drive a gaudy truck full of religious statues to fairs and public gatherings, and dispense fortune cookie poetry to paying customers. In his spare time, Yellow Bull takes care of things, and in doing so finds himself at the heart of the film’s eponymous trinity; he fixes up any God statues he finds, feeds stray Dogs and even provides succour to his fellow Man. A travelling healer disguised as a spirituality huckster, he’s the film’s most interesting character, and far too absent from the turgid first half of its running time.

It’s a slog. Everyone just keeps bursting into tears. Happiness proves that unrelenting pain can be palatable to an audience, but that film’s ace in the hole was a thick vein of ink-black humour that ran throughout, varying the tone to provide welcome relief from the suffering. No such luck with God Man Dog‘s opening acts, and coupled with this po-faced commitment to despair is an unfortunate lack of subtlety in the writing from Li-An You and also-director Singing Chen. Some of the blame might be claimed by an awkward translation, but much of the film’s first hour is scene after scene of heavy-handed dialogue like “You’re an alcoholic! You’re ruining Mum’s life!” and “Do you think I don’t care about the baby? Don’t shut me out again!” The cast acquit themselves well, but constantly battering the audience about the face with cloth-eared issue-driven conflict without any reprieve is simply exhausting or, worse, boring.

The religious symbolism starts off with similar bluntness. One of the first shots is of Yellow Bull’s truck, crammed with enormous sculpted idols, a scrawl on a lamppost declares “the kingdom of heaven is near”, and the drunk holds his hand up to block the sun from his eyes, allowing the tiny crucifix he has tied to his wrist to dangle in the sunlight like an angel. The film seems to be shouting “God. God! Gooooooood!” from every frame with all the subtly of an electrocuted baptist.

However, something happens halfway into the film. At almost exactly an hour in, the plot strands start to intertwine and, almost immediately, sparks of life begin to appear. Misery loves company it seems, for when the leads are crashed together (sometimes literally) their effect on each other brings the varying tones of tender light and heartbreaking dark the film so sorely needs. It even becomes bleakly humorous if you can fathom it.

Throwing together the characters also serves to illuminate what the film might be saying with it’s omnipresent religious overtones. Throughout the abject misery of the first hour, character are told to turn to God. Platitudes about God’s love and his healing powers are dealt out with as much heart and sincerity as Yellow Bull’s fortune poetry. In fact, throughout all of man’s hardships, the Gods are impassive. In one darkly comic moment the homeless teen is kicked off a bench so that ‘the gods’ (three men in huge prosthetic God costumes) can sit there and take a load off.

Instead, despite the constant presence of religious iconography, the characters only find the help they need in each other. Yellow Bull takes in the homeless teen and begins to put him back together piece by piece, like the religious artefacts he mends on a day to day basis. Perhaps what the film is trying to say is that instead of buddhist fortune poetry, or impassive idols, or christian hectoring, what we need to have faith in is each other. Perhaps the film regards the phrase “the kingdom of heaven is near” to be as empty and fatuous as it sounds. Conversely, there’s more than a little touch of fate about the way the characters stumble across each other. Perhaps there’s instead a deeper religious message in the film’s very structure; redemption through a somewhat contrived destiny that moves in mysterious ways.

Surprisingly, no conclusion is overtly stated by Singing Chen and by the time the credits roll, God Man Dog proves itself to be a thought-provoking and eventually charming piece. It’s a real drain on the human spirit actually getting to the closing moments – had the storytelling of the first half been subtler, G.M.D. Could have achieved greatness – but once you reach its end, the film is much more satisfying than initial appearances suggest. It will ultimately redeem itself. You just need to have faith.