Nov 22 2011

“oh green fairy what you’ve done to me” London Boulevard – Sountrack

by Eoin Butler • All, Movies, Music 0

oh green fairy what you’ve done to me

London Boulevard tells the story of a man recently released from prison who falls in love with a reclusive young movie star but, as a consequence, finds himself in a duel with a violent gangster.

London Boulevard is directed and produced by William Monahan in his own adaptation of the novel by Ken Bruen. It stars Keira Knightly, Colin Farrell, Anna Friel and Ray Winstone and was filmed on location in London and Los Angeles.

Composer Sergio Pizzorno who is also lead singer and guitarist with Kasabian used a small string section for his underscore comprising 6 first violins, 6 seconds, 4 violas and 5 celli. LMO was led by Rita Manning and conducted by Andy Brown. Steve McLaughlin was the engineer / producer and the session was recorded at British Grove studios.

Mitchel (‘Colin Farrell’ ) just got out of jail and wants to stay legitimate but his friends involved in the messy London underground fear him and wants him to join them again but Mitchel tries his best to stay away. He gets himself a job as a bodyguard for a retired actress Charlotte (Keira Knightley) who is still hot news for the paparazzi. Mitchell, through his friend Billy eventually meets the underground Don by the name of Gant (Ray Winstone) who wants Mitch to work for him because of Mitch’s reputations. While working together Mitch and Charlotte fall in love. Gant asks Billy to get the guy who sent Mitch to jail but it turns out to be the wrong one, Gant kills the guy in front of Mitch and lets Mitch know that he has to work for him now that Mitch has seen him commit the murder but Mitch refuses. Gant keeps trying to force Mitch to his side promising him good ranks…

If I only had three words to use to describe this film they would be Classic, Cool and Clever. Ray Winstone’s (Gant) presence is eagerly anticipated and arrives at last almost a quarter of the way into the film. An impressive stately Rolls Royce signals this is the arrival of an important person even before he steps out onto the pavement. The clichéd story line of the ex-con walking from prison set on a life of ‘going straight’ and that ‘one last job’ springs to mind seem not to be irritating. Colin Farrel (Mitchell) could be auditioning for James Bond. He is cool, calm and collected. Nobody and nothing spook him. Everybody smokes, a lot, and swears, a lot. However, this is a crime thriller/gangster movie after all and is to be expected. It’s just that those two words ‘f**ck off’ and ‘you c**t’ are said with such conviction but in a cool and effortless manner by both Gant and Mitchell. The film has a calm linear flow for a crime thriller but several twists and turns toward the conclusion remind you that within this genre,clever can often be more stimulating than too much blood and violence. Although there are a few quite gruesome scenes. However, the nasty bits are not dragged out and enough is seen for you to get the picture of what’s going on!Winstone, Farrel, Thewlis, Friel give good performances and present interesting roles. Knightly however gives a rather wooden performance in a boring role. Humour is weaved within this relatively serious film and classic 60′s music from bands such as the Yardbirds add to the recipe which make this rather tasty. A few unexpected twists of fate toward the end seal this stylish film.

In what hopefully proves to be a happy coincidence, now that ‘Drive’ has established a good benchmark for more left-field entries in the crime thriller genre, and I suspect has positively affected the critical environment for the reception of the same, ‘London Boulevard’ is soon getting US distribution. I anticipate the stateside reviews.

Last year, towards the end of November, it opened in the UK and Ireland to baffled shrugs and critical dismissal. This, only one week after ‘The American’ – now widely agreed to be an above par effort in the Melville tradition – had been released to a near identical reaction.

I saw neither film during its cinematic run, but rented ‘London Boulevard’ as soon as it was out, and it was actually to write a review of it that I signed up to IMDb, an 8/10 review to which the headline ran, “Underrated, but now on DVD appreciation for this film sure to grow.” I’ve seen the film twice more since then, and can say that while, as to others, it wouldn’t appear to have made much inroads, MY appreciation for the film has certainly grown further still. It’s not a perfect film by any means, and part of the reason it benefits from multiple viewings is that there is something of an information dump at the end, one detail of which stands out as either insignificant or not well enough integrated into what has come before. Fifteen (twenty at a push) of the film’s ninety three minutes also plod to some extent once it tips the thirty minute mark, which is not to say this stretch is boring or that nothing happens – not at all – this is simply the portion of the film with the least style and the most concern for plot advancement.

That plot, briefly, is a spin on ‘Sunset Boulevard’, only here a neurotic younger actress, besieged by paparazzi, hires a newly released prisoner for a caretaking job in her West London pile; love blossoms, while the hood’s mad sister and erstwhile gang associates figure heavily in events.

Much as the list, disseminated throughout various sources, of ‘Drive’s conceptual forebears is a long one – Hill, Melville, Kenneth Anger, Brothers Grimm etc. – so is that of ‘London Boulevard’s referents. Its look aspires to that of British Technicolor films of the sixties and seventies: “(I)n London there was just something about the light and there’s something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light. It’s mysterious and Elysian in a way that Antonioni got at in ‘Blow-Up’.” The Yardbids play over the opening titles.

It mixes art world and gangland subcultures in a manner reflective of Roeg’s ‘Performance’. Ray Winstone plays another in a long line of cockney gangsters. Thewlis’s character harks back to ‘Withnail’. There’s also maybe a touch of Osbourne in the central relationship; of Pinter in the dialogue; while some of the script’s other gestures are as much Shakespearean and even medieval as they are gangster film clichés. For example, what might ordinarily be called ‘turf’ is instead repeatedly referred to as someone’s ‘manor’. This vibe is accentuated by the sound of a lyre on the score and, not least, by the film’s big final number, “Green Fairy,” which kicks in just around the time evil is confronted on the fens. The pretend-blind old man who lives in the underpass, meanwhile, evokes BOTH ‘ye olde times’, AND that Antonionian otherworldliness.

The Shakespearean is evident not just in the generous number of players who come to a sticky end – or the crazy sis – but, more fundamentally, there is a real sense of King Lear’s Edmund’s – “Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom? (…Optional: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!)” – in Monahan’s approach to characterization. As in ‘The Departed’s “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” In ‘London Boulevard’, then, comes a protagonist, Mitchell, who, though he’s within this determinist, tragic gangster template, nonetheless acts wilfully and with self-determination: Danny: “I don’t need to tell ya, there’s no free lunches.” Mitchell: “There are other things I can do, and maybe I want to F-ing do them.” And, “See what you have to understand is that if I was a gangster, Rob, you’d be the first to F-ing die. I wouldn’t work for you. I’d kill you and take everything you’ve got … IF I were a gangster. That’s why you don’t want me to be a gangster.”

This – alongside utterances more abstracted and ontological in nature, the likes of the Lennonesque (supposedly he’s the uncle of one character), “There are times when a gangster is something to be,” and Thewlis’s rakish dissipate taking up a large pistol and intoning, “I am what I am” – is indicative of what, at first, because it doesn’t much square with genre expectations, can be perplexing to an audience, but also of what is ultimately so interesting about the film.

But that kind of density, being purely verbal, might go for nothing if the film as a whole failed to present it in a suitable style. But it excels on that score too, with the final fifteen minutes the obvious standout section, an atmospheric tour de force.

Cinematographer Chris Menges achieves Monahan’s desired neutrally coloured, flat, tactile Technicolor look in the film’s daytime scenes, while its night shots, which often contain the ambient twinkle of the city’s lights, out of the depth of field, benefit from a June shoot with the beautiful deep indigo of their sky. With Keira Knightly’s head staring from concession stands and looming hugely from billboards, one of which itself twinkles memorably, the effect, sometimes, is that of an aquarium. Appropriate for a crime movie seeking to plumb deeper channels.

Sountrack

The Yardbirds – Heart Full Of Soul
The Rolling Stones – Sray Cat Blues
22-20s – Devil In Me
The Pretty Things – Come See Me
The Electric Banana – Street Girl
The Box Tops – The Letter
The Knickerbockers – One Track Mind
Dominic Murphy – Minstrel Boy
Dominic Murphy – The Green Hills Of Tyrol
Kasabian – The Green Fairy
The Electric Banana – It’ll Never Be Me
Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues
Annu Malik – Sun O Dilruba Dil Ki Yeh Sada
Kasabian – Club Foot
The YardBirds – Train Kept A-Rollin
Derek & Clive – Celebrity Suicide

If anyone is interested I will create a Rapidshare or Torrent download for this?

Nov 17 2011

Soundless Soundtracks

by Eoin Butler • All, Movies, Music 0

Alfred Hitchcock’s famous (1962) movie “The Birds” and Sidney Lumet ‘s (1975) classic “Dog Day Afternoon” both epic pictures in there own ways… but what do these classics have in common? Most would struggle to mention that both these pictures run from start to finish without a soundtrack! Not even a few notes involved to help dramatise those ever important gripping scenes…

Personally while I think these two films are works of art one can’t help beat a great soundtrack. Over the last few months i have been collecting musical greats from movies i have re-caped from years before and in recent times… Sometimes one can’t help but feel like the great multimillion air broker or the bullet proof gladiator characters in these movies when you close your eyes and listen to these works. I suppose after all the “soundtrack” while not always featured really does play such an important role in gathering the audiences attention.

Enough shite! Below are some greats i have aquired over the last few months and bookmarked to my youtube “OST” playlist.

Collateral

Inception

Platoon

Pride and Glory

London Boulevard

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL71394C4352BBFB96&feature=viewall