Walk The Black Dog

Category: arts

  • I’m Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

    Trailer has spoilers, as as is the fashion unfortunately.

    Kevin Smith, without me noticing, made a third Clerks film, released Summer 2022. I’m not a Smith superfan by any means, but I would be lying if his films did not sit somewhere between guilty pleasure and cinematic comfort food. We’re not far apart in age, and his 90s output (I originally wrote oeuvre but got over myself) put his characters at my age, too. His stuff is relatable to me. I’ll say up front I find Kevin Smith’s comedy funny. If you don’t, I doubt the film or this post will change your mind. The guy was, and remains, famously Marmite.

    The first Smith film I actually saw was 1997’s Chasing Amy, and I immediately loved the snappy, shit-talking dialogue, endless Star Wars references, and admittedly crass humour. I didn’t see Clerks – the Smith film – until a little later, and while I enjoyed it, the film didn’t grab me the way it did some people, but I did like the chemistry Dante and Randall displayed. At that time, Randall seemed interchangeable with Chasing Amy’s Binky (Jason Lee); to me the characters were written very similarly, but this is me splitting hairs, honestly.

    In 2006 I was living with a Kevin Smith fan (at the time, I doubt he is now) who was a real child of the always-online internet, and I got swept up in what seemed like tremendous buzz around Clerks 2. There were web shorts showing behind-the-scenes stuff; long before it was fashionable. YouTube was in its infancy, Facebook was barely out of Zuckerberg’s balls, Tom was still shitting up your MySpace. Smith had a canny knack for the internet’s marketing potential, definitely. Everyone does it these days.

    People say Kevin Smith isn’t a good filmmaker, but I don’t know enough about the art to notice. I think it is one of those perceptions that isn’t accurate but nevertheless persists. Zack & Miri was good. Red State was good. I ‘know what I like’ as twats say, and Clerks 2 delivered for me. It did feel a bit more SoCal, a bit Hollywood? Polished and whittled. It was a Miramax product, just before Smith parted ways after Zack & Miri underperformed. Definitely lost a bit of that Jersey patina.

    I still think it holds up well. I did struggle a little with Dante and Becky (Rosario Dawson) having a relationship because to paraphrase Stirling Archer she was so out of his league it was practically inter-species mating. But I rationalised it as them being the exception that proves the rule. That’s a thing, right? You see these beautiful women with guys that look like Shrek and you wonder how that happens.

    Clerks III is good. Someone on Reddit (yes, I know…) said it was the best thing Smith made in a decade. Maybe. As I watched it, I had the impression that – as much as I enjoyed the second film – this perhaps could have been it. It feels – by design – much closer to the first film, because without giving much away it basically follows the first film’s beat very closely. Yes, there is a film within a film. Yes, it works.

    It’s autobiographical. Smith had a serious heart attack not long ago, and that’s the motivation for one of the characters in this third entry. What the film really pulls off is being genuinely affectionate towards its subject, fans, and earlier films. It is, at the risk of sounding like a tit, sincere. I said ‘comfort food’ earlier. Or maybe like a cigarette with a sharp beer, after a shit day at work. It gives you what you expect, and what you want. Of course, you have to like that kind of thing in the first place, and if you don’t, you’re not about to start. I don’t think I could recommend it to someone that doesn’t know, or more importantly, enjoys the View Askew universe, but it would be interesting to find out.

    There’s a great scene where Randall is describing what is very obviously (if you’re a fan) The Mandalorian and the CGI regenerated Luke Skywalker turning up and just fucking everything up, like a virtuous stud. He’s so hot and young you don’t give a shit he’s not real. This is in contrast to the Sunday morning haggard and bitter Luke we see in The Last Jedi. Young, ass-kicking Luke – yes, the Luke of our childhood – is all we ever wanted, even if it’s not real.

    This is a good metaphor for the film – it services the fan, which is treated like a regressive thing now, but the film is built on the premise that, why not? It’s okay to indulge and to be indulged, to relive the salad days of 30yrs ago, just for a couple of hours. We all die, soon enough.

  • Flashbacks Of A Fool

    This review contains spoilers.

    Daniel Craig was peak Bond in 2008. Still warm on the success of Casino Royale (which is a fucking banger of a film) he did the slightly shit Quantum of Solace, and around the same time, this got released.

    Not the main trailer but they don’t allow hotlinking so you get this

    I’ve only just seen it, having wanted to watch it for a while. I really like reflection and redemption stories, and this is..difficult. The film does that frustrating thing of somehow being less than the sum of its parts.

    Craig, still in peak physical form from his Bond role, plays Joseph Scot. We meet Joseph in the midst of a cocaine and booze-fueled shagging fest with what is implied are working girls. “Where did it all go wrong” in the fashion of George Best. There’s a touching scene with his assistant Ophelia played with much charm by Eve – easily the most likable character of the film – and we’re straight into the setup. Firstly, Ophelia wants out:

    When I show up here,
    I never know what to expect.
    Whether you’ve eaten mushrooms
    or acid or coke or all of the above.

    Joseph, for all his apparent vices, is actually pretty likable. He clearly likes, even loves Ophelia, and seems to want an authentic connection to people, but boy is he in the wrong town for that. Every relationship is transactional, except Ophelia but his approach to her unmet expectations is to solve it with more money, which is a big part of Joseph’s problem. He can buy anything but self-awareness.

    Scot, we are shown, is past it. addicted to drugs, girls, booze “It’s cocktail hour somewhere” he says in a falsetto as he mixes a drink first thing in the morning, in front of a frowning Ophelia. This is someone on the drop. He’s vain, selfish, and needy. An actor in Hollywood, in other words. Scot gets word a childhood friend has died, and is obviously moved but it is implied he’s not expected to make the funeral because he’s probably busy (subtext: He’s a flakey shithead) and then he goes out for lunch.

    A word on the cinematography; the first third of the film is beautiful. I really thought it was Malibu CA (it’s supposed to be) but it is in fact Cape Town in South Africa. Once I knew this it caused me some issues because it is also meant to double as the South Coast of England which if you know either country is kind of a stretch.

    Scot’s Tony Stark house

    Scot has lunch with his agent, the ever-brilliant and perpetually intense Mark Strong, where he learns he’s not getting pitched for a film, but fired for Hollywood’s original sin: Age, and the much less punished sin of being a fuckup. The film, after a running joke about a dog, takes a turn into the titular flashback, and this is where it starts to wobble. The world of the first act is very well drawn, the characters work, and it’s a good skewering of the unhappily rich and famous – who doesn’t love that?

    The shift to 1970s England feels jarring, not least because we lose Craig and all the others. It feels like two films and never quite worked for me. The point of it is to tell us all about Joe’s friendship with the departed, and it’s all very competent but never really grabbed me. Scot’s neighbour (Jodhi May) is a bored young mother and clearly has a lustful eye on the teenage Joseph.

    Jodhi May as Evelyn

    The biggest problem is we don’t really see much of what made present-day Joseph; the younger version is a fairly typical confused teenager that gets taken advantage of; he’s neither abnormally selfish or unusual, just a typical good-looking young lad. Older Joe is a lot more interesting.

    There’s a love triangle with his friend Ruth (Felicity Jones) who is established as the town’s most eligible chill girl, and Boots (Max Deacon). Joseph lets Ruth down by finally giving into Evelyn’s advances (well aware of the game she is playing), with eventually explosive consequences.

    There’s much to like in this part of the story. The excellent Olivia Williams plays Scot’s mother, and Miriam Karlin gives a solid turn as Mrs Rodgers, who sees everything before it unfolds, as only the elderly can. Evelyn’s a believable portrayal of an attractive young woman who is unhappy with settling, and thinks adultery with her neighbor’s son will do something for her (there is a definite parallel between Evelyn and adult Joseph), and Boots and Joseph have a convincing enough dynamic.

    What really did not land is this hazy summer of fishing, Roxy Music and illicit sex is supposed to be pivotal to present day Joseph, but it feels disconnected. His later life is his responsibility, but in this chapter he’s arguably a victim of a predatory woman, adolescent impulse, and plain bad luck. It’s not explained how and why this cast such a big shadow. Why did he leave and not look back? There is something of answer to this (the trauma of the tragedy) but the story never unpacks it.

    If the 2nd act is weaker than the first, the 3rd is very flat. Back to present day, there’s no particular resolution. Joe already knows he’s a bit of a shit, decides to help out Ruth (who we learn went onto marry Boots after Joe left them all behind) and that’s it.

    I liked the film in spite of itself. It so nearly does something really decent, but just flatlines. There’s gold in the individual parts, which really are very good. I wanted to see a lot more of Joseph and Olivia, if he sorts any of it out, but you get left hanging. Is that the script’s failing, or mine?

  • LOST Is back, I have some feelings

    Netflix, in their absolute unquestionable wisdom, have bought LOST. This is the show that is now regarded as the ‘Golden Age of Television’ in some circles. It’s not, that title will forever be owned by The WIre, and I am sorry, I will not be taking notes. LOST was the defining show of network TV, in much the same way Climie Fisher were the defining band of the 1980s.

    So of course, I watched the fucking pilot, for the first time since the absolute crushing disappointment that was the original broadcast run of the show. LOST was a glorious mess, a one-trick pony the likes of which we will never see again, because you can only pull this shit once, and everybody sees how it is done. It killed Westworld, for a recent example. “This show feels a bit like LOST“, I remember thinking, shortly before it died early, before really doing, well, anything.

    Mystery boxes – a perennial theme for showrunner Damon Lindelof, who got so badly broken by LOST he ragequit Twitter because people had the audacity to suggest his handling of the show was, like, shit, have a very short shelf-life. You can’t keep doing it. It’s boring, and it is not a substitute for solid storytelling. They were spinning plates, and they knew it, and by Season three, the audience knew it, too. Sky TV’s promo posters for Season 3, and I remember them very well, used to say “answers are coming”. It was an admission that the show set itself up for failure and had no hope for a resolution. We wanted to believe that they “knew what they were doing”. They didn’t.

    Ironically, LOST had fucking spades of great stories. It remains one of the greatest character-driven shows ever made. On form, the show was magic, but the writers never nailed the big picture. I remember in Season 2 with ‘The Hatch’ and the endless exposition the uneasy feeling the audience was collectively having its pisser pulled.

    Now the zoomers have got hold of it, and are fully embracing it in their weird little fanatical way. I wonder if they too will feel that burn of disappointment as the show goes on. Much is made of the ending. It’s okay, it’s just the show goes stale long before the finale.