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Yes I'm afraid its all true! Here's an old friend and ex-employee's story of mis-adventures in Cannes. And just to prove that he sometimes does work for a living, check out the great photo shoot with Tippi Hedren in L.A. recently... and that trip is another story!

It was not meant to be like that. Never. If you had told me in advance how that particular Cannes trip would go, I would have said “No thanks, I’m washing my hair during those particular dates.” As I sport a permanently shaved head, you get my drift… I was determined to go to Cannes. My first visit the previous year, was nothing but a massive, eye-opening, educational and, yes, fun experience. You can’t really think of yourself as a Producer and not go to Cannes. So I picked dates around other work commitments and booked my flight to Nice. I set up a few meetings, and arranged for accommodation with a friend. I knew I was meant to get paid on the day I was leaving, so everything was on track for four days of working, drinking, networking and searching for party invites. Having thrown some stuff into my worn out travel bag at the last minute, I legged it to Kings Cross to catch the train to Luton Airport. Having paid for my train ticket, I tried to get some cash out of the ATM, and nothing happened! Gulp! I took the train. Feverish thoughts running through my head – I was meant to get paid, no money in bank, but then payments from them usually get made in the afternoon, but, it’s near the afternoon, and they’ve always paid on time, but then there’s clearly no money… hmmm… To go or not to go, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of a missed Cannes trip, or take up arms against this current financial problem?
I couldn’t get hold of the company whose payment I’ve been expecting, and decided to board the plane and call them again once I got to Cannes. I will no doubt see the money in my account in a few hours…
Land in Nice.
Other members of the film community are also waiting for the bus to Cannes. The ticket is one Euro. I put it on my card and it goes through. I put my phone on. It searches for a signal, looking to hook
it to a French network. This is the very same phone I used in Cannes the year before, as well as trips to a number of other countries. It should work. Hear me dammit? It should work! But no… it’s searching… searching and it ain’t finding nothing. It just searches. On the bus to Cannes (which was only two hours late) I ask a fellow producer if I can use her phone. I just need to call the friend I’m meant to be staying with.Naturally his phone isn’t working. I leave a message to call me (obviously my phone will be fine any minute now). We arrive. Phone or no phone, in Cannes the basic idea is to get yourself to The Grand. Arriving late at night, I dragged my bag to the hotel and immediately found a few of the people I had arranged to meet with. Within minutes I found myself with a drink in my
hand and in fun company, and got all the latest gossip from people who had been there for a few days, being updated on what’s been happening in the market, and in the festival. It’s always funny to note that there are in fact two (if not more) events happening at the same time – the festival and the market. To most people, one has nothing to do with the other (in my case, the goings on at the festival are almost irrelevant). I couldn’t spot the person I was meant to be staying with, and given that my own phone was still in search mode, I borrowed a few phones throughout the night to try and get hold of him. Nothing. At about four in the morning most people had left the bar… I know someone offered me a place to stay, but I lost sight of them, and without a phone… Damn that alcohol! Strolling the street at night, dragging my bag (thank goodness for wheels), I notice it’s starting to rain – obviously. My body is tired, as are my arms after carrying that bag all across town. Then I remember the train station. Crossing my fingers, I walked there in the hope of getting away from the rain. The relief I felt seeing it open was massive. I couldn’t see any other festival goers in there. Most of the people seemed like French locals who were stranded or were waiting for the first train.
An empty bench became my new best friend as my body rested. Rested, but crying out for something softer under it. Rested, but without really resting as I was in a constant panic that if I fall asleep someone would walk away with my bag and rucksack. So not the greatest rest ever. Never mind, tomorrow will be different, I said to myself. Tomorrow will be great! Tomorrow becomes today. It’s early in the morning and I start walking around, luggage in tow. I go to the nearest ATM. It seems to be mocking me. I’m getting hungry. After my failed encounter with the cash machine I start thinking of options of where to go. Then I hear my name being shouted. I look around – J. an old colleague from another life, is waving to me, looking swish in his Cannes outfit (you know, summer clothes and shades – everything we don’t wear in grey old London). He tells me it’s his last few hours in Cannes and invites me to breakfast. Phew. He asks me if I need a pass to the market place. Of course I do! He just needs to go in for an hour or so, and he’ll call me when he’s done. I explain the situation and we arrange to meet up. Predictably, J does not turn up. Since when does anyone arrive on time in Cannes?
Lunch is next on my mind. Thankfully I have an invite to a lunch do courtesy of the lovely people at some post-production house, and my neighbour, who has just finished his first feature film with them. I go down and hear the first pop of a champagne cork – what a sweet sound. Something no screwtop bottle will ever be able to achieve. With food and drink aplenty, I lay down on a comfy sofa, situated right on the beach, a glass in my hand and my body finally finds itself starting to relax. I then notice that this is no ordinary post-house party. There’s Billy Zane and Kelly hanging out next to me,
and when I look in the other direction, Tommy-Lee Jones is nattering with what could only be ‘his people’. My neighbour turns up and we eat and drink away.
One woman turns to me and comments that I look so relaxed on the sofa… yeah, right…
This is just relief that I’ve not had to drag my luggage for a few hours. The party is long finished, but the hardcore crowd is still drinking away. This is mainly due to the fact that the boss of said post-house is being ridiculously generous and keeps buying rounds of mojitos, and all of us are far too polite to say no. There’s mention of another party at the Weinstein headquarters, and a motley crew of semi-pissed film people (a description which applies to nearly everyone in Cannes) makes its way there. I seem to be the only person dragging their luggage. Stunning views from the penthouse, more champagne and food, lovely company, and I’m thinking – hey, it’s not all bad! We carry on to a club – by now it’s getting very late – and I’ve still not found a place to sleep for the night. Truth be told, I’ve not been looking, what with all the schmoozing and boozing. But my neighbour promises to sort something (he’s staying with the good folk from the post-house), so I’m not worried. Someone – and I really have no idea who by now – just keeps buying drinks at this very loud club. I’m seeing five of most people, but in a good way. It’s now way past two in the morning and we all start making our way toward their villa when I realise I’m not dragging anything behind me! The panic that sets in means I’m running around a bit. By the time I find my luggage I’m no longer able to spot neighbour and friends (the next day I find out my neighbour spent about an hour looking for me and probably missed me by a few minutes in every place he looked). So I drag myself and my luggage to La Petite Majestic and find myself nattering away with other night-owls, all of them asking if I’ve just arrived. Tired, still broke, and still with luggage in tow I try to find a place to rest. Petite Majestic has closed, and the streets are nearly empty. I find a café, which is open with a seat outside. After 10 minutes or so I’m told that I can only stay if I order something. I order the bill, but the joke is lost on the waitress, so I politely leave and head to the only place that will have the likes of me at this time of night– the train station. The friendly bench awaits me.
Morning. I’ve not washed in two days – something I’ve not done in quite a few years, and I need a coffee. I check the cash-machine, just in case, but the results are the same. I go back to the Grand and, having had enough of dragging my luggage around, I store it underneath the piano in the hotel. Laptop out, I manage to at least get in touch with a few people I’ve arranged to meet. A quick change of clothes in the toilet, and I’m fresh as a daisy. I sit down and someone asks if they can sit at my table. I agree, and when the waiter arrives my new tablemate insists on buying me coffee and a pastry for invading my table. Who am I to refuse? I decide I must make it into the market area and, given that I can’t buy a daily pass, I go for the oldest trick in the book – do you mind if I just nip back in? But where is your pass monsieur? I can’t find it – I think I left it inside the UK pavilion – I’ll be very quick. They let me in. Inside, a whole host of familiar faces, and I’m very kindly invited to the Kodak lunch, which just happened to be starting. Good – I’m hungry and could do with a drink (hair of the dog and all that). At the Kodak party I bump into a gang of old chums who are on the hunt for more parties and meetings. We stroll around the market and, somehow, the business card I’ve hung around my neck seems to work on all the security people. This is good as I need to be meeting one or two people there.
Later in the day we find ourselves invited to the party hosted by the Scandinavian countries. Great food and drinks, and more interesting chats with producers and financiers. What an international lot we are – a German producer, French composer, Swiss director, Italian actress (she was a bit weird), and various other folk who seemed to pop out of nowhere and joined our party. Once again I find myself on a great rooftop, with great view of the most buzzing film festival in the world. I drink a toast to the town. The French composer is horrified by the fact I’ve not found a bed and offers me his spare room! I’m determined to keep eye-contact with him! I have his phone number of course. We move to another party and, walking along La Croisette, I bump into a producer friend from China. We’ve been trying to set up a meeting for the past two days. It’s past midnight now and she’s leaving first thing in the morning. We decide to sit down and chat (I’m hoping to be invited to China to run a workshop for her). She takes me to the Chinese party. Before leaving my gang I ask where they’ll be later. They give me the name of the club. As I watch them go I wonder if I’ll ever see that spare room – but this meeting is important to me. When we get to the Chinese party I become slightly star-struck. The table next to us is playing host to two people I hugely admire – Jackie Chan and John Woo – who are getting very drunk together, which makes my meeting even more entertaining. The meeting goes well, and we plan the sort of workshop we’d like to run.
She tells me they are talking to other people about running the workshop, but I’m the person she’ll be recommending. I walk away elated. Happy about the meeting, even happier to have had a couple of words with two filmmakers I’ve admired for a long time. Was this worth losing a spare room for? Time will tell. The Grand is about to close and I just cannot be bothered to drag my luggage anymore. I decide to leave it under the piano. All my valuable things are in my rucksack, so sod it. I’m sure my luggage will be there in the morning. I start imagining various bomb-scare incidents at the hotel, but the worst that will happen is the French police will blow up some dirty underwear. C’est la vie.
More drinks at Le Petite Majestic, and when it closes I know my routine. Yes, my little train station bench, here I come. As I lay down I try to imagine that the spare room I was offered earlier was the worse possible room ever; smelly, full of bugs and far far away. Surely that must be the case. My last day in Cannes. I arrive at The Grand to see my luggage is still waiting for me where I’d tucked it away.
I finally get an e-mail from the company whose payment I’ve been expecting. There was a problem with printing out my invoice. They were very apologetic – this has never happened before etc, and the payment should be in my account by end of day. Hmmmm…. After a couple of hours of meetings and card swapping I get hungry again. I walked along La Croisette, trying to think of how best to deal with this when I bumped into an old chum outside a restaurant. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked what he was doing there. He was in charge of the guest list for The Times lunch, and asked if would I like to come in. He’d read my mind! A fantastic lunch was laid out and I found myself on a table with a few British financiers and producers. A solicitor friend is on the table next to me, which gave us a chance to catch up – something we’ve been trying to do for a couple of months. After a couple of hours of more food and wine, we – myself and all the friends at my table – are the only ones left. Everyone else has left, but we are still ordering wine, munching away, making plans, talking shop, and loving the sunshine. I only have one or two more hours before I need to be at the airport. I’ve not really given any thought to how I’ll get there, but somehow, a woman who has just joined our table tells me that she’s on the same flight as me, and that I can join her taxi ride! I just need to make it to her hotel in an hour or so where she and the rest of company are staying. Perfect! After five hours at one of
the best, and most entertaining, lunches I’ve ever had, I stagger away to retrieve my luggage from under the piano at The Grand Hotel. I say to Cannes and somehow find the hotel just as my new acquaintance and the rest of her company step into the cab for the airport. I’ll admit that after all the wine we’ve drunk, I am not all there. I fall asleep in the airport and wake up to find I can’t see my luggage. There’s only 10 minutes left to board the plane. Finally someone indicates that they may have found it and I should check with security. At security they tell me off for walking away from my
luggage (did I do that?), and hand it back to me. I make my way as fast as I can and manage to board the flight just as they’re closing the doors. Phew….
When I land in Luton I worry about getting back to London, but my card works! I can buy a train ticket! There is money in my account! Needless to say that my phone is working again. I spend the train ride to London listening to all the messages left for me over the last four days: “Where are you?” “Do you still need the room?” “Can’t find you…worried about you”. Text messages, voicemail, all of them about my sleeping arrangements. Well, I think as I prepare myself for my first night on a proper bed, at least I’m not out of pocket by much – just that one Euro I spent on the bus from the airport to Cannes. Before falling asleep on the lovely mattress, surrounded by my lovely pillows and my soft, soft duvet, I go over the last few days in my head. I had a good time, a productive
time, a lot of fun – but never, I mean NEVER again!

 

After the success of our last initiative to encourage you all to discover, or even re-discover, works from specific directors... its back!

Our CELEBRATE DIRECTORS season kicks off again from the beginning of June with FREE rentals from WOODY ALLEN, SAM MENDES & CLINT EASTWOOD. All of whom have great new releases coming out.

Get any of their Back Catalogue films Free with any of our £6 deals!

More great directors to choose from throughout the summer...

 

Roll up Roll up... such is the state of packaged media that used films can be purchased from a mere one pence on Amazon. Even we're at it, so check them out. Lots of recent releases straight from our shops end up on Amazon around 4-5 weeks after release, at well under a tenner!   

In our 20th anniversary year we're pleased to say we've had many memorable episodes, including 6 marriages between staff and customers... but never before has a past customer won a major Oscar!
There's some great films out to rent at the moment, or how about the back catalogue from Kate Winslet and Danny Boyle... any 3 for 3 nights for 6 quid!
 

While we're all pre-occupied with getting through the winter, let alone the recession, it just seems to be getting worse. With a whole range of Media and Entertainment concerns falling by the wayside, who's going to be left? First the country's largest wholesaler, S.Golds, Woolworths & EUK and now Zavvi. Consequently we, I'm afraid, have been having a hard time sourcing some stock for Rental stores. But we've managed and now look forward to some great releases over the coming months. Having suffered most of the hangover from the writer's strike last year with gaps in quality viewing, it's given the industry a shake up and more indie films have had a look-in.
Rental is on the up again as an alternative form of entertainment when times are hard... especially as we're now offering such great deals!
Happy New Year to everyone, in this, our 20th anniversary year in Biz!      

A New York city street as modeled in a vast theatre, underneath an imprisoning roof of arched steel and flying overhead, an airship. A perfect visual summation of the concoction of Philip K Dick with Kafka weaved by Kaufman in his debut as director.  Not that Kaufman would ever be simply guilty of repeating his influences, his own vision is enough of a creature itself to apprehend. And besides, most of all the movie poster leaves out the central being of this intensely focused film. Caden Cotard is slowly falling apart, and out of the decay is trying to realize his ultimate work. The film becomes an example of its own title, a synecdoche, as his projected play slowly envelops his life and becomes the reality, which supersedes life, or life miming art.
The kind of games, the playful literary technique in Synecdoche NY put this into the seriously enigmatic category, as though Woody Allen did acid before Manhattan. You look at the form, and after Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind this could well be Charlie Kaufman’s Gravity’s Rainbow or Infinite Jest.   It’s a demonstration of a uniquely dense take on the “big themes” and has peerless invention, but it feels rather too concerned with itself as a post-modern exploration than a cinema experience. 
The notes of a soul crying out against the awful, dreary world of ever encroaching death never quite connect in a way that moves, unlike Jon Brion’s song, Little Person, which beats away in the soundtrack like the missing heart of this work. Casting Phillip Seymour  Hoffman should ring out the sadness which is poor Caden’s lot rather than  the showing up the coldness of the design. It doesn’t matter how good you are. I felt for Diane Wiest when she comes to the reins late on, playing a version of Caden, she is given about the most important lines in the entire film and they sound so clunkily explicit, like a writer making his address. 
But there’s easily enough in this to inspire reflection long after you’ve finished the film.  No stranger to playing with time, Kaufman tells his story in a peculiar kind of temporal atrophy. Scenes continually allow the future into the present, and then later in the movie Caden is caught in a terminal rush where death is definitely the next stop, only we never arrive, we wait and see time itself as another lesson in narrative. This is very close in spirit to Beckett. It isn’t going to repeat the success of Eternal Sunshine, but for anyone bothered to make an effort it feels as though it would repay another viewing. Kaufman isn’t the kind of director to imitate, although there’s a distinct Punch-Drunk Love feel in all of this, albeit one which is amped into a very theatrical intelligence. If Adam Sandler and Emily Watson’s romance was about the West Coast promise of happiness in escape,  then Caden’s lonely journey is rooted in an East Coast urban negativism.There is a notion of love in this but it keeps being strangled by a drive towards the darker side of a dreamy version of Caden’s life.  
The story goes awry from the start when his wife walks out on him with their 4 year old daughter. Catherine Keener seems not quite the bitch she played in Being John Malkovich, but decides to leave for the art scene in Germany and entirely cuts off Caden.  Kaufman can’t write anything remotely realistic about a break-up without going into overdrive – this isn’t Blood on the Tracks so much as Torture in A Berlin Sex Club. Just as Being John Malkovich was relaxed, even amused over the quite horrifying, as Malkovich regains his mind so briefly, again in Synecdoche there is a detachment obstructing its more heartfelt claims. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s tears should be worth something more than this. Kaufman could have learnt much from the sincerity of  Hoffman’s character in Love Liza, nevermind looking at Todd Luiso’s direction for how to make a downward spiralling life seem worth caring about.
The sheer abstraction in the narrative asks for more an effort of exegesis than viewerly pleasure. While in fantasies, the introductory is often the most beguiling here. Kaufman bides his time till he lets us in on the extent of his game with Caden Cotard. Turning mimesis inside out isn’t so original but the way it builds into a cumulative experience, where everything becomes another reflection of a reflection, every wall, every room, another piece to be restaged has at least, a flat out brilliant conceptual design even if steadily Kaufman’s trademark humour is drained from the film.
Perhaps it eclipses everything he’s done before, intellectually it does, but it makes the mortal error of being itself a part of Caden’s terminal drift towards death. There is no will to contrast the solipsistic stage of Caden’s descent. The happiness, as the  Kaufman penned lyrics go, is somewhere, maybe some day far away….

Commander Travis

Having had various friends, colleagues and staffers mingling at the recent festival, we'll hopefully be bringing you our own reviews of certain films. Although some of us didn't quite get around to watching many movies, I for one loved the latest Bond movie... surely the best for some time, for all sorts of reasons. Not least because of the slightly darker take and subtleness of the storyline. Daniel Craig (one of our members) is fitting into the part nicely.
    

It seems some of our shop members are upset that we're about to cancel in-store subscription accounts. So here's why we're doing it...

We don't make money out of them! And they were becoming a conflict to normal members in terms of copy depth. Although many members, past and present, may well use the likes of lovefilm, it should be noted that there're agenda is to aggregate subscribers for next-generation digital delivery and that the business as it stands is still not profitable. Besides the fact that a growing amount of monthly debits we're being returned unpaid (sign of the times!),causing admin headaches.

Anyway, bet you didn't know we have execs of lovefilm who still rent films from our shops! Ask yourself why that should be? Remember people, we give you up to 30% extra if you pre-pay, and many a loving relationship has been struck-up in our shops between customers over the years! So get out there, meet your neighbors, go to the pub for a drink and then go and watch one of our movies together... that way you save more money because you're sharing!    

   

Batman has come a long way from his first appearance in Detective Comics.  If ever a film marked a contrast with its forbears then this is it. Tim Burton’s own effort pales against this very contemporary vigilante.  The gothic design, party theatricality and   sing-song Joker are now caught in a 1989 past which is an ornate confection.  Films don’t exactly improve but they certainly revel in their ability to portray a more exciting, realistic version of action. Christopher Nolan’s particular contribution rides over the problems with his first effort and takes the intensity level to ten or thereabouts, not just in its aerial swoops but in it’s intelligence. This must be one of the most auteurist blockbusters ever made. Critics who feel judgement has be qualified by the base material of a big budget Hollywood production should realise this allows Nolan to carry on from Memento rather than somehow restricting his freedom. Genre doesn’t mean dumber, even if the rapturous Fanboys makes it seem so. For many, this is genre defining for 2008 the way James Cameron accomplished with Terminator and Aliens in the 80s, or Fincher with Se7en in the 90s. Bryan Singer’s own Superman rebirth falls to the side, an irrelevancy next to this.

 

As much as the spectacle is impressive, easily eclipsing his first effort, and featuring an inspired turn from Heath Ledger, its ambition ultimately reveals a rather troubled core.  The problem with Christopher Nolan is his need to exercise the most calculated kind of plotting for the sake of throwing his audience into an unexpected turn. For all the critical praise he receives, like Bryan Singer, he is an exemplar of a dubious evolution of narrative. Where the absurdity of the ruse in Vertigo is brilliantly revealed we now find less and less artfully a defined tendency to surprise an audience with a plot turnaround like an addict looking for a fix. The rot set in with David Fincher’s Se7en. It becomes especially striking with the manifest ability of these directors. In the case of Nolan it’s remarkable to find such favourable consensus on his style. Being skilfully hoodwinked only for the plot to unravel in the most drastic fashion suggests a certain pursuit of complexity of form, a balancing act with reality that goes completely askew. 

 

The Joker appears as if from nowhere in The Dark Knight, there is no attempt to explain him; he supersedes the notion of an origin. While this is satisfying, and Nolan’s beloved style of over intricate plotting is absolutely what you should expect from Gotham’s exotic criminality, too much rests on the tragedy of Harvey Dent. The rising star of Gotham’s fight against crime, played to perfection by Aaron Eckhart, is built up with barely a hint of the precipice he walks. Nolan likes to work a sudden reversal even when most of the audience know where Dent is headed. There is a kinship Batman feels for Dent’s crusading work in the court room who also happens to be romancing Rachel Dawes, (now Maggie Gyllenhaal after Kate Holmes oddly turned down this sequel) Bruce Wayne’s former love interest. This is the game of rivals but this time Nolan explores it as a kind of sympathetic contest. When Dent comes out with the memorable line: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain” its pure Frank Miller, the writer who kick-started it all with his own Dark Knight, before Tim Burton’s Batman.  But the crunch is the transformation from sanity to insanity.  That is the rub.  And here, Dark Knight falls down. 

 

When poor Harvey comes round from his accident we have to deal with a derangement bent on vengeance no matter what the cost. Herein lies a problem. In the genre of the comic book unhinged psychopaths are perfect villain material; dramatic shifts in character add to their colour. But Nolan puts so much of our everyday world into the sensibility of The Dark Knight it presents a challenging paradox not just of Dent’s persona but of how you integrate realism into genre. After the thrills there’s an uncomfortable feeling over how much has been taken from a post 9/11 American psyche and replayed out for kicks. What was present in ‘Batman Begins’ now becomes questionably amplified. The Joker is essentially a cipher for terrorism. Gotham is plunged  just like Iraq into the most violent insecurity replete with videos of hostages being killed,  and a debate on whether Batman, like the US army, is only serving to further inflame the situation. 

 

It’s very bold of Nolan to debate the value of Batman, but drawing such a close analogy to the American role in Iraq is bound for difficulty. Standing in the smoking wreckage of a building, the fire hoses behind him Batman may as well be at Ground Zero. I can understand the need for genre to be reinvented, to be made more contemporary but this is mainlining a very ideological sort of fear. Graphic Novels have explored both the psychological and political but not ventured as far as Nolan. But then, the stakes are so much greater now than when Miller originally created his Dark Knight and Alan Moore wrote The Watchmen. This is an experience attempting to push the action further whilst exploiting the frayed psyche of post 9/11 USA. It wears its intellect a little too obviously at the expense of feeling. For all its authentic darkness, so lacking from Burton’s version  there isn’t one frame of lyricism. A transvestite Joker walking from Gotham General Hospital dressed as a nurse to his getaway school bus is one of a number of inspired images which don’t quite cover for a film full of guile but confused how far to go in questioning a hero who becomes increasingly warped. The stakes are raised, pain of a mental kind is all over this without it ever disturbing the next thrill of the narrative.  Heath Ledger’s Joker is the draw card living up to the hype. He brings a riveting take on The Joker’s murderous games although it must set a new high for sadism in a 12 rated movie.  Next to the protagonist of Memento he seems to be the character who most eloquently allows Nolan to give rein to his strongest impulse to deconstruct identity.  

 

After six films Chris Nolan has most convinced he crafts captivating films with an intellect rarely found in Hollywood. I can think of no clearer case of a director flattering to deceive.

Charles Maclean

As we're in the process of integrating the DivX platform into our site, perhaps some of you would like to partake in the live testing phase... Mac and PC. You need to be in the UK and of course have a suitable broadband connection.
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Cannes on 1 Euro...

Yes I'm afraid its all true! Here's an old friend and ex-employee's story of mis-adventures in Cannes. And just to prove that he sometimes does work for a living, check out the great photo shoot with Tippi Hedren in L.A. recently... and that trip is another story!

It was not meant to be like that. Never. If you had told me in advance how that particular Cannes trip would go, I would have said “No thanks, I’m washing my hair during those particular dates.” As I sport a permanently shaved head, you get my drift… I was determined to go to Cannes. My first visit the previous year, was nothing but a massive, eye-opening, educational and, yes, fun experience. You can’t really think of yourself as a Producer and not go to Cannes. So I picked dates around other work commitments and booked my flight to Nice. I set up a few meetings, and arranged for accommodation with a friend. I knew I was meant to get paid on the day I was leaving, so everything was on track for four days of working, drinking, networking and searching for party invites. Having thrown some stuff into my worn out travel bag at the last minute, I legged it to Kings Cross to catch the train to Luton Airport. Having paid for my train ticket, I tried to get some cash out of the ATM, and nothing happened! Gulp! I took the train. Feverish thoughts running through my head – I was meant to get paid, no money in bank, but then payments from them usually get made in the afternoon, but, it’s near the afternoon, and they’ve always paid on time, but then there’s clearly no money… hmmm… To go or not to go, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of a missed Cannes trip, or take up arms against this current financial problem?
I couldn’t get hold of the company whose payment I’ve been expecting, and decided to board the plane and call them again once I got to Cannes. I will no doubt see the money in my account in a few hours…
Land in Nice.
Other members of the film community are also waiting for the bus to Cannes. The ticket is one Euro. I put it on my card and it goes through. I put my phone on. It searches for a signal, looking to hook
it to a French network. This is the very same phone I used in Cannes the year before, as well as trips to a number of other countries. It should work. Hear me dammit? It should work! But no… it’s searching… searching and it ain’t finding nothing. It just searches. On the bus to Cannes (which was only two hours late) I ask a fellow producer if I can use her phone. I just need to call the friend I’m meant to be staying with.Naturally his phone isn’t working. I leave a message to call me (obviously my phone will be fine any minute now). We arrive. Phone or no phone, in Cannes the basic idea is to get yourself to The Grand. Arriving late at night, I dragged my bag to the hotel and immediately found a few of the people I had arranged to meet with. Within minutes I found myself with a drink in my
hand and in fun company, and got all the latest gossip from people who had been there for a few days, being updated on what’s been happening in the market, and in the festival. It’s always funny to note that there are in fact two (if not more) events happening at the same time – the festival and the market. To most people, one has nothing to do with the other (in my case, the goings on at the festival are almost irrelevant). I couldn’t spot the person I was meant to be staying with, and given that my own phone was still in search mode, I borrowed a few phones throughout the night to try and get hold of him. Nothing. At about four in the morning most people had left the bar… I know someone offered me a place to stay, but I lost sight of them, and without a phone… Damn that alcohol! Strolling the street at night, dragging my bag (thank goodness for wheels), I notice it’s starting to rain – obviously. My body is tired, as are my arms after carrying that bag all across town. Then I remember the train station. Crossing my fingers, I walked there in the hope of getting away from the rain. The relief I felt seeing it open was massive. I couldn’t see any other festival goers in there. Most of the people seemed like French locals who were stranded or were waiting for the first train.
An empty bench became my new best friend as my body rested. Rested, but crying out for something softer under it. Rested, but without really resting as I was in a constant panic that if I fall asleep someone would walk away with my bag and rucksack. So not the greatest rest ever. Never mind, tomorrow will be different, I said to myself. Tomorrow will be great! Tomorrow becomes today. It’s early in the morning and I start walking around, luggage in tow. I go to the nearest ATM. It seems to be mocking me. I’m getting hungry. After my failed encounter with the cash machine I start thinking of options of where to go. Then I hear my name being shouted. I look around – J. an old colleague from another life, is waving to me, looking swish in his Cannes outfit (you know, summer clothes and shades – everything we don’t wear in grey old London). He tells me it’s his last few hours in Cannes and invites me to breakfast. Phew. He asks me if I need a pass to the market place. Of course I do! He just needs to go in for an hour or so, and he’ll call me when he’s done. I explain the situation and we arrange to meet up. Predictably, J does not turn up. Since when does anyone arrive on time in Cannes?
Lunch is next on my mind. Thankfully I have an invite to a lunch do courtesy of the lovely people at some post-production house, and my neighbour, who has just finished his first feature film with them. I go down and hear the first pop of a champagne cork – what a sweet sound. Something no screwtop bottle will ever be able to achieve. With food and drink aplenty, I lay down on a comfy sofa, situated right on the beach, a glass in my hand and my body finally finds itself starting to relax. I then notice that this is no ordinary post-house party. There’s Billy Zane and Kelly hanging out next to me,
and when I look in the other direction, Tommy-Lee Jones is nattering with what could only be ‘his people’. My neighbour turns up and we eat and drink away.
One woman turns to me and comments that I look so relaxed on the sofa… yeah, right…
This is just relief that I’ve not had to drag my luggage for a few hours. The party is long finished, but the hardcore crowd is still drinking away. This is mainly due to the fact that the boss of said post-house is being ridiculously generous and keeps buying rounds of mojitos, and all of us are far too polite to say no. There’s mention of another party at the Weinstein headquarters, and a motley crew of semi-pissed film people (a description which applies to nearly everyone in Cannes) makes its way there. I seem to be the only person dragging their luggage. Stunning views from the penthouse, more champagne and food, lovely company, and I’m thinking – hey, it’s not all bad! We carry on to a club – by now it’s getting very late – and I’ve still not found a place to sleep for the night. Truth be told, I’ve not been looking, what with all the schmoozing and boozing. But my neighbour promises to sort something (he’s staying with the good folk from the post-house), so I’m not worried. Someone – and I really have no idea who by now – just keeps buying drinks at this very loud club. I’m seeing five of most people, but in a good way. It’s now way past two in the morning and we all start making our way toward their villa when I realise I’m not dragging anything behind me! The panic that sets in means I’m running around a bit. By the time I find my luggage I’m no longer able to spot neighbour and friends (the next day I find out my neighbour spent about an hour looking for me and probably missed me by a few minutes in every place he looked). So I drag myself and my luggage to La Petite Majestic and find myself nattering away with other night-owls, all of them asking if I’ve just arrived. Tired, still broke, and still with luggage in tow I try to find a place to rest. Petite Majestic has closed, and the streets are nearly empty. I find a café, which is open with a seat outside. After 10 minutes or so I’m told that I can only stay if I order something. I order the bill, but the joke is lost on the waitress, so I politely leave and head to the only place that will have the likes of me at this time of night– the train station. The friendly bench awaits me.
Morning. I’ve not washed in two days – something I’ve not done in quite a few years, and I need a coffee. I check the cash-machine, just in case, but the results are the same. I go back to the Grand and, having had enough of dragging my luggage around, I store it underneath the piano in the hotel. Laptop out, I manage to at least get in touch with a few people I’ve arranged to meet. A quick change of clothes in the toilet, and I’m fresh as a daisy. I sit down and someone asks if they can sit at my table. I agree, and when the waiter arrives my new tablemate insists on buying me coffee and a pastry for invading my table. Who am I to refuse? I decide I must make it into the market area and, given that I can’t buy a daily pass, I go for the oldest trick in the book – do you mind if I just nip back in? But where is your pass monsieur? I can’t find it – I think I left it inside the UK pavilion – I’ll be very quick. They let me in. Inside, a whole host of familiar faces, and I’m very kindly invited to the Kodak lunch, which just happened to be starting. Good – I’m hungry and could do with a drink (hair of the dog and all that). At the Kodak party I bump into a gang of old chums who are on the hunt for more parties and meetings. We stroll around the market and, somehow, the business card I’ve hung around my neck seems to work on all the security people. This is good as I need to be meeting one or two people there.
Later in the day we find ourselves invited to the party hosted by the Scandinavian countries. Great food and drinks, and more interesting chats with producers and financiers. What an international lot we are – a German producer, French composer, Swiss director, Italian actress (she was a bit weird), and various other folk who seemed to pop out of nowhere and joined our party. Once again I find myself on a great rooftop, with great view of the most buzzing film festival in the world. I drink a toast to the town. The French composer is horrified by the fact I’ve not found a bed and offers me his spare room! I’m determined to keep eye-contact with him! I have his phone number of course. We move to another party and, walking along La Croisette, I bump into a producer friend from China. We’ve been trying to set up a meeting for the past two days. It’s past midnight now and she’s leaving first thing in the morning. We decide to sit down and chat (I’m hoping to be invited to China to run a workshop for her). She takes me to the Chinese party. Before leaving my gang I ask where they’ll be later. They give me the name of the club. As I watch them go I wonder if I’ll ever see that spare room – but this meeting is important to me. When we get to the Chinese party I become slightly star-struck. The table next to us is playing host to two people I hugely admire – Jackie Chan and John Woo – who are getting very drunk together, which makes my meeting even more entertaining. The meeting goes well, and we plan the sort of workshop we’d like to run.
She tells me they are talking to other people about running the workshop, but I’m the person she’ll be recommending. I walk away elated. Happy about the meeting, even happier to have had a couple of words with two filmmakers I’ve admired for a long time. Was this worth losing a spare room for? Time will tell. The Grand is about to close and I just cannot be bothered to drag my luggage anymore. I decide to leave it under the piano. All my valuable things are in my rucksack, so sod it. I’m sure my luggage will be there in the morning. I start imagining various bomb-scare incidents at the hotel, but the worst that will happen is the French police will blow up some dirty underwear. C’est la vie.
More drinks at Le Petite Majestic, and when it closes I know my routine. Yes, my little train station bench, here I come. As I lay down I try to imagine that the spare room I was offered earlier was the worse possible room ever; smelly, full of bugs and far far away. Surely that must be the case. My last day in Cannes. I arrive at The Grand to see my luggage is still waiting for me where I’d tucked it away.
I finally get an e-mail from the company whose payment I’ve been expecting. There was a problem with printing out my invoice. They were very apologetic – this has never happened before etc, and the payment should be in my account by end of day. Hmmmm…. After a couple of hours of meetings and card swapping I get hungry again. I walked along La Croisette, trying to think of how best to deal with this when I bumped into an old chum outside a restaurant. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked what he was doing there. He was in charge of the guest list for The Times lunch, and asked if would I like to come in. He’d read my mind! A fantastic lunch was laid out and I found myself on a table with a few British financiers and producers. A solicitor friend is on the table next to me, which gave us a chance to catch up – something we’ve been trying to do for a couple of months. After a couple of hours of more food and wine, we – myself and all the friends at my table – are the only ones left. Everyone else has left, but we are still ordering wine, munching away, making plans, talking shop, and loving the sunshine. I only have one or two more hours before I need to be at the airport. I’ve not really given any thought to how I’ll get there, but somehow, a woman who has just joined our table tells me that she’s on the same flight as me, and that I can join her taxi ride! I just need to make it to her hotel in an hour or so where she and the rest of company are staying. Perfect! After five hours at one of
the best, and most entertaining, lunches I’ve ever had, I stagger away to retrieve my luggage from under the piano at The Grand Hotel. I say to Cannes and somehow find the hotel just as my new acquaintance and the rest of her company step into the cab for the airport. I’ll admit that after all the wine we’ve drunk, I am not all there. I fall asleep in the airport and wake up to find I can’t see my luggage. There’s only 10 minutes left to board the plane. Finally someone indicates that they may have found it and I should check with security. At security they tell me off for walking away from my
luggage (did I do that?), and hand it back to me. I make my way as fast as I can and manage to board the flight just as they’re closing the doors. Phew….
When I land in Luton I worry about getting back to London, but my card works! I can buy a train ticket! There is money in my account! Needless to say that my phone is working again. I spend the train ride to London listening to all the messages left for me over the last four days: “Where are you?” “Do you still need the room?” “Can’t find you…worried about you”. Text messages, voicemail, all of them about my sleeping arrangements. Well, I think as I prepare myself for my first night on a proper bed, at least I’m not out of pocket by much – just that one Euro I spent on the bus from the airport to Cannes. Before falling asleep on the lovely mattress, surrounded by my lovely pillows and my soft, soft duvet, I go over the last few days in my head. I had a good time, a productive
time, a lot of fun – but never, I mean NEVER again!

 

Celebrate Directors

After the success of our last initiative to encourage you all to discover, or even re-discover, works from specific directors... its back!

Our CELEBRATE DIRECTORS season kicks off again from the beginning of June with FREE rentals from WOODY ALLEN, SAM MENDES & CLINT EASTWOOD. All of whom have great new releases coming out.

Get any of their Back Catalogue films Free with any of our £6 deals!

More great directors to choose from throughout the summer...

 

Buy DVDs from 1p!

Roll up Roll up... such is the state of packaged media that used films can be purchased from a mere one pence on Amazon. Even we're at it, so check them out. Lots of recent releases straight from our shops end up on Amazon around 4-5 weeks after release, at well under a tenner!   

And The Winner Is...

In our 20th anniversary year we're pleased to say we've had many memorable episodes, including 6 marriages between staff and customers... but never before has a past customer won a major Oscar!
There's some great films out to rent at the moment, or how about the back catalogue from Kate Winslet and Danny Boyle... any 3 for 3 nights for 6 quid!
 

Happy? New Year!

While we're all pre-occupied with getting through the winter, let alone the recession, it just seems to be getting worse. With a whole range of Media and Entertainment concerns falling by the wayside, who's going to be left? First the country's largest wholesaler, S.Golds, Woolworths & EUK and now Zavvi. Consequently we, I'm afraid, have been having a hard time sourcing some stock for Rental stores. But we've managed and now look forward to some great releases over the coming months. Having suffered most of the hangover from the writer's strike last year with gaps in quality viewing, it's given the industry a shake up and more indie films have had a look-in.
Rental is on the up again as an alternative form of entertainment when times are hard... especially as we're now offering such great deals!
Happy New Year to everyone, in this, our 20th anniversary year in Biz!      

A little person, somewhere. Synecdoche New York

A New York city street as modeled in a vast theatre, underneath an imprisoning roof of arched steel and flying overhead, an airship. A perfect visual summation of the concoction of Philip K Dick with Kafka weaved by Kaufman in his debut as director.  Not that Kaufman would ever be simply guilty of repeating his influences, his own vision is enough of a creature itself to apprehend. And besides, most of all the movie poster leaves out the central being of this intensely focused film. Caden Cotard is slowly falling apart, and out of the decay is trying to realize his ultimate work. The film becomes an example of its own title, a synecdoche, as his projected play slowly envelops his life and becomes the reality, which supersedes life, or life miming art.
The kind of games, the playful literary technique in Synecdoche NY put this into the seriously enigmatic category, as though Woody Allen did acid before Manhattan. You look at the form, and after Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind this could well be Charlie Kaufman’s Gravity’s Rainbow or Infinite Jest.   It’s a demonstration of a uniquely dense take on the “big themes” and has peerless invention, but it feels rather too concerned with itself as a post-modern exploration than a cinema experience. 
The notes of a soul crying out against the awful, dreary world of ever encroaching death never quite connect in a way that moves, unlike Jon Brion’s song, Little Person, which beats away in the soundtrack like the missing heart of this work. Casting Phillip Seymour  Hoffman should ring out the sadness which is poor Caden’s lot rather than  the showing up the coldness of the design. It doesn’t matter how good you are. I felt for Diane Wiest when she comes to the reins late on, playing a version of Caden, she is given about the most important lines in the entire film and they sound so clunkily explicit, like a writer making his address. 
But there’s easily enough in this to inspire reflection long after you’ve finished the film.  No stranger to playing with time, Kaufman tells his story in a peculiar kind of temporal atrophy. Scenes continually allow the future into the present, and then later in the movie Caden is caught in a terminal rush where death is definitely the next stop, only we never arrive, we wait and see time itself as another lesson in narrative. This is very close in spirit to Beckett. It isn’t going to repeat the success of Eternal Sunshine, but for anyone bothered to make an effort it feels as though it would repay another viewing. Kaufman isn’t the kind of director to imitate, although there’s a distinct Punch-Drunk Love feel in all of this, albeit one which is amped into a very theatrical intelligence. If Adam Sandler and Emily Watson’s romance was about the West Coast promise of happiness in escape,  then Caden’s lonely journey is rooted in an East Coast urban negativism.There is a notion of love in this but it keeps being strangled by a drive towards the darker side of a dreamy version of Caden’s life.  
The story goes awry from the start when his wife walks out on him with their 4 year old daughter. Catherine Keener seems not quite the bitch she played in Being John Malkovich, but decides to leave for the art scene in Germany and entirely cuts off Caden.  Kaufman can’t write anything remotely realistic about a break-up without going into overdrive – this isn’t Blood on the Tracks so much as Torture in A Berlin Sex Club. Just as Being John Malkovich was relaxed, even amused over the quite horrifying, as Malkovich regains his mind so briefly, again in Synecdoche there is a detachment obstructing its more heartfelt claims. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s tears should be worth something more than this. Kaufman could have learnt much from the sincerity of  Hoffman’s character in Love Liza, nevermind looking at Todd Luiso’s direction for how to make a downward spiralling life seem worth caring about.
The sheer abstraction in the narrative asks for more an effort of exegesis than viewerly pleasure. While in fantasies, the introductory is often the most beguiling here. Kaufman bides his time till he lets us in on the extent of his game with Caden Cotard. Turning mimesis inside out isn’t so original but the way it builds into a cumulative experience, where everything becomes another reflection of a reflection, every wall, every room, another piece to be restaged has at least, a flat out brilliant conceptual design even if steadily Kaufman’s trademark humour is drained from the film.
Perhaps it eclipses everything he’s done before, intellectually it does, but it makes the mortal error of being itself a part of Caden’s terminal drift towards death. There is no will to contrast the solipsistic stage of Caden’s descent. The happiness, as the  Kaufman penned lyrics go, is somewhere, maybe some day far away….

Commander Travis

London Film Festival

Having had various friends, colleagues and staffers mingling at the recent festival, we'll hopefully be bringing you our own reviews of certain films. Although some of us didn't quite get around to watching many movies, I for one loved the latest Bond movie... surely the best for some time, for all sorts of reasons. Not least because of the slightly darker take and subtleness of the storyline. Daniel Craig (one of our members) is fitting into the part nicely.
    

Subscription Freedom Accounts

It seems some of our shop members are upset that we're about to cancel in-store subscription accounts. So here's why we're doing it...

We don't make money out of them! And they were becoming a conflict to normal members in terms of copy depth. Although many members, past and present, may well use the likes of lovefilm, it should be noted that there're agenda is to aggregate subscribers for next-generation digital delivery and that the business as it stands is still not profitable. Besides the fact that a growing amount of monthly debits we're being returned unpaid (sign of the times!),causing admin headaches.

Anyway, bet you didn't know we have execs of lovefilm who still rent films from our shops! Ask yourself why that should be? Remember people, we give you up to 30% extra if you pre-pay, and many a loving relationship has been struck-up in our shops between customers over the years! So get out there, meet your neighbors, go to the pub for a drink and then go and watch one of our movies together... that way you save more money because you're sharing!    

   

The Dark Knight

Batman has come a long way from his first appearance in Detective Comics.  If ever a film marked a contrast with its forbears then this is it. Tim Burton’s own effort pales against this very contemporary vigilante.  The gothic design, party theatricality and   sing-song Joker are now caught in a 1989 past which is an ornate confection.  Films don’t exactly improve but they certainly revel in their ability to portray a more exciting, realistic version of action. Christopher Nolan’s particular contribution rides over the problems with his first effort and takes the intensity level to ten or thereabouts, not just in its aerial swoops but in it’s intelligence. This must be one of the most auteurist blockbusters ever made. Critics who feel judgement has be qualified by the base material of a big budget Hollywood production should realise this allows Nolan to carry on from Memento rather than somehow restricting his freedom. Genre doesn’t mean dumber, even if the rapturous Fanboys makes it seem so. For many, this is genre defining for 2008 the way James Cameron accomplished with Terminator and Aliens in the 80s, or Fincher with Se7en in the 90s. Bryan Singer’s own Superman rebirth falls to the side, an irrelevancy next to this.

 

As much as the spectacle is impressive, easily eclipsing his first effort, and featuring an inspired turn from Heath Ledger, its ambition ultimately reveals a rather troubled core.  The problem with Christopher Nolan is his need to exercise the most calculated kind of plotting for the sake of throwing his audience into an unexpected turn. For all the critical praise he receives, like Bryan Singer, he is an exemplar of a dubious evolution of narrative. Where the absurdity of the ruse in Vertigo is brilliantly revealed we now find less and less artfully a defined tendency to surprise an audience with a plot turnaround like an addict looking for a fix. The rot set in with David Fincher’s Se7en. It becomes especially striking with the manifest ability of these directors. In the case of Nolan it’s remarkable to find such favourable consensus on his style. Being skilfully hoodwinked only for the plot to unravel in the most drastic fashion suggests a certain pursuit of complexity of form, a balancing act with reality that goes completely askew. 

 

The Joker appears as if from nowhere in The Dark Knight, there is no attempt to explain him; he supersedes the notion of an origin. While this is satisfying, and Nolan’s beloved style of over intricate plotting is absolutely what you should expect from Gotham’s exotic criminality, too much rests on the tragedy of Harvey Dent. The rising star of Gotham’s fight against crime, played to perfection by Aaron Eckhart, is built up with barely a hint of the precipice he walks. Nolan likes to work a sudden reversal even when most of the audience know where Dent is headed. There is a kinship Batman feels for Dent’s crusading work in the court room who also happens to be romancing Rachel Dawes, (now Maggie Gyllenhaal after Kate Holmes oddly turned down this sequel) Bruce Wayne’s former love interest. This is the game of rivals but this time Nolan explores it as a kind of sympathetic contest. When Dent comes out with the memorable line: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain” its pure Frank Miller, the writer who kick-started it all with his own Dark Knight, before Tim Burton’s Batman.  But the crunch is the transformation from sanity to insanity.  That is the rub.  And here, Dark Knight falls down. 

 

When poor Harvey comes round from his accident we have to deal with a derangement bent on vengeance no matter what the cost. Herein lies a problem. In the genre of the comic book unhinged psychopaths are perfect villain material; dramatic shifts in character add to their colour. But Nolan puts so much of our everyday world into the sensibility of The Dark Knight it presents a challenging paradox not just of Dent’s persona but of how you integrate realism into genre. After the thrills there’s an uncomfortable feeling over how much has been taken from a post 9/11 American psyche and replayed out for kicks. What was present in ‘Batman Begins’ now becomes questionably amplified. The Joker is essentially a cipher for terrorism. Gotham is plunged  just like Iraq into the most violent insecurity replete with videos of hostages being killed,  and a debate on whether Batman, like the US army, is only serving to further inflame the situation. 

 

It’s very bold of Nolan to debate the value of Batman, but drawing such a close analogy to the American role in Iraq is bound for difficulty. Standing in the smoking wreckage of a building, the fire hoses behind him Batman may as well be at Ground Zero. I can understand the need for genre to be reinvented, to be made more contemporary but this is mainlining a very ideological sort of fear. Graphic Novels have explored both the psychological and political but not ventured as far as Nolan. But then, the stakes are so much greater now than when Miller originally created his Dark Knight and Alan Moore wrote The Watchmen. This is an experience attempting to push the action further whilst exploiting the frayed psyche of post 9/11 USA. It wears its intellect a little too obviously at the expense of feeling. For all its authentic darkness, so lacking from Burton’s version  there isn’t one frame of lyricism. A transvestite Joker walking from Gotham General Hospital dressed as a nurse to his getaway school bus is one of a number of inspired images which don’t quite cover for a film full of guile but confused how far to go in questioning a hero who becomes increasingly warped. The stakes are raised, pain of a mental kind is all over this without it ever disturbing the next thrill of the narrative.  Heath Ledger’s Joker is the draw card living up to the hype. He brings a riveting take on The Joker’s murderous games although it must set a new high for sadism in a 12 rated movie.  Next to the protagonist of Memento he seems to be the character who most eloquently allows Nolan to give rein to his strongest impulse to deconstruct identity.  

 

After six films Chris Nolan has most convinced he crafts captivating films with an intellect rarely found in Hollywood. I can think of no clearer case of a director flattering to deceive.

Charles Maclean

DivX

As we're in the process of integrating the DivX platform into our site, perhaps some of you would like to partake in the live testing phase... Mac and PC. You need to be in the UK and of course have a suitable broadband connection.
All feedback is much appreciated so if you're interested in some Free Movie Rental Downloads over the coming weeks, get back to us using the contact page on the main site.