Up Malcolm

Peter Bradshaw's blog from Venice today, in which he talks of the Tinto Brass-Guccione version of Caligula - a truly awful film - prompted me to go and find some stills from it. I'm not sure if this is actually from the film or was simply taken on set, but it's too good not to share, especially for those of us who remember Up Pompeii.

Autochthony

The news that Rome Film Festival will be concentrating its efforts on promoting Italian cinema rather than the careers of foreign actors would probably have been greeted with greater enthusiasm if it had come from a liberal mayor. The fact that the decision has been made by Alemanno has led to a rather more - how shall I put this - strident, even hysterical, reaction. Particularly outside Italy, where The Times of Rupert Murdoch, in pot-to-kettle fashion, refers to the new mayor as il Duce. That's as may be. Though it's odd that the spots of hard left leopards seem to wash off with no trouble at all, aided perhaps by a gentle shower of clerical rain, while those adoring the hard right are considered to be as permanent and indelible as Indian ink.

Personally, I'd be happy to see a little more attention being given to an industry that still manages to produce worthwhile cinema - Crialese, Moretti, Soldini, to cite three very different directors - despite the massive attention given by the media and distributors to foreign (read, US) movies. Maybe a little autochthony will do us all good. It will also be refreshing to see less of Walter Veltroni fawning over Hollywood starlets as though they were envoys from the planet Beautiful.

Is this the beginning of the backlash?

Mother! Oh God, mother! Blood! Blood!

We had to help Scout with this one, which comes from a film whose opening scenes are set in this very city.

Scout is a dog.

The poor dope. He always wanted a pool

Scout is working on a series of scenes from his favourite movies, using whatever prop comes to hand. This one is named after a place that isn't really that far from where we'll be in a week's time.

Schlock

I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film last night with Sally. The two of us were alone in the cinema apart from a group of teenagers, mostly boys, nerdy types as QT must have been, who behaved in a fairly respectful way and then went home, no doubt to squeeze their spots and dream about Butterfly.

The film had all the essential ingredients, raunchily attractive women in hot pants discussing sex, car chases, gory and apparently gratuitous violence, an intellectual's attention to tacky period detail, deliberate anachronisms, lap dancing - everything you expect and love (or hate) from Tarantino, in a particularly stripped-back form. Underpinning all this was an extraordinary simple but effective structure: essentially, the same story told twice but with all the difference in the world, which is where the film's moral purpose (because, of course, it has one) comes from.

I won't say any more, because I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, but it's extraordinary how something that is so much sheer fun in such a superficially mindless way can also be intellectually satisfying.

Now just let me squeeze that spot.

Walk the Line

I saw Walk The Line last night and, by coincidence, came across this video on YouTube today. Is this significant? (Well, of course not, but the video's sweet, the beard it contains is impressive, and I did enjoy the film, so let's call this an aide-memoire-cum-tribute.)