Video Portrait NO.1 (KEV SOAR)
Baxter Dury-Claire
Too Late Too Early
Jay Griffin- He's kind of invisible
Somewhere In the middle
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Monday, 16 July 2012
Danny Sangra & Kevin Soar
Video Portrait NO.1 (KEV SOAR)
Baxter Dury-Claire
Too Late Too Early
Jay Griffin- He's kind of invisible
Somewhere In the middle
Interview with Bruce La Bruce for Baron Magazine, Jan 2012
Baron Bonds with Bruce La Bruce
Bruce LaBruce is a true zeitgeist of our generation.
As a moviemaker Bruce LaBruce is unchallenged in the way
he makes movies, he operates without a care for who will watch
them, an avant-garde artist in every sense. He doesn’t set out to
deliberately offend like a fledgling artist might, but offend he can.
He makes what he wants, about what he wants, with micro budgets.
Confronted with money he doesn’t bow to the masses; he uses it
to make something true to himself and his vision. This piece is not
intended as an homage to Bruce LaBruce, he like everyone else has
flaws, but it is the honesty in his work that overrides and forcefully
volleys back any criticism sent his way.
LA Zombie was the movie that brought Bruce into the
consciousness of most of today’s young film enthusiasts and
budding auteurs. But on the back of this controversial masterpiece,
the artistic importance of his oeuvre is bound to be rolled out,
and consumed once more. Banned at the Melbourne Film Festival,
it wasn’t so much the shock of sexual orifice intrusion (already
witnessed in Otto: or, Up with Dead People) that shocked those
who did get to see the movie, but its portrayal of the LA homeless
situation and its explicitly original handling of horror and porn.
“I made LA Zombie more as a visual idea, I only had a three
page outline when I went to LA to shoot it, and when I went for
pre-production and scouting locations we really noticed the severe
homeless situation so we included as much as we could when we
were shooting. It’s obviously systematic of something much wider
that is happening, that America is turning into a banana republic.”
Throughout history horror writing has manifested society’s
fears, but recently the genre has lost its way, regurgitating
old themes, films and stories. Stoker’s Dracula and its numerous
adaptations highlighted the fear of the immigrant and the
foreigner, and Shelley’s Frankenstein set its sights on science
and the enlightenment. Bruce LaBruce doesn’t see that
correlation in horror today.
“I think that the whole new wave of horror movies,
are almost like an anti-intellectualism where certain people,
and certainly horror geeks, almost resent when you try to use
the genre for nefarious purposes, like metaphor or allegory, it’s
almost supposed to be unconscious or something, so they feel
very territorial about the genre. There’s a kind of tendency
to reject any kind of analysis of horror.”
Romero re-introduced the zombie onto our screens as
a political monster and now Bruce has re-worked Romero’s idea
of the ‘Political Zombie Film’ by introducing the homosexual
man as the zombie in Otto; or, Up with Dead People for one of
the worlds first brushes with the ‘Gay Zombie Porno’. With LA
Zombie, Bruce took that theme one step further, introducing not
just alienation as a theme but poverty as well. So what we’re left
with, as Bruce alluded to, is LA Zombie the first ‘Gay Zombie
Poverty Porno’ ever made.
“Both Otto” and LA Zombie featured marginalised, schizo
gay people and a friend of mine who saw LA Zombie said ‘wow,
that really is poverty porn’ because it’s combining elements of porn
with cinéma vérité style footage of the homeless, whilst looking at
street life in LA. I tried to put two seemingly impossible elements
together so I mixed porn with this documentary realism; some
people get it and found it interesting and some people just can’t
get past the porn.”
Bruce LaBruce was greatly influenced by his mentor in film
college, the respected film critic Robin Wood who edited a seminal
book on 70’s horror, ‘The American Nightmare: Essays on the
Horror Film’.
“His main theory was that a lot of these films signified the
return of the repressed. There was a lot of repression in American
society post Vietnam, there was political upheaval, there was a
return to a certain social conservatism and a lot of the analysis was
about sexual oppression and how any kind of repression returns as
some kind of monstrous form; it has to manifest itself someway!”
Bruce claims that it’s this idea that he was referencing
somewhat in Otto; or, Up with Dead People, his first foray into the
horror genre. Last year LaBruce wrote a tongue-in-cheek article for
his column ‘Wondering’ in Vice Magazine, criticising Canada and
some of its foreign policies.
“I was partly forced out of the country in a way because
my early films were that sexually explicit I was accused of being
a pornographer. I had film labs call the cops on me, I would have
them try and confiscate my work, so it was hard to get funding
from anyone in Canada so I was forced to move away to make the
films, that’s when I moved to LA for a year”
Whether or not Bruce is consciously referring to his
feelings toward the extreme conservatism that runs rife through
Canadian society in his films, he definitely still finds it a difficult
place to go back to in terms of work.
“I get next to no distribution in Canada, there is a
weird phenomenon here, you are forced to leave for your work,
because there isn’t an interest or a market here for avant-garde,
underground or pornographic film so you have to go somewhere
else to make it. Then when you come back they kind of resent
you for having gone away in the first place. There’s also a sort of
preventionism in Canada.”
From early in his career Bruce found minds akin to his own
in Berlin. His long time producer Jurgen Bruning found funding
and open arms for Bruce in the German capital. The city’s influence
on Bruce LaBruce is evident in No skin off my Ass and Skin
Flick in their association with the gay skinhead, a culture he first
witnessed in Berlin. However it’s in The Raspberry Reich that the
love affair really blossoms. The Raspberry Reich is a pastiche of
revolutionary fashion and fads and an ode to the Red Army Faction,
the famous Baader Meinhoff group who ran amuck during the
70s. Upon release, Bruce was introduced to Felix Ensslin who was
Gudrun Ensslin’s son, one of the four main members of the RAF.
Through him Bruce met Gottfried Ensslin, Gudrun’s brother who,
whilst she was in jail exchanged letters with his sister in which she
encouraged his homosexual activism. Gottfried loved the film for
embracing these ideals, and it is these links that encourage
Bruce to push on in his use of pornography as political activism.
“I like to think we did something unique that was about
sexual revolution but also a porn movie which I think was
important, as it was like ‘put your Marxism where your mouth
is’. It was also not only an investigation into their belief system
but also a critique into how revolutionary movements are coopted
or how they become incorporated into fashion, and their
political significance becomes irrelevant, dissipating, leaving empty
signifiers that are exploited by capitalism.”
Bruce again referenced porn’s importance as a weapon
in a recent column, saying, “Today, with the emergence of the
gay conservatism, pornography appears to be the last bastion
of sexual radicalism. That’s why I always express solidarity with
gay pornographers. They’re the last glimmer of glamour in
the gay movement.”
As we chatted with Bruce about last year’s gay marriage
law passing in New York he said,
“There is no movement anymore, there is no solidarity,
there’s no progressive or subversive agenda anymore, so what
unified people disappears, in a way I think the gay movement
is dead anyway. I think it’s a shame that so much money has been
poured into marriage as opposed to AIDs, the AIDs crisis has
kind of been put on the back burner to fund the marriage agenda.”
It was back in Canada where Bruce found his first real
avant-garde inspiration in AA Bronson and his partners
‘General Idea’, enthusing,
“3 gay men in an art collective who made work that was
ahead of its time, and specifically homosexual and influenced by
the sitiuationalists, they put a political and aesthetic dimension
to the work that was quite avant-garde way back in the 70s.”
This is where Bruce wants to be. He cites himself as
a purveyor of The Gay Avant-Garde and he is an inspiration
to others because of it. But what’s most inspiring is that Bruce
LaBruce isn’t nearly done, he has only just begun and with porn
as his weapon, he won’t stop until the machine has been bombed
into submission.
Baron Bonds with Bruce La Bruce
Bruce LaBruce is a true zeitgeist of our generation.
As a moviemaker Bruce LaBruce is unchallenged in the way
he makes movies, he operates without a care for who will watch
them, an avant-garde artist in every sense. He doesn’t set out to
deliberately offend like a fledgling artist might, but offend he can.
He makes what he wants, about what he wants, with micro budgets.
Confronted with money he doesn’t bow to the masses; he uses it
to make something true to himself and his vision. This piece is not
intended as an homage to Bruce LaBruce, he like everyone else has
flaws, but it is the honesty in his work that overrides and forcefully
volleys back any criticism sent his way.
LA Zombie was the movie that brought Bruce into the
consciousness of most of today’s young film enthusiasts and
budding auteurs. But on the back of this controversial masterpiece,
the artistic importance of his oeuvre is bound to be rolled out,
and consumed once more. Banned at the Melbourne Film Festival,
it wasn’t so much the shock of sexual orifice intrusion (already
witnessed in Otto: or, Up with Dead People) that shocked those
who did get to see the movie, but its portrayal of the LA homeless
situation and its explicitly original handling of horror and porn.
“I made LA Zombie more as a visual idea, I only had a three
page outline when I went to LA to shoot it, and when I went for
pre-production and scouting locations we really noticed the severe
homeless situation so we included as much as we could when we
were shooting. It’s obviously systematic of something much wider
that is happening, that America is turning into a banana republic.”
Throughout history horror writing has manifested society’s
fears, but recently the genre has lost its way, regurgitating
old themes, films and stories. Stoker’s Dracula and its numerous
adaptations highlighted the fear of the immigrant and the
foreigner, and Shelley’s Frankenstein set its sights on science
and the enlightenment. Bruce LaBruce doesn’t see that
correlation in horror today.
“I think that the whole new wave of horror movies,
are almost like an anti-intellectualism where certain people,
and certainly horror geeks, almost resent when you try to use
the genre for nefarious purposes, like metaphor or allegory, it’s
almost supposed to be unconscious or something, so they feel
very territorial about the genre. There’s a kind of tendency
to reject any kind of analysis of horror.”
Romero re-introduced the zombie onto our screens as
a political monster and now Bruce has re-worked Romero’s idea
of the ‘Political Zombie Film’ by introducing the homosexual
man as the zombie in Otto; or, Up with Dead People for one of
the worlds first brushes with the ‘Gay Zombie Porno’. With LA
Zombie, Bruce took that theme one step further, introducing not
just alienation as a theme but poverty as well. So what we’re left
with, as Bruce alluded to, is LA Zombie the first ‘Gay Zombie
Poverty Porno’ ever made.
“Both Otto” and LA Zombie featured marginalised, schizo
gay people and a friend of mine who saw LA Zombie said ‘wow,
that really is poverty porn’ because it’s combining elements of porn
with cinéma vérité style footage of the homeless, whilst looking at
street life in LA. I tried to put two seemingly impossible elements
together so I mixed porn with this documentary realism; some
people get it and found it interesting and some people just can’t
get past the porn.”
Bruce LaBruce was greatly influenced by his mentor in film
college, the respected film critic Robin Wood who edited a seminal
book on 70’s horror, ‘The American Nightmare: Essays on the
Horror Film’.
“His main theory was that a lot of these films signified the
return of the repressed. There was a lot of repression in American
society post Vietnam, there was political upheaval, there was a
return to a certain social conservatism and a lot of the analysis was
about sexual oppression and how any kind of repression returns as
some kind of monstrous form; it has to manifest itself someway!”
Bruce claims that it’s this idea that he was referencing
somewhat in Otto; or, Up with Dead People, his first foray into the
horror genre. Last year LaBruce wrote a tongue-in-cheek article for
his column ‘Wondering’ in Vice Magazine, criticising Canada and
some of its foreign policies.
“I was partly forced out of the country in a way because
my early films were that sexually explicit I was accused of being
a pornographer. I had film labs call the cops on me, I would have
them try and confiscate my work, so it was hard to get funding
from anyone in Canada so I was forced to move away to make the
films, that’s when I moved to LA for a year”
Whether or not Bruce is consciously referring to his
feelings toward the extreme conservatism that runs rife through
Canadian society in his films, he definitely still finds it a difficult
place to go back to in terms of work.
“I get next to no distribution in Canada, there is a
weird phenomenon here, you are forced to leave for your work,
because there isn’t an interest or a market here for avant-garde,
underground or pornographic film so you have to go somewhere
else to make it. Then when you come back they kind of resent
you for having gone away in the first place. There’s also a sort of
preventionism in Canada.”
From early in his career Bruce found minds akin to his own
in Berlin. His long time producer Jurgen Bruning found funding
and open arms for Bruce in the German capital. The city’s influence
on Bruce LaBruce is evident in No skin off my Ass and Skin
Flick in their association with the gay skinhead, a culture he first
witnessed in Berlin. However it’s in The Raspberry Reich that the
love affair really blossoms. The Raspberry Reich is a pastiche of
revolutionary fashion and fads and an ode to the Red Army Faction,
the famous Baader Meinhoff group who ran amuck during the
70s. Upon release, Bruce was introduced to Felix Ensslin who was
Gudrun Ensslin’s son, one of the four main members of the RAF.
Through him Bruce met Gottfried Ensslin, Gudrun’s brother who,
whilst she was in jail exchanged letters with his sister in which she
encouraged his homosexual activism. Gottfried loved the film for
embracing these ideals, and it is these links that encourage
Bruce to push on in his use of pornography as political activism.
“I like to think we did something unique that was about
sexual revolution but also a porn movie which I think was
important, as it was like ‘put your Marxism where your mouth
is’. It was also not only an investigation into their belief system
but also a critique into how revolutionary movements are coopted
or how they become incorporated into fashion, and their
political significance becomes irrelevant, dissipating, leaving empty
signifiers that are exploited by capitalism.”
Bruce again referenced porn’s importance as a weapon
in a recent column, saying, “Today, with the emergence of the
gay conservatism, pornography appears to be the last bastion
of sexual radicalism. That’s why I always express solidarity with
gay pornographers. They’re the last glimmer of glamour in
the gay movement.”
As we chatted with Bruce about last year’s gay marriage
law passing in New York he said,
“There is no movement anymore, there is no solidarity,
there’s no progressive or subversive agenda anymore, so what
unified people disappears, in a way I think the gay movement
is dead anyway. I think it’s a shame that so much money has been
poured into marriage as opposed to AIDs, the AIDs crisis has
kind of been put on the back burner to fund the marriage agenda.”
It was back in Canada where Bruce found his first real
avant-garde inspiration in AA Bronson and his partners
‘General Idea’, enthusing,
“3 gay men in an art collective who made work that was
ahead of its time, and specifically homosexual and influenced by
the sitiuationalists, they put a political and aesthetic dimension
to the work that was quite avant-garde way back in the 70s.”
This is where Bruce wants to be. He cites himself as
a purveyor of The Gay Avant-Garde and he is an inspiration
to others because of it. But what’s most inspiring is that Bruce
LaBruce isn’t nearly done, he has only just begun and with porn
as his weapon, he won’t stop until the machine has been bombed
into submission.
Monday, 21 November 2011
Introduction to the Studio Ghibli Season at The Victoria, Mile End, Nov 2011
As a youngster in suburb of Essex Anime wasn't something I would commonly come up against. The four channels stuck to the western output of animation, it wasn't until I moved to London and met a girl from the continent that I was introduced to the mind-blowing art, magic, stories, moral messages and complexity that comes from within the Studio Ghibli house of animation. Those of you from Asia and any country in Europe outside of the UK were probably bred on Japanese animation but for many it wasn't until Spirited Away got international acclaim that they delved in to the country’s rich animated history.
Despite the common assumption that Studio Ghibli's films are for children, they are infact full of social, global, historical and environmental questions and debates. Two of the films in our season Pom Poko and grave of the fireflies are both known for their hard-hitting nature and bringing adults to their knees in tears circling around themes regarding the destruction of the rain forests and America's catastrophic bombing of Japan during WW2, whilst My Neighbour Totoro and Porco Rosso show the lighter side to the house and highlight the notion that Studio Ghibli's creations and characters are on a par with disney if not better which is probably the reason disney bought studio ghibli's distribution rights outside of Japan.
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Introduction to The Alan Moore Season at The Victoria, Mile End, October 2011
Alan Moore Season will include V for Vendetta, The Watchmen and From Hell.
V for Vendetta brings us nicely from the Freedom season with its dystopian view of the future and its revolutionary ideals. Alan Moore is the best graphic novelist of our generation and arguably Great British literature's most genius and incendiary left wing literary mind since George Orwell. He has enjoyed being courted by both Marvel and DC comics and has created some of the most influential and iconic comic book characters the world has ever seen. It was inevitable of course that Moore would be swamped upon by Hollywood and from this has resulted in 4 films both heralded and damned by audiences, critics and Moore himself. The Alan Moore Season brings you the best 3 the 4th being The League of Extraordinary Gentleman which despite being one of his best comic series is the worst of the films despite its all-star cast and is frankly not worth the bother.
V for Vendetta caused a controversy when it came out due it's scenes of 'terrorism' and the blowing up of certain landmark buildings apparently to close to comfort to the 2005 London bombings. Since then the film despite mediocre critical acclaim has now somewhat of a cult following, whether it is from its superb and groundbreaking inspiration in the Graphic novel or the disturbances it stirred in its release and the appearance of Natalie Portman with a skinhead. Thousands now adorn the mask of V as a form of protest, whether against scientology or an identity guard in student protests whether or not he likes the film, Moore must take pleasure in the fact the character of V takes such a part in modern left wing protests against the big brother like establishments we now face and which are fought against in the film.
V for Vendetta caused a controversy when it came out due it's scenes of 'terrorism' and the blowing up of certain landmark buildings apparently to close to comfort to the 2005 London bombings. Since then the film despite mediocre critical acclaim has now somewhat of a cult following, whether it is from its superb and groundbreaking inspiration in the Graphic novel or the disturbances it stirred in its release and the appearance of Natalie Portman with a skinhead. Thousands now adorn the mask of V as a form of protest, whether against scientology or an identity guard in student protests whether or not he likes the film, Moore must take pleasure in the fact the character of V takes such a part in modern left wing protests against the big brother like establishments we now face and which are fought against in the film.
Alan Moore famously said of the film adaptation of his best selling series Watchmen, “I will be spitting venom all over it” but despite Moore's hatred of the hollywood treatment on some of his best comic works watchmen actually came out boosting the franchises fan-base and ignored the lure of casting huge hollywood names to the 6 main oddball characters. The overall look of the film is true to the comic series and Zack Snyder makes a 100% better film than most Watchmen readers expected him to. Comic book adaptations suit sunday nights to a tee and with Watchmen easily sitting pretty amongst the top 5 its well worth a revisit with a pint or two.
As we draw nearer to all hallows eve the Alan Moore season winds down with a nod to England’s most infamous villain and links nicely with our two part Jack the Ripper halloween special sundays.
'From Hell' is the War and Peace of Moore's back catalogue, an epic collection of twists, turns and conspiracy’s surrounding the man, the prince, the butcher, the physician, the monster, the legend that is Jack the Ripper. The serialisation now finds itself together in a doorstop heavy graphic novel.
Without giving too much away Moore's take on the case was that he was heavily involved with a cover up involving the Royal family, a scandalous affair and the free masons. Despite being blighted with a flurry of hollywood names such as Johnny Depp and Heather graham and the familiar splattering of those actors that appear to have to feature in any Hollywood film set in the UK such as Jason Flemyng, Robbie Coltrane and Ian Holm, From Hell paints Whitechapel in all its 19th century squalor.
Its a pint sized compact version of the Moore classic by any means and Moore fans will be disappointed in its skimming of the surface, but nonetheless From Hell still remains as one of the only good films to London’s favourite murderer and its always fun to play spot the location where I once puked up, drank a pint, pulled or bought a ridiculously shit pair of expensive jeans from in All saints on a jolly to the consumerist bourgeois vintage heaven that now is Spitalfields.
Monday, 19 September 2011
Introduction to The Freedom Season at The Victoria, Mile End. September 2011
German writer Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once famously said “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”.
We now live in a society where we crave freedom, freedom from the government, freedom from the police, freedom from cctv, freedom from capitalism, freedom from the banks, freedom from our parents and freedom from our spouse's. The people of the West have been taken on a ride for far too long in the belief that we are free. Many of our forefathers fought fiercely for what they believed was liberty and freedom and we now live in a country that douse's us with the notion that we live in a democratic and free society. We are led to believe that our freedom is only threatened by 'terrorists' and more recently the 'criminal underclass'. Everything you believe to be true is wrong, we are all slaves in someway to the powers that be, I need not go into a political spiel about Capitalism and America or the monetary system, I will refrain from lecturing you, but please question everything, do not fear what you are told only what you are not. Let it be known we are in chains, whatever, whoever governs the country, America, The European Union, left or right, the invisible chains of the people have been here for decades and will remain beyond our known lives.
For the next four weeks we will be celebrating the film makers who have questioned our freedom, documented our lack of it, predicted our fight for it and laughed at the notion of it.
First up is Woody Allen's 'Sleeper', Woody having been whisked from 1973 into a police state 22nd century America meets a young Diane Keating and together they become rebels. The best commentries on society are usually the satirical and Allen's dystopian view of the future with all its underground movements, Aires Project's, society brainwashed to act in a singular fashion, are very much inspired by novels such as Orwell’s big Brother and its pre curser Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'We'.
Up next is another comedy caper poking a finger at the States (this time its foreign policies) is William Friedkin's 'Mr Freedom'. Mr freedom was made during the Vietnam war and the student riots of France 1968, it's criticism of the US and right wing politics is stark so no wonder this gem of cinema remains sadly only a favourite of hardcore cinephiles. The film features John Abbey making a star turn as Mr Freedom who is sent to France to win the French people over to the way of freedom and defeat the evil communist enemies Moujik Man and Red China Man.
Look out for the incredible ongoing cameos from Serge Gainsbourg as M.Drugstore.
'The Baader Meinhof Complex' by Uri Edel is where the season gets serious, not for those looking for laughs, violence plays heavily in this re-telling of the West German extremist group Rote Armee Fraktion who were one of Europe's most prolific and dangerous underground guerilla groups of the past 100 years. The film was criticised for glorifying the actions of this left wing group but the film is less a glorification and more an insight into the mindset of a group of young people fed up with lying down and getting fisted by their government, and who rightly or wrongly took it upon themselves to oppose them in the most extreme ways possible.
How could we end a freedom season without a good old Godard. The hero of every hip filmmaker for the last 50 years Jean Luc Godard is most commonly known for his cooool cinematography and his use of hot young french actors and actresses, but whilst many watch his movies to mark another notch on the 'cool films I have seen board' or to swoon over Anna Karina, it is all too easy to overlook his political messages. Godard was never one to shy away from poking a stick at the establishment from the truly brilliant dystopian thriller 'Alphaville' to the masterpiece of dialogue that is 'La Chinoise'.
For its colour, beauty, rebelliousness and smooth spy capers we have chosen 'Made in U.S.A' as Godard's representation for the 'Freedom season'.
Anna Karina stars as a young leftist writer and there is a lot of running around, shooting and bucket loads of 60's coolness, beneath this lies an exciting gung-ho spy flick which Godard used to comment on the obvious theme of right vrs left but also human censorship and more interestingly the murder of a left wing Moroccan politician by the name of Ben Barka who was suspected to have been assassinated by the joint efforts of the CIA and french intelligence.
Ironically but somewhat predictably this film was banned from the USA in the 60's, but us at The Victoria however bring you all these great films for FREE, and if you thought we couldn't say free again we can as we also offer you FREE popcorn.
Fin
Introduction to Steve Martin Season at The Victoria, Mile End. August 2011.
Steve Martin is arguably the best absurdist comedic actor of our generation. Rick Moranis, faded, Dan Aykroyd makes a living off cameos, Chevy Chase told everyone Cary Grant was gay and was ousted from hollywood, and Rowan Atkinson made Mr Bean's holiday. Some might say Bill Murray but Bill Murray does well in great films, Bill Murray fits films, and anyone can look good in a well made suit. Steve Martin makes the film, take 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels', on paper a terrible film but Steve Martin's performance transformed Michael Caine from bit parts as ex spy's and butlers to an actor who could do 'funny'.
Steve Martin bowed out of decent films with 'Bowfinger' and has been sadly waisted in the poor remakes of the Pink Panther. But he is however like another comedic genius before him, George Fornby, a fantastic banjo player and now concentrates on his playing as his major creative outlet. He is now heralded as a purveyor of true blue grass, it was even rumoured that after his ukelele performance of 'you belong to me' in The Jerk sales of the small guitar went up 120%.
Martin cut his teeth on the stand up circuit and when making guest appearances on saturday night live audiences would jump by 1 million viewers. His first feature film appearance was in the musical 'Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band' which features the Bee Gee's as The Beatles but more importantly Steve Martin singing Maxwells Silver Hammer.
Soon Martin was well on his way into America's coffee table magazines, in 1979 he co-wrote and lead Total films no.48 funniest film of all time 'The Jerk' which will be opening 'The Steve Martin season' at the Victoria. His first starring role saw Martin believing he was not adopted but born of an African American family, the second film in the 'Steve Martin season' , 'Dead Men don't wear plaid' see's him believing he is acting alongside Burt Lancaster, Humphry Bogart, Veronica Lake and Bette Davis. Carl Reiner's 'Dead men don’t wear plaid' is the only successful film noir comedy parody ever made but still generally overlooked despite seeing Steve Martins at his absurdist best.
Next we have 'The man with two brains' , Carl Reiner and Steve Martins second outing together in the space of two years and not a bit 'crainely' less stimulating than our first two offerings.
We finish off with what can cheaply be referred to as a christmas movie, but 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles defies any public holiday classification, huge laughs are welcome anytime of year at The Victoria. 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles brings us the fantasy threesome of Steve martin sandwiched between the timeless, 80's hit-making genius writing of John Hughes and the 2nd best career performance of John Candy after his master stroke in 'JFK' of course. Candy threatens to steal the show but Martin brings a more mature comedic performance, here he loses the absurdness the 80's tagged him with and sets him up for the 'Father of the bride' franchise with this, his most serious role of our 'Steve Martin season' , which says something about what every sunday in August is about to bring you.
We will be topping up the loo roll this month because you will piss your pants with laughter.
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