Dirty Harry lives again in the form of Walt Kowalski, a cantankerous 70-something veteran and recent widower, obstinately hanging on to his American dream (best before 1960) in a dilapidated suburb.
He divides his time between mowing the lawn, seeing off gangs with his army-issue M1 Garand (plus an apparently endless supply of unfashionable racial epithets: gooks, slopes, spooks, zipper heads…to name but a few) and getting to know his Hmong neighbours, who gradually begin to show him the error of his xenophobic ways and melt his hate-hardened heart. A little bit.
Although there’s an inter-community-bridge-building vibe going on, the film's main concern is how Walt copes with his feelings of loss and guilt (from killing so many people in the Korean War). And “copes” is the operative word; this is a redemption tale up to a point, beyond that it’s all about a man doing the best he can with the life he has. Eastwood’s libertarian credentials shine through.
But all of this is academic; the most striking thing about the film is its propensity for intense mood swings. One minute Clint’s spoofing (I think) his tough guy image by administering arthritic OAP beatdowns, and in the next a bunch of gangbangers are putting out a cigarette in a kid’s face.
The inconsistency of tone is deeply confusing, and you may find yourself laughing at both these sequences. I did, and I wasn’t alone; going by sheer volume of audience response, this is easily the funniest vigilante film ever made. In fact, I have no compunction in declaring Gran Torino a full-blown Laugh Riot, and on that basis I whole-heartedly recommend it.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Brown courts crosshairs
PR firm tells PM to keep enemies closer
A PR firm, charged with improving Gordon Brown’s public image in time for the next general election, has proposed to make him more “assassinatable”. ProScope Media, which represents the successful hate figures Simon Cowell and Peaches Geldoff, has recommended that the prime minister work harder to antagonise demographics with proven track records in political murder, including Islamic terrorists, anarchists and ambidextrous American actors of the 19th century.
Brown has a lot of work to do: the Killodex, a biannual league table of the world’s top 50 candidates for assassination, currently features him at number 44. This is the weakest showing by a British premier in the publication's history, and bookmakers are offering 4-1 odds that the next instalment, due in April, will see him slip from the rankings altogether. A recent Al Jazeera poll of nearly 1000 Mujahideen found that 73% of respondents either failed to identify Brown or mistook him for the American writer Susan Sontag, who is at number 36 in the table, despite having died in 2004.
According to Lee Hammerstein, a researcher for the Killodex, “Gordon Brown is just too dour to appeal to international assassins. He doesn’t have the knack for exciting people that Tony Blair had, for better or worse.” (Blair peaked at two in the table, during the run up to the invasion of Iraq.) “Another thing is that he’s a slow-moving target. The fashion for the modern assassin is to use a sniper rifle or bomb, and that’s just no challenge with someone who moves as slowly as Brown. It’d be like shooting an elephant in a milk float.”
Although the reasoning behind the proposed strategy is still unclear, there is an implication that it is intended to generate sympathy for the embattled prime minister. A junior member of the consultancy team is reported as saying that “if there was an attempt on his life it’d be good if he can sustain an injury of some kind. Go for a Reagan-type deal…is it possible to get the guy who shot him?”
A PR firm, charged with improving Gordon Brown’s public image in time for the next general election, has proposed to make him more “assassinatable”. ProScope Media, which represents the successful hate figures Simon Cowell and Peaches Geldoff, has recommended that the prime minister work harder to antagonise demographics with proven track records in political murder, including Islamic terrorists, anarchists and ambidextrous American actors of the 19th century.
Brown has a lot of work to do: the Killodex, a biannual league table of the world’s top 50 candidates for assassination, currently features him at number 44. This is the weakest showing by a British premier in the publication's history, and bookmakers are offering 4-1 odds that the next instalment, due in April, will see him slip from the rankings altogether. A recent Al Jazeera poll of nearly 1000 Mujahideen found that 73% of respondents either failed to identify Brown or mistook him for the American writer Susan Sontag, who is at number 36 in the table, despite having died in 2004.
According to Lee Hammerstein, a researcher for the Killodex, “Gordon Brown is just too dour to appeal to international assassins. He doesn’t have the knack for exciting people that Tony Blair had, for better or worse.” (Blair peaked at two in the table, during the run up to the invasion of Iraq.) “Another thing is that he’s a slow-moving target. The fashion for the modern assassin is to use a sniper rifle or bomb, and that’s just no challenge with someone who moves as slowly as Brown. It’d be like shooting an elephant in a milk float.”
Although the reasoning behind the proposed strategy is still unclear, there is an implication that it is intended to generate sympathy for the embattled prime minister. A junior member of the consultancy team is reported as saying that “if there was an attempt on his life it’d be good if he can sustain an injury of some kind. Go for a Reagan-type deal…is it possible to get the guy who shot him?”
Monday, 9 February 2009
What actually happened according to my friend Billy who I am here with now and who was also there at the time but I wasn't
Christian Bale slams his enormous fist into the lighting director’s puny face, shattering it into a thousand pieces. The man falls to his knees in abject defeat; he tries to beg for his life, but his jaw is just a sliver of splintered bone and dripping gore. The sound he makes is 'grgrgagrghrg'. Bale understands this sound – he has heard it before – but he does not show mercy. ‘Boom!’ he roars, kicking his opponent into the air with such force that he flies up thirty feet, only for his trajectory to be intercepted by a jutting girder, on which he is mortally impaled.
‘Catch ya later!’ quips the victorious actor, who is rewarded with guffaws from the assembled cast and crew. The director, McG, slaps Bale on the back in an overly familiar fashion and offers him a cold Heineken from his personal stash (stored in a refrigerated backpack, which is carried around by a pint-sized lackey who never leaves McG’s side). Bale declines; ‘No thanks G-Mac,’ he says, using his pet name for the director in order to soften the blow of rejection. McG almost whimpers with appreciation.
Bale, who is topless, stretches his arms and yawns. ‘Time for a break,’ he says, to unanimous assent.
‘Catch ya later!’ quips the victorious actor, who is rewarded with guffaws from the assembled cast and crew. The director, McG, slaps Bale on the back in an overly familiar fashion and offers him a cold Heineken from his personal stash (stored in a refrigerated backpack, which is carried around by a pint-sized lackey who never leaves McG’s side). Bale declines; ‘No thanks G-Mac,’ he says, using his pet name for the director in order to soften the blow of rejection. McG almost whimpers with appreciation.
Bale, who is topless, stretches his arms and yawns. ‘Time for a break,’ he says, to unanimous assent.
Friday, 6 February 2009
Christian Bale shouts at a guy
Christian Bale’s recent blow-up on the set of Terminator IV (which I’m not going to post or link to because I adore inconvenience) seems to have scandalised a few people, but I actually found it quite endearing; it’s the first time I’ve heard the taciturn actor communicate with such emotion. (Psyche!)
But there’s something suspicious about it: why does he deliver the whole tirade in an American(ish) accent? Could it be that it’s a ruse? Possibilities are spawning in my head like the eggs of a particularly fertile spider, ready to hatch and devour my brain matter at any moment. Two of them (the possibilities) stand out in particular:
1) Bale, tired of being seen as a cold fish, manufactured the incident to make himself seem more "human". He will soon follow up with a full-on emotional breakdown, a brief period of convalescence and a tastefully low-key return to public life, after which he will create a charitable foundation to support sufferers of mental illness. Everyone will love and cherish him, and he will win an Oscar a year for the rest of his life, occasionally turning it down for reasons of modesty or ethical concern.
2) The widely disseminated recording of Bale’s outburst is actually a promotional tool for Terminator IV. The film is secretly an ambitious post-modern masterwork, whose creators aim to use it as a vehicle for examining contemporary attitudes to technology and its place in society. Bale, who is credited as John Connor, will actually play himself playing John Connor; the "story" will focus on his experience of the production process, drawing parallels between the Terminator universe and 21st-century western society. Its premier screening will coincide with the release of a computer virus that projects onto the monitor of every Internet-enabled computer in the world live footage of Bale being skinned alive, revealing that he was a robot all along. This will prevent people from accessing Facebook for half an hour, with cataclysmic results.
But there’s something suspicious about it: why does he deliver the whole tirade in an American(ish) accent? Could it be that it’s a ruse? Possibilities are spawning in my head like the eggs of a particularly fertile spider, ready to hatch and devour my brain matter at any moment. Two of them (the possibilities) stand out in particular:
1) Bale, tired of being seen as a cold fish, manufactured the incident to make himself seem more "human". He will soon follow up with a full-on emotional breakdown, a brief period of convalescence and a tastefully low-key return to public life, after which he will create a charitable foundation to support sufferers of mental illness. Everyone will love and cherish him, and he will win an Oscar a year for the rest of his life, occasionally turning it down for reasons of modesty or ethical concern.
2) The widely disseminated recording of Bale’s outburst is actually a promotional tool for Terminator IV. The film is secretly an ambitious post-modern masterwork, whose creators aim to use it as a vehicle for examining contemporary attitudes to technology and its place in society. Bale, who is credited as John Connor, will actually play himself playing John Connor; the "story" will focus on his experience of the production process, drawing parallels between the Terminator universe and 21st-century western society. Its premier screening will coincide with the release of a computer virus that projects onto the monitor of every Internet-enabled computer in the world live footage of Bale being skinned alive, revealing that he was a robot all along. This will prevent people from accessing Facebook for half an hour, with cataclysmic results.
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