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Saturday, 01 September 2001 |
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The year is 1899, the place a reconfigured Montmatre, Paris (Catherine Martin's set design recalls an entire world powered by the gilded engine of fashionable decline: the court of Caligula, the Berlin of Otto Dix, Studio 54), its hub the Moulin Rouge, a nightspot of boho repute run by Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent), a Micawberish impresario who pines for theatrical respectability. Joining him in this dream is Satine (Nicole Kidman), the club's star attraction and consumptive courtesan. Christian (Ewan McGregor), a Scot in Paris, is introduced to Satine by Moulin chancer Toulouse-Lautrec (the genius of John Leguizamo) and, after much farcical faffing (and dialogue out of 'Carry On Oh-la-la'), they fall in love. However, not only is Satine dying (we know, her wiltings are registered in the syrupy, stoned motion of the damned) but, as is the way with so many variations on this riff ("Camille" for one), she is bound to another, the duke (Dick Roxburgh, a Disney King John in a morning suit) who, in return for her exclusive favor, has agreed to bankroll Zidler. What ensues narratively is a backstage romance, a show-within-a-film, a look at how life imitates art but somehow always misses the point. |
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Saturday, 25 August 2001 |
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"A.I. Artificial Intelligence" was a Stanley Kubrick project that the late director kicked around for a number of years. Steven Spielberg was intrigued enough to buy the rights after Kubrick's death last year, and the result is an extraordinary hybrid. Although the script (an adaptation at least twice removed from Brian Aldiss' short story, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long") is credited to Spielberg, but it's obvious that the first half, in tone and substance, is all Kubrick. David (Haley Joel Osment) is a newly minted "boy" robot, who is adopted by Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O'Connor) to fill the void left by their real life son Martin (Jake Thomas) being in a deep coma. It takes a while for Monica to adapt to a boy who never sleeps or eats, but David has been programmed by his creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt) to bond emotionally with his "mother." No sooner has he done so, however, than Martin miraculously awakens from his coma, and a sibling rivalry ensues. Judged a threat to her own son, David is abandoned by Monica to a life as a fugitive amongst other discarded robots. This ain't no "E.T." and the box office reflects it. Yet it seems unrealistic to expect that Spielberg, after having made "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan," could somehow go back to making the innocent, boyish films of his youth. And it says something about his integrity that where it is necessary, he adheres to Kubrick's disturbing vision of human beings destroying the best of themselves. |
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Saturday, 18 August 2001 |
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** (out of four) |
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Saturday, 04 August 2001 |
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**1/2 (out of four) |
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Arts & Entertainment 
Flying or climbing around Colima’s Volcan de Fuego
