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Four ways of English cinema in 2008. The cardinal points of a drift
Road to Perdition
The average level of English cinema this year has been substantially lower than the previous year. Or that we think. Or so it has come to us that is the end of what this article. There have been outrageous insults like last year, but if there was a clear sense of mediocrity and a congenital form, if not wrong (that God will judge, Mohammed or producers), it complacent and cowardly to face an art that is industry and not vice versa. To see the nominations of Goya or the candidates for the Academy once again shows that while cronyism is the formula, the garbage will result. The very poor blind Sunflowers José Luis Cuerda highly finished with 15 nominations is an abomination that we assume will not unparalleled in any civilized country and with some shame and / or public awareness of the importance of a film funded. Adaptation, cojitranca and halite, the book contains stories of Rafael Méndez all tics of authorship misunderstood, the academic (with h) greater appreciation of the truly artistic calligraphy and "realism" false art director contaminated for prizes and designers FETEN. Its success and "prestige" is again a wake-up call after the good harvest of loneliness, Ts, influences or women in the park last year, made against currents, tides and other influences lunatic coats. Another issue is that of another type of victory, sometimes even overlapping the other and it becomes the host in tomato or so. The influence of TV hits tend to the dumbing down of the viewer by making them part of xenophobic attitudes, sexist, homophobic or just stupid to let them proceed normally, and jokes about the most highly topical, which is dressed in everyday lies and false naturalness. While in the U.S. succeed (and last) series like "The Wire," "Mad Men" "Lost," "John Adams", "The Office", "The Larry David Show," "True Blood", "Studio 60 on Boulevard Street", "Rockefeller Plaza", "24", "The Shields" or clinched "Deadwood", in Spain we have "Aida" as an example of what sucks the creativity of our country. Outside letter is one of the successes of the year and perhaps the most enlightening film about our situation, the assumption of television codes to keep squeezing the goose that lays the golden eggs poisoned. Garcia Velilla's debut is a return to landismo but changing the Swedish by an Argentine footballer. As last year Chuecatown (John Flahn, 2007) offers the most reactionary film of the year from the supposed freedom of a country where Peter wants to be Harvey Milk Zerolo only to have the same sexual tastes. Ultimately going to be true that we have the movies we deserve. Asphalt road without direction
Stay
no man's land may be dangerous or a sign of deficiency. English cinema a while now is almost a relief to film a few words that do not work for whatever reason. Paradigm seems Antonio Hernandez, director who has a history of the most curious (Lisbon, 1999, The great Martian, 2001, Los Borgia, 2006), and his new movie The lesser of two evils, a remarkable thriller, nicely shot, but diminished by the vulgarity and tricks from a stronger history in theory than in practice. If we notice other titles, which we believe would be in this space films that contain good ideas but are burdened by these or other reasons are very different from each other productions: The crisis carnivorous (Pedro Rivero), an animated film but very bad baba visually sparse and somewhat stuffy Excuses (Silvia Munt) a melodrama with authorial aspirations can create an oppressive atmosphere and build some suggestive pictures, but whose charges Depth (dialogues, symbols) impostada operation sounds, mellifluous, just want to walk (Agustín Díaz Yanes), a thriller very entertaining and fast than the previous film of his author (the very mediocre Alatriste, 2006) actually re- put on the table worrying Diaz Yanes limitations as a storyteller, 8 citations (Peris Romano and Rodrigo Sorogoyen) or hell is paved with good intentions. It also happens with good intentions to Antonio del Real in the brave The plot of the heap, a film raised to greatness and eager to please. What happens is that talent has never been anything of this director. Neither management nor actors. Neither the work of casting. Or writing. Well, that did not turn out very well in the end. Just as the duo Corbacho-Cruz in Cowards try to return to folkloric style of Tapas (2005) but it all else fails. The story begins not bad but the intellectual discourse of talk shows as "The Martian Chronicles" in the end one is surprised that the best of the function is the interpretation of Paz Padilla. Not surprised but not displeased Shiver (Isidro Ortiz), a horror film desperjuiciado full of holes and stammering histrionisms writing is sometimes not able to avoid the ridiculous for its openness and its mimicry of issues endemic to other film industries that have more money and experience . It also occurs Casual Day with the second film in the SUV Max Lemcke, who in his eagerness to make a work based on the performers are paying homage too deep and empty the critical load of a text just adrift of their own intentions. O Roser Aguilar's debut, The Best of Me (2007), dodges not the worst vices of the worst melodramas despite its happy ending rare, affecting conventional structures raised from a story calling for a formal risk in line with which takes the thematic. This catalog, more disjointed varied, affects the surface character of a film that seems to be built on the run and, as I pointed out last year has a definite disadvantage: the inability to generate and promote their own identity. This may be one reason why it continues, from certain institutions and forums, applauding a film that maybe if you follow any particular direction, but frankly we think that moves dirt roads, paved with bad luck ...
Walker,
Where no road kill there is no potato farming says a Castilian proverb of wise conciseness. Where fire was still smoldering but less and especially in these times of creative crisis, and the other, that stifle any possibility of (us) what we see positive. Renowned authors still persist in using old formulas who once worked in another setting and other needs. It is cyclical and therefore ephemeral talent today by Manuel Gutierrez Aragon, Jose Luis Garci and Gerardo Herrero but little discussed is quite debatable. All are invited, Blood May or May look like an accident (like the mentioned The Blind Sunflowers) are creative autopsies of some filmmakers who ended giving way to follow headlong into a wailing wall outside. There is nothing remarkable in his three films, nor the supposed courage in addressing the issue of Aragon Basque or reconstruction which will see the board (stone) of Garcia, or the more vulgar than absurd humor, grayer that black, Herrero. A similar case is that of Fernando Colomo that rivals try again greening old laurels after the (worthy) failure of the riskiest The Near East (2006). A Colomo saves almost nobody has seen the film, which brings to more and more interesting Goya Toledo and that finally after all the modesty of his approach fails to be misleading as in the debut of Nacho García Velilla. It's not just our greatest the only paths that have tried to move inhospitable to any browser insufficiently prepared. Some newcomers have gone the way of more self-conscious authorship: the self-styled genius bourgeois emperor costume Albert Serra (The Birdsong), the Galician woodyalleniano by the name of Ramon Costafreda and answers with sparkling dialogue and with many eses (bundle up). Others have stayed bandwagon survival horror genre means nothing to save as F. Javier Gutierrez and Gonzalo Lopez Gallego, who has changed from one side to another with less luck than if I had done the opposite: both 3 days as the king of the mountain are two films wretched, vulgar but with a high opinion of themselves In both cases, by people who underestimate gender putting himself above the most basic codes to transcend with ideas as fresh and frozen are old they are. The same applies to the president of the academy Angeles Gonzalez Sinde same rolling laughter that the tears in the spongy A word from you. But it could be the surprise of the Goya and get a prize. It would be a surprise as when these two pariah beat Jaime Rosales and Paul Berger in the New Director Award. The inexperienced less ready, however, have chosen to go into safe paths that nevertheless go straight to the depths of stupidity as revealed in relief the very first-but even more forgettable Some Aramaio Aitzol chocolate and the last fair Manuel Carballo. All of these names and titles, whether veterans or rookies, and treat the past or present, come to mirror atrophied a (ir) reality prefabricated fascia. But to be fair with them and honest with ourselves: we have never trusted or believed, or fail to do so too long ago, in this film, what it represents, what he says, when it shuts ... Fortunately, there are other roads. Road to the imperfection
When English cinema reaches artistic triumphs, complete or partial, is likely to surprise us even when previous elements that might suggest. Perhaps we have reached a point where you really claim viewers and critics have serious trouble when we go to a domestic industry. We believe that especially because of the thick of the proposals that we despair or depressed and biased media poisoning and substitutes are always interested in selling their investments optimally and / or friends (from the lazy reminders about the status of English production of Vicky Cristina Barcelona to the hallucinogenic Albert Serra claim as a sensitive artist, fun, going through the cheek when referring to the courage, commitment and rigor of an Enrique Cerezo / Julio Fernandez or Jose Luis Cuerda / Álex de la Iglesia). So perhaps, in the absence of emergence of a Steven Spielberg or David Lynch Basin Tomelloso (or vice versa) have to keep looking in imperfection film flashes of that this year we have been in several movies. For example, in the third film of the above curious (El milagro de P. Tinto, 1998) or intolerable ('s Big Adventure Mortadelo and Philemon, 2003) Javier Fesser, Camino, a poignant tragedy fantastic in both senses of the term, knows how to combine creativity with skill and slippery elements. A film that instead of giving us a side of reality, we turn the other cheek as it seeks to reach heaven (or immortality) by staging and the ability to trust in the narrative as the lyrical engine. We appreciate this film, by extension, quality-Gutmann Farewall Welcome to Xavi Puebla, a strange bet quite trodden road that passes this year (Casual Day in Spain, the human question, Nicolas Klotz, 2007, in Europe) but a different form, between what we expected was terrifying (colleagues, bosses, interviewers) and awaits us in when we were alone with ourselves is the ability to put a story with few resources but the ultimate humanity, people of poor quality of Juan Cavestany revealed to us as a very bad cañí Solondz baba and a special intuition to get the best of their performances (remember that also has been the big winner of the English scene this year with the distressing work "Urtain) and one of the two can not be wrong (2007) by Pablo Llorca, a bizarre story of love among other things, with an attractive surface that is more a Godard seemed reasonable that a misappropriation and a background that reflects a reality as early as frightening, is that the devil himself is the protagonist. We also liked, though perhaps not fully convince us, Timecrimes Nacho Vigalondo, imaginative updating of a homespun fantastique referring to their findings regarding best shot in the head and Jaime Rosales, a tangible demonstration of what is an author against all odds, prizes and a curse, fashion and manners. In a country where the coherence is not so good accepted as envy, Jaime Rosales has begun an ordeal that we have no doubt that we will work as brave as this honest spin on what we are calling perception, normal or conflict. It is clear that very small handful of good movies, do not respond to a particular movement or shares a similar concern: not therefore be wise to try to find a unifying thread or a general explanation for these successes within what we would call English industry (but continue with no identity and no desire / interest to be created.) Each of these proposals, and with it its directors, from different production structures, show approach and deploy resources globally opposed. There are, therefore, links, or are tangential (none of them share style but all have the minimum or maximum common multiple of opposing the established standard and share a tone somewhat hopeless, tired even: on the line, should be specified of many important works made outside our borders) between the pure narrative condition Way, formal sloppiness and hyperbole of one of the two can not be wrong, setting movie-theater-Gutmann Farewall Welcome to the comedy unbelieving and cruel people of poor quality, the sense of neo-fantastique Timecrimes and arthouse cinema of truth Bullet in the Head. Heterogeneous parallel paths toward a design flaw that makes at least the possibility to keep walking away from the quicksands of the cliffs temporary and elusive of conformism and buried by egos beens subsidized and commitments.
