Tales from the Bitface

This review may contain spoilers.

Kind of daft film that somehow I’d never seen. 

Set at Christmas, as I should have realised from the title, But not a Christmas film. Great opening scene with the shoplifting, And then the bizarre next scene, where she’s leaving him, but hasn’t got round to telling him yet. 

Then the actual plot gets going and runs on down to quite a flat ending. Makes me wonder if all the ice-cream stufff was his delusion caused by grief at his beloved leaving.

I remember seeing this as a kid and absolutely loving it. We talked about it at school, probably played at being Flint.

It’s a Bond spoof. James Coburn as Flint is a super agent who is brought out of retirement to save the world from some mad scientists who are controlling the weather.

I only remembered two things about it. His ability to stop his heart for maximum rest, and the device in his watch that got him started again; and his lighter, with ‘82 functions… 83 if you want to light a cigar.’

It’s daft nonsense, but fun in places. There’s even a lesser agent called 0008 (Triple Oh Eight) who tells him ‘It’s bigger than SPECTRE.)

Watched on Saturday February 4, 2023.

Tár is a much-discussed, disputed, disagreed-upon tour de force. Not since Moonlight have I read so much about a film after seeing it.

Lydia Tár is a conductor who is rehearsing with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for what should be the pinnacle of her career, a live recording of Mahler's Symphony No 5. But she has a past, and it's coming to get her.

Perhaps my favourite interpretation is the too-long-titled 'Tár Is the Most-Talked-About Movie of the Year. So Why Is Everyone Talking About It All Wrong?', from Slate. It posits that the last third or so is, essentially, fantasy, hallucination, or similar.

There's a lot to get out of this — not least encouraging me to listen to Mahler's Fifth — and I'm looking forward to watching it again.

Watched on Saturday January 21, 2023.

Watched on Tuesday January 17, 2023.

The usual Marvel daftness. I enjoyed it, but really, there's just so much of this stuff now that it's become ridiculous.

And I kind of hate what they've done to Wanda between this and WandaVision, which this kind of follows straight on from.

Excellent documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival, an outdoor music festival in 1969. The same year as Woodstock, but much less well-known. The footage was shot at the time, but lay in a basement for fifty years, because the then-filmmakers couldn't get it broadcast.

We get Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Sly & the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder…

If I have a complaint it's that I'd like there to be more of the music and less of the interviews. Or not less of them: the interviews are good. I especially liked the ones that started with some of the surviving performers watching their younger selves. But for most of the acts we just get one song, and an interview gets superimposed over part of it.

Well worth a watch, though.