Daily Mail and buying into their :,eiisationalised ‘JlFfiN of youth delinquency. Clarke is certainl'y no Harmony Korine.
All that said. there is still plenty to admire here. from Jamie 'daughter of Ray' Wrnstone's vicious turn as the school slapper to Brian Bil/v Eliot Tufano's suitably adolescent but unobtrusive Cinematograiihy. The film’s overly moralistic ending is. however. a real hurnrner. (Kaleerh Aftabi I C/newor/d Renfrew Street. Glasgow and Vile Ocean, Edinburgh from Fri 3 Mar. See interview. page 40.
[)HAMA
THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN
(12A) 127min o
‘Spectacles. testicles. watch and wallet.‘ They were the everyday items that pensioner and land speed record enthusiast Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) always checks for before he leaves his shabby suburban New Zealand home. During the course of watching this dreary. predictable. mawkish drama (based on a real stOryl you will come to resent the fact that you have brought all these things to the screening. About half way thrOugh the film you Will wish that everything would go blurry. yOur watch would speed up. your fanny or balls would stop aching and that your wallet was not down 98. You see. The World's Fastest Indian is a family film with a capital F: nice things happen to a nice old man who lust wants to live out his dream.
Set in 1967. Roger The Fiecrurt Donaldson's s0porific. feelgood film follows the adventures of professonal old codger. inventor and motor enthtiSiast as he travels from shithole KiWi town lnvercargill to the equally backwards salt flats of Utah's Bonneville Flats. With its folksy road encounters. tiresome anti-smoking message and nauseating Mr Magoo- style sentiments it's not difficult to imagine the potential audience for this all round crowd pleaser — noticeably soft bi'ained AiistralaSians. speed freaks. motor cross morons. Formula One fools and a broad demographic of tedious eight-to-SO-year-olds who like their cinema to be unchallenging. agreeable and mildly inspirational.
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balding Trff‘: Pad Dali.“ I Gripe/(1’ release frorr‘r "7 'Ja‘r
rat-i his r tie/MA MIRRORMASK (PG) 101 min 0..
Helena (Stephanie LeOnidasi l‘i lion‘- good stock. She .‘rorkr: the big tr .p .vith mother and father but. like Jenn Major befere her. she often dreams; of 1{:&i‘.lll(} the circus to loin the real .voild When her mother gets siclv and she has an adolescent tantrum at her Idlfl‘, benign daddy rBob Brydurii she finds herself slipping into a strange lanri filled With giants. riionkeyliiids and dangerous sphrmes. Ail iii-wine real. knows is that she must .‘rake iii: the Queen of Light and return f)(1.".‘if:
Writer Neil Gaiman and multimedia artist, director Davrd McKean have a long collaborative histOiy. from their first book together - 1987's Violent Cases — to, most recently. their award wrnning illustrated book (and subsequent theatre production) The Wolves in the Walls. With iI/lirrorriiask this dynamic duo are seeking cinematically to reflect the recurrent themes that seem endemic in their work (teenage angst. growrng pains and the inner torment of an outsider from a troubled familyi.
Working with a fairly measly (for a fantasy film anyway) 84m budget. McKean keeps things fresh and fairly inspired despite a few longeurs. Undeniably touched by the spirit of Jan Svankmejer. Francrs Bacon. Henson's The ark Crystal (the film was even produced by daughter Lisa Henson. thOugh none of Henson‘s puppets was used in the film). as well as the work of artists Jim Dine and Roger Dean. the film is a mildly diverting rites of passage fable. Mirror'mask certainly suffers in comparison wrth such genre milestones as The Company of Wolves. Time Bandits and The Wizard of Oz. but there is no denying McKean's visual audacrty or his very Lin-British Cinematic ambition (Paul Dale)
I Selected release from Fri 3 Mar.
POLITICAL THRILLER SYRIANA (15) 127min 000
Syriana is an American think tank term used for an imaginary. reconfigured Middle East. The obscwe titular reference of writer director Stephen Gaghan's new film serves as an indicator that he is not interested in offering obvious explanations or conclusions. lt‘s produced by Steven Soderbergh, who worked with Gagham on the screenplay for Traffic in 2000. In a possible attempt to recreate past glories. Syriana is
INTERVIEW
THE GREAT DANE
LARS VON TRIER talks about his new film and life after Dogme.
‘Manderlay was written as a part two and is supposed to a little different and lighter than Dogville. It’s actually more of an intellectual little comedy. When I wrote Dogville I kept thinking about Bertolt Brecht, Peter Watkins and the BBC plays of the 19705, especially this one production of Nicholas Nickelby. And then I started thinking about all these things that I remembered from my childhood, and all the things that we as adults do not allow ourselves to do any more.
‘After seeing the Lord of the Rings trilogy I longed for another way - I believe that there is big potential in showing as little as possible instead of showing as much as possible because too much becomes a little dull
in the long run, I would say.
‘The third film in my “American Trilogy" is to be called Washington and the only thing I can say about it right now is that I have been writing it for almost half a year and that l have put it away because it was not good enough. So we’ll have to wait. But the plan is to have Grace meet her evil sister. And the plan was also to have Nicole [Kidman] and Bryce [Dallas Howard] in it at the same time.
‘At the moment I’m actually shooting a Danish comedy which is provisionally called Boss of Bosses. And it was almost a Dogme film for a while but now I have a new idea, which I’m very fascinated by. It has to do with the way the camera is placed. So it's not a handheld camera any more; it’s a fixed camera and the idea is that you, the director, place your camera, and then you ask the computer how many set ups you should do. It is this strange thing that is decided by a machine. I am now saying that the only thing you can use computers for is to make decisions. It’s kind of a randomising process, you could say. But it’s actually giving life to the computer. It’s very interesting. I have a name for the technique and we are now registering it under the name Automavision. It’s fantastic. It sounds extremely stupid but at least it is not conceptual, which I hate. Believe me, it’s great; let the machines make the decisions (laughs).’ (Interview by Paul Dale)
I Mander/ay is at Fi/mhouse. Edinburgh from Fri 3 Mar and Cineworld Rentrew Street, Glasgow from Fri 24 Mar. See review. page 44.
53".
45‘. 4.
structured like its predecessor along a similar portrnanteau style. A series of stories provides snapshots to the state of play YlI the modern day oil industry irom the Dartl‘, and bearded CIA operative Bob Barnes (George Cloohe‘ii and his attempts to uphold various political interests inoticeably to a group of Pakistani illegal immigrants in Saudi Arabia who are sacked when contract is awarded to a Chinese company to the US in/estigation into
the ll)(:l’}i:l of two oii f/)llil)itlfl‘:’. .vanting to exploit oil reseries in Kazakhstan young er errty trader Bryan ‘.’.loo’l'iiari (Matt Da'roni .‘Jho cashe“. in r: farniiy tiaried‘, and a battle of aCr,ess;on bet .‘xeeii t.'
princes. Half .vay through (in it' it i’
lhromi into the 'lll/ i'.
set/1e" ). ’t'anrts on one that ‘.'.‘; plethoras of these tales are not ’j’fillf} to tie together. Gaghan is not interested in offering a didacticai analysis of the oil lllfIll’iiry‘. but through clever editing he argues that neth.rig is black and white and e rec/thing i', a r;0mpr0rriise. But this conclusion l‘, reached at the expense of character development. exposition and entertainment. As Such Syria/m l‘, COrtfusmg and a hard .vatcl‘. that Hill bOrc- as many as it delights
(Kaleem Aftab.
I Genera/ release from Fri ,3 Mar.
2—“) MW 27/. THE LIST 43