Film You May Have Missed (#5)

La Antena (2007)

A completely unique take on silent cinema is this fairy-tale like story by Argentinian director Esteban Sapir, beautifully shot in black-and-white and practically without dialogue; ‘La Antena’ is a feast for the eyes.

'The City without a Voice', is ruled by Mr. TV. He has stolen the inhabitants’ voices and is in total control of all spoken words and media, forcing everyone to eat his own brand of TV-food. Mr TV is not just a monopolist, he is the personification of evil and totalitarianism, even the swastika appears as a symbol a number of times. He secretly works on a device to steel the words through his television broadcasts. For this purpose, he kidnaps the only one left with The Voice, a beautiful singer, but a TV repairman witnesses the kidnapping and using The Voice’s blind son who is the only other inhabitant that can speak tries to thwart Mr TV’s evil plans.

In the opening sequence, we see a book, titled ‘La Antena’, that opens and a three dimensional city made of paper rises from the pages into which the camera dollies. The production design is stunning with beautiful sets and imagery. Although, shot primarily with the basic language of silent cinema, Esteban Sapir also adds a number of fresh techniques of his own, such as a combination of typographic and animation techniques. Everyone ‘talks’ to each other through text balloons (usually floating near their mouths), the louder they talk, the larger the font. The same trick is used for sound effects. The balloons themselves can be pushed away or crushed as if they had physical presence.

A magical film quite unlike anything else I’ve seen before or since.

Book You May Have Missed (#5)

Dangerous Davies by Leslie Thomas (1976)

When it comes to reading I am a neophiliac so I rarely read a book more than once, but it was after reading ‘Dangerous Davies’ for the third time that I wrote my first (unfinished) novel. I loved Leslie Thomas’ mixture of comedy, whodunit and a very English admiration for the under-dog.

Detective Constable ‘Dangerous’ Davies (we never get to know his real first name) is a sort of English equivalent of US TV’s Colombo, scruffy, bumbling and accident prone but he gets the job done in the end.

Thomas wrote 4 Dangerous Davies books. As well as the original, there was ‘Dangerous in Love’, ‘Dangerous by Moonlight’ and ‘Dangerous Davies and the Lonely Heart’.

You may have seen the TV series based on the character – ‘The Last Detective’. It starred Peter (Dr Who) Davison and comedian Sean Hughes who played Dangerous’ sidekick Mod.

There was also a film ‘The Last Detective’ (1981) with Bernard Cribbins as Dangerous and a terribly miss-cast Bill Maynard as Mod.

Fun Fact: I saw Leslie Thomas once. He was walking along Exeter Street by the wall of Salisbury Cathedral Close. I waved but he ignored me.

Film You May Have Missed (#4)

Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

In 1964 I began working in central London and discovered the delights of the Academy cinemas and the French New Wave films, one of which was 'Alphaville'

Jean Luc Godard’s spoof of, and/or tribute to, American sci-fi/spy dramas/crime films starred Eddie Constantine as secret agent Lemmy Caution on a mission to Alphaville, the ultra-modern city state that has criminalised love and self-expression. The authoritarian voice of the city is that of a computer Alpha 60 invented by Professor Von Braun who is Caution’s mission target, but first he must find Henri Dickson played by the Russian-born American actor Akin Tamiroff  and get involved with Von Braun’s daughter played by Anna Karina (Godard’s wife who appeared in several of his films).

 

                        Akin Tamiroff and Eddie Constantine      Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina

Remember, this is Godard directing, so don’t expect a straightforward drama film, although French New Wave voice overs, cinema-verité location shooting, Raoul Coutard’s black and white high-contrast cinematography and Eddie Constantine playing his part totally seriously all add up to a very interesting period piece.

In my opinion, Alphaville is the last of the run of great films Godard made that started with ‘À Bout de Souffle’ (‘Breathless’) in 1960 and included ‘Pierrot le Fou’, ‘Vivre sa Vie’ and, Tarrantino’s favourite, ‘Bande à Part’ (‘The Outsiders’). Godard then seem to stop considering his audiences and made a number of totally self-indulgent films, some of which are frankly unwatchable even to a veteran of ‘left-field’ film viewing like myself.

Fun fact: Eddie Constantine had already played Lemmy Caution in a series of French adventure films in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.

Book You May Have Missed (#4)

Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel by Todd Brendan Fahey (1996)

 

                                              Todd Brendan Fahey

An easy book to have missed, it was self-published, after being praised but turned down by just about every publisher in America for fear of being sued by one or more of the surviving cast of characters (according to Fahey).

Fahey has taken the facts, the rumours and the conspiracy theories concerning the CIA, the Hippies, JFK’s murder and everyone who was anyone in the Counter Culture of the 1960’s and added a tab or two of inspiration (LSD) to create a mad bad alternative history that might just be true after all.

Some of the characters are thinly disguised by name changes (Franklin Moore is the late great Ken Kesey, Carlo Marx is Alan Ginsberg (Fahey used the same alias as Jack Kerouac used for Ginsberg in ‘On The Road’)) while many retain their true identities; including the larger than life Captain Al Hubbard.

Al Hubbard

If you want to get a non-fiction view of the times and people in Wisdom’s Maw, I’d recommend ‘Acid Dreams’ by Martin A Lee and ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’ by Tom Wolfe.