a DVD helps me find the counter-poison in Cosmopolis

A couple of recent evenings out have created some music and film swapping moments. A few of us emailed quick lists of recent music we liked - it gave me some new ideas as a result.

Separately, a different group of us exchanged a single DVD with one another. I received Cosmopolis, which is the 2012 Cronenberg movie adaptation of the Delillo novel. Someone else got Lady and the Tramp.

I read Delillo's book a few years ago, which I remember as a sort of road-tripping life-loop compressed into a single journey.

I hadn't seen the movie, which stars Twilight's Robert Pattison playing Eric, a different kind of blood-sucker.

The focus is a 28 year old billionaire in a white stretched limousine crossing a road-blocked Manhattan to get a haircut. He's received a death threat. The soundproofed limo is configured like a gleaming space capsule and on his journey he meets his wife, lovers, his art advisor, a doctor and colleagues as well as going through the asteroid shower of an 'Occupy Wall Street' type demonstration.

Many of Eric's reactions appear as automaton-calculations, challenging the notion of richness and smartness being linked. A quarter second of a real shared glance could violate the agreements that made the city operate.

The immersive numbers soup echoes current global trading where markets are tweaked and debts offloaded to unwitting consumers.

“Look at those numbers running. Money makes time. It used to be the other way around. Clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism. People stopped thinking about eternity. They began to concentrate on hours...using labour more efficiently.”

As various brainiac accomplices of Eric briefly join him in the car, there's only a fuzzy understanding of the way the markets work. The machine algorithms rule the organic charts. No shoeshine story, but a 24 year old who briefly joins him has had enough and wants to get out of the markets.

From a book written in 2003, there's plenty for 2015. Take falling energy markets where oil slid from $130 to around $60 per barrel. Everyone trades with all the right software. Allegro, Openlink, Triple Point, Amphora. Roll out the names. Roll out the barrels. Yet be surprised.

US fracking increases oil availability, energy efficiency in cars improves, middle east conflicts fluctuate, China shops around, Russia creates embargoes and the Saudis keep production levels for market retention. A few events outrun the systems - halve the price. Now wait to see whether Saudis hold their nerve and American fracking becomes unprofitable.

The machines' trades win over the humans' comprehension with the capture of margins creating an ultra-minority wealth. Just like the 28-year old in the story.

"Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself. as Delillo puts it.

Frankly, it's a tough movie to watch. Tight one-to-one interactions with Pattinson's character, dealing in whip cracks of Delillo thought. Eating and sleeping in the shadow of what these people do.

Ex_Machina

I've just been to see Ex_Machina, the Alex Garland film about a cyborg, which is played by Alicia Vikander (Who also took centre stage in the recent 'Testament of Youth').

Coincidentally, I re-watched Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' a few days ago (it's free on Amazon Prime at the moment), where Scarlett Johansson plays a kind of alien 'Woman who fell to earth', set in Scotland.

There's similarities in some of the ideas around empathy and adaptation. Without spoilers, Ex Machina explores whether a created AI can pass the Turing Test, where another human considers it indistinguishable from a human in terms of its responses.

After the jolly opening scenes, the movie is mainly a closed-world three-hander showing the interplay between the off-key billionaire software developer (Oscar Isaac - who played Llewyn Davis in the film of the same name), the unwitting software guy being used to conduct the test (Domhnall Gleeson) and the initially somewhat transparent cyborg played by Alicia Vikander. As you'd expect, the tension ratchets in the closed surroundings.

Probably the last proper gag in the movie is in the first 20 minutes, when Gleeson gets his pass into the billionaire's science hideout.

After that, it's all set in a secluded high-tech designer-cool secure laboratory in a lush wilderness of mountains and streams. There's a strong storyline that certainly had me thinking about the themes.

Garland previously adapted the Ishiguro story 'Never Let Me Go' which I though was a superbly haunting movie, and there are some similarly big questions in this one. I can't really say much more without spoiling the plot, but it's one I enjoyed and will probably watch again.

(sorry if you need to skip a particularly long youtube BMW supermodel advert before the trailer starts)

The King's Speech in The King's Road

Well, Saturday's plan went smoothly. What was fun part way through was seeing a genuinely enjoyable film which created much positive audience reaction and then, at the end, as the titles rolled, hearing loud spontaneous applause from the audience.

We'd visited the Chelsea Cinema in the King's Road. It's the one that quite often shows European films and looks quite unlike most multiplexes, with its very wide seating area, convenient bar and somewhat 1970's styling.

The film we'd been watching was "The King's Speech" - about the yet to be King George VI breaking past his speech impediment in the stormy times that led to him becoming King.

The film opens showing Bertie (Colin Firth) struggling and stuttering to make a radio broadcast and being criticised for it by his father King George V. By contrast, his highly self-confident older brother David (Guy Pearce) seemed to have a social world at his fingertips.

The story showed the attempts of Bertie to break past his stutter, led by the efforts of his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter), who introduced him to the non-nonsense and somewhat eccentric instruction of Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). There's some great Royalty meets Commoner scenes which created much laughter in the cinema.

Meanwhile those partying fingertips of David were never far from Baltimore socialite Wallace Simpson, although its not entirely clear that she was only within one man's grasp.

History tells of the death of George V, which made David the new King Edward VIII. He didn't make it to be crowned though, staying as monarch for less than a year, because of his wish to marry Wallace Simpson which created the basis for his abdication.

The reluctant Bertie was instead to be crowned as the new King. Albert couldn't be the name - it sounded too Germanic, so George VI was chosen to create continuity with his father. Luckily most of the Royals have plenty of spare names.

The story continues with the lead up to the Coronation and the see-sawing improvements of the to-be King's speech in the time when much of Europe was preparing for World War II.

I enjoyed a well-told and engaging story, with much delicate humour as well as a sense of the dark times ahead as George VI prepared for a reign which would run the course of the second world war.

movie title is a winner

I missed most of the speeches from the Oscars, and my hopes were pinned on this film, which seems to have somehow been at number 11 on the various lists of ten.

I'm sure that the sequel will do better so long as they remember not to include any card games and laughter. Thanks to britanick for this little gem.

"Catchphrase"
"Famous quote" : furious woman.
"Metaphor"

"naive yet inspiring statement as music gets hopeful"

nine

At the best cinema in London this evening - The Electric in Portobello Road - to see Rob Marshall's 'Nine'. We'd booked armchairs with footstools and grabbed some suitably Italian drinks before the show started. It's the movie musical that parallels Fellini's 8 1/2 about the trials and tribulations of a director with writer's block attempting the ninth movie.

Stylishly 60's Italian, with little Alfa sports cars, perpetual sun-glasses and glamour the Sartorialist would envy, this was a cinema spectacle. I didn't know what I was getting in advance, and about a third of the way through realised it was a series of cameos by the women connected with Daniel Day-Lewis as the enigmatic and conflicted maestro Guido. At around the same moment I decided it wasn't so much a musical as a modern-day opera. Art house opera marketed as big screen musical, maybe?

All new songs (I think) and flashily sassily directed choreography which sometimes tips more than a wink to Bob Fosse. My sense was that the songs need to be heard a couple of times to really sink in, maybe because they are new rather than Moulin Rouge or Mamma Mia style implants of existing pop.

I'll be one of the people who enjoyed this show, although my sense is it will be divided. I liked the homage to 60's cinema, the graininess of some of the film, the wide open lenses with liquid backgrounds. The way that Daniel Day-Lewis played the director without a script or any ideas, but who could function charmingly on auto-pilot through the press calls.

There's a roll call of well-known actresses as the women in his life, from Marion Cotillard as his wife, Penelope Cruz his mistress, Nicole Kidman as his muse, Sophia Loren as his mother, through Fergie, Kate Hudson and even Judy Dench as the wardrobe person.

This may have been a simple storyline, modest dialogue and some flashy set pieces. I'd put it closer to art house homage than the way it seems to have been marketed. On that level I think it works well.

Trailer here