Wanting what you have

No lengthy write up here. I just really like the juxtaposition of these two films. Both very different, but both around the theme of "if you love them, let them go".

Do you remember the Internet?

Yesterday Microsoft launched a new campaign around their update to Internet Explorer, with a video entitled “Child of the 90’s”. The slightly micro-soft-touch video aimed to tug at our Gen Y heartstrings with memories of pogs, tamagotchi’s, slap bands and - you guessed it - “the browser you loved to hate”. To use a term coined by The Future Laboratory, “netstalgia” is in full force, as me and my contemporaries begin to fondly remember the good old days of dial-up broadband and phones the size of a Fiat Punto. For the perhaps the first time, it’s now possible to market web-based services with the rose-tint of nostalgia, rather than the blinding glint of innovation. 

On a similar, if somewhat, tangential note, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the internet on film. Whether it’s about retrospective storytelling (The Social Network, Jobs) or the web as a narrative device (HBO’s Girls will be my primary reference for this), filmmakers are facing an increasingly challenge of making screens, code and online activity as visually exciting as the real world action taking place in the story.

I am loathe to give Lena Dunham any more column inches, but her integration of the Internet within the plot and lives of her characters marks a watershed moment for film and TV. We can no longer pretend that online interactions aren’t contributing to the momentum of a contemporary storyline. I’m not talking “You’ve Got Mail”, where an occasional screen-shot of an email revealed the characters’ burgeoning relationship. Technology has made human interaction complex - a broad range of subtle cues from across a range of platforms now impact the trajectory of our lives. 

But if people looking at screens is boring, do we have to invent a new cinematic style to literally show the deep subtext taking place in the virtual world? For some reason, I keep returning to this video.

It’s gaudy, it’s over the top, and it’s French.... but it kind of works. I may be part of a generation that gets “netstalgic” for when life took place on just a few platforms, when the protagonists we watched on TV had only to wait by the just one phone for her life to change. But, to the generations behind me, this kind of overt meta data, is an intrinsic part of their world view. And film and TV need to reflect that if they are going to continue to tell rich, meaningful stories about characters we believe in, love and remember forever.

Dark with something more than night

Cool little collection of films here to indulge in over the bank holiday, sent to me by Giles Phelps last week. Giles is a one time resident of LA who, back in the day, spent many a hour with my Father - tearing up a city where the night smells of lust and depression, the wind sounds like a Raymond Chandler line, and 'on location' never counts...








Sent in response to a new film made my dear friend, the ferociously talented Rex, for Design Studio/Nokia.

Nothing Specific

So here it is. The inevitable Moonrise Kingdom post. Made possible by the fact that I'm white, work in the creative industry and live in Hipster Yuppie central. Plus the new episode of Girls isn't yet available on my illegal download site of choice.

People seem to have a bit of a Marmite relationship with Wes Anderson. Some loathe his work, finding his style sickeningly twee, his characters devoid of meaning and interest, and his plots... non-existent. Others revel in the vagueness he casts in the dusty pastel light of imagined nostalgia. Love it or hate it, his recurring theme of disconnected, flawed adults encroaching on the apparent innocence of youth is unparalleled. His loyal ensemble cast defined so much by their possessions and hobbies, they can say everything without the need to say anything at all.

While Anderson's previous films (Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Darjeeling) focus on grown-ups trapped by the expectations of their childhood, Moonrise Kingdom brings the emphasis onto the children. His pre-teen protagonists long to be fugitive from the suffocating emotional tension at home before the real damage - the damage their parents and guardians so fearfully obsess over - truly sets in.

As a viewer, Moonrise Kingdom initially comes across as an escapist fantasy. Reading the tweets surrounding its opening last week, many people were leaving the film feeling blissfully upbeat. And, with all the whimsical detailing, ironic one-liners and small children talking the big talk, it certainly has all the attributes of Bugsy Malone as interpreted by Jack Spade and Anthropologie. Personally, I was nevertheless left with a haunting feeling - a bitter taste in my mouth that suggested something was amiss. Perhaps, the innocence of the kids served only as a distraction to what was really being said about the empty selfishness of adulthood. Perhaps the joy I and my fellow Dalstonite audience felt was simply blinding denial. As Anderson himself said in a recent interview with WSJ, "I don't really know what I want people to take away from my movies. Nothing specific". Nothing specific - the beating heart of a hipster yuppie lifestyle.

Moonrise Kingdom achieves intense whimsical charm that devolves into such oppressive inhuman cuteness I wanted to shoot myself in the head.
— Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) May 26, 2012

Bridging the gap

Just for kicks I sometimes enjoy messing with the Netflix algorithm by watching movies way out of my usual 'taste preferences'. So with this in mind and to cheer myself up a bit, I watched 'The Bridge' - a moving documentary about the people who take their lives by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

I've driven across the Golden Gate several times now - more often than not in The Great Red Shark while listening to the soundtrack from The O.C. But even then, the bridge holds a strange sense of foreboding within its straining ironwork and startling russet tones. The inclement weather patterns, for which SF is known, seem to begin and end at the bridge. The mists roll in and out, sometimes gleaming brilliantly in the Californian sun, other times shrouding the entire structure in cloud. On the gloomy days, with the rain and the wind and the shadow of Alcatraz in the near distance, it really couldn't be further from the picture postcard image of majestic structural engineering.

'The Bridge' includes footage of real people jumping, shot over several months by the film's makers. Apparently, on average, two people take their lives at the bridge every 15 days. It's easy, it's dramatic and it's high enough to be a sure thing. But the most emotive element in the film were the interviews with the jumpers' friends and family. Just like the ambiguous nature of the bridge itself, they veered between understanding the actions of their loved ones, while struggling to comprehend how anyone could fall so deeply into despair.

One of the parents interviewed wondered if her son chose the bridge because he "wanted one last chance to fly". The footage of him - Gene - pacing next to the barrier for hours before finally leaping triumphantly onto the rail and throwing his arms up in a swan dive takes your breath away. Just as the bridge is a testament to man overcoming nature - connecting two sides of San Francisco bay - so these fatal acts depict an individual's conquering of his or her own destiny.

You can check out the trailer out here.

And as for me, don't worry I'm back to Season 3 of The Rachel Zoe project. All good.

Young Money

Last night I spent a few hours propping up the bar at the BFI, soaking up the scene that is the onedotzero audio visual festival. I'm lucky enough to work alongside many uber-talented motion graphics people, some of whom were featured in the festival, such as Simon Jones' collaborative film project, Resonance, and "rising star" Sam Blain's In Dreams.

I also got chatting to a recent graduate Hannah Blackmore, who made this beautiful film which poignantly captures the silent extinguishing of traditional retail going unnoticed in middle-England.

After Wes Anderson

Massive new Internet crush on Alex Cornell. Today, his painfully funny app pastiche, jotly, blew up across Twitter. But, having scouted around on his website a little bit, the video I'm particularly loving is this one. Acutely observed and charming.