Month: February 2008

Roger Donaldson, the director was in attendance and participated in a Q+A after the film.

FILM BLURB
A tightly wound heist film, The Bank Job is based on an infamous 1971 London robbery, in which a gang of East End crooks got away with approximately  £500,000. Roger Donaldson’s film unpacks all that went into the job and all that came after, including the shady criminals, the corrupt politicians, the government cover-up, the violent revenge and, of course, the royal scandal. Jason Stratham plays the mechanic and small-time criminal who masterminded the heist, ultimately finding himself in far over his head. The film opens in the Bay Area on March 7.

MY TAKE
Michael X, a black radical, has pictures of Princess Margaret in a compromising situation and is using them to thwart his arrest by the Government. MI5 (or MI6, who can tell) knows they are in a safe deposit box in a London bank. A babe returning from Morocco is found with drugs in her possession. An agent promises her immunity is she will round up a band of guys to break into the bank, give the pictures to MI5 and keep whatever else they take. They do this, but of course, there are complications. A Porn Lord who has the goods on crooked cops, a high class madam and members of Parliament become involved, so the hapless crooks are sought by dangerous dudes on both sides of the law and the government.

I wanted Michael X and the Porn Lord, despicable chaps, taken down, but could have accepted an ending where either MI5 or the small time criminal with balls of steel, prevailed.

Very cool film — taught, tense, and with more plot turns than Lombard Street. Incredibly, based on a true story.

A film that reminded me of Sir Ben Kingsley‘s Sexy Beast, as well as Layer Cake. Check it out.

We saw Zidane at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room last night. The room is not large, maybe 200 seats, and was packed, largely with soccer teams and their coaches. We were two of a few “civilians.”

I expected to see the familiar number 10 of the French national team, and of course, the famous head butt. But no, seventeen cameras focus on Zinedine Zidane for an entire, regular season soccer match, Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005. Zidane wears number 5 for Real Madrid.

This is an amazing film. For me, it defines the art of the motion picture. IMDb mentioned it as a “conceptual art installation.”

What we see on the big screen is Zidane; his face, his head, the back of his neck, his torso, his feet, sometimes his whole body. He stands, jogs, runs, handles the ball, whatever the match situation calls for. He sweats, spits, blows his nose, says very little. His expression rarely changes. We see Zidane assist on a goal as he kicks the ball across the face of the goal, to be scored on a header by a teammate. It is one of the few instances where the camera follows the ball. We see a few brief shots of a black and white video monitor and a few brief shots from the stadium roof, otherwise we don”t see the match, just Zidane. From time to time, quotes from Zidane interviews are shown as subtitles.

The film is in real time, and at half-time, news clips of things going on in the world on that day, are shown.

The sound may be even more amazing. We hear in turn, silence, the roar of maybe 80,000 rabid soccer fans, the thunk of his foot against the ball, the skidding sound of the ball on the turf, footsteps digging in the turf, a musical monotone building and fading as the action warrants.

I found the film a joy; I delighted in the clarity of the pictures moving before me. I felt as if I were in a photo gallery, passing from one photograph to the next, always thrilled by the image at hand. I was mesmerized. Carol was bored silly.

Zidane played at Sundance last year, but has not secured distribution in the US.

Here is a review from the Guardian, and a Wired review from Sundance.