Film
A Mighty Wind takes the form of a comic documentary following the exploits of three folk groups and the people they meet as they reunite for a concert commemorating the passing of their old record producer. The three bands consist of the witchcraft practising The New Main Street Singers, good ol' boys The Folksmen and the now estranged husband and wife combo Mickey and Mitch.
Filmed in the style of a fly-on-the-wall documentary the film is a mixture of interviews and cleverly fabricated archive footage, building up to the concert itself. The production values of a documentary are perfectly realised on screen, easily deceiving the viewer into believing what they see to be a honest piece of non-fiction. This realism is accentuated by director Guest's tendency to encourage improvised dialogue. Whilst improvised comedy always runs the risk of falling flat, Guest's assembled cast all possess good comic timing and the ability to create subtlety studied yet very funny character sketches.
The songs, naturally, steal the show. They are delicately written pastiches of the folk music genre: their surreal streak beautifully shown by such titles as 'Skeletons of Quinto' and 'Potatoes in the Paddy Wagon'.
The joy of watching A Mighty Wind comes from the sheer variety of characters and the number of outstanding performances. What other film can boast a cast which includes model train fanatics, neurotic siblings, ex-porn stars and an incredibly clichéd Jewish television producer? Fred Willard steals every scene he's in with his portrayal of a crazy ex-sitcom actor Mike LaFontaine who is now managing one of the bands. Constantly spouting catchphrases and rubbish publicity ideas, he alone is worth the price of admission. Co-writer of the film, Eugene Levy (aka the embarrassing dad from the American Pie franchise) turns in a wonderfully surreal performance as the seemingly always-stoned Mitch, desperately trying to put his life back together as he struggles to prepare for his performance.
It is in Mitch's story that the human elements of A Mighty Wind show themselves. Although the film has sly digs at the folk music industry it still displays a gentle fondness for its characters and their way of life. It never resorts to cruel jokes at their expense and this gives the film a refreshingly kind sense of humour.
Overall, this is a must see for fans of Guest's previous work, such as Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap. His sense of humour is still sharp and the cast work brilliantly together. This is one mighty wind guaranteed to blow you away.
It had to happen. Just as bad kung fu movie lovers now have their Kill Bill, with its gleeful homage/pastiche of everything that made that genre great, bad zombie movie lovers now have House of a Thousand Corpses. Showing this week in Oxford, it features everything you would expect: heaps of dismembered un-dead, cackling bad guys, underdressed heroines and gallons of gore. In its wake come remakes of zombie classics, even computer game adaptations - all utilising such staples as faithfully shown in House.
Twenty years ago, every ambitious director started with the ketchup bottle. Sam Raimi persuaded his dentist to fund The Evil Dead; Peter Jackson terrorised Wellington with Braindead (back when Gandalf was but a glint in his eye); George Romero got all arty on us (or so he'd like to think) with Dawn of the Dead. Why has the zombie genre recently risen from the dead?
Blame Danny Boyle. With his stylish, exhilarating 28 Days Later giving the genre a shot in the arm, and proving it was still commercially viable, Hollywood was sure to turn to the shuffling hordes once again. But this perhaps points to something deeper in the American mindset than a liking for chainsaws and their effects on arteries.
In the same way in which Night of the Living Dead, released in 1968, was an allegory about Communist brainwashing, zombie films now mimic mainstream America's present ideas with nice symmetry. There is the mindless aggressor surrounding the farmhouse/lab/wherever the survivors inevitably end up, brainlessly baying for their blood. Whether they realise it or not, mom and pop in Idaho have a nice metaphor for their view of the rest of the world besieging the land of apple pie, baseball and casual prejudice. The continued success of such films in America seems, for now, assured.
Touching the Void tells the story of two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who set out in 1985 to climb an unscaled face of the Siula Grande in the Andes. Disaster strikes in emphatic form, as Simpson falls on descent, shattering his kneecap and in the process becoming a dead man walking, minus the ability to walk. Yates refuses to leave him, attempting to lower him down the mountain in stages, but bad turns to worse when he accidentally lowers him over a cliff face, leaving the body of Simpson and the lives of both hanging in the balance.
Their story has become legendary in the climbing world, but has left filmmakers perplexed as to how to transfer it onto celluloid. Tom Cruise fancied himself in the mould of Simpson, but, somewhat ironically for a story that captures triumph amidst adversity, was unable to find a solution to the major problem encountered in adapting it: how does one make a watchable film based upon two characters who spend the majority of the story alone?
Thankfully, the tale landed in the more capable hands of documentary make Kevin McDonald. After the truly horrible Vertical Limit, perhaps more of a disaster than the real life expedition of Simpson and Yates, McDonald avoided melodrama and created a drama-documentary, interspersing jaw-dropping reconstructions with interview footage of the climbers themselves.
The drama, although losing something in the inevitability of their survival - indicated by the fact they literally live to tell the tale - is expertly shot, capturing the horror they faced and the enormity of the potentially fatal decisions they had to make. Meanwhile, the frank recollections of the climbers work like a highly effective soundtrack, emphasizing and complementing the visuals with astounding results. Tense, gasp-inducing and at times impossible to comprehend, Touching the Void, much like that of the climbers, is a truly unique experience.
29th Jan 2004