If anyone was expecting me to comment on the second series of Mad Men, I’m sorry but I can’t. I’d missed the first series, despite often hearing it was good. Right now, the second series has kicked off on the BBC. I did my best to watch the first episode, but failed miserably. Then came episode two. By now I’d remembered the show was broadcast on Wednesday nights just after midnight (11.20pm local time) and repeated on Saturday nights. I’d programmed my dvd recorder for the third episode, so that I wouldn’t miss it… after the show I turn on the tv and what do I see? Mad Men. Apparently the BBC wanted to show a documentary about Margaret Thatcher on the Mad Men slot (no points for making cheap puns now) and so the series was moved to 00.50am local time (which is nearly 2am my time).
Suddenly I remember why I never watched series one in the first place… if a show is broadcast on the most odd moments off the day, how do they expect people to watch it? I have no problem with a show being moved for a good reason, but a documentary on Thatcher could’ve just been shown every hour of the day.

Which brings us to the question “Why is there a need to show quizzes like QI three times a week?”. It all started with Have I Got News for You (which got one regular repeat and one with bonus footage) and Graham Norton Uncut (which contained material they had to bleep out pre-watershed), but now it seems business as usual to repeat every show at least twice, no matter how pointless that may be. (Also, do they change the scores on the longer versions of the show? Otherwise, it’s just banter to fill dead moments.)

The BBC have begun to be cruel to BBC Four programmes (which are repeated on BBC Two for people who don’t have access to the Beeb’s digital channels – still an overwhelming majority of the people). Take Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, for instance. They began to air the final episode of the series, then moved it to another slot on another day and started showing the episodes in a different order than announced, never showed the longer episode on screenplays and thus ended one week early, so they broadcast the final episode again.
Mad Men is also repeated, as I think I mentioned before. The late night repeat is shown on Saturday nights. I’m sorry, but that’s about as specific as I can get. It tends to start somewhere between midnight and 2am. The best way to make you sure you’ll be able to watch it is to take the entire night of programming and you’ll find it somewhere on your hard disk. This is also how you’ll discover BBC2 still broadcasts subtitled movies. They’re on most Saturday nights, somewhere after 3am.

Don’t get me wrong, I still like BBC2, but I hate the tendency of having to drag a magazine to my television to see where they’ve stuck a series now while they’re repeating other programmes incessantly, just to fill up dead air. By the way, next week’s episode of Mad Men will be shown on the regular slot. No doubt – in an attempt to be original – they’ll show that one in reverse.

Recently we’ve been exposed to remakes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left. (Just wait one more month for that – well, “wait” is a big word, “hide” may be better.) Those movies had two things in common: one was already mentioned by me (they’re remakes), the other similarity is that they all sucked. Yes, those were horribly nasty pictures, but they were also social commentaries. And oops, didn’t the remake people forget to include this vital element?

Whether you like the film or not, Eden Lake is much more akin to those originals than any of the remakes. Occasionally quite close to the torture porn movies like Saw and Hostel, Eden Lake doesn’t waste any time getting to the point. On the way to their idyllic location, young couple Jenny and Steve listen to the car radio, which informs them about young criminals. Not much later, a bunch of kids on bikes drive right in front of the car. Those chavs – and mind you, I had to endure watching the movie with a bunch of them myself, if you remember my pre-review -, aren’t they horrible?
As the couple arrives in their not so idyllic hotel, a wonderful scene unfolds, which rubs our noses in our double moral standard. A young kid is behaving quite badly and Steve wishes the mother would silence the boy. However, when the boy is punished with a slap in the face, Steve and Jenny look at them in disgust.

Flash forward to the real plot of Eden Lake: when Jenny (a superb Kelly Reilly) and Steve go to an idyllic spot near a lake (conveniently ignoring the 700 “Keep out” signs on their way to the spot), they soon find they’re not the only ones around. Yes, the young chavs are back and keen on disturbing the couple’s inner peace and quiet. Steve walks up to them to tell them it isn’t nice to be so loud and to let their fierce dog scare this girlfriend. As they pretend to ignore him, Steve turns down their radio. What follows can only be described as X being worse than Y for Y’s being bad to X. The situation escalates and a painful accident becomes the catalyst for extreme nastiness and I mean really extreme nastiness. Apart from dealing with uncontrollable kids and parental ignorance (“No sir, my kid doesn’t do that.”), Eden Lake also dips its toe in peer pressure and its 21st century variant (the camera on the mobile phone).

Which brings us to what I think is one of the bigger flaws of the film: sometimes it wallows in its own filth. At one point Jenny and Steve split up and after a while she finds out the kids have grabbed Steve and are on the verge of torturing him. That Jenny watches this scene in disgust can be explained psychologically (some people just freeze when freaking out), that she remains unnoticed for so long is just a plot mistake that’s painfully obvious.
Another example – even more literal – is Jenny’s weird choice for hiding in the trash rather than in the bushes surrounding her. Of course, this can be explained too: it’s about the last place they’ll go and look for her (and it’s a great excuse for getting Kelly Reilly dirty as hell), but it’s just another example of Eden Lake just liking its own filth a bit too much.

Never mind that bit of objective criticism though… Eden Lake‘s glory lies not in whether everything can be explained logically or not, Eden Lake doesn’t mind asking you the question: what would you do in an extreme situation? Surely Jenny and Steve’s choices aren’t always the correct ones, but noone is perfect (though I would’ve expected a bit more chivalry from Steve, who needlessly endangers his girlfriend – then again, he wanted to take Jenny to this beautiful lake because he wanted to propose to her and he’s not letting his grand moment being spoilt by a bunch of loose teenagers). As Eden Lake tries to explain, in an extreme situation where the law isn’t around to protect you, can you defend yourself and to which length are you willing to go?

Eden Lake is the directorial debut of James Watkins, but it’s not the first movie he worked on. In 2002 he wrote another lovely horror movie, My Little Eye (which was a mix of horror and Big Brother). If some parts of Eden Lake make you think of The Descent, you’re not the only one. Apparently Watkins liked that other great slice of British horror so much he was willing to pen the sequel. The Descent: Part 2 should open later this year. Well, in the UK anyway. Eden Lake didn’t hurry itself to cinemas worldwide, I must say: while the movie opened in Belgium, the DVD was released in the UK. (Which gives the Dutch audience the choice between importing the dvd or waiting another three months before the film is released in cinemas over there.)

Anyway, back to the movie… you can’t say the film is a pleasant experience. You’ll have a tough time rating Eden Lake because the film is so disturbing. As I pointed out before, the movie isn’t perfect. As I also tried to point out, you’re willing to forgive some of those mistakes because the film has a point to make and needs to get there. Plus, some of the choices made by Jenny and Steve are irritatingly stupid, but can we blame the film for that or the characters (or does this just add to the realism of the film)? And let’s not forget the absolute horror in some of the scenes. You’ll feel like a twisted psychopath for claiming you liked this movie.

Some of my friends also watched the movie and while our rating of the movie differs (between 3 to 4.5 stars out of 5), there are a couple of things we could all agree on: the film is thought-provoking and quite disturbing. So let’s skip the score and rate the movie with words…

Score: disturbing and thought-provoking / 10

I’d finally got round to writing my Eden Lake review (promised only eons ago) when I found the news on DV that someone else was going to put something on DV’s frontpage. So in order to give Neko’s Fritt Vilt the attention it deserves (by the way, you can find that review here), let’s go for a brand new review of an older movie. The Eden Lake review will appear on these pages this Tuesday.

In 1942 Preston Sturges released the screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story. I first learnt about the movie in 1995, the year cinema celebrated its first 100 years. The BBC had collected the BBC 100, a diverse selection of only the finest movies from that first century. It was broadcast on an early Saturday afternoon and I probably would’ve missed it had it not been for the director’s name. Director Hal Hartley had mentioned Sturges as one of his biggest influences and this made me quite curious.

The movie is quite something else: rather than boring you with what happened before, the credits tell the backstory while the actors’ names appear on the screen. Anyway, near the time the director’s name appears on the screen, we’ve seen Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert marry. What’d happened before isn’t exactly clear, but all that will be revealed before the end of the movie. McCrea and Colbert exchange rings and a title informs us “and they lived happily ever after”, interrupted only by the more ominous addition “or did they?”.
Well, did they? Not really. McCrea’s character may have had many ideas, but he was never able to get them sold. The couple is bitterly overdue with their rent and it doesn’t help much when their landlord  decides to show the flat to possible new tenants…

Colbert decides the only way out of this situation is to get a divorce. She hails a cab and is off to Palm Beach. Despite shaking McCrea off, he’s on her trail and is quite upset to hear how Colbert has managed to get to Palm Beach. I won’t spoil the fun for you by telling you how she got there, but it’s quite funny. Sturges had a wonderful talent for screwball comedy. The Palm Beach Story is one of his easiest comedies, some of his movies have more heart-breaking drama than comedic scenes. The man seemed to be the specialist of movies that made you cry rather than laugh. Which doesn’t mean they don’t make you laugh.

When McCrea tracks his wife down in Palm Beach, she’s courted by one of the richest men in the world. She’s partly there because of love and partly to get money for his soon-to-be-ex-husband’s ambitious plan. Earlier the movie, there is a wonderful dialogue between Colbert and McCrea about how important ‘looks’ are in the world (which you can watch below), but there’s also a wonderful moment just after the scene you’re about to watch where Colbert, unable to get out of dress, asks McCrea for assistance to unzip her. “It doesn’t mean anything to you anymore when I touch you, does it?” he asks. “No,” she lies. He kisses his back to prove her wrong. Like many of his other movies, The Palm Beach Story is comedy walking on the line between love and despair.

The Palm Beach Story is not a perfect movie, which – reluctantly – makes me rate it 9/10, but it’s one of those imperfect movies you’ll cherish more than some perfectly made movies which don’t have this much soul. Some of Sturges’ comedies (incl. Christmas in July and Sullivan’s Travels – starring Veronica Lake and the inspiration for O Brother Where Are Thou?) are now available on DVD in a boxset (both in the US and the UK). You’d be silly not to buy them.

(thanks to countrygirltori for the clips from the movie)

Welcome to the news headquarters of DV. That a wonderful dvd release of Nightmare Castle was coming up, may not be news to you: this was already mentioned months ago. But recently a release date has been announced: fans of gothic Italian movies should put May 19 2009 in their diaries.

Gothic horror fans will be delighted to know that Severin Films will be giving the first official DVD release to the 1965 Barbara Steele chiller NIGHTMARE CASTLE / THE FACELESS MONSTER (original title: Amanti d’oltretomba, or “Lovers Beyond The Tomb”).
The original negative has recently been discovered in a Rome storage vault and apparently in good condition. Severin will be doing a new HD transfer in its original aspect ratio, so all those super cheap bootleg DVDs taken from 10th generation TV prints can now be discarded forever.
The film was directed by Mario Caiano, and Severin recently shot a great interview with the 75 year old master at his home just outside of Rome. NIGHTMARE CASTLE also showcases the very first horror score by the legendary Ennio Morricone, and the beautiful black & white cinematography comes courtesy of Enzo Barboni.
This uncut, uncensored and unsung hit of Italian horror history will have a DVD street date to be announced in the near future. (source: dvd drive-in)

In these times of economic crisis with one small company after another closing the books this morsel of good news is more than welcome.

Another recent addition to this upcoming release: Barbara Steele has been interviewed for the dvd extras.

A while ago we talked about Miranda July‘s book and the fact she’d starred in the Blonde Redhead video for “Top Ranking”. Someone came up to us (albeit virtually) and said: “Hey, did you know July also directed a Sleater-Kinney video?” We didn’t, but now we do. It was for the band’s 2006 track “Get Up” and looked like this: