Judged

The ever-reliable Editing Room have thrown up an abridged script for one of my 2012 faves, Dredd. Some of you may wonder how such almost literal cannon fodder can rub shoulders with the likes of Never Let Me Go and This Must Be The Place.

From Chris W‘s abridged script:

INT. HALL OF JUDGENESS

JUDGE KARL meets his plucky new sidekick OLIVIA THIRLBY.

JUDGE KARL

So you failed the Judge SAT test, but you’ve got Kuato powers so we’re giving you one more chance to prove yourself.

OLIVIA THIRLBY

(using mind powers)

I sense that you’re very... You’re kind of... You’re sort of...

JUDGE KARL

Yeah? Go on?

OLIVIA THIRLBY

(pause)

Uh, nevermind. Forget it.

JUDGE KARL

But you were about to reveal something interesting and profound about me that might give my character the slightest shred of depth.

OLIVIA THIRLBY

(looks at watch)

Wow, you haven’t shot anyone for a full two minutes.

JUDGE KARL

Damn, you’re right. Characterization can go fuck itself. Let’s go kill something.

Yeah.

I loved Dredd because it didn’t try to be anything more than it is, whether it’s a balls-out actioner, a more-faithful-than-hoped-for adaptation of the original comic character, a nicely self-contained dystopian sci-fi flick, or a combination of any/all of the above.

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2012 on Screen

I’ve seen more titles this year than in any other since official records began in 2003. I’d like to think the year’s expanded viewing-slash-research goes some way toward explaining why posts on this blog have tended towards commentary rather than craft.

Features

Drive
Tropa De Elite
(Elite Squad) and Tropa De Elite – O Inimigo Agora E Outro (Elite Squad – The Enemy Within)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Avengers
Safe
Never Let Me Go
Armadillo
The Angel’s Share
Dredd
This Must Be the Place
La Jetee
End of Watch

Yes, that’s more than ten for the year but those 2011-and-earlier titles were just so damned good that I had to name-drop them.

Television

Panama-hat-tips to The Good Wife, Mad Men, Justified, Nurse Jackie and Breaking Bad for continuing to be must-see telly three or more seasons into their respective runs. It’s sad that Mad Men and Breaking Bad will finish in the coming year but all good things do come to an end.

Hung – Season 2
Justified – Season 3
The Good Wife – Seasons 3-4
Smith
Inside Men – Season 1
Dirk Gently – Season 1
Game of Thrones – Seasons 1-3
Mad Men – Season 5
Nurse Jackie – Season 4
Hounds
The Newsroom – Season 1
Hit & Miss
Longmire – Season 1
The Golden Hour
Breaking Bad – Season 5
The Bletchley Circle
Last Resort
Monroe – Season 2
Boardwalk Empire – Season 1
Vegas – Season 1
The Sopranos – Season 1

Late adopter excuse/s for ‘discovering’ Smith, Boardwalk Empire and Sopranos.

A great year for UK telly with The Bletchley Circle and Hit & Miss.

And sun-hat-tips to the excellent The Golden Hour that almost, almost, made me want to watch the Olympics, and the lamented Hounds.

Theatre

Leilani Unasa’s His Mother’s Son
P-Lab’s Hypothesis One
Louise Tu’u‘s Gaga: the unmentionable

Disclosure: All three pieces are by Banana Boat colleagues,

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This Must Be the Place

The market caters to all sorts of tastes across various arbitrary boundaries, and impulse (that is, blind) purchases can provide the most rewarding of viewing experiences. (I suspect a large part of any cinematic or television enjoyment I can get nowadays is the tension between anticipation/expectation and The Unexpected – I might expand on that once I’ve found my thesaurus.)

So it was with This Must Be The Place, a road-trip/revenge-tale/coming-of-age film that captivated me for all of its almost two-hour running time. What distinguishes this film from any other film that tries to deal with even just one of those genres is the Robert Smith-inspired middle-aged rock star protagonist (Sean Penn) whose backstory is not what we expect, whose journey is equal parts convention and surreality, and whose characterisation reminds me why I’ve been a Penn fan since Bad Boys.

The trailer plays up the revenge angle but the film is, like other personal favourites, so much more.

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