The Legend of Zorrodir Martin Campbellout nowIn 1998, The Mask of Zorro, alsodirected by Martin Cambell,was released to general acclaim.A rousing, swashbuckling adventurewith a healthy dose of humour,it made a sequel entirely predictable.Sadly, predictable is certainlythe watchword for this latest offeringfrom the conveyor-belt that isHollywood. The film, essentially aninferior photocopy of the original,is not terrible, but it is terribly mediocre.The sultry spark of the first filmhas vanished, replaced by lazy actingand an even lazier script. Thestory, little more than a series of frequentlyillogical plot devices, opensin 1850 as California votes on joiningthe Union. Zorro is enduringsomewhat less than marital bliss,with his devotion to work resultingin estrangement from his beautifulwife. This potentially emotional storylineis instead played for laughs,as Zorro strives to win Elena backfrom a villain so bland I’ve alreadyforgotten his name. Naturally, healso has to save America.The Legend of Zorro is sporadicallyfunny, but the broad slapstickmerely contributes to its uneventone, as it tries (and fails) to find abalance between grit and sanitisedfamily fare. The introduction of aZorro Junior to the forefront of theaction was always going to be intenselyirritating. One also wonderswhy the skilful swordsman Zorronever actually kills anyone with hissword.Nevertheless, the blockbusterdoes have its moments, and it occasionallyfeels like a better story islurking just out of reach. A mealtimescene proves surprisingly macabreand the rousing fighting ofthe climax is undeniably exciting.On a different front, real emotionis felt when Zorro’s identity is revealed,yet the chief effect of this isto highlight the sterility of the restof the affair.It is a depressing thought that sausagefactory of Hollywood cannotmuster the courage to experimentwith fresh material. Recycling is agood thing when it comes to litter,but not when cinema is concerned.The word ‘sequel’ may arouse producersin Bel-Air, but for me it hasall the excitement of toast.There are exceptions, of course,that prove this rule. This film,as you may have guessed, is notone of them. No amount of scenery,swords, special effects or even(gasp) Antonio Banderas can hidethe unerring feeling that The Legendof Zorro has nothing new tosay. Far from being a legend, thisfilm proved difficult to rememberlong enough to write a review.ARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005

Halloween FilmsSee listings for detailsHalloween is in the air. The oddly impressive halloween-bop costume aside, though, none of us seem to have the time or inclination to get into the spirit of things with any pumpkin carving or trick-or-treating. Fear not, as there’s always that steadfast of the scary season: the horror movie. Fortunately, Oxford’s film societies are happy to oblige.On the night of the 31st, Magdalen Film Society is showing James Wan’s Saw (2004). Two strangers (Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell) wake up in a bleak, neon-lit washroom, chained to each other and unsure of how they got there, or indeed why. The latter question, at least, is answered when the recorded voice of Jigsaw, their sadistic imprisoner, tells them that to survive, one of them must kill the other within the next eight hours. The only means which which to escape from their manacles is a hacksaw: not for the shackles, of course, but for their ankles. In the same vein as David Fincher’s Se7en (1995), Saw has a somewhat holeridden plot and shallow psychology, especially when it comes to the motives of Jigsaw. However, in the midst of the glib macabreness of it all, none of this really seems to matter.The sequel to Saw has just come out in cinemas, sporting the tagline ‘Oh Yes, There Will Be Blood’. That’s all you really need to know about the first film, as well. As if an hour and a half of blood and gore wasn’t enough, following on immediately afterwards is George Romero’s legendary horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), also at the Magdalen Film Society. Again, the taglines of the movie are to be cherished, with such beauts as ‘They Won’t Stay Dead’ and ‘They’re Coming to Get You … Again!’. This is a movie that does exactly what it says on the tin, following the attempts of a group of people trapped inside a farmhouse to survive the night, with a horde of the living dead outside. Shot in gritty black and white, Night of the Living Deadmarked a new dawn in the horror genre, forsaking any sentimentality or neat conclusions in favour of unrelenting gore and tension, as the group under seige desperately try to cling to their humanity while the inhuman closes in around them.To complete our backwards movement in time, Corpus Cinema is this week showing one of the earliest and most classic horror films, FW Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). When a real-estate agent, Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) visits the sinister Count Orlok (played with spinechillingmenace by Max Schreck), an evil is released upon Hutter’s home town, not to mention hiswife, that should have stayed in the shadows. Murnau’s silent film relies on haunting scenery and eerie music to get across its thrills, rather than the easy shocks of modern counterparts. A testament both to how far the horror genre has come, and the legacy to which it owes its tremendous potency.ARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005

After the success of 2003’sscreening, OxShorts, acollection of four shortstudent films, is back.Bollocks, some mightthink: more pretentious ‘ooh lookI’m filming a pidgeon flying over theRad Cam in black and white’ crapfrom English students who’ve beenwatching too much Tarkovsky andTruffaut. Hallelujah, others wouldsay (including myself ): finally, wehave another event outside of FilmCuppers in which student film is represented,however pompous or howeverstunning it turns out to be.The most eye-catching of the filmsis Sam Leifer and J van Tulleken’sdazzling animation, The UnsteadyChough. When at Oxford, MontyPython’s Terry Jones wrote a shortcomic poem about a boozing bird(an avain version of Sebastian Flyte)from Teddy Hall, animated here withCGI, cut-out photographs and cartoonbackgrounds. The quirky resultcomplements the rowdy tone of thepoem, read to us by none other thanJones himself. An infectiously funnyshort, which was deservedly shortlistedfor the 2004 BBC Best Newcomerin Animation award.Thomas Maine’s mockumentaryPunters focuses on another eccentricindulgence of Oxford life: thatcurious pastime of lazily propellingshallow boats down a river with bigwooden poles. Maine injects a humouroustwist by parodying TheBlair Witch Project. Four students,we read at the start, once attemptedto punt fifty miles up the Cherwellto its source. They were neverfound again. Featuring diary-shots ofsoaked Oxonians (“We’ve been tryingto outrun a storm for the last twohours”) Punters is as funny and idiosyncraticas the pursuit it follows.Equally eccentric, yet less amusinglyso, is Stephan Littger’s Memoriesof a Sick Mind. This black comedyfollows a mentally ill man forced tofind a wife before his mother’s death,or the fortune she holds goes to herbeloved cat. The concept is admirablyoddball and the film is well executed.However, it is peppered with tiredmotifs (albeit used self-consciously),such as the horrific cackling of anold lady, and irritatingly punctuatedby redundant shots of insects on thepavement or calendars moving ingusts of wind. Proof that the best studentfilms are the simplest ones.Matt Green and Duncan Brown’sLe Cauchemar de l’Homme Noiret-Blanc (which won the 2004 FilmCuppers) is the exception to thisrule, being as complex as it is inventiveand hilarious. Shot in the styleof a 1920s silent film, it follows ayoung wannabe film-maker who getsembroiled in a sordid tale of murder,obsession and furry animal torture.If this sounds bizarre, that’s because,well, it is. But with fantastic visualsand a darkly comic undertone, this isbizarre in the best possible way.OxShorts is exactly what our studentfilm scene needs: a non-competetivescreening environment thatencourages student film-making ofall sorts. The evening will also featurea talk by director and Oxford alumniKen Loach, and a fifth ‘surprise’ filmthat was tantalisingly withheld fromme. The only thing that the Oxfordfilm scene needs now is an appreciativeaudience. Yes, that means you.ARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005

Sarabanddir, Ingmar Bergman,out now: Ingmar Bergman, after nearly twenty years of silence, has spoken again, with a new film,Saraband, showing at the National Film Theatre throughout next week. Even during his 1950s heyday, Bergman, most famous for The Seventh Seal (1957), must have cut a striking, if somewhat daunting, figure. Spiritual to the point of theological, his films seemed to spring directly from the existential crises of late 19th century European literature and philosophy. Yet his ability to craft visual images that swiftly acquired iconic status marked him out as a true master in the age of cinema.Originally made for Swedish television two years ago, Saraband picks up from where Scenes From a Marriage (1973) left off. Divided into ten dialogues between four characters, the film opens with a monologue from Marianne (played with beautifully fraught serenity by the director’s erstwhile muse, Liv Ullmann), who declares her intention to visit her elderly former husband Johan (Erland Josephson). Arriving at his rural retreat, she soon discovers that he is embroiled in the traumatic fallout from the death of Anna, wife of his estranged son, Henrik (Borjhe Ahlstedt). Henrik’s obsessive love for his wife is now directed to his 19 year old daughter, Karin (JuliaDufvenius). A prodigiously gifted cellist, Karin comes to realise that her father’s stifling attentions have crushed rather than nurtured her talents, and her attempts to escape him constitute the chief narrative thread.That Bergman, 86, is still alive and making feature-length films in the 21st century might be seenby some as achievement enough. Given this feat of endurance, it’s possible that anything he produces might be swamped by the audience’s gratitude, the work’s artistic merits meaning less than the simple fact of the film’s existence. Happily, Saraband is much more than a museum piece. The dialogue occasionally feels staged, but more often it gives way to the claustrophobiclyricism that is often to be found in the work of Bergman’s successors, such as Lars von Triers. It is as Bergman’s final statement, though, that Saraband will ultimately be viewed. Johan and Marianne’s exchanges add humour and credibility to the weighty themes of mortality and forbidden love, familiar to Bergman fans. When Johan claims that he now has the answer sheet for his life, one almost gets the sense that Bergman has shifted the goalposts, cheekily allowinghimself the vantage point of a dead man, from which he can not only articulate his last thoughts but also satisfyingly close one of the most remarkable careers in the history of cinema.ARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005

When I first heard about theOxdox festival, I couldn’tbelieve my ears: a week ofhundreds of documentary films frommore than thirty countries, showingin five different locations aroundOxford, featuring post-screeningtalks with directors, dancing interludes,video-tech booths, performingmonkeys (a slight embellishment,perhaps, but not out of thequestion), photographic exhibitions,new directors’ workshops, localschools’ film projects. Just scanningthe website makes you dizzy. Aftera much-needed lie-down in a darkenedroom, I launched my plan ofattack to navigate the overwhelmingprogramme of films and events.One cannot fault the ambition ofthe festival, which in its third yearhas struck an impressive balance betweenhonouring some of the genre’smost celebrated directors and promotingthe unsung champions ofdocumentary film-making in 2005.It features a retrospective of the filmsof Nicholas Philibert, perhaps bestknown for Etre et Avoir (2002), alow-key feature documenting theminutiae of everyday life in an infantschool in rural France, whichhas grown to be France’s most successfuldocumentary of all time. Philibertis present for post-screeningdiscussions of his films, as is Britishdirector Michael Grigsby, whose televisiondocumentaries have enjoyedwide acclaim since the 1960s, andKim Longinotto, prominent amonga burgeoning set of female documentarymakers in the UK.Such famous faces are not the onlycause for excitement, however, as thelesser-known films, despite their sundrysubjects and locations, all have incommon not only a duty to informbut a desire to entertain. The festivaloccurs at a curious juncture in theworld of documentary film-making,for both the big screen and the small.The recent boost in popularity of thedocumentary underscores the growingcommon desire for immediatelyself-reflexive art, a knee-jerk culturalresponse in the west to the shock of9/11 and one that has been fuelled inno small part by tabloid scaremongering.The result has seen the qualityand popularity of documentary filmsin the past few years surge in a directlyinverse proportion, explaining theunmerited success of US sensationalistand often propagandist filmssuch as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit9/11 (2004) and Morgan Spurlock’sSuper Size Me (2004). These filmsserved respectively to impart two little-known gems of wisdom to theirviewers: firstly, that Bush fellow reallyisn’t the brightest button in thebox, and secondly, it turns out thatthe human body doesn’t take well tosubsisting only on McDonald’s finesthydrogenated vegetable fat andcow offal.Thankfully, the Oxdox programmeis wholeheartedly bucking the mainstreamtrend towards such opportunistand uninformative documentarieswith a series of films that offerall that the viewer expects and more.British director Paul O’Connor’sfilm The Only Clown in the Village,for example, purports to serveas a reminder of the continuing andlong-lasting devastation in the areashit by the Asian tsunami last Christmas,the initial blanket media coverageof which has since slowly fizzledout. The film more than fills its brief,however; in addition to its commitmentto such a worthy cause, thrownin is a touching and funny portrait ofthe young Kingsley Perera, the onlyAsian clown registered in Britain,who travels to Sri Lanka to offer hishumble services as an entertainer tothe victims of the disaster, and to rediscoverhis roots.Like all the films I have seen in thefestival so far, O’Connor’s is pervadedby a universal spirit of good humourwhich is both disarming andhumbling to the viewer, given howconspicuously it belies the gravityand hardship of the situation that theindividuals and communities portrayedfind themselves in. Furthermore,the directors featured in Oxdoxappear refreshingly without ego,again unlike the self-serving style ofMichael Moore. This is an approachLonginotto favours in her new filmSisters In Law, depicting the experiencesof female judges in the highlypatriarchal West African society, inwhich she aims for an ’un-authored’vision of a ’universal story’. This descriptioncould well be applied to allof the films in the festival, a welcomethought given the warning from thepromotional blurb which has beenringing in my ears this week: “youwill need to see at least 12 films a daynot to miss out!”Oxdox runs until Friday 28 October.For further information see www.oxdox.comARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005

From now until the 22 January 2006, Tate Britain will be playing host to an exhibition of the shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize. Ever a magnet for controversy, the prize has previously offered such spectacles as Damien Hirst’s Mother and Child, Divided (you know the one; pickled, bisected cow carcasses) and Tracey Emin’s My Bed. These, whatever else may be said about them, were certainly memorable. But just what is the Turner Prize out to prove?It was remarked by GS Whittet, in a letter to the Observer in 1984, the year of the prize’s inception, that “Turner must be rotating in his grave at the prize given in his name by the Tate gallery”. Yet, while a man of Joseph Turner’s era would indeed be somewhat bemusedby a prize which rewards the efforts of a transvestite potter (Grayson Perry, winner of the prize in 2003) and an artist who presents for exhibition an empty room with The Lights Going On and Off (Martin Creed, winner in 2001), Turner himself was by no means an uncontroversial figure in his day. His earlier works in oils received heavy criticism and his later style, so admired by the likes of John Ruskin, was nonetheless frequently ridiculed. Perhaps Turner would feel more empathy with the bearers of his prize than Whittet and others have given him credit for.The most traditional and simultaneously most controversial offerings on this year’s shortlist come from Gillian Carnegie, nominated for her solo exhibition at Cabinet, London. Her paintings, embracing the respected and quietly reassuring categories of still life, landscape, the figure and portraiture, reveal their artist as technically astute and almost certainly safe from the accusingcries of “I could do that!” which are so often and so easily uttered by many a spectator of modern art. Even Carnegie though, recluse as she is, still manages to create a stir, choosing as the subject for one series of paintings a discreetly anonymous posterior. Her peers on the shortlist are producers of the conceptual kind of art more generally associated with the Turner Prize. Damien Almond works in mixed media with film, photography, sculpture and real-time satellite broadcasts, exploring time and its effects. While not in any sense shocking, the works do raise questions about where the line should be drawn between traditional visual arts and film and have been the subject of much debate. The breadth of artistic approaches which the prize encompasses can be seen in the diverse concepts behind the works of Simon Starling and JimLambie, nominated respectively for solo exhibitions at The Modern Institute, Glasgow and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona and at Anton Kern Gallery, New York, and Sadie Coles HQ, London. The former describes his work as “the physical manifestation of a thought process”, while for the Lambie, it is the sensory pleasure of his installations which takes precedence over any intellectual response that it may reflect or generate.We might well ask ourselves just what the point is of having artists of such varied techniques in competition for the same prize, but it is perhaps not the idea of a single or outright winnerwhich is at the heart of what this prize is about. The competitors’ works this year are by no means as controversial as previous years of Turner nominations. Yet they still represent the prize’s spirit of innovation and diversity. Public debate is arguably the lifeblood of the Turner Prize and when the pieces under discussion meet with criticism they will have done so in the public eye, which can only generate further interest. Even if the whole shenanigan is viciously dismissed with descriptions like that offered by government minister Kim Howells in 2002 of the works as “cold mechanical bullshit”, they have still provoked a reaction and in doing so have brought contemporary art to itsARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005

Angela BullochModern Art Oxford11 October – 18 DecemberAngela Bulloch’s newexhibition is rather likehow you might imaginesome cyberspace realitywhere technology hasreplaced humans. The plywood andmetal boxes, which form most ofthe work in the exhibition, are thesquadron of living creatures that,spread around the main gallery, emitunearthly pink, yellow and greenlight. The boxes fade and brightencontinuously as if engaging in Morsecode, unintelligible to the viewer.Bulloch’s earlier work RGBSpheres has a similar futuristic feel.You wander among huge bulbouslamps, implanted into the gallerywalls, to the accompaniment of a lowelectronic hum. The bubble-shapedlights, sweet-shop colours andmuffled sounds all mingle with thevacuous white space of the galleryto give Bulloch’s exhibition an eerilyunnatural character.The artist tells us that each boxrepresents a pixel, the smallest speckof colour on a television. In one ofBulloch’s works, Z-Point, the pixelboxes, forming a large vertical grid,display the explosion scene fromMichelangelo Antonioni’s 1970s filmZabriskie Point. However, the imagesof the explosion are slowed down andthe violence bleached out of the film:only the plaintive music and distantsound of a blast suggest the violencethat the film originally projected.Bulloch modifies the presentation ofscenes from various films to the pointwhere they are no longer recognisable,and she is trying to show the sterilityof modern society and its attemptsto order and sanitise reality. Withoutreading about the artist’s own ideas,however, you would strain to catchthese somewhat elusive meanings.The very least that can be said forBulloch’s exhibition is that it raisesquestions about what art really is,which something like Monet’s WaterLilies would never do. However,opinion of Bulloch’s work has not yetdrifted into orthodox art consensus.With an occasional belief in its ownprofundity, her work seems to bealone, out in orbit and talking onlyto itself. Bulloch’s exhibition seemsso dehumanised and so clinical that,despite its innovative approach, itwill no doubt have viewers like myselfcreeping back to Monet’s WaterLilies.ARCHIVE: 3rd week MT 2005