These days, travel is cheap. This means two things:
It’s easy for us to travel places, see what they look like and learn about other people’s cultures
It’s easy for film crews to travel places and film them
That means that these days, except in a few cases where it’s not worth the effort, if a movie wants to show us Japan or Paris or Iceland, it can.
But this hasn’t always been the case. The Hunt For Red October is a rather good 1990 movie directed by Die Hard’s John McTiernan, with cinematography by future Speed director Jan De Bont. Based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name, it was the first of many movies featuring Clancy’s hero Jack Ryan (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit being the others), here played by 30 Rock’s Alec Baldwin – yes, young people, there was a time when Alec Baldwin was an action hero. It was also the movie that temporarily relaunched Sean Connery’s acting career.
But as it was 1990, which was a horrifying 25 years ago, the American film industry’s approach to foreign filming – and indeed foreign – was a little different. First off, it was entirely acceptable to have Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Gates McFadden pretending to be Ryan’s English wife Caroline.
Yes, children, there was a time when there were so few British actors working in Hollywood, they actually had to hire Americans to play Brits. Can you imagine that?
But how best to establish that our Jack lives in England, without actually going to England, cos it’s expensive and who cares about the tax breaks and co-funding that don’t yet exist? Well, he’s got to go to the airport, of course, and that means Heathrow. But do enough people know that’s in London? Probably not. So let’s make sure it’s labelled ‘London Heathrow’. And because it’s England, that means it has to be raining. So let’s start with that.
Good so far. But is that British enough? Obviously not. We need to make sure there’s a whole bunch of right-hand drive cars, made obvious with some careful backlighting. And they have to be obviously English cars, too, so let’s throw in a black cab, a Rolls Royce and a Land Rover.
Still not enough? Okay. Let’s add in a double decker bus. Still not enough? Then let’s add in a Union Flag.
But is that British enough? Really? Are we quite sure everyone will realise they’re in London yet? I don’t think so. So let’s add in a map of the London Underground on the side of a bus stop for no well explored reason. Surely that should say London, England.
Not enough? Are you kidding? Surely that’s peak Brit. Okay, fine. I can see what we need here. We need a good old British bobbie in one of those pointy helmets.
Happy? No! Really, that’s not British enough? Right. Fine. Here, have two British bobbies.
And thus we reach peak Brit. That’s how we did it in the 90s, kids. And here you can see it in one smooth, beautiful 90 seconds of Englishness so powerful, it might as well be drinking tea and eating spotting dick while a British Bulldog sits on a Union Flag pillow with the Queen.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.
As we sit in the gap between the end of the Fall 2014-15 season and the summer season in the US, Canada and most countries around the world, we discover the horror that is not having any tele to watch. I’ve even been reading books. Gasp!
But I have found a few other things to watch and tell you about, don’t you worry. I’ve already reviewed the first two episodes of 1864 elsewhere, and after the jump, as well as the usual usuals of Community, The Flash, Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley, I’ll be casting my eye over Netflix’s three-part Brit sci-fi/horror gloom Residue. But I’ve actually managed to watch a couple of movies, too. Well, parts of movies…
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies (2014) (iTunes) The third of the almost interminable Hobbit movies sees Bilbo and the dwarves facing orc armies, dragons and more in a whole bunch of scenes that definitely weren’t in the book. The big Hobbit conclusion – Bard killing Smaug – happens in the first 10 minutes or so, after which it’s all about big armies of CGI beasts smashing each other, and elves being stoic and doing the right thing, all while Thorin (Richard Armitage) fights off his gold addiction. The Hobbit himself (Martin Freeman)? Doesn’t actually do a whole lot…
As I mentioned in the comments on last week’s WHYBW, I did actually start watching this nearly a fortnight ago, got three-quarters the way through then went to bed… and totally forgot I was watching it until this Monday, by which point it was too late to continue watching it without re-renting it. So I’ve no idea if we get cameos from old Bilbo and Frodo (or anyone else) at the end, and probably won’t do until Netflix picks it up. Nevertheless, while you might argue that this all tells you something about me, I’d argue that it tells you something about just how engrossing this third entry in the series really is.
American Sniper (2014) (iTunes) Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of the autobiography of America’s most lethal sniper got a whole lot of attention for something that’s really pretty ordinary at heart. Bradley Cooper does well as the Texan who enlists in the Navy SEALs in the 90s to fight terrorists and ends up shooting an awful lot Iraqis in the 21st century, while Sienna Miller is astonishingly unrecognisable as his long-suffering but tolerant wife.
Eastwood’s direction is relatively pedestrian and matter of fact, and his few forays out into CGI special effects are decidedly ill-advised (did he learn nothing from Firefox?). But the film is notably non-judgemental and reverential of its subject, showing a normal man in a lethal occupation doing his best to defend people and his country, even if he subsequently finds it hard to initially mix with those people when he returns from war.
While it’s easy to criticise the movie for not bothering to make any of the Iraqis anything more than murderers, with scenes at times reminiscent of Zulu’s large-scale slaughter, most members of the audience will be aware of the greys of the situation and that this is just one story about a very complex subject. Worth watching to see just what Bradley Cooper can do as an actor and if you prefer your dramas to have less judgement of its subjects.
