2437 A good film about Jazz, about a football fan, contemproary art, and fariy tales of different genres,

Listening to Duke Ellington Sophisticated Lady, The Mooche, Jump for Joy, Perdido, Harry James Two O clock Jump, Flying Home, and Music makers, Benny Goodman My Gal Sal, Nice work if you can get it, Django Reinhardt I got Rhythm, Sweet George Brown, Honeysuckle Rose.

 

There have been few serious films about jazz men and women and of these Young Man with a Horn is memorable and worth seeing more than once, despite the Young Man being played by a middle aged Kirk Douglas and the sexual love of his life played by Lauren Bacall, no longer the young psychiatrist in training she attempts to play. Doris Day is Doris Day and therefore there is a credibility gap as a swing band singer although if one thinks of her name sake Anita O’Day (Jazz on a summer’s Day) and that Doris do not purport to be a deep blue singer but a straight and loyal loving friend I was impressed by her performance. The film also features Hoagy Carmichael as the piano playing friend of Douglas as Rick Martin the trumpeter.

 

The importance of this film is that unlike Boogie Woogie the film brilliantly demonstrates that being a jazz man can become as much an addiction as any drug to the exclusion of any other interest including money, fame, family or food. The problem for Rick is that he becomes attracted to the wrong woman brilliant played by Lauren Bacall who uses the insights from her study of psychology and her sexuality in an attempt to take from Rick what she does not, to possess his creative art and nearly destroying him in the process. When Lauren finds someone else to take over after she flunks her course, Rick goes to pieces, drinks, turning on and isolating from his friends including the black jazz trumpet who taught him how to play when as a young boy he was able to purchase his first trumpet. When the man is knocked down and killed in a car accident after trying to appeal to Douglas to stop his spiralling descent into oblivion the trumpet is smashed he becomes a drink hobo until fortunately he is discovered by Doris and Hoagy before it is too late. He returns to success and appreciates the love with Doris Day has always had for him and support of Hoagy.

 

The film and the original novel by Dorothy Baker is a thinly veiled description of the life of  perhaps the greatest white cornet player of all time Bix Biederbecke and a man whose creativity rivals that of Louis Armstrong, a contemporary of his Whereas Louis went on to International fame and financial success Biederbecke died  at the age of 28.

 

 Whereas many people of different generations, whether they are interested  or like  jazz know the name of Louis Armstrong, Biederbecke tends to be someone rarely discussed outside the narrow world of jazz musicians although there was a  couple of seasons of a brilliant humorous drama mystery with James Bolam and Barbara Flynn, The Biederbecke Tapes which featured his music throughout although played by the British trumpet man Kenny Ball who recently died  at the age of 82 years and who I saw perform with his man at the 02 a couple of years back along with the bands of Chris Barber and Acker Bilk.

 

Biederbecke like Douglas in the film was a self taught as a very young boy whose ability to play by ear was commented on when still at school and where he also played with professional musicians as a young school age man. Whether his local fame and that he was white was a factor most biographies cover up of an incident in which as an eighteen year old he was arrested and alleged to have sexually assaulted a five year old girl. He was no prosecuted because of the age of the girl as a potential witness but it is understood that he never denied what he did. It would be surprising if this incident helps to explain the nature of self destructive alcoholism. It is too easy for biographers and commentators to claim that the alcoholism, substance addiction including sex addiction of musicians and other artists is somehow an inherent part of their lifestyle. He is reported to have had   a breakdown at one point in his life.

 

His interest in jazz and being a full time jazz player was activity discouraged by his middle class parents but in 1923 he joined the seven piece Jazz Group the Wolverines and the band recorded nearly two years before Armstrong created and led the Hot Five.  The older and more established Hoagy Carmichael invited the Wolverines to Indiana in 1924 and the two became friends. Whether under the influence of Carmichael who was studying law in addition to piano playing and composing, Biederbecke enrolled in a university on a course which included religion, ethics, keeping fit and military training but after a drunken bar fight was expelled having attended few classes. In 1926 he moved to a new and larger band which was to play at the now famous Roseland opposite Fletcher Henderson who advertised their Battle of the bands.

 

In 1927 he joined the already famous Paul Whiteman orchestra and although as the film and others suggested Bix found his requirements of a conventional dance orchestra stifling he thrived and commenced to study formal music.  Far from drinking caused by the beak up of a relationship, as the early bar brawl revealed him and become a hard and regular drinker along with many musicians although there is no record of his using drugs. He returned home and with the help of his parents attended a residential treatment clinic for a month. Although recovered he worked only occasionally despite his chair in the band being kept open.

 

The most memorable aspect of the two years before his death is the performance with Carmichael of Georgia on my mind playing to together with Jack Teargarden and Tommy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti and Bud Freeman.

 

As faithfully recorded in the film he got up to play one night with the Whiteman band on their regular Radio Hour and his mind went blank and he could not play a note. He spent the rest of the year with his parents and then returned to New York for one last time, he died in his apartment from pneumonia assisted by his continued alcoholism. The 1955 film The Blackboard Jungle included some of his music.  There is a large collection of| his music available to listen free on Deezer radio. Having not read any full biography I can find no reference to his sexual interests and relationships which are odd and probably accounts for why the film script was written to include two relationships and a happy ending and emphasised his unique talent and preoccupation with music.

 

Bix Biederbecke and Frank Trumbauer Clarinet Marmalade, In a Mist (both composed by Beiderbecke) Trumbology and Jazz me blues.

 

Bix and Trum is a four CD set which also has Clarinet Marmalade and Trumbology but also singing the Blues, Riverboat Shuffle Way down New Orleans, Three Blind Mice and 70 tracks in total

 

A warm family film about football and involving Liverpool Football Club is Will. Although the film is a vehicle to show the loyalty and length which fans of a football club will go as well as comradeship which can develop, it begins with a heart rendering situation in which a boy loses both his parents.

 

Will is an eleven year old in a convent boarding school because his father cannot cope following the death of his wife and the boy’s mother. He reappears unexpectedly one day calling at the Inn which his friend Davy manages (Bob Hoskins) to claim his old room and explains that he has worked through his grief and now wants to reunite with his son who he visits to the concern of the school head  given his failure to keep in contact and having made false promises. 

 

He takes the boy to his mother favourite picnic spot and then surprises with providing two tickets for them to travel to Turkey to watch Liverpool play Milan in the 2005 Champions League Final. He tells the head of his plans to settle in the area and for the boy to become non residential. She takes charge of the tickets. The horrific double tragedy occurs when father does not arrive for a visit and it is Hoskins who has the task of informing that his father had died from a brain tumour.

 

It is at this point that film begins to have similarities with Africa United in which a young football player with the possibility of being good enough to play for his national side makes his way to South Africa for the World Cup, revealing something of the reality of Africa to day with boy soldiers, militia, poverty, lack of educational opportunities and health care. In this instance Gareth, played by Damian Lewis, has an ally at the school that helps him first break into the head’s study for the match tickets and then leaves the school where he turns to Hoskins who explains that he cannot help him.  Fortunately an assistant has brought the takings to be safed and while Hoskins is contacting the school, Gareth takes the funds and makes his way to France.

 

He has his money stolen but fortunately again makes contact with a former professional footballer from Yugoslavia who works as delivering goods and helped to get across the channel..

 

He is persuaded to take Gareth to Turkey despite publicity throughout Europe to be on the look out for the boy. He takes him to his family village where the reason for his leaving football is revealed. He had returned to the village with footballs for the children and one of these had been kicked by a young blind boy into a cordoned area where there was unexploded ordinance from the civil war. The boy dies and Alek (Kristan Kichling) stopped playing football and vowed not to return.

 

They meet up with Liverpool supporters on their way by coach who do not advise the police when questioned that they have any knowledge of the boy. Unfortunately the buy get to Turkey they find the tickets are fakes and Alek’s efforts to buy spare tickets fails. Fortunately they meet up with the Liverpool fans and then Kenny Dalglish spots the now famous boy at the Gates and arranges for him to enter, meet with the team and lead the team onto the pitch with Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher accompanying him as them.

 

At one point Alek had been in contact with the school to alert that the boy was safe and had agreed to wait until the school head came to collect him, The head with the rest of school watch the game and are delighted to see that Gareth has made it and is able to go onto the pitch to receive the applause of all footballers.

  

Boogie Woogie is a satirical film rather than a comedy and which sets out to reveal the pretentious world of the contemporary art dealer and collector. A world in which vast sums of money change hands, older men attempt to seduced attractive young women and older women take up young artists, all familiar stuff and done before in various ways.

 

What makes this film interesting is the number of established actors who participate, including Christopher Lee, Joanna Lumley, Charlotte Rampling and the young Amanda Seyfried who came to the fore in Mama Mia and  only recently in Les Miserables. My problem is that I was not engaged by any of the characters or what happens to them, but more significantly the film is so unbalanced, throwing out the baby with the bath water. Of course the people who buy and sell artworks can become the subject of confidence tricksters; the sums of money exchanged are preposterous but no more than bankers or professional footballers and Hollywood film actors. and sex governs much of human activity, but contemporary art is important and most contemporary  artists serious people attempting to express themselves in a relevant, creative and original way foremost and earn a living secondary, much as most musicians, actors, writers and other creative artists.

 

 What a Girl Wants is a 2003 USA from remake of a film and play scripted by William Douglas Home and called the reluctant debutante. The features a young woman brought up by her mother who fantasies about her father with whom she associated when in North Africa and Europe.  Her mother has become a wedding singer and she works as a waitress envying the brides given away by their fathers and with whom they have the second dance.

 

The father is played by Colin Firth as Lord Dashwood who is abandoning his title in order to enter the House of Commons with a view to becoming the party leader and future Prime Minister.  He is being pushed into this course by Jonathan Pryce, an influential political fixer and whose daughter he has become engaged.

 

His natural daughter goes off to Europe and London to meet her father where Pryce attempts to sideline the girl but Firth takes to her and arranges for her to have a coming out season bringing her into contact with royalty and also a young well connected singer. The girl wrestles between the new status and life and her feelings for the young man deciding in the end to return to America. Rather than settled for his life, after meeting the girl’s mother who arrives for the coming out ball he goes to the USA, abandoning his engagement and political career, especially after it emerges that Pryce had originally persuaded the girl’s mother to return to the USA and not marry Firth.   Firth also bring with him the young man and the dream of the girl to have her father give her away at the wedding and have the first dance is fulfilled.  Everyone sigh with happiness.

 

I also enjoyed the Arabian adventure film Black Gold which poses the question would the life and culture of desert city and nomadic living Arabs have been better if they had not embraced the offer of modernity by entering into contracts with oil exploitation firms. The French produced film also called known as Day of the Falcon and Black Thirst was disastrous at the Box Office and with the critics despite featuring the excellent actors Mark Strong and Antonio Banderas.

The story centres on two ruling families who have gone to war for many years over disputed territory between their two cities drawing in support from the nomadic tribes who also live in the area. In order to seal the peace agreement, the father of one agrees that his two young sons should be brought up in the household of the other. The two boys have very different personalities with the younger sensitive and bookish and establish a close friendship with the daughter of the household Princess Leyla until she reaches puberty and is hidden away with the women.

 

Then the balance is disturbed when the Emir (Banderas) bringing up the sons of the other is persuaded to allow those working for Texan oil to commence drilling in the area of disputed territory thus breaking the agreement. Arsing from the first successful drilling, prosperity begins to reach his city and he makes one of the adopted sons a senior office in his army and the other head of a new Library, while the daughter looks on admiringly. By a mixture of bribes and promises he gets the leaders on the nomadic tribes to support the oil extraction and then sends an envoy to try and bring his former enemy into the deal sharing in the opportunities for hospitals, schools and other social benefits.

 

Amar (Mark Strong) remains a traditionalist Sultan and hostile to progress and refuses the offer of a percentage of the profits. His eldest son Prince Saleh believe he can persuade his father and leaves the other Palace but kills one of his minders in doing so and he is captured and killed. The Emir decides to allow his daughter to marry her life long friend Prince Auda as a means to prevent war and shortly after the marriage sends his son in law to try and convince his father.

 

Instead Auda is persuaded that there is much in favour of his father especially on learning that only 5% of the profits had been offered. He meets up with the tribal leaders and persuades them that their way of life is threatened although he opposes the slavery operated by one group, rescuing the daughter of another leader which results in gaining the man’s support when she is returned.

 

The Emir has used his new wealth to purchase planes and tanks, machines guns and other modern weapons which creates a tremendous imbalance between the two forces. Audi’s father hits on a plan in which he leads the official army in the straight route to the city while his son and the tribes attempt to cross the desert and attack the Emir from an unexpected quarter.  They and the camels barely survive the travel from a lack of water but just when all appears lost Auda works out that there are fresh water springs just off shore so they are able to find drinking water for themselves and their animals. Auda also appears killed in a battle but survives turning him into a god which has the benefit of inspiring the others to take on the planes and the tanks which are ineffective in the desert conditions.

 

The consequence is that are able to come to city which has become poorly defended. In the battles and skirmishes which take place, the Emir loses his son and Auda’s father is killed.  Princess Leyla who has refused to divorce her husband as the Emir has wanted joins her husband as they become leaders of the two cities. But what to do about the Emir? Auda has the brilliant idea of using the father in law’s cunning and diplomatic skills to act as the representatives of the new combined states to negotiate the best terms with the companies for the exploitation of the oil. And the film closes with everyone gaining from the agreements reached.

 

Remained open mouthed in disbelief at the morality of Contraband watched because it featured Mark Walhberg who I have got to know as an actor through the TV series about New York’s finest the NYPD Blue Bloods.  In this film Mark, having married (Kate Beckinsale) had settled into a law abiding and respectable life with their two young sons, having previously been a drug courier.

 

When customs approach the ship in which his brother is bringing in huge consignment of drugs, these are dumped in the Mississippi River to the disbelief of those who had paid for the supply to be brought in. Mark operates a construction business with a best family friend who is also a former drug running associate and in order save his brother’s neck and threats against his family, Mark with his brother and another friend join the crew of the smuggling ship to visit Panama to buy $10 million in fake bills for entry into the USA to sell on return to raise the $, 7 million debt. On arrival they find that the counterfeit money is badly made and they go to a drugs war lord who can provide better quality. He insists they participate in a robbery which involves the contents of an escorted armoured vehicle. The robbery is partially successfully in that he contents are removed, a multimillion pound Jackson Pollock creation. The ambush is itself ambushed by the police/military and drug baron and his men are killed/captured leaving Mark and co with the painting and the money which they take back to the ship in their van. Some of the funds are used to purchase drugs unknown to mark until later. When Mark finds out he says they will be dumped before they get back to port. The complications multiply for the Captain in league with the drug runners warns the Border agency in advance of docking and they check out Mark’s van and find nothing.  Mark has got the drugs back on land and secreted at the home of the ship’s captain so when he is forced by those owed money to show them where the drugs are kept he takes them to the house of the Captain and gets away just as the police arrive to captured the  “real” villains.

 

Meanwhile while away and fearful of the threats made to his wife and son Mark has an arranged for his business partner to protect them, not knowing as we do that in fact it is the business partner behind the original drugs deal and the present deal in order to pay off his substantial gambling debts with interest to the mob. When Mark’s wife realises who the traitor is she accidentally bangs her head and appears dead, so the businesses partner take her body which he covers in plastic sheets and places in yet to be concreted foundations for the building site the company is working on.

 

Fortunately Mark also works out the treachery of his partner and goes in search of the man and the whereabouts of his missing wife. He is told she is dead, rings her cell phone and hears it ringing in the concrete trench just in time. If this was not miraculous enough. The two brothers retrieve the $10 million of fake notes dumped in the river before the arrival of border control agents. They also buy the van back at a police auction for the Pollock art work which is still in the van as paint splattered canvass said to have a value of $20 million. The film closes will his family enjoying life in a luxury waterfront property.

 

Now to two incredible films produced for the weekend teenage cinema going market.  I watched Shark Night in 3D at home. Seven University undergraduates in North America drive to the holiday home of one of their number bordering a private lake where she encounters red neck boyfriend from the past who with his friend are also racists who immediately pick on the black student.

 

One of the groups is then badly injured in what appears to be a shark attack. As the film progresses student by student is attack, some eaten with the exception of hostess and one of the other students. What emerges is that the former boyfriend and his mate aided by the local young Sheriff have stocked the lake with killer sharks and they then film people lured into the water being attacked, killed and eaten. The baddies get there just deserts or more accurately the sharks get theirs and the eventual body count from the ten adults is eight. The sharks looked models that CGI.  To echo a well known tennis player, “You can’t be serious.” This low budget film is said to have made a little profit.

 

I only have a vague memory of Playback a film released on my birthday a year ago which as with Shark Night I believe involved the baddies filming their victims and which  also involve a corrupt policeman. However I may have confused this story with another about supernatural power unleashed and which threatens everyone in the university based town.