"Inferno" artwork

Inferno is an upcoming drama/biopic film that revolves around the late American porn star, Linda Lovelace. Lovelace gained fame for starring in the most successful porn film, Deep Throat, in 1972.
I'm not sure that the film will be any good as it's directed by Matthew Wilder, who is famous for THIS. Ahem.

But judgements aside, the artwork is fantastic.
I am looking forward to more posters being released by the end of the year.

Photography and poster design is by the amazing Tyler Shields, who is by far my favourite portraitist, and fast becoming my favourite contemporary photographer.

Cemetry Junction : A review by James Cox

Cemetery Junction is the first cinematic offering for the Gervais/Merchant team that has spawned television gold (that requires no name check), a record breaking podcast and introduced us to Karl Pilkington’s own brand of idiotic genius.



The title is taken from a real town near Gervais’s Reading origins and encapsulates perfectly the apathetic stagnation of a working class community, and in particular, three friends who, having graced the threshold of adulthood, must decide where their future lies.
It is to Gervais and Merchant’s credit (and the film’s) that the protagonists Freddie, Bruce and Snork aren’t played by the A-listers they could have so easily called upon with their star studded connections and comedic prestige.
Instead the young debutants take centre stage, and our lack of familiarity with them as actors allows us to bond with their genuine dynamic a lot sooner, and a lot closer.
If they are guilty of anything, it’s perhaps being too handsome for working class losers, but their allegiance to the chubby, down-trodden Snork, (a young Nick Frost look-a-like, sound-a-like and walk-a-like), is authentic and never gimmicky.
In their first major roles Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan relegate the established screen names to brilliant, but peripheral characters, off which the friends bounce like pinballs, their individual insecurities bundled and bound by the collective dilemma of their impending adulthood.
Freddie (Cooke) has made his mind up. He refuses to end up like his factory working father (Gervais) who despite a life of labour and honest hard work, is anchored in the 70’s working class; complete with nagging mother-in-law, casual retro-racism and a humdrum disregard for any ambitions beyond their hometown.
In his small screen time, Gervais manages, among his trademark quips, to summon a pang of recognition in the acceptance of his station.
Freddie blags a job with a wealthy Insurance Company, owned by a brilliantly ruthless Ralph Fiennes, and decides to make a go of success, much to the amusement of his friends.
Bruce (Hughes) and Snork (Doolan) are less emphatic in their desire to progress and relish in the japes, bar brawls and scrapes with the law that have defined their teen years.
These characters could so easily have been hackneyed devices, comedic foils and rebellious devils on the shoulder of Cooke’s sensible and focused Freddie. But the script veers cleverly away from the obvious flanking manoeuvre, adding naïve charm to Snork’s court jester, and a dark homelife subplot that fuels Bruce’s anger and failure to commit to his promise of leaving Cemetery Junction for better things.
Freddie’s attempts to succeed in the insurance sales business are hindered by his empathy with the customers (his salesman mentor bats away a naïve couples saving for a quick sale, much to his dismay) and his re-acquaintance with childhood friend, the beautiful and creative Julie (Felicity Jones), who just happens to be his bosses daughter and his mentor’s fiancé.
Julie harbours dreams of her own to become a travel photographer, and her desire to explore and experience life outside of Reading infects Freddie and ignites feelings for her that threaten his own plans, and position within his new job.
Amazingly, considering the creative team behind Cemetery Junction, this is far from the sharp comedy I was expecting, but instead, we get an intelligent, funny, thoughtful and genuinely moving portrayal of a town full of losers, and a man’s desire to escape the same fate.
The three main performances are pitch perfect, and precocious in their confidence. The carefully assembled supporting cast, Fiennes, Julia Davis, Steve Speirs and Emily Watson (fantastic as Julie’s mother, the “ghost” of a woman who once had a life, now a prophetic template for her daughters inevitable descent into house-ridden monotony), are used sparingly to excellent affect, both dramatically and comedically.
Speirs, recognisable as the over friendly Welshman from Extras, provides a revelatory performance anchoring the comedy to the drama and setting up one of the many tug-on-the-heartstring moments.
I’ve also got to mention Francis Magee as Bruce’s father, who in just minutes of screen time and barely any dialogue portraits a lifetime of hurt and a man at the mercy of bad luck.

We’ve always known Merchant and Gervias were writers at their core.
They proved with The Office that they can create quotable dialogue parallel with acute observations, and it’s their ability to recognise people, and write that recognition into their scripts, that is so successful in this film.
Every time a scene is played for laughs, a flash of dour observation is moments behind, and every time a musical set piece or chase montage ups the tempo, we are brought back to our kipper-tied reality by sparkles of pathos that brought audible sobs from the audience.
The main criticisms have been towards the lack of laughs (which are a lot more sparse than a conventional sitcom, which, of course, this never claimed to be) and its light hearted temperament, which I personally cannot understand.
The direction shows an unintrusive, mature quality that I didn’t expect, helped along by the authentic set design and establishment of the small town working class community.
The soundtrack plays it safe most of the way (although opting for the David Bowie original of “All the Young Dudes” rather than the popular Mott The Hoople version was a master stroke) but the allusion to pop culture is authentic in a way that seems autobiographical. In fact much of this film suggests Gervais may be developing a Polaroid of his own 70’s childhood; from the Ziggy posters to his mothers shocked retort to his ambition to travel “there are parts of Reading you haven’t seen yet”. This dialogue will be familiar to podcast fans as a genuine soundbite from his real life mother.

As a Gervais/Merchant fan, I was concerned about this movie, well aware that anything deemed less successful than their two monster sitcoms would receive barbed criticism. I am also aware that the subject matter and British made 1970’s context may alienate some of his more subversive fans who like Gervais for his shock humour and child like energy we are accustomed to from his stand up and radio shows.
Cemetery Junction is, however, a thoughtful and often funny melodrama in the mould of “Saturday Night And Sunday Morning”, that pulls on your emotions and crystallises the fading light on a town full of broken dreams, and the youthful exuberance of creative minds that need to escape.
A truly enjoyable film that could be as important for the British film industry as it could for the directorial duo’s big screen aspirations.

Footnote: Karl’s very minor cameo made me choke on my coke with laughter.

Where The Wild Things Are. A review by James Cox

Where The wild Things Are. A review by James Cox.



It has taken five years for Being John Malkovich director, Spike Jonze, to pitch, film and package a feature adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are.
The book itself evokes murmurs of excitement from a non-specific generation of fans, enthused by the instantly iconic illustrations of mystical beasts encountered by precocious child run away, Max, on a fantastical island.
Film land has been awash with rumours of troubled sets and back room disharmony. Release dates have been chalked and erased, leaving a grubby trail of expectancy in their wake.
Now finally, it’s here, rendered in a beautiful marriage of art direction, CGI and quaint puppetry, painstakingly angled towards fleshing out Sendak’s diminuitive, yet poignant read.
The film starts in chaotic fashion, with young Max tearing down the stairs, in his iconic wolf costume.
Instantly the world of Sendak’s Wild Things, jagged illustration and pastel shades, clashes with an unmistakeable dose of Jonze guerilla realism.
Here is Max, a boy searching for his place in a life riddled with petty disappointments and pragmatic compromises. He is creative and lively, seeking the attention craved by a minor, and as his hard earned igloo fort is destroyed in a boisterous snowball fight with older kids, his big sister refusing to comfort him, and his mother selfish enough to couple her maternal affections with a need for an adult social life, we realise which world this films inhabits. It is one seen through the fractured rationale of a lonely child trying to understand grown-ups.
Shouldering the newly acquired knowledge that the sun is dying out – an unsubtle aside from a science teacher – Max lashes out at his mother, dons the wolf costume and disappears into the night.
Alone, and unrestrained, his imagination offers him a boat, which Max uses to navigate through turbulent waters to the rocky shores of a mystery island.
Max approaches the shaggy inhabitants as he does adults, back in the real world – at first with caution and fear, and then with wreckless abandon, running toward them in a breathless sprawl, legs buckling beneath him.
From here on in the island becomes a plotless mess, which is precisely the point. It skates on the dream logic and fleeting sense of an over excited child. Max and the Wild Things hatch grand plans without agenda, games are made up on the spot, but swelling in the background like an orchestral drone is the old adage: What starts off as fun and laughter, often ends in tears.
The Wild Things seem to embody Max’s disparate emotions: a breathless need for fun and chaos, a confused temper and a scared goat, lost in a world of clumsy giants.
It is within this motley dynamic that the James Gandolfini voiced, Carol, emerges as a dominant, and dangerous companion for Max’s quest for identity. Carol searches for harmony among his friends; vying for unity among the Wild Things, as Max vies for unity within himself.
On the island we see through Max’s eyes, and as a result understand as little about this world as Max does the real one.
The dialogue is surreal and disconnected, and brings to mind Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of The Absurd, as evoked in his classic stage play “Waiting For Godot”. Like Godot, characters are fluid and rather more unimportant than the message they carry. The relationships between the Wild Things are nothing more than decoration to a Jungian parable about the turbulent inner mind of a kid.
As the messy narrative unfolds, it is driven by tone, rather than plot, and the sinister air of the final third will both confuse and unsettle younger viewers as the action switches between Max’s wonderment and horror towards tempestuous nature of the Wild Things
Like a David Lynch directors cut of Sesame Street, Where the Wild Things Are never bows to expectation. To put it crudely, the wildest beast on that island is the storm in Max’s head.
And what a beautiful storm it is too.
Jonze and cinematographer Lance Acord create a naturalistic and patchwork children’s adventure, dispelling the thick key-lined, primary coloured Disneyfication of childhood nostalgia. It is naturally lit, with hazy sunsets and jagged shadows. The beasts themselves, forged by the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, and layered with CGI expressions, are a spectacle themselves, as they run and jump and laugh and roar.
Max’s muddied wolf costume is evidence enough of the painstaking appreciation for the source material, right down to the wizened whiskers protruding from the hood.
Of the few human performances, Max Records (playing Max) is outstanding both in his precociousness and his naivety and Catherine Keener marries her dual role as doting matriarch and authoritarian with aplomb. This is aided by the economical handling of the ‘real world’ sequences in both the intro and the coda. So much is conveyed in such little time and never failing to be visually impressive.
James Gandolfini gives a subtle, but hearty vocal performance, layering Carol with a childish ethos and turning on the Soprano rage in terrifying flashes of the darker side of the Wild Things.
The visuals will be enough to impress any viewer, although younger audiences will sense the bleakness long before the end credits.
It is a successful exercise in fleshing out the confused psyche and creative mind of a child, and manages to convey the intrinsic fear and irrational train of consciousness driving their seemingly chaotic actions. With all this considered, I was also surprised to find a few genuine laughs and a comedic savvy about the film.
Also successful are the quiet and tender moments, as Max dictates a story to a dewy eyed Keener, as he lays under her desk admiring his mothers feet with the observant wonder only a child can muster.
Whether this piece of cinematic art will be a crowd pleaser, is a big question. It plays out to no particular audience, abandoning any intention of being child friendly and, often, asking too much of a sceptical adult audience who must be willing to leave any desire for coherent narrative, driven dialogue or any discernible plot, outside the movie theatre.
This is a visceral experience, but one laden with ideas and pathos.
If you want to work for it, there’s an unpolished gem of a film in store for you, every bit as beautiful as the early trailers hinted at, with enough ideas to write a three page review (see above).
But it is, perhaps, wise not to expect the frivolous , giddy, banana-boat ride you may have hoped for, but instead embrace a visually stunning think-piece, celebrating the dying embers of innocence in the creative mind of a child.