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.

Ricky Gervais "Science" - A review

Ricky Gervais' latest stand up owes little to it's title "Science", very little.
By his own admission, any link to the moniker is tenuous, and only the Frankenstein insignia and gloriously elaborate set design makes any more than a nod to it.
If you were to guess at a title, you would probably pip for "religion" or "controversy" as Gervais navigates through subject matter such as Noah's Ark, censorship and Britain's Got Talent, his observations barbed and gasp inspiring.
He sets the tone, emerging on a Segway, a pre-cursor to another main talking point, his comically inflated ego.
"There's a recession on. Apparently. Someone told me".
And, how his ego would have swelled as the packed audience at Sheffield's Irwin Mitchell Oval Hall lapped up his show with rapturous laughter and adoration.
Ever the showman, Gervais shoe horns in a Ken Dodd impression, a joke of such controversial tone I couldn't possibly repeat, and anecdotes that will delight his fans, and undoubtedly cause unrest among the more sensitive observer.
Well into the tour run, the material seems fresh and as funny to him as the moment he conceived it.
Now a fully fledged icon, it is difficult to judge the humour on it's own merits. As he appeared above me in my meticulous, Row A seats, I am instantly impressed by his presence and the show is over and wrapped before you can truly absorb the spectacle.
Side achingly funny are his sections regarding quotations: "I have nothing to declare but my genius" will resonate with anyone who has seen it, as will his trawl through a a Sunday School text book.
Most impressive, however, are the moments when Ricky threatens us with seriousness. His impassioned lecture on censorship and the unapologetic nature of comedy are inspired, and bang on the money. His usual atheist rants are becoming tightly scripted and impressively convincing. Of course, all of these heady sections are punctured by humour, and you're never far away from a belly laugh.
Of the shows few let downs, the structure is perhaps the most glaring. So charismatic and archetypal is Gervais, that an evening bathing in his anecdotes and trademark cackle are a joy, but I wonder how this sense of "event" will transfer to the small screen, with the inevitable DVD release.
Ricky, himself, reminded us that the show evolves throughout the tour:
"Some of this material will be exclusive to you. But as I'd have cut them out before the next show, they will be the shit bits".
I only hope he finds a neater direction than the enjoyably chaotic presentation he enthralled the Sheffield crowd with.
A quick mention must go to support act, Stewart Francis, who was a massive hit in his role as warm up act. His stream of one liners had us laughing and groaning in equal measure. I am particularly fond of his zinger: "I quit my job at the helium factory. Nobody speaks to me in that tone!"
Gervais' latest is a success, albeit one that will divide, possibly alienate the non-diehards, and will almost definitely draw complaints from some quarters.

Book Club: The Quiet American

James Cox reviews “The Quiet American” By Graham Greene

Greene's work is a master-class in how to write morality and his 1955 novel “The Quiet American” is a perfect example of this.
His characters display a sense of ethical realism and ambivalent character traits that help to destroy the readers’ sense of good and evil and display both an intimate observation of human interaction and a macro-cosmic epic on a geopolitical scale.
The story takes place in Saigon in the early 1950’s towards the end of the first Indo-China dispute that would escalate into the Vietnam War until 1973.
Protagonist Thomas Fowler is a veteran, English journalist who reports events devoid of opinion or political persuasion. He is Green’s vision of Englishness: logical, calculated, and cynically realistic. Fowler inhabits the kind of purgatory in which Greene thrives. He is at the end of life, and just as he refuses to side with either faction in the war, he too has found a level of comfort in his job and his personal life.
His Vietnamese lover, Phuong, is a purveyor of balance and harmony. She is portrayed sympathetically by Greene as a free spirit who exists unencumbered by any symbolic weight outside of Fowler’s journalistic, narrative ego. She prepares his opium pipes and is an object of desire, but rather than be demoted to a two-dimensional plot device devoid of any personal, or intelligible thought, she emerges as a mystery, a foreign body immersed in a culture neither Fowler, nor Greene, wishes to divulge.

“Sometimes she seemed invisible like peace.”

The equilibrium is destroyed when Fowler becomes acquainted with the eponymous “Quiet American” Alden Pyle who is in the country on an Economic Aid mission, and whose boyish naivety and democratic righteousness represent Greene's own observations of Americans during his time serving in Saigon. Pyle is a fervent advocator of imperialist writer York Harding and his steadfast loyalty to Harding’s writing paints him as a fundamentalist whose idea of establishing Americas democratic structure in Vietnam appear higher on his agenda than establishing peace.
Pyle’s allegiance to Harding’s literature arouses suspicion in Fowler that he may be involved in a mysterious “Third Force” operation through which the U.S. are promoting rebel leader Minh Thé as a potential ruler of Vietnam by initiating devastating bombings which are then used as anti Communist propaganda.
It is this subplot of political deviancy that has earned Greene's novel the label: “prophetic”. By the time “The Quiet American” was published in 1955 Americas “Third Force” had actually installed a puppet dictator in Saigon in the form of brutal leader Ngo Dinh Diem. Indeed, Green had met an enthusiastic member of the Economic Aid mission whilst serving in Saigon who had sermonized the benefits of a Third Force democracy – a character template for Alden Pyle.
In a fantastic example of Greene’s ability to digress between the ‘big picture’ and a much more intimate study of the human condition, Pyle’s political dissidence soon becomes personal when he announces to Fowler that he is in love with Phuong.
This can be seen as Greene’s way of drawing parallels between Pyle’s conduct and America’s overall policies in Vietnam, but I also believe the honest and touching depiction of love, and its different interpretations, are a main narrative focus for Greene, who handles the subject matter sensitively and artistically.
On one hand we have Pyle who has a projected image of Phuong as the ‘Eastern beauty’, his love encapsulated in a romanticised memory of her dancing in a white gown. He sees her through the naïve eyes of a man who has spent very little time in her home nation. He has the money to marry her and satisfy her desire to see America, and this meets to great approval with her over controlling sister.
Fowler, however, loves Phuong as a man at the end of life. Despite living in a time of seemingly endless war, they have found each other and he is reluctant to let her go. His fear of loneliness and Pyle’s colonial intentions highlight “The Quiet American’s” Jungian subtext – that of personal desires and motivations that drive the plot.
Fowler displays a desire to protect Phuong from Pyle’s “idea” of her, realising that with him she will no longer be able to function as a free spirit, but as an American’s trophy.

“The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride, or to be possessed without humiliation.”

Fowler is unable to marry Phuong as he is still married, and in one heart stopping section, receives a letter in answer to his request for divorce, proving again, that Greene can create suspense on a very personal level, as well as the political and theological issues for which he is usually credited.
Greene converted to Catholicism in 1926 in order to marry, earning him the self-rejected title of “the Catholic novelist”.
By the time of “The Quiet American” the thick ethical boundaries imposed by his Catholic discipline had faded to a grey area of personal motivation, and his struggle with his faith spills onto the page. In Greene we have an adulterer, a man who played Russian roulette as a youth, yet who has earned a legacy as a Catholic thinker. Just as Fowler gravely miscasts Alden Pyle as a Quiet American, the irony of Greene himself screams out here in theological debate:

“If I believed in any God at all, I should still hate the idea of confession. Kneeling in one of your boxes. Exposing myself to another man. You must excuse me, Father, but to me it seems morbid – unmanly even.”

“The Quiet American” is a success on all levels, portraying a touching and astute observation of interpersonal turmoil and love (and the loss of) as well as being chillingly poignant prophecy of America’s imperialistic intentions in Vietnam which will leave potent images of the recent, chaotic events in Afghanistan and Iraq firmly in the readers’ awareness.

BAND review: Smoke Fairies – Chichester duo ‘wing’ it in style.

Smoke Fairies – Chichester duo ‘wing’ it in style.
James Cox

Half way into their signature tune “Catching leaves” you start to get a hint of deep-South bluegrass about the Smoke Fairies.
This is bizarre considering the smoky vocals, atmospheric harmonies and steam train guitar rhythms, that would lend them selves to anything written by Mark Twain, contrast uncomfortably with their creators, two porcelain faced nymphets from humble Chichester, West Sussex.

It could be the time out the Fairies took whilst at University, where they performed around New Orleans, eventually hopping the greyhound to New York, but the Fairies’ sound defies their origins and their age (both Katherine and Jessica are 22 years old).

Their style lingers somewhere, mysteriously between Nickel Creek and Beth Orton, from the skiffle enduced “I’m so lonely” to the melancholic “I’ll move on”, the sounds are so refreshing and new (yet so old). Close your eyes and listen to “Smoke filled room”, you could be riding a tug down the Mississippi.

But these girls are not a cliché. Mixing mysticism with brooding sentimentality for another place, you’ll be so captivated the pure ambition of the vocal arrangements and the hypnotic melodies that when you stumble from your bar stool onto a damp London high street you’ll question whether you’ve just stepped through the looking glass.

Highly original and hauntingly delicate, Smoke Fairies web site is at: www.smokefairies.com and future gigs include: