"Saving Mr. Banks" on BLU RAY – A Review Of The 2013 Film….

Here is a link to Amazon UK to get this BLU RAY at the best price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H3IG3TE

"…I Have Final Say!" – Saving Mr. Banks on BLU RAY

It’s 1906 in the beautiful and affluent city of Maryborough in Australia. Travers and Margaret Goff are leaving with their two daughters – Ginty and Dolly. Like Pied Piper their jokey father is leading his family to a new home, a new town, a new job in a bank for him and supposedly – a new and happier life. But the nanny who watches them leave yet another nice home and wife Margaret with an infant in her arms seems not so sure. And on the train to a remote place called Allora in Queensland (the last stop on the line) – Margaret watches with concern as her husband Travers sips slyly from a hip flask filled with whiskey. So while Ginty may adore her story-telling Dad who fills her with magic thoughts – she just stands on the back of the train dreamily watching everything she’s ever known disappear into the distance because of Daddy’s "ways"…

Now its April 1961 in London and the child Ginty is grown up into the frightfully prim and prig Pamela L. Travers – author of "Mary Poppins" – sat alone at her desk meditating (as per the works of George I. Gurdjieff). A ring at the front door brings in her literary agent Diarmuid Russell (Ronan Vibert) who informs her that the royalties have dried up and because she refuses to write anything new - soon even her beloved Bloomsbury home will go unless she procures money. But still she’s staggeringly prickly. Russell who has tread lightly long enough rages that Walt Disney - who has pursued her for twenty years to get the film rights to "Mary Poppins" - has even agreed to her excessive demands - no animation and full script approval. But she lives in terror that Hollywood will turn her beloved creation into pap.

But needs must – so - soon she’s on a BOAC jet to Los Angeles being rude to air hostesses, mothers with children and even the driver who picks her up at the other end – Ralph (a fabulous show by Paul Giamatti). "It smells like chlorine and sweat!" she says as Ralph tells her the scent in the Californian air is Jasmine. He buckles up – it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Mrs. Travers then throws pears out of her hotel window, growls at the writers in the Disney studios, whinges about piddly details like numbers on doors and moustaches and says "No! No! No!" absolutely all of the time. She’s even truculent in the face of the legendary Walt Disney and his considerable charm.

“Saving Mr. Banks” uses the technique of running Ginty’s 1906 childhood in Australia alongside her 1961 Californian battle with Disney and his people – so we slowly get to see why the dreamy hopeful child grows into a woman who would pen such a prig and proper character. Key to all of this is her relationship with the man she worshipped – Travers – her father. His daily battle with drink made his wife attempt suicide in a lake - lost him his job and health (consumption) – and eventually saw the kids farmed out to a visiting matriarch - Aunt Ellie. And with her starched almost churchlike garments, large carpetbag, face-shaped umbrella and 'no nonsense' practicality in the face of a crisis – Aunt Ellie would of course become the character "Mary Poppins". But is Mary Poppins about her saving the children - or is it really about Ginty saving her father through fiction? 

The superb cast includes Ruth Wilson as Margaret Travers, BJ Novak and Jason Schwartzman as the composing brothers Robert and Richard Sherman and Bradley Whitford as Disney man Don DaGradi. But the movie belongs to the leads… Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson.

There’s a strong body of evidence (“Castaway”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Cloud Atlas” and “Captain Phillips”) that Tom Hanks may indeed be up there with De Niro, Al Pacino, Liam Neeson, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman and other greats in terms of being the best actor who’s ever lived. So it takes serious boots to outshine him as Walt Disney. Up steps such a force of nature - Engerland’s Emma Thompson – giving her hateful bully lady a beating heart and gradually unfolding the real reasons for her guarded and prickly nature. Thompson gives a performance of true brilliance - an embattled woman who is hurting so deeply that you literally ache for her – cherishing dreams she cannot have sullied by commerce and gaudiness. The dances between her and Hanks are fabulous – but even better is her work with Giamatti – the humble limousine driver who touches her heart and makes her offer up a rare morsel of kindness when he reveals he has a special needs daughter ("Tell your daughter she can do anything she puts her mind too…").

Credit also has to go Colin Farrell who is magnificent and measured as the troubled yet adoring father Travers. The scenes between him and Annie Rose Buckley as young Ginty are beautiful and immensely moving. Childlike and wondrous himself – he instils in his little girl the qualities that would make her such a great writer later on. But he also crippled her mind with images of innocence betrayed – and a helpless descent into loss that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Thomas Newman’s perfectly complimentary music and the presence of those wonderfully uplifting movie songs that are lingering in the back of our consciousness give the whole film warmth that’s tangible. But what really gets you over and over again - is the astonishing and truly immersive attention to period detail. The look of the bank Travers works in Allora, the huge wooden house on a hill in the middle of nowhere, the fun-fair day where he makes a fool of himself in front of his family because he’s drunk…  Then there’s the Beverly Hills Hotel where Pamela stays in 1961 – the Disney gift hampers she encounters in her room – even the stationery that Giamatti is holding when he meets her at the airport – all of it is period and absolutely spot on. There’s a scene where Walt takes Travers to Disneyland in an effort to soften her up – the stalls outside the theme park gates – the public crowds walking by the attractions and the carousel that ends up in the movie – huge set pieces - and all of it perfect.

The BLU RAY print is glorious throughout - a big Hollywood production and the picture quality reflects that. It’s defaulted to 2.34:1 so there are bars top and bottom – but even extended to Full Aspect – the print is gorgeous. This film is a real looker on the format.

Audio is English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio with English 2.0.
Subtitles are English for The Hard Of Hearing, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish
Extras include "Deleted Scenes", "The Walt Disney Studios: From Poppins To The Present” and "Let’s Go Fly A Kite".

And on it goes to P. L. Travers finally sat in a cinema with tears rolling down her face as Walt Disney gives her Mister Banks the joy he so lacked all those years ago in Australia. Even Dick Van Dyke’s awful accent is forgiven as the joy of the songs and the film transcends everything. 

"Wind's in the east…mist coming in…like something is brewing…about to begin…"

"Saving Mr. Banks" is beautifully crafted cinema – superbly written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith and Directed by John Lee Hancock.

Do your heart and yourself a favour and spend Tuppence on this quality movie…

“Crazy Heart”. A Review Of The 2009 Film Now Released On DVD and BLU RAY In 2010.

"…The Good Ones Feel Like They’ve Always Been There…"

As every film lover knows, Jeff Bridges has been putting in great performances for years - but “Crazy Heart” is different.
Quietly magnificent throughout the entire movie, he owns the Oscar on this one.

“Bad Blake” is a 57-year old country singer, drunk most of the time and shuffling with a cigarette in his gob towards another small time venue he doesn’t care about. As he empties a plastic carton of piss into the parking lot of a bowling alley (having been on the road for hours), he can think about only one thing – not family, not music, not love – but how can he get a bottle of McClure’s Whiskey into his liver with only $10 left in his jeans?

Without any new material to make money from, wifeless for the 4th time and with deteriorating health, “Bad” is still a legend among his fans and when he’s on stage, him and his beloved songs like “I Don’t Know” can still cut it. But the younger bucks have replaced him – especially his despised protégé Tommy Sweet (a brilliantly cast Colin Farrell) who now has 3 huge articulated trucks to haul his equipment from one arena to the next and not a beat-up convertible called ‘Bessie’.

Then “Bad” gets a lucky break. He is interviewed by a local Santa Fe journalist Jean Craddock, a divorced Mum in her Thirties with a bubbly 4-year old son Buddy whom she protects from – you guessed it - ‘bad’ men. Yet despite all her rules, both Jean and Buddy fall for the charms of the big kid with the guitar and the ten-gallon hat. And on the story goes, heartbreak to joy, joy to heartbreak and back again…

The support cast are convincingly enamored small town folks - Tom Bower as the store manager and Rick Dial as the local band's piano player. Colin Farrell sings amazingly well too and is a perfect foil for the aging singer (he's also superb in "Ondine"). Significant others shimmy around Bad's constant verbal abuse too - Paul Herman as his long-suffering manager Jack Greene and Robert Duvall as the bar-owner who never seems to give up on "Bad" and is maybe his only real friend (Duvall is still such a great actor at 79).

Although this kind of movie harks back to Duvall’s own “Tender Mercies”, it feels a lot richer in its details. There’s a particularly tough scene where Bad decides to finally call his son of 28. Bad hasn’t seen him since he was 4 years of age – never helped him, never been there for him. There are very few words in the scene, but there’s a lot of pain. The grown-up son is not surprisingly unforgiving - especially with his Mom having passed away two years earlier. With the receiver to his ear, there is a look on Bridge’s face that is pure destruction – a horrible realization that he has caused agony with his cavalier stay-away life and won’t easily get forgiveness for it. In the hands of another actor, there might have been histrionic tears when the call abruptly finishes – but Bridges just does what an alcoholic would do, not mend his ways, but look cravenly at the kitchen for a bottle to get lost in. And on it goes until he finally does something really selfish and stupid in a shopping mall with a boy who now looks at him with affection. It’s brilliantly relaised stuff, it really is.

Niggles – his recovery is too swift and too painless – alcohol abuse over that length of time is never that easy to shake off, and even though she’s a magnificent actress, there’s a nagging disbelief in the relationship between her character and his – would she really fall for such a car-crash as “Bad Blake”. But these are minor points.

“Crazy Heart” (based on the novel by Thomas Cobb) isn’t quiet a masterpiece, but it's damn close. And while the other actors, the T-Bone Burnette music and Scott Cooper’s superb direction all add so much to the film - ultimately it belongs to its leading man. Bridges imbibes it with believability and a soul few actors could even get near.

As Jean asks what is it that makes a great song – Bad answers with the title of this review – “The good ones feel like they’ve always been there…” You may feel the same about “Crazy Heart”.

Put it high on your rental/to buy list.

“Ondine”. A Review Of The 2009 Neil Jordan Film Now Released On a 2010 DVD and BLU RAY (USA).

"…It's Not Illegal…But It Is Unusual…"

*** THIS REVIEW IS FOR 'BOTH' THE DVD and BLU RAY VERSIONS ***

Colin Farrell has become a great actor - not just a good one - a great one - and there's a very real difference. As wildly differing characters, he has amassed an accumulation of powerhouse performances in "London Boulevard", "In Bruges", "Crazy Heart" and "The Way Back" – there seems little he can't do. And Director/Writer Neil Jordan was smart enough to surround him with a hugely complimentary cast on "Ondine" (filmed in 2008) that I dare say the handsome and talented Dubliner absolutely relished working with.

Set in a quiet fishing village in Southern Ireland, Farrell plays Syracuse (nick-named "Circus" because of his previous clown-like antics when drunk) who goes out to fish every day, but both life and the sea have beaten him and his boat into a hopeless wreck. But then something almost mystical happens...

The gorgeous Alicja Bachleda is "Ondine" - a woman literally fished out of the Sea into Syarcuse's trawler net one afternoon. Maybe she's a magical sea-creature - maybe she's not. She can't remember - but mysteriously she seems aware enough to not want to see 'other people' whom she perceives as dangerous. And whenever she sings on his boat, bountiful things happen to his catch - and therefore his fortunes.

Recovering from drink himself, a broken marriage to another drunk (a great performance of skill from Dervla Kirwan) and trying to keep his sick daughter alive (a sensational and touching turn by newcomer Alison Barry), Farrell's character has his hands full. He then confesses all of this to his local Catholic priest, because he knows that the confessional bounds him to secrecy (a wonderfully weary and understated turn by Stephen Rea - who has starred in 12 of Neil Jordan's movies).

But the heart of the film belongs to Alison Barry as Annie - trundling around lanes and grass pathways in her motorized wheelchair. A precocious and witty child – she comforts her troubled Dad - while also giving him a very real reason to stay sober (two years and counting). But life has cruelly lumbered Annie with a life-destroying condition of her own – a failing liver. Ever upbeat though - Annie believes in magic – fairytales – and her talks with the ethereal "Ondine" only fuel this.

But while she's playful and charming at first with the mysterious woman who seems to permanently love the sea, Annie soon wants and needs more. Weakened by the draining hours of Dialysis - she craves a cure, a proper family, a happy ending. Annie starts to dangerously believe wholeheartedly (like a child would) in the 'good luck charm' Syracuse has been blessed with. Daddy's beautiful lady in the secret cottage down by the shore is the saving of them all. Ondine wouldn't be hiding something...would she? And on the story craftily goes to a lovely Sigur Ros song sung on television towards the end...

Filmed on location, the scenery is ace, the locals are believable and the bonds that hold together and destroy a family are realistically portrayed. Believable humour even crops up from time to time - the two fishery officials peering down on Ondine tangled up in his nets instead of salmon (dialogue above). And to the cinematographer's credit they make the Beara Peninsula in Cork where it was filmed look beautiful but not like an Irish Tourist board advert. Even Colin’s Cork accent is good and lends his character a 'humbled-man' feel, which really works. And as Farrell and the intoxicating Bachleda fell in love on set for real, there's also a secret tenderness and chemistry at play between them that feels like art imitating life. It finishes on a lovely song called "Braille" by Lisa Hannigan that sees out the credits…

To sum up - "Ondine" is not a blockbuster - it's a small film with a big heart.
I had a feeling it would be good – and it is.
Lovely, lovely stuff...

Note: A WORD ABOUT THE 'BLU RAY' VERSION:
At present (February 2012) “Ondine” is on BLU RAY but only in the USA. The good news is that the 2010 American release on Magnolia Home Entertainment is 'all regions' so it will play on UK machines (type in barcode 876964003384 in Amazon and it will direct you to the correct issue).

Audio is English 5.1 DTS-HD and there are two Subtitles - English for the Hard Of Hearing and Spanish

The aspect is defaulted 1.85:1 so it fills the entire screen and it's BEAUTIFUL to look at about 90% of the time. There are moments when blocking appears (the opening shots – the intruders at night in their home) but these are few and far between. The clarity when Colin’s in the confessional with Stephen Rea – when he’s talking head to head with his daughter – absolutely spot on – and a joy to look at.

The 2 Extras are 10 and 8 minutes and have interviews with most of the cast and the Director – very nice – if not a little short.

If you can plum the extra for the BR then go for it – because this is a movie that shines on this format…