One Word Movie

A Cock and Bull Story

This is the adaptation of the notoriously unfilmable - or perhaps that should be unreadable - smash-hit literary sensation of the 1760s. I was prepared for the worst, and not just because I was going to see this in that awful flea-pit, the Odeon Panton Street.

It's just that post-modernism is more than a little jaded. Two Brady Bunch movies and a shit Arnold Schwarzenegger film have been at it, for God's sake. The textual awareness of textuality gets in the way of communicating anything to do with art, and one's normally left with the numbing sense that everyone involved in the project is awfully awfully clever. Which negates the whole purpose, if you ask me, so it's not really that clever after all. Oh yeah, and Jacques Derrida snuffed it ages ago.

Look, if you're interested in that, you can go and read a load of books like this. But it's not necessary for the enjoyment of A Cock and Bull Story, because although it's a film about making a film, it's not all about this. It's about vanity getting in the way of desire, and desire getting in the way of love. And a whole load of nob gags. Steve Coogan is excellent, but he's freakily good at playing schmucks. Rob Brydon's job is to steal every scene he's in, which he manages with aplomb. And Michael Winterbottom has a damn good thing going when he gets to cast the dashing Jeremy Northam as himself. If he'd had the budget I'm sure it would have been Clooney.

There are a few isolated moments when you think the film's going to disappear up it's own arse, and when I spoke to Adam about it he thought that he wouldn't read the book having seen the film. But apart from this, the film is good.

They also showed the trailer for Herzog's Grizzly Man, which looks fucking fantastic.

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 12:31 PM