(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DOES OR DOESN'T SUCCEED)
[And now for a Bust of a movie that is unashamedly feel good.]
The Commitments (1991) Alan Parker's film adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel of the same name. Stars Colm Meaney, Johnny Murphy, Robert Arkins and Andrew Strong.
In the end Robert Arkins fails to become the manager of the world's greatest (Irish, soul) band.
Son of Elvis loving Dubliner Colm Meaney, Arkins plays an ambitious young man, who will stop at nothing in order to realise his dreams of success in the music industry.
To this end he manages to bring together and equip a group of variously talented teenagers who gradually come to share his aspirations.
However, it is only the late addition of charismatic, middle-aged, veteran trumpet player, Johnny Murphy, to the group that not only lights a fire underneath the disparate bunch of wannabes, but which also ultimately leads to the band's demise.
Chief among the teenage talents Arkins recruits is bus conductor Andrew Strong, whose ill manners and boorish self belief is only just tolerated by the other band members because he possesses the singing voice of soul god.
Despite sexual jealousies, the mounting tension that Strong's presence generates, and a sometimes less than whole-hearted commitment to their cause, the group seems to be on the brink of success in clinching a record deal.
But after a promised guest appearance of one of Murphy's famous former jamming partners (the unseen Wilson Pickett) fails to materialise, Arkins decides, in frustration, to abandon his creation.
Only when he is stopped in the street by a chauffeur-driven limousine seeking directions, does Arkins realise how close he and the band came to hitting the big time.
Fifteen years after Bugsy Malone (1976) Alan Parker hit musical pay dirt for a second time with this modern take on the Garland-Rooney "let's put on a show" formula.
It's not hard to like a movie so completely infused with the soul classics of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Wilson Pickett.
What raises this story head and shoulders above its antecedents, though, is the absolute authenticity of both the characters' voices and the lives of crushing poverty from which these would-be stars aspire to escape.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commitments_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Malone
http://www.musicals101.com/who7c.htm#Rooney
http://www.musicals101.com/who3b.htm#Garland
Showing posts with label Murphy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murphy. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Thursday, 1 April 2010
28 Days Later (2002)
(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER OR NOT ANYONE SURVIVES)
[Now for the movie that started the whole virus infected speed zombie controversy.]
28 Days Later (2002) Directed by Danny Boyle. Staring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston.
In the end Cillian Murphy and his two female companions survive to make contact with the outside world.
Following the animal rights activist release of an alarmingly violent chimpanzee from a medical research facility, cycle courier Murphy comes round from a road traffic accident induced coma to find himself completely alone in an abandoned major London hospital.
Dressing himself in green medical scrubs, Murphy sets off through a deserted city rife with signs of some chaotic catastrophe looking for help and answers.
Unfortunately for Murphy, the first person he encounters is a maniacal, blood splattered priest obviously intent on extracting more than just a confession from him.
Murphy's flight attracts an increasing number of similarly rabid individuals until he is rescued by a young pair who lead him to their refuge in a London Underground station snack kiosk.
Although unaware of the exact source of infection, Naomie Harris and her companion explain the rapid contagion that has spread uncontrollably through the population turning everyone affected into blood-crazed monsters.
The full horror of the situation is revealed to Murphy, first, when the pair help him to reach his parents' home, where he finds that they have committed suicide, and then, when Harris slaughters her companion without hesitation, as soon as she sees that he has accidentally come into contact with one of the infected.
Murphy and Haris's prospects seem bleak until they discover another pair of survivors, Brendan Gleeson and his teenage daughter, who plan to abandon their fortified tower block apartment in order to track down the origin of a prerecorded radio transmission promising a solution to infection.
Travelling north in Gleeson's black taxi cab, the group eventually reach a corpse strewn blockade that turns out to be the source of the broadcast.
When Gleeson is accidentally infected by one of the corpses, the group is only saved by the sudden appearance of a squad of soldiers, who subsequently take Murphy and the women to a nearby mansion that they have made into a base.
There they meet the soldiers' commanding officer, Christopher Eccleston, who explains that the promised solution is to wait for the infected to starve to death, while his men get busy repopulating society with the willing, or otherwise, help of the women that have been lured to their camp.
Realising their mistake, Murphy has to escape the now murderous squaddies and somehow free the trapped women, which he does with the help of an infected soldier who he lets loose in the mansion.
As the crazed soldier works his way through his former comrades, Murphy and the women take flight in Gleeson's cab, but not before Murphy is shot in the chest by a soon to be consumed Eccleston.
Harris is obviously no stranger to the emergency room, though, as she succeeds in saving Murphy's life.
The movie closes with the trio signalling their survival with a huge homemade banner spread out on the ground for a low flying jet fighter that buzzes the isolated cottage that they have made their home to see.
George A. Romero purists may have balked at Boyle's reinvention of the zombie horror movie. But there's no denying that his creation sustained a genre that became hard to take seriously after its superb spoofing by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) which actually made an oblique reference to Boyle's contested premise that zombies could result from a virus infection and would die unless sustained by consuming others.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_of_the_Dead
[Now for the movie that started the whole virus infected speed zombie controversy.]
28 Days Later (2002) Directed by Danny Boyle. Staring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston.
In the end Cillian Murphy and his two female companions survive to make contact with the outside world.
Following the animal rights activist release of an alarmingly violent chimpanzee from a medical research facility, cycle courier Murphy comes round from a road traffic accident induced coma to find himself completely alone in an abandoned major London hospital.
Dressing himself in green medical scrubs, Murphy sets off through a deserted city rife with signs of some chaotic catastrophe looking for help and answers.
Unfortunately for Murphy, the first person he encounters is a maniacal, blood splattered priest obviously intent on extracting more than just a confession from him.
Murphy's flight attracts an increasing number of similarly rabid individuals until he is rescued by a young pair who lead him to their refuge in a London Underground station snack kiosk.
Although unaware of the exact source of infection, Naomie Harris and her companion explain the rapid contagion that has spread uncontrollably through the population turning everyone affected into blood-crazed monsters.
The full horror of the situation is revealed to Murphy, first, when the pair help him to reach his parents' home, where he finds that they have committed suicide, and then, when Harris slaughters her companion without hesitation, as soon as she sees that he has accidentally come into contact with one of the infected.
Murphy and Haris's prospects seem bleak until they discover another pair of survivors, Brendan Gleeson and his teenage daughter, who plan to abandon their fortified tower block apartment in order to track down the origin of a prerecorded radio transmission promising a solution to infection.
Travelling north in Gleeson's black taxi cab, the group eventually reach a corpse strewn blockade that turns out to be the source of the broadcast.
When Gleeson is accidentally infected by one of the corpses, the group is only saved by the sudden appearance of a squad of soldiers, who subsequently take Murphy and the women to a nearby mansion that they have made into a base.
There they meet the soldiers' commanding officer, Christopher Eccleston, who explains that the promised solution is to wait for the infected to starve to death, while his men get busy repopulating society with the willing, or otherwise, help of the women that have been lured to their camp.
Realising their mistake, Murphy has to escape the now murderous squaddies and somehow free the trapped women, which he does with the help of an infected soldier who he lets loose in the mansion.
As the crazed soldier works his way through his former comrades, Murphy and the women take flight in Gleeson's cab, but not before Murphy is shot in the chest by a soon to be consumed Eccleston.
Harris is obviously no stranger to the emergency room, though, as she succeeds in saving Murphy's life.
The movie closes with the trio signalling their survival with a huge homemade banner spread out on the ground for a low flying jet fighter that buzzes the isolated cottage that they have made their home to see.
George A. Romero purists may have balked at Boyle's reinvention of the zombie horror movie. But there's no denying that his creation sustained a genre that became hard to take seriously after its superb spoofing by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) which actually made an oblique reference to Boyle's contested premise that zombies could result from a virus infection and would die unless sustained by consuming others.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_of_the_Dead
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