I always eagerly watch the trailers before a film. The best snippets of releases that are “coming soon” can be tremendously exciting. There is also an art to making good and great trailers, with the best of them standing apart from the movies they promote or making a crap film look irresistible. Many movie buffs appreciate this. But more often than not I’ll be watching something with someone urging me to skip to the film we’re actually watching. When I’m fortunate enough to be in control of the remote, I always insist on watching the trailers, even when I’ve seen them dozens of times before.
The first trailer of quite a few before the menu screen on the True Grit DVD, was for Morning Glory, starring Rachel McAdams. I’m mildly interested in seeing this at some point because of a rather different comic role for Harrison Ford, the strange appeal of the breakfast show subject matter and the feminine charms of McAdams. She is cultivating a line in cheeky but likeable performances, with a turn in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and the news that she’s been cast as Lois Lane in the 2012 reboot of Superman. There’s also a shot of her rounded rear that does the film’s appeal no harm in my book.
Next up was the Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher rom-com No Strings Attached. I’ve read a lot about this movie, including some pretty hilarious but ultimately unflattering reviews. I’ve seen the trailer more than once. It’s part of a trend of stories trying far too hard to be modern, about “friends with benefits”. In the 21st century what is wrong about a man and a woman, who know and trust each other, having casual but enjoyable sex on a regular basis? Well the rom-com likes to point out that love is the big stumbling block; it always gets in the way when you least expect it. I mean it’s frankly just an inconvenient and inconsiderate emotion. We all ought to hate its lies, its deceit and its inevitably devastating consequences.
And yet it always conquers all. Even those like Portman and Kutcher’s characters, avoiding love like the plague by making sex a satisfying physical transaction, get bitten eventually by that pesky love bug. Cinemagoers too are always infected because soppy idiots fall for the obvious, predictable, signposted, cliche and crappy happy ending.
Today I must’ve been after a happy ending. I wasn’t really in the mood for Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar nominated True Grit. I was inexplicably captured by the trailer to No Strings Attached, which as I’ve said I’ve seen several times before and I’d long ago concluded I wasn’t bothered about seeing. Perhaps its my persistent crush on Natalie Portman’s pretty and sexy features. Perhaps its simply my starved and hungry libido. Or perhaps it’s a longing for the perfect emotional satisfaction of the romantic comedy.
Whenever there was a lull in the action of True Grit and I was no doubt supposed to be reflecting on or contemplating the rugged wild west landscape or the moral terrain of the story, my mind drifted into daydreams prompted by No Strings Attached. I don’t think a trailer has ever disturbed my enjoyment or concentration of the following film in quite the same way.
I pondered again and again what would happen to the relationships I had with people now, how friendships would shatter, grow or change beyond recognition. I planned imaginary grand gestures and pictured the romantic epiphany when I realised that yes, she was the one. I imagined myself living a busy, varied and satisfying life. The social groups that encircled it would be populated exclusively by young and attractive people, and some of them, perhaps just one or two, would care about me. And I’d have lots of sex. In short: I surrendered to fantasy.
What does it mean to be a romantic nowadays? At times I am happy to embrace the label and at others I am disgusted by it, depending on my mood or the particular definition. Is Mattie Ross, the heart of True Grit, a romantic? Some might say that’s nonsense given her realistic and often pessimistic outlook, with a tough maturity well beyond her 14 years. But she is also idealistic about bringing her father’s killer to justice, about the intentions of the law, and indeed her naive and childlike distinction between evil and good men, proven simplistic by her choice of hero.
Maybe it’s the peculiary romantic, noble and heroic ideas of Ross that helped my wandering mind off track. It could equally be of course that the isolation of True Grit prodded my loneliness into creating deluded distraction. The Coens have certainly crafted a film with darker and deeper depths than the 1960s typical John Wayne outing.
True Grit can also be surprisingly warm though. Mattie Ross is a character it’s impossible not to invest in and care for. Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn as a cold and hardened gunslinger at times, and a hilarious layabout drunk at others. There’s some wonderfully teasing interplay and banter between him and Matt Damon’s LaBoeuf. And the dialogue at times evokes the homely West so vividly that you want to take a trip there away from the boring variety of British dialects by comparison.
True Grit is as not as “fast paced” as some of the quotes on the cover would have you believe. But it’s not a dreary, arty take on the Western, as many attempts at the genre are these days. Its runtime is agreeable and its characters playfully portrayed. There is a fairly snappy climax with some good action and shocks. And Hailee Steinfeld’s performance as Mattie is a truly remarkable breakthrough. The plaudits have mostly been lavished on Bridges but she is the real star and the glue holding True Grit together. Damon is good too.
It wasn’t a masterpiece of filmmaking. But then I was barely paying attention. I know should be talking in depth about a film that chose to adapt a novel’s true nature rather than remake a Hollywood classic badly. The Coens usually make great and intelligent cinema. So perhaps it was majestic; I was simply in the mood for a cruder and more direct, perhaps even a crap, tugging of my heart strings. Is that a crime?
I suspect it probably is.
The impact of “impossible question” is impossible to calculate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13627415
Follow the above link and you’ll find a news story about an “impossible question” set in an AS exam last week.
The most baffling and infuriating aspect of this story is the response of the exam board, OCR. They have apologised profusely for the error and they insist that “procedures are in place” to deal with such things. They have contacted the schools involved to reassure them that their pupils will be treated fairly.
OCR claim that they will take into account the disruptive effects of the impossible Maths problem. It was literally impossible, not just hard. And inevitably some students won’t have figured this out.
OCR say that they will work out which pupils DID figure out the sum was impossible. They will reward those who show the correct working out and readjust their grading scales to cope with the time students will have wasted on the eight mark question; a substantial amount in a 72 mark paper.
It seems reasonable that OCR will take these steps to mark appropriate working out positively and adjust their marking as a whole. But students are calling for a complete retake of the paper on social networks. And I think they should get one.
Whatever “systems” or “procedures” OCR may have in place, calculating the levels of stress caused by the unfortunate typo and how this affected the rest of an otherwise intelligent student’s performance, is as impossible as the un-answerable question they set in the exam. It really is astounding sometimes just how ignorant of the realities of taking an exam these exam boards can be. Or perhaps they are just selfish.
Organising retakes, particularly ones where the organisation must foot the bill, is costly and time consuming. Sorting this out in a truly fair way is not in the interests of OCR. And yet today’s younger generations are constantly trampled underfoot by protestors about the decline in standards of modern education.
Is it any wonder young people can’t properly prove themselves when the system continually falls foul to cock-up after cock-up? It’s an absolute disgrace that there are any errors at all in exam papers but they are there all the time. Most are not as crucial as this one, but typos crop up in almost every examination without fail. If there is a decline in standards it is not with the intelligence of students, but with the way they are being assessed.
I am sorry for such a rant about a seemingly minor and mildly funny news story. But it’s not funny for those involved and teenagers making themselves ill with the pressure of trying to succeed. High achievers and hard workers still exist, producing young adults as intelligent and as ambitious and well meaning as in the past.
Politicians use slogans like “broken Britain” to scare voters into supporting them. They tap into the fears of the elderly and adult about growing disrespect amongst emerging generations. But all the time they are conceding control of bodies and organisations that ought to be serving communities and students, thus losing the right to respect amongst clever young people who deserve their own.
David Cameron’s Big Society rhetoric might make use of such a monumental mistake from a bureaucratic body like OCR but what does he actually have to say about fixing such common problems? He rants against paper pushing and champions efficiency starting at a local level but provides no money or support for it to happen. Likewise Labour’s opposition moans about the destruction of Britain’s cultural heritage, without saying how it would save it in government.
Politics does little to earn the respect and admiration of pupils. Neither do “professional” educators who rush out text books and muck up exams. Teachers, for the most part, still do a good job, but not all the time. I don’t know where from but perhaps those who worry and pick at the next generation, would like to find some worthy role models for it.
In this case though, serves these kids right for taking a subject as dull and dreary as Maths.
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