ON FILM
Who says art cinema has to be roll necks and Parisian cafés?
As cinema is of such inspirational importance to contemporary painters, one of the distinct perks of being un-engaged from dusk till dawn is the chance to cruise by the local picture house as and when the feeling grabs me.
Though mainstream cinema doesn’t always dish out original art works in the tens, this summer has seen two particular pictures worth noting.
The first was the highly anticipated Inception from Christopher Nolan who bought us he mind bending Memento. In this film, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a troubled protagonist who hides truly Wellian-inspired dystopian landscapes within his minds eye whilst the over all feature seems to be a far more successful and coherent love child of Nolan’s Batman Begins/Dark Knight and Scorseses’ Shutter Island.
Of slightly more surprising artistic merit was in fact Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in which comedic hero fights for girl in a series of completely surreal, death defying mortal battles. This might be a light hearted laugh with bizarre characters making witty quips, but the viewers are treated to an incredibly well directed, visually decadent display of retro-futuristic computer game play coupled with fight scenes that far surpass any graphic novel adaptation I’ve ever seen.
Perhaps I was just in a good mood, perhaps I just empathised with the geeky-loser protagonist…I felt inspired Perhaps it’s just a damn good film.
