arts & entertainment
Frank and droid go thieving “Robot and Frank” (M) THIS is director Jake Schreier’s debut film and Christopher Ford’s first screenplay for the big screen. Do these novitiates entitle them to special consideration for this amusing, agreeable drama observing technology’s role in daily life some 30 to 40 years hence? Three decades after divorce, Frank (Frank Langella) lives alone, his memory in an early stage of decay. But he remembers his profession – cat burglar, requiring special skills and imposing special risks. His son (James Marsden) brings him a droid to ease his housekeeping burdens. The plot skips between Frank’s new domestic arrangements and his visits to the local library where Jennifer (Susan Sarandon) and IT guy Jake (Jeremy Strong) are converting reading into a paperless activity. The library has a treasured antique copy of “Don Quixote” that Frank and the robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), after settling into an amicable relationship, steal. Next, they steal prime jewellery belonging to Jake’s wife. Here, the screenplay raises a neat moral issue. Should a robot, programmed to do all manner of useful things, be punished for criminal behaviour? There’s enough here to sustain a film where the ambience bridges now-time with a near future in which every home and every person has its robot. “Robot and Frank” has numerous little moments that wound its verity. One of them is not little, easily recognisable but not so serious as to render the film beyond redemption or forgiveness. This review begins with a question. Its infinitely
26 CityNews November 22-28
Dougal Macdonald cinema
Frank Langella in “Robot and Frank”. variable answer depends on one’s point of view. Every life should experience agreeable small surprises. And every film. At Dendy
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” (M) I SAW this film in an otherwise deserted cinema except for a pair of young (here a relative term) women who watched in silence and, when I asked how they had found it, gave a non-committal answer. Designed for an unsophisticated and predominantly adolescent audience for whom fantasy creatures and situations bring richness into otherwise humdrum lives, the culmination of Stephanie Meyer’s novel employs a well-worn plot, good guys versus bad guys. Part 1 ended with human Bella (Kristin Stewart) giving birth to daughter Renesmee whose father
is vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). It is well-known that the conventional technique for creating new vampires involves not copulation, gestation and parturition, but an established vampire drawing a meal of blood from an attractive human of the other sex who then transitions into the life vampirical with all its attributes – immortality, threats from garlic, sunlight or a crucifix, social ineptness. Unattractive victims of vampires do not survive the process. Volturian vampire Irina thinks little Renesmee poses risks for her tribe. After sorting out issues confronting the Cullen family, a coalition of vampires and werewolves confronts the Volturi on a snow-covered battlefield. Big spectacle. Big special effects (those involving werewolves look a bit fakeish, which is regrettable since the animals look magnificent). Much blood. Heads forcibly ripped from shoulders or torn apart at the jaws (gruesome as this looks, its artificiality is patent). The end. Happy ever after. Who cares? The cast is mostly young men and women chosen for buffed and burnished appearance rather than acting prowess. Playing Aro, the chief of the Volturi, well-regarded British actor Michael Sheen fills the gap between “mostly” and “all”, giving every impression of enjoying his involvement in such well-rewarded nonsense. Director Bill Condon does his best to tell a story unburdened by credibility, verity or twilight, but at the end of the line, evaluating its worth would be difficult if it were not so obviously a no-brainer. At all cinemas
Poetic emotion of the landscape visual art
red-ochre wash. As the exhibition catalogue states: “Each mark offers an interpretation of the movements of time and its effect on the natural world”. McIntyre’s fabulous ceramic platter series draws influence from FROM the ancient Aboriginal Eastern artistic traditions and also songlines to the impressionistic references indigenous culture. beauty of the Heidelberg school, These works explore the tension from the figurative renderings of the between the domestic utilitarian Antipodeans to the abstraction of status of the platter and its pictorial Fred Williams, let there be no doubt beauty. Through a blend of earthy, the Australian landscape is integral sun-drenched hues “Untitled” to the ethos of Australian art. captures the textural grains and “Marking Place” encompasses rhythmic contours of the familiar the work of three local artists, and overlapping Brindabella ranges. highlights the way the AustralIn Teakel’s work we encounter ian outback informs and extends a rural Australia. This is brilliantly expressions of belonging. Working portrayed in “Drought” where white in a range of mediums G W Bot, settlement is invoked through the Anita McIntyre and Wendy Teakel barbed wire segmenting on the move beyond the mere physical landscape, and the plowing of fields. and geographical dimensions The piece’s minimal design and its of landscape, and respond to its grading of ancient and indigenous emotional and temporal fabric. colours further suggest a mapping G W Bot’s work is striking with a of white ownership. disciplinary range including bronze “Marking Place” is a fascinating sculptures, linocuts and watercolour exhibit that encapsulates the paintings. In “Journey Through A poetics of landscape as expressed Landscape” she reduces the terrain through the careers of the three to a few squiggly lines and a lush remarkable artists.
“Marking Place” Works by G W Bot, Anita McIntyre and Wendy Teakel CMAG, until March 21 Reviewed by Johnny Milner