Tag Archives: London

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 206 – The Gentlemen

 

Guy Ritchie returns to the guns ‘n’ geezers mine with The Gentlemen, a caper with a beautifully dressed and enjoyably playful cast. We discuss his stylish direction, ability to work with actors, the audiences that adore his work, how the film functions as fantasy, and its issues with being casually offensive.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Antonioni’s London in Blow-up

Antonioni’s London in Blow-up  is exciting, artistic, inclusive, open-minded and a bit queer. It’s  full of different kinds of people but with an accent on youth, photography, music, art and fashion. It values old things. Grey cement blocks and old red-brick buildings are the backdrop to new and exciting ways of being with new, more open-minded attitudes to sex that are still anchored in ages-old sexism and in which the pull of a certain kind of realism  is over-ridden by a clash of modernist impulses, conveyed graphically. It’s a place of unsolved murders where mimes cavort, justice is sought,  but alienation dominates, albeit in green spaces. Why do I think this? See below:

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Cement blocks as backdrops to new ways of being

 

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Nuns and Beefeaters (It’s an Italian’s London)

 

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Rolls Royce convertibles against old bric
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Veroushka
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photography, fashion, the thrust of the camera; new sex, old macho posturings

 

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graphic designs; modernist studios rendered from old places
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fashion
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ART
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Queers
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Antiques
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Green parks and smart tayloring
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An old realism for old people suffering from old hardships
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People from all over the world
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Anti-nuke protests for peace
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Vanessa Redgrave
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Murder revealed; murder unsolved.
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Jane Birkin, nude, in a frolicksome threesome
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Sarah Miles, having sex with one but looking at another
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gigs
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Busy streets with cool shops
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Flower power parties
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Drugs
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Old buildings with great views of the Thames
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Mimes playing tennis in green parks
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Alienation in green and pleasant fields.

José Arroyo