Things I learned at Leeds Festival 2009

I got back from Leeds Festival a couple of weeks ago. It was my first experience of a “proper” camping-on-site festival, so I thought I’d write down a few recollections and thoughts I picked up during the weekend.

If you’re going to go, go volunteer

I went to the festival as a volunteer for Anti-Slavery International. Staffing for the bars is organised by the Workers Beer Company, and volunteers work a six-hour shift each day, with their salary being paid back to the charity they volunteer for. In return, you get free entry to the festival, access to a staff campsite with its own beer tent, and meal vouchers. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough – you bond with your fellow volunteers, you get to experience a festival without paying £150-plus for a ticket, and raise a bit of money for a good cause.

Meeting people is easy

Over the weekend, I worked with just about the nicest people you could hope to meet. Everyone was more or less in the same boat, and people who had volunteered before had advice and anecdotes to share. When my shift was over, I’d wander around with the friends I’d made and see bands, chat, have a few drinks and relax.

Afternoon shift is fine…

I was lucky enough to serve my shifts at a bar directly across from the main stage. My two 11am-5pm shifts took in some relaxing times, when the flow of customers wasn’t too hectic, and you could listen to the bands playing the main stage as you worked.

Unfortunately, the sound mixing for the main stage started out pretty bad each day, so if you were a band playing the first few slots, any high notes or vocals would get lost in a muddy sludge of bass and feedback. The only afternoon set I heard with decent sound was Noah And The Whale (who aren’t very hard-rocking, so that may have been it).

…Evening shift is where Shit Gets Real

My Saturday shift was from 5pm to 11pm. From a music standpoint, this couldn’t have been better – I got to watch Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party and Radiohead playing the main stage in front of me. But of course I had to work, and encountering the great British public in varying states of drunkenness is pretty hairy at the best of times, but mildly terrifying when you have to take their money and provide them with more alcohol.

Don’t be afraid to try new things

I didn’t have much time to look at the schedule before I went, but I’d seen a line-up, and had a fair idea of bands I really wanted to see. Beyond that, I was open to suggestions. And exploring the festival with friends exposed me to some cool stuff I wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise.

On the Saturday afternoon I went with them to the Radio 1 stage to see … Lethal Bizzle! Definitely not someone I’d go see of my own accord, but he put on a great show. That, to me, is what a festival is all about; not just a laundry list of Bands You Want To See, but taking the time for something that comes out of left field and surprises you.

Scheduling can let you down

I’m not just talking about when an awesome band you really want to see is playing another stage while you’re on shift (The Gaslight Anthem … sniff). There were some odd decisions in the scheduling of bands, which led to sets that could have been better.

For example, Friday night’s headliners were Arctic Monkeys, preceded by the Prodigy. I’m not a huge fan of the Prodigy, but they tore the place up – their lighting show alone looked like the end of the world. Following that, the Monkeys couldn’t help but seem a little subdued. They’re a small-venues band (which I mean in the absolute best way possible) that have grown to stadium size, and their live shows reflect that.

Similarly, on Saturday night Bloc Party’s muscular, dance-tinged set, heavy on tracks from their third album Intimacy (I was one of the three people who actually liked Intimacy, so that was great for me) segued into Radiohead’s headliner slot. It was Radiohead, so of course it was amazing, but the lead up of three mainstream indie/rock acts didn’t quite lay the ground for their daring, slightly experimental live experience – almost more of an art installation than a traditional rowdy singalong festival headliner. This isn’t to say anything against rowdy singalongs, though…

This is an irony-free zone

I made friends with another volunteer who wanted to see Kings of Leon play the headline slot on Sunday. Not being greatly invested in the band, I tagged along, and was treated to an INCREDIBLE set. In between songs the lead singer would address the crowd, telling us that they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for us. Usually, such sentiments would come across as calculated, or just a little embarrassing. But standing in the middle of a huge crowd, singing along to their songs, it was impossible to take that kind of sincerity at anything but face value. Normal rules don’t apply at a festival. Which leads nicely into my final bit of advice…

Go with the flow

Head along to see a band you haven’t heard before – they might be really good. Or they might be a complete mess, but at least you’ll have something to talk about afterwards. Talk to people – you’ll have an interesting conversation, even if it does vary between “lovely-interesting” and “terrifying-interesting”. And never conclude that you’re done for the night. Because while walking across the deserted main arena after the headliners have finished, you might just come across a tent containing Future Of The Left, playing what must be the very last gig of the festival, and end your weekend on the best note possible. Roll on, next year’s festival season!

Here are the bands I saw:

Friday

(During shift)

Fightstar

Eagles of Death Metal

Enter Shikari

The Courteeners

(Off shift)

White Lies (partial set)

The Prodigy (partial set)

Arctic Monkeys

Saturday

Noah And The Whale

Lethal Bizzle

The View

(During shift)

Vampire Weekend

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Bloc Party

Radiohead

Sunday

(During shift)

Sonic Boom Six

Madina Lake

Alexisonfire

New Found Glory

Funeral For A Friend

Deftones

(Off shift)

Kaiser Chiefs

Kings Of Leon

Future Of The Left

Back to the past: rewatching Mad Men

As the third season of acclaimed US TV drama Mad Men gets underway in the States, I’ve decided to go back over the first season on DVD, to see if what is now one of my favourite shows ever looks different on a second viewing. This piece will combine impressions of the first episode, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, with consideration of how the show has grown from its origins. (Contains spoilers for the first episode, and general discussion of subsequent ones.)

On its debut, Mad Men seemed extremely committed to proving the old maxim that “the past is a different country; they do things differently there.” The world of 1960s America, as seen from the New York advertising industry, seems impossibly remote, and is made to look and feel so. One of the most well-known aspects of the show is its poised elegance, not only in set and costume design, but also in the composition and editing of its shots (particularly the office sequences, which owe a lot to The Apartment). There is a deliberate sense of distancing from the characters and the period they live in, at first holding up the 60s as a polished façade, then delving beneath the surface.

The first we see of Don Draper, Madison Avenue adman and the closest thing we’ll have in the series to a hero, is the back of his head as he leans back in his chair – a deliberate mirror of the last shot of the opening credits sequence. There’s a deliberate opacity to this introduction: we know no more about him than the black waiter he chats with about preferred brands of cigarettes, or the other patrons at the bar (all also smoking) who he studies in slow motion. His job is getting into people’s heads and working out what they want, but we already get the sense that he himself is a closed book.

The flipside of this polish is a fascination with the clothes, the lifestyle (drinking in the office!), and the sexual adventures of the privileged few in this era of unprecedented prosperity. But the series is just as interested in showing how the not-so-privileged fare. We follow Peggy Olsen (Elizabeth Moss) on her first day as a secretary, and witness her dealing with the rampant sexism of the young creatives, and the sly put-downs of Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), the immaculately poised queen of the typing pool.

It’s a tough ride for Peggy. A recurring motif is her seeing another secretary crying in the ladies’ toilets; by the end of the day she is no longer visibly upset at this. Indeed, there are hints of the inner steeliness she will have to develop to make it in this world. (Not to spoil anything, but Peggy’s journey is one of the most fascinating parts of the show.) From an appointment with a doctor (smoking, of course) to provide her with the contraceptive pill, to a highly charged encounter with newly-married creative Pete Campbell, she seems to be breaking free of the gender roles that are presented as omnipresent.

And on that note … oh, Pete Campbell. I don’t think I’ve ever loved and loathed a fictional character so much at the same time. Any actor can get a decent amount of acclaim by playing a psychopathic bad guy, dripping charisma and chewing scenery. To me, it takes real bravery to abandon all pretences of vanity and play your character (as Vincent Kartheiser does brilliantly) as a complete douchebag.

The excellently slimy Campbell is a man who tries to walk the walk, but constantly fails. From the frequent mentions of his moneyed origins, to the slightly-too-tight bright blue suits he wears, subtle details give him away as (quite literally) a boy in men’s clothing. His efforts to outflank Draper at a crucial presentation to the top brass of Lucky Strike cigarettes are weaselly, but almost understandable, when earlier in the episode we see alpha-male Don brush off his pathetically eager attempts at friendship.

Here we have the essential dynamics of the season, and maybe even the series; the man who is supposed to have it all, yet feels empty; the woman who wants more than to be a pretty face at a typewriter; and the boy-turned-man who finds the traditional masculine roles much tougher than they appear.

And yet, and yet … there is a lot about Mad Men’s first episode that feels rough and unformed, especially in contrast to what will come later. Don, Peggy and Pete are pretty much perfectly formed right out of the gate, but it’s surprising on a second watch how much of the supporting cast is barely sketched in. The creatives and account managers – Harry Crane, Ken Cosgrove, and Paul Kinsey – are an indistinguishable bunch of rowdy schoolboys, and Joan at this point is just a stylish/bitchy female, with little hint of the depths her character will acquire. The same goes for Don’s boss Roger Sterling (Jon Slattery), and even Don’s wife Betty (January Jones) who only appears at the end of the episode.

If supporting characters are only sketched in during the pilot, the setting is laid on very thickly indeed. There are numerous instances of unsubtle period detail: Joan, showing Peggy her desk, which features a typewriter and speakerphone, remarks “Try not to be intimidated by all this new technology”. Don, while confronting Pete over stolen material in the pitch meeting, wisecracks, “It’s not like there’s some magic machine that makes identical copies of things.” Couple this with the numerous shots of people smoking in wildly inappropriate numbers and situations, and Mad Men starts off almost desperate to assure its viewers of the gulf between the past and today.

However, this clumsiness quickly fades as the series progresses, and the characters and setting become deeper. An apt comparison to this progression would be The Wire. For all its groundbreaking qualities, the first episode features a lot of cop-show clichés; the untouchable crime lord, the maverick cop looking to bring him down, the ball-busting superior, etc. But from these stock elements and exposition, it builds a cohesive world that will sustain all the inventive directions that David Simon et al will take it over five seasons.

Mad Men came to screens with buzz around its creator Matthew Weiner, a former writer on The Sopranos, and the setting and subject matter. But buzz will only get you so far. Mad Men’s first episode is an extremely assured and confident debut that may not have every detail of the series intact, but embarks on a journey that will use the medium of serial television to its full potential. Two series later, I’m more than happy to be along for the ride.

Cambridge Film Festival review – Strangers On A Train

Strangers On A Train (1951)

Dir. Alfred Hitchcock (USA)

101 minutes

Screened: Friday 26th September 2008

I tend to divide Hitchcock’s work in a strangely arbitrary fashion; between his black-and-white and colour films. Although he used a lot of innovative camera tricks throughout his career, I can’t help but think of the Technicolour panoramas of North By Northwest or the psychedelic craziness of Vertigo, and see his black-and-white films as restrained by comparison. In Strangers on a Train, rescreened as part of a Warner Bros. retrospective at this year’s CFF, this restraint works, as a nightmare unfolds from a seemingly innocuous event.

Strangers was adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, and her and Hitchcock have many preoccupations in common. Highsmith’s novels and short stories read as if they’re filmed in tight close-ups, dragging you into the protagonists’ distrubed minds and desperate actions, which are terrifying precisely because of their seeming banality. The film begins on a lighthearted note, as starstruck Bruno encounters famous tennis player Guy on a commuter train. Guy tries to fend off Bruno’s attempts at conversation, but by the end of the journey, a plan for the two men to “swap murders” has been set in motion, without Guy knowing it.

Late ’40s/early ’50s America is a good-looking, peaceable place in Strangers, but with a secret rottenness to it. Both the pivotal event of the film – the murder of Guy’s estranged wife, Miriam - and its climax are set at a fairground, and Hitchcock wrings equal amounts of irony and suspense from the location. The former scene is a masterpiece in slowly building tension, as Bruno tails Miriam through the rides and stalls, and eventually strangles her. Heightening the eerie atmosphere, the murder is seen reflected in the victim’s glasses, soundtracked by the haunting lilt of fairground music.

The downside to this is that when we spend more time with Guy, the film grows curiously inert. As Guy, Farley Granger has an endearing woodenness which actually works for the purposes of the film, like Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate. Strangers never recovers the disturbing atmosphere of the fairground scene, but offers up an entertaining set-piece in which Guy must race Bruno to the site of the murder in order to prevent him planting evidence – but not before winning a tennis match. The climax, too, is well-staged and terrifically paced. Unfortunately, the bizarre shift in tone afterwards, with Guy going from murder suspect to free man in five seconds flat, and on the flimsiest of evidence, rings false. Still, the fact that we want to spend more time with the cold-blooded sociopath is credit to Hitchcock’s skill, and perhaps proves his point about the murderous nature of seemingly ordinary people.

Cambridge Film Festival review – Time Crimes

Time Crimes (Los Chronocrimines) (2007)

Dir. Nacho Vigalondo (Spain)

88 mins

Screened: Thursday 25th September 2008

Anyone who knows anything about writing will be familiar with Chekhov’s quote about the gun on the wall in the first act that must be fired by the third. In this time-bending Spanish thriller, Chekhov’s gun signifies almost anything onscreen, as seemingly innocent objects and events become pieces in the grand puzzle that is the film’s plot.

Hector, relaxing in the garden of his new house, catches sight of a naked woman through his binoculars. He goes into the woods to investigate, and is attacked by a man whose face is swathed in pink bandages. Fleeing from the stranger, he takes refuge in a nearby research institute, and seeks the help of a young man, whose motivations remain unclear. The man convinces Hector to hide in a mysterious chamber, which sends him back in time to before his nightmare began. But in fact, it is only just beginning.

From here on, the film stops being a straight chase thriller and becomes entertainingly loopy (in both a temporal and mental sense). Post-time travel, “Hector 2″ is forced to retrace his steps and undertake actions that will affect ”Hector 1″’s behaviour, causing him to get in the machine and travel to the past, thus creating Hector 2. Cause and effect become their own opposites, or the same thing. Or something.

While I saw from a mile off the obvious twist [SPOILER ALERT] – that Hector would become the bandaged man - this development does interesting things with the sense of tension created in the film’s first section. We see our protagonist become the terrifyingly blank assailant, and some of the efficient jump scares are repeated, but this time played for laughs as we know who is inside the bandages.

Although the timeline loops back on itself several times over, the narrative remains linear, charging along on sheer energy as Hector tries desperately to repair the mistakes made by his past selves. It’s also worth mentioning the amount of damage he takes, as the progressively spreading cuts and bruises he sports help to distinguish the versions of him running around on the same stretch of hillside.

This kinetic quality makes the film terrific fun to watch, as you’re figuring out what Hector will do/has done in the future/his past. But it also leads to a certain shallowness, as it never stops to allow serious examination of the moral consequences of his manipulation of events. The ending sees him relaxing at home with his wife, seemingly never considering the misdeeds he has committed to save them both.Time Crimes flies when it’s having fun, but unlike Hector, once it’s finished you will have little motivation to go back to the start.

Cambridge Film Festival review – UK Shorts Programme 3

Screened: Monday 22nd September 2008

In addition to the feature films I saw at the CFF, I caught one of the three programmes of short films from the UK. They were a real mixed bag, so instead of reviewing the programme as a whole I’ve written a short piece on each film.

Speechless

Dir. James Cooper. UK. 8 mins.

First up, an engaging little short that took a neat concept and spun it out for maximum laughs. Devoid of spoken dialogue, the film shows a conversation in text message form between two gangsta-rap-obsessed teenagers. Very funny, nicely shot to show the texts against the locations, with a decent payoff.

Time Out

Dir. Angus Gafraidh. UK. 8 mins.

A man finds a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper, and uses it to his advantage. The film unfortunately kept skipping at odd moments, which at first I thought was just terrible editing. Pretty silly, but I have a soft spot for the goofy comedy feel of it, because it’s probably the kind of short film I’d make.

Terrafarmer

Dir. Will Adams. UK. 2 mins.

The adventures of an astronaut and his bumbling robot. Too short to make much of an impression, it had the feel of a channel ident.

Blunder

Dir. Simon J. Riley. UK. 8 mins.

Yet another addition to the overcrowded sub-genre of “sales rep goes to the rescue of an apparent kidnap victim, only to discover that she’s a happily married S&M enthusiast” slapstick comedies, with little to differentiate it from classics of the form.

The Legend of Ol’ Goldie

Dir. Matthew Snyman. UK. 8 mins.

A lonely young boy keeps a pet goldfish, but has to keep feeding it… A great combination of real footage and CGI, with a suitably absurd sense of of humour driving the twisted fairytale to its logical conclusion.

And The Man Is Born

Dir. Pavel Prokopic, Marie Morgan. UK. 9 mins.

A tale of unwanted pregnancy and 80s pop stars, with a bizarre mood enhanced by some well-chosen shots, and a nice performance from the lead actress. If you’ve ever wondered what Eraserhead might look like from a female perspective, this film will show you.

Sun In The Night

Dir. Anne Wilkins. UK. 4 mins.

Deep within woods that are more suggested than drawn, a story of grief and imagination is played out. Poignant and a little eerie, the animation style is a big plus.

21 Seconds

Dir. Ru McArdle. UK. 9 mins.

A drama about a security guard and a suicidal actress, set over one night in a car park. The decision to shoot in speeded-up long takes portrays the characters as immobile statues against a stream of rushing headlights, and lends the film the insomniac’s feel of a long night, not passing nearly fast enough. A great visual style, but almost ruined by the “message” at the end of the film: “Every life lost to suicide is a tragedy.” Yeah! Take that, suicide!

Charon

Dir. Chiara Ambrosio. UK. 13 mins.

A marvellous stop-motion animation depicting Charon, the figure in Greek mythology who ferries the dead over the river Styx. Charon is a hunched, wizened figure wrapped in tattered robes, moving in achingly slow jerks that seem eerily lifelike. The sound design brings every wheezing breath to life, as he moves on in a uniformly dark landscape. The standout short of the programme.

Sundays

Dir. Sarah Bick. UK. 6 mins.

This didn’t make as much of an impression on me as the others. The memorable parts were more about the art and design featured onscreen (a girl dressing up as a cupcake, etc.) than the filmmaking.

The best of the bunch? Charon, with Speechless coming in second.

Cambridge Film Festival review – Katyn

Katyn (2007)

Dir. Andrzej Wajda (Poland)

118 minutes

Screened: Monday 22nd September 2008

The opening scene of Katyn takes place on a bridge where two crowds of fleeing civilians meet. One group is running from the invading Germans, the other from the Red Army. It’s a bleak opening to a bleak film, and one that reduces the tragedy of Poland’s experience in the Second World War to a human scale, in order to tell the story of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet forces in 1940.

The isolation of individual stories among the multitudes is skilfully done, as the camera moves past the crowds to seek out a few characters. And yet, in the shocking final scenes, we revert to an impersonal, far-off view, as the main characters become just a few faces among many. For most of its running time, Wajda focuses on the struggle of several families, as the men are held captive by the Soviets, and the women are left to hold their lives together. It is a film with a strong focus on the domestic, but we only ever see the full family unit in scenes of heartbreak and farewell.

The characters, who come from various segments of society, are connected to each other in ways that are sometimes implausible; I can’t have been the only audience member to find it unlikely that everyone in Krakow knows each other. Another distraction was the English subtitling, which frequently ended up mangling the dialogue (something that I assume will be cleared up if/when the film gets a wider British release).

Katyn has the look of a standard WWII prestige film, all immaculate interiors and well-fitting costumes. However, the overly comfortable mood of many British and American war films is absent here. There is no assurance of eventual triumph – the massacre is compunded by the Soviets’ repression of the truth after the war ends. The later sections of the film bring home the poisonous atmosphere of doublethink pervading the post-war Eastern Bloc, as Katyn becomes a propaganda tool for the Soviets, and writing the wrong date on a headstone can become an offence.

The denial of the right to remember compounds the tragedy, a message emphasised in the final shot, as a hand clutching a rosary is covered by earth, leaving no trace. The film’s natural style brings a deep horror to the scenes of the massacre, and the struggles of those left behind serve as a grim reminder of more recent attempts to pile atrocity upon atrocity by by wiping out the memory of murder.

Cambridge Film Festival review – The Lark

The Lark (2007)

Dir. Steve Tanner, Paul Farmer (UK)

70 mins

Screened: Saturday 20th September 2008

The debut feature from Cornish film-making collective War-rag is an arresting achievement, if not for its accomplishments then for the way it transcends its limitations. Shot in HD digital video for less than £10,000, the film used a mix of amateurs and professionals, some of whom donated their skills and experience for free. It’s an authentic slice of independent film that makes the most of its tiny budget with an amazing location and impressive lead performance.

The film begins with Niamh (Mary Woodvine) entering the derelict complex of buildings where she lives with her two young children, clad in a boiler suit and respirator. Her over-riding concern is to protect her children from the poinonous world outside. The early scenes of this family group have a touching intimacy, an initially set the scene for a post-apocalyptic drama. But the plot thickens as it soon becomes apparent that not everything Niamh sees is actually there.

For long stretches, The Lark is essentially a one-hander, and Mary Woodvine carries the film with a skilful combination of exterior toughness and a hidden vulnerablity, as she explores her surroundings. Each location, strewn with rubble, broken glass and enigmatic grafitti on the walls, adds to the dark and claustrophobic atmosphere, and Niamh’s occasional hallucinations of crowds of people filling the place only serve to emphasise the desolation that surrounds her.

It’s only with the arrival of two visitors from the outside world that the film loses its sure footing. During the scenes where Niamh interacts with Jackson (Mark Jackson) and Siobhan (Helen Rule), the dialogue too often turns elliptical for its own sake, and Jackson falls into the improv-class pitfall of SHOUTING HIS LINES TO BE DRAMATIC. However, after a brief wobble the film regains the emotional intensity of Woodvine’s performance, as fantasy and reality are reconciled.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of twisty, identity-based thrilers that feature unrealiable narrator/protagonists. If a film bears the slightest resemblance to Fight Club, Memento or The Machinist, it’s odds on I’ll enjoy most of it. Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I got to meet the director and hang around with him before and after the screening. We had a pretty interesting conversation about (among other things) the logistics of filmmaking, festivals and the appeals and pitfalls of making a genre film.

Modern independent film is unafraid to embrace and borrow from mainstream genres. But the best art is acheived when genre is used as a springboard for original ideas. In the director’s words, The Lark started as an attempt to make a straight horror film. Where it ended up is unclear, but it is definitely an original creation.