GHOST WORLDS

Three years ago I was going through one of my many phases where I was renting a lot of movies from my favourite video store here in Toronto, Suspect Video. But because I was so busy at the time I had the habit of making VHS dubs at work as I seemed to run out of time before I got around to watching many of them. As I was working at a video company in those days it was an easy matter to make copies. It became too easy. Well, I have decided to start watching these tapes.

Last week I knocked off Ghost World, Terry Zwigoff's film from 2001. It wasn't too bad, although not the keeper that I heard it was at the time from a soul or two (which is typical). There was a pace that I liked and it had well defined characters. One ingredient in Ghost World did hurt a little and that was that stock quirky 'lets have a weird thing where we have some old dude waiting for a bus that never comes... and then it actually comes at the ending as the protagonist finds herself, a little'. Why do some filmmakers think that 'goofy' means 'quirky'? I will never know.

Tonight's feature on the upper decks was 24 7: Twenty Four Seven (1998). I liked the rawness of it -- and Bob Hoskins was good as usual -- but not a lot else. The characters lacked any real depth; this is interesting considering that you would expect more from a 'story film'. The writer and director must render characters at least to the point where you, as an audience member, can react plus or minus when plus or minus-type things happen to the characters. This film struck me more as a bunch of roughly connected, let's go towards the finish, scenes instead of nice and efficient moments which reveal personality as important and analogous to what story is being told. Having a bunch of unlucky or down and out males in a depressed area of England is fine in itself but there must be some progression. Having various sorts meet up at a boxing club to go for that inspiring and life-affirming moment constructed by the filmmakers only means something if there is just a little, tiny, at least, bit of forward movement. Advancement through a ticking clock is not necessarily forward movement. Hey, that happens anyway. By the end of the movie, everybody was, more or less, the same as they were when we first saw them. The one good by-product of such methodology is that some folk will claim that the scriptwriters didn't sell out by having the typical rags to riches story, or at least a happy ending. They might have a point. (As a note, if you want to see how well this kind of film can be done -- depressed town in England with down and out characters -- watch Lindsay Anderson's 1963 flick, This Sporting Life. A nice blend of ingredients and ultimately successful. And a terrific film sporting an outstanding Richard Harris.)

Next entry: Now for something completely different... last night I watched David L. Hewitt's 1965 feature, The Wizard of Mars (starring John Carradine). I will explain tomorrow on Sci-Fi Theatre.