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thedullwoodexperiment

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Tag Archives: Record producer

Begin Again (2013)

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Adam Levine, Drama, Gregg Alexander, Hailee Steinfeld, John Carney, Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Music, Record producer, Review, Romance, Singer-songwriter, Songs

Begin Again

D: John Carney / 104m

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, Hailee Steinfeld, Adam Levine, James Corden, Yasiin Bey, Catherine Keener, CeeLo Green

Record label executive Dan Mulligan (Ruffalo) is struggling to keep up with the changing pace of the modern music industry. Separated from his wife Miriam (Keener) and estranged from his daughter Violet (Seinfeld), Dan’s partner in the record company he co-founded, Saul (Bey) fires him. He goes on a drinking binge that sees him end up in bar where English singer-songwriter Gretta James (Knightley) is persuaded to take to the stage by her friend, Steve (Corden). The song she sings captivates Dan and he approaches Gretta with the offer of signing her.

Gretta isn’t interested in Dan’s offer because she’s planning to return to England the next day. She’s in the US because she came over with her boyfriend, Dave Kohl (Levine), when he was signed to a record label. While on a promotional jaunt, he slept with a record label executive; unhappy and discouraged, Gretta just wants to leave and put her relationship with Dave behind her. The next morning, though, she takes up Dan on his offer. This forces him to come clean about his position, but he convinces her to go with him to see Saul; Dan is sure Saul will sign her, but without a demo to give him, he passes.

Undeterred, Dan comes up with a plan to make an album of Gretta’s songs by recording them all over the city: on rooftops, subway platforms, alleyways, wherever they can. Dan assembles a team of musicians that includes Steve, while Gretta, in an attempt to reunite him with his daughter, arranges for Violet to play guitar on one of the songs. With the album completed they see Saul again but leave without a deal having been reached (Gretta wants Dan to get his job back as well as a bigger cut of the profits).

Shortly after, Gretta sees Dave accepting an award on TV and believing him to have sold out, pours out her feelings in a song she sings and leaves on his voicemail. Dave gets in touch with her and asks to meet when he’s back in New York. Greta agrees but finds that her feelings for Dan are changing from professional to personal. Unsure of which way to turn, Gretta meets Dave in the hope that she’ll be able to decide which path to take.

Begin Again - scene

A fresh take on an age-old story, Begin Again belies its Svengali-like origins to give its audience a modern day interpretation that sidesteps many of its genre conventions with a knowing wink and a shrug of indifference. Working from his own script, director Carney fashions a story of two peoples’ separate roads to personal empowerment and redemption that neatly avoids the clichés inherent in such scenarios, and makes the movie feel like a breath of fresh air.

Playing around with the structure in the movie’s first half hour, Carney introduces the viewer to Dan and Gretta with a view to telling their back stories in such a way that by the time they begin to make the album they’re like old friends we’ve known for ages. We get to see Dan at his worst and Gretta at her most trusting. We see them come together and start to rely on each other as they begin to rebuild their lives. It’s in these opening scenes that Carney draws the audience in and sets up the dramatic elements that will pay off later on in the movie (but not in the way that you might expect). And he doesn’t fall into the usual traps, for example: despite the predictable nature of Gretta and Dave’s break up, it’s presented in the kind of “adult” way you rarely see in movies. It’s a relatively short scene but Carney packs it with an emotional punch that is frankly disarming (and he’s ably abetted by Knightley and Levine).

With Dan and Gretta’s relationship so well cemented the movie’s central section becomes a joyous evocation of making an album. This is Begin Again at its most winning and infectious, the sheer pleasure of making music in a live environment so evident you can’t help but tap your feet along with the songs. And thanks to the efforts of composer Gregg Alexander these are terrific songs indeed, catchy and effortlessly perceptive about life and love and the pitfalls of both. Knightley, who hadn’t sung before, is assured here, her soft, soulful voice a perfect match for the material.

Alas, the final third, with its need to wrap things up, undermines some of the good work Carney has put in. Gretta and Dan each arrive at a place that befits their individual struggles, but there’s a sense that they’ve been let down by Carney’s determination not to play it safe and to avoid the movie having a predictable ending. Even with this, his leads remain convincing throughout, handling their characters’ journeys from start to finish with skill, confidence and conviction. Ruffalo gives such an impressive performance it’s hard to take your eyes off him, while Knightley invests Gretta with a stubborn, earnest vulnerability that is mesmerising. When on screen together they spark off each other, each raising their game, each making the movie even richer. In support, Steinfeld, Keener and Corden all provide charming turns, while Levine (from Maroon 5) makes his feature debut and is very good indeed.

With its emotional content linked directly to, and expressively through, its songs, Begin Again is a musical drama that packs several unexpected punches, and if its near rags-to-riches feel has an unavoidable touch of whimsy wrapped around it, then it’s no bad thing. This is a feelgood movie, and unashamedly so.

Rating: 8/10 – guaranteed to put a smile on anyone’s face during its musical numbers, Begin Again is a lively, effervescent movie that is both delightful and poignant in equal measure; with assured turns from its two leads, it’s a movie that entertains and rewards far more than it should do given its bittersweet ending.

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Phil Spector (2013)

17 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Al Pacino, Ballistics, David Mamet, Defence, Helen Mirren, Lana Clarkson, Linda Kenney Baden, Murder trial, Music, Record producer, Suicide, True story

Phil Spector

D: David Mamet / 92m

Cast: Al Pacino, Helen Mirren, Jeffrey Tambor, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rebecca Pidgeon, John Pirruccello, James Tolkan, David Aaron Baker, Matt Malloy

In the aftermath of the death of actress Lana Clarkson at the home of legendary music producer Phil Spector (Pacino), his defence attorney, Bruce Cutler (Tambor) persuades Linda Kenney Baden (Mirren), another attorney, to help with the case and the upcoming trial.  Baden is convinced at first that Spector is guilty and that the case can’t be won.  Her opinion begins to change when she meets Spector for the first time at his home.  Spector’s rambling, paranoid arguments in support of his innocence leave their mark on Baden, and she endeavours to find a way of combating the public’s view of Spector as a “freak”.  She dismisses attacking the victim, or any of the other women who have come forward to claim that the producer also threatened them with a gun at his home.  Instead, she focuses on the discrepancies that she finds in the ballistics report: principally that if Spector did shoot Clarkson by putting a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger, why wasn’t he covered in her blood?

As Baden persists in her efforts to have simulations of the gunshot entered as evidence at the trial, Spector becomes impressed by her tenacity and places his trust in her and her instincts.  Meanwhile, disturbing evidence continues to be uncovered that points to Spector’s unhealthy interest in guns and his volatile anger.  Baden perseveres with the ballistics evidence but finds that the only way she can introduce it into the trial is by putting Spector on the stand.  To prepare him, she puts him through a mock cross-examination, but Spector reacts badly when shown videotaped accusations of abuse by his ex-wife.  The next day, Spector’s arrival at the trial causes a stir that leads Baden to question whether her decision to let him testify was too hasty…

Phil Spector - scene

Opening with the disclaimer that Phil Spector is a work of fiction based around the true events of the record producer’s trial for murder in 2007, the movie charts what may have happened behind the scenes both with the man himself and his defence team.  It’s a bold, heavily stylised approach, and one that allows for a great deal of conjecture to be indulged in.  Spector’s guilt or innocence is debated but the script by David Mamet never comes down on one side or the other (even if it seems to be saying that he couldn’t have done it because of the lack of blood spatter); instead it presents the evidence that was available at the time, and backs it up with references to the trial itself and how it was conducted.  From this it’s up to the viewer to decide if Spector was guilty or not.

Taking such dramatic licence, the movie could easily be accused of being pure fabrication but it has input from the real Linda Kenney Baden, and so its authenticity is more credibly established.  The nuts and bolts of the defence team’s efforts to find a way of getting Spector acquitted are often quietly intense, and are offset against the more sensational reporting of the trial itself (seen through both contemporary footage and scenes set outside the courthouse).  And then there’s Spector himself, a vain, arrogant, irrational, and lonely figure (as presented here) who may or may not be the real victim.  Mamet’s script allows the man several chances to express his views on the world, and the press, and fame, and his own self-importance, and it’s in these moments that the movie most draws in the viewer, as the apparent depth of Spector’s dissociation from “normal” society is revealed, and the script paints him as too egotistical to fully understand just how his behaviour and demeanour are detrimental to his defence.

It’s a powerhouse performance from Pacino, mesmerising and enthralling, his distinctive vocalising fitting a character who declaims as much as he discusses.  Looking out from under a succession of wigs – including the “tribute to Jimi Hendrix” wig he wore on the day he was due to testify – Spector is portrayed as a man with serious psychological issues allied to an unhealthy disregard for those around him; he only takes to Baden because she believes in his innocence.  Pacino chews the scenery as much as he ever does, but here it suits the larger than life personality that Spector forged for himself, and the actor applies himself to Mamet’s florid dialogue with undisguised glee.  As the quieter, but no less passionate Baden, Mirren puts in an award-winning performance that serves as the perfect balance to Pacino’s more grandiose approach, and in doing so, is so impressive that she steals the limelight from Pacino with ease.  Her no-nonsense attitude and glowering disposition speaks volumes throughout, and Baden’s patience with Spector, and her ability to “manage” him, highlights the sound judgment Bruce Cutler made by hiring her in the first place.  When the two are together on screen it’s nothing short of hypnotic to watch.

The supporting cast flesh out their roles with aplomb, and the recreation of events surrounding the trial is skilfully done – though the lighting is gloomy throughout the whole movie, as if the subject matter is ultimately too depressing to deal with.  Mamet directs his script in a deliberate, TV-movie-of-the-week style that actually seems appropriate to the material, and he cleverly manages to blur the distinctions between what actually happened the night Clarkson died, and what may have happened.  It’s a neat trick, and it makes the movie a more intriguing watch than you might expect.

Rating: 8/10 – an absorbing and unexpectedly gripping account of the downfall of a music industry legend, Phil Spector is sharp, intelligent, and features two hugely impressive performances from its lead actors; at its heart, a powerful insight into how one man’s insularity and overwhelming self-belief can lead to their eventual downfall.

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