| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have some psds for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides some scans for you to download and use
in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here.
I also have pages on devart here
and urbis here. |
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| a cock and bull story review |
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| details |
| The Genre: Comedy |
| The Format: DVD |
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| The plot: Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and
Bull Story is a rollicking inventive adaptation
of the notoriously unfilmable British comic novel
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman
written by Laurence Sterne. Crammed with literary
jokes and dark humor and aided by stellar performances
by Jeremy Northam, Rob Brydon and Naomie Harris,
Shandy's warped tales reveal far more about himself
than any conventional autobiography. |
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to top |
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| opinion |
| I've been renting DVDs via the internet for
a while now. In fact, as I write this, it's a smidge
over three years since I first started.
The reason I started was that I was buying an awful
lot of DVDs, which cost quite a bit of money and,
basically, 90% of them were dross and I ended up
re-selling them on e-bay. Why not just rent them
instead and only buy the really good ones?
Well, as you can imagine, in those 3 years I've
watched a fair few films and guess what? In that
whole time I've only then gone on to buy two of
them. The first was "Thank you for not Smoking",
which I may end up reviewing, but if not, go check
it out, and the second was the subject of this review,
A Cock and Bull Story.
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I think this review is actually going to
be a fairly short one.
The reason is that it's often much more difficult
to explain why you do like something than
why you don't. Criticising and pointing out
bad stuff is easy. It's so easy in fact that
you may have noticed reviews where I do actually
like what I'm reviewing I actually end up
pointing out the few bad bits I don't like.
But there really isn't much not to like about
A Cock and Bull Story.
The film stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon,
and also features a whole host of well known
British actors, many of them comedy actors.
I'm something of a fan of Coogan, and especially
of Rob Brydon, whose Marion and Geoff series
I still rate as one of the best comedy series
ever and who is currently shining as the best
thing in Gavin & Stacy.
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Right, now comes the difficult bit. A Cock and
Bull story is an adaptation of a well known series
of books from the 18th century called Tristram Shandy.
The story is fiction, but it's a fictitious autobiography.
But the central conceit of the books is that, in
writing his autobiography, Tristram's life gets
in the way and prevents him from successfully writing
his autobiography. To quote a line from the film,
for I have not read the book, "By the end [of
the book] he hasn't even been born yet". So
packed full of anecdotage and the noting of current
events is his writing that he never actually gets
past his own birth.
Adapting such a series of books is clearly not
going to be an easy task, not least because the
collected works runs into thousands of pages.
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The clever part is that instead of really adapting
the book, they've adapted the central conceit of
the book. If Tristram Shandy's fundamental joke
is that he fails to write his autobiography because
his life "gets in the way" then A Cock
and Bull Story fails to adapt the book, because
making the film "gets in the way".
Only not.
In the film, as well as playing actual characters
from Tristram Shandy, Coogan, Brydon and several
others also play themselves. Except it's not themselves,
it's slightly exaggerated parodies of themselves.
They play egotistical, self-centred actors staring
in Tristram Shandy and this film ends up following
them as they struggle to make that film.
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Only this isn't a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
It's not The Office - the characters are not
aware of the cameras. This is us observing
as if we were there as a person. We get to
see everyone from the Director to the producers
and all extras who are going to be involved
in a battle re-enactment scene.
However, saying that, there's a bit towards
the end of the film that even sort of pulls
the rug from under this notion of the film.
We see the people watching a pre-release screening
of the film and from some of the comments
they make it becomes apparent that actually
they've just watched what we've watched...
possibly. It's left unclear whether they've
actually just watched a screening of the actual
film or the film we've been watching.
It is, to use some big words, a metatextual
moment of the metatext. It's the breaking
of the fourth wall for a film that breaks
the fourth wall. Only again, it isn't. It
isn't the screening; it's just another layer
to the film.
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As I say - the tough bit is trying to explain
this - when you watch it it's much clearer.
What else is there? Oh yes, this is a comedy so
I should say if it's funny or not. Well yes, it
is. In some ways a lot of the humour is reliant
on knowledge of Steve Coogan as a (womanising) person,
although if you don't know all that stuff, it does
still work, I think.
So why not five stars? Well, if I'm absolutely
honest, it doesn't quite stand up to multiple repeat
viewings, and for all the really funny bits there
are some slightly slow bits in the film.
But these don't really mean it's not worth seeing. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: It's very funny and also very clever. |
| The Score: 4/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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