Centre Point

car sleep, originally uploaded by DogBanjo.

Sometimes the camera just comes to rest. After spending half a movie chasing the characters and always behind the action , always wrong footed, never in charge or an equal or comfortable but always out of breath , sometimes there is a moments poetic meditation when the camera just stops and stares with its mouth open. This is one of those scenes. In my imagination i’m seeing a contemporary drama about the emotional journey being taken by a young city dweller. Here’s my review: After his commanding, polemical reinvention of the World War II musical in The Sound Of Gunfire Off In the Distance, Dogbanjo takes up a smaller canavas with his spare, timely drama, set against the background of the world wide recession. In Fitzrovia a young woman ( Kate Winslett) hears the news that a colleague (Eric Cantona hopelessly miscast) in the small bookshop where she works is about to be made redundant. She is devastated, the more so because she has, overtime, developed a girlish crush on him. Meanwhile Nigel (Alec Guinnes) an elderly African forrester working in France, sets out to find his long estranged son. As both characters arrive in the heart of London, their heads full of conflicting emotions and barely reconcilable narratives it is only a matter of time before they meet. Dramatically barren, Dogbanjos film avoids the cliches about cultural misunderstanding that are so prevalent in the current spate of globally themed films. The central dream sequence with a sleeping Winslett exhausted and traumatised whilst parked outside the Dominion in Tottenham Court road remains to this day one of the most fraught and pointless exercises in contemporary cinema. While Winslett offers her her most compelling performance since Hideous Pervert veteran Brittish actor Guinnes offers an immense presence alongside a barely credible accent. Strong support comes from Star Trek alumni William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, as well as Jim Davidson as a policeman. With its matter of fact London locations, the film captures the city life in ways usually the preserve of non British Directors. Here Dogbanjo persuasively and movingly channels downbeat UK realism in a manner barely attempted by Tony Scott. Amusing too to think that in barely a years time Tarrantino would pick up on the Lynchian dynamic of Jedward and transport them into the surreal and warped universe of Club Mambo.

The Intrepid Fox

The Intrepid Fox., originally uploaded by DogBanjo.

Photographed some time ago , maybe late eighties maybe a bit later. Will have to dig out the negative maybe from the files and find a date. All those negatives …. what a prospect! All of them presumably deteriorating infintessimaly day by day until in a few years I will be confronted by a flaking shard of grey ash. From which I might just be able to extract an image if the scanner doesn’t gag at the prospect of being fed such unappatising gunk. so photogenic this pub. On Wardour street and frequented by a mix of punks, goths, men in grey and black – or is that a lie and me just forgetting. Romantasising the past for the sake of a few words on screen. Have always loved this kind of interior. Posters stuck on walls and the whole thing a collage of pop culture icons , text and bright lights. And of course Marilyn. Seem to remember that I had a postcard published of this image a while back. A northern poet who wanted it for his front cover. Phoned me up and said poetry doesn’t pay well and so I’d get a name check if the photo could be used for free. I said sure and was mildly amused – or was it disappointed – to see that he’d misspelt my first name.

Is this a scene from a movie? Maybe. Or more likely a documentary. Maybe one not unlike the recent Time and The City doing for Soho what Davis did for Liverpool. No over ripe fruity voice over though. No cerebral Frankie Howards bemoaning the passage of time. But music and probably classical and choral. A nice juxtaposition as the camera glides in slo mo past the habituees of various drinking establishments. And then the camera just holds steady on this image with the lights on the fruit machine performing neon lit laps that hold your attention for ever and ever.

4 girls walking

4 girls walking, originally uploaded by DogBanjo.

Gotta be the follow up to Fish Tank isn’t it? Took this picture for granted at the time and now I really like it. Love they way they are striding out with such purpose. They look unstoppable. Four warriors traversing the world. Palmers Green today, Tokyo tomorrow. If it was Fish Tank I guess they’d only stop if a rhythm was good enough to make them throw down some shapes. Hard. Menacing. No one smiling.

Loved that movie when I saw it with Shane. Really beautifully shot and acted. Shane told me the closing music the girl and mother dance to is by Nas. He left me a copy on my itunes. Its great. A bit Jazzy and Shane said yeah – as we swung round onto the North Circular cruising towards the new shiny architecture and bright lights of the flagship Tesco in North Finchley. Nas’s dad was a jazz player. It’s in the blood. Reminded me of Thelonious Monk in places.

Remember there are loads of scenes where the depth of field is so shallow – the merest centimetre in focus. How she did it, with whatever lenses is neither her nor there but I recall being really struck by its beauty and thinking at the same time that maybe we are seeing the end of this kind of movie. Already there is all this talk about the latest lurch into the future with Camerons Avatar. This movie, so intimate, smallscale, English, how will they make it twenty years from now? Would they make it 3D? Would they make it at all? Fish Tank is so accomplished – the medium at the height of its powers, like the silent movies before the crude mechanics of the talkie. Will this kind of film become as archaic and tiresome as a black and white photograph?

Times Square Morning

Times Square Morning, originally uploaded by DogBanjo.

Can you feel the light?. Think this was my first time in New York and was staying at a hotel pretty much on Times Square. I remember it was February and very cold and of course I was wide awake real early in the morning. So I’d get up and go out. Onto the street. Revelling in the sheer cinematic glamour of all the towering edifices and yellow taxis and neon adverts. Later on the commuters appeared. Dresssed up warm and heading places. I’d just bought a digital camera – my first one. A Canon. At the time – 2004? – it was pretty much cutting edge – about 6 or 7 mega pixels. Ha Ha Ha: Christmas crackers from Sainsburys have mobile phones more powerful than that now!.

I like this picture. I think I do anyway. I’m a wee bit bored by it too. All that golden morning light. There’s just too much of it. like too many chocolates. Was trying the camera out really – looking to see what happened if I pointed it straight down one of those gorgeously broad thoroughfares and right into the sun. It was so cold that I had to keep my hands in my pockets with my gloves on until the last second and then I’d take them off and take the picture. My fingers would immediately start to ache in the cold but I’d be all right to point and click. Christ – what else is there to do with a camera anyway?

But even if this is a bad photograph it does remind me why I love photography. It’s the light isn’t it? Forget Turner. Pity poor Renoir. Forget any of those artists working with mud and water and turps in order to nail that translucent shimmering butterfly. Nothing succeeds like a photograph or a film. Nothing captures the mood of late afternoon, early morning or high noon, the feel of weather, the changing seasons, the infinite liquidity of light better than a photo. And maybe nothing does it yet quite like film and all those microscopic grains of light sensitive silver. And is this why photos are so often cherished as perfect memories – because the best of them capture the exquisite pallete of light and shade that we associate with that time, that place, in that year, that afternoon with those people. In fact so often we think we’ve photographed a building or a girlfriend or a landscape only to discover that the camera was looking beyond that at the infinite gradations, from the brightest highlight to the deepest shadow, and the shafts of light bursting through the clouds.

Here are some of my hero poets. They so often captured that elusive quality and at 24fps they kept it moving.
Raoul Coutard
Sven Nykvist
Christopher Doyle
Freddie Francis
Jack Cardiff
Robert Burks
Greg Tolland
Winton C. Hoch
Otello Martelli