Cinema Year Zero

Kelsey Grammer has stolen valour.

In 2004, a movie was released about the joyous reclamation of youthful romance through time travel, and the rejection of hard-bitten corporate life in favour of downhome suburban bliss.

It’s a cold winter’s night in the UK, and the dazzling floodlights of AFC Newbourne’s home ground are visible for miles in every direction across the London skyline, each dappled beam only matched in reach by the echoing caterwauls of the staunchly loyal blues fans.

Something unspoken lies underneath the whole of cinephilia. Well, not exactly unspoken.

I grew up in a pulseless nothing-ville outside a certain Canadian metropolis.

For the estimable cineastes confused by last year’s dispatch, may I state for the record: I love the Locarno Film Festival.

Swashbuckling action, scoundrelly antics, and even tattered iconography are all mere ornaments of what the act of piracy actually entails.

If you access Brown Sugar Too Bitter For Me (2013) via Guyanese director Mahadeo Shivraj’s official YouTube account, the first image that appears is a message in white on a black background: “Piracy is not a victimless crime”.

The camera trembles ever so slightly, the unseen cameraperson weary of its illicit recording.

2012’s Trouble With The Curve opens on a then-83 year-old Clint Eastwood in dialogue with his penis, attempting to coax pee out by berating it with gruff, raspy words.