’44 INCH CHEST’

It would be remiss to claim that some of the fine ensemble cast amassed for ’44 Inch Chest’ have something to atone for, given the crimes inflicted upon the gangster genre on this side of the pond during the late ’90s and early ’00s – Ray Winstone in ‘Love, Honour & Obey’ for instance, John Hurt in the dreadful ‘You’re Dead’ or lord forbid, Steven Berkoff in ‘Rancid Aluminium’ – the Tarantino blowback birthed the carefully placed grit of the crime caper movie with all the good bits taken out. Yep, Guy Ritchie’s overrated ‘Lock, Stock…’ did more damage to the UK film industry than good, from opening the floodgates for straight-to-DVD Dyer and Tamar geezer-on-the-run flicks to making people think the MFI Michael Mann-isms of ‘Layer Cake’ were actually anything more than an Arena magazine mashup of every gangster cliché around.

The payback? Guy gets a new lease-of-life after nearly a decade of bombs for helming a Holmes film that’s harmless but no more revolutionary than Barry Levinson’s attempt at a franchise re-up in 1984. The bad guy walked away scott free. The ‘orrible cahnt.

DVDS AS AN ARTFORM

Blog post from February 2009.

DVDs are pretty faceless. You can pick up a trio for 20 pounds or buy an individual one for the price of a pint come saletime to leave in cellophane for a couple of years. Whereas CDs succeeded vinyl, a format to get nostalgic about, to extoll its tactile nature, I don’t yearn for VHS, huge laserdiscs or 8mm reels. The cinema experience is nice, but limited distribution, especially as key companies are going through some major corporate changes (think New Line sacking Robert Shaye and Lion’s Gate kicking its genre oddities to the curb ), seems to be sending the more interesting features down the straight-to-DVD route.