peter young’s listopia

10) Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, 2009, UK   DIRECTED BY MAT WHITECROSS
After lurking somewhere in the margins of Lord of the Rings and King Kong I wondered if Andy Serkis could prove capable of carrying a film as a lead actor, although I needn't have worried as this is undoubtedly a career-best performance. Dury was a difficult man who fell into all the traps of fame but he never let his polio become an excuse to quit fighting his way though life, and his awkward relationships, particularly with his adoring son Baxter, are what's at the heart of this edgy biopic even if it does occasionally have a few extra coatings of sugar here and there. A film I expect I'll get on DVD and watch many times more in the years to come.

7) The Polymath or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, 2007, USA   DIRECTED BY FRED BARNEY TAYLOR
I obtained this last month direct from Fred Barney Taylor's website when the DVD was first made available. Despite Delany's natural aptitude for complexity he feels no need to be obscure about his private life, in fact he's remarkably straightforward and open about both halves of being a "gay writer", especially the first half, as in his own eyes it undoubtedly defines him as much if not more than the second half. There is plenty in this documentary that provides insight into Delany the person as well as his life and family history, but little mention of science fiction or his thoughts on it. There is no intellectual hypocrisy to him so he's possibly too frank about his sex life for some people's tastes, and he's clearly someone whose life has been lived according to what he teaches, after having first broken down the barriers he discovered within what society has tried to teach him, and in ways that no one else seems to have ever thought about. I've not read everything he's written but since first discovering him in the late ’70s I knew I'd always be a huge Delany fan, so it's no surprise I think this is a great documentary.

8) The Orchid, 1971, USA   DIRECTED BY SAMUEL R. DELANY
This film was often mentioned in the brief bios that prefaced Delany's UK paperbacks in the ’70s, and I always reckoned I would never get to see it but it's included here on the 'extras' disc of The Polymath. It's a rather impenetrable 30 minutes long, made in New York with a young cast, most of whom weren't actors (a young George Alec Effinger among them). It involves a man who senses reality breaking down around him, all seemingly caused by a mischievous young boy. Delany clearly intended it to be fun and it is, in a kind of anarchic art student way although it's distinctly hard to get a grip on any kind of story: he inverts reality in a way that makes you want to watch it a second time, although not particularly for its desexualised approach to nudity. There are points at which I'm repeatedly reminded of a passage in his autobiography The Motion of Light in Water where he mentioned an ensemble musical piece written by a friend that collectively plays every note on the scale except one, so the composition actually contains a silent melody you can't hear, and this is emblematic of the kind of thinking Delany put into this film. I've read that on its first screening it caused a near riot, the audience tried to shout it off and even pulled down the screen... nowadays you can assault you computer instead after trying to figure it out on YouTube.

A few people on my FL are doing a 100 Movie Challenge for 2010 (or variations thereof), so. Why not.



1) Man on the Moon, 1999, USA   DIRECTED BY MILOS FORMAN
Never a fan of Jim Carrey, I approached this one with trepidation but came out the other end with a much-raised level of respect for his acting. I think he's said this was one of his most demanding film roles and it's not surprising, it must have been very exacting conveying the ambivalence and complexity of Andy Kaufman's personality and humour. On this side of the Atlantic we were never privy to the antics of Kaufman, only ever having seen him in Taxi, so it was fascinating to see how minor that series was in his wider career.

63) Nic Dunlop, The Lost Executioner, 2005
Irish photojournalist Nic Dunlop took on a personal search for Duch, the notorious and beguiling Cambodian mass murderer who disappeared from public view after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. It is a totally fascinating read: Dunlop's observations of the Cambodian tragedy could be endlessly quotable if they were not so self-effacingly oblique, especially when he considers the function of photography and the strange use the Khmer Rouge made of it; which, in comparison to other genocides, has allowed us to retrospectively witness their barbarity with a peculiarly timeless and almost lucid clarity. Dunlop's writing is always sensitive, never intrusive and rarely judgemental, even when he finally tracks down Duch who unexpectedly confesses. Nic Dunlop has done an enormous service to Cambodia with his research and the writing of this book.