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Oxide Ghosts screenings in Birmingham

Started by dmillburn, July 10, 2017, 03:53:39 PM

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dmillburn

At the Electric in Birmingham on Thursday 21st September, both with a Michael Cummings Q&A after. The 8pm one has completely sold out but there's still tickets for the 5.45pm one.

http://www.theelectric.co.uk/book.php?date=24427

weekender

Thank you for posting this.

I have a friend who might be interested in going, so I've booked two tickets for the 5.45pm one.

weekender

Does anyone have any questions they'd like asking at the Q&A?

I'll have a root through the previous thread and see if there's anything unresolved in there.  Link for the lazy:

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58980.0

I have a spare ticket which I can't use for the 5.45pm Birmingham screening on Thursday of Oxide Ghosts, if anyone wants it for cost?

Ambient Sheep

Unrelated to the above there is now a SPARE TICKET FOR THE 5.45PM SCREENING if anyone can get to the foyer before it starts.  This is because I am shit.

EDIT: Another Verbwhore has my ticket.  He now knows I'm not coming.

weekender

Well that was shit.

I'd rather have spent around 6 hours (please tell me it was no more than 7 hours and you got home safely) driving around the UK's convoluted motorway system.

No, not really, it was alright actually, I did enjoy it.

Twatty woman on the next-door sofa took a while to turn her fucking phone off, but hey.  That couple mocked me for having a bottle of wine on my own, and yet I sat there silently for all of the fucking film -
and the Q&A - whilst she fidgeted with her phone and they both talked, so they can both fuck off.

In her defence, she asked a really good question:

"Were there any celebrities that you felt sorry for?"

From memory, Cummings said that Darcus Howe came across really well, a really intelligent bloke, and him and Morris apparently spent over an hour in conversation.  Despite Morris's attempts to make him say something funny, Darcus apparently shut down any attempts of silliness with very clever conversation, and just engaged Morris, which is why Morris just ended up doing the bit about 'Robert Elms' in the eventual episode.

Also Toyah called them out fairly early on with something like "I support animal rights, but I'm not reading this shit out".

Random recollections now:

Before the film played, the soundtrack (blank screen) was good, I don't think anyone noticed.  Lots of people chatting so I couldn't hear them all properly, but I picked out Michael St John and the Bonzos.

Getting one of the Krays to enunciate and elongate the 'a's in 'AAAAAZ' (there are obviously five) was particularly funny.

russell dust

Just got back from the Birmingham showing too, quite enjoyed it. It'd been listed as sold out for months but checked the website at 3am and there was one seat available which I snapped up. Turns out there were a handful of empty seats including the sofas at the front! Like you I heard some interesting tunes beforehand inc. Captain Beefheart.
As for the film I didn't really know what to expect but I thought there'd be more commentary to accompany it, it's basically just outtake clips stuck together. Michael was interesting to listen to, he seems to know the scripts off by heart as he quoted a few scenes word for word. Would be interesting to see what's on those Brass Eye floppy disks shown with the vhs tapes at the end.

weekender

Quote from: russell dust on September 21, 2017, 09:40:28 PM
As for the film I didn't really know what to expect but I thought there'd be more commentary to accompany it, it's basically just outtake clips stuck together.

I thought there was a good visual/audio commentary, but it was largely lost amongst the laughter.

There were lots of things where Cummings took the words as written down, and then tried to describe how he made them into visual scenes:

EXT. LONDON STREET.  NIGHT. 

"A man is walking on the streets and attempting to buy drugs from some drug dealers.  The man appears to have a big orange on his head which may or may not look like the lower half of a popular 1970s toy that children used to bounce on".

It was difficult to focus on the exact details because of the laughter.  It's a shame, because as a 'making of' documentary, I thought it was really good. 

I can't really moan at people for laughing either, however I really hope this will become available on DVD at some point, because it's fascinating to study how 2 years of film-making becomes a great comedy.

weekender

On this latter point, I found the time-stamps fascinating.

When Morris does that bit about the basking shark up the Thames, the ape to slap, etc - if you look at the time-stamps it's basically at least an hour of Morris sitting in the one position doing animal whimsy between 7pm and 7.45pm-ish.  Clearly what happens after that is that they take about 5 seconds of footage, match it up to the zebra, and that's what ends up in the final show.  Then there's footage of when they're filming the zebra, and the zebra looks really bored, really interesting to see how the eventual juxtaposition was made.

Oh, apparently they spent an entire day shooting footage for the 'weasel' segment.  That lasts what, 1 minute onscreen?

weekender

I didn't enjoy it that much though.

Spending 6 to 8 hours on a fruitless motorway trip would have been equally as enjoyable, and had I done that I wouldn't have felt that I had lost out in any way.

It was only a film, after all.


Ambient Sheep

It's fine, honest. x

More later, perhaps, but then that would get boring for everybody.

Do feel completely free to report more of your thoughts on the film.:-)

weekender

I wish I could remember more, yesterday I jotted down on here what I thought might be the more interesting details whilst they were still fresh. 

It was very fast paced and well edited - much like the show itself - so by the time my brain was processing one thing, the screen was elsewhere.  It's like that bit when Morris injects himself with heroin and says "What about other people less stable, less middle class than me - builders, or blacks, for example - if you're one of those then my advice is to leave well alone".  I remember watching that live and laughing maniacally then immediately thinking "Wait, what?" but the next scene was already on.  This film is a bit like that - there's footage of the actual show but with  <insert graphic here> on a background instead of what was actually broadcast, so by the time I've placed the scene in my mind, everything has moved on again.  It's my fault for trying to read all the words.

One example that I've just remembered - you know that bit in Animals when Morris spray paints the camera?  There's a nice little outtake when he's a little too far away and the spray just goes into the air and he just corpses and goes "Fuck.  I suppose I'd better move nearer the camera then". 

I'd love to be able to have a copy so I could digest it more, but the reasons why it can't be made available are clear - celebrity permissions, licensing issues, boring stuff - that Mr Cummings explained quite well.

Mind you, and I hope not to give too much away about who I am here, but on the sofa behind me was a laughing gibbon, albeit one who was laughing at the right places, if that makes sense.  It was a bit distracting, but I can't really blame the bloke, it's not his fault that he hasn't perfected the art of going to the cinema like I have.  It's his fault if I can't remember any more.

weekender

A better way of doing this might be to ask me about bits of BrassEye, and then my mind could remember if there were any bits about it in Oxide Ghosts.

From memory (how else am I going to do this?) the opening scene was showing how they hoisted Morris up into a harness for that bit in which he hangs upside down next to the pigs and does the intro.

russell dust

I liked the 'spider wins a design award for making a really good web' sketch, that made me laugh a lot as did the Leon Brittan had to get rid of the bat that he thought 'knew too much' line

Have to say i had to turn away at the part where the cow gets shot in the head, maybe a bit too gratuitous for me, although people around me were howling with laughter.

lipsink

The screening I was at, someone said: "Chris Morris has obviously been a big influence on others that have come after him, like Ali G and Keith Lemon..."

To which the director replied: "I don't think you can blame us for Keith Lemon!"

I asked him if he ever struggled not to laugh when the celebs were reading out their bits. I have no idea how they coped. Especially as we then saw the amount of corpsing Morris does in the film. He said that when meeting and filming them it was more like you were playing a role of a student film maker so he didn't find it that difficult. Although the parts in the studio when he was up in a booth while watching on the monitors he said he was able to have a good old laugh.

lipsink