Dead Man's Reviews
Feb 9, 2006 9:31:53 GMT
Post by brasidas on Feb 9, 2006 9:31:53 GMT
this is a review I did from an old issue of Swine - more on the commentary than the film itself. Hope anyone on here can help sorting out an interview with Shane for the website. Cheers.
Dead Man’s Shoes by Shane Meadows
I’m not usually one for all these fancy extra features on DVDs but in Shane Meadow’s case, I’ll make an exception. If anyone has listened to the director and lead actor, Paddy Considine’s hilarious commentary on the A Room For Romeo Brass DVD it’ll come as no surprise that the commentary for their latest co-venture, Dead Man’s Shoes is just as illuminating. Put simply, Meadows and Considine are a great double act, feeding off each other’s lines like a well seasoned working men’s club gag act….it’s everybody’s favourite Utoxeter Terrors, Shane & Paddy! Of course that sounds far too much like Peter Kay’s crap bouncer spin-off but nevertheless, listening to this pair deliberate over the whys and wherefores of every scene puts the very process of film-making under scrutiny.
Rather than acting all auteurish and dissecting every move or angle from a hundred pompous luvvy perspectives, very often Paddy and Shane don’t appear to be aware of how or why they direct or perform as they do. It’s obvious that a lot of what appears on screen is the result of spontaneous improvisation or inner dialogue and that the director and actor may never have even discussed the ‘motivation’ behind a good deal of the work. They don’t attempt hide this fact and therefore what you listen to has extra resonance, becomes a living, breathing creative process rather than a laboured, scripted ‘performance.’
The commentary echoes this loose ethos as childhood mates, Shane and Paddy make wisecracks and reminisce about old times whilst questioning and ribbing each other as they belch, fart and eat their way through the no-doubt tedious contractual obligation of providing a fucking commentary for the DVD. Whereas in Romeo Brass the director’s commentary is a joke a minute, with Dead Man Shoes, the mood is, like the film, far more sombre, yet just as engaging. For the DMS commentary they’re joined by Warp Films producer, Mark Herbert who doesn’t really get much of a look-in and at one point incurs Shane’s wrath by asking if Richard (Considine’s vengeful character) is aware of what has happened to his brother. That the entire film rests upon Richard being aware of this, only underlines just how free and easy the producer/director/actor approach to their art is. Shane upbraids Mark with a ‘smacky botty’ comment yet questions like this pervade throughout the film. Without giving the game away, the final twist to the tale ensures that you go straight back to scene one and play it again in order to see if it all makes sense. It does…kind of!
Meadows is a director who lost his way for a few pictures and with Dead Man Shoes he’s found the path back home. He admits as much on the commentary and in a moving tribute to Considine’s now dead father, both Shane and Paddy admit to their errors and seem delighted to be working together once again. It’s hard to believe that Romeo Brass was Paddy’s first film role, so much did he make that film his own. No wonder then that offers came flooding in for his talents whilst Shane went onto to make bigger budget flops like Once Upon A Time In The West Midlands, a film I still refuse to watch, such is the cast (Robert Carlyle, Ricky Tomlinson etc). Meadow’s early promise with low budget, dialogue rich studies of humdrum working class lives and ambitions, such as Smalltime and TwentyFourSeven re-invigorated British film and made us yearn for another Loach in the making.
It wasn’t all gangster flicks and period pieces, this was life as it was lived in obscure parts of the East Midlands, films that gave you hope for a home-grown cinema industry that wasn’t obsessed with fairytale bourgeois fantasies or laughably cartoonish underworld stereotypes. Dead Man’s Shoes IS a gangster film but a gangster film set in MATLOCK not Manhattan or even Manchester. It’s a film that sees Shane Meadows returning to his roots and doing what he does best; making us believe in characters and situations even if, like here, they appear to be totally far-fetched. FilmFour and WarpFilms should be applauded for giving Shane the chance to redeem himself because this is a film about redemption in more ways than one.
Phil Thornton
Dead Man’s Shoes by Shane Meadows
I’m not usually one for all these fancy extra features on DVDs but in Shane Meadow’s case, I’ll make an exception. If anyone has listened to the director and lead actor, Paddy Considine’s hilarious commentary on the A Room For Romeo Brass DVD it’ll come as no surprise that the commentary for their latest co-venture, Dead Man’s Shoes is just as illuminating. Put simply, Meadows and Considine are a great double act, feeding off each other’s lines like a well seasoned working men’s club gag act….it’s everybody’s favourite Utoxeter Terrors, Shane & Paddy! Of course that sounds far too much like Peter Kay’s crap bouncer spin-off but nevertheless, listening to this pair deliberate over the whys and wherefores of every scene puts the very process of film-making under scrutiny.
Rather than acting all auteurish and dissecting every move or angle from a hundred pompous luvvy perspectives, very often Paddy and Shane don’t appear to be aware of how or why they direct or perform as they do. It’s obvious that a lot of what appears on screen is the result of spontaneous improvisation or inner dialogue and that the director and actor may never have even discussed the ‘motivation’ behind a good deal of the work. They don’t attempt hide this fact and therefore what you listen to has extra resonance, becomes a living, breathing creative process rather than a laboured, scripted ‘performance.’
The commentary echoes this loose ethos as childhood mates, Shane and Paddy make wisecracks and reminisce about old times whilst questioning and ribbing each other as they belch, fart and eat their way through the no-doubt tedious contractual obligation of providing a fucking commentary for the DVD. Whereas in Romeo Brass the director’s commentary is a joke a minute, with Dead Man Shoes, the mood is, like the film, far more sombre, yet just as engaging. For the DMS commentary they’re joined by Warp Films producer, Mark Herbert who doesn’t really get much of a look-in and at one point incurs Shane’s wrath by asking if Richard (Considine’s vengeful character) is aware of what has happened to his brother. That the entire film rests upon Richard being aware of this, only underlines just how free and easy the producer/director/actor approach to their art is. Shane upbraids Mark with a ‘smacky botty’ comment yet questions like this pervade throughout the film. Without giving the game away, the final twist to the tale ensures that you go straight back to scene one and play it again in order to see if it all makes sense. It does…kind of!
Meadows is a director who lost his way for a few pictures and with Dead Man Shoes he’s found the path back home. He admits as much on the commentary and in a moving tribute to Considine’s now dead father, both Shane and Paddy admit to their errors and seem delighted to be working together once again. It’s hard to believe that Romeo Brass was Paddy’s first film role, so much did he make that film his own. No wonder then that offers came flooding in for his talents whilst Shane went onto to make bigger budget flops like Once Upon A Time In The West Midlands, a film I still refuse to watch, such is the cast (Robert Carlyle, Ricky Tomlinson etc). Meadow’s early promise with low budget, dialogue rich studies of humdrum working class lives and ambitions, such as Smalltime and TwentyFourSeven re-invigorated British film and made us yearn for another Loach in the making.
It wasn’t all gangster flicks and period pieces, this was life as it was lived in obscure parts of the East Midlands, films that gave you hope for a home-grown cinema industry that wasn’t obsessed with fairytale bourgeois fantasies or laughably cartoonish underworld stereotypes. Dead Man’s Shoes IS a gangster film but a gangster film set in MATLOCK not Manhattan or even Manchester. It’s a film that sees Shane Meadows returning to his roots and doing what he does best; making us believe in characters and situations even if, like here, they appear to be totally far-fetched. FilmFour and WarpFilms should be applauded for giving Shane the chance to redeem himself because this is a film about redemption in more ways than one.
Phil Thornton
