Alex Phelps might just have found 2013’s best new show.
Well Netflix has done it again. From the exclusive airing of the new season of Breaking Bad to House of Cards, Netflix has proven itself to be one of the greatest forces in television.
Instead of scandal in Washington or chemistry teachers turned drug kingpins, Orange is the New Black follows the story of a women’s prison. From the creator of Weeds, comes the story of Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) who has to leave her comfortable New York lifestyle and her fiancée (Jason Biggs, you know Jim from American Pie) for a year in prison because of her relationship with a wild drug dealer.
What results from this show is a unique take on the male dominated prison drama genre with some fascinating side characters and sharp writing.
With so many dramas such as Prison Break and Oz, it’s refreshing to see a female driven cast. While we all know the tropes of male prisons such as stabbings and awkward shower scenes, with Orange everything feels much newer and more unknown making it a much more enjoyable experience.
However, it is the side characters that truly make the show.
Each episode tends to see Piper interact with one of the other inmates and the viewer gets a glimpse of that character’s life outside of prison and how they ended up there in the first place. So instead of getting all these overused stereotypes of prison life you get an in-depth look at human beings from all walks of life who are all in prison for a reason and not just as plot devices.
Kate Mulgrew as Red. Image credit: Netflix
Probably my favourite side character is Red, the tough Russian woman who runs the kitchen. In her episode you see her as she is in prison, strong and in control but in her backstory you see a much more vulnerable side to her. For me it those moments that truly make the series.
These collections of side stories mean that the show deals with a whole range of complex issues like drug addictions, lesbian relationships, religion and even the difficulties of being transgendered.
One of the best episodes in the series deals with a transgender inmate who is taken off her hormone pills and has to cope with losing the features that make her feel feminine. The result is possibly the best portrayal of a transgendered person in television.
The actress herself had undergone the surgery and even noted how this was one of the first times she had played more than just a dead body on a murder show. All these issues are handled so well by both the actors and intelligent writing.
Once again Netflix has produced a great series that it is definitely worth getting into, and (possibly) failing degrees for.
Alex Phelps
Do you love Orange is the New Black as much as Alex does? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.
Before Breaking Bad, there was Malcolm in the Middle, pants, and Power Rangers. Marcus Beard examines the unlikely rise of Bryan Cranston.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico a man stumbles out an RV into the desert in nothing but a tired pair of tighty-whities. Hyperventilating, panicking, he says farewell to his wife, son, and unborn child before bringing a pistol up to his temple.
So much underwear, so little time: Cranston as Hal in Malcolm in the Middle. Image credit: CW
In South-Californian suburbia, a man stares at himself in the mirror, in nothing but a tired pair of tighty-whities. Upon declaring “I’m so full of bacon, my body’s meant for shakin’”, he busts out some funky, funky moves, his flabby stature showcased in all its jiggly glory.
Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of two middle-aged family men has touched us millennials students in very different ways. First as the dopey, lovable father of three Hal, in seminal single-camera sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, and then as terrifying criminal genius Heisenberg – or, Walter White if you’re just starting with the series.
But what of his early career? Getting his start in youth stage acting groups and moving up the ranks in the San Fernando Valley, Cranston’s angular visage graced many TV dramas and sitcoms throughout the 80s, albeit in hilariously minor roles. Perhaps you’ll recognise his high-pitched but still intimidating growl as ‘Snizard’ in a 1994 episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (“Curse you and your power bolt!”).
In the same year a novacaine-loving dentist first tormented Jerry Seinfield in his long-running sitcom. The hilariously incompetent recurring Dr. Tim Whately (who often appeared in Seinfield’s paranoid daydreams) secured Cranston many more appearances on prime-time cable shows, and eventually his role alongside Frankie Muniz.
Cranston first captured Gilligan’s attention playing a villain in the X-Files. Image credit: AMC
It was in one of these prime time shows, the X-Files, that writer Vince Gilligan saw Cranston portray a nasty anti-semite tormented by radio-brain waves (a standard late-90s sci-fi plot) that, by the end of the episode, grabbed audience’s sympathy.
So, when it came time to cast for Gilligan to “turn Mr. Chips into Scarface” with a chemistry teacher driven by ego, power and money to kill, intimidate and manufacture drugs in Breaking Bad, Cranston was the only one who could strike the balance of empathy and maniacal genius.
He also happened to be a-ok with being introduced wearing nothing but tighty-whities.
Marcus Beard
Was Cranston the right choice for Walter White? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.
Natalie Garces-Bovett falls for the BBC’s idiosyncratic drama Peaky Blinders.
Oh. My. God. Peaky Blinders.
Image credit: BBC
Why must you be shown only once a week?!
‘Peaky Blinders ’ is shown every Thursday at 9pm on BBC2 and like most BBC dramas, it’s crammed with talent from all over the British Isles. The main character, Thomas Shelby, is played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy, and his iron-willed Aunt Polly is portrayed by the award-winning Helen McCrory. But despite this stellar cast, ‘Peaky Blinders’ seems to have slipped under the radar.
Set in Birmingham 1919, it tells the story of the Peaky Blinders, a family-run crime syndicate who got their name from the charming practice of blinding enemies with razor blades sewn into their peak caps. Although based on a true story, it’s clear that a huge amount of creative license was employed in this script – but it doesn’t make it any less gripping.
Image credit: Creative England
The intensity created by the first episode certainly hasn’t waned by the fourth, and despite the brutality of the central characters, you still can’t help but root for their cause in the minefield of criminal politics, and post-war dissent.
Perhaps the reason for Peaky Blinders’ low profile could be the poor Birmingham accents or the grey filter hanging over the footage like a perpetual rainy day, but in reality these are superficial criticisms in light of the brilliant script.
Peaky Blinders is like an old fashioned heist movie, only with more political commentary (and cheekbones); it just keeps getting deeper, until you think there can’t possibly be any more twists and then they turn you upside down all over again. Do I recommend this show? Yes, and if you’re squeamish, just look away.
4/5
Natalie Garces-Bovett
Did you love or loathe Peaky Blinders? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.
It was an emotional farewell this week to Vince Gilligan’s masterful Breaking Bad, but how might Heisenberg’s legacy live on in our viewing culture? Jonathan Blyth gives his verdict.
Over the last six years, through countless plot twists, genre shifts and film homages, (and one long bottle episode about a fly), Vince Gilligan and co. have charted the progression of one man’s ascent into criminal godliness, and descent into evil.
Image credit: The Atlantic
The current era of television, often called the Golden Age of Drama, has been obsessed with tortured protagonists since Tony Soprano. Breaking Bad stands as the most critically acclaimed of this era of anti-villains, with three Emmy wins for Bryan Cranston in his role as Walter White. So now that Walt is leaving our screens, are we going to see an end to this style of character?
Tension drives conflict. Conflict drives drama. Drama makes for, who’d have guessed it, good drama. And whilst tension and conflict can come from external sources, the last few years of television have clearly shown that the best drama comes from internal struggles.
Some of Breaking Bad’s most compelling scenes have come from observing Jesse and Walt wrestle with their own innate villainy, or watching characters make tough choices between their priorities. For those of you who are already well acquainted with the series, compare these scenes to the finale of season two. This mostly superficial, externally-driven event is widely considered Breaking Bad at its weakest.
Homeland has a similar problem. Most of the large-scale CIA thriller scenes feel like an add-on to the real show, a 24 knock-off left in to drive up viewers. Homeland’s strongest sections are those concerning Damian Lewis and his personal struggles, similarly to Breaking Bad being most emotionally compelling when it deals with the internal.
Ultimately, shows such as Homeland, Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire will continue to provide drama based around villainous protagonists, and thus we are unlikely to see an end to this style of character. However, Breaking Bad has been one of the most watched and talked about shows of the last six years; what will fill its place? What will the next era of television be?
NBC’s Hannibal, starring Mads Mikkelsen. Image credit: Salon
The significant surge in horror and surrealist based shows over the last two years, including American Horror Story, The Following, Bates Motel and more recently the critically acclaimed Hannibal suggests that viewers are keen on seeing a darker, stranger tone in televised drama for the next few years.
Or will Agents of Shield, created by the critically adored, fanatically loved, and consistently cancelled Joss Whedon begin a push towards more relaxed shows dominating our screens? Despite already being a cultural and critical darling, Game of Thrones seems the most likely to replace Breaking Bad as the show of choice for television connoisseurs and the average viewer alike.
We cannot be sure of where television will go after Walter White and company (or whoever is left alive) leave our TV’s and Netflix queues. Perhaps in five to ten years we will see a show claimed to homage the Breaking Bad era, as Breaking Bad itself does to 70s exploitation cinema.
All we can be certain of is, one of the greatest shows ever created has finished, and its impact will be felt for years to come.
Jonathan Blyth
How did you feel to see Breaking Bad go? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.
Nobel ran at The Edinburgh Fringe festival May 1-31 3013.
DESPITE its controversies, few would deny the scientific significance of stem cell research, least of all Exeter based company Theatre with Teeth.
Their Fringe show Nobel discusses the ethical questions posed by these scientific advances through physical theatre.
Image credit: Theatre With Teeth
At the centre of the loose plot is a woman who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, from this stems the thought processes of four interrelated characters who ponder over the scientific facts and the morality issues they present.
The five person cast is delightfully diverse, illustrating the viewpoints of doctors, friends and even a lecturer with an absurd fascination for the subject. However, in just under an hour they barely scratched the surface of the topic. With no real grasp on the developments of stem cell research, this worked for me as I was still able to keep up with the action, yet for another audience member it may have lacked a slight philosophical or scientific complexity.
Monologues, images and dynamic movement are used interchanging to create a piece of abstract physical theatre. It is fast moving, but remains fluid, using interpretive dance to illustrate the ramifications of when “stem cell research will stop repairing and start upgrading”. The strong choreography successfully moves the production forward and mirrored the sentiments of the preceding dialogue. Yet, the visual images created using balloons containing glow sticks, UV paint and old video clips, really elevated the force of the overall performance.
This experimental piece of theatre was both imaginative and thought provoking, as I really was forced to contemplate the morality of implementing stem cell technology in modern medicine. The company’s ability to influence their audience was largely down to the personal manner of performance. The frequent monologues worked to successfully bridge the gap between the performers and their audience, which in effect formed a potent and thought provoking relationship, where I was really made to evaluate the evidence presented to me on the stage.
Daring yet delightful, the performance was undoubtedly a success at the Fringe and I am excited to see what Theatre with Teeth produce this year.
Sophy Coombes-Roberts, Arts Editor
Read Deputy Editor Clara Plackett’s overall experience of The Edinburgh Fringe here.
Follow @exeposearts on Twitter and like us on Facebook here.
The University of Exeter have introduced a new degree programme which allows students to pursue interests across multiple disciplines.
The new Liberal Arts degree, which had its first intake this month, is targeted at ambitious students interested in arts, humanities and social sciences who don’t want to be tied to one subject.
Professor James Clark, Director of Liberal Arts at University of Exeter, said: “It’s still early days, but recruitment has far exceeded our targets in terms of student numbers, so we’re very happy and pleasantly surprised with how popular it’s been.”
Modelled on elite Liberal Arts colleges in the US, the flexible degree allows students to choose a ‘major’ subject from across humanities and social sciences; from Art History to Politics, Drama to Sociology.
The undergraduates are encouraged to follow intellectual interests via individual modules rather than entire programmes of study. Other subjects that they can take modules from include Anthropology, English and Theology. However, assuming they meet the criteria, students can study any subject from across the university to some degree, even the sciences.
The Liberal Arts programme can also function as an Integrated Masters, which means students can choose to undertake a fourth year in which they take Masters level modules and complete a research dissertation or project.
The degree is designed to prepare these students for a competitive graduate marketplace by providing emphasis on flexibility and intellect rather than an in-depth knowledge of one subject.
Professor James Clark said: “People tend not to stay in the same career for their entire working life these days, so they need skills which are transferable, and the ability to apply their intellect to all sorts of problems and situations.”
“Our aim is to develop students intellectually so they’re got the critical skills, experiences and cultural intelligence that employers are after in key sectors like consultancy, charity, the arts, the civil service and journalism; areas where you need intellectual tools and flexibility, rather than in-depth subject knowledge necessarily.”
“The end result, we hope, will be incredibly intellectually curious and well-rounded graduates, who aren’t limited by disciplinary boundaries. We think this makes much more sense with the way the modern world works and is much more in line with the knowledge and skills that many employers now require.”
For more information on the new degree or to download the brochure click here.
Herons was on at The Edinburgh Fringe from May 1-31 2013.
OPENING with a single spotlight shining onto a frightened looking youth stood clutching a revolver in shaking hands with tears streaming down an innocent face, EUTCO’s production of Herons by Simon Stephens instantly moves and engages. From the stunning cast through to the understated staging, this excellent production is an emotionally intense and engrossing hour of top quality theatre.
Herons Image credit: EUTco
Dealing with the lives of a broken community a year after the brutal murder of a thirteen year old girl named Rachel, Herons details the journey of fourteen year old Billy and his involvement with the gang responsible for Rachel’s death, an event witnessed by his father Charlie. As the violent and vicious bullying of Billy and his friend Adele intensifies, Billy decides to take action in a naïve and desperate way.
Played with a sense of confused innocence, Jamie Manton’s Billy epitomises the broken youth who desires to escape but is trapped behind a past he doesn’t deserve. A genuinely moving performance from Jamie is a real highlight of the show and is supported by the rest of the play’s exceptional cast. Hannah Lawrence plays Adele, another youth trapped by her background and desperate to find some hope amidst the bleak life she leads whilst George Watkins plays the truly terrifying and malicious bully Scott, followed faithfully by his gang of two Aaron – Henry Fewster – and Darren – Jordan Edgington. Ryan Whittle and Kate Rayner also give great performances as Billy’s supportive father Charlie and alcoholic, abusive mother Michele respectively and overall the cast really bring the play to life.
Image credit: EUTco
With one simple set, consisting solely of a wooden bench in the centre of the small stage, EUTCO’s Herons focuses on the human emotions involved in these violent situations without detracting from the emotive performances and Stephens’ cutting, contemporary script. The graphic displays of desperate violence leave a dull feeling in your stomach as you sit passively in the audience but wonder if you would even attempt to interact were you able, whilst other moments inspire a sense of hope for those who are stuck amongst this mess.
Despite having witnessed a plethora of average theatre and comedy during my month at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Herons does not rank in this category at all. It is one of the best pieces of theatre I have experienced this year in Edinburgh with an outstanding cast and brilliant script.
Emily Tanner, Deputy Editor
Read Deputy Editor Clara Plackett’s experience of The Fringe as a whole here.
Follow @exeposearts on Twitter and like us on Facebook here.
Want to know what arty activities you can partake in at Exeter University? Read Online Arts Editor Giverny Masso’s alphabetical guide for snapshots of every arts related society – from Exeter University Theatre Company to the Circus Society see what sparks your interest.
Art Society
Art Society’s exhibition in the Phoenix Image credit: Art Society
“Art Society is all about getting creative and is open to everyone, no matter what your artistic ability is. We hold weekly life drawing and print and textiles sessions, as well as having ‘open studio’ sessions where members can come and use the art studio for their own projects and generally get messy without having to worry about not getting your deposit back! For more info click here.”
Playing with fire; the Circus Society Image credit: Circus Society
Breakdancing Society
“The breakdancing society has performed in the RAG Fashion Show, Dancing Devon, Strictly come dancing and the finals of Exeter’s Got Talent. All abilities are welcomed so don’t be shy if you’ve never breakdanced before! Lessons are taught at both a total beginner and an intermediate level in a friendly, relaxed atmosphere. Socials are different from other societies in that you go out and dance – It’s great fun and gives everyone a chance to showcase their skills in a real-life setting!”
Circus Society
“The circus society’s objective is to gather anybody with an interest in the performing arts into a cooperating troupe. Together, we aim to organize shows which will encompass various disciplines, such as juggling, acrobatics, fire-dancing, hula-hopping, martial arts, and others. There is no selectivity to join the circus society: anybody is welcome. Whether you are a perfect beginner or a master acrobat, you will certainly find your place amongst us!”
DanceSport Society
“We are one of the University’s largest societies, we teach classes in all the Ballroom and Latin dances, and hold a weekly salsa social. All are welcome, including complete beginners; you don’t need special shoes, or clothes, and you don’t even need a partner!
With regular classes with a World Champion coach, practice sessions, technique classes, and socials, we are a very active society. Dancing is a great way of making friends, and can improve communication, team participation and even your memory skills (all very handy for any CV!). Check us out on Facebook here.”
Exeter University DanceSport Society Image Credit: DanceSport Society
Drama Society
“The Drama Society is the place to be for not only Exeter Drama students but also any student interested in drama and theatre. Our online magazine, The Green Room, provides you with all the information you could possibly need: upcoming shows in local theatres, auditions and shows from all the theatrical societies at Exeter, and all student auditions and performances. With regular reviews, witty articles and much more, it is all you need to keep up to date with drama at Exeter. And of course, we have regular socials and trips where you will learn how to party like a Drama student!”
EUTco
“EUTCo is Exeter University’s longest running theatre company and is the go-to society for exploring your creative impulses on the stage. As well as offering opportunities that include directing, acting and producing, amongst other things, EUTCo can offer a great University social experience with termly get-togethers and a great sense of community. For more information visit our website here.”
Image credit: Fashion Society
Fashion Society
“Exeter Fashion Society needs YOU! Whether your interest lies in fashion, modelling, photography, journalism/blogging, art, events management or a simple love of clothes, we’d love to have you. If you tick any or all of the boxes, why not check out our Facebook page and our blog.”
Folk Society
“Folk society includes dance, music and singing with a weekly pub session! We host ceilidh dancing workshops and also dance rapper, a traditional North-Eastern display dance with swords. For more information please visit our website here .”
Footlights Society
“Footlights is the University’s biggest musical theatre society that performs show-stopping productions at the Northcott Theatre and in the M+D room. After the Mayor of Exeter claiming that last year’s “Thoroughly Modern Millie” was our best show yet, and a legacy of fantastic productions, Footlights continues to go from strength to strength.”
Gilbert & Sullivan Society
“As Exeter University’s longest running student performing arts society, at 46 years old, we are proud of our reputation for bringing to life the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in our highly rated performances every year.
We are a friendly and inclusive society that gives everyone a chance to perform and enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the professional setting of the Northcott Theatre.”
Photo Society
Stunning Devon landscape photography from PhotoSoc member Siddharth Jayaraman, click here to see more of his work. Image credit: Siddharth Jayaraman
“Whether you are a professional photographer or just planning to start taking your first photos, Photo Society is the place for you!
Members have full access to the darkroom, A3 colour printer and various photography equipment. We organise trips, socials, workshops, exhibits and competitions. To see a full list of benefits of joining PhotoSoc, click here.”
Pole Dancing Society
“Pole dancing is great fun and incredibly rewarding! You be taught spins and moves that will improve your strength, fitness and coordination in such a way that you will be able to choreograph your own routines.
The Society encourages members to participate as much as possible, so there will be many performances and competitions available throughout the year for anyone to partake in, at any ability.”
Poster for Shotgun Theatre’s last show ‘1000 Suns’ – a post apocalyptic folk rock musical Image credit: Shotgun Theatre
Shotgun Theatre
“Shotgun is the newest addition to Exeter’s growing host of theatre societies. We are proud to offer our members enjoyable, quirky performance opportunities; be that in one of our two annual musicals, termly cabarets, workshops and socials. Whilst we work hard to achieve fantastic results, the most important thing to us is to have a good time! Find us on Facebook here.”
Tadpole Theatre
“Hello! We’re Tadpole Theatre. We’re an emerging Exeter-based theatre company and would love to get you involved in one of our shows! Our mission is to compliment theatre with other art forms in order to create highly physical, story-telling pieces. Want to find out more? We aren’t a Guild Society, but we are a student run theatre group so to find us like us on Facebook, follow us @TadpoleTheatre, or read our blog.
Theater Goers Society
“Theatre Goers Society provides fantastic opportunities to get together and see some truly amazing shows at discount prices. We’re very excited about our upcoming trips to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company in Plymouth, and Curious Incident in London. It’s going to be a great year for theatre- don’t miss out! Visit our Facebook page here.”
Theatre with Teeth
“Theatre With Teeth is Exeter’s foremost producer of new writing, adaptations, devised work and physical theatre. We create bold, new and relevant theatre, with our work performed across Exeter and beyond. Our productions receive tailor-made support, and foster developing talent through a broad range of workshops and events. Visit our website here or follow us on twitter @TWTExeter.”
Tadpole Theatre’s latest production ‘Small People’ Image credit: Tadpole Theatre
University Dance
“We run weekly classes in ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, street, hip-hop, limbering and Irish. Being a DanceSOC member will give you the chance to audition for University events, our inter-university Competition squad and for performances in Exeter’s best nightclubs. DanceSOC socials are great fun and have included masquerade balls, pub quizzes and nights out! Feel free to get in touch with any questions to eet202@exeter.ac.uk.”
Click here for the listing of all these societies on the Students’ Guild website where you can join up or find out more information.
Liam Trim, Site Manager opens up on ITV’s latest hit drama Broadchurch, starring a stoney-faced David Tennant. Series 2 has already been confirmed, but with a few residents already dearly departed and a seemingly conclusive finale, where can it go from here?
ITV’s Broadchurch was a strange beast. On the one hand, it was just another standard ITV drama. A police procedural (hardly original) following the murder of a child in a coastal Dorset town. On the other, it seemed kind of different.
Image credit: Digital Spy
There was a scope that isn’t usually there. The plot thrust its slow, plodding face into the homes of lots of characters, practically the whole community in fact. There was also a shiny gloss to everything that doesn’t normally grace British telly. Beaches were shot in beautiful ways and waves washed in cinematically. With such a gorgeously crafted stage, the drama seemed all the more important and doom laden.
And then there was the soundtrack, which I could describe as intrusive, but I’ll instead call ‘emotionally piercing’.
Obviously, on ITV there are ad-breaks. Writers and directors must get round these pesky, profit driven interruptions by creating natural cut off points in the narrative. At times, Broadchurch had these mini cliff-hangers that worked well. You’d rush your cup of tea to get back to the sofa (not that I watch TV like that, it’s the 21st century after all).
But it didn’t matter if the narrative didn’t flow seamlessly into a break. The soundtrack would simply put in an ominous, Inception-esque ‘bwaaam’ over a picturesque rural background to signal the transition. It did this a lot, not just before ad-breaks. It would pile on the tension and the suspicion, quite often at completely inappropriate moments. It would tell you what to feel, rather than guiding the emotions supplied by the story.
Image credit: The Mirror
At other times though, the soundtrack worked brilliantly. Broadchurch was wonderfully hit and miss, addictively so. I’m convinced that was part of its mass appeal. Mostly though, people tuned in for the cast and the writing. David Tennant and Olivia Colman stole the show as the detectives but there were supporting turns from those in the victim’s family, as well as the journalists, shopkeepers and suspects.
Chris Chibnall, the writer behind the whole thing, also crafted a story with many layers, many possible suspects and lots of room for the actors to develop their characters, which seemed to draw people in.
Screen trivia for you: Chibnall, and the two directors who steered the episodes, have all worked on Doctor Who, and with Tennant’s central performance, plus Rory the Vicar, the show would appear to owe quite a debt to the BBC sci-fi programme.
And finally, as they say on the news, the Dorset accents must get a mention. As a born and bred Dorset resident, I was more intrigued than most by this aspect of the programme. Thankfully Tennant’s character didn’t require a Dorset twang but given his skill for accents in previous roles, he could probably have done a better job than many.
Image credit: Metro
Colman, who has received bucket-loads of praise for her performance, delivers an awful caricature, as did the actors playing the grieving mother and father. Eventually though, the accents stopped bothering me, merely providing the occasional laugh. And I must admit, there are people in Dorset who sound like the residents of Broadchurch, but not all of us sound quite that country.
Anyway, the big question now that the phenomenally successful series has ended is what on earth has Chibnall got planned for Series 2? A second series is not just a possibility, it’s already confirmed by ITV, always desperate for a hit, bless ‘em.
Chibnall claims to have a ‘very different story’ to tell now that detectives Tennant and Colman have (seemingly) left the Broadchurch bubble. But what could that story be? Another murder surely wouldn’t work.
Here are my entirely serious, speculative guesses about Chibnall’s plan for Series 2…
1) Toxic barrels wash ashore and Broadchurch is quarantined, closed off from the outside world. Chibnall’s script probes human psychology under pressure, as the residents prepare to fall out and presumably fight each other to death for food. But everything turns out alright, when the Broadchurch residents realise that they never leave the town anyway.
2) Terrorists in speedboats turn up from France, where no one would let them in. Broadchurch proves much more accommodating for the freedom fighters. The residents struggle to reconcile their sympathy for the gunmen’s aims, and their fear of them. The final episode is a huge shootout, as armed police finally arrive from London after 8 weeks of slow plotting.
Image credit: Radio Times
3) The town’s tech savvy vicar opens an internet cafe and slowly the whole town discover the joys of the web. The series takes a documentary approach, following the residents as they enter the modern world and start thriving businesses enabled by their internet skills.
4) One of the residents is an alien. We don’t know who. 8 episodes later we find out.
5) A child is killed. The residents decide that child murders are actually good business for the town, but an outsider working for The Jeremy Kyle Show exposes the cover up.
Liam Trim, Site Manager
Were you glued to Broadchurch? Tell us your Series 2 predictions on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.
The second instalment of Ben Lewis’sview on foreign film sees him perplexed by Dogtooth, a chilling drama from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, and winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
After the screening of Regarde la Mer by François Ozon for my contemporary French cinema module, the general feeling was that of revulsion and invariably along the lines of what on earth have we just watched? (A toothbrush being rubbed in feces and then actually used by actress Sasha Hails, for example). People have walked out of cinemas for less shocking films.
Image credit: The Guardian
Yet, upon reading about Dogtooth and watching the bizarre trailer, I felt I was up to the challenge of watching it – at the very least so I could report back to the readers of Exeposé. I thought that whatever happened, it ultimately would not be as shocking as Regarde la Mer. Apparently readers, Ozon has a long lost Greek brother.
So where to begin? To its credit, Dogtooth is one of the most memorable films I have ever seen, and an important film in Greek cinema being only the fifth Greek film to be nominated for an Oscar. It rivals Requiem for a Dream, Compliance and Regarde la Mer for impact, but of the three, it is probably most comparable to the unnerving and uncomfortable feeling experienced in viewing Compliance.
The film revolves around a Greek family who, barring the father, live an isolated life in a large countryside house. However, this family differ from others in that the parents have chosen the wildly popular and completely healthy option of bringing up their three late-teen, to early twenties children, completely oblivious to the real world.
Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes
Their methods include changing the meanings of words such as ‘phone’, so that it means a salt pot. The children are terrified to leave the grounds of their house, and they believe that the cat is the most ferocious and deadly animal in the animal kingdom due to the laughable act and story concocted by their father. This example provokes one of the many memorable scenes of the film, in which the father teaches his children to defend themselves from the cat, by getting all three children and his wife on all fours, and to bark manically like dogs.
The success of the parents in keeping their children effectively ignorant and afraid of the world is incredibly chilling, and it makes for even more uncomfortable viewing when we realise this fictional portrayal has real-life similarities, such as with the case of Josef Fritzl and the imprisonment of his daughter in his house for over twenty years. Thus we can’t reassure ourselves that this film is just crazy art-house cinema.
If this wasn’t memorable enough, there are also scenes where the father smashes a VCR recorder around the head of his female security guard for bringing traces of the outside world into the house (two movies including one of the Rocky series), as well as the elder daughter performing an eerily accurate rendition of a dance from Flashdance.
This subsequently leads to her smashing out her ‘dogtooth’ with a dumbbell. Her reasoning? The parents tell the children over dinner one night that they will only be ready to leave the house when their dogtooth has fallen out.
Image credit: Slant Magazine
There are definitely allegorical references to authoritarian power and oppression. The namelessness of the children (promoting conformity), their brainwashing and vulnerability bear many resemblances to the lives of citizens in former extreme right and left-wing nations. The son killing an innocent cat may be seen as a metaphor for what the parents have done to the children.
They clearly would not function in the real world, or would at the very least, need a month’s slot on the Jeremy Kyle show.
Ultimately, the film is probably more for the film buff or individual that wants to claim to have seen the weirdest movie ever – and that’s without me revealing the most repulsive aspect of the movie, which is the catalyst for the demise of the father’s control. I will leave that for you to discover for yourselves.
Regardless, the fact that I am still questioning what exactly I witnessed means that the film has at least been original. I’m just glad that there hasn’t been a co-production between François Ozon, Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) and Giorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth). I don’t think the world, or Jeremy Kyle, is ready for that just yet.
3/5
Have you seen Dogtooth, or anything quite as bizarre? Let us know your favourite grotesque cinematic moments via Facebook, Twitter, or by commenting below.
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