Photography Laurence Jarrett-Kerr

A look through the bookbinder’s studio breathes eclecticism and textural sensuality. Her accuracy is impressive as she spots 0.5mm errors with a single look. In this busy room, an active imagination for colours, textures and materials works with ancient machinery to create objects that make e-books seem a sick joke.

Laurence

When Avatar hit screens in late 2009 it captured and instructed the collective imagination of the world. Pandora, in all its magnificence, showed us, in vivid detail, the impact of technology on the human psyche.
More beautiful than the dreams of Tolkien, it was an unapologetic exercise in visual excess. Little thought to plot beyond a surface engagement, Avatar is Cameron’s essay on modern spectacle, a revelation as to its evolution, brought to us by the outspokenly spectacular technology he developed.

Such an impressive and equally unashamed moneymaking venture. Cameron made sure we knew it and planned a snap re-release to recoup box office takings that the film “lost” to Alice In Wonderland.

Tim Burton’s less-than-masterpiece replaced Avatar at theatres and went on to follow it into the US billion dollar club.

All the while it emphasised some of the problems with 3D, as it relates to the self-respect of the film medium. Notably it was only converted to 3D in post-production. Admirably attempted, but ultimately underwhelming. Particularly as one trailer was produced in 3D, disappointment was almost pre-determined.

Something worth doing is worth doing well, and this post-production practice suggests that Hollywood holds little regard for the worth of 3D beyond what is fashionable. The quality of the spectacle is unimportant, as its existence is what draws the crowds, and their hard-earned dollar.

Narrative too is irrelevant, with Hollywood yet to utilise 3D as an effective storytelling tool. Films have generally come off the weaker for dramatic use of spectacle to distract from narrative shortfalls. Tom Gunning’s cinema of attraction, adjusted for 21st century economic standards.

And then there was Jackass. US comedian Jon Stewart called it “the first film in 3D that makes sense”. Slapstick comedy at its crudest, virtually all humour and entertainment is derived from visual gags. It is the logical extension of the technological trend, not symbolic of its oversaturation. Without any narrative pretensions, Jackass is a film made for 3D.

Instead, the true tragedy of the medium is the way it enables filmmakers like Cameron and George Lucas to waste obvious narrative talent, retelling and rehashing past glories. Titanic and Star Wars 3D hit theatres in 2012.

Todd Selby is a portrait, interiors, and fashion photographer and illustrator. The Selby began in June 2008 as a website, www.theselby.com, where Todd posted photo shoots he did of his friends in their homes. I hate to take one photo out of the edit – but I have anyway – so you get a taste of this insider’s view of creative individuals in their personal spaces. Head over to his website and check out some of his work.

Hopefully this site will be a little bit of this in the future. In fact why not start now… anyone want us to come and photograph and interview you? Email laurence at dressedinthedark dot co dot uk

Some have called it mind-blowing. Others are convinced that Inception is a dull attempt by Christopher Nolan to match The Matrix and by DiCapro to be taken seriously as an actor. I can get where both responses are coming from.

To be sure, the film is visually stunning. There is just no question about it. The gravity-defying scenes which see Joseph Levitt-Gordon (Arthur) defending himself against a militarised subconscious and binding the rest of his team and guiding their sleeping forms through a hallway are memorable. Ariadne’s manipulation of the dream world as Cobb trains her in dream architecture cannot but delight.

The story, too, hangs together with strength. The intrigue is there – Cobb and his band of merry men make a business of bringing people into manufactured dreams and stealing their secrets from their subconscious. They are now presented with the infinitely more difficult task of ‘inception’, of planting an idea in the subject’s mind. Cilian Murphy plays the subject, Robert Fischer Jr., whose aged father has just passed away leaving him the family’s big business. Japanese rival businessman Riao (Ken Wantanabe) hires Cobb to convince Robert to divide his father’s business. Everyone involved makes it clear that the task is difficult, if not impossible, making the audience ravenous to know how they will accomplish it.

The emotional logic is also there. Cobb is trying to get home to his children. We are continually reminded of this fact to make sense of the risks he takes. But while it serves to drive the plot forward, it doesn’t necessarily tug on the cockles of our hearts.

This is partially because next to no time is spent building up the relationship between father and children so that it’s difficult for us to emotionally invest in his motives. It’s even challenging to work out why Ariadne is so determined that he should succeed. She appears to be an effort to provide the film with a human rationale. She asks the film’s big question: How important is reality if you’re happier in the dream?

The father-children plot might also be disrupted by the shallow fact that, at 36, DiCaprio still looks too young to be taken seriously as a father. Similarly, Levitt-Gordon (Third Rock from the Sun) and Page (Juno) also seem visually under-aged for their complex roles. Don’t get me wrong. They both play the parts beautifully and believably and they’re both so good-looking and likeable that I hope they get together if Inception has a sequel (as it appears geared up to do). Personally, though, I had to keep reminding myself that they weren’t fourteen and therefore would have had the time to acquire the level of knowledge necessary for mental espionage.

Obviously, if a film discusses the mind as a physical space that can be broken into, secrets as objects that can be stolen and the subconscious as a violent population, it’s asking you to suspend reality. Still, there needs to be a measure of coherence within the film’s reality.

So, I have a few questions I can’t quite push aside. Why does Ariadne not respond with surprise when Cobb initially tells her about shared dreaming? Why is Cobb the only character to bring traces of his own subconscious into the shared dream? How does the technology make shared dreaming possible (as far as I can tell, they don’t actually explain this)?

I’m sure that when you see it you’ll have answers for my questions and a few more questions of your own. Laurence and I had a bit of a debate and he won me around to accepting that there must simply be different sections of limbo – obvious, maybe, but it took me a while to get there. So, I say, go see it, come back and fire away. It is certainly worth seeing.

Adele Jarrett-Kerr

Laurence Jarrett-Kerr

That’s right – the very same Friedberg and Seltzer who delivered such gloriously unfunny turds as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, and Disaster Movie – have mercifully returned to satisfy the blood thirst of the global minority of Twilight haters.

The film adopts the by now all too familiar plot of a teenage girl caught between two boys. Throw in a smear of blood and a pinch of vampire culture and le voilà – you have a half-baked spoof on the Gothic, vampire-themed films and television shows of late. Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, relax. Vampires Suck will bore your critics into submission.

Baffling though it may be, people are actually excited about Vampires Suck. It could be because Friedberg and Selzer are two of the six writers of the occasionally entertaining Scary Movie series. But it’s more likely that these people are simply idiots.

No matter how many crappy films this duo litters the filmscape with, people continue to flock to the next one. Friedberg/Seltzer understand their market, their audience, and the universal desire to laugh at the things that take themselves way too seriously. Certainly Twilight falls into this category and is primed for parody.

Unfortunately for Seltzerberg, parody is mistranslated as ill-conceived crude jokes, punchlines of a telegraphic quality, and downright insults to physical comedy. The fact that the often hilarious Ken Jeong (Community, The Hangover) is involved in this Gothic mess is simply tragic.

When all is said and done, the man who goes to see Vampires Suck, simply because it claims to protest against all that is Edward Cullen, is no better than the average Twilight fan. He has run head-first into the barely-concealed trap of a seeing a (very bad) film, made with purely moneymaking aspirations and the broadest of appeal, marketed directly at him.

Worst of all, Vampires Suck exploits the popularity of that “greatest of evil” – Twilight itself. Sure, Stephenie Meyer’s literary phenomenon has force-fed us through three extraordinarily awful films, with two more unfortunately on the way. But is that a justification for Seltzerberg to add an even more unnecessary, and undoubtedly worse film to the burgeoning canon of vampire films?

Words by Liam Camps

While the name refers to life’s fragility, this debut indicates that it might take more than a huff of wind to blow Strawhouses in. ‘Malaise’ comes hot off the band’s album recorded with producer Jon Withnall who has worked with the likes of Coldplay and Feeder.

Dressed in the Dark caught up with the Liverpool band’s singer and songwriter, Paul Donnelly to get the dirt on the relative newcomers.

Dressed in the Dark: What’s ‘Malaise’ all about?
Paul Donnelly:It was so raw for me. It’s a lot about how I’ve struggled to fit in with the real world and relationships and all that. I was in a relationship at the time and the way its collapse seemed to happen just poured out of me. It was one of those really cool moments, actually. Even though it was emotionally charged, it was a triumph to write that song. At least that came out of it.

Video by Dave Harry, Red Union Films

DitD: How did the band get together?
PD: I really need to make up something interesting enough like that we met on Lonely Hearts and my guitarist decided we should make a band after being on a few dates or we met at a fetish convention.

DitD: What inspires you to write?
PD: I find language very interesting. People’s turns of phrase set off bells and I just have to write it down.

DitD: Is there message to your music?
PD: There’s a tenseness I feel sort of globally and certainly in the UK that can’t help but pervade the music I write. I don’t necessarily write about individual events that happen in the world. It’s just a general feeling that seeps into songs. Fragility and uncertainty are carried into all of the songs. I never try to be judgemental in any of the songs but it’s just the way that I see it.

Get ‘Malaise’ from iTunes

I Love Fizz from Laurence Jarrett-Kerr on Vimeo.

Appreciating the power that Trinidad wields, she begins to document the new colours, smells, sights of this island, noting how “Trinidad surrounded us, hilly and bushy, boisterously green.”

Later, she directs her keen observational eye towards Eric Williams, the new leader of Trinidad, writing him hundreds of unsent letters. These letters express her growing resentment and feelings of indeed being surrounded by the personified, even glorified, woman of Trinidad.

Conversely, her husband George falls irrevocably in love; Trinidad quickly becoming the ‘other woman’ in his relationship with his wife. His unrelenting worship of all things Trinidadian, the land, its climate and its women, increasingly isolate the already lonely Sabine.

As the years pass, the overwhelming heat wears away at Sabine, her love for her husband slowly evaporating in the sun. Yet, she is held there, flitting between intense hatred and genuine love and concern for Trinidad.

The green bicycle offers Sabine one of her few pleasures. Riding around the island she discovers another side of Trinidad, of an island united with a shared revolutionary voice, unintentionally enthralling Sabine. This voice however doesn’t captivate George in the same way, as he chooses to remain blissfully unaware of problems outside of his conceived paradise.

Sabine instead becomes deeply involved with following the political developments of the PNM. It is not until years after their arrival that George desperately attempts to understand his wife’s history, and opens his eyes to the Trinidad Sabine has always seen.

Monique Roffey’s novel starts at the end. That is to say, it begins in Trinidad in 2006, jumping back to 1956, with the novel then continuing chronologically. This structure brilliantly provides the reader with the gift of hindsight, allowing for a clearer perspective on the events later narrated.

It is a tale which will embed Trinidad into the consciousness of its readers, offering something real; real love, real loss and discovery. Powerfully told, Trinidad is vibrantly conjured and appreciated. A book I wanted to begin again once I had finished.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is available at Amazon for £3.99

Eleanor Beeton