Monday, September 1, 2008

The Somechance Film Festival

After the fun many of us had recently presenting our favourite 12 films, I’m starting a festival of films that one would like to be made. Based on Robert Redford’s Sundance festival, this'll be a chance to see offbeat stories that might never get shown in your local multiplex. I hate inaugurating things – simply because they so often fail – but if others would to present their own film wish-lists then please do.

Das Boot: The Musical

It’s getting tense inside U-96 at 280 meters deep with the hull starting to crack, but what better moral booster could there be than a song and dance number! The guys fix the leaks whilst belting out the catchy “Ach mein Gott, das Boot ist bald kaput!”, leaping around and banging their spanners rhythmically on the pipework. Not much romance here for the ladies, you might think, but there’s time for a love duet between Chief Mechanic “I Hate Fresh Air” Johann and the sub’s beautiful Germaniawerft M6V 40 diesel engine.

Gandhi 2

The Mahātmā's back and this time it’s personal!! But unfortunately he’s been reborn as a slug because the Brahmins administrating the reincarnation process are pissed that he tried to subvert the Indian caste system. The new-look Gandhi gets straight back on the campaign trail, organising fellow slugs, snails, and other gastropod mollusks to hustle for a new world order. However, they become seriously “unstuck” when they try to recreate the famous Salt March.

My Right Foot

The Eric Bristow Story. A boy born with 6 toes on his right foot finds solace in the game of darts and overcomes ridicule and adversity when he finds that his “disability” actually gives him extra balance on the ockey. The film follows his rags-to-riches story, the four world titles, the decade of being world no. 1, and culminating in the seemingly de rigueur allegations of domestic assault. Like My Left Foot - the story of the handicapped Irish poet Christy Brown – but in this film the poetry’s all in Eric’s throwing.

Hedd Wyn and the Angry Inch

(I haven’t really done the “storyboard” for this yet, to be honest, as I’ve never seen the musical about transexuality set in an Berlin drag club, nor been able to find many poems in English by the Merionethshire bard killed in the WW1 trenches. But if somebody with less respect than I would like to take up the challenge, please be my guest).

16 comments:

  1. This is brilliant!

    I have a feeling that the Hedd Wyn project has my name on it. I'll see what I can do without being lynched the Welsh way - they let an oak tree grow around you. It's slow, but inevitable.

    I've often thought that a musical about golf would be horrendous. Let's do it.

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  2. I agree - a superb initiative. It might bring me out of hibernation.

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  3. Amazing ideas! I think the depth charges should take the place of the drumbeats in one of those "boom, boom, boomty, boom" German marches.
    The Gandhian slugs would have to be non-violent, but there's nothing to stop them making you sick if you eat them.

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  4. Hate to party-poop, but Gandhi II has been done, albeit tragically only as a spoof trailer:

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=On-XJw-DqWI

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  5. "Gimme a steak - medium rare."

    It's the subtleties that stay with you.

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  6. A musical about golf would indeed be absolutely hideous, Boyo - nice idea, see if you can get some bright young thing at The Corporation to fund it!

    Don't go jeopardising your nocturnal cycle, MC; if you need 6 months sleep, then you gotta take it. (Though isn't it actually spring now in Brazil?)

    Bananas, I think you've got there the audition scene from The Producers featuring the guy dressed as a WW1 German soldier :-)

    Gyppo, ah, I thought it was too good not to have been done before!

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  7. Ah, Kevin already has some form on this - Lon Chaney as Gene Kelly in American Werewolf in Paris, suberb!

    That idea could run and run. For a starter: Yul Brynner as Richard E. Grant (with Deborah Kerr as Paul McGann) in The Withnail and I.

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  8. I am still working on my top 12 films of all time. I've got it down to 78. Should have it ready by Christmas.

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  9. You can do it, Daffers, I know you can. By the way, MC Ward is also doing sterling work on this theme; I do urge you all to pay a visit there.

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  10. Oh Gadjo, I can't add anything even remotely amusant to this, because I feel quite addled today, but I larfed and larfed. Really, your comic gift is quite unparalleled. And I mean that most sincerely. A big kiss on the mouth for several seconds longer than entirely appropriate, xxx

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  11. Oh Mrs POUNCER.... I'm at work.... oh stoppit stoppit toppit!!

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  12. I see you failed to invite me to compile a list of twelve films. Quite right, too!

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  13. Mr Can Bass 1, welcome to you! Yes, I might have indeed chosen you to present your 12 films if I'd known you a little better. But would you like to? My friend Andy seems to be away, so please take up go for it!

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  14. Ah well, that's one nomination crossed off me list...
    (-:

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  15. I'll withdraw what I said; you nominate him, Kevin, he's clearly a man cut from the same cultured cloth as yourself.

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