Art attacks

The five-yearly British Art Show arrived in Nottingham last month, and I was lucky enough to see it. Held in three venues across the city, the show’s admirable, if ultimately subjective, aim is to showcase the best of contemporary British art. The work on display covers a barrage of mediums, from video installation to drawing to oil painting through to mixed media sculptures. After the run finishes in Nottingham in early January, the exhibition will go touring to Glasgow and London’s Hayward Gallery.

Even for such an expansive show, it throws a lot at you. The segment in the Castle opens in particularly eye-catching fashion, with a large head - open mouthed, the monstrosity is dribbling out something like vomit. Thankfully not a metaphor for what is to come, although the art doesn’t immediately get much more savory. Through the door, Sarah Lucas produces one of her more distinctive pieces with the Anish Kapoor-esque NUD(3) which mixes up the sexual and the scatological. Performing a highwire act between these two (but not entirely opposing) extremes makes it hard to tear your eyes away – regardless of the seductive shapes, its power thrives in the indecision it leaves its viewers.

Not everything is as confrontational. Charles Avery’s drawings are from the David Shrigley school of scribbling, but retain a fun, if macabre, idiosyncrasy of their own. Elsewhere, Christian Marclay’s film Clock, which had also been playing at London’s White Cube gallery recently, is entirely beguiling (if at the opposite end of the city in the New Art Exchange, and a bit of a trudge). It’s both technically impressive and a reminder of how obsessed we are all with time – not just the passing of it, but the recording of it too. Best of all is Wolfgang Tilmans’ expansive frieze Freischwimmer 155 – an immersive, beautiful display of emerald green, laced with a dark, but intriguing, murk.

As is the nature of such a large revue, some of the artworks baffle rather than dazzle. The usually reliable Karla Black (whose solo show last year at Oxford Contemporary Art impressed) seems to be going through the motions with her two contributions, located in the multi-storied Nottingham Contemporary space. One of her works is even crammed into a corner, somewhat defeating the changeable, movable feast aspect which can make her so engaging – her plastic bag-esque hanging piece in Oxford, springing to mind in this regard. Also, Brian Griffith‘s leering, bug-eyed tent seems , at best, a fun party trick or, at worst, a wodge of recycled surrealism. When is a tent not a tent? When it doesn’t have a door, clearly.

That said, it’s hard to think – Saatchi’s latest survey of contemporary art included – which could be more provocative, discussion-worthy and exciting. And with its genius touch of opening in the provinces, it’s a move which requires those trendy Londoners who want to join in this cutting edge discussion to break out of the cosmopolitan confines of the capital.

Get Him to the Greek

Russell Brand's rockstar from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Aldous Snow, proved such a hit with audiences, he's got himself a movie – Get Him to the Greek.

Jonah Hill plays the record company lacky who is instructed by Sean 'P Diddy' Coombs to get Aldous Snow to the Greek Theatre in LA. Diddy's farmed out the job to hired help as Snow is washed up, difficult and drug-addled. Hill discovers a hard truth – whilst being down and out means you're easy to find, it also means you are difficult to stay ahead of.

There's no doubt that Russell Brand is a singular, charismatic force of supernature – but Get Him to the Greek is certainly not the vehicle to showcase his unique presence. Brand is required to shout, gurn and gesticulate but little else. There's little fire or soul behind his eyes, as he has no choice to engage in an autopilot as predictable as some of the jokes.

Elsewhere, Jonah Hill does the straight man role well but, again, has little to work with. Half-cocked (or, indeed half arsed) jokes about anal sex, diarrhea and vomiting crust everyone's performance eventually however. Only Coombs, Mr P Diddy, manages to escape such a fate. It's probably because he has a small role – never has being underused in such a way saved so much face.

For someone who prides himself on his articulacy and intelligence, it's initially hard to see why the star chose this movie. If you're kind you could call the movie a misguided misfire. Being cynical, it's a lazy launch pad for a star who deserves, and should know, better.

The Social Network

For all those who can't see the grimy toxicity of David Fincher's finger prints all over The Social Network , I point you to several points.

Firstly, how was his last movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a recognisable Fincher movie?

And, secondly, have you watched The Social Network? Lashings of paranoia, a choppy MTV style of editing and slinky, sexy visual flourishes are all married with a storming industrial soundtrack by Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor ... do I need to say any more?

It's a wonder how anything else survives, but it's thankfully one of many stars of this astute new movie. Aaron Sorkin's screenplay focusing on the rise and rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbeg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) has already been feted to the heavens, and its hard to underplay how excellent it is. I did maintain some – perhaps slightly ageist – doubts over Sorkin's appointment here – how can a fifty-something year old tap into the socio-cultural maelstrom that is Facebook?

But of course part of Facebook's concern is universal – the airing of dirty laundry, the importance of popularity and the need to belonging are as important as technological aptitude and ease around a VDU. And his possible distance from the subject may have helped to make his points ever sharper. Fuck, what do I know? He may be an addict like millions across the globe.

Whilst Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield are, quite magnificently, jostling to steal the film from each other, there's an incredibly sad story here. The film ends on a character waiting for someone to accept his pending friend request. Despite how much we despise some of the characters actions, they're all painted as terrifyingly fallible. And as geeky and technological as it can seem to outsiders, Facebook is ultimately about connecting with people. What can be more human and accessible than that?

Spineless

Nine is a shoddy musical, but that's not its biggest problem. No, the big problem is that director Rob Marshall lacks the courage of his convictions.

Musicals are hardly the most fashionable things on the Hollywood screen of late. Despite the critical and commercial successes of Chicago, Sweeney Todd and even Moulin Rouge, we're still in an age where the teenage boy (or, at least, the studio's view of a certain type of teenage boy) still is the only demographic served by big-budget Hollywood cinema.

So it's great that any musicals get made at all. However it can't be too much like a musical. In Rob Marshall's world, musical numbers are interrupted by dialogue. All musical numbers are presented through the trope of a dream sequence or, at least, an unadventurous theatrical staging. We can't have them as anything interesting. They are also sexualised to the point of banality. You have to make a concession to the boys, after all.

Julie Andrews would be turning in her grave, if she were dead. And this might well just kill her. It says a lot that West End musicals are booming. Singstar is a new way of life to others. People want to see this stuff. I want to see this stuff.

The Cat Returns

The Cat Returns won't transport you through the same rapturous plains as Studio Ghibli's best films such as Spirited Away or Ponyo. But within its perfunctory whimsy and mild charms, lies a film which is, more than occasionally, a fully functional animated delight.

And like most of the studio's films, it brings you a pre-packaged universe of immeasurable imagination. Here, it's the Kingdom of the Cats; this is where our heroine Haru is taken, after performing a good deed for a moggy in distress. After rescuing the cat from what would have surely been death under the wheels of a lorry, she is rewarded by an invitation to a feline alternate reality. Although always a fan of cats since young, she soon is choking on her words as she finds herself in an arranged marriage to cat royalty, and sprouting whiskers of her own.

It's consistently odd, but it doesn't have the sly or nasty edge of the best work out of Ghibli's Hayuzi Miyazaki-directed animation. The gorgeous backdrops of Princess Mononoke are missing, and the characterisation of Howl's Moving Castle isn't here. The ambition is also somewhat tempered, as the movie nestles into a comforting groove of likeable craziness.

But we'd rather have the crags and blemishes of this comforting groove, than the much-furrowed safety of the latest Dreamworks, Pixar-lite creation.

Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a film of bits, all presented in the chocolate box grime he's become synonymous with.

This time, this bittersweet Gothic assortment comprises of his most CGI-oriented film to date. Aside from the opening ten minutes, in which an older, post-pubescent Alice, is attempting to ingratiate herself into the world of stuffy Victorian society, there's barely a shot which isn't bathed in a digital afterglow. This really shows up the problem with filming Alice in Wonderland; the material's charm lies in its literariness. The book is essentially about the breaking down of structure, language and convention. To film it, you have to invent a language and then actively destroy it. Burton has decided to speak the lingo of CGI – the only way to destroy CGI is by employing more CGI, and here he does this to the point it becomes almost unbearable.

Aside from the zealous, highly-constructed digitry, it's a film of barely structured tumbling. From when Alice skitters down the rabbit hole and enters Wonderland again, until Alice's final battle with Helena Bonham's bulbous-headed Red Queen, it's little more than a whistle-stop revisit of the source material. From Tweedledum and Tweedledee through to the Cheshire Cat, all the hits are here, which in combination of the indulgent visual gee-whizz, are all desperately trying to hide a creaking storyline.

Soon it emerges every one of these characters has been waiting for Alice; it has been foretold in some oracular scrolls held – and then stolen from – Absalom, the hookah-smoking caterpillar (voiced by a deliciously deadpan Alan Rickman). They also foretell a battle between Alice and the Jabberwocky. However, to do this, she needs a sword, currently held by the Red Queen. Unlike the first time around, not all of the characters are on her side. She does find support in Anne Hathaway's ethereal White Queen, and some unlikely camaraderie in the shape of Johnny Depp's bipolar Mad Hatter.

The film limps to a conclusion which is maddeningly dissatisfying, and when Alice eventually emerges from the rabbit hole, there is no sense of what she has learnt, why she was in Wonderland again and how she'll change her awkward life in high society. You're in awe of the many visual flourishes, Bonham Carter's impression of Miranda Richardson's Queenie from Blackadder II and Depp's effortless craziness. But to what end?

Worst of all, I felt my eyes were bleeding. Auteurism and individual style is a wonderful thing, however more is definitely less. For all its creativity, Alice in Wonderland casing is burnt to a crisp, while its centre is definitely undercooked

i love you, philip morris

'This really happened. It really did.'

As well as being a pre-credit statement, this may well also describe the hook behind I Love You, Philip Morris. Who thought when Jim Carrey broke through in 1993's The Mask, that he'd one day be playing a Texan and screwing Ewan MacGregor in an unlikely conman movie?

That's the beauty of indie film making and if any movie of the last ten years epitomised the spirit of it, this one is as good as any. Jim Carrey is a former cop who's new life as a liberated gay man has landed him in jail on the count of insurance fraud. To reinvent himself after coming out, he spent shed loads and needed a fraudulent source of income to fund it. In jail he meets fellow southerner (and car thief) Philip Morris (Ewan MacGregor), and falls in love.

But once a conman, always a conman. Once released from prison, he takes on a variety of jobs and schemes – whatever seems to take his fancy. And, of course, all of these vary in their ethical, moral and legal validity.

If this all sounds unfocused, episodic and free wheeling, then that's exactly what it is. However, for the most part, it's held together by charm and likability. Jim Carrey does revert to gurning mode a little too frequently for comfort, but with a character that's inherently outrageous, it's a forgivable affectation on the director's part.

Most important, as a film depicting a gay relationship, the film does well. It's still the case that a bankable Hollywood lead depicting a gay character will immediately attract the adjective 'brave', even if he doesn't have to kiss a man. And Jim Carrey only has to adapt his persona a little to accommodate his role. But the frankness of the relationship's depiction is welcome. The two do kiss, bedroom activities are hinted and they frequently exchange the 'I love you's. And MacGregor is depicted as the perfect bottom: he is both feminised and very, very masculine. He's pretty good at balancing the two.

The movie only falters when things turn serious in the second half. You know things are going wrong when a previously straightforward narrative jimmies in flashbacks for pathos. Too much effort is misplaced in trying to achieve a sudden tonal shift. Guess what? All actions have consequences! It's rubbed in a little too often. This isn't Crime and Punishment, this is still, essentially, a Jim Carrey movie. Still, the 'true story' aspect of the narrative goes some way to sweeten the pill. It really happened, it really did, after all.

A flawed and unlikely, but strangely uplifting and rewarding gem.