Before Knives Out, there was Brick: Rian Johnson’s alluring, hard-boiled debut
Before Benoit Blanc, there was Brendan Frye,At first glance, the teenaged gumshoe at the heart of Brick doesn’t share much with the gentleman sleuth from Knives Out, Glass Onion and the upcoming Wake Up Dead Man,Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) styles himself as a lost Agatha Christie character, while Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a jaded teen who spits Dashiell Hammett dialogue before starting fights he can’t win,But dig deeper and you’ll find two detectives caught in cases that contort around their own genre conventions,Both, of course, are creations of Rian Johnson – the writer/director who induces either delight or unspeakable rage, depending on what type of nerd you are.
And both Blanc and Brendan play their cards close to their chest and keep the audience guessing, even when they don’t know what the question is,Brick is certainly an ambitious first film: a hard-boiled film noir, but set in a high school,The story begins with Brendan staring at the body of a young woman in a stormwater drain, her outstretched arm weighed down with blue plastic bangles,Cut to two days earlier, and that same arm slips a note into Brendan’s locker, pleading for help and dragging him back into the school’s drug ring,A lesser film would wink at this gimmick, but Brick plays it completely straight: there’s a twisty plot, moody imagery, a femme fatale, two-bit thugs and a dapper dealer who styles himself as the local kingpin and is “old, like 26”.
Rather than wet inner-city streets, Brick basks in the concrete grime of suburban California: carparks, vacant lots and rundown schools,The now-cliched film noir voiceover is absent, replaced with Gordon-Levitt’s magnetic performance as Brendan, a loner whose apathetic exterior hides the fact that he cares too deeply to let anything go,While it doesn’t have the comic accents and mocking social commentary of Knives Out, Brick is also a deceptively funny film, thanks to Brendan’s bone-dry affect (he calmly takes his glasses off every time he’s about to get his ass handed to him) and the tension between the poker-faced plot and reality,When one of the film’s baddies, The Pin (Lukas Haas), arrives on the scene like an Orson Welles villain in a black cape, he’s still working out of his mum’s plywood walled basement,When Brendan reels off a list of tasks for an ally, they include “cover for me for first [period] – I’m gonna be a little late”.
As with many debut outings, Johnson struggled to get funding and made the film on a shoestring budget, relying on the talent of his friends (like cinematographer Steve Yedlin) and family (like composer Nathan Johnson).The lack of money forced them to be inventive – the score features half-filled wineglasses with a finger dragged over the rim, and Yedlin’s clever framing and low frame rates allow stunts they otherwise couldn’t afford.Low budget doesn’t mean low risk: scenes are lit with mirrors, trippy montages strangle the camera, and the dialogue is almost Shakespearean, rattling along rhythmically until a line punches you in the gut.It’s an incredibly confident take on one of cinema’s most established (and parodied) genres.Much of the Brick team have stayed with Johnson throughout his career – Steve Yedlin and Nathan Johnson are both integral to the Knives Out series.
But it would be selling Brick short to say it is only interesting as a precursor to later success: it’s an alluring, all-encompassing mystery that draws you under and holds you down,Brick is available to rent in Australia, the UK and the US,For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
Barclays boss urges UK ministers to limit public sector pay rises
The chief executive of Barclays has said the UK government needs to limit pay rises for public sector workers and resist a further “squeeze” on banks with tax increases.CS Venkatakrishnan said the government needed to look at its own spending levels as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seeks ways to address a fiscal hole when she announces her budget in November.“We need to curb expenditure at the government level,” he told the Financial Times. “We need to find a way to curb wage inflation.”Venkatakrishnan said that while the government needed to restrict rising “public sector” wages, the inflationary impact of pay rises was an issue across the UK economy
UK economy flatlines in July in grim news for Rachel Reeves
The UK economy flatlined in July, according to official figures, in grim news for Rachel Reeves as she gears up for a challenging budget.It was a slowdown compared with June, when the economy grew by 0.4%, according to the Office for National Statistics.GDP expanded strongly in the first half of the year, making the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7, but it had been widely expected to slow in the second half.The ONS said that growth in the services and construction sectors in July was offset by a 0
Larry Ellison briefly overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest person
US tech billionaire Larry Ellison is neck-and-neck with Elon Musk in the contest to be the world’s richest person after briefly overtaking the Tesla chief executive on WednesdayEllison’s wealth surged after Oracle, the business software company in which he owns a stake of 41%, reported better than expected financial results.Oracle shares rose by more than 40% in early trading, at one point valuing the business software company at approximately $960bn (£707bn) and Ellison’s stake at $393bn, just ahead of Musk’s fortune of $384bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. However, Ellison’s lead was short-lived as the stock closed at $328, a rise of 36% valuing Ellison’s shareholding at $378bn and putting Musk back ahead.The pair sit comfortably ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.Ellison, 81, also has other sources of wealth, including a stake in electric carmaker Tesla, where Musk is chief executive, a sailing team, the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, and an island in Hawaii, according to Bloomberg
Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study
Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA.The social media platform has said it proactively uses technology to filter out profiles selling drugs. However, research by Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), a Danish research organisation that promotes responsible digital development, has found evidence of a failure to moderate drug-related language in usernames. It also accused Snapchat of failing to respond adequately to reports of profiles openly selling drugs.Researchers used profiles of 13-year-olds and found a multitude of people selling drugs on Snapchat under usernames featuring keywords such as “coke”, “weed” and “molly”
Leigh sweep sorry St Helens aside to confirm home playoff slot
These two great rugby league clubs may both be preparing for the Super League playoffs in a fortnight’s time but on the evidence of what we have seen both here and in recent weeks, you suspect only one has a credible chance of walking out at Old Trafford in a month’s time.And incredibly, it is not the side who were world champions just two years ago and won four consecutive league titles at the turn of the decade. For all of the brilliance St Helens showed in that run of unprecedented domination, this is now a very different side: underlined by the fact that for the first time in the summer era, they will finish outside the top four in consecutive seasons.But this night belonged to a side who are hoping of ending a much longer wait to become champions of England. Not since 1982 were Leigh last the dominant force in rugby league, and their only other title came all the way back in 1906
Canelo Álvarez and Terence Crawford hit 167½lb ahead of Las Vegas megafight
Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez and Terence Crawford each weighed in at 167½lb behind closed doors on Friday morning, clearing the final hurdle before their historic showdown at Allegiant Stadium.The weigh-in result confirmed what many had been waiting to see: Crawford, unbeaten in 41 professional fights, tipping the scale at a career-high mark as he climbs two weight classes into the super-middleweight division for the first time. Until last year he’d never fought above 147lb and in his most recent outing last August he weighed 153.4lb in edging Israil Madrimov. Now, after months of adding bulk, he stands one night away from challenging for all four of Álvarez’s belts at 168lb
Children detained under Mental Health Act held for hours in A&E departments
Hospices ‘on the brink’ financially if assisted dying is legalised
Cost of place in children’s care homes in England hits almost £320,000 a year
Girls who play after-school sport in UK 50% more likely to later get top jobs, study finds
Boom times and total burnout: three days at Europe’s biggest pornography conference
More than half of UK births now involve medical intervention, audit finds