Cine-City

Film Review - Che

2009-04-05T15:36:00.004Z

Hailed by many critics as the first great film of 2009, Steven Soderbergh's epic study of the Cuban Revolution's poster boy is a welcome return to form for the director who has spent the past few years wrestling his indie sensibilities with more mainstream fodder. In Che Part One (Part Two is released in February) he presents a complex and relatively fast-paced account of the revolutionary leader, centring on the 1958 campaign to take Cuba with Fidel Castro.

Benicio Del Toro takes on Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in a performance of impressive restraint which showcases the actor's range considering he first came to most people's attention as the flamboyant Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects. Fifteen years and one Oscar later and Del Toro portrays Che as an introverted intellectual who follows Castro to Cuba in the late 50s in the hope of spreading the revolution to Latin America.

Dedicated to the cause but never seeming entirely comfortable with a gun, Del Toro's Che is a mysterious and meditative individual around his own people, emanating quiet charisma as he busies himself with the organisation of Castro's grand plan.

Portrayed as a doctor first and military strategist second, his ideological passions are largely restricted to the UN where he picks verbal fights with assembly members in successive flash-forwards to the 60s.

As with Traffic, for which Del Toro won his Oscar, Soderbergh punctuates the film with impressively stark visual styles, the Cuba campaign intercut with scenes shot in grainy black-and-white of Che addressing the UN and facing penetrating questions from Julia Ormond's journalist, his answers to which double as a voiceover narration.

Soderbergh presents both a human drama, and, in the final act, a gripping war movie as the 1959 assault on Santa Clara is depicted practically bullet-by-bullet in an impressive sequence of tense street-fighting.

What's perhaps missing are more probing details on Che himself. While his ideology and personality are depicted with broad brushstrokes, attempts to form a greater understanding of the man beyond the front-line or the training camp are largely sacrificed for the wider view.

First published on InTheNews in January 2009.

Film Review - Max Payne

2009-04-05T15:33:00.003Z

Let's get one thing straight. There has never been a good movie adaptation of a videogame. From Resident Evil through to Silent Hill and Tomb Raider, while the atmospherics are fairly straightforward to nail, the lack of audience interactivity leads to abject failure via paper-thin plotting and airy substance.

Still, audiences keep paying to watch them and the bottom line is enough motivation for the studios. Unfortunately Max Payne does nothing to break free of genre expectations. As a character, Payne is an almost laughably tough nut. While haunted by a periodic, sepia-toned flashback of his family's murder, he spends his downtime cleaning his guns and blows doors open with his cannon-sized six-shooter when he's chasing a villain. Although Mark Wahlberg does Repressed and Angry very well, probe a layer or two below his limited repertoire of scowls and furrowed brows and you'll be left wanting.

The support cast offers little back-up. Mila Kunis is essentially a poor man's Trinity, who has little to play with and has nothing to offer besides some extra firepower and a handy foil when the audience needs some laborious exposition. Then there's current Bond girl Olga Kurylenko who suffers the indignity of a slink-on, slink-off part in which she loses her clothes and then falls victim to one of the most embarrassing death scenes of the year.

Director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, the remake of The Omen) has a history of providing flashy visuals in place of any real substance, and he tries to pull the same trick here. Occasionally diverting action scenes will keep the teens happy but they're ultimately far too Matrix-lite to be truly effective. Of more interest is the look of the city itself, a frozen and barren New York which manages to make an impression throughout, while a series of impressive set-pieces marking the finale will produce an involuntary nod of satisfaction. Would've made a good ten-minute music video, perhaps... You'll find yourself wishing they'd paid as much attention to the screenplay.

First published on InTheNews in November 2008.

At first I thought: 'What am I supposed to do with this?'

2009-04-05T15:11:00.003Z

Marc Forster reacted in much the same way as the rest of us when the producers of the biggest franchise in cinema history told him the name of the new Bond film. Only thing was, he was the one whose job it was to make it.

Hardly the obvious choice to help pick up where Casino Royale left off, Forster initially took some convincing to sign on the dotted line. He came from a more modest, albeit critically-acclaimed, filmmaking background with the likes of Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner on his CV. "Yes, I was surprised," he says, describing during a recent BFI interview the moment the offer came in: "My agent called me and said are you interested in the next Bond film? I said: 'No, not really'."

Despite being very comfortable making lower-budget films ("I could do whatever I wanted, I had final cut, pretty much most of the actors wanted to work with me"), the director set aside his concerns that a blockbuster flop would put him out of work for five years and decided to rise to the challenge of making his first action film.

Climbing onboard the Bond juggernaut with a firm release date but no locked screenplay, the film collected screenwriters, including input from acclaimed writer-director Paul Haggis, whose work on Casino Royale is widely considered to be one of the core reasons for its success. "Paul did a great job on the [Quantum] script and I was very happy but he was also working on his own movies, so what he gave us still needed more development," Forster says diplomatically. Forster and star Daniel Craig added their own input, as did at least one other writer who missed out on a credit, but the director admits the script "was sort of a work in progress" while the crew looked to the various exotic locations to inspire them into creating exciting action set-pieces.

Carrying the promise of even more action after the electrifying free-running opening of Casino Royale, the film starts as it means to go on, hurling audiences into a manic car chase within the opening seconds before launching into a bruising sprint across Sienna's skyline with barely a pause for breath between. "I thought, if I'm making an action movie I want to do actually a lot of action," he explains, adding: "Because that's sort of the challenge for me; I've never done that before."

Forster was also keen to develop the relationship between Bond and M (played once again by Judi Dench), by having "that verbal tension between them, sort of like a little bit of this mother-son thing going on" between the two characters. As a result, Dench gets more screen-time as Bond's behaviour starts to alienate him from both the British government and the Americans, in a series of tense and increasingly fraught scenes designed to give more insight into Bond's character and his motives. Forster had carefully considered elements of the previous film to get a feel for Bond's mental state and used this to inform Quantum of Solace. He says: "I was mainly interested in the last five minutes of Casino [Royale], where Bond was as a character and where we left him and what kind of emotional state we left him in."

Forster is philosophical about the mixed critical reception the film received, although of course its box-office success makes it easier to stomach. "You know, I like polarising people!" he says, adding: "I think there's a discussion happening. Some people seem to really love it and some people really hate it. I think discussion is always good and it's not the last Bond film ever made."

Despite its success, he won't be returning for Bond 23, despite being offered the job. "They did ask me to do another one, but at this point I need to do something smaller." He gives a sly smile, unable to resist: "But then you can say never say never again..."

First published on InTheNews in March 2009.

Milk filmmakers discuss awards-baiting biopic

2009-02-04T23:21:00.004Z

James Franco, Gus Van Sant and Dustin Lance Black shed light on a new, Oscar-nominated biopic

Black is already bagging awards nominations for his screenplay recounting the extraordinary tale of Harvey Milk, who in 1978 became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US. Milk was shot dead by fellow city supervisor Dan White (played in the film by a superb Josh Brolin) later the same year and, despite the obvious significance of his life and career, remains largely unknown by many even around San Francisco where he spent the last years of his life. "It's very common that people don't know who Harvey Milk is," Black said recently in a Guardian interview at the NFT in London. He added: "It's unfortunate because it means that gay and lesbian kids don't grow up with the sense that they have forefathers and foremothers - and they really do."

Black says that the writing process was a challenge, especially given that Milk's life personally inspired the writer. The story was informed by accounts from Milk's friends and from a variety of documentaries made over the years, although a degree of "telescoping" was needed. But Black explains that Milk's friends understood the process: "They sort of got it. I think they just really wanted to see their father-figure, this man who had been so inspirational to them, they just wanted to see his story told."

Black's script has been brought to the screen by director Gus Van Sant - whose CV includes My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting - and is anchored by a stunning central performance from Sean Penn. In addition, James Franco co-stars as Milk's long-time partner, Scott Smith. The actor is still best known for his role as Peter Parker's best buddy Harry Osborn in the Spider-Man franchise, but Milk marks his most assured performance to date.

Born the year Milk was elected, Franco knew nothing of the man but was encouraged by Van Sant's involvement: "I heard that Gus was doing this movie about a guy named Harvey Milk and I'd known Gus a little bit before that." He adds: "Nobody had told me anything about Harvey Milk, and I grew up an hour away from San Francisco. They don't teach it in history class." Franco also relished the opportunity to work with Van Sant on an important project which the director was particularly enthusiastic about ("He'll be at the top of his game", he remembers thinking).

Figuring out how to interpret Scott was no easy feat for Franco. Smith died in the mid-90s and information wasn't abundant. "I did everything I could to find material on him," he explains, "but as most of the material is about Milk I had to get a lot of stories from friends." Scott was with Milk throughout most of the major events of his life, from coming out and leaving his career as an investment banker, through his first few election campaigns. Franco also tracked down some archive footage which helped him to realise the character and he's confident he's done Scott justice.

The film has received almost universally positive reviews and has tested well from the start, but Van Sant is quick to play down the buzz: "If you become too big a cheerleader for your actions and the actors and the presentation, and on the filmmaking side with the DoP's work and the lighting... " He trails off. Van Sant has had his fair share of critical mauling in the past (think of his ill-fated 1998 remake of Psycho, which came only a year after multiple Oscar success with Good Will Hunting), although Milk is likely to be justifiably remembered as one of his career highs.

Milk has also found further political relevance as its release comes only a few weeks after a law legalising gay marriage in California was abruptly overturned by Proposition 8 in the highest court in the state. Although the situation in America has far improved since Milk's death (the film depicts anti-gay campaigners routinely referring to gay people as paedophiles), Black hopes that the film will help gay and lesbian communities to take inspiration from history. "I wish it could've come a year earlier in a way so that the gay community could look to a time which was far more homophobic but see that we were winning these fights."

Milk's achievements centred on everyone being open and unapologetic about their sexuality, something that Black believes was lacking from the campaign against Proposition 8. "Harvey Milk had come up with this strategy of coming out, being upfront, outreach, education, shaking the hand of the guy or the woman who might vote against you on election day, and that was really lost." He also thinks that there is a danger in overlooking Milk's achievements: "You know, it's the old saying: if you don't know your history you're doomed to repeat it."

This article was first published on InTheNews.co.uk on 17th January 2009.

Q&A with director Daniele Luchetti

2008-08-20T13:08:00.002Z

As My Brother is an Only Child comes to DVD, we talk to the Italian director about improvisation, surviving drive-by shootings and not caring about the audience.

Based on the novel Il Fasciocomunista by Antonio Pennacchi, My Brother is an Only Child tells the story of Accio (Elio Germano), a headstrong youth growing up in southern Italy in the 60s and 70s, and his turbulent relationship with older brother Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio). When Accio is drawn to the local communist party, Manrico follows his parents′ leanings and becomes a communist. As the years rolls on, ideological differences further strain their relationship with each other and their family.

Future Movies: Considering that the chemistry between the two leads was so vital, how difficult was the casting process?
Daniele Luchetti: The most difficult thing was to find the main actor, for Accio, because he was described in the book and in the script as a thug, as an unintelligent boy, as a very muscular man. I looked at a lot of boxers for the actors and I wasn’t happy because every time I found the ‘right’ person he wasn’t so interesting. Elio Germano was the opposite of the character in the script. He’s clever and intelligent, and the idea of having an intelligent character doing stupid things is more interesting. [Accio has] a sensibility that pushes him into the idea of the radical, exaggerated, doing too much, too noisy. The antagonist to this character, the idea of Riccardo Scamarcio, is quite similar in Italy because he does a lot of teenager’s movies; he’s a big star. You feel excluded if your brother is a sex symbol, and he’s intelligent, he’s successful. That’s the character for me.

Neither of the leads lived through the events of the film, so was there anything you did to help them engage with that period of Italian history?
No, they are involved in politics, they’re very committed. In Italy there are still some slices of young people still involved in politics. I know it sounds strange that in Italy we have so much interest in politics, but it is true.

There’s a great sense of fluidity throughout the film. Was there a lot of improvisation on set?
It was very free, but only to do what I wanted! For me it was very important to work on the subtexts. Sometimes trying to reverse the apparent meaning of the scenes, for instance the scenes of fighting, I directed them as scenes of love, and when the brothers fight it’s a scene of love, non-expressive love, untold. Also, the scenes of love between Francesca, Accio and Manrico, are scenes of hate, scenes of fighting, scenes of pain, because Accio loves Francesca, but he cannot explain, so the subtext was pain. I didn’t care exactly to the lines [of the screenplay]. I kept them, but for me it was most important to keep the sensation that the dialogues are improvised.

Why did you choose to shoot so much using a handheld camera?
Usually when you shoot a movie actors are obliged to get positions, and for me [the handheld camera] gives a lot of lenience to the performance of the actor. The director of photography gave me absolute freedom of shooting using natural light, and I kept hidden to the cameraman all the scenes before we were shooting, and asked him to see the scene with the actors through the camera as a documentary. Sometimes we were shooting with two or three cameras, with two opposite angles at the same time, to keep the freshness of the dialogue.

Did you allocate rehearsal time to practice that style of shooting?
No, we didn’t rehearse at all, to keep the freshness of the performances. Sometimes after two or three or four takes I had to change lines because they were getting too precise, and to allow more material for the editing table afterwards. For example, the final scene between the brothers in the cafe I shot for two days, trying at least four different ways to do the scene; the first time with dialogue, the second time with different, political dialogue, the third time without dialogue, the fourth time just talking about stupid things as brothers do. That way, in the editing, I’ve found a thread, and you’ll see something that was similar to the script in the meaning, but not so literal.

What were the challenges in interpreting the original novel?
Yes, it was difficult because the novel is autobiographical and it has no plot, so we had to find one. That was actually the easiest thing because you have two brothers who we haven’t met, and so you have a story between them there. The most difficult thing was to return to the old political discussions, because the book was full of discussions, full of small parties that have now disappeared, and to return to this one, this idea of making the characters talk the whole time about politics – that was the most important thing. It turned out it was impossible to talk about politics and be interesting! Because, if you are real, and you make characters from the 60s talk [about politics] then you cannot understand anything because the cultural references are lost. If you try to make it understandable for today, you are fake, so we cut out a lot.

You sought out people who were politically active during the period as you researched and co-wrote the screenplay. How did that inform the writing process?
Well, the first source [of research] is the book, and the second source was my personal experience. In the 70s when I was in high school we had some political fights that were quite important, and I knew a lot of neo-fascists. Once I was in a bus-stop and I was shot at. They didn’t catch me; they got the wall behind me. It was all so fast, I didn’t understand anything. They passed me in the car and bang! I don’t know if they targeted me. Maybe it was because I was wearing a poncho, as it was a left-wing symbol. I tried to meet some fascist activists [during the writing stage], and usually they were working in the police or in personal security and as bouncers. It was funny and very tragic at the same time, because they believe in an illusion, in a very imaginative world, out of time.

The story has quite a light-hearted tone, despite the exploration of fascist and communist politics from the time. Were you ever concerned that the tone would alienate your audience?
No, not really. We had a lot of ideological movies in this era in the 70s where we had to not show a story but we had to demonstrate something, we had to demonstrate that fascism was a monster, but now we have more distance, we can tell a story about this era without giving judgement. You can just show their feelings. Sometimes you were fascist by chance because your best friend was another fascist, but you weren’t ideologically committed. In honesty I didn’t really care about the audience, because if you think of the audience before the movie you cannot have any sincerity and you cannot predict what the audience will like. The only audience you can reference is yourself.

(This article was first published on Future Movies)

How the Superheroes Saved the Stars

2008-06-17T14:33:00.004Z

It’s clear that Edward Norton decided to make the most of The Incredible Hulk. An acclaimed character actor who won an Oscar nomination on only his second film - 1997’s Primal Fear - his casting in Universal’s second stab at the Hulk franchise was a surprise to many. Not so surprising is that he effectively became a co-writer on the project, keen to explore Bruce Banner’s inner psyche and probe the complexities of the monster within. Unfortunately his efforts reportedly caused clashes with both director Louis Leterrier and a disgruntled studio, and the sole screenwriting credit ended up with Zak Penn.

The reality is that Norton needs The Incredible Hulk, just as the franchise certainly benefits from his thespian talents. Despite Norton’s early success, his standout part in David Fincher’s generation-defining Fight Club is nearly ten years old already, and a handful of gems aside - Rounders, 25th Hour, Down in the Valley - his subsequent CV has steered him ever closer towards the obscure. His projects haven’t found the audiences to match their quality, and his collaboration with Marvel signals a commitment to broaden his appeal.

Norton’s efforts to reclaim the mainstream echo the other Marvel release of the year. Jon Favreau’s Iron Man is an origins story that made the daring move of casting Robert Downey Jr as weapons engineer and metal-clad superhero Tony Stark. Production executives looked beyond the actor’s extensive list of high-profile drug misdemeanours collected over the past decade or so, and focused instead on his undeniable acting talent. He certainly delivers the goods, elevating the film above the mediocrity it would have suffered without his particular brand of breezy charisma. The actor fought for the role, and it’s not surprising given the career rebirth it has undoubtedly delivered with the film’s stunning success.

With perhaps the unfortunate exception of Eric Bana, the superheroes have generally been kind on their stars, acting as a launch-pad to new opportunities and a wealth of choice, courtesy of an expansive and eternally enthusiastic fan-base. In the same year that Norton won Academy recognition for Primal Fear, George Clooney became Bruce Wayne in Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. The film would become a doomed addition to the DC franchise, with Clooney spectacularly miscast, but although rightly remembered with derision, the mere presence of ER’s Dr Doug did wonders for his career. He went from awkward caped crusader to bedding Jennifer Lopez as stylish petty thief Jack Foley in Steven Soderbergh’s impressive crime drama Out of Sight, although he was perhaps lucky to win the role before Batman & Robin opened. He may have apologised to fans for such a mauling of the Batman legend, but as a means to an end he’s hardly complaining.

Contemporary superheroes have come to be dominated by thespians since Tobey Maguire gave Spider-Man some credibility and cult favourite Sam Raimi agreed to direct the cinematic juggernaut. Despite his youth, Maguire’s CV was already peppered with thespian projects, from Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, through The Cider House Rules to Wonder Boys. All popular with the Academy, but largely unseen by Spider-Man’s core audience. His casting opened up the character’s appeal and introduced Maguire to the popcorn crowd. Comic-book rival DC has since responded by casting a former American psycho as Batman. Christian Bale has defined himself as an actor willing to go to extraordinary physical lengths in pursuit of character, something which suits both director Christopher Nolan and the darker political times that the franchise now aspires to address.

The calibre of talent shaping big-screen superheroes is perhaps finally doing justice to the frequently overlooked standard of writing evident in the Marvel and DC universes. Comics have never really escaped their stereotypical, snotty-teenager image, despite addressing such themes as alienation and adolescent confusion with undeniable insight. Whereas the big-screen versions may rely on thespian credibility to reach audiences beyond the fan-boys as the standard of writing sinks between the comic and the screen, it’s a two-way relationship that won’t run out of steam anytime soon.

(Thsi article was first published on Future Movies in June 2008)

Casey Affleck on Gone Baby Gone: Bit-Part Player to Leading Man

2008-06-09T14:22:00.004Z

“I didn’t want it to feel like he could’ve gotten someone better,” Casey Affleck says simply, as he recalls pondering whether to take the lead in his brother Ben’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. He adds: “He probably could’ve got someone better, and I think he tried!”

Affleck has lost his voice, leaving his tones even raspier than normal. He’s casually dressed in T-shirt, jeans and trainers, and frequently pauses long and hard to find the words he’s looking for, let alone the ability to say them in his current state. Still, at least he has a work to be proud of. He eventually agreed to play Patrick Kenzie, a Boston PI who, along with his girlfriend and PI partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), is hired by the family of abducted four year-old Amanda McCready, when the police investigation draws a blank. The pair find themselves up against corrupt cops, child abuse, surprising moral questions and the murky world of Boston’s criminal fraternity, as they delve deeper into the child’s disappearance.

Ben has surprised many critics by directing and co-writing an impressive adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, although its British release was delayed six months as a gesture of sensitivity to the ongoing Madeleine McCann case. “There’s always similarities to something, and there’ll be a family out there that’s dealing with a tragedy like that the weekend this movie comes out,” Casey sighs, although he adds that he believes the UK release delay was the right thing to do: “If there’s the tiniest chance that it might interfere in any way with the real investigation, then there’s no question.”

When asked about how he thought his work relationship would be with his brother, Casey responds with characteristic nonchalance. “I wasn’t trying to ensure… I wasn’t anticipating… a very friendly relationship on-set. I mean, when you’re trying to make a movie together, and if you both care about it, then you’ve gotta be passionate - if you’re gonna disagree, then butt heads and work it out. Why I’m so comfortable about Ben is that I knew he and I could fight comfortably, you know? We could fight and say exactly what we want, which was great if for no other reason than we save time.” He pauses for a moment, before adding: “He was always very open to me doing things… I mean, sometimes he’d be frustrated because, um…” He smiles to himself, as though concerned he’s being too candid, before laughing: “Next question!”

Ben and co-screenwriter Aaron Stockard (a childhood friend of the Afflecks) took Kenzie’s age down from 40 to 30, both to accommodate Casey’s youthful appearance and to leave scope for a more dramatic character arc. “If you had a 40 year-old private investigator, he’s presumably been working for some time,” Casey explains: “He’s probably used his gun before, he’s probably seen a dead body before, he’s probably been exposed to a lot of the moral, grey areas of his job… Making him younger means that all these things are happening for the first time and so have more of an impact on him, along with decisions that are harder to wrestle with.”

The film has drawn praise for an unflinching study of the ‘real’ Boston, one of which the Afflecks have firsthand experience, although Casey is bemused by many critics who have reacted with shock at such an unsanitised dose of social reality. “I think, you know, the faces look real, and Ben seems to really love the city and wanted to photograph the people who live there and wanted to photograph the streets where we grew up, and I don’t think it’s that harsh; it seems pretty fair,” he shrugs, adding: “Every city has corrupt police officers and crack-heads, and children are abducted everywhere across the world, so I’m not sure I see what’s so awful about it.”

The film marks Casey’s graduation from a decade of supporting roles in some 20 films (some, he admits, “phenomenally awful”), to leading man, although he’s riding a wave of critical acclaim for his portrayal of the vilified killer Robert Ford in Andrew Dominik’s stunning western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. “Well…” he begins. He pauses for several seconds before conceding: “I guess I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel nice!”

The critical success is leading towards greater choice for the 33 year-old, although his apparent physical pigeonholing has been demoralising in the past: “Very often the character description, which is usually on the first page [of the script], is something like, you know… ‘Joe Smith, early 30s… Attractive, but not so you’d notice’!”

All that should be about to change for Affleck the younger.

(This article was first published on Future Movies in June 2008)

[REC]: The Future of Horror Looks Shaky

2008-04-21T14:03:00.002Z

It would seem that shaky cameras are cool. The release of Spanish horror [REC] is the latest in a series of horror films shot on a digital camera from the perspective of stressed-out operators who are themselves a character in the story. [REC] presents the ‘footage’ captured by a late-night news reporter and her cameraman as they follow a team of Barcelona firefighters on a routine call to a seemingly innocuous apartment block. A gruesome encounter with an apparently demented old woman quickly escalates out of control, and suddenly the lives of everyone in the apartment block are under threat. With the news team present, all the action is caught on camera, the images becoming increasingly wild and frenetic as the situation worsens.

The digital format is certainly highly suited to the horror genre, with low production-costs and increasing technical flexibility proving especially advantageous for independent filmmakers. Still, mainstream cinema has taken nearly a decade to catch up with the box-office phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project. Meanwhile, words like ‘gritty’ and ‘real’ are bandied about in the press as critics and paying audiences alike respond to the stylish digital aesthetic. Where younger viewers hail the future of filmmaking, and in particular the horror genre, older critics grumble at the motion-sickness-inducing visuals and the lack of anything resembling a good old-fashioned tracking or Steadicam shot.

Whereas the Blair Witch style arose as much from necessity as from inspired editing on the part of the filmmakers, it seems that replicating the shaky-cam look on a mainstream studio production, where traditional techniques and equipment are well-practiced and readily available, can be just as tricky. It was the handheld, amateur style that provided the hook for the recent Cloverfield. Otherwise merely a bog-standard monster movie, director (and pal of Lost co-creator JJ Abrams) Matt Reeves decided to appeal directly to the YouTube generation by shooting the entire $30m film in a shaky-cam aesthetic, notably against the advice of his production team who didn’t relish the challenge of having to look like they didn’t know what they were doing. Reeves achieved the look by getting his actors to shoot some of the footage themselves, and, indeed, becoming a cameraman himself; “I qualified for the job by being, well…not qualified!” he told reporters on the press-circuit. Being a studio piece, however, the trick was also in ensuring his crack team of professional camera operators adopted an amateur style while still capturing the right shots necessary for both maintaining suspense and driving the story. The result is a riotous piece of filmmaking which, while failing to live up to much of the hype, shows the studios are finally paying attention to the massive cultural influence of multimedia viewing platforms, of which YouTube is the most recognised.

Digital shaky-cam filmmaking is seen by many as directly relevant to the everyday lives of the cinema-going public, a fact which big-budget Hollywood will doubtless be looking to on a larger scale now that Cloverfield has paid off handsomely at the international box-office (a sequel is already in the works). Matt Reeves has stated that his film was “made for an audience that does this daily,” as he refers to the quantity of online material depicting ordinary people simply filming their daily lives. With the lingering spectre of terrorism still very much at the forefront of people’s minds, converging the reality of modern media saturation with times of crisis has been a topical theme since images of the World Trade Center collapse were beamed to a live global audience. Cloverfield is at its best and most poignant early on when panic sets in across New York in scenes deeply reminiscent of amateur footage filmed on 9/11, while [REC] and George Romero’s own Diary of the Dead, an addition to his original zombie saga (and follow-up to Land of the Dead) seen through the eyes of a group of film students, explore the now-common theme of infection and viral threat. With the tragedy of 9/11 in New York, the fallout of 7/7 in London, and then the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina documented by both amateurs and professionals alike to be saturated across television and the Internet, firsthand experiences of a world in chaos are accessible at the touch of a button. Replicating this chaos in fiction filmmaking is therefore fertile filmmaking territory that suits the digital format and is a gift to the horror genre.

This isn’t to say that the character-as-camera-operator is limited to horror. Brian De Palma’s recent Iraq dram Redacted, addresses the media-saturated world head-on. Exploring the lives of a platoon of US soldiers on checkpoint duty in a provincial Iraqi town, the story unfolds primarily through the eyes of a young GI who films his experiences in preparation for a planned film-school application on his return home. The film uses this character facet to iron out the familiar shaky-cam aesthetic (the soldier has raw talent as a filmmaker, after all, so he knows how to use a camera), focusing on the content of the soldier’s point-of-view rather than the style in which he shoots it. De Palma also uses streamed Internet video footage, CCTV and even pinhole cameras to develop the story, in a marked difference from the frenetic style that increasingly characterizes the horror genre.

The problem comes when repetition kicks in. Although still a solid horror, [REC] suffers from a lack of originality, a frenetic zombie film following hot on the heels of both Diary of the Dead and The Zombie Diaries, all of which linger in the shadow of 28 Days Later… The question remains as to whether the horror genre can evolve beyond the simple shaky-cam aesthetic, or whether multiplexes will be cursed with a continuous slew of cheap knock-offs. With Cloverfield arguably Blair Witch with a visual-effects budget and a more conventional visual pay-off, it could be that the next true innovation will be left to the shoestring creativity of the independents.

(This article was first published on Close-Up Film. Click here for a full review of [REC])

"Sly's seen it... Lovely to get his blessing!" Garth Jennings and cast discuss Son of Rambow

2008-04-08T15:13:00.003Z

Mild motion-sickness isn’t perhaps the first thing you expect to feel in north London’s Holborn Studios. That’s until you realize that much of the office-space is actually located on converted barges, with a gently bobbing quay providing a walkway onto the snappily-named Eagle Wharf. This is the base of production company Hammer & Tongs, founded by director Garth Jennings and his producing partner Nick Goldsmith. Here Jennings awaits the press to discuss his second feature, Son of Rambow, along with his young stars Will Poulter and Bill Milner, and co-star Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson). All are in good humour, as you’d expect given that the film has proved a hit on the festival circuit, and its long-awaited UK release is only a few weeks away.

Set in 1982, Jennings’ film tells the story of two ten-year-olds - the quiet and sheltered Will Proudfoot (Milner), and school troublemaker Lee Carter (Poulter) - whose discovery of Stallone’s classic action-thriller First Blood inspires them to shoot their own action-packed sequel. Jennings, dressed in casual jeans and T-shirt, reckons that his young stars are largely responsible for the film charming festival audiences and critics alike. “I think if people like the film, it’s normally because they like these two,” he smiles, “You know, you can do all the best writing and all that stuff in the world, but actually it’s very hard to find people of their age with that kind of confidence.” Lucky, then, that the boys showed up when they did, as the production team was coming to the end of a fruitless five-month casting period. “We had to sort of stop casting and start moving on with pre-production, and they were both - even though they’re in the room, I would say this anyway - exactly right for the parts,” says Jennings, adding, “It was one of those instant, easy-peasy decisions.”

While the boys snap up most of the attention, Hynes plays Mary, Will’s mother. As the Proudfoots are part of the strict Brethren religion, Mary has imposed a blanket ban on television and films, making Will’s accidental exposure to First Blood all the more potent. Hynes, perhaps still best known for cult TV favourite Spaced, which she co-wrote and starred in with Simon Pegg, describes her rare, non-comedic role in Son of Rambow as “a one-off”, adding, “To play a straight role in a film like this is a gift, I mean it’s a sort of career highlight, really.” Her enthusiasm for the role even extended to the costume, despite the Brethren’s conservative tastes: “I loved it!” she laughs, “It’s like Little House on the Prairie, with the button-up shirt.”

Jennings drew inspiration from his own childhood in writing the screenplay. “This was phenomenal!” he exclaims as he recalls his own discovery of the original Rambo. “We were playing in the forest everyday, and then here’s this guy with a knife and a stick who takes on two-hundred guys – he only kills one of them, and that’s by throwing a rock…” Even, however, after the success of his debut feature, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Jennings found the £3.5 million production-budget was still far from easy to secure for Son of Rambow, as it didn’t seem to track with industry expectations. “We weren’t making another loony space movie, or something with a robot,” he sighs, “No, seriously, people were saying, ‘Nice… but have you got anything with robots, or some puppets? Puppets would be great.’”

With the budget eventually secured, taking a step back in terms of production size was a relief for Jennings, who, having come from a background in music video production through Hammer & Tongs, found the big-budget studio experience to be sometimes cumbersome on Hitchhiker’s. “We [had] got to do it exactly as we wanted to, but we suddenly inherited all this studio stuff,” he explains, “We had a load of people, it means you’re a lot slower, it’s harder to get what you want, just the numbers… So it was rather nice to do Son of Rambow and go, right, you really don’t need all that stuff.” Cutting back on the studio fat meant Jennings could also pay more attention to his stars. Hynes describes how the production’s small scale helped preserve its charm: “They’ve solved problems with the film within their own sort of creative team, which has meant that it’s kept its heart.” As Jennings banters back and forth with Milner and Coulter in the Holborn Studios barge, they offer a glimpse of how much fun the shoot must’ve been. “It was an amazing thing for a director to have people who just, I mean when you say ‘Can you be dragged a hundred feet along the floor really fast by the kite there?’ (imitates the boys) ‘Yeah, cool,’” Jennings gushes.

The boys weren’t allowed to do their own stunt-work (“if something happened, that would be the end of everything,” Jennings grimaces), although Milner admits to a boyish rivalry with his co-star: “During filming we had like an ongoing competition who could do the most stunts, but they were always a bit petit!” Milner remains the only one of the two to have seen the original First Blood, strictly for research purposes of course. “It did help me, kind of, play my character a bit more,” he offers, thoughtfully. It turns out that Milner’s more into Spider-Man (“He’s a dangerous lad! And he goes to school! He’s doing his GCSEs, and he’s fighting crime at the same time!”), while Coulter’s cinematic inspiration is Ethan Hunt: “I remember when I was about ten years old coming out of Mission: Impossible and being generally convinced that I was a secret agent!”

Son of Rambow was originally scheduled for release last summer, but legal problems restricted it to the festival circuit instead. Jennings and Goldsmith had gone into production not knowing who owned the rights to First Blood (Son of Rambow uses clips of Stallone, and, of course, the correctly-spelt name), but discovered afterwards that, in Jennings’ words, “people own different parts of Rambo”, which complicated things. Jennings describes the production mentality, with a wide smile: “[We thought] we’ll just make it, and it’ll be good, and then they’ll see it and go, oh alright, and, er… that was unbelievably naïve.” Luckily, the legal issues have all now been sorted, and the film even has the seal of approval from Rambo himself, to Jennings’ obvious delight: “Sly’s seen it, and he gave me a very, very nice review, yes, he was very sweet. Lovely to get his blessing.” Lets hope Son of Rambow gets the box-office reception it so richly deserves.

(This article was first published on Future Movies)

Box-Office Blood: Michael Haneke Re-Boots Funny Games

2008-03-19T13:46:00.005Z

The scene takes place in an East Coast lake-house. Ann is an affluent middleclass mother, and right now she is fast approaching the limits of emotional endurance. Tormented, along with her husband and young son, by two well-spoken young sociopaths, Ann is battered, bruised and emotionally wrecked. “Why don’t you just kill us?” she asks one of her tormentors. “You shouldn’t forget the importance of entertainment,” comes the cruelly jovial response. Although potentially ripped from a tabloid headline, this single line of dialogue sums up the tone of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games U.S., a shot-for-shot English-language remake of his own 1997 Austrian domestic drama Funny Games. With moments of gut-wrenching horror mixed with spikes of jet-black humour, Haneke tells a sadistic tale that explores the media’s relationship with violence, and how that relationship impacts on viewers both young and old. For youths Paul and Peter (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet, respectively), violence is a game without consequences, bouts of torture arranged between a bit of TV and a sandwich. When things don’t go their way, they literally ‘rewind’ the action and replay the scene with the necessary adjustments made; “Where’s the fucking remote!” Paul cries as their victims briefly gain the upper hand. It’s a surreal moment, but nonetheless incisively taps into their states of mind.

Haneke counters the largely-unseen violence of Funny Games U.S. with dark humour, as though poking fun at the false reality of the films and television that have clearly inspired his two young sociopaths. Paul and Peter often raise a wry, if uncomfortable, smile when they discuss their motivation, gleefully plundering all the usual clichés (bullying, dismissive, divorced parents, um, incest…), while Paul’s occasional comments directly to the camera underscore the film’s voyeuristic elements (“You’re on their side, right?” he asks us). In contrast, events seen from the victims’ perspective are far more sobering, drawing attention to the emotional realities of personal crisis. Haneke lingers on Tim Roth’s George, nursing a painful injury while trying to dry a soaked mobile phone battery with a hair-dryer in order to contact the police; hardly thrilling stuff but painfully real. Swinging from the pathetic and helpless to the emotionally-crippling, Haneke also presents an audacious scene where he keeps the camera rolling for several minutes in the aftermath of a moment of particularly devastating violence in the couple’s living-room. Once again spared the act itself, the audience must drink in the consequences, as the surviving characters first orient themselves, and then react to the emotional impact. The result is heart-thumping, if utterly draining, cinema.

Whereas Haneke debates and criticizes the media’s relationship with violence, big-budget Hollywood seems to be responding to uncertain times by backtracking when it comes to violent content. Perhaps the highest profile example of the past year is Die Hard 4.0, aka Live Free or Die Hard, to use its self-conscious post-9/11 US title. The original Die Hard became one of the definitive action movie of the 1980s (and, arguably, beyond), presenting a bloody, violent and coarse thriller. It was targeted at a young adult audience in a market dominated by machismo and Schwarzenegger, in a wider Reaganite culture of Cold War militarization. In short, violence was cool. By the time the third sequel showed up last year, the franchise was targeted squarely at the teenage market. The hard-smoking, hard-talking John McClane neither smoked nor swore, and was even given a teenage sidekick in the form of TV-star Justin Long. The plot was also self-consciously teen-oriented, involving a disgruntled techie naughtily hacking into a US Government mainframe, and thus tacking a web-related ‘Point Zero’ onto the film’s European title.

As an action movie with plenty of explosions but little actual blood, Die Hard 4.0 demonstrates the reluctance of the studios to rely on the young-adult audiences that have proved so profitable in the past. This is perhaps why the relatively low-budget torture-porn horror of the past few years, such as the hugely profitable Saw franchise and Eli Roth’s Hostel films, have been rewarded with such enormous box-office. They provide the adult alternative to the increasingly sanitised content of contemporary big-budget thrillers, most of which are rated 12A in Britain as they target the teen market in a bid to increase their chances of taking back ever-ballooning production costs. As a result violent content is toned down, although the sanitised nature of some cinematic offerings is often controversial in a different way, as with Die Hard 4.0.

In sharp contrast to the modern cinematic trend, Rambo, the third sequel to the often under-rated 1982 thriller First Blood, clings to its 80s roots with considerable gusto, much to the consternation of many US critics. Sylvester Stallone co-writes, directs, stars and perhaps even made the tea on the project that attempts to revitalize the second iconic character of his career. He was clearly less interested in playing it safe in the current climate than he was in consolidating his mark on cinematic history with more of the same. He delivers a Burmese-set gore fest that has certainly succeeded in turning heads. Presenting the thinnest of plots involving western missionaries in need of rescue from the tyrannical Burmese military, the trim screenplay hinges upon staggeringly bloody action set-pieces, providing gleefully gruesome answers for anyone who wondered what effect a piece of heavy artillery will have on a human body at point-blank range. The resulting film was surely saved from a straight-to-DVD release only by industry goodwill for Stallone’s name and the franchise’s dubious genre pedigree. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that Rambo represents a significant turning-point in the action genre, with the film seen more as a likely swansong to Stallone’s see-sawing career than any kind of industry barometer.

The thorny subject of movie violence can be detected lingering in the background of almost every headline-grabbing tragedy, from Jamie Bulger through to Columbine and, more recently, the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Combined with the post-9/11 cultural sensitivity, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the major studios are avoiding big-budget gore-fests. Still, with the next generation of video-games at times attracting even more attention than the latest installment of the Saw franchise, the question of how individuals respond to on-screen violence, and the reality of violent acts, looks to remain eternally relevant, even if sly explorations of the subject from the likes of Michael Haneke, seem few and far between.

(Funny Games U.S. is released in the UK on 4th April. This article was first published on Future Movies)

Juno: Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman in Interview

2008-02-17T21:16:00.005Z

“I have a sick, sick tendency to find comedy in crisis,” admits Diablo Cody. She and director Jason Thank You For Smoking Reitman are in a jovial mood as they greet journalists in the depths of London’s Soho Hotel. It’s a cold October afternoon, and Juno will be making its UK debut in the next few days at the 51st London Film Festival. Only three months later the film will have taken an astounding $100m at the US box-office (from a budget of less than $10m) and secured no fewer than four Oscar nominations, but for the moment it remains a below-the-radar indie that’s testing well and generating positive buzz.

It all kicked off with a blog called Pussy Ranch, written daily by former stripper Diablo Cody (aka: Brook Busey-Hunt). For six months, producer Mason Novick read each new entry and laughed, before finally deciding it was time to drop her a line and ask her whether she’d ever tried writing a screenplay. Cody admits she was initially wary. “I’m just a pragmatic mid-Westerner. Writing movies is not something that we do,” she says, adding, “I didn’t really listen to him right off the bat, I kinda blew him off for a while, and then finally he got to me, and so I started writing Juno.” The resulting screenplay tells the story of pregnant and quick-witted teen Juno MacGuff. Deciding to give up her unborn baby for adoption, the story follows the impact of her decision upon the nervous father-to-be, her family, the couple who will adopt, and of course Juno herself. The screenplay landed on Reitman’s desk, who found he was hooked by the second page: “I thought, ‘Wow, this girl’s got a great voice’,” he says, “and by about halfway through I just thought, ‘if I don’t direct this, I’m gonna regret it for the rest of my life’.”

It comes as no real surprise that Cody draws Juno from her own adolescence (“I consider the character autobiographical in a sense” she says). As a result, she was frequently on-set to make any changes or adaptations that Reitman deemed necessary. “It’s her voice, at the end of the day,” states Reitman. It’s 20 year-old Ellen Page who breathes deadpan life into Cody’s creation. Reitman had, like most people, been mightily impressed with her performance in the controversy-baiting Hard Candy, and from their first meeting her role in the film proved a no-brainer. Page effortlessly nails Cody’s tone, and has been rewarded with an Oscar nomination for her troubles.

Part of the film’s appeal is the comedic tone, the “comedy-in-crisis” set-up that seems to be Cody’s natural setting as a writer, and which has undoubtedly been a major factor in the film’s stunning success. Teen-pregnancy doesn’t perhaps make for the most obvious comedy material, but Cody’s writing generates a distinctly liberating feel that manages to explore serious social themes while keeping the tone light and fluffy. “I always saw comedic potential in the idea of this unplanned pregnancy,” Cody confirms, “I know people think that’s kinda weird.” But it’s a tone that plays to Reitman’s strengths: “I actually think you can deal with more issues in comedy than you can in drama,” he says, “For some reason in a comedy, soon as you get people laughing, you’re able to say things you otherwise were not able to say… Had [Diablo] done this as a drama, it would’ve perhaps just been melodramatic.”

Although the story hinges around Juno’s pregnancy, Reitman believes that wider themes are in fact more prevalent: “What I think Diablo really approached, in a very sophisticated way on this film, more than teenage pregnancy, is the changing idea of what a modern family is.” In making his point, he draws attention to Juno’s stepmother Bren (played by former West Winger Allison Janney), who is sympathetic to her stepdaughter’s plight from the start, and Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), the increasingly estranged couple who Juno decides will make suitable adoptive parents for her baby. Reitman also points out that all the main characters, at some point in the film, “decide to grow up.” As he surmises, “That’s, I think, what makes it infinitely relatable.”

The Stateside success of Juno has certainly confirmed that cinema audiences have connected with Cody’s story en masse. Cody herself has become hot Hollywood property, and has already been courted by Spielberg for TV show The United States of Tara. Arguably, not since Charlie Kaufman delivered his quirky screenplay for Being John Malkovich in 1999, has a writer been thrust into the spotlight so quickly. With Cody’s cannibal horror Jennifer’s Body already in preproduction, she’s certainly a talent to watch out for.

This article was first published on The Smell of Napalm

Cloverfield: Director Matt Reeves Discusses A Beast For Our Time

2008-02-17T20:53:00.005Z

“I mean, a giant monster’s absurd, but you have to find ways to make it real.” Director Matt Reeves smiles as he recalls the moment when childhood friend and Lost co-creator JJ Abrams approached him with an idea for a modern, thoroughly American monster movie, inspired by the enduring Japanese cultural resonance of Godzilla. Reeves was understandably cautious, as would anyone who had never directed a feature before, much less a feature that was so effects-heavy, calling for the wholesale destruction of New York City at the hands of a 350-foot beast. But Reeves soon found a hook that compelled him to commit to the challenge. “I think what’s different about the movie is really the point-of-view,” he explains, adding that the production mentality became to “try and find the way this would be shot if the person finding the camera was going through the experience.”

Taking inspiration from the personalised home-movie style so abundant on YouTube, along with sources such as Deborah Scranton’s The War Tapes, a war documentary shot by National Guard troops serving in Iraq, Reeves decided that all the action would be filmed from a single viewpoint, with a character simply picking up the camera and shooting the experience. “This movie is very much made for an audience that does this daily,” Reeves says. The resulting story centres on a group of twenty-somethings whose party is interrupted by an apparent earthquake and then an explosion in downtown Manhattan. Given the task of filming the party, the amiable Hud (TJ Miller) ends up documenting his friends and the resulting chaos as the city comes under attack. Cloverfield marks the first time this style of shooting has found its way into a big-budget production, although of course the micro-budgeted Blair Witch Project employed a similar idea way back in 1999. “The thing about Blair Witch,” Reeves observes, “is that they use that style very smartly to create suspense that will never be paid off because they can’t afford to pay it off.” While there’s the argument that Blair Witch was effective because it lead the audience to create the largely unseen horror in their own minds, it’s undeniable that Cloverfield presents a gripping big-budget alternative to the intimate point-of-view format which, for better or worse, leaves little to the imagination.

While a rough-and-ready shooting style may come more naturally to independent filmmakers strapped for cash, Reeves found instilling a similar sense in his team of professionals was something of a challenge: “When we have a focus-puller and, you know, somebody walks in and hits their mark, and if that person isn’t sharp, then that person (the focus-puller) loses their job! This all has to be messy.” A solution was that TJ Miller shot much of the footage himself as Hud with an actual handy-cam, as did Reeves as he also qualified for the job by being, well, not qualified for the job. Of course, the pros did some of the work too. “Some of it was that we got our professionals to try and shoot to look as bad as what we were doing,” smiles Reeves, adding, “I’d put our professional camera-operators, with their 50-60 pound cameras, in TJ’s clothing so that whenever you saw his feet, that was TJ’s feet, supposedly, or his hands. And basically it was this giant experiment.”

Of course, the cinematic destruction of New York brought its own concerns, in the post-9/11 climate, and this was something that Reeves and his team were acutely aware of throughout. “I think that all really interesting genre films, for me, tend to reflect the anxiety of the time,” Reeves notes, “They reflect our deep-seated fears.” With Godzilla originally presenting such an overt manifestation of nuclear anxieties, released only a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it is perhaps inevitable that the first big-budget disaster movie since the 9/11 terror attacks should focus so significantly on individuals merely reacting to a crisis. Indeed, many of the images in Cloverfield strongly recall home-movie footage of the tragedy, including people staggering through dust-covered streets and taking cover in shops as the monster passes them by. As producer JJ Abrams has previously said, “We live in a time of great fear. Having a movie that is as outlandish as a massive creature attacking your city allows people to process and experience that fear in a way that is incredibly entertaining and incredibly safe.”

This article was first published on Close-Up Film

One Man, His Dog and a CG Apocalypse

2008-01-13T18:53:00.000Z

‘Infected’ is the horror genre’s buzzword for the 21^st Century. Big-budget film productions are gradually backing away from the classical monsters that defined early horror, the studios apparently fearful of kitsch, B-movie associations and sub-genre pigeonholing. As Will Smith wanders the deserted streets of New York City in Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend, an assault-rifle slung over one shoulder and his faithful pooch padding alongside, his nights are haunted not by the vampires of Richard Matheson’s original novel, but by infected humans referred to as ‘dark-seekers’, a pretentious phrase seemingly designed to avoid the word ‘vampire’ at any cost. Although aversive to sunlight, they’re in fact more zombie than vampire, victims of an apparent cancer cure that backfired spectacularly and ushered the apocalypse.

The third film adaptation of Matheson’s 1954 novel, I Am Legend saw a decade-long development phase that was delayed even further by the release of Danny Boyle’s 2002 low-budget horror 28 Days Later... . A superior film made for a fraction of the cost of Lawrence’s adaptation, screenwriter Alex Garland borrowed heavily from Matheson in crafting his story of a young man who wakes from a coma to find London deserted. The UK has been evacuated in the aftermath of a savage plague – viscerally referred to as ‘Rage’ – which, upon transmission of infected blood, almost instantaneously strips victims of their humanity and turns them into rabid, demon-eyed, blood-vomiting monsters. It was a shocking vision amplified by a gritty digital format. The film has become a seminal entry in the modern horror genre - finally spawning a belated sequel last year – and ushered a new chapter for the cinematic undead as a source of serious horror. Not that the monsters have at any time been referred to as either ‘undead’ or ‘zombies’. Instead, as with the ‘dark-seekers’ of I Am Legend, they were merely ‘Infected’, knocked several steps down the evolutionary chain by a virus.

George Romero himself took inspiration from Matheson in creating a horror icon when he critiqued America’s involvement in Vietnam in 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, and then satirized Western consumerism a decade later in Dawn of the Dead. Similarly, 28 Days Later… arguably captured the 21^st Century zeitgeist. In the aftermath of 9/11, and in the months preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the fear of weapons of mass destruction, chemical warfare and infection, dominated headlines across the Western world. The Bush Administration insisted Saddam was stockpiling unpleasant chemicals in the Iraqi desert, and tabloids speculated on the likelihood of a terrorist ‘dirty’ bomb hitting London or New York. As though feeding from this dark collective fear of what reprisals the War on Terror will bring to the West, both 28 Days Later… and I Am Legend offer striking images of deserted urban landmarks plastered with billboards warning of infection. The end of the world is a sight the camera soaks up with relish.

The ‘zombie’, the ‘infected’, the ‘dark-seeker’, or whatever name is chosen to ease the route to box-office success, is overdue a serious resurgence. For nearly two decades from the late 1980s, the zombie was effectively confined to the annals of cinematic ridicule, perhaps owing to the torrent of lazy parodies and trashy TV movies that plagued the 1990s (Space Zombie Bingo, anyone?). 28 Days Later…made the zombie scary again, and the film’s massive stateside success was clearly interpreted by the studios, albeit with a characteristic laziness. A remake of Dawn of the Dead hit multiplexes in 2004, jettisoning the consumerist satire of Romero’s original to concentrate on snarling horror that seemed directly inspired by Boyle’s brutal hit.

Once again, however, it was the British who broke new ground in the genre. Comedy duo and Romero-worshippers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, released the London-set zombie-homage Shaun of the Dead in 2004. A quirky, hilarious and surprisingly violent affair, the film was billed as a “romantic comedy with zombies”, telling the story of a young man attempting to fix his relationship woes with the added inconvenience of the undead roaming the streets of London. Like 28 Days Later…the film was embraced by the Americans, and even played a part in convincing Romero himself to direct a fourth zombie film of his own. Land of the Dead was released in 2005 to mixed reviews. Indeed, it lacked the satirical punch of his previous outings, although it marked a return to the classic lumbering zombie that suddenly proved no less terrifying than the rabidly hyperactive victims of 28 Days Later…

I Am Legend can, in a sense, be considered Hollywood’s response to 28 Days Later… While similarly dramatic in its depiction of a deserted urban landscape, this time New York, Smith does a good job exploring the psychological elements of the story. Unfortunately his strong performance is undermined by a film that crumbles under the pressures of mass-appeal filmmaking. Abandoning Matheson’s vampires on purely commercial grounds – the studio didn’t want the project pigeonholed as just another vampire movie – the resulting ‘dark-seekers’ are disappointingly digital, looking as though the visual-effects department handed in only half-finished homework. Still, having proved a huge hit across the world, a sequel seems almost inevitable. There is, it would seem, life in the undead yet.

This article was first published on Future Movies in January 2008

The War on Terror Meets the Hollywood Ending

2007-12-04T11:49:00.000Z

The ongoing War on Terror doesn't play by the Hollywood rulebook. The current lack of anything resembling a final act means that there are plenty of questions, accusations and statistics, but no closure in sight. As with Vietnam the cultural impact has been seismic, and having dealt with the events of 9/11 directly through the likes of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and Paul Greengrass' superior United 93, Hollywood has now shifted its gaze to the wider conflicts that have arisen from the rubble. The past four months alone have seen the release of three star-studded studio productions, The Kingdom, Rendition and Lions For Lambs, all looking at different elements of the War, while the schedule for the coming months is peppered with similar offerings in the run-up to Awards Season. Terror, it seems, is the Serious Subject of the times, and with a US election less than a year away (and Daily Show presenter Jon Stewart set to bring topical comic-observation to Oscars 2008), Hollywood's royalty are all keen to get a slice of the action.

Despite polished production-values and a strong cast headed by Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner, Peter Berg's The Kingdom is less a comment on the War on Terror than a revenge fantasy featuring FBI agents tearing up Saudi Arabia, coincidentally (or not) the kingdom that produced the majority of the 9/11 hijackers. Marketed as an action-thriller with brains, the film was defined by a high-profile poster campaign showing Foxx prone with bullet-proof vest, shotgun and shades. Seizing upon producer - and Heat director - Michael Mann's reputation for technical realism, Universal thrust his name front-and-centre to promote the tale that opens with a devastating terror attack on a Saudi-based US housing compound.

Matthew Michael Carnahan's screenplay phones-in a study of Middle East-West tensions, with the Saudis portrayed as mostly uncooperative and incompetent, while even the Americans come across as arrogant and revenge-driven. The reality, however, is that politics comes a distant second to the balls-out action promised by the poster imagery and bolstered by the "ticking time-bomb of a movie" poster-quote, originating from men's mag Maxim. The film's main selling point is a freeway ambush that leads to a kidnapping and subsequent takedown of a terrorist stronghold in a blaze of automatic gunfire. With Mann lurking behind the scenes, and Peter Berg rapidly establishing himself as a technically adept director, the action is expertly staged, but also more than a little vacuous given the context. Conveniently enough, the team end up killing the mastermind of the opening compound attack, in the process providing the Hollywood Ending that brings a kind of misguided satisfaction. "We'll kill them all" whispers a traumatised Saudi girl, whose apartment has been ripped apart by small-arms fire during the finale. We discover her words mirror Foxx's FBI agent as he comforted a colleague days earlier. The revelation is intended to create dramatic gravitas and draw attention to the notion of violence perpetuating violence, but there's a sense that this is merely a token gesture, and that the death of the movie's criminal mastermind totally justifies the long-term consequences, no matter how bad they be.

Carnahan is also the screenwriting brains behind Lions For Lambs, a self-consciously cerebral take on the conflict that features Peter Berg in a supporting role in one of three story strands. Taking a far more serious stab at the myriad political issues of the War, Carnahan spares only the US infantry from his and director-star Robert Redford's stern finger of blame for America's new quagmire. Co-starring alongside Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep (but sharing no scenes with them) Redford plays a West Coast political science professor trying to inspire a talented but disillusioned student. The film's argument is that America's apathetic youth are squandering their potential, while both the government and the media are guilty of hypocrisy for their parts in initiating and sustaining the conflict. Undeserving of the critical mauling its received on both sides of the Atlantic, the rhetoric may sound familiar, but the presentation nevertheless makes for generally thought-provoking filmmaking, especially through engaging scenes between Cruise's committed Republican senator, and Streep's veteran reporter. The chatter is undermined by a flag-waving thread involving two wounded GIs on tour in Afghanistan, which gradually signals Redford losing his nerve. The final act then nosedives into implausible melodrama and even condescension, culminating in the ludicrous sight of Streep's veteran journalist choking back tears as she returns from the Hill finally 'facing up' to her network's indirect roll in the ongoing slaughter.

Streep switches from enlightened journalist to cold-hearted CIA chief, in Gavin Hood's Rendition, a drama that explores the CIA's 'extraordinary rendition' policy, apparently significantly indulged since 9/11. Involving the covert transport of suspected terrorists to countries where interrogations can take place without legal concerns (with all the torturous trimmings that implies), the film found its cinematic release only months after the British government drew an apparent blank on an investigation into real-life CIA rendition flights, that allegedly used British airports as stopovers. The film focuses on an Egyptian-American abducted by the CIA on arrival in Chicago from a business trip, and flown to an anonymous North African country (clearly Morocco), for questioning, hours after a Morrocan suicide bombing kills a CIA operative. While the abductee is stripped and tortured by the local intelligence officer under the observation of Jake Gyllenhaal's CIA rookie, back in the US the man's wife battles a wall of silence in trying to uncover her husband's whereabouts. Meanwhile, in a third strand, the daughter of the Moroccan intelligence officer has a secret relationship with a young man who is becoming radicalised in a local mosque.

While Hood does a good job exploring the CIA's illegal (and perhaps ongoing) shuttling about of prisoners who may or may not be guilty, the film's finale approaches and the narrative structure eventually makes more impact than its subject-matter. Suddenly challenging the audience's assumption that inter-cut story strands are happening simultaneously (a la Lions For Lambs), we watch the radicalised teenage boy carrying out the film's opening bombing, as Hood reveals that the events of this story-strand have happened a week prior to everything else. Cut back (or rather forward, as is suddenly the reality) to the interrogation and in a plot-device apparently borne of desperation, Gyllenhaal's rookie has a crisis of conscience. In a plausibility-defying move he frees the prisoner himself after what's been a week of brutal interrogation, even pausing to notify the American press of his actions as he orchestrates the getaway. As a relatively painless and tidy close, it's a more palatable result for multiplex audiences.

All three films offer personal closures against the wider backdrop of a war with no end. The Kingdom offers a dead bombing mastermind with no home casualties and Rendition obligingly frees it prisoner, while, in Lions For Lambs, the media accepts responsiblity for its part in the conflict, disillusioned youth are reinvigorated and soldiers fall bravely in battle. The conflict may be ongoing, but when packaged as a bitesize war, the elusive third act is easier to come by. In the coming months, the War on Terror will maintain its presence in multiplexes. Writer-director Paul Haggis' In The Valley Of Elah, Brian DePalma's Redacted, Nick Broomfield's Battle For Habitha and James Strouse's Grace Is Gone are all set to explore different elements of the conflict, from grief to mass-murder and back again. Even the origins of today's political problems will be addressed, albeit in a lighthearted fashion, through Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War, set during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s when the CIA funded and armed Osama Bin Laden. Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, it seems few are keen to miss out on the politics of the age, and there are doubtless many stories still to tell. All that's missing is a real-life ending.

First published on the Future Movies website.

The Darjeeling Limited: A Journey With Wes Anderson

2007-11-21T14:06:00.000Z

"What I'd had in mind was to work in India, and before that, three brothers on a train." Director Wes Anderson describes the creative genesis of his latest feature, The Darjeeling Limited, with disarming simplicity. Whilst certainly, at its most basic level, the tale "of three brothers on a train", there's much more to it than that, as you would expect from a filmmaker proclaimed by some to be the next Martin Scorsese, and certainly one of the most fascinating and exciting American writer-directors. Filmed on location in Northwest India, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman star as brothers Peter and Jack Whitman, summoned to the sub-continent by eldest brother Francis, played by Anderson stalwart Owen Wilson. Having not spoken to each other since their father's funeral a year previously, the three siblings find themselves sharing a cramped compartment on the eponymous train, struggling to both adapt to each other's company and understand Francis' real reasons for such a peculiar family gathering.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a director whose CV includes quirky titles such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Anderson's latest project experienced a somewhat unconventional journey to the big-screen. Co-written by Anderson, Schwartzman and also Roman Coppola, the story found its origins in Anderson's experiences on his first trip to India. The three friends then made their own journey into the sub-continent, deciding to stay until the screenplay was complete. "[The story] is filled with all our personal experiences," Anderson explains, shortly before the film closes the London Film Festival, "We had an idea that we wanted to make a very personal movie. Practically everything in it is something that happened to either one of us, or someone we know." Writing as they travelled, they went further, actually acting out scenes in public places, that often ended up being used as the actual shoot-locations. It was a method that Schwartzman clearly found a liberating experience. "We'd be walking down the street," he says enthusiastically, "and if we had a scene that took place in a temple we would take out our scripts if we happened to be in front of a temple, and we would act out the scenes. We would see what worked and what didn't work." Anderson smiles as he remembers the crowds gathering to watch three American tourists role-playing in the open. "Without realising it you're surrounded by ten Indian men," he says, "[They're] looking at the script too, trying to make sense of it all, and giving their two cents about it."

Anderson insisted on shooting on a real train for the scenes onboard The Darjeeling itself. The production acquired ten carriages and an engine, and created interiors that fused several different East-West designs. To top it all off, the train ran on live track throughout the three-month shoot. Co-star Adrien Brody thoroughly enjoyed the experience. "The most exciting aspect of that was that it was real," he says in his calm, considered tones, "I think that as an actor your objective is to connect as much as you can to not only your character's emotions, but the environment, and oftentimes in film, the actual environment is very different than what the character is supposedly going through." He adds, "In this case, [Wes] created a very authentic and inspirational environment." Anderson also points out that the train presented "a very intimate working environment" that contrasted sharply with scenes shot amongst crowds of people in the towns and train-stations. As he observed, the train station "was absolutely overwhelmed with people, and [in] the train compartment there's not room for the sound-man!" In these circumstances it's perhaps just as well that family dysfunction, Anderson's speciality, remained firmly in the pages of the screenplay, and the reality on-set was a far more amiable affair. As Brody notes, "I think the fact that we were all in such an exotic location, and we were all on such an adventure, it created a real sense of family and closeness."

In true Anderson style, the story itself has an abundance of subtle character quirks that suggest each character's emotional baggage. From Francis' recent brush with death in a mysterious motorcyle accident (his head is bandaged throughout the film), through Peter clinging onto items belonging to their late father, to Jack scrawling short, ostensibly fictional stories of sibling rivalry and relationship woes. Despite having the opportunity to present rich back-stories throughout the film, the writing team resisted the temptation to deliver too much detail. "We wanted a movie that was a bit more mysterious, that was more sparse, and would imply more than say more," Schwartzman explains, "The audience could make up their own mind about things, and create their own back-story for a lot of what they were seeing." The result is eccentricity, peculiarity and quirky humour, all of which will be familiar to Anderson's fans, and should, if there's any justice, win him some more.

Click here for a full review of the film. This article can also be read at reviews website The Smell of Napalm.

Werner Herzog on Rescue Dawn

2007-11-15T15:15:00.000Z

"What's his name who did Star Wars?" asks German filmmaking legend Werner Herzog. He nods his head at the mention of George Lucas' name, but rather than launching into an anti-Lucas tirade, as you might expect from someone whose spent decades avoiding mainstream Hollywood, he says instead, "You shouldn't be worried about George Lucas going to the outer galaxy; he's making a film within his culture." It's a refreshing viewpoint, almost too fresh to take seriously, but Herzog's not joking. Cultural identity is important to the Bavarian auteur, who insists, "I have left my country, but I have never left my culture."

Herzog's in good humour, despite just entering his fourth hour of press-meetings. When he first enters the room, in the bowels of London's Charlotte Street Hotel, he moves around the table and gives each one of us (there are eight) a firm handshake and a smile, before we settle down to business. He's in London to promote his latest feature, Rescue Dawn, the true story of German-born US Navy pilot Dieter Dengler who was shot down during a top-secret bombing campaign over Laos in 1966. After spending months on the edge of starvation and subject to medieval conditions in a remote prison-camp, he and fellow prisoner Duane Martin made a daring escape into the dense jungle. Christian Bale takes on the role of Dengler, bringing a sprightly spirit, optimism and unrelenting determination to the character who Herzog says, "had all the qualities I like in Americans." Quick to play down Bale's weight-loss, achieved to portray a prisoner living in such conditions, Herzog states that his primary concern was "to stop Christian from going too much into an imitation of the real Dieter Dengler." He goes on to explain that Dengler's heavy German accent would have never worked for the project, and it becomes clear that Herzog was keen to focus instead on what he refers to as the "frontier-spirit" that kept the pilot alive during his ordeal.

Rescue Dawn in fact marks the second time that Herzog has approached the subject of Dieter Dengler's "wild" life, the first being his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. The film only touched briefly, however, on the time Dengler spent in the prison-camp, and Dengler himself turned to Herzog at the documentary's premiere and said "this is unfinished business". Herzog reveals that the feature-film would have come first if circumstances had allowed it, but funding complications led to the documentary coming to fruition first. Herzog believes that "the films complement each other very well," adding, "in spirit, in its heart, the feature film has always been the first one."

It's clear that Herzog feels a strong connection to Dengler, having invested so much of himself in bringing the pilot's story to the big-screen over the past ten years. The two men shared strikingly similar upbringings, neither having a father-figure in their lives as children, and both suffering from deprivation and hardship in postwar Germany. Although touched upon with only a few lines of dialogue in Rescue Dawn, Dengler's childhood is looked at in Herzog's initial documentary, for which Herzog met with the man himself, in the process forming a close friendship. Dengler sadly died in 2001, but Herzog has a clear and lifelong affection for the man: "Even now, when I get into complicated situations," he says, "I often ask myself: 'What would Dieter have done?'"

Of course, Herzog is no stranger to 'complicated situations', be they physical or emotional. Take Klaus Kinski, the German actor with whom Herzog experienced an at-best tumultuous, at worst near-homicidal relationship, during the filming of such jungle-set classics as Aguirre, Wrath Of God and Fitzcarraldo in the 70s; the mere mention of his name leaves Herzog instantly stony-faced (for the record, Herzog doesn't think Bale, or anyone for that matter, should attempt to tackle a Kinski biopic - the journalist in question hastily adds his tongue was firmly in his cheek). Beyond Kinski, however, Herzog is notorious for journeying to the most inaccessible corners of the world in pursuit of cinematic gold, and of course he's particularly well-known for his apparent affinity with the jungle. In discussing the making of Rescue Dawn, it's clear he relishes a challenge, as he describes scouting for appropriate locations in the thick Thai jungle and discovering a dense wall of vines: "You literally cannot imagine that a human being can penetrate," he says, adding with a sly smile, "we stopped and said 'Let's go for that one!'"

Rescue Dawn may be Herzog's first collaboration with Hollywood actors, with Christian Bale heading up acting talent that includes unlikely casting choice Steve Zahn (as downed helicopter pilot Duane Martin), and also Jeremy Davies as the deluded and antagonistic Gene DeBruin, but otherwise the production is, in Herzog's words, "not Hollywood". Although the lack of pestering studio executives gave him the freedom to shoot the film his way, remaining outside the system brought its own problems. "There was always financial trouble," he says, explaining the pitfalls of working with committed but inexperienced producers: "There was one day when over thirty people in the Thai crew quit because they were not paid in time... I, as a filmmaker, had to make something out of a disaster."

Beyond the set, the film has become the subject of a low-key internet campaign, instigated primarily by Gene DeBruin's family. They object to Herzog's depiction of Gene as deluded and even traitorous, as he is shown threatening to thwart Dengler's escape plan, so convinced is he that their release is imminent. Herzog acknowledges the campaign as unfortunate, but states that he has stayed true to Dengler's story, in bringing the project to the big-screen. Rescue Dawn is Dieter's story, and, for all its apparent controversies, it is without doubt a remarkable one.

Click here for a full review of the film. This article can also be read at reviews site The Smell of Napalm.

A Writer's A-Z of the 51st London Film Festival

2007-11-06T13:53:00.000Z

Opening with the appropriately London-set Eastern Promises, and closing with Wes Anderson's quirky The Darjeeling Limited, this year's festival was a real treat. Here's my A-Z overview:

A is for Absences
Not to start on a sour note, but although the festival's considered international enough to host the world premiere of Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, there were still many faces conspicuous by their absence. Opening-night gala duties for Eastern Promises were distinctly Viggo-less, although nobody seemed to really care as Naomi Watts provided all the necessary glamour. Later in the festival, clearly-very-talented-but-not-very-recognisable Chopper director Andrew Dominik arrived on the red carpet for the gala show of his stunning sophomore piece The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. The cast were nowhere to be seen, with Casey 'Brother of Ben' Affleck having apparently pulled out when Gone Baby Gone was disappointingly dropped from the schedule.

B is for 'Better than Brad'
He and his more famous brother may have pulled out, but Casey Affleck delivers a brilliantly layered performance in The Assassination Of Jesse James. Managing to out-act an on-form Brad Pitt, Affleck plays it subtle in the arguably meatier role of the notoriously villified Robert Ford. His impressive performance in brother Ben's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone should cement his graduation from supporting comic-relief opposite Brad n' George in the Ocean's 11 franchise, to fully certified leading man, although British audiences will have to wait til next year to see the Boston-set kidnap drama.

C is for Crappy Weather
This being London, the gala performance of Lions for Lambs - the biggest of the festival - was blighted by climatic cliche. "I'm surprised this many people showed up," Tom Cruise commented to a BBC journalist, "It's cold, it's wet... Londoners love film!"

D is for Dictaphones
The obligatory tool of every self-respecting journo. A few hours before the gala show of Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg walked into the screening-room of the Soho Hotel to find fifteen voice-recorders littering the table next to his microphone. "I'm having a yard-sale in these afterwards..." he deadpanned. Juno director Jason Reitman, and The Darjeeling Limited's Jason Schwartzman, both felt compelled to turn over the tapes on devices that clicked off in front of them. "They keep turning off when I'm in the middle of answering a question!" Schwartzman laughed in response to murmours of amusement from the crowd.

E is for Entertaining Banter
"It's gonna be awesome!" was Diablo 'Best Name In The Business' Cody's response when she heard that Jason Reitman was interested in directing her debut screenplay, Juno. With Reitman, Cody and former West-Winger Allison Janney bouncing off each other so effectively, the press conference was less a media grilling and more a lighthearted conversation between friends, overheard by fifty members of the press. How else could you hope to learn that Janney finds the idea of trampolining in heels sexy? It is possible she was joking...

F is for Fresh-Faced
The Darjeeling Limited marks Brit Amara Karan's feature debut as a train stewardess who has a fling with Jason Schwartzman's Jack. Auditioning for the role just weeks after graduating from drama school, Karan's initial nerves were well and truly dispensed with when it came to the actual shoot. Describing a key scene between herself and Schwartzman, she bluntly states, "I felt like I nailed that on the first take". Cue a gesture of mock intimidation from Schwartzman.

G is for Gala Performances
Otherwise known as the shows that got all the attention, as the stars came out for the press. Audiences frequently emerged from a non-gala show to find themselves leaving over a red carpet, while they dodged reporters and press-photographers massing for the gala performance that was next on the schedule.

H is for Haneke, Michael
The German director's English-language remake of his own 1997 domestic thriller Funny Games, titled simply Funny Games US, is a devastating comment on the relationship between audiences and the media-portrayal of onscreen violence. Starring Tim Roth and Naomi Watts as an unassuming middleclass couple tormented by disturbed teens Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet, the film is a shot-for-shot remake but nevertheless more effective as a dramatic punch to the gut for the English-speaking world. Juxtaposing a media-influenced teen perception of violence without consequence, with lingering shots of characters recovering from savagely real acts of extreme violence, it's top issue-driven filmmaking.

I is for Inappropriate Questions
With the tabloids providing ample speculation as to Owen Wilson's mental state over the past few months, co-star Adrian Brody professed quiet relief to Wes Anderson that the press conference for The Darjeeling Limited was very civilised. A rare case, perhaps, of the British media behaving themselves.

J is for Juno
Ellen Page stars as the eponymous teen who loses her virginity and gets pregnant on the same night, with unexpectedly hilarious consequences. Expect comic subversion, a screenplay from Diablo 'Best Name In The Business' Cody, and support from former Arrested Developers Jason Bateman and Michael Cera. As the film isn't due out in the UK until February, that's what you call Positive Early Buzz.

K is for Kudos
On a personal note, being a film buff with a press-pass at a film festival really is very, very cool.

L is for London
Bit of a no-brainer, that one. As Michael Caine's iconic tones stated on the official, cooler-than-expected festival trailer, "The best new films, right here in London".

M is for Moore, Michael
Hammersmith Hospital rocks! For his new doc Sicko, Moore tramps around the London hospital seeking out wherever it is patients go to pay their medical bills; his search is long, fruitless and much-mocked but entertaining nonetheless. One-sided as ever, but still outstanding, and frequently shocking, filmmaking polemic that sees Moore return to the inspiring heights of Bowling For Columbine.

N is for No Response
Despite a dozen polite interview requests emailed to publicists, only two replied. Against all expectations, one of them was the representative for Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Unfortunately it was a no, but at least they dignified the request with a response. Suppressing. Bitterness. Now.

O is for Opportunism
Emerging from a press-conference with David Cronenberg and Naomi Watts, a mooch across the bridge back to the South Bank turned into perfect timing for a press-screening of below-the-radar doc The English Surgeon, listed somewhat confusingly in the festival programme as Russian Roulette With Two Revolvers (taken from a striking analogy made in the film). The touching tale of neurosurgeon Henry Marsh's ongoing fifteen-year quest to bring medical resources and knowledge to Ukraine, one sequence in the film follows himself and local colleague Igor Kurilets as they browse a street-market in search of hardware to use in a brain-surgery operation. Yep, a street-market. The film currently faces a future as uncertain as many of the featured patients, although a limited, arthouse release may be happening next year.

P is for Press Centre
Expectations of something not unlike the New York Stock Exchange, with brokers perhaps replaced by dozens of film-writers frantically hammering away on laptops to meet imminent editorial deadlines, proved naive. The reality was a very low-key affair that felt more like the teacher's staffroom at breaktime. There never seemed to be more than about fifteen people there, and a hefty chunk of them were staff. Still, you couldn't fault the resources. Three separate information desks, free net access on big shiny Macs, a handful of sofas, and a full video-library complete with screeners for twenty or thirty of the smaller festival entrees.

Q is for Quite Slow
Time slows down when Adrian Brody speaks. Not one to be rushed, the Academy's youngest ever Best Actor has the air of a true artiste determined to deliver a considered answer in his own time. This doesn't always suit the PR, whose nervous watch-checking intensified when Brody spent several minutes talking about filming on a fake boat for Peter Jackson on King Kong, as a sort-of relevance to shooting on a real train for Wes Anderson on The Darjeeling Limited.

R is for Reitman, Jason
Laidback and amiable, the Son of Ivan ended up staying behind for ten minutes after the Juno press conference to talk to curious journos about the pros and cons of the iPhone, three weeks before it was released in the UK. Just a cool guy.

S is for Swanky Hotels
The Soho Hotel in, well, Soho, may be impressive, but Clarridges has the edge. Elegant and sophisticated, if a little too Donald Trump when it comes to the gold trimmings, it was host to the press conference for The Darjeeling Limited. The slightest hint of disapproval could be noted on the faces of some of the more senior staffers as our ragtag band of journos massed by the surprisingly small lift enroute to the surprisingly compact 6th floor conference room. The lift may have been small, but it did have a sofa.

T is for Technical Problems
No public event is complete these days, it seems, without those minor hitches drawing attention to an embarrassed techie somewhere. The gala performance of this year's Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, was a resounding success and played to a packed-out audience. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu and star Anamaria Marinca introduced the film, or at least we presume they did, as they could barely be heard past the tenth row, while the post-screening Q&A session was plagued with similar problems. Meanwhile, the Juno press conference was underscored with constant electronic interference. When the PR eventually wrapped things up, he thanked everyone for a discussion "broadcast simultaneously in morse-code".

U is for Unnecessary Cancellation
Ben Affleck's impressive directorial debut, child-abduction drama Gone Baby Gone, was pulled from the schedule and has had its UK release put back til next year, owing to similarities with the Madeleine McCann abduction. The film has drawn added attention owing to the young actress' striking resemblence to Madeleine McCann, and the fact that the actress' real name is also Madeleine. Coincidental creepiness aside, the decision to postpone its release seems unnecessary given that a) the film is really quite good, b) questionable content in Hollywood's general output is routinely ignored by the media and c) nobody has to watch it if they don't want to. Having said that, the postponement will certainly delay a seemingly inevitable cry of insensitivity from The Daily Mail.

V is for Very Early
Once the festival was officially opened, the majority of press-screenings took place mid-morning in order to free up cinemas for the public shows after midday. For anyone used to working late into the night, morning screenings take a bit of getting used to. That probably explains why attending journos tended to be bleary-eyed and wrapped up in endless layers of warm clothes, their hands cradling a hot beverage, and a glint of annoyance in their eyes as they signed in with the relentlessly chipper festival staff.

W is for Wild, Into The
Sean Penn's best film as director, Into The Wild is the true-life story of Christopher McCandless, who marked his 1992 college graduation by donating his entire $22,000 college fund to Oxfam, assuming the name Alexander Supertramp, and setting out on a two-year trek across the continental United States to Alaska. Inspired, touching and tragic stuff.

X is for, er, Xander Berkeley
A jobbing actor perhaps best known recently for playing Jack Bauer's boss in the first few seasons of 24, he also played 'Railroad Foreman' in this year's Seraphim Falls (stay with me here...) Seraphim Falls is a Western, as is The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which played at the festival. He may well have been at the festival too... but probably wasn't. X is a real toughie...

Y is for Yuck!
A particularly unpleasant afternoon in a North London sauna results in some necessarily extreme self-defence moves for Viggo Mortensen's mob-affiliated 'driver' Nikolai in Eastern Promises. 250-odd audience members cringe simultaneously.

Z is for Zoo
The festival's token touch of controversy was provided by this documentary exploration of a Seattle-based group's indulgence in bestiality. Evasively described by IMDB as "a look at the life of a Seattle man who died as a result of an unusual encounter with a horse."

London Film Festival Special: Cronenberg Delivers Eastern Promises

2007-10-30T12:58:00.000Z

"David's got a wicked sense of humour," smiles Naomi Watts, a few hours before the Canadian director's latest feature Eastern Promises opens the London Film Festival. "Thank you," Cronenberg replies quietly, adding, "The set was very funny... it really is fun, if you do it right." Their comments are seemingly at odds with a film which has been reduced by many to a single, already-infamous sequence where a naked Viggo Mortensen fends off a couple of vicious, fully-clothed Chechen assassins in a sauna in London's Finsbury Park. Renowned for his graphic portrayals of physical trauma, Cronenberg delivers a sequence of intense brutality which is such a far-cry from standardised, sanitised Hollywood, that it's not surprising the scene has found such infamy. That said, the film's periodic lashings of blood and brutality are punctuated by equally unpredictable moments of wry, often dark humour, be it Russian gangsters casually prepping a body to be dumped, or Mortensen's mysterious Nikolai trying, and failing, to start Watts' motorcycle: "Take a bus" Nikolai soon deadpans.

Set in the murky underworld of London's Russian mafia, Eastern Promises offers a view of the city rarely seen even by those who call it their home. Indeed, the only recognisable landmark on offer is the Gherkin building in the City, and this only appears fleetingly in the background of a single shot. The notion of capturing the 'real' London resonated particularly strongly amongst the crew, most of whom were local. "The crew were pretty excited to be shooting there instead of Notting Hill," Cronenberg states dryly. Although the film's story is instigated when Watts' midwife Anna looks to uncover the identity of a young migrant girl who has died in childbirth, this is Mortensen's show. Having already worked with Cronenberg on his previous feature A History of Violence, the former King of Gondor is totally convincing as the mysterious Nikolai, the shadowy associate of a ruthless Russian crime family. His subtle, restrained performance was, according to Cronenberg, undertaken "with a great sense of humour". Further dispelling the myth of the introverted character-actor, the director adds, "After 'cut' he's still Viggo, and you can still joke with him".

Viggo's performance immediately elevates the film above the 'issue-movie' label that some have been quick to attach. Although the relatively low-profile crime of people-trafficking is a major element of the story, it is also a backdrop, with themes of family and identity receiving more attention in Steven Knight's screenplay. Nikolai remains a mysterious character for much of the story, his behaviour and motivation rarely clear, and his few words and restricted body-language giving little away. We're offered similar conundrums in the form of Anna's Russian uncle, Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski), whose alleged background in the KGB may not be as crazy as it first seems, and Tatiana, the teenage migrant whose death in the film's opening scenes initiates the story. We hear her diary-extracts read in periodic posthumous voiceover as Anna has them gradually translated, turning her from an anonymous and unidentified fatality into a rounded and tragic victim of eastern promises, as well as a warning of the savage criminal world into which Anna inadvertantly stumbles.

Through such past classics as The Fly, Videodrome, Scanners and the infamous Crash, Cronenberg is renowned for his fascination with how the human body interacts with the outside world, and the relationship between biology and machinery. Taking this into account, it's perhaps not so surprising that there are no firearms in Eastern Promises, although this was the case even before the screenplay came to Cronenberg's attention. Instead, the violence is instigated with blades and razors - generally anything with a sharp edge. "To kill someone with a knife is a very intimate, perverse act," the director explains, "it means you feel them, you smell them, you hear them breathing." Similarly, Knight's screenplay draws attention to the 'story' of tattoos that characterizes the Vory V Zakone brotherhood to which Nikolai's family belongs. A particularly intimate scene towards the film's finale sees Nikolai fully initiated, after years as a mere 'driver', and an elder reading his life-story through the myriad tattoos that already decorate his body. With reference to the sauna assassination-attempt, Cronenberg explains that the assassins "would be destroying the tattoo-pattern on [Nikolai's] body, and would leave a message for other people not to betray them."

The film has met with overwhelmingly positive reviews, including, as it turns out, the indirect mark of approval from the Russian mafia itself. "Over the net we've discovered we get two thumbs up from Russian criminals" Cronenberg states, adding with a sly smile, "We're just not sure whose thumbs they are..."

Click here for a full review of the film. This article can also be read at reviews site The Smell of Napalm

London Film Festival Special: The Assassination of Jesse James, and the Western Revival

2007-10-20T16:52:00.000Z

After two and a half years irritating studio executives in post-production purgatory, Andrew Dominik's The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford has finally taken a bow at the London Film Festival. As a poetic and brooding deconstruction of the violent life and equally violent death of one of America's most mythologised outlaws, the film is a magnetic character-study and stunning addition to the modern Western genre. While Brad Pitt is on fine form as the darkly charismatic killer struggling with the scale of his own myth and the traitorous admiration of those closest to him, it is Casey Affleck who proves the true revelation as the conflicted Robert Ford, the teenager whose hero-worship creates one of the most reviled and misunderstood villains in American history.

The Western is currently experiencing a stuttering comeback, with The Assassination Of Jesse James being the fourth addition to the genre in a little over a year. Although set in the Australian Outback rather than the American West, John Hillcoat's under-seen The Proposition was among the best cinematic offerings of 2006. Written by Nick Cave (who also provides part of the soundtrack and a cameo appearance in The Assassination Of Jesse James), The Proposition stars Guy Pearce as a captured outlaw faced with the task of bringing in one deranged brother in exchange for the life of another. Despite the specifics of the location, the film remains a hypnotic Western, providing a visceral insight into the lawlessness of frontier-life, and the physical and psychological traumas of those banished to the far corners of the earth.

Whereas The Assassination Of Jesse James and The Proposition account for some of the best of the past year in cinema, let alone the genre, the other end of the spectrum has been equally well represented. Seraphim Falls tells the story of Liam Neeson's stubborn and vengeful former Confederate soldier, chasing Pierce Brosnan's guilt-racked Unionist from one corner of the continental United States to the other. The reasons for the chase are revealed to the audience only in scattered flashback until the story's finale, but in the end are not really worth the wait. The film's primary appeal lies in its stunning visuals, with veteran cinematographer John Toll capturing an endless collection of spectacular vistas, as the leads wander from the frozen North-West through the prairie-land to the desert, in search of anything resembling a story. The film can be read as a cinematic celebration of America at its most raw and most beautiful, at a time when the country was still being shaped by the throes of Manifest Destiny. A cross-section of human encounters, from isolated rancher-pioneers through to religious nomads, railroad developers and opportunistic native Americans, add to the sense of cultural diversity that will create the modern America in the century following the story's setting. It's just a pity the screenplay wasn't subject to the same level of attention.

The cast is the draw in 3:10 to Yuma, a remake of the 1957 film of the same name. Russell Crowe is the apparently cold-hearted outlaw Ben Wade, captured in the aftermath of a violent stagecoach robbery, while Christian Bale is penniless rancher Dan Evans, who joins the posse charged with transporting the prisoner to the town of Contention for the eponymous 3:10 prison train. Despite committed performances from the two leads, the film is a straightforward genre-piece that ticks all the boxes, and has nothing new to add to the genre beyond a grittier tone and more blood. Crowe may be the cold-hearted thief and killer, but A-List stardom carries its own responsiblities at the box-office; Wade sketches animals, effortlessly sweet-talks women into bed, and even kills a man for disrespecting his own mother. As a result Wade is more an edgy badboy than a villain. The true antagonist is Ben Foster's Charlie Prince, Wade's righthand man. With Foster lacking Crowe's A-List status, Prince is a psychotic murderer and simpleton who shoots anything that moves and apparently takes pleasure in doing so. As a studio genre piece, his fate is never in doubt.

Although the Western is currently inconsistent in the quality stakes, the gritty, edgy feel, apparently truer to the age, continues to unite the genre. No longer aimed at young, tea-time audiences, the genre has darkened, perhaps in a bid to keep up with the times. While Kevin Costner deconstructed the myth of the cinematic native American (with a healthy dose of fantasy, say the tribes of the Mid-West), in Dances With Wolves, Clint Eastwood deconstructed the myth of the gunfighter and what it means to kill a man, in his stunning Unforgiven. With the stories of Wyatt Earp also re-addressed in the early 90s with the less iconic Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, the genre left few fresh angles until Kevin Costner delivered Open Range in 2003. The times have, of course, changed since 9/11, and cinema has come to reflect this. With even James Bond beginning to feel the pain of his injuries, audiences have been deemed ready for a further revision of life in the Old West, one stained with blood, poverty and stunning cruelty.

With America's conduct in the global community inviting intense scrutiny and criticism, it's perhaps easier to understand why Hollywood is keen to look back at the history that created the country's character and fierce national pride. From the stunning geography through to the straightforward concepts of defending the homestead from wrong-doers, feeding loved ones and seeking justice for those who defy the law, the Western has a purity and a simplicity of ideals that can be seen to distract from the moral complications of living in a modern world dominated by covert conflicts that play to unknown rules. But although the Old West may have been more black and white, Hollywood's recent depictions have hardly been inviting. Still, entries such as The Assassination Of Jesse James suggest the genre may still be relevant to the modern world for some time to come.

Game Over, Man

2007-09-10T15:29:00.000Z

The release of Michael Davis' Shoot 'Em Up demonstrates a more progressive side of the relationship between video-games and cinema, one that's seen a rapid evolution since the early 1990s. With companies such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo competing fiercely for market-supremacy, the pressure for new, more advanced technology has never been more intense. Games have evolved to become cinematic, incorporating fully developed narratives and characters, and embracing new technology to produce lush visuals and often breathtaking - sometimes photo-realistic - gaming environments. Hollywood has been quick to spot the commercial potential of transferring cinematic games to the big-screen, and although an endless influx of film adaptations have found cinema audiences (from Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, through to Silent Hill and Doom), none have managed to win over critics.

Whereas films that take a game's narrative substance and try to make it work on the big-screen have never been memorable for the right reasons, the results can be stunning when cinema takes inspiration from gaming style. The most successful cinematic example can be found with The Matrix films, a series of visually-spectacular setpieces glued together with stylishly-photographed exposition. The films are most famous for their groundbreaking 'bullet-time' sequences, which are themselves rooted in modern gaming environments via the Japanese anime that was a direct inspiration for the Wachowski Brothers. Indeed, the very concept of the matrix is an artificial environment where characters can do pretty much anything, so long as they have faith, and commit to an ability to bend the rules of the physical world. Video-gamers were enjoying a primitive version of the same idea when Nintendo first gave us the Super Mario Brothers.

Shoot 'Em Up takes its very name from the gaming genre which is now effectively redundant owing to the rapid technical progression of the gaming world. Recalling a more basic gaming age of the mid-nineties when titles were effectively defined by genre, Shoot 'Em Up is an hilariously tongue-in-cheek action film. Rather than taking an existing gaming narrative as inspiration, writer-director Michael Davis focuses on the style of the shoot 'em up gaming genre, and sets about delivering a thrill-ride that sells itself as a product breaking new ground in action cinema. It carries itself with a winking glee, propelling itself from setpiece to setpiece, each more ludicrous than the one before. The bones of a story can be found in the hail of bullets. Clive Owen's rugged protagonist, appropriately for the genre known only as 'Mr Smith', delivers a baby in an opening gunfight and then spends 96 minutes defending it from Paul Giamatti's army of intentionally anonymous goons. But the story matters only as much as it does during the average game of Time Crisis. Moments of narrative exposition feel like the animated moments from the above arcade classic or more recent gaming entries like Grand Theft Auto; merely brief pauses to catch the breath before moving on to the next level.

The cast undoubtably makes the trip more enjoyable, and enticed by the promise of an end result a little different from the norm, the experience is elevated above what could have easily become a straight-to-DVD affair. Owen is on fine brooding form as the charismatic man of mystery with an appetite for carrots, whereas Paul Giamatti lends further weight to proceedings as a former Bureau profiler for whom the assassination of the infant is the only obstacle to getting home for his son's birthday. Monica Belluci provides a few distractions, but ultimately it's the setpieces that grab the attention. As Giamatti's antagonist murmours excitedly, moments before a(nother) bloodbath: "Violence is one of the most fun things to watch."

With Resident Evil: Extinction topping the US box-office charts in its opening weekend, and Hitman coming to multiplexes within the next few weeks, it seems almost inevitable that a mainstream Hollywood ever wary of risk-taking, will provide more of the same over the coming years. Similar to the culture of remakes (think The Departed, King Kong, War of the Worlds and most Japanese horror films of the past five years), games come with a built-in fanbase and can be reimagined for the big-screen with comparatively little effort. The gaming industry now rivals Hollywood in terms of sheer scale and market-value, with game releases enjoying unprecedented hype (just look at the release of the massively anticipated Halo 3, the latest weapon in Microsoft's bid for gaming supremacy), while promoted with movie-trailer cinema publicity and public launches little different to red-carpet film premieres. In the meantime, the distinction between film and game becomes ever more blurred.

In a curious twist, although most mainstream kids' films come with a video-game as a standard marketing tool, classic adult films such as Reservoir Dogs, The Godfather, Scarface and Hard Boiled, are getting their own video-game adaptations. Perhaps the intention is to cash-in on the interactive nature of the gaming environment, something which makes Resident Evil work on the console, but a lack of which leads to big-screen disaster. Giving film fans the opportunity to interact with characters in their favourite crime-thrillers is a potentially lucrative idea. In the meantime, cinema-goers will have to make do with a Hollywood generally more interested in ripping-off the gaming industry, than taking inspiration from it.

The Name's Bourne, Jason Bourne

2007-08-09T22:13:00.000Z

Matt Damon was in career free-fall in 2002. Five years had passed since the Oscar glory of Good Will Hunting, and a series of box-office failures (including The Legend of Bagger Vance and All The Pretty Horses) meant that the offers were drying up. Jason Bourne saved him, although the effect was far from instantaneous. Based on a novel by Robert Ludlum originally published in the late 70s, The Bourne Identity cast Damon as an amnesiac CIA assassin struggling to establish his identity whilst evading various Agency "assets" sent to eliminate him. Indie director Doug Liman helmed the project in a gritty, guerilla style, with a screenplay that was rarely locked-down, and with a total of four separate re-shoots eventually shoe-horned into the production schedule. Even Damon appeared to have little faith in the project, publicly doubting that the two additional novels in the franchise would go before the cameras.

Perhaps appropriately, the film opened against The Sum of All Fears, a prequel to the Jack Ryan franchise that replaced Harrison Ford with Damon's childhood friend and rising megastar Ben Affleck. The square-jawed Affleck was a more conventional action-hero, and proved a box-office success as a young Ryan chasing stolen nuclear weapons across the globe. The studio reacted instinctively and promised a sequel that is still yet to materialise. In stark contrast, The Bourne Identity made up for its poor box-office reception through stunning DVD sales, and against all expectations a franchise grew.

Damon's depiction of Jason Bourne as a cold, unemotional and isolated individual was instantly the heart of the film's success, and has since transferred to both The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. Appropriately, the world inhabited by Bourne is shot with a gritty realism, initiated by Doug Liman's handheld, indie sensibilities, and continued by United 93 director Paul Greengrass in both sequels, as Liman fell back to the position of executive producer. All three films are action-packed, with the obligatory hand-to-hand combat, car chases and breath-snatching stuntwork. What elevates the franchise and has caused a seismic shift throughout the genre, is the raw, back-to-basics approach, with short, sharp and functional violence puntuating a support-cast of strong character-actors. Over the three films, the support cast has included Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Scott Glenn and Albert Finney. Their committed performances bring gravitas and credibility to often ludicrous action (Bourne jumping several stories down a spiral staircase, nailing a goon with a single shot in mid-flight, and using a dead body as a crash-mat at the bottom..??). As an audience we're left believing we could all do the same if only we were that creative.

The film's most notable influence has been on the Bond franchise. The casting of Daniel Craig as Pierce Brosnan's successor for Casino Royale was the first indication of a major change. Then came the shift in tone, with Craig's younger, leaner Bond chasing a free-runner across a perilous Madagascan building site before tearing up an embassy, all in the film's opening ten minutes. Bourne did the same thing in Switzerland, only without firing a shot. Craig's Bond is suave and cold, and makes his first kill in a public urinal; killing is, after all, an unpleasant business, and Bond, like Bourne, is now more likely to quietly contemplate the horror of his actions post-kill, than to offer a quip for the camera.

Odd, though, how things seem to have come full-circle. The Bourne franchise has adjusted to mainstream success and is happy to subtly acknowledge its style and origins. "You couldn't make this stuff up" deadpans Scott Glenn's Agency chief as a subordinate reels off the Story So Far, in a Langley briefing-room early in The Bourne Ultimatum. Later, when the action finally moves to New York after two films spent running across Europe, Bourne escapes by apparently performing a guerilla-version of a car-park stunt that was the highlight of Tomorrow Never Dies. "He just drove off the roof!" cries a stunned goon as he heads off in pursuit.

Although Bourne inevitably escapes death during Ultimatum's appropriately-executed finale, his position is little better than it was at the beginning of the franchise. Having pieced together his identity and determinedly rejected it, what else is there? For Jason Bourne, the possiblity of a fourth cinematic outing after a very healthy US opening weekend. For the relevant 21st Century action-hero, constant adjustment to the uncertain times in which we live point to continued paranoia and isolation from humanity. Savvy cinema-goers the world over may come to demand it.

The Simpsons Anomaly

2007-07-29T21:45:00.001Z

This week, America's first family finally makes the transition from television to the big-screen. The Simpsons has become a global phenomenon since it began nearly twenty years ago, generating over $2.5billion of revenue for Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network. In those two decades it has maintained its high standards, and remains one of the best shows on television. With its massive crossover appeal, sharp satire and rich tapestry of supporting characters to occupy the otherwise anonymous town of Springfield, its transition to the big-screen is perhaps long-overdue and certainly tentative. The film itself lacks the confidence of the show and struggles to get to grips with the cinematic format. Still, it remains head and shoulders above the competition.

The Simpsons Movie is something of an anomaly in contemporary cinema, as the bulk of the animation is created using traditional techniques. Of course, with the TV show having the status that it does, the use of CGI was never seriously considered for the production of the film. Although the film does utlise CGI for a handful of shots, all of which notably stand-out as cinematic in style, the movie is otherwise a traditonally-animated feature in a Hollywood where CGI has all but taken over.

When Pixar, with the backing of Disney, produced Toy Story back in 1995, the film became an instant industry landmark. As the first ever fully computer-animated feature, the industry was shown what was possible. Crucially, Pixar invested as much in the story dynamics as they did in the technology that brought it to life. As a result the film drew attention both for its significance as a feature-film, and for the intelligence and imagination of its screenplay, a key factor explaining its appeal to a crossover audience of both kids and adults. Pixar have since dominated the industry in the quality stakes, producing an excellent sequel to Toy Story, as well as films such as A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo.

Twelve years since Toy Story proudly took a bow, CGI has effectively claimed a monopoly over animated Hollywood. DreamWorks, having developed its own animation division, has established itself as Pixar's chief competitor, helped in large part by the massive success of the Shrek franchise, the first of which won the first Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002. However, now that the technology has become commonplace, the crossover audiences are being increasingly abandoned. While the quality of the animation increases with each new release, the standard of writing - always the hardest part of any film production - has begun to fall. Over the last two or three years, cinema-goers have been inundated with a barrage of CGI features, most of them aimed squarely at the kids. Releases such as Madagascar, Over The Hedge, The Wild, Shark Tale and The Reef, tell very similar stories of animals in peril, and increasingly blur together before fading into oblivion. Each project usually finds big-name stars, all attracted by the minimum of fuss (no make-up or costume-fitting necessary, no waiting around for hours on-set), and an end product they can show the family.

Traditional animation is seen by many as old-fashioned, and is becoming increasingly irrelevant in Hollywood as CGI becomes the default setting. Japan's Studio Ghibli is responsible for recent releases Howl's Moving Castle and The Cat Returns, as well as influential classics Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, the only traditonally-animated films to be seen on general release in Europe and the US in the last few years. This is partly due to the old-school preferences of influential director Hayao Miyazaki. In the UK, even Aardman Animation, the home of Nick Park and Wallace & Gromit, is beginning to experiment with CGI. The recent Flushed Away saw characters created in the classic Aardman aesthetic, but put through a CG filter.

It seems likely that it may fall to the film industries of the Far East to rejuvenate traditional animation in Hollywood. Just as Japanese and Korean horror has heavily influenced an American counterpart hungry for ideas, perhaps the same will happen for animation. In the meantime, it seems that only a film with the iconic aesthetic of The Simpsons will appear on the big-screen without coming completely by way of a hard-drive.

Appeal of the Director's Chair

2007-07-16T21:48:00.000Z

This month, screen-legends Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood are joined by fellow movie superstar Mel Gibson, in seeing their latest directorial offerings transfer to DVD. De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, a compelling yet ultimately disappointing spy drama telling the story of the birth of the CIA, is only his second film as director. In contrast, Eastwood builds on an already esteemed directing career with Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, two separate films looking at the crucial World War II battle, from both the American and Japanese perspectives. Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (as the publicity sometimes reads) forms the director’s more relaxed follow-up to the massively successful Passion of the Christ.

Historically, big-name actors have had generally smooth transitions to the director’s chair, and the Academy has responded generously. Two of the biggest travesties in Oscar’s history have involved A-List actors moving behind the camera, and the loser on both occasions has been Martin Scorsese. Raging Bull, perhaps the greatest sports film in cinema history, was beaten to Best Picture in 1980 by Ordinary People, Robert Redford’s family drama, and his directorial debut. A decade later, GoodFellas, routinely celebrated as the greatest film of the 1990s, and a clear showcase of Scorsese at his artistic best, fell victim to Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner’s fairy-tale Western, and coincidentally also his directorial debut. The reality is that Oscar has long carried a conservative leaning and has a strong history of favouring the most openly conscientious filmmaking, regardless of whether the most conscientious is also best. Ordinary People was a study of the American family unit disintegrating from the inside, whilst Dances With Wolves was the first of contemporary Hollywood’s revisionist Westerns, following a Unionist soldier’s trip to the Frontier, and the relationship he forms with the Indians he finds there (and, for the record, the Indians of the Mid-West who I’ve spoken to think of themselves as both Indians and Native Americans).

The Oscar success of Dances With Wolves paved the way for Eastwood’s astonishing revisionist Western Unforgiven, which came two years later in 1992. Eastwood directed himself in Unforgiven, as Costner had done in Dances With Wolves. As ever, the bottom line in Hollywood is financial, and even the biggest names in the business face constant pressure from the studios to deliver on their investment. Mel Gibson directed historic epic Braveheart only on the studio-imposed condition that he also take the starring role of William Wallace. The producers were only too aware that with only one low-key entry on Gibson’s directing CV (1993’s The Man Without a Face), his name was worth far more on the cast-list than it was on the crew. In the past few years, however, Gibson has become a force unto himself through the stunning global success of The Passion of the Christ. Turned down by every studio, Gibson invested around $20million of his own money. Despite the film’s bloodletting making it more akin to the Saw franchise than to The Ten Commandments or The Greatest Story Ever Told, the Christian movie-going public responded in their masses, with church groups block-booking theatres across the US. Gibson walked away as the wealthiest actor in the world, with $800million in global box-office.

The creative freedom that Gibson now enjoys has most recently resulted in the superior Apocalypto, a grandly presented tale set against the backdrop of the last days of the Mayan civilisation in Central America. For all its marketing pretensions, however, the film tells a simple tale of a young tribesman kidnapped following an attack on his village, and his subsequent attempts to escape and rejoin his family.

So long as someone else’s money is at stake, however, terms and conditions apply. George Clooney, while routinely celebrated in the media as encapsulating what remains of Hollywood’s integrity, is an individual who plays the game with aplomb. Through the likes of Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker and Out of Sight, he established himself as an A-Lister, before making his directorial debut in 2002 with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. The film was a low-key success, and his next film as director, the excellent Good Night, and Good Luck, telling the story of pioneering broadcaster Ed Murrow, won more attention from the Academy than from the movie-going public. With his true filmmaking interests failing to make big impressions at the box-office, he has been forced to satisfy the studios by playing supporting roles in the films he directs, whilst also balancing his output with more commercial fare. The most obvious of these has been the Oceans 11 franchise, remade from the rat-pack original, and then spawning two sequels of its own. The films have been, on the most part, a lot of fun, but ultimately disposable. However, they have been commercial enough to bring studio funding to projects that Clooney is more passionate about, such as Good Night, and Good Luck.

Ultimately, the director's chair clearly hold its appeal. A body of screen-work under the guidance of myriad distinct directors, can create their own insightful stamps on an actor seeking to make the transition. Perhaps crucially, however, a career in the director's chair, and behind the scenes in a wider sense, generally carries a greater longevity than is offered before the camera, especially in modern cinema. It is longevity that established actors tend to identify among their primary objectives, as they sets their sights on the future.

Sci-Fi: The Genre of Big Ideas

2007-05-20T00:33:00.000Z

Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is an overdue shot in the arm for original science-fiction. With the last decade dominated by underwhelming Star Wars prequels, it’s easy to forget that science-fiction is capable of debating big ideas and influencing how we see ourselves in the universe. Star Wars, and to a lesser extent Star Trek, is a cultural phenomenon on such a scale that it’s effectively a genre unto itself. Nevertheless, lightsabers and Federation jumpsuits have long been accepted as integral to the classic iconography of wider science-fiction. These nerdy associations are perhaps one reason why the genre is so good at repelling the casual viewer.

Sunshine focuses upon a manned mission to reignite our own dying Sun with a nuclear payload the size of Manhattan. The film builds upon its overt cinematic influences (namely 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and the original Solaris), by blending cutting-edge effects with a screenplay inspired by real science. Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, take the day-to-day practicalities of long-haul space travel, and put them front and centre. In the process they present a bid for inclusion in the annals of “serious” sci-fi. The result fuses stunning visuals with multi-stranded tales of obsession, as the characters respond to the power of the star they must reignite.

The film is something of an anomaly, as mainstream cinema has become a hostile environment for original science-fiction. Although the millennium was greeted by space-faring adventures Red Planet and Mission to Mars, both suffered from poor screenplays and an over-reliance on visual-effects. 2000 also gave us Pitch Black, a comparatively low-budget project starring Vin Diesel as the cynical and murderous convict, Riddick. The film sported a head-turning premise, dumping a group of disparate crash-survivors onto a desert-world populated by light-sensitive carnivorous aliens, and then plunging the planet into an extended solar-eclipse. With meagre funds, director David Twohy produced arresting visuals, a gritty tone and a focus on character that was unusual to the genre. The film was a cult-hit and spawned a big-budget but risible sequel; Chronicles of Riddick abandoned the original’s intelligence, leaving only the clichés of excess sported by so many additions to the genre.

Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris, released in 2003, is perhaps the only other post-millennium cinematic release to approach the genre in a truly adult fashion. A remake of the 1972 Russian epic, the film lacks eye-catching visuals, devoting itself instead to an exploration of love, memory and faith, with the science-fiction setting merely a backdrop. However, not even George Clooney’s presence could save the film from box-office disaster. Although the project was undoubtedly let down by uncertain studio marketing, it was also a harsh reminder that multiplex audiences prefer their entertainment a little more light-hearted.

Original science-fiction is as rare on television as it is on the big-screen, ‘originality’ most-often equating to modern takes on established franchises. Star Trek was reborn on television in 1987, with a new crew comprising The Next Generation. Spin-off series Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and eventually Enterprise, soon followed, all updating the franchise for the 90s. Competition to the Star Trek juggernaut came in the form of the grittier Babylon 5 and Farscape, and the teen-friendly Andromeda. In 1997 came the long-running and hugely profitable Stargate SG-1, a reformatted television version of the critically-mauled 1994 science-fiction fantasy, Stargate. Most recently, the 1970s Star Wars rip-off Battlestar Galactica has been stunningly reinvented as a contemporary adult drama with an identity all of its own. The show is perhaps the first attempt in a decade to instill the genre with real adult drama. In its content, it has taken direct inspiration from the uncertain, post-9/11 world, pondering the future of humanity through a long-running story of survival that is a clear allegory for the War on Terror.

Offering long-running characters and settings, as well as often sustained allegorical comments on society, television need not rely on a strong opening weekend to recoup its costs, even if a producer’s enthusiasm is often required to convince the moneymen to have faith in their product finding an audience. In contrast, original cinematic science-fiction must exhibit involving characters, dramatic, fast-paced stories and, ideally, arresting visuals, all within a timeframe rarely longer than two hours. Future visions and space-travel normally require substantial budgets to realise, but this increases the pressure for broad audience appeal; spectacular visuals cannot be targeted at a niche audience. An original hook is also crucial to the genre. A simple but head-turning concept worked for Pitch Black, while for Sunshine, Alex Garland broke new ground in contemporary science-fiction by turning his attention to the Sun. Despite the sudden cancellation of Enterprise in 2005, a new Star Trek film has been confirmed for production, but it remains to be seen whether the studios will continue to support original sci-fi visions.

Raising The Undead

2007-04-17T16:49:00.000Z

This coming May sees the UK cinematic release of 28 Weeks Later…, the unimaginatively-titled sequel to director Danny Boyle’s gritty horror 28 Days Later... Boyle’s original has become, in many ways, a seminal entry in the horror genre, although, notably, the ushering of a new chapter for the cinematic undead as a source of serious horror, was not what the film initially drew attention for. The filmmakers apparently sought to draw attention to their relatively low budget by shooting only on semi-professional digital cameras. Then there was the film’s opening spectacle of a deserted London, and the arresting image of Cillian Murphy’s Jim, clad in hospital scrubs and clasping a carrier-bag, standing in bewilderment on an empty Westminster Bridge. As Jim soon discovers, London, and indeed the UK as a whole, has been evacuated in the aftermath of a savage plague – viscerally referred to as ‘Rage’ – which, upon transmission of infected blood, almost instantaneously strips victims of their humanity and turns them into rabid, demon-eyed, blood-vomiting monsters. It was a shocking vision amplified by the digital format, giving the impression that the end of the world was being filmed with footage blended from survivors on the run, and static CCTV cameras.

Just as George Romero critiqued America’s involvement in Vietnam in 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, and then satirized western consumerism a decade later in Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later… arguably captured the 21^st Century zeitgeist and became a product of its time. In the aftermath of 9/11, and in the months preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the fear of weapons of mass destruction, chemical warfare and infection, dominated headlines across the western world. The Bush Administration insisted Saddam was stockpiling unpleasant chemicals in the Iraqi desert, and tabloids speculated on the likelihood of a terrorist ‘dirty’ bomb hitting London or New York. The ‘Infected’ of Boyle’s British apocalypse capitalized on the fears fanning from this brave new world. Gone were the cumbersome, slow-moving undead of Romero’s original visions; the Rage created aggressive, salivating victims who were fast on their feet, aimlessly sprinting and snarling in their tireless and instinctive search for flesh to feast upon.

For nearly two decades from the late 1980s, the zombie was effectively confined to the annals of cinematic ridicule, perhaps owing to the torrent of lazy parodies and trashy TV movies that plagued the 1990s (Space Zombie Bingo, anyone?). 28 Days Later… made the zombie scary again, and the film’s massive stateside success was clearly interpreted by the studios. A remake of Dawn of the Dead hit multiplexes in 2004. The film jettisoned the consumerist satire of Romero’s original to concentrate on snarling horror that seemed directly inspired by Boyle’s brutal depiction of the British apocalypse. Despite lacking depth, the film was hugely entertaining and creative in its own way by depicting a zombie birth.

Once again, however, it was the British who broke new ground in the genre. Comedy duo and Romero-worshippers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, released the London-set zombie-homage Shaun of the Dead in 2004. A quirky, hilarious and surprisingly violent affair, the film was billed as a “romantic comedy with zombies”, telling the story of a young man attempting to fix his relationship woes with the added inconvenience of the undead roaming the streets of London. Like 28 Days Later… the film was embraced by the Americans, and even played a part in convincing Romero himself to direct a fourth zombie film of his own. Land of the Dead was released in 2005 to mixed reviews. Indeed, it lacked the satirical punch of his previous outings, although it marked a return to the classic lumbering zombie that suddenly proved no less terrifying than the rabidly hyperactive victims of 28 Days Later…

The success of 28 Days Later… has had differing effects on each side of the Atlantic. The British horror genre has seen a rejuvenation, perhaps most notable so far for having supported the career of writer-director Neil Marshall. His werewolf horror-comedy Dog Soldiers, was released in the same year as 28 Days Later… and enjoyed critical and commercial success in Britain, as did his follow-up, caving-horror The Descent. More recent releases, such as camping horror Wilderness, and gory business-retreat satire Severance, remain under-seen but still worthy additions to the genre. In America, the ripple-effect has been far more routine. A film adaptation of the popular video-game Resident Evil was filmed in 2002 by British director Paul WS Anderson. Telling the story of a deadly, zombie-creating virus unleashed within a subterranean research facility, the film received a thoroughly-deserved critical mauling at the international box-office. Still, the film found a fan-base, and the second sequel is due later this year.

In the midst of an influx of tepid additions to the horror genre, many of which young children are allowed admission to even under the UK’s stricter film-classification guidelines, 28 Weeks Later… will be eagerly anticipated by horror fans. The lack of Danny Boyle is a glitch, and the lack of the experimental digital format may affect the distinctive atmospherics of the original. Having said that, it will be fascinating to see whether the return of the Rage will have the same resonance on the movie-going public, as it did back in 2002.

IMAX: The Bigger Picture

2007-04-11T17:31:00.000Z

The BFI London IMAX is an ever-present background entity to all those who leave Waterloo International and descend the steps into the city. Since its erection in 1999, the structure has achieved a slightly uneasy integration with the urban architecture fanning from London’s South Bank. The £20million building attempts a statement of modernity, and always proclaims its latest cinematic offering with outward-facing banners that rival the format itself for sheer enormity. As the exotic alternative to traditional cinematic spectacle, the IMAX sales pitch tends to begin with the venue.

There are around 150 IMAX theatres across the United States, and the London IMAX is one of nearly 150 more worldwide. All boast screens nearly twenty metres high. Films shot specifically for the IMAX experience are typically documentaries exploring far-flung corners of the world. They exploit the enormous format (ten times the size of a 35mm frame) to capture such magnificent natural vistas as the Grand Canyon, the African savannah and the peaks of Everest. Loose documentary narratives usually guide the viewer in the form of voiceover, but relentlessly stunning visuals are of course the star. Accompanying the documentaries on the schedules are normally CGI compilation films which, although rarely less than stunning on a visual level, are really little more than special-effects show-reels.

An inevitable result of this new technology would be that the format opens itself up to the same criticism routinely leveled at mainstream Hollywood; the ‘wow’ factor induced by cinematic spectacle is prioritised over good storytelling. The difference with IMAX is that the technology is specifically designed to showcase that new breed of spectacle, to the extent that many shows even begin with a short demonstration of the theatre’s audio technology. Whereas traditional cinema has, in many cases, evolved into serious art, and only tends to command critical respect when filmmakers offer involving stories and characters, IMAX is generally accepted as being little more than a theme-park attraction. The reality is that, with the limited range of purpose-shot films on offer, it is yet to prove itself capable of much else. In this way, there are certain similarities to be seen with the birth of cinema itself. From the first public exhibitions of the 1890s, and beyond, the appeal of early cinema was primarily the visual spectacle. Be it a train arriving at a station, or workers leaving a factory, the appeal was in the fact that these actions had been caught on film in the first place. It could well be that the IMAX format simply needs time to evolve, to become as established an art-form as its 35mm older cousin.

More straightforward, however, is the argument that IMAX represents the next cinematic step in audience-participation. With cutting-edge surround-sound, and a screen enveloping the viewer’s field of vision, the line between the audience’s very status as viewer or participant, becomes blurred. We find ourselves gently leaning as the camera swoops through the Grand Canyon, or mysteriously pinned to the back of the seat as we plunge into the depths of a volcano on a computer-generated roller-coaster. Add to this the now-routine 3D element of many shows, and the film envelops us to the extent that we can truly lose ourselves in the experience. That can’t often be said in quite the same way of traditional cinema.

Despite, however, the abundance of technological hooks, the IMAX format seems to be relegated to the fringes of the entertainment world; the theme park ride struggling to find its fan-base. An often stagnant schedule, combined with premium admission-rates for films which rarely run longer than forty-five minutes, are no doubt contributing factors. Over recent years, however, a certain format-crossover has begun to take place. A mix of classic and commercial films, such as The Matrix sequels, Apocalypse Now, Superman Returns, and most recently Zack Snyder’s Spartan-spectacular 300, have all taken advantage of digital technology to find themselves enjoying releases in the IMAX format. Similarly, though, digital 3D technology is beginning to find its way to the ‘traditional’ multiplexes. Recent releases such as Monster House, Tim Burton’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas and the current Meet The Robinsons, have all been available in digital 3D outside the IMAX.

If current trends persist, it could be that ‘bigger’ is the only real hook that the IMAX format has to offer audiences. Perhaps that will be enough to sustain it as a more exotic alternative to the 35mm and, increasingly, digital multiplex. This, however, seems somewhat unlikely. It seems reasonable to instead predict a similar evolution to that demonstrated by its 35mm cousin over the past century, assuming the public’s theme-park enthusiasm remains. Without it, the IMAX will likely end up permanently relegated to the status of cinematic oddity.

Oh, The Horror

2006-10-30T15:30:00.000Z

Back in 1999, two young filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, sent three actors into the woods in Maryland with nothing but some camping equipment, a camera and a fabricated myth about a local witch. The film became The Blair Witch Project, and through brilliant editing and even better Internet promotion and myth-building, went on to collect an astounding $250 million at the global box-office. The filmmakers and actors faded into obscurity as rapidly as they arrived, but the film sent shock-waves through the industry as it served as a stark reminder to the studios; audiences like to be scared.

The legacy of Blair Witch is, somewhat ironically, drenched in blood. The horror genre of the new millenium is relatively low-budget, with a renewed focus on violence and gore that would've been branded "Video-Nasty" twenty years ago. The stark difference is that it's now studio-sponsored and dominates the mainstream. The irony arises from the fact that Blair Witch, in common with several other groundbreaking entries in the genre (perhaps most notably the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is an almost entirely bloodless film. Violence is either implied, or occurs off-screen with only sound giving an indication of what's going on; the horror is almost exclusively psychological.

In the years since Blair Witch, however, visual subtlety has been increasingly drained from the genre. It seems audiences like to see characters suffer on-screen, and so each new horror entry attempts to out-do the last when it comes to blood-letting. Yet, despite the increasingly over-the-top nature of the genre, hooks to the real world have proved remarkably effective in securing often massive box-office returns. Blair Witch itself is the best example of this, as Myrick and Sanchez used the Internet to elaborate the myth of the witch. The film itself was presented and marketed as a documentary showing the last few days of the characters' lives before 'disappearing' in the woods. The filmmakers' skill at maintaining the facade was undoubtedley a major factor in the film's stunning success. Even informed audiences found it easy to believe that they were watching real events unfolding before them.

Over the last year, the genre has adjusted to take 'inspiration' from real-life events. The recent Wolf Creek, a tale of three young backpackers stranded in the Australian Outback to be hunted-down and tortured by a sadistic Bushman, was inspired by real-life missing-persons cases and even features an epilogue explaining what happened to the survivors. Similarly, the massively over-hyped Hostel, a gore-fest in which wealthy businessmen pay to torture backpackers (a somewhat persecuted bunch) in Eastern-European basements, was inspired by rumours of similar activities happening for real in the Far-East. The recently-revived Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise also plays up the 'Based on true events' line, as the original concept of the iconic Leatherface was very loosely inspired by the post-homicide rituals of 50s serial-killer Ed Gein.

The most successful franchise, however, is purely fictional. Saw drew direct inspiration from the bleak atmosphere of David Fincher's outstanding Se7en, and focussed on two men shackled to opposing walls in a dank basement, faced with the prospect of sawing through their ankles in order to escape. The film has spawned two sequels, the second of which opened last week, but unfortunately the premise has lost its imagination, substituting plot for ever-more creative ways of killing people. Still, the success of the Saw franchise, and the imminent arrival of Hostel 2, is a strong indication of both the future of the genre, and audience taste (or, perhaps, lack of it). Hostel was marketed as a gore-fest on a level never before seen by American audiences (it wasn't), and Quentin Tarantino's involvement as an executive-producer was emphasised in an attempt to reinforce this; audiences lapped it up.

Despite, then, its often more subtle ancestry, the horror genre looks set to continue (d)evolving into a bloody mess. Indeed, next year we'll be treated to Grindhouse, a double-feature directed by Tarantino and pal Robert Rodriguez, which promises zombies, psychotic hit-and-run drivers and no-doubt blood by the gallon. Still, there'll always be Shrek 3 to sink your teeth into if you find you're seeing a little too much red.

Evolution of the Super-Spy

2006-10-13T00:12:00.000Z

In the last year, only the controversy surrounding the production of 'United 93', and other 9/11-related projects, has come close in the film world to the scale of the media-storm created by the announcement of Pierce Brosnan's successor, to the role of MI6's least-secret agent. If the myriad websites that have sprung up over the past year are to be believed, Daniel Craig is too unsophisticated, too ugly, too small-time and just too damn blond to make James Bond his own. The critical backlash is unprecedented in the franchise's 44-year history, but the recasting of Bond spearheads Sony's apparent modernisation of the series. After Brosnan's last outing in 'Die Another Day', a film that set a new gadget-low with an invisible Aston-Martin, and showcased some of the worst visual-effects in recent memory, 'Casino Royale', based on Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, promises a return to grittier drama. Craig will play Bond as an MI6 agent newly-promoted to Double-0 status, and the latest trailer suggests drama with a firmer footing in the real world.

The reality is that Bond must adapt and evolve in order to demonstrate his continuing relevance in the post-9/11 world. Audiences are becoming far more accepting of the competition, to the point where questions are being asked as to whether indestructible super-spies have a genuine place in the world. The studios have attempted to update and Americanise the concept of Bond, with varying degrees of success. Perhaps the most overt of recent years has been Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible' franchise, the third of which was released earlier this year. Sharing little in common with the original TV series, beyond the title and the name of the protagonist, Cruise is super-agent Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Mission Force. Indestructible, athletic and increasingly banal, what character there was has rapidly faded beneath the dazzling glow of Cruise's all-too-public movie-star persona. Far less successful, but dosed with more wit, was 'xXx' (marketed as 'Triple-X'), another multiplex-targeted, teen-friendly action-movie starring Hollywood beefcake and man-of-the-moment Vin Diesel (real name Mark Vincent). Beginning with the apparently symbolic assassination of an anonymous but tuxedo-clad spy, the film attempts to establish an extreme-sports star as a reluctant secret-agent, snowboarding (no, really) his way to victory whilst aiming to win the hearts and pocket-money of skater-kids everywhere. The film spawned a sequel but in the process lost its focus, and the franchise descended into generic, teen-friendly violence.

Perhaps the most potent challenge to Bond's supremacy has come from the unexpected success of 'The Bourne Identity'. Telling the story of an amnesiac CIA assassin going rogue in Europe in an attempt to unlock the secrets of both himself and the ruthless committee that created him, the story has some pedigree, its roots found in a Robert Ludlum novel of the same name published in the late 70s. The film is a back-to-basics, stripped-down affair, helmed by respected indie director Doug Liman, and starring under-rated Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. As a character, Bourne is cold, distant, calculating and unsure when it comes to interacting with other human-beings. In stark contrast to Bond, he is also bound by the physical laws of the real world, meaning the violence really hurts, he limps and he bleeds. The original novel is one of three; 'The Bourne Supremacy' has since become an equally-impressive sequel, and 'The Bourne Ultimatum' is due next year, both retaining Damon in the title-role.

With gritty action-sequences that feel more authentic, and a greater focus on character, it seems the success of the Bourne franchise has likely been a major inspiration for the repackaged Bond. Despite the grievances of many hardcore fans, Craig is a talented actor, perhaps the most versatile to ever have been offered Bond, and his work in the excellent British gangster film 'Layer Cake' shows he can handle this kind of character. Either way, after so much controversy, the eventual box-office reception of 'Casino Royale' will have a massive impact on the continuing evolution of the cinematic super-spy.

Hollywood vs The Original Idea

2006-10-10T00:52:00.000Z

Last Friday saw the UK release of Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a crime-thriller set in the murky underworld of the Boston-Irish Mafia. A well-crafted piece that sees Scorsese return to the cinematic heights he once scaled with GoodFellas, the film is a remake of recent Hong Kong crime-thriller Infernal Affairs. As such, it's the latest entry in a long line of Asia-to-US remakes, which, for all their individual merits, represent perhaps the most cynical side of Hollywood film production. Over recent years, classy Japanese horrors such as Ringu (The Ring), Dark Water and Ju-on: The Grudge, have provided fresh material for Hollywood to plunder, in a time when home-grown originality is increasingly scarce in the mainstream.

Despite being freely available, in their original forms, on both sides of the Atlantic, these movies' collective status as "Foreign Film" has hindered their circulation in all but the most enthusiastic film clubs, academic-film circles and late-night TV schedules. The major US studios, however, are not about to miss out on an opportunity, and as a result all three of the aforementioned titles have been remade in the US, with The Ring and The Grudge spawning more-of-the-same sequels in mirror-image of their Japanese origins. The foreign locations are swapped with suitably eerie American counterparts, big-name or up-and-coming Hollywood stars are signed up to multi-picture deals (as production executives predict franchises), in the case of The Grudge the original Japanese director is hired, and, crucially, the characters all speak English with American accents; two hours of subtitles are often unwelcome in the multiplex environment on a Friday night.

Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with originality. The major studios tend to operate best when a problem can be solved by throwing money at it, which is great when creating a summer blockbuster where regular fireworks will keep the popcorn-audience entertained. Money buys technology, improvements in technology produce better-looking fireworks, and studio-executives everywhere go home happy, slapping each other's backs and giving the effects techie a bonus (maybe). In contrast, original material - namely, decent writing - is harder to come by, and when it does appear, it can be a gamble. It's untested, it's risky, and it's invariably more cerebral, a word which is less likely to appear on the wish-list of the average movie-goer in the multiplex on the all-important opening weekend.

Over the past few years (or longer, as some would argue), the well of originality in Hollywood has become particularly dry, with studios falling back on big-screen versions of classic TV shows, hoping to cash-in on nostalgia and long-established fan-bases, whilst never underestimating the help of modernised premises and current big-name stars. Think of Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels (and its sequel), Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell in Bewitched, Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville in Dukes of Hazzard... I would go on, but for a sudden pain in my head.

Remakes are as effective an exercise in risk-reduction, although the studios have for some time now been gleefully raiding their own archives, as well as those of the Far East. Occasionally entertaining but ultimately soulless "reimaginings" of The Poseidon Adventure (renamed simply Poseidon, perhaps to cater better for the 21st-century attention-span), The Omen, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, to name but four, have all hit cinemas over the last year or so. The occasional involvement of big-name directors appears to offer a degree of validation to the otherwise cynical practice. Of course, each has his own motivation. Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds stemmed from his lifelong enthusiasm for the story. Although massively rushed (barely a year passed from the moment Tom Cruise first read the updated screenplay and committed, to the film hitting cinemas), his version turned into an effective modern invasion-thriller, and has been interpreted, in my view rightly, as the director's response, through allegory, to the events of 9/11. As a 12 year-old boy, Peter Jackson tried remaking King Kong, the film that inspired him to become a filmmaker. As a 12 year-old he failed, but last year his second attempt benefited from thirty years experience and a $200 million budget-increase. While the finished product doesn't quite match the quality of the 1933 original, it comes pretty close. Even 80s indie saviours the Coen Brothers have given it a go, with their version of The Ladykillers, while Steven Soderbergh has given us a remake of Ocean's 11 and a sequel, with a third coming our way next year. With Soderbergh also a former indie saviour, it's almost enough to make you cry. For all the wrong reasons.

Still, these "reimaginings" would dry up without the support of the audience. Whilst the cultural revolution of the 1970s produced an abundance of groundbreaking cinema, from Easy Rider to Scorsese's own Raging Bull, this was before the time of today's primary cinema-going audience, many of whom were not aware that the recent Poseidon was a remake at all. This cinematic amnesia works in the studios' favour, as they take it upon themselves to "reimagine" the hits of the past, in the same manner in which they've approached classic television. Rough-and-ready production-values (originally necessitated by low-budget filmmaking), enthusiastic directors and unknown casts have all been completely reversed, and this trend is set to continue. This month, for example, sees the cinematic release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a prequel to the remake of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and apparently unrelated (except in name, of course) to the two sequels spawned by said original. Next year, we'll be treated to Hannibal Rising, which will be not the first, nor the second, but the third prequel, in terms of narrative chronology, to The Silence of the Lambs. Telling the story of the young Hannibal and how he came to be 'The Cannibal', it's doubtful whether Anthony Hopkins was too upset over losing that particular gig. Instead it serves as still more evidence of how far Hollywood will go to make a buck.

9/11 in Cinema

2006-10-03T07:29:00.000Z

Historically, America is not great at confronting sources of national trauma. A pertinent example is the Vietnam War, the first major conflict that the US ever lost. After more than a decade of fighting and nearly 60,000 American deaths, the nation slipped into a long period of self-induced historical amnesia, an unwillingness to confront the ghosts of the past. Indeed, it was only in 1986, nearly fifteen years after the American withdrawal from Saigon, that the true realities of the War were first addressed in cinema, with Oliver Stone's Platoon. Even in 1986, Stone had immense difficulty getting funding for a script which had been universally shunned for a decade.

Recovery from, and indeed confrontation of, the tragic events of 9/11, seems to have been more accelerated. After various TV projects telling the same story, Paul Greengrass' outstanding United 93 was released in cinemas earlier this year, to both massive plaudits and massive controversy. Telling the story of the fourth hijacked plane with a notable absence of recognised actors and several air-traffic controllers playing themselves, the film comes across as almost documentary in style, especially as we watch the controllers on the ground reacting to the horrifying events in New York and Washington.

Of course, many believe that United 93 was made 'too soon', coming less than five years after the attacks. Although I of course understand the argument, my own belief is that 9/11 is an unavoidable area of study, in order to attempt to understand and explore the foundation of the Bush Administration's current foreign policy. The roots of the current chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq are to be found in the chaos that was created in New York and Washington back in 2001.

Only months after Paul Greengrass explored the story of United 93 in a gritty, stomach-churning and apparently authentic style, Oliver Stone has won apparently universal praise (in the US, at least) for the first major studio response to the attacks, World Trade Center. With a big budget and a big-name actor, Nicolas Cage, Stone's approach to the subject seems to have been far easier for American audiences to digest. With television schedules around the fifth anniversary of 9/11 crowded with documentaries and docu-dramas exploring the numerous governmental failings that lead to the attacks, it is actually refreshing to hear a story of courage and strength that emerged from the death and destruction. Telling the story of two Port Authority cops who were among the last survivors to be pulled from the rubble of the fallen towers, Stone's film tells the story of 9/11 from two relatively unseen angles; first from inside the towers up to the moment of collapse, and then from beneath twenty feet of rubble as the two men attempt to stay alive, their distraught families living on scraps of information that reach the outside world from the search-teams.

It is by no means a terrific film, displaying many of the negative hallmarks of mainstream Hollywood in regards to tinges of emotional manipulation, and a sequence exploring global reactions to the attacks carries a cringe-inducing crassness. For me, the film was in fact near its most poignant during the opening scenes, as we see a city waking up and going about its business, oblivious to the physical and emotional devastation about to be wreaked upon it. For all its faults, however, the sentiment is right, and is certainly the direction in which we should be headed. With governmental failings identified and (hopefully) addressed, and with chaos subsequently wrought across Afghanistan and Iraq with the resulting wrath of US foreign policy, it has never been more important to remember the humanity that saved lives back on the day that the world changed.

Gems in American Television

2006-09-28T17:41:00.000Z

When it's good, American television is very, very good, with writing that routinely surpasses its silver-screen competition for sheer quality. Whether it's the recently-retired President Bartlet running an inspirational West Wing, or the stressed-out and soon-to-be-retired mob-boss Tony Soprano attempting to keep order in the New Jersey ranks, I've been surprised to find myself drawn to television over recent years in a way that I never expected. I think that to an extent we're lucky here in the UK for generally only receiving the best American exports, with critical reactions in the US in some ways acting as a quality-control filter. The recent return of Doctor Who to British television (and subsequently the world after its stunning success), gave our industry a much-needed shot-in-the-arm, although we're still inundated with banal medical dramas and anything kitchen-sink in style that can be done on the cheap and still find itself winning National Television Awards.

One of the problems in the UK is that we have so little money in either film or television, especially in contrast to the studio-funded stateside productions. Before the rebirth of Doctor Who, perhaps the most imaginative British-made TV series screened in recent years was a Channel 4 production called Ultraviolet, a kind of vampire thriller that's since been remade in the US. That lasted one solitary season (and that's six fifty-minute episodes, as opposed to the dozen or so that usually form a minimum production commitment in the US). Ten years of creative stifling followed, with Doctor Who finally representing something a bit different, although still risky despite the programme's rich history and global fan-base. There is an audience for material beyond the everyday and the banal in this country, but I believe there is a prejudice towards it. Further, when the Americans have more money to throw at exciting new ideas, networks on this side of the pond would rather shell out for broadcast rights to established hits, than take a risk with something new of their own.

Recently, I've had to search around to route out the gems amongst the usual American imports. Luckily, I've found two massive winners. Firstly, crime drama The Wire is perhaps one of the best pieces of screen-drama I've ever seen, on film or TV. There are three seasons currently available on DVD in the UK (criminally ignored by the major networks, the series has only been picked-up by obscure cable-channel FX in the UK), with each telling the story of a single case stretching over twelve episodes, a crime novel told on-screen. The story is told fully from the perspective of both cop and criminal, and all the ingredients come together to form a hugely rewarding viewing experience.

My second discovery took me from left-field and I truly never saw it coming. As a 25 year-old, I never expected to be thrilled by Battlestar Galactica, but it's happened. The original series was axed almost thirty years ago and is best remembered for being regarded as a cheap Star Wars rip-off. Which it pretty much was. Four years ago it was given a radical makeover and became a mini-series, which in turn became a full season, which then became one of the highest-rated shows on US TV. As a sci-fi 9/11 allegory, it's perhaps one of the most topical and relevant television shows around right now, although many have been put off by the spaceships-and-lasers surface sheen. After all, sci-fi is for geeks... right?

The 2002 mini-series dealt with a devastating terrorist attack (the terrorists are androids named Cylons in the context of the show) that leaves fewer than 50,000 humans alive. As the survivors flee into the depths of space, they discover that the enemy, ironically created by Man in the first place (read what you like into the Iraq War), have evolved to impersonate humans, and that there are enemy 'sleepers' living among them, willing to sacrifice their own lives in their relentless pursuit to destroy humanity. As the situation intensifies aboard the military space-vessel Galactica, suicide bombers are endured, and suspected Cylons are stripped of their rights and tortured, in increasingly desperate attempts to preserve the remnants of the human race. It is, indeed, a brave new world. This is adult drama of the highest order; we've come a long way since the camp theatrics of the 70s.

Borat: Great Culture-Clash Comedy

2006-09-28T15:45:00.000Z

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to catch a UK preview of Sacha Baron Cohen's first filmic outing as Kazakhstani journalist Borat, in the brilliantly titled Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

I've never been a huge fan of Cohen's more famous character, Ali-G, who was originally a late-night phenomenon here in the UK, but is now rarely seen on these shores. In contrast, I've always enjoyed Cohen's Borat sketches, which is strange considering that, as a very sheltered character with little experience of anything outside his own immediate life and culture, Borat is very similar to Ali-G.

The strength of Ali-G was always his ability to catch powerful individuals off-guard through his apparent charm and naivety, essentially tricking people into revealing their true thoughts on controversial subjects, from women in the workplace through to correct dinner-party etiquette.

Borat shares all Ali-G's abilities and more. The Kazakhstani government has rigorously attacked the film for its portrayal of the Kazakhstani people as backward, but the reality is very different. Borat is a physical embodiment of the Kazakhstani stereotype, and can even be seen to represent the way in which many westerners view the eastern-European and Islamic worlds in general. As a character Borat works on two levels; he satirises and mocks as unacceptable the derogotory views of women which are still prevalent in many cultures around the world, whilst simultaneously satirising the US stereotype of middle-eastern cultures by playing up to it.

As with Ali-G, the opinions that Cohen expresses as Borat succeed in drawing out prejudices and laissez-faire attitudes amongst individuals - and even crowds - he meets in the US. In the conservative Republican heartland that is the mid-West, Cohen delivers a particularly ballsy performance and manages to draw applause from a rodeo crowd for inciting little short of the total destruction of Iraq. Only when he asks for President Bush to drink the blood of the Iraqi people in celebration of their destruction, does the crowd begin to waver in their support for the general sentiment. The scenes are remarkably reminiscent of attitudes held towards the Vietnamese people forty years ago, by a people who had little understanding of the culture they were fighting against.

On the surface then, Borat is a culture-clash comedy following a bumbling Kazakhstani reporter as he sets out to document the American way of life, and instead initiates an impromtu roadtrip from New York to LA. So far, so accessible for the MTV generation. That might normally be something of a criticism if it wasn't for the fact that Borat is very, hysterically funny. Then, as if that wasn't enough, look just beneath the surface, and you'll find a biting satire of western prejudice and naivety.