One Man, His Dog and a CG Apocalypse

‘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

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

"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

"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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.