Twenty Four

Today I turn twenty four.

I am now officially a man.

There is only one way to express how I feel today...

Dance to the Radio

I've just bought Control (2007) on DVD.

Here is the real Joy Division with Transmission.

How can this not stir something deep within your soul?

All I want for Christmas is...The Road on DVD.

This Christmas I decided to buy The Road (2009) on DVD for pretty much every single member of my family.

Boring? No. Everybody has to see this. It's one of the best adaptations from a novel of the past ten years, maybe more.

Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalypto-depresso follows a man and his young son as they traverse the charred landscape of North America. Their aim: to survive. Of what few people are left on earth, most are desperate and violent. Gangs of cannibals roam around looking for survivors.

John Hillcoat's film evokes every ounce of the novel's escalating desperation. He focusses on the humanity of the characters, drawing mood from the hellish environment on their sombre, almost hopeless journey.

At times the film is horrific. At times it is beautiful.

Not one too cheer you up, though.

I'd strongly advise that you read the novel first. If you're adverse to literature, I can assure you that it is short and the language is very sparing. You don't want to go into the book knowing what happens.

If you're not going to read the book, however, then nothing shall be taken away from your experience of this brilliant, brilliant film.

(psssssssssst! Only six quid in Tescos!)

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp/Edward Scissorhands

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, naff-cinema crime-fighting team, have begun to wither.

In a partnership resembling a prehistoric Hollywood studio contract combined with Manchester United's player loan programme, they've collaborated on seven (soon to be eight) features since the inception of Depp's career in Wes Craven's A Nightmare in Elm Street in 1984.

Their latest, Alice In Wonderland, was the actor/director's first foray into the third dimension; a fluff re-imagination of the classic tale that saw Depp goofing as an imbalanced (both physically and mentally) computer-generated Mad Hatter.

Burton is one of the most imaginative film directors of the last twenty years. Still, the repetition of his choice of actors, which includes wife Helena Bonham Carter, is becoming tedious. No longer are their roles as fresh and bewitching as they used to be, and the style of direction has become- though a trademark- predictable and samey.

Everything started in 1990 with Edward Scissorhands, a darkly comic fairytale about loneliness, exploitation, love, and envy. Brilliantly original in both story and style, it starred Depp as Edward, the 'human' creation of an aged inventor- incomplete but for his hands, instead possessing long, razor sharp shears. Whisked from his tower by an over-empathetic Avon saleswoman he tries his best to fit into the garishly dull suburbia and soon he discovers that his individuality and creativity brings new life to the townsfolk; but not everyone wants him there.

Depp's performance ignited a career that would see him hailed by many as one of the finest actors of our generation and his mug is firmly slapped across the bedroom ceiling of every fifteen-year old girl in Christendom. Brilliant it is. Uttering only something like 172 words during the whole film, he twitches, snips and pouts his socks off, perfecting physical comedy in several hilarious spurts of deranged panic (waterbed+giant scissors= ha ha ha).

Winona Ryder- Burton's pre-Carter kooky gal in residence- knocks socks off as dreamy teenage daughter Kim, for whom Edward falls in... love? Her buttery shhhh-shy voice and puppy dog eyes excuse the daft unconditioned yellow mop, which pales in comparison to the barnets of her neighbours- over-tanned chicken-coop alpha-females shifting out of identikit bungalows.

She could steal from my department store any day, mate!

Following the sublimely macabre Beetlejuice (1988), Burton used this film to cement his screenwriting/directorial style, depicting a combination of the bizarre, the fantastic, the vulnerable, the crazy, and the down right chicken oriental. Additionally, Edward Scissorhands opens with an almost identical shot to the opening of Beetlejuice with a long birds-eye tracking shot over an elaborate model replica of the town setting.

Talking of which, the set design is unbeatable and thank days that this was visualised before the improvement of CG because I just know that it would all have been done the easy way if made today. The various towering hedge sculptures are amazing (and real), though I shall forgive for there not actually being a castle on a giant mountain right next to the set.

Vincent Price gave a memorable last performance in the movie before his sad passing in 1993, his last ever scene ironically being the character of the inventor dying on-screen when presenting Edward with his hands. The role was said to have been written for the actor, who enjoyed a long career- most famously in the horror genre, thanks to his distinctive voice.

The only thing that I don't like about this film is the cheesy bracketing of the story with an old lady Winona telling it in a form of a fairytale to a little girl in a bed ten times too big for her. It's not just the fact that Tim Burton suddenly turns me into a gilf-lover every time I watch this movie, but that it almost ruins the magic of it, you know? 

Sorry, I'm lying. 

I don't like it because when Winona tucks the little girl into bed and it zooms out through the window towards Edward's castle and it's all beautiful and he's there snipping at the ice sculptures and there's one of Kim then Danny Elfman's choral score floats over the top, it soaks up all the love in my soul and I start crying because its so sad that Kim and Edward can't be together.

Oh, all right. Bollocks to you. 

It's really because Me and Winona can't be together, alright? Are you happy now?

Bloody hell.

So what's next for Depp and Burton? Dark Shadows: "a gothic-horror tale centering on the life of vampire Barnabas Collins and his run-ins with various monsters, witches, werewolves and ghosts." Very much Burton territory, but I'm skeptical as to what Depp can bring to this role that he hasn't in previous collaborations. True, his canon contains more variation than a box of quality street, but highly problematic for this actor is that the status of his celebrity makes every role henceforth unmistakably a Johnny Depp Performance. He seems to have lost the ability to disappear into a character, which is exactly what he has been so highly regarded for.

It's the drunk pirate that did that, didn't it!

Anyway, this leads to me to consider other director-actor dream teams over the years (since the studio system that is, when contracts used to stick them together for a determined number of flicks).

Most notably for me has been Martin Scorcese and Robert De Niro's cinematic relationship, though since Gangs of New York Marty's pinned the best mates birthday badge to a rougher, matured Leonardo Di Caprio. Alfred Hitchcock was fond of James Stewart. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg extend beyond movies into producing pals. Christopher Nolan's right hand man looks a lot like Christian Bale.

A good, lasting actor-director combo is a hard thing to find, especially when the artists are both at the top of their game. 

All I'm saying is that I don't want another 'New Tim Burton and Johnny Depp Movie'. I want another great, original movie that you can lose yourself in that is directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp.

Ya dig?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Muppet Christmas Carol(Brian Henson, 1992)

REVIEW: Blue Valentine

"It takes a lot of whiskey
to make these nightmares go away
and I cut my bleedin' heart out every nite
and I die a little more on each st. valentine day"


- Blue Valentine
- Tom Waits
--------------------------------------------------------------

Derek Cianfrance has been hovering just under the mainstream radar since scooping a bounty of awards at the indie fests for his feature debut Brother Tied, which he wrote, directed and edited in 1998 at the tender age of 23.

Over the past twelves years of making shorts and lending his craft to television documentaries, Cianfrance has been secretly working on Blue Valentine- perfecting a script which, for all its 66 geneses, demanded extensive improvisation from leads Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

Blue Valentine depicts one relationship in two time frames- the molten marriage/ the blossoming romance. These two narrative channels are linked with seamless matching shots, at points the characters seeming to stare at their future/past selves asking "who do I become?" and in turn, "how did I learn to hate you?".

We are but voyeurs to a breakdown. Scenes are natural, but concise. Subtext dominates every married scene; Cindy's passive hostility tempting Dean's rejected frustration to breaking point. This is about how love changes when people change, how we can become trapped by what we do in the moment.

Gosling, having intelligently shuffled away from the heartthrob status he earned in 2004's schmaltzy tear-jerker The Notebook, is subtle and brilliant. The physical transformation from coy Brooklyn removal guy to balding big-hearted trailer-trash is almost as impressive as his performance,  ranging from a sweet, smitten father, to pathetic over-possessive drunk.

But Williams is no less the star here. She smoulders behind her eyes with resentment, then sparkles with the hopeful promise of being won. Cindy's loss of love is not down to Dean's complacency, but his inability to fulfil a promise that he never made. She is her own undoing. She traps herself willingly, though sympathetically, by being emotionally incapable of completing the abortion of Dean's child.

Not only does Cindy feel trapped by this person who seemed to enter her life so quickly, she is trapped by the town that she was supposed to escape. The older Cindy does go through medical school and become a doctor, but she is still living where she grew up. The older Dean, however, is happy to remain there. He's still a removal guy, claiming- much to his wife's disgust- that one of the benefits is the ability to drink a beer in the morning.

This is no Revolutionary Road. Underlying tensions are pushed to breaking point. In the most powerful scene, Dean tries desperately to instigate sex with Cindy in the shower of their romantic retreat. She turns away again and again and you can see his heartbreak growing but still he gets to his knees and puts his head between her legs. The way that she grabs his hair and pulls him away, trying not to be violent, trying to hint, when really she wants to scream out loud but all she can do is scream inside, is soul destroying.

During the 'flashback' parts of the narrative, however, we see sweet, natural, non-sentimental romance. Twee gestures come from humble protagonists, such as Dean's serenading Cindy on the street with a ukelele ("Sorry but I can only sing stupid") while she performs a little dance, to his selection of an obscure motown number to soundtrack their lustful sex. He pursues her with the energy of a small dog and the conviction of a boy who has fallen in love. These lovers set in direct contrast against their future selves are almost unrecognisable, but the transformation is fully believable.

This relationship is so real, so true, that it is impossible to not see a reflection of your own life in at least one stage of Dean and Cindy's story. It is not always an easy film to watch, but it is very affecting.

My only criticism: it feels perhaps a touch overlong at two hours.

I would find it hard to watch this film again soon because it felt like I too were experiencing a marital breakdown. These characters are so vulnerable, so emotionally exposed, that you feel their pain on their behalf. The quality of the writing is evident in its refusal to make you take sides. Neither character is guiltless; neither character lacks the capacity to love or be loved. Both of them want something that is gone.

Great cinema rips your heart out, shows it to you, then stuffs it back in.

Blue Valentine brought up memories that I was yet to put to rest, but it has actually helped me deal with them. I have been both Dean and Cindy. Most of us have.

Therein lies the excellence of this sad, beautiful film.

More Shameless Self-Promotion!

I've cut together a quick promo for the art exhibition. All the footage I shot on the opening night last thursday.

If you're in Kent this week, please come down. This exhibition is brilliant.

Music: 'Strobe' by Friendly Fires and 'Safari' by Holy Fuck.

REVIEW: Brighton Rock

Now I've spent a fair bit of time in Brighton, both in the blaze of the summer and battling the grey, lashing winds of winter. Some call it "London by the sea"- if only for the similar expense of living- but to many it represents the last bastien of liberal attitudes in Britain; a commune-like city of free-thinkers gazing out into the rolling tide.

Having never seen John Boulting's 1974 movie, nor read Graham Greene's novel, I went into Brighton Rock cold. I was eager to see how Sam Riley would follow up his breakthrough as Ian Curtis in 2007's Control, but more interested to see how Rowan Joffe would depict my favourite coastal town (while fully aware it was mostly shot in neighbouring Eastbourne).

This is the story of Pinkie, a young flick-knife wielding member of a racket on Brighton beach in the 60's, under threat of being uncovered by a local waitress, Rose, who could link him and his gang to a series of murders. Pinkie seduces Rose and marries her to keep her quiet, but as the gang start to doubt his ability to retain control and Rose's boss Ida is hot on the trail, Pinkie loses his grip.

Brighton Rock exudes the mood of its location. Dark, foreboding arcades give shelter from the lashing rain. Egg-white skies cover pastel-shade promenades. Cream coloured tea rooms and dusty, maudlin bedsits. The period is also evoked fantastically with subtle touches to the dialogue and some great set design. In the best scene in the film we are taken back down memory lane to Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979) when the mods and rockers descend on the city for their famous medieval battle; Pinkie finding his own (unrelated) ruck amongst the carnage, managing to blend in with the crowds to escape his assailants.

Sadly, the problem with this film is Pinkie. Not Sam Riley, but Pinkie. The character is flat and boring. He's supposed to be a cold nutter, yes, but not an unsympathetic one. There is not one line of expositionary dialogue or scene description which alludes to a back story to our protagonist, thus we don't give so much as a damn about the chap. Sam Riley evokes emotionlessness effectively in this role, but the lack of personality is stifling.

Andrea Riseborough is great as Rose. She has an honest, almost vulnerable face and she portrays a sweet, likeable character (though I was quite unsure what she found so attractive about Pinkie).

Helen Mirren and John Hurt have certainly the weakest roles in the film, both in relation to their acting efforts and the development of character in the script. On top of a sense of their drive to stop Pinkie, is it never very clear whether they're supposed to have a history or not. It feels as if the film hasn't got time for them and both actors knew this before production.

Andy Serkis' career has rocketed since he danced in front of a green screen in The Lord of The Rings trilogy, and his turn here is symptomatic of an actor that no longer has time to take bit parts. His part is functional, but all too brief.

Brighton Rock is another case of good tale made unnecessarily confusing. What starts off as a subtle, sharp style of storytelling fails to lay sufficient groundwork in explaining what is going on. We are given too little, left with the impression that this is supposed to be an flimsily plotted art film- not an artfully shot plotted film. Multiple times I found myself asking "who's he?" and "why did he do that?"- not because I'm retarded (let's hope), but simply because the director didn't do a good enough job with providing key information.

For all its beautiful cinematography and rich sense of time and place, this film fails to craft the character and succinct storytelling to form a brilliant film. The performances are good but let down by the screenplay. Still, I can't help but ask: if Riley had ever tried on a smile could some personality have been dragged out of Pinkie? We'll never know.

Brighton Rock has been nominated for a BAFTA and is out in UK cinemas on February 4, 2011.


Next review: Blue Valentine.

Apologies...

Sorry everybody for my lack of bloggage this week.

On Monday I started a short post as script reader/assistant for a production company in London, plus I have been readying for the art exhibition advertised in my previous post.

This is no excuse, but it is one!

As a bonus for my job, however, I have access to a private screening of Brighton Rock, which stars none other than SAM RILEY who plays the legendary Sal Paradise in the forthcoming adaptation of On The Road.


This was showcased at the BFI London Film Festival, but is not due for UK cinema release until February 2011.

Expect a review tomorrow morning.

Brighton Rock

Shameless Self-Promotion

Cinema is a medium of art.

What else can be a medium of art?

An Art Exhibition!

From Thursday 16th until Friday 24th December my work shall form part of a collective art exhibition at No.9 The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells, Kent.


"WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING” brings together ten artists from the South East and surrounding area in an exciting exhibition of contemporary art. Responding to their occupation of an empty commercial unit and to their own areas of investigation, the artists explore ideas around communication, technology, consumerism, and the “post-” world in which we live or may come to live, through the mediums of sculpture, painting, drawing, film, photography and sound."


The full press release can be found here: http://we-got-everything.weebly.com/


If you live in the Kent- or anywhere in the ruddy South East for that matter- please come down to experience something interesting and original.

Jim'll fix it

I must've slept an hour last night, tops. The whole world was whizzing around in my brain. 

The truth is, the harder you try to sleep the more likely you are to miss the train to Noddington. I was right there- swinging on the door (it was an old-style figurative train)- screaming at dream me, "Don't you fucking leave! Don't leave!" But he peeled my fingers off the frame, sent me tumbling across the platform. I looked up to watch him recede into the distance, head tossed back. He was laughing like the narrator at the end of Thriller. 

All day long I've been a ghost of my former self; body weak and head heavy, fighting back the mocking sleep.

Monsters, was not to be.

But something had to be done. I paced, I lounged, I screamed, I lay on the hard wood floor and thought my brains out, until... the answer... finally... came...

What heals quicker than a good cup of tea?

Jim Bloody Carrey.

Say no more, dear reader.

Enjoy.

Dumb and Dumber (Peter Farrelly, 1994)

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com

The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998)



Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Tom Shadyac, 1994)



Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

REVIEW: Let the Right One In.

Following Laura’s article on vampires last week I promised to review Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010) the recent US remake of 2008 Swedish cult horror/love story Let the Right One In.

Due to having been snowed into my house for the best part of five days it proved impossible to actually get to the cinema. Now the roads are less treacherous, I’ve chosen to save my hard-earned to watch Gareth Edwards' Monsters this weekend having raved about his artistic achievement to everybody I know ever since I first read about it.

Alas, bloodsuckers- all is not lost! A brilliant person was kind enough to lend me Tomas Alfredson's original, which- I was happy to find- beautifully subverts the pin-up romanticism of the modern vampire genre.

Let the Right One In follows Oscar, a shy twelve year-old who suffers regularly at the mercy of the school bully. One night he meets Eli, twelve, who has just moved in next-door. She is a vampire and her "father" subsidises her bloodlust by murdering local boys and men. Oscar falls in love with Eli, but the discovery of her terrible secret only cements his conviction that he is no longer alone in the world.

John Lindqvist’s screenplay (adapted from his own novel) broods quietly as Oscar and Eli change from resentful loners to inseparable dependents. Love is neither a crush nor an over-wrought battle of minds but a reciprocal loneliness; an aching, understated sadness. The violence, often strong, is not mere spectacle but a reflection of the brutal necessity of Eli’s survival.

The cinematography is beautiful, depicting a shadowy snow-covered mid-Scandinavia in which boxy, functional apartment blocks sit awkwardly in the darkness; pristine flat-packed interiors ghostlike in the rare, oppressive daylight. Most of the film plays at night, owing to Eli’s aversion to the sun. 

Subtlety is key. These characters make realistic, logical decisions but not obvious decisions. Love is not communicated by a kiss but a touch of the hand. A vampire is not a sexy, brooding human bat, but a miserable being, ashamed of its condition.

In a dark, forbidding environment in which men huddle together and drink whiskey and women sit alone watching television all evening, there is little parental love. The only sympathetic adult is Eli's "father", who murders out of love then takes his own life out of shame. He is not a 'murderer', but he has to keep Eli alive. He has conditioned himself not to care.

And this is true with Eli: she has conditioned herself to survive, long past being sympathetic to herself. Lina Leandersson's performance is understated and affecting. Kare Hedebrant as Oscar is reminiscent of Danny Lloyd in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980); little expression but lots of subtext. Again, we have a character who has conditioned themself to deal with loneliness. A lot of credit has to go to Tomas Alfredson for his direction of children.

The theme of gender is tactfully debated, with Oscar branded 'a girl' by his tormentors and Eli's self description "I'm not a girl, I'm nothing", a single shot suggestive to several explanations (confirmed, however, by the novel). But sexuality is not important here so much as love, and at twelve years old a physical relationship is not expected to progress. 

The remake Let Me In has been described by Empire as "a movie that will stand on its own and satisfy fans of the original". I'll be very happy to see Reeve's take on the story, but Alfredson has set a very high bar with what is, in my opinion, one of the best movies to express the concept of the vampire ever made.

Following this weekend there will be a review of Monsters. I'm very excited about this one.

Christmas movies that have nothing to do with Christmas

So all the family are here. We've a roaring fire, tonnes of food... even the cats are curled up around our toes. Mum's drunk. Dad's fallen asleep. Granddad is overcome with joy because he's got a new pair of socks.

What shall we watch? Anybody for DIE HARD?

Hang on.

What is it with movies that have nothing to do with christmas, have zero festive spirit, yet are somehow synonymous with yuletide?

Of all the genuinely christmas themed films, there's few that I have time for. My favourite is Jingle All the Way (Brian Levant, 1996), in which Schwarzenegger makes a fine comedic turn as an estranged father desperate to win the affections of his son by buying the ludicrously popular Turbo Man action figure for xmas. Can he save face against the traditional Smug Step-dad? Why is he so ludicrously muscular? Arnie's plight unfolds with such manic desperation that you half expect him to break somebody's neck or rip their arm off or throw them out of the breathable atmosphere in order to attain his prize.

Thankfully, Santa doesn't come into it.

But the selection of annual irrelevance is as wide as it is deep. We have the aforementioned Die Hard (John Mctiernan, 1988) usually followed the more fitting Die Hard 2: Die Harder ( "Just once, I'd like a regular, normal Christmas. Eggnog, a fuckin' Christmas tree, a little turkey. But, no. I gotta crawl around in this motherfuckin' tin can!" haha). 


Then there's The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985), Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968), Back To The Future (Robert Zimeckis, 1985), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977), Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987)...


Damn loads, that's how many!


The reason for this seemingly random repeated annual programming is that there is simply too much time, too few festive films. Classic cinema is classic cinema. You can watch Robocop with your Gran at any time of the year and be sure that the cockles of your heart shall be thoroughly warmed.


This year I'm looking forward to another fortnight of television movie gold. I even don't mind about the adverts.


Here's my suggestion for the perfect boxing day hangover treat, fun for all the family:

Film of 2010: Dogtooth

It was a sweltering afternoon in downtown Manhattan. The streets were aswarm as they always are late-june, but the heat was focussed on my little pocket of the Lower East Side; hanging around in Union Square park, sipping on a coffee frappuccino to keep death at bay, audience to a nineteen year-old college student playing ska on the corner for dollars and dimes.

When the clock made its mind up for three I moseyed down University Place, taking respite in the shadow of the towering buildings. Cinema Village was nestled between the delicatessens, corner stores and bars characteristic of Greenwich Village; a turn-of-the-century fire station converted into a cinema in 1963, having survived the purge of the movie theatres in the 80's kept its board through a good reputation for film festivals and showing popular movies after their first run.

I was taking a risk on multiple festival award winner (including Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film) Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009).

Okay, not that much of a risk.

So I was in the empty cinema scribbling in my empty journal and another chap enters- a tall, lean swept-back-hair guy with a chiseled jaw. He takes a chair two rows in front of me. Then he turns around and starts talking.

He starts telling me about his life; how he's in NYC for a little stopgap before going over to New Jersey for an old college friend's wedding. The problem is that he hasn't seen his friend since college but knows that all his friend's family and loved ones have heard about him because he was this wild Dean Moriarty character who got his friend into lots of extra-curricular scrapes. The Sorority Moriarty, if you will.

He was fretting about all these things, getting them off his chest to me because hell- he knew nobody in that city, just like I didn't. I'm remarking on this because this never happens in England. The cinema is the most unlikely place to meet somebody new, let alone hear their life story. You're more likely to shout at somebody for throwing popcorn, or talking.

When he turned back around and the opening credits started to roll I thought to myself, Why can't home loosen up a touch? You know?

Anyway, this isn't an article about "my greatest cinema experience" or "a bromance made by the movies". I never saw that guy again. This is about a very special Greek film that everybody should watch.

Dogtooth is a world unto itself. Set predominantly in a small house in anonymous rural Greece, it depicts the story of three teenagers who have never left their family home. Their warped perceptions of the world are moulded and controlled by their father, whose bizarre social experiment includes the seemingly random re-appropriation of nouns, and various lies to curb any desire to escape (at one point he tells them that a domesticated cat is a dangerous beast- see trailer below).

When the boy reaches sexual maturity the father employs the services of a security guard, Christina, but the introduction of this unknown element to the home's controlled environment has an effect beyond the scope of the father's control.

Lanthimos's film is slow, but gripping. The long, naturalistic scenes evoke the anarchic possibilities reminiscent of Dogme 95, tension created by the possibility of horror- not the actuality of it.

The performances of the three 'children' are understated but affecting, particularly Aggeliki Papoulia's 'Older Daughter', whose slow descent into an insane, primal state is subtle but devastating.

As the audience, you are voyeur to something dark and forbidden. You are, in effect, a participant in the abuse the children have to endure, but you are helplessly distant.

Dogtooth is also frequently hilarious. To eliminate any curiosity toward the aeroplanes which frequently fly over the house, the father invents the lie that they are very prone to falling out of the sky. Whenever he spots one, he leaves a toy plane in the garden for the children to discover- a trick they they fall for every time.

The prolonged graphic (and in some cases real) sex scenes are likely to put some people off, as is, possibly, the not-understated political subtext concerning the tyrannical rule of a mentally disturbed father figure (government, much?). These are minor patches in a film which as a whole is disorientating, beautiful, engrossing, and entertaining.

Walking out of the cool dark cinema into the crushing heat of west 12th street, I felt drunk. The shop signs, the roaring cars, the anonymous people everywhere, the sounds of the metropolis; all of this became irrelevant. I was in a dream, wandering through the colours, my mind rolling and rolling; lost in an ephemeral daze.

I just walked and walked, and by the time I considered where I was going I was lost. So I sat down and thought some more.

Rarely has a film drawn me in and affected me so much.

Film of 2010? Yes.

Guest Article: Buffy The Vampire Slayer 2012?

Today we have a guest article courtesy of online journalist Laura Chamberlain as news breaks of a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer feature:

Joss Whedon (centre) and the core cast of Buffy The Vampire Slayer

So there's talk on the internet and a press release from creator Joss Whedon that a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer film is in writing. One major problem: Joss Whedon isn't involved and, even worse, the director of the first Buffy film Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, who Whedon maintains ruined his script for the original movie and resulted in its failure, were the ones who gave the rights to make the film to Warner Brothers.

I can see why they think now might be a good time for a Buffy revival: vampires have never been hotter. For a vampire lover like myself, however, they are getting far too mainstream.

The problem with selling a Buffy film now is this: the series only finished seven years ago. Your mainstream film audience- now twentysomethings- grew up with the series and I'm not convinced that the teenage girls who obsess over the Twilight Saga wouldn't have caught the tail end of Buffy's popularity.

As a self-proclaimed Buffy geek I think I can speak for the fan base when I say making a film without Joss Whedon's approval, let alone his input, will draw massive resentment from its core audience.

I also think that if you take a closer look at why vampires are popular now, there are other clues to this film's potential failure.

Vampires have been popular for a long time because there's something about battling with the dark side of our human nature that has always fascinated people, but when Buffy came along, something changed.

Take the films shortly before Buffy came to air. We have Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) which is entertaining but doesn't deserve the Bram Stoker pre-fix as it misses the point of the book entirely, and Interview with a Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994). These were the prominent titles in the genre, post-Hammer. Very traditional perspectives, although the latter does explore the blurry line between what makes good and what makes evil.

This was also done post-Buffy in Russian feature Night Watch (Timur Bekmambetov, 2004). The line between the forces of light and those of darkness is unclear from the outset and forms the basis of the rest of the film. The same goes for sequel Day Watch (Bekmambetov, 2006).

But here's the interesting thing: when our 'hero' Anton first meets the little boy who becomes so pivotal to the plot of Nightwatch, Buffy is on the television in the background. This is more interesting when we look at the episode that they chose. In the short segment we see playing, Buffy is talking to Dracula. This was not an accidental choice. Dracula represents the traditional vampire and Buffy the modern day 'damsel', who no longer is all that distressed.

Dracula's seduction of Buffy

In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula seduces leading lady Mina from her pure ways. Although, in an interesting mirror to Buffy, she is considered in the book as a 'new woman'. She is intelligent and is not just there for her beauty. She may know her place but compared to the other female characters she is actually a very empowered woman.

Although Dracula may make us question the morality of our 'good' characters, he is evil through and through. This is what has changed dramatically in modern Vampire portrayal.

They chose that particular episode of Buffy as it depicts this contrast. Long-serving Buffy vampire Spike voices his dislike for Dracula early on.

So a film that questions the line between good and evil shows us an example of the old vampire vs the new. But where's the relevance? Dracula seduces Buffy into allowing him to bite her. He is very powerful despite his traditional demeanour, but this eventually lets him down. When he makes her taste his blood she sees the evil in herself, in her power. She embraces this evil as part of herself and so is not seduced by his. Subsequently, he does not utilize his humanity to defeat her.

This is what Buffy made mainstream. Take one small but powerful woman as your heroine – men fancy her, women admire her- bring in one mysterious vampire with a difference, Angel, the vampire with a soul, turn him evil once, give him back his soul, send him to a hell dimension and WALLAH! What is he really? He isn't human as he can't have happiness without submitting to his demon side, he isn't demon as he has a conscience.

How did this change cinema? 

Compare pre-buffy with the vampires of today and you'll find a big difference. Before, vampires were driven by evil even when they were also driven by good. Now we have Twilight, we have True Blood, we have vampire heroes who may have a dark side but are simultaneously good soulful creatures. They battle against traditional vampires but they always come out on top because they utilise their evil and their good.

Twilight: Good, soulful creatures

The only true exception is 30 days of night (David Slade, 2007), adapted from a graphic novel. Here the vampires are truly evil, but there is still an element of the humans having to embrace their dark side to defeat them at the end.

So how would Buffy fit in now? To me it would seem like a step back from the current evolution. Vampires are now not the seductive tempters, they are the romantics and the lovers. A theme that Buffy introduced and played with but that has evolved quickly into something new. I think that to a new audience the Angels and the Spikes wouldn't resonate as strongly. They aren't the romantic vampires we now see. They are tortured souls battling against their own evil. It wouldn't be adding anything new to the genre. It would seem somewhat stale.

Is a new Buffy film doomed to failure? I say yes. If they stray too far from the original characters and the original set up, their core audience will be instantly lost. For an audience that is consuming stomach churning romances with a bit of added vampire, the Buffy format is now out of touch.

The only way out now is for someone to take a brave return to the evil vampire. They need to echo fear into our hearts with the sound of their screams because if the genre continues as it is going, we will lose sight of why they were interesting in the first place. They are creatures of the night, they are evil and seduce us away from our good intentions.

It's all well and good to blur the line between vampire and human as long as they are still a dark reflection of ourselves. They cannot survive as merely pale, light-deprived people who offer more humanity than the humans. A Buffy revival in the current vampire genre would make this oh so obvious and if the audience starts to clock this, once the twilight saga ends we could see a Buffy revival kill the mainstream genre altogether. But maybe this is what it needs. 

Maybe after a much-needed break from vampires someone can come in with a renewed, darker perspective.

-Laura Chamberlain

Laura- aside from being a huge Buffy fan- writes regular beauty blog Killer Lips and you can also visit her website.

Interestingly, the recently released Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010) promises to be the fresh take on the vampire genre Laura was after. Could it be? Expect a full review shortly.

Intrepid Pictures start shooting The Raven

Funny looking chap, isn't he, Poe?

John Cusack will star as Edgar Allan Poe in a film named after the most famous of the writer's work, The Raven (published in 1845), shooting on which began this week in Hungary.

According to a John Cusack fan page at Opera.com, The Raven "is based on a Hannah Shakespeare/Ben Livingston script set in the last five days of Poe's life, when a serial killer is running around Baltimore using Poe's stories as the backdrops to his killings. Poe and a young detective have a ticking clock to outsmart the killer before he kills again."


Interesting concept. Will Cusack's barnet be as snazzy? Let's hope so.


Read the full original poem here:


The Raven


Or, you can hear it read by Darth Vader (AKA James Earl Jones)...

Hammer's Back!: The Woman in Black.

Three years ago the rights to classic British horror producers Hammer were bought by Dutch consortium Cyrte Investments, the company behind Big Brother.

They pledged to restore the name, which, after achieving great success in the 50s and the 60s bringing the names Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to the forefront of British cinema, lost popularity in the 70s and early 80s after losing American backing and having to compete in a market quickly becoming oversaturated with horror.

After four titles in the last three years under the Hammer name (including the brilliant vamp-chiller remake Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010) we have the adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 ghost story The Woman in Black, which shall star a Daniel Radcliffe no doubt keen to stop fannying around with wands and earn the respect of fellow thespians without taking all of his clothes off.


The film was originally intended to be shot in 3D but Hammer have reversed this decision. Thank goodness.

The Woman in Black is the story of Arthur Kipp, a young London solicitor on business to a remote northern village to deal with the possessions of deceased spinster Mrs. Drablowe. He quickly learns that the villagers don't like to talk about her, let alone go anywhere near her home, and that she lived on a large estate periodically cut off from the mainland by the tide and swamped by thick mists called "sea frets". 

Despite being terrified by apparitions and noises without source, Arthur chooses to stay in the house alone to work as quickly as he can, but intrigued by a single locked room and the hauntings he endures, he seeks to discover the truth behind Mrs. Drawlowe's death. 

This production treads in the footsteps of an almost perfect television adaptation in 1989 and an experimental theatre production still running after twenty-three years, described by the BBC as "One of the most phenomenal theatrical performances in the UK." 

Reading the novel in school was tantamount to psychological terrorism. Why can't teachers just beat us any more? I have also seen the theatre production and it is absolutely terrifying. Here's a link to the television adaptation which, for the first forty five minutes, is an example of horror done simply and effectively: The Woman in Black (television series) (Herbert Wise, 1989)

Look very forward to this film.

If my sights are correct, this is going to be a good twelve months for the renewed Hammer Productions. Let Me In received glowing reviews and has taken in over £20million, which came as a surprise considering the Swedish film it was adapted from, Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008), is held in such high regard by the press and the cult horror audience.

Think before showing your kids The Woman in Black, though. 

And if you do, a good family doctor would prescribe a heavy dose of Disney, ketamine and sausage rolls to alleviate the initial trauma and prevent significant lasting damage. 

Sadly, some of us were left to cope alone.

SNOW MOVIES

And the cocaine rain didst come...

Snow.

A simple theme, perhaps, but fitting as today England was tucked up under a blanket of sparkling white.

Trekking across my local national trust park this afternoon- over 1000 acres of parkland- wrapped up in three tee shirts, a snazzy jumper, a big coat, hat, two pairs of gloves, three layers of sports socks and a trustworthy pair of wellington boots, I felt like Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow.

Standing on high ground and surveying the land, bucket sled in hand, there was not a soul in sight. A multi-national disaster could happen right now, I thought, and I would be none the wiser.

And then I happened across Knole House: monolithic Tudor residence. This would have been eerie. It should have been eerie. But what was wrong? Was it the cute little fawns skipping through the snow? No. Was it the reassuring sound of Tears For Fears blasting into my skull through my headphones? No.

It was a lorry arriving to remove the last evidence of the presence of a film crew. Hankies out, Deppomaniacs- Pirates of The Caribbean 4 has left town.

No, I don't want to talk about Pirates. I want to talk about Snow Movies.

There's almost something boring about productions filmed on location in Los Angeles. The biggest film industry in the world initially found it's footing on the west coast of the US not only for the money, but for the light, and as great and as convenient this is for exterior film production, blue skies and dry floors aren't too sympathetic a climate for the dramatic picture.

Perhaps it's my intense jealousy of Californians, who knows, but what I do know about filmmaking is that weather is a damn powerful cinematic tool.

In Do The Right Thing (Lee, 1989) Spike Lee uses "the hottest day of the year" in Brooklyn as a cauldron for racial tension. 

In Glengarry, Glen Ross (Foley, 1992) real estate salesmen played by Jack Lemmon and about half of the A-list actors in Hollywood are under pressure while a rainstorm relentlessly batters the streets of New York.

In Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950) a thunderstorm forces a priest, a woodcutter, and an anonymous man to take shelter under a ruined gatehouse, where they recount a tale of murder.

Compare the way a snowy setting can create an atmosphere in these movies:





The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)



Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996) Apologies for the lame clip- all other versions are blocked on Youtube.



The Snowman (Jackson, Murakami, 1982)



The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)



The Empire Strikes Back (George Lucas, 1980)

In Dumb and Dumber (Farrely, 1994), the snowscape chased by Harry and Lloyd represents "someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen".


I'm yet to find a movie where snow is the killer itself.


If you know of any indie flicks featuring knife-wielding snowmen send me a message, then a DVD. I've got a million pound hug I could write a check for.


Today this has been my space to indulge my appreciation of white sky fluff.

My wellies are back on and so's that snazzy jumper. I'm going back outside.

BFI Takeover and Leslie Nielson RIP

Today, Monday November 29th, has been remarkable in its duality.

One of cinema's most beloved comic actors has passed away, and Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey has announced that the BFI are taking over most of the responsibility from the soon-to-be abolished UK Film Council.

When it was announced in July that the UK Film Council was going to be abolished, Clint Eastwood wrote a very angry letter. Now if I know anything it's that when Dirty Harry says jump, you'd better bloody jump.

And jump they did. Albeit, up and sideways.

From next year the British Film Institute- not the UK Film Council- will distribute lottery money to film makers. The organisation shall have to expand to accommodate the extra responsibility as all of the functions of the now-defunct council, bar the encouragement of inward investment, shall now become their call.

According to today's Guardian, Vaizey has "reaffirmed that lottery funding for film would rise from £27m to more than £40m by 2014 and said there were no plans to change the tax credit scheme which has encouraged Hollywood studios to make films in the UK."

Plans for the BFI to partially merge with the UK Film Council were made over a year ago, but now it has been confirmed that the former shall actually swallow the latter. Film London is to continue the job of attracting Hollywood to Britain.

What better news could we have asked for on the day we are promised that the sky shall fall on us, shitting down cocaine rain?


And on a grave note:


Yesterday, Leslie Nielson, aged 84, passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was in a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, suffering from a complication of pneumonia.

After a varied acting career which began in television and spanned 62 years, Nielson was best known for his role as Doctor Rumack in Airplane! (1980), an surrealist disaster spoof from directors Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams of Kentucky Fried Theatre fame. The movie's modest intentions were dwarfed by its success, taking Golden Globe for Best Comedy and a Bafta for Best Screenplay, but more notably it boosted Nielson to stardom; his comic turn typecast, you could say, and repeated in many features to follow.

Nielson's comic roles were characterised by a sharp, deadpan delivery in utterly absurd situations.

Here are some of his most remembered exchanges:

Rumack: I won't deceive you, Mr. Striker. We're running out of time.
Stryker: Surely there must be something you can do.
Rumack: I'm doing everything I can... and stop calling me Shirley.


Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land? 
Captain Oveur: I can't tell. 
Rumack: You can tell me. I'm a doctor. 
Captain Oveur: No. I mean I'm just not sure. 
Rumack: Well, can't you take a guess? 
Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours. 
Rumack: You can't take a guess for another two hours?


Rumack: You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?
Rumack: It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.


(In The Naked Gun series, Nielson played Frank Drebin, inept cop)


Frank: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.
Jane: Goodyear?
Frank: No, the worst. 


Frank: Just think; next time I shoot someone, I could be arrested.

Mayor: Now Drebin, I don't want any trouble like you had on the South Side last year, that's my policy. 
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos, dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in full view of a hundred people, I shoot the bastards, that's *my* policy! 
Mayor: That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of 'Julius Caesar,' you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!


Finally:

One for the road... (or... air?).