Evangelism
The Half Dozen Special: Cambridge Film Festival 2012
This is a local blog, and for eleven days a year it becomes one for local people, too. Far away from the bright lights, the razzle-dazzle and the overpriced food of London, many other major cities have film festivals during the course of the year and tomorrow the 32nd Cambridge Film Festival gets underway. I’ve often thought about trying to get down to London for some of that festival action (happening in October, in case you’ve been living under a rock), but with this much varied, and quality, film entertainment right on my doorstep then surely it makes sense to take advantage?
And take advantage I have. I packed in 19 films in my first visit in 2010 and, despite a slightly reduced programme due to other factors, still caught 27 last year. So, in what is now becoming something of a tradition, I’ve assembled every trailer I can find for the films I’m seeing. It’s not been easy – the likes of more mainstream releases such as On The Road and Liberal Arts are easily accessible, but two films have eluded me completely (both from the MicroCinema thread); another, from the Catalan stream, has no online trailer (but I did find the whole film, without subtitles; the first of four parts is here for your viewing bemusement) and a number of other trailers are again appearing in a foreign language without subtitles, a situation which will thankfully be rectified once I get to the cinema.
Sadly, time travel hasn’t yet been invented so I can’t see everything. The likes of Woody Allen’s new one, Ashes (with Ray Winstone and Jim Sturgess) , Blind Spot and Big Boys Gone Bananas have all eluded me due to scheduling conflicts – and that’s just A to B! Still, with 39 films and 2 short programmes, I’m not going to complain too much. So if you’re not local, get a cup of tea and a biscuit, sit back and spend around an hour and a half getting a flavour for what’s possible at a film festival. And if you’re there in person, don’t forget to say hi. I”ll be the tall one with square eyes and an even squarer posterior.
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For September 2012
Welcome back to the blog that loves trailers. Wow, I’m really sorry if you’re reading this and thinking, “Trailers? Again?” Due to my continuing commitment to a paid job that keeps a roof over my head and funds my film addiction, but gives me increasingly less time to write about my film addiction, four of the last nine posts on here have been lists of trailers. The bad news to anyone averse to trailers is that there’ll be another one along shortly; for the third year in a row I’ll be living at the Cambridge Film Festival for a week and a half, soaking in everything from the Kristen Stewart starring adaptation of Kerouac’s On The Road to a documentary about a man who makes sushi and pretty much everything in between. In 2010 and 2011 I listed the trailers for everything I’m seeing, and this year’s list – longer than ever before – will be up shortly. But there will be posts this month that aren’t all about trailers. Promise.
But life isn’t all about film festivals, sadly, and the real world still has plenty of cinematic treats to enjoy. It’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt month this month, with Looper (below) and Premium Rush, the Die Hard On A Bike that the world never knew it needed; the new Joe Wright film Anna Karenina, which if it’s at least half as good as Atonement or Hanna will be right up my street; The Sweeney, which has a fantastic looking cast but to which I now have an irrational hatred thanks to the awful Orange “turn your mobile off, slag” trailers running before most multiplex films at the moment; and the new Resident Evil film. If you are keeping Paul W.S. Anderson in work by repeatedly watching these films, then please leave now, we have nothing more to discuss.
There’s a whole host more out this month, much of which will be on the festival list, but for now here’s my pick of the general populace’s best choices this month.
Dredd 3D
I’ve never been a huge fan of comic books; not that I dislike them, I’ve just never really gotten into them. (Apart from buying all four issues of the Robocop vs. Terminator cross-over series for some reason. Go figure.) However, I did have a serious affection for Judge Dredd when I was younger, from 2000 A.D. to the single line strips that would appear in tabloid newspapers. The Stallone version from the mid-Nineties is best forgotten about, but it seems as if all concerned here have tried to keep faithful to the spirit of the original. It’s rumoured that a $50 million take in the U.S. is the minimum requirement to get two planned sequels; come on you lovely Yanks, don’t let us down now.
Tabu
It’s black and white, it’s in the Academy ratio, it and everything else that ticks two out of the three boxes will be compared to The Artist for years to come. The temptation to get a camera and film a black and white, Academy ratio, silent slasher horror comedy just to try to put a stop to that trend has never been greater. (If you’re reading this and you’re a talented director, or a madman with more money than sense, then feel free to make such a film; you’ll be doing us all a service in the long run.)
Paranorman
Why is it that so often these days the best films in terms of adhering to good storytelling principles are animated films? Discuss.
House At The End Of The Street
Jennifer Lawrence might just be the most promising young actress of her generation. Outstanding in Winter’s Bone, it’s not hard to see why she was cast in The Hunger Games and she’s delivered supporting performances in other films which have helped elevate them above their station. So is this the start of her inevitable Halle Berry phase and the descent into bad sequels, or can she enliven this slasher-of-the-month-remake to something more enticing? Let’s hope it’s the latter.
Killing Them Softly
Brad Pitt and Andrew Dominik team up again, after their first collaboration, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Thankfully, the title of this one is slightly less spoilerific, although I would still expect some killings if I were you.
Looper
Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels in a time travel movie set in the future? Sold. (To be honest, you had me at Bruce Willis.) There were a huge amount of great things about Rian Johnson’s previous film, The Brothers Bloom, and I can’t help but feel it was a decent ending short of being a great film. Take this scene where Rachel Weisz discusses what she collects; if all of Looper is this quality, it’ll be genius.
The Half Dozen: Film 4 Fright Fest Special
Warning: normally this is a PG blog but the trailers contained herein are not suitable for younger viewers. Normal service will be resumed shortly.
It’s been a big month for trailers, at least round here; not only have I published my pick of the month and my Tony Scott tribute list, but here we are with a third selection. And this time it’s personal.
Yes, as mentioned in that earlier monthly round-up, I’m having a day at Film 4 Fright Fest 2012, to substitute for the fact that there’s no Movie-Con or Big Screen this summer. The logistics of this should be fun: the first film starts at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning (meaning I’ll be heading to bed very soon), so I’ll be driving 60 miles to my nearest Tube station and parking up. However, the last film doesn’t start until 11:30 p.m., so I’m expecting to be on the night bus around 1 a.m. on Sunday (or later), back at the car around 2:30 – 3:00 a.m. and getting in around 4 a.m. The sacrifices I make for my craft sometimes…
It should help to address a rather unfortunate imbalance in my viewing this year as well, as The Woman In Black and Prometheus are the closest I’ve come to a horror film this year, and neither are what I’d be looking for in a decent horror. I’m equally at home with psychological horror, deep scares or an all out gore fest, but it’s harder to find quality product in the multiplexes these days. For the last two years I’ve managed to catch a few at the Cambridge Film Festival, but mainstream horror by and large leaves me cold these days, so I can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s got in store.
Right, I’m off to get some well needed sleep, but here’s (some of) the trailers for what I expect to be watching tomorrow, just to get a flavour of what I hope to be experiencing.
The Half Dozen: A Tony Scott Tribute
I awoke this morning to tragic news; Tony Scott, one of the finest film makers of a generation, has taken his own life at the age of 68 by jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge near Long Beach, California. I’m sure that the media of the world will pore over the possible reasons for this devastating act in weeks to come, but nothing will ever replace him for friends, family and millions of movie lovers around the world.
When I started this blog, I tried to settle on a name which captured my intentions, to encourage others to watch films and to watch them in a cinema. When settling on the name “The Movie Evangelist”, not only did the name roll off the tongue better than “The Film Evangelist”, but it also captured that sense of what drove my love in the first place. While I’m as happy with the art house as I am with the blockbuster these days, it was my love of genuine movies, the thrill ride best enjoyed in a dark room on a big screen with a large audience, that has fuelled my passion and sees me where I am today, desperately sad that we’re deprived of any more works from one of action cinema’s greatest talents.
But while he spoke the language of action movies fluently, he also worked with some of the best casts of the last thirty years: the likes of Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman and Christopher Walkman cropped up regularly in his films, and it was the combination of great acting, excellent scripts and his unique direction, which was undervalued in his lifetime but already seems to have touched so many as news of his death circulates. In addition, his production company Scott Free, set up with brother Ridley, had also started to produce some real gems in the past few years, and his impact on everything from music videos to big budget films will last for a long time to come.
While I don’t know that I can find fitting words to pay tribute, what I can do is share trailers for some of my favourite Tony Scott movies. I hope watching some of these will inspire you to get out the DVD or the Blu-ray and put them on sometime this week. Normally I would limit myself to a strict half dozen, but to try to sum up such a career in six films seems barely sufficient, but I’m sure you’ll not mind on this occasion. Tony Scott, rest in peace.
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For August 2012
August. Really? I think my calendar may be broken. Where has the year gone? It’s been a challenging year keeping The Movie Evangelist going, mainly as my full time paid job has gotten in the way of pretty much everything else I do. I’ve managed to keep watching films at not far behind last year’s rate (at the end of July last year, I’d seen 87 new films in the cinema and I was up to 79 at the end of July this year), but, along with most of my other nice-to-have interests, the blog has taken a beating, as I got a grand total of two posts up last month, and one of them was the trailers.
Still, if I’m managing to watch films the least I can do is encourage you into trying to do the same, even if it’s proving a struggle to put fingers to keyboard at the moment. But I have a couple of highlights to look forward to: in the absence of an Empire magazine event this year such as Movie-Con or Big Screen, I’ve bought a day pass for FrightFest 2012, so I’m looking forward to a very varied day there at the end of this month, and by the time the month is up I’ll be buying my tickets for the Cambridge Film Festival, running between 13th and 23rd September. Given that I managed 19 films two years ago and 27 last year, the only question is how many, and the answer is probably quite a lot.
But before that, there’s plenty to look forward to, including a new entry in the Bourne series and Richard Ayoade’s attempt to follow Chris O’Dowd into American cinema. Oh, and this lot.
Sound Of My Voice
Despite showing at only a handful of cinemas and getting buried under the Olympics, Brit Marling’s second feature in as many years is a big step up from the overly simplistic Another Earth which landed late last year. On the surface, the ideas are similarly basic, but here the concepts are better handled and there’s more of a sense of ambiguity and tension. I was also sucked in by the video showing the first twelve minutes online, a concept which more films could take advantage of.
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
A fantastic look at a fascinating character, I’m sure, but who knew cats could do that? Seriously, I’ll be trying to train our Pumpkin to do that for months. I may also have to install some suitable door handles, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it.
The Forgiveness Of Blood
For some reason I keep mixing this up with the Christian Bale film out around the same time. Which I think is called The Flowers Of War. Definitely The Something Of Doo-Dah, anyway. I’m easily confused, I think it’s my age.
Brave
A Pixar I’m really not sure about, starting what could be a run of Pixar films I’m not sure about. No matter how good your run of quality is, it can’t go on forever. Apparently nothing outside the first act appears in this trailer, a fact which I look forward to testing, but if true is really how all trailers should be constructed.
The Imposter
It’s been a year for cracking documentaries: in the last month alone I’ve seen some outstanding work in the field, including Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present and Searching For Sugarman. Early word on this one suggests that trend could be continuing.
Berberian Sound Studio
And finally, in honour of FrightFest, a film that pops up there, although sadly not the day I’m there. Thankfully the rest of us don’t have too long to wait. Don’t have nightmares, now.
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers for July 2012
Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? As of yet I’ve not won the lottery, so I’m resigned to a life of actually working to pay the bills, rather than getting to sit in a cinema all day, write reviews and generally evangelise about how great cinema is. Consequently, with work demanding rather more from me than usual at the moment, I’m left with two choices: write the blog, or go and see films. As I’d not have much to write about if I didn’t go and see films, I’ve followed the logical option, but I’m now desperately trying to find time to squeeze in blogging.
So this month’s trailer picks will be a masterclass in efficiency, as I attempt to describe each trailer in ten words or less. To be honest, my mind’s only on one thing anyway: next Saturday I’m making my annual pilgrimage to the BFI IMAX in London. Two years ago, I double billed Inception and Toy Story 3 and last year it was Mission: Impossible: Ghost: Protocol: Colon, and this year it will be a follow up to the first film I ever saw in IMAX: The Dark Knight. Next Saturday, Batman will rise and, Nolan obsessive that I am, I’ll be sat in row F, having a giant Nolangasm as discreetly as possible. I’ve rated the last four Christopher Nolan films 10/10, so TDKR has a lot to live up to, but based on early word of mouth, I have every right to be excited. Squee.
Anyway, here’s six upcoming films, five of which could be improved with the addition of Batman. Probably.
Marina Abramović The Artist is Present
Apologies for the nudity, apparently it’s art.
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World
Her off Community might be the female Steve Buscemi. (Funny looking?)
Detachment
Still never seen American History X. Sorry, Tony Kaye.
Nostalgia For The Light
Is it Batman time yet?
The Dark Knight Rises
As I said earlier, squee.
Searching For Sugar Man
I might see this. I might see Batman again. Batman.
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For June 2012
There’s something about June. No, not a sequel to There’s Something About Mary, which will probably appear in two to three years when Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz have finally squandered all public goodwill on unwatchable rom-coms, but there’s actually something about the month of June. It’s when the weather normally transitions from utterly miserable to just about bearable in this country, and it feels just that fraction more wasteful to be spending the few sunny days that we have inside a dark room full of seats and a big screen, even if it is air conditioned. (Watch now, as I have probably jinxed the whole thing and condemned the country to thirty days of storms.)
So it does feel that films released in June somehow have to make just a little more effort. It’s normally the lull in Blockbuster Season, which kicks off in May and is now biding its time until the onslaught of spider-men, ice ages and men with pointy helmets clogging up multiplexes everywhere in July. Now, June might also be the month this year that Prometheus has been unleashed upon the world, but if there’s anyone not utterly worn out by the endless procession of marketing which has both raised and unfairly directed expectations for the film itself, then you’re a hardier character than I am.
But my selections for June still have plenty of variety – there might not be space aliens or men dressed as bats, there are black and white horses, a freakish looking hedgehog, a stovepipe hat and R-Patz himself. If that’s not value for money, I don’t know what is.
The Turin Horse
Managing to best even Ridley Scott’s impressive visuals, the most striking trailer of the month features is supposedly the last feature from Hungarian director Bela Tarr, and if you’ve ever seen any of his previous work in a cinema, award yourself ten bonus points. In the year when a black and white film walked off with the Best Picture Oscar, there’s never been a better time to get your black and white horse film into distribution. Anyone with black and white meerkat films in the pipeline, you’d better get a wriggle on, these fads never last long.
A Fantastic Fear Of Everything
My attraction to this film has become somewhat perverse, as the word of mouth from those I know on Twitter that have seen it is astonishingly bad in the main. I don’t know what compels us as humans to look at the accident on the other side of the carriageway as we’re driving past, but that same instinct is driving me to understand what the bloke from Kula Shaker and the guy with red on him have managed to cook up. Ideally, the more awful, the better.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
I’ve seen this trailer twice now in cinemas, and both times it elicited an identical response. People seem generally interested in the setting, there’s the usual buzz and background murmuring, the odd bit of excitement as the trailer ramps up towards the end… and then the title card reveals itself, and when the words “Abraham Lincoln” and “Vampire Hunter” appear on screen, there’s a lot burst of incredulous disbelief, as several hundred people who hadn’t heard about this (and who still laugh at the Orange mobile ad every single time) go “WTF?” as one voice. Oddly satisfying.
Cosmopolis
I discussed my formative experiences with David Cronenberg a few months back, and ever since the first time I saw The Fly Cronenberg has been on my list of directors who simply need to make a film and I’ll be there. His last couple have been good without being great, and apart from a naked fight and Keira Knightley’s impersonation of the Giger alien downhill skiing they had nothing to really make them stand out. This looks satisfyingly like a return to crazy, ideas filled, off-the-wall Videodrome-era Cronenberg, and that makes me very happy. Kristen Stewart hasn’t yet risen above her Twilight role, despite getting all shouty in Snow White and the Huntsman, so let’s hope Robert Pattinson gets more to do here.
Killer Joe
I was going to put Polisse in here, but couldn’t think of a single thing to say about the trailer. Sure, it looks good and all, but… So at the last minute I swapped it out for this one instead, the latest from William Friedkin, with a great big NC-17 warning on the front of the trailer. That kind of insane last-minute decision making is just the way I roll.
The Fairy
You wait ages for a film about Le Havre, then two come along at once. In case you missed it, the other one was called Le Havre. Bit of a giveaway in the title, there. This one also notable for the horrified reactions in the YouTube comments sections of those who’d seen it, and obviously aren’t in the target demographic.
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For May 2012
It’s May, when the warm sunny days start becoming more frequent, the nights are getting lighter and the movies get bigger and shoutier. Except it’s so cold this year I’ve still got a jumper on and the rabbits in our garden are getting a second winter coat. At least there are some certainties, such as the studios getting out their summer tentpoles and using them to put up their giant tent of blockbuster goodness. In the US, they’re getting the wide and varied delights of The Avengers and Battleship, but we’ve already been spoiled with them early, which leaves May in the UK packed with mainly warmed over comedy sequels. Oh dear. At least the nights are still getting brighter.
So, if American Pie: Reheated, The Dictator or Men In Black: This Trailer Has Quite Literally No Jokes In It, Will Smith What Are You Doing aren’t getting you excited, there’s still something this month for all tastes, including a couple of directors with their own distinctive styles and at least one name that we may be hearing a lot more from in the future.
Monsieur Lahzar
Ticking the inevitable box for me of “nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar” and therefore meaning that my watching it, provided it’s showing this side of London, is also almost an inevitability, it’s a shame that almost every review or article on this film feels the need to compare it to Dead Poets Society, especially since that now ranks at best third in the list of Robin Williams’ academia-based performances. (Good Will Hunting and World’s Greatest Dad are better, thanks for asking.)
Dark Shadows
Tim Burton has proven himself to be something of an enigma, with an often unique take on material, normally skewed with a dark sensibility but one that doesn’t always come off, and for every Edward Scissorhands or Sweeney Todd in the back catalogue there’s also a Planet Of The Apes or an Alice In Wonderland. I was one of many surprised by this trailer, as it originally looked to be a straight adaptation but the trailer suggests the camp factor has been ramped up a little. Place your bets as to what we actually get later this month.
Piranha 3DD
It’s not big, and it’s not clever. So sue me. (Well, actually maybe it is big…)
The Raid: Redemption
If the definition of world cinema is ‘three hour Norwegian drama about cabbage farming’, then I’ll probably still be interested. If, on the other hand, it’s ‘guy from Wales goes to Indonesia and makes martial arts action film that’s being spoken about in the same breath as freakin’ DIE HARD’ then I’m definitely in.
Even The Rain
Of course, if you are a foreign language film – this one didn’t make Oscar’s final five, but it did get on the longlist of nine – then it helps if you have a couple of better-known names to stick on the poster, and Gael Garcia Bernal and Luis Tosar just about fit that bill. The kind of worthy enterprise about Indians that in the wrong hands (i.e., probably American) would be maudlin, saccharine and just about unpalatable, but looks to have fared much better by the hands of the Spanish.
Moonrise Kingdom
The Royal Tenenbaums was in my top 10 of the last decade, but although Wes Anderson’s films have never been less than great, none has quite hit the heights of Wes’s first film of the last decade. Based solely on this trailer, I am getting my hopes sufficiently up that this will come at least close to those heights, and given the inclusion of the likes of Bruce Willis and Edward Norton to compensate for the loss of Owen Wilson, I am eagerly awaiting word from Cannes when Moonrise Kingdom opens the festival this year.
Wreckers: An Interview With Dictynna Hood
You might recall an article I wrote last year about a film that had been made in my own village last year, called Wreckers, starring Claire Foy and Benedict Cumberbatch. I wrote a review, as well as a piece on how I was Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film, long before this blog was a glint in the milkman’s eye, but I also took the opportunity to conduct an interview with the writer and director, Dictynna Hood.
The interview took place at a local tea shop, where we had some delightful tea and scones, and I recorded a forty minute interview on my iPhone, which came out surprisingly well. Typing it back now has been a strange experience – particularly listening to the clanking and bustling going on in the rest of the tea shop – and Dictynna was a very open and friendly interviewee for my first such attempt, for which I must say a big thank you. We covered a wide variety of topics, everything from the films of Michael Haneke to Doctor Who, but it’s the cinematic impact and benefits that I’m most interested in, so what’s here are my questions specifically around that subject, and the film in general.
The film is showing tonight and tomorrow night (24th / 25th April) at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, and tonight there will be an opportunity to ask Dictynna your own questions. Hopefully if you’re in the area you’ll be able to make it, and enjoy both the film and the Q & A as much as I did.
When you set out to make Wreckers, was the intention to get it into cinemas or was it just an extension of the short films you’d made previously?
I was definitely thinking of it for cinemas, knowing that we’re selling to the BBC and abroad it will also be mainly TV sales, but we definitely wanted the cinema release. Claire Foy is also very filmic; she has this quality that you can just watch her. She does a lot of watching, not speaking, in the film and I think holds the screen fantastically, which is one of the reasons it’s gone into the cinema. In the cinema, you can also see the subtlety of the performances more clearly, which gets lost a little on TV when you’re more focused on the plot.
What was it that decided you to set it in a village specifically? Was it more plot driven or was it about the film economics?
A little of both, really. It’s very contained, and while there’s a budgetary reason for that people have mentioned at Q & As that they saw that containment as a blessing. There were a lot of people who helped with the production of the film who’ve ended up being cut; nothing to do with them or their performance, but that was all to do with keeping that contained feeling. The village in the film isn’t a literal reflection of the real village itself, or the village I grew up in, but it’s important that there’s that small space with a very large area around it.
I had a fascination with the Fens for a long time; I also had a look at the West Country, and took a lot of pictures, but it somehow didn’t feel right. I had a book of Fenland stories which was inspirational. I was looking for a village that wasn’t too twee or precious. A friend suggested looking in the Isleham area, and when I went to the village I found the church open and the layout of the village was immediately appealing. I’d also looked at Norfolk, but the extreme landscape on the Fens was just so appealing.
I understand you studied in Cambridge; was that where the love affair with the area came from originally?
No, I think it actually came from the book of stories originally, but it wasn’t something that it particularly occurred from my studying. I’d been on a biking holiday with my sister on the Fens when I was younger, but it didn’t capture me then, only later. I’d still love to do more filming in the area in the future, possibly getting on the water, or exploring the farming and the legends. I do think it’s one of the most extreme landscapes in the UK, and it gets away from all the murder mystery and period drama feel that you normally associate with the countryside.
Although I live in the village, I wasn’t aware of who you had in the film until after you’d finished filming. How did you put a cast like that together?
We cast them because we thought they were a cracking cast; as it turns out, everyone else seems to have thought that as well! They were fantastic, and obviously that has helped the film enormously. Their profile has increased since we filmed, and we were very lucky to get them all, especially given how especially Benedict’s profile has soared since. He makes David’s character very ambiguous, with a more straightforward performance the film would have taken a very different turn, and potentially been less interesting for it.
Reading interviews with him, he seems to be in it very much for the craft rather than the attention. How did he come across when filming?
My impression is that he loves to work, and that’s why he did the film, as he had a gap in his schedule. I read in one of his interviews that he wanted to follow the James McAvoy path, mixing blockbusters with films like this, but his schedule actually made finishing the film rather complicated.
When did you actually film? Was it a couple of years ago?
It was 2009, and it’s actually turned out to be a real help that it’s taken a while to put together, in terms of the profile of the cast and where they are now, but at the time it didn’t it didn’t feel like that, it felt like, “why can’t we just finish this bloody thing!”
I need to be careful, I’m technically a PG blog!
But no, everything about it felt wonderful in the end, for such a small production.
How do you go about getting a film into something like the London Film Festival [the film played at LFF in 2011]? Is it a fairly lengthy, tortuous process?
When we showed it to our cast and crew on a big screen for the first time we realised the film had a real pull in the cinema. Then we hosted a couple of screenings for industry folks and got Artificial Eye our distributor on board at that point which no doubt helped. We invited one of the programmers for the London Film Festival to an industry screening, it’s certainly better if a programmer can see your film big screen.
Do you think that British film is becoming confined to the festivals? It seems harder to get distribution for British films these days.
We had very realistic expectations for our film and it’s already gone beyond those expectations. I saw a lot of bold films at the London Film Festival which probably won’t get a release, but I’m not sure what the answer is; maybe more the French style of distribution. There’s a lot more film clubs in villages these days, which does open up more opportunities for folks to see films on the big screen. From a filmmaker’s perspective it does help enormously if you can cast people more recognisable to a wider audience, but it’s a shame if you have to do that at all times.
Has Wreckers turned out pretty much how you imagined it?
We realised on day three that we couldn’t shoot our storyboard, so we had to work out quickly how to capture the feeling we were after, happily we’d had a lot of discussion during pre-production about the grammar and the atmosphere of the film and how to maintain that even if shooting not exactly as planned. Even if you’re Hitchcock or Kubrick, as soon as you cast it the film becomes something different, as actors embody the characters and make them their own. The key as a director is to hold on to the core ideas and the core feeling of the film and to create around that. It’s was Annemarie’s [Lean-Vercoe,director of photography] first or second feature, and I couldn’t have done it without her, but all of the crew were magnificent.
What’s next for you, now that Wreckers has been a success and gotten into cinemas?
I’m exploring what to do next; we’ve got a story about a big family gathering where the parents are ageing hippies, and we’ve got a wonderfully twisted rom-com. I want to get on and direct more, but you have to make sure that the script is a match, and I guess the joy of writing is that you know your script is a match! [laughs]
Dictynna Hood, thank you very much.
Wreckers is also available on DVD now from all good stockists.
Review: Ultra Culture Cinema #09
London. City of dreams, land of opportunity, where everyone is 19% more good looking than elsewhere in the country, where you might have to remortgage your house to be able to eat at the best restaurants and home of the most diverse range of cinemas known to man. I’m a country mouse in blogging terms, stuck up here in the Fens with good quality cinemas all around but missing out on the advanced previews and shiny, star-laden premieres of Leicester Square and the like. Even in the West End, though, there’s a difference between the mainstream and the art house, and if you’re looking for something more thought provoking and stimulating then you could do worse than seek out the Institute of Contemporary Arts, tucked away from the bright lights, stale popcorn and over-inflated prices of Leicester Square as it is on The Mall. But it’s also been the occasional home for the past couple of years to Ultra Culture’s imaginatively-titled Ultra Culture Cinema series.
Ultra Culture, or Charlie Lyne as he is known to people who don’t call each other by their Twitter usernames, might be a well known face to those who watch Film 2012 (or, more precisely, watched Film 2011 when he was actually on it), but sadly the format of the revamped programme has never given its contributors the chance to be themselves, so the better outlet for Charlie’s brand of insight and humour is undoubtedly his own show, and how better to do that in London with a stage show? Events like this are also a great opportunity to see films before their general release for plebs like me, so I can, on this occasion, get one over on Mr Joe Public. (Apart from all the people who saw it at the raft of other free public screenings earlier this week. Balls.)
This is the first time I’ve managed to venture down to London for one of these nights, but reviews of previous evenings seemed to suggest that we’d be treated to more than just a film. What I was treated to first was the the company of a familiar face from my visits to Empire’s Movie-Con / Big Screen events, so I didn’t have to spend the evening sipping my orange juice alone in the ICA’s trendy white cafe, which feels like it’s been decorated upstairs in the IKEA Clockwork Orange range. Which was nice. (Both the company and the decor, that is.) Said friend Marie also seemed to know about half the people in the bar, so it really did feel like a home away from home.
The other thing that also made me feel right at home was the preponderance of gingers. Almost as if some sort of subliminal redhead Pied Piper effect was at play, the presence of the nation’s premier red top film blogger, in the more literal sense, seemed to have been a rallying call for the auburn and the strawberry blond across the capital. If you don’t believe me, here’s the photographic evidence:
Given that the average proportion of those with a copper-coloured top in the general populace is 2 – 6%, it was clear that this was the hot ticket for those with hot hair. As a redhead myself, it was comforting to be surrounded by so many of my kind. If that wasn’t great enough, someone then moved through the crowd handing out Mini Eggs. Sometimes it’s the little things, y’know?
However, the one ginger that mattered was the one on stage, and at around the scheduled start time we were ushered in to take our seats. There was then a flurry of activity, as prizes were rapidly handed out for drawing on walls and other random achievements, but the core of the pre-movie entertainment was a short play, penned by Charlie himself. This might be misleading for two reasons: to suggest it was a play would suggest there were actual actors, rather than punters conscripted out of the audience to read the other parts from their scripts, and to suggest it was short might be based on Charlie’s original estimate of its duration (about 15 minutes) rather than its actual duration (nearer 40 minutes).
Four volunteers were brought up on stage to enact the story, a tale of how writer and director Rolfe Kanefsky made a self-referential horror movie called There’s Nothing Out There, featuring a character who knows that they’re in a horror movie, so has watched other horror movies so he knows “The Rules”. The play featured “Kanefsky”, as well as “Wes Craven” and a number of other characters, some with indecipherable accents, as well as live musical accompaniment played on the supplied instruments, including a saxoflute, a playmonica and a tambourine. Eat your heart out, Mark Kermode and the Dodge Brothers.
The highlights of the the “play” included some malfunctioning flame effects on the Keynote presentation which caused much disappointment in our host, but much cheering in our audience when it started working on the next slide, one of the male actors who appeared to start on the improv when it became apparent that one of the chosen actors would win the rest of the prizes, and the supporting actress taking the narration line “And now, Scream” far too literally and eliciting a high-pitched scream with impeccable comic timing, thus enabling her to walk off with that bag of prizes.
We were also treated to, as part of the play (which, thanks to its combination of Keynote speech, Charlie’s narration and the scandal of how Wes Craven may have ripped off Kanefsky, felt like the An Inconvenient Truth of self-referential horror movies) a run-down of Rolfe Kanefsky’s other works, including Sex Files: Alien Erotica, Jacqueline Hyde (say it out loud and it makes sense) and Emmanuelle in Wonderland, and we were also presented with the epic trailer for the high point of Rolfe’s career, The Erotic Misadventures Of The Invisible Man. Sadly, as this is a PG blog I can’t share the trailer for that with you – I’m also fearful of the level of spam that linking its trailer might generate from the kind of sites hosting it – but I can share the tralier for Kanefsky’s original meisterwerk, There’s Nothing Out There. (Yes, it’s not really PG either, but whatever.)
After all that, we got to watch a film, which for many people was the point of being there. There was also possibly the most shambolic intro from the talent ever witnessed, as Drew Goddard and star Jesse Williams bore a contorted look of confusion on their face as they attempted to understand what an “Ultra… Culture Cinema?” actually was, while in the middle of introducing it. My full review of the film is available here, but let me just say for now that The Cabin In The Woods is magnificent, and while it may not be totally the revolutionary deconstruction of the horror genre that some are claiming, it is both hysterically funny (my face is still aching 24 hours later from the laughing) and on occasion, properly scary. If you’ve seen the trailer and think you know what you’re in for, then you may well still be pleasantly surprised, and you’ll get nothing more out of me. The genuinely appreciative audience screamed, whooped and hollered at all the appropriate points, and made their appreciation known at the end.
We then all decamped to the bar again on the promise of a late licence, what people as old as me would call a disco and “Easter Presents”, although given that I had to have just one quick drink and head for the Tube back to my car, I didn’t see any presents. There is always the possibility that I misheard and it was actually an “Easter Presence” in the bar; if Jesus was around, I hope he enjoyed the evening as much as I did.
But would it not have been better just to have the film without all of titting around before and after? Frankly, no. The cinema experience is becoming lost and diluted, and in this age of 3D cinema and vibrating cinema seats attempting to keep punters putting our bums on their seats, actually a little bit of showmanship, an education and a right good laugh were the perfect warm up, got everyone in just the right mood for Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s epic and actually made the film itself even more enjoyable, if such a thing is possible. For anyone doubting what the cinema experience has to offer, or just hoping to eat Mini Eggs and draw pictures of horror movies in a room packed with gingers, then I strongly recommend giving the next Ultra Culture Cinema a try.
The Movie Evangelist 