The Road, has new direction….

If the second recently released trailer for The Road has told Babydylan one thing, its that the film is looking to be thee most important picture of 2009, if not for the past ten years. In contrast to the first, the second trailer convinces me that the picture has retained the original message so eloquently written about in the book (although I’d thought that for awhile, not only because ‘DissolvedPet’ pipped up and told me that The Road is suspected to be “pretty fucking brutal”). Hopefully this film will walk the same line as previous documentaries, ala The Inconvenient Truth, and give those in denial about Global Warming a firm kick up the bum. In fact I can imagine the irony of the film being more succesful than docos at conveying the message (it being a ‘work of fiction’ and all). Anyway, heres the trailer….tell us what you think!

The Road, it’s going somewhere……..

A few years ago my mums partner gave me a book for Christmas called The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy (author of No Country for Old Men). The book was about a father and a son making their way through a desolute and post-apocalyptic version of earth, camping in the ruins of buldings, encountering savage locals and all the while trying their hardest to fulfill a ‘quest’. What kind of quest, we didn’t know. I may be an exception, but it took me while to figure out that the novel’s world has been ruined by global warming (and the other grievances commited by us, the humans). I could see the futuristic element to it, but the idea of the earth having been ruined by polution and the novel therefore being a critic of how we’re dealing with global emmisions wasn’t immediatly obvious, at least to me. My mums partner understood the premise straight away.

Thats because at some points the narrative moves past its setting to focus on the relationship between the father and the son, the most poignant and heartrenching part of the whole text. The novel has since become one of my favourites, because it balances this relationship with its subtle attack on how we are treating our planet. Its a reminder that nomatter what happens, we do our best to survive and that love conquers all etc.

Now the novel has been adapted for the big screen by Australian John Hillcoat (director of The Proposition and Ghosts….of the Civil Dead). Whilst it is in capable hands, the recently released trailer was disapointing, as the film looks like it has focused on the ‘disaster’ element of the novel, and has ignored all the rest. It reminds me of The Day After Tomorow, or the new trailer for 2012. Hopefully it is true to the text, and they’ve just cut it this way to get more bums on seats, but then i guess only time will tell………..

Terrence Malick is not the Messiah! He’s just an amazing filmmaker!

World War Two film The Thin Red Line exploded onto the scene with a resounding bang, standing out as a stark contrast to another 1998 war drama, Saving Private Ryan. As opposed to it being a confronting portrayal of the horrors of war, with extra schmaltz thrown in (as Ryan was), The Thin Red Line was deeply philosophical, its focus being the devastation of nature. The picture seemed to come from nowhere, details of its production were kept tight lipped. The most anyone could say prior to its release was that it was based upon a James Jones novel, it had an amazing ensemble cast and was the third feature in almost twenty years for filmmaker Terrence Malick, whose previous films Badlands and Days of Heaven are considered masterpieces of New Hollywood.

Rumours began to circulate about Malick’s twenty year hiatus from filmmaking. Who was this guy? Where had he been? And what had he been doing in that time? One rumour suggested that he had been running a second hand book shop in small town America, another was that he became a farmer, or that he was a cobbler operating in Paris. The most likely rumour was that he was teaching English in an American University under the alias of Joey Joe Joe Shabadoo Jr. The New World (Malick’s fourth feature) followed in 2005, and it was considered by some to be a companion piece to The Thin Red Line. Both were period dramas, involved nature being plundered by outsiders, both had a running internal monologue comprised of the thoughts of the characters in the films, and were representative of a filmmaker who was completely in control of his craft.

If the twenty year hiatus wasn’t enough, the perfection of the two films caused us to ask more questions about the man who made them. Who was he, this strange man who had disappeared from Hollywood, but had emerged years later with an ultimate control over filmmaking? And if this wasn’t enough, rumours began to circulate about the secrecy surrounding his projects. Malick’s contracts stipulate that no current photos of him are aloud to be taken, and that he is to give no interviews. Even the documentaries about his films don’t feature any interviews with the man himself, or any footage of him directing, it’s just interviews with his cast and crew. Colin Farrel, who worked with Malick in The New World, has done nothing to quell these rumours of his elusive reputation, in fact in an interview given to a magazine, he seemed to encourage them. “I don’t even remember making The New World. I just remember showing to meet Terrence for an interview, and when I walked into his office there was this shining flash of light…..and I passed out. And I woke up 7 months later and there was this completed film that had me in its cast. Weird.” * When Malick agreed to give a rare public appearance for a Q and A at the Rome film festival, fans were excited thinking it might be the only opportunity to glimpse the man, even capture footage of him. Yet as the following clip demonstrates (taken by an audience member on his phone) this couldn’t happen. We can hear Malick’s voice, but we can’t actually see him. How frustrating is that!

All this weird stuff combined, coupled with the sheer perfection of his films, caused many to speculate whether Terrence Malick was God himself. That maybe God had wandered down from Heaven and began a career as a filmmaker. If you go on IMDb, and look at Malick’s message board, every second post begins with “So Malick, is he like……God?” No he’s not God, nor is he a culmination of other filmmakers who have all pooled their talents and worked under the same alias (as I also heard on the rumour mill). He’s just a normal dude who started off as a normal filmmaker, but quickly tired of the Hollywood system and turned his back on it, deciding instead to operate under his own steam. After looking long and hard, I found two current pictures of the man. The one on the right looks like it was taken without him expecting it, the one on the left was taken at a film festival, on someone’s phone.

Also, the following clip is from Malick’s debut Badlands, in which he makes a cameo as a door to door salesman, which suggests that at one point he wasn‘t as preoccupied with secrecy as he is now.

Peter Biskund, in the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, portrays Malick as a shy, introverted, normal guy, with weaknesses and eccentricities. “A burly young man, barrel-chested and bearded, Malick looked a little like Peter Boyle with hair**. He was shy and introverted, said very little. Malick came from Texas. His father was an executive with Phillips Petroleum, and he had two younger brothers, Chris and Larry. Larry went to Spain to study guitar with Segovia, a taskmaster of legendary proportions. In the summer of 1968, Terry learned that his brother had broken both his own hands, apparently distraught over his studies. Terry’s father asked him to go over to Spain to help Larry. Terry refused. The father went himself, and returned with Larry’s body. He had apparently committed suicide. Terry, as the eldest son, had inherited the birthright. He was the one who went to Harvard and became a Rhodes scholar, and now when his younger brother needed him most, he hadn’t been there. He always bore a heavy burden of guilt.” Further on, Biskund goes into detail about Malick’s unusual directing style on the Days of Heaven shoot ( including the “meticulous and indecisive” editing of the picture which took place over two years, and eventually made the plot “incomprehensible”, saved of course by the voice over), and the studio inteference Malick experienced during production on both Badlands and Days of Heaven.

Malick’s hiatus from filmmaking is more easily understood when we read the stories surrounding the making of his films, the production delays, the studio’s barging in on the editing, the budget cuts, the uncooperative crew. He disappeared from Hollywood for twenty years, fed up with all the red tape and the bullshit, but like all good directors found himself drawn back to it because of the stories still waiting to be told.

*I made this up, in case you couldn’t tell.

*The dad from Everyone Loves Raymond.

A short Trailer for ‘The Ghost’

As I said in my previous post, I will be keeping everyone updated on Polanki’s new film ‘The Ghost’ as it develops. In all his awesomeness, Polanski has released a very short (“very very fucking short”, Alex says) trailer that gets me (as well as the entire film viewing community) salivating with excitement. Ewan McGregor plays a ghost writer for Britain’s former Prime Minister, played by Pierce Brosnan. Nothing more needs to be said……….

As I said, its very short….but still guaranteed to be amazing. Kaching!

A Short Piece on ‘The Ghost’

Roman Polanski fans from all around the world (myself included, in fact…I am the frontrunner of his fan base) rejoiced at the news of his upcoming feature, titled The Ghost, because many thought that it would literally be about a ghost, and thus be a new horror film.

The disappointment was due to the fact that Polanski directs the most amazing horror, from the overtly scary, ie. Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion, The Tenant (which form a loose trilogy) and The Ninth Gate, to those which take place in a subtle, morally corrupt world ie. All of his other work. Polanski thinks of himself as having a total rational view of the world, he is a complete agnostic, and therefore does not believe in any supernatural, either evil or good. Thus his work is afflicted with that shred of rationality, that maybe the ‘evil’ which takes place in his horror is not supernatural, but is real and that humans can be held accountable for it. Fan boys wanted to see Polanski take the genre and yet again smack it down the ball park, however the plotline for his next picture is far removed from any ghost story, although it could still be called a horror film.

A Ghostwriter (someone who writes the ‘autobiography’ of someone else) is employed to ‘write’ the memoirs of Great Britain’s last Prime Minister. A leader who was elected under the promise of bringing change to England, and who was representative of overturning ‘Thatcherism’, but who was forcibly retired under allegations of corruption and of encouraging the war on terror (its impossible to have a war against a bloody emotion, but I’ll keep my feelings aside). As you may have guessed, the British Prime Minister in The Ghost, Adam Lang, is a not so subtle representation of Britain’s ex Prime Minister Tony Blair. Whilst writing the memoir the Ghostwriter encounters scandals and what not and trouble starts to brew……

I’m currently reading the book at the moment (I’m interested in how it’ll compare to the film when it comes out, its due for release in 2010) but I know that whilst its not conventional horror materiel, Polanski will still create a totally amoral, corrupt world in the film that will rival most horrors, and because of the relevancy of its topic, Polanski will not doubt create a thriller that will be all the more scary and horrifying because it is partially based on fact. A reminder to us that evil and yuckiness can exist, a sentiment echoed in all of Polanski’s work.

As soon as some pictures from the film are released they will be uploaded quicksticks.

Play It Again, Sam.

For the first time on babydylan, Alex and Eugene have roped good friend and fellow blogger Jamie (check out his Learning the Lingo blog) into contirubting a little somthingsomething for their humble site. Hopefully to be the first of many additions, inspiring us to get our arses into gear, Jamie talks of his love to SCORE!Firstly, we know that’s not the actual quote from Casablanca. I believe Miss Bergman said “Play it, Sam. Play “As Time Goes By”". But this is not a post about mis-quoted movie quotables. This is about my love for film composers. It has only been in the last few years where I realised the difference a score can make – turning a good film into a brilliant one.

 

My awakening occurred with Philip Glass’ score of The Hours. This was just some kind of symphony that, for me, came out of nowhere. I’d never heard anything like it in a film, where the music was literally striking a chord within me. His orchestrations were as critically important to the story, as were David Hare’s adapted words from Michael Cunningham’s amazing novel. I still play the CD of his score to this day, and “Morning Passages” is the deepest way there is too wake up in the morning.

If the cast wasn't enough to inspire SQUEEING, the score is sure to make you do so.

Soon this pattern started emerging in more films that I watched. I’d be taking mental notes of who was composing what, and before I knew it, I’d be eagerly anticipating who would win Best Score at the Oscars instead of the Acting categories.

And it’s not just me who sees the significance of music in film. Recently I stumbled across some interesting quotes on the Sight and Sound website where many influential directors had been asked how music influences film. Cameron Crowe notes that the best music just bypasses your mind and transports you into another world. Sidney Lumet says that music should be treated as a character that can reveal something that the movie does not explicitly deal with. Fernando Meirelles sees music (or its absence) as the soul of a film. For more amazing quotes click here.

I could (would and should) literally spend hours writing about ALL of the films that tickle my fancy regarding film scores that changed my life, but alas, I doubt I have the amazing talent as a writer to pull one’s imagination for the length of a mini thesis. So here are some mini snippets of film composers I love.

PHILIP GLASS – As evidenced by the reasons mentioned above. Also, his whole career is worthy of a check out, but do see Notes on a Scandal, not just because Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett want to make you rip off your clothes in a self sacrificial “I’m not worthy” stance, but because this sometimes over bearing score is still a must see/listen experience.

Phillip Glass

THOMAS NEWMAN - Not only is he one of the most sought after film composers, but he did the amazing theme for Six Feet Under!!!! (where the main titles were made around his score – can you tell I kinda like the show?) Newman has composed many amazing scores (Road to Perdition, HBO’s Angels in America, The Green Mile) but it is the score of American Beauty that stands out in my mind as well as probably every other cinephile.

ROLFE KENT – A composer to many of Alexander Payne’s films (as well as Nurse Betty, Thank You for Smoking and Mean Girls), my favourite Kent score is 1999’s Election. It’s the perfect combination of quirkiness and humour that is required, with that little bit of pathos on the side.

GUSTAVO SANTAOLALLA – his Oscar winning score is that made Brokeback Mountain simply unforgettable to me. The piece “Wings” would not leave my head for weeks, even after many listens. The mark of a great artist. His score in Babel also won him an Oscar, and his next score will be on Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s latest work Biutiful.

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT – It was Stephen Frear’s The Queen that made me realise that Desplat is a gem among 21st Century cinephiles everywhere. Since then he did the score of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many more will follow. Also, see his scores in Birth and The Upside of Anger.

Alexandre Desplat

HANS ZIMMER – Three words The Lion King. Four more words. The Thin Red Line. If you haven’t seen either of these films, or the scores do not ring a bell, then do yourself a favour (as well as the karma gods and cinephiles everywhere) and buy the hell outta these films.

It’s also interesting to note the directors that use certain composers time and time again, such as the aforementioned Santaolalla with Innarritu, Kent with Payne, and other teams of Burton and Elfman, Spielberg and Williams, Badalamenti and Lynch, Eastwood with Eastwood (with a side of Eastwood). The list is endless.

Now, maybe you’re wondering where John Williams is in this. Don’t get me wrong, he is amazing and a living legend in film composer movie world. But while he is almost in another league compared to these dudes here, I still haven’t had the amazing connection to his film scores. They are more like themes. The most amazing and recognizable themes out there. It’s just a different league.

Also worthy of honourable mention goes to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue heard in Woody Allen’s Manhattan. So this is not a piece of music written specifically for the film, but when you see the sequence in the film, (besides jizzing your pants over the black and white wonderment that is Woody Allen and the island of Manhattan) something so indescribably moving, haunting and evocative of pure beauty is merged with the classical composition and the film that looks like a black and white postcard.

Woody Allen and his island

Sarah Watt on new film, ‘My Year Without Sex’

Airing between 3pm-4pm on Sunday the 14th of June, Alex (the radio girl of Babydylan) had a speical interview with Sarah Watt for the release of her new film. Feeling very nervous to be interviewing one of her idols, they had an enthused chat and hopefully didn’t babble too much. Posted here just for Babydylan readers is the transcript of the interivew. Hope you enjoy, Alex & Eugene.

Sarah Watt

ALEX: Good afternoon, you’re listening to Arts Mitten on SYN. And today we’re talking to Australian writer and director Sarah Watt about her latest film, My Year Without Sex. How are you today, Sarah?

SARAH: Good, thank you.

ALEX: Good, great to have you on the show.

SARAH: Thanks for having me.

ALEX: For those who haven’t seen the film, could you give us a brief introduction or overview of what it’s all about.

SARAH: So hard to say, trying to cram so much in. In its wholeness it’s a portrait of where a very average family was in 2006 when I wrote it. Also about consumerism and how we get through our days and what meaning we can derive from them. It’s also a kind of love story, but about a whole family of four people and how they reassess their lives after a major event.

ALEX: It’s a really interesting film. Everyone I’ve spoken to has really related to the family and seen themselves in it either through the parents or the children. You’ve captured that really well.

SARAH: That’s great!

ALEX: I was wondering how you came up with the idea? Was it something from your own life or from something you’ve observed?

SARAH: In the beginning I was more interested in society and how it felt so wrong and unsustainable. Through what we consume and what we didn’t care about. I had a particular beef about how everyone wanted a swimming pool in their own back yard rather than caring about the community. So it came out of ideas like that. But then the actual story of a way of looking at society came out of my own life but also a friend of mine who had a medical shock. So I kind of used both; my thinking of ‘what are we here for?’

ALEX: Just taking bits from things you’ve heard in your own life and other people?

SARAH: Yeah, I’m a bit of a magpie like that. (laughs)

ALEX: I think that’s interesting, as it feels very real and it’s come across quite well.

SARAH: You know it’s quite hard to do that. I think some people have looked at the film and thought, ‘Oh it’s just like you’ve walked into a house and grabbed this documentary style.’ When it’s actually a really constructed film and very tight and it kind of feels like it’s too real for some people.

ALEX: I really liked how real the dialogue felt because it’s nice to see an Australian film that’s not all about drugs and death. This was really warm, especially the ending of the film how it ended with hope. Because there is so much going on that is quite sad but it ends on such a positive note

SARAH: That’s the thrust of the film. Just because all these bad things can happen in the world doesn’t mean they are going to happen. So in the meantime you might as well live with the glass half full. I’m a real stickler for that real dialogue. I can’t watch any film where one character you don’t believe and you can see the acting. I fall out of believing it.

ALEX: I was wondering about that, with the casting of the film. I know you’ve worked with Sacha Horler before on Look Both Ways. When you were writing the film, did you have her in mind for the casting or did she come about through the audition process?

SARAH: Just through auditions. I find it difficult to write with people in mind. I think the audition process is really good. Australia has so many great actors, it’s really good to explore that. It’s the beginning of giving away the characters from the writers head to the directors head and so it’s a nice process to have to go through.

ALEX: I thought the whole family was amazingly cast, especially Ruby.

SARAH: Isn’t she great!? Her parents are going to find it hard to keep her off the street.

ALEX: She’s fantastic. There is one scene I love when they are sitting in the service station and the kids are bickering and she uses the menu to tease her brother. That’s such a wonderful moment you captured. Was that your direction or her own?

Film's charming family

SARAH: A lot of it was her. She’s a real bright spark and one of the most pleasant kids I’ve ever met which you think wouldn’t go with her character.

ALEX: The whole film seemed to hinge on the family being real and I found myself looking at the children and thinking ‘That was me!’ I was so obnoxious and annoying. It really made me sympathise with my parents and I feel I owe them an apology.

SARAH: (laughs) That’s gorgeous of you.

ALEX: I was also curious about the location of the film. Because it’s a really Melbourne film and it was really nice seeing Melbourne as it is, not disguised as something else. There’s been a lot of films out recently that have used Melbourne as something else, such as The Knowing or Ghost Rider. It’s interesting to see Melbourne as it is.

SARAH: Yeah, well I didn’t particularity want to set it in the Western suburbs, just because I live there and it’s an eaiser commute. It could have been set in anyone of those ring suburbs. I love Melbourne, I think it’s a great city and I would have loved to have made something that celebrated other aspects of it.

ALEX: I was really interested in how you’ve taken things that aren’t sterotypcially Melbourne, but if you live here you would know them. Places such as the Russell Street cinema. There is one shot you have used framing the roof and how it curves up. It’s such an interesting place to put the camera. I would never have thought you could make this old cinema look so beautiful. Did you just go to the location and decided there to do that?

SARAH: We just always loved that location. With cinemas it’s virtually impossible to get. We couldn’t get a location that was a big suburban megaplex. So we used the Russell Street cinema.

ALEX: I think it’s really familiar for all the people in the city.

SARAH: It had the feel of the big suburban cinema and you just couldn’t not photograph that roof!

ALEX: I’ve been there so many times, I never thought it could be shot like that. I saw My Year Without Sex in a packed cinema and the guy beside me saying, ‘That’s beautiful!’ And there was another scene I thought captured that quite well. The scene where Matt Day is sitting outside the house at Christmas time. This comes back to before, where you were talking about capitalism and consumerism. All the celebrations are meant to be such a joyous time and yet, they can’t be happy unless they have the latest ipod. And the image of him sitting outside, with the lights behind going off slowly, eating the carrot with the dog on his lap. It seemed to sum up everything he was feeling.

SARAH: I don’t know whether you noticed, but in the background you can hear the neighbours further away having a party. It’s the whole thing of Christmas Eve in Australia as a time to get totally written off (laughs).

ALEX: And he is sitting there with his wife inside, chewing the carrots pretending to be the reindeer…

SARAH: I love that moment.

ALEX: I was wondering how you found the house as it is such a character as well.

SARAH: I was looking before Christmas, looking to see if we could get some shots before we were financed of the Christmas decorations, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to afford to do it. So I was driving around, with my kids in the car driving around trying to find houses with lights. And my daughter saw an elephant! Something completely ridiculous to see when driving around Altona North. We’d actually stumbled across a film shoot of ‘Elephant Princess’ which I think is a TV series. And next door to this elephant house there were these fantastic Christmas decorations. And when I went across the road to take photos, I stood in the yard of this house and turned around and thought, ‘This is it. This is a great house.’ And it just turned out that that house was empty and the owners were going to renovate it to rent it out. So we rented it out and it was all perfect. A nice bit of serendipity.

ALEX: That’s a great story!

SARAH: And I was so close to saying, (patronizing voice) ‘Yes, dear!’ and driving off!

ALEX: Getting back to your earlier films, in Look Both Ways and your short film you use a lot of stop motion animation which it was quite famous for. Yet in this one you didn’t use it as much, more for the transition scenes between the months and the use of stock footage.

SARAH: I liked the artificial structure around the realism. In Look Both Ways it was an organic part of the story, needing to know what those characters were thinking, projecting something different than what they were really thinking. And there just wasn’t room for it in this one.

ALEX: I think with Look Both Ways, I think it fit well with those characters – her being an artist it was organic. But as you said, it might not have worked as well for this film. I’m sure you’ve thought about it a lot more than I have.

SARAH: Sometimes it just starts being an indulgence or you start adding more to make it interesting, but I feel it has to come out of the characters and what the film is actually trying to say.

ALEX: And that is where the transitions between scenes worked really well.

SARAH: I liked that, as I think a lot of the film I about what happens off screen as well as on screen.

ALEX: A lot of people have liked the unique way of changing scenes, not just a subtitle on the bottom, just something different.

SARAH: And it was meant to be, it has a reason outside of it. You’re inside this little family, in this little suburb and then you get to see they are part of a huge world, then back to the little world. To try and tie the big and little world together.

ALEX: Sadly we are going to have to leave it there today, I would love to chat for a lot longer. Thank you for coming on the show.

SARAH: Thank You.

ALEX: You’re listening to Arts Mitten on SYN.

Thanks for your time Sarah.

Dark Star (aka I Know You’re Flawed But I Still Love You)

When I was a youngster I watched a series of docos on SBS that taught me a lot about film. I knew that I was into it, but I also knew that I knew nothing. I had just watched Fargo and decided that it was the greatest thing ever made, but I knew that I was just beginning to scratch the surface of what films had to offer, so I decided to make a conscious effort and learn more about it.

My first steps involved hiring out different books from the library, and getting my parents and their friends to write down lists of films that they really liked. Also, there was a series of docos advertised on SBS about different filmmakers, which I made a point of watching. The weird guy who used to introduce films on SBS (the one with the lopsided mouth that made him look like he had a stroke) used to introduce an hour long doco on a director, and then two of their films which would play after.

The first I think was on John Waters (try and imagine the effect he had on me, I was ten. I remember seeing Divine Trash eating a dog turd off the ground and a lady with crazy pink hair keeping someone prisoner is their basement, things that stay with a boy for life. But I learnt soon after that the turd was a metaphor for like….violence or rubbish in the media so I tried to view it from that perspective, but it still puzzled me). The second I think was on Mario Bava and the third was on Dario Argento (again this had an unsettling effect, I was beginning to regret my decision on trying to learn about new filmmakers) the other two I can’t remember but the last, the lucky last….was on John Carpenter.

Dark Star - note the buttons, actually ice cube tray. Rocking the budget.

He really struck a cord with me because he wrote the music for all of his films, and he seemed to be the most normal of the filmmakers that had been interviewed so far. Because I was young I was still naïve enough to think that all films were made for entertainment, yet these doco’s were teaching me that films were also a form of expression. Some directors were using that medium to create art, or as John Water’s put it, to ‘shock, tease and excite the viewers’. Because Carpenter and his work seemed to be the least challenging at the time, I decided that he was the director who I was going to be obsessed with, so I wrote down the names of all of his films and tried to watch them as soon as I could.

The doco on Carpenter was followed by two of his most ‘important’ pictures, Halloween and Dark Star. Both had been discussed quite a lot in the doco, Halloween because it set the precedent for films like Scream and I Know What You did Last Summer (and pretty much every slasher film after) and was incredibly popular upon its release, and the later because it was Carpenter’s first feature and was made over a few years on a ridiculously small budget.

That barely begins to touch the surface of why Dark Star is so amazingly awesome, and so perfectly perfect. It began as a short film about four astronauts who are far away from home, they have been stuck together for too long and are slowly going insane….

Amazingly awesome cover

Carpenter completed the film whilst at film school and after it was finished, he could see its potential to be a full length feature film. He drafted a longer screenplay with his collaborator Dan O’Bannon, who also stars in the film (yes the same Dan O’Bannon who wrote the screenplay for Alien, my heart truly weeps at the amount of talent in this film). They wrote an extended story based on the footage already shot, and then they began to build the props and sets for the film using simple house-hold items.

This is the films shining light, the stupidly quirky and quaint props that look authentic and real, but at the same time incredibly out of place. The dials and knobs in the shuttle are actually beer cans sawed in half and cup cake trays spray painted and stuck on the wall, the space suit is an old Halloween costume with a painted vacuum cleaner stuck on the back, and the alien, the token monster in the film who is onboard their space ship, is a painted beach ball with two rakes as its feet. To use a shameless ‘Clueless’ quote, the film is a Monet. If you view it from far away, with your eyes dimmed, you’d think it was a big budget sci-fi film with top notch special effects, but when up close you realise how low budget and old school it is, like the sets are made from sticky tape and optimism. Personally, this is why I love it. Its like a three legged dog or a toddler with a mono-brow, you just want to give it a hug as soon as you see it because its so special and cute and it tries so hard…..

The monster = scariest beach ball ever.

Also, Carpenter didn’t need special effects or a bid budget to convey the boredom and insanity of the characters, which is the point of the film. The most poignant scene is towards the beginning of the picture, when the characters converge in a bedroom which looks like an abandoned bomb shelter (chances are it probably was one). One of the characters reads an old copy of Playboy, another puts on a novelty pair of glasses (not sure why, he just does), someone else plays that knife game with his hand (he stabs one of his fingers and doesn’t even notice) and someone else puts a rubber chicken in his coat and then surprises his friend with it. These characters are so bored, and we don’t need elaborate sets or props to understand that.

This is a film I can watch over and over again, it introduced me to the idea of ultra-low budget filmmaking, which prior to this film I never really knew existed (as sad as that is). I should write a second part to this piece talking about its amazingly awesome screenplay and Carpenter’s little tricks to make the film look more professional (he created different names for himself so it looked like more people were involved in the film than they were) but that would give too much away. Go find the film and watch it.

Sometimes a film is so bad it’s bad.

I am a very tolerant person. I like to think that when it comes to films, I try very hard to find at least one good point, a moment, a look, the lighting, the script, Christ anything! But even Christ himself could not help Ron Howard’s latest blockbuster, Angels and Demons.

What were you thinking Ron? Don’t make me hate you more than I already do! Frost/Nixon was pretty damn amazing and I felt I could perhaps stomach this latest ‘thrill-ride’, while the cheap tickets did sweeten the deal (it is rather helpful/brilliant to have one half of babydylan working at Hoyts. Eugene is tops, go stalk him there). And even after an exceptionally long two-and-a-bit hours I thought maybe I could see the good side. But on reflection, I really can’t. I doubt this will be anything particularly insightful, nor coherent but sometimes it just has to be said.  

Hanks: Running from one major plot hole to the next

Tom Hanks, please, please stick to your comedies. That Thing You Do is a bit of my childhood genius, you made me love you in Sleepless in Seattle, your voice in Toy Story defined my youth, hell even Big and Turner & Hooch rocked my world. If not that, go all out and pluck at the ol’ heartstrings in Saving Private Ryan, Forest Gump or Philadelphia. But DO NOT pretend to be some action hero vying to be number one in the worlds worst hair competition. Because that space has already been filled by my old friend Nicolas Cage as I have mentioned before.

Nic Cage called, he wants his hair back.

Secondly, I know the church didn’t allow you to shoot at the Vatican (can’t imagine why, perhaps God told them the film would be pox?) but the CGI is annoyingly obvious. It felt like you took a basic tour guide of Rome and made sure to tick all cliche boxes. And then the accents, it felt like the Amazing Race linguistic style, German, Swiss, Amercian Italian, Scottish…all speaking flawless English without once needing to whip out the phrase book, not to mention attractive physicist token-female lead who accidentally created the worlds most powerful bomb and happens to be fluent in Latin. That’s the type of girl you want around in a sticky situation.

'Baaa, baaa!' The budget for the extras was mighty large this day. No one knows what the hell is going on.

Then there is Ewan McGregor (playing a priest who spent most of his life in Italy yet has a messed up Scottish/Irish hybrid accent and speaks not a word of Italian to his minions. Che cosa?). I will never stop loving you, but that crazy shit with the helicopter is wiggity-wack stupid town and you know it. Being somewhat lacking in the workings of Catholicism, or any ism, I had no idea what your function was, nor the purpose of the five million priests in various types of robes along with the eighty-five levels of police that seemed to be completely inept at anything, catching crooks, protecting priests, driving cars, staying alive. All epic fails.

The whole creation vs. faith, science vs. religion was handled pretty shoddily, sweeping statements were made and leaving the film you felt they were trying very hard not to step on anyones toes and offend as little as possible.

Fail cat tells it like it is

If judging from my cohorts and my reactions – one snickered the whole way through, one tried their hardest to remain interested (me), while two fell asleep, missing most of the plot while managing to drool and snore all over the theatre and STILL felt the film ran too long – this film is highly offensive. Offensive for all those who like to be entertained by a good, old-fashioned treasure hunt movie. Ron Howard, you disappoint me.

I’m sure there are some who will feel I am being too harsh, but you can’t deny the film is flawed. Perhaps I’m wrong. Got any films that no matter how you look at them, they completely suck? Let us know, we’d love to prove you right/wrong.

Gotta Get To The Previews!

Sometimes the greatest thing about the movies is the wait.

The apprehension, the excitement, the countdown. If you’re anything like me, which I fear a large portion of you are, you will rarely see a new film you know nothing about. Whether it be trawling through Internet sites, looking for the latest announcements (such as Chris Hemsworth – of Home and Away and recent Star Trek fame - to play Thor!) reading film mags, both trashy and intellectual, newspapers and of course my favourite, watching the trailers. What on earth did we do before YouTube?

Sometimes going to the film is more exciting due to the trailers that proceed it. I will get quite shirty if I miss them, any of them. I remember before the Lord of the Rings films came out, I could quote every line from the trailers, knew ever shot. And who could forget the jizz-in-your-pants inducing Watchmen trailer. There were two major ones, distinguished by many as the ‘one with the Smashing Pumpkins song’ and ‘the one with the Muse song’. Often showed before The Dark Knight, a comic book nerds wet dream.

Wikipeida tells me that one of the pioneers of film trailers was Stanley Kubrick. Are we at all surprised? Watching the trailer for 2001: A Space Odyssey is a mini-movie moment in itself. And quite interesting to see how the previews have changed.

It’s a fine line to walk for the filmmakers, as I’m sure we have all seen one too many comedy trailers that make the film look hilarious, but actually reveal all the humorous parts thus making the actual viewing flat and predictable. Sometimes filmmakers choose a different path, where scenes are shot for the trailer alone, such as the second Terminator film or, one of the greatest trailers of all time, and my very favourite trailer,  Hitchcock’s Psycho, where he actually escorts the audience through the house and hotel of the film. All the iconic rooms that hold such chilling significance are made even more exciting by his lordly presence until the final reveal. Genius.

For now, I will leave you with the two trailers that have been making me salivate recently. Star Trek, making the worn out franchise look vibrant and sexy again, giving glimpses of the iconic cast members and making you desperate for the release date to be now, now, now (obviously this is how I felt before I saw it recently…on opening day). Along with Rob Marshall’s new venture, Nine. It doesn’t give much away but by God he has given me more than enough to know I will be all over it like a lampshade when it is eventually released. If The Internet Movie Database is to be trusted, and it usually is, we won’t be seeing it in Australia until January 2010. Looks like this will have to do for now.