The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse:
I'm years behind-the-times with this modern British comedy classic of a series, but this month it's all been about Dyson, Gattis, Pemberton, and Shearsmith's darkly delicious vision of the warped Northern town of Royston Vasey. The film is a satisfying outing, bringing fresh territory to the series, and a sense of scale that exceeds the consistently impressive TV show. When the town of Royston Vasey begins to crumble - the titular apocalypse - it's up to Hilary Briss (the butcher), Geoff Tipps (the clumsy dolt who can't tell jokes - and who practically steals the entire film), and Herr Lipp (the innuendo-driven German tour guide) to save their town, by entering the real world to get their creators to keep writing about them. Bloody good fun.
The Lovely Bones:
Peter Jackson's adaptation of the book that concerns the aftermath of a teenage girl's murder, from both sides of the divide between life and 'the place in-between', is a visually inventive, dramatically tense, and chilling affair that will linger hauntingly in your mind afterwards. The emotional drive of the film - the torture of losing a child to murder - is keenly and tensely depicted throughout. Then throughout the flick, the visions of 'the place in-between' provide moments of wondrous melancholy, but also threat from unresolved trauma.
However, despite the impressive presentation and emotionally deep and grounded direction, there's a curious sense of lacking at the final hurdle come the film's end. Many characters feel cast aside throughout, and the closing moments of the film comes in a way that lacks a sense of closure for many of them, rather than in a way that would have more satisfactorily tied together the various plot strands. Indeed, the inevitable comeuppance is somewhat lacking in itself - you don't get the totally relieving sense of vindication that you feel you deserve as a viewer, and the execution of it doesn't pack the punch you'd expect given its foreshadowing earlier in the film. Perhaps these problems aren't so present in the original book (where they will have, naturally, spawned in the first place) - problems that have become more evident through the adaptation process.
Despite these stumbles though, The Lovely Bones is a beautifully realised vision with confident, considered direction, strong performances, a perfect sense of tension building, and a chilling balance of grim and glorious subject matter that allows the film to walk the line between drama for general audiences, and the horrific implications of the actions of truly dark individuals. Flawed, but satisfyingly haunting.
Saturday, 30 July 2011
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Chepstow Castle video...
I shot this footage years ago now, when I first started out as a Freelance Filmmaker (hence the Auto Iris), and I came back to use a couple of the shots in Abortion: Ancient & Modern - which made me think that I could edit the footage together into a nice little musical montage, akin to what I did with the North Berwick, and Edinburgh, tour videos last year.
Anyway, enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JSyYOHmJkA
Anyway, enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JSyYOHmJkA
Monday, 25 July 2011
Abortion: Ancient & Modern - Part 3 Screenshots...
The new educational DVD - Abortion: Ancient & Modern - is complete, and below are some screenshots from the third film in the three part series. This third film was the most complex of the lot, on a project that proved to be quite the editing challenge - the find a way to not only maintain our visually arresting style, but to wrestle with a topic as controversial and tricky to visualise as abortion.
Triple Bill Mini (and Cine) Musings: The Inexplicable, the Okay, and the Horrible...
Resident Evil Afterlife:
N.B. Sarcastic spoiling of the entire movie follows...
The fourth instalment in the inexplicable videogame-to-movie adaptation franchise (again written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson) kicks off with a very stylish, but mostly unintelligible attack - by a bunch of cloned Alices - on yet another impossibly labrynthine underground Umbrella Corporation complex. Then Mrs W.S. Anderson is flying around in a plane that is seemingly fuelled by magic in search of the paradise promised in the third movie (which was decidedly indebted to George A. Romero's far superior Day of the Dead). It's nowhere to be found, so her and Ali Larter sod off in their magic plane and end up landing on the roof of what looks like a hotel casino, but which is apparently a high-rise prison (eh?!).
We're introduced to 1) Asshole Producer, 2) Tough & Buff Black Guy with Incredibly Precise Facial Hair, 3) Random Asian, 4) Deluded Brunette Who Happens to be Good at Swimming, 5) Some Guy Called Angel or Whatever ... oh, and Wentworth Miller ... who's imprisoned, but he knows a way out (good thing he had all that Prison Break training, isn't it?) Then some zombies with weird mouths turn up, as well as some giant sack-headed creature with a massive axe/hammer (who's presumably from one of the games, but who is totally unexplained in this movie), and so a bunch of action happens - in slow motion - as Anderson makes full use of the 3D cameras (although I was watching it in 2D on my telly).
Fast forward, a bunch of cannon fodder has been gotten out of the way, and now we're on a boat. Then a bunch of nonsensical "muahahaha, we're an evil corporation" gibberish happens - and looks all shiny and slow-motioned and 3D in the process - and then the fifth inexplicable movie is set-up and we all fall down. It's a pretty face, with a handful of cool zombie apocalypse shots, but the plot makes little-to-no-sense - so you don't give a bollocks about anything that's going on. It's a movie for 13 year old boys who spend all their time testing the theory of "if you don't stop, you'll go blind" while intermittently rage-quitting from Call of Duty death match marathons.
Skateland:
Adventureland was a coming-of-age drama set in the 1980s starring one of the girls from Twilight (Kristen Stewart). Skateland is a coming-of-age drama, with a rather similar title, set in the 1980s starring one of the girls from Twilight (Ashley Greene) ... and it was also made in 2009, the same year as the pitch-perfect, involving and justifiably nostalgic Adventureland.
Skateland, on the other hand, expects our sympathies immediately - launching straight into nostalgia without having earned the right. We don't know who these characters are, nor what their relationships really are for the most part, and we don't know what the timescale of the entire movie is. We're not brought along for the ride from the get-go, so we spend the rest of the movie playing catch-up ... it's like being on the outside of a really good joke being told by another group over there somewhere, or being told a nostalgic story of an event you missed - perhaps you had to be there, eh? Suffice to say, it's a bit confusing, and Shiloh Fernandez's confused slacker teen comes off more as a lazy jerk, who's occasionally a bit-of-a-dick, than the identifiable, self-concious, kid-in-the-background played by Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland. Indeed, Fernandez (also seen in DeadGirl) - half of the time - has this odd smirk on his face that just makes him seem like, to quote Scott Pilgrim, a "cocky cock".
There's some lovely visual moments and a great soundtrack, but the heart of the movie is lost for the most part thanks to confused plotting which lacks focus. If you want a coming-of-age drama (with a bit of comedy thrown in for good measure) that's set in the 1980s, then go directly to Adventureland, which is a wonderful film. Skateland on the otherhand, is sadly just okay.
Horrible Bosses:
While Mark Kermode (my film critic of choice) went off on a tangent by having a whinge about Jennifer Aniston being too fit for her role as a female dentist/sexual predator (summed up as "phwoar, Jennifer Aniston, phwoar, hey?") - I'd only half agree. While yes, you could have played it more dangerously as the dentist being a bit of an old boiler, on the other hand part of the joke is that the other two males from the central trio of protagonists (Nick and Kurt) cannot understand why their friend (Dale) doesn't like being felt up by a hot dentist. Indeed - Jennifer Aniston ... phwoar, hey?! Speaking of which - it's good to see Aniston in a more daring role that's actually a bit different, and in a movie that isn't utter naffness like The Bounty Hunter.
Anyway - three guys (including the ever-reliable Jason Bateman) find themselves in the employ of three horrible bosses, and (as you'll have surmised from the trailer) they decide to kill off each other's bosses. Suffice to say, things don't go exactly according to plan, as they bumble their way through attempts to 'gather intel'. It's not a comedy classic, but it's a good time nonetheless (the audience in the cinema where we saw it would have to agree), helped along by a dirty mind, solid central casting, and a strong core idea - even if the middle portion somewhat loses the spark before rallying itself for a satisfying sign-off.
N.B. Sarcastic spoiling of the entire movie follows...
The fourth instalment in the inexplicable videogame-to-movie adaptation franchise (again written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson) kicks off with a very stylish, but mostly unintelligible attack - by a bunch of cloned Alices - on yet another impossibly labrynthine underground Umbrella Corporation complex. Then Mrs W.S. Anderson is flying around in a plane that is seemingly fuelled by magic in search of the paradise promised in the third movie (which was decidedly indebted to George A. Romero's far superior Day of the Dead). It's nowhere to be found, so her and Ali Larter sod off in their magic plane and end up landing on the roof of what looks like a hotel casino, but which is apparently a high-rise prison (eh?!).
We're introduced to 1) Asshole Producer, 2) Tough & Buff Black Guy with Incredibly Precise Facial Hair, 3) Random Asian, 4) Deluded Brunette Who Happens to be Good at Swimming, 5) Some Guy Called Angel or Whatever ... oh, and Wentworth Miller ... who's imprisoned, but he knows a way out (good thing he had all that Prison Break training, isn't it?) Then some zombies with weird mouths turn up, as well as some giant sack-headed creature with a massive axe/hammer (who's presumably from one of the games, but who is totally unexplained in this movie), and so a bunch of action happens - in slow motion - as Anderson makes full use of the 3D cameras (although I was watching it in 2D on my telly).
Fast forward, a bunch of cannon fodder has been gotten out of the way, and now we're on a boat. Then a bunch of nonsensical "muahahaha, we're an evil corporation" gibberish happens - and looks all shiny and slow-motioned and 3D in the process - and then the fifth inexplicable movie is set-up and we all fall down. It's a pretty face, with a handful of cool zombie apocalypse shots, but the plot makes little-to-no-sense - so you don't give a bollocks about anything that's going on. It's a movie for 13 year old boys who spend all their time testing the theory of "if you don't stop, you'll go blind" while intermittently rage-quitting from Call of Duty death match marathons.
Skateland:
Adventureland was a coming-of-age drama set in the 1980s starring one of the girls from Twilight (Kristen Stewart). Skateland is a coming-of-age drama, with a rather similar title, set in the 1980s starring one of the girls from Twilight (Ashley Greene) ... and it was also made in 2009, the same year as the pitch-perfect, involving and justifiably nostalgic Adventureland.
Skateland, on the other hand, expects our sympathies immediately - launching straight into nostalgia without having earned the right. We don't know who these characters are, nor what their relationships really are for the most part, and we don't know what the timescale of the entire movie is. We're not brought along for the ride from the get-go, so we spend the rest of the movie playing catch-up ... it's like being on the outside of a really good joke being told by another group over there somewhere, or being told a nostalgic story of an event you missed - perhaps you had to be there, eh? Suffice to say, it's a bit confusing, and Shiloh Fernandez's confused slacker teen comes off more as a lazy jerk, who's occasionally a bit-of-a-dick, than the identifiable, self-concious, kid-in-the-background played by Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland. Indeed, Fernandez (also seen in DeadGirl) - half of the time - has this odd smirk on his face that just makes him seem like, to quote Scott Pilgrim, a "cocky cock".
There's some lovely visual moments and a great soundtrack, but the heart of the movie is lost for the most part thanks to confused plotting which lacks focus. If you want a coming-of-age drama (with a bit of comedy thrown in for good measure) that's set in the 1980s, then go directly to Adventureland, which is a wonderful film. Skateland on the otherhand, is sadly just okay.
Horrible Bosses:
While Mark Kermode (my film critic of choice) went off on a tangent by having a whinge about Jennifer Aniston being too fit for her role as a female dentist/sexual predator (summed up as "phwoar, Jennifer Aniston, phwoar, hey?") - I'd only half agree. While yes, you could have played it more dangerously as the dentist being a bit of an old boiler, on the other hand part of the joke is that the other two males from the central trio of protagonists (Nick and Kurt) cannot understand why their friend (Dale) doesn't like being felt up by a hot dentist. Indeed - Jennifer Aniston ... phwoar, hey?! Speaking of which - it's good to see Aniston in a more daring role that's actually a bit different, and in a movie that isn't utter naffness like The Bounty Hunter.
Anyway - three guys (including the ever-reliable Jason Bateman) find themselves in the employ of three horrible bosses, and (as you'll have surmised from the trailer) they decide to kill off each other's bosses. Suffice to say, things don't go exactly according to plan, as they bumble their way through attempts to 'gather intel'. It's not a comedy classic, but it's a good time nonetheless (the audience in the cinema where we saw it would have to agree), helped along by a dirty mind, solid central casting, and a strong core idea - even if the middle portion somewhat loses the spark before rallying itself for a satisfying sign-off.
Monday, 18 July 2011
Double Bill Mini Musings: Decidedly meh, even rubbish...
The Incredible Melting Man:
For some reason three astronauts have gone on a mission into space to gawp at the sun from nearby Saturn, then something happens and the sole survivor is back on earth and has been transformed into the eponymous purveyor of immovable carpet stains. The flick is really only worthwhile for fans of naff genre flicks, or - more admirably perhaps - Rick Baker's gloriously gloopy make-up effects work. Baker's work is the real draw of the flick - indeed there are numerous scenes where we just sit there and watch the titular enemy of Cillit Bang, drip runny snot-like blobs of gooey flesh from his form (the final meltdown is good fun after an all-too-long, not-terribly-exciting chase sequence).
When it comes to the script, and indeed the acting, I can't tell whether it's deliberately - or accidentally - trying to be a bit pants. It's like the movie is trying to be tongue-in-cheek, but the jokes (if you can be so generous) seem to have been lost in translation to any of the actors, whose performances are wooden to say the least ... its as if they're trying to be the antithesis of the very much fluid lead. When the gloop isn't glooping, and when heads aren't getting lopped off, it does get rather tedious ... which is a shame, because in terms of production design it's pretty good (they certainly squeezed every drop out of their time at industrial locations).
The Hills Have Eyes II:
Wes Craven's original was pretty good - not great, but good - and the Alexandre Aja remake has been one of the rare instances in which a remake has been worthwhile. However, Craven's sequel is a woeful mistake (mirrored by the unconnected sequel to Aja's remake - featuring the worst military recruits America has to offer - which was beyond crap). Making liberal use of flashbacks to the original film (including one for Beast - the dog from the original movie!) to pad out the skimpy running time (which, ironically, moves by slower than a glacier), the vast majority of the new footage is risible at best - a bunch of cardboard teens (who are off to the desert to race dirt bikes) yomping around the wrong part of the desert being total morons.
There's initial - very brief - promise when the flick begins with one of the survivors of the original moving suffering mental anguish several years later, still trying to cope ... but what could have made for an interesting personal struggle is ditched after 15 padded-out minutes in favour of idiots making useless decisions (except for the aforementioned survivor, who makes the only smart choice in the entire movie - to not go to the ruddy desert!). Hills II is one of the worst examples of the horror genre - when those who moan about the genre dismiss it off-hand, it's movies like this that they're referencing - utterly witless, inane, bore-fests with little merit even to die hard horror hounds.
However - there is one plus - the soundtrack. Having not noticed in the credits, a short while through I recognised the unmistakable similarity in feel to the soundtracks for the early Friday 13th films - and sure enough, Harry Manfredini scored this stinker, and while the movie is indeed a rotten load of old nonsense, the score is classic, chilling, Manfredini.
It's a strange thing - Wes Craven had done so well with the likes of Last House on the Left, the original The Hills Have Eyes, and A Nightmare On Elm Street, but what on earth was he thinking with this?! That said, as bad as it is, it's not even as atrocious as the unforgivably wretched 2007 follow-up to Aja's 2006 gore-ific irradiated remake.
For some reason three astronauts have gone on a mission into space to gawp at the sun from nearby Saturn, then something happens and the sole survivor is back on earth and has been transformed into the eponymous purveyor of immovable carpet stains. The flick is really only worthwhile for fans of naff genre flicks, or - more admirably perhaps - Rick Baker's gloriously gloopy make-up effects work. Baker's work is the real draw of the flick - indeed there are numerous scenes where we just sit there and watch the titular enemy of Cillit Bang, drip runny snot-like blobs of gooey flesh from his form (the final meltdown is good fun after an all-too-long, not-terribly-exciting chase sequence).
When it comes to the script, and indeed the acting, I can't tell whether it's deliberately - or accidentally - trying to be a bit pants. It's like the movie is trying to be tongue-in-cheek, but the jokes (if you can be so generous) seem to have been lost in translation to any of the actors, whose performances are wooden to say the least ... its as if they're trying to be the antithesis of the very much fluid lead. When the gloop isn't glooping, and when heads aren't getting lopped off, it does get rather tedious ... which is a shame, because in terms of production design it's pretty good (they certainly squeezed every drop out of their time at industrial locations).
The Hills Have Eyes II:
Wes Craven's original was pretty good - not great, but good - and the Alexandre Aja remake has been one of the rare instances in which a remake has been worthwhile. However, Craven's sequel is a woeful mistake (mirrored by the unconnected sequel to Aja's remake - featuring the worst military recruits America has to offer - which was beyond crap). Making liberal use of flashbacks to the original film (including one for Beast - the dog from the original movie!) to pad out the skimpy running time (which, ironically, moves by slower than a glacier), the vast majority of the new footage is risible at best - a bunch of cardboard teens (who are off to the desert to race dirt bikes) yomping around the wrong part of the desert being total morons.
There's initial - very brief - promise when the flick begins with one of the survivors of the original moving suffering mental anguish several years later, still trying to cope ... but what could have made for an interesting personal struggle is ditched after 15 padded-out minutes in favour of idiots making useless decisions (except for the aforementioned survivor, who makes the only smart choice in the entire movie - to not go to the ruddy desert!). Hills II is one of the worst examples of the horror genre - when those who moan about the genre dismiss it off-hand, it's movies like this that they're referencing - utterly witless, inane, bore-fests with little merit even to die hard horror hounds.
However - there is one plus - the soundtrack. Having not noticed in the credits, a short while through I recognised the unmistakable similarity in feel to the soundtracks for the early Friday 13th films - and sure enough, Harry Manfredini scored this stinker, and while the movie is indeed a rotten load of old nonsense, the score is classic, chilling, Manfredini.
It's a strange thing - Wes Craven had done so well with the likes of Last House on the Left, the original The Hills Have Eyes, and A Nightmare On Elm Street, but what on earth was he thinking with this?! That said, as bad as it is, it's not even as atrocious as the unforgivably wretched 2007 follow-up to Aja's 2006 gore-ific irradiated remake.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
