Spontaneous Production

Little Movies That Could

2008-07-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm a great admirer of people who just get on with things. Perhaps that's why I read blogs. People write without needing to be paid per word, without needing to be published, without needing to be employed by a newspaper or magazine. They just write.

Similarly, I am in awe of those who just go ahead and make a movie without any money, or industry backing, or, in some cases, industry experience. They just beg, borrow and steal, get their mates and their family to pitch in and make a film.

This week on the Sunday Showcase Movie Club on Original, I talked about little movies who made it big. I covered the usual suspects, like Clerks, El Mariachi, The Blair Witch Project and Napoleon Dynamite. Certainly for Clerks and El Mariachi, the do it yourself theory is the be all and end all of these movies.

Robert Rodriguez put himself through medical experimentation to raise the $7,000 it took to shoot his film, El Mariachi. Kevin Smith piled everything on a stash of credit cards and used student ID from enrolling on a part time course in Pig Roasting at his local community college to get student discounted film stock and made Clerks.

These guys are legendary and have inspired many Guerilla filmmakers.

It occurred to me the next day that I left someone out of this list; Aberdeen's very own Lee Hutcheon. Right on our doorstep we have our own Guerilla Filmmaker; a guy who has just got on with it. I urge each and every one of you to seek out his first feature length film set in Aberdeen, In a Man's World.

The latest I heard from Lee was that he was working on a new film and I hope that the critical acclaim he got from In a Man's World means that someone, somewhere, has put faith and money into his next project. Because if someone can make a feature length film that is as good as anything (if not better) than something with millions of dollars behind it FOR NOTHING, then what could he do with some real cash?

Hear the Sunday Showcase podcast which features my Movie Club topic of Little Films That Could here.

Stay at Home Cinema

2008-06-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

Since I started doing the film reviews on Original, I seem to get quite a lot of people asking me what they should go and see.

Recently I've been somewhat stuck in my recommendations. It is not a good thing when you are a film pundit to say to people, "You know what, I'd stay home if I were you", or "rent a DVD" or "but the football's on....!", or "Have you considered self harming for entertainment?"

When people insist I end up simply giving one sentence put downs of the week's releases which break down like:

1. The Happening: The Shattening, more like.

2. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: 17 years to get it right and THAT is the best plot that Lucas can muster? How are the team of monkeys with typewriters getting on?

3. Sex and the City: Watch the re-runs instead; they have actual sex and actual city in them and aren't all about boosting the SJP pension fund.

4. Teeth: A film about a vagina with teeth? You're kidding me? Isn't it hard enough for single women to find a man these days?

5. Hulk: WHY? WHY?WHY? No-one needs it, no-one wants it. Even Norton didn't really want to be in it and tried to sabotage the master print with a deodorant can and a lighter, so he could get out of having to promote it. Why do it?

6. Superhero Movie: Has "not funny" running through its core like lettering on some Blackpool Rock.

Recently I'm thinking that my slogan should be, "I go to the cinema, so you don't have to", since I'm telling everyone that there's nothing worth getting excited about in the flicks this month.

Summer time is when the film releases turn cinemas into something resembling a tacky theme park; a waste of money, trashy, superficial, merchandise-obsessed and bad for you.

The good news is, that you can stay at home and have cinema nights.

I would like to propose five perfect Summer movies to keep you warm until the Autumn comes and some decent stuff starts to fill our cinema screens again. And although we don't seem to be having any commenters yet, since this blog is terribly new and no-one ever wants to go first, like big Jessies, I would be so bold as to ask anyone to comment with their Summer Movie Club recommendation in the comments box.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Hey kids, remember when Indiana Jones was new, cool and exciting? Remember when a Summer Blockbuster was a singular event that styed in the cinema for weeks and you went to go and see it at least twice and filled the times in between by re-enacting the entire movie with your chums? Re-live it and watch this again to feel like a kid. It may even wash the disappointment of the Crystal Skull from your brain and you can call off that contract hit you've got on George Lucas.

Jaws: Can't go to the beach because it's too damn cold? Never mind, this'll make you not want to hang out in the surf anyway. Oh and it's just one of the greatest Summer films of ALL TIME.

"Fair well and adieu, my fair Spanish ladies, fair well and adieu you ladies of Spain..."

"We're gonna need a bigger boat" etc etc...

Big Wednesday/Point Break: Two great surf movies that still look great. Jan Michael Vincent is the epitome of cool in Wednesday. And a film that teams Patrick Swayze with Keanu Reeves shouldn't be good, but admit it, you loved Point Break, even though on paper you shouldn't have.

Do the Right Thing: When Summer hits New York, there's no way you can cool down. Here is your antidote to Sex and the City right there. Just a mile away from 5th Avenue and girls obsessed with shoes and bags, Spike Lee's characters can't take themselves off to the Hamptons to escape the city heat, so they start a race war instead. Spike Lee at his best.

Betty Blue: Some adult cinema to redress the balance from all those kids' movies that saturate the cinema listings at this time of year. Revisit steamy, summer-set, sex-filled Betty Blue; the film that every eighties student had a poster of on their walls. Aside from making you feel all summery, this will make you want to rent a beach hut in France in the hope that you'll either become, or bump into, a Beatrice Dalle clone. (Until she goes mental, that is)

Have a nice Summer!

Whatever Happened to The Happening?

2008-06-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Zooey in remake of Eyes Wide Shut..I don't think so.

This post contains SPOILERS, so watch out.

Occasionally I have to temper my reviews somewhat on air. Tomorrow will be an occasion such as this. This week I have been to see M Night Shamalyan’s The Happening. Already, I have come up with a few alternative titles for the film:

My first gut reaction on leaving the cinema was, “The Shattening” and that then morphed into “The Haemorrhaging” and now it is simply, “What the fuck happened?”

M Night as we know, started off jolly well with The Sixth Sense. This is proof in itself that some directors have only one good film in them. Just like Michael Cimino with The Deer Hunter.

OK, MNS (I am sick of typing his name, I’m going with this acronym from now on) isn’t quite as one hit wonder as Cimino- I like Signs, in fact I probably like Signs more than any of his other films, even if it’s just for the scene with Joaquin Phoenix with tin foil on his head and the Brazilian news footage of the green guy walking past the kids’ party.

And even if every one is sick of MNS after his hokey The Village and his vain self important self-as-star vehicle The Lady in the Water, the proposition of going to see his latest film, despite bad reviews still seemed a better idea than going to see The Incredible Hulk.

Well, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear ,oh dear. What indeed did happen? Such was the severity of the bad acting and bad scripting, I actually began to worry about the mental wellbeing of MNS. Credibility challenged as some of his earlier films may be, at least you never saw the man behind the curtain. The film was so badly scripted it was as if the characters were reading cue cards. The dialogue sounded like badly penned written word masquerading as spoken word. In some instances like the first effort of a twelve year old writing a little play to put on for their mum and dad. There are actually points where characters kind of recap the plot to each other, as if for the benefit of latecomers, or as a service to the monumentally stupid.

“I think it might be the plants,”

“Do you think it might be the plants?”

“Yes, it could be the plants and the trees everybody”

"Hang on, are we having marital troubles?"

"Yes, I think we are"

I’m paraphrasing, but you get my gist.

Zooey Deschanel always makes me smile in films- I like her. But I have come to the realisation and accepted the fact that she pretty much plays one type only. The “kooky” girl. In this she is meant to be troubled. She emits trouobled by opening her big eyes wide. Then she is supposed to be scared. She emits scared by opening her eyes slightly wider than she did when she was troubled. She never smiles. Maybe because this is the first film in ages where she hasn't been offered the opportunity to sing a wee song.

We know the film is over when she manages a wee smile.

The worst performances, in a sea of horrible performances, come from Mark Wahlberg and John Leguziamo. Wahlberg is like Fred from Scooby Doo, but with less range. And Leguziamo is clearly channelling his character from Ice Age. I am quite pleased when Leguziamo dies, as it means I don’t have to suffer any more.

The film trundles along with folk dying all over the shop but with no real sense of where it’s going. MNS hasn’t got anything else to offer us after the admittedly quite interesting premise of There’s-a -spooky-thing-that- is-happening-which-makes-people-stop-still-and-then-kill-themselves-suddenly. Beyond that, he's got nothing. Not even a wee twisteroonie like he usually does.

No twist? MNS? Without a twist? Not even a little one? See why I'm genuinely worried about him?

Aside from some genuinely disturbing scenes of suicide and the aftermath of suicide, the film has nothing about it. And the ending I’m afraid is tacked on, preachy and the final scene is nicked wholesale from 28 Weeks Later. Not even the first one, the sequel. That wasn't as good. It may have passed you by.

Maybe MNS thought that nobody made it to the end of 28 Weeks Later. But I DID, matey, and I’m onto you!

Hear me restrain myself tomorrow on Original 106FM when I review The Happening.

Gone Baby Gone

2008-06-15T03:11:00.000-07:00

So this week I have been mainly trying to give Ben Affleck a second chance. Okay... seventh chance.

His directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, was my pick of the week, and my main review on Evelyn’s Saturday breakfast on Original 106FM . Trouble was, we were told off for going on too long about Sex and the City the other week, and not playing enough records, so I had to keep it brief. Never mind that our Sex and the City chat got the most competition entries since I’ve been there. But hey ho, what do I know...the film’s just made box office No1 slot for the third week running, and is pretty much a marketing phenomenon, so who wants to hear two old broads dissecting its every nuance?

Anyway back to Ben. I am beginning to think we’ve all been focussing on the wrong brother all this time. Gone Baby Gone has the performance of Casey Affleck at its heart and I think he’s a little bit special, actually. And can I just say for the record that I don’t think that the two actors are, in fact, biological brothers.

Evidence to support this claim: None

Conjecture in lieu of evidence: The two don’t look alike in any way. Have a good look at the photos. I wasn’t awake much during biology lessons, but I believe that siblings should at least share the same eye colour. Ben's are brown and Casey's are blue. Fishy, I think. Casey also has a normal jaw line. Ben was probably left on the doorstep by a woman knocked up by Desperate Dan.

Hey, listen I don’t want any legal trouble. But I want a blood test. Let’s see who is right.

Anyway, how was the film? A little bit disjointed I’d say, if I were to start on a negative. But if I were to change the habit of a lifetime and go the positive route I’d say there are two remarkable things about Gone Baby Gone. The first was Casey’s performance. He is a little bit of a talent, I’d say, and if there is any justice in the world should start to eclipse is big brother in box office billing and go on to make some great films. But then, we knew he was pretty good after he stole the show from Brad Pitt last year in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He was Oscar nominated for that ‘un. And rightly so.

The second remarkable thing about GBG was the opening scenes showing the people and streets of South Boston. All I can say is that those ugly acting agencies must have been raking it in that month. The depiction of the white trash great unwashed of the Irish Catholic Boston ghetto was quite startling. Was Ben Affleck, the King of Hollywood Schlock about to make a gritty film that actually had a big dollop of realism? Well done to the casting director and the set designer, the opening scenes almost had me supporting John McCain...

But then the realism slipped away more and more as the story took plot twists and turns that beggared belief. But you’ll have to go and see it, to know what I mean. I’m not about the spoilers.

Unless, we talking spoiling family harmony by suggesting biological anomalies in the Affleck household.

Don’t sue me Ben I gave your flick 6 out of 10. That’s more than you got for every single review in the Universe for Jersey Girl.

*********

Listen to my Gone Baby Gone review here.

Revenge of the Remake

2008-06-08T01:37:00.000-07:00

I can't be the only film fan calling for an embargo on the remake.

But recently the news has just been getting more and more upsetting. Certain remake news has been waking me up in the middle of the night screaming.

Most upsetting of all was the news a few months ago that Scarlett Johannsen were to take the Marilyn Monroe part in a remake of Some Like it Hot. This is my favourite film of all time. It is perfect. Even though "nobody's perfect". Since the initial news there haven't been any subsequent reports so I'm taking it that the fact that I have Johanssen held hostage in my basement is paying off*. Unfortunately she managed to get that Tom Waits cover album out seconds before I bundled her into the back of my van. You can't do everything!

Anyone reading this who hasn't seen
Some Like it Hot is ordered
to go and rent it NOW

Latest though is the news that "they" are remaking My Fair Lady with none other than big jawed, carved from the matter of trees, Celia Johnson wannabe, Keira Knightley.

I'm a good girl I am!

Cue another claim by me that this is a personal attack on me personally in a very personal way. Audrey Hepburn is my favourite dead actress. If you don't believe me, then how come I asked my hairdresser to make me look just like her on my wedding day. Eh? Explain THAT! (Never mind that I had to explain to her who Audrey Hepburn was and ended up looking like Princess Anne) And explain how I will gloss over the fact that Breakfast at Tiffany's features one of the most racist portrayals of any race since Al Jolson was slapping on the greasepaint?

Mickey Rooney was banned from going to China
after he did this apparently..and Japan..and Korea
(as no-one was exactly sure which nation he was upsetting)

So NOW I've got to kidnap Keira. And frankly I don't know if I'm going to be able to stand having her in my house for longer than five minutes. I've a feeling it's going to be like having Penelope Keith's Margo from The Good Life moving in with me. But without the added bonus of Gerry.

"Come back to me"

I'm drawing the line at abducting Guy Ritchie though. Mainly through fear that his missus might come looking for him. Ritchie is spouting off about making a "high action" Sherlock Holmes film. Fine...let the mockney, ginger has-been get on with it. No-one really has any interest in Holmes anyway. Unless it's that porn one.

In return, whilst Ritchie's ample back is turned, what I suggest is that we, The Nation take it into our hands to remake all of his films starting a reverse trend of making crap movies good.

Here are my ingredients for success in this regard:

1. Remove all wannabe actress wives
2. Have actors only speaking in the accents God gave them
3. Erase Vinnie Jones from the earth
4. Replace Sting with an actual real person
5. Substitute hackneyed technique of introducing main characters with a quickly cut montage that then freezes at a key point, with actual character development and decent scriptwriting.
6. Set all films in Belgium

* But not in an Austrian way. My partner is fully aware that I have her incarcerated down there.

The Summer Blockbuster; Junk Food for the Soul

2008-06-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

If only Anchorman 2 were to feature in this post
...wait...(checks) it is! (kinda)

This has only happened to me once before. I have seen every movie that is currently playing. The last time this happened was when my husband and I first started going out and neither of us had our own flat to cuddle up in. Instead we went to the pictures to cuddle up in . Much as I imagine my grandparents might have done during the air raids. Let’s not take that any further. We did NOT get banned from anywhere, you HEAR?

Truth is, everything that’s out is packing them in and leaving no room for anything else...and in my home town at least 350 fajillion screens have been turfed over to showing the Sex and the City movie for the squadrons of hen night type female posses making a night of it. Apparently they are having to hose the auditoriums down with Femfresh after each showing.

So this week on the radio show I am not reviewing a movie. I am looking at Summer Blockbusters. What is there to look forward to? No really WHAT IS THERE? Because it’s making pretty depressing viewing so far.

Indy and Sex and the City are out, one is packing them in, the other is petering out. Anything that comes out after Iron Man is going to have to go some to perk my interest up as Iron Man was refreshing, knowing and funny. Blockbusters are so rarely refreshing, knowing and funny; mainly they just block busts. And that can get a little tiresome.

Well, what could be the highlights of an otherwise CGI filled haze of loud noises, shiny things and no plot? Well, there’s a new film by Sixth Sense director M. Night Shamamanamamalayananan coming out. I am semi-excited about The Happening but my overwhelming feeling is worry about having to pronounce Shama..em, the guy’s name on radio. Still he’s got it all to prove after the silliness that was The Village, which was about as scary as the time my dad dressed up as a scarecrow at Halloween and jumped out from behind the hedge when I was about twelve. Actually that was bloody scary. But anyway, that’s what The Village reminded me of.

Then there’s The Dark Knight, which is the sequel to the prequel to the phenomenon that used to be and now is again, Batman. The film could well be overshadowed by reviews of the performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker. This was Heath’s final complete performance before his death early this year and I'm guessing many people may go and see it for that reason alone. Expect lyrical waxing of the River Phoenix type last performance musings. “Oh what could he have gone on to achieve…?” etc etc. Truth is, Heath was 1,000 times more of an actor than Phoenix and I think achieved plenty as it was. But expect some lazy journalism all the same.

Still The Dark Knight is a good bet since director Christopher Nolan has taken over the reigns and made Batman into a more respectful replication of the dark comics. And there's not a wacky Prince soundtrack in sight... Anyone in doubt of Nolan's caliber should rent his masterpiece Memento. Then after watching Memento, they can phone me and tell me what it was that actually happened.

Otherwise it’s a case of ..didn’t they already DO an Incredible Hulk? Or, didn’t the X Files show finish over ten years ago, so why are they doing a second movie? And will Will Ferrell be in a good movie to tide us over until they get off their asses and make Anchorman Two instead of teasing us about it? (They are apparently doing it; Steve Carrell made it clear he's up for reprising Brick whenever they want him! We love lamp!)

Ferrell's in Step Brothers with his actual (not his actual) brother John C Reilly, the X-Files movie reprises the roles of Mulder and Scully and has Billy Connolly in it (run and hide) and the Hulk replaces Eric Bana (or Lou Ferrigno depending on your age) with the bizarre casting of Ed Norton as the big green man. Ed Norton looks ill! Doctor David Bannerman would NEVER neglect to eat healthily. He's a Doctor for chrissakes! The whole thing beggars belief!

See? He's even substituting breakfast

for a shot of something!

And where is the new Harry Potter? Last year they tease us with a Summer offering. This year, pah- nothing! We have to wait til winter for the next installment. And me with my Quidditch robes all ready….

Sent to Jail by Carrie Bradshaw

2008-06-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

Carrie Bradshaw may get me into some legal trouble.

Anyone hanging round here for long enough will know that I review films on the radio. How I got into this lark is anyone’s guess but I think it might have something to do with me mentioning that I loved going to the cinema more than anything else and being a bit of nerd about it all.

It should be a film lover's dream...but I can tell you, it is not.

I still love the cinema and I still love film, but it seems to me that as soon as you are obliged to do something, it becomes....well…sometimes it becomes a bit of a chore.

Surprise surprise; not all films are good. This is the curse of the film reviewer.

(Cue brattish ranting).

I have to go to the cinema every week no matter what is on. And watch big stupid films that I ordinarily wouldn't choose to go and see. With other people I don't want to be with. Who eat food I don't want to smell, crunching and slurping loudly in my ears. And have their phones go off midway through the film. And talk during the film. And kick my seat. And breathe near me.

My station, Original 106FM, understandably wanting/having a large audience of ordinary people who like mainstream stuff, requires me to go and see “THE BIG FILM OF THE WEEK” even when I rather go and see the subtitled “Two Ducks Laughing” by Lars Svenige Arschbiscoot, in an empty cinema that eschews the eating of hot foods in its environs and that only employs staff that have bizarre bohemian facial hair and tribal tattoos.

Oh how I long to cry at the poignancy of the two ducks, to laugh along with them as they laugh, to be shocked by the violent tragedy that befalls them when the laughter stops, to wonder if the fifteen minute scene where a duck looks silently into his own reflection in the pond is a metaphor for the rise of fascism.

I want to be the first and only person to see “Two Ducks Laughing” so that when it finally gets an award I can say, “Well, I did say that 'Two Ducks' would be the cinema event of the year…when I saw it back in December in the original Swedish. But it is still not as good as Arschbiscoot’s earlier work, ‘ My Life as a Toad ’ which he shot on leftover film stock from Bergman's “Fanny and Alexander”, found in an abandoned loft in Stockholm.”

But no, cinema has increasingly become a poison chalice of widescreen multiplex mediocrity for me.

Take this week. I’m trying in vain to see “Sex in the City” as it is expected that I review it on Saturday. This is a film that has somehow been made when, in fact, it is a TV show and should stay a TV show. This is a film that is to cinema what Dido is to music. This is a film that is made for people who don’t like films. A film that will have people who don’t normally go to the cinema, taking up all the seats that film reviewers need to go and review the bastard thing. A film that is completely bloody sold out despite having about twenteen performances daily. It is a film I can’t get tickets for for love nor money.

What’s more, this bloody film, which will probably be utter dog shit, will have gaggles of girlies going to see it. Girls who will make an event of the whole thing by dressing up to go and see it and having a meal beforehand. Girls will have had a couple of glasses of wine before going to see the film which will mean that girls will talk throughout the film and will have stupid and loud conversations behind me that will liken themselves to characters in the bloody film that will enrage me.

So when I finally get to go and see Sex in the City, I will have to kill several people.

The audience's feeble attempts to emulate the fashion crimes of Sarah Jessica Parker will be my weapons. I will strangle them with their chiffon scarves, I will gouge eyes out with fake Manolo stiletto heels, I will choke them with their over-sized corsages, I will asphyxiate them with their own boob tubes.

And then they won’t let me review films anymore. And I’ll have to watch films on a shared TV in the common area of a woman’s prison where being told to “Shussssh” will get me a kicking in the showers and a midnight visit from "Big Brenda" (who ironically will resemble Sex and the City actress, Cynthia Nixon's girlfriend- Jesus, she might as well be straight...)

See what I mean?

Sex and the City will ironically force me to live in an all female environment and not one bedeckt with high fashion in any way. As Paris Hilton proved, prison jumpsuits cannot be accessorised successfully.

Hey folks, don't forget to listen to the review on Saturday here!

*Sigh*

Stay Tuned

2008-06-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

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Film reviews, film pastiche, and film related news and film podcasts.