solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

The word is that the graphic novel 'Signal to Noise', written by Neil Gaiman and visualised on paper by Dave McKean is going into production as a feature film. The pair will be writing the screenplay together and McKean will be directing.

Last years Mirrormask was a fascinating little animated film and was about as 'Dave Mckean' as you can get visually speaking, so it will be interesting to see how he deals with a live action film and wether working under such constraints will make the film better or worse than if it was animated.

The plot of 'Signal to Noise' is intriguing…

The graphic novella tells the story of a film director dying of cancer. His life's crowning achievement, his greatest film, would have told the story of a European village as the last hour of 999 A.D. approached — the midnight that the villagers were convinced would bring with it Armageddon. Now that story will never be told. But he's still working it out in his head, making a film that no one will ever see. No one but us.

More news as it develops 

It's not often I say "stop reading solaceincinema and go read this…" but occasionaly I feel inspired to. It's a slow news week and not a lot has been going on so I was trawling through the Toronto film festival reviews over at Twitchfilm. They have a lot of interesting premiers at TIFF and one of the ones I was most interested in was 'This is England', previously titled 'OI! This is England'. The new film from Shane Meadows, the writer director of 'Dead mans shoes' and 'A room for romeo brass', 2 films that if you haven't seen you are sorely missing out, not only on two great films but also seeing the brilliant Paddy Considine in action.

Meadows is one of the best directors working in Britain today, and If I was handing out knighthoods he would get one. The odd thing Is he really should be much bigger than he is, he hasn't made a bad film, and most of his films have been highly critically acclaimed so I find It weird hollywood hasn't come calling. Then again maybe they have and Meadows passed it up, the guy makes very british-centric films and is often compared to directors like Alan Clarke and Ken loach and maybe he's happy with that. He makes the films he wants to make the way he wants to make them.

'This is england' is the story of a group of skinheads in the early 1980's, If you want more information than that check out a couple of the articles I posted before about it, or just go read the glowing review over at Twitch.

Solace will be reviewing 'This is England' next month when it plays as part of the London Film Festival

Read the 'This is England' review at twitchfilm here

Check out a promo reel for the film at the London film festival site here 

This film sounds awesome, like a 'Commando' for the xbox generation. The plot is delightfuly simple…

A man named Mr. Smith (Owen) delivers a woman's baby during a shootout, and is then called upon to protect the newborn from the army of gunmen.

I'm loving it. If anyones played 'Black' the self-pescribed "gun porn" console game, this sounds a lot like a screen version of that. More bullets on screen per frame than any other film to date. Bring it on. Clive Owen takes the lead with Monica Belucci as the love interest, interesting casting considering it sounds like the kind of brainless film Jason Stratham automatically gets cast in.

The review is over at 'Latino Review' and is incredibly positive, but i'm waiting for more reviews to role in before I start raving about it as 'the next big thing'.

Read the review here

Check out some stills from the set here

**UPADTE** Latinoreview also have a trialer/promo reel for the film up, here **UPDATE**

I hate it when artworkers get a bit crazy in photoshop. The poster looks cool but they've given Daniel Craig weird zombie face. He looks like one of the infected from 'The Omega Man'. Albino death face

This film will still rule.

Check out the bigger version of this poster over at impawards here

And the latest trailer for 'Casino Royale' here

I talked briefly about the casting for Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut 'Synecdoche' before, now called 'Synecdoche, New York' apparently. A review of the script has turned up online and the reaction is, well, exciting but confusing. Full of comments like this..

"Synecdoche" will make "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine" look like instructional industrial films. No one has ever written a screenplay like this. It's questionable whether cinema is even capable of handling the thematic, tonal and narrative weight of a story this ambitious.

The review comes from the LA Times and the journalist obviously likes it, but has difficulty seeing how such a script will translate to the screen. I can understand that confusion, without witnessing 'Adaptation' on screen I would class the script as unfilmable, but it takes a writer with clarity like Kaufman, and a director with some vision like Spike Jonze to pull off such a project.

Whether or not Charlie Kaufman can do the job of screenwriter and director remains to be seen, but with a guy as obviously talented as he is, I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Read the script review here

Found over at FilmIck 

It's Friday, so i'm mainly going to post stories that will waste a lot of time, and this is a great one. Why not Spend your afternoon watching the new HBO Spike Lee Documentary.

I listened to a radio interview not long ago with Spike Lee (BBC Radio 5, you can probably still find it as a download on their site, if anyone cares) where he was on to talk about 'The Inside Man', but ended up basically saying that he made the film to fund a documentary he was working on.

Here's the lowdown from the HBO site…

As the world watched in horror, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Like many who watched the unfolding drama on television news, director Spike Lee was shocked not only by the scale of the disaster, but by the slow, inept and disorganized response of the emergency and recovery effort. Lee was moved to document this modern American tragedy, a morality play witnessed by people all around the world. The result is WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. The film is structured in four acts, each dealing with a different aspect of the events that preceded and followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New Orleans.

Find the links to the documentary pieces here

Check out the official HBO site here

Over on HNR they've heard "reports" that Strike Entertainment, the production company behind 'Slither 'and the upcoming 'Day of the Dead' remake have gained the rights to produce a prequel based on John Carpenters 1982 horror classic 'The Thing'.

'Slither' was a good film, but I think that was largely due to James Gunn's vision rather than any input the production company had, 'Day of the Dead' will be the real test to see if these guys can output something decent.

I'm actually surprised they never cashed in at the time and made a bunch of direct to video sequels, other films from the same period like 'Halloween' and 'The Howling' had sequels coming out of their ears.

Strike Entertainment are apparently shopping around for someone to write the screenplay.

In the words of MacReady "Why don't we just wait here for a little while… see what happens…"

source 

I'd never even heard of this film until I read a review on Twitch a couple of days ago. The Twitch boys live in Canada so they get to go to TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. 'Cashback' a UK production is one of the many films that has premiered there.

When art student Ben Willis is dumped by his girlfriend Suzy, he develops insomnia. To pass the long hours of the night, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket. There he meets a colorful cast of characters, all of whom have their own `art' in dealing with the boredom of an eight-hour-shift. Ben's art is that he imagines himself stopping time. This way, he can appreciate the artistic beauty of the frozen world and the people inside it - especially Sharon, the quiet checkout girl, who perhaps holds the answer to solving the problem of Ben's insomnia.

The feature film is apparently very close to the director Sean Ellis's original short of the same name, and after a bit of digging I found it online. If you've ever worked a laborious retail outlet job, you'll identify and feel the pain the characters are experiencing.

Watch the short online here (NSFW)

Read the review of the feature length version here 

Kumar Pallana is a guy you could pass on the street and never give a second look, but if you've ever seen a Wes Anderson film you'll recognise him as the surrogate 4th Wilson brother. Kumar is the guy who played 'Mr Littlejeans' in 'Bottle Rocket', and 'Pagoda' in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' a performance i've mentioned before.

A new doucmentary charts the friendship of Kumar Pallana and "PR/Management guru" Dave Brown. 'My 88yr Old Best Friend' is a fascinating inside look at a man who has become a cult figure in more recent times but is no stranger to the world of entertainment. Kumar (and I only know this from watching the extras on 'The Royal Tenenbaums' dvd) is an amazing plate spinner, ring juggler, magician and all round 'old school' entertainer, he's been around since the 50's and even performed as an opening act for the Rat Pack. That is cool as fuck.

The film looks absolutely hilarious, but I have a feeling all you have to do is point a camera at the guy and he'd start making jokes or pulling a chain of hankerchiefs out of his pocket. The film follows Kumar and Brown as they tour across america gigging at cruddy looking bars, small clubs and even senior citizens homes.

Kumar Pallana, a god amongst men. If he shives you with a pen knife it's becuase you were asking for it.

Check out the trailer and website here, then go tell your friends. then visit the site again

found over at bigscreenlittlescreen 

We previously posted about some unofficial stills that had been leaked online, and finally they've released some official stills from the film, well behind-the-scenes shots. Steve Miner is proving to be an unpopular choice as director (I liked 'Lake Placid' but obviously thats just me) and has the fanboys raging across the net about what a terrible job he's going to do, although i'm certain no matter who they appointed as director, the fanboys would still be crying about it. No matter now anyway as the film has wrapped.

Fangoria has the scoop on the images, and although they don't show a great amount you can see some of the cool zombie make-up and a zombie(?) with the top of his head chopped off. I'm probably way off on that but it looks a bit like a homage to the helicopter/head-slice scene in the original 'Dawn'. You also get to see some people gettnig chewed up in a hospital. Nice.

Check out the stills on fangoria here