solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

Remember the French guy Etienne from Danny Boyle’s ‘The Beach’? No? Nor me, but he (Guillaume Canet) has just made his second film and it’s called ‘Tell No One’, or ‘Ne le Dis a Personne’ if you’re feeling Gallic. Originally a novel by Harlan Coben set in and around New York State, Canet has skilfully transplanted the action to Paris and the surrounding countryside.

The film centres around Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet), a paediatrician who is clearly very much in love with his wife, and childhood sweetheart, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze). One evening after visiting friends outside Paris, they stop for a swim at a lake they have been going to since they were kids. After a disagreement Margot swims off to return to their car, and when Alex follows, he is knocked out by an unseen assailant. When he regains consciousness he finds out his wife has been brutally murdered.

Fast-forward 8 years, and out of the blue Alex receives an e-mail that appears to be from his dead wife, whilst almost simultaneously the police discover two bodies near her murder site prompting them to re-open the investigation into her death. I can’t really give too much else away, but what I can tell you is that Alex becomes the prime suspect in the investigation, and he is forced into a race against time to discover what really happened all those years ago.

I’d heard a lot of good things about ‘Tell No One’, and I did enjoy it, but it has also left me with mixed feelings. At times it plays the European thriller card brilliantly. It is well paced, is tense in all the right places, and there are some really strong performances. Cluzet is excellent as the doctor whose anguish and desperation are palpable as he descends further into the mystery surrounding his wife’s death. And Kristin Scott Thomas is a bit of a surprise package as the lesbian lover of Alex’s sister, particularly as she performs entirely in French. Oh, and it’s got a superb chase scene through the streets of Paris that’s almost as good at Reeve’s and Swayze’s in ‘Point Break’.

But, and it’s quite a large but, the plot does seem to have a couple of pretty large holes in it, and I feel that the makers missed a trick by never really putting Alex’s innocence into doubt. I also had a bit of a problem with the film’s conclusion in that I didn’t feel that the reveal really warranted such a complicated conceit.

A chap over at the unfiction forums snapped a quick shot of a poster titled ‘Monstrous’ which it’s now rumoured is another possible name for the ‘untitled’ J.J Abrams project. The Poster appears to show the statue of liberty without a head and the city of New York on fire, The title reads ‘MONSTROUS’ at the top and ‘1-18-08′ at the bottom left.

This could be fake as all hell, but it seems like a lot of effort to go to..and it seems that paramount have registered themonstrousmovie.com although it stands empty.

If I was going to put money on what the ‘mystery’ will reveal… this would be my pick

Kind of looks like a hip-hop album cover to me. and echoes of this too, which automatically makes me hate it. I have faith the film will be great, I’m just not keen on their graphic design choices.

No matter how hard you try and contain a movie set there’s always going to be a smart arse hanging out of a window with a cameraphone and the ability to upload to youtube.

So it turns out the only legitimate Cloverfield site is 1-18-08.com, and despite the minimal amount of information it’s providing it’s obviously enough (coupled with the trailer .. of course) to capture peoples imaginations as a shit tonne of fansites and ‘Cloverfield clues’ sites have sprung up.

As useless as these fan captured behind-the-scenes are, I really like them as it just builds the anticipation for me even if I get to see nothing. I’m gonna buy some of these and play Cloverfield on my carpet.

Oh… and it’s not a Voltron movie… i’ll put money on it right now.

Video via cloverfield clues and Slashfilm

Pretty sweet. Favreau.. please don’t fuck it up…

I saw Transformers on my birthday last Friday (as I’ve mentioned… I’m on holiday and it’s out here in Norway, unlike the fucking UK where we’re STILL waiting) and while it didn’t disappoint on many levels, there was a lot of shit that really bugged me.

First the good…

As stupid as it is that robots come to earth, disguise themselves as tanks/camaro’s and other machines and electronic devices it was kind of presented in the film with the right amount of glossing-over-the-facts, exposition, flashbacks and actual plot progression. I suspended belief enough to not be sat there thinking “holy shit this is stupid”. Sure I wanted to buy it all because I grew up with the cartoon but i’m just saying Bay handled it well. Shia laBeouf is really likeable, as i’ve said before he’s the young Tom Hanks, rambling, nerdy and precocious in the right mixture and he does a good job as the lead. Quite a feat considering he only just turned 21.

The Transformers themselves are very cool, I was worried about some of the design choices initially, Optimus Prime with flames all over him, Megatron as a walking scrap heap etc, but they all looked so cool on screen I couldn’t really fault it… Bay obviously knew what he was doing. I’ve saved the best for last… the action. If there was ever any doubt that Michael Bay could direct an action sequence, this film smashes apart that doubt with a giant Optimus Prime robot sword. When an action sequence hits it you know about it. The scale of the Transformers is epic, they look and behave ..like… well.. giant robots but for something that’s 99.9% cgi it’s really impressive to see on screen.

All the action scenes are immense but I was close to squealing at two separate points (but obviously I didn’t because i’m tough and shit); 1. Optimus Prime fighting ummm.. I think it was devastator…the fight is really pulse racing and when he takes him out with a sword through the chin it’s coupled with a classic Michael bay-music-video-shot panning in a circle around the action as it happens. It gave me the same kind of chills I got watching Jurassic Park on my 13th birthday, a sure sign it was doing something right. 2. The final battle. You know a summer blockbuster has got to have an impressive final battle, like the conclusion to a computer game the pinnacle of the film trumps anything that’s come before it, and dials it all up to 11. I won’t say anything more that that. I’ve hyped it enough.

So there was a screening of new Kiwi comedy ‘Eagle Vs Shark’ last Friday, but what with me being away in the Bjorgan Fjords and all I couldn’t make it. In my stead I sent my friend Sam to the screening and asked him to let me know what he thought:

Eagle V Shark is Taika Waititi/Cohen’s first feature length offering after the mucho hyped (and oscar nominated) Two cars and one night short. This highly anticipated follow up focuses around Lily and Jarrod, a couple of local Wellington misfits and the perfectly/predictably tailored odd couple. The focus of the film is the unfolding romance between the pair and the rapidly ensuing power struggle. The Romance between the twosome runs parallel with the driving force in Jarrod’s life, a re-return to his hometown to take revenge on his arch nemesis (aka the school bully) and to hopefully get noticed by his dad who now shows even less interest in Jarrod since his older brothers suicide.

OK here goes…I really wanted to enjoy this film however there are far too many story lines shoehorned into one film, in turn this slows down any opportunity to develop the characters and leaves the viewer feeling more than a little short changed. This is a shame as there is such obvious potential to really draw the viewer in deeper especially the relationship between Jarrod and his father. On the upside the soundtrack keeps at least your ears focused throughout. Oh and there’s a great scene with a cripple being beaten with nunchucks.

Ah well, I’ll wait to see the film to form my own opinions, but it’s a shame Sam wasn’t keen on it. The guy that plays Jarrod is one half of ‘Flight of Conchords‘, who crack my shit up. If you haven’t seen it yet.. you might want to dig out their US tv show… by any means necessary

Really way to similar to the life aqautic poster to call it amazing, and I can’t say i’m too excited for this film but Wes Anderson’s projects have a habit of sneaking up on me and surprising me…. like a ninja. a secretive ninja. a secretive sneaky ninja.

The word is the trailer is arriving today in front of the US release of ‘Sunshine so I would expect to see the web version by tomorrow (saturday)

There’s some more blurb on the film from a USA Today article over at bigscreenlittlescreen

There’s a non fuzzy version of the ‘Clover / Cloverfield/ Slusho’ trailer up on Apple

Check it out here (thanks to Rob for the heads up).

Just because the master of the house is off playing vikings doesn’t mean things slow down too much around here. I’m off to see this on Monday:

Cool subtitles aside, the American version of ‘Night Watch’ was a mess. They gutted it. Be interesting to see what they do with a film that centres around a piece of magical chalk. I just about managed to follow a badly fan subbed Russian version of ‘Day Watch’ last year so I’m looking forward to filling in some gaps, but can’t help be worried as to how much will be deemed too Russian for us this time round.

Review to follow…