solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

So as the rest of the movie blogs sit down to talk about Michael Caine in the remake of Sleuth, Solace is posting about naked girls. Naked girls, the late, great Denholm Elliott and Michael Caine.

A month or so ago I found an unusual set of promo photos taken presumably on the set of Robert Aldrich’s movie Too Late The Hero. They’d been posted onto a Russian site with no real background info so I have no idea where these were originally published or how they came about. If memory serves they have very little to do with movie…

I’ve put the photos together here, but they feature around 50 breasts so don’t go opening them at work unless it’s your last day or something.

Maybe it was simply an attempt to put some distance between the movie and its grim tagline, WAR, It’s a dying business to something like PHWOAR, Carry on Caine.

It could just be how you marketed everything in 1970, but if anyone has any more background on these I’d love to know what the story was…

There’s a few things to get out of the way before I get onto the movie which I saw on Friday night in 3D at the IMAX. Like most people I know, the trailers and stills for Beowulf had left me completely underwhelmed. The CGI rendering of the cast was last used to good effect in The Polar Express to make Tom Hanks look like a paedophile. At best the trailer looks like a cut scene from a video game and anyway, haven’t we had enough of this story yet? While The 13th Warrior is a guilty pleasure of mine I was convinced that this tale of daring do had been nailed once and for all in Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf & Grendel, bypassing as it did the myth and fantasy aspects by trying to build a more realistic retelling of the poem. So while I was happy to be invited to the preview I wasn’t overly optimistic as I donned my silly glasses in front of the towering screen.

It took a couple of minutes for the brain to accept the scope of what was going on and there’s also an initial distraction trying to discern Hopkins and Malkovich under the effects, but by the time Grendel made his first appearance I was hooked.

Beowulf is an awesome experience.

The story for the most part sticks to the familiar narrative: King Hrothgar is having a spot of bother with a monster by the name of Grendel leading (heroic with a capital H) Beowulf and a boat full of Geats to come to his aid. Like just about every other interpretation of the tale this one does wander off-poem, but this version unfolds into something special as it finally brings together the young hot-headed warrior with the more world-weary king many years later.

What you get is A LOT of heroics, a lot of violence and an intelligent version of a classic tale that pushes the technology a lot. 3D films used to be just about jabbing things at the audience, and while there is a fair bit of spear poking here, the effects are also used to create depth of vision. The visuals have a fantastic perspective to them, especially when the camera pulls back to take in the landscape. This is going to be sadly lost away from the IMAX.

While Cinematical are worrying about the god-bothering dollar in relation to The Golden Compass all we really care about at Solace is if it’s going to be any good or not. If we had our own alethiometer one needle would be pointing to a small pair of bollocks while the other would be quivering over the STABBY position, as the crab-lice shaped daemons in Hollywood’s collective facial hair threw up a little.

The title, The Golden Compass, is shit. I know that’s what the first part of the His Dark Materials trilogy was renamed in the backwaters of the new world, but to me and anyone who gives a damn about the books it will always be called Northern Lights.

The script has already diluted the source material down to avoid upsetting the overly religious. This of course beggars the question why go near these books at all if you have to fuck them up so badly just to appease people who’d rather watch a tractor-pull anyway? Dumbing down the religious aspect in these books is akin to green-lighting a new version of the Nativity Story only to open with an abortion scene. And of course the god mob are far from appeased, preparing more wholesome fare like a dead man being fingered in his stabports by a doubting cult member. So we’re given a half-pint concept for no good reason at all. Wonderful.

I’ve read the Dark Materials novels a few times now and it’s fair to say that Philip Pullman does a wonderful job of creating worlds slightly out of step with our own, yet still makes them utterly believable. You wouldn’t guess this from the trailers as Lyra (don’t start me on the casting) now lives in a world that looks better suited to Star Trek: The Search for Glossy Meaningless Shitty CGI.

Goddamnit. And the word juggling over ‘compass‘ and ‘alethiometer‘ has lead to a clash of trailer exposition. Both those Youtube links show off a lot more of the film than the earlier teasers. Somehow the production even manages to make armoured bears look dumb. They would have been better off throwing both Ians (McKellen and McShane), naked except for bearskins, at a startled cameraman and hoped for the best.

I love Terry Gilliam’s work, but while most agree he can go a little over the top I don’t mind that as long as he doesn’t get too twee. After the mess of The Brothers Grim I’m hoping that Gilliam has got all the nonsense out of his system and poisoned the saccharin a little with some of the mumified corpse head kicking that we saw in Tideland.

We’ll find out soon enough as he’s due to begin shooting The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus next month here in London. The cast looks able enough with Christopher Plummer in the lead, backed up by Heath Ledger, Verne Troyer and Tom Waits. Interestingly they’ve all played with Gilliam before so I’m hoping that familiarity will help things run smoothly in what sounds like a perfect project for the ex-Python. I’ll drop the synopsis in after the jump for those curious among you, but be warned there’s the odd small spoiler there in.

Oh and the madcap pic above is an Imaginarium… in case you were wondering. (more…)