solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

Some subjects, although seemingly interesting documentary fodder are always going to be difficult to watch when they’re committed to celluloid. Certain things are just genuinely difficult to digest, other things are ultimately not as interesting as the filmmakers thought they would be and some things… well…they’re difficult to take seriously, no matter how balanced and serious in tone a documentary may be. ‘Zoo’ a snapshot of the lifestyle of a Seattle man referred to by his internet moniker ‘Mr Hands’ who died from internal bleeding due to “interaction” with a horse falls heavily into the latter category.

It’s 10.30 on a Wednesday morning and I’m rushing to get to the press screening at the BFI of ZOO, it’s an internal struggle because on one hand I hate missing the beginning of films.. but on the other hand I’m rushing to see a film about zoophilia, a difficult topic to be presented with at the best of times. I’m sure you can see where I’d have problems. I’d read a few reviews of ‘Zoo’ before sitting down in the theatre and was aware what I was about to see was tastefully treated, and if nothing else, a film I should be able to say that I’ve watched.

First off, the striking thing about Zoo before you even touch on the uneasy subject matter is that the film is beautiful. Like stunningly beautiful, I don’t know what kind of cameras they used or who the cinematographer was… but the film really is gorgeous to look at. The story is told through audio interviews with all the people involved in the ‘incident’ and it’s aftermath while the visuals are recreations of what the subjects are describing. It’s an interesting style for a documentary to adopt but meant the scenes I was being presented with were separated from the less-than-glamorous reality that the voices are discussing. In the end it made me feel that what I was watching was at best a vacuous video experiment or art exhibit.

The audio interviews are interesting and provide more insight than the ponderous and over-stylised moving images ever do. It’s fascinating to hear different takes on the whole subject; including talking to the family of ‘Mr Hands’, the police that dealt with the aftermath, hospital staff that looked after the man, and his internet acquaintances that were present on the farm where it took place. The problem lies really in the lack of people who were willing to stand up and talk about it.

As a film fan I think i’m pretty easy to please. If you throw a couple of key ingredients into the mix you’re almost certain to please me. One thing you can guarantee is if you turn on the Terrence Malick visuals (roaming landscapes.. filmed mostly at ‘the magic hour’ with people starring into the middle distance) and dreamy music you’re 90% there. I didn’t like Carlos Reygadas last film ‘Battle in Heaven’, but I did like a film he made called ‘Japón’ a kind of sparse (again very Malick) story of depression and love.

Reygadas’s new film ‘ Silent Light’ is playing at this year’s London Film Festival, so hopefully i’ll be able to report in when I catch a screening. The film has already garnered a lot of praise from Venice and Cannes so hopefully i’ll enjoy it more than ‘Battle in Heaven’.

I spied the trailer over at the excellent Spout blog and though i’d repost it here… beautiful stuff…

Carlos Reygadas’ latest follows the plight of Johan, a husband and father living in the Menonite community out the outskirts of Chihuahua, Mexico who breaks the rules by falling in love with another woman.

at the LFF

I read a lot of other movie blogs, a…lot. Most of the time you’ll see the same pieces of news dotted around, new trailers.. ‘exclusives’ all that stuff, but occasionally you get a story that you can tell has got people excited because EVERYONE is talking about it.

So the Hot Topic this morning is that Variety are reporting that Simon Pegg has been cast in J.J Abrams Star Trek, specifically in the role of ‘Scotty’. This is fucking fantastic news. I’m not a massive Star Trek fan (I don’t hate it… I just never got into it) but casting decisions like this bring me on board, get me all excited and make me do the weird moving my feet dance that makes it look like I need to pee. Pegg is a brilliant comic actor but can do serious too as he showed with his little role in ‘Mission Impossible 3′ (a J.J Abrams film no less), and a blink-and-you-miss-it role in ‘Band of Brothers’.

Regardless of your or my opinion of Abrams or Star Trek one thing can’t be denied; they’re making some stellar (nice pun.. blam!) casting decisions. Eric Bana will play a villain called ‘Nero’, Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) will play Spock and the Hollywood Reporter also announced today that John Cho will play Sulu.

Hollywood casting directors should really sit up and take some fucking notes (you know who you are) because Alyssa Weisberg and April Webster have got it nailed. Step 1) find awesome actor. Step 2) cast said actor in good role. It’s doesn’t seem like rocket science to me, yet somehow Nicolas Cage is still working….

‘Star Trek’ is still in early pre-production but will supposedly be released some time in 2008

via Hollywood Reporter

So i’ll pick some names out of my ass at the end of the day (that’s about 6pm UK time)…. so get your entry in while you still have a shot. The full details are here if you missed it the first time around…

drop me an email to competition@solaceincinema.com with the word ‘Daywatch’ in the subject to be entered for your chance to win

I don’t know who or what it is that made me suddenly quite pessimistic towards modern sci-fi films…. at I guess i’m going to say directors like Paul W.S. Anderson, to a lesser extent Tony Scott and pro-douchebag Nic Cage with his stupid hair have ruined the genre for me. Ok that’s perhaps a bit hyperbolic, not ruined exactly but just made me look at every new sci-fi themed film I see as rubbish until I see more than a trailer. Sci-fi movies in my eyes are guilty until proved innocent. The new film from Doug Liman ‘Jumper’ might possibly be the break through I needed, a catalyst for change. perhaps. maybe. I hope.

I’m not sure about Sam Jackson’s weird hair, and Hayden Christensen has a lot to prove.. in anyones eyes. Luckily Doug Liman is a good director and the script was written by David Goyer so hopefully that’ll whip Hayden’s shitty acting into shape or at the very least let him stand there looking like teen-magazine fodder while Jamie Bell quite clearly acts circles around him.

The trailer looks like a lot of fun I think, and a lot less complicated than I thought it might be. It’s a nice little concept and if they can just fashion a decent plot around it hopefully it’ll break the high-budget sci-fi curse.

You can check out the trailer on the official site here, or download a quicktime version from IGN here

‘The Island of Lost Souls’ is one of those “why the fuck haven’t I heard about this?” type films. The only thing i’d seen or heard about it before I checked it out at an LFF press screening was the small blurb and the single image in the festival guide book. After checking it, myself and my friend mike were both amazed that we’d heard nothing about it. It’s a great ‘kids’ film and contains enough magic and wizardy that you’d think Potter freaks and the distribution companies that feed them would be all over it, yet… nothing…

“14-year-old Lulu moves to a small provincial town with her mother and younger brother. One night, her brother is struck by a beam of white light - actually the spirit of Herman Hartmann from the 19th-century. To her despair, Lulu realizes that Herman has possessed her brother, and the two of them are whirled into a fevered adventure. Joined by Oliver, a rich kid, and Richard, a disillusioned clairvoyant and inventor, they take on the dark, supernatural forces gathering over the town - evil from deep in the land of the dead, determined to take over the world and see them die.”

I’ll write up a proper review at some point this week but until that point check out the other posters over in sizemore’s twitter stream here, here and here

Oh and the official site including the trailer is here

It’s no secret that I’m ridiculously excited about the big screen adaptation of ‘30 days of Night’, and other than the weak link of Josh ‘Pretty boy’ Hartnet, I can’t see where it can fail. The comic books are great, containing some of my favorite artwork of any book I’ve read in the last 10 years and I really like director David Spades debut ‘Hard Candy’. The movie also stars my favorite psychopath of the moment Ben Foster

The PR train is obviously building up steam because new images and video clips seem to be popping up every day or so. If you go over to reelz here you can check out a bunch of new images. and there’s this pretty awesome new clip via ign titled ‘Rock, Scissors, Stone’

I’ll start by saying the marketing in general, but especially the trailer for new film ‘The Kingdom’ is fucking terrible. I don’t know exactly which demographic it’s trying to hit, or goals it’s attempting to fill… but it misses them all. The fact is if I wasn’t aware of director Peter Berg’s previous work then no amount of star power or cars exploding in the aforementioned trailer would draw me in. Peter Berg is a ‘that guy’, a long time actor turned director who’s face you probably wouldn’t be able to associate with a name, but when you see him you remember him from lots of things. You remember him mainly as cops, FBI agents or other such man-in-suit types. Berg is making much more of an impression on me as a director than he ever did as an actor.

Berg’s previous film was ‘Friday Night Lights’ a great movie about a small town American football team trying to “take it to state”. He infused that film with a realism and emotional weight that few directors can get right. Berg pulled that trick out of the bag with ‘The Kingdom’ too, making it feel realistic, tense and exciting yet deftly side-steps cliche and pointless dramatics.

The subject matter of ‘The Kingdom’ was never going to be an easy sell; the bombing of an American compound in Saudi Arabia by Islamic militants, and the subsequent investigation to track down the culprits by an FBI team (Jamie Fox, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper). It would almost have been easier for the film to focus on the middle-east issue and become a political thriller, but that would have been a different film. The film would have quickly become mired in explaining the countries complex problems within the space of 90 minutes.

‘The Kingdom’ is not a political thriller, and while the backdrop is Saudi Arabia and the villains of the piece are Islamic fundamentalists it only ever explains enough about the situation to move the plot along at a steady pace. Elements like Islamic religion’s treatment of women, the Saudi Monarchy and American oil investment are touched upon, but only to give a context and set-up the environment in which the action is carried out.

My personal list of ‘films to see’ is ridiculously long, and grows longer practically everyday. Shark documentary ‘Blue Water, White Death’ has been on that list for a long time, and while you can grab the dvd off ebay i’ve never got round to actually buying it. So Jay C over at Film Junk did this video review of the film a while back, and I just re-watched it. It’s a good review but more than anything has spurred me into action to get hold of a copy of the movie… it looks like a fascinating watch..

The only ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ trailer i’d seen up until now was the terrible pirate copy from Comicon, and although i’m a big advocate of cruddy pirated trailers (no, really) it’s nice to see everything clearly.. even the stuff that’s made to look like cruddy vhs recordings….

I honestly think this is going to be amazing, and it’s the kind of thing that makes me wish Michel Gondry was making films when I was a kid so I could see it aged 9 and grow-up re-watching it over and over…

Check it out on apple here

“I will shoot you and I know ROBOT kung-fu!”