I’m grateful. Really, I am. It’s good to have a low water mark against which all else can be judged. It’s good to know that when a friend rags on a film that you can chip in and say, “Yeah, but at least it’s not…”
Let’s put it another way. We have our new Battlefield Earth.
Continue reading Low Blows And Dirty Tricks: X&HT Saw Sucker Punch
An interesting post hit yesterday on Salon from director of photography Matt Zoller Seitz. A summons to arms, a battle cry. In it, he calls out the increasing practice of directors and DOPs to use shaky-cam techniques on multi-million dollar films. The specific example he mentioned was Battle: Los Angeles (yes, THAT film again. Welcome to Battle: LA week. Not my intention, honest. Like I plan any of my content) but Paul Greengrass and Michael Bay are also singled out for special attention. You could argue that most big-budget actioners use this technique to a greater or lesser degree, and in a worst-case scenario, almost exclusively.
In Battle: LA, I assume that the idea was to give the impression of an embedded reporter following alongside 25 Recon. This reporter is clearly suffering from the coffee shakes. Shaky cam turned the last Bond film into an incomprehensible mess as the Broccolis tried to put Bourne style shot-work into the franchise. It was one of the flawed decisions that would stall the resurgence of Bond in it’s tracks.
I don’t want to spend time synopsising Matt’s post, so I’ll simply add my approval. There’s a whole genre of horror films that pose as found footage from camcorders in the tradition of The Blair Witch Project, and I can’t be alone in finding them unwatchable. They give me motion sickness, and are pretty much unreadable. There’s no sense of staging, or frame-building. Hand-held techniques, used sparingly, can be incredibly effective. When they become the only technique, there’s a problem. It looks cheap, ugly and lazy.
The problem is, it’s everywhere. Bandwagon jumping has always been an issue in Hollywood. A film-maker does something innovative, and others rush to follow. When shaky-cam techniques were folded into the effects sequences of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, Hollywood made notes. The Star Trek reboot forgot the sweeping, graceful camera passes across the surface of the Enterprise as it flew past in favour of jittery zooms and whip pans. NCC-1701 is a beautiful ship, and it needs to be eye-candy, not half-seen in a thick layer of fake motion blur.
Shaky cam is hard to shoot, too. You need a multi-camera set-up, and even then there’s no guarantee that you’ll catch everything you need. It’s a mess to edit, a pain to sound sync and horrible to grade. As you can probably tell, I’m not a fan.
I don’t want to see the end of hand-held, by any means. It’s been a vital part of film technique since the French New Wave. But it’s time to stop relying on it as a way to mask poor direction, effects and acting. As Matt says: Get a tripod. Write a set list. Stop covering action. Start directing again.
Battle: Los Angeles is a war movie. Let’s get that out of the way right now. The SF trappings are there to pull in the core audience of 16-25 year old males who will happily sit through it in the same way that they’d sit through a walkthrough of Crysis 2 on YouTube. But it’s really an excuse to have US military, modern US military with their grenade lobbing rifles and laser sights and night vision wage war against an enemy with which they can actually get their fight on. There is no fear of accidental civilian deaths or any of the horrible tangled messiness that modern warfare against an enemy that remains undefined and hard to find has become.
SF has always provided this kind of unambiguous thrill. As the audience becomes less and less excepting of the traditional war movie (which after all served primarily as propaganda against countries that have now been friends and colleagues for over fifty years) there’s still a need for shootybangbang excitement against a villainous horde. If you can make that villain completely fictional, and of a different species to the hero, then all to the good.
The aliens in Battle: Los Angeles are faceless, emotionless avatars, existing only to shoot and to be shot at. They spindle around in a backward-leg walk, and fire guns that have been grafted onto their arms. They couldn’t surrender if they wanted to, or were given the chance.
There’s little sign of pain or any kind of emotion when M-16 slugs tear through them (or, in one memorable sequenced, skewered on a bayonet and then torn apart by M-16 slugs). They make that default monster noise that’s becoming as over-used as the Wilhelm Scream, and then they fall over. As such, they’re simply the latest in a long line of invaders that runs all the way back to War Of The Worlds. Think the swarming hordes of James Cameron’s Aliens, mirrored helmets topping a drooling tooth-filled maw. The creatures of Independence Day, blankeyed and mouthless. Notice too, that the writers haven’t even bothered to give the enemy proper names. They are simply called by their function. Alien. Invader. Enemy. Monster.
Creatures from the Doctor Who universe have names, at least. Of their species, anyway. On the whole, they still follow the same idea of being interchangable, indistinguishable. Daleks and Sontarans differ from the Hollywood Horde ideal in that underneath the expressionless masks they wear, something hideous lurks. The Cybermen take this one step further – they were humanoid once, and chose to lock all that away behind a blank carapace. There’s a little more depth there, but their intentions remain the same. They are set on conquest and colonisation.
The Stormtroopers of the Star Wars Universe have the same purpose. Spookily, under their helmets, they all look the same. They’re clones, and therefore again one step away from the human. They’re constructs, manufactured and therefore easily expendable. And again, they have a collective name rather than anything that would allow us to see them as individuals, to give us the chance to empathise.
The one flipside to this idea that I’ve been able to find comes in, of all places, from the first Austin Powers movie. A running gag showed the home lives of some of Dr. Evil’s henchmen after they were killed by the International Man Of Mystery. Giving a faceless hench a wife, a family, friends and a social life is unthinkable in most of the cases I’ve talked about. We’re not supposed to care about them. They are obstacles to be removed without thought or consequence.
As @JaesonX pointed out to me on Twitter, SF invasion pics are starting to shrug off the old cliches. District 9 takes a much more complex and nuanced approach to the theme of first contact, a situation that’s unlikely to begin with the two sides shooting at each other. Gareth Edwards’ Monsters tells us that we’re just unlikely to be able to figure out what they want here in the first place. Both films end, not in full-scale conflict, but a grudging, uncomfortable co-existence, marred with sporadic violence. This can be tracked back to shows like Alien Nation, where the visitors arrive not as aggressors, but refugees. This reflects the fluid nature of national identity, racism and touches on the way people view their territory and the people that come into them in ways that the basic war movie simply doesn’t have the tools to address.
There will always be a place for war movies. But we live in a complicated world, and it’s sometimes difficult to figure out who the bad guys should be. I’m holding out for the first war movie that pits the USA against it’s own banking system. That’s a fight with some life in it.
(pic credit: Francesco Francavilla).
I am the commander of an invasion force. We have travelled across the stars to parasitise a small, blue planet somewhere on the Western Spiral Rim of the Milky Way. Specifically, my comrades and I have come for its water. There’s a lot of it. This “Earth” (such a foolish name for a world whose surface area is 70% water) is a rich prize.
Because I am not stupid, and because I understand that a) tactically, high ground gives you a major advantage and b) there is no higher ground than low orbit, I begin my assault by making a note of all the major gathering points of the indigenous population. Usefully, these are lit up at night.
Then I start throwing rocks at those population centres. They don’t need to be massive. Just big enough not to burn up on their way through the atmosphere. Something the size of a skyscraper, tiny in terms of the masses of rock and metal that swing around the sun in tandem with the blue world, would have a pretty appreciable effect on a major urban conurbation when it’s travelling at several miles per second. I don’t even need to be that accurate. Shockwaves and airborne debris would do most of the work. Then it’s a simple mopping-up operation.
Or, if I’d rather start a harvest of the water without causing genocide, I could land my forces in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific, and set up seaborne facilities that would be difficult to detect until it was too late. I could have a defence grid in place before the aboriginals have a chance to organise a meaningful response. Maybe I’m already at it. You’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle, right?
The one thing I would unquestioningly not do is land a ground force on coastal zones of high population without immediate air support, and then force them to fight inland in order to start a refuelling and harvesting operation from the sewers. The sewers, for fate’s sake. This would afford me the barest trickle of the resources that are clearly available. You know, all the blue stuff I can see from orbit? The stuff I came hundreds of light years to get at? Why would I fight an expensive and potentially ruinous land war against natives who, quite rightly, are going to be pretty honked off at what I’m up to? Like I said, I’m not stupid.
I am the commander of an invasion force, and I laugh at your Aaron Eckhart, just before I throw an asteroid at him.
Rango is a film that shouldn’t work. It’s a droll, adult-oriented Western pastiche featuring a wildly ugly protagonist, from a studio that had never done a full animated feature and a director that had never worked in animation. But it does, and not only that, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen all year.
It’s telling that Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job hits UK screens in a week when no less a figure than the head of the Bank Of England has made it clear that the blame for our financial woes should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the banks. Telling, and in some ways heartening, although the conclusion Ferguson reaches in his film isn’t at all comforting.
Like a financial version of An Inconvenient Truth, or a less schmaltzy Michael Moore, Inside Job makes no attempt to be objective. It’s a film that has no interest in painting the leading monetary figures behind the 2008 bust as anything but ogres or incompetents. Ordinarily, I’d be bothered about the fact that so many of the key players declined to be interviewed. But in these arena that doesn’t really matter. It’s the numbers that count, and Ferguson does a good job of showing how the venality of the banking sector tried and failed to skew those numbers in the interest of quick and massive profit.
It’s a film that demands your full attention. One point that the bankers who are seen in Congress sessions make time and again is that the situation is and remains way too complex for we mere mortals to understand. Ferguson uses graphics and a measured, careful narration from Matt Damon to ensure that we can.
We are taken though a history of financial deregulation since the Reagan era that led to investment banks packaging loans that were designed to fail, and betting that they would in the quest for spiralling short term profits and bonuses. It is complicated, I’ll admit. I’m a complete doofus when it comes to money, and I found myself squinting more than once at the screen to make sure I got it. But it’s worth the effort.
The end picture is clear. The banking industry in the US (and although it’s not mentioned, I realised there was a direct correlation to the UK bailouts of Lloyds and Northern Rock) has systematically engineered a structure in which it can operate without regulation or any real restraint, and with the clear understanding that they will be bailed out by government funds if they should screw up.
The failure to appear by most of the big noises in this perfect storm begins to look less like a flaw, and more like an admission of guilt. It’s a dirty journalistic trick, to be sure, and Ferguson doesn’t come across as a sympathetic interviewer. But the silence at the heart of the film speaks volumes, and you get the feeling that these guys very definitely have something to hide. Something that Ferguson’s simple, clear graphs and extensive research winkle out with mathematical precision.
In short, no-one in this story gets away clean. When the rot even extends to the compromised state of the educators at Harvard and the Columbia Business School (who, while they should have taken the Fifth that their smarter colleagues invoked, also provide some wonderfully squirm-inducing moments) you have to wonder if there’s anyone you can trust with your money anymore.
Inside Job is a brutal indictment of an awful situation that has been allowed to fester for years. Sadly, as Ferguson points out, not only are the banks in question unlikely to be punished for their misdeeds, many of the key players are still in power, and in many cases in central roles that will enable them to dictate US and hence world financial policy under the Obama administration. It’s not an easy or fun watch, but I think it’s essential, and left me wanting to know more. There’s a lot of cant and waffle about the state we’re in, and we need more work like Ferguson’s to at least begin to answer the unasked questions.
I wonder if George Osborne’s seen it.
The usual pointless farrago of asskissery and balls-out flint-eyed marketeering fancied up with a couple of handfuls of pink frosting, but a few points sprang to mind on a brief spin through the results.
1. Boy, the producers of True Grit must have really pissed someone off. Not a sniff of a golden dildo. I would have laid money on Roger Deakin’s luminous photography getting the nod, and I’m on record about my admiration for the acting skills of Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross.
2. when it comes to supporting actor/actress, bigger is clearly better. In terms of performance, that is. I thought Christian Bale sailed pretty close to the wind in The Fighter, but Melissa Leo ran up all her flags and bared her fangs at the storm. Cartoony performances go down well with Oscar, and Leo’s role as the Ward matriarch was as broad as it gets. I thought Amy Adams was better, frankly.
3. The only reason anyone’s disappointed that Exit Through The Gift Shop didn’t win? It would have been fun to see what Banksy would have come up with. Inside Job is this week’s cinema trip, and by all accounts it lives up to the high reputation it’s received.
4. SF films have to make do with technical Oscars. The Awards Committee is full of actors who look to script and performance rather than the whole package. It’s blatantly clear that they’re not interested in films with a fantastic bent, and Inception is just the latest example of this tiresome snobbery. These films will get a pat on the head for looking and sounding pretty, then sent off to play while the grown-ups take the stage.
5. The King’s Speech should have won the award for Film Most Likely To Tickle The Academy’s Fancy. Historical drama? Check. Historical drama featuring Brits with plummy accents? Check. Historical drama featuring BRITISH ROYALTY? Check-o! Historical drama featuring a British royal with a disability? OMG Checky Checkington III! It was so blatantly tooled to the Academy’s proven weaknesses that the other nine nominations might as well just not bothered turning up.
Once again, there will be crowing about what a great day this is for British film. No, it’s not. British film is in a real state, and tosh like The King’s Speech only puts a pretty mask on an increasingly withered and ugly old trouper. There was no official British presence at the Chermont International Short Film Festival this year, despite a strong independent showing. British short film is blooming, as Shaun Tan’s deserved Oscar in the Short Film category made clear, but otherwise things are looking grim. I shudder to think what representation or support there’ll be for Brit film-makers at Cannes. The King’s Speech shows the idea of a British film becoming caged up into a shrinking pool of acceptable subjects. Funding for films that fall outside this net will only become more and more difficult to achieve, in a market that’s vanishing day by day.
Meanwhile, over at the Razzies, I was delighted to see M. Knight Shamalangadingdong’s Last Airbender get the thorough kicking it deserved. Until I saw that it had taken $360million worldwide, despite the fan-hate and critical pantsing the movie had endured. That means the rotten thing actually made a profit. It also shows that Oscar is meaningless. In it’s way, Last Airbender was as successful as any of the Oscar winners last night, in that it accomplished it’s primary objective. It made money, and without any of the posturing and shmaltz that the rest of the industry had to put up with last night.
Having an Oscar is great for marketing purposes, but if you can make a buck without it, you have to question the point of the whole exercise.
(EDITED, once I realised I was claiming that there were no British short films at Chermont. Very not true, and X&HTeamate Nick Scott was there flying the flag amongst many others.)
As Libya is on the verge of shrugging off the chains of the most comic-book of the villainous Middle Eastern dictators, I thought it would be fun to look at some slightly more fictional varieties of Gaddafi et al. With his elite guard of female killers and penchant for a fancy costume and ranting speeches, I reckon he’d fit in nicely amongst this lot.
Continue reading Gaddafi’s Role Models: Five SF & Fantasy Despots
Just a quickie for now, although I may well update later. On a train into That London, for to meet with the mysterious docoBanksy.
The project that has taken well over three years of our life is now close to completion. A virtually complete version is going out to film festivals worldwide. We meet today to plan, strategise and plot our next move. We’re pleased and excited about the end project, and hope you will be too.
In 2011, docoBanksy will have you.
The big news this weekend for music fans is the sudden appearance of the new Radiohead album, The King Of Limbs, which I’m happily downloading as I write. But if you like horror, then there’s another reason to celebrate.
Simon Aitken’s smart, grown-up vampire film Blood + Roses is finally, finally available to buy from Amazon. OK, yes, I have a deep connection to the film. I have a big fat colourist credit, and edited the behind the scenes documentary Love Like Blood. But I believe in the film. I think it’s a clever update on the mythology and iconography of the vampire trope. It’s well written, and has a sterling brace of leading performances from Benjamin Green and TV’s own Marysia Kay (she’s on Take Me Out tonight on ITV1). Those in the know are already calling Blood + Roses “Twilight For Grown-ups”. I’m really pleased that you all have the chance to enjoy a film that I’ve been banging on about for the last couple of years. Do yourself a favour, and snag a copy of Blood + Roses, Readership. You know it makes sense.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 