In a recent post at Movies.com entitled ‘Dear 3D, Please Die Already (Again)’, Scott Weinberg (a writer whose thoughts on film I generally agree with) bemoaned the current trend of 3D films filling multiplexes. His piece taps into a number of opinions about 3D that seem very common right now and whilst I’m not exactly 3D’s biggest advocate (I still think it has a long way to go both technologically and artistically), I disagree pretty strongly with the argument he puts forth.
Scott Weinberg begins the piece with comments surrounding the idea that 3D is just a gimmick and one that is born out of purely financial concerns.
“…There are way too many entertainment options these days! We need to dust off our secret weapon! Yes, my brilliant fellow studio executives, we must resort to 3D again. We’re desperate.”
Whilst many films do rely on 3D as simply a gimmick and one that is used predominantly to make more money, this does not mean that this is all that 3D is. 3D is another tool for filmmakers and one that can be used badly or well, like any tool. If films shot in 2.39:1 only used the format in a gimmicky way, widening the frame only when a big landscape is visible or placing people or objects in areas on screen that pay no attention to the way in which an audience moves their eyes then I would not criticise the aspect ratio, the tool, I would blame the workman.
Some filmmakers have ignored the complexities of 3D filmmaking, some have tried and failed to master them and some have succeeded but to an only limited degree. But some have yet to weigh in and even those that have are working in an area that is still new and liable to change enormously in the near future.
The next criticism is that 3D has influenced the quality of scripts,
If only a similarly revolutionary new advancement in the craft of screenwriting took place, then maybe we’d be somewhere. As long as our huge leaps in filmmaking lie solely within the realm of technology, we’re missing something. A studio will spend millions to make a film “look 3D,” but they won’t spend a fraction of that to make sure their shooting script is kicking ass on all cylinders.
This is a common argument I’ve heard many times (although it is framed here more intelligently than it usually is) but I do not believe it is one that really adds up. Is it the over attention to 3D that results in studios ignoring basic storytelling and script development? Possibly. Does this mean that a film can’t have a decent script and be in 3D? Of course not, and I don’t believe Scott Weinberg is actually taking the point that far. But isn’t that really what matters, that the choice to shoot or post-convert in 3D doesn’t make it impossible for a script to be good. If you tell me that studios are spending too much time and money worrying about 3D and not enough about the scripts then I think they should be spending more time and money on scripts, I don’t blame the 3D. I don’t see that 3D factors into the discussion of script quality.
So what about the negative impact that 3D has on the viewing experience and the quality of other elements within films.
I saw it in Thor and in Clash of the Titans and even in The Green Hornet: the practical materials on the set are dulled, muddied, and made blurry.
This is a very fair point. Poor 3D harms the impact of a film. Lots of things do though and that’s surely part of the job of critics, to point out when people screw up and the film is worse as a result. One could of course argue that 3D is inherently flawed due to the darkening issues and the glasses (I get this – I hate wearing two pairs, it’s obviously ridiculous) but it is worth remembering that this is still a relatively fledgling technology. Patents have been filed, plans are in place, things are moving forward. When/If 3D gets to a point where nothing about the cinematic experience is effected (no glasses etc) then this argument becomes redundant.
There is also mention in the piece of cost and whilst this is a problem and one that irritates me when visiting the cinema, it’s not really an argument that I consider part of a critical argument about 3D. Sure it’s important but if cinemas started charging more for colour films (colour and 3D aren’t perfectly analogous but I feel they suit this example) would I say we should complain and everything should be shot in B&W? No, I would complain that we were being charged too much and would consider the choice of whether the film should be in colour or 3D should be left up to the filmmakers – whatever best serves the story.
A popular pro-3D comment one often hears is that 3D is more immersive.
The loudest supporters of the 3D trend — the people who make the movies, slap “3D!” on to the poster, and then stare the most intently at the opening weekend cash haul — will no doubt point to the few high-end 3D experiences and preach about the “immersive” nature of the experience.
I’m also pretty sick of the “immersive” argument but because it’s often put forward in an overly simplistic and hyperbolic way (I’m also kind of sick of the marketing trend in relation to 3D but to be honest I don’t care too much. I like films a lot more than posters or trailers). All great films are immersive and they are immersive for a mixture of reasons, including the filmmaking techniques that are used to guide and influence an audience – shot composition, depth of field, colour manipulation, lighting and so on. As I stated above 3D is one of these tools. Therefore it is a tool that can be harnessed for use in filmmaking, as part of this effort to immerse the audience.
Scott Weinberg ends the piece with the following statement that speaks directly to this,
“In 3D” is, to me, the same as “Now with louder explosions!” or “Improved wiith new shinier CGI!” These are visual tools that are employed to help tell a good story. They are not the story.
No, they are not the story. They are “visual tools”. Visual tools that can be employed to help tell the story. Who said they are the story? The posters? The trailers? The marketing executives? So, we know the truth, right?
If one of those visual tools, in this case 3D, can be used to more effectively to help tell a certain story then why shouldn’t it be used. And if it is at a stage where it shows potential but has negative aspects that need to be ironed out then shouldn’t we will these to be addressed and the technology developed, not flat-out tell 3D to die?
Attack the Block is a movie I’ve wanted to see ever since it screened in London a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first feature film by Director Joe Cornish who you may know from Adam and Joe fame and is Executive Produced by none other than Edgar Wright.
This evening’s screening took place at the Alamo Drafthouse and was a fantastic venue to debut the British film to an International Audience. Being there as a Brit who comes from about 4 miles away from where they filmed was somewhat odd but equally cool! As you’ll see from if you look at the various tweets which have gone out this evening, Attack the Block went down extremely well with concerns the slang used in the movie pushed aside as you’ll see in the Q&A when I get it uploaded.
Attack the Block features a mostly unknown cast who have little or no acting experience with a cast which includes John Boyega (Moses), Alex Esmail (Pest), Franz Drameh (Dennis), Leeon Jones (Jerome), Biggz (Simon Howard) and Jodie Whittaker (Sam). Nick Frost also makes an appereance as Roy, the keeper of a rather large supply of weed in his flat or, ‘the penthouse’ as we come to know it.
Attack the Block is shot entirely on location in Brixton, South London and tells the story of a group of teenagers who find themselves completely entangled in a fight against aliens who fall from outer space.
Synopsis: Attack the Block is a fast, funny, frightening action adventure movie that pits a teen gang against an invasion of savage alien monsters. It turns a London housing estate into a sci-fi playground. A tower block into a fortress under siege. And teenage street kids into heroes. It¹s inner city versus outer space.
Trainee nurse Sam is walking home to her flat in a scary South London tower block when she¹s robbed by a gang of masked, hooded youths. She¹s saved when the gang are distracted by a bright meteorite, which falls from the sky and hits a nearby parked car. Sam flees, just before the gang are attacked by a small alien creature that leaps from the wreckage. The gang chase the creature and kill it, dragging its ghoulish carcass to the top of the block, which they treat as their territory.
While Sam and the police hunt for the gang, a second wave of meteors fall.Confident of victory against such feeble invaders, the gang grab weapons, mount bikes and mopeds, and set out to defend their turf. But this time, the creatures are bigger. Much bigger. Savage, shadowy and bestial, they are hunting their fallen comrade and nothing will stand in their way. The estate is about to become a battleground. And the bunch of no-hope kids who just attacked Sam are about to become her, and the block¹s, only hope.
The twist with Attack the Block is the comedy element which, if you’re a fan of Joe Cornish, you’ll know comes completely naturally to him. Every scene is well shot, well directed, well acted and throughout every line of dialogue you’re waiting for one of the newbie actors to deliver a line that is going to make you laugh and the audience if kept laughing from start to finish with the fantastically delivered lines and comedy timing.
The creatures which have been created for the film have been done using a rotoscope technique that you might have seen in movies like 300 with the wolf fight at the beginning of the movie against Leonidas and also in The Lord of the Rings (1978). You can see Cornish talk about this during the Q&A which I’ve videoed if the movie ever uploads!
I have a feeling that you’re going to be reading rather a few reviews which are just like this one summing up the fact that Attack the Block is an original British masterpiece with so many original ideas and an absolutely fantastic script. Cornish told us that the kids in the movie had all been involved with the writing as well choosing which colours they should be wearing to make the movie more real. This movie has been a labour of love for Cornish who has been working on the movie for a number of years. Just seeing him so excited to be here at SXSW showing his project was a special place to be and I was one of the privileged few who managed to get in to see the movie as many were turned away at the door through lack of room.
I would love to write more about the movie but the 04.25 time on the clock means I’ll have to leave it there! Attack the Block is a movie that you’re going to love and I don’t think that Cornish could have hoped for a better response to his debut movie! Bravo!
Yesterday I posted the first trailer for the fifth instalment in the Final Destination franchise and now Apple have released the trailer in HD and shown us the first poster for the movie.
Final Destination 5 stars Nicholas D’Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Arlen Escarpeta, David Koechner, Tony Todd, Courtney B. Vance, P.J. Byrne, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes-Wood and is directed by Steven Quale.
Synopsis: In “Final Destination 5,” Death is just as omnipresent as ever, and is unleashed after one man’s premonition saves a group of coworkers from a terrifying suspension bridge collapse. But this group of unsuspecting souls was never supposed to survive, and, in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group frantically tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda.
It’s scheduled for release in the UK 26th August and in the US 12th August.
This is really nothing more than a brief look at Benjamin Walker as the 16th President of the United States in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and while several of the assembled do seem as if they are moments away from taking their own first steps in the life beyond it’s a fairly sedate first look at Timur Bekmambetov’s film.
The New York Times talked to the director on set and clarified some of the plot points we’ll see next year and what he said hints at a far more thoughtful approach to the supernatural alternative history,
The “Vampire Hunter” film, like the book, follows Lincoln from his boyhood on the frontier through his assassination by John Wilkes Booth and — because this is a vampire story — beyond. Young Lincoln, having learned that his grandfather and mother were killed by vampires, vows to kill every last blood-sucker in a country that is crawling with them.
On realizing that vampires are tangled in the slave trade, Lincoln’s resolve grows and takes on a moral dimension. To complicate matters he also learns that the creatures come in two varieties, good and bad.
Decapitations and moral flux with stiff collars and outstanding muttonchop sideburns? Count me in. Here’s your pic.
Last week I got to chat with director, James Erskine about his brand new movie, From the Ashes which has a cinema release this evening and will be streamed to 127 cinemas around the UK followed by a Q&A with Ian Botham and Kim Hughes. You can find which cinemas are screening the movie on the official website here.
When I called James, he was at The Oval in South London watching the cricket which was perfectly topical for our conversation. James has previously directed One Night in Turin which looked at the England football team’s defeat at the 1990 Football World Cup. This time, he focuses on a sporting triumph looking at the 1981 Ashes Test match.
Read on to find out how he got involved in the project and what you can expect. If you missed the trailer, you can watch it here.
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HeyUGuys: How did you get involved with the project?
I made the film One Night in Turin last year and I wanted to do more on British Sporting heroes. One Night in Turin had been about a British loss and I wanted to make a film about a British victory and the heroism. I was rooting around for ideas and the 1981 Ashes stood out to me as not just an incredible sporting achievement but a really fantastic human story. A story of leaders, of kings – Apparent super human loses power which needed to be resorted and it had big epic themes as well as fantastic sporting moments.
HeyUGuys: How old were you in 1981 and do you remember it happening?
I remember it but not the political context. I remember watching the TV and watching Botham being a hero and going out at buying a Duncan Fearnley bat like Botham in the local sports shop in Stockport and constructing my own cricket net in the garden with the help of my dad so I could smash a tennis ball around!
HeyUGuys: With movies like From the Ashes, Senna and TT3D: Closer to the Edge all out this year, do you think we’ll see a resurgence of documentaries based around sporting achievement?
I think in a way, documentaries are the perfect form for sport in cinemas. There are amazing achievements that arise, you’re seeing something that you can’t fake. If you take a movie like Gladiator with Russell Crowe, you can suspend disbelief, but we’re so close to sport, we watch and consume so much sport. We know the difference between a moment of genius and self expression can come once in a decade. To see that, it’s best to see it in its original with a dressing of the film around it rather than attempts to create it. I think that’s why there is an emergence for sports documentaries with Turin and Senna. It is a fantastic way of seeing it. You’re seeing it on a big canvas and I think the more the better. The more people go to the cinema and see films like that, they’ll just enjoy it., it’s like being there. Sports stadiums are one of the few places we go where they’ll be hundreds or in a stadium tens of thousands of people sharing the same collective emotion. There’s almost something religious about that experience. It’s very different from being on your own on the sofa watching the tele.
HeyUGuys: Did you have hours and hour of footage you had to go through to get the final cut?
Actually our initial cut was just 95 minutes. I wrote a script so we went through a huge amount of material but we were very careful not to get lost in a five hour version. I think our original cut of Headingly on it’s own was 45 minutes but then we reduced that down. We went through a lot of footage, particularly photos and remember that in that period where was no Sky Sports. Off the pitch, there was very little footage. We had to go and open up films cans that had been covered in dust for 30 years in the ITN archive and in Australia then get it transferred and find shots of Kim Hughes not on the cricket pitch. There’s actually not that many and believe me, we were extensive and we were pulling those pretty much from the dust bin. The great things with stills though and there were so many photographs taken at the time. Sports events have always been well covered by photographs. We went through thousands and thousands of stills and checked that we had more angles that might have previously existed.
HeyUGuys: I loved the way you cross-fade between the live footage and the photos…
It was interesting because it’s the photos which really bring you closer to the person. You’re not getting a close up like you would in a movie. In a video, you can put a brave face on very quickly when you’re dismissed for zero but in a photo you’re frozen for a thousand years.
HeyUGuys: How did you find interviewing the players?
We interviewed a lot of people who didn’t make the final cut. We wanted to focus on our key players. There’s sort of three perspectives, the England perspective, the Australian perspective and the audience perspective and in a film you want to know your interviewees so we were very careful to scale those back.
The great thing was with the Australians. The English interviewees were great but the Australian story wasn’t a story I really knew at all and a lot of it emerged in the interviews. The Kim Hughes is extraordinary; he’s the forgotten man of cricket. He’s kept his silence for years and never really talks about it but clearly carries the scars of something that happened 30 years ago.
Here’s a question that I ask at the end of the film, ‘which would you choose, would you choose to be the hero or the leader, a king?’
The recently released trailer for Colombiana put many in mind of a sequel of sorts to Producer Luc Besson’s 1994 Leon with its familiar theme of parental murder and subsequent revenge thrills and director Olivier Megaton’s eye clearly has learned a lot from Besson.
There’s a new poster is the offing tonight and it’s a pretty decent image, the tagline doing in words what the trailer’s shots of a lithe Saldana kicking ass in her underwear did so often.
The film is looking likely for a September release in the US and beyond. Saldana is more than capable of stepping out of the supporting spotlight she’s been in so far, and the trick will be giving us something to care about in this tale, let’s hope that she’s not the unstoppable killing machine some lazy genre films seem to turn their heroes and heroines into.
Here’s your poter, go wild.
Latio Review put those eagle eyes of theirs to good use.
The recently released trailer for Colombiana put many in mind of a sequel of sorts to Producer Luc Besson’s 1994 Leon with its familiar theme of parental murder and subsequent revenge thrills and director Olivier Megaton’s eye clearly has learned a lot from Besson.
There’s a new poster is the offing tonight and it’s a pretty decent image, the tagline doing in words what the trailer’s shots of a lithe Saldana kicking ass in her underwear did so often.
The film is looking likely for a September release in the US and beyond. Saldana is more than capable of stepping out of the supporting spotlight she’s been in so far, and the trick will be giving us something to care about in this tale, let’s hope that she’s not the unstoppable killing machine some lazy genre films seem to turn their heroes and heroines into.
Here’s your poter, go wild.
Latio Review put those eagle eyes of theirs to good use.
We must have run hundreds of competitions over the last 2 and a half year but 99% of them have always been to our UK audience. We know that we get a lot of readers from the US so finally, here’s a competition just for you!
To celebrate the release of Elephant White on May 17th, Millennium Entertainment have been kind enough to give us three copies of the movie to give away.
Mercenary Curtie Church (Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond) is hired to take out a notorious Thai sex-trafficking gang by a father’s whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered by the gang. With the help of a ruthless weapons dealer (Kevin Bacon, Mystic River), Church finds the men he is hired to kill. But what starts as a paying job turns into an outright war between two rival gangs, and Church finds himself caught between the corrupt world that surrounds him and the truth behind the man who hired him.
After four remakes/reboots in a row (including this summer’s Conan the Barbarian) Marcus Nispel’s next feature will not only be an original story, but it’s also based on his own idea.
Entitled Backmask (and budgeted at a relatively low $10 million), little is known about the project, apart from the director revealing that is will feature “paranoia, possession and the paranormal.” Hmmm.
Nispel is a veteran of over 1000 commercials and music videos, a number of which have garnered him a variety of awards over the years. His film work his brought him less success (both Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were produced under Michael Bay’s creatively-stilted Platinum Dunes banner) so the opportunity to work on something he’s devised himself must very alluring.
It’s easy to become blinded by the shine from its multiple awards but the Blu-ray and DVD release of The King’s Speech is an opportunity to enjoy Tom Hooper’s excellent film again, and it’s an opportunity well worth taking.
The film tells the story of the ascension of King George VI to the throne and the painful maturation of the man’s public persona and its key ingredient, the voice of a King. The central relationship between Firth’s King George and Geoffrey Rush’s unorthodox Australian speech leads the film from the 1925 closing speech of the British Empire Exhibition to the rousing speech to the nation on the outbreak of War. It is a rich tale, told with impeccable pacing, focus and is something of a triumph for a relatively low budget British independent film.
It may have been decried as Oscar bait on its release, a label as unfair as it was prophetic, but there is something undeniably classic about Hooper’s film with an affecting and rich central performance from Colin Firth. The choices Hooper made with the composition and layering of the speech therapy sessions do as much for the film’s momentum as the crippling moments of public speaking, and the use of silence is pitch perfect and Hooper has spoken about his collaboration with composer Alexandre Desplat which resulted in Firth’s vocal performance having the space to breathe, to be heard.
Their is a line through Hooper’s work in which a public figure and a private relationship play out, his Damned United and TV series Longford and John Adams both played with the notion of discovering a public voice and in The King’s Speech the theme finds its most accomplished execution. We feel emotionally charged and viscerally attuned to the savage expectation, both from commoner and King, of the importance of ‘the voice’ and there is a tangible sense of helplessness in Firth’s King and Hooper’s skill is in relaying the human aspect of the pomp and circumstance; we all feel the same as our words hit the air.
The director’s commentary has Hooper his usual generous self, and the construction of character and his famous ‘triangle of man-love’ between him and Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush is not only great fun but illuminates the on-screen relationship. The real history behind the film is given its due and the DVD and Blu-ray is bolstered with these additions but the jewel here is the rarest of beasts: an Oscar-winner that is worthy of the hype surrounding it, and is even more satisfying on a second watch. Firth arguably did better work with Tom Ford’s A Single Man but here he has to lead us through a far wider world and the reason it works it because Hooper never lets us forget who the man is. In moments of crises Hooper kicks in with a very shallow depth of field and Firth seems increasingly lost in his own prison. To be the most public person in the country and still be completely alone is a hard trick to pull off as an actor and for a director, but Hooper and Firth manage it flawlessly.
The supporting cast is exceptional, Hooper shows his playful side by casting I Claudius actor Derek Jacobi and in Jennifer Ehle he reunites the Darcy and Lizzie of the BBC’s iconic Pride and Prejudice, and it’s churlish to suggest that this film is an automatic Oscar winner and the performances and direction are not worthy of the praise it’s received. Hooper allows the film’s central story to be peppered with small moments as the bedtime story with the Princesses and the embittered interplay between Firth’s George VI and Guy Pearce’s irascible Edward VIII, never drawing our eye away from the story, embellishing it and rewarding us with a solid and inspirational piece of work that will stand with the best of British film for years to come.
Film ****~ (4/5)
Disc ***~~ (3/5)
Commentary with director Tom Hooper
An inspirational story of an unlikely friendship – The making of The King’s Speech
Filmed Interview with Mark Logue
Speeches from the real King George VI
Production sketches from Academy Award® nominated Production designer Eve Stewart
Production stills and Behind the Scenes photo gallery
In a recent post at Movies.com entitled ‘Dear 3D, Please Die Already (Again)’, Scott Weinberg (a writer whose thoughts on film I generally agree with) bemoaned the current trend of 3D films filling multiplexes. His piece taps into a number of opinions about 3D that seem very common right now and whilst I’m not exactly 3D’s biggest advocate (I still think it has a long way to go both technologically and artistically), I disagree pretty strongly with the argument he puts forth.
Yesterday I posted 
This is really nothing more than a brief look at Benjamin Walker as the 16th President of the United States in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and while several of the assembled do seem as if they are moments away from taking their own first steps in the life beyond it’s a fairly sedate first look at Timur Bekmambetov’s film.
It’s easy to become blinded by the shine from its multiple awards but the Blu-ray and DVD release of The King’s Speech is an opportunity to enjoy Tom Hooper’s excellent film again, and it’s an opportunity well worth taking.
