Sunday, 31 January 2010
Term 2: Week 3: In which we really start making films
The first half of the week was officially quite empty but thankfully we had the Crawl for Haiti film to fill it up. More on that excitement in a seperate blog.
Wednesday
Again we had the luxury and comfort of the boardroom to enjoy as we discussed the idea of appointment viewing. This was especially enjoyable for me since I cut my analytical teeth on Doctor Who, and have been familiar with it's structure and its 360 presence from the beginning. I also know the names of all the actors, and way more unnecessary detail besides.
(For instance, while the Paul McGann tv movie conflicts with continuity somewhat, his Doctor has established himself moreso through the Big Finish audios and the novel series. Also, there is the forgotten Ninth Doctor, played by Richard E Grant in an online one-off. And what connects these two? Withnail & I of course!)
As our accompanying viewing we got a real treat: the Morcambe and Wise Christmas Special! Some of the topical jokes fell badly flat, which is probably why you don't see these being repeated on tv any more, but a lot of the humour still works and I could easily imagine families gathering to watch it at Christmas. It's a pity we don't have anything similar - surely in the BBC's sizable stable of comedians someone could put together an hour of laughs? What you wouldn't get, though, would be the co-operation of the guest stars. Can you imagine today's celebrities submitting to that kind of treatment? Each one would have a long list of what could and couldn't be alluded to, and what level of mockery they would tolerate.
Thursday
This was a big day for the DFTV crew, since it was the first time we all worked together on a shoot. Overall, I think we did very well.
My own area of responsibility was sound, but by the nature of the event, that was mainly taken care of by our TPA equivalent, and it's a good thing too since what I know about sound could be scribbled on the back of a beer mat. Still, I didn't take that as an excuse to sit back and let the others do the heavy lifting, I joined in, sometimes quite literally - lugging sandbags to weight the tripods. I mainly busied myself worrying about the little details like battery charges and holding up the back focus diagram.
I enjoyed the collaboration very much, and I think we got on very well with TPA, since they are our natural techie kin. This little experience has made me more excited for upcoming partnerships, since I reckon we can do some great things together.
Friday
More silent cinema, this time the much-hyped Sunrise. I'd never even heard of it until Andy told us about it but I'm glad I got the chance to see it.
The plot is simplicity itself, the story of a marriage's difficulty and eventual resolution. I wasn't absolutely convinced by the characters' sudden 180 but I was willing to go with it, and the cynical interpretation that the man was only luring his wife into a false sense of security all the better to kill her didn't cross my mind. Their finances did make me nervous - can you really afford to gallivant about?
I really have to mention the cutest piglet in cinematic history - it was adorable. Was it relevent? not really, but it was more than cute enough to make up for that.
Joy of joys, the soundtrack this week suited the action and was easy on the ear! It had character themes and evoked atmosphere and emotion. So, thank you to whoever recovered and recorded that.
It's a pity Murnau was in that car crash, since he surely had more brilliance in him. Perhaps he could have sped up the transition into sound cinema. So take this as a life lesson folks: when driving, be sure to pay full attention to the road.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
Monday, 25 January 2010
Crawl for Haiti filming log
Things I learned from my first DFTV shoot:
- The streets on an early Sunday morning are weird: full of the old who have been up for hours, and the young who have yet to go to sleep
- We're going to need considerably warmer socks
- Starbucks cups can easily be mistaken for manna from heaven
- Weight-lifting classes would be a sound investment
- If you have capacious pockets, they will be used
- Wear sturdy boots
- Seven hours in the rain makes my hair look like Monica's in the Bahamas
- Be sure to switch the mic input to "front" before you do the interview
- When you ask people to be silent, they hear "feel free to whisper"
- Camera crews, or maybe just me, attract weirdos (I quote: "Hey, you're that babe off of Hollyoaks", no crazy old guy, I'm not, now please leave me alone!)
- Non-weirdos are very unlikely to want to be interviewed, especially the vain ones
- Training comes back to you in emergency situations
- Camera bags get heavier in the rain; much heavier
- As tired as we were, our subject must have been infinitely more-so, since he managed to cover 8 miles up and down a rainy hill on all fours
Singin' In The Rain (1952) / Nine (2009)
Yet another film which disproves my "I hate musicals" stance.
The story itself is a fun romp through early sound cinema and an irreverent look at the movie industry. I love that Gene Kelly's character is such a bad actor - he can sing, he can dance, but he doesn't act because he doesn't have to. And his critic, Kathy, is no better - she disdains movies for the stage but works as a dancing girl.
The music is classic, from the eponymous tune to all the rest. It's infectious to the point that I did a tiny bit of dancing on my walk home from Cineworld's special screening. (This said, one number, the fantasy film scene, dragged on somewhat, and was surplus to the story.)
And another musical, which very much confirms my distaste for the genre.
Nine is certainly not a terrible film - it is very, very good looking, in its cinematography and its cast. Italy is beautiful and so are the the Italians (not that many of the actors are portraying their own nationalities, but I've never let facts get in the way of a good sentence) and you can't move for frilly, lacey, corsetty ensembles or sharp, skinny-tied suits.
But all this is just surface and unfortunately there's very little substance underneath. Guido is a suffering artist who obviously needs to get his act together, and the women around him have no existence outside of validating his own.
Daniel Day Lewis is lovely, as always - I've never seen him in a dancing role before but it's obvious he has the necessaries, even if his singing is somewhat lacking. The Women (Kate Hudson, Fergie, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Judi Dench, phew!) are mixed, with my favourite singer strangely Hudson. Judi Dench, fabulous as she is, can't sing in a French accent.
There are a few real moments however, such as when Louisa watches the other actress's screen tests or when Claudia refuses to be the woman behind a man, saying "I'd rather be the man", which manage to get beyond surface froth but they're sadly overwhelmed. The way they separate the singing from the action, using the set of the film Guido is supposed to be making, is nice, especially at the end when the cast of his life assemble behind him as he embarks on the next phase of his life.
Also, the editing of the dance sequences served the ADHD desire for fresh angles rather than the dancing. It's characteristic of director Rob Marshall, whose previous work includes Chicago, which cuts for every foot tap.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
The story itself is a fun romp through early sound cinema and an irreverent look at the movie industry. I love that Gene Kelly's character is such a bad actor - he can sing, he can dance, but he doesn't act because he doesn't have to. And his critic, Kathy, is no better - she disdains movies for the stage but works as a dancing girl.
The music is classic, from the eponymous tune to all the rest. It's infectious to the point that I did a tiny bit of dancing on my walk home from Cineworld's special screening. (This said, one number, the fantasy film scene, dragged on somewhat, and was surplus to the story.)
And another musical, which very much confirms my distaste for the genre.
Nine is certainly not a terrible film - it is very, very good looking, in its cinematography and its cast. Italy is beautiful and so are the the Italians (not that many of the actors are portraying their own nationalities, but I've never let facts get in the way of a good sentence) and you can't move for frilly, lacey, corsetty ensembles or sharp, skinny-tied suits.
But all this is just surface and unfortunately there's very little substance underneath. Guido is a suffering artist who obviously needs to get his act together, and the women around him have no existence outside of validating his own.
Daniel Day Lewis is lovely, as always - I've never seen him in a dancing role before but it's obvious he has the necessaries, even if his singing is somewhat lacking. The Women (Kate Hudson, Fergie, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Judi Dench, phew!) are mixed, with my favourite singer strangely Hudson. Judi Dench, fabulous as she is, can't sing in a French accent.
There are a few real moments however, such as when Louisa watches the other actress's screen tests or when Claudia refuses to be the woman behind a man, saying "I'd rather be the man", which manage to get beyond surface froth but they're sadly overwhelmed. The way they separate the singing from the action, using the set of the film Guido is supposed to be making, is nice, especially at the end when the cast of his life assemble behind him as he embarks on the next phase of his life.
Also, the editing of the dance sequences served the ADHD desire for fresh angles rather than the dancing. It's characteristic of director Rob Marshall, whose previous work includes Chicago, which cuts for every foot tap.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
Term 2: Week 2: of soaps, white balances and vampires
Monday
I loved the lesson with Kim - it was great to talk to someone who is right now writing for television which we see. There was a particularly nice moment when Meg revealed her favourite storylines from Hollyoaks and it turned out to be one Kim had written!
Rather bizarrely I found myself attracted to one of the least glamorous roles she described - that of script editor. They can be terrible apparently, but I rather like reading others' writing and tweaking and helping to develop it.
In the afternoon we learnt about one of the many mustacioed men who pioneered America's film industry. My new favourite film is "The Eagle's Nest": a true comedy classic! The comparison between 1902 and 2010 was very nice, especially since Gavin and Charlotte had paid such attention to the detail.
Tuesday
More lighting, more feelings of desperate inadequecy, although less and less as we learn more. The concept of colour temperature and it's counterintuitive way of being described (orange is a cold colour?) still makes me make this expression 0_o but I felt ok putting up the lamps and doing the white balance. I'm still impressed by how pretty even the simple images we are experimenting with are.
In the afternoon I had a lovely little tutorial with Gav, which reassured me that I hadn't been going wrong. Still, looking back at my edit it needs more work - more variety in the shot lengths and shapes.
Wednesday
Bucking the habit of months, we were in in the morning and the subject at hand was Reality. Yep, all of it. Pretty heavy stuff.
It's odd to think of such a staple of tv being invented, but of course someone had to be first, and it turns out it began with the investigation of mysteries in America. And, loathe it or hate it, reality tv has undoubtedly had a huge influence on what we watch; it's become so much of the landscape that there are dramas based off it and parodies everywhere.
Friday
In which Nosferatu scares the pants off me.
I don't know whether if it was the eerie cinematography, Max Schreck's utterly unnerving performance or the music*, but this still works as a horror film. Not quite fainting-in-the-stalls bad, but enough that I was left well unsettled.
I think that among all the rest of the brilliance of the cinematography (even if the colour washes were a bit weird) and the set design and the editing, what it really proves is the power of not showing. Count Orlak is creepy and scary, but you never see him doing anything particularly violent and the most blood is a slight cut on someone's finger.
*And this seems to be a running problem - except for Charlie Chaplin, most of the silent movie music I've heard gives me a headache. Please DVD companies, think of the viewer!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
I loved the lesson with Kim - it was great to talk to someone who is right now writing for television which we see. There was a particularly nice moment when Meg revealed her favourite storylines from Hollyoaks and it turned out to be one Kim had written!
Rather bizarrely I found myself attracted to one of the least glamorous roles she described - that of script editor. They can be terrible apparently, but I rather like reading others' writing and tweaking and helping to develop it.
In the afternoon we learnt about one of the many mustacioed men who pioneered America's film industry. My new favourite film is "The Eagle's Nest": a true comedy classic! The comparison between 1902 and 2010 was very nice, especially since Gavin and Charlotte had paid such attention to the detail.
Tuesday
More lighting, more feelings of desperate inadequecy, although less and less as we learn more. The concept of colour temperature and it's counterintuitive way of being described (orange is a cold colour?) still makes me make this expression 0_o but I felt ok putting up the lamps and doing the white balance. I'm still impressed by how pretty even the simple images we are experimenting with are.
In the afternoon I had a lovely little tutorial with Gav, which reassured me that I hadn't been going wrong. Still, looking back at my edit it needs more work - more variety in the shot lengths and shapes.
Wednesday
Bucking the habit of months, we were in in the morning and the subject at hand was Reality. Yep, all of it. Pretty heavy stuff.
It's odd to think of such a staple of tv being invented, but of course someone had to be first, and it turns out it began with the investigation of mysteries in America. And, loathe it or hate it, reality tv has undoubtedly had a huge influence on what we watch; it's become so much of the landscape that there are dramas based off it and parodies everywhere.
Friday
In which Nosferatu scares the pants off me.
I don't know whether if it was the eerie cinematography, Max Schreck's utterly unnerving performance or the music*, but this still works as a horror film. Not quite fainting-in-the-stalls bad, but enough that I was left well unsettled.
I think that among all the rest of the brilliance of the cinematography (even if the colour washes were a bit weird) and the set design and the editing, what it really proves is the power of not showing. Count Orlak is creepy and scary, but you never see him doing anything particularly violent and the most blood is a slight cut on someone's finger.
*And this seems to be a running problem - except for Charlie Chaplin, most of the silent movie music I've heard gives me a headache. Please DVD companies, think of the viewer!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Term 2: week 1: I forgot to pack my regular sleeping patterns
Here begins a new chapter of personal reflection!
Monday
It felt very good to be back at the Academy after the holidays and we kicked off with a chat about the history of cinema, from Thomas Edison to James Cameron. There's got to be an amazing biopic in there but I expect Mr Edison patented the story of his own life already. I liked learning about the crazy, and sometimes cutthroat, world of early cinema and the comparisons between it's novelty value and that of Avatar (which I still need to see!).
I also began instituting what I want to make my notemaking method. It's the closest I've made to a New Years resolution. Basically, I'll take note of everything we talk about no included in the slides, download the slideshow and then make extra notes of the extras on that. The very process of repetition will help.
Tuesday
Still, technical class makes me feel like a particularly dim - and weak - idiot. It's just a matter of learning it, I know, but I feel silly when I can't even get the right battery for the monitor.
Still, I'm excited about lighting, since even this session's demonstrations, which were primarily introducing us to all the million different pieces of kit, showed the first spark of what we'll be able to achieve. Posing Chris and then Ada under some soft lighting they were both suddenly transformed - there is just something beautiful about a well lit subject and even on the little CRT I got a sense of the potential in the kit which, so far, has mainly been a source of confusion and sore shoulders. Maybe not a breakthrough moment, but a nudge, anyway.
Wednesday
I have to ask myself: why on earth didn't I watch The Street before? Because it is, without a doubt, one of the best pieces of television I've seen; TV as art, on a par with the best theatre or film has to offer. I've rarely been so relieved by an ending, and heartbroken atthe same time.
The question of authorship seems to me to be an interesting one, but always necessarily dependent on the individual project. It's something I've been a little familiar with thanks to the likes of Russell T Davies and Joss Whedon. I have definitely been attracted to series becuase they were "made by Joss Whedon" and to a certain extent you know what you're getting. (My bitter inner fan says that you know there'll be character deaths, upsetting plot twists and that Fox will cancel it.)
Friday
I was looking forward to this: I do love a bit of silent Russian cinema! And no, I'm not being sarcastic, I really do. I ended up crying in a history lesson once because of my stirrings of love for the Motherland and my Comrades after watching one. (Can't remember the name, but there were peasants pulling a church down.) They're propaganda, sure, but they're excellent examples of it.
Sergei Eisenstein in phenomenally influential: pretty much every area of 20th century culture I've studied has been somewhat affected, and as for cinema, well, he shaped the way films would be made afterwards. It's lovely that even something like the Kellog's Crunchy Nut Cornflakes still references something like Battleship Potemkin.
And that sequence on the Odessa Steps is remarkable. The climax with the assault on the Opera House was a thing of beauty: the fast cut shots of the lion's expressions gave me shivers - such a brilliant and effective idea. And the cutting is fast, but in a way which differs from badly fast cut montage: it uses a build up of intensity to create effects, much like poetry, rather than just cutting every second for the sake of it.
I won't deny that it gets dull and preachy at times - it's a propaganda film after all - but overall it was still an amazing experience. A better soundtrack would be most welcome - the Pet Shop Boys sounds very interesting, as would assembling a compilation from our own tastes. I wonder how Dark Side Of The Moon would sync up with it?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
Monday
It felt very good to be back at the Academy after the holidays and we kicked off with a chat about the history of cinema, from Thomas Edison to James Cameron. There's got to be an amazing biopic in there but I expect Mr Edison patented the story of his own life already. I liked learning about the crazy, and sometimes cutthroat, world of early cinema and the comparisons between it's novelty value and that of Avatar (which I still need to see!).
I also began instituting what I want to make my notemaking method. It's the closest I've made to a New Years resolution. Basically, I'll take note of everything we talk about no included in the slides, download the slideshow and then make extra notes of the extras on that. The very process of repetition will help.
Tuesday
Still, technical class makes me feel like a particularly dim - and weak - idiot. It's just a matter of learning it, I know, but I feel silly when I can't even get the right battery for the monitor.
Still, I'm excited about lighting, since even this session's demonstrations, which were primarily introducing us to all the million different pieces of kit, showed the first spark of what we'll be able to achieve. Posing Chris and then Ada under some soft lighting they were both suddenly transformed - there is just something beautiful about a well lit subject and even on the little CRT I got a sense of the potential in the kit which, so far, has mainly been a source of confusion and sore shoulders. Maybe not a breakthrough moment, but a nudge, anyway.
Wednesday
I have to ask myself: why on earth didn't I watch The Street before? Because it is, without a doubt, one of the best pieces of television I've seen; TV as art, on a par with the best theatre or film has to offer. I've rarely been so relieved by an ending, and heartbroken atthe same time.
The question of authorship seems to me to be an interesting one, but always necessarily dependent on the individual project. It's something I've been a little familiar with thanks to the likes of Russell T Davies and Joss Whedon. I have definitely been attracted to series becuase they were "made by Joss Whedon" and to a certain extent you know what you're getting. (My bitter inner fan says that you know there'll be character deaths, upsetting plot twists and that Fox will cancel it.)
Friday
I was looking forward to this: I do love a bit of silent Russian cinema! And no, I'm not being sarcastic, I really do. I ended up crying in a history lesson once because of my stirrings of love for the Motherland and my Comrades after watching one. (Can't remember the name, but there were peasants pulling a church down.) They're propaganda, sure, but they're excellent examples of it.
Sergei Eisenstein in phenomenally influential: pretty much every area of 20th century culture I've studied has been somewhat affected, and as for cinema, well, he shaped the way films would be made afterwards. It's lovely that even something like the Kellog's Crunchy Nut Cornflakes still references something like Battleship Potemkin.
And that sequence on the Odessa Steps is remarkable. The climax with the assault on the Opera House was a thing of beauty: the fast cut shots of the lion's expressions gave me shivers - such a brilliant and effective idea. And the cutting is fast, but in a way which differs from badly fast cut montage: it uses a build up of intensity to create effects, much like poetry, rather than just cutting every second for the sake of it.
I won't deny that it gets dull and preachy at times - it's a propaganda film after all - but overall it was still an amazing experience. A better soundtrack would be most welcome - the Pet Shop Boys sounds very interesting, as would assembling a compilation from our own tastes. I wonder how Dark Side Of The Moon would sync up with it?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Sherlock Holmes and the mysterious case of the marketing campaign
I wish the timing had worked out that we could have studied this film for our group project, because I really do think its campaign was brilliant. It was enough to get me hooked months before it came out, and to get people to go.
The first thing I remember seeing was the fair amount of publicity announcing that Guy Richie was to direct a Sherlock Holmes movie. People were in uproar (or at least, mildly annoyed) because of his previous films and the perception that he would never be true to the books. However, even bad publicity is publicity, and it caught my attention.
Next was the very early trailer, which said very little about the plot, but which threw a lot of stuff at the screen:
I was given a link to it, so I don't know how knowledge of its existence was announced, but word of mouth (and word of... type...) spread it. It really made me want to see it, even though I knew it wouldn't be out for months. Its interesting to see bits which were obviously meant to go into the film but which were cut, ie: Rachel McAdams in a corset. DVD extras, anyone?
In the following months, there were a number of interviews with the cast and crew which circulated around the internet press, maintaining interest, and stills and posters were released. A second trailer was released in the summer, and I remember poring over it with a dozen theatre students gathered around a computer:
The design was character and actor based, so that fans of Holmes and Watson would be interested, and fans of robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as well. It made the film look glamorous and shiny in the way Hollywood does best. It feels like the standees have been in Cineworld for ages, and I'm pretty sure they arrived in November - yet more lead-in time to get people excited; I know that we would often stand in the lobby after getting our tickets just gazing...
I would drool over the compositition and the use of slab-serif fonts and the textures but that's just me slipping into graphic designer mode. (Although really, look at those slab serifs!)
In December, things got aggressive. The third trailer arrived, with more to it and continuing in the partnership vein of the posters:
I first saw it before 2012, (there was squealing involved) which I'm sure reached a lot of cinema-goers. Posters were everywhere, and you couldn't move for tie-ins. The Baker St underground was covered in tiny posters (which is clever and funny, and exactly the kind of thing I love):
All this effort yielded results: so far it has taken $230,729,320 worldwide, and it is still to be released in many countries. This is especially promising considering that the competition was Avatar, the film widely billed as the film you have to go and see, and which millions of people did. As a comparison, Guy Richie's last film, Rock'n'Rolla, took $5,700,626 during its whole release, and his previous highest grossing film (Snatch) took $30,328,156.
We can't just go around measuring success as money though. One mark in its favour is that there is already talk of a sequel; some people criticised the film for actually just being a set-up for a continuation, but while the opportunity is doubtless there, had this flopped we would not be hearing about possibly-maybe casting spoilers and this woman wouldn't be getting into a fuss over Robert Downey Jr on Letterman. (Even though she has no legitimate claim.)
Critically, it's somewhat mixed: The Guardian's Catherine Shoard hates it (despite liking Guy Ritchie), Mark Kermode likes is (despite hating him), Wendy Ide of The Times is enthusiastic (if fixated on the relationship between the detective and the doctor); the users of IMDB give it 7/10 stars and Rotten Tomatoes gives it an average of 6.1/10. As far as word of mouth goes, I tend to be the one doing the proselytizing, so I really wouldn't know.
Next in the series: Watchmen! (Possibly. Its internet campaign was very interesting, as was the push on the graphic novel.)
The first thing I remember seeing was the fair amount of publicity announcing that Guy Richie was to direct a Sherlock Holmes movie. People were in uproar (or at least, mildly annoyed) because of his previous films and the perception that he would never be true to the books. However, even bad publicity is publicity, and it caught my attention.
Next was the very early trailer, which said very little about the plot, but which threw a lot of stuff at the screen:
I was given a link to it, so I don't know how knowledge of its existence was announced, but word of mouth (and word of... type...) spread it. It really made me want to see it, even though I knew it wouldn't be out for months. Its interesting to see bits which were obviously meant to go into the film but which were cut, ie: Rachel McAdams in a corset. DVD extras, anyone?
In the following months, there were a number of interviews with the cast and crew which circulated around the internet press, maintaining interest, and stills and posters were released. A second trailer was released in the summer, and I remember poring over it with a dozen theatre students gathered around a computer:
The design was character and actor based, so that fans of Holmes and Watson would be interested, and fans of robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as well. It made the film look glamorous and shiny in the way Hollywood does best. It feels like the standees have been in Cineworld for ages, and I'm pretty sure they arrived in November - yet more lead-in time to get people excited; I know that we would often stand in the lobby after getting our tickets just gazing...
I would drool over the compositition and the use of slab-serif fonts and the textures but that's just me slipping into graphic designer mode. (Although really, look at those slab serifs!)
In December, things got aggressive. The third trailer arrived, with more to it and continuing in the partnership vein of the posters:
I first saw it before 2012, (there was squealing involved) which I'm sure reached a lot of cinema-goers. Posters were everywhere, and you couldn't move for tie-ins. The Baker St underground was covered in tiny posters (which is clever and funny, and exactly the kind of thing I love):
Ads were carried on YouTube, on MSN today; the Guardian promoted an audio tour of Holmes' London; Madame Toussaud's "developed a Robert Downey Jnr as Sherlock Holmes experience" (via: http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk). And then there was the Facebook tie in.
Called 221B, you visited this website, logged into your Facebook account and you got to be Sherlock Holmes. I'm not going to lie, I played it, and it would be a brilliant, brilliant piece of advertising if it didn't have one major flaw. The point is that you can choose one of your friends to be the other character, and then you can collaborate on sharing evidence etc; this was perfect for me, since I do have a perfect friend for such a purpose. She is someone upon whom I can thoroughly rely, the Watson to my Holmes (some of you have seen the picture), she's as much of a fan as I am (she's cameoed on this blog before as "a random vet" during Robert Downey Jr night), and what did 221B do? It wouldn't let me pick her. I don't know what glitch in the system this is, but it was bitterly disappointing, not to mention depressing to play by myself. So, good game, but an insurmountable problem.
(Incidentally, my favourite example of this kind of tie-in is the Dalek Game from back in 2005, I got embarrassingly good at that.)
All this effort yielded results: so far it has taken $230,729,320 worldwide, and it is still to be released in many countries. This is especially promising considering that the competition was Avatar, the film widely billed as the film you have to go and see, and which millions of people did. As a comparison, Guy Richie's last film, Rock'n'Rolla, took $5,700,626 during its whole release, and his previous highest grossing film (Snatch) took $30,328,156.
We can't just go around measuring success as money though. One mark in its favour is that there is already talk of a sequel; some people criticised the film for actually just being a set-up for a continuation, but while the opportunity is doubtless there, had this flopped we would not be hearing about possibly-maybe casting spoilers and this woman wouldn't be getting into a fuss over Robert Downey Jr on Letterman. (Even though she has no legitimate claim.)
Critically, it's somewhat mixed: The Guardian's Catherine Shoard hates it (despite liking Guy Ritchie), Mark Kermode likes is (despite hating him), Wendy Ide of The Times is enthusiastic (if fixated on the relationship between the detective and the doctor); the users of IMDB give it 7/10 stars and Rotten Tomatoes gives it an average of 6.1/10. As far as word of mouth goes, I tend to be the one doing the proselytizing, so I really wouldn't know.
Next in the series: Watchmen! (Possibly. Its internet campaign was very interesting, as was the push on the graphic novel.)
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Epic Christmas blog: The Holiday, Hancock, Terminator, Dr Who
What do two sisters snowed into their country house, armed only with Sky HD and a surround sound system, do for a week and a half? Why, they watch a lot of tv.
There were the obligatory rewatches of films you've seen a hundred times already:
Jurassic Park,
Enchanted,
The Great Escape,
James Bonds,
Iron Man,
Batman [including, notably, watching The Dark Knight twice in 24 hours... I do love that movie!]
Fly Away Home
Wallace and Gromit
Australia
And I also had the opportunity to see a couple I'd not seen before:
The Holiday
There will be spoilers in this review, but it's a romcom - do you really care? It's not a bad example as far as it goes, tapping into two forms of emotional wreckage (the girl whose boyfriend who turned out to be a bastard and the girl who can't get over her ex-turned-friend). It also has the clever tactic of providing American glamour for the Brits and British glamour for the Americans. The cast is good too, and I like the romance between jude Law's character and Cameron Diaz's. In a fun touch, her character worked cutting trailers for big budget movies and couldn't stop herself from picturing her life in trailer form.
The story of Kate Winslet's character is very interesting, veering off into issues of the elderly and giving a bit of a history lesson about old Hollywood. My big disappointment is that her arc seemed to be heading her for a state of happy self-sufficiency, but they apparently felt obliged to give her a love interest since it's impossible for a woman to be happy without a man in a film. I'm not being a psycho, I don't mind a good romantic plot, but there was no call for one here, and there was zero chemistry between Winslet and Jack Black, who is a fine comic actor but no Jack Lemon. Oh Hollywood, will you ever give us a less than sexist romantic comedy?
Hancock
As a general rule, you can't go far wrong with a Will Smith movie. He's just entertainment gold. This, however, is not even enough to save this wreck.
I do try to look for the good in every film, and this had such an exciting concept, and it's a logical continuation from the recent trend of superhero movies. Will Smith plays John Hancock, a man with super-strength, healing abilities and the power of flight; unfortunately, he's also an anti-social alcoholic who tends to cause as much damage as he prevents. I described it to my friend as like Watchmen for dummies, but it's more like The Incredibles for people who like swearing and violence.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN. Thanks to Richard's class I can pin down exactly why it goes so badly wrong from there. For one, the inciting incident is a positive thing: Hancock meets a PR man who wants to change his image and improve his life.
There's also a criminal lack of an antagonist; there's an attempt made with a couple of people who aren't too fond of Hancock and want to kill him but they don't fit into the structure and they're not nearly developed enough. So the only thing our hero is struggling against is himself, and even with the charismatic, most popular man in existence playing him, he's not lovable.
This isn't made better by his apparent willingness to betray the man who's been helping him by making moves on his wife, Charlize Theron.
As if that wasn't enough the film then takes heads in a direction best described as what on earth were you thinking? There are twists, and then there are broken legs. Out of nowhere, this great big mythos breaks out: apparently John Hancock is an angel-type-thing, and so is Charlize Theron. AND, the deal is that they were made in pairs and that if they are together then they lose their powers. It comes out of the blue and makes absolutely no sense. It would make an interesting film in and of itself, but there's only so much you can throw at an audience at one time! There's an episode of Angel which very neatly shows this off - it fails because the viewer has to accept three entirely new things at once and it's too much. So rather than going OOooOooOO at the twist in Hancock you just scratch your head and get yanked out of the story. It's a pity, since I do think there was potential in the story.
Terminator
That's right, until recently I hadn't seen Terminator. Well, situation rectified! And it also let's me finish on a positive, because I loved it.
First though, I find it disturbing that the people of California have seen their Governor butt naked.
It's a really clever premise, full of time travel paradoxes and ample opportunity for explosions and shoot-outs and car chases. It's really the best role Arnold Schwarznegger could ask for: he's an emotionless robot who just has to be crazily muscley.
Sarah Connor is great, an ordinary woman who responds to her extraordinary circumstances in a believable way without being a cissy about it. Seeing this has made me quite interested in watching the spin-off series The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I liked Kyle Reese as well, he's believably lovable and practicle.
And on a screenwriting note, it was excellently structured! (Can you tell I've been filtering everything I see through my three-act-structure goggles?)
The only bum note in the whole thing is the dodgy CGI of the skinned terminator, but it's churlish to sneer at special effects in an otherwise excellent film.
Doctor Who
This was really the big event for me, and for a lot of people I'm sure. It was David Tennant's last outing, and the end of Russel T Davis' reign as Executive Producer. This is a big deal; since back in the day I was quite the Doctor Who fan, and in fact it sparked off my blogging career and taught me a lot of stuff about storylining and the way a tv show is produced.
It was typically RTD. By which I mean: big, loud and in love with its own mythology; the ending was an unparalleled piece of indulgence. You call it connecting with the spin-offs and resolving the loose ends, I call it tedious. When Christopher Ecclestone's Doctor died, he didn't get this, this is about the producer leaving.
The whole story was inpenetrable to anyone who hadn't been watching religiously for several years, with every other character an appearance from two or three seasons back. The exposition for those not in the loop was all pompous pseudo speak: for once, can't a character please not speak in riddles?please?
I'm starting to sound sour, but it's a problem which has plagued the series' run so far. Too much is thrown at the screen and the plot holes are covered with bluster and yet more riddles. Doctor Who works best with contained stories mixing humour and horror, like the recent Waters Of Mars, or pretty much any Steven Moffat episode, and while you need an over-reaching arc, and a fitting climax to that, it doesn't necessarily follow that that must involve the entire universe should be under threat.
However, let's talk a out what was good:
John Simm. When I saw him as The Master, I knew it was perfect - he's such a brilliant psychopath, and this incarnation does far more with their relationship than the original series did. I'm glad he was brought back, even if I'd have preferred it if the fourh season had been The Doctor and The Master have madcap adventures in time and space.
Timelords. Ever since the reboot in 2005 the Timelords have loomed as an exciting possibility, and the little glimpses we got were not disappointing. And the fact that the President was Rassilon? The part of me which will always be a fan was thrilled, partly because of the geek-appeal and partly because I can just see how much that upsets continuity and how stressed it will ammeter some people.
David Tennant. I am going to miss the 10th Doctor terribly, and his final line broke my heart. I don't want him to die either! (I cried.) I want to like Matt Smith, but he has a tough act to follow.
Still, I am very much looking forward to the next season since it will be led by Moffat, who has been the most consistently brilliant writer (along with Paul Cornell) and he's sure to take an interesting direction.
Phew! Well, that was a glimpse of my Christmas. Despite all this I can't wait to get back to the cinema to watch the new releases (and endlessly rewatch Sherlock Holmes of course).
There were the obligatory rewatches of films you've seen a hundred times already:
Jurassic Park,
Enchanted,
The Great Escape,
James Bonds,
Iron Man,
Batman [including, notably, watching The Dark Knight twice in 24 hours... I do love that movie!]
Fly Away Home
Wallace and Gromit
Australia
And I also had the opportunity to see a couple I'd not seen before:
The Holiday
There will be spoilers in this review, but it's a romcom - do you really care? It's not a bad example as far as it goes, tapping into two forms of emotional wreckage (the girl whose boyfriend who turned out to be a bastard and the girl who can't get over her ex-turned-friend). It also has the clever tactic of providing American glamour for the Brits and British glamour for the Americans. The cast is good too, and I like the romance between jude Law's character and Cameron Diaz's. In a fun touch, her character worked cutting trailers for big budget movies and couldn't stop herself from picturing her life in trailer form.
The story of Kate Winslet's character is very interesting, veering off into issues of the elderly and giving a bit of a history lesson about old Hollywood. My big disappointment is that her arc seemed to be heading her for a state of happy self-sufficiency, but they apparently felt obliged to give her a love interest since it's impossible for a woman to be happy without a man in a film. I'm not being a psycho, I don't mind a good romantic plot, but there was no call for one here, and there was zero chemistry between Winslet and Jack Black, who is a fine comic actor but no Jack Lemon. Oh Hollywood, will you ever give us a less than sexist romantic comedy?
Hancock
As a general rule, you can't go far wrong with a Will Smith movie. He's just entertainment gold. This, however, is not even enough to save this wreck.
I do try to look for the good in every film, and this had such an exciting concept, and it's a logical continuation from the recent trend of superhero movies. Will Smith plays John Hancock, a man with super-strength, healing abilities and the power of flight; unfortunately, he's also an anti-social alcoholic who tends to cause as much damage as he prevents. I described it to my friend as like Watchmen for dummies, but it's more like The Incredibles for people who like swearing and violence.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN. Thanks to Richard's class I can pin down exactly why it goes so badly wrong from there. For one, the inciting incident is a positive thing: Hancock meets a PR man who wants to change his image and improve his life.
There's also a criminal lack of an antagonist; there's an attempt made with a couple of people who aren't too fond of Hancock and want to kill him but they don't fit into the structure and they're not nearly developed enough. So the only thing our hero is struggling against is himself, and even with the charismatic, most popular man in existence playing him, he's not lovable.
This isn't made better by his apparent willingness to betray the man who's been helping him by making moves on his wife, Charlize Theron.
As if that wasn't enough the film then takes heads in a direction best described as what on earth were you thinking? There are twists, and then there are broken legs. Out of nowhere, this great big mythos breaks out: apparently John Hancock is an angel-type-thing, and so is Charlize Theron. AND, the deal is that they were made in pairs and that if they are together then they lose their powers. It comes out of the blue and makes absolutely no sense. It would make an interesting film in and of itself, but there's only so much you can throw at an audience at one time! There's an episode of Angel which very neatly shows this off - it fails because the viewer has to accept three entirely new things at once and it's too much. So rather than going OOooOooOO at the twist in Hancock you just scratch your head and get yanked out of the story. It's a pity, since I do think there was potential in the story.
Terminator
That's right, until recently I hadn't seen Terminator. Well, situation rectified! And it also let's me finish on a positive, because I loved it.
First though, I find it disturbing that the people of California have seen their Governor butt naked.
It's a really clever premise, full of time travel paradoxes and ample opportunity for explosions and shoot-outs and car chases. It's really the best role Arnold Schwarznegger could ask for: he's an emotionless robot who just has to be crazily muscley.
Sarah Connor is great, an ordinary woman who responds to her extraordinary circumstances in a believable way without being a cissy about it. Seeing this has made me quite interested in watching the spin-off series The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I liked Kyle Reese as well, he's believably lovable and practicle.
And on a screenwriting note, it was excellently structured! (Can you tell I've been filtering everything I see through my three-act-structure goggles?)
The only bum note in the whole thing is the dodgy CGI of the skinned terminator, but it's churlish to sneer at special effects in an otherwise excellent film.
Doctor Who
This was really the big event for me, and for a lot of people I'm sure. It was David Tennant's last outing, and the end of Russel T Davis' reign as Executive Producer. This is a big deal; since back in the day I was quite the Doctor Who fan, and in fact it sparked off my blogging career and taught me a lot of stuff about storylining and the way a tv show is produced.
It was typically RTD. By which I mean: big, loud and in love with its own mythology; the ending was an unparalleled piece of indulgence. You call it connecting with the spin-offs and resolving the loose ends, I call it tedious. When Christopher Ecclestone's Doctor died, he didn't get this, this is about the producer leaving.
The whole story was inpenetrable to anyone who hadn't been watching religiously for several years, with every other character an appearance from two or three seasons back. The exposition for those not in the loop was all pompous pseudo speak: for once, can't a character please not speak in riddles?please?
I'm starting to sound sour, but it's a problem which has plagued the series' run so far. Too much is thrown at the screen and the plot holes are covered with bluster and yet more riddles. Doctor Who works best with contained stories mixing humour and horror, like the recent Waters Of Mars, or pretty much any Steven Moffat episode, and while you need an over-reaching arc, and a fitting climax to that, it doesn't necessarily follow that that must involve the entire universe should be under threat.
However, let's talk a out what was good:
John Simm. When I saw him as The Master, I knew it was perfect - he's such a brilliant psychopath, and this incarnation does far more with their relationship than the original series did. I'm glad he was brought back, even if I'd have preferred it if the fourh season had been The Doctor and The Master have madcap adventures in time and space.
Timelords. Ever since the reboot in 2005 the Timelords have loomed as an exciting possibility, and the little glimpses we got were not disappointing. And the fact that the President was Rassilon? The part of me which will always be a fan was thrilled, partly because of the geek-appeal and partly because I can just see how much that upsets continuity and how stressed it will ammeter some people.
David Tennant. I am going to miss the 10th Doctor terribly, and his final line broke my heart. I don't want him to die either! (I cried.) I want to like Matt Smith, but he has a tough act to follow.
Still, I am very much looking forward to the next season since it will be led by Moffat, who has been the most consistently brilliant writer (along with Paul Cornell) and he's sure to take an interesting direction.
Phew! Well, that was a glimpse of my Christmas. Despite all this I can't wait to get back to the cinema to watch the new releases (and endlessly rewatch Sherlock Holmes of course).
Term 1
Personal reflection is what I'm supposed to be doing more of, so starting when we get back I'm going to be doing one every Sunday, looking back on the week, but I think now would be a good time to look back on term 1 as a whole.
For one, I can't quite believe it's already been 12 weeks. Outside class it's been a whirlwind of fun mixed in with learning stuff like "how long is too long to cook noodles?" and "how seriously should I take this use by date?". I love living in the city and I love having met such lovely people!
On the academic side, I really feel like I've learnt a lot. I love seeing the line between early film and TV and what we have now, and even further back to the theatre and music hall which was popular before the CRT had been invented. I also like that we're being taught about the business side of the industry since it's so important that we can actually work. I think I've done well with this, and I'm keeping up with the blogging, partly because it feels quite natural to me: I've been talking about and writing about films for ages, and even blogged before.
Writing I've enjoyed, but I find parts of it hard. I've always been a pretty miserable creative writer - draft 1 is a painful, painful experience for me and usually precluded by plenty of agonising. I'm not wholly satisfied with my own performance in this class yet. I didn't think my short story was very good (it's been an age since I wrote in prose and the subject matter felt very bleh) and I've only had a couple of premises I like. Of those, a couple were too long, one was a good length but I couldn't convey it in words (which probably means it's not a film), one was a play and two were animations. I do really love one of those, and I'm going to write it up as a personal project and try to find someone who can do the visuals: a chained-up bank pen stages a daring escape and tries to find its own place in the world. I like my tv idea much more, and I think it's a very interesting medium to work in, and I'm happier with my performance in that class.
I enjoyed the bits of editing we've done so far, and I think I'm quite good at it, but partly that's down to the fact I'm already familiar with the software. Still, I'd like to think I've passed the assessment. I don't feel like I've made enough progress with the camera: I still couldn't do much more than set it up and point it at something. I would still struggle to then record that something, since the record button has proved elusive. So next term, my resolution is to take the camera out and get practice.
So overall, I think it's been a good couple of months and I'm very much looking forward to the next couple of months to follow!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
For one, I can't quite believe it's already been 12 weeks. Outside class it's been a whirlwind of fun mixed in with learning stuff like "how long is too long to cook noodles?" and "how seriously should I take this use by date?". I love living in the city and I love having met such lovely people!
On the academic side, I really feel like I've learnt a lot. I love seeing the line between early film and TV and what we have now, and even further back to the theatre and music hall which was popular before the CRT had been invented. I also like that we're being taught about the business side of the industry since it's so important that we can actually work. I think I've done well with this, and I'm keeping up with the blogging, partly because it feels quite natural to me: I've been talking about and writing about films for ages, and even blogged before.
Writing I've enjoyed, but I find parts of it hard. I've always been a pretty miserable creative writer - draft 1 is a painful, painful experience for me and usually precluded by plenty of agonising. I'm not wholly satisfied with my own performance in this class yet. I didn't think my short story was very good (it's been an age since I wrote in prose and the subject matter felt very bleh) and I've only had a couple of premises I like. Of those, a couple were too long, one was a good length but I couldn't convey it in words (which probably means it's not a film), one was a play and two were animations. I do really love one of those, and I'm going to write it up as a personal project and try to find someone who can do the visuals: a chained-up bank pen stages a daring escape and tries to find its own place in the world. I like my tv idea much more, and I think it's a very interesting medium to work in, and I'm happier with my performance in that class.
I enjoyed the bits of editing we've done so far, and I think I'm quite good at it, but partly that's down to the fact I'm already familiar with the software. Still, I'd like to think I've passed the assessment. I don't feel like I've made enough progress with the camera: I still couldn't do much more than set it up and point it at something. I would still struggle to then record that something, since the record button has proved elusive. So next term, my resolution is to take the camera out and get practice.
So overall, I think it's been a good couple of months and I'm very much looking forward to the next couple of months to follow!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch
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