Tomorrow Comes Today
Perky Pop Practitioners, Saint Etienne [saintetienne.com] have been collaborating with film maker Paul Kelly ever since they released the film to accompany the album, Finisterre [plexifilm.com]. Together they are helping us hold onto the fragments of London’s recent past including many of the old style cafés that are disappearing under an avalanche of Starbucks and Pret a Mangers. They have put a bunch of their films up on YouTube too including this one about the New Piccadilly Café which closed only a couple of months ago, along with snippets from their latest feature, This is Tomorrow.
Review 2007: the Films
If we learnt anything in 2007, it was to avoid films where the title is set in Red Hot Futura Extrabold or Gill Sans Display — see [here], [here], [here] and [here]. The more distorted or ‘3D effect’ the type, the more arduous the film. Mainstream Hollywood films continued to rely more on their marketing spend and less on quality or originality. When you see a mainstream Hollywood film these days you can almost see the guys in cheap suits peering through the two-way glass into yet another focus group, mentally stripping the film down to the bare necessities it needs to appeal to commonherd America. In some weirdly subtle response, a lot of the mainstream cinema chains (well in the UK, at least) became increasingly lack-lustre in their presentation. That certain ’specialness’ that makes seeing a film at the cinema preferable to seeing one from the comfort of your sofa [sofacinema.co.uk] has been tarnished somehow. Vue in Leicester Square [cinematreasures.org] has seen fit to do away with the human-in-a-ticket-box in favour of a credit card machine. Yerg! Still, as always, there were a few nuggets of goodness to chew on this year as long as you knew where to look…
Inland Empire [imdb.com]
You have to make time for David Lynch’s [davidlynch.com] Inland Empire. If you’re a ‘quick fix’ kinda cinema goer (which I can be sometimes too) then this film would have had you pulling your hair out in the cinema. I wrote a brief review when it came out and then bought the DVD and am still watching it every now and then. Mr Lynch’s technique of letting a film build itself scene by scene means you can dip in and out of it if you like or just hone in on the scenes you find intense, funny or whatever. This is film making for film lovers and a must see if you’ve ever enjoyed sitting in the dark for a couple of hours and having your head fed.
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Disturbia [imdb.com]
The easiest way to describe Disturbia is like a modern take on Hitchcock’s Rear Window for today’s not-especially troubled teens, where our protagonist has a angle tag instead of a wheelchair and a hot babe in the swimming pool next door instead of Grace Kelly and her overnight kit. It wasn’t necessarily clever but it was thrilling without dipping it’s toe in the torture porn tub and fun in a way ‘gross-out’ comedies haven’t been for a long time.
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F for Fake [imdb.com]
F for Fake was released on DVD this year as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series [eurekavideo.co.uk]. This is Orson Wells at his most mischievous and inventive. Apparently made in answer to well-known critic Pauline Kael’s insinuation that Welles stole the script for Citizen Kane, the film partially documents a couple of famous 70s fraudsters living it up in Ibiza, a painter of fake masterpieces and the man who penned the fake biography of Howard Hughes and ends as a lesson on cinema and the suspension of disbelief. It’s fast, mind-boggling fun.
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Electroma [imdb.com]
This was the year we got to see French dance act Daft Punk’s first foray into feature film making minus their own original, custom built soundtrack. It’s an audacious and possibly overly simplistic film. The fact that their is no dialogue should tell you it’s a bit of a test but the visuals are often reward enough. You enjoyment totally depends on your state of mind at the time. My suggestion: watch it when you’re feeling relaxed and not up for much of a challenge, you’ll like it a whole lot more.
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Southland Tales [imdb.com]
Southland Tales is as odd as it’s route to the screen… possibly more so. For a start, the cast is so weird. It includes Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, the funny little psychic woman from Poltergeist, The Rock… I mean Dwayne Johnson, Christopher Lambert, Seann William Scott… the weirdness just goes on. Eli Roth even turns up to get shot in one of the shortest scenes you’ll ever see him in. The plot will blow your mind and visits places similar to those last seen in Wild Palms and Mulholland Drive via some pretty catastrophic world events, the words ‘This is the way the world ends’ gets uttered more than a few times. All this from the hot young director who gave us Donnie Darko. Originally around three hours long, this is the two hour version of the film, released after a lot of cut and paste plus a layer of heavy duty CGI and some deliberately dubious (through still pretty hideous) ‘on screen’ graphics had been applied. See it but expect a big mess and very little answers by the end.
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Sunshine [imdb.com]
There seemed to be a real lack of any stand-out or break through films this year. Not to say it was a particularly bad year… it was just sort of ‘middling’. As was Danny Boyle’s first voyage into Science Fiction. Actually, ‘middling’ was unfair. Sunshine is an above average Sci Fi adventure with lush visuals made for the big screen and nice use of some hoary old Sci Fi cliques. The DVD has some pretty cool short films produced by crew members and hand picked by Danny Boyle himself.
There are a few films I never got to see that I’m sure are worth a mention. Control springs to mind and, I’m sure will be on many people’s lists. If you want to add your own review, leave a comment at the end of this post and roll on 2008.
Lost Classics: The Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda Strain [iMDB] is one of those rare instances where the film’s production matches the story seamlessly. It’s chillingly cool, calm and precise story telling at it’s most concentrated. The story is based on a novel by Michael Crichton (writer of Westworld [iMDB] and Jurassic Park [iMDB]) and focuses, firstly, on the mysterious and literal collapse of the population of a small town in backwater USA and then the scientific endeavour required to solve the mystery of what has happened.
Robert Wise’s direction is ice hot and the cinematography is almost ‘photojournalistic’ in some cases. It makes you think of vintage copies of Life [life.com] and National Geographic [magma.nationalgeographic.com] magazine. Ultimately it’s the Art Direction that takes centre stage in The Andromeda Strain and makes it worth seeing for this reason alone. The real treat comes once you get past the clean, clinical white light of the deadened town and venture down into the research lab with it’s many colour codes levels (all using the same sets, just repainted each time). The titles are pretty ace too with loads of ‘confidential’ looking bits and bytes of design and typography floating through the typewritten credits in all their Technicolor glory.
Lost Classics: Demon Seed
Demon Seed is a film about a computer that first traps and then coerces a woman into giving birth to it’s child. Based on the novel by the poor man’s Stephen King, Dean Koontz. It’s truly weird. Julie Christie plays the lead role as a warped but sort of cooly rational female cipher, flipped into the mad world of a computer with plans to become living flesh and blood. It’s directed by Donald Cammell [wikipedia] who made Performance [iMDB] with Mick Jagger and James Fox [wikipedia]. Cammell only made a hand full of films in his lifetime and reportedly committed suicide after his last film, Wild Side [iMDB], was heavily edited by it’s producers. Dark. You won’t find a better example of how paranoid the 1970s were than the Demon Seed [iMDB]. The defence mechanism thingy in the basement kind of looks like a Rubik’s Snake too [wikipedia].
Premium Bond
Following on from the International Herald Tribune’s article on film poster designers. I can’t help having a bit of a go at Casino Royale… Not the film, mind. I saw the film last night and am happy to report that Daniel Craig makes poor old Pierce Brosnon and Roger Moore look like Sophia Loren’s male equivalents. Particularly cruel was coming home and switching on the telly to find ‘For Your Eyes Only’ playing. Yikes! My only critisisms are that most of the women still look like painted monsters stuck in 1989 and the Chris Cornell theme song made me bolt from the cinema at the end of the film. It’s dire.
No, my real critisism is a lot pettier than that. It’s the ruddy font they have used for the title ‘Casino Royale’. I know a lot of people shrug off this sort of thing but getting the right font adds quality to your film and James Bond has to be about quality, right. James Bond is expensive. Century Gothic [identifont] is not. In fact, if you have a look, it’s probably lurking about on your computer as we speak.
Why is it free for anyone to use without, necessarily, having to pay for it? Why do they have a to give it away? Well, for the same reason you didn’t pay for Arial or Impact. It’s another shoddy redraw of a classic font made to avoid having to pay for licensing the real thing. Shame Daniel Kleinman (whose new titles are pretty fab but still not a patch on Saul Bass), when you had the choice of a well cut classic or one the latest crop of rigorously developed cut geometric style typefaces currently available (there’s a few suggestions above). Would Bond have approved?
Want to check out almost every Bond opening sequence eva? Here’s your linkage: [cinematical.com]
Trend! Nilhism
Okay, so it’s not super catchy and doesn’t seem to have any discernible dress codes (apart from wearing loads of black, but that’s a bit obvious really) but if you’re feeling a bit ‘Children of Men’ and can’t stop listening to Jarvis Cocker’s ‘Running the World’ then may I recommend a handful of other dark delights:
Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Weekend’ [IMDb]
Prepare yourself for this one. Once you get past the scene with the car jam that seems to go on forever you’ve still got to contend with hippies killing pigs in the woods, car wreaks that turn into flocks of sheep and an old lady’s pet skinned sheep… eeww!
‘La Grande Bouffe’ [IMDb]
A bunch of Italian guys get together with a few prositutes to eat and shag themselves to death and that’s pretty much it. A bleaker concept for a film is hard to find and I found this hard enough to watch (I think I turned off half way through). Let me know how you fare with this one.
‘V for Vendetta’ [IMDb]
From Godard to the Wachowski Brothers. Yikes! Still this has to be Children of Men’s closest modern relative (if you can think of another let me know). It’s dystopian (well to start with anyway), set in Britain after the seeming collapse of the United States and the lead actress is bald… er, just kidding about the last one. Sorry.
Lost Classics: CQ
Roman Coppola [www.romancoppolastudio.com] once made a film called CQ [iMDB]. If this is ‘ye olde ancient news’ to you then maybe skip onto the next post or something (you can leave a comment telling me what you thought of it first if you like, go on, you know you want to… maybe). It was back in 2001, although he started work on it a year before hand. I really liked it (but then my all-time favourite film is Modesty Blaise [iMDB]). It’s a typically quirky mixture of the clever and aware film making of the new wave era re-interpreted and the frothy, escapist fun of 60s Sci-Fi Pyschadelia (think Barbarella [iMDB], Danger: Diabolik [iMDB] and the aforementioned Modesty Blaise).
It also features the usual high quality Coppola siblings collaborations, this time with Graphic Artist Laurent Fetis [laurentfetis.com] who, not only supplied various marketing materials for the film, but also worked with Coppola Jr on the titles, on screen graphics and props used within the film/s themselves (the posters are a joy, here are a couple of them below). If you pick up the DVD you’ll also find documentary by Mom and Sis with loads of really cool featurettes and even a couple of ‘new wave’ style films about CQ.
