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Sunday, 15 March 2009
NEW "FOLLOWER" FEATURE
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WATCH WATCHMEN
"Who watches the Watchmen? " ask the concerned citizens of the USA during the film. Anyone who enjoys bringing their brain into the auditorium instead of leaving it by the popcorn counter would be my reply.
If you go to see this film expecting Spiderman teen-angst, Superman heroics or Batman pseudo-Freudian trauma, then this is not the movie for you. However if you want a film that stimulates the mind as well as the senses I recommend it without reservation.
It's pointless giving you a synopsis of the film - you can find this at IMDB or in Total Film or Empire magazines and their sister sites. I can only tell you my personal response and that was to be gripped by an intelligent storyline and not feel that the two and half hours of my life I had invested in this movie had been wasted. Also, I wanted to watch it again.
Whether seeing Watchmen on an IMAX screen contributed to such a positive experience will remain a matter of conjecture until I see it on a standard screen or on Blu-Ray in 6 months time. It is a film that's made for IMAX: epic and bold, visually stunning and riveted together by a savvy, intelligent script. The casting is crucial here: not one real-headlining, big-batter star but highly skilled and accomplished ensemble. Fine actors all. Most of them are familiar but would not instantly spring to mind to be of blockbuster, high budget calibre. Of course whether this is a blockbuster is debatable. The audience is limited in terms of box-office as it received an 18 certificate in the UK. Is this reasonable? Probably.
Arguably it is no more extreme than Zack Snyder's two earlier outings: Dawn of the Dead and the choreographed violence of 300 but where it oversteps the mark in the censors' eyes has to be two graphic scenes involving firstly an attempted rape and one in which a pregnant woman is shot dead. Again this is a film with very adult themes, deeply political and visceral. This is not to say that it is not entertaining - it has a deep sense of irony and dark humour which is refreshing and characters who are not insular, brooding navel searchers which I find so irritating about the glut of Marvel manifestations appearing on our screens.
Special mention to the opening credits which are stunning and a lesson in how to provide the audience with back-story with brevity and without the use of text or the dreaded voice over. For a moment I thought I was watching a Saul Bass sequence such was its refinement and story-telling energy that complemented the narrative moving it forward without one wasted shot.
The theme of anti-hero is timely and it is sobering to remember that this "unfilmable" film has taken nearly twenty years to be realised going through a sway of screen-writers, directors and
actors penciled in for the parts including Arnold Schwarzenegger. The creator of the graphic novel Alan Moore told Terry Gilliam as he (Gilliam) gave up on the project that the "War and Peace" of graphic novels was impossible to film as this art-form was impossible to emulate in terms of film and literature. Even if the film must undoubtedly be Watchmen-Lite, the spirit and the themes within the original novel are realised and all credit to the screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse in achieving this.
As for the IMAX. I pity anybody who sits on the first six rows. The cinema announcer welcomed us to the evening's screening and gave advice on what to do if anyone should feel dizziness or nausea or perhaps a combination of the two. I can't see how anybody positioned so close to the front can gain a positive experience of the screen. I think you would need the eyes positioned like a bullfrog or a chameleon to benefit from such proximity.
Ticket prices were £9.00 and £10.00 for the central VIP seats. The seats are comfortable with plenty of leg-room. One issue with The Printworks cinema I attended: the escalators are inadequate for the volume of people exiting the cinema at the end of the performance especially as the screen is housed at the top floor. This leads to a bottle-neck and a delay when leaving and potential crushing if other screens are exiting at the same time.
Special mention to the opening credits which are stunning and a lesson in how to provide the audience with back-story with brevity and without the use of text or the dreaded voice over. For a moment I thought I was watching a Saul Bass sequence such was its refinement and story-telling energy that complemented the narrative moving it forward without one wasted shot.
The theme of anti-hero is timely and it is sobering to remember that this "unfilmable" film has taken nearly twenty years to be realised going through a sway of screen-writers, directors and
actors penciled in for the parts including Arnold Schwarzenegger. The creator of the graphic novel Alan Moore told Terry Gilliam as he (Gilliam) gave up on the project that the "War and Peace" of graphic novels was impossible to film as this art-form was impossible to emulate in terms of film and literature. Even if the film must undoubtedly be Watchmen-Lite, the spirit and the themes within the original novel are realised and all credit to the screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse in achieving this.
As for the IMAX. I pity anybody who sits on the first six rows. The cinema announcer welcomed us to the evening's screening and gave advice on what to do if anyone should feel dizziness or nausea or perhaps a combination of the two. I can't see how anybody positioned so close to the front can gain a positive experience of the screen. I think you would need the eyes positioned like a bullfrog or a chameleon to benefit from such proximity.
Ticket prices were £9.00 and £10.00 for the central VIP seats. The seats are comfortable with plenty of leg-room. One issue with The Printworks cinema I attended: the escalators are inadequate for the volume of people exiting the cinema at the end of the performance especially as the screen is housed at the top floor. This leads to a bottle-neck and a delay when leaving and potential crushing if other screens are exiting at the same time.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
FILM STUDIES: WATCHMEN
Here's the trailer:
Sunday, 8 March 2009
AT LAST - WISE BLOOD OUT ON DVD
At last it's happened, the long wait in the wilderness is over. John Huston's satirical masterpiece Wise Blood has finally been released on DVD.
No longer will I and other admirers of this great film have to scour the Internet in search of grainy and truncated versions and suffer eye-strain and loss of patience and the feed dies or freezes.
Restored to its former glory, the DVD also features interviews with the main cast including Brad Dourif who gives the best performance of his life. Despite the obvious talent of Dourif, he, like the film, has been lost in the wilderness some thirty years since its release in 1979. Despite a scattering of roles in David Lynch films, an Oscar nomination for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and a memorable slot on the X-Files, his appearances have been too infrequent, his talent little utilised.
That is until now. He has appeared recently in Werner Herzog's Wild Blue Yonder and is pencilled in for two more of the great German director's forthcoming features. About time too.
I'll let you into a secret. I'm a sucker for any story from the Deep South. I think it all began when I read William Faulkner in my teens, first his short stories and then the novels including Absalom, Absalom and the Sound and the Fury. The South is not a place it is more a state of mind. A primeval landscape peopled by every eccentric imaginable and stories that are deeply Gothic and hysterical. Honour sits squarely with racism, old world values, meanness and generosity, misguided loyalty, honour and red-neck justice all mix like a Bourbon mash with a dash of sourness at losing the American Civil War. The American South is a heady mixture of the righteous and the venal at one and the same time, in one and the same person...
Wise Blood has eccentrics a plenty and some. A seemingly blind preacher, a belief that the motor car is a means of salvation above and beyond religion itself and the establishment of the "Church of Christ Without Christ". Based on Flannery O'Connor's debut novel, Huston's film is true to the writer's spirit. Much of her peerless dialogue is lifted straight from the page. Huston by this time was box-office poison and living the life of a recluse in Mexico. He had been ill for some time and was uninsurable. The film was not financed in America but relied on German investment in order for it to be made on a modest budget.
Huston was an inspired choice of director and even has a cameo role as a fire-breathing preacher shown in flashback. Look out also for Harry Dean Stanton as preacher Asa Hawks and his daughter Sabbath (Amy Wright). All perfectly cast in this all too long-awaited film release.
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Yes, I've just "pimped-up" the site thanks to the PimpMyNews team. What does this mean you ask and what in Sam Hill is PimpMyNews? Basically it means that you can have all the news from my blog read to you and feeds to your phone, MP3 player or your laptop/PC! Great for the drive or ride to work or if you're an audio type learner! Excellent too for visually impaired visitors to this site.
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Just click on the icons around my site to listen to the blogs on a dedicated player or to download them for later consumption. Alternatively you can have them delivered daily to your phone or computer via a feed.
For more details visit the PimpMyNews site where you can also download feeds from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone magazine and other great sites that include the famous to the downright quirky! Please down categorise my site although it has been placed in "Entertainment - other entertainment"! This leads me searching for my fire-eating and juggling gear - I always did want to run away and join a circus!
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
FILM STUDIES: QUIZ
This is a photograph from the Kitchen in Alcatraz prison, San Francisco. Can you think of a purpose for this device? First correct answer before Friday wins an Alien Key Ring! No expense spared as usual!
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