Film Is A Harsh Mistress

There are a few things we know about fame. One – it’s very fickle. Two – it doesn’t bring happiness (apparently). Three – it’s a commodity that is cherished by individuals, but often claimed by society at large. In New Zealand, we even have an idiom for that notion: “World Famous In New Zealand”. I have to admit, as a foreigner, I don’t quite know what that actually means. But I think it’s a perspective comparison on New Zealand’s position on the ‘world stage’ (bottom end of the world, remote island nation, very young country, quaint post-colonial English culture etc) versus the success that people from New Zealand are capable of creating that reaches back to the globe. Sort of a cultural “neener-neener-neener-we-can-be-awesome-too”.

We have a lot of famous New Zealanders who have made an impact in film and television of the world. Apart from Sir Peter Jackson, our biggest name in popular media today, we also have Andrew Adamson (director of Shrek and the first two Narnia films), Karl Urban, Cliff Curtis, Richard O’Brien (creator of the Rocky Horror Show), Melanie Lynsky, Marton Csokas, Jermaine Clement, Rhys Darby, Lee Tamahori (director of Once Were Warrior and the James Bond film Die Another Day), Simone Kessell (starred Underbelly and the sci-fi show Terra Nova), Anna Hutchinson (Go Girls star who is appearing in Joss Whedon’s cult horror Cabin In The Woods) and Martin Henderson.  We even have a few NZ-born people whom we’ve disowned to their current countries of residence such as mega-star Russell Crowe and singer Keith Urban and, of course, a whole host of non-New Zealand-born talent who’ve made a name for themselves while living on our shores like Sam Neill (from the UK), Craig Parker (born in Fiji), Roger Donaldson (Australian), Anna Paquin (Canadian), Daniel Gillies (also Canadian) and even our ‘own’ Bruno Lawrence (also from the UK).

Given our country’s tendency to focus on those who’ve ‘made it big’ across the seas, I got to thinking: what about all the success stories of New-Zealand-born individuals that we don’t know about? The ones who perhaps left our country before the formative years of their careers and then made a name for themselves in other parts of the world? The ones who we don’t celebrate (whether or not it is appropriate to do so)? I knew of a few off-hand, but digging deeper I came across a few surprises. This blog post is about those who have made it big, but perhaps you don’t know of their humble Kiwi beginnings.

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If you haven’t had the chance to check out the new Indonesian martial arts sensation (dubbed by many as the greatest action movie made in the last ten years) – The Raid – then you owe it to yourself to get your ass out to the cinemas now and see this low budget (a meager $2 million USD – cheaper than many New Zealand films), festival and theatrical sensation (be sure to see our write-up, trailer and NZ session times on the main Flicks site).

In acknowledgement of this breath of fresh air at our multiplex, I figured I should – as all film bloggers must and have already done by tradition – write the very unoriginal article on my favourite martial arts movies and/or fight sequences. For my part, I’m going with actual fights rather than entire films and, along the way, we’ll take a quick slide into the cinematic tradition and history of chop-sockey-cinema. So get yourself into a good horse-stance (feet shoulder length apart, pelvis out, shoulders back), pour some green tea and let’s get stuck in!

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The words that have erupted from the tongues of many industry watchers and workers over the last few months have been “marketing”, “marketing” and “marketing. Hardly surprising since the biggest news on the high-end of the world of movie-making has been the supposed failure of Disney’s John Carter, a movie for which (regardless of its strengths and weaknesses in terms of finding its audience) was let down by what appears to be a research and marketing fiasco. Blogger Claude Brodesser-Akner recently put his spin on the John Carter debacle with this fascinating article regarding what went on behind-the-scenes as Disney attempted to find a way to sell a film which they had relinquished so much control over to the movie’s director (which will probably never happen ever again at that studio). And of course, in case you missed it, there was my own take on the debacle posted last week which you may read here.

Compare that with the marketing for one of the most highly anticipated movies of this year (not withstanding Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises): Ridley Scott’s Prometheus presents the world with a barrage of almost nonsensical, but tantalizing images, sounds and story snippets that has very successfully whetted the audience’s appetite for the director’s return to the cinematic genre that he helped shape thirty years ago. And while I totally concede that this is mostly a giddy, fanboy-ish excuse to revel in the hype of the film, in anticipation of its release on June 8, I think it’s worth us taking a step back to admire the fascinating presentation of the film’s marketing campaign and how it draws its target market in for the dark, wet, cold, screaming kill.

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[Ed's note: Click here for Flicks' review on John Carter]

I don’t really like the idea of doing ‘film reviews’ of in-release films in a blog like this, but this week I have to make an exception with a little film currently doing the rounds called John Carter.

Perhaps you have heard of it?

For good and bad, John Carter is all that Los Angeles and the film world is talking about this week – not because of the merits of the film per say, but rather the fact that it’s currently touted as an unmitigated disaster for the Walt Disney Company who blew an epic $350 million USD on what has become, ostensibly, as a tepid family film that is set to shake nobody’s tree. The close post-mortem on the film for many in the industry reveals a fascinating insight into the processes of blockbuster generation and the film business, especially when gambling with a project so vast and outrageously expensive that it threatens the financial stability of a major corporation.

If nothing at all, I thought this could be an chance to do a comprehensive assessment of a film both from the perspective of historical context, number-crunching analysis (provided by other publications) and an aesthetic review to use for comparison. Here-in, we join the party and take a look at what may have went wrong with Disney’s John Carter.

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Ah, the movies.

Like everything that’s bad for you, sometimes one just isn’t enough.

The culture of DOUBLE and TRIPLE FEATURES has pretty much fallen out of the mainstream, but the terminology still remains to this day and is revived at many repertoire and cult cinemas around the world. In fact, most of us have done double or triple features, right in our own living rooms, because there is something so ‘more-ish’ about films that you just can’t help yourself. Even your local video store always offers you a 2-for-1 deal, even if its an overnight rental, which says a lot about their expectations on your viewing habits.

In this blog post, I’m going to talk a little about some of my own personal, favourite, double and triple feature ideas. These aren’t just excuses to watch a bunch of films together, but rather films that may have never thought about watching together or never suspected actually compliment or feed into each other. Films which, when viewed back-to-back, may give you some pretty interesting (and strange) insights. And, ultimately, films that work together to create a cohesive experience for the viewer, often in unexpected ways.

Right, less talk and more action. Let’s dive in!

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And so another year passes and we find ourselves knee-deep in the mire of low expectations as a we look forward to another 12 months of sensory assault by the movie industry, clamoring for a share of your hard-earned cash in exchange for distraction, entertainment and (sometimes) insight.

Bleak? Probably. If you’ve been following my blog so far then you’re aware that I don’t hold back in my opinions on where the industry has gone right and wrong in terms of meeting audience expectations. And while I can often explain away my in-built pessimism by claiming that I’m just a humble realist, supported by my limited experience and knowledge of working in the film industry…I can’t get away with being such a downer all the time.  Because the truth of the matter is that, despite the bad movies, brain-fodder and soul-slashing craputainment that we may be in for in 2012, movies are still cool. After all I wouldn’t be working in the industry if they weren’t. And being a realist is boring when there’s so much potential for what’s going on at the moment in the movies.  There’s always a light of hope at the end of the tunnel and so I thought I’d start the year on the positive foot and remind ourselves why film is still exciting, fun, interesting and worth spending 90+ minutes of our lifespan on them.

In short, this is my in-depth take on my most anticipated films of 2012.

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A colourist perfects a shot in his colour-suite.

Movies are illusions from start to finish.  Everyone (we hope) knows this.  Even documentaries present a perspective on reality, not reality in of itself.  Movies are, at best, reality augmented and filtered through the pores of perspective and then reconstructed on the scaffolding of artistic interpretation. Time, place, performance, sound, picture, all are nothing more than fabricated mirages carved to resemble reality in an attempt to reflect some aspect of it.  One of the things that many people don’t realize is part of the illusion is colour and a film’s control over it. I’m not talking about the use of colour in the wardrobe or a set or as a design aesthetic, I’m talking about how colour that is photographed is then bent to the will of the filmmaker and their needs.

How this is achieved is through a process known, within the industry, as ‘colour correction’ or ‘colour grading’. Essentially a ‘Photoshop for film’, colour-grading is the manipulation of colour values in an image to achieve a certain look, feel or style that helps accentuate the emotional and visual content of a movie. Usually misunderstood and often unacknowledged, grading is one of the most vital components of modern filmmaking.  Here-in, we take a short stroll through the basics of the artform.

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Martin Luther King Jr delivers his "I Have A Dream" address in Washington D.C.

In the course of human existence and that experiential medium that we call “life”, there are few things that people could argue ennoble our species more than the power of speech…or more precisely the power to give damn great speeches. History is seemingly anchored to orbit around moments when one human being got their wits together, took a deep breath and (reputedly) exhaled words, syntax, grammar and nuance in such a combination of obscene eloquence that the world seemed to stop for a minute and humanity collectively listened. From Cicero to Elizabeth I, Demosthenes to Churchill or Jefferson to JFK, the ability to concisely deliver a well-thought out and evocative speech has not only helped shape history, but also ingrain our culture with the importance of being able to communicate an idea with meaningful context and emotional firepower. Gandhi, Hitler, Twain, Cromwell and Ben Franklin are some of the people who are reknown not only for their deeds, but for their power to hold sway over millions of people through their words.

Speech is also a vital component for a majority percentage of movies and great speeches themselves are tinged with the essence of what makes their real-world counterparts so memorable. But movie speeches are so much more: attenuated to such perfection by the collision of sound and imagery, uplifting music and the tears in the audience’s eyes, to the point where the art-form of the great movie speech stirs within us all something not quite attainable, but yet whole-heartedly true that we take these moments with us forever.

This is what makes epic movie speeches so great and why I want to revisit some (kick up your heels and sit back, this one’s got lots of lovely video clips to enjoy).

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