London Film Festival (Week 1)

In The Shadow Of The Moon

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a British documentary, directed by TV veteran David Sington, and telling the story of the only people to ever reach the moon -- American Apollo astronauts. Using tons of unseen footage, and new interview with the surviving Apollo crew members, the movie is an inspiring experience, starting with the beginnings of the space race, and, using Apollo 11 as a centerpiece, tells the astronauts' stories -- how they got to the moon and back, what it was like, and what they took away from it.

The film is an uplifting experience, and a lot of the space footage is awe-inspiring. The most enlightening part is getting to know the astronauts involved (you get to hear everyone's first hand recollections, with the sole exception of Neil Armstrong, who is famous for keeping to himself), who are all soft-spoken, gentle, Middle-America kind of people, extremely clever, extremely articulate, and extremely humble. Everything about them, from their achievements to the way they speak, throws you back to what America used to (and was supposed to) be in the first place; a feeling enhanced by footage of the whole world (yes, including the French) cheering and waving U.S. flags to celebrate Apollo 11's landing on the moon -- a togetherness it's hard to imagine happening again in today's world. The film's music, composed by Philip Sheppard, is the movie's other big strength: powerful, emotional, stirring, it's an impressive feat, especially considering this is Sheppard's first film score.

The directing itself is unexceptional, and you do get the feeling that the film just rides somewhat comfortably on its fantastic subject and all the fascinating men involved -- but in the end, that's enough for a terrific 90 minute doc, one which'll entertain you, educate you, elevate your spirits, and throw in a few things to ponder in the process. 8/10

Enchanted


Enchanted had a one-off screening at the festival, making it its World Premiere, two months before the film's actual release in the UK (which'll come in the middle of December). It was a big promotional event for Disney, who treated every audience member to a free magic eight ball (woo-hoo!), and made sure the movie's three main stars were present and in a good mood to get some buzz going.

Enchanted tells the story of animated princess Gisele (Amy Adams), who is about to marry animated Prince Edward (James Marsden), which'll make her Queen of Andalasia in stead of evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon). To save her throne, Narissa pushes Gisele into a magic well, that leads into an world where there are NO happy ever afters -- ours. More specifically, New York City, where Gisele meets a handsome divorce lawyer (Patrick Dempsey), who introduces her to her new environment...

It's an idea that could've been developed into a sickly-sweet film, aimed squarely at teenage girls and their parents. But Disney and director Kevin Lima (Tarzan, A Goofy Movie) instead make the concept blossom, and develop it into an extremely entertaining movie, one that even I, a 20-something male whose favorite films include The Godfather and Braveheart, thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, there's a lot of satire and irony in the film that I'm not sure kids would get, but that made all the grown-ups in the audience piss themselves, and that's not something that happens very often with movies about Disney princesses.

Most of the humor in the film comes from the culture crash between members of two very distinct worlds: the classic Disney cartoon world and our real-life world. Gisele, a gorgeous young princess, is used to improvising love duets, marrying Prince Charmings she barely met, cutting dresses out of curtains and rugs, and counting forest animals amongst her friends (and housekeeping mates). But suddenly, she finds herself in a world where no one sings, there are supposedly no happily ever afters, and people, well...date before deciding to marry.

The film is well, but not uniquely, written, but flies along at a very fun, breezy pace. The actors have a great time, and most of them are pretty much terrific -- Amy Adams is fantastic casting as the princess, and even though one might blame her for just taking on yet another pretty-ditzy role, she still delivers every inch of the way. James Marsden, who is the only person I can think of ever to get typecast as "the likeable other guy" (see the X-Men movies, Superman Returns, and The Notebook), is a revelation as Prince Edward, and overall gets the most laughs of anyone in the movie. He plays your typical overjoyful, overconfident, overperfect, overzealous storybook prince with glee and an absolute straight face, and as such pulls off the very rare feat of creating a character who is deeply likeable because of all his flaws. Patrick Dempsey is great casting too, and even though his role isn't exactly a stretch in any direction, he fills it solidly, hitting the beats and making every situation work. There's also a great animated chipmunk in there, one of the few CGI-animals-in-a-live-action-film I've ever seen work so well.

The one disappointment, really, is Susan Sarandon, who is terribly miscast as evil queen Narissa. She just tries too hard to be over-the-top and cartoonish, and as a result is simply ridiculous, working all right in the animated portions of the film, but looking ludicrous in the live-action bits -- like a thesp who takes herself very seriously, but to prove that she doesn't, takes a fun popcorn role and, hamming up way too seriously, comes out looking like a desperate middle-aged woman in a funny outfit, trying too hard to be wacky. Dempsey's to-be NYC girlfriend, played by Idina Menzel, is also somewhat annoying and miscast, but her role not being gigantic, it's not much of a bother.

There are also a few situations that the film fails to exploit fully, and even though the songs are composed by legend Alan Menken (an EIGHT-time Oscar winner) and do stick in your head, the way they are orchestrated in the couple of musical numbers ruins them. The choreographies in the musical numbers aren't very impressive either, and on a whole the numbers themselves are disappointing. The very final act is also quite disappointing (it throws the necessary CGI-packed climax at a film that never really needed it).

Nevertheless, it's a great film, really good fun, especially if you enjoy Disney films (even if you don't admit it) or if you have a little girl to take out to see it. 8/10


The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford


This is one of the films I was looking forward to the most in this year's lineup -- I'm a huge fan of Ron Hansen's book, I'm a huge fan of westerns, I'm a huge fan of the cast (Brad Pitt, Sam Shepard, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell -- how right can you go?), and the early buzz has been quite good, comparing the film to some of the 70s greats.

Let's say it straight-out: the film's far from perfect. In fact, it's far from even being the film it could be. It feels over-edited (director Andrew Dominik's spent a year in the cutting room) and somewhat without a center, shooting for a theme but not quite bringing it together as poetically and humanly as it could and should.

As a result the film is edited in fade-outs, like little vignettes, and features what felt like wall-to-wall narration from an omniscient storyteller. The idea is obvious -- to make the film feel like a yarn told by a frontier storyteller, which is the tone of Hansen's novel -- but the filmmakers sacrifice the story's power and potential on the altar of that form. Some of the important transition and human bits are left out of the story, and eventually, it definitely feels like someone is telling you a yarn, but not the most interesting one -- it's like Grandpa is reading you a story, but leaving out most of the good bits.

The movie isn't a bad one in any way -- it's a good film, but it could've been a great western, as far as I'm concerned an all-time great. It looks fantastic -- absolutely breathtaking for most shots -- the music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is brilliant (and I wish had been used more in place of the irritating narration, which just tended to tell us everything that we could already see happening on screen), the costume and set design looks deliciously authentic, and the acting is all-around top-notch. Brad Pitt is great as Jesse James, a man whose larger-than-life character slowly turns mercurial and paranoid, but there again the edit cuts out many of the important transition points in his character's arc, which has the effect of making his performance seem less impressive than it actually is (I think). The supporting cast is stunning, from Sam Rockwell (who steals every single scene he's in, which is pretty much what you pay Sam Rockwell to do) to little-known Garret Dillahunt, magistral as an awkward, frightened member of the James Gang. Zooey Deschanel makes a solid cameo near the end, and two of the bigger names in the cast (Mary-Louise Parker and Sam Shepard) take rather unnoticeable turns, but there again it could be the editing shaping their performance into something less defined than it could've been.

Surprisingly (to me), considering how much praise his performance has received so far, I thought Casey Affleck's performance was unexceptional, nothing special -- he takes the obvious path of making Robert Ford your pale-faced, awkward kid with a cracking voice and tender eyes, the victim of bullies who suddenly turns the biggest of all bullies into his own victim. But he never fully creates Ford's darker side, his ambition, his own mercurial side, all those things that, in a way, do make him like Jesse James -- only a weaker Jesse James, one without courage or pride. As a result you never quite feel James and Ford connect in the way they should: as Mary perfectly put it when we left the screening, this is essentially All About Eve, and where Pitt does (in my opinion) a fantastic Margo Channing, at first captivating and entrancing and likeable, then fearsome and paranoid, Affleck's Eve Harrington is too simple, too obvious. Jesse's his hero, he wants to be like Jesse, turns out Jesse isn't that nice a guy, so the best way to become as famous as him AND not be bullied anymore is to shoot Jesse. Only it's not that simple: in actuality, Ford was someone who went from wanting to be like Jesse, to wanting to be with Jesse, to wanting to be respected by Jesse, to wanting to BE Jesse; but since he didn't have any of the few qualities that made Jesse James such a larger-than-life character, he ended up going about it the way most of us would've, by waiting until the last possible moment and then, motivated by fear and greed rather than something undefinable, shooting his prey in the back, in his own house, while backed up by his brother.

Again, it might be the fault of the way the film is cut together (incredibly, the very important beat where Robert Ford turns from James gang member to government snitch is just plain missing from the film), but it's another reason why the piece doesn't completely click.

In the end, what could've been The Godfather or Unforgiven or Once Upon A Time In The West comes out more like The Proposition or Open Range -- a good-to-great western, but not a masterpiece. The shame is, that masterpiece is probably on the cutting room floor somewhere, already shot and performed, but probably never to be seen. 7.5/10

"Gone" World Premiere!

A quick post to let everyone know that Gone, written/directed/produced by Mary Kerr, and starring Jenny O'Reilly and Kate Wyvill has just had its World Premiere at the St. John's International Women's Film Festival in St. John's, Canada.

Worth sharing as it's the first film either Mary or I have been involved in to get to screen in front of a paying audience (yay!), and as this festival is a fairly big festival of its kind (for instance, Mary's film screened in the same program as a film by Isabella Rossellini, and other films selected for the festival include the award-winning Soft, the best short film I've seen in a film festival this year, which has also screened at the NY Short Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival), which is a long-overdue and much-deserved little tidbit of recognition for Mary and her film -- in my opinion a really cool, original short.

So, there -- a bit of bragging. :) I'll be back later on tomorrow with a bit more news, and something of a report on what we've been seeing at the London Film Festival.

Cheers,

TenCents

Turns out blogs are hard to keep up. :)

I'll try to do better in the future, but until then, here's a bit of information about how things have been going since I last posted -- the Cannes Film Festival.

I spent the first couple of months of the summer back in New York, doing some work. It was an odd few weeks -- to save some money, we took a cheap sublet in Chinatown, and my God, Chinatown is a hostile place. It's funny how, where Little Italy is like a Disneyland version of Italy, Chinatown is properly like China. It's a whole different world, and oddly not a welcoming one. There's this feeling of a mass there, of people just trudging along rather than elevating themselves (which is one of the most amazing aspects of New York usually -- people are vibrant), and a hostile fear of anything different or unusual or unexpected. And, to call a cat a cat, the hygiene's pretty dodgy too. So we worked with that for a while, and then flew back to London for a wedding. Shortly after that, Maz and I took a road trip around the Scottish Highlands, which was an amazing experience -- we started down in Jedburgh, in the Borders, and then worked our way up the East Coast, to Inverness, then along the North Coast, and then back down the West Coast, all the way to Oban, and from there drove to Glasgow, from where we flew to Barra (the ONLY place in the world where the plane lands on the beach -- natch) for a few days, then back to Glasgow, from where we drove to Peebles and back to Jedburgh.

It was a fantastic thing to do (Maz's idea, to give credit where credit is due), and at the right time, too. You develop tunnel vision, working in something like the film industry, trying to get ahead -- you forget about anything else. You wake up, look up film news, work on film stuff, go see a movie, work on some film stuff, go to bed, start again. Even when you're not doing film-related stuff, you're thinking about it, it's dancing in the back of your head, it's worrying you, it's obsessing you. Every disappointment sticks with you like a bad smell, and every success only serves to make you worry about the next step. Ultimately you just end up running in circles, more busy than productive, trying to check things off your To-Do List rather than actually growing in any way. And Maz and I had both gotten to that point in the past few months. I personally had been focusing way too hard on how to get that short film finally off the ground, on how to get onto Indiana Jones 4, on how to find a producer I respected to work for, on how to make a living, on how to find a project to produce next...And for weeks I had been trying so hard to get it all done, I stopped getting anywhere.

So the road trip was really good -- couple of weeks with virtually no Internet, no cinemas, just talking and doing things and landscapes and reading and writing. Suddenly rather than anxiously bouncing in every purposeless direction, every day narrowed down to getting into the car, going somewhere fun, and having fun -- and talking in-between. Scotland's a gorgeous country, one where the landscapes, history and activities combine to instantly make all the bad energies just seep out -- and I personally came back from it in the best headspace I've been in in months.

And unsurprisingly, since getting back, things have been going much, MUCH better. After obsessing over it every single day since January (I'm serious.), I finally got my few days' work on Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, worked on the same set as Steven Spielberg, and saw Harrison Ford in the outfit -- it cost me nearly a grand for the privilege, flying to L.A. and putting myself up and working for free, but fuck, man, it's Indiana Jones. I can't talk about it much, non-disclosure agreement oblige, but it was a great experience, and as far as I'm concerned the film looks amazing fun. After it comes out, I'll post a longer post with the bits I saw, how they did them, and what was great about them -- and hopefully Lucasfilm won't sue me then. :)

I also started doing some book reading for Walt Disney Studios, and a bit after that, I got to work on a series of commercials for H&M, as a camera trainee for one of my all-time favorite DPs, Darius Khondji. We've also gotten a film into a film festival, and I've initiated contact with a bunch of directors and writers I'd like to work with as a full-fledged producer, and things are going well.

It's funny how things aren't always necessarily about putting your mind to it, but putting your right mind to it. Trust me, the world's full of driven people, but driven people who go about things in the right way, with the right mindset, beating their own drum at their own pace... I truly think that's one of the keys of getting wherever you're going. I'm not one of those people yet, not consistently, but I'm starting to tell when I'm in that mode and when I'm not, and I can tell the (huge) difference.

I'll keep this a short post -- no point writing too much today, and then not doing it for a month, as I tend to -- but I'll be back over the weekend, asking myself several questions that have been swimming around in my head, all centered around one issue: why is the film industry so keen on killing itself?