Film – Page 11 – The Daily Opinion

Will the Hunger Games Premiere Match the Hype?

The Hunger Games Premiere is hitting cinemas on the 23rd of this month, and with the huge success of the books the question on everyone’s minds is, Will it live up to expectations?

So big are the books that aside from spending 160 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List they have sold in excess of 23 million copies in America alone. The Hunger Games are those rare books that, like Twilight and Harry Potter, permeate into society’s conscious mind and rest there until Hollywood decides to spin a profit with films.

While for the legions of fans that the Young Adult trilogy has racked up will consider the film a no-brainer, others have noticed that the storyline seems to have taken influence from various other stories – Stephen King’s The Running Man and Long Walk spring to mind, with the former taking place in the future where the government is in full control of what is seen and heard in the media, and the top entertainment being a reality gameshow where people have to outrun killers while the public place bets; the latter is a national sporting event for 100 teenage boys to embark on an treacherous walk in the author’s vision of a totalitarian USA, and if they break certain rules or receive three verbal warnings (walking under 4mph is one violation) they are shot. Then there’s Battle Royale, a story where the Japanese government captures a year-9 class and, under the Battle Royale Act, forces them to kill each other. Each of these stories has something that the Hunger Games seems to have borrowed, but the author, Suzanne Collins, insists she got the idea by flicking between real-life war coverage and a reality TV show. However they came to be, these books were released in a saturated genre and became huge sellers, so it’s the film to be concerned with now.

While there are well-known people in the first film to be released, such as Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland, they will be playing important but not primary characters. The main characters are being portrayed by unknowns, so is this a false move or a touch of genius? The Hunger Games will undoubtedly have no trouble at the box office regardless of who is starring in it, and everyone has expectations and opinions of actors that are already known. By going with yet-to-be-big actors, the cast can work solely on making the film as good as possible, rather than wondering how each actor’s fans will react, but fans could have concerns that unseasoned actors may not be up to the task – but at least moviegoers can be grateful that Kristen Stewart won’t be in yet another film. Instead, the Hunger Games will feature Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss and Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark. How well they will do can be decided in less than 2 weeks, and it’s a safe bet that if they do a bad job, there are millions of people who will be more than happy to say as much.

If you’ve already seen the Hunger Games trailer and can’t wait for the big release, we have some behind-the-scenes footage of the upcoming Hunger Games film below:

What are your expectations of the film? Let us know in the comments below.

The Oscars – Playing it safe?

At the end of another ‘successful’ Oscar evening, the awards season came to a glorious close (not including the much maligned Razzie Awards) and as LAX was swamped with photographers trying to get a coveted snap of the A-listers as they made their way home after a gruelling couple of months, Hollywood was back to business as normal.

It was great to see Billy Crystal return to host his ninth Academy Awards ceremony, particularly after the inexplicably poor showing of Anne Hathaway and James Franco last year, and though it was safe and predictable, it was good fun, everyone seemed to be in spirited moods, and there was nothing particularly controversial to note; all in all, the ceremony seemed to run just as expected – and perhaps there lies the problem.

Personally, I can’t begrudge The Artist and Hugo walking away with 5 awards apiece, as I believe they were fully deserving for the most part. Yes, both had received an insane amount of hype in the build up, and had collected the prestigious gongs at earlier awards shows such as the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, and no one really expected any other winners in the Best Picture category. Both films depicted a certain nostalgia for a golden era of Hollywood, and a severe love for the movie world. One thing these ceremonies do well is how they drill us all with the fact that we’re here to celebrate film, and that film is a wonderfully magic invention which we would be nowhere without. That’s great an’ all, but then the problem starts to arise; how much longer can they get away with that?

We understand that film is magical, and that it’s a huge part of many peoples’ lives, but they won’t improve their dwindling ratings by showcasing this year in year out, and this was clearly in the back of their minds, prompting a rather lame Cirque Du Soleil skit halfway through Sunday’s main event. I’m sure it’s beautiful and stunning to watch in its entirety, but I didn’t see its strained relevancy to the movies – it seems Hollywood may have run out of ideas.

The winners themselves were nothing out of the ordinary; I myself predicted 9/10 of the ‘bigger’ awards – my 100% record tarnished by the one pleasant surprise of the evening landing in the form of Woody Allen’s Best Original Screenplay triumph for Midnight In Paris – and even Meryl Streep, winning her 3^rd Oscar, seemed to recognise this apparent ignorance of newer quality in her acceptance speech by announcing that she could hear the cacophony of sighs as she picked up the gong again. I know she’s gone a ridiculously long time without winning an Oscar, but I do believe these awards should be used to promote the rising talent in Hollywood, rather than ‘making up’ for lost years (no disrespect to Streep, a wonderful actress).

Then we come to the movies actually nominated for the bigger awards. This ‘phenomenon’ has become known as ‘Oscar-bait’ over the years and can usually indicate what movies are ripe for nomination. I myself don’t usually get that invested in this type of speech, as I feel the last 10 years have featured a vast range of movie winners from The Hurt Locker to The King’s Speech and No Country For Old Men to The Lord Of The Ring trilogy. However this year seemed to be plugging away at that stereotype, and truly baffled with some of its picks (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, War Horse) whilst films like hyper-stylized and violent Drive were snubbed completely for safer options.

Montage after montage, forced celebrity skit after skit, teary-eyed monologue after monologue, the 84^th Academy Awards was no stretch of the imagination. Hollywood seemed to have given up trying to put on a show which really captivated their audience, but stuck with the old and safe route. The ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ rule may be applied in this situation, but what good is it really doing for Hollywood’s reputation? Is the continued celebration of films that depict a past era really doing anything but reminding us that the best days are behind it? The continued stance against Sci-Fi and Action films could possibly be tested next year following the release of high-profile films such as Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. When you think of each title, you will immediately dismiss its Oscar chances, but ask yourself ‘Why?’ Why couldn’t The Avengers win a Best Picture award, or at least get a nod? Joss Whedon is a talented director, who has a knack for writing good, intriguing stories and characters, so will the film be any better or worse than The Artist?

It doesn’t matter now, of course, and we shall see in due time what happens; however, I believe the Academy needs to start considering a larger range of movies to keep the current trends in cinema popular. The population of the Academy voters is primarily made up of elderly white men, which has led to a few accusations of prejudice being thrown around. The snub of The Social Network and David Fincher last year may highlight this as well; The King’s Speech was a safe option, and I don’t think anyone was too surprised to see it go home as the winner, whilst the slightly superior and modern tale of Facebook, which resonated deeply in today’s society, was overlooked.

Whilst the future of cinema remains as exciting as ever and the Academy Award can still promote a sense of heightened excitement in film buffs worldwide, it is, however, becoming more and more alienating to those who wish to be entertained. People don’t want to see one film, or one actor, miles ahead of the rest. They want to know that this, the most prestigious film award in the world, can go to any one of the five nominees, and that it’ll be as big a shock to them as it will be to those in the theatre. Where it will begin, I don’t know, but for now some serious thinking will be going on behind those golden doors, and hopefully next year, we’ll all be in for some rather delayed entertainment and surprise.

Film Review – “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”

Collaborating for a third time were star Humphrey Bogart and writer/director John Huston in this 1948 classic. They would go on to make a total of six movies together including The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen and all I can say to that is – like eggs and bacon, some partnerships were just meant to be!

Some films thrill us with their stunning visuals and intricate plots that weave and wend through a patchwork of location changes and character allegiances; some make us laugh from witty dialogue or weep from a deep emotional connection but then others simply lay bare, in all its divine glory or unholy horror, the spirit of humankind.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has one of the seven deadly sins at its core but in spite of its heavy theme, it remains surprisingly entertaining. That’s what a great writer can achieve and Huston was rewarded with the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for his troubles. He also took home the Award for Best Director and just to keep things in the family, his father (Walter Huston) took home the statue for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1920s Mexico, American drifter Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and fellow vagrant Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), find themselves begging for food in the small town of Tampico because they’ve been cheated out of several days wages by an unscrupulous contractor. In a frowsy boarding house, they meet grizzly old-timer Howard (Walter Huston) who captivates them with his tales of gold prospecting and it doesn’t take long before their heads are filled with dreams of striking it rich in the Sierra Madre mountains. After Dobbs and Curtin allow their fists to persuade the swindling contractor to cough up what he owes them, they purchase prospecting equipment and together with Howard, they head up into the hills in search of their fortune.

Howard, the old-timer has been on this fortune trail before and is all too aware of the perils they face. He explains about the bandits and the inhospitable elements and he also warns about the danger they present to each other. “I know what gold does to men’s souls”, he says. It’s clear from the outset, when Dobbs promises that everything will work out dandy and that any gold they find will be split three ways, that Howard is the least convinced of the three.

With Howard’s knowledge of the mountain together with his mining know-how, they begin to extract their gold. The work is filthy and hard but their labours continue and the gold piles up. Greed soon comes into camp though and Dobbs becomes increasingly distrustful of his partners to the point of being terrified they will kill him. Sleep becomes something all three attempt to avoid in order to stay alive but then a fourth American, James Cody appears on the scene thereby setting up a moral debate regarding the sharing out of the gold. Paranoia increases, bandits turn up, guns are fired and the ending is a bitter irony and a lesson to be learned.

This film is a far cry from the cool sophistication of Bogart’s earlier Huston-directed efforts and in this he’s about as charming as a scorpion in your lunchbox but all in all, it’s a cracker of a movie. Walter Huston takes the honour of finest performance though and indeed, it was rumoured that he was asked by the director (his son) to tone down his performance so as not to steal the movie from Bogart. It is noted for being one of the first Hollywood films to be shot almost entirely on location outside the U.S and is quite faithful to B. Traven’s novel of the same name on which it is based.

If you haven’t seen it yet, lucky you. Go rent it or better still, buy it because you’ll want to see it more than once for sure. It’s a title that appears in numerous top 100 polls, it includes an iconic quote about “stinking badges” and best of all, it’s devoid of any visual flab so common in mediocre moviemaking. It’s bare boned, gritty and powerful; cinematic storytelling at its very best.

Film Review: “Carnage”

Carnage is perhaps a hyperbole. The implied connotations may give you different expectations of this movie, and not all of them will be met. It’s remarkable how so much damage can be inflicted through mere words, and this film explores that, accompanied by a quartet of bitingly sharp performances from its leads.

Though the movie takes place in a Manhattan apartment, it was in actual fact filmed in Paris, due to Roman Polanski’s inability to step foot in the USA. This has never prevented him from working with the best actors available, and making some of the greatest films of the last 50 years. Though his magnum opus remains Chinatown, made almost 40 years ago now, his work is as relevant today as it was back then.

The movie is a screen adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play ‘God Of Carnage’. This is evident in the way Polanksi has bizarrely made use of space and time. With the exception of the opening and closing credits, the movie doesn’t stray from the apartment of Mr and Mrs Longstreet (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster). Reluctantly joining them is upper-class couple, Mr and Mrs Cowan (Christophe Waltz and Kate Winslet). The reason for their occupying the same space is their children. Zachary, belonging to the Cowan’s, has smashed Ethan, belong to the Longstreet’s, around the face with a stick. The conversation flows politely in its early exchanges, a brief moment of silence here and there, or whenever Alan (Waltz) is ‘forced’ to remove himself and answer his incessantly-ringing cellphone.

The power here is how it develops. We open with a shady state of equilibrium; a state that has to smoothly cross into the realms of the eponymous carnage. This is orchestrated with masterful work from Polanski, giving his actors just that little bit extra to work with, deftly timing each event that takes place to occur precisely when it needs to. The running time of the movie is just over an hour, as is the on-screen narrative.

It’s a character study of considerable depth; at first, each of them displays signs of accustomed social conventions. Nancy (Winslet) feels inclined to enquire about the apartment she finds herself in, as well as the different displays of culture which Penelope (Foster) has laid out, primarily on her luxurious coffee table. Alan and Michael (C. Reilly) discuss their jobs, picking apart each other’s livelihood through polite, yet slightly strained dialogue, which is to lead someplace darker.

Bit by bit, shot by shot, Polanksi manipulates happenings to his will, sparks begin to fly, and tempers begin to flare. Put together by their children’s childish behaviour, the four parents exhibit their own infantine dispositions by hurling verbal put-downs at each other. They belittle, they snarl, they vomit, they drink, they scoff, they drink more, they sob, they turn on their own spouses, they drink even more, they smoke. It doesn’t ever reach what I would call ‘carnage’, but it certainly inhabits a space nearby.

As you’d expect, the script is solid enough to keep an audience satisfied for 70minutes, but the four actors, Winslet and Foster in particular, exude unmatched ability in being able to distort themselves over and over again, finely treading, but never crossing, the line between radical depiction and parody. They are all cynics, expecting next to nothing from their opponents; they won’t budge on their opinions, and a considerable amount of care is put into the way they act within the different circumstances Polanksi throws their way. It’s a refreshingly honest piece of work, but not funny enough to be considered comedy. It’s a movie worth watching, but don’t expect to be enlightened, amused, or entertained. This is a movie about character; it’s peculiar and comes off with an odd taste, but it’s impeccably acted, and masterfully directed.

Film Review: “The Woman In Black”

The Woman In Black has received a lot of attention since its announcement, partly due to it being a well-known story from its book and stage production, and partly because all eyes are on Daniel Radcliffe.

The film is a big departure from Daniel, who will forever be known as Harry Potter, no matter how illustrious his career goes on to be. Focusing on the actor for a moment, there can be little criticism of his performance. From his appearance to his character portrayal, he performed wonderfully. The drawback to casting Radcliffe however was not in his performance, but that the public has known him for such a long time as a young person, thanks to Harry Potter, that it’s hard to shake that from your mind when watching The Woman In Black. Which means that it’s difficult to disengage the actor from his previous roles to view him objectively in this film. Put another way, we feel like we know Radcliffe, and that offers a sense of comfort when watching him perform in a horror film – and it removes quite a large element of the suspense from the film because we’re just too comfortable with the lead actor as someone not to feel scared by. And because the film is almost voyeuristic in that you feel as though you are accompanying Radcliffe on his journey, there is a peculiar sense of protection throughout.

All that could be overlooked and indeed overcome if the writing was stellar, but sadly it wasn’t. With a 12A certificate The Woman In Black was never going to be a terrifying, white-knuckle ride that kept viewers on the edge of their seat. It gets off to a slow start, where we learn of Radcliffe’s sad personal problems before he embarks on a journey from London to England’s North East as part of his job as a lawyer. His task is to get the paperwork of a deceased widow in order so her house can be sold off. Once we see the house, the film starts to rely too heavily on tired horror cliches to shock an audience that is desensitised to such attempts. Scares and moments of suspense were thin on the ground, but they were almost entirely revoked thanks to obvious camera movements (who doesn’t expect something to happen when the actor is to one side of the screen while what’s behind him is in full view, or when there’s a close-up and the camera then pulls back?) or creepy music acting as a big neon sign warning of an impending moment for which to prepare. For a widely publicised film with a huge star in the lead role, not to mention the film’s history as a play and a book, there could and should have been more substance. With such a vast back-catalogue of haunted house films and stories from which to draw on, The Woman In Black could have been one of the scariest films to be released, but instead it found itself with an identity crisis, stuck in no-man’s land somewhere between horror and drama, not quite knowing where to lay its loyalties and eventually deciding on neither. You know you should be scared, but are left wondering why you weren’t. And for a 90-minute film, you’re also left wondering why it took so long for the story to get going. A slow start would be fine had it been a longer film, or picked up to a flurry of activity that left viewers hiding behind their hands from the ceaseless onslaught of scares and suspense, but instead when the lights come on there’s nothing to think but how anti-climatic it transpired to be. Throughout the film, rather than gasps and screams, the most common reaction from the audience was laughter – not the reaction horror filmmakers tend to go for, and a rather clear indication of how scary this film turned out to be.

Perhaps it was the inclusion of Radcliffe that encouraged the writers to keep the film tame – with his fan base predominately comprised of the younger members of society, and his reputation mostly as a child star, it may have been considered too big a leap to enter a bonafide, adult horror film, and instead a deliberate attempt was made to achieve a 12A rating. It’s pure speculation, but if it’s true, it was a mistake. A film like The Woman In Black deserves a genuinely terrifying script with a more experienced director behind the camera to ensure that big scares occur and when they do, they aren’t pre-empted by camera placement or music. The success of the Paranormal Activity trilogy should be a lesson to all horror filmmakers: less is more. An audience is more scared when something happens out of the blue, with nothing to prepare them for the scare; and never fail to make the final thirty minutes a hive of scares. The Woman In Black deserved that treatment, but it didn’t get it.

Rating: 2/5

Film Review: “Les Diaboliques”, a Must-See Movie

We all have films we could watch over and over for the way they delight us and we’ve probably all seen a few that have required more than one viewing to fully appreciate but what about a film that enthralled us to such an extent that we wish we could have our memories erased just to see it again for the first time?

That’s how I feel about Les Diaboliques. God, how I envy anyone who is about to sit down and watch that for the first time!

If your exploration into French cinema stops with Amelie then you are indeed a lucky person. And I say lucky not because you’ve saved yourself time but because you have so much to discover. For among the many fine films to come out of France, which is after all where the motion picture was born, there is this perfect example of horror come noir come thriller.

Released in 1955, it was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot from a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. It’s set in a slightly iffy boarding school run by the truly despicable Michel Delassalle (played by Paul Meurisse) although the school is owned by his frail wife, Christina (Vera Clouzot, who happens to be the real-life wife of the director) who also teaches there. Michel is loathed by his colleagues as well as his pupils and being the kind of guy he is, he’s also messing around with another teacher called Nicole (Simone Signoret) but rather than the fancy woman and the wife despising each other, they enjoy a friendship of sorts based on the fact that they both hate Michel because of his abusive behaviour towards them. Nicole, being stronger in character than Christina, finally has enough of Michel and concocts a plan to do away with him thereby freeing them both from his tyrannical grip. Christina is reluctant at first to go so far as murder her husband but Michel pushes her buttons once too often and she later agrees to help Nicole. Under false pretences, they lure him away to a quiet location and after a brief struggle…

And I shall reveal no more because what ensues has to be some of the most masterful suspense ever put onto film and if you watch it with the lights out and the heating off, you’ll probably feel like you’re there. It’s shot in black and white, which adds austerity to its already bleak atmosphere and the tension builds steadily right to the very end. The acting is spot on – particularly Signoret, who mesmerises as the cheesed-off mistress and many little details caught by the director will send shivers of paranoia down your spine. The film ends with an instruction to the audience to not reveal the outcome and you would truly be depriving your friends of a cinematic treat if you did.

It’s hard to see how Hitchcock, who reportedly missed out on securing the films rights to the novel by mere hours, could have done any more to have us gripping our seats in fear. A true masterpiece and worthy of its inclusion in numerous lists of greatest films.

It was remade for a modern audience by Hollywood in 1996 with Sharon Stone playing the role of Nicole. It was also given a different ending and although I haven’t seen that version, I’ve read the reviews. They read as I expected.

Go on, treat yourself to the original French version and make me green! You won’t be disappointed. Just don’t tell your friends how it ends.