Tag: film

My Expectations of ‘Skyfall’

Right, so tomorrow I am going to see the new James Bond movie, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judy Dench and Ben Wishaw. It has garnished very good reviews so far but I have not read any of them. With this movie, I am not leaving anything to chance! I need to go in clear-minded and as neutral as I can be. I have read some interviews here and there but for some reason, I had no desire to know more than the snippets of information I got from the trailer and the few words exchanged by Mendes and Empire magazine. The story goes thus: Bond is accidentally shot by Naomi Harris on the roof of a train, he fakes his death to drink a lot and play with scorpions and Judy Dench has to write his eulogy. Then out of the blue, MI6 is compromised, bombed and sensitive information on all agents is leaked on YouTube. The man who did so is called Silva and has a major grudge against M, something Bond does not like so he returns to England to save the day. However he really looks old and weak. Is he a match for the evil Silva and is he brainwashed by M? What’s Skyfall? Who is Silva? Why is Q using realistic technology? Hmmmm…the questions seem to multiply as I type.

So what are my expectations on this movie? What Bond movie do I expect from this day and age? What things am I hoping they improved after Quantum of Solace?

I have a confession to make. I was never a Daniel Craig fan until very recently. When I saw he would take the mantle from a very confusing Pierce ‘Bond’ Brosnan (remember Die Another Day), I was very sceptical. Actually who the hell am I kidding? I hated the idea! I was absolutely repulsed at the guy. He was not handsome like Connery, he looked too old and too noticeable (in that he was built like a house). All that muscle seemed to somehow make his brain smaller by each passing frame. My mom used to describe the great Hercules as ‘All muscles and a brain like a sesame seed’. I am afraid my mind only screamed that saying when I saw Craig in the first shot of Casino Royale. And yes, I was one of those people that had something against the blonde hair! Yes, I, like a lot of people, am a creature of habit at times and when that habit is broken I start complaining. Like you can sit here, reading this, and tell me that never happened to you. Plus, I can say that the concept of a prequel depicting how Bond got his 00 status was not that intriguing to me. I was born and bred on Connery and Moore, already seasoned spies that have been in the fucking and killing business for a long time. Why would I want to see a character that had started so high in his career go down 10 levels and be a rube again? But then again, I pride myself in giving a second chance to anything that I feel I might have not understood or had disapproved of, from the start. I also pride myself in this particular case to have made the right decision. If not I would not be sitting here writing about Skyfall.

My Bond has always been Sean Connery. Primitive, smooth but not very discreet, resourceful, witty (but not as much as Moore) and seemingly motivated by selfish reasons. If you look at his missions they all seem to end up on a beach most of the time, kick-started by a girl or a photo of one (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Thunderball) and not once has he shown any sign of actual patriotism. He did this for the fun of it and the kicks (chicks) he got out of it. His look defined a generation of spies. The tuxedo, the signature drink, the cigarette at the end of his lips as he utters his name, like it’s a gift from God (not him, just his name). He had the fighting skills to beat up his enemies, had the talent to land a falling plane safely (although Timothy Dalton took the whole plane stunt to a whole different level in The Living Daylights), attach himself to a harness and grab the girl before flying away thanks to a taxi-plane, had the luck to be let out of an incinerator just in time, and had a Nemesis in Ernst Stavro Blofeld, SPECTRE mastermind and bad guy to the bone! Not many Bond nemeses would come along later on that would be as amazing as this man. Meddling in Cold War relations, NATO nuclear missiles, the diamond business, stealing whole spaceships with another spaceship that is hidden in a fake volcano. The dedication alone is just beautiful. Shame he had to leave the stage so early on and in a less than adequate way for his persona(For Your Eyes Only).

After Connery, the forgotten and underrated George Lazenby took over, however I will be completely honest, he has not left any particular trademark as Bond. I was very young when I saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and was very sad that Bond got married, until the obvious little glitch on the way to the honeymoon. Lazenby was not a big part of my idea of Bond and realistically neither was Roger Moore. Something just did not sit right with me and his Safari suits, his little one liners and his weird missions. However, Moore had the immense privilege to be in films where the focus was put on the villains. Yep, all sorts of villains and megalomaniacs but hell, they were the pinnacle of sneaky, malicious, crazy, napoleonic figures  and had the best henchmen. Don’t believe me? Let’s tally: Kananga and Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die), Fransisco Scaramanga and Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun), Carl Stromberg and Jaws (The Spy who Loved Me), Hugo Drax and The Cat (Moonraker), Aristotle Kristatos and Locque (For your Eyes Only), Kamal Kahn and Gobinda (Octopussy) and finally Max Zorin and May Day (A View to A Kill). I remember all of them as clear as day; Hugo Drax setting the dogs on Corine Dufour, Jaws chewing some cable car wire in Rio, Nick Nack loyal to his master till the end, Gobinda crushing dice in his fist, reducing them to powder in front of a very worried Moore. If the Connery era defined the spy, the Moore era defined the villain.

Who combined both? My close favorite and the Bond I found the most gritty till Craig came along, Timothy Dalton. It took two movies and one Colombian drug lord to show that Dalton knew how to deal with trash. He fed rotten CIA agent Killifer to a great white shark and ignited Franz Sanchez to the sky to avenge his best friend. There was not that much dedication to avenging his dead wife was there? That’s probably because in the 80s there was no room for tact within a spy’s lifestyle. This was a time of violence and Timothy Dalton was the violent Bond. The one that looked like a remorseless killer, the darkest side of Bond yet. Brosnan took the darkness to the next level but his movies suffered from scripts that could not cope very well in the post-Cold War era. The last great Bond in my opinion can only be Tomorrow Never Dies because it contained a realistic Bond and an extremely plausible villain in Elliot Carver (read Rupert Murdoch. Huh? Who said that?). The death of Paris Carver shocked me when I first watched it, as well as the frigging monster of a man that killed her! It was also surprisingly the first Bond I ever saw in English because all the VHS copies we had at home were all dubbed in French. To this day I can quote you From Russia with Love in both English and French. Funny how that turned out!

Then came Craig. Following my six years of objecting, complaining and turning down all positive reviews about the actor’s portrayal, I looked at him differently. I scrapped all the Bonds from my mind and looked at a man, a spy, a borderline sociopath working for an organization that does not approve of him but believes in him (God bless you M) and battling the enemies of the country that trained him and made him a ghost for the rest of his life. Craig played just that. He played the man all of the previous Bonds could not play because of time, place and context. For every era comes a different hero and Daniel Craig successfully embodies this generation’s anti-hero with a heroic purpose.

For Skyfall my expectations are simple. Craig’s Bond almost lost credibility with the latest outing but through no fault of his acting. Surrounding issues such as script, villain and Bond girl made this 007 chapter bearable but I expect Skyfall to take Casino Royale and transpose the major characteristics of the other movies. So far, the villain looks properly old-school and it helps that Bardem, like a lot of kids, grew up with Bond. If his villain reaches the charisma the previous ones had (namely Emilio Largo, Max Zorin, Franz Sanchez and Elliot Carver) then that would culminate to an unforgettable character like Ledger’s Joker in the latest Batman franchise. The arrival of a new Q deserves attention as well, since that means that this shit is about to get technological, something Craig’s movies have not explored yet. From the trailer, I am thinking Big Brother surveillance and tracking to get to Silva. M and MI6 look like they have a lot more secrets than a regular secretive agency and they all look human, prone the error (only their errors seem to have graver consequences than the regular Joe). This humanity culminates with Bond. I want to see him suffer, confused, double-crossed and run down, not for any other reason than to see him rise up from the ashes and stand, proud and angry. I do not hold much hope for the Bond girls. This seems to be a man’s adventure with little around him to distract him long enough from his ultimate goal. Finally, I expect from Mendes to turn this film into a thriller, fast-paced, structured, respectful of its genre and a film that you would want to see like you would want to see Dr.No, again and again. But this time Craig has to face real an present evil that would terrify you, me and the whole audience. I want a Bond you hate to love, a Bond that will laugh at his enemy because he does not care whether he lives or dies so long as he gets the last word! A Bond that represents this era of confusion, violence and fear, that he vanquishes through fire and blood, because in the end, it is the only way this current world deals with its evils.

Film Review: The Night That Panicked America

The recent spectacle of a meteor shower tracing fiery trails across many parts of the UK’s night skies brought to my mind another group of meteors crashing into Earth in that wonderful H.G.Wells story, ‘The War of The Worlds’. This in turn induced me to seek out and listen to the original radio broadcast from 1938 (isn’t the Internet an amazing resource?), when Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air created history with their dramatisation of the story.

Now, I’m sure the majority of us have seen either the 2005 Spielberg blockbuster starring Tom Cruise or the much cooler (in my opinion) 1953 movie featuring Gene Barry. Of course, it goes without saying that neither film compares to Herbert George’s 1898 novel – for me, one of the most significant science fiction stories ever written – however, the earlier film benefits from being simpler and less overblown but no less impressive visually. It also tapped into that whole ‘red (communist) scare’ thing that was gripping America at the time of its release.

To really allow the genius of Wells’ writing to stir up your imagination though, turn off the TV, switch off your phone and lay back in a darkened room and listen to the radio broadcast that went out on CBS on the eve of Halloween almost seventy five years ago. It was such a spellbinding play that of the approximate six million who tuned in to the broadcast, over a million believed it to be a true Martian invasion and many of them actually fled from their homes in hysterical abandonment. And this brings me rather neatly to the film I’m recommending this time round – The Night That Panicked America.

Made in 1975 for the ABC Television Network this TV movie, starring Vic Morrow, Tom Bosley and Paul Shenar, recounts in docudrama style the broadcast from the point of view of Orson Welles (Shenar) and his Mercury Theatre associates as well as from several fictional groups of listeners from varying locations and social classes who all believed the broadcast to be a real Martian invasion.

The depiction of the broadcast itself makes this film worth watching just to see how radio professionals put together a show – actors in front of mics reading lines from pages of script while foley artists use the tools of their trade (and often some clever improvisation) to create the sounds to bring the story alive. To witness each and every one of them coming in right on cue is a pure joy. And once the broadcast is under way, then we get to see the poor, misguided listeners, the believers, those who had missed the broadcast’s opening line announcing the evening’s dramatisation of a novel. If they had heard this, they would have realised it was not real news bulletins they were listening to. There’s no doubt that the ‘on-the-spot’ reporting style of the radio play helped convince many that an invasion was actually happening and together with fact that in 1938, Americans were living in an atmosphere of tension and anxiety as Adolf Hitler steered the world towards its second global conflict, the play’s frightening premise simply fuelled the paranoia that was already running high in the country’s stream of consciousness. Indeed, some listeners thought the invaders were the Germans on a vanguard attack.

While this TV movie may exaggerate some of the panic (for entertainment’s sake, you understand), it’s not difficult to imagine just how wildly people might have reacted on that night. Remember, this was a time when news wasn’t as instant as it is today and with the radio being the only source of finding out what was going on in the wider world, hearing (never mind seeing) was believing. So, when we see a pair of farmers arm themselves with shotguns and head out into the surrounding countryside in search of the invaders and a wealthy household flee their dinner party with the family silver we can pretty much understand their actions even though we know they’re mistaken.

Another note of consequence – the Mercury Theatre on the Air was an unsponsored show at the time, and therefore there were no advertisement breaks during the play. The audience would have heard an uninterrupted report of a Martian invasion in real time with no clue that they were listening to a work of fiction. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the CBS studio started receiving calls from concerned listeners but the switchboard operators simply couldn’t believe that people thought that what they were hearing was real.

In the days following the broadcast, CBS was on the receiving end of a fair amount of flack over the incident with several newspapers and public figures describing the play’s ‘news-bulletin format’ as cruelly deceptive. The network was sued by many listeners claiming ‘mental anguish’ and ‘personal injury’ but all suits were dismissed save for one – a man from Massachusetts claimed for a pair of shoes he had bought to escape the Martians. Orson Welles apparently insisted the man be paid.

All in all then, this is an interesting little film made all the more remarkable for being a true story. The fact that the story revolves around one of the greatest sci-fi tales ever written, makes it, while not quite a classic, most definitely worth watching.

 

 

 

Film Review: Black Narcissus

Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced numerous films of note, many of them rivalling anything that came out of Hollywood. Their collaborations began in 1939 with the First World War thriller The Spy in Black, which Powell directed and Pressburger wrote the screenplay for. A couple of years later they co-founded their production company The Archers and made One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942). The two would go on to share a writer-director-producer credit until the partnership ended in 1957 and along the way they gave us such classics as A Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Battle of the River Plate (1956).

Arguably their most memorable offering was Black Narcissus (1947), a wonderful psychological drama set within a convent in an isolated Himalayan valley. The stunning Technicolor photography alone is enough to imprint this movie forever on your mind and if you’ve never seen, I urge you to do so at your nearest convenience. The use of matte paintings and scale models has rarely been used with such skill and majesty and despite the fact that the landscape is clearly fake, it is lit and coloured so magnificently, that it’s all the more awesome for being so. Costumes too, seem to take on a symbolic relevance and whether it’s the godliness of white robes, the devilishness of a red dress or the honesty and frankness of being semi-naked, there’s a depth to be found in every detail we see.

The plot revolves around a group of nuns – lead by the Sister Superior Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) – who are sent to the abandoned Palace of Mopu, near Darjeeling in the Himalayas to establish a school and hospital in order to help civilise the local community. Their mountainside convent is a former harem complete with sensual mosaics and images on its walls, and making it habitable is the nuns’ first hurdle to overcome. Sister Clodagh is forced to accept the help of local British agent Dean (David Farrar) to achieve this and Dean immediately makes a hurdle of himself but in a different way. His deep-voice and hairy-chested masculinity affects the nuns to varying degrees and seems to remind several of them that they are, after all, women and as if that wasn’t enough, Jean Simmons, in a very early role, has a memorable part as a mischievous local dancing girl, who with her flowing silks and flirtatious demeanour, presents a stark contrast to the nuns’ chaste way of life.

Dean warns Clodagh from the outset that the palace is no place for a convent and later credits the high altitude as capable of playing havoc with one’s senses. It’s not long before the isolation and the atmosphere unsettles the nuns while Dean’s bullish machismo begins to affect Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron). Clodagh finds herself dwelling on the failed romance that drove her into the Sisterhood several years prior while Ruth becomes pathologically jealous of Clodagh’s growing friendship with Dean. The climate, the mystique of the local culture and the nuns’ own fallibility all play a part in this story and each of these adds to the tension as it rises like the mountainous peaks that surround them.

If this might sound less than exciting, do not be fooled. This film is a masterpiece. Full of psychological suspense and sexual desire Black Narcissus is, in Michael Powell’s own view, the most erotic film he ever made. “It is all done by suggestion,” he said, “but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts.”

The climax is a riveting pastiche of music and image on a truly epic scale with no dialogue, just a mesmerising operatic symphony of sound that will turn your knuckles white. An interesting note here is that the music for this scene was scored before the scene was shot which meant the actors’ motivations and movements were choreographed to the music just as they would be on a stage. Truly, truly wonderful stuff.

The film collected two Academy Awards at the 1958 Oscar’s ceremony for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction. Deborah Kerr won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her portrayal of Sister Clodagh.  It holds number 44 in the British Film Institute’s greatest British films of the 20th century and number 16 in Time Out’s 100 best British films list.

The 65 years that have passed since the film’s release hasn’t diminished its impact. The haunting beauty of the painted landscapes and backdrops and the film’s vivid colour simply adds to its lasting appeal. To see it once, is to never forget it.

 

 

 

Hollywood’s Uncovered Gems?

There is a rowdy queue of merits associated with the serene art of cinema; perhaps one of the strongest advantages lies in its powerful sense of evocation. For some very privileged people, cinema is able to paint more than just a pretty picture and is fully able to rip into its audience’s soul and juggle with their emotions, their thoughts and feelings. Let me throw some names at you:

Nolan. Tarantino. Spielberg.

Household names; ground-breaking directors who have caused more than a mere stir during their renowned careers and all thanks to one endearing trait: their pure love of cinema. Their contribution has helped make cinema a dominant art form, one which truly caters for everybody with its eclectic style and creative prowess. So it’s really no surprise that the deaths of Tony Scott and Michael Clarke Duncan have packed such a brutal punch.

Tony Scott lived his life in the shadow of his more-critically accepted brother, Ridley (Alien, Blade Runner) yet thankfully, the overwhelmingly positive tributes that have flooded in for the late and certainly great director have focused solely on his aesthetically pleasing body of work. Many will recall the likes of Top Gun, an undoubtedly popular addition to the macho-men volume of Hollywood cinema and far superior to the likes of Charlie Sheen’s Navy SEALS and oh, yes…Iron Eagle.

What Scott lacked in critical backing, he made up for at the box-office. However, unlike film-makers who experience similar critical contrast such as Michael Bay, Scott was a true master of his craft. His ‘on-the-fence’ reviews would usually pin-point a lack of dramatic and narrative resonance (that was attributed so highly to Ridley) yet a picture made to pure perfection. In Poker terms, he was always the Full House opposed to the Royal Flush. His knowledge and dexterous touch as well as sublime craftsmanship were second-to-none and his flicks provided audiences with endless hours of thrills and spills. A truly remarkable, yet severely underrated film-maker.

Michael Clarke Duncan was a unique screen presence. Big Mike stood at 6’ 5” and his muscular frame, imposing stature and deep, booming voice were bizarrely contrasted by his kind, caring nature; or at least that was the way he consistently came across as.

Like many others, the role I’ll always associate him with was that of the (wrongly) convicted child-murderer in Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile. Strongly considered one of the best movies made in the last 20-years or so, The Green Mile was an adaption from Stephen King’s novel of the same name. Duncan portrayed John Coffey (“like the drink, only not spelled the same”), a seemingly uneducated simpleton who had been sentenced to death after being discovered with two dead girls. As the audience learns more about the character in Darabont’s majestic and emotionally charged movie, Duncan himself is a revelation. Never looking like a fish-out-of-water next to co-star Tom Hanks, Duncan was rightly nominated for an Oscar that year for his portrayal which will be remembered for a long time to come.

The point I wish to make is one that rings a beneficial bell in terms of Hollywood. Tributes poured in from all over when the shocking announcements were first made. It quickly became apparent that though neither was considered a household name, both were respected by those who cherish the art of cinema as well as those who perhaps consider themselves casual acquaintances with their local movie theatre. I think it’s a testament to the power of movies and the much-maligned Hollywood that these two figures are being celebrated so much. Scott’s True Romance defined the hyper-stylised and violent movies of the 90s (written by Pulp Fiction’s Tarantino of course) and contemporary film fans hold recent efforts such as Unstoppable starring Chris Pine and Denzel Washington and Man On Fire, again starring Scott-favoured Washington, in such high-esteem.

Duncan also had a varied career; The Green Mile will go down as his magnum opus due to his Oscar nom, but he also starred in many a-blockbuster such as Armageddon, The Whole Nine Yards and Daredevil. He was appreciated by the industry he loved so much and by the fans who flocked to the cinema, even if they couldn’t quite recall his name.

Hollywood is damn-near impossible to break and once you’ve made it, it can knock you back down from whence you came within a matter of seconds. That’s what they say anyway but I believe the likes of Michael Clarke Duncan and Tony Scott oppose that theory. Consistent, efficient, hard-working and reliable; they weren’t stars that shone the brightest and perhaps didn’t always get the recognition they deserved but when it came down to the final haul, both got the rousing send-off they deserved and the industry has suffered a great loss. The beauty of film is that they will always be remembered through their art and cemented within the rich history of cinema forever more.

Tony Scott (21st June, 1944 – 19th August, 2012)

Michael Clarke Duncan (10th December, 1957 – 3rd September, 2012)

Remakes going too far? Croneberg’s ‘Videodrome’ next to go under the knife.

Yesterday morning, like every morning in the past five years, I put my cup of coffee on my desk, open my laptop, click simultaneously on the seven bookmarked pages that start my day and they all talk about the same thing: film. I browse the news, scroll down, then an article catches my attention and makes me spit out my coffee, out of my nose. I move from site to site, hoping that the article is just a rumour, but it’s no use. I know Empire Film Magazine would not lie to me, so I get a tissue, blow my nose, wipe the desk and stare at the article: ‘Adam Berg Hired For Videodrome Remake; Ads man will direct the new pic’. The shock is indescribable, the disappointment insurmountable. David Croneberg’s iconic ‘body-horror’ film has not just been green lit for a remake; it actually has a director, signifying that it probably has an ongoing script and a producer. As I stared in disbelief, the one question that kept running through my mind was ‘Why?’ Why remake a classic? Why remake a film that, even though did poorly commercially, is now a symbol, amongst many others, of media violence and a whistle-blower on eighties society’s apathy when it came to television programming. Why remake it now, of all times, when television itself is slowly dying, replaced by the smaller screen of our laptops and when its current programming is relying on massive budgets to keep at least a minimum amount of audience and survive the next season? All of these questions ran through my mind but then, after the emotional part of my brain calmed down, I thought that the ‘why’ I kept repeating was not only for the benefit of ‘Videodrome’. It was resonating for all remakes I could think of, good and bad. Why is Hollywood so hell-bent on remakes? The announcement of David Fincher taking over ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, the opening of ‘Let me In’, the mess that was ‘Clash of the Titans’, all of these films have either aggravated or excited audiences, me included, but there is always that initial question of ‘why’, followed by an instant judgement on the project, either positive or negative. Thinking about it, I am guilty of always being very negative after any remake announcement and I am starting to think that I am wrong in doing so. After all, everyone deserves a second chance, even in film. Only problem is, when the first time around the film was a success and enjoys its days as a classic, why pull it out of retirement and give it a makeover? Is it only for the sake of money or is there actual artistic motivation behind it? I’d like to believe it’s the latter but sadly, it might be far from it.

If I asked any person on the street about their opinion on Hollywood remakes, I’d be lucky to get a passionate response. Most people have had, in one occasion or another, bad experiences with this type of film, either because one of their favourites was used, or because the result was that bad that they immediately deny the chance for the original to impress. The rare gems that make it past the initial stage of acceptance are always under immense pressure to be on the same level as their predecessor, so the remake seems to be the weak child that always tries to impress his parent, to little or no avail. His stepbrother, the reboot, has, at least since 2002 with the seminal film that resurrected superheroes, Sam Raimi’s ‘Spider Man’, been far more accepted. It managed to gross millions of dollars, is responsible for at least five current major franchises (Spider Man, X-Men, Batman, The Avengers, Star Trek and now Superman) and people are excited. Say reboot and everyone is all ears and no complaining. Why? Because a reboot does not necessarily mean same story, same exact characters, same universe. The reboot will take principal characters and twist them into completely different ones. Batman no longer has nipples on his suit and ridiculous enemies to fight (exit Mr. Freeze), but is dark, borderline psychotic and his enemies are gangsters, terrorists and religious fanatics. Familiar? Yes, it does symbolise modern day America within the comic book universe. A remake would’ve probably changed Batman’s costume, had different taglines and brought in the same villain again. Let’s face it; the poor remake is no match for the reboot in this day and age. When audiences are looking for something fresh, the reboot will take the original dish, keep the ingredients but make it taste like new and different. The remake gives the audience re-heated soup that will never taste as fresh as that first time.

Within the pantheon of remake titles, I can give some examples of failed attempts in trying to impress a second time, using the same material. Tim Burton’s famous flop, ‘Planet of the Apes’ (2001) proved that even though Hollywood had made giant leaps in moviemaking technology and imagery, it still could not beat that old-school feel you get when Charlton Heston swears at a monkey (ok, I mean ape) and you can see the prosthetics on the actors’ damn dirty paws. Despite Tim Roth’s relentless efforts to portray General Thade as the archetypal racist villain and Helena Bonham Carter’s Ari trying to dissolve this ape-human apartheid, Burton did not conjure up the charm of the original. This was for two reasons: number one, a common one amongst remakes that flopped, is because what started off as an alternative sequel to ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’ (1970) became a near 20-year battle amongst scriptwriters and 20th Century Fox, who could not agree on script, directors and actors. The end result was whatever could be salvaged of the original concept and a heavy reliance on special effects and on ‘the twist’ that enraged all geeks and fans of the franchise. Second, this is what happens when producers back a film that they do not believe in anymore! There is no charisma, no desire to create, no enthusiasm in the way this remake was done, just a feeling of ‘Let’s try and make as much money as fast as we can because this ship is sinking’. The film now lives in memory as one of the worst remakes ever made and as a warning about the heavy reliance on technology as opposed to plot and character development. The same can be said about the recent ‘Clash of the Titans’ (2010) remake, where director Louis Leterrier, a fan of the original (just like Tim Burton was a fan of the Apes franchise), wanted to bring the film to a new generation. I am the first to point out that the 1981 version was in no way perfect and that even though it is a classic in the fantasy genre, it became less accessible to later audiences and unfortunately, aged very badly.  In that instance, a remake was not without reason, however 2010 brought us 3D and as usual, Hollywood insisted on the film’s conversion to this new technology, especially after the record-breaking success of Cameron’s ‘Avatar’. Leterrier made concessions to the studio and behold the result; critics and fans booed the final product and its sequel ‘Wrath of the Titans’, I hear, is even worse.

Another instance of a failed remake is the 2006 pagan-horror film ‘The Wicker Man’ (‘Aaaahh, the bees, not the bees’). Yes, the Nicolas-Cage-goes-mad-and-hits-women film that made everyone laugh and realise how much he or she missed Christopher Lee. The original, made in 1976, was simplicity itself, including beautiful shots of the Scottish Isles, a very toned down, yet menacing, Christopher Lee, a very ambiguous hero (Sergeant Howie), resurrected folk songs, a controversial theme and, let’s all be honest, Britt Ekland’s dance scene (although to the disappointment of many men, it was later revealed that it had been a body double and not the actress herself). Beautiful and haunting, the film is described as the ‘Citizen Kane of horror’, largely because it slipped into obscurity after its release. This is the one instance where I disagree with Hollywood about remaking a film like ‘The Wicker Man’. The 2006 Nic Cage version threw out all meaning and controversy in favour of jump scares and gender reversals. If the sole reason was to lift the original film out of the shadows and to make it a nonsensical feminist promo meant for teenagers then mission very much accomplished. Acting, plot and sound were butchered in order to impress an unimpressed audience, Nicolas Cage as a laughable lead, unable to re-create the Christian stubbornness of Edward Woodward’s Howie and as much as I love Ellen Burstyn, she could not compare to the utterly chilling portrayal of Lee’s Lord Summersisle.  In an effort to attract the hip crowd, the film flopped and is now a cult rental in video stores, whereas the original still enjoys its place amongst the ranks of the greatest horror films.

I can honestly understand the concept of remake in one instance; the case of the foreign films. My father once pointed out to me ‘Some people, Ersi, do not want to read subtitles and try to understand a different culture’. Unfortunately, this does not just apply to US audiences, but many other countries too, yet the US has the monopoly on the English-language remake. It is an understandable want to remake a foreign film because the dialogue is in another language, the setting is in a wholly different country, the actors are unrecognisable and the culture does not seem familiar to other audiences and this has been a long-standing trend. Akira Kurosawa, the famed Japanese director, was fascinated by the westerns of John Ford and was so heavily influenced by the genre that he included in his films his equivalent of cowboys, the samurai, and kept Ford’s main theme, the extinction of the cowboy/samurai and the advent of industrialism that slowly pushes out all romantic notions of honour and justice. His most famous work, ‘The Seven Samurai’, was a genuine two-and-a-half-hour masterpiece in 1954, innovative, bold and now considered one of the pivotal influences of US directors Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese, John Sturges and George Lucas. Sturges’ ‘The Magnificent Seven’ starring, amongst others, Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson, was the remake of Kurosawa’s film, done six years later, and is considered one of the most popular westerns in the history of the genre. What is fascinating is that the single US film genre was taken from its roots, taken to a country where the Americans ravaged only nine years earlier during World War II, reconstructed to fit Japanese culture and then the country that originated the concept remade its own final product later. This shows that the remake can prove to be very useful to spread an idea, a concept or a script, worldwide to audiences that would otherwise not understand. This is not just a question of reading subtitles, like my dad used to say. It’s the alien nature of the language and the culture that dissuades many people of going to the movies if a film like ‘The girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ was playing, hence Fincher’s swift remake, two years after the original. Who would have noticed a foreign film like ‘Ringu’ if Naomi Watts had not jumped on board of the remake and terrified everyone off their TV sets in ‘The Ring’. As we speak there is an ‘Old Boy’ remake in production, starring Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley, not because the original is not good and groundbreaking but because it could not be spread further than the few countries who could still either relate or appreciate it, in its original form. This goes for Kurosawa and Sturges, it goes for horror remakes like ‘The Ring’, ‘The Grudge’ or adventure like ‘Pathfinder’, or dramas like ‘The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo’, thrillers like DePalma’s upcoming ‘Passion’ and for all other future remakes of foreign films. There is that thought that maybe we have become way too lazy to even try and understand foreign films but personally I do not think it’s laziness so much as it shows that cinema is inherently and involuntarily racist thanks to widespread Hollywood involvement all over the world. It is worth pointing out though that remakes based on foreign films have not been tragically disappointing. Yes, some have failed to convey the original’s message, yet most have created successful movies either way because there is still some respect for the material (with some exceptions, *cough*Godzilla, 1998*cough*).

Okay so, trying to share a country’s filmmaking with the rest of the world through a remake, that I can jump onboard with, because it also gives the audience the choice. Would you like to stick with the original or with the ‘international’ version? There is significant enough change to make a separate movie and to add some innovation in it so it does not appear to be a completely different film. I can accept that. But what I cannot accept is remaking a movie on the sole excuse that it is old. This ageist stance that Hollywood has been developing since the mid-1990s has taken a very serious turn and has carried on till today. Whenever someone turns around and affirms that a movie has aged very badly, a probable cause being that it was not good in the first place, yes I will agree that in some cases time does not favour cinema. Not everything that is old is necessarily a classic. But why meddle in something that was not good in the first place and why not let it age and die in peace? What could go so wrong if 1924’s ‘The Wolfman’ was left silent instead of the stale 2010 version whose only merit was its retro use of prosthetics (oh, the irony).  What is so bad with leaving ‘Psycho’ to its glory as the first slasher, instead of hiring Vince Vaughn to badly emulate Anthony Perkins’ performance in a colour version? Was the black and white really that bothersome?

It is quite obvious that most of the remakes I am outraged at are the horror films, who when they became unsuccessful in their production of sequels, decided to start all over again after ruining what was left of the old horror generation. Carpenter, surprisingly enough, led the remake way with ‘The Thing’ in 1982 and showed it could be done by taking only the material and the atmosphere and re-arranging the entire mood to fit a new generation’s fears. The same thing applies for ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, which has been through about four remakes, some with different titles, trying to bring the original’s sense of paranoia to the new generations that had not lived during the height of the Cold War in the fifties. These were not made to make the film look better and more appealing to teenagers. They were made because their concept was so terrifying in nature but the context had to be slightly updated. The latest to work was Snyder’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’ in 2004 where the theme of consumerism was still a central issue, very much discussed then and today. Surprise, surprise though, it doesn’t work with every horror (or any) film, as a long string of remakes has proven from 2000 onwards. ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘Friday the 13th’, ‘The Omen’, ‘Halloween’, ‘Prom Night’ (who the hell cares about proms anymore, really?). These were remakes that did not scare; they mildly entertained and slipped into the video store racks faster than you can say ‘corn syrup’. This is what Hollywood is doing now, it wants to easily entertain and since it cannot solely rely on its big-budget films all year-round, it has to rely on remakes to fill in the gaps, a cheap scapegoat that is starting to age itself, very badly. It’s like introducing someone to an aunt, every year, after she has had a plastic surgery. First her nose looks a little crooked, then her forehead seems strangely triangular than by the tenth time she has been introduced, she looks like shit. That is what a horror remake has become; a cut and paste face of a film that has been through so much hacking and cutting that in the end becomes barely recognisable and quite frankly ugly to watch.

So there I am, in front of my screen, coffee getting cold, staring at the ‘Videodrome’ announcement still, pondering these facts. It is safe to say that I am not a remake fan but that does not mean I am willing to shut them out and pretend they don’t exist. I have been surprised at some recent ones like ‘The Hills have Eyes’, ‘3:10 to Yuma’, ‘True Grit’, ‘The Departed’ or ‘The Mummy’ and it is these and many others that have made me ponder which one I liked more, the original or its new shiny follower. That is rare and special! But I have come across the worst of attempts to revive a classic that was and will always be alive either way. As I scroll through a rough list of remakes bound for a cinema near you, I see names that I never thought Hollywood would dare touch again. Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ will pass under the knife and so will ‘The Crow’ (met by heavy opposition and production difficulties) and I still wonder. Yes, remakes can work favourably for cinema’s forgotten and foreign but not being able to cope with an aging film or just plain leaving it in its own mess seems impossible, so Hollywood hires ad-makers, video clip directors or just newcomers to the studios to try to squeeze as much dollar juice as they can with very little integrity and passion going into them. Yes some have exceeded (my) expectations but most seem to inspire apathy and a sense of ‘déjà vu’, only with more CG effects, younger actors and inexperienced directors that bore most of the audience. So in conclusion, I present to you my letter to American cinema:

Hollywood, from me to you, I have been following your career with great and unabashed interest and thanks to you, I know where my passion lies but please, do not take your most memorable and prized achievements and turn them into cash cows. You try and bring concepts and stories to a public that doesn’t understand foreign filmmaking as opposed to yours and I can get behind that, but what I cannot accept is you defacing your wall of fame and silliconing your icons for the sake of dollar bills and cheap thrills. The originality and thinking you have today comes from your past and your greatest features so don’t turn around and spit on them. They are the legacy you leave for your children, not idols of clay to re-shape whenever you feel like it.

The Good, The Bad, Kermode and Me

Film critic and presenter Mark Kermode goes by many names, including The Good Doctor and Flappy Hands. You may know him from BBC2’s The Culture Show. His most devoted fans, however, tune in to hear his pithy comments on Kermode and Mayo’s Film Reviews on Radio 5 Live every Friday afternoon with Simon Mayo. Kermode and Mayo are a long-standing double act and they squabble like an old married couple.

I met Mark when he was touring his second book, The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex at the Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds. A very long queue formed after his talk for him to sign the copies we’d bought. He spent a long time chatting with each one of us, including me, was charming and seemed genuinely interested in all we had to say.

He even gave an impromptu blast on a harmonica that he whipped out of his pocket (Mark plays in a rockabilly band, which explains his haircut). He’s better looking in person, but I digress.

One of the things I like about him is that he’s not a snob. In fact, he’s the very opposite of a snob. If an action blockbuster comes out and he likes it, he’ll say so. Conversely, if a low budget, art house film comes out that he thinks is a load of rubbish, he’ll say so. He often defends films that are considered to be ‘uncool’. Mark simply likes good films, of any genre or time period.

I don’t always agree with his verdicts but he is never short of well informed, witty and entertaining. When he loves something, he is delightfully eloquent, but he is most famous for his rants and also for his pedantry. The rants can go on for a very long time, delivered with much hyperbole and unsurpassed fervour.

Mark has been passionate about films since he was eight years old. Other critics are deeply knowledgeable and entertaining but, for me, no one exudes that pure love of cinema like old Flappy Hands. After watching what must be thousands and thousands of movies (and an awful lot of crap), his enthusiasm is still intact. That’s why he gets so angry…because he cares so much.

In his previous book, It’s Only a Movie, he describes how he got into the world of professional film criticism. In this second book, The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex, he gives us his take on the modern Hollywood scene and the multiplex experience.  There are amusing anecdotes in both books with this latest one kicking off with his hilarious account of trying to get an assistant cinema manager to fix the screening of a film starring Zac Efron wherein the top of Zac’s head was missing. One of Mark’s many soap boxes concerns showing films in the correct Aspect Ratio and when cinemas GET IT WRONG!

As for multiplexes, his tenet is this: there is nothing inherently wrong with them provided they are run properly, but so many of them are run badly. They are like glorified sweet shops with a film casually thrown in. Selling popcorn is the priority and digital projection (digital doesn’t always equal efficiency) is left to its own devices, often without anyone capable of fixing something if it goes wrong. Mark’s opening chapter is aptly titled, ‘Would the Last Projectionist Please Turn Off the Lights’.

Does anyone really like their local multiplex? They are soulless places and they all look, smell and taste the same. Going to the aforementioned Hyde Park Picture House, a charming cinema dating from 1914, is a much pleasanter experience.

Another of Mark’s soap boxes is 3D and there is a chapter devoted to its technical shortcomings. The decision to invest so much money in this recent resurgence is not for any intrinsic artistic merits but as a defensive measure against piracy and to lure us away from watching Blu-ray on our 42-inch TVs with surround sound.

So much money is thrown at so many mediocre projects and it’s disheartening. Mark makes the point that a mainstream, big star film doesn’t have to dumb down. Audiences don’t need to be talked down to, including the all-important 15 – 35 years old, male demographic. He poses this question: Why not make it intelligent while you’re about it? As he points out, it didn’t do Inception any harm.

I’ve been thinking about the level of writing that goes into a lot of hit U.S. TV shows these days, in contrast to a lot of the bland releases that hit our cinema screens. Look at the series, Lost, a brain twister if ever there was one. Give audiences something to challenge them and they lap it up. Meanwhile, original filmmakers outside of the system, including some brilliant British ones, struggle to get their films distributed.

Mainstream cinema would benefit from more intelligent scripts. Mark’s proposal is that it wouldn’t damage the takings, at least. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with car chases and explosions or indeed, charming rom coms. Just spend some of those millions on the screenplay and see what happens. We’re being fed a diet of prequels and sequels with nary an original thought in sight.

Another issue Mark addresses in his latest book is Hollywood’s insistence on making its own versions of foreign language films. These re-makes are rarely as good, but try persuading the industry that distributing the original films would be a more worthwhile venture. When it’s a case of art versus money, there’s only one winner. So, audiences go to see an inferior movie, like feeding on the crumbs or wearing hand me down clothes.

Finally, the book ends with a sad farewell to celluloid, its history and traditions and the magic it has given us. As we boldly go into the digital future, we gain and we also lose. The closing paragraphs may just make you cry.

Film is one of the greatest art forms to come out of the 20th century and look how we treat it. Next time you’re sat in the dark, sucking on your mini-buffet, ask yourself this question. Is this screening worthy of the legacy that the great writers /directors / producers / actors have left us?

It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare every time. Heaven knows, America needed its share of fluff to get it through the Great Depression (the difference being it was mostly well made fluff) and we need it today too. Just every now and then…make us think. In the meantime, I shall bask in the glow of Mark’s rants. And for any Kermode fans reading this – “Hello Jason Isaacs” – they’ll know what that means!