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First Poster for THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

by Posted in Movie Posters

 

After adapting the tomes of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings series into three massively scaled films, Peter Jackson made the folly of trying to do the same with the 276-page The Hobbit. Splicing the minor film into three films seemed like a poor choice from the get-go so it was no huge surprise that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a big letdown.

If the sequel, the smugly named Desolation of Smaug, has anything going for it, it’s low expectations- exactly opposite to what An Unexpected Journey had working against it. While I can’t help but admit that my faith level in the franchise as it exists is hardly soaring, there are worse things in the world than hanging out in Middle Earth for a few hours.

This first look at The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug cues us into the fact that Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), and his layer, will indeed play a large role in the film. Oh and we’ll probably see Legolas chilling somewhere too.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is directed by Peter Jackson and stars Martin Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, Luke Evans, Cate Blanchette, Evangeline Lilly, Richard Artmitage, Elijah Wood, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis and Stephen Fry. It hits theaters over this holiday season on December 13.

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Talking With Kieran Darcy-Smith and Felicity Price of WISH YOU WERE HERE

by Posted in Interviews

 

Curled up in leather chairs by a sputtering fireplace, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Felicity Price and I had a chance to talk about their new film Wish You Were Here. Director/screenwriter, Kieran, and leading lady/screenwriter, Felicity, worked through making a distinctlyAustralian film that is also universally human and found success.

With acting as divine as it is challenging and confident, unsettling directing from Darcy-Smith, Wish You Were Here has taut and introspective independent flair. For our full review of the film, click here or read on to learn more.

 

From Kieran talking about falling into a sewer on day one of the shoot, to Felicity recounting her youthful experiences as a traveler, this husband and wife duo really highlight the truly collaborative nature of their work and serve as an inspiration for working couples in the industry.

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What was it like for you guys as a husband and wife duo working on the film? Was it at all taxing on your relationship or was it a fun experience to work together day-in and day-out?

Kieran Darcy-Smith: It was the best thing that could’ve happened to our marriage. It was doomed prior to that. (Laughs)

Felicity Price: Basically, it was marriage counseling.

KDS: A lot of people anticipate that we would be admitting that there were tons of arguments and difficult but it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been more positive on a creative-level and a relationship-level. We’re kind of joined at the hip and the thing about this film is we were coming from exactly the same place. We had the same intentions and ambitions with it and things that we wanted to commit to and felt obligated to do so we were on the same wavelength which is important. Often, when you’re working collaboratively with someone you might be kind of jostling.

FP: I’ve attempted collaborations before and the projects very quickly kind of cave in because you’re just not seeing things eye-to-eye and you realize you’re making a different film. For us, it was the opposite of us fighting all the time. For people who are a couple and one’s in film and one’s not, suddenly they’re surrounded by how all-consuming it is and the other one is left out and also you’re surrounded by this kind of family that becomes your everything. For both of us, because this was Kieran’s feature debut and it was my first lead role in a film, it was both of our first produced feature length film so it’s been a wonderful journey to go on together. We’re also both sort of people who like to get completely absorbed in whatever kind of creative project that we’ve involved in so we are exactly the same in that way so we could talk about it all the time. It meant that we were brainstorming together and didn’t have to call up your writing partner on the phone.

All you’d have to do is turn next to you and there they were. So when you guys were writing this, were you, Felicity, always going to be Alice or was that something you figured out as you were going?

FP: No, I put her in the story from the beginning for myself. I had the idea for this treatment and when we sat down to write, we thought it was gonna be low-budget and I wanted to make it within the next 5 years rather than 10. So we knew it needed to be low-budget so we could raise the finances and I knew that I wanted a role for myself. Those were the two starting points.

KDS: Originally, the intention in the beginning was to make this film for 100,000 dollars. We were somehow going to scrape together five grand per friend and I was gonna play Dave and Felicity was going to play Alice and we were gonna rent a house in the suburbs.
FP: We were gonna rent the house, live in the house while we wrote the film and then shoot the film in the house. I was pregnant with our first child so we were gonna have Alice pregnant in the film and that’s where that kind of came from. In the film, I wasn’t pregnant but we originally were going to use the real pregnancy. It’s probably even harder to raise five grand from each friend then to raise the finances the way we did which was through the Australian government. Australia is a country where film is subsidized by the government so we were financed largely by Screen Australia.

In the opening shot of the film, we have Alice and Jeremy sitting on the beach and you ask the question, “If you could stay anywhere forever, where would it be?” and he says, “Here, or somewhere near here. Somewhere in Southeast Asia.” So had you guys been in Southeast Asia beforehand and is that what inspired you to set the story there?

FP: The inspiration for the film was kind of inspired by a true story that happened to a friend of ours. Kieran had gone to drama school with this girl and she knew the story fairly well and for me, it was something I vaguely knew. But this girl, probably about 20 years ago now, went traveling to Southeast Asia with her boyfriend at the time and another couple and the guy of that other couple went missing and to this day, he has never been found.

So it wasn’t as definitive as the ending of your film?

FP: For a couple of drafts, we also didn’t know where the character of Jeremy went but I think the thing is Southeast Asia is very close to Australia so a whole lot of Australians travel to Southeast Asia. Over there, your dollar is worth a lot so you come into town and you’re a king and you can stay in a nice hotel and dine out all the time and party. It tends to be a first port of call for young Australian travelers.

I lived in Thailand for a year and you would see Australian travelers on the beaches and all around more than any other nationalities. What made you guys want to set the film in a country like Cambodia rather than Thailand or Indonesia or these other highly visited tourist destinations?

KDS: We looked at everything. Originally, it was Bali.

FP: It moved around in the script for a long time.

KDS: Then I had a bit of a personal connection with Cambodia because my sister actually lives over there with her family. They’ve only been there about five years so they’d only been living there about a year before we started to write the movie. I’d been there a couple of times researching another movie and I’d always been incredibly attracted to the Cambodian history and was interested in the conflict there. When I first went there in the mid 90s, the war was still on but it was very quiet and sort of still a peaceful place. Phenom Penh was just a village with bicycles.

FP: It still is one of the wilder places of Southeast Asia.

Yeah it’s got a very different feeling from night to day in Cambodia even up around Siem Reap, where I visited.

KDS: When I went to Siem Reap the first time, it was a dusty little tiny village without a building over two stories.

Now you go down to the main drag and there’s just so many bright, neon lights that the electricity pops off every night.

KDS: And massive hotels, it’s changed so much.

FP: When I first went traveling in Thailand and Bali, it was such a different thing and now it’s really changed. It used to be so cheap but now it’s not, especially in the more high profile areas.

Cambodia does seem somewhat like the last refuge in everything being so dirt cheap.

KDS: There’s also a darkness there. There’s a tragic history and there’s a lot of lurking reminders of that. But on the flip side, you have these extraordinarily positive people who are letting all that go and just recreating their country. It’s a wonderful dichotomy. I think it’s as alluring as the first time I went to Thailand back in the 80s, it’s still maintained it’s danger and mystique. It’s slightly untapped, there’s been a couple feature films shot there over the years but not the many.

FP: Also shooting there was gonna be easy to get in and get out. We had a friend who was shooting ads there and in Vietnam. If you’re gonna make a film and you want to do it cheap, Cambodia is a great place to go. We had all the permissions to shoot in the areas but there’s not many permissions you need to get. It’s kind of just shoot whatever you want. You can use the whole country. It’s not like every street you shoot, you have to get a release form.

KDS: It’s very free. You just go over there with a camera and grab anything you want.

FP: Even in Thailand, they’re much more savvy about that kind of thing now.

Where did you guys shoot in Cambodia?

KDS:  Phnom Pehn and the travel down there- that little montage down the road. We thought that the cast would basically step off the aircraft in costume and we’d be rolling. We just shot everything we could all the time.

What was the biggest difference shooting in Australia compared to Cambodia aside from the expense?

FP: So many. Every time you shot even the side of a building in Australia, you have to have permission from all of those people.

KDS: There’s no real infrastructure in Cambodia. There’s not even really a local movie industry.

FP: Nor do they have very experienced film crews. These guys are like farmers coming in and swinging a light around. They don’t have that sense of pace. We didn’t take a make-up artist when we went to Cambodia and we got one there, who was probably the best in Cambodia, but he was so achingly slow. Also, the aesthetic was very different because their sense of television and movies are very different but we wanted to go for something realistic with hardly any makeup.

KDS: Everything was shot on location and things were just constantly evolving. Something would be pulled down and something new would come up. We’d been over there on a location scout a couple months earlier and locked in all of our locations and guaranteed they were gonna be fine and when we came back they were all gone and no one knew why so we had to start from scratch on locations. In Sydney, we were shooting with a very light on its feet crew so we could keep things small and flexible and spontaneous. Your camera department in Cambodia has about 30 people standing around.

FP: When you’re shooting in Australia, there’s always someone on your back about hours and regulations whereas in Cambodia, it was us, actors, heads of department, and we were all super keen about shooting whenever. It was more like everyone having a great time and being on holiday.

KDS: We had all local gear too. The lighting and everything was just old and falling to pieces plus we were really sick while we were there. Incredibly ill from dysentery. I fell into the sewer up to my neck on day one. I couldn’t even get washed down, I was covered in you can’t imagine for ages.

Kieran you said that originally you were going to play Dave, how did you wrangle the great Joel Edgerton into the production?

KDS: Full disclosure, he’s my really close friend. He was the best man at our wedding and is the godfather of one of our kids. We went to drama school together and then we moved into a house together so I’ve known him forever. Even when we decided to make this properly and go through all the hoops with the Australian government to finance it, we needed to get someone on board to play the role properly. I never considered that Joel would want to do it because it’s a low budget Australian films and at the time, we was filming these monstrous movies out in LA and I didn’t want to be rejected or put him in a position that was difficult. I was discussing with him all these other actors and he said, “Dude, what about me?” So he kind of volunteered himself. 

FP: Joel had seen every single draft of the script as a collaborator too.

Being his friend, what was that you for you Kieran to direct him and for you Felicity to act against him?

FP: He’s just such a great actor so it was so much fun.

KDS: As a director, I’m really big on performance. I’ve taught a lot of acting as well and I know that all good performance comes down to trust. If your actors trust you and you trust them and you have that total faith in one another and you have faith in the material then you’re gonna get a spontaneous environment where you’re gonna get great stuff. They’ll break their back for you but they’re not gonna do that if they don’t trust you. The great thing with Joel is we’d spend three years in drama school together, had lived together, had been in each other’s short films together. We knew each other intimately and what each other were capable of so trust was just there. Felicity also had trust in me purely because she knew me and I knew what truth was for her. I’d worked on movies where there are like five or six people in the lead and the actors weren’t trusting the director and so all the actors were directing themselves and doing their ego-driven version of the film.

So there is no singular direction.

KDS:  Exactly, you have seven actors trying to make seven different movies. I understand that, you want to feel safe and don’t want to come off with an egg on your face with everyone watching you. So if you have that trust, you have everything.

FP: I think the familiarity between Kieran and Joel and I really helped the film. In the movie, we’re not a couple that’s in the throes of love but in a fairly worn in relationship. Familiarity really helped because there was a leap that was already made that otherwise you might do through rehearsals. We only had a 25 day shoot. We did a week or something of rehearsals, I had a six-week old baby, we did it at our house, it was just Joel and I and we were just working though some scenes. We would go out to lunch and pretend we were a couple. Also, Joel knew very much where the story came from because he knew us.

The title of the film, ‘Wish You Were Here’, has been stirring in my mind as I try and figure out exactly what it’s referring to because it seems intentionally ambiguous and could go a couple of different ways.

KDS: Yeah. It was an eleventh hour decision and we went through many different names but we weren’t happy with the title that we shot under.

What was that?

KDS: It was called ‘Say Nothing’. It was more thriller-esque and generic but I knew there was something more evocative that had these other layers. I’d always been attracted to films with titles taken from a song lyric or album cover. Something with some familiarity. The Pink Floyd song ‘Wish You Were Here’, I’d grown up playing on guitar.

Which is equally melancholy.

KDS: Yeah, the great thing about it is that cliched sign off on the postcard “Wish you were here.”

FP: It’s the irony of that.

KDS: So there’s that reference and also it refers to, more than anyone, wishing that Dave was here, back with her.

FP: And on a more on-the-nose level, wishing Jeremy was back.

KDS: It referred to all of those things and seemed to encapsulate all of it. I knew not everyone was gonna like it but for me, it was the first one that had the musicality and cross meaning in its substance.

In the film, you paint Cambodia, as well as Southeast Asia in general, as this alluring place that also has this really seedy underbelly. In part, it does have the beauty of a postcard but there’s also this footnote where this is a cautionary tale.

FP: I don’t know how much this reaches the news here but there’s been these sad stories about dumb Australians who’ve got into trafficking drugs between Australian and these countries where you get the death penalty as a penalty. You would have to be insane to do it.

That last scene really spoke to me when you flashback to the Cambodia guy who is asking them if you want marijuana or girls because that really is what it’s like in Cambodia when the lights go down. You have these people coming up and really pushing you towards.

FP: At night during the shoots, we would see these 60, 70 year old white guys with these young beautiful 20 year old or younger. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff and it’s just awful.

KDS: That last sequence that you’re talking about is all the real deal. It’s at the back of the port, this little strip of dust called Chicken Village and it’s just madness down there. It’s where the poorest of the poor fisherman and dockworkers go to procure working girls and often the working girls are 20. It’s all mafia run and is dangerous and sketchy as hell. You couldn’t go there without permission but everything you see is real and everyone we used in the movie are all non-actors.

FP: In the writing of the film we were interested in this stuff. For me, I’d traveled in Europe as a young woman on my own and some guy would come up and say, “Do you want to do this?” and I’d go off. Now I go, “The things that could have happen”. In Southeast Asia, it’s often that guys will drink too much and people will see it and think the amount of times that they’re come that close. The difference is luck. You just didn’t meet the wrong person. We were exploring that idea that when you go on holidays, you don’t have as many inhibitions and you let yourself go a little bit.

What are you guys going to work on next? Do you have anything in the pipeline already?

FP: Yeah, we’ve moved from Australia to LA and we’ve got a whole array of things that are going on. Kieran is attached to direct a couple of films that he didn’t write that are really beautiful as well as directing one that he has written. I’m in the second draft of a psychological thriller. We’re about to start writing another project together for another director.

KDS: There’s an awful lot going on and right now it’s just juggling plates. Nothing is in production really. We’re all in various stages of casting and financing really so we don’t know what will go first. We’re really, really busy.

FP: I’m now going out as an actor for a lot of things.

Are you attached to anything so far?

FP: No. I got a green card just recently so I’ve only had a working visa since February.

KDS: I will formally attach you right now to a role.

Breaking news. Felicity is now cast in Kieran’s next film.

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SIFF Review: LAST I HEARD

by Posted in Festival Reviews
“Last I Heard”
Directed by Dave Rodriguez
Starring Paul Sorvino, Renee Props, Michael Rapaport, Andrea Nittoli, Lev Gorn, Steven Bauer, Chazz Palminteri
Drama, Comedy

 For a film whose focus is character, Last I Heard is pretty inept at characterization. Leading man Paul Sorvino does the best he can with his ex-mobster character Mr. Joe but he just doesn’t have it in him to play the star role nor does he have any character half decent enough to adequately play off of. His eventually coming-to-terms with life outside the confines of a prison cell should have felt poignant but instead stagnates and quickly becomes adrift in mediocrity. When the walls to the stony faced character are finally broken down, even his tears feel artificial and vapid. Director and screenwriter Dave Rodriguez uses heavy-handed pathos to try and move his audience but his actors just aren’t up for the challenge.

Sorvino is certainly suited for the role as he completely embodies the look and feel of traditional Italian mafioso. His type is so suited, in fact, that you’re sure to double take when you realize that he was not indeed a regular on The Sopranos. Even as a devoted fan to that series, I was pretty much convinced that he was part of the show however a quick pit-stop over at IMDB revealed that he indeed never set foot on the glorious set of one of television’s best and most groundbreaking shows.

 
I can’t tell you exactly where this Renee Props came from but she is simply awful as Joe’s daughter Rita. Each and every time she utters, “Daad,” with a piss-poor Italian accent, it is literally cringe-worthy. She’s about as believable as a Sasquatch playing poker and her god-awful accent is really nothing short of detestable. I’m not here to take pot shots but her total lack of skills really alienates any connection to the audience that the film is trying to generate. She is Joe’s anchor to the modern world and when even your anchor is drowning, there’s no real hope for the captain.

In that the same salad of wilted lettuce, Michael Rapaport’s Bobby is equally rotten and just doesn’t  make sense. As Joe’s neighbor, Bobby grows up admiring Mr. Joe because…he’s old school. Oh and he had nice cars. Essentially, Bobby was won over by the glitz and the glamour of Joe’s old lifestyle so when Joe returns home, Bobby is happy to help Joe acclimatize to a world that has changed tremendously in twenty years.

This involves driving Joe to the doctors, driving Joe some other place and also just driving Joe. The first thing we learn about Bobby is from his wife: Bobby “lives at work.” He’s so busy that he barely gets time to spend with his family. And yet, he appears to drops everything in an effort to take care of this washed up geezer of a mobster. On top of that, Joe is a disrespectful prick to Bobby about 98 percent of the time. Regardless, Bobby considers Joe a friend and feels a deep-seated responsibility for this neighbor. Don’t ask me why because it’s never really fleshed out to a satisfying degree but this seems to be a general theme of the film.

 
When Rodriguez’s flick does try and switch gears into Joe’s repentance, it’s too late. We just don’t care for you Joe nor are we really interested in the people you’ve associated with for the past hour and a half. Sure, there’s some heft to the third act but it’s not enough to pick up the rotten breadcrumbs you’ve spilled down the street for the entirety of our engagement.

In all honesty, when Rodriguez does manage to accomplish something in the film, it feels more like homage than anything you could call original. Trying to channel the love for The Sopranos is an ambitious goal and one that he entirely fails to live up to. As for Sorvino, he has his moments but the people behind the camera and back in the editing rooms have done him more of a disservice than anything.

 


With The Sopranos, what makes the gangsters-dealing-with-their-feelings subject interesting is that stark dynamic between their steely persona and their fragile innards. Just like you and I, these people struggle with familial relations but don’t want to compromise their iron and traditional demeanor in fear or looking weak or, oh no!, progressive. While Sorvino’s Mr. Joe has all the opportunity in the world to skirt the line between these two internally battling perspectives, Rodriguez only serves in blacks and whites. Without nuance, we only see a hard-faced mobster or a blubbering old man, none of the gooey in-between – the subtlety and nuance that makes the transformation interesting.

Sweeping dynamics off to the side, we’re throttled between weepy sentimentality and backwards-thinking stubbornness and it just gets…well…boring. Perhaps this seesawing might have worked better if the characters surrounding Joe weren’t as flat as a two-by-four… but they are.

D

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Woody Allen's Newest BLUE JASMINE Gets a Trailer

by Posted in Trailers

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2013/06/blue_jasmine.jpg
The nick-pick king returns after his last soft-boiled effort, To Rome With Love, failed to stir up much excitement with critics and audiences. Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine however is already making waves in the film community and the result seems to be a resounding, ‘Yay.’ So long as Allen can channel that inimitable Allen-ness that made Midnight in Paris, alongside his countless older classics, such a winner, we’re all in store for another esoteric treat.

Unlike Allen’s recent entourage of globetrotting filmography, Blue Jasmine is not a love letter to a city as much as it is a dark character study. Starring Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin, the narrative follows a financial dealer (Baldwin) sent packing for prison after dealing outside the confines of the law and his wife (Blanchett) on the outside who is left to pick up the pieces.

Check the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FER3C394aI8

Blue Jasmine is directed by Woody Allen and stars Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, Louis C.K., Sally Hawkins, Charlie Tahan, Alden Ehrenreich, Tammy Blanchard, Michael Stuhlbarg and Bobby Cannavale. It hits limited theaters on July 26.

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More Raunch for Second FILTH Red Band Trailer

by Posted in Trailers

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I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I like red band trailers and a film like Filth is good reason why. If you’re dealing with dark, mature material, it’s hard to really convey the essence of the piece without giving us a taste for the down and dirty aspects.

Jon S. Baird directs a script torn from the pages of Irvine Welsh‘s novel, who also wrote Trainspotting. Filth will enter the canon of the corrupt police-officer genre with James McAvoy at the helm of the madness.

If you haven’t already checked out the first – and equally red band – trailer, check it here. Otherwise, enjoy the filthiness of Filth. (I hope I don’t have to say that this isn’t safe for work.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rsXHrgoUOc

Filth is directed by Jon S. Baird and stars James McAvoy, Jaime Bell, Jim Broadbent, Imogen Poots, Eddie Marsan and Shirley Henderson. It hits theaters September 27.

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SIFF Review: WISH YOU WERE HERE

by Posted in Festival Reviews

“Wish You Were Here”
Directed by Kieran Darcy-Smith
Starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price, Teresa Palmer, Antony Starr
Drama, Mystery
89 Mins
R

Cautionary tale and psychological thriller, Wish You Were Here is the worst of vacation nightmares realized. Veering around chronological storytelling, director Kieran Darcy-Smith twists an introspective journey into a taut thriller. With silence that feels as weighty as dialogue, Darcy-Smith stretches the alluring reveal on a little long but, when all is said and done, has left his mark and made a potent statement about the destructive nature of guilt.

When Jeremy goes missing after a drug-fueled night of partying, his girlfriend and her sister and husband are forced to continue their lives in his absence all the while trying to piece together his whereabouts and what exactly happened that night. The shenanigans overlap with the general theme of The Hangover insofar as there’s a lost friend and our characters are trying to compile some semblance of an otherwise drugged up night but the similarities end there, as the sorrowful drama that follows is no laughing matter.

Back home in Australia, Dave and Alice Flannery reconcile this shocking jolt of an event with their everyday lives. The notion of impermanence seeps into their mind like poison. As Alice stirs, Dave tries to forget. But his general unease and unwillingness to engage with the topic is revealing. Meanwhile, Alice is almost too oblivious to Dave’s discernible withdrawal into himself. Sugarcoating the mire may be a reactionary response to this trying time but without digging into the subtext, her aptitude for empathetic cues are questionable. Even when Alice isn’t on the same page as us, we know there’s something that Dave’s not letting on.

As Dave, Joel Edgerton wrestles with demons and, again, mixes it up. Even whilst jostling between a lineup of tough guys, Edgerton brings something unique to each of his characters and Dave is an imploding washboard that is miles different from his mob of manly roles. Bottled, carbonated and shook up, Edgerton’s Dave wrestles with the destructiveness of guilt and loses offering a performance that is at once restrained and explosive, adding fuel to the fire rocketing him to stardom.

Star and screenwriter, Felicity Price plays Alice as a wife and mother that’s caring, deluded and shabby-around-the-edges. Put through the ringer by her husband, Alice is a reactionary character, trying her best to adapt and shift with the new bits of information illuminating around her. Her hopeful optimism is the epitome of cognizance gone awry. Fooling yourself is a tricky game and one that Price navigates with careful footing. Her consternation with what unfolds is equally well plodded.

A jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing, Wish You Were Here unpacks its story like a jack-in-the-box strapped into boxing gloves. Slicing the real-time flow with quick backflips into time spent in Cambodia, we learn a new important piece of the puzzle every so often but never enough to anticipate the ultimate payoff. In true prizefighter fashion, Darcy-Smith saves the big, unexpected hook for last.

With some of the story beats coming right from the thriller playbook, there are moments where you hope for more bold originality on the screenwriters part but they still accomplish what they set out to: to entertain. Yes, there are bits that don’t quite hold up once we know the whole scope but the  emotional schema alleviates any lingering pressure from story impracticalities.

Capitalizing on our irrational fear of the unknown, Darcy-Smith Murphy Lawschools us into submission and throws that fear in our face with a final act that leaves us lack-jawed and stunned into silence. Entropy grows in the obscurity of guilt and the resulting smash-and-crash relations are a slow-growing inevitability.

Within the hustle of Cambodian life, the picture feels authentic and captures essences of culture and lifestyle that only the student of a culture can kindle. This is no work of a passerby; it is the story of a participant. The live free and die-hard nature of this place is alluring and minatory. A two-sided coin where danger lurks in the shadows on the outskirts of paradise, heaven and hell trade shifts with the coming and going of the sun. Leaping between continents and social constructs, Darcy-Smith juxtaposes the lifestyles of the Cambodian and Australian but passes no active judgment nor does he prescribe a formula for happiness or escaping dread.

Fleet-footed character exploration be damned, this creeping house of cards is parasitically engrossing. From Dave’s shell-shocked volatility to Alice’s buckling under, the characters are richer than the bulk of the script. Bleak and soul-searching, Darcy-Smith and Co. have created a film that pulls loose the rock on post-traumatic-stress and pokes around at the ants scurrying inside.

B-

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SIFF Review: V/H/S 2

by Posted in Festival Reviews 2 Comments

“V/H/S 2”
Directed by Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sánchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard
Starring Kelsy Abbott, Devon Brookshire, Samantha Gracie, Hannah Hughes, Kevin Hunt, Lawrence Michael Levine, Carly Robell, Mindy Robinson, Adam Wingard and John T. Woods
Horror
96 Mins
R

V/H/S 2 is completely tone deaf to any semblance of mood that it tries to summon. Waffling between a lo-fi ghost story, perverse Zombie campiness, genuinely eerie cult atmospherics, old-school creature puppetry, and shockingly lame Alien clichés, the five portions that make up this film couldn’t be more disparate and at odds with each other. Even without the complete overuse of crackling audio and tired finicky video errors, it’s clear that this franchise cannot capture the almost realistic nature of the first film and instead settles with being a loose grab-bag of predictable horror staples.

In order to flesh out what exactly made V/H/S 2 such a failure on the whole, it’s important to understand the pieces. At first, the narrative structure holding the whole thing together seems more promising than the destructive-kids-on-a-tear that was the structural glue for the first one. It becomes obvious rather quickly though that just as little thought was put into this overarching story as were put into the segments that make up the majority of the film’s run-time.

The first segment opens on a guy who, after some unexplained accident, has had his eye replaced by a cyber-eye at the behest of an obviously screwy doctor/scientist. As part of the experiment, this robotic eye records everything that the host sees and thus, the filmmakers have set up the framework for the whole VHS slant. Even in the inklings of these establishing moments, the acting is so wooden and grade school that you’re almost jolted right out of the thing.

Only 10 minutes into the film and you’re already second-guessing its value… then come the ghosts whose makeup jobs look more like your parents on Halloween than anything resembling a professional effort. Sure, it’s spooky, it’s got some degree of mystery as to how they filmed some of the shots and certainly milks its fair share of jump-scares but it’s not really that much more impressive than something you’d find on YouTube and it features the acting ability of your local middle school play. Next.

From the second this sophomore short begins, it’s evident that we have another dud. Some dude is strapping a GoPro camera to his helmet to record his super-dope, ultra-hardcore mountain biking ride when his girlfriend calls and gives some speech about how he should be riding her and not his bike. Sigh. I understand that you’re not going to get top notch writers or even agented performers for the level of work but it really just seems like Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez, the filmmakers responsible for this dud, just scooped up their own friends or girlfriends for some of these roles. The acting is that bad.

 *SPOILER ALERT* As the chaos escalates, our POV gains sentience, grabs a shotgun and blasts his own head off. Considering that this is only a short, Hale and Sanchez may think they have escaped answering for this blaring WTF but it’s what’s left lingering afterwards. Horror audiences are asked more than most to just go with the flow and accept things for what they are but that’s still no excuse from this flagrantly sloppy screenwriting. *END SPOILER*

After these first two complete failures, the third short (which is considerably longer than the first two) arrives and saves the day. It doesn’t waste time establishing the POV and discards the shoddy acting while offering an actually interesting premise that hasn’t been done a million times before. We’re in some South East Asian country to check in with a scandalous cult organization and it’s pretty clear off the bat that the crew of documentary filmmakers –  whose eyes we are seeing through – are in store for some serious trouble.

Gareth Evans makes this work as well as it does because he plays with both reality and fantasy. Even though the aspects that were all grounded in reality work better than those that were not, this fantasy mash-up is certainly more entertaining than the run-of-the-mill horror flick. While this portion of the film may not quite be transcendent horror, it’s a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant and stinky feature.

The final segment is hardly worth mentioning because it could be the weakest of the bunch. After establishing a pretty solid setting of tweens vs. teens and the escalating pranks taking place at their beachside mansion, director Jason Eisener abandons any sense of propriety and sulks backwards into the lamest alien feature this side of the 21st century. The lack of imagination and scares are almost laughable and invoke a sense that this is all just a facade to be pulled away to reveal the real scares. It’s not. It’s just that bad.

If you have five people each pour a different ingredient into a proton collider and turned it on full blast, you still couldn’t expect something as disparate and self-defeating as this sour hodgepodge.  The standards for these short scares seem so low that I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a three-week window to make the executive decision on what was going to pass. Admittedly, there was one of the five total flicks that really worked for me but otherwise this is four-fifths of a terrible movie. With four films begging for that easy F and the third portion being a pretty solid B, the resulting GPA does not work in the film’s favor. If you’re up for turning off your mind and seeing the same old thing all over again in a completely unoriginal manner, you’re sure to get a few chuckles from the experience but otherwise, go watch Evil Dead again.

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Talking with Karen Whitehead of HER AIM IS TRUE

by Posted in Interviews

 

Last week, I got a chance to chat with Karen Whitehead, director of Her Aim Is True. Focused on the career of Jini Dellaccio, Karen’s documentary takes aim at both the world of 1960s rock ‘n’ roll, asking how a young woman photographer made such an impact in a largely patriarchal subculture. From The Rolling Stones and The Who to The Beach Boys and The Sonics, Jini’s shots became the standard for “cool”. An icon in her own right, this is the story of Jini’s journey and where she is at today.

 

 

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What inspired you to make a documentary about Jini?

Karen Whitehead: Well, my background as a journalist and I think I’ve always been drawn to revealing stories that are not in the mainstream. I was particularly interested in this story that brings so much together about women’s experiences that are not really generally known about. In particular Jini, when I met her, was just so intriguing to me. How she got to do what she did, the choices she made, were very unusual for a woman in that time period. And she was such a good character.

When you’re a filmmaker or a journalist, and you write stories and interview people, it’s a whole other level, when you’re talking about how you’re going to tell that story officially. And whether the person you want to talk about and feature… whether that person can actually essentially engage an audience.  And what struck me, in the cinema, was the regular laughing and gasps. People laughed with her at her extraordinary sense of humor. She’s so charming, and she tells a great story, and the camera loves her. And it was amazing, because when you sit in a, because when you sit in a editing room, as well, and you think you’ve found something and you think it’s going to work, you actually don’t know until you actually watch it with an audience, which is something, unfortunately, most filmmakers don’t get to do until right at the end. I’m very excited that we got the reactions that I had hoped. And it very much goes back to what I felt, to answer your question, with the first meetings and encounters that I had with Jini. I just knew there was something fascinating about the way she describes her experience and approach to life, as well as the particular stories she tells.

Of course you have the archives but I also thought we could do something different. It’s not an art gallery. It’s a film, we’re telling a story. I just felt that we could do something that would bring out Jini’s incredible artistry and experience that would be inspiring, but also would have universal appeal, but also tell her particular story and how she documented her very unique music scene, from a perspective that actually no one’s seen. And that’s something that we got into a bit in the Q and A, after the screening. A lot of people were very interested in how we got that balance, and they were excited about the music. My whole approach of having herwas based on mixing the music of the 60’s and the current music, and showing how Jini could move and relate to young people, whether they were in the 60’s or whether they are right now. All these ideas I had and how I put that into the film, very much extended to my responses to her storytelling and how she talked to me when we first met.

Did you meet with Jini, before making the film? Did you know of her before, or had somebody turned you on to her and then you sought her out? Or did you always know of her as an artist?

KW: Well, I lived in Washington D.C and like everyone else in the world, until I made this film, I had not heard of Jini Dellaccio. Actually how it happenedwas serendipity really, because what happened was I got lucky. Basically some work was already under way by the Jini Dellaccio collection, to preserve her archive. And Chuck Pennington, who’s interviewed in the film and is the archives advisor, for the Jini Deelaccio collection, had been involved in producing this coffee table book, which you may have seen or heard of. It’s called Rock and Roll by Jini Dellaccio. It was certainly sold in at least one bookstore in the Seattle area. I mean, it was a really small run… a niche kind of thing, but a beautifully produced book of a handful of some her iconic rock images. And they decided to have a tribute birthday party to her, and this was in 2009 for her 92nd birthday. And they invited some of the musicians.

What happened was an amateur Youtube video went viral and somehow a friend of a friend of mine, here on the east coast, saw it. And musicians were saying things like, “Thank you to Jini for making us look so amazing.” I think it was Merrillee Rush, specifically, that there’s a little clip of. I realized there was this amazing rock and roll photographer that nobody has heard of, so I got in touch with JDC and I was able to come and meet some of the musicians and Jini and got to look around more. And that’s when I realized that this isn’t just an interesting story, this could potentially be a fascinating documentary.

In the film, Jini says at one point that music was the best part of her life and was an inspiration to her always. What do you draw on for inspiration? What do you consider the best part of your life?

KW: Oh my goodness. Well I’m about half Jini’s age so I hope I’ve still got more to come. I grew up in London, and I was always fascinated by listening to people telling stories. That’s really how I got into journalism. I take a lot of inspiration probably from my own parents. They were teachers. And I grew up in a place where I had very easy access to the arts, music, theater, being in London. And I saw a lot of amazing productions and you know. Always in London… you know the national theater was on my doorstep, so I get a lot of inspiration from the kind of upbringing I had, with parents as teachers who were very into me experiencing the arts. I spent many Sunday afternoons walking around the Tate Gallery. So I think the visual arts have always been a part of my life. And I’m very lucky, because of that.  

At one point in the film, towards the end, a photographer was being interviewed and he said that Jini was never a rock and roll photographer, rather a fashion photographer working in the rock and roll scene. But it’s this that made her so different and really changed the mold. What original approach do you bring to your work?

KW: To some extent, I think it’s important to let the audience decide how they feel about how I experienced it. That’s a really good question though, because I think the way I feel very strongly about storytelling is that the person that’s had the experience, as much as possible, should be the one telling the story. I’m not a huge fan of narration, which you will see if you look at the way I constructed the film. It’s not linear, it’s not necessarily in the order that you might expect, and I like to unravel layers. All documentary filmmakers find their way and their story. I think particular stories call for particular approaches. I had the challenge of working with someone who was in her nineties and we can’t follow Jini around, in a way that you might in other approaches to filmmaking. We can do bits and pieces, but we have particular challenges. For me, it was about building a really strong visual aesthetic. This is a film about photography. So I think, in the approach I took, I wouldn’t call myself necessarily original. I think I tried to pull together some ideas about how you can tell this kind of story, and put them in a form that makes sense and be enjoyable for the viewer.

What was the most difficult part of making the film, for you?  

KW: There are two answers. As I alluded to, one particular challenge is working with someone when you’re spanning 90-plus years. There’s that challenge of getting 90 years into 70 minutes and we made sure to. We’re not trying to do an art gallery and tell her entire life story. We’re not showing her entire archive. We’re showing a period. We’re particularly showing what I think is a fascinating period in her photography. It’s not what anyone’s expecting to see and it gives you the essence of her artistry. And there is much much more, there to be enjoyed. I also think all indie films have the unavoidable challenge of funding.

We’ve had a lot of support from fundraising and that’s very important for all indie films. I would particularly hope that, as more films like this come out, Searching for Sugar Man is another example… Art films need to be given a chance. We have very few places to go to for grants. Most of the grants and funds that are available are for very important storytelling and issues of social justice, which we all need to be out there in the world, but there are very few spots for those of us who find these kind of stories. And that has been the difficult challenge of this film. I don’t want to dwell on it, but you did ask.

What do you personally think has been the biggest impact of Jini’s work, to this day?

KW: I think that, again, you have to look at that in levels. She clearly has had an enormous impact on many lives, in terms of the musicians and friendships. She was able to form really close bonds with those musicians. In a broader sense, she has brought an approach to art and beauty… Of observing beauty and documenting music and the natural world in a unique way. Given that, she leaves an incredible legacy, for anyone looking to be creative and pursue their own individual spirit. It is an important legacy, for those two things. I personally think my life has been enriched from meeting her. But I also know, from people I spoke to in the audience afterwards, and people who have contacted me since doing this film, that she has touched lives she does not know. There’s a couple of musicians in the film who have not met Jini, like the people in the band Girl Trouble, but knew her work. And then think about all those photographers and people, who have seen those album covers. You can go on for so many levels of seeing her influence, not just what we showed in the film. Obviously, she is one of the most famous rock photographers now. She definitely was doing something that we describe as “trailblazing” and “pioneering.” But I actually think, fundamentally, I’d like to think, and I’m sure Jini would enjoy the fact that she can be such a positive role model for women and girls, which is really great.

Absolutely. It seems like that probably is one of her biggest impacts, just being a woman and emerging into this scene, which was unprecedented at the time. Were there some band members that you really wanted to get a hold of that, for one reason or another, you weren’t able to get into the film?

KW:It’s obviously unfortunate, but people die. Unfortunately, Kent Morrill was very seriously ill with cancer, when I started filming. There were practical problems. Someone like Kent would have been a great interview, but it wasn’t possible, because he was deteriorating in his house. So that was unfortunate. I actually made a conscious decision not to seek out quote “rock star legends,” because their memory of Jini is going to be fleeting, because the bands she shot in a rock concert are a moment in the film, but it’s not… I actually got her interviews with musicians that she had close relationships with. To me, that was the essence of the film. The other person who would have been great to interview, would have been not a musician, but Alan Little, who helped her design the house. Actually, in the end, we have a bonus scene for the DVD more about the house, because he had actually died when we were starting production. So that kind of changed a little bit.
What’s next for you Karen?

KW:: Well, I do have another project that I hope to get off the ground, and I have been working on a little bit. I’m very involved in the Women in Film and Video community, in Washington D.C. And I love mentoring other filmmakers. Other than those sorts of things, I actually have to now work on getting this film really out in the world. We hope to do other film festivals, art community screenings, and wider distribution, but we still have some final challenges. There is a lot of music and photography in the film. I have to put out licensing. That’s still remaining. Next step for us, to sort that out with, is distribution plans, which we have.

What’s coming up for you on the festival circuit?

KW: We’ve applied for a few other festivals. I have just started to receive a couple of invitations. So we’ll be looking at what we can do, over the next few months. There’s usually a bit of a break in the circuit, as you know, so I expect people will be seeing this film, hopefully, around the autumn, if not before. We’ve got a few possibilities that we’re starting to look at.


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Check out the trailer for Karen’s documentary, Her Aim is True, right here:

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Out in Theaters: THIS IS THE END

by Posted in Out in Theaters

“This is the End”
Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen
Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Michael Cera
Comedy, Action
107 Mins
R

Funnymen Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen – the writing team behind Superbad – have teamed up again to make their directorial debut and the funniest movie in the last ten years. With the who’s-who of comedic actors playing amped up versions of “themselves,” this ensemble bounce off each other with the snappy veracity of high speed bumper cars and manage to bottle lightning. Like sitting in on a smoke session with this pack of real-life buddies, the experience will either make you euphoric, inducing helpless giggles and maybe even tears of joy, or make you uncomfortable, leave you with dry mouth and make you want to go home. Thankfully, if your funny bone still works, you’ll probably be in the former camp.

Satisfying our munchies for laughs, Rogen and Goldberg have expanded upon their 2007 short film Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse and crafted a full length comedic masterpiece full of sardonic wit and brohemian madness. Chronicling a fictional reunion between long-time friends Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel, the inside-the-not-so-glorious-life-of-a-celebrity aspect demarcates the film from the pack of big budget summer comedies we’ve become acclimatized to. Rogen and Baruchel, playing Rogen and Baruchel, munch Carl’s Jr. burgers and smoke a metric ton of pot (a J made of jays for Jay, to be precise) before heading over to a party at James Franco‘s new pad where the apocalyptic chaos ensues.

Feeling alienated by Rogen’s newfound bromance with Franco, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson, Baruchel sulks around the party. Franco’s guests are not just throwaway extras but exactly who you would expect to be living it up at a James Franco party: a slew of young famous people who’ve worked with the crew before on previous projects.

With the cameo really surfacing as a must-have in modern day comedies, they have become, for the most part, ineffective and boring. Shoehorning in celebs feels like a plea bargain and a desperate pull for a gag but the cameos here haven’t felt this fresh since Bill Murray‘s game-changing appearance in Zombieland.

Aziz Ansari, Rihanna, Kevin Hart, Mindy Kaling, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Emma Watson all find a line or two as they saunter around the party, pre-sinkhole of death, but it’s Michael Cera and his penchant for cocaine that steals the show and wrestles us into stitches. Cera has crafted this innocent and harmless persona from his debut in Arrested Development to his more recent roles such as Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and totally turns that expectation on its head. This is a manic Cera; a booty-slapping, drug-addled Cera. Note to the Cera man: you have found a new calling. The bad boy is out, now let him roam.

When the apocalypse begins and people start dying off left and right, Rogen, Baruchel, Hill, Franco and Robinson hole up and prepare for the worst. Divvying up their resources, they realize that they are tragically short on useful provisions (and one much-desired Milky Way) but are stocked up with enough beer, pot, ecstasy pills, and mushrooms for them to party themselves into their graves.

When early-to-bed Danny McBride emerges from a drug-induced hibernation, he quickly becomes the vocally domineering antagonist. As a solo act, McBride’s particular brand of humor works well but it can become overbearing at times in union with the ensemble nature of the piece, with his dead-eyed machismo sarcasm tap-dancing all over everyone else’s toes. Similarly, Franco can’t score the same slam dunk riffs that Robinson, Baruchel, Hill and Rogen are dribbling and passing off between them but, at the end of the day, the imperfections of the movie give it character rather than rob it of its hard-earned steady stream of laughs. Not everyone’s part may play perfectly but, as arts-man Franco would say, it’s all art man.

As a daring new form of comedy, This is the End is art…and it is brilliant. It works as a memorable addition and a milestone for the genre for many of the same reasons that Superbad continues to be a staple for any comedy diet. Behind the blood, penis jokes and billows of weed smoke, these are really genuine friendships that, despite how raunchous and tongue-in-cheek they are, have won us over.

Rather than feeling like an artificially scripted motion of plot points, these comics are left to do what they do best: be comical. With Rogen involved in all steps of the project, a tip of the hat goes out to him as he understands how to best use the talent of the crew around him – something that has somehow become a rare thing in the industry.

When the crew finally do emerge from the confines of Franco mansion, the world is in ruins and the special effects take the stage. Surprisingly enough, they’re pretty damn good! I mean like a long-winded Craig Robinson “dayummmn” good. For a film made on a reported 25 million dollar budget, this looks like a million bucks (which ironically enough costs around 100 million in the studio system.) Hollywood take note – this is how you spend money. Retire your outdated model of smoke and mirrors because Rogen and Goldberg just schooled you at your own game.

Rejoice, comedy is funny once more thanks to This is the End. Like a moustachioed Chutulu rising from the depths, it’s not only a resoundingly successful comedy but also a surprisingly effective apocalypse flick. Aggressively funny from start to finish, this new stripped down take on what the genre can do is somehow self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing at the same time. Still, I dare you not to laugh. This one’s for the screwball, the punsters and the satiricalists and adds up to one of the best times in theaters in years.

A

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Trailer for Corporate Thriller PARANOIA

by Posted in Trailers 1 Comment

 

Led by Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games), Paranoia is a game of corporate cat-and-mouse that sees feuding corporate giants Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford spying on each other to acquire technology potentially worth billions of dollars. This one has flown pretty low on the radar which gives me the general idea that there isn’t a lot of faith in it. The actors alone simulate some interest though even though the concept sounds familiar to some other corporate-climbing films like Wall Street.

Give the trailer a watch and gauge your interest level:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFPe1bXXyk

Paranoia is directed byRobert Luketic and stars Harrison Ford, Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and Amber Heard. It hits theaters August 16th, 2013.

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