Metropia **review** #LFF
Metropia is the third film by Tarik Saleh, a wonderfully bleak vision of a united Europe joined by a stark underground Metro system. It echoes an Orwellian vision of a society watched over by a big brother surveillance system, whilst blending paranoid delusions of voices in your head with plots to take down the controlling forces. It’s a striking film that in some moments looks like it is live action and in the next rotoscoped animation. In fact the technique is surprisingly just the use of two dimensional images animated in After Effects. Faces are only ever seen face on or on profile and while the mouths move with a subtlety only seen in computer animations of a time now gone, it is the eyes that capture you with their expressive gleam and wide-eyed longing. Heads seem to teeter on miniature bodies. Skin tones are hyper real, like gorgeous macro photography might be. There is an air of authenticity to the acting and animation that breathes life into this bleak, grey vision of a future inspired by the Swedish suburbia that the director grew up in.
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After Tomorrow
Kicked off my London Film Festival this year with a real corker. It was a short film panorama featuring seven rather odd little delights from around the world. The highlight for me was After Tomorrow directed by Emma Sullivan and starring the excellent Joseph Mawle who I recently saw in the TV drama Freefall (about the credit crisis in the UK).
“Returning to the village of his estranged wife, James grows increasingly concerned when the sinister owner of the guest house refuses to let him leave. A psychological suspense with a surprising yet moving denouement.”
Without giving too much away this short is not what it seems and the twist actually elicited a few gasps from the audience and lots of chatter afterward. It’s a shame you can’t view these shorts online yet but I’m sure once the festival seasons are over it will be posted so look out for it. Who knows, it might even be up for an oscar this year.
Short from the London Film Festival
Zombies Zombies everywhere!
It’s been a bit of a zombie week for me quite unintentionally I might add. When done right this genre of horror is fantastic (think 28 days later – but not 28 weeks later) and it seems there is still more that can be told in this tale of people gone mad with blood lust.
First up is a video that someone at work posted on our blog (which incidentally is worth checking out as lots of people regularly post http://www.leanmeanfightingmachine.co.uk/blog/). It’s called ZOMBIE ZOMBIE Driving Clip Simon Gesrel Xavier Ehretsmann and is an homage to the classic Carpenter flick The Thing. It’s done in stop-motion and set to an absolutely hypnotic electro track. The tension is incredible and the tale is told in a breathtaking 6 and a half minutes. It’s absolutely brilliant stuff and it’s on youtube so I’ve included the video below. Make yourself a cup of tea and settle down for this treat…
Second up is a fantastic Spanish movie called REC. It follows a camera crew as they set out to film an ordinary night of a local team of firemen who get called to a routine call at an apartment block. It seems neighbours have called the services to reports of screams coming from an apartment of which the police need the firmen’s help in opening the door. You see everything from the cameraman’s point of view and although this style of film-making has been done before in Cloverfield doing this in the horror genre certainly adds a level of claustrophobia I’ve not felt in a movie in a long time. What emerges from this plot is a zombie movie but trust me this is realistically done. Totally believable storyline. Brilliant acting. And terrifying in its conclusion. It’s the first time (I think ever) that I’ve actually jumped up in my chair and screamed. I know that sounds a bit woosie but really this film will make you do this. It’s an absolute classic and well worth a watch. Here’s a clip…
Focus On: Saul Bass
Saul Bass (May 8, 1920—April 25, 1996) was an iconic graphic designer working throughout the 60s through to the early 90s. Based in New York he has been responsible for designing some of the most recognisable logos in American history.
Minolta
United Airlines
Warner Communications
He went on to work in the movie industry by creating some of the best movie posters around. Working closely with some of the biggest names in the industry like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick he managed to design movie posters that really captured the imagination and acted as an effective teaser to the movie.
But what he is more famous for have been his work creating some of the most striking movie title sequences in history. He first garnered acclaim for his work on the titles of Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955 but went on to create some more gems in his later career.
Here’s my pick of the best of the rest :
Waltz with Bashir
I’m so excited by this movie. Last year we had Persepolis this year it’s Waltz with Bashir. The animated film genre is coming into its own. Blending reportage and rotoscoping techniques this gorgeous feature looks set to be devastating in impact with a seriously deadly soundtrack. A contender for Best Animated Film or Best Foreign Film no doubt. But could this be up there for Best Picture? Alongside Wall-e? It could happen. People are really taking the animated film so much more seriously these days.
scorcese wins
A great win for Scorcese last night. He was owed, true. But he won for a deserving movie. My blog predictions all held good with the exception of Alan Arkin winning for Best Supporting Actor but to be fair this category was wide open (however, strangely a couple of hours before I switched to Babel for Best Picture having the horror of Crash winning still ringing in my ears…..despite having said that The Departed will win Best Picture and Director since seeing the movie….. ho hum).
All in all a good night with Ellen settling in to do a great job of holding her own and entertaining the crowd of A-listers. She will be back I’m sure. Also good song performances from the Dreamgirls with Beyonce being surprisingly good and Jennifer a little nervous (bless her… having just won for Best Supporting Actress). Also great shadow puppetry interspersed the proceedings (hopefully someone will post clips to youtube so I can post them as they really were quite good). 13 correct predictions out of a possible 24. Not the best year for me and well done to Dean for winning. How did everyone else do? Post a message and let me know about your Oscar night….
everybody loves you oscar
iFilm has recently added a new category to their listings: an oscars page. I have long been an advocate of iFilm over the far inferior youTube as it generally has the best animation and short film selection. Their oscars page has loads of clips and trailers from many of the best picture nominees. Having failed to see Letters from Iwo Jima I may well use this to catch up on those oscar worthy clips at some point. Dean and Lee there’s a couple of good clips from Babel there too which I don’t think you’ve seen yet.
Have a great oscars night y’all and may the best man or woman win….. or more likely actually be forced to slap a smile on as the award goes to some undeserving misfit. My predictions….
Best pic: Departed
Best dir: Scorcese
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker
Best Actress:Helen Mirren
Best S. Actor: Eddie Murphy
Best S. Actress: Jennifer Hudson
darren aronofsky
I had a bit of a Darren Aronofsky weekend having seen The Fountain on Friday and renting Pi on Saturday. I am a huge fan of his interim movie Requiem for a Dream about a group of recreational drug users who slide headlong into addiction.
And so on the strength of this movie (one of my top ten movies of all time) I went to see The Fountain. Build up for the movie has been in the form of an exquisite movie trailer….
… and with a brilliant website from the folks over at Hi-Res (who incidently did the site for Requiem for a Dream and was the site that launched their company… brilliant lo-fi style flash site here). The Fountain site is a superb experience website allowing you to navigate the three time zones that the movie is set in. The movie itself is gloriously pretentious and unapologetically incomprehensible, being mired in philosophy and religion. Most of the movie goers left scratching their head or laughing. For me though this movie was a lot more than that. It is flawed for sure. But the essence of the message is something that resounds deeply within me. Gorgeous art direction and underpinned by a sumptuos score by Clint Mansell, this film is a must for film fanatics. It feels much like the personal movies of the 60’s. It explores themes of love, death and immortality whilst touching on old testament stories such as the Tree of Life from the garden of eden (the other tree was the tree of knowledge that Adam and Eve ate from). If The Fountain doesn’t leave you chattering about the meaning of life you probably shouldn’t have gone to see this movie in the first place. It is cerebral. It is challenging. But ultimately very rewarding. Did I mention it was beautiful to look at.
And so on to Pi. How I have managed to not see this movie for so long is beyond me. Shot in stark black and white and filmed in the streets and apartments of New York this film is designed to give you a headache. Again Clint Mansell is at the helm with the score and he produces a scratchy whiny soundtrack the crescendos in epic style as the waves of pain build in the movie. Like all Aronofsky movies he creates something of an opera with building intensity and painful release at the end. Pi is about a guy called Max who is a genius having looked at the sun for too long at the age of six and seemingly bringing everything into focus at that point. He is a brilliant mathemetician who stumbles upon a number of great importance. The movie touches on some really interesting themes such as the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio. This 216 digit number is believed to be the key to the universe. From the point of view of the government agents who are persuing Max this represents the key to unlocking the seemingly chaotic system of the stock exchange. From the point of view of the Rabbi priests who are also persuing Max this number represents the true name of God which had been lost over the course of time. To Max this number is his gift and seems to manifest itself literally in a section of his brain, a realization with devastating results. Max is plagued by headaches and seizures which he can only control with an increasing amount of stimulants and drugs. Pi is movie genius. Raw, edgy and brilliant. If you loved Eraserhead and Waking Life this will resound deeply with you.
Aronofsky is clearly a writer/director with a lot to say and hopefully with a lot more to come. Unfortunately I suspect he may have to scale down his next effort a little as the studio execs will undoubtedly be disappointed with The Fountain’s buzz and ticket sales. But this will surely be a good thing as the movie magic he creates does stem from his lo-fi and grittier film experiences.
catch me if you can can
Nexus Productions of London created this classic title sequence for the movie Catch Me If You Can back in 2002. It is a retro look back at 60’s design emulating the look of movies like the Pink Panther and other caper movies. It is highly stylized and follows a narrative as the animation takes us through the main plot line of the movie. This is monochromatic gorgeousness at it’s best.
transform my ride
Well yes they do make some great and clever adverts here in the ol’ U of K but can it really compete with the coolness of this Sci-Fi channel ad from the States. Number one ‘they’ need to spend trillions figuring out how we can actually have cars that do this. Imagine how cool that would be when going out of a Friday night. Oh and the timing with the release of the ever popular Transformer series just seems poetic. Did we ever doubt that a live action Transformer movie would ever get made. My only worry is Michael Bay (Armaggedon, The Island, Pearl Harbour….yikes) at the directing helm. I do hope Spielberg steps in as producer with some helpful hints and tips. “Hi Michael, here’s the 3 disc DVD of the making of King Kong. I’ll just leave it on the table by the TV. Feel free to watch it ANY time. No really”. Check out the Transformers trailer here.