On Thursday night I went along to the opening of the New Zealand Film Festival at Auckland’s Civic Theatre. For those who don’t know The Civic Theatre is a large heritage theatre seating over two thousand people in central Auckland, New Zealand. First opened on 20 December 1929, it was reopened in 2000 after a major renovation and conservation effort (yep, got that bit from Wiki). Seeing a film in a large olden style hall is something I haven’t done since I was a teenager, and being spoilt these days with hi-tech audiovisual complexes and home theatres, I was curious to see how the acoustics and and visuals would hold up. Little did I know that the visual and audio onslaught of Beasts of the Southern Wild would be just the film to test it. This was going to be something special.
Read my review of Beasts of the Southern Wildhere.
Directed by Lars Hallström (Chocolat, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Cider House Rules) Salmon Fishing in Yemen is a light weight and mildly comedic romance that centers on the absurd premise of creating a salmon fishing spot in the Yemen. Read the rest of this mini review here.
A midweek night off so Seema and I headed off to the Rialto in Newmarket to see J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call. I have not been to the Rialto for some time. Perhaps it was the particular cinema that we were in but I must say that it was awful environment to watch a film in. The sound was far too loud (and this was not an action film), yet somehow you could still hear the air-conditioning droning in the background. Oh, and the floor lighting was distractingly bright. I hoped that Margin Call was going to immerse me enough to remove me from these real world woes … and it did, ironically because it is about another very real world woe, the risky numerical terrors of the investment banking sector.
I know nothing about its director, Craig Zobel, except that this is his second feature after Great World of Sound (which I have not seen). By all reports, this thriller created quite a stir at the Sundance festival. I’ve learnt not to trust trailers too much as I’ve been burnt in the past. However, as far as trailers go, this looks fantastic. It drags you in leaving you with a sense of intrigue made all the more pertinent because it is based on true events. Its soundtrack and aesthetic alone piqued my interest. Which is interesting because when you break down what little narrative you can obtain from this trailer, it may be nothing more than a schlock thriller boiled down into a cleverly defined style. Opens August 17th in the U.S. I’ll be keeping an eye out for this one.
Really looking forward to this film which is due for release in November. The web site for the film is up. At the moment it does not contain much content, but it does give you a taste of its visual aesthetic. I’m not mad of the soundtrack that accompanies it, perhaps a tad commercial for a film like this, but really I can’t make any judgements at this early stage. You can view the site here.
Finally, Prometheus has landed. My anticipation of this film has been, at times, fever pitched. A loose prequel to one of my all time favourite scifi films, Alien. Was I destined to be disappointed? Surely, nothing could come close to the original Alien. I was about to embark on a discovery to see if the poisonous fangs of Hollywood had sucked the life out of this genre. All I could do as the trailers for Batman, Spiderman, and JamesBond rolled on was to try and forget Scott’s original film and take this on face value. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t manage it. Read my full review here.
Cannes 2012 has run its course and as expected has exposed some very interesting looking films. The following are five films shown at Cannes that top my list to see. Add to this list Life of Pi and Prometheus … and I suppose The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and you have a fairly comprehensive list of my personal must sees for the remainder of 2012.
So at number one is the Palme d’Or winner Amour. Directed by Michael Haneke who made the Oscar Nominated White Ribbon and the chilling Funny Games. He is a master of clipped minimalism, structured and elegant. From all reports this film is well deserved of the Palm D’Or.
Second is the surreal Holy Motors by Leos Carax. I’m not familiar with his work, but by all accounts this is an exceptional film. It’s completely out of left field and appears to be dripping with Lynchian surrealism … and it stars, among others, Kylie Monogue. Odd casting but fascinating nonetheless! The trailer looks stunning and I can’t wait to see it.
Third is Beasts of the Southern Wild. I was a mad fan of Where the Wild Things Are and Pans Labyrinth and this film also explores a child’s cognitive defense from hardship by creating a new reality … it is a theme that for some reason fascinates me.
Fourth is Cosmopolis. A futuristic dystopian thriller. David Cronenberg returns to a genre that he does well. This film has seemed to polarized critics. However, being a Cronenberg fan I can see myself going berko over it. Surprisingly, I think Pattinson is a good choice for the lead. Hopefully I’m right and hopefully its a lot better than Cronenberg’s previous disappointment, A Dangerous Method.
Fifth is Mud. Call it a guilty pleasure but I quite like Matthew McConaughey … I just think he’s very “likable”. Directed by Jeff Nichols (who gave us Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter), this film is a Stand By Me style story concerning an escaped fugitive who befriends two boys. Been getting exceptional reviews.
Other notible films which piqued my interest are: The Paperboy (yes, I know it’s McConaughey again) On the Road. What’s not to like … it’s written by Jack Keroac. Moonrise Kingdom. Looks quirky and has an interesting cast but may be a fizzer as well. Killing them Softly. Kiwi director Andrew Dominik who directed the exceptional slow burn The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Both star Brad Pitt. If this is half as good then it will be worth seeing.
Abstract from an essay I did in 2011 on French surrealism. Breton observed in his first Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) that “what is admirable in the fantastic is that there is no more fantastic, there is only the real.” I discuss the validity of this statement and illustrate with examples from Dulac’s La Coquille et le Clergyman and also Buñuel’s L’Âge d’Or and Un Chien Andalou. Read the remainder of the abstract here.
Here is the first official one minute clip from Scott’s Prometheus. Somebody please tell me that this is not the final edit of this sequence, because if it is then this really is going to be a different beast from its genetic predecessor, Alien, … and I’m not sure I like it. Alien took great pains to emphasize the difficulty involved in landing on an alien planet and pretty much dedicates a quarter of the film to it. This created tension and a sense of realism. In the Prometheus clip they do all this in one minute. Really? They plonk the ship down like its landed at Auckland international airport. Not to mention, the edit does not flow well and feels incredibly jumpy. Hopefully this means they’ve only released a rough cut … which doesn’t sound like a thing the studio would do. My hopes for this film are systematically being dismantled, but as they say, a pessimist is never disappointed. I guess we’ll know for sure in a month.
I’ll say from from the start that I am a huge David Cronenberg fan. He often dives headlong into intense psychological dramas that involve power and its ties to sexual tension. The Talking Cure seemed like an adaptation that was tailor made for an auteur such as Cronenberg. As a result I was expecting a grand Cronenberg psychoanalytic opera. I was disappointed. Read the full review here.
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