Archive for the ‘Film’ Category

Werner Herzog has a reputation for being a bit mental. In the past he has cooked and eaten his own shoe after losing a bet. There was a short documentary made about this incident, the snappily-titled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. He was also shot whilst being interviewed by Mark Kermode but insisted on continuing the interview as ‘it was not a significant bullet’. You see? Crazy.

Nicolas Cage is also a rather deranged individual. The evidence? His performance in The Wicker Man remake and the fact that he named his son Kal-El after Superman’s real name. Bonkers. Now, what would happen if we took this pair of fruit-loops and got them to make a film together? Well somebody did and the result is Bad Lieutenant and it’s brilliant.

Cage plays Terence, a cop promoted to lieutenant after some heroics during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately Terence injures himself and gets addicted to his pain medication. Like Dr House dialled up to eleven, his addiction escalates from Vicodin to weed, to coke, to heroin as the film progresses. Terence also has the small issue of a multiple homicide to clear up, sky-rocketing gambling debts to clear, a young witness to protect and his father’s dog to babysit. Eva Mendes, teaming up with Cage once more after 2007’s Ghost Rider, plays Terence’s girlfriend, whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, Frankie.

Cage gives the performance of his life, chewing up the screen and spitting out chunks of dialogue with barely contained fervour. If you thought he was fun as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Cage clearly relished the role and is a joy to watch. Mendes also gives a fine performance and the supporting cast, including Val Kilmer, Xzibit and the ever-amusing bit-parter Jennifer Coolidge, play their parts well.

Bad Lieutenant takes the well trodden hard-boiled cop genre and warps it; Terence skulks around his beat, comically oversized .44 Magnum sticking out of trousers like Harry Callahan’s doped-up younger brother. The generic conventions of renegade cop movie are exaggerated to the point of parody; to say too much would spoil some of the film’s delight, but just ‘til you see Terence threatening witnesses, attempting to rig football matches and the lengths he goes to get his next hit.

One senses that perhaps Herzog would rather be making unhinged natural history documentaries (see Encounters at the End of the World and the mind-blowing insanity of Grizzly Man) and is probably looking to raise some cash to fund his next project. Rather than phoning in the direction however, Herzog makes the film never fearing to skew the genre further out of recognition or stick in a bizarre repeating lizard motif in the scene.

To conclude, Bad Lieutenant is one of the most unexpected and most entertaining films you’re liable to see any time soon. Hats off to the madmen.

Nominated for two BAFTAs and winner of the British Independent Film Award, Moon is the feature debut of London-based director Duncan Jones and my personal favourite film of 2009. Filmed in the style of sci-fi classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and Silent Running, Moon represents a return to the serious sci-fi of the 1970s, before George Lucas got ahold of the genre and turned it into ‘an amusement park ride’ – as film critic Mark Kermode puts it. Last week I got the chance to talk to Gary Shaw, Director of Photography of the film that has been praised especially for its cinematography.

Gary, what exactly does the job Director of Photography (DP) entail?

“The DP gets the vision from the imagination of the director onto the negative”. Be it ideas, moods or a degree of plagiarism from other films. He or she tells you what they ideally want and how they want it to look. The DP should add any of his own ideas to the mix and then a collaborative mixture of both is often what you end up with.

How do you become a DP?

I started at 16 as a runner and then moved into optical special effects (SFX) and post-production. Eventually I became a bit bored working in the background, in darkened rooms, and when I got the chance to do a couple of shoots I realised that was where I wanted to be: At the front, on the camera. Then I made my way from where I was through a fairly convoluted path to DP. The training I had on how you can manipulate images gave me knowledge that have become increasingly valuable. People can’t get that kind of knowledge anymore since optical camera houses don’t exist anymore. I also worked with many top flight DPs on commercials and films during my time in motion control. That involved a lot of technical and post knowledge, often building tricky camera moves and working out the best way to achieve certain effects. You suck up your knowledge on the job. I’ve been in the film industry for 30 years and I still learn new things every day.

What role did sci-fi classics like 2001, Silent Running and Blade Runner play?

Those were the kind of films that director Duncan Jones grew up with and admired greatly. When he wrote this film for Sam Rockwell he had all those in the back of his mind, for reference. We did look at each of those three. For the Doppelganger scenes we also looked at Adaptation and Dead Ringers. We wanted to do the shots of multiple Sams in a not too tricksy but ‘throw-away’ fashion so that people think: wait a minute, that’s kind of clever. When you see 50 Kylie Minogues in the music clip you think: oh, aren’t they clever but that’s just showing off for the sake of it. By doing it in a throw-away fashion it becomes more believable. For building the set, Alien was also considered even though it is a much darker piece. We decided to put a lid on the set to make it more claustrophobic. Due to the budget we couldn’t use too much CGI anyway, so the motto was: rein it in and make it realistic without being too smart-ass.

One of my favourite scenes is the Sam Rockwell vs. Sam Rockwell ping pong game.

That was one of the simpler ones to do. It’s a locked-off shot. The harder ones are those with moving cameras and the Sams interacting, especially when ‘crossing’ each other.

How many days did you shoot?

33 days and seven days of miniature work. The budget was originally £1.2 million and once the backers realised how good the film was looking they put another £600,000 into the post-budget. The budget was helped by the fact that it was all shot in a “box” in Shepperton and that everyone was working for next to nothing. I was doing it for Duncan & Stuart and had it been literally for nothing I still would have done it. It was a dream team crew even though I hadn’t worked with anyone except one or two guys. No one knew each other but everyone got on amazingly. “It was all hands to the pump” so much that even my daughter is in the film: She plays Sam’s infant daughter in one of the EarthLink transmission videos.

How did you and Duncan Jones get to know each other?

We slightly knew each other socially in the local pub scene. On most week nights you will bump into someone from the film industry in most of the pubs in Soho. We had also been doing some commercials together when Duncan told me that he was planning a film. He was trying to get John Mathieson (Enemy of the State, Gladiator) to be DP but when that didn’t work out he called me.

Moon has 400 special effects (SFX) shots. What’s it like having to work around them?

You shoot those shots as best you can and then leave it for the SFX guys. Some of the shots of GERTY, the robot voiced by Kevin Spacey, were done with the help of runners who pulled him along on the floor with a piece of cable. We knew some things were hokey and would have to be gone over by a SFX company at some point. But we didn’t actually work around them, we just shot as much as we could in camera, paying respect to whatever work had to be done afterwards. Duncan has extensive post-production knowledge as well. It’s better to leave it blank than mess it up and make someone else paint it all away. Shooting clean BH plates can also save some poor soul hours and hours of matte/clean up painting.

In Moon, Sam Rockwell works for Lunar Industries, a 100% ‘green’ energy company that retains a dark secret. To what degree do you see Moon as a political film?

I don’t have much of a political view, generally. Let live and don’t mess up the planet for the people living after you is the best I can say. Yes, the film is about Corporate America, but that’s just because America leads the space race. Duncan’s take on the whole film was more about long-distance relationships, in this case between Sam on the Moon and Tess on Earth. It wasn’t a dig at Corporate America, but if anything corporations in general.

Moon has been critically acclaimed across the board. Did this come as a surprise to you?

I wasn’t surprised that Duncan’s talent was recognised. He is a really nice guy. He gets on with it, is quite focussed and knows what he wants and that’s refreshing. I guess I am slightly surprised that it was as successful as it has been. But when we saw the end product we knew it was quality, Sam (Rockwell) embodies quality. He delivers a great performance no matter what. Duncan is an amazing writer too. It’s his first film and we are all pleased.

Has it impacted on your career?

Yes, it has meant quite a few scripts through the door, so the film side of things is on the up but strangely some commercial production companies seem to think that once you have shot features you are not interested in their market anymore. I think my commercial pace keeps me ‘quick’ on films because you need to shoot your schedule each day or you’ll soon find yourself ‘drowning’. So I will still do both as long as I am getting hired.

Have you ever worked on a set that descended into chaos?

I worked on a car commercial in Mexico once that ended with the car crashing into the lights and giant wind machine in the film studio, injuring a bunch of people. Some were hospitalised. Is that what you mean by chaos?

Quite. Any future projects you can tell us about?

I had three films on the agenda at the beginning of this week. Now I have two (laughs). One film about a war veteran has been in development since November. It’s an urban Rambo tale about an ex-Afghanistan soldier who comes back from Afghanistan. Quite an involved plot but a nice script so I agreed to do it. I am also in touch with Aaron Sayers who is first-time directing a film called A Pathless Destiny, a supernatural thriller. It’s a larger-budget, Hollywood-cast film. I think that will come along first.

A word of advice for London students looking to work behind the camera?

You have to go out there and get as much practical knowledge as you possibly can, from as many sources as possible. Don’t be too overpowering. Go out there and find work with cameramen, focus pullers, loaders. You can’t just say ‘I want to be a cinematographer’ in the same way that you can’t just wander out and become a film director. Very few people, unless they are exceptional at film school, get slotted in. And even if they do, it’s usually a long way from someone offering you to shoot a NIKE or BMW commercial. Get out there and get sucked in. Be conscientious, work, learn, do the best you can. You can do all the study in the world at college but nothing makes up for getting on the studio floor. That way you can learn from all the people who have been doing it for years. Don’t waste time because that’s the one thing you don’t get a second go at. Become as polished as you can before you step up, Once you’re a really good loader, you can become a focus puller. Once you’re good at that, become an operator and so on. There is some luck involved but you can make your own luck by knuckling down and getting on with it.

Stieg Larsson may have died a tragically sudden death in 2004, but he also brought to life a worldwide phenomenon in form of The Millennium Trilogy, and its conundrum of a lead character Lisbeth Salander. Published after his death, the originally Swedish works have progressed into multiple languages and cultures, resulting in the listing of Larsson as the second highest selling author of 2008. Following in the success of the literary project came 2010’s release of the cinematic adaptation of the first of the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and each and every Larsson fan is racing out to discover if the genius of the novels can be successfully translated onto the big screen.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the story of investigative journalist Michael Blomkvist, takes a job from a capitalist giant to find out what really happened to the man’s long missing niece. On hitting a brick wall, Blomkvist enlists the help of mastermind yet mysterious computer hacker Lisbeth Salander whose anorexic frame and antisocial nature engrosses the reader as much as they do Blomkvist. Together the pair form an entirely unconventional team which takes the novel from the average crime thriller to a new and innovative take on the undercover workings of Sweden and its right-wing components.

Blomkvist is at first displayed as a slightly stereotypical hero, echoing features of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon in his appealing persona and stubborn temperament. However, the use of one familiar face acts as an anchor for the other more unique characters and the enigmatic canvas on which they are painted. The novel’s opening in Sweden’s urban capital contrasts artistically with its immersion into the depths of countryside Hedestad; perhaps symbolising the angelic surfaces of the novel’s suspects and their harsher realities beneath. The most fervent appeal, however, is Lisbeth Salander for in her fearlessly feisty and intelligent nature, she encapsulates all the features that make the novel so irrevocably readable. In her, Larsson captured what was needed in modern culture; a woman who is free of archetype yet possesses amounts of strength and individuality sufficient to evoke both interest and envy in almost any contemporary reader.

The accomplishment of Larsson’s creations made the film adaptation a consequent must-see, and for a supporter of the trilogy it would not disappoint. The movie stays true to the book in every aspect from its plot and characterisation right down to the native Swedish language and location. The film is scenic and fast paced, and most importantly it indulges a deep sense of realism. The cast portray suitability rather than beauty, the unpleasant scenes of the novel are mercilessly transferred and the cinematography is minimalistic whilst effective. Larsson’s own activism against conspiracy in his journalistic pursuits was predominant in his prose, and this aspect of realism in the movie is a loyal tribute to the author’s own intent; the hidden secrecies of Sweden were actively displayed whilst maintaining the utmost credibility.

However, while the book intrigues the reader from start to finish, the film is simply too long. With a running time of over two and a half hours, the audience are by the end restless, and are excited by the movie’s climax only as it initiates a long-awaited end to a tiresome venture. The obvious intent to stay true to the novel’s plot was admirable, but a little more editing would have made the process more enjoyable, especially to viewers who were new to the tale. Soon to be followed by a Hollywood rival adaptation, it will be interesting for many, to witness whether either adaptation will stand the test of time or whether the novels will stand alone in their phenomenal and admittedly unexpected success.