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.

2001: A Space Trailer

Still as jaw-droppingly insipiring today as it was back in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a landmark science fiction movie. From a novel by Arthur C. Clarke and turned into a screenplay by both himself and the legendary Stanley Kubrick this movie is epic. Spanning the dawn of time to the far flung corners of the universe we must now recognise the year 2001 to be more symbolic of a future age than an actual date. It seems that science fiction was overly optimistic in the 60s as to how fast the human technology would progress.

To a casual viewer this movie is tough to say the least. It deals with notions of evolution, technology, artificial intelligence and alien life. And not in an altogether obvious way. What stands out for me is that the effects are as current today as anything cg can achieve. The space exterior shots are filmed with an understanding of the medium. There are no sounds in space as space is a vacuum. This often leads to disturbing silent images as a space walk goes wrong and the hero tumbles off into the void. Underpinning the action is the score primarily by Johann Strauss and most notably the Blue Danube.

It won the Best Effects, Special Visual Effects oscar in 1969 and quite rightly so. It was a pioneer of the front projection technique whereby background images of scenery and landscapes could be projected onto a camera lens within a studio envionment to achieve a realistic exterior effect. The movie was also filmed in Cinerama a process whereby 3 35mm projectors are pointed at a widescreen curved screen. The DVD release of 2001 also includes the original interval complete with score which really is a mark of times gone by. A stunning classic worthy of multiple views.

pan's labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is a stunning fairytale set in post war Spain. Guillermo del Toro (of Hellboy fame) has really immersed us in this dreamy world where fantasy meets reality. Guillermo Navarro is at the helm as cinematographer and it seems he has a great crew working for him. Loads of visual effects by cafeFX ensure that the fairytale world of this young girl melds with the real world Spanish Civil War era. I was really impressed with the look of the movie. As with many of these great stories they dive into existing lore, take that and spin it into something even better. Here we have a labyrinth patrolled by a faun (or pan). Almost nightmarish is the character design and yet it never delves into horror. Not so laiden with FX as Hellboy was and yet intoxicatingly enchanting as the line becomes more and more blurred between the nightmare of the real world and the enticing universe beyond. Check out a great review of the movie here.

happy feet

What a joy this film is. A fantastic kids movie with loads of adult appeal. The animators have nailed the look of the penguins perfectly and it is obviously a movie inspired by March of the Penguins . It is a story of belonging and a rite of passage but also a message about the state of the planet. Often shots pan out to reveal the earth spinning viewed from space - a reminder seemingly of how small the planet really is and how humans are interfering with the balance.

What is so joyous about this movie are the musical numbers when the emperor penguins belt out their heart songs. All the songs are covers so for the adults we can all sing along :) There are some really breathtaking scenes. The art direction is incredible. The frozen scape; piercing blue seas; arora borealis are all melded into this tale. As little Mumble (who is the star of this story) finds out he has no heart song but he can dance like a god, he must embark on a journey of self discovery that will lead him ultimately to the saving of his penguin race. Favourite quote: "Gimme some fin" as one penguin goes to high five the other.

Go see this movie and bring the kids 9/10

300

Ok so the acting is a little Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon but visually this movie is stunning. This is the second online trailer and far superior to the first. This actually gives you chills as you slide into the overly stylized scape of ancient Persia. Be warned there are a lot of 'aaarrrggghhhs' in this trailer ("diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive") but that can be excused. Frank Miller's graphic novel is the inspiration here as he has been for various other ventures (Batman Begins, Sin City etc) and that style is definitely captured here although in no means as starkly as was visioned in Sin City. Colour here is used as a tone and not an accent. There is some serious post-production work going on here. Can't wait to see the final result.

shortbus arrives

Just out of seeing Shortbus which is John Cameron Mitchell's latest spurt into the movie industry. For those of you who know not who he is think Hedwig and the Angry Inch. If you know not of what I talk then do yourself a favour and rent it.... NOW. Shortbus is everything I love in a movie. This is movie making magic. If you can get past the first five minutes which is essentially full on porn, you will be in for a treat. JCM is a master at characterisation. He really invests himself into these characters which seem to be all versions of himself and each you can relate to in a different way. Melded to this is a great 3D render of New York city starting with an almost erotic pan up the statue of liberty. The movie culminates in a crescendo of emotion...epidsodic. The build up to this moment which is realised in the movie by the blackout of the east coast USA as each of the characters storylines come to a head. And then he takes you onward to experience what happens next. Drama, sex, relationships, nightlife, therapy all melded into this joyous piece of movie making. Love you JCM. Thank you for this beautiful film.