The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews
The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews |
| A director for 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' Posted: The first word many people uttered when they heard Sam Taylor-Johnson's name earlier this week in connection with Fifty Shades Of Grey was: "Who?"
Already the speculation has begun about a potential place for Johnson in the movie, as either Christian Grey (at 23, he's just four years younger than the domineering hero) or another character. I've never met Taylor-Johnson, but it's hard to imagine any director wanting to bring that kind of drama to the set. With all the fan interest, a Fifty Shades Of Grey movie is already enough of a hot house. But even if the young actor stays far away, there will be intrigue. This is, after all, a movie about a taboo relationship directed by a woman who, at least to some minds, was involved in same. That might come up in an interview. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services The first word many people uttered when they heard Sam Taylor-Johnson's name earlier this week in connection with Fifty Shades Of Grey was: "Who?" The next sentence was: "This will be interesting."Taylor-Johnson has been chosen as the director of the erotic drama, which author E.L. James is heavily involved with, working alongside the producers of the Social Network, Mike De Luca and Dana Brunetti, and executives at Universal Pictures and Focus Features. The Hollywood types all have pretty deep reputations. Taylor-Johnson? She isn't widely known in filmmaking circles. She made a coming-of-age John Lennon movie called Nowhere Boy that played the festivals a few years back. If you know more than a few people who've seen it, you have more film-nerd friends than you realise. She is, however, known for being an acclaimed visual artist – she's won Britain's acclaimed Turner Prize – which plays into the belief that Focus and, in particular, James, want this to be a tonier version of a sub-and-dom story (see under: Oscar-nominated Social Network producers), not the Cinemax edition. Still, it remains to be seen which actors will be willing to take the plunge with a relatively untested director. Taylor-Johnson also attracted plenty of tabloid attention for marrying Aaron Johnson, her much-younger (by about two decades) star of Nowhere Boy, with the two having a child when he was 20 and she was 43. Already the speculation has begun about a potential place for Johnson in the movie, as either Christian Grey (at 23, he's just four years younger than the domineering hero) or another character. I've never met Taylor-Johnson, but it's hard to imagine any director wanting to bring that kind of drama to the set. With all the fan interest, a Fifty Shades Of Grey movie is already enough of a hot house. But even if the young actor stays far away, there will be intrigue. This is, after all, a movie about a taboo relationship directed by a woman who, at least to some minds, was involved in same. That might come up in an interview. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services The first word many people uttered when they heard Sam Taylor-Johnson's name earlier this week in connection with Fifty Shades Of Grey was: "Who?" The next sentence was: "This will be interesting."Taylor-Johnson has been chosen as the director of the erotic drama, which author E.L. James is heavily involved with, working alongside the producers of the Social Network, Mike De Luca and Dana Brunetti, and executives at Universal Pictures and Focus Features. The Hollywood types all have pretty deep reputations. Taylor-Johnson? She isn't widely known in filmmaking circles. She made a coming-of-age John Lennon movie called Nowhere Boy that played the festivals a few years back. If you know more than a few people who've seen it, you have more film-nerd friends than you realise. She is, however, known for being an acclaimed visual artist – she's won Britain's acclaimed Turner Prize – which plays into the belief that Focus and, in particular, James, want this to be a tonier version of a sub-and-dom story (see under: Oscar-nominated Social Network producers), not the Cinemax edition. Still, it remains to be seen which actors will be willing to take the plunge with a relatively untested director. Taylor-Johnson also attracted plenty of tabloid attention for marrying Aaron Johnson, her much-younger (by about two decades) star of Nowhere Boy, with the two having a child when he was 20 and she was 43. Already the speculation has begun about a potential place for Johnson in the movie, as either Christian Grey (at 23, he's just four years younger than the domineering hero) or another character. I've never met Taylor-Johnson, but it's hard to imagine any director wanting to bring that kind of drama to the set. With all the fan interest, a Fifty Shades Of Grey movie is already enough of a hot house. But even if the young actor stays far away, there will be intrigue. This is, after all, a movie about a taboo relationship directed by a woman who, at least to some minds, was involved in same. That might come up in an interview. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services The first word many people uttered when they heard Sam Taylor-Johnson's name earlier this week in connection with Fifty Shades Of Grey was: "Who?" The next sentence was: "This will be interesting."Taylor-Johnson has been chosen as the director of the erotic drama, which author E.L. James is heavily involved with, working alongside the producers of the Social Network, Mike De Luca and Dana Brunetti, and executives at Universal Pictures and Focus Features. The Hollywood types all have pretty deep reputations. Taylor-Johnson? She isn't widely known in filmmaking circles. She made a coming-of-age John Lennon movie called Nowhere Boy that played the festivals a few years back. If you know more than a few people who've seen it, you have more film-nerd friends than you realise. She is, however, known for being an acclaimed visual artist – she's won Britain's acclaimed Turner Prize – which plays into the belief that Focus and, in particular, James, want this to be a tonier version of a sub-and-dom story (see under: Oscar-nominated Social Network producers), not the Cinemax edition. Still, it remains to be seen which actors will be willing to take the plunge with a relatively untested director. Taylor-Johnson also attracted plenty of tabloid attention for marrying Aaron Johnson, her much-younger (by about two decades) star of Nowhere Boy, with the two having a child when he was 20 and she was 43. Already the speculation has begun about a potential place for Johnson in the movie, as either Christian Grey (at 23, he's just four years younger than the domineering hero) or another character. I've never met Taylor-Johnson, but it's hard to imagine any director wanting to bring that kind of drama to the set. With all the fan interest, a Fifty Shades Of Grey movie is already enough of a hot house. But even if the young actor stays far away, there will be intrigue. This is, after all, a movie about a taboo relationship directed by a woman who, at least to some minds, was involved in same. That might come up in an interview. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
| Posted: Is an endless, insanely expensive parade of semi-fascist bores (read: superheroes) strangling the film industry? Do we need saving from the heroes? TWENTY years ago, after appearing in two phenomenally successful, visually opulent and generally brilliant Batman movies, Michael Keaton decided he didn't want to make any more Caped Crusader films. So he walked away. It was a disastrous move that effectively ended Keaton's career as a leading man, the actor learning the hard way that the only unforgivable crime in Hollywood is to walk away from a phenomenally successful franchise. The next two Batman films starred Val Kilmer and George Clooney. Batman Forever was not very good and Batman & Robin was terrible. And for the next few years, Batman dropped out of the global conversation. This was good because it gave society a breather. The Dark Knight thing was played out: the excitement moviegoers felt when Tim Burton made the first Batman film had evaporated under the tutelage of Joel Schumacher. In retrospect, Keaton's catastrophic decision to walk away now seems heroic, because he was the last actor to go through a script, take a cold, hard look at the superhero genre and say: "Enough. These films are starting to suck." Today's superhero films have not yet reached the point where they flat-out suck. But they are getting there. Iron Man 2 was a huge disappointment, The Avengers an aimless hodgepodge and The Dark Knight Rises a pretentious, incoherent mess. And now, we have yet another Superman movie, Man Of Steel. Those of us who would like to see an end – or at least an extended pause – to the hegemony of superhero films would be very pleased if Robert Downey Jr, Christian Bale and their costumed brethren would make a similarly audacious artistic decision and walk away. As Steven Soderbergh recently complained, these films are draining the life out of motion pictures, diverting virtually all of the industry's resources into insanely expensive "tentpole" films that supposedly prop up other projects. It is unlikely that any of these actors will make such a courageous decision as Keaton, though: they saw what happened to him, they saw how Sean Connery's career stalled when he quit 007. But it's still okay to dream, isn't it? This thing is starting to get old. There are too many superhero films; their storylines are all beginning to run together. It is a genre dominated by the thoroughly unoriginal notion that you cannot trust the government. Even when you can trust the government, you cannot trust all of it. And even the branches you can trust aren't much help, because they are incompetent. To save humanity, one must rely on a bootstrap operation headed by a dedicated go-getter and self-starter. At heart, all superheroes are Republicans. In superhero movies, women are almost always accessories. This is true even if they themselves are superheroines. The men do the heavy lifting; the women serve an ornamental function. This is why we are all the way up to Iron Man 3 and Batman 7, but have not seen a Supergirl film since 1984, or a Wonder Woman film ever. The 12-year-old boys for whom superhero movies are chiefly made are not interested in women. They may not even be interested in girls. They are certainly not interested in girls with superpowers. Breeding neurosis Superhero films increasingly rely on a structure where the hero thinks he is fighting one villain when he is actually fighting another. In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman thinks he is up against the crypto-fascist Bane, when he is actually locked in a deadly struggle with a mysterious fellow philanthropist played by Marion Cotillard. In Iron Man 3, the hero believes he is going toe-to-toe with a terrorist called the Mandarin, when the villain is actually a mad scientist who bears a striking resemblance to the dead but not forgotten US rock star Warren Zevon. In Thor, the bodacious nordic deity spends most of the movie worrying about a race of tall, antisocial creatures called The Frost Giants of Jotunheim, and does quite a bit of jousting with the testy emissaries of the US Government, when the person he should really be worrying about is his brother, Loki. In days gone by, a superhero only had to worry about the Joker or the Silver Surfer or Lex Luthor. Now, he has to worry about mysterious philanthropists. No wonder he's so neurotic. In fact, the rise of superhero movies signals the triumph of the neurotic over the maverick. In the classic Hollywood movie, whether the hero is cop, cowboy, private eye, rebel or drifter, there comes a moment when this solitary, self-sufficient loner faces the bad guys all by himself. The bad guys are usually trying to destroy a ranch, a town, a portion of the high chaparral, or in some extreme cases, a flourishing ethnic group. They are rarely seeking to destroy an entire planet. These villains have limited aspirations, and the man in the white hat has a limited arsenal of era-appropriate weaponry: a gun, a bow and arrow, a few grenades, maybe even a tank. He does not have any weapons of mass destruction to fall back on, nor any supernatural powers. He has to rely on brains, brawn and guts, nothing else. Sometimes, this is not enough: more often than we would like to think, he ends up like Spartacus or Braveheart. In the classic superhero movie, the situation is quite different. Here, the bad guys are trying to destroy entire societies, cities or planets, and the good guy is rarely self-sufficient. Instead, somehow or other, he has come into possession of a preternaturally phantasmagoric suit of armour, complete with zany high-tech accoutrements; or a hammer that can call down lightning from the heavens; or extendable fingernails; or laser eyesight; or implausible (and non-steroid-related) abs; or the ability to change shape. And these superpowers aren't just good news for all the societies, cities and planets that need saving: most superheroes are nerds or geeks or losers or screw-ups or pixies or marooned orphans from deep space who can't get their personal lives functioning properly – until they come into possession of some mystical power or magical weapon. Nothing in their pitiful lives works out until they are bitten by a spider, or start sporting a remarkable piece of jewellery, or are handed a large, seemingly radioactive hammer by their father. Waking up awesome "Being a superhero is a way of working out your personal problems," my 26-year-old son told me when I asked him about the popularity of the genre among his age group and younger. "You're an ordinary person with no special skills – and suddenly, you wake up one day and you're awesome. So, if you're asking me if the superhero genre is going to fade away soon, the answer is no." You wake up awesome. Not because you did something special like beat Hitler or cure polio. All you did was wake up. And suddenly, you were awesome. It is the dream of the fame-hungry TV talent contest generation. If movies are a reflection of society's most cherished hopes and deepest fears, then superhero movies perfectly capture the planet's current mood of uncertainty and dread. Today's global economy is a disaster, unemployment is ravaging the economies of both the developed and the developing world, and the threat of terrorism stretches from Kabul to Moscow, from London to Boston. Superman arrived during a particularly dark time in the world's history, the 1930s, so it is not surprising that the franchise is being rebooted now, with Man Of Steel directed by the prolific action hack Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). There is no clearer indication that this is a dark time in the world's history than the fact that the director who made the slovenly, inept Watchmen is now getting to reboot Superman. Is nothing sacred? No. Superhero movies are made for a society that has basically given up. The police can't protect us, the government can't protect us, there are no more charismatic loners to protect us and the euro is near-defunct. Clint Eastwood has left the building. So, let's turn things over to the vigilantes. Superheroes need not obey laws or social conventions; they go where they please and do what they want. They pose simple – usually violent – solutions to complex problems. Superheroes operate in a netherworld just this side of fascism. Still, it would be a mistake to say that all superhero movies are the same. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are dark. The Iron Man movies are funny. The Hulk movies are goofy. The X-Men movies are complicated. Captain America was camp, Thor a bit silly, The Avengers sillier still. The Spider-Man movies are closest to conventional movies, placing ordinary people in difficult situations. They also feature a romance that seems quite believable, unlike Iron Man. Rebooting and rehashing Although superheroes are archetypal, each succeeding generation of filmgoers demands a more up-to-date hero. And so, each generation gets its own reboot of the Batman/Spider-Man/Superman franchise. One day, there may even be a Daredevil reboot, though hopefully not soon. The films reflect the values of the decade in which they appear. The Batman movies of the 1990s were camp and jokey; the Dark Knight movies, appearing a decade later, were not. The Superman movies of the 1970s were over the top, like the comic books they were based on – it was, after all, the era of Nixon, Ford and Carter, clowns to a man. Iron Man, a more recent creation, is recognisable as a sneering, insincere slacker: nothing heartfelt ever passes through his lips; the very thought of saying something honest and authentic would mortify him. You cannot imagine Iron Man talking like Batman, Wolverine or even Thor. He is the superhero as wise guy. He is Ironyman. One thing that is puzzling about modern-day superhero movies is that the skill set of the individual hero is often poorly defined. I am not sure what it would take to put Iron Man out of commission. I have not been able to figure out whether the Dark Knight can actually fly: he certainly seems light on his feet. And I have no idea what powers Thor possesses. I know that his hammer has miraculous potencies, but I am still not sure precisely how miraculous they are. I have no idea what it would take to kill Thor; nor for that matter does Loki. In films featuring Dracula, Tony Montana, Orcs or even Achilles, the parameters are more clearly drawn. The most interesting thing about the popularity of superhero movies is that they are insanely expensive to make, yet they spring from a plebian, populist artform. Comic books, at least until recently, were cheap. They were beautifully drawn and exciting, but they were still basically cheap. That was the point. Movies are not cheap, especially not in 3D. Comic book heroes, like football players, have lost all contact with their proletarian roots. Some people will read all this and say: "You're over-intellectualising. You're reading too much into it." This may be true. But these charges are always made by people who never over-intellectualise anything, who never read too much into things. They are made by people who want you to take the X-Men seriously, as legitimate fiction. And then, when you do, they say that you are over-intellectualising. After all, they say, it's only a movie. That's exactly right. It's only a movie. But it's the same movie – over and over and over again. – Guardian News & Media |
| Posted: Acclaimed cinematographer Christopher Doyle has had a crazy life so far. It's thunderous weather at Straits Quay in Penang, and Christopher Doyle decides to have his next interview indoors. I tell him that we only have about 20 to 30 minutes. "What the hell can we talk about?" I say. "I'll talk really fast," Doyle replies. And sure enough, the famed cinematographer keeps to his promise, delivering answers and opinions in rapid-fire succession, sometimes not even finishing his sentences, but always on point. And of course, there is the ever-present glass of beer in front of him. Some years ago, renowned journalist Dennis Lim wrote an article on Doyle in The Village Voice with the headline "The legend of the Drunken Master." Well, it's not quite accurate, because Doyle remains very much sober throughout all his interviews, even though the beer never stops coming. It seems more like he has OD-ed on coffee, as one notices that his thoughts sometimes overtake his speech as he frantically searches for the right words. He arrived in Penang at midnight, and held a masterclass in the morning at the Penang Performing Arts Centre under the Tropfest Roughcut banner, part of the ongoing George Town Festival. And after 18 hours, he will be hopping on a flight back to Hong Kong. Famed for his work with Wong Kar-wai on films such as Chungking Express, Days Of Being Wild and In The Mood For Love, Doyle set up his unique voice in those early films, before going on to various projects from Zhang Yimou's epic Hero to Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water. He got his first break in film in 1983 with the late Edward Yang's That Day, On The Beach. But before that, he was a sailor, and had even dug for oil in India and worked in an Israeli kibbutz. One (in)famous story has it that he was a quack medicine man in Thailand. "Yeah, it's true," Doyle confirms it, straight-faced. "We used to travel around in a station wagon, and I would dress up as a doctor, and I would say (in Thai) 'It's good for your back.' A guy would introduce me as a Western doctor, and I would sell all this bull***t. "And then I thought, f*** this. I didn't speak a second language. So I went to Hong Kong to learn Chinese. At that time, it was impossible to go into China. I went to a very good school, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and my teacher gave me the name Du Ke Feng." And with that he went on to commit to celluloid some of the most endearing, powerful, memorable and unique images in cinema history. From the kinetic, time-bending style of Chungking Express and Ashes Of Time, to the searing images of Argentina in the gay romance Happy Together and the nostalgic memories of Days Of Being Wild. And then there's the masterpiece, In The Mood For Love, in which shadows and light inform a world of languid longing. He won his first award for his first work on That Day, On The Beach ... and lost the trophy after leaving it in a taxi. "Which was good," says Doyle. "It was a good sign. That was my first film and I didn't know what I was doing. I remember for my next films, I was really nervous, because I was trying too hard. It was actually counter-productive, because I was not seeing the bigger picture. I was just seeing my own concerns. Once you get to a level of experience, and you feel you know what you're doing, then you can see the bigger picture." But the Christopher Doyle/Du Ke Feng duality is endlessly fascinating. Here's a guy born in Sydney, Australia who ended up as one of Asian cinema's most iconic figures. "It's me," he says of Du Ke Feng (which means "Like the wind"). "The name is so Chinese ... It has a very poetic sort of ... you know, it's not like my Japanese name, Kuristofa Doyo. You know it's not a Japanese person, right? But with my Chinese name, you wouldn't imagine that the person is not Chinese." He feels the name has a lot of obligations with it, as well as resonance and aspirations. "I think it's made me a better filmmaker," says Doyle. "Because I want to be Du Ke Feng. But I'm not there yet. Because I was born like ... this (points to himself and laughs). I'm stuck with this." He thinks he was born in a wonderful country and had a wonderful childhood and family. That means he has the best of both worlds. "I have an optimistic attitude towards life, which comes from being born in Australia," he says. "And I have Du Ke Feng, who aspires to more." But having spent more than 30 years in Asia now, is he still an outsider looking in? Does it still give him a unique perpective on all things Asian? "As any artist does, you choose to be removed," says Doyle. "Even Jean Cocteau or Hunter S. Thompson. I think we all do in our different ways. You protect that distance, because that is where the perception comes from. That is where you cut through the bull***t. I think I guard that distance quite ferociously, mainly because it helps one not to take oneself too seriously. That's very important. If I really believed what everyone says about me, I'd be a w**ker. "If I believed all that, I certainly wouldn't tell my mother!" he breaks into raucous laughter. Doyle says he loves working with young people. He finds great satisfaction in seeing them grow as artists. "I'm glad people still regard me as a Hong Kong filmmaker, and young people in their 20s come to me to help them make Hong Kong films. And I'm very proud of that. They want to have their own voice. And since they're kids, they're going to have a different voice than Wong Kar-wai or Jackie Chan. "I'm proud that because it's me, it helps with the money. They use my name ... please, go ahead, what am I going to do with it? (Laughs, turns to the other tables in the restaurant.) Hallooo, do you know who I am? Would you like to buy me a beer? Who gives a f***? (Breaks into more raucous laughter.)" And despite his now-infamous rant about Life Of Pi's Oscar for Best Cinematography, he is actually optimistic about digital filmmaking. During his masterclass, he explained that he thought Life Of Pi should have been given a technical award for the entire special effects team, and not for the cinematographer. "I think film will come back, but it will come back in a different way," says Doyle. "For example, like in photography, people are still using cameras from 100 years ago because they want a certain quality. It will become a very specialised thing ... The thing about digital filmmaking is, you see what you get. And then you can change it later. That's a dangreous precedent, because it means that what really matters is often determined by a machine as opposed to the choices of the artist." He believes that this means the "money people" have more control and it could render someone like him useless. "Filmmaking by committee," as he calls it. "But I'm not afraid of that," he says. "Because the other way to go is to simplify things and work from within to subvert all this ... to simplify things to a point where we regain control. And because the young kids have so much digital experience, they're going to see the world in a different way than people who come from a more traditional film background. That's what's going to happen. "The Impressionists saw the world differently than the Pre-Raphaelites. And then the Cubists responded to that. Everything's a response to what came before it. I'm actually quite positive about digital (filmmaking). There are textures that we don't know about yet. And the kids are going to teach us. In other words, it's a different visual experience. So was Impressionism. So was pop. So was conceptual art. "There is a space of give-and-take where we can enchance each other's work." |
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