Take One

Are the Oscars losing their golden sheen?

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:18:00 GMT

It should have been Tinsel Town’s glitziest night of the year. Oscar Night 2010 should have been the occasion when the film industry honoured and rewarded the brightest and the best of its talented number, so how come they presented the world with one of the dullest, most predictable spectacles of recent years? This was the first year since 1943 when there were ten candidates up for Best Picture instead of the usual five. So why did it still end up as a two horse race between Avatar and The Hurt...(read more)

Alice and the disappearing cinema window

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:29:00 GMT

The title of this blog may sound like a recently discovered third volume of of Alice tales by Lewis Carroll but the row that has threatened to rob us of Tim Burton's latest flight of fanasty has signalled another shift in the uneasy world big screen cinema and home viewing. The row, which at one point had Odeon, Vue and Cineworld all refusing to play Burton's re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, revolves around the period in which cinemas have exclusive access to the film. The standard...(read more)

BAFTA should be selling British film to the world

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:01:00 GMT

THIS year proved to be a very good year for the Brits at the BAFTA awards. Well, it should, you would think because they are the British film academy awards, surely they should reward their own? It has to be said that is not always the case. In fact some years they take an almost perverse delight in ignoring the British entries and engage in a rather fatuous game trying to predict the outcome of the Oscars four weeks later. This has led to the strange situation of BAFTA nominating...(read more)

Farewell to Miramax - an old friend

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:15:00 GMT

Sad news indeed. It seems that Disney have announced that Miramax Films is no more. The House of the Mouse bought the arthouse/mainstream cross-over production company in 1993 for a healthy $80 million. The company's founders and guiding lights Harvey and Bob Weinstein left the Disney subsidy in March 2005 to form their own company having tired of the increasingly conservative tastes of their paymasters. This was not a surprise. Miramax has always had a reputation for edgy film-making. They believed...(read more)

Oscars - first reactions

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:33:00 GMT

It was no surprise that Avatar and The Hurt Locker have come out on top with an amazing nine nominations each. Amazing not because they are great films but because essentially they are fairly ordinary films. Take away the 3-D magic from Avatar and you have virtually nothing left. The script is no better than some made-for-TV movie. The Hurt Locker has a far better script and could have been a staggeringly brilliant movie except that you can't get close to the protagonists. You can't identify with...(read more)

Learning the wrong lessons from Avatar

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:13:00 GMT

The news from Skywalker Ranch is more than a little worrying. Apparently, the good folk at LucasFilm have announced that dear old George is readying his much abused Star Wars double-trilogy for yet another big screen release. Word has it, that George Lucas, probably the world’s greatest techno-geek, is so impressed with James Cameron’s 3-D extravaganza Avatar that he feels that his six Star Wars films need to be seen in this new process. As we mere mortals all know, this is a terrible idea. Not...(read more)

What next - Spiderman the musical?

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:02:00 GMT

What!!! Spiderman – The High School Musical Years? Spiderman at Beverley Hills 90210? Surely not. But apparently it’s true. One of the best super-hero movie franchises has been betrayed by the very people who should have been protecting the integrity of the franchise. Director Sam Rami along with stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have not been invited to return to the big screen series and studio executives have said they plan to re-boot the series by concentrating on Peter Parker’s High School...(read more)

Searching the twilight zone for grown-up movies

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:39:00 GMT

It’s been a funny old year at the cinema. It’s been a year in which the cinema in the provinces seems to have largely turned its back on adult audiences – preferring instead to screen multiple copies of teenage favourites meaning that grown-up pictures have been consigned to London specialist cinema or DVD. Well reviewed films like Jane Campion’s Bright Star, The Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, Steven Soderberg’s The Informant, Oscar contenders like Doubt with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman...(read more)

Parents beware of paranormal activity

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:33:00 GMT

Paranormal Activity, like The Blair Witch Project before it, has rewritten cinema's horror rule book. Out goes the big budget, the buckets of blood and gore, in comes the hand-held digi-cam, the unknown actors and the power of thge audience's imagination. The secret of this film's success lies not in the fact that it cost a penny farthing to make but in the fact that it has a good strory to tell and it is told with flair and imagination. The audience is credited with having a mind of its own and...(read more)

Taking stock of the noughties

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:26:00 GMT

The year is not even finished yet and already the film lists charting the defining moments of the first ten years of 21st century cinema are hitting the streets. What is interesting is how mainstream the lists have become. You have to look hard for those European art-house movies that used to fill the all-time great lists of yesteryear. The European movies that are present tend to be the high profile cross over films, movies like Volver and Amelie rather than little gems like Cockles and Muscles...(read more)

When did they stop making adult movies?

andrew.clarke@eadt.co.uk — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:47:00 GMT

The other day I let slip a rather loud, frustrated comment: “When did they stop making adult movies?” It certainly brought the conversation in the office to a sudden halt as everyone shot me a look but I was in no mood for sleazy double entendres. “No, I mean films for grown-ups,” I growled. I was feeling that I had stumbled into a cinematic mid-life crisis and for once I rather resented being cast in the part of a grumpy old man. The trigger for all this grouchiness and gloom was the fact that...(read more)

Are the Coen brothers bigger than George Clooney?

mark.heath@archant.co.uk — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:35:00 GMT

The accepted view of Hollywood is that you need names to sell a film. Not just any names but star names. Throughout film history it’s been actors who have sold films from Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne, to Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford – or so the Hollywood agents would have us believe.

But, is it really just the actors who sell films? Undoubtedly, they do play a major part and always have done. In the 1930s and 40s, the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, people flocked to see the latest Errol Flynn or Humphrey Bogart films just as today Brad Pitt and George Clooney have their own followings.

But, I have a feeling that star actors aren’t the be-all and end all. There are films which triumph without star names. These tend to be independent films which rely on good script and good acting to get people parting with their money at the box office.

District Nine Away We Go, 500 Days of Summer and last year’s Juno are recent examples of hit movies which did rely on star names for a good box office performance. Indeed, it could be argued that Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, despite the presence of Brad Pitt in a supporting role, was a film populated solely by unknowns.

But, Inglorious Basterds had something else going for it – the name of a cult director which was driving audiences to part with their money.

Directors are a much over-looked factor when it comes to the selling of movies. For a significant number of film fans, the film’s director is a major factor in whether they will go and see a movie.

Throughout history some directors have always had an above the title pulling power. Alfred Hitchcock was always more important to a film’s success than any of his leading men which is very impressive when for the best part of his career he was working with Cary Grant and James Stewart.

Similarly John Ford was a titan on the big screen and again a man whose name over-shadowed those of John Wayne, Henry Fonda and, one again, James Stewart.

Other directors who also had a powerful followings included Frank Capra, George Cukor, John Huston and Howard Hawks. The secret of all these directors was that they put their own stamp on a film. You could recognise a Frank Capra film and tell it apart from a William Wyler movie.

The same is true today. There are directors who are more important to an audience than the star – even though the star may be an important part of the director’s appeal. Tim Burton has a strong following and a distinctive style, as do The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino.

Just as John Ford was always better with John Wayne as his leading man, so Burton recognises that Johnny Depp is an important, but not essential, part of his film-making arsenal. The Coen Brothers similarly have a close working relationship with George Clooney who also has close ties with Steven Soderbergh.

Now Clooney, like Clint Eastwood before him, is using his acting success to bank roll a number of personal but artistically risky films which leave us all enriched. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Gran Torino, Good Night and Good Luck, The Changeling are challenging directorial flourishes from both men.

Audiences do love star names but they also love distinctive film-makers who have something to say – film-makers who surprise and delight audiences rather than just serving up the same bland soufflé at every cinematic meal.

The decade that British film forgot

mark.heath@archant.co.uk — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:02:00 GMT

There’s obviously not a lot of film news about at the moment because my colleagues in the national press have gone film list crazy during the past week. One paper has started compiling the Top 100 films of all-time (again), while another lists the top 20 transfers from the novel to the big screen while a third broadsheet paper is inquiring about the best British movie made after 1984. While this may seem like an odd date to pluck out of the ether, it is actually a very significant date because 1984...(read more)

Patrick Swayze gave fans the time of their lives

mark.heath@archant.co.uk — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:01:00 GMT

Just weeks after the death of writer-director John Hughes, it’s sad to be reporting the death of yet another 1980s icon; the dancer/actor Patrick Swayze – the man who swept his female fans off their feet in such romantic weepies as Dirty Dancing and Ghost. He was the sensitive, caring man that women loved to shed a tear over. He personified romance to the 20-30-something generation of the 1980s. While he found a loyal following in romances – fame elsewhere was harder to find. Typecasting had pigeon-holed...(read more)

Is it time to bring foreign films into the mainstream?

mark.heath@archant.co.uk — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:35:00 GMT

The wonderful Cambridge Film Festival is almost upon is, the line-up for the London Film Festival has been announced, why then is it so hard for independent films and foreign language films to find a screen in our local cinema? Multiplexes were supposed to offer choice – instead we get multiple prints of the same big budget Hollywood movies. The reason for my sour-faced grumblings this week, is that my local arthouse cinema has been closed down. I am feeling incredibly isolated of late – infact...(read more)