Cléo from 5 to 7 is a wandering film, a melancholic city odyssey through Parisian streets. In her second feature, Agnès Varda shows her understanding of Paris to be better than most of her equally cosmopolitan contemporaries, filming a journey through some of the capital’s most picturesque and unique urban landscapes. Shooting in the streets and buildings of the Left Bank, Varda achieved a level of authenticity that is difficult to match. With such authenticity comes a multitude of possible pleasures for the film location enthusiast, with almost every frame of the film presenting a potential visit or wander.
Varda’s film follows a day, or more precisely two hours, in the life of Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a famous singer plagued by paranoia over an impending biopsy result. Her worry drives her to wander and explore Paris, sometimes forgetting her problems via friends and chance meetings, sometimes overcome with anxiety over what a potential illness could mean to her as a singer and as a woman. Cléo is, on this day, forced live with chance rather than the accustomed control over which she is clearly used to exerting. Varda’s film is essentially an anxiety map of its lead character, in which the long way round is taken to get a simple answer.
As much as being a narrative film, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a cartographic document. The strength of the film comes from the veracity with which Varda captures the journey at the film’s core. Paris is not fragmented but almost recreated from reality, showcasing genuine haunts and realms from the period’s art scene in a way only someone totally immersed in it could have known. Being shot in this way, and with the screen filled almost constantly with images of Parisian walkways, buildings and streets, a full walk of the film is entirely possible, so long as its occasional taxi journey and bus ride is taken into account. Whether we would see the same city as Cléo does with her newly acquired, morbid gaze, however, is another question.
With so many potential locations to choose to visit, it was a difficult choice to find one that summarises the whole film: how can a film explicitly about journeying be contained within one image? The closest answer I found was in a scene in the film’s finale, in which the thoughts haunting the film come to a strange, corporeal anti-climax in the wittiest of Varda-esque visuals. Cléo, along with the local soldier (Antoine Bourseiller) she has picked up as a wandering companion, finally go to the hospital to get her results.
They meet the doctor (Robert Postec) driving along the road just in time, casually giving the diagnosis out of the window before departing, leaving the pair staring in amazement. But what are they watching as the shot moves off with the camera: their fears drifting away, the waste of time of the last two hours, the hope of a city seen anew?
The shot in question, in which Varda quite literally drives the camera away from the pair, is one of the arching, cobbled roads outside of the Cours Saint-Louis, the road leading to the famous l’Hôpital Universitaire Pitié-Salpêtrière. Though originally starting out as a factory for gunpowder, it became a hospice for poor women, and in particular a prison for prostitutes. The building is equally famed for its Catholic chapel, the St Louis Chapel of the Salpêtrière commissioned by Louis XIV and designed by the architect of Les Invalides.
Now one of Paris’ most successful teaching hospitals, Cléo was in fine company in being one of its attendees. Michael Foucault and Lady Diana died there, whilst the hospital is generally known for its famous patients including Alain Delon and Gérard Depardieu.
The location is interesting in the film as it really is its endpoint. Even if the film went on wandering, which would be an equally Varda-esque thing to do, this would still be turning point, the peak. For the meander we’ve seen throughout the whole film has been an avoidance of this place and what it represents for the character. This location has coloured the film emotionally, ironically dragging it into black-and-white.
When Varda zooms that camera shot away in the doctor’s car, it is a telling gesture; a nod to the paranoia of the film but also an acknowledgement of its serendipity, the joy of a journey unplanned. As Lauren Elkin observes in her beautiful assessment of the film in her book ’Flâneuse’, “The car pulls away and the camera with it: Cléo’s shock rendered in movement, a quick back zoom travelling. Travelling shots for a travelling director.”
The film was shot on the spring equinox of 1961 and was certainly a nicer day than my wintery visit. Walking along Boulevard de l’Hôpital and trying to avoid the street sweeping cars which drive at unusually fast speeds along the pavements, I eventually came to the gates of the hospital. The railway line from the Gare D’Austerlitz runs on a raised line along the road, under which a small shanty town of tents huddle underneath sheltering from the rain. A friendly security guard greeted me as I worked out which of the two roads Cléo and her soldier wander back on.
In 1961, Cléo could not have been in a better place to receive her medical news, of hope for healing. “This neighbourhood,” she says, “is full of hospitals. As if one were better cared for in the 13th and 14th arrondissements.” The statement has a stark irony today considering the other vagrant wanderers taking shelter just over the road, left to walk with no end in sight.
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British cinema has a long-standing tradition of reflecting the country’s social, political and economic state, and 2019 is no different. Ray & Liz, the debut feature from photographer-turned-filmmaker Richard Billingham, artfully portrays the everyday struggles of a family on the breadline. On the other end of the class spectrum, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir filters a young woman’s burgeoning first love through the prism of wealth and privilege in Knightsbridge.
This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival featured a promising selection of homegrown films from established and emerging directors. There was a sense of a collective reckoning with the current state of affairs. How do we continue forward when it so often feels that as a nation we are moving backwards? The films selected as part of the festival’s ‘Best of British’ strand branched off into different directions, whether that be to borrow from the past for prescience, or to avoid the present completely through escapist narratives.
The cream of the crop was Mark Jenkin’s Bait, a strange time capsule piece which several critics have already dubbed the first true Brexit movie. The film follows Cornish fisherman Martin (Edward Rowe), who is scraping by selling sea bass to the local pub as his village’s industry succumbs to seasonal tourism. As if it has been plucked from the ocean, muck and grime scrubbed off for presentation, the film feels like a relic from a bygone era thanks to its anachronistic visual aesthetic.
Shot in black-and-white on a hand-cranked 16mm Bolex camera, Bait doesn’t hide its imperfections but rather celebrates them. Those imperfections – spots and scratches resulting from the film stock being process by hand – are part of the package. Harsh close-ups accentuate the physical performances of the mostly non-professional cast of actors. Violent cuts are used to draw a contrast between the wealthy tourists and the hardened locals. The film is so singularly immersive that the moment a character takes out an iPhone induces whiplash. It’s pure anger and frustration condensed into raw celluloid.
More explicitly political, the autobiographical Farming from first-time director Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is almost excruciating to watch. The title refers to the practice that was common during the 1950s and ’60s in which parents of West African or Caribbean origin would pay British families to foster their children. Enitan (Damson Idris) is one such child, sent away by his Nigerian family to a foster home in Tilbury, Essex for his aggressive temperament in the classroom.
Berated by racism throughout his childhood, Eni is taught to hate the colour of his skin. In one of many devastating scenes, he coats himself in talcum powder. At 16, Eni is lured into a skinhead gang, clinging onto the false promise that if he joins his bullies, he can’t be beaten by them.
Farming is a painful exorcism of demons. Memories are recalled with harrowing clarity, as if recently closed wounds have been split open once more. Internalised racism is a very real and serious issue among black people, but the film’s message is clouded by a clunky screenplay that is more focused on putting Eni through severe emotional and physical turmoil than conveying insight into the systemic racism that allows such abuse to occur in the first place.
Elsewhere at the festival, a pair of brooding period dramas explored the dangerous grip of patriarchy on young women. William McGregor’s Gwen sees a teenage girl’s peaceful life in the Welsh mountains come crashing down as her family is threatened by a coal mine looking to expand. Another coming-of-age story, Emily Harris’ Carmilla is a study of repressed desire through the perspective of a young woman who becomes enchanted by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious girl.
Both films are similarly grim and dour, but they use elements of horror to varying effect. Dread permeates Gwen, with tension building in minute increments: its single jump scare is impactful for how sparingly it leans on the gimmick. Meanwhile, Carmilla pairs body horror with the gruesome cycle of nature. The film’s potent sound design accentuates the sounds of the surrounding forest to an almost deafening level: worms squirming in wet soil; ants scuttling across a decaying tree.
Sadly, Carmilla is a derivative period drama, although both films are bolstered by impressive performances from their young leads. In particular, Gwen’s Eleanor Worthington-Cox is terrific as an innocent adolescent who is forcibly thrust into maturity. She flits between desperation and despair effortlessly even as she goes toe-to-toe with Maxine Peake as her surly mother.
Not everything in the ‘Best of British’ strand was inherently political though. David McLean’s Schemers, which recalls the director’s own coming-of-age, sees Davie (Conor Berry) and his mates band together to become music promoters, booking groups for local venues. Of course, it starts as a ploy to impress a girl, a trainee nurse Dave meets in the hospital while high on morphine.
In this sense, Schemers plays like Dundee’s answer to Sing Street. But where the Irish musical dips into fantasy, Schemers is more attuned to the peaks and troughs of reality: the teens have a run-in with some organised criminals. At the film’s spirited climax, the boys scrounge together everything they can to meet their contractual obligations with the “up-and-coming” metal band they’ve booked: Iron Maiden. In the end, they’re just kids with no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into.
Remarkably, Schemers is the first full-length feature to be made in Dundee, and it is a wonderfully evocative love letter to the Scottish city. From nights out at the student union to the diversity of the city’s music venues, the film celebrates the small things that make the city what it is. In the film’s most touching scene, Davie tears up at the sight of Dundee’s “twa” (two) bridges. “Same as Edinburgh,” he says, his voice quivering with pride.
The films at this year’s EIF prove that British cinema isn’t short on diverse and fresh perspectives from filmmakers of all walks of life. Exciting new stories continue to invigorate and prolong this island’s rich film history. Even if Britain’s political future is becoming increasingly uncertain, its cinematic future is looking bright.
For more on this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival visit edfilmfest.org.uk
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Having announced himself in gloriously deranged fashion with his debut feature Hereditary, writer/director Ari Aster has quickly been heralded as a new harbinger of doom when it comes to horror. His 2018 familial freakout saw Toni Collette take on the role of a lifetime as Annie Graham, and made Millie Shapiro’s Charlie possibly the most unnerving child since Damian Thorn. When Aster’s second feature, Midsommar, was announced, starring woman-of-the-moment Florence Pugh and set amid the traditional festivities of an isolated Swedish community, anticipation quickly began to grow.
It’s a strange thing to be so bitterly disappointed by a film that should, in theory, be right up your street. It doesn’t happen often, but the sting is always the same when it does. Perhaps the relentless all-consuming hype machine is partly to blame, bolstered by hyperbolic first-look reactions from US critics and a ceaseless tide of meme-able promotional material. Even so, Midsommar’s failings run deeper than it being unable to live up to expectations: its chief problem is that it essentially rehashes a story Aster has already told.
As in Hereditary, the film’s protagonist, Dani (Pugh) is coping with a family tragedy. Her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) is trying to be supportive, but has been debating breaking up with her for some time, encouraged by his pals Mark (Will Poulter), Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren). In an attempt to lift Dani’s mood, Christian invites her on the boys’ trip to Pelle’s hometown in rural Sweden to attend a summer solstice festival. Not long after their arrival, the group begins to realise there is something more sinister at play in the community, unsettled by violent rituals that sit in stark contrast to the apparent serenity of the locals.
Where Hereditary offered an intimate portrait of family turmoil and failure to communicate, Midsommar seems less interested in providing compelling characters. Pugh is given precious little to do other than snivel softly or wail like a banshee, her grief never explored in a satisfying manner. Meanwhile Reynor spends most of the time looking either confused or completely blank. Poulter and Jackson Harper don’t fair much better, their roles so trivial it’s as if their inclusion was an afterthought.
The film is far more preoccupied with its dreamy pastel aesthetic than providing any real substance to its plot or character development. Blonde moppets in crisp white cotton garments scamper through the lush surroundings, a ceremonial stone is stained red with blood, life blossoms all around while several characters meet a sticky end. Yet none of these images feel particularly original or, even in the context of a creepy cult practicing strange rituals, shocking.
Aster repeats several narrative beats and recycles numerous motifs from Hereditary, and while there’s certainly no harm in carving a niche for yourself as a filmmaker, after the wild inventiveness of his debut this feels like a less fully-formed concept – a collection of arresting iconography that doesn’t quite come together. The intriguing concept of the pagan festivities is never fully explored, and the gore feels oddly sedate, rendering Midsommar a strangely toothless beast. For genuine horror at the hands of collective madness, you’re better sticking with The Wicker Man or Kill List.
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During the second night of the Democratic Primary Debates, there was one presidential hopeful onstage who seemed a little… out there. That was self-help author-turned-candidate Marianne Williamson, who appeared to not just ignore the premise of questions, but then go off on random tangents about New Zealand or the power of love. Pretty immediately, Twitter began lighting up with folks eager to see SNL star Kate McKinnon’s impersonation of Williamson, although that seemed like a long shot given that Williamson is unlikely to hold on until the fall when SNL returns. Luckily, McKinnon just happened to …
My, what a spectacular year we're having on television. With half of 2019 left to go, TV has already delivered the bulk of the best in entertainment this year, across the board. From streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon, cable standouts like HBO and Starz, upstarts like DC Universe and more, everywhere you turn, there's some fantastic TV to watch. Likewise, the best TV shows of 2019 represent an impressive lineup of diverse genres; superhero and fantasy entertainment, prestige dramas and mini-series, horror comedies, sketch comedy, animation, genre-bending hybrids and everything in between. No matter where …
This summer, Film Feels are exploring the enduring appeal of Obsession on screen at cinemas, festivals, events and pop ups around the UK. Search for screenings happening near you here, and check out our guide to this long-standing subject below.
Subject One: The Gunslinger
Name: Annie Laurie Star
Played by: Peggy Cummins
Film: Gun Crazy (1950)
The phallic potential of the trusty six-shooter is clearly visible in Joseph H Lewis’ delirious crime spree picture in which a loved-up pair of trigger-happy reprobates take on the world with just the ammo on their pocket. Peggy Cummins’ Annie is crack shot with a pistol, and falls hard for John Dall’s Bart when she sees the slick manner in which he handles a gat. Unlucky for him, it transpire she is one bad egg, fixated with transgression to the point of annihilation. In terms of obsession, this one flags up an unholy trifecta of guns, violence and criminal endeavour which sends this wild pair down a road from which there is no return.
Subject Two: The Paranoid Boyfriend
Name: Lee Jong-su
Played by: Yoo Ah-in
Film: Burning (2018)
The negative effects of romantic obsession are exacerbated when you have no one to talk to about your problems. Bookish, shy Lee Jong-su tends his farm as his father languishes in prison. A meet-cute with old schoolmate Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) swiftly evolves into a sexual liaison and then a burgeoning love affair, until she heads of travelling and returns with the considerably more affluent, charismatic and relaxed Ben (Steven Yeun) on her arm. Lee Chang-dong’s masterful Burning conflates obsession with paranoia – the way we tend to pick, pick, pick at the scab even though we know it’s going to bleed.
Subject Three: The Instagram Troll
Name: Ingrid Thorburn
Played by: Aubrey Plaza
Film: Ingrid Goes West (2017)
If obsession is a big ol’ bonfire, then social media is like a can of kerosine. Aubrey Plaza, the comic actress who boasts a nice line in demented loons, plays a young woman named Ingrid Thorburn who wants nothing more than to bridge the digital chasm between herself and top media influencer Taylor Sloane (Lizzie Olsen). With a discharge note from the local asylum and a massive inheritance cheque from her deceased mother, Ingrid hightails it to California and connives and cheats her way into Taylor’s charmed life, alienating friends and family in the process. The message of the film invites us to not confuse digital avatars with real people, as slavishly chasing after the former can lead to some very dark spots.
Subject Four: The Existential Sleuth
Name: Robert Graysmith
Played by: Jake Gyllenhaal
Film: Zodiac (2007)
This is a case of what you might call occupational obsession, where the art focusing your mind onto a single subject can be both intellectually fulfilling and possibly even lucrative. In the late 1970s, a series of unsolved murders became tied together by the cryptic notes from the pen of a person identifying himself as Zodiac. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist-cum-codebreaker whose work for the San Francisco Chronicle causes him to dedicate his life to revealing the identity of this savage prowler. There’s an existential edge to the David Fincher’s film, where Graysmith’s search for truth can be seen as a bid to prove that God exists. It’s about how obsession is sometimes the only way to unlock life’s most formidable challenges.
Intrigued by movie obsession? Explore more at filmfeels.co.uk
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Sony Pictures has released the first Charlie’s Angels trailer. The new adaptation of the 70s TV series stars Kristen Stewart (Personal Shopper), Naomi Scott (Power Rangers), and Ella Balinska (A Modern Tale) with director Elizabeth Banks stepping in as the new Bosley, the go-between for the Angels and their employer, Charlie. However, in this new version, Charlie’s Angels has gone worldwide as an independent security and intelligence service,” each with its own teams and led by a different Bosley. We’ll have our thoughts on the trailer for you soon, but wanted to bring you this as …
The most frustrating thing about writing a review for Spider-Man: Far From Home is that the best, most interesting stuff in the film is off limits right now per Marvel’s request. Since this article is posting five days before the movie opens, it wouldn’t be right for me to disclose some of those surprises. So without that, I can simply say that Spider-Man: Far From Home is fun! It’s fun like Spider-Man: Homecoming was fun! Everything you loved about that film is amplified here with more texture added to characters like Peter and MJ …
Andrew Patterson’s incredible debut feature The Vast of Night feels like a spiritual successor to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Set over the course of a single night in late 1950s New Mexico, it follows radio presenter Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick), who begin to suspect that strange things are afoot when mysterious sounds disrupt lines and broadcasts. With the aid of callers describing sightings of UFOs, they embark on a scavenger hunt of sorts to get to the bottom of the town’s apparent alien activity.
The film’s evocation of Americana feels fully realised and lived-in. James Montague and Craig W Sanger’s screenplay is filled with period appropriate jargon that never sounds unnatural coming from the mouths of the magnetic leads, while crucially it avoids the sort of easy target-hitting writing of every Back to the Future wannabe: no utterance of ‘gee-whiz’ here. The closest The Vast of Night comes to a pop culture joke is Everett’s radio station running a competition to win a carpet sample with a supposed connection to Elvis Presley, and that’s really more a detail regarding how a town with a population of 492, where a teenage late-night DJ can be a local celebrity, engages with the wider world.
Another point of comparison is Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant, which operates on a similar register of heightened nostalgia for a small-town yarn backdropped by Cold War-era politics. Both feature characters who are endlessly fascinated with the possibilities of what the future holds, while slowly coming to terms with the problems of the era in which they live.
The film has no on-screen POC characters but a pivotal bit of social commentary comes from an unseen veteran caller to Everett’s radio show, who gives the amateur sleuths a key piece of intel regarding a military connection to the alien occurrences. When asked why he’s never spoken about this before, he admits he didn’t think anyone would believe him because he’s black, and that he suspects the same would be the case for the Mexican vets who witnessed the same extra-terrestrial sights he did.
The Vast of Night is a film that trains you how to watch it and then subsequently resets its own rhythms multiple times. Its framing device, which sets up a Twilight Zone-esque show, is immediately disrupted by an extended sequence of walking-and-talking that’s like David Mamet writing a screwball comedy. It’s best not to spoil how formally inventive the film is, which extends to the fascinating score by Erick Alexander and Jared Bulmer, but it’s fitting for a riveting and ultimately heartbreaking story about seemingly insignificant people who are irrevocably changed by contact with big things beyond their comprehension.
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Imagine this horror scenario: You’re in a room full of people, and a boorish man with silvery hair stands up and loudly announces, “The Beatles are the best band to have ever existed. The music they produced has and will not be surpassed.” Now, do you simply take this address with a pinch of salt – as one guy loudly articulating their subjective opinion? Or, do you sheepishly waddle over to Richard Curtis and say, “Hi there Richard, while I respect your subjective opinion on this matter, I feel you should except that your narrow-minded and dogmatic take on The Beatles’ output may not be shared within a universal sphere.” What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Possibly some kind of comic altercation.
Yesterday is a film which hinges on what it believes to be the indisputable fact that The Beatles were the greatest pop band of all time. The very idea that the art they produced may not be to some tastes, or that the revolutionary aspect of their work may have been couched in the specific context of the era in which it was produced, are questions with which screenwriter Richard Curtis is sublimely untroubled. Also, it’s a film which dismisses the idea that all art contains an inextricable bond with its creator. Apparently, The Beatles’ music retains its essential greatness when performed by any old schlub with an acoustic guitar. Karaoke and talent show covers are as good as the real thing. George Martin? Get. In. The. Sea.
The sky-high concept of the film sees scruff-bag Lowestoft busker Jack Malick (Himesh Patel) failing to draw crowds with his slightly lame bubblegum pop-rock stomper, ‘The Summer Song’. His number one super fan is Ellie (Lily James), who also doubles as his manager. He sees her as the eternal BFF and never once questions her excessive fealty. She desperately wants to be placed in the “love” column, but refuses to make the first move.
Then, one night, by strange cosmic quirk, the music of The Beatles is erased from existence, except in the mind of Jack, who happens to have memorised the lyrics to their best-loved hits. Mainly the ones penned by Macca. It’s a superhero origin story, though instead of the old notion of great power requiring great responsibility, Jack decides to cash this thing with nary a second thought. He waves goodbye to his friends and fam, and is taken under the gilded wing of Ed Sheeran (a surprisingly calming presence) and his coterie of LA phoneys (Kate McKinnon, very funny as an avaricious big label manager).
In the moment, Yesterday clips along at a rate of knots, and director Danny Boyle, flexing his Millions muscle, builds what may be the optimal delivery system for what transpires to be cut-rate material. It avoids the close-proximity shooting style of TV sitcoms, and Boyle really does his best to make sure that every gag has an odds-on chance of landing. The impression is that there was no single-take improv here – the scenes, the lines and the delivery were repeated until they worked.
Patel makes for a charismatic lead, and his spirited performance goes some way to plugging the vast contradictions and flaws within his character. The same goes for James, and she does get to do a little more than just bray from the sidelines. The film works through Jack’s rise to the top, then it pivots to a standard, saccharine-sweet “will he get the girl?” scenario and tosses the high concept from a high window to its death. Were Curtis’ levels of intellectual curiosity on a par with his desire to enshrine romantic conformism, we may be on to something. That so little is going on beneath the surface is perhaps what gives the performances a pleasing lightness and ample room to breathe.
Eventually, the film feels becomes the embodiment of that moment in I’m Alan Partridge, where our tavern-bound hero reveals that his favourite Beatles album is ‘The Best of the Beatles’. It craves mainstream acceptance and – unlike the Beatles – rejects innovation and a pressing need to show the audience anything they haven’t seen before. The irony of it all is that, in the cold, hard light of day, it’s ‘The Summer Song’ that would’ve vaulted Jack to stardom.
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Bras are at once a symbol of femininity and an emblem of the misogyny inherent to capitalism. Supposed to provide support to girls, they are also uncomfortable cages restraining the movements of half of the population.
The women working at sports bar Double Whammies in Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls wear push-up bras – as part of their uniform. They look good, but they are here to work, and they’re tired. Only the young new recruits, who are unexpectedly pressed into service straight after their job interviews, find their little red tops fun. But it’s only a matter of time before they too see their outfits as the stifling disguises they are.
Double Whammies, however, prides itself on being a “mainstream” establishment. In her position as general manager, Lisa (Regina Hall, finally given a real lead part to work with after so many great supporting turns) does her best to embody and encourage her establishment’s family values. Unlike their menacing chain competitors, her joint isn’t about waitresses being casually inappropriate with their rowdy male clientele.
Fathers and husbands come to Double Whammies to be taken care of by friendly women. Lisa, meanwhile, treats her employees like her siblings or children, ready to bend the rules to help them, even in the midst of chaos. Lisa is an angel of the service sector, at once humane and professional, patient and resilient. It’s the world around her that is less than ideal.
When an employee runs into trouble and badly needs a lawyer’s services, Lisa organises an illegal car wash to raise funds. Luckily, the clients don’t care much about where the money goes, but this disinterest in anything beneath the surface is a sign of things to come. The dehumanising effect of capitalism isn’t Bujalski’s main target, however.
Because he is working in a neorealist genre, it doesn’t come as any real surprise that neither work nor her marriage become easier for Lisa (which doesn’t mean that the ensuing turn of events isn’t heartbreaking – expectation isn’t always consoling). It’s what she does in the face of her insurmountable difficulties that reveals the director’s deep understanding of what it means to be a cog in the machine of our cruel 21st century economy.
Lisa’s basic modus operandi for day-to-day survival – which, in the case of the film, begins with a thief trapped in the vents and builds to other shop floor catastrophes. She wills herself to be helpful to the bitter end. Other employees have different coping strategies: Maci (the simply unbelievable Haley Lu Richardson) is the most upbeat person who’s ever worked in a diner or anywhere, and that is as much part of her personality as it is a put-on – it doesn’t really matter to her whether the two are distinct.
By contrast, single mother Danyelle (Shayna McHayle) takes no shit from anyone. But one trait unites them: they all love working together. Lisa’s family wasn’t just an idea. When all else fails, what remains and gets you out of bed in the morning is another support mechanism, and one that won’t dig into your flesh and which you can neither sell, nor buy.
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If you’re a die-hard Game of Thrones fan, you’ve just got your premium item for this Christmas. HBO has announced that Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection will be made available as a limited-edition, “ultra-premium” Blu-ray. All eight seasons will come in a “visually stunning wooden shadow box case, featuring beautiful, multi-layered panel designs by Robert Ball (the artist behind the “Beautiful Death” series) that summarize the Game of Thrones story. Each season is represented by a different layer, showcasing iconic characters and memorable moments from the show, all clambering toward the Iron …
Netflix’s Binge-Focused Content Model Is Why It Lacks Original Series Like ‘The Office’
June 26, 2019
Fans of Netflix and The Office were dealt a blow this week with the news that the most-watched show on the streaming service will be leaving Netflix in 2021. We’ve been through drills like this before—Friends nearly left Netflix this year, until the streaming service and Warner Bros. struck a new deal to keep the series on Netflix through 2019. But these “scares” of potentially losing Netflix’s most-watched programming highlight another major problem: with various studios launching streaming platforms of their own and taking their content off of Netflix, the streaming service lacks anything substantial …
Netflix has announced additional voice cast joining The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the epic prequel series to the beloved 1982 Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. The fan-favorite world began with Henson’s groundbreaking movie, which he co-directed with Frank Oz. From inception to release, The Dark Crystal was seven years in the making and has since gone on to become a cult classic around the world. Visually conceived by Creature and Costume Designer Brian Froud, Thra, the setting for this epic story, is teeming with characters brought to life by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, including …
When he’s not busy making movies, Wes Anderson finds other ways to contribute to contemporary culture. Case in point: the American director has conceived a new exhibition in collaboration with the Lebanese designer, illustrator and writer Juman Malouf, which is set to open at the Fondazione Prada in Milan this September.
‘Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures’ comprises some 537 artworks hand-selected by Anderson and Malouf. Billed as a challenge to traditional museum canons, the show reflects both artists’ personal tastes and creative influences and is notable for its non-academic curatorial approach.
Named after one of the key pieces, ‘Coffin of a Spitzmaus’, an Egyptian wooden box containing a mummified shrew dating from the 4th century, the exhibition was originally presented at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna earlier this year.
This newly expanded version features a wide range of objects, from miniatures to timepieces, wooden boxes, and portraits of children and noblemen as well as meteorites and animals.
‘Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures’ runs at Fondazione Prada in Milan 20 September to 13 January, 2020.
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Noah Hawley on Ending ‘Legion’ with Season 3 & His Feature-Directing Debut ‘Lucy in the Sky’
June 26, 2019
From show creator Noah Hawley and Marvel Television, the FX drama series Legion is back for its third and final season, as David Haller (Dan Stevens), a man who believed himself to be schizophrenic only to discover that he is the most powerful mutant the world has ever seen, is forced to confront his actions and the decisions that he’s made. With the dark voices in his head lusting for power and at odds with everyone he once considered a friend, David is now leading a commune to satisfy his need for adulation and he’s enlisted the help …
Marvel Studios began its life rolling the dice. Iron Man was the first self-produced feature film Marvel Comics adaptation for Marvel Studios, and it wasn’t like Iron Man was some incredibly famous superhero character or wildly popular toy at the time. Most general audiences were unfamiliar with Iron Man and wary of the film—we’d been through a lot of bad superhero movies at that point. But Marvel’s gamble paid off, and then they rolled the dice again with Marvel’s The Avengers, betting that audiences would turn up to a crossover movie starring characters from …
Avengers: Endgame may be headed back to theaters this weekend with an unfinished deleted scene, but you’ll be able to own the biggest movie of 2019 within a month. Disney announced today that Avengers: Endgame will be released on Digital on July 30th and on Blu-ray on August 13th, making that a fairly short wait between the film’s late April theatrical release and mid-summer home video release. As is always the case, the digital and Blu-ray releases are stacked with bonus features. With the digital release you’ll get an exclusive bonus feature called “Steve …
The documentary Apollo 11 shows the moon landing mission as you’ve never seen it. Incorporating a recently rediscovered collection of 65mm film from NASA’s archive, Todd Douglas Miller’s film is a visual feast for large format and NASA aficionados alike. Whether it’s a towering shot of the Saturn-V rocket, the staggering amount of detail in a shot of the crawler carrying it to the launch pad, or Buzz Aldrin’s strong stare into the camera, the film is frequently jaw-dropping. And like the events it depicts, Apollo 11 has pushed technical boundaries via the use of a custom-built 8K film scanner.
“One of the most frustrating things we had to do was to find out the provenance of this footage,” Miller tells LWLies. Some of it previously found its way into the 1971 documentary Moonwalk One, albeit copied onto 35mm and cropped to save costs. As the film’s archive producer Stephen Slater explains, “Now we’re seeing them how they should have been seen, and now you’re seeing all the other stuff that was never even used.”
The ins-and-outs of who shot what and for what purpose are still being figured out. “All we knew was that there were some reels marked with ‘Apollo 11,’” recalls Miller, “and if you were even more lucky there was a shot list.” This ongoing work is tangentially linked to another project, Al Reinhart’s 1989 documentary For All Mankind, which helped to catalogue NASA’s collection of 16mm footage from the various Gemini and Apollo missions and bring it to the big screen. “It pains me that Al didn’t get to see this film,” says Miller, “because he always said he just loved watching footage of man walking on the moon.”
The 16mm footage recorded by Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, and other moments captured by engineers on the ground, makes up a large portion of Apollo 11, which unfolds through purely archival means, foregoing the use of present-day talking heads. Slater was instrumental in realising this, with the film giving him license to expand on his long-running work syncing up NASA’s silent 16mm archive with air-to-ground flight loop audio. Thanks to Slater, we get to see and hear the engineers uttering commands, forging a connection between those in mission control and the moon-bound astronauts.
While Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are suiting up for the mission, a young woman is seen standing at a control panel that prints out their heart rates in real time, marking specific moments with a marker pen. This shot might have been deemed trivial next to the sight of three national heroes preparing for their historic mission, but the film’s astute balance of sound and image really underscores the significance of her involvement.
Eric Milano’s sound design work on the film also emphasises the importance of the audio. As Miller explains, “We spent a long time trying to get the sound of the Command Module right, like the hum and the interior noise, because it varied on the onboard recordings depending on where they had the recorder.” If you’re watching footage in the Command Module listening the voices of CAPCOM mainstays Charlie Duke or Bruce McCandless, their voices reverberate as if you were sat alongside the astronauts.
“If you’re on the beach as people are watching the launch, the shot will pan around, and you’ll hear a radio broadcast,” adds Slater, “and it’ll sound like it’s coming out of that specific radio. I love that.” Beyond the voices of those involved in the mission, the film’s sound design comprises a symphony of beeps, whirrs and static noises, as various pieces of electrical machinery from multiple transmissions transport the viewer back to July 1969.
The authenticity of the sound design became just as pivotal to the project as the celluloid footage. Miller remembers feeling “really excited, like, ‘we nailed it!’” at a test screening with Armstrong’s sons and Collins present, only to be informed that they’d missed out the signature popcorn-like noise the Saturn-V rocket made as it left the atmosphere. “We put our tail between our legs and went back to New York,” he jokes.
With those involved in the mission growing older, and several of them having passed away, the notion of Apollo 11’s footage as a time capsule grows increasingly important. “It was really about taking notes from people who were there and going back” says Miller, underscoring the impact of first-hand knowledge upon the assembly of the film.
Through the sound archive and sound design, the footage gains additional layers that make for an incredibly textured viewing experience. Apollo 11 is more than just a collection of astounding clips, it’s an exercise in activating the archive, making you feel closer to those events through the people who played a crucial part in it. The film expands our understanding of the mission. It is cinema as education as much as it is cinematic spectacle.
Apollo 11 is released 28 June. Read the LWLies Recommends review.
The post How we brought Apollo 11 from NASA’s archive to the big screen appeared first on Little White Lies.
Fifty years on, what’s left to be said about the flight of Apollo 11? The eight-day mission that fulfilled President Kennedy’s eight-year-old pledge to place a man on the moon before the end of the decade is one of the most widely documented events in human history. We all have the fuzzy, black-and-white footage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface etched into our collective memories. We know their words by heart (“The eagle has landed…It’s one small step for man…”), and in 2018, Damien Chazelle recreated the journey from Armstrong’s perspective in the meticulously crafted First Man.
So how can Todd Douglas Miller, the director of Apollo 11, offer us a new perspective? First of all, he has the benefit of using footage that we’ve never seen before, thanks to the discovery in 2017 of a wealth of materials in the NASA archive, including more than 60 reels of 65mm film related to the Apollo 11 mission. Miller is a smart enough filmmaker to know that this footage is his trump card, so he gives it to us straight; no explanatory voiceover, no talking heads, just captivating images that remind us of the awesome scale of this project.
When we first see the magnificent Saturn V, itself being carried into position on enormous caterpillar tracks, it’s hard not be overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, and when this three-million-kilo rocket is launched into the stars it seems like an impossibility, even as we watch it happen in front of our eyes.
Apollo 11 achieves the feat of making us see these events as if we were watching live footage, with no sense of how it was all going to play out. Miller’s skilful editing of the footage gives the film a gripping sense of immediacy and momentum. He occasionally uses onscreen graphics to reinforce our understanding of the mission’s progress and he employs split-screens at critical junctures, but his most effective tactic is a small counter that appears on screen when the astronauts are engaging in a particularly tricky manoeuvre, like landing, docking or re-entry. The falling numbers tell us how much fuel they have to complete each action and how close they are to doing it and, in these moments, the film generates and sustains a remarkable degree of tension.
But for all of the drama surrounding the flight itself, it’s the footage on terra firma that proves to be the most engaging and moving. From the countless NASA engineers and scientists calmly processing a tsunami of data to ensure no detail is left unchecked, to the reporters and families gathered by the launch site in makeshift camps, their faces filled with excitement and wonder, their eyes all fixed upon the same distant point in the sky.
When President Nixon called the Apollo astronauts to congratulate them, he said, “For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one: one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.” Apollo 11 is a chronicle of a world united by a single collective human endeavour. Perhaps the reason we keep going back to this story is the knowledge that we’ll never see the like of it again.
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It took a while to get going, but production is finally underway on Fast & Furious 9. The sequel sees the return of Justin Lin to the director’s chair, who helmed Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Fast & Furious 6, which put the franchise on course to become a global phenomenon while Lin went off to helm Star Trek Beyond and the first two episodes of True Detective Season 2. Indeed, the last two installments of the franchise—Furious 7 and Fate of the Furious—both crossed $1 billion at the global box office, making this …
Based on the young adult novel from Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith (the screenwriter of 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde and The House Bunny, with her co-writer Karen McCullah), the Netflix/Awesomeness TV series Trinkets follows three teenage girls – Elodie (Brianna Hildebrand), Moe (Kiana Madeira) and Tabitha (Quintessa Swindell) – from the same high school who cross paths in the same mandated Shoplifter’s Anonymous meeting. On the surface, these young women couldn’t be more different, but as they get to know each other, their family issues and life drama brings them together and helps them to find …
Ryan Murphy Directing Oscar-Hopeful ‘The Prom’ for Netflix; Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande Lead Cast
June 25, 2019
Ryan Murphy is about to embark on his first feature film project under his new deal at Netflix, and in true Ryan Murphy fashion, this will be a major debut. The American Horror Story and Glee creator will direct and produce a feature film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Prom for Netflix, with the movie being eyed for an awards season release in 2020. And the cast he’s put together? Straight-up fire, as the kids say. Indeed, Deadline reports that Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, Ariana Grande, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, and Andrew Rannells are all …
As of this publishing, Avengers: Endgame is about $38 million shy of topping Avatar for the all-time record for worldwide box office. Disney wants to claim that top spot, so they’re making one more push by re-releasing Endgame and hoping that a slow weekend will provide enough room to get the Marvel movie the top spot. Marvel Studios has now sent out a press release detailing what the re-release will entail: Fans who buy a movie ticket will receive an exclusive piece of Avengers art (available in select theaters and until supplies run out) and will …
While the production of Bond 25 has been plagued with difficulties from the very beginning, a new official behind-the-scenes set video is all smiles. Indeed this first official set video puts the focus on the sequel’s initial shooting location, Jamaica, and offers some candid looks at Daniel Craig back in character as Bond, Jeffrey Wright reprising his role as Felix, and director Cary Joji Fukunaga looking like he could hold his own in front of the camera opposite 007. Of course, Bond 25 has had some problems. They began in the script phase, when Danny Boyle pitched …
Maiden is almost here. Get your tickets now!
As far as underdog stories go, cinemas won’t see a more incredible champion than Tracy Edwards, the subject of Maiden. The film details how Edwards, along with twelve other women, became the first all-female sailing team to participate in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Through a combination of interviews and extensive archival footage, Maiden really gives a window into the challenges Edwards’ team faced on their way to making history.
Tracy Edwards sat down with me to talk about the documentary, her experiences after the Whitbread, and the importance of making the Maiden’s story known. This is our conversation.
***
I was taken aback by the amount of great archival footage in this film. It’s almost like this movie was ready to be seen from day one. What made you decide to put it together now?
It’s interesting actually, because we didn’t quite know what we were doing with that footage. The Whitbread at the time wanted volunteers on different boats to film and no one was that enthusiastic, but we thought, “We need a record of this. We need to cover this.” So we volunteered. We got hidden cameras, and Jo went off to the BBC to learn how to use one. She did a four-day course or something. I think that is a really nice element of how it all seems very natural, and I think how she’s filmed it is great.
There was a kind of documentary made of the race, and all the footage went off to that. None of us really thought about it after that and we went off to do our other sailing projects and everything else and I did other things. And then five years ago, I went to a talk at a school, and the film director and his daughter were there. He listened to the story, he called me the next day, and he said, “Has anyone ever made a film of this?” So I said, “Well, a long time ago.” He said, “I would love to talk to you about doing that.” So we met the next day and he said, “I’m thinking: a drama.” I was like, “Why would you be doing a drama?” He said, “Well because it’s so long ago there’ll be no footage.” I went, “I’m not that bloody old, y’know. We did have cameras. We filmed everything.” He was like, “You have footage?” And I said, “Yeah! Days, months of footage!” And then we had to find it all because [the company] that had made the original documentary had gone bankrupt, and all the stuff was everywhere.
They spent two years finding that stuff. It was a labor of love, I think. It became a real challenge to find all that footage.
It seems like lately there’s been a wave of films about women doing incredible things many years ago and these stories are only now getting the recognition they deserve. How do you feel about Maiden contributing to this trend?
That’s a really interesting question, because I don’t think about the fact that people don’t know who I am. I know who I am. I know what I did. But [the Whitbread race] was thirty years ago, so, yes, there is a circle of people that don’t know about Maiden.
You know what film I watched that really made me think, “Wow there’s all these stories out there?” It was Hidden Figures. The film about the space race. I was like, how did I not know this story? And I realize there’s whole areas of history that have not been told.
It’s so interesting that you should say that because I think Alex, when he talked about making the documentary, he was like, “There are people who will be going, ‘How did I not know that?’” And there are. I meet people all the time now who are like, “I had no idea about Maiden.” So I love the timing of it, and I love the fact that this year is about women and our rights, and the battle. (laughs) It still goes on. But it’s nice to be part of that.
If someone wanted to enter the world of competitive yacht racing in 2019, what advice would you give them?
There are various routes. There’s still the route of going to work on boats. You know, you have to take risks.
There are places all over America where you can go find a job on a boat, and learn like that. Or—I mean I don’t know what the equivalent in America is—but in the UK we have the Royal Yachting Association. It’s not a governing body. They run all the yacht clubs. People think, “Hmm.. sailing is really expensive,” but it doesn’t have to be. If you join a small dinghy club, often you can learn to take part just in return for cleaning the boats.
There’s lots of different avenues in. I think my way in is probably closed off now because everyone needs qualifications now. I don’t have any qualifications because you didn’t need them then. So I think it’s probably a more formulaic route in, but start by calling your local yacht club.
It’s funny how you say it’s harder to get into sailing these days, because it seems like in one major respect, it has gotten much easier, and it’s partially thanks to you, of course. What are your thoughts on the Volvo Ocean race introducing crew combinations to encourage women’s involvement?
It’s brilliant. Such a positive way to do it. Because instead of saying “you’ve got to take women” and them going “Oh, we don’t like women”, Mark Turner—who brought the rule in—made it a positive thing. So if you want extra crew, which is an advantage, they have to be women.
There was one hold out, a dreadful man by the name of David Whitt, the skipper of Scallywag, who went, “I don’t want to be part of some social experiment.” So I tweeted back, “Umm, I did a mixed crew twenty years ago, David. It’s not a social experiment. You’re way behind the times now, mate.”
But it worked! They had two or three girls on each boat. Now, maybe, people see it not as something they have to do but something that should be natural. The whole point of Maiden was not to do all-female crews repeatedly. It was to get men and women to sail together, because that’s the best combination.
And it worked.
What was really brilliant—I have to tell this story—so, David Whitt of the Scalawag said, “Nope, not sailing with women.” Then he finally relents because he wants an extra crew member, and he takes a woman on board. But he really makes a big thing of it. God that poor girl—she must have had the patience of a saint.
Anyway, they come last on the first three legs. And then he takes on one of the greatest female navigators who ever lived, Libby Greenhalgh. This woman is bloody scary and formidable, and he takes her on, saying [dismissively] “Female navigator.” And they win the next leg because of her. (laughs) So cool! Everyone was like “Yes!”
In the film, King Hussein of Jordan plays a small but important role in Maiden’s launch. What more can you tell me about him?
He was just one of the greatest men who ever lived. He was way ahead of his time. The reason that Jordan is such a stable part of the Middle-East is because of him. And he died in 1999, so King Abdullah has picked up the mantle and runs with it. But I think what was so extraordinary about him was his love of people. He loved everyone. All people. His vision for all of us, the whole world, was that we were all equal. And Jordan, thirty years ago, women had the vote, they drove cars, they went to university, they wore western clothes.
In Jordan, you had a church, next to a mosque, next to a temple. You had a woman in a burka next to a woman in shorts. Y’know, that was his vision for the future, and that is what made him so amazing. When people say, “Why did an Arab king support an all-female crew?” that’s the answer I give them.
A few years ago, you recovered the Maiden, and now I understand you’re running the Maiden Factor with it. How is that project going?
It’s very fun. It’s still hard to raise money for women doing anything, but the Maiden Factor has restored Maiden. She’s now sailing all around the world with another all-female crew. Most of whom were inspired by Maiden the first time but were too young. Now they’re old enough, which is a great story.
We’re raising awareness and funds for girls’ education. What we’re trying to do is work with schools to get kids to think about their education beyond just reading, writing, and doing maths. Remember when all the kids went on strike to save the planet? That kind of social activism [is what Maiden Factor is aiming for]. Young people, not just learning within that arena, but to think outside the box and to think “What in the world do I want to change? And how can I do that?” We put different schools in touch with each other. We have young trainee sailors on the boat.
So for me, Maiden changed my life, and I would like her to work with the next generation to change their lives.
If you had to pick a crew of historical women to sail with, who would you pick?
Oh my god, do they have to be sailors?
No.
Rosa Parks, Florence Nightingale, Emily Wilding Davison, and Emmeline Pankhurst
What if I asked you to pick women and men?
Oh, well now that’s too many to count. (laughs)
Every year, with depressing dependability, a new study is published that reveals what most of us already know: women, especially women of colour, are not well represented on-screen or behind the camera. Women have less speaking time and screen time than men. Female directors are not getting second films green lit. Studios are not hiring female writers. Female critics are vastly underrepresented.
Director Tom Donahue’s new documentary This Changes Everything asks why these statistics aren’t improving or, if they are, why the film industry is making such slow progress. Talking heads interviews with some of the most powerful and respected women in Hollywood, including Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman, Meryl Streep and Jessica Chastain, expand on why representation is so important, as well as the obstacles they’ve faced to get female-centric stories on screen. “Filmmaking has historically told [women] no,” says Chastain. It’s hard to argue with her when the film then reels through clip after clip of popular films with horrifying gender politics.
The film explores the phenomenon ironically known as ‘this changes everything’: when the press proposes that cultural milestones will have a systematic impact on how the film industry operates. A recent example is Kathryn Bigelow, the first – and so far only – woman to have won the Best Director Oscar, for The Hurt Locker in 2009. Bigelow’s win was hailed as a sign of Hollywood recognising female filmmakers’ works, yet since 2010 Greta Gerwig is the only female director to have been nominated for the award.
To understand why women struggle to be heard within Hollywood, we need to take a long, hard look into its past. Donoghue’s film points to the high number of female directors in the 1930s rapidly diminished because of sound technology. The advent of sound meant films were required to be shot in studios. Movies suddenly had to make enough money to support the studio system. The moment films became financially viable, This Changes Everything argues, was when women were shut out of the industry.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. The film also looks at the women in the industry who have taken action. In 1983, when a group of female filmmakers discovered that only 0.1 per cent of assignments by the Directors Guild of America were being given to women, they took legal action against the Guild.
There’s also the real world impact of when on-screen representation improves. Named the CSI Effect because of the direct correlation between the TV show’s popularity and the spike in women pursuing careers in forensics, data shows that what we see on our screens, especially as children, impacts the choices we make. The Effect famously happened in the early 2010s when The Hunger Games and Brave encouraged more girls to take up archery and youth participation in the sport increased by 75 per cent.
Developed just before the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and the Time’s Up initiative, This Changes Everything ends with optimism about the future. The documentary’s subjects point to two recent cultural milestones – Donald Trump’s election and the release of Wonder Woman – as sparking a reenergised movement against Hollywood’s discrimination and for female-led blockbusters. Donohue’s documentary might not change everything, but it certainly makes a powerful argument as to why everything in Hollywood needs to change.
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If you’ve ever been made to feel like a knuckle-dragging neophyte by a documentary asserting the considerable and incontrovertible cultural significance of a pioneering subject you’ve never even heard of, don’t be put off by Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows. This is one of those films, but there’s a good reason why the artist in question has slipped into obscurity over the past 30 years or so.
Raised at the height of postwar austerity and reaching maturity amid the counterculture explosion of the 1960s, Slinger became something of an avant garde It girl during the proceeding decade. Primarily working in collage, photography and sculpture, she created radically political, invariably provocative pieces that combined elements of erotica and surrealism, culminating in her career-defining 1977 work, ‘An Exorcism’, a psychosexual ‘photo-romance’ that evolved over the course of seven years.
Of course, this was a time when the male gaze was being challenged and received notions of femininity questioned like never before. When art, fashion and sex were becoming mainstream. Slinger was at the vanguard of this movement, so why is she not better known today? Well, while the historical airbrushing of female artists should not be overlooked, Slinger herself cites her decision to withdraw from public view (she moved to the Caribbean in the 1980s before settling in rural California, where she lived and worked as recently as 2017) as a key factor.
Director Richard Kovitch makes a strong case for Slinger being the most overlooked British artist of the 20th century. As several talking heads observe, however, it’s not the case that Slinger was simply ahead of her time, more that the singular style and progressive themes of her work are inextricably bound to a specific period. Slinger was a product of her era, and it’s only now that the female body and gender representation are at the forefront of cultural discourse again that she is finally getting the recognition she deserves.
Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows is released 28 June. To find out where the film is screening near you head to anti-worldsreleasing.co.uk
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Having set his previous features in Transylvania (Katalin Varga, 2009), Italy (Berberian Sound Studio, 2012) and a Middle-European Amazonia (The Duke of Burgundy, 2014), Peter Strickland returns to his native Britain for In Fabric.
The location is the semi-fictitious ‘Thames Valley On Thames’, stuck in what appears to be a permanent 1970s – or perhaps that is just Peter Strickland’s sly comment on the state of England, both Middle and Little. On the periphery, there are country walks and woodland backroads, but the town centre features Vlassos’ Greek restaurant, Waingel’s Bank, Staverton’s washing machine repair and Zimzam’s night club – and dominating everyone’s attention, especially during this time of the winter sales, is Dentley & Soper’s department store.
At the film’s beginning and again near its end, a TV spot for Dentley & Soper’s is shown – not so much an ad as a lo-res mesmeric invocation, summoning customers to spend. Old Mr Lundy (Richard Bremmer) and his all-female staff, when they are not engaged in nocturnal orgiastic rites (with anatomically responsive mannequins) in the basement, run the store as a cult centre, where ‘the paradigm of retail’ is performed by zealous customers as a ritual act. The bank, the club, the restaurant, the repair shop – these too are familiar yet defamiliarised institutions, managed according to strange, often perverse codes and conventions that abstract and fetishise social norms.
The elevator (or ‘dumb waiter’) pitch for In Fabric goes: comedy horror in which a cursed red dress brings its owners to ruin. Really, though, that only scratches the narrative surface of a wilfully weird film that reduces English mores to what a poster at Waingel’s Bank terms ‘transactioneering’: that awkward interface whereby individuals negotiate sales, relationships, power and gender.
Like the department store ad, Strickland’s film sends viewers into a hypnotic state with its rhythms and repetitions, whether it is serial scenes of middle-aged divorcee Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) both on blind dates and in bizarre meetings with her bosses (Julian Barratt, Steve Oram) at the bank, or of young repairman Reg Speaks (Leo Bill) putting himself, his customers and even his fiancée Babs (Hayley Squires) into eroticised trances with his monotone descriptions of washing machine parts, or just the patterns and leitmotifs of Cavern Of Anti-Matter’s circling score. Even the bipartite structure hinges upon repetition, as Reg and Babs’ story picks up where Sheila’s ends, retracing its themes (with deviations).
You might fancy that Fatma Mohamed will be a grounding presence, given that she is the one actress to have starred in all of Strickland’s features – but in fact her soothing department store assistant Miss Luckmoore serves as the witchy heart of the film’s chaotic confusion, using highly mannered turns of phrase and sensual gestures to cast a surreal spell over everyone whom she seduces into making a purchase.
In this oneiric oddity, consumerism is everything, ultimately devouring even the consumer – while the real horror is the exploitative means of production, carefully kept underground beyond the sight of bourgeois shoppers above.
The post In Fabric appeared first on Little White Lies.
When Zachary Levi was announced to star in DC's Shazam!, I'll admit, I was skeptical. But the Chuck star proved me and the rest of the doubters wrong, as Shazam! grossed $366 million worldwide. Not a home run, but a modest hit nonetheless, and one that should become profitable once it hits Blu-ray in just a few weeks. With that in mind, it's no surprise that New Line has tapped its heroic leading man to star in the action comedy Spy Guys, Collider has confirmed. Levi is in negotiations to play a super spy along the …
In Fabric is Peter Strickland’s darkly comic horror tale about a possessed dress and the lives it affects. Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Sheila, a bank clerk looking for love who buys the ill-starred garment from oddball department store Dentley and Soper. She finds herself in a real-life costume drama, quite aside from putting up with her amorous son Vince (Simon Manyonda) and his domineering girlfriend Gwen (Gwendoline Christie).
The writer/director’s previous film, The Duke of Burgundy, is an intriguingly strange and beautifully delivered study of desire and devotion. Once again he tackles sex and love from an unusual perspective and here explains how his very own phantom thread got made with inspiration from mannequins, Mel Gibson and The Office.
LWLies: You’ve made a film about a haunted dress. What inspired the idea?
Strickland: I think this idea that all clothing is haunted by a human presence. People think you can’t make a film about an object but I can guarantee you can reduce anyone to tears if you gave them a dead relative’s clothing. How clothing can make you grieve, how clothing can turn you on, how clothing can disgust you. And also how we feel when we wear clothing, how you can transform, how your posture changes, how your expression changes and the opposite of that: how you can hate your body when you wear something, how you can have body dysmorphia. It’s exploring ideas about fetishism, loss. I remember buying second-hand corduroy trousers which had a come stain on them. The idea of, ‘My god there’s a whole history’.
Did you wear them?
I washed them first. It’s also charity shops: clothing marked by sweat and bodily fluids and dead people’s clothing. The film is opening up a discussion about how we perceive clothing. There’s a very light satire on consumerism in the background. I don’t want be earnest or righteous about it because I’m sure there’s something I’m wearing now which was made in a sweatshop, so I’m a hypocrite to go down that path.
It looks like it’s set in the 1980s. Is there a reason you focused on that time?
It’s 1983 – there’s a newspaper front page which has it discreetly hidden. I wanted it to feel like the ’70s, maybe because department stores always had that look. Ideally I would have set it now but if I did that the whole dating thing would have been very different with Tinder and swiping. What I wanted was the mystery of dating back then. You had to imagine what a person’s like.
On one level the film does feel like a satire of retail. Do you have a particular affection for those stores?
I love the world of those stores, I love the flamboyance, I love the heightened theatrical nature of those stores. It’s a celebration as much as a parody. All of that is dying out. I love that human interaction. It’s a performance. I remember this store in Reading [where Strickland grew up] called Jackson’s. It had the pneumatic chutes where the money flew up, so that long wait for your change to come back and that awkwardness while you’re standing there. I thought that would be so good to put in a film.
I was trying to really true to the way I saw the world as a kid, how the mannequins feel like they’re protecting the store, they’re guarding the store like they’re kind of agents in all this. And how interchangeable mannequins and the staff can be, the sound of people shopping, the movement of people shopping. The important thing was that everything had to be connected to reality. Everything is exaggerated but when I spoke to the actors everything was on a dial. Reality was, say, zero and complete surreality was, say, 10. It was really talking about it like that, like an elastic band stretching reality but without every breaking that elastic band.
What’s the fascination with washing machines about?
It’s clothing again, isn’t it? It’s all connected. I wanted to make an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) film. A lot of the influences were those YouTube videos. It’s like this tactile response to certain sounds, like whispering, catalogue pages being turned, that kind of thing. I wanted to make a film you could fall asleep to. So it was very important to get the right paperweight for the catalogue, to make it thick enough to have that sound. I wanted to make a film of textures, physical textures and sonic textures, the texture of the human voice and send you into a bit of a trance.
There were certain key influences on your previous work: giallo films in Berberian Sound Studio and Stan Brakhage on parts of The Duke of Burgundy. Were there any particular inspirations for this film?
There was no big sensibility. Giallo really didn’t come into it at all. The big influence for me was beyond film, people like Keyholtz, the German sculptor. He did a lot of work with mannequins. Incredibly scary looking mannequins with resin dripping down their faces. Very nightmarish. When Mr Lundy gets the shoplifter in a leg-lock, that comes from the end of Lethal Weapon in the fight scene with Mel Gibson and the bad guy.
The Office was a huge influence. As a middle-class university graduate you end up in a lot of those white-collar jobs. The Office taught me that this is not a waste of time, this is all material you can use later on and if you use it without being self-pitying it can be very cathartic and people can relate to it. The Office was a huge revelation for me and was very inspiring. People want to hear if it was Chantal Akerman or something. I hate to say but television in 2000 was a big influence.
The portrayal of sex and desire in the film is very unusual. Can you shed any light on what you were thinking?
I guess clothing is sold on human desire. The whole commodification of desire, the catalogues, so it’s exploring that, for sure, but also beyond that going into to this parallel dimension of sex magick rituals of the mannequin being washed and menstruating. Is the dress made of menstrual blood? Is it acting as a dye? In terms of someone like Gwen and Vince and the underwear, it’s the element of showing clothing being erotic, it’s erotic because of the human imprint. And the scenes with Gwen, that’s more about accentuating Sheila’s loneliness. There’s nothing worse than hearing people in your house having fun when you’re not having fun.
In Fabric is released 28 June. Read the LWLies Recommends review.
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Dan Stevens on Saying Goodbye to ‘Legion’, X-Men Connections & How Long He’s Known the Ending
June 24, 2019
From show creator Noah Hawley and Marvel Television, the FX drama series Legion is back for its third and final season, as David Haller (Dan Stevens), a man who believed himself to be schizophrenic only to discover that he is the most powerful mutant the world has ever seen, is forced to confront his actions and the decisions that he’s made. With the dark voices in his head lusting for power and at odds with everyone he once considered a friend, David is now leading a commune to satisfy his need for adulation and he’s enlisted the help …
Toy Story 4 has done something that no previous Toy Story movie has done. Not only did Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom's script introduce the decidedly nontraditional toy character known as Forky (Tony Hale), it also chose to explore the mythology behind what it means to be a toy in Pixar's fictional franchise. How are they made? What gives them sentience? What separates trash from toys? And what rules does a toy have to follow simply by the nature of being a toy? These are all heady, existential questions, and you don't need to ponder the answers …
Universal Pictures has released the first trailer for the fascinating upcoming film Queen & Slim. The movie hails from a story idea by James Frey (yes, the Million Little Pieces guy) that was then written as a screenplay by The Chi creator Lena Waithe, and it tackles incredibly incendiary subject matter: the killing of a police officer by an African-American male. Daniel Kaluuya and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith star as a black couple on a first date who are pulled over for a minor traffic violation, only for the situation to escalate as Kaluuya’s character kills the cop …
The arrival of Toy Story—and by extension Pixar Animation Studios—in 1995 forever changed how we see movies. Not since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has the medium of animation been so significantly rocked, as new technology brought colorful CG to audiences for the first time ever. Within a decade, CG would replace hand-drawn 2D animation as the dominant medium at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and the animation world would remain forever transformed. But Pixar’s legacy doesn’t begin and end with technology. Sure, Toy Story ushered in a new visual medium, but it also shook …
Disney has released a new TV spot for The Lion King, just one more reminder that this movie is going to make one trillion dollars and make people of a certain generation weep uncontrollably in public. This new clip features the voices of Donald Glover's Simba and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter Nala making sweet harmony on "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" while James Earl Jones reprises the role of Mufasa from the clouds. Jon Favreau directs the remake from a script by Jeff Nathanson. The Lion King also features voice work from Chiwetel Ejiofor, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Alfre …
If you were under the impression that Harry Lloyd joining the cast of Legion season 3 as iconic X-men leader Charles Xavier would result in a more straightforward, comic book-faithful storyline, then woo boy I have a giant unexplained pig monster to sell you. (To clarify: Legion season 3 contains a giant pig monster. It is not explained.) The third and final season of Noah Hawley's wild ride through mental illness and mutation is, if anything, more prone to flights of fancy, unorthodox editing, and the occasional random musical number than the two seasons before it. With …
‘Big Little Lies’ Season 2: James Tupper on Recapturing the Magic & Working With Meryl Streep
June 23, 2019
The HBO drama series Big Little Lies is back for a second season, as the lies that were told last season come back to haunt the Monterey Five. With the death of Celeste’s husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) even more present now that his mother, Mary Louise (Meryl Streep), seems to be staying in town indefinitely, the friendship between Madeline (Reese Witherspoon), Celeste (Nicole Kidman), Jane (Shailene Woodley), Renata (Laura Dern) and Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz) is tested, pushing their husbands to the edge. During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor James Tupper (who plays Nathan, the …
What a strange summer at the box office this has already been. Toy Story 4 easily took the weekend with a $118 million debut. This marks the highest opening in the franchise by a wide margin—topping Toy Story 3's $110.3 million—but still falls below the $122 million the movie was estimated to rake in, and well below the $140-165 million mark that Disney was originally expecting. The trend continues of big franchise tentpoles underperforming, although Toy Story 4's premiere isn't nearly as tragic as Dark Phoenix or Men in Black: International. The film'…
‘Jessica Jones’ Season 3: Eka Darville on Malcolm’s Journey and Saying Goodbye to the Series
June 23, 2019
Executive produced by showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and Marvel’s Head of Television Jeph Loeb, Marvel’s Jessica Jones (available to stream at Netflix) is back for a third season, as Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) crosses paths with a highly intelligent and very deadly killer. At the same time, Jessica has cut the newly powered Trish (Rachael Taylor) out of her life, as she struggles to live up to her mother’s expectations for being a hero, but in order to survive the madman who wants to put an end to the super-powered, the two must find a way to …
In a month where eight franchise films are being released - Dark Phoenix, The Secret Life of Pets 2, Men in Black: International, Shaft, Toy Story 4, Child’s Play, Annabelle Come Home, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged - I’m not sure if it’s superfluous or absolutely essential to revisit the movie whose success inspired most or all of them. But Tim Burton’s Batman turns 30 today, and it’s impossible to overstate its effect not just on superheroes or movie series but the industry as a whole, alerting generations of filmmakers (and more importantly executives) how important pre-existing properties would become as a cornerstone of studio revenues, and consequently, priorities over the next three decades.
As a 13-year-old kid, it felt like a dream come true - my imagination, brought to life by Hollywood’s biggest stars and splashed across the big screen. But the four films in that cycle would eventually come to epitomize almost all of the virtues and shortcomings of not just “event” movies but bona fide cultural moments. Looking back at Batman and its sequels in the wake of their commercial success and cultural impact, the biggest lesson it taught - and studios keep having to re-learn - is that there’s no definitive right way to translate an iconic property to film, but a sure wrong one is to focus on the packaging and forget about the characters underneath.
Of course, by the time of Batman, I was already a huge fan of Tim Burton; though I wasn’t smart enough then to understand why, he made mainstream audiences understand what it felt like to be outsiders, and made outsiders feel like they were accepted. (It helped that he told underdog stories that were invariably bankrolled and marketed by the biggest studios in Hollywood.) But looking at the film now, I’m not quite sure who I’m supposed to identify with; I mean, Batman’s the one with all of the wonderful toys, and he is of course the hero. But the Joker is just so much more fun, and Burton oddly seems like he’s more in the villain’s corner, even when he’s defacing priceless artwork and gassing Gotham’s citizens by the thousands.
Nevertheless, Burton shouldered with genuine skill and passion the unenviable challenge of bringing the character to the screen for the first time in a believable and “serious” way, and that feeling remains today as you watch Michael Keaton turn the limitations of that inflexible rubber suit into an opportunity for mythic theatricality. Even featuring some inexplicably re-recorded sound effects on the new 4K Blu-ray release, the film oozes with pre-CGI charm, lending that suit, the fight scenes, the vehicles and Gotham’s enormous iron silhouette a weighty physicality that would soon be composited together with computers rather than, well, photographed (at scale or actual size) in physical space.
The movie’s actual release, however, changed the ideas behind studio moviemaking forever. Star Wars certainly overhauled the opportunities that studios had to create merchandising tie-ins - opportunities carried forward on many films throughout the 1980s - but Batman, arriving several years after Lucas’ flagship franchise had “ended,” supercharged that process, making publicity and the art itself synonymous with one another. Not only were there books, comic adaptations, soundtracks, film scores, and a slew of action figures and other toys, but there were bed sheets, dishes, and apparel lines in a variety of price ranges. That visibility helped catapult the film to record-breaking box office returns, becoming the first film to earn $100 million in just ten days. Even to cynics long since disabused of the notion that Hollywood majors make movies for anything other than profit, Batman’s success established a problematic notion, at least in the middle of summer - namely, that art is the last, and least, reason to make them.
Mind you, I don’t believe that Burton and his collaborators were disinterested in making something good, much less personal. The movie is infused with his visual sensibilities as well as themes common to his earlier films - and he shows a remarkable inventiveness in bringing together a lot of intense and unique technical challenges in terms of set design, costuming, fight choreography and visual effects together to create something smart, engaging and cohesive. Moreover, the filmmaker immediately took advantage of the commercial muscle that he developed with the first film in order to make Batman Returns even darker, nastier and more macabre.
Reminding Warner Brothers that the film’s financial success was a public vote of confidence for his take on the superhero and his world, Burton dug deeper into the psychology - the psychosis - of the caped crusader and his deeply troubled adversaries to create the Temple of Doom of Batman movies, a considerably more disturbing and violent adventure than its predecessor. Like the second Indiana Jones film, Batman Returns seems to attract fans who celebrate its comparative maturity, evidenced in a more literally cutthroat competition between good and evil for control of a Gotham that is itself perhaps too compromised for redemption. In retrospect, the movie feels to me like patient zero for the “dark, gritty” superhero takes that fans claim to want now, but as the product of a bygone era - one where those words still had little to do with true realism - its theatricality remains its greatest virtue.
Well, that and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight may have been the first performance of the modern superhero era to be taken “seriously” from a critical point of view, but her transformation in the film outpaces Keaton’s as Batman and even Danny DeVito’s as The Penguin in terms of both complexity and sheer, leaping-off-the-screen fun. Where Keaton feels sidelined in a movie that’s supposed to be about him, and Penguin’s tragic story dominates Burton’s story (and his sympathies), Pfeiffer not so quietly steals the show as a character who is simultaneously clever, empowered, sexy, and deeply confused - a combination that is both incredibly appealing and deeply sympathetic.
Unfortunately - and again, not unlike Temple of Doom - the film proved too grim for many moviegoers, testing the limits of its PG-13 rating and failing to provide the kind of manic fun that, well, inspired ticket buyers to keep spending their money on Batman-related trinkets after they left the theater. (McDonald’s even reportedly shut down a related Happy Meal promotion for the film.) And so, depending on who you ask - and according to interviews conducted for the film’s home video release in 2005 - Burton was either (or both) not invited back to direct a third film, or actively discouraged from doing so. In retrospect, it makes financial sense - the movie grossed $150 million less than the first film, not counting the drop in merchandising sales - but Batman Returns suggested that Warner Brothers needed to exert more control, not less, over the creative impulses of the filmmakers shepherding their moneymaker to the screen.
Then, of course, came Joel Schumacher’s two films. According to Schumacher, the word “toyetic” became an inextricable part of his vocabulary on Batman Forever after he agreed to helm an installment that was engineered to be more family-friendly both on screen and off - meaning that the film was accessible to audiences of all ages, and of course would encourage them to shell out money for toys and other goodies after the credits rolled. The shift marked a growth spurt in the wrong direction for longtime Batman fans - or even just those drawn to the character by Burton’s ’89 film - as it de-escalated the darkness and intensity of the character and embraced a level of camp associated with the 1960s television series, albeit in a more technically sophisticated way. Certainly there were still opportunities to explore the character’s fractured psyche on screen, but Schumacher, working from a script by Lee and Janet Scott Batchler and Akiva Goldsman, opted instead to leave that psychological work to replacement Bruce Wayne Val Kilmer while externalizing the broadest details of his identity - his provocative duality - with cartoon simplicity.
But more importantly, it also evidenced Warner’s growing understanding of the character, and IP in general, as a revenue generator rather than an opportunity to tell interesting stories. As studio leadership grew up, their audience got younger. Whether it was an inspiration or byproduct of this new thinking, Forever featured more characters than ever before, once again sidelining Batman with multiple villains as well as a sidekick, Dick Grayson, whose character was undoubtedly aimed at teens but seems way, way, way too old to be an orphan long before Bruce decides to “adopt” him.
Warner Brothers’ decision-making was for better or worse validated by the film’s success, earning more than Batman Returns and becoming the second highest-grossing film of 1995, after Toy Story. It of course led Schumacher to plunge right back into Batman’s world for Batman & Robin, which effectively quadrupled down on every wrong instinct of its predecessor. Trying to revisit it now is genuinely painful; the plot itself is incomprehensible, but the production design is so overbearing that it feels as if you can’t even keep track of the characters when they’re shuffling through their one-dimensional melodramas. It went on to become the lowest-grossing live-action (modern) Batman movie to date.
Unfortunately, those lessons had already been absorbed into Hollywood’s bloodstream, and the industry has spent every minute of the subsequent 30 years trying to replicate its success with one idea or another, increasingly involving “known” properties that executives get in a hurry to build a franchise around years and years before bothering to examine whether they can consistently attract audience, much less support multiple stories. In which case, Batman’s duality has become not just a metaphor explored on screen time and again but an emblem of the industry’s penchant for taking rich, complex literary and artistic legacies and reducing them to their most salable, sometimes ruining what makes them interesting but certainly ruining audience interest in seeing them explored at all. But even at their worst, the four Batman films in the series’ original cycle serve as an important reminder that there are available versions of characters and their worlds for all audiences - and there absolutely should be, so long as the goal is to reward their interest with more stories, and produce more interest, and not just to separate them from their cash while woefully underserving the mythologies being brought to life.
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