Movie Con III Coverage

As a journalist, I feel like I’ve been blindfolded – my telephone and Dictaphone have both been confiscated before I’ve been allowed into the BFI and Empire’s very own Chamber of Secrets – or NFT1, as it is more commonly known. Over the weekend, those lucky enough to get hold of the highly limited number of tickets have been treated to screenings, trailers, snippets, Q&As, random prizes and, mostly importantly of all, goody bags. Through our friends at Disney, I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to the final day’s events, which includes a preview of Tron: Legacy, Kim Newman’s movie quiz and an exclusive screening of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with a Q&A with the esteemed director and creator of the original comic, Brian Lee O’Malley. Now if only I could record anything…

Things kick off bright and early with the aforementioned footage of the belated sequel to Tron, the classic sci-fi groundbreaker, which saw a youthful Jeff Bridges sucked into a computer world and forced to engage in deadly combat to survive. The new iteration of the film sees Bridge’s son Sam enter the Tron world in search of his long-lost father.

The footage we witnessed saw Sam being apprehended by the Tron police, suited up by four sultry fem-bots and sent, like his father before him, into the games realm. For will surely be billed as a family movie, the film seems very dark (to employ an overused adjective in film previewing), even unnerving. The 3D effects seem fine, even apt given Tron’s futuristic environments. What struck me most was how brilliant Daft Punk’s soundtrack was: exciting, brooding and very, very cool.

Producer Brigham Taylor dropped in to chat about the film, revealing the convoluted origins of the film, his faith in first time director Joe Kosinski, cautious optimism in regard to a threequel and, jokingly, how the technology they’ve used is, “a thousand times more advanced than Avatar’s”. He also made known how jealous director of the original Tron was when faced with said technology and hinted at Kosinski’s next project, Oblivion, an ‘idea and character driven’ sci fi. Disney also mentioned their remake of another of their classic sci-fi flicks, The Black Hole and there was a final video message from Jack Sparrow to stir up interest in the fourth instalment of the dead-horse-flogging Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, On Stranger Tides.

Sony showed trailers for Angelina Jolie’s would-be Bourne/Bond beater, Salt (looks decent), Superbad’s Emma Stone starring teen-sex-rom-com, Easy A (looks okay…) and extended footage from Will Ferrell cop-comedy vehicle, The Other Guys (looking very funny and also starring Mark Wahlberg, Sam Jackson, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and the delightful Eva Mendes) and the appallingly-titled Battle: Los Angeles, a good old fashioned alien invasion movie which, should it have the brains to match its considerable brawn, could be America’s answer to District 9. It stars Harvey Dent himself, Aaron Eckhart and Lost star, Michelle Rodriguez. Think Paul Greengrass style handheld camera work crossed with Independence Day and you’re in the right ballpark.

There was footage from Paul WS Anderson’s latest Resident Evil flick as well as some behind the scenes stuff introduced by the man himself (on video, not in person). Afterlife (so the film is subtitled) is filmed in 3D and Anderson was somewhat overly keen to compare his feature to Avatar; his earnest appraisal of his own work was met with some derision form the crowd, but most seemed quietly impressed by the scene we saw: a hulking great zombie type thing terrorising Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter with a humongous axe/hammer/thing in a bathroom with the plumbing shot to pieces. There was also a trailer for Priest, which looks like a total bag of balls. You heard it here first.

The highlight of this spate of trailers was, however, Robert Rodriguez’s Machete. Starring Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez (again), Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro and the wonderful Jeff Fahey, Machete boasts copious violence, swearing, depravity and hilarity. Spawned originally from one of the fake trailers in the Rodriguez/Tarantino opus, Grindhouse, Machete looks like it ‘gets’ the whole tongue in cheek exploitation genre as well as, if not more so, than either the likable Planet Terror or the boring Death Proof and should be a total riot.

Everyone’s favourite pair of grown-up geeks, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost then turned up to flog their own alien-featuring-film, Paul and received a standing ovation. The film looks as funny as anything we’ve seen from the pair so far (which is good) and boasts a great cast – Jason Bateman, Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Sigourney Weaver, David Koechner and the godly Jeffrey Tambor all star alongside the Brit duo. Following a visit to rival film convention, Comic-Con, Graham and Clive (Pegg and Frost) take a road trip through America’s UFO hotspots and encounter Paul, an escapee from Area 51. The pair described the film as a loving tribute to Steven Spielberg – a running joke apparently being that Paul has been serving as an advisor to Hollywood sci-fi in his many years on earth.

Pegg and Frost were, of course, very funny and seemed completely at home in an auditorium full of hardcore film fans. They talked fondly of Spielberg on the set of the Tintin movie in which they star as Thomson and Thompson. Pegg was unable to say much about upcoming projects Mission Impossible 4 or Star Trek 2, but did divulge that he’d recently had a lovely picnic with Damon Lindeloff. The pair also described their own road trip across America in an RV – purely in the name of research, of course.

Following that, we were treated a fair chunk of Ironclad, the true story of one castle’s resistance to the tyrannical rule of King John and the resulting siege. We bore witness to not only a bloody and thrilling battle sequence, but also to Paul Giamatti royally hamming it up as the previously mentioned monarch. A decent chunk of the cast, consisting of James Purefoy, Jason Flemyng and newcomer Aneurin Bernard, plus director Jonathan (Johnny?) English and producer Andrew Curtis all turned up to answer questions about the film. They told tales of blokey bonding and competitiveness, horizontal Welsh rain and treacherous-looking trebuchets. Flemyng also revealed his role in X-Men: First Class, as the teleporting Azeazel.

Ironclad looks like decent fun, but its main selling point seems to be its historical accuracy – not just in its depiction of events, but in its unflinching violence. I always have been annoyed by medieval-set films that show soldiers falling bloodlessly with a merely glancing blow from a broadsword. There’s none of that in Ironclad – feckless soldiers are hacked to death brutally, limbs are (eventually) lopped off and one poor sucker is cut clean in half. Jolly good.

There was also a trailer for Fanboys, in which a troupe of geeks attempt to invade Skwalker Ranch for reasons that are not entirely clear, but it seems to provide a decent excuse to pack in a number of nerd-friendly cameos, including Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. Duncan Jones (looking just like his dad) was kind enough to record a short and to the point video in which he describes his Moon follow-up, Source Code, in which Jake Gyllenhaal is tasked with reliving a train bombing repeatedly to find out whodunit. It sounds a bit like that JFK episode of Red Dwarf, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We were also treated to Kim Newman’s very tricky movie quiz. There was a plethora of prizes including signed Kick-Ass swag, a Wii, X-Boxes and, top of the pile, a 3D TV. The quiz came down to a tie-break question between two identical looking movie geeks who were asked how much money Avatar made worldwide. One billion and one dollars was the closest and thus winning guess.

The last chunks of footage we were treated to were from the upcoming Brighton Rock. As its director Rowan Joffe and producer Paul Webster were keen to stress, the feature is not a remake of the classic 1947 film, rather it is a new adaptation of the original novel, its tale of the rise to power of the psychotic gangster Pinkie relocated from the 30s to the 60s. The footage was moody and evocative; the sight of hundreds of mods on their mopeds cruising down the sea front being particularly impressive. The pair were also trying a little too hard to impress, but their hearts seemed in the right place; indeed for Joffe, the project seemed like a labour of love and he repeatedly referred to the ‘ghost of Graham Greene’, the novel’s author, sitting on his shoulder as he wrote the screenplay.

Finally, the ‘surprise’ screening was revealed – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was our headlining act and was a none-more-apt closer to this unabashed geekend. The last thing this website needs is another Pilgrim review, but suffice to say, Edgar Wright’s hyperactive, eclectic style is writ large and runs riot for 112 minutes of shameless joy. Part film, part video game, all class, Pilgrim is a marvellous calling card for Wright who is now surely undisputedly a member of the filmmaking A list. Highlights include Beck’s brilliant tunes for Sex Bob-omb, the Zelda spoofing first meeting between Scott and Ramona and Kieran Culkin as Pilgrim’s gay roommate. If you’re reading this site, you’ll probably love it. Oh, and during the film, I was sat three seats down from John Landis, director of The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London and the upcoming Pegg-starrer, Burke and Hare. Which was neat!

Wright and Brian Lee O’Malley, the creator of the comic, stuck around after the screening and, after downing an Edgar Wrightini each, proceeded to answer questions from the crowd, though each in a considerable state of jetlag. They revealed how they bonded over mix tapes of music to be used in the film, how production on the film overtook the publication of the comics and vice versa, the influence of video games, the various aspect ratios used and the price of a pint of milk.

All told, Movie-Con III was a brilliant if exhausting day out (there was an optional showing of Despicable Me, which I was quite keen to see, but by which point I was flagging severely and my eyes felt like they would bleed from my sockets – kudos to those who did the whole weekend). Roll on next year.

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My Week in Film #4

On Sunday night I had the pleasure of watching Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The film is an American retelling of Infernal Affairs and tells the tale of a hood that has infiltrated the police and an undercover cop posing as a gang member, played by Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio respectively. Jack Nicholson plays the bodacious crime lord at the centre of the intrigue. Inevitably, the plot gets complicated as interests conflict and allegiances mutate. The film is stylish edited, adding to the snappy pace, much needed due to its excessive run time. Pleasingly, Scorsese is unafraid to show separate scenes running parallel to each other, again, adding to the pace of the narrative.

The film perhaps meanders too long into an extended epilogue which probably could have been more economically made (by that I mean doing more with less, rather than that they blew the budget on pyrotechnics or anything). Perhaps Scorsese would do well to give the gangster genre a rest now, though that said this is arguably his most engrossing take on the genre yet: the plot is excellent and much less predictable than you might expect – though having the two leads share a love interest seemed hugely artificial to my mind. The best thing about the film is the wonderful supporting cast, with standout performances from Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. A well deserved best picture Oscar then, even with the stiff competition it faced from Little Miss Sunshine and Babel, both brilliant films too.

Earth is a kind of ‘greatest hits’ to the BBC’s superlative documentary series, Planet Earth’s ‘complete discography’, if you will. Edited into a feature length film from many of the aforementioned series’ best bits, Earth shows us a year in the life of our planet and truly is awe-inspiring in every sense of the phrase. Make no mistake; if you see any film that I have mentioned in these blogs, make sure you see Earth: it has by far the greatest cast of characters, set design and photography of any I’ve mentioned.

I was only slightly disappointed in that there was precious little footage I had not already seen, but then, this isn’t the kind of stuff that gets old easily. Tracking shots over Angel Falls and bus-sized sharks leaping out of oceans may draw a tear to your eye. Different from the TV series is Patrick Stewart narrating in place of David Attenborough, though either’s dulcet tones are welcome in my book. Again, the most exciting thing about the film is, apart from the use of extreme slow motion and sped up camera work, there are no special effects whatsoever; everything you see happens somewhere on our still beautiful planet and if you do not find that a joy to behold, then I don’t want to know you.

My friend lent me Prachya Pinkaew’s kung fu film Chocolate, which I watched on Friday. This is the story of a mentally troubled girl whose mother has cancer. To pay for her mother’s medication, our heroine Zen sets out to collect the various debts people owe her mother. Unfortunately, due to her mother’s dodgy gangster past, these people are BAD MEN and are unwilling to pay up. Fortunately, Zen is a kick-ass martial artist. The inevitable result is lots and lots (and lots) of people getting kicked about the face by a thirteen year old girl in a varity of inventive ways.

The plot is only slightly thicker than the paper it is written on and characterisation is merely functional. However, the choreography of the fight scenes is predictably excellent and the film is shot stylishly and often artistically. The soundtrack too is rather decent. There are a couple of flaws in the plot, for example, would the average factory worker really take a meat cleaver to an adolescent girl at a moment’s notice? And would people really be so unwilling to pay up for cancer medication? Had it lasted any longer, it may have outstayed its welcome, as it stands though; it is a short and sweet, enjoyable beat ‘em up with unexpected and welcome pathos adding an interesting hook for the viewer. Zen’s gleeful shrieks and whoops as she takes on the workers of the ice factory are hugely endearing too.

Finally, I re-watched Edgar Wright’s modern classic and action movie pastiche, Hot Fuzz this very eve. Simon Pegg is a big cop in a little village and Nick Frost is his idiot partner. Laughs ensue, arse is kicked and everyone goes home with a smile on their face. Another great ensemble cast here, in particular, Timothy Dalton’s scene stealing Simon Skinner, played with villainous joy. The editing is fast and furious and the soundtrack here too is brilliant and demonstrates an often fascinating use of sound (really!).

The film is wonderfully dense in references both self-reflexive and parodic which warrants repeated viewings. The script is tight and there are some real belly laughs as well as impressive set pieces in the film. Only one or two lines fail to hit their target, but with this tiny exception, Hot Fuzz is one of the most consistently enjoyable films I can think of. I await Wright, Pegg and Frost’s next venture with barely contained anticipation!

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The Departed, Martin Scorsese, la Terre, Patrick Stewart, Chocolat, Prachya Pinkaew