Legends of the Knight (2013)

Posted on October 16, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #23
Brett Culp | 76 mins | Blu-ray | 16:9 | USA / English

Heartwarming crowdfunded documentary about the power of Batman — not to beat supervillains, but his positive influence on real people.

Its multitudinous subjects span everyone from a businessman who visits children’s hospitals in full Bat-costume, to an anonymous teenager in a homemade Bat-outfit who helps around his small town. Plus a five-year-old leukaemia patient enjoying a Make-a-Wish Batman day, inspiration for the grander “Batkid” that went viral last November.

There’s also analysis of what makes Batman such a powerful character, but I think the real message is how finding a symbol to rally behind can bring out the best in people.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long. You’ve just read one.

The Battle of the Somme (1916)

Posted on September 7, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #71
Producer: William F. Jury* | 74 mins | DVD | 1.33:1 | UK / silent (English)

Arguably the most famous clash of the First World War, the Battle of the Somme lasted four-and-a-half months from July to November 1916 and, with over a million men wounded or killed, is “one of the bloodiest battles in human history.” As the BBC’s History website puts it, although it was “intended to be a decisive breakthrough, the Battle of the Somme instead became a byword for futile and indiscriminate slaughter”. Not that you’d guess it from this contemporary documentary, which is essentially a propaganda piece produced by the British government.

Centred around 1st July 1916, the day of the first British assault on the German trenches, the film mostly covers the build-up and aftermath of the initial fighting — despite the title, there’s very little footage of combat. There’s probably two reasons for that: one, the footage of the battle wasn’t very good and so, infamously, was staged (aka faked) later; and two, the battle was a bloodbath, making it a somewhat inappropriate spectacle to show to the general public, especially when it was their friends and relations being slaughtered on “the worst day in the history of the British Army” (they suffered around 60,000 casualties on that first day alone). Not that we’re spared the sight of dead bodies elsewhere in the film, but the moment of death itself is another matter.

The faked footage of men going ‘over the top’ has dogged the film’s reputation to a degree. As Roger Smither, the keeper of the Imperial War Museum’s film & photograph archives, notes in the booklet accompanying their DVD release, “despite a common perception that The Battle of the Somme is ‘full of fakes’, the staged ‘over the top’ scene is in fact a significant anomaly in a film that is otherwise characterised by nothing worse in the way of fabrication than the kind of ‘photo-opportunity’ arrangement that remains a continuing part of television news and photo-journalism to this day.” It’s also one that lasts only a few minutes, if that; a tiny fraction of the entire film.

The British press certainly believed they were seeing “the real thing at last” (the Manchester Guardian), feeling it showed “war, grim, red war; the real thing” (the Daily Sketch). The British public agreed, flocking to see the movie en masse: twenty million admissions were sold in the first six weeks of release. At the time, the battle still raged (the film debuted on 10th August 1916) — as Smithers notes, “to its original audience, the film was not history but a despatch from the front”. It is such an historical document now, but at the time it wasn’t even recent-history — it was produced as newsreel, a record of current events, designed to make people at home feel connected to the everyday lives of their family, friends and countrymen serving on the frontline.

It can still serve that role today, to an extent. From much of how World War One is presented in modern fiction, documentary and education, you’d be forgiven for thinking troops were shipped directly into trenches, went over the top and died or, if one of the few lucky enough to survive, then went directly to hospital/home/back to the trench. The Battle of the Somme puts lie to that from the start: we begin with preparations for the battle, lines and lines of troops marching or standing around waiting for something to do, in normal-looking fields and towns, far removed from the cramped, muddy, horrid trenches of our imagination. Smiling faces follow the camera, running around to remain in shot, lifting tarps uninvited to helpfully show off stacks of ammunition. It’s all very jolly.

Equally striking is the scale of the operation. You know it was a monumental effort, but actually seeing so many men… You never see that scope in dramas because they don’t have the budget for all those extras, I guess, but here the crowds of soldiers just waiting around are remarkably large. And crikey, the heavy artillery! Even though you know these were real weapons, today they look more like some fantastical steampunk creation, so covered are they in rivets, and so damn huge.

Signs of disruption to the happy masses creep in, though: it’s surprising how scruffy the uniforms are — not when the soldiers are at rest, but while performing duties like reloading guns. Hats are at odd angles, some are jacketless — just a general lack of the smartness you’d expect to see in an official documentary about the military. Later, we see a gaggle of smiling and laughing faces as men attach special barbed wire cutters to the end of their rifles. Hindsight lets us know few of those men would’ve got close enough to need them.

But there’s no hindsight here; no mention of the incompetent strategy and the severe loss of life it led to. If anything, it makes even the post-battle front look not-so-bad. We see some of the wounded, but they’re either walking or seem to be enjoying a nice stretcher ride, the intertitles informing us we’re seeing “how quickly the wounded are attended to”. Even the captured enemy look just as chipper as the British soldiers escorting them. When we do see action, any British attack is successful and described with words like “glorious”, while any German counterattack is “one of five unsuccessful” ones. It’s brazenly propagandistic. Towards the end we’re shown — and I quote the intertitle accurately — “some of the booty”! (That being artillery, etc, salvaged from the captured German lines.) The closing section opens with shots of devastation wrought on the landscape by British shellfire, accompanied (in the 1916 musical medley) with triumphant music. The tone is shocking.

Speaking of the music, the Imperial War Museum DVD release offers up a choice of two scores: a newly-commissioned (in 2008) one by film composer Laura Rossi, and a recreation of the kind of music that would have accompanied the film in 1916. The film’s producer and distributor, William F. Jury, was also the editor of trade paper The Bioscope, and had columnist J Morton Hutcheson draw up a list of suitable pieces to be performed alongside screenings, which was published days before the film’s release. To quote Dr Toby Haggith (the Imperial War Museum’s film programmer), again in the DVD booklet**, “for this reason, it may be fair to describe this medley as the ‘official score’ for the film. Although cinemas were not obliged to use these recommendations, we know that it was used in at least seven of the cinemas where the Somme film was screened and there is other evidence that it was widely adopted. However, the point is not that the Morton Hutcheson medley was used on every occasion The Battle of the Somme was shown, but that it is the kind of selection that was typical for this film”.

Rossi found the “medley was much more positive and light-hearted than I imagined… I think it’s interesting to hear the medley and see how it was watched in 1916… but I think someone watching the film today would watch in a totally different way, as we can now look back in hindsight, and we have a pre-conceived idea of what the war was like”. This is partly why I chose to view the film with the 1916 soundtrack: to get an idea for how the film was originally perceived, rather than the laden retrospective view. Rossi avoided listening to other scores when composing her own, preferring to respond to just the film itself. Admirable, and probably the ‘right’ way to do it; but it also brings all that associated baggage of “this was a terrible thing”, whereas the original film, produced as propaganda-newsreel, is going for more “this is hard but honourable”. The 1916 music selection is indeed quite jovial on the whole, though marginally more somber when the occasion calls. The (very small) sampling I listened to of Rossi’s score was more ominous, rumbling, haunting and haunted — much more in tune with our modern understanding, I’m sure.

Haggith summarises many of Hutcheson’s choices as “motivated wholly by the needs of propaganda… jaunty, martial and unashamedly heroic. Given the nature of the scenes recorded and the bloody history of this phase of the battle, the selection of such upbeat music seems deeply inappropriate.” However, other selections “reflect Hutcheson’s personal response to scenes that he found distressing on a universal level, and which led him to warn musicians that ‘they must realise the seriousness and awfulness of the scenes’… These contradictions suggest that Hutcheson had difficulty selecting music for the film because he was torn by the contrasting images and messages it conveyed. In this way the medley highlights the tension at the heart of the film.” Musician Stephen Horne, who leads the 1916 medley recreation, agrees that the film is torn “between a sense of propagandist duty and a desire to honour the reality that had not evaded the camera’s gaze.” It’s true that, however positive the final movie wants to be, it can’t completely escape reality. At one point it cuts abruptly from a jauntily-scored scene of men happily receiving post to “German dead on the field of battle”. A deliberate juxtaposition of happiness with the fate that awaits them with near inevitability? Seems a bit radical for a propaganda piece…

As a whole, The Battle of the Somme offers little atmosphere or sense of narrative; just the presentation of a series of broadly-chronological tableaux that the cameramen captured. Even the intertitles only describe what exactly the following shots will be showing us, almost like an onscreen footnote or picture caption. This is formative documentary making, and that apparent simplicity only adds to its veracity: because it seems so determinedly unstaged, we believe it must be real.

But it can’t avoid drawing parallels: the film ends almost as it began, with artillery being moved up for the next assault and men marching to the front, waving merrily as they go. History repeats — probably not the lesson a propaganda film wants to impart, but one it can’t quite escape. And one that, even a hundred years later, we can’t quite learn.

This review is part of the World War One in Classic Film Blogathon, which you can read more about from hosts Silent-ology and Movies Silently.

In that spirit, you might be interested in my reviews of certified-classic Lawrence of Arabia and Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war diatribe Paths of Glory; or, for World War One in modern film, my pieces on the very good Canadian melodrama Passchendaele, and Steven Spielberg’s exceptional, epic adaptation of War Horse. Plus, if you want to really push the definition of “films about the First World War”, there’s always Sucker Punch.

* There’s no credited director. As well as producer Jury, the full credits include cameraman and editor Geoffrey H. Malins, cameraman J.B. McDowell, and editor Charles Urban. ^

** Believe it or not, I’ve avoided quoting too heavily from the Imperial War Museum’s DVD booklet in this review. It’s filled with insights, into not only the film but also its different musical scores and the in-depth restoration process, that make it an enlightening read for anyone interested. ^

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape (2010)

Posted on July 16, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #60
Jake West | 71 mins | DVD | 16:9 | UK / English | 18*

Originally produced for the 2010 FrightFest film festival, horror director Jake West’s feature-length documentary with the unwieldy title explores the ‘video nasty’ scare that gripped early-VHS-era Britain. Starting with a primer on the birth of home video, and what it was like to watch movies in those days (because, ladies and gents, we’ve now reached a point where even fans of that (second-)most adults-only of genres, the gory horror flick, are young enough to not recall a time before DVD), West uses archive news clips and a wide array of new talking head interviews to take the story from the UK’s first video recorders in 1978, through a newspaper-led panic, up to the infamous Video Recordings Act of 1984, which irrevocably (thus far, anyway) changed the face of home entertainment releasing in the UK.

In terms of documentary filmmaking, this is not a flashy affair — as I said, archive clips and talking heads. But this is a gripping story — horrifying in its own way, ironically enough — and West and producer Marc Morris have a double whammy of quality components with which to tell it: well researched and selected clips and cuttings, which include key interviews from news and opinion programmes of the time; alongside new interviews with people from both sides of the debate. These include those who campaigned at the time, both anti- and pro-censorship, as well as those who said nothing and perhaps regret it; and now-famous fans who lived through the era and have since gone on to prominent positions — filmmakers and journalists, primarily. It’s this array of informed opinion that makes the film such captivating, essential viewing.

Focusing on the scare rather than the films embroiled in it makes this less a “horror documentary” and more a social history/pop culture one, though the liberal use of extreme clips from the movies in question shuts out anyone without a hardened stomach. (If you did want more on the films themselves, the DVD set that contains the documentary — Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide — includes 7½ hours of special features discussing all 72 ‘official’ video nasties alongside their trailers.) There’s room for little asides amongst the main narrative, though. One of the highlights is the story of an interviewee who was invited on to Sky News in the wake of the James Bulger murder and asked if the film many were holding responsible, Child’s Play 3, should not be available on video… at which juncture he pointed out to the interviewer that it was currently showing on Sky Movies.

One of many fascinating aspects of the documentary is learning how little defence was given to the movies or, more potently, the idea that we shouldn’t be censoring media. It’s the Guardian’s own film critic from that time who highlights that certain papers should have been mounting some kind of defence, or at least counterpoint, but simply didn’t. He explains that they actually found the films a bit extreme and shocking too, which is why they didn’t step in, but — as he says — that’s besides the point: they should have been arguing against censorship; and it was that lack of an intelligent counterargument (or a paucity of one) that helped the ridiculous views take hold and the ill-thought legislation sweep through.

There was some counterargument, however, which leads us to the film’s best interviewee, and surely a new hero to many: Martin Baker. Baker was one of a few (certainly the first, and for a time the only) critical/intellectual-type voices to speak out in defence of the films that were outraging so many. He’s to be commended not only for his valiant defence of, essentially, free speech at a time when his views were immensely unpopular; but also because he remains one of the most lucid and fascinating commenters in the documentary. He makes the clearest points about the need to not forget both what happened and how it was allowed to happen, lest it occur again.

In a film overloaded with memorable points and sequences, two of the best come near the end. One is the aforementioned, a series of points (including Baker’s) about how the public must learn because politicians won’t. Very true, and surely the main take-away point of the film. Just before that, however, there’s a piece of vintage news footage. Over shots of innocent children in a playground, a reporter tells us that the potential long-term effects of children watching video nasties are not yet known — the implication being we should be terrified that they’ll all grow up either emotionally scarred or to become mass murders. What follows is a near-montage showing successful filmmakers and journalists of today attributing their entire careers to video nasties; and it only scrapes the surface of the tip of the iceberg of those, too.

For those of us not alive or aware during the period in question, it’s a massively informative film. Indeed, even for those who remember it well, this may offer a level of insight and explanation that was absent at the time. It’s important for film fans of all stripes, not just gore hounds, because the legislation passed in response to video nasties still dictates so much of modern British film releasing. And beyond even that, everyone has something to learn from the story of how mass government-sponsored censorship — to a level that, at some points, is reminiscent of Nazism or Stalinist Russia — was not only allowed, but encouraged, in such recent history. Indeed, such issues very much still play out today — after all, this is a country that has recently enacted ludicrous, ineffectual rules that force ISPs to attempt to censor what we can and can’t see on the internet, and just yesterday rushed through anti-privacy legislation without proper debate. Sad to say, many of the valuable lessons of the ‘video nasties’ brouhaha — lessons made explicit with superb clarity in Jake West’s excellent documentary — have not been heeded.

A new sequel documentary, Video Nasties: Draconian Days, is released on DVD as part of Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide: Part Two this week.

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Violence placed 10th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2014, which can be read in full here.

* Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape isn’t actually listed on the BBFC websites, suggesting the makers decided that, as a documentary, it was Exempt. However, the rest of the DVD set on which it is available is rated 18 and, thanks to all the included clips, that’s certainly the appropriate category for the documentary. ^

Visions of Light (1992)

Posted on May 18, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #33
Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy & Stuart Samuels | 90 mins | TV | 16:9 | USA & Japan / English | PG

Cinematographers discuss cinematography in this AFI-produced documentary. Initially a whistlestop history of film photography, it segues into analysis of movies the interviewed DPs had shot. Unfortunately, casual film fans may judge it monotopical, while hardened cineastes may find it a haphazard, Hollywood-centric overview.

However, there’s real delight to be found in the clips, and the discoveries you can make through them. It opens with an extended section on David Lean’s Oliver Twist, which in my experience is mainly discussed for Alec Guinness’ Fagin, but on this evidence is visually awe-inspiring. This showcasing, plus a smattering of insights, redeem any imperfections.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)

Posted on January 15, 2014 by badblokebob

From 1984 to 1994, a perfect storm of people and circumstances changed the face of animation forever.

So declares the title card at the start of this documentary, which covers how in just a few years Disney went from nearly shutting down its animation division to a period of immense critical acclaim and box office success, including the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

On the surface, it’s not a secret story. A significant part of the film is made up of contemporary news and documentary footage that clearly shows this was being covered at the time, and you can see more of the same just by looking into box office numbers and critical assessment. It’s also, to an extent, ‘race memory’ — we ‘all’ know of the Disney classics from earlier years, how this tailed off through the likes of The Black Cauldron, and then the renewed burst of creativity that began with The Little Mermaid and flowed through the likes of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, until (more or less) the end of the ’90s (before it all went wrong again, but that’s another story).

However, Waking Sleeping Beauty is told from the inside: director Don Hahn started out as an assistant director at Disney animation in the ’80s, graduating to producer by the time of Beauty and the Beast. With him he brings behind-the-scenes home movies and access to a stunning array of interviewees. Almost everyone who was anyone at Disney during that time is interviewed, either through archive footage or new audio commentary. It was a tough time, and while Hahn’s portrait is probably not quite warts-and-all, it comes damn close; for example, we get to see some of the caricatures the animators drew in disgust at their new boss, Jeffrey Katzenberg.

As best I can tell, Waking Sleeping Beauty is only available in the UK through certain streaming services (I watched it on Now TV, which it has now departed; I believe it may have been on Netflix, but again isn’t right now), which is a shame. The US DVD is reportedly packed with nearly an hour-and-a-half of additional interviews and the like, which makes it an enticing prospect.

As Disney’s ‘animated classics’ continue to be successful (with Wreck-It Ralph and Christmas-just-passed’s Frozen the most recent entries) and the focus of their business, from merchandise sales to attractions at their ever-popular theme parks, it’s easy to forget that the animation legacy nearly died — several times. Waking Sleeping Beauty does an excellent job of showing us how close they sailed to disaster, and how the dedication and creativity of individuals who believed in that legacy stopped the ship from sinking.

Side by Side (2012)

Posted on December 7, 2013 by badblokebob

Side by Side is a documentary on camera technology. No, wait, come back! It’s much more interesting than that sounds.

We live in a transitional time for the cinema, between methods that sustained the art and industry for 100 years, and groundbreaking digital revolutions. A decade ago it would unthinkable to shoot a serious Hollywood feature on anything other than film stock; now, you have to be a special filmmaker with some clout to persuade the studios it’s worthwhile doing it that way — most stuff is shot on digital formats.

Side by Side is, primarily, about the debate between those who prefer the old film ways and those who embrace the digital future. There’s some other stuff about the history of the format and how we got from a place where shooting digitally was a joke for ultra-low-budget indies to a time when it’s the dominant filming method, but this is all framed in the context of, “should we really be abandoning film?” And, for cinephiles, it is a fascinating and complex debate — and, actually, for non-cinephiles: it’s the kind of debate you might find a little dull and for a niche audience, but could one day affect everyone who likes movies. It’s not just about pixel resolution or colour range or depth of field or how a filmmaker views dailies or edits the final product; it’s also about what constitutes a Film, what gives it that almost-indefinable big-screen quality; and about how we preserve these cultural artefacts going forward.

The significance of the debate is emphasised by the interviewees. Nearly every high-profile name who has at any time factored in the film vs. digital debate pops up, however briefly (renowned film advocate Christopher Nolan gets just a couple of comments; I think Peter Jackson is the only notable omission). Indeed, you can tell how significant the interviewees are just by looking at the poster — what more do you need to know? There are also others — producers, cinematographers, and so on — whose names you might not be familiar with, whose work you might not even know, but have insightful contributions to make. Presenter Keanu Reeves is not just a celebrity voiceover but also the primary (sole?) interviewer, and believe it or not he does a sterling job.

Side by Side is essential viewing for serious film fans. It’s a state-of-play piece that documents where things are right now and how we got here, while also serving as a record for the future of what people felt at this crucial tipping point. Film might be about to die out, and this film will tell you why that’s been allowed to happen.

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2013. Read more here.

Diary of the Dead (2007)

Posted on November 1, 2013 by badblokebob

While making a horror movie in the woods, a group of friends hear news of the dead coming back to life. As they try to reach home, their aspiring documentary-maker director keeps his camera rolling, recording their encounters with the living dead…

After his first living dead movie, it took writer-director George A. Romero a full ten years to have a concept for a follow-up. Then it was seven years before he produced another, and then he skipped a decade entirely before he produced a fourth twenty years on. But it was only two years after that before he returned to the subgenre he’d spawned almost 40 years earlier.

The quick turnaround was thanks to Romero being inspired by the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ — that’s people who document events with mobile phone cameras and the like, telling their own alternative version of the news on blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and the rest. It gave him an idea for another of his zombie movies, which he rushed to make before anyone else could do it first. Too late, George: although he managed to get Diary of the Dead into festivals in 2007, its wider cinematic release came after Cloverfield, the high-profile big-budget version of Romero’s concept that’s rather kickstarted a whole found-footage subgenre. And anyway, both of them owe a clear debt to a film released eight years earlier, The Blair Witch Project.

I liked Cloverfield, and Blair Witch. I don’t object to found-footage as a genre when it’s done well. Diary of the Dead is… well, it’s a funny one. It marks Romero’s return to independent feature making, after producing Land of the Dead for a major studio, but he perhaps went a little too independent: with a clear low-budget ethic and a cast of unknown actors, criticism from some quarters that this is little better than a Syfy TV movie are not without basis. And the technological aspect is already beginning to feel dated after just six years (people use MySpace!), so goodness knows how it’ll look after even ten. Thing is, despite all that, Diary still has one ace up its sleeve: it’s written and directed by George A. Romero.

What does that mean, then? Well, it means clear social commentary, as usual. Some people say that’s not as subtle as it used to be — again, as usual. Romero’s targets this time are the news: how the mainstream media lies to us, and how we’ve turned to alternative sources. But he’s also aware of the limitations of those alternatives: the lack of real-world contact, interacting with each other through cameras, phones and computers; processing the world not by going to see it but by watching it in little boxes on a screen.

In taking on this world, Romero has produced a movie that fits right in amongst it. Diary feels like it was made by some just-out-of-film-school kid rather than a 67-year-old moviemaking veteran. Romero is clearly a stylistic chameleon (as I noted on Land of the Dead), but that’s the surface sheen: the digital HD visuals, the syndicated-TV-level ability of the cast, the cut-price CGI… It’s also, sadly, sometimes the writing: the dialogue isn’t all it could be, and the characters are sketchy and archetypal — though, in fairness, that’s not unheard of from a Romero supporting cast. But, as ever, Romero adds his own spin by attempting to engage with social themes; not only those I’ve mentioned, but several more: “do we deserve to survive this?” is the closing note — again, taking on one of Romero’s pet subjects, the violence of humanity, against ourselves and others. Earlier in the film the military turn up, very briefly, but they are the opposite of all they should be. It’s not just that Romero hasn’t changed his views in 30 years or more, it’s that the world hasn’t changed either.

That said, the thematic concerns feel less resonant than in Romero’s previous work. The found-footage has led him to frame this as a film-within-a-film — the first title card reads The Death of Death, followed by one noting it’s “a film by Jason Creed”, the aforementioned aspiring director — complete with montages of news footage and, at times, a voice over narration. This rather rams the point home at times, over-explaining features that previously Romero would have allowed us to spot for ourselves. In some respects you can’t blame him being more obvious in this day and age — it needs to be on the nose to get through to some people — but it’s less satisfying, the blunt information coming across as a statement rather than asking us for our own interpretation, which I feel can lead to a more insightful analysis.

This is coupled with arguably a greater focus on action and gore than ever before. The first three films limit the majority of their violence to a final-act brawl — think Night’s trip to the gas pump/zombie break-in, the bikers in Dawn, the zombie break-in (again) in Day, the zombie, er, break-in in Land — but here we’re given a smattering throughout, with no all-or-nothing finale. That’s not a bad thing, but it makes it feel more pervasive — even more so than Land, which was an action-adventure movie through and through. Is Romero playing to his crowd, here? The ones who have always looked to his films foremost for their zombie-killin’ special effects; the ones who think Zack Snyder’s Dawn remake is superior to most/all of Romero’s films? (Seriously, those people exist.)

Such folks, and even genuine Romero fans, seem to have two major problems with Diary (aside from arguments about the acting, the storyline, or even the entire concept). First, the gore: where Land added CGI to the traditional mix, Diary’s almost exclusively courtesy of computer wizardry. That’s the age we live in: computer effects are so commonplace that they’re now the cheap and easy thing to achieve, rather than men with buckets of red food colouring and entrails from the local butcher. For me, it’s a mixed bag. I don’t think this is the worst CGI I’ve ever seen (unlike some commentators), but I do think it lacks the distinctive Romero feel — there’s none of his trademark eating of intestines, for instance, or the tearing a human in half that’s become a key visual in every film since Dawn. Perhaps that’s because of the realism angle? No one would film that; they’d turn away. Of course, when zombies get shot/beaten/etc, that’s different; that we can watch.

In fact, Romero kind of has his cake and eats it. There’s CG gore aplenty, and new and inventive ways to kill the zombies, but he still criticises that “violence for the sake of it” attitude, particularly in the film’s closing moments. He also takes pot-shots at fast-moving zombies and the treatment of women in horror films, but those are deserved, especially as they generate a laugh here. Nonetheless, said inventiveness is somewhat entertaining. There’s a particular good bit with an Amish man (the film’s best character) and a scythe, and another with a kid and a bow & arrow. I guess gorehounds will never be satiated by CGI, instead always moaning it looks cheap, but here at least it’s fine — doubly so for a film of such low budget.

The other problem bemoaned by fans is that this is a reboot, of sorts. Romero’s previous zombie films feature no recurring characters and don’t sit properly within the same timeline, but they nonetheless feature an evolution of the zombie epidemic: it spreads from a one-night issue in Night to a dragging problem in Dawn, to an all-consuming one by Day, in which we see the zombies gaining in intelligence, to the point where they consciously form an invading force in Land. But Diary scraps all that, going back to the start of the epidemic. It doesn’t remake Night — in fact, it handles a few things notably differently (in Night the radio and TV report factual and helpful information; in Diary, they obscure the fact the outbreak is even happening) — but it does disregard the development Romero had taken the undead through.

This may, then, be the time to mention that Romero doesn’t consider his films to be sequels, because each one starts with a new set of characters and tells a self-contained story. He has a point: consider any of the first four films in isolation and you’ll realise you don’t need to have seen the preceding movie(s) to follow them, they just don’t take the traditional move of starting from the birth of the zombie problem. This is perhaps most evident in Land: the sci-fi-esque dystopian world, born of ours but notably different, is the setting for dozens of movies; we’re used to jumping into that without three films’ worth of exposition on how we got from here to there. So if you choose to consider each film as a standalone, self-contained entity, Diary going back to the start doesn’t seem quite so odd. It’s even necessary for the film’s theme: the premise requires it to be set in a present-day we recognise that’s then transformed by the zombie epidemic, rather than a sci-fi future set post-Land.

But, nonetheless, the epidemic did develop and evolve across Romero’s previous films, and that’s been lost here. Maybe there’s nowhere further to go with it? I’m not convinced of that. Perhaps Romero will have another idea and get to tell that story someday in the future, leaving Diary (and Survival) as an aside to his once-a-decade continuing series.

I disagree with those who think Diary is without interest or merit — clearly, as I’ve gone on this long about it. Romero brings a class to the concept that a lesser director wouldn’t, but it’s also a concept a lesser director could have realised much of in a similar fashion. It’s unquestionably the weakest of Romero’s first five ‘Dead’ films, then, but that still leaves it notably better than many, many other contributions to the genre.

Part of Week of the Living Dead for Halloween 2013.

Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2012)

Posted on October 23, 2013 by badblokebob

If you don’t know that name then you must be a young whippersnapper, because otherwise Ray Harryhausen needs no introduction.

The master of miniatures back when special effects were truly special, rather than copious CGI ladled all over a couple of thousand shots throughout a blockbuster, the effect of Harryhausen’s work in (primarily) the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s is to thank for much of the best creativity in sci-fi/fantasy filmmaking of the last 20 to 30 years. The list of interviewees clearly attests to that: it’s a veritable who’s who of genre filmmakers, from household names Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Tim Burton, and Steven Spielberg; to respected filmmakers like John Landis, Terry Gilliam, Joe Dante, Guillermo del Toro, and John Lasseter; via renowned animators and effects gurus like Nick Park, Dennis Muren, Henry Selick, and Phil Tippett — and, as ever, more.

As with the best documentaries about a filmmaker’s work, the real impact of Special Effects Titan is it leaves you with a burning desire to see the films themselves. I don’t think I’ve actually seen a great many of the films Harryhausen worked on, but the most famous sequences are nonetheless seared in my memory because that’s how damn good they are — we’ve all seen them, even if it’s on clip shows or what have you, because they merit repeating. They’re stunning technical achievements that still look great today. Sometimes they’re a bit jerky, maybe, and the inevitable issues of scale show they’re models fighting or interacting with actors on set… but for all that they’re still not significantly less realistic than so many modern computer-based techniques, and they carry a charm and obvious level of skill that said renderings usually lack.

I noted recently that I don’t normally review a title’s home ent release because that’s usually a little beside the point, but here’s another one where it merits a mention. The DVD (and Blu-ray) provides a very interesting array of additions. Normally documentary films have either no special features or things like extra interviews and subject-related bits & bobs, but Special Effects Titan comes with lots of information about the actual making of the documentary itself: why and when scenes were deleted, why things were or weren’t done in certain ways (e.g. they considered a stop-motion title sequence), and so on. That’s as well as those extra/extended interviews, including Douglas Trumbull and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, plus on the disc but not in the film are Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Rick Baker, and Peter Lord (of Aardman).

One thing I always wonder about ‘specialist’ documentaries is, do they have crossover appeal? Will someone with no interest in Harryhausen, or even in Cinema, get something out of this? Probably not, I guess. But that’s not a bad thing per se, because this is an informative overview of a man’s influential body of work that deserves all the appreciation it can muster. Even if, like me, you’re not that familiar with said work, this is a film that will show you why you should be.

The Extraordinary Voyage (2011)

Posted on October 14, 2013 by badblokebob

aka Le voyage extraordinaire

2013 #3
Serge Bromberg & Eric Lange | 64 mins | DVD | 16:9 | France / English & French

Documentary about the life and work of Georges Méliès, with particular attention to A Trip to the Moon, which then moves on to discuss how the hand-coloured print was rediscovered and the various attempts at restoring it.

It’s an informative piece, respectful of Méliès’ genius but not stopping short of detailing the later tragedies that befell him and his work. I suppose some might accuse it of being a hagiography, but I don’t think it’s so blunt. Praise comes from interviewees like Jean-Pierre “Amélie” Jeunet, Michel “Eternal Sunshine” Gondry, and Michel “The Artist” Hazanavicius.

The section on the restoration of A Trip to the Moon is perhaps even more fascinating. The colour print that was discovered was in terrible condition, and the restoration process was far from a straightforward scan-it-and-tweak-it. Various methods were tried, mistakes were made, and the documentary details them in fascinating, occasionally wince-inducing detail. Méliès created magic when he made these shorts, and now equally incredible digital magic is conjured to make them shine again.

The Extraordinary Voyage accompanies A Trip to the Moon on DVD (or, if you fancy spending a small fortune, Blu-ray), but arguments that it goes beyond a mere ‘special feature’ are worth hearing. It’s a worthy biography/tribute to a cinematic force whose influence is still felt today, coupled with the extraordinary story of how his supremacy is being preserved.

The Imposter (2012)

Posted on August 22, 2013 by badblokebob

Some films benefit from knowing as little as possible going in; some are at their best when you know nothing at all. But that’s pretty much impossible — unless you go purely on someone’s “you’ll like this, trust me” recommendation about a film you’ve never even heard of, you’ll be aware of something. Normally this comes from a review or blurb, and you just have to trust that the reviewer or copywriter was kind enough to keep it spoiler-free.

BAFTA-winning drama-documentary The Imposter is a definite case of the less you know the better, and yet it’s been quite widely praised and pushed so that if you’ve heard of it you probably know what it’s about. Documentaries need that more than fiction films, because they have to fight to ‘cross over’. It’s arguable that Catfish suffered from the same problem of having to reveal too much in order to attract attention. But Catfish had the advantage that its Big Twist was at the end, meaning it went largely unspoiled — The Imposter’s is right at the start. I suppose this is because it’s a fairly well-documented news event (at appropriate junctures, the film is littered with clips from American media coverage), but also because it’s such an implausible story you have to be honest about it upfront.

So here’s what the film lets you in on in the opening moments: in 1993, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing in Texas. In 1997, a boy claiming to be him surfaced… in Spain. He had Nicholas’ tattoos, but he had a French accent and the wrong colour eyes. And yet the first relative to see him, Nicholas’ older sister, gave a positive ID, and upon returning to America he was accepted into the family. Why did they take in such an obvious fraud?

The blurb on the DVD/Blu-ray cover will also tell you that much. And the thing is, the film is basically that story in more detail. There’s more at the end of it, of course — when the FBI get involved; when deeper questions get asked about what really happened to Nicholas — but for a good long while it’s putting flesh on the bones of a story you’ve already had sketched. While that has its plus points (just how a set of events so ridiculous you wouldn’t buy them in a fiction came to pass is naturally a fascinating tale), there’s the odd bit of thumb-twiddling while you wait for it to get to the inevitable.

For me, this was hindered rather than helped by Bart Layton’s flashy direction. This doesn’t look like your standard documentary (even the talking heads have a different visual feel), to the point where the line between archive footage/audio and dramatic recreation is blurred. It’s quite a straightforward retelling — Layton doesn’t indulge in the game of dramatising a lie only to reveal it was indeed a lie — but, nonetheless, it makes the documentary itself feel untrustworthy, just like its participants. Is that an intended effect? Arguably the film’s main theme is lies — the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we want to believe; confirmation bias, perhaps, though that term is never mentioned — but the documentary itself never lies to us… I don’t think. It just feels like it might be.

The story comes alive in the last half hour or so. Early on it is fascinating how fake-Nicholas sets the ball rolling, but then you just wait for everyone to cotton on. As things begin to unravel, however, the story moves in a slightly different direction — in my opinion, a more engrossing one, because it’s an area of the tale that isn’t covered in the blurb! Unfortunately, it has no definite ending. This is real life, that happens, and the objectivity of not forcing a conclusion or pushing an agenda is to the documentary’s favour; but it’s nonetheless a smidgen unsatisfying.

There’s no doubting The Imposter tells a bizarre and fascinating tale, but at times I felt it was one that might be better served through a solid Sunday supplement article than a feature-length documentary film. Layton’s over-eager style also grated occasionally, particularly when it drew attention to itself over the story it was trying to tell. Perhaps he better belongs in fiction filmmaking? Perhaps that’s where he wants to go in future: as the poster prominently tells us, this is “from the producer of Man on Wire”, a film whose director went on to helm Red Riding 1980 and IRA thriller Shadow Dancer, so there’s a pathway there.

Still, for its faults, The Imposter is a tale worth hearing — a tale so unbelievable, it can only be true.

The UK TV premiere of The Imposter is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.

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Category Archives: Documentary