Tuesday November 29th 2011
The vast majority of people, I’m beginning to realise, give kids far too much or far too little credit. Most children aren’t ultra-perceptive or wise beyond their years, and they’re not stupid or easily pleased either. If there’s any one adjective that can be applied to kids en masse, it’s ‘tasteless’.
Which isn’t to say that they like everything. I’m just saying that, to a young child, there’s no essential difference between Space Chimps and Wall-E. It doesn’t matter that one was Time Magazine’s Film of the Year and the other had a character called Splork — they’re both just regular movies about colourful characters floating around in the sky.
When I was younger my two favourite films were Toy Story and Flubber. I suspect one has held up better than the other …
So the notion that children won’t ‘get’ Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s spectacular new 3D kids film, is ridiculous. Sure, they might be slightly nonplussed by some of the period detail, but just because the film’s A Little Bit Classy doesn’t mean kids won’t appreciate the big, loud, shiny spectacle of it all. And neither is it an indication that those who do are somehow child prodigies with superior critical faculties to their peers. It’s just an indication that kids are all different, like any other age group.
As a legal adult (who pays taxes and everything!), I liked Hugo a lot. It’s the sort of film that only Martin Scorsese could have made, because nobody else is allowed to be quite so extravagantly indulgent. After all, it is essentially a $150million public service announcement about the importance of the film preservation movement.
Not so fast, stock photo lady! Because as $150million public service announcements about the importance of the film preservation movement go, this is one of the best.
Its 2hr+ runtime could probably do with a bit of trim, but there’s so much sheer wonder in Scorsese’s first foray into children’s filmmaking that it’s hard not to share in the film’s all-encompassing passion for the art of cinema, and easy to forgive its plodding storyline and utter lack of conflict. Chloë Moretz’s British accent, on the other hand, is indefensible.
I still can’t imagine what audiences are going to make of Hugo when it finally reaches cinemas this Friday. Selling a kids film on the basis of it being from the same director as The Departed still strikes me as a weird marketing tack. But those who do choose it over Existential Dancing Penguins 2 will be hard pushed to muster much cynicism for a film so innately well-meaning.
It’s totally 2011′s Flubber.
Tuesday November 29th 2011
… monitorin ur Oscar hopes.
Monday November 28th 2011
I’ve seen a load of really great movies over the last week or two, but it’s Monday afternoon and I haven’t got the energy to be positive, so here’s a quick rant about five incredibly irritating movie trends that are currently killing cinema. (Please read aloud in angry tone of voice.)
CLUMSY VOICEOVER IMPLEMENTATION
A lot of people take the view that voiceover is, in and of itself, a Bad Thing. I disagree: you don’t have to look back all that far to find examples of movies that wouldn’t be a tenth of what they are without narration. But all too often, movie voiceovers seem like eleventh hour decisions included at the behest of studios or test screen audiences. The worst (yet most prolific) kind is the Bookended Voiceover, inserted at either end of a film to add some grand symbolic resonance that the pictures themselves were unable to convey — “Since I was a young boy, I dreamed of going to college.” / “In the end, I may have dropped out of school, but life gave me the education I craved.” Bish bash bosh, Oscar nomination.
POINTLESS TRIVIA
This is mainly a biopic trope, but occasionally it pops up in other genres too. It seems that no matter how restrained, respectful and subtle a screenwriter’s treatment of his or her real-life subject is, they can’t resist slipping in a few irrelevant facts just to leave the audience with something to tell their friends at work the next day. Maybe it’s the fact that Eugen Bleuler coined the term ‘schizophrenia’ (as I learnt from A Dangerous Method); or the fact that Jesus invented the dining table (thanks The Passion of the Christ); or any old shit about Johnny Cash (kudos Walk the Line). Whatever it is, you can rest assured it’s got fuck all to do with the plot.
DISCORDANT MUSIC
So you’ve got a really sad and/or horrifying scene but your actors aren’t quite good enough to convey the required emotion on their own. It’s time to call in the big guns: INCONGRUOUSLY UPBEAT SOUNDTRACK CHOICES. The thing is, I know these were pretty effective at one point (Blue Velvet reprazent) but it’s gone beyond a joke now. Case in point: We Need to Talk About Kevin. I mean, come on Tilda! If you’re that upset by the dissonance of Buddy Holly playing on your car stereo while you’re mourning the death of a loved one then TURN OFF THE FUCKING RADIO. It’s not that hard.
THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE SAID WITHIN THE MOVIE
I’ve whinged about this before but it seems Hollywood is still intent on winding me up, so I’ll go ahead and say it one last time: please, for the love of god, stop having your characters announce the title of the film that they’re in. It’s fine if the title of the movie is a noun referring to something plot-centric (e.g. Hugo, Melancholia, The Smurfs) but in any and all other cases, it’s Definitely Not Okay. That means you, Did You Hear About The Morgans?
THE ‘HE/SHE WROTE THE BOOK’ ENDING
Remember at school when your teacher warned you not to use the ‘it was all a dream’ ending in your creative writing? Well in my opinion, the ‘and then the lead character wrote the story that you have just read/watched’ ending is even worse. And yet Tolkien gets away with it. Scorsese gets away with it. I’ve seen three movies in the last fortnight that have gotten away with it. And yes, there’s a time and a place for conclusions as simplistic as this one (it works pretty well in the half dozen novels that Roald Dahl used it in) but as a stock ending for a raft of major Hollywood blockbusters? Surely we can do better …
Wednesday November 23rd 2011
That’s right: HERO HITLER IN LOVE.
Written and produced by lead actor Babbu Maan (who also did the music), Hero Hitler in Love is a Punjabi drama that’s been showing at a handful of cinemas since last Friday. Here’s the official plot synopsis — taken from the film’s Facebook page, which I suggest you all ‘Like’ right away:
“Hero Hitler In Love revolves around hitler ( Babbu Maan ) who lives in his village Ishqpura . Hitler is a man with unique and different thoughts who loves his fellow villagers and helps them unite their soul mates . hitler falls in love with Sahiban ( Mouni Roy ) . who lives in Pakistan and decides to bring her to his village hitler believes in solving the problems by taking about them but when something crosses the line he decides to become Real ” Adolf Hitler ” , Hitler Loves car racing but when he is set up to fail in the Asian Car Racing competition he decides to take revenge the story shapes how hitler takes his revenge and fights to win his girl and reunite both the nations.”
I know it’s very easy to laugh at a plot synopsis clearly written by someone for whom English is not a first language, but put aside the grammar and punctuation for a second and consider that this is the ACTUAL plot of a REAL movie that is SERIOUSLY in cinemas now:
A lovestruck villager named Hitler becomes the ‘Real Adolf Hitler’ in order to take revenge on the organisers of a car racing competition.
And this is the theme tune:
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And this is the trailer:
And this is the T-shirt that ‘Hitler’ wears in that trailer:
I badly need to see this movie.
