Thursday January 12th 2012
The one accusation most commonly levelled at films like Transformers is that they’re big on budget but light on ideas. This is indeed a serious problem facing mainstream action filmmaking today. Much worse, however, are films that fall short on both fronts. Speaking of which, The Darkest Hour is released nationwide this Thursday.
Produced by cult Kazakhstani director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) and made for a relatively modest $30million, the film is part of a growing horde of contemporary science fiction B-movies like Skyline and Battle: LA, all out to prove that you don’t need half a billion dollars and a megalomaniac Michael Bay type to make a serviceable action romp. Sadly, all The Darkest Hour really proves is Emile Hirsch’s need for a new agent.
Hirsch and Max Minghella (from The Social Network) star as a pair of headstrong American entrepreneurs travelling to Moscow to present their fledgling social network to European investors. Upon arrival, they discover that a hitherto agreeable business partner (played by Swedish star Joel Kinnaman) has gone rogue and created his own, superior version of the site. To be honest, you’d think Minghella would have seen it coming.
Taking solace in the company of two attractive but essentially superfluous female characters (including The Wackness‘s Olivia Thirlby) in a Russian club, the pair are all set to return home the following morning. Unfortunately for them, fate has other plans.
A flock of mysterious ‘energy beings’ promptly descend to Earth and though they’re invisible and therefore visually unimpressive, their ability to atomise human beings on contact makes them a serious threat to mankind. It’s quickly established that our heroes’ only hope of survival is to stay hidden during the day and explore the city by night, when they can be alerted to the energy beings’ presence by lit street lamps, blaring car alarms, etc. etc. etc. Basically wherever these things go, shit powers up. (Where are they when my iPhone dies on the night bus home, amiright?)
This ‘light is dangerous, darkness is safe’ conceit is a bold but interesting one in a genre that’s built on precisely the opposite theory. Sadly, The Darkest Hour‘s antagonists are far too vague a threat to really imbue any confidence in the idea, especially when it goes against hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary programming. And Paranormal Activity.
Eventually the team work out a way of fighting back at the extraterrestrials, using a ‘microwave gun’ to weaken their powers of invisibility and then shooting them when they become visible. A bit like how you get Mew in the final level of Pokémon Snap. This revelation leads to one of the most dreary, undramatic third acts in recent memory — notable only for its spectacularly high volume of plot holes. Still, even a decrease in tension is quite interesting compared to the relentless monotony of the rest of the film.
In short, The Darkest Hour might just give you newfound respect for Michael Bay. And that’s no mean feat considering that he’s really, really awful.
Wednesday January 11th 2012
The winner will be announced along with all of the real Bafta awards on February 12th.
Wednesday January 11th 2012
Twitter was abuzz on Monday morning with the news that Netflix, the US online rental giant that ‘inspired’ British equivalent Lovefilm, had finally launched their UK service. As expected, they’re offering a streaming-only package here, allowing them to massively undercut the competition with a monthly fee of just £5.99. They’re also offering a free trial.
Fearless investigative journalist that I am, I thought I’d take a look.
The sign-up process is simple enough but does require that you link your new account with Facebook, presumably so that your friends know to stage an intervention when you start watching Barbershop at 2am on a Tuesday morning. Luckily, it’s easy to unlink the two later. New customers are also asked to fill in a few taste-profiling questions, which range from the banal …
(I selected often for ‘dramas’, ‘thrillers’ and ‘comedies’.)
… to the deeply bizarre …
(I selected often for ‘wacky’, ‘cerebral’ and ‘violent’. But nothing ‘inspiring’, thank you very much.)
Clicking through to the next page, I was immediately presented with a number of personal recommendations, all of them bang on the money:
The system works! I quickly selected Half Baked and began my very first Netflix streaming experience, making a mental note to catch up on Poirot later.
Video and audio quality are both a significant improvement on Lovefilm’s streaming service, though the system’s insistence on choosing your streaming quality for you based on your internet connection is a little frustrating. Depending on your router you might end up with 1080p or something that would be deemed inadequate on all but the most debased of porn sites.
The presentation, too, is streaks ahead of the competition. Without the pressure of balancing physical media rental with online streaming, Netflix are free to focus on providing the best viewing experience possible. The video window is minimalistic and intuitive, menus are easy to navigate and the search field is a complete and utter fucking joy.
Films are sorted into genres (in Netflix’s world, ‘Foreign’ is a genre) but you’re also free to search from a range of oddly vague adjectives. So, for example, here are just a few of their ‘steamy’ films:
Is Hard Candy really steamy? I guess the whole castration thing might be up some people’s alleys. Or, you know, the predatory peadophile vibe. Sin City on the other hand — phwoar. I’m getting hot under the collar just thinking about Elijah Wood with all his limbs lopped off.
So, as you can see, the categorisation model leaves something to be desired, and it only gets worse once the system starts factoring in your existing taste preferences. I selected the ‘Foreign’ tab expecting to see award-winning international titles like I Am Love and A Separation, but now that Netflix knows about my penchant for ‘wackiness’ I’m instead presented with Drunken Master, Delhi Belly and Kung Fu Dunk.
The overall selection of titles is also somewhat lacking (probably more than Lovefilm have available to stream but far less than they have in total) but there a few nice surprises, not least Joe Swanberg’s Uncle Kent, which is on my Movies of 2012 list but hasn’t come anywhere near a UK theatrical release yet. In fact, the site is something of a revelation for Swanberg fans, offering up four of his movies never before available in Britain.
There’s also an impressively well-organised TV section (something Lovefilm are notoriously bad at handling) with extensive archives of shows like Twin Peaks, Breaking Bad and Damages.
Sadly, where it really matters, Netflix fails miserably …
Three fucking movies and one of them is Sirens. For shame, Netflix, for shame.
Monday January 9th 2012
As part of their centenary celebrations, the BBFC have just released the 1913 pamphlet that first explained their reason for being. It’s worth a quick read if you like that sort of thing.
Monday January 9th 2012
You may have caught Steven Spielberg on BBC Breakfast this morning, giving one of the few sanctioned interviews during his brief press trip to the UK. The interview was surprisingly in-depth by the show’s admittedly low standards, giving Steven ample time to answer questions on War Horse, the upcoming fourth Jurassic Park movie and a host of other subjects. Needless to say, he was his usual charming self.
Talking about production on War Horse — which tells the story of a thoroughbred named Joey and his journeys through the battlefields of the First World War — Spielberg repeatedly referred to the film’s equine star by his character name. “The horse Joey had never been on screen before,” he said, adding that Joey “loved Jeremy Irvine. Whenever Jeremy was on set he would come trotting over to him”. You’d be forgiven for assuming not only that the production used a single horse for the character, but that the horse happened to have the same name as his fictional counterpart.
The question of exactly how many horses played Joey in the film was one that puzzled me when I first saw War Horse at the end of last year. Despite the obvious debt owed to them, the film’s end credits make no mention of any horses by name. It seemed like a strange oversight, especially when other recent films had made such marketing capital of their animal stars. Why would Spielberg actively shy away from lauding the horses that brought War Horse to life?
After a spat with Disney last month (partly involving this very issue), I pledged not to review their films going forward, but I’ll make a brief exception to say that War Horse is a pretty good movie. Sentimental for sure, but admirable and effective. And yes, a certain amount of that effectiveness relies on the audience’s ability to relate to Joey, who serves as our window into the war and its myriad horrors. But to make believe that one ‘miraculous horse’ somehow performed his entire role (as Disney are eager for audiences to believe) is ludicrous. After all, there were 10 Seabiscuits, 3 Secretariats and 4 Black Stallions, and those films required relatively little of their equine leads.
There were in fact 14 ‘Joeys’, and while — much to Disney’s delight I’m sure — one did happen to have that name, the primary horse used was in fact Finder, an 11-year-old thoroughbred from California. He also portrayed Seabiscuit and (wait for it) HIS OWN MOTHER in War Horse.
Even then, it would be misleading to suggest that any one horse did the bulk of the work. Bringing Joey to the screen was inevitably a collaborative effort. One horse was used mainly for close-ups, another for galloping through the trenches, and so on and so on.
Critics are being urged not to divulge the precise number of horses who portray Joey in the film and for the most part they’re complying, though this Horse & Hound editorial makes brief reference to the number in a photo caption. 
That strategy clearly extends to Spielberg’s TV interviews, and also left its mark on the Royal Premiere in Leicester Square last night, where a horse described by BBC News as …
‘the film’s equine star Joey’
… walked the red carpet along with Spielberg, Irvine and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The actual horse present was named Sultan, though he could just as easily have been any one of his co-stars (Civilon, Diego, Lincoln and Sueño, amongst others) as he was of course wearing makeup to closer resemble the horse described in Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel.
Broadly speaking, I do understand why Disney aren’t shouting from the rooftops about the intricacies of creating Joey. His character is one of the film’s major selling points and it’s understandable that they don’t want to threaten the mystique by, say, outing him as his own mother. But refusing outright to acknowledge a truth as self-evident as multiple animal performers is just baffling. Does Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson steadfastly avoid all questions about the authenticity of the Tooth Fairy? Did Tim Allen attend the premiere of The Santa Clause in full costume and respond only to ‘Saint Nick’? In both cases, I sorely hope so but suspect not.
War Horse arrives in UK cinemas this Friday and is rated 12A. If you’re old enough to see it, you’re old enough to know fact from fiction.
