I was so busy organising a teen film festival last week that I completely forgot to mention what a bonkers clocks week it was for new teen movies. Young Adult, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Chronicle all more or less fit the profile, and two of them already feature in my Best Movies of 2012 list. Cinemas showing all three are few and far between, but if you happen to live near the West India Quay Cineworld then there’s a hell of a triple bill waiting for you one night this week.
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.
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.
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 thisHorse & 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.
Plus, I just checked IMDb and its credentials actually check out: director Kirk Jones made reasonable De Niro family drama Everybody’s Fine and co-writers Shauna Cross and Heather Hach wrote Whip-It and played ‘Gym Teacher’ in Freaky Friday respectively.
Answer: very amazing. As if the mere concept of a movie starring Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah as rival choir directors wasn’t appetite-whetting enough, Warner Brothers have gone ahead and released a trailer for the film that is — by all accounts — completely fucking insane.
Let’s take a closer look:
First we meet Parton’s character. It’s not entirely clear what her name is so for the purposes of this exercise let’s call her Babs. Babs has been called into a meeting with a pastor to find out who’s got the ‘position’, which we can safely assume means ‘the choir director job’. Babs says, “I think I know where this is going,” betraying a level of self-assuredness which may or may not be about to shatter before her very eyes.
“We’ve decided to offer the position to Vi Rose Hill,” says the pastor, which must refer to either a human being or a light Chardonnay.
From her delighted “Thank you pastor!” we take it that Queen Latifah is Vi Rose Hill, unless she’s thanking the pastor on behalf of the young boy behind her. In fact, thinking about it, I can see no other reason for his presence so let’s assume that he is Vi Rose Hill and call Queen Latifah’s character Marge.
Babs, who’s somehow managed to change into a frilly yellow blouse in the six and a half seconds since we last saw her, is distraught.
“They live in the same small town…” the voiceover tells us, which makes sense because they were both hoping to get the same choir director job and it’s not really the sort of thing you’d want to commute for. This geographical proximity inflames the rivalry between the two women and despite Marge’s defence that she didn’t ask to be made choir director, at 0:24 Babs makes the sound of a chair being dragged across a basketball court to indicate her anger.
“They share the same big dreams…” Flash forward and Marge is ‘choir directing’ live on stage in front of an unrealistically massive audience.
Her choir sound reasonably choir-y to me, but two men in the audience appear slightly bored so Marge brings the performance to a halt. This just isn’t good enough, she seems to say, as she flaps her big purple arms all over the place.
“We gotta shake ‘em up!” suggests Babs, and so Marge sets about adding stupid gimmicks to the choir’s performances, namely an increase in booty shaking. She knows it’s not the answer though, and her insistence that a fellow chorister gets ‘her Beyonce’ out of Marge’s face is both an inventive, original pop cultural reference and a slamming indictment of her foolish attempts to sex up the choir.
Luckily, just as all hope seems lost, an arrogant, jive-talking Jeremy Piven-a-like named Randy shows up and turns their luck around. We see him singing to himself in some kind of enormous valley, which tells us that he’s deeply connected to Mother Earth. He also likes a bit of a swear.
The choir are duly shocked.
Luckily, he’s also one of only a small handful of people on Earth with Auto-Tune pre-installed in his vocal chords, and he soon wins over the choir with his terrifying, non-human self-harmonising.
“He’s completely changed the way the choir sings! Who knows what he’ll do next?” protests the pastor, after Randy breaks every rule in book by getting them to sing Man in the Mirror.
Suddenly we move, without explanation, to a scene in which Babs tells Marge: “I am who I am”. “Maybe you were five precedures ago” comes the retort. This is, I think you’ll agree, a mighty zing.
Babs gets angry and throws a bucket of ice that she was apparently holding at Marge.
“Who cares if I’ve got a few little nips and tucks? God didn’t make plastic surgeons so they could starve.” This is obviously the best line in the movie.
Things are getting a little silly now, so it’s time to introduce Marge’s daughter, who has lots of ‘emotions’. “This isn’t about that! This is about me!” she wails, invisible tears pouring from her strained face.
Now Marge has Babs in a headlock.
“Put that online,” she instructs a nearby man who is taking pictures on his iPhone for some reason.
Queen Latifah
Dolly Parton
…
(?)
The first law of Hollywood trailers dictates that you need one funny bit directly before the movie title and one directly after. Here, we see Marge’s daughter telling Randy “don’t look at my butt, I’m a good girl.”
But he looks at it anyway! LOL, he’s imagining having sexual intercourse with her. Possibly anal.
JOYFUL NOISE
And finally, we see Babs flailing around a bit, presumably attempting to scratch Marge’s gigantic breasts.
“Quit it with those nails, Edward Scissorhands!” shouts Marge, which is funny because it’s still 1991.
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 …
