Video: A return to the Marché du Film
22.05.2012, 15:00:00
Xan Brooks visits the real powerhouse of the Cannes film festival, the Marché du Film Xan Brooks Elliot Smith |
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Day seven - in pictures
22.05.2012, 14:17:28
Ken Loach enjoys his Angels' Share of the limelight, Brad Pitt charms the fans, and more |
Xan Brooks's diary: day seven
22.05.2012, 13:56:07
Given the relentless rain pounding the Croisette, it's small wonder Nastassja Kinski would rather stay in bed than keep our interview date Ahead of my scheduled interview with the actor Nastassja Kinski , I sit down to watch the restored version of Tess , the film she is in Cannes to discuss. Roman Polanski's 1979 epic drifts on a summer breeze of hay wains and dairy farms, bumps for a spell in the frozen mud of the potato field and then fetches up at Stonehenge, where our fugitive heroine has fled with her milksop husband, Angel Clare (Peter Firth). The bobbies come to arrest Tess but it turns out that they must wait their turn. "She's still sleeping," Angel whispers. "Just a little longer." Somewhere, very distantly, alarm bells start ringing. Screenings in Cannes run to an immaculate clockwork precision. Interviews, however, are something else entirely; like confetti tossed to the wind, blown this way and that by changing schedules, shifting schedules and the whims of the talent. Sometimes you find yourself sat down with a subject and simply left there for hours on end (thanks for your patience, William Hurt). Sometimes (only sometimes) you don't get sat down at all. The Kinski meeting is set for noon, in a beach-front pavilion further up the Croisette. At 11.30 the publicist calls to say it's running late, "she's still asleep". At 2pm I'm chewing my knuckles, cooling my heels, ready to go at a moment's notice. Half an hour later, the meeting is cancelled. It rains and rains and rains some more. Small wonder that Kinski would prefer to stay indoors with the duvet pulled up. Outside, everyone is sopping, squelching, poised to erupt. They turn mutinous in the lines outside the Kiarostami screening where the umbrellas clash and scratch like some garish armada. Inside it's dry and the screenings keep coming. Killing Them Softly is a lean, supple and sure-footed American noir. Brad Pitt headlines as a discreet, leather-coated assassin called in to clean up a mess in a recession-hot America, while Andrew Dominik makes great play (perhaps too much play) of the weedy vacant lots, overlooked by brightly hopeful campaign posters from the 2008 presidential election. James Gandolfini co-stars as a fellow hit-man at the end of his tether, while Ray Liotta's fall-guy is first beaten to a pulp and then shot in slow-motion, the bullets razing him through the car window as he waits at the lights. "This country is fucked," Pitt says at one stage. "There's a plague coming." Elsewhere, the delegates indulge You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet , a play-within-a-play-within-a-film from 88-year-old Alain Resnais, though his celebration of the wonderful business of acting turns a shade irksome after a while; a heaped plate of meta-cheese. Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone In Love comes in for a rougher ride. The viewers find it baffling and obtuse and they boo at the end. And yet Kiarostami's tale of play-actors and contrived-intimacies in Tokyo casts a definite spell. One danger of Cannes (aided and abetted by Twitter ) is that it forces the critics to make snap judgments. But some films take longer to settle and confound the knee-jerk response. Already, 36-hours after it played, I have a sense that people are slowly coming round to the Kiarostami. Back in the flat, I find the Tess DVD is still stuck in my laptop. I pour some wine and idly flick the time-bar through to that final scene on Salisbury plain. Kinski is sleeping amid the stones but she has to wake sometime and, when she does, the cops are waiting. Her dress is muddy, her eyes are fearful. The policemen haul her up and march her brusquely away down the rutted path, while the closing caption explains that Tess was later "hanged in the city of Wintoncester". And, shaming though it is to admit it, this does cheer me up. Cannes 2012 Cannes film festival Festivals Xan Brooks guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Killing Them Softly - review
22.05.2012, 11:22:25
Andrew Dominik's immensely gripping and brutal world of recession-hit criminals, starring Brad Pitt, is smart and nasty, with a political dimension, too The adverb is horribly inappropriate. Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly is a slick ensemble-nightmare of middle-management mobster brutality and incompetence in the tradition of Goodfellas and Casino , Pulp Fiction and TV's The Sopranos , with something of the opening voiceover monologue from the Coens' Blood Simple : the one about being on your own. It is outstandingly watchable, superbly and casually pessimistic, a world of slot-mouthed professional and semi-professional criminals always complaining about cleaning up the mess made by other screwups. The movie delivers the classic mob "betrayal" trope: someone shoots someone else, at close range, suddenly and terrifyingly, having lulled his victim - and us - into a false sense of security with a long pointless conversation about what they were going to do later. The movie is adapted by Dominik from novelist George V Higgins 's 1974 thriller Cogan's Trade, updated to the Bush/Obama handover era of 2008, albeit with some automobiles that seem to belong to that earlier era. It is a time of financial anxiety, which Dominik applies cleverly, if not entirely subtly, to the world of crime. American taxpayers were being asked to bail out banks for the sake of confidence and prestige - and these taxpayers also had to tighten their belts. Here, local wiseguy Markie (Ray Liotta) has to be whacked for robbing some other wiseguys' poker game: he didn't do it, but someone has to be seen to get killed for the sake of confidence and prestige. And the hit-men will have to accept a reduced fee in the current economic climate. The assassin in question is Cogan, played with suavity and shrewd style by Brad Pitt , a killer who prefers to shoot people at long range, because he detests the screaming and pleading of victims who realise they are going to die - what he calls "killing them softly". He is called in to help out with a mixed-up situation. As well as Markie, others have to be addressed. The poker hit was actually carried out by two ridiculous young jerks, Frankie and Russell, brilliantly played by Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn, hired by another mobster whom Cogan feels delicately unable to rub out because he is personally acquainted with the man, so he subcontracts this wet job to a second assassin. And here is where Cogan himself is guilty of incompetence; he calls an old friend Mickey, hilariously played by James Gandolfini , who's in need of the cash but instantly reveals himself to be nowadays quite unequal to the demanding task of contract killing: a heavy drinker and prostitute addict (he calls it his "hobby") who is, moreover, morosely in unrequited love with one of the girls he despises, and on the verge of a breakdown. To Cogan's dismay, Mickey is exhibiting precisely those messy and undignified emotions he hates in his own murder victims. Killing Them Softly is a reminder of what Tom Wolfe wrote about crime in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities : it is not the dramatic or romantic notion of some brilliant desperado who knows what he wants and is prepared to go outside the law to get it. It is more a question of ruthless, greedy, stupid people who get themselves into a progressively worsening, violent mess. Dominik controls the scenario and the cast tremendously well. Admittedly, slo-mo hit scenes to the accompaniment of ironically romantic music, and pre-crime banter and squabbling between robbers, are not entirely original, but these scenes are executed with flair, with a regular supply of dialogue zingers. There are some outstanding set pieces - the moment when Russell and a fellow criminal try to destroy a car by setting it on fire is a surreal moment of dismay. The political dimension to the movie, emphasised with continually recurring glimpses of the outgoing and incoming presidents on the TV news, is restated with a grandstanding monologue from Cogan. Perhaps it's too emphatic to count as satire, but it gives an extra edge to a smart, nasty, gripping movie. Rating: 4/5 Cannes 2012 Cannes film festival Brad Pitt Festivals Crime Thriller Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Tom Cruise set for Magnificent Seven remake
22.05.2012, 11:00:41
MGM studio takes advantage of its extensive back catalogue to resurrect classic 1960 western, with updates of Robocop and Carrie also on the cards Tom Cruise is in line to star in a remake of the classic 1960 western The Magnificent Seven, according to a Variety report . The new version is in the early stages of development at studio MGM, which is taking advantage of its extensive back catalogue to reassert itself following several years of financial travails . The studio will also deliver new versions of the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi romp Robocop and the classic Stephen King horror Carrie , both of which go into production later this year. The Magnificent Seven was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese tale Seven Samurai . John Sturges's film featured an impressive ensemble cast of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and Horst Buchholz. It centred on a ragtag group of Americans recruited to help defend a Mexican village against raiding bandits. It is not known which role Cruise is considering or who might star alongside him. Variety says MGM does not yet have a writer, either. Such projects are prone to falling by the wayside - a remake of Seven Samurai, touted last year , was to be set in Thailand and directed by British film-maker Scott Mann, but has not yet made it to the big screen - though MGM seems pretty serious about revisiting its back catalogue. As well as the above-mentioned films the studio wants to remake 80s horror Poltergeist , geeky teen tale War Games , vigilante revenge thriller Death Wish and Nicolas Cage romcom Valley Girl . Cruise has plenty of projects to keep him busy after seeing the latest Mission: Impossible film, Ghost Protocol, deliver the series' highest box-office yield and strong reviews earlier this year. He will play an ageing sex god rocker in the upcoming musical Rock of Ages , and is set to portray the retired military policeman Jack Reacher in an adaptation of Lee Child's thriller novel One Shot , which is due in cinemas this December. Other projects include the Joseph Kosinski dystopian sci-fi film Oblivion and the Doug Liman action movie All You Need is Kill, while Cruise is also being tapped to star opposite Beyoncé in the latest remake of A Star Is Born for Clint Eastwood and to return to the role of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in a sequel to 1986's Top Gun . Tom Cruise Westerns Ben Child guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Live blog - day seven
22.05.2012, 16:56:00
All the latest news from the Croisette, as Brad Pitt's new movie Killing Them Softly makes its debut 10.47am: Good morning and welcome to the latest Cannes liveblog. I'm ripping back the reins from Andrew Pulver as he gets the train down to the south of France, where he'll grab the baton (or, perhaps, just a baguette) from me and I'll fly home. I'm back in the press room, which is currently humming with slightly inelegant excitement as Brad Pitt is about to walk past, on his journey from the Killing them Softly photocall to the press conference. 10.52am: The film itself is a blood-lust-tastic crime thriller set in 2008 round New Orleans. Directed by Andrew Dominik, with whom Pitt teamed up for The Assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford the Coward, it's a tale of sweaty crooks and desperate junkies, cracked codes of honour and the primacy of cash. I spoke to Peter Bradshaw and Jonathan Romney as they came out of the screening: both were pretty enthusiastic. Me, I'm not so sure, less because of the undeniable glamourisation afforded to repeatedly shooting someone through the head, or the fact the only woman in it (for half a scene) is a hooker, but because the endless spliced political campaign footage (primarily Obama) feels too on the nail for me. This is allegory for dummies, which shoves the irony about the recession hitting hitmen just as bad as the rest of us down your throat a little over-insistently. The music cues, too, are aren't just on the nose, they slap you around the face. Still, great gamey performances, especially from Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn as the scummier crims in an ensemble that also includes Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini and Richard Jenkins. It's a good film; I'm not convinced it's the masterpiece of crime cinema it's probably about to be hailed as. 11.05am: Anyway, while I've been wittering on, Pitt and co walked past. He hammered on the window trying to get my attention, but I was busy, so I just kept on typing. Later, Brad, later. 11.07am: The press conference has kicked off. Our own Charlotte Higgins is inside and will file the full story later. If there's any breaking hot potato quotes, I'll try and serve them up. 11.09am: Here's some Twitter snippets on the film: @zlobuster Killing Them Softly = boring them deadly. ?@daveyjenkins A kind of nasty pulp/noir NASHVILLE. Fun, though politically like being preached at through a bullhorn. @robbiereviews KILLING THEM SOFTLY is a scorcher: real American crime cinema. Tough, violent and nihilistically funny. Loved it. #cannes @firstshowing Dominik's Killing Them Softly - Brutal as f-k! But also lacking a bit. Felt way too short, oddly. Typical hit-and-kill kind of crime flick. ?@erickohn KILLING THEM SOFTLY would make a great double bill with THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, both period pieces about recession-era 2008. #cannes @charlesgant Killing Them Softly's "crisis in the economy" not-so-sub text: messaging you can enjoy and then feel smart for finding it too crude. Clever! ?@yo_damo Liked but didn't quite love Killing Them Softly; some very good hardboiled set-pieces and Brad Pitt is excellent @GuyLodge KILLING THEM SOFTLY (B-) Blinding dirty-70s homage taken to stylistically suspended present, all to add stunningly banal Obama surtext? Why? @XanBrooks Cannes screening: Killing Them Softly. supple, punchy hit-man noir from the front-line of recession America. Ray Liotta goes through hell 11.17am: Update on the press conference: the director has said he likes violence in films (hold the front page); Brad Pitt has said - in response to a question about how he can square being a father and playing such a violent man - that he'd rather play someone who shoots people in the face than, say, a racist. He's also said that he doesn't feel troubled by the symbiotic relationship between art and commerce in Hollywood. So now you know. 11.20am: Dominik explains how the id, the ego and the superego relates to his film. He also says he hopes that it tells you to have good mental health. 11.22am: In case you missed ... A gallery of last night's red carpet action Peter Bradshaw's verdict on some footage screened last night of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained Four stars for Ken Loach's The Angels' Share Another day six gallery Three stars for White Elephant from Peter 11.33am: So the Aussies are doing well in this press conf - Dominik and Mendelsohn both very funny and self-deprecating. Pitt's suggestion that we don't have press conferences before 1pm doesn't seem to have garnered the groundswell of popular support he perhaps would have expected. They're now saying it's not totally a coincidence it's coming out in an election year. 11.38am: And here's Charlotte Higgins's interview with the director of Pinochet drama No . 11.57am: Peter's filed his review. It's a four star number. 12.09pm: Here's a report on Roman Polanksi's Prada short film . And here's Peter Bradshaw's review of Antiviral, the debut from Brandon Cronenberg . 12.40am: Catherine has just nipped out down the Croisette for a pint of milk, so we're taking over the live blog temporarily at Guardian HQ. We've just published a video of Michael Haneke talking to Xan Brooks about his new film, Amour. Mortality is a theme directors seem to steer clear of, he says - probably because they're afraid of it. And while we're on the theme of life being too short Mr Haneke doesn't seem too pleased that he spends most of his time at Cannes conducting interviews rather than watching films (ahem). Also: never work with pigeons. 12.57am: It's still raining in Cannes, by the way (so those of us enjoying the soaring temperatures in London do at least have something to feel smug about). Day 7 of #Cannes2012 . Day 4 of Rain. Day 8,513 of Resigned Dread. -- Jay A. Fernandez (@Writer730) May 22, 2012 Cannes Roof Collapse: Uncooperative Weather Puts A Dampener On Festival huff.to/K5UyEC via @ HuffPostEnt #Cannes2012 -- Elena Strelbytska (@ElenaStrBlogger) May 22, 2012 Seriously #cannes2012 what is it with the non-stop rain, we r trying to do business here!! -- Marcelle Aleid (@marcellealeid) May 22, 2012 And my favourite: About to walk the red carpet for @ LOrealParisUK . It's raining lol. #Cannes2012 -- Cheryl Cole (@CherylCole) May 20, 2012 So much for the sunny riviera, eh? 12.17pm: Here's Ken Loach at the Angels' Share photocall. Hopefully he's looking a bit more relaxed now that he knows Peter Bradshaw approved . 12.22pm: And here's actor Benoit Poelvoorde and director Albert Dupontel at the photocall of Le Grand Soir: . 12.24pm: It's the moment you've all been waiting for ... Peter Bradshaw's review of Brad Pitt's movie Killing Them Softly . It is, he says: ... outstandingly watchable, superbly and casually pessimistic, a world of slot-mouthed professional and semi-professional criminals always complaining about cleaning up the mess made by other screwups. The movie delivers the classic mob "betrayal" trope: someone shoots someone else, at close range, suddenly and terrifyingly, having lulled his victim - and us - into a false sense of security with a long pointless conversation about what they were going to do later. 1.34pm: Hello again - thanks ever so to Theresa Malone for taking over while I nipped out. I'm back in the Cannes flat now, have fuelled up on eclairs and am tapping away stickily. 1.39pm: Still to come today we've Xan Brooks's diary, video of his annual turn around the Marche, plus reviews of Le Grand Soir, the new film by Bertolucci, a gallery of the day's events, news on the Brad Pitt and Ken Loach press conferences, plus an encounter with some Fast Girls. 1.49pm: Good to see photos of the Ken Loach cast. I visited their villa yesterday afternoon. Smelled of fish soup, in a great way. 2.11pm: Sometimes, in Cannes, it can feel like the sky is falling in. Sometimes, that's actually true: the roof of the Soixieme Theatre (which does catch up screenings and has no loos) collapsed on Sunday night due to weight of rainwater. 3.00pm: Sorry for the intermittent nature of this - we're all hammering away back in the flat working on copy I'm afraid. Here's another picture of Brad Pitt to keep you going. 4.00pm: OK: we're back in the room. Here's Xan's latest Cannes diary, on getting stood up by Natasha Kinski, and watching lots and lots of Tess . 4.18pm: And here's the day so far in pictures . 4.53pm: You can keep your Hanekes and you can shove your Kiarostamis: everybody's real favourite bit of Cannes is the trashy, teeming market. Here's Xan Brooks having a mosey around. 5.57pm: So what have we learnt at Cannes today? o For a start, Brad and Angelina haven't set a wedding date yet. Also, Pitt says he would rather play a brutal killer than a racist . And his new film, Killing Them Softly, has gone down a storm. It trended on Twitter for a while, but looks like it doesn't have the staying power of World Goth Day . o Bernardo Bertolucci's new film gets three stars from Peter Bradshaw . Here's a flavour of his review: The spirit of the new wave is revived (albeit in apolitical form) by the 72-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci in his new film, a slight but engaging two-hander showing out of competition in Cannes. It's an intimate, disorientating and highly charged encounter between a young man and an older woman, who find themselves having to share a cramped basement flat which they cannot leave for one week. There are resonances with the director's The Dreamers, his adaptation of Gilbert Adair's novel, and perhaps even with Last Tango In Paris. o Ken loach reportedly thinks the middle class is obsessed with swearing: Ken Loach: "The British middle class is obsessed with swear words" #Cannes2012 twitter.com/FdC_officiel/s... -- Festival de Cannes (@FdC_officiel) May 22, 2012 o Furthermore, Ronan Keating is funny, interesting and even liked Avengers Assemble. Well there you go: Ronan Keating is funny and interesting. Also, he really liked Avengers Assemble. #cannes2012 -- Total Film (@totalfilm) May 22, 2012 o Apparently it has stopped raining. @ annasmithjourno tells me weather forecast for next 3 days is warm and sunny. Yay. #Cannes2012 -- Charles Gant (@charlesgant) May 22, 2012 Still to come watch out for a review of Le Grand Soir, a gallery of pictures from today's premieres and more news from Brad Pitt's Killing Them Softly press conference. We'll be back with live coverage tomorrow. Cannes 2012 Brad Pitt Crime Catherine Shoard guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Iron Sky doesn't stand out from the crowdsourcing
22.05.2012, 09:59:54
Timo Vuorensola's Nazi space romp is the most high-profile film to use crowdsourcing for both development and finances. Is this to blame for those lukewarm reviews? If you've ever fancied yourself as a Hollywood screenwriter, producer or even star, the film section of crowdfunding site IndieGoGo might just be the place for you. Browse through the fledgling movie projects touting for cash in the past few months, and you might have come upon opportunities to pick up a writer's credit for $50 on the British post-apocalyptic drama Remnants of a Disaster , or an executive producer's credit on the Kiwi documentary God Is Incredible for $500. The director of comic book tale Super Day recently promised to shave his head if the film's campaign reached its $3,500 target, with donors permitted to scribble their names on his newly bald pate. Amid the silliness, the site addresses a very real need. Movies cost an awful lot of money to make, and not everybody who wants to make movies has an awful lot of money. Some of these features may provide the opportunity for the next Kevin Smith or David Lynch to take their first step on the film-making ladder. And yet one cannot quite imagine either of the above offering to pass over creative duties on Clerks or Eraserhead for less than the cost of dinner for two at a half decent curry house, as at least one IndieGoGo project has promised recently. A shift in terminology may even be in order: crowdfunding, via which film-makers reach out for help with the financial costs of a particular project, is becoming increasingly blurred with crowdsourcing, via which wannabe producers engage fans via the internet to become part of the creative process of putting together a new movie. Kept separate, each has its place. When one becomes contingent upon the other, creating a sort of "crowdeverything" hybrid, it gives the film projects in question an unsavoury air of mercantile desperation. "There is a real dark side emerging," says British independent film producer and screenwriter Ant Neely. "I am seeing crowdfunding campaigns that offer 'a line in the film and an IMDb credit' for a big enough donation. The thought of casting someone because they can pay, as opposed to their abilities, is really very sad." Neely and his wife Sloane U'Ren (a director) took a different approach to getting their science fiction-cum-period drama flick Dimensions: A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads , on to the big screen - they simply sold their house . While he accepts that getting a movie financed is an incredibly difficult process, Neely doesn't believe the crowdeverything approach is the way forward. "It's an interesting concept and arguably connects a film-maker directly with the audience," he says. "However, we're not comfortable with having movies made by committee. I'm not saying selling your home is any more of a sensible strategy though!" If one film has a chance of escaping the crowdsourcing/funding ghetto, it's Iron Sky , a comedy romp about space Nazis from Finnish director Timo Vuorensola and a supporting online crew of thousands which is released on Wednesday in UK cinemas (more of which later). The EUR7.5m film will be shown in more than 70 countries this year and stands a good chance of making a profit for its legions of financial backers. Despite its origins, Vuorensola says his film eschewed the cash-for-credits approach. "I have to say that I've been seeing this kind of thing a lot," he says. "They always start out cool and everybody is really excited for two weeks but then there's a mess of everybody doing something. If you want to crowdsource you have to be very dominant - I've always made it clear with Iron Sky that this is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship. "With our film the idea was to use the community to develop ideas and issues that are problematic rather than get them working on the script. We needed lyrics for the national anthem of the moon Nazis, and I don't speak German, so it was something we put to the community. They knew what I was looking for, and they were able to let me know if something that someone had written was getting close." Since this interview was conducted, it has emerged that the Iron Sky is to be released for just one day in the UK, a decision which producers have blamed on the distributor, Revolver. "The fact that they are releasing Iron Sky for just one day (in the middle of the week) shows a great disrespect for us, the film-makers, who have been slaving to make this film as cinematic - with big special effects, sounds and great action - as possible," reads a statement on the movie's website . "It's also a major middle finger to the fans, followers and investors who have been following the production for years and now suddenly have only a few hours to run to the theatre, and then enjoy their quickly rushed DVD and Blu-ray release." Might the decision be linked to lukewarm early reviews for the film? And does the critical indifference which has greeted the project emanate from its crowdsourced origins? If so, the Iron Sky team are showing no sign of having got the message: their statement asks fans to email Revolver in protest at the short UK run. There's something to be admired, at the very least, in the producers' determination and audacious, barefaced belief in people power. Shouldn't critics take account of the film's meagre budget and reward its struggle in the face of adversity, rather than gloat over its failures? Guardian film writer Andrew Pulver, who handed Iron Sky a two-star review at the Berlin film festival last year , says reviewers often do give low-budget fare an easier ride but reckons in the case of Iron Sky "the comedy just wasn't there". He adds: "Cinema going back to (Robert Rodriguez's) El Mariachi has benefited from people reviewing the budget. Critics are supposed to be detached, but you tend to absorb the conditions under which the work is made. However in the case of Iron Sky the special effects were great, but after the first five minutes it really fell apart. "The wider story is that 95% of filmmakers can't get the money they want, and crowdfunding is the latest thing. It was the same a few years back with microbudget and people like Terence Davies doing films for pennies: the first few who get on the bandwagon have done well but then you get the lemming-like rush. I find the thought of people surrendering control over their film - to treat it like it's a commodity - very bizarre. Giving someone a role as an extra is one thing, but writing is a very difficult art. It's like selling off articles in newspapers." o Iron Sky is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday. Dimensions: A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Threads was shown recently at the London film festival, and also at the London independent film festival, where it won best film. Science fiction and fantasy Crowdsourcing Independent production companies Ben Child guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Antiviral - review
22.05.2012, 10:05:43
Brandon Cronenberg's hypo-horror of celebrity disease-obsession should fit Cannes perfectly. I doubt it will go viral The appearance of a laborious and derivative body-horror satire by David Cronenberg's son Brandon - showing among other things the exploitative replication of celebrity DNA - officially takes the Cannes film festival beyond satire. Antiviral is set in a dystopian future-present in which obsession with celebrity has reached such neurotic levels that fans eat specialist steaks and burgers created with cultured cell-lines from celebs' bodies. Worse still, the real hardcore believers get themselves injected with viruses and diseases that once lived inside their idols - all to get up close and personal with the stars. Caleb Landry Jones plays Syd, a pale and haunted young man employed by the corporation which markets celebrity viruses; his employer has an exclusive licensing arrangement with the world's biggest female star, Hannah Geist, played by Sarah Gadon (Carl Jung's wife Emma in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method ). We never find out what Hannah is famous for, which is maybe the point. Syd is one day given the important job of reporting to Hannah's hotel suite and picking up a sample of a new disease she has. Obsessive and addictive, Syd injects himself with it - Brandon Cronenberg shows so many wince-making closeups of injections he may have invented a new sub-genre called "hypo horror" - and finds that this sickness he shares with Hannah is more serious than he thought. It is possible that Brandon Cronenberg was inspired by the real-life case of movie star Gene Tierney who in 1943 contracted rubella, while pregnant, from an infected fan who had sneaked out of quarantine to get her autograph at a Hollywood Canteen event. Tierney's child was born with disabilities which caused Tierney herself to suffer from severe depression and become bitterly disenchanted with the business of celebrity. But celebrity is an easy target, and it's tricky to take seriously a satire featuring imaginary celebrities, played by real actors who of course want to be famous. Our alleged obsession with celebrity is a fashionable talking point - but it's far from clear how interesting or indeed accurate the notion is. Are we so much more obsessed than the 30s and 40s, with their fan mags? It's not proven. Brandon Cronenberg's movie is made with some technical skill and focus, but it is agonisingly self-regarding and tiresome. Rating: 2/5 Cannes 2012 Cannes film festival Festivals Horror Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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