It’s a hundred years since Bram Stoker had his head removed, and a stake driven through his heart died, and, sure, it’s Friday so I could’ve just found a picture of him eating some KFC and we’d all be happy.
But sometimes, oh, things just get out of hand and here are some of our writers on lesser-seen vampire flicks. Looking at them all together, the words ‘sexy’ and ‘erotic’ crop up a lot of times. What does that say about us? About vampires? What do you think? What would Mr Stoker think?
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we look at just a few of the many screen portrayals of one the most infamous* disasters of the 20th Century. Spoiler warning – we do reveal details of the fate of the RMS Titanic.
By Tindara Sidoti-McNary
Do you remember the acclaimed nineties BBC drama that brought actors Christopher Eccleston and Daniel Craig to popular attention? I recall it fondly as ‘Our Wigs in the North’. You see, friends, I have a problem with hair and make-up. The anachronistic mullet, the dreadful syrup, the misplaced pout; I cannot rest when it doesn’t work in a TV or film drama. Immune to the frustrated protestations of my viewing companions, I just can’t ignore it and be another brick in the fourth wall. The distraction of an obvious scratchy looking wig or time travelling bonce infuriates me deeply, often forcing me to shout obscenities about fringes at the telly.
Well, we managed to get through the whole of Easter without anyone shouting ‘No one fucks with the Jesus!’, but it’s Tuesday now. It’s all over. Wipe the chocolate off your face and point your eyes at this selection of idiosyncratic messiahs.
by Clare Dean
This year, the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary in style with an eclectic line-up covering film, music and visual art across nine venues in London, Edinburgh and Belfast. Over the course of a fortnight, 19 features screened along with a selection of short films, an exhibition of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue film posters and a closing concert with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. While previews of new films dominated, two strands focused on the classics and reminded me just how great Polish cinema can be.
Back in what we shall call The Day, MostlyFilm recommended twelve obscure gems, promising that this was the start of an occasional series. In the meantime, MostlyFilm Recommends has blossomed to give you overlooked sequels, Christmas films (nice and not so nice) and cult Australian cinema, but we’ve never got round to giving you more of those obscure little gems, films lost down the seat cushions at your local multiplex, half-remembered and covered in boiled sweets. Until now, as they say. Until now..
by theTramp
Earlier this month, Moth and Anise took a look at the latest pop releases, including Marcus Collins’ version of The White Stripes Seven Nation Army. Moth described it thusly: “Collins’s version is a thin streak of reggae-scented piss compared to the majestic White Stripes original”. Harsh words that got me a-thinkin’; I wonder who else has covered it?
Fired by curiosity and a love of cover versions I have listened my way through more than 20 covers of this song to provide you with five versions that I think are the most interesting and worth your time. If you have your own personal favourite that isn’t on this list please let us know what it is in the comments, or tweet your favourite @MostlyFilm.
by Jen Corcoran
Lena Dunham: if you don’t know her name already, you soon will. The 25 year-old Manhattan based film-maker is currently the focus of intense media attention from blogosphere to broadsheet as her Judd Apatow-sponsored TV series Girls debuts on HBO over in the US. Meanwhile, Dunham’s wildly acclaimed breakthrough feature Tiny Furniture (2010) finally gets a release in the UK this week, exporting her brand of naturalistic, female-led comedy across the Atlantic.
Lena Dunham’s accelerated rise through the Hollywood food chain has met with adulation and condemnation in equal measure. With a dozen YouTube shorts and one micro-budget feature, Creative Nonfiction, under her belt, Dunham was barely out of college when Tiny Furniture won the Best Narrative Feature prize at South by Southwest Festival. Starring the writer herself as Aura, a disillusioned graduate who returns to New York and moves back in with her mother and sister, the film is an unashamedly personal, self-parodying exploration of what it means to be young in the post-Millennial era.
by Thomas Pratchett
In 1979, Ridley Scott made a film about a bunch of people who find an alien spaceship and discover that the long dormant life inside isn’t so dormant, and in fact wants to kill them. In 2011, Ridley Scott made a film about a bunch of people who find an alien spaceship and… you can see where this is going. By now, everyone knows that Prometheus is a (so Scott claims) tangentially related prequel to Alien, although exactly how related they are is still to be seen. We’ve got the same Giger-esque architecture, milk-filled androids, stark white interiors played against grimy steam-filled corridors and pods filled with slimy things that want to hug our faces. If anyone else had come up with such a scenario and claimed it had no real links to the Alien franchise, 20th Century Fox’s lawyers would have moved faster than you can say ‘minimum safe distance’.
by Paul Duane
Kenneth Lonergan, a big, disorganised-looking, mop-haired, slightly put-upon-looking man, sits at the front of the auditorium. He’s looking at the audience, they’re looking at him, and nobody speaks. The guy who’s doing this Q&A with Lonergan, director Damien O’Donnell, is nowhere to be seen – it transpires he’s looking for a small bell that he’s brought as a prop, for some reason that never really becomes clear. There’s a long, uncomfortable pause as the audience and Kenneth Lonergan try to figure out the etiquette to deal with this mild bit of social discomfort.
It’s a very ‘Kenneth Lonergan’ type of moment, right out of Margaret, Lonergan’s second film in his two-film career as a writer/director.
Margaret’s a baggy, shapeless, engrossing story that can’t really be described except to say that you need to see it in order to talk about it. If you do see it you’ll definitely want to talk about it, the way you talk about people you know and the odd, compulsive decisions they make, and why the fuck did they do this and not that? It’s that kind of film.
Lonergan was visiting the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival to talk about screenwriting. Here’s some of the things he had to say on the subject.
Continue reading There’s Always Two Lawyers: Kenneth Lonergan on screenwriting
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