Category Archives: New Releases

Mostly Links – 1 July 2011

Home Video, Links, MF Recommends, New Releases

BY NIALL ANDERSON

Just good friends: Shia 'Shirley' LaBeouf and Megan 'Don't Call Me' Fox

Mostly Film spent last weekend at Glastonbury. Every year, millions of pixels are indiscriminately slaughtered to convince the public that it’s the best fun they never had. We will refrain. Let it just be said that your life will be made briefly but appreciably better if you watch Janelle Monáe’s astonishing performance from Saturday night. Viewers outside the UK will have to make do with edited highlights, but still, not since Prince in his absolute pomp, etc.

By coincidence, this week Mostly Film will be going to see Prince, but we promise not to mention it. Unless Tricky turns up again. Or Limahl. Or, you know, anyone who Prince bafflingly thinks is cool.

Stepping briefly away from the corporatisation of fun, we turn to taking the piss out of corporations. What should an advertisement for KFC look like? Peter Serafinowicz has an idea that I’m sure the Colonel will love. Continue reading Mostly Links – 1 July 2011 →

Comics to Screen – a look at X-Men: First Class

Comics, New Releases

by Matthew Turner

Warning: This post contains SPOILERS for X-Men: First Class and is intended to be read after you’ve seen the film.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this blog about the juggling act faced by film-makers when making superhero movies, namely, playing to their built-in audience on the one hand (by referencing the comics, lifting famous plots, making in-jokes and so on) and making the film broadly accessible to newcomers on the other. This article is intended as a follow-up to that piece, exploring how the same ideas apply to X-Men: First Class but also looking at the various ways in which the film both sticks to and differs from the comics. It’s also intended to serve as a handy bluffer’s guide to the various characters in the film.

Continue reading Comics to Screen – a look at X-Men: First Class →

Fire in Babylon

New Releases, Sport

by Susan Patterson

Holding 61370-11A

“We play cricket for the value of cricket” – Bunny Wailer

Despite my ancestors being indigenously British as far back as the Romans, I failed the Tebbit cricket test a long time ago.  My mantra was ‘anybody but England, unless it’s Australia’, but my true love in international cricket was the West Indies team.  When I meet someone from Ballycastle who supports Leeds United, or from Porto who supports West Ham United, I have a theory that the club was in its glory years when that person was ten years old. Having seen Fire in Babylon I now know that in supporting the Windies, instead of being a romantic maverick I was a glory hunter, no better than a London Red. (I prefer to believe that I had a premonition of the Barmy Army, and knew that I would want nothing to do with it.) After telling a classmate, who called me an n-word-lover, for the first, but not last, time in my life. My affiliation became the love that dare not speak its name. This was also my first lesson that National Front supporters were not cuddly patriots.

In Fire in Babylon director Steven Riley tells the story of the West Indies cricket team, from their humiliating 5-1 Test defeat in Australia in 1975 to becoming the unstoppable Test-winning machine captained by Clive Lloyd, using archive footage, interviews, music, and cultural analysis by Bunny Wailer and Frank I. The film is overtly framed in the emergence of a post-colonial Caribbean culture; the politicisation of some of the team, particularly Viv Richards, as black people increasingly conscious of their African descent; and the fight against apartheid. Its saddest moments come with the fallout from the rebel tour of South Africa in 1983.

Continue reading Fire in Babylon →

Takashi Miike: On the Outside, Hacking In

Cult Movies, New Releases

A conversation between Spank The Monkey and The Belated Birthday Girl

The US poster for 13 Assassins. The UK one simply isn’t as good, sorry.

SPANK THE MONKEY: This Friday sees the UK theatrical release of Takashi Miike’s second film, 13 Assassins. It’s been a full decade since his debut Audition was in cinemas here, and it’s hard to understand why a director with such a low work rate has achieved the reputation that … oh, I’m sorry, I can’t keep this up. I’m just trying to see if I can write the single most inaccurate opening paragraph ever published on Mostly Film. You’ve got the IMDB stats there: how many films has he made?

THE BELATED BIRTHDAY GIRL: Between Audition and 13 Assassins, about fifty. I think we’ve watched about 33 of his in total, but a couple of them pre-date Audition, so we’ve seen around half of those fifty.

STM: That’s handy. It’s always good to establish your credentials before the jump, I think.

Continue reading Takashi Miike: On the Outside, Hacking In →

Playing to the Audience: “Thor” and the Joys of Marvel Superhero Movies

Books and Movies, Comics, New Releases

by Matthew Turner

What do people want from Marvel superhero movies? (Sorry, DC fans –there’s only room in this blog post for one superhero universe). Looking beyond the obvious answers (super-powered fight scenes, spell-binding visual effects, compelling characters and entertaining stories) the makers of a superhero movie about a lesser-known character like Thor (or a pre Iron Man Iron Man) have to perform a complex juggling act. On the one hand they have to appease the existing (though in Thor‘s case, relatively few) fans of the comics, bearing in mind that with characters like Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, there’s almost 50 years of backstory to draw on (this isn’t the place to go into the Ultimate Marvel Universe but it’s worth noting that film-makers have so far steered clear of its rebooted and updated versions of the properties). On the other hand they have to introduce the character to a whole new audience (usually by way of an origin story) and hopefully launch a new money-making and sequel-generating franchise – basically, everyone wants another Iron Man, the enormous success of which has led directly to the upcoming Thor, Captain America and Avengers movies. Speaking of which, Thor director Kenneth Branagh had a third ball to juggle, in that he had to lay the groundwork for the upcoming The Avengers and provide significant crossover with both the Iron Man series and Captain America, establishing a Marvel universe continuity that isn’t wholly reliant on post-credits cameos from Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Continue reading Playing to the Audience: “Thor” and the Joys of Marvel Superhero Movies →

Meek’s Cutoff

New Releases,

by Indy Datta

The almost sensational Meek’s Cutoff – which tells the story (loosely based on historical facts) of a small group of emigrants on the Oregon Trail who take the eponymous diversion from the main trail under the dubious guidance of lushly bearded blowhard Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) – seems, in isolation, to be a departure for director Kelly Reichardt from the somewhat literary miniaturism of Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy: a more story-driven genre piece (albeit in an uncompromising arthouse register) with an ensemble cast of recognisable names (Michelle Williams returns from Wendy and Lucy, and is joined by Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan and Shirley Henderson). Viewed in the context of the earlier films, however, it seems more like a transition: the film-maker’s ethical, political and aesthetic concerns remain consistent even as the scope of the storytelling becomes more expansive and conventional.

Continue reading Meek’s Cutoff →

3D Meets the Arthouse: Pina and Cave of Forgotten Dreams

New Releases, , ,

A conversation between Philip Concannon and Niall Anderson

Philip Concannon: Over the coming months the cinema release schedules will be dominated by summer blockbusters, and most of these movies will be in 3D. After false starts in the 1950’s and the 1980’s, it appears that 3D is now here to stay, becoming an increasingly integral element of studio filmmaking, but perhaps the most interesting experiments in three dimensions are taking place outside the multiplex. By a fortunate coincidence, two new 3D features from respected German auteurs are hitting UK cinemas in the space of a month. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog utilises this newfangled technology to explore the primitive artwork buried deep within the Chauvet Cave in France, while  Wim Wenders’ Pina uses 3D to pay tribute to the late dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. While most 3D films thus far have been the result of studio-imposed conditions, these films are passion projects from idiosyncratic directors, and both attempt to express the simple beauty of their chosen subject through three dimensions.

The question is, have they succeeded? Does Herzog’s camera bring the 30,000 year-old paintings to life, and does Wenders’ use of three dimensions capture Pina’s dancers at their best? Finally, what do these films say about the future of 3D as a viable filmmaking tool outside of the mainstream? In the following conversation, Niall Anderson and I will hopefully answer these questions as we examine and compare both Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Pina.

Niall, perhaps you’d like to begin by sharing your views on 3D in general, and as you saw both documentaries this week, who is your victor in this Teutonic 3D duel?

Continue reading 3D Meets the Arthouse: Pina and Cave of Forgotten Dreams →

Country Music and the Movies

New Releases, ,

by Josephine Grahl

In Country Strong, which opened two weeks ago in the UK, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a self-destructive country music star struggling with alcoholism, who is pulled out of rehab by her manager-husband and forced to tour. So far, so clichéd. Country music films abound in scenes of alcoholism, breakdown and emotional dysfunction: from Robert Duvall’s alcoholic former star in Tender Mercies to Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash impersonation in Walk the Line. When, in Country Strong, Gwyneth Paltrow breaks down on stage, babbling about the stars and crying, it brings to mind Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter and, Ronee Blakley as Barbara Jean in Nashville. But both Spacek and Blakley manage to convince as troubled stars: Gwyneth Paltrow is not remotely convincing as a country singer, let alone as a suicidal alcoholic.

Continue reading Country Music and the Movies →