If you live in this wonderful town, I urge you to join the Little Theatre Cinema. Student membership is £10 for a whole year, and for that you will get two free tickets and then reduced prices all year round, as well as 10% off food and drink. Standard general public membership is £32, but you will get three free tickets.
It's also a really lovely little cinema with kind of art deco furnishings and lighting, just a lovely place to sit. They put on quite artsy films which wouldn't make it to the Odeon down the road so again, worth the money IMHO!
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
Review: The Master
A little bit of film trivia for you to begin. In the 'good old days' (a phrase usually used by my parents to indicate a time before I was born) films were recorded on 35mm film stock. The film looked like you get in old cameras, and 35mm was the width of it. As light (i.e. an image) hit the film, it stained it in a certain way and that's the image you got when you projected light through it again. This then was how film was originally made - film recorders and projectors.
Then the digital age came. And newbie filmmakers saw that it was good. What's the point of investing hundreds of pounds in expensive filming and projection equipment when you can buy a £150 camcorder from any high street? And the industry, being an industry, followed suit. Suddenly, everything was filmed and projected in digital. It was cheaper and easier, at both ends of the process. This is how most films were made.
Paul Thomas Anderson is not most filmmakers.
The five-time Oscar nominee decided when making 2012's The Master that he would go back to the old ways and use film. Not just mucky old 35mm though. No no - that's what everybody else would do! He decided to use a very rare 70mm film stock. The wider aperture of the camera (the lens will mirror the size of the film) means the quality of the image is richer and altogether deeper.
Unfortunately not all cinemas are equipped to project this type of film, so most people saw The Master projected in a digital form converted from the film - the same type you will get if you buy the DVD or Blu-Ray. Fortunately for me working in London last year, Leicester Square Odeon had a limited run of 70mm projections of the movie. And honestly, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The quality of image, and in particular light, is rich and unprecedented in film in my opinion. At times I genuinely thought I was watching a play - it was that realistically.
Anyway, onto the film itself. Joaquin Phoenix, the enigma himself, plays a Freddie Quell - a boozing ex-Naval officer who can't seem to work out what to do with his life. He stumbles upon to the boat of Lancaster Dodd, AKA The Master, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and ends up following him round the world as he preaches his seemingly phoney and made up religion to anyone who will listen. Since I do want to work in the film industry quite a lot, I will be as careful with the S word as PTA was. But... Yeah. Pretty much. Bar the aliens and the placenta eating. With me? Let's continue...
Phoenix is unnervingly brilliant in this film, as he is in most. His attention to detail with characters is remarkable. The little things, like how he puts his hands on his hips or how he squints, make him just become Quell. He brilliantly portrays a tortured soul, a damaged man who wants to love and be loved but seems incapable of either without frequent implosion.
Hoffman is masterful (sorry) as Dodd. His presence within the role is looming, and he and Phoenix take turns in stealing scenes from each other, sometimes line for line. He manages to switch from lecturing and posturing to sheer bloody anger in the space of a second, perfectly portraying the fear Dodd has of being uncovered as a phoney.
The story itself isn't the richest, but this is one of those rare films where that doesn't really matter. There isn't really any character development, and everyone really seems to be back where they started by the end, but the quality of the interactions between the characters and the beautiful images (the opening shot of the wake of a boat in particular for me) is what stays with you.
This is a fine, fine film, and for what it's worth I think it should have taken home Oscars over Argo. But hey, it's not a film about Hollywood saving the day is it.
Oh damn there I go again. Please forgive me LA.
Anyway: watch this film. Until next time!
Then the digital age came. And newbie filmmakers saw that it was good. What's the point of investing hundreds of pounds in expensive filming and projection equipment when you can buy a £150 camcorder from any high street? And the industry, being an industry, followed suit. Suddenly, everything was filmed and projected in digital. It was cheaper and easier, at both ends of the process. This is how most films were made.
Paul Thomas Anderson is not most filmmakers.
The five-time Oscar nominee decided when making 2012's The Master that he would go back to the old ways and use film. Not just mucky old 35mm though. No no - that's what everybody else would do! He decided to use a very rare 70mm film stock. The wider aperture of the camera (the lens will mirror the size of the film) means the quality of the image is richer and altogether deeper.
Unfortunately not all cinemas are equipped to project this type of film, so most people saw The Master projected in a digital form converted from the film - the same type you will get if you buy the DVD or Blu-Ray. Fortunately for me working in London last year, Leicester Square Odeon had a limited run of 70mm projections of the movie. And honestly, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The quality of image, and in particular light, is rich and unprecedented in film in my opinion. At times I genuinely thought I was watching a play - it was that realistically.
Anyway, onto the film itself. Joaquin Phoenix, the enigma himself, plays a Freddie Quell - a boozing ex-Naval officer who can't seem to work out what to do with his life. He stumbles upon to the boat of Lancaster Dodd, AKA The Master, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and ends up following him round the world as he preaches his seemingly phoney and made up religion to anyone who will listen. Since I do want to work in the film industry quite a lot, I will be as careful with the S word as PTA was. But... Yeah. Pretty much. Bar the aliens and the placenta eating. With me? Let's continue...
Phoenix is unnervingly brilliant in this film, as he is in most. His attention to detail with characters is remarkable. The little things, like how he puts his hands on his hips or how he squints, make him just become Quell. He brilliantly portrays a tortured soul, a damaged man who wants to love and be loved but seems incapable of either without frequent implosion.
Hoffman is masterful (sorry) as Dodd. His presence within the role is looming, and he and Phoenix take turns in stealing scenes from each other, sometimes line for line. He manages to switch from lecturing and posturing to sheer bloody anger in the space of a second, perfectly portraying the fear Dodd has of being uncovered as a phoney.
The story itself isn't the richest, but this is one of those rare films where that doesn't really matter. There isn't really any character development, and everyone really seems to be back where they started by the end, but the quality of the interactions between the characters and the beautiful images (the opening shot of the wake of a boat in particular for me) is what stays with you.
This is a fine, fine film, and for what it's worth I think it should have taken home Oscars over Argo. But hey, it's not a film about Hollywood saving the day is it.
Oh damn there I go again. Please forgive me LA.
Anyway: watch this film. Until next time!
A really quick thought
Are internet GIFs the reincarnation of silent physical comedy like Chaplin...?
By the way, in your head did you pronounce it jiff or giff?
Bet you're really doubting yourself now.
By the way, in your head did you pronounce it jiff or giff?
Bet you're really doubting yourself now.
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
Review: We're The Millers
This film is pants. It really really is. I won't use the phrase "this is what is wrong with the entire industry today" because it tars some very good films with the same brush. Don't get me wrong, I like a good summer blockbuster. Emphasis on the 'good'. What I don't like is a film spending it's entire budget on two actors and then going "Look! Look! LOOK! LOOK WHO'S IN OUR FILM!! ISN'T IT GREAT??" Jason Sudeikis is a good comedy actor. Jennifer Aniston is a very good comedy female actor. In this they are both dire, but the fault is not their own.
The script itself is unerringly childish and overly simplified. There are painfully obvious gags and oh, wait, hang on, Jennifer Aniston plays a stripper?! She will have to take her clothes off then, most likely in order to somehow escape the bad guys? Ding ding, ring the cliché alarm. Germaine Greer, continue to look away now.
The movie also does the rare thing of making the viewer actually hope that the main characters fail. At no stage do you feel any sympathy for the Millers or actually want them to succeed in their weird drug smuggling mission. You just want the authorities to seize the contraband and for the movie to end after half an hour.
I will say something for this movie - I actually think Will Poulter's performance as the babyfaced kid led astray is pretty good. Personally this is the first thing I've seen him in since Son of Rambow and I think the switch to an American sounding Will works. He plays this character down the middle and while not overdoing it, does solicit a few genuine laughs along the way. I look forward to seeing his career continue and flourish, hopefully on both sides of the pond.
In conclusion, I won't say don't go and see this film, because I think there probably is a place for it for those with painfully low expectations in life (perhaps this is why my girlfriend came with me). But I would urge you wholeheartedly to see something else instead. Incidentally, THAT scene with Jennifer Aniston isn't even that great. And if you're going to the cinema just to see naked ladies then shame on you. That's what the internet is for.
Any excuse to put a link to this song...
The script itself is unerringly childish and overly simplified. There are painfully obvious gags and oh, wait, hang on, Jennifer Aniston plays a stripper?! She will have to take her clothes off then, most likely in order to somehow escape the bad guys? Ding ding, ring the cliché alarm. Germaine Greer, continue to look away now.
The movie also does the rare thing of making the viewer actually hope that the main characters fail. At no stage do you feel any sympathy for the Millers or actually want them to succeed in their weird drug smuggling mission. You just want the authorities to seize the contraband and for the movie to end after half an hour.
I will say something for this movie - I actually think Will Poulter's performance as the babyfaced kid led astray is pretty good. Personally this is the first thing I've seen him in since Son of Rambow and I think the switch to an American sounding Will works. He plays this character down the middle and while not overdoing it, does solicit a few genuine laughs along the way. I look forward to seeing his career continue and flourish, hopefully on both sides of the pond.
In conclusion, I won't say don't go and see this film, because I think there probably is a place for it for those with painfully low expectations in life (perhaps this is why my girlfriend came with me). But I would urge you wholeheartedly to see something else instead. Incidentally, THAT scene with Jennifer Aniston isn't even that great. And if you're going to the cinema just to see naked ladies then shame on you. That's what the internet is for.
Any excuse to put a link to this song...
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