Sunday, January 31, 2010

Kathryn Bigelow becomes first female to receive DGA Award

Kathryn Bigelow DGA AwardKathryn Bigelow made history on Saturday night when she became the first woman to receive the Director's Guild of America Award for Oustanding Achievement in Feature Film for her 2009 Iraq War thriller The Hurt Locker.

Bigelow beat off stiff competition in the form of ex-husband James Cameron (Avatar), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and Lee Daniels (Precious) to bag the award, which typically serves to predict the Best Director winner at the upcoming Academy Awards. Only six DGA winners have not went on to collect the Oscar with the last of these being Rob Marshall (Chicago), who lost out to Roman Polanski (The Pianist) back in 2002.

Also celebrating success is filmmaker Louie Psihoyos who collected the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary Award for The Cove, while you can check out a full list of winners here.

The Academy Award nominations are announced in just two days time on February 2nd. Be sure to check out Trevor Hogg's in depth profiles on frontrunners James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow and Jason Reitman.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Movies... For Free! Road to Bali (1952)

"Movies... For Free!", showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain (with streaming video!)...

Road to Bali Bob Hope Bing Crosby
Road to Bali, 1952.

Directed by Hal Walker.
Starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.

Road to Bali is the sixth movie in the popular Bing Crosby - Bob Hope "Road" series (beginning in 1940 with Road to Singapore) and sees the comic pair as vaudevillians George and Harold, competing for the affections of the beautiful Princess Lala (Lamour) in the South Pacific.

As with the previous offerings Road to Bali is thin on plot and instead relies on the chemistry of its stars to entertain with a mixture of ad-libbing, sight gags and musical numbers, and also features a host of uncredited cameos including legends such as Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Humphrey Bogart and Jane Russell.

The film is the only colour entry in the Road series and the last to feature Dorothy Lamour in a leading role, although she does make a cameo appearance in the seventh and final offering Road to Hong Kong, produced ten years later by United Artists. Coincidently, Road to Bali is also the only instalment to have slipped into the public domain, with studio Paramount having failed to renew the copyright within the required time-frame.



Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

Click here to view all entries in our Movies... For Free! collection.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Bringing Star Wars to the Small Screen: The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Continuing our series of articles examining the various screen incarnations of George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, we turn our attention to the first official spin off - the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special…

The Star Wars Holiday Special, 1978.

Directed by Steve Binder.
Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Bea Arthur, Art Carney and Harvey Korman.

The Star Wars Holiday Special
SYNOPSIS:

Returning home to Kashyyyk to celebrate ‘Life Day’ with his family, Chewbacca (and companion Han Solo) are tracked by Darth Vader, who sets up a blockade and despatches a legion of stormtroopers to capture the crew of the Millennium Falcon.

Bea Arthur Star Wars Holiday Special
“If I had the time and a hammer, I would track down every copy of that programme and smash it”, Star Wars creator George Lucas is alleged to have commented about his first foray into television, the universally derided Star Wars Holiday Special. Whether the quote is accurate or not, the end result must surely prove to be one of the biggest regrets of his illustrious career. A combination of rehashed footage from the original movie, sloppy new scenes and variety performances (including comedy and song and dance routines), the two-hour farce received but a solitary airing in November 1978 that cemented its place as the most infamous entry in the franchise, if not the entire history of television.

“[It] didn’t really have much to do with us,” the filmmaker commented on the origins of the special. “I can’t remember what network it was on, but it was that thing they did. We kind of let them do it…we let them use the characters and stuff and that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but you learn from those experiences.” The network in question was CBS, who were naturally looking to capitalise on the stellar success that Star Wars had enjoyed in cinemas. Executive producers Dwight Hemion and Gary Smith were tasked with overseeing the project and while Lucas may have since washed his hands of responsibility, he is said to have contributed the initial story in addition to attending a number of production meetings.

With pre-production underway Lucas' former USC classmate David Acomba was brought in to direct only to resign shortly thereafter citing creative differences, a decision backed wholeheartedly by the series' creator. Acomba was replaced by Steve Binder (whose television credits include the Elvis ’68 Comeback Special), while writers Pat Proft (Police Squad!), Leonard Ripps (Frankenweenie), Bruce Vilanch and Rod Warren (Donny and Marie) were hired to turn the concept into a full-length feature special. Husband and wife composers Ken and Mitzie Welch were responsible for the musical numbers (with Mitzie also receiving a writing credit), with other notable crewmembers including effects guru Stan Winston (who provided the Wookie costumes) and Star Wars regulars Ben Burtt and Ralph McQuarrie.

While Lucas may have enjoyed the luxury of anonymity credits-wise and supporting cast members Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels and James Earl Jones were masked behind their characters, the same could not be said for main players Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (who, when asked for his thoughts on the special by talk show host Conan O'Brien, joked that it "doesn't exist"). Their phoned-in performances alongside Bea Arthur (The Golden Girls), Academy Award-winning actor Art Carney (Harry and Tonto), comedian Harvey Korman (The Carol Burnett Show) and seventies rock band Jefferson Starship do little to salvage the train-wreck and simply add to the embarrassment.

In addition to live-action segments that include a number of Chewie family soap opera scenes (many of which are dialogue free for extended periods) and a singing Princess Leia, The Star Wars Holiday Special is notable for the inclusion of an 11-minute animated segment that introduces fan-favourite Boba Fett to the saga. In 1976 Canadian animators Nelvana Studios had released the half-hour special A Cosmic Christmas, which was brought to Lucas’ attention via his friend David Acomba. Lucas invited the fledgling studio to pitch an idea for the cartoon section and after being impressed by co-founder Clive Smith’s presentation, Nelvana were awarded the contract. Incorporating Lucas' suggestions, the resulting animation entitled The Story of the Faithful Wookie is perhaps the show's only redeemable feature and ultimately led to Nelvana producing The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour on behalf of Lucasfilm.

The Star Wars Holiday Special received its only broadcast on Friday November 17th, 1978 and resulted in excellent viewing figures, although the response was far, far from complimentary and it has continued to attract severe criticism. Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew may be quoted on record as enjoying his experience and believing it to be “one of those things that Chewie and Star Wars fans would adore”, it really is little more than painful to watch. It would attract a niche audience of masochists and completists if it were ever to see the light of day on home video, although that proposition seems highly unlikely. When asked by Maxim Magazine if he harboured plans for a Special Edition Lucas responded: "That's one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it." Unfortunately for Star Wars fans, so do we.

The Story of the Faithful Wookie:


Bringing Star Wars to the Screen: Episode IV – A New Hope
Bringing Star Wars to the Screen: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
Bringing Star Wars to the Screen: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

Bringing Star Wars to the Small Screen: Caravan of Courage - An Ewok Adventure
Bringing Star Wars to the Small Screen: Ewoks - Battle For Endor
Bringing Star Wars to the Small Screen: The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour

Gary Collinson

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Absurdity & Carnage: A Coen Brothers Profile (Part 1)

Trevor Hogg profiles the careers of filmmaking siblings the Coen brothers in the first of a four part feature...

Coen BrothersUsing a Super 8 camera, Joel and his younger brother Ethan were inspired to remake the Hollywood movies being broadcasted on television; their naivety about motion picture production did not hinder their innovative spirit when shooting a new version of The Naked Prey (1966). “We had very weird special effects in that film,” reminisced Joel Coen of the childhood project entitled Zeimers in Zambia. “We actually had a parachute drop – a shot of an airplane going overhead, then a miniature, then cut to a close-up of the guy against the white sheet as it hit the ground.” Their enthusiasm for the craft of filmmaking led the brotherly duo to venture into the realm of scriptwriting. “The first one was called Coast to Coast,” stated Joel. “We never really did anything with it. It was sort of a screwball-comedy.” The unproduced tale was a product of the brothers’ surrealist sense of humour; it dealt with Chinese communists creating twenty-eight clones of the legendary physicist Albert Einstein.

After their post-secondary studies, the two siblings from Minneapolis, Minnesota reunited in New York; they renewed their creative partnership which proved to be so intuitive that upon meeting the brothers, an interviewer wittingly remarked that the Coens were “joined at the quip”.

While Ethan Coen earned money as a part-time typist, his older sibling immersed himself in the movie industry. “I was an assistant editor on a few low-budget horror films, like Fear No Evil [1981],” recalled Joel. “There was another one which I actually got fired from called Nightmare [1981], which had a small release here in New York, and The Evil Dead [1981].” The latter film would solidify an ongoing artistic relationship between the Coens and cult-horror maestro Sam Raimi (Darkman) who hired them to write a script for him called The XYZ Murders.

Blood SimpleIndulging in their appreciation for the film noir genre, Joel and Ethan began to construct what would become their feature length debut. “You can’t get any more independent than Blood Simple,” declared Joel. “We did it entirely outside of Hollywood.” The director of the picture went on to say, “The main consideration from the start was that we wanted to be left alone, without anyone telling us what to do. The way we financed the movie gave us that right.”

In regards to the literary influences for the murderous tale about a sleazy private investigator (M. Emmet Walsh) hired by a cuckolded husband (Dan Hedaya) to follow his adulteress wife (Frances McDormand), Ethan said, “[James M.] Cain is more to the point for this story, than [Raymond] Chandler or [Dashiell] Hammett. They wrote mysteries, whodunits.” The writer-producer explained further, “Cain usually dealt with three great themes: opera, the Greek diner business, and the insurance business.” Completing his brother’s answer, Joel replied, “Which we felt were the three greatest themes of twentieth century literature.”

Shooting the picture in Texas had an aesthetic appeal for the moviemaking brothers. “Your classic film noir has a real urban feel and we wanted something different,” stated Ethan. There was another major decision revealed director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black), who served as the cinematographer for the film, “I think we were afraid that to shoot the film in black and white would make it look too “independent”, too low-budget.” Sonnenfeld’s remark caused to Ethan to deadpan, “We wanted to trick people into thinking we’d made a real movie.”

Two cinematic classics served as major inspirations for the rookie filmmakers. “The Conformist [1970] is one of the movies we went with Barry to see before we started shooting, in terms of deciding what we wanted the visual style to be, the lighting, and all that,” confided Joel. “Also, we went to see The Third Man [1949].”

Making use of storyboards, the Coens, Sonnenfeld and the assistant director met each day for a breakfast conference at Denny’s; they discussed what was going to be shot and how it was going to be lighted. “On the set, we’d put it together and look through the viewfinder,” stated Joel. “Barry might have an idea, or Ethan might come up with something different, and we’d try it. We had the freedom to do that, because we’d done so much advance work.”

Blood Simple Frances McDormandRealizing the need to lighten the mood of the picture, the Coens sought to include humour into the plotline. “We didn’t have an equation for how to balance the blood and the gags,” responded Ethan. “But there is a counterpoint between the story itself and the narrator’s attitude toward the story.” The mischievous spirit worked itself into the production credits where film editor Roderick Jaynes (a pseudonym for the brothers) was mentioned for the first time.

Influential film critic Pauline Kael of The New Yorker was unimpressed by Blood Simple upon its release in 1985, “The reason the camera whoop-de-do is so noticeable is that there’s nothing else going on. The movie doesn’t even seem meant to have any rhythmic flow; the Coens just want us to respond to a bunch of ‘touches’ on routine themes.” Responding to the accusation that style had triumphed over substance, Joel Coen declared, “If somebody goes out to make a movie that isn’t designed primarily to entertain people then I don’t know what the fuck they’re doing…What’s the Raymond Chandler line? ‘All good art is entertainment and anyone who says differently is a stuff shirt and juvenile at the art of living.’”

A far warmer critical reception was found at the Sundance Film Festival where the picture was awarded the Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic. Twenty-four years later, Zhang Yimou (Huozhe) loosely remade the drama as a comedy with the title A Simple Noodle Story (2009); the cinematic action was transplanted from a small town Texan bar to a Chinese noodle shop located in a desert.

With The Evil Dead achieving cult status among horror fans, Sam Raimi captured the attention of Embassy Pictures which agreed to finance the script Raimi co-wrote with Joel and Ethan Coen. The filmmaking brothers felt at the time that Raimi should produce Crimewave (1985), also known as The XYZ Murders, independently. “We’ve always let Sam make those mistakes for us,” said Joel. “ ‘Sam’, we’ll tell him, ‘you go do a movie at a studio and tell us what happens.’” The black comedy about a young technician on the run from a pair of hired guns who becomes implicated in a series of slapstick killings, turned into a production and commercial fiasco. Bruce Campbell (Bubba Ho-tep), the original star of the picture, was bumped to a minor role while onset rumours circulated that lead actress Lousie Lasser (Requiem for a Dream) had a cocaine habit. “At the time we had no idea how good an experience Evil Dead was,” reflected Campbell. “Sure we burned off four years of our lives and didn’t pocket a cent, but we had total creative control. Jumping into the big time meant dealing with the excruciating specific and alternatively vague demands of a studio – unlike [the] Michigan dentists [who financed The Evil Dead], Hollywood executives took an interest in everything.”

With Blood Simple securing the Coens a distribution deal with Circle Films, the two siblings where able to maintain their independence as filmmakers for their sophomore effort. “With [Raising] Arizona we didn’t begin by thinking about diving into a genre,” stated Ethan in regards to the origins of the story which revolves around an infertile couple, played by Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas) and Holly Hunter (Thirteen), who kidnap a baby in an effort to start their own family. “We’d wanted to broadly make a comedy with two main characters. We concentrated on them, more than the movie in a general sense.” When it came to constructing the tale, Joel said, “The idea of kidnapping the baby was really secondary. We weren’t that interested either in the problem of sterility or the desire to have a child, but in the idea of a character who has that desire and at the same time feels outside the law. This conflict allowed us to develop the story, that aspiration of a stable family life, and at the same time a taste for unusual experiences.”

Raising ArizonaHandling the cinematography once again was Barry Sonnenfeld who has nothing but admiration for the storytelling abilities of Joel and Ethan. “Given any topic, they could write an excellent script. Topics are incredibly unimportant to them – it’s the structure and style and words. If you asked them for their priorities, they’ll tell you script, editing, coverage, and lighting.” Executive producer Jim Jacks (Hard Target) observed of the two moviemaking brothers, “You watch Ethan walk in a circle this way and Joel in a circle that way; each knows exactly where the other is and when they’ll meet. Then they go to Barry.”

Breaking into the Coens’ inner circle proved to be difficult for actor Nicolas Cage, who declared, “Joel and Ethan have a strong vision and I’ve learned how difficult it is for them to accept another artist’s vision. They have an autocratic nature.” Cage’s attempts to make a creative contribution did not go unnoticed. “Nic’s a really imaginative actor,” stated Joel. “He arrives with piles of ideas that we hadn’t thought about while writing the script, but his contribution is always in line with the character we’d imagined. He extrapolated from what was written. The same with Holly. Even if she surprised us less because we had her in mind when we wrote the part, and we’ve known her for a long time.” Future Oscar-winner Holly Hunter, said of the brothers, “Joel and Ethan function without their egos. Or maybe their egos are so big they’re completely secure with anybody who disagrees with them.”

“I remember a specific image which pleased us when we wrote the script: to see Holly in uniform hurling orders at the prisoners,” recalled Ethan. “It might appear secondary, but that image had great importance in setting the writing in motion.” Frances McDormand, who married Joel after the completion of the Coens’ cinematic debut, makes a cameo appearance in the film. “They love the performance part of their job,” said McDormand of her husband and brother-in-law, “like the minute you walk on the stage or the camera starts rolling. For them, the writing is one part of it, the budgeting and the preproduction another, but it’s all building toward the shoot. And then in postproduction, that’s when they get to lead the artistic life. They get to stay up late and get circles under their eyes and smoke too much and not eat enough and be focused entirely on creating something. And then it starts again.”

For the Coens, storytelling inspiration comes from the simple things in life. “Their favourite midtown lunch place is the counter at Woolworth’s,” explained Michael Miller (Ghost World) who edited Raising Arizona. “They go to hear dialogue that will find its way into a script. The opening of Blood Simple – many of those lines they’d overheard. Their attention is never more riveted than when they’re in the backseat of a taxi. I’ve seen Joel draw out taxi drivers in a way he doesn’t draw out his friends. Once, on the way home from the airport, the driver had a ball game on – the Mets were playing someone and it was in the heat of the pennant drive – and Joel said, ‘What’s the game?’ and the cab driver said, ‘Baseball, I think.’ They loved that.”

Raising Arizona Nicolas CageInserting the motorcyclist into the picture was the consequence of the Coens entering the mindset of ex-con Herbert “H.I.” McDunnough (Cage). “We tried to imagine a character who didn’t correspond specifically to our image of an “Evil One” or a nightmare become a reality, but rather to the image that Hi would have,” explained Joel. “Being from the Southwest, he’d see him in the form of a Hell’s Angel.” He went on to add, “There are people who find the conclusion too sentimental. Once again, that doesn’t reflect our attitude to life. For us it’s written in the context of the character, it fits his ideas about life, what he dreams about accomplishing in the future.”

Released in 1987, Raising Arizona was described by Caroline Westbrook in the British film magazine Empire as a “Hilarious, madcap comedy from the Coens brothers that demonstrates why they are the kings of quirk.” The picture received a more divided reception from American movie critics. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Raising Arizona is no big deal, but it has a rambunctious charm.” While Roger Ebert in the Chicago-Sun Times declared, “The basic idea of the movie is a good one and there are talented people in the cast, what we have here is a film shot down by its own forced and mannered style.”

Screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the picture which cost $6 million to make was not a commercial failure; it grossed $23 million in box office receipts.

Miller's CrossingMiller’s Crossing is really closer to film noir than to the gangster movie,” said Ethan Coen of the 1990 picture produced by the brothers. “The movie is a gangster story because it’s a genre we’re attracted to – a literary rather than a cinematic genre, by the way – but the conflicts of the characters, the morality have a more universal application.”

Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), a confident of Prohibition-era Irish gangster and political boss Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney), attempts to protect the brother (John Turturro) of his lover Verna Bernbaum (Marcia Gay Harden) from Italian mobster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito); however, Reagan’s intervention sparks a gang war between Leo and Johnny.

“The starting point of the script was an image, or a series of images,” explained Joel as to the origin of the tale on which he collaborated over an eight month period with Ethan, “the desire to make a movie whose characters would be dressed in a certain way – the hats, the long coats – and would be placed in certain settings that were unusual for the genre: the countryside, the forest.” The director of the picture went to say, “In Miller’s Crossing the actors did not change a single word of the dialogue. We follow the script very faithfully, and a large number of the production elements are already included. That said, in the middle of the shooting we rewrote the whole second part of the script.”

Other changes were required such as in the area of casting the character of Leo O’Bannon. “The part had been written for Trey Wilson (A Soldier’s Story), who died just before the beginning of shooting,” revealed Joel. “We had to delay it for ten days. It just happened that [Albert] Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) was available and could commit himself for a few months. We didn’t rewrite the dialogue for him, but the result would undoubtedly have been very different with Trey.” Ethan did not regret the choice of the last minute replacement. “What’s strange is the part would never have been written without Trey in mind, whereas now it’s impossible for us to imagine any other actor than Finney in the Leo role.”

Selecting a famous Louisiana setting for the principal photography was a judgment made out of creative necessity by the Coens. “We had to shoot in the winter, and we didn’t want snow for the exterior shots, so we had to choose a Southern city,” remarked Joel. “New Orleans happens not to be very industrially developed and many districts have only slightly changed since the twenties.” Once filming commenced, another significant artistic decision was made. “We took care not to show the picturesque or tourist aspects of the city,” stated Ethan. “We didn’t want the audience to recognize New Orleans. In the story the city’s an anonymous one, the typical “corrupt town” of Hammett novels.”

Miller's Crossing Gabriel Byrne Marcia Gay HardenGabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects) convinced the Coens to revise the role of Tom Reagan. “The characters are of Irish extraction, but their parts weren’t planned to be spoken with an accent,” recalled Joel. “When Gabriel read the script he thought it had a style, a rhythm that was authentically Irish, and he suggested trying the lines with his accent. We were skeptical at the start, but his reading convinced us. So Finney took on the accent too.” Responding to criticism that the story was too complicated to comprehend and that the manner in which Byrne spoke made him hard to understand, Joel replied, “It doesn’t really concern me if the audience sometimes loses the thread of the plot. It’s not important to understand who killed the Rugs Daniel character, for instance. It’s far more important to feel the relationships between the characters.”

As to the significance of the recurring dream Tom Reagan has of the hat blowing in the wind, Joel responded, “It’s an image that came to us, that we liked, and it just implanted itself. It’s a kind of practical guiding thread but there’s no need to look for deep meanings.” There is a sequence about which the two brothers talk enthusiastically: one of the two assassins sent to kill Leo loses control of his machine gun causing him to do an impromptu and fatal jitterbug to the strains of the traditional Irish ballad Danny Boy. “Thomson guns are not light guns,” said Joel. “It’s difficult to hold one while it’s firing and bucking, and also with the squibs going up your back.” Ethan was in agreement with his older brother’s comment. “It’s hard. You have to sell all that body language taking the bullet hits. What sells the hit is the dance.” Even with the logistical problems of the weapon constantly jamming, Joel remained engrossed in filming the macabre death scene. “You keep thinking of things you want to add to the scene. He shoots up the chandelier, the paintings, his toes. All kinds of fun things. It was lots of fun blowing the toes off. The only regret is that it goes by so fast, you almost kind of miss it. It’s a highlight.”

Unfortunately for the Coens, movie audiences failed to embrace the romantic onscreen chemistry of Gabriel Byrne and Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River), and the wayward plotlines; the picture which cost $14 million to make earned $5 million in the box office receipts.

Questioned as to whether or not he and Ethan would consider producing someone else’s screenplay, Joel answered, “For us, creation really starts with the script in all its stages; the shooting is only the conclusion. It’d be very difficult for us to direct a script written by a third person.”

For their fourth cinematic effort, which became a critical sensation at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, Joel and Ethan Coen turned to intimately familiar subject matter – screenwriting.

Scene from Miller's Crossing:


Continue to part two.

For more on the Coen brothers, visit fansites You Know, For Kids! and Coenesque.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

UK Box Office Top Ten - weekend commencing 22/01/10

UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 22nd - Sunday 24th January 2010.

In an unchanged top three the UK box office is once again dominated by Avatar, with the James Cameron film adding another £5m+ to its gross and shattering the record for sixth weekend performance previously held by Titanic with £3.3m. Perhaps a tad more memorable is the fact that today he's also broken his own record at the global box office, although the film will have to wait a little longer before it tops the domestic record books in both the US (Titanic) and UK (Mamma Mia).

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes has enjoyed a strong run since opening on Boxing Day and passes the £20m mark, while fellow holiday release Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel remains hot on its heels in third place. Meanwhile Jason Reitman comedy Up in the Air and rom-com It's Complicated (which or the time being stands as the biggest UK release of 2010) swap places but both hit seven figures, with no new releases managing to break into the top five.

Opening for a special two-week limited 3D run (the timing of which one has to question), the Pixar classic Toy Story 2 managed to pull in £900k despite fierce competition from Avatar for screens, placing sixth to lead the new releases and pushing The Book of Eli and Daybreakers down one position apiece.

Finally at the foot of the chart, war drama Brothers opens in ninth to disappointing numbers (although not as disappointing as Ninja Assassin, which continues the Wachowski brothers' dysmal run of form), while highly-rated French gangster flick A Prophet banks just £50k less from almost a third of the screens.

















































































Pos.FilmWeekend GrossWeekTotal UK Gross
1Avatar
£5,155,8446





































£57,441,123
2Sherlock Holmes
£1,632,1725









































£21,372,499
3Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel£1,454,2785





























































£18,563,223
4Up in the Air£1,205,8812























































£3,282,512
5It's Complicated
£1,140,6843































































£5,397,653
6Toy Story 2£909,0931



























































£909,093
7The Book of Eli£825,5082



















































£2,636,078
8Daybreakers£420,1993





































































£3,521,958
9Brothers£366,2901

































































£366,290
10A Prophet£312,2371





































































£312,237


Incoming...

Avatar will surely retain the top spot next weekend with little in the way of competition; Friday sees the release of director Lee Daniels' award winning drama Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, along with Mel Gibson thriller Edge of Darkness and a limited release for the South Korean crime drama Ddongpari (a.k.a Breathless).

U.K. Box Office Archive

Monday, January 25, 2010

Avatar to receive Academy Award for Best Moneymaker?

James Cameron AvatarAs of this morning James Cameron is a mere $6 million away from smashing his own twelve year record at the peak of the all-time global box-office chart, with 3D motion capture epic Avatar set to overtake Titanic's mighty haul of $1.842 billion.

It truly is testament to the man's film-making genius that Cameron has returned from his self-imposed feature exile to smash a record that seemed for so long to be unbreakable, especially when you consider that juggernauts such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean were lucky to bank half of Titanic's world-wide gross.

Sure, ticket prices are a lot higher these days (even before the 3D surcharge), but there are few who could have predicted the sheer success that Avatar would enjoy. Although it's yet to grab the top spot overall in North America (with less than $50m to go), it's only a matter of time before the film becomes the first to cross $2 billion and set a mammoth record that will take another twelve years to surpass (Battle Angel, anyone?). Having already bagged a couple of Golden Globes and numerous film critics awards - along with a host of BAFTA nominations and soon-to-be Academy Award nominations - Avatar has the potential to run and run and it would be impossible to predict it's final tally at this stage.

What isn't impossible to predict is that it's a shoe-in for Best Moneymaker - sorry, Best Picture - at the Oscar ceremony come March 7th.

Now don't get me wrong. Avatar is a bloody good film. It's a true visual treat with some excellent performances that really bring the animation to life and it certainly deserves to clean up the technical awards, where it is outstanding. But Best Picture? Hmm... story fairly predictable... nothing really new here, to be honest... nice and pretty and all... ooh a flying bit... and the shit hits the fan and there's a big fight. I think I'd have to say no, whilst at the same time placing a rather large wager that it will be.

Anyway, well done Mr. Cameron and sincere congratulations on your success. Two films miles ahead of the competition at the global box office and neither of them crack your top three.

Fuckin' A.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Movies... For Free! Born to Win (1971)

"Movies... For Free!", showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain (with streaming video!)...

Born to Win
Born to Win, 1971.

Directed by Ivan Passer.
Starring George Segal, Paula Prentiss, Karen Black and Robert De Niro.

Czech director Ivan Passer follows up his highly rated debut Intimate Lightning (1965) with his first American feature, the 1971 black comedy Born to Win. George Segal (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) stars as hairdresser-turned-junkie JJ, estranged from his wife (Prentiss) and feeding his habit by dealing drugs and engaging in petty crime around New York City. JJ soon begins a relationship with the free-spirited Parm (Black), but his problems continue to spiral out of control when he is arrested delivering drugs on behalf of local dealer Vivian (Hector Elizondo) and forced to turn against his employer in a sting operation.

Based upon David Scott Milton's play Scraping Bottom (with a title change that Pauline Kael described as perhaps the most extreme in American cinema), Born to Win is an under-rated example of low-budget independent filmmaking and is also notable for featuring a young Robert De Niro, who makes an appearance as an undercover detective working with JJ to bring Vivian down.



Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

Click here to view all entries in our Movies... For Free! collection.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

R.I.P. Jean Simmons (1929-2010)

Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning British actress Jean Simmons has passed away yesterday Friday 22nd January aged 80. Born in London in 1929, Simmons made her screen debut alongside Margaret Lockwood in Give Us The Moon (1944) before working with legendary directors David Lean (Great Expectations, 1946) and Laurence Olivier (Hamlet, 1948). Her work in Hamlet was recognised with an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and Simmons soon made the transition to Hollywood under contract to Howard Hughes.

Simmons went on to enjoy a long and successful career sharing the screen with acting legends such as Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas. She received a Golden Globe for Best Actress in the classic musical Guys and Dolls (1956) and a further Oscar nomination in 1969 with The Happy Ending (directed by her second husband, Richard Brooks), while her shift towards television work in the 1970s led to an Emmy Award for the 1983 mini-series The Thorn Birds. Later career appearances include the mini-series' North and South (1985-86) and Great Expectations (1989), while more recently she provided voice-over work for animations Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) and Howl's Moving Castle (2004).

Director Profile: Lynne Ramsay (Part 2)

Amy Flinders profiles Scottish director Lynne Ramsay in the second of a two-part feature... read part one here.

RatcatcherWith three critically acclaimed shorts and a mantelpiece full of awards, Ramsay won another cluster of prizes, including a BAFTA for most promising newcomer, for her first feature Ratcatcher (1999). When asked how the idea of Ratcatcher came to her, Ramsay has said:

‘I remember the dustmen's strike in the 1970s, and it was quite weird because there were football pitches filled up to the goalposts with rubbish…It was also the time when punk rock was starting and the Labour government was coming to an end, so there was a depression and an excitement in the air…So it started off with a place of deterioration with something new happening with a boy caught up in a very macho environment - he's quite sensitive, but he's not supposed to show it. It felt like a beautiful backdrop for that.’

And almost miraculously, Ramsay does manage to turn a grey, deprived, 1970s Glasgow – every corner of which is packed with overflowing bin bags - into a oddly beautiful setting as the narrative follows twelve-year-old James after he plays a part in the accidental drowning of one of his friends. James must deal with the guilt that arises from this inadvertent act, which makes his developing adolescence an even more uncomfortable and turbulent experience.

Whilst Ratcatcher seems purposefully slow as time plods uncertainly along for James, each shot is as engaging as the last as Ramsay repeatedly captures a profound sense of emotion from seemingly still, small moments. Ratcatcher is a film for more than just the eyes and ears, as some of the images on screen are projected so intensely you can almost feel them. For example, when James first meets his new friend Margaret, he touches her grubby, grazed knee and we witness that first awkward spark between them that lingers in the friendship they have throughout the film. In another scene, James notices a hole in the toe of his sleeping mothers stocking. In Ramsay’s words,

‘He's always wanting her to be perfect, so he tries to pull the toe of the tights up, so she hasn't got this hole. For me it says about how he loves her; a tiny detail that says something about their relationship.’

James fantasizes about the perfect family and the perfect home and Ramsay again creates a profound contrast between the character’s dreams and the bleak reality of the narrative. James takes a trip one day to an empty building site of clean, brand new, partially built homes, his dream being that one day his family will move in to one. James climbs out the window of one of the houses into brilliantly sunny cornfield, the director again using this environment to represent her character breaking free from his hostile constraints.

The film includes a nod to a director much admired by Ramsay, Terence Malik. In a scene where James’ sweet but slightly simple friend Kenny ties his pet mouse to a balloon, the song Musik FĂĽr Kinder, a song repeatedly used in the film Badlands (arguably Malik’s most famous work) plays on the soundtrack as the red balloon floats into the sky, a symbol also used in Malik’s film. James seems tragically adult-like as he later tells Kenny that his mouse is dead and hasn’t landed on the moon. Perhaps James is gradually losing his innocence after the various incidents in his life, much like Anne-Marie in Small Deaths.

Her second feature, Morvern Callar (2002) , takes a different tone as Ramsay moves from representing childhood and the notion of families sticking together, to portraying the life of a very solitary individual in an adult world. Morvern (Samantha Morton, the first time the director has used a well known, professional actor) wakes up one morning to find that her boyfriend has killed himself. In his suicide note, he asks her to take his newly finished novel to a publisher and to pay for the funeral with the money on his credit card. Instead, Morvern publishes the novel under her own name and uses the money to splash out on a holiday to Spain with her best friend, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott).

Movern CallarUnlike the Alan Warner novel from which Morvern Callar is adapted, the film has no interior monologue or any access to Morvern’s thoughts. On altering the quantity of speech for the film Ramsay has said,

‘The monologue in the book, well, she never explained her actions. It's quite existential. I was open to the idea but I wrote it without the monologue and described the actions visually, because most of them were, and it really worked. It had a real atmosphere to it.’

Instead of using her raw amalgamation of sound and images to depict the nit-ridden hair and grazed knees of childhood, she adapts her sensual style to portray Morvern’s more seductive, adult world. In a scene where Morvern goes to a party for example, Ramsay occasionally moves the images out of focus whilst the scene dips in and out of slow motion while the sound and dialogue remain at normal speed, expertly capturing the party’s ambience and perhaps the sensation of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. She uses the same technique in her earlier short, Gasman, but on that occasion to portray the energy and excitement of a children’s party, proving that Ramsay’s techniques are not limited in the environments they can represent and atmospheres they can create.

Although the film received a number of awards, including a double win at Cannes in 2002, and yet more acclaim and recognition for its director, it has been argued that it is not as strong a piece of work as her first feature. In an interview with her, British director Mike Leigh said he thought that there was ‘a quality in Ratcatcher and the shorts that somehow doesn't survive in Morvern Callar.’

One criticism of the film has been that the title character is perhaps a bit too emotionally distant and not particularly easy to identify with. Ramsay has commented that,

Morvern Callar's a really weird film, in a sense, where I was trying to experiment with taking things in a different direction, and it kind of half works and it half doesn't. And I kind of felt with that film that perhaps I should have pushed it more into the realms of black comedy slightly.’

In February 2001, Ramsay was hired to write and direct an adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. The book had not been completed at this point, but eighteen months later Sebold's novel had spent numerous weeks at the top of The New York Times best sellers list, and Hollywood began to show an interest. Ramsay has said of the project,

'...it was one of those situations where I was given the manuscript of a novel that wasn't finished. There was something interesting in it, I thought. It was set in America, which I felt was a big leap, but it wasn't attached to any studio deal - it had been passed by everybody for being too dark. But the bottom line was that the book came out and became a massive bestseller. And it was also such a well-loved book that I didn't want everyone talking about the difference between the book and the film.'

She left the production in 2004 and the film eventually went to Peter Jackson to direct (his adaptation will be out in UK cinemas at the end of this month).

We Need To Talk About KevinSince her departure from the production of The Lovely Bones, Ramsay has directed a music video for the single 'Black and White Town' by indie-rock band Doves. Her distinct style is as prevalent in this as it was in her features and shorts, as she again implements her ability to accurately capture the energy and frustrations of youth, a skill that will most probably be exercised in her latest project, an adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lionel Shriver has stated that she wants the filmmakers to 'look beyond the novel's thriller aspects'. If she wants a filmmaker that can look beyond the surface material and dig deep to expose the core meaning and emotion of the text, then Lynne Ramsay is the director to do it. Hopefully the film's release will see the Guardian-voted ‘world’s 12th best film director’ bounce back onto the big screen to the critical acclaim she is used to, and thoroughly deserves.

Amy Flinders

Thursday, January 21, 2010

An Education, Avatar and The Hurt Locker lead BAFTA nominations

Check out the nominees for the 2010 British Academy Film Awards...

The nominations for the Orange British Academy Film awards (BAFTAs) have been announced this morning with Lone Scherfig's An Education, James Cameron's Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker leading the pack and featuring in eight categories apiece. The trio are joined in the Best Film category by Precious (dir. Lee Daniels) and Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman), and you can view the full list of nominees below...

BAFTA
Best Film
An Education
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Precious
Up in the Air

Outstanding British Film
An Education
Fish Tank
In the Loop
Moon
Nowhere Boy

Best Director
James Cameron (Avatar)
Neill Blomkamp (District 9)
Lone Scherfig (An Education)
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)

Leading Actor
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
George Clooney (Up in the Air)
Colin Firth (A Single Man)
Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
Andy Serkis (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll)

Leading Actress
Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones)
Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)
Audrey Tautou (Coco Before Chanel)

Supporting Actor
Alec Baldwin (It's Complicated)
Christian McKay (Me and Orson Welles)
Alfred Molina (An Education)
Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Supporting Actress
Anne-Marie Duff (Nowhere Boy)
Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
Mo'Nique (Precious)
Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy)

Outstanding Debut
Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, David Pearson (directors/ producers – Mugabe And The White African)
Eran Creevy (writer/director – Shifty)
Stuart Hazeldine (writer/director – Exam)
Duncan Jones (director – Moon)
Sam Taylor-Wood (director – Nowhere Boy)

Orange Rising Star Award (public vote)
Jesse Eisenberg
Nicholas Hoult
Carey Mulligan
Tahar Rahim
Kristen Stewart

Original Screenplay
The Hangover (Jon Lucas, Scott Moore)
The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
A Serious Man (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)
Up (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter)

Adapted Screenplay
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell)
An Education (Nick Hornby)
In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche)
Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher)
Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner)

Film Not in the English Language
A Prophet
Broken Embraces
Coco Before Chanel
Let the Right One In
The White Ribbon

Animated Film
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
Up

Music
Avatar (James Horner)
Crazy Heart (T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton)
Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (Chaz Jankel)
Up (Michael Giacchino)

Cinematography
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The Road

Editing
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Up in the Air

Production Design
Avatar
District 9
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Inglourious Basterds

Sound
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Up

Special Visual Effects
Avatar
District 9
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek

Make Up & Hair
Coco Before Chanel
An Education
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria

Costume Design
Bright Star
Coco Before Chanel
An Education
A Single Man
The Young Victoria

Short Animation
The Gruffalo
The Happy Duckling
Mother of Many

Short Film
14
I Do Air
Jade
Mixtape
Off Season


The winners are announced on Sunday 21st February.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Rendering Reality: A Robert Zemeckis Profile (Part 3)

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of visionary director Robert Zemeckis in the third of a three part feature... read part one and part two.

Robert ZemeckisAdapting Winston Groom’s story of a simple-minded man who meets various historical figures from the twentieth century, while wandering in and out of the life of his childhood sweetheart, served as the basis for the ninth film by Robert Zemeckis. “The [script] writer, Eric Roth [The Insider], departed substantially from the book,” explained the director. “We flipped the two elements of the book, making the love story primary and the fantastic adventures secondary. Also, the book was cynical, and colder than the movie. In the movie, [Forrest] Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anyone except Jenny, his mother, and God.”

Aided by digital effects, the title character (Tom Hanks) is able to seamlessly blend into major world events as if he were there. One of the most memorable computer generated scenes is of the rapid-fire competitive ping pong matches Gump engages in against the internationally-renowned Chinese teams.

Robert Zemeckis had nothing but admiration for Robin Wright (The Princess Bride) who portrays the tragic love interest, Jenny Curran. “Robin exudes a kind of strength and, at the same time, a vulnerability. She doesn’t bring any of her stardom to the role. You don’t look at her onscreen and think that this is Robin Wright’s interpretation of the character. She’s a real chameleon.” Explaining her role as the matriarch, Sally Field (Norma Rae) remarked, “She’s a woman who loves her son unconditionally…A lot of her dialogue sounds like slogans, and that’s just what she intends.”

Forrest GumpA famous line in the movie has Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan) declaring, “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Neither did the film critics, until Forrest Gump was released in 1994. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “[Hanks’] performance is a breathtaking balancing act between comedy and sadness, a story rich in big laughs and quiet truths.” Others were far less complimentary. Entertainment Weekly movie reviewer Owen Gordinier believed that the film “reduces the tumult of the last few decades to a virtual-reality theme park; a baby-boomer version of Disney’s America.”

There was no doubt that the voting members for the Academy Awards sided with those who found the picture to be praiseworthy. Nominated for thirteen Oscars, Forrest Gump won for Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Reflecting on the momentous occasion, Robert Zemeckis declared, “I won an Academy Award when I was forty-four years old, but I paid for it with my twenties. That decade of my life from film school till thirty was nothing but work, nothing but absolute, driving work. I had no money. I had no life. I was just devouring movies and writing screenplays.”

Grossing $677 million worldwide, controversy erupted when novelist Winston Groom was denied his share of the profits; the explanation given to him by the producers was that the movie did not make any money. Interestingly, despite the monetary shortfall, both Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis earned $40 million for their involvement in the project.

ContactDelving into the scientific fiction world created by Carl Sagan, Robert Zemeckis adapted a book that was originally intended to be a movie but instead became the novel Contact (1997). Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) finds evidence of extra-terrestrial life and is chosen to be the individual responsible for making the first contact.

“I think too often, intellectual processes are portrayed as some kind of dry, scientific things that don’t have a connection to the soul,” remarked Jodie Foster (The Accused) about her role as a scientist. “And when you’re obsessed by something, when something fascinates you, it’s wondrous. And in fact, if anything, I think she’s a zealot, so it’s actually kind of a movie about a zealot; who learns to have tolerance for other people’s zeal.”

Incorporating Kip Thorne’s study of wormhole space travel, and inspired by Dr. Jill Tarter, the head of the Project Phoenix of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program based at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, Sagan, along with his wife Ann Druyan, constructed the outline for the tale in 1979. “Carl’s and my dream,” revealed Druyan, “was to write something that would be a fictional representation of what contact would actually be like, that would convey something of the true grandeur of the universe.”

Contact went nowhere at Warner Bros. until the book edition was published in 1985 and rejuvenated the movie studio’s interest. More development troubles followed, however, as British filmmaker Roland JoffĂ© (The Mission) left the picture in 1993 and two years later Australian director George Miller (Mad Max) was fired. Responsibility for making the big screen adaptation fell to Robert Zemeckis, who originally had rejected the offer in 1993. “The first script [for Contact] I saw was great until the last page,” recalled Zemeckis, who had chosen instead to do a biopic on escape artist Harry Houdini. “And then it had the sky open up and these angelic aliens putting on a light show and I said, ‘That’s just not going to work.’”

With the promise of artistic control as well as the right to choose the final cut of the film, Zemeckis changed his mind and subsequently hired the acting talents of Matthew McConaughey (A Time To Kill), James Woods (Ghosts of Mississippi), Tom Skerritt (The Turning Point), William Fichtner (Crash), John Hurt (The Elephant Man), Angela Bassett (Strange Days), and David Morse (The Crossing Guard).

Requiring the work of eight different visual effects companies including Weta Digital which was responsible for designing the wormhole sequence, Contact received a mixture of movie reviews, ranging from being favourablely compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] to the not so complimentary. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post found the movie to be “a preachy debate between sanctity and science.” Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Drama (Jodie Foster), the movie generated more controversy than box office receipts. The American White House was upset over U.S. President Bill Clinton being digitally inserted into the picture, George Miller and Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) filed breach of contract lawsuits, and CNN chairman, president and CEO Tom Johnson regretted the decision to allow thirteen of the news channel’s on-air staff, including Larry King and Bernard Shaw, to appear in the film which created “the impression that we’re manipulated by Time Warner.”

With the formation of Dark Castle Entertainment in 1999, Robert Zemeckis along with producers Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon) and Gilbert Adler (Valkyrie) embarked on the ambitious project of remaking the 1950s and 1960s horror films of William Castle (Thirteen Ghosts); the first picture released by the production company was House on Haunted Hill (1999), forty years after the original had graced the big screen. The cast for the film featured the acting talents of Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush (Shine), Famke Janssen (Turn the River), and Ali Larter (Final Destination).

Castaway“I got the Cast Away [2000] project from Tom Hanks,” stated Zemeckis. “About a year or so after we finished Forrest Gump, he sent me an early draft that he and Bill Broyles had been working on. It had some amazing possibilities, but it wasn’t completely fleshed out. And there was the challenge could you actually do a movie where you didn’t have dramatic plot devices, other than the obvious one that starts everything?” The filmmaker went on to add, “It was a great set-up but it never really became a whole movie. We kept tinkering with it for years, and I went and made Contact, and Tom had a couple of other movies. But we kept getting together every couple of months or so. Then Bill had a breakthrough idea. The early drafts always had him getting rescued off the island at some point, through a fortuitous event. But then the idea came that the character would be given a choice at some point, the choice to either die on the island or try getting off. Then I could see the movie.” However, not everything was settled for the director. “Then the big problem came up, and that was Tom’s big concern: ‘How do I do this movie physically?’”

To solve the legitimate concern of his leading man, Robert Zemeckis came up with an enterprising plan which involved the cooperation of both 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks. While Tom Hanks lost the required weight and grew a beard for his time spent stranded on the deserted island, the film’s production crew was used to make another picture.

Returning to shoot the island scenes a year later, the director had to deal with another matter - the lack of dialogue. Filling the void of an onscreen companion for Tom Hanks was an inanimate object that survived the Federal Express plane crash with him. “As far as the world’s most popular volleyballs are concerned, Wilsons aren’t the ones,” deadpanned Zemeckis. “But we didn’t want to call him Fila, though we could have earned a lot of money if we had.”

When it came to discussing the theme of the picture, the filmmaker responded, “We are alone in that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves. But one of the hopeful themes in Cast Away is that we’re not made to be alone. We don’t function well as human beings when we’re in isolation. When we were researching this, we looked at documentaries about P.O.W.’s. These poor guys all tend to find solace in art of some sort. They start to draw on walls. That thing that is inside every human, that need for creative expression, ultimately becomes the main tool of their survival.”

Earning $429 million worldwide, Cast Away resulted in Tom Hanks receiving nominations for Best Actor from the Oscars, BAFTAS, Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild. The MTV Movie Awards went a step further and honoured Hanks and his buddy “Wilson” with a nomination for Best Onscreen Team.

What Lies BeneathThe other picture shot while the production of Cast Away was temporarily shutdown was a supernatural thriller which saw Harrison Ford (Witness) give a rare performance as a murderous villain. “What Lies Beneath [2000] was all style,” declared Zemeckis. “Especially in the last act of that movie, where the camera is snaking in and out of windows, going underneath cars. I said to the effects guys, ‘If [Alfred] Hitchcock had the computer, what would he do? Let's try to do that.’ What’s fun about genre pictures, like What Lies Beneath, for a director is that they’re supposed to have that operatic thing going on, so you can shoot in mirrors, put the camera real low, see the ceiling in every shot.”

Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) becomes possessed by the spirit of a young woman killed by her renowned scientist husband Norman Spencer (Ford). “This woman starts out as a blind, fragile being who wasn’t always that way,” explained Pfeiffer (The Fabulous Baker Boys) as to her attraction to the role, “but came to be that way so she could exist in the environment that she created and continued to live in as a lie. Ultimately she is like the phoenix that rises from the ashes. She rises from the lake and in the end she’s braver, stronger and a more independent woman. I liked that character and hadn’t done the genre before, and I really wanted to work with Bob Zemeckis. I want to make good movies and he makes good movies, so in the end I thought it would be something I could be proud of, which I am.”

Unlike Cast Away, What Lies Beneath failed to receive any major award nominations, however, it went on to gross $291 million worldwide.

The Polar ExpressLeaving behind the adult subject matter for an acclaimed children’s tale about a young boy who rediscovers the spirit of Christmas on a magical train ride to the North Pole, Robert Zemeckis made The Polar Express (2004) his next project. “One of the conditions that author Chris Van Allsburg put on the sale of the rights to us was that he didn’t want it to be an animated cartoon,” revealed the director. “At the same time I didn’t think it should be done as a live-action movie because all the charm of the beautiful illustrations that were in the book would be lost and I think they are so much a part of the emotion of the story. I basically presented the dilemma to Ken Ralston at Sony Imageworks and asked how we [could] turn these Van Allsburg paintings into movie paintings. That’s when he came up with this process of doing it “virtual”, using motion capture.”

Following the advice of Ralston, a new love affair was born for the technically-minded filmmaker. “I think I was the most relaxed and the least compromising I’ve ever had to be on a movie because I could get the camera where I wanted it to be without being limited by the physical world.” Once again relying on the talents of Tom Hanks, Zemeckis had him play five different roles from the train conductor to Santa Claus. “The wonderful thing about working with actors, of course, is that they give you those wonderful moments you could never imagine – that’s what’s great about [performance capture]. But you’re not going to luck into a beautiful sunset – you’re going to paint one in.”

Hindering the technological achievement of the picture was the “dead eye syndrome” which gave the characters a soulless appearance; not helping the situation were the mixed movie reviews but neither of these two drawbacks diminished the enthusiasm of theatre audiences. Generating $305 million in worldwide box office receipts, The Polar Express was released in two versions with the IMAX 3-D format outpacing its traditional 2-D counterpart 14 to 1. Nominated for Best Sound, Best Sound Editing, and Best Original Song at the Academy Awards, the IMAX 3-D edition of the movie has become a Christmas tradition being re-released each year since 2006.

BeowulfBeowulf [2007] is a timeless, epic tale of heroism and triumph,” answered Robert Zemeckis when asked why he chose to adapt the ancient Old English poem, set in sixth century Denmark, for the big screen. “Digital rendering will allow us to depict this incredible story in ways we would never dare to imagine.”

Helping King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) of the Danes, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) slays the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover) and his mother (Angelina Jolie). Later when his own kingdom is terrorized by a dragon seeking to reclaim its pillaged treasure, Beowulf battles the creature with fatal consequences.

“I had to do a lot of training for the film,” remarked Winstone (Sexy Beast). “I had to watch my diet and press up – a lot of press-ups…People say it is very much like theatre, but I found it like the ultimate cinema without cuts. You were there and you played the scene out.” There was another aspect of the motion capture process that the actor enjoyed. “I loved the speed of it. There was no time to sit around. You actually cracked on with a scene and your energy levels were kept up.” Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day) on the other hand had a harder time adjusting to the technology which required him to wear seventy-eight body markers. “It was confusing at first because we had to do these weird gestures, stand up, pull faces, and all that. I wasn’t quite sure what the purpose was.”

Two sets of animators where used, one being responsible for the facial expressions and the other for the body movements. Other members of the cast included John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), Robin Wright, Alison Lohman (White Oleander), Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges), and Sebastian Roché (The Last of the Mohicans).

Although Justin Chang acknowledged in his Variety review that the “dead eye syndrome” of its predecessor had been fixed, the film critic went on to take issue with the director of the picture, “Zemeckis prioritizes spectacle over human engagement in his reliance on a medium that allows for enormous range and fluidity in its visual effects, yet reduces his characters to 3-D automatons.” Richard Corliss of Time Magazine had a different opinion; he believed that the “effects scenes look more real, more integrated into the visual fabric, because they meet the trace-over live-action elements halfway. It all suggests that this kind of moviemaking is more than a stunt. By imagining the past so vividly, Zemeckis and his team prove that character capture has a future.”

Ranked number one at the box offices in the United States and Canada during its opening weekend, Beowulf went on to gross $196 million worldwide.

Asked if he would ever return to live-action filmmaking, Robert Zemeckis replied, “I’m really committed to getting this art form off the ground but of course I would, and I’m never going to say never to anything, but right now I want to make sure that we get this out there so that younger filmmakers have these absolutely breathtaking tools that they can use.”

A Christmas CarolFor his third effort utilizing the motion capture technology, the director focused on adapting A Christmas Carol (2009), the literary classic by Charles Dickens. “I think that one of the things I found very interesting about the story, which I read when I was very young and I’ve seen most of the versions that have been made, was that the descriptive imagery that Mr. Dickens put into his writing was never truly realized in the way I think he might have imagined it. We’ve never had the tools do such a large rendition or landscape of it. Even the characters, I think, are very stylized in an interesting way – they’re a bit surreal in the way they’re described.” In explaining his depiction of the seminal creations that serve as the spiritual guides for the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Robert Zemeckis talked about one in particular, “What I did with the Ghost of Christmas Future [Yet to Come] was to keep him as a shadow. He’s actually a shadow cast by Scrooge. That’s the one spirit that doesn’t take Scrooge by the hand and fly him into different areas of his past or his present. Scrooge had to get himself to these different places, so I used the device of the phantom hearse to chase him through London.”

Treating the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come as “an extension of his [Scrooge’s] alter ego,” Zemeckis had a Canadian actor perform all four roles. “This is the true genius talent of Jim Carrey [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind],” marveled the moviemaker, “there was never a situation where he was immersed in just the one character. He was bouncing between these accents…three or four a day, and every ten or twenty minutes and he never faltered, ever. It was an amazing thing to see.” Featured alongside Carrey in the film are actors Robin Wright, Colin Firth (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Bob Hoskins, Cary Elwes (Kiss the Girls), and Gary Oldman (Prick Up Your Ears).

Addressing the overall look of the picture and his motive for making it, Robert Zemeckis stated, “I think that one of the great things that we can do in the digital cinema is represent the classics in a way that is more accessible to a modern audience. For example, I consider this to be a graphic novel version of Christmas Carol.”

As with the previous pictures by Robert Zemeckis, film critics remain divided. A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times, “[A Christmas Carol] remains among the most moving works of holiday literature and Mr. Zemeckis has remained true to its finest sentiments. He is an innovator, but his traditionalism is what makes the movie work.” Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter was far less enamored, “Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3-D technology. On that level, it’s a wow. On any emotional level, it’s as cold as Marley’s Ghost.” Thus far moviegoers have warmed to the tale to the tune of $256 million worldwide.

Not planning to give up on the motion capture technology anytime soon, Robert Zemeckis intends to remake the psychedelic, animated tale Yellow Submarine (1968) and to produce the long-rumoured sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit; if all goes well, both pictures are tentatively set to be released in 2012.

Acknowledging that not all of his films have found a receptive audience, a reflective Zemeckis remarked, “I can very honestly and clearly say that the same passion and love that I put into Forrest Gump is exactly the same as the passion that I put into the movies that weren’t successful.”

Read the screenplay for Forrest Gump, and be sure check out the trailer for A Christmas Carol.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.