Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Forthcoming Attractions - Paranormal Activity 2 gets a trailer

First time director Oren Peli struck gold with his self-financed horror Paranormal Activity when it hit cinemas last year, becoming one of the most profitable movies ever made with worldwide takings in excess of $190m from an initial budget of $15,000. Naturally distributors Paramount Pictures would look to capitalise on that success as soon as possible and sure enough a sequel was rushed into development, with Peli serving as producer and handing over directorial duties to Tod 'Kip' Williams after original director Kevin Greutert was recalled to the Saw franchise to helm the seventh installment.

Anyway with the sequel set for release this October the official website has just launched the first trailer, which is also expected to debut in cinemas with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse this coming weekend.

Paranormal Activity 2 trailer:


More movie trailers here.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Theatre of the Mind: A Christopher Nolan Profile (Part 1)

With his latest offering Inception hitting cinemas this July, Trevor Hogg profiles the career of British filmmaker Christopher Nolan in the first of a three part feature...

Christopher NolanWhile studying English Literature at University College London, British director Christopher Nolan discovered the two loves of his life – his long-time producing partner and wife Emma Thomas, and cinematic storytelling. “While I was making films with the college film society, I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well.”

Employing guerilla film techniques, the undergraduate student shot a series of 16mm films, one of which was a three-minute grainy black and white short called Doodlebug (1997). A man (Jeremy Theobald) tries to catch a bug running around his room. The tense action unfolds within the confines of a dark and tiny apartment; it concludes with a mind-bending twist. “I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today’s movies,” observed Nolan. “They believe everything they’re hearing and seeing; I like to shake that up.”

After his home had been broken into, Christopher Nolan wondered about what the thieves thought as they were looking through his belongings. The robbery served as the basis for his feature length debut Following (1998) which once again starred Jeremy Theobald. Struggling novelist Bill (Theobald) indulges in voyeuristic trips where he follows strangers; trouble arises when he is confronted by one of his stalking subjects, Cobb (Alex Haw), who in turn takes him on a series of burglaries.

Following Christopher NolanFollowing was always planned as an ultra-low budget film, so the substance of the film was both inspired by and planned around a shooting style which we developed to accommodate our limited resources,” remarked Nolan. The entire cast, crew, and equipment were squeezed into a single London taxi cab for the $6,000 production. “Even for a “no-budget” film our production methods were extreme. All of us were in full-time employment throughout the production, meaning we were only able to shoot on Saturdays. As a result, it took us a year to get all the filming done, a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to pay for all the stock and processing from my salary without getting into debt.”

“The script was written along the lines of what I see as the most interesting aspect of film noir and crime fiction; not baroque lighting setups and sinister villains, but simply that character is ultimately defined by action,” stated Christopher Nolan who had Jeremy Theobald also serve as a producer and acting-talent spotter. Theobald turned to his college drama society days to find performers Lucy Russell and Alex Haw. “We rehearsed two evenings a week for six months before shooting anything,” revealed Nolan. “The actors developed a familiarity with the material which meant that the finished film could be edited using almost exclusively first and second takes.” The aspiring director adjusted his filming approach with an eye to helping his cast. “By operating the camera myself and by using minimal lighting, I was able to place the actors within each location in a relatively natural and interference-free environment.”

“Locations were begged, borrowed, stolen…for the most part the film was shot in our own friends’ flats,” recalled Nolan. “The main location was my parents’ house, which worked perfectly – no only because the house is great, but also because the catering was excellent. The only hitch came when the house was burgled and ironically enough, some of the items which are stolen in one of our fictional burglaries, were stolen in real life. Thankfully, we had most of what we needed although some of the inserts I had planned were now impossible to shoot.”

Submitting the finished project to various international film festivals led to Following being nominated for Best Production at the British Independent Film Awards, and winning the Silver Hitchcock at the Dinard British Film Festival. Nolan was lauded with Best Director at the Newport International Film Festival, while the picture contended for the Jury Award for Best Film. The Rutterdam International Film Festival presented the movie with the Tiger Award, and the Slamdance Film Festival handed out the Black and White Award as well as a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize. Subsequently released in the United States, Following earned $48,482 in American box office receipts.

Memento poster“The structure of Memento is weirdly less self-conscious than it was with Following,” observed Christopher Nolan when discussing his sophomore effort released in 2000 about a man (Guy Pearce) suffering from short-term memory lost who attempts to avenge the murder of his wife (Jorja Fox). “In Following, the relationship between the subject matter and the narrative divides. It’s a bit harder for people to figure out, it’s a little more subtle. Memento is very clear to most people, even if they hate it. It’s like we try to put them in his head and that’s why the story is told backwards.” The director had a certain viewpoint in mind when positioning his camera. “What we tried to do with Memento was simply block the film from the character’s point of view as much as possible. He walks into a room and you’re looking over his shoulder, exploring the room as he does.”

“It’s been a weird organic process, because my brother told me the concept when he was writing the story,” explained Christopher Nolan, who frequently collaborates with his younger sibling Jonathan. “He told me it while we were driving from Chicago to L.A., across country.” The Nolans chose to explore the concept using two different mediums. “We had decided that in our own ways we were going to try and tell the story in the first person; me in film and him in a short story...I was going for something that lived in its own shape which was slightly built from the standard linear experience.” Two years later as Christopher Nolan completed the movie, Jonathan wrote the final draft of his short story titled Memento Mori. Though both versions maintain key elements such as the main character leaving notes to himself as well as having tattoos containing information about the murderer, they significantly diverge from one another in their conclusion. Unlike the film, there is no ambiguity in the short story as to whether the right perpetrator is killed.

Contemplating what makes him and his brother artistically different, Jonathan Nolan remarked, “I’ve always suspected that it has something to do with the fact that he’s left-handed and I’m right-handed, because he is somehow able to look at my ideas and flip them around in a way that’s just a bit more twisted and interesting. It’s great to be able to work with him that way.” When writing the screenplay for the picture which features Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano of The Matrix (1999) as well as Callum Keith Rennie (Hard Core Logo), Christopher Nolan found inspiration in literature. “Certain books had a big influence on me, particularly Graham Swift’s Waterland. It’s a really fantastic novel that I read years and years ago where he has this incredibly complex juggling of parallel timelines.”

Memento Christopher Nolan“The weird thing is you go through these tortuous creative machinations and then you look back at the original script and it’s pretty close to what’s on the screen,” confided the London-native who pointed out one particular difference. “There is probably more voice over in this film than there was in the script. I kept missing it when it wasn’t there for twenty minutes because you just needed to keep drawing people into his mind.” The first person perspective left audience members as perplexed as the main character. “I find it quite satisfying that people will come out of this film arguing about who are the good guys, and who the bad guy is. Not because there isn’t one but because we are using an unreliable narrator.”

Maintaining a hectic principle photography schedule which resulted in fifty-seven camera setups being done in a single day, there was no time for second guessing. “You have so many points along the way where the film stops being real and you just have to say, ‘This is what I’m making,’” reflected Christopher Nolan whose major creative challenge was assembling the footage for the $5 million production. “It was very tough in the editing to get down to the right length because you could not lose a scene, otherwise you lost your link [between them].” The director prides himself on being meticulous. “I feel like I’ve got three years to work on this and as a viewer you’ve got like two hours to watch it, so I ought to be functioning at some level of greater sophistication than you can absorb in one viewing.”

Premiering at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, Memento received a standing ovation. Unlike their international counterparts, U.S. distributors labeled the picture as being too confusing. Encouraged by a public campaign of support by American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), the movie’s production company Newmarket chose to distribute Memento itself. The risky decision paid off as the psychological thriller grossed $40 million worldwide; it also became a darling of the awards circuit. The British Independent Film Awards presented the movie with the trophy for Best Foreign Independent Film – English Language, and the American Film Institute handed the picture the award for Screenwriter of the Year along with nominations for Editor and Movie of the Year. At the Oscars, Memento contended for Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay, while the Golden Globes nominated the film for Best Screenplay; other nominations included one from the Director’s Guild of American and another from the American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Feature Film.

Having captured the attention of Hollywood, the next project for Christopher Nolan was to remake a 1997 Norwegian picture, with a trio of Oscar-winning actors.

Continue to part two, and be sure to cast your vote for your favourite Christopher Nolan film in our poll.

Read Jonathan Nolan's
Memento Mori, and for more on Christopher Nolan visit fan sites ChristopherNolan.net and Nolan Fans.

Related:

Short Film Showcase - Doodlebug (1997)
Movies... For Free! Following (1998)
Thoughts on... Inception (2010)

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

UK Box Office - weekend commencing 25/06/10

UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 25th - Sunday 27th June 2010.

The past couple of weekends have been nothing short of a disaster for the UK box office, which recorded its worst results in more than five years last time out. Well, it's managed to repeat that feat again this week as the top ten drops another 25% overall to paint a rather bleak picture, much like the England World Cup 'run' that has so badly damaged its takings.

Topping the chart with just over £1.5m is the Judd Apatow-produced comedy Get Him to the Greek featuring comedian Russell Brand, which benefits from Wednesday and Thursday previews of £495k meaning that it just manages to break seven figures for the three-day weekend. Nevertheless it knocks last week's number one (lowly-rated rom-com Killers) and two (Sex and the City 2) down one place apiece with Disney's live-action video game adaptation Prince of Persia holding firm in fourth for the third consecutive week.

Only one other newcomer manages to make an impact in the chart with horror flick The Collector debuting in 7th place with £109k. Meanwhile Shrek Forever After enjoyed a run of preview screenings, although those figures will be added to the 3D CG-animation's opening haul when it gets an official release this coming Friday. It did however impact heavily on StreetDance 3D, taking over the majority of available screens and knocking the Brit effort down into fifth with a decent six-week haul north of £11m.

Much like Prince of Persia ensemble comedy Death at a Funeral is unchanged for the third time as it holds onto sixth, while at the foot of the chart Letters to Juliet and Wild Target both fall three spots to eighth and tenth respectively. Finally sandwiched between them is Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, which limps beyond the £15m mark after seven weeks on screens.

Number one this time last year: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
















































































Pos.FilmWeekend GrossWeekTotal UK Gross
1Get Him to the Greek
£1,569,5561£1,569,556
2Killers£389,5092





















































£1,863,836
3Sex and the City 2£357,0665































































£20,353,171
4Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time£159,6845































































£8,356,964
5StreetDance 3D£159,2606











































































£11,280,062
6Death at a Funeral£118,6484£2,414,942
7The Collector
£109,5191

























































£109,519
8Letters to Juliet£104,1343















































































£1,770,149
9Robin Hood£89,4577









































































£15,104,421
10Wild Target£88,2872













































































£543,334


Incoming...

It's been a difficult time for cinemagoers (and cinemas) these past few weeks but now that the World Cup is over for 99.9% of the country Dreamworks Animation will be hoping to put an end to the slump with their latest adventure Shrek Forever After (cert. U). Making its 3D debut this coming Friday, the big green ogre is a surefire bet to open in the top spot when you factor in preview takings from this past weekend.

Meanwhile those looking for a live-action fix can opt for French rom-com Heartbreaker (cert. PG) or comedy drama Lymelife (cert. 15), along with documentaries Gay Sex in the 70s (cert. 18) and When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors (cert. 18).

Of course, a certain vampire romance is also likely to attract a fair few with preview screenings of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (cert. 12A) taking place this coming Saturday and Sunday.

U.K. Box Office Archive

Monday, June 28, 2010

Join the Inception briefcase hunt and win tickets to the world premiere

Inception posterWith just under three weeks to go before the release of Christopher Nolan's latest feature, the big-budget sci-fi thriller Inception, distributors Warner Bros. are running a competition to offer 14 lucky UK fans tickets to the world premiere in London along with return travel, accommodation and a chance to meet the cast.

All you have to do to be in with a shout of bagging the tickets is to 'like' the official Inception Facebook page (which you can find here), where - starting July 1st - they will be posting cryptic messages each day that hint at the location of 'The Extractor'. Decipher the code, track 'The Extractor' down and be the first person that day to state "my mind is the scene of the crime" and the prize is yours! The contest will take in seven UK cities (one per day, starting with Brighton on July 1st and taking in Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and London), and you can read the full terms and conditions here.

Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, a skilled thief and the absolute best in the art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state when the mind is at its most vulnerable. A coveted player in the treacherous world of corporate espionage, Dom is also an international fugitive who has lost everything he's ever loved. However, he is given a chance at redemption but only if he can accomplish the impossible... instead of stealing an idea he must plant one.

The film is released world-wide on July 16th and also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite and Lukas Haas. Watch the trailer here and be sure to head over to NolanFans.com for a host of behind-the-scenes featurettes and cast and crew interviews.

You can also vote on our poll for your favourite Christopher Nolan movie, while on Wednesday Trevor Hogg presents the first of a three-part feature covering the director's career to date.

Related:

Short Film Showcase - Doodlebug (1997)

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Short Film Showcase - Doodlebug (1997)

With Inception set to hit cinemas in July we're running a number of features on director Christopher Nolan, beginning with this 1997 short...

Doodlebug, 1997.

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Starring Jeremy Theobald.

The third of three short films made while studying at University College London, the three-minute Doodlebug stars Jeremy Theobald as a man attempting to squash a bug in his apartment but, in the process, could be hurting himself more than he realises. Shot in black and white on 16mm film stock, Doodlebug was produced by Nolan's future wife Emma Thomas, while Theobald would reunite with the director as both producer and star of his debut feature Following (1998) as well as a cameo appearance in Batman Begins (2005).


Embed courtesy of DailyMotion.

Be sure to vote on our poll for your favourite Christopher Nolan movie.

Related:

Theatre of the Mind: A Christopher Nolan Profile

Thoughts on... Inception (2010)

Click here to view more short films and public domain features.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

New international trailer for Predators

Sci-fi reboot gets a new trailer...

We're just a few short weeks away from the release of Predators, the sci-fi reboot courtesy of producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimród Antal (Vacancy), and a new trailer has made its way to the internet which you can check out right here:

Predators international trailer:


Predators stars Adrien Brody (The Pianist) as Royce, the leader of a group of mercenaries and elite warriors who find themselves transported to an alien planet as prey to a new breed of the 'ugly motherfuckers'. Joining the cast are Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Alice Braga (I Am Legend), Topher Grace (Spider-Man 3), Walton Goggins (The Shield), Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), MMA star Oleg Taktarov (Righteous Kill) and Rodriguez regular and Machete himself, Danny Trejo.

The film is released in UK cinemas on July 8th and hits North American screens the following day. Check out the official site and Facebook page.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Friday The 13th Retrospective - Part 2: From the Grave to Space

Luke Owen examines the classic horror franchise Friday the 13th in the second of a two-part feature... read part one here.

While the first half of the Friday series was a bit hit (parts 1, 2 & 4) and miss (parts 3 & 5), the latter half was more cut and dry in the miss department. The franchise was in a decline. With box office takings dropping and the interest in the series dwindling, Paramount was to take drastic measures to install some appeal back into the franchise. The first step? Bring back Jason.

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (McLoughlin, 1986)

After the disaster that was A New Beginning, the decision was made to bring Jason back into the series as its full time villain. Even though having Tommy become the new killer would have been an interesting plot development, it’s not what the fans wanted. They wanted Jason.

After the incident with the copycat killer of New Beginning, Tommy Jarvis is still being haunted by dreams of Jason and needs to know that he is really dead. So he and one of the other Pinehurst patients escape to go and visit the grave of the supposedly deceased Mr. Voorhees. Upon finding his grave, Tommy opens it up to find Jason is really dead as is evident by the decomposing body. In a fit of rage, Tommy stabs Jason in the chest which, with a stroke of unfortunate luck, gets struck by lightning and brings Jason back to life.

So, they’re not taking it too seriously then.

This isn’t a terrible film. Tom McLoughlin does a good job of adding some fun comedy into the film to break the monotony of the stalk and slash genre. The paintball scene in particular is quite funny if a little bizarre considering the film it’s placed in. The death sequences are well played out and the pacing of the film is very well done. The final climactic scene is excellent and does a great job of leaving it open ended for a sequel without resorting to the tried and tested “wake up from a dream” ending. Its continuation of the Tommy Jarvis arc works really well and, despite him being played by yet another actor, we can identify with him because we know what he’s been through the past couple of films. In fact, this could be one of the stronger entries to the series.

Speaking of furthering the story, there were rumours abound that this film would have introduced Elias Voorhees, Jason’s father. The biggest clue to this comes from Jason’s grave being plotted next to his mothers – hinting that someone paid for it to be there. McLoughlin even went so far as to have a treatment for the character, describing him as a silent yet intimidating character with red hair. In the novelisation of the film, Simon Hawke explored this by detailing out the purchasing of the plot of land and him witnessing his son's drowning at the end of the film. While this was never explored in the films (apart from a brief mention in Jason Goes To Hell), it has made for some interesting canonicity. My personal feelings behind this are ones of positivity. If you recall my issues I had with the convoluted back story surrounding Freddy Krueger in my Nightmare retrospective, this character introduction would have only bogged down the plots progression while at the same time serving no purpose. This is evident in Elias’ appearance in other forms of Friday cannon; most notably Jason vs. Leatherface and the Jason X spin off novel Death Moon. These incarnations of the character all conflict with one another and don’t help further any form of the overall Friday myth – and this was something that the film canon really didn’t need.

Paramount had answered the fans demands and had brought Jason back from the dead. So what was next for this now seemingly immortal zombie killer? A teenage girl with psychic powers.

Jason was about to meet his match.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988)

Part 2 of the drastic measures of installing some more interest in the series came in the slender form of Tina, a 17 year old girl who accidently killed her abusive father when she was 7 years old using her psychic powers. Traumatised by her actions, Tina’s mother helps her seek counselling with the seemingly innocent Dr. Crews. Part of her counselling sees her return to the house where he father died, which just so happens to be next to the lake were Jason has been laying dormant for the last 10 years. After one of Tina’s freak outs, she runs out to the lake and thinks she feels her father’s presence at the bottom of the lake. She uses her telekinetic powers to try and raise him out of the waters. She raises something alright, a very pissed off Jason Voorhees.

I love this entry and I’m never 100% sure why. The plot is wafer thin, the acting is pretty awful and the premise is just ridiculous. Jason fighting a teenager with telekinetic powers? Who came up with that idea?

Well, a lot of the writing for the film is shrouded in mystery. Original writer Daryl Haney, who came up with the “Jason vs. Carrie” concept, was fired after his agent told the producers that he wanted a bigger pay cheque (a comment that Haney claimed he never made) and the rest of the script was completed by a Manuel Fidello. The thing is that Manuel Fidello doesn’t exist. As far as I’m aware, the replacement writer of The New Blood still remains unknown to this day.

Even more interestingly behind the history of the film is that it was destined to be Freddy vs. Jason. Sean S. Cunningham had put the idea forward and talks were in place. The only problem was that Paramount and New Line Cinema (owners of the respective franchises) couldn’t come to an agreement on who would have the control over the film (something that would leave the film in development hell for years to come). It is from my understanding that the “Jason has met his match” was the initial idea when bringing Freddy across. When New Line pulled out, Freddy was replaced with Tina and dream invading was replaced with telekinesis. This could however be an unfounded statement seeing that a lot of the pre-production side of The New Blood remains unknown.

While writing this section of the review, I went back and re-watched The New Blood to see if I could hammer down what it was about this entry that I liked. And the conclusion that I have come to is that Jason looks great.

This may seems like quite an insignificant cog in an otherwise sub standard machine, but Jason’s look is so improved in this film from previous instalments in terms of believability that it raises the bar of the film on a dramatic and immersive level. The suit he wears in the 6th film is now dissolved and ruined from 10 years of slumber at the bottom of the lake, his face has become even more decomposed since he rose from his grave and his mask is discoloured from the lake and wrecked from Tommy’s knife attack of Final Chapter as well the propeller attack of Jason Lives. It’s these attentions to detail that really sell me on the film. It takes the franchise from just your bog standard hack and slash soirees into a series with continuity, thought and dedication.

The box office still wasn’t reacting to the film. They needed to take Jason in a new direction.

And boy were they taking him somewhere.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Hedden, 1989)

What a great premise. Taking Jason out of the environment we’d seen him in for the last 7 movies to somewhere that not only exists but is known the world over. They also had a great marketing campaign that had Jason tearing through a “I love New York” poster and a great tag line, “New York Has a New Problem” (something that the New York tourist department were not happy about). Paramount was almost guaranteed to have the people queuing around the corner, just as they had done nearly 10 years ago.

But they were wrong.

Jason Takes Manhattan is so boring. It’s nonsensical, badly acted, badly scripted, badly put together and just so ungodly boring. For a film to advertise Jason “taking” Manhattan, he is only there for about the final 20 minutes of the film and when he is there, it looks a lot like Vancouver. The rest of the film is set on an ugly looking boat with boring decor and ends up being the Crystal Lake woods without the trees.

The problem was that after Rob Hedden had finished his final draft of the script he was informed by Paramount that his budget was to be slashed (no pun intended) and he could no longer afford to film at all the New York locations he’d planned. Elaborate death sequences and set pieces were written to take place in Madison Square Garden, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building but they all had to be cut due to financial restraints. Instead the film had to be replaced with a boat trip to Manhattan for ¾ of the film and a stupid asinine back story between Jason and the leading lady Jensen.

The other problem is that the film doesn’t follow on from any form of continuity laid out by the previous instalments. Jason is now back in the water (despite being blown up in a house), his clothes have changed, his mask (bearing in mind that he picks up a new one) remarkably has the Tommy Jarvis knife attack but not the Jason Lives propeller damage, he doesn’t look as decomposed as he did in The New Blood and he’s been given a stupid convoluted back story to facilitate a boring sub plot of the film. Everything that they had right in The New Blood has been thrown out of the window and forgotten about and for me it really affects the film. And Rob Hedden can’t blame that on his budget cut.

The back story given here is that our leading heroine nearly drowned as a child whilst learning to swim because a young Jason (who was still in the lake) tried to grab her leg. She grew up traumatised by the water and has visions of this boy in the lake.

Completely ignoring the time frame inconsistencies, we know that Jason didn’t drown in Crystal Lake, because we’ve watched him as an adult for the last 6 movies. This is lazy, unjustified writing and no one bought into it. It hangs over the film like a bad fart in a filled church and really drags it down. This all leads to a completely nonsensical ending that really spoils what was already a pretty horrible picture.

The box office reception reflected the poor reaction the film received. Taking only $14 million made it the 2nd lowest earner in the franchise (the lowest was Jason X but that was down to its massive budget) and it is commonly agreed by fans as one of the worst entries in the series.

Paramount had had enough. The cinema takings had dwindled film by film and, despite them not costing that much and always making their money back, they didn’t think the franchise was worth keeping. By the end of 1989, the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise reverted back to the original producers of the first instalment who then sold it to New Line Cinema. Great news for series creator Sean S. Cunningham who wanted New Line to have the rights so he could make the Freddy vs. Jason film he planned in 1988.

With New Line now in control of both the Friday and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, Cunningham’s plans were looking to be coming into fruition, but Wes Craven had other ideas…

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993)

Sean S. Cunningham had dreamed of making Freddy vs. Jason since before Paramount made The New Blood. Now that New Line Cinema held the rights to the respective franchises, all they needed was a good script. And that’s where all the problems started.

In the time it took to develop a script, 4 years had passed and Wes Craven, who was disappointed by Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, announced he was going to make Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and finish of the franchise himself. With Freddy now being out of action in a different film, Freddy vs. Jason was once again shelved. With New Line having paid a lot of money of the franchise and not making a single penny back, Cunningham made the decision to make another Friday film. And this would be the final Friday.

With no explanation after the rubbish ending of Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason is once again back in Crystal Lake killing campers (there was a comic released that bridged the gap, but even that skipped over the crux of Manhattan’s terrible ending). Out of nowhere, an army task force show up and, quite literally, blow him up. With Jason now in bits, he is taken back for an autopsy. Whilst performing said autopsy, the doctor takes a bite out of Jason’s cold black heart and “transfers” the soul of Jason into this new body. This all leads to a convoluted mess where Jason is trying to make his way back to the Voorhees house to be “reborn” while trying to avoid a bounty hunter who has discovered that the only person who can kill Jason and send him to hell is his sister. I can almost hear the groans from the cinema audience.

As Albert Einstein once said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.” A lot of courage maybe, but there is nothing genius about this move at all.

This film is a mess. It’s all the over the place and so badly put together you have to wonder how this even made it past test audiences. Jason Takes Manhattan may be regarded was one of the worst entries in the series, but this is commonly agreed by many to be the worst of the lot.

The film was originally slated to called Friday the 13th Part IX: The Dark Heart of Jason Voorhees, which would have been a more appropriate title considering that none of this film is set in Hell and Jason has about 15 minutes of screen time. The rest of the time is spent with annoying and poorly written characters transferring the soul of Jason between each other. Keeping the titular character out of the film was a huge slap in the face of the audience who paid to see him.

The addition of Freddy’s daughter in Freddy’s Dead didn’t sit well with horror fans so it baffles me that Cunningham and his team thought it would be a great idea to add another member to the Voorhees clan. If you recall what I wrote many paragraphs ago regarding how the addition of Elias Voorhees would have needlessly convoluted things, well Jason Goes To Hell is all the evidence I need to back up my claim. Jessica is a horrible character with no charisma or charm and makes a mess of the entire back story to the franchise. She is so unnecessary and brings nothing to the table that her being there was just unneeded.

But the most annoying thing of all about this horribly turgid movie is that it’s only purpose of existence is to build up to Freddy vs. Jason. The final shot of the movie has Jason’s iconic hockey mask lying on the sand pit when Freddy’s trademark glove comes out of the ground and pulls it under. So Jason Goes To Hell was essentially an hour and a half trailer for a film that wouldn’t come out for another 10 years.

The Friday series had hit a brick wall and seemingly had come to an end. Sean S. Cunningham would spend the rest of the 90s trying to get Freddy vs. Jason off the ground but to no avail. As the new millennium drew in, it was time to bring Jason back on to our screens and be shown in a new light.

Jason X (Issac, 2001)

The 90s was quiet time for Jason Voorhees. Aside from the atrocious Jason Goes To Hell, he stayed away from our screens. The problem was that the audience who used to queue round the corner for the latest instalment no longer existed, they’d moved on. The slasher horror sub genre movement had come to a close.

That was until Wes Craven directed a screenplay entitled Scary Movie that would eventually grow up to be called Scream. It sparked a short lived and not well received slasher revival that would last up until the end of the decade.

During this time, Sean S. Cunningham was still working towards Freddy vs. Jason. A script had still yet to be agreed on, directors kept walking away from production and the whole process appeared to be stuck in that horrible limbo known as Development Hell. Cunningham was annoyed and frustrated. He turned to Todd Farmer and brought him on board to pen the 10th entry for the Friday series, a Friday the 13th for the new millennium so to speak. Jason was going on a one way trip to space.

In the year 2008, (it had to be set at this point as to not conflict with the Freddy vs. Jason timeline which coincided with the Friday timeline... not that they’d ever cared before) Jason has once again been captured and is now being held in Crystal Lake Research Facility where they plan to cryogenically freeze him. To the surprise of pretty much no one, Jason breaks free and starts to kill people. Remarkably enough he is actually frozen along with one of the doctors who was there to administer the procedure. They remain there until they are discovered by some students on a field trip in the year 2455. The students, unwisely, unfreeze both of their finds and Jason continues his murderous rampage.

This is the point the Friday series “jumped the shark”. Taking Jason into space was a last ditch attempt to install some energy back into this lifeless corpse – something they’d been trying to do for years. The thing that makes me laugh is that the Leprechaun series put its titular character into space as a joke, yet here is Sean S. Cunningham putting his creation into space as a way to bring some interest back into the franchise. So did it work?

Yes and no. The film polarises its fans, with some thinking it’s a bit of harmless Friday fun in space whereas the others think the film is a steaming pile of pants. Personally I’m in the former half with my left foot ever so slightly leaning into the latter.

The acting is bad and the dialogue is poor, as are its characters in all their stereotypical terribleness. But the death sequences are creative, the set pieces are well laid out and well presented and the overall feel of the film is a light and fun one – the kind of feeling I got when watching Jason Lives. This is by no means the worst of the series but it’s certainly not the best. But comparing it to Jason Goes To Hell, it’s an absolute masterpiece.

It’s becoming a fruitless argument to complain about the continuity of the hockey mask so I’m not going to bother because as with Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes To Hell, the continuity of the look of Jason was thrown by the wayside. But this didn’t really matter because, as the tag line promoted, evil was about to get an upgrade.

Keeping the Uber-Jason idea quiet was such a tall order that it couldn’t be done. Had this movie been made before the internet then it would have been a cool reveal, however we live in a digital age and it’s hard to keep things under wraps. In the movie, Jason is blown to pieces by the cyborg character Kay-Em but is put back together by the nanotechnology of the ship into a half zombie, half robot killing machine in a shiny hockey mask. It was a bold move that could have back fired drastically, but fans reacted so positively to it when the images were leaked that they based the entire advertising campaign around it. Jason had been reinvented for a new age – and he actually looked kind of cool.

As stated, I do like this movie. It may not be a masterpiece but it really isn’t the worst of the series and it only gets a bad rap for its ridiculous plot. But it’s a lot of fun and an interesting and bold addition to the franchise. The film is definitely worth watching if only for the “frozen head smashing” death or the “virtual 80s” scene.

Luckily, depending on whose view point you take, the producers never had to tackle the “where do we go from here” as this was the last entry in this series. It had come to an end.

So where does the series stand in cinema history? Well, the first film will be forever in the hall of fame but a lot of its sequels will be quickly forgotten about. With only a few exceptions, the series itself is pretty poor and quite shoddy at times. The acting is never good, the plots are laborious and painfully repetitive (aside from some stupid plot points) and a lot of the production looks very dated and clichéd. As a horror fan, it’s difficult to show these films to people who don’t appreciate the art as a way to argue the case of slasher horror.

But, just like Nightmare on Elm Street, the series isn’t about the acting and it isn’t about the characters and it’s never really about the plot. It’s about Jason Voorhees killing amorous teens in various creative ways. We’ve watched this character as a young child being tortured by the older kids only for him to come back to have his vengeance. We’ve seen him die only to be brought back to life as a immortal killing zombie. We’ve seen him drown only to be resurrected so he could journey to Manhattan, Hell and even the deepest regions of space. It was a hell of a roller coaster ride, and I loved every bit of it.

In fact, the series itself is a lot like its main character Jason. Sure he’s a little bit ugly and sure he’s a little bit on the slow side but there is something redeemable and quite likeable about him.

Thoughts, opinions, questions all can be sent to to boddicker_scripts@yahoo.co.uk or visit my website www.boddicker-scripts.moonfruit.com

Luke Owen

“You see, Jason was my son and today is his birthday” – Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th, 1980)

Related:

A Nightmare on Elm Street Retrospective

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Drawn to Anime: A Hayao Miyazaki Profile (Part 5)

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of Japanese animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki in the final instalment of a five part feature... read parts one, two, three and four.

Howls Moving Castle“Although I have thought about leaving the world of animation many times,” confessed renowned anime filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, “whenever I see a piece of work that I really like, I naturally want it to express it in my own ideas. When I hand it to the others, I always think about how this and that should be done. At last, I feel that it will be better if I take up the work myself.” With director Mamoru Hosoda departing from a planned adaptation of a book by Diana Wynne Jones about a flamboyant and wandering wizard, Miyazaki found himself shepparding Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl’s Moving Castle, 2004) to completion. “The reason that we made Howl's Moving Castle is that there are too many unhappy matters in the world, such as wars and economic crises,” stated the Tokyo-native. “We hope that, through the movie, people can keep up their courage and see the hope.”

Accompanying Howl in his journeys are Markl, a wizard in-training, and Sophie, a girl who has been transformed into an old woman by a witch’s curse. “Is someone different at age eighteen or sixty?,” asked Hayao Miyazaki. “I believe one stays the same. A ninety-year-old woman once said to me that she felt the same as when she was eighteen. So an eighteen-year-old young woman is struck by a spell and changes into an old lady. I didn't want a film where the key to happiness would be to break the spell and get youth back…Being young is not panacea. So what is? How can this heroin be happy? I wondered about this very seriously, and this film is the result of my thinking.”

“I didn't have time to show Howl's character in detail,” admitted Miyazaki. “My co-workers often said, ‘In the evening, when we go back home, after a long work day, our wives do not know what we have done, and they don't care much.’ I did this film with the same spirit. Sophie doesn't have to care about what Howl is trying to do. So I didn't show it.” Discussing his most glamourous onscreen creation, the animator remarked, “At the beginning, the character really look like shoujo-manga archetypes. I mean, those characters with big eyes and hair that flows like a somewhat mysterious curtain.”

Howls Moving CastleThe design of the pivotal movable home in which Howl lives was the result of a happy accident. “That drawing was originally not meant for the film,” revealed producer Toshio Suzuki. “It was intended to fill an empty space at the Studio Ghibli Museum. When Miyazaki asked me ‘What design should I use for the castle?’, I said, ‘How about that one?’ Miyazaki was happy, as there was now no need to find a new design. The problem became: what about its legs? The original book didn't give much detail. Miyazaki said that if it moves, it need legs. Firstly, he thought about samurai armour from the twelfth to forteenth centuries, or maybe European armour of that time. Eventually, they became the legs of a... chicken. The next question was: how many - six or four? I suggested four. Miyazaki agreed.” The initial idea was for the picture to be computer generated rather than hand-drawn. If a movie at one point is made by the highest tech, it will become outdated soon,” observed Suzuki. “We tried CG on Howl's. For example, the legs of the castle were made by CG. However, it didn't seem very natural to me and I told Miyazaki that his skill was better than that of a computer. He accepted that and quit using CG.”

“The twenty-first century is a complex and unforeseeable epoch,” philosphized Hayao Miyazaki. “Our thinking habits and our values, which until now looked settled, are being challenged. Even if this film is intended for the young public, and must be entertaining, I couldn't be satisfied reproducing films that have already been made, where you only have to fight off the bad guys. When I am doing a film I always wonder whether what I'm doing is interesting. I cut off all that is dull.” The anime artist added, “I can't believe companies distribute my movies in America. They're baffling in Japan! I'm well aware there are spots in Howl's Moving Castle where I'm going to lose some of the audience. Why do you land in a different place when you open the door? Well, it's magic. I don't provide unnecessary explanations. If you want that, you're not going to like my movies. That's just the way it is.”

Howls Moving CastleThere was no confusion at the worldwide box office as the movie grossed $235 million; it won the Osella Award at the 61st Venice International Film Festival as well as the Mainichi Film Concours’ Reader’s Choice Award for Best Film. The Academy Awards nominated Howl’s Moving Castle for Best Animated Picture; the movie also contended for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Writing at the Annies. Hayao Miyazaki travelled to Aadman Animations in Bristol, to screen the movie for the story’s author Diana Wynne Jones and the staff of the British animation company.

On March 31, 2005, Studio Ghibli gained its independence from Tokuma Shoten. Named the corporate director of Studio Ghibli Inc., Hayao Miyazaki was listed as one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.

Resorting to traditional forms of animation, the anime artist produced another series of ten to twenty-minute experimental short films for the Studio Ghibli Museum. “In Yadosagashi [Looking for a Home, 2006], the leading character, a girl, encounters a lot of bugs when she spends a night at an empty house,” said the animator. “The insects stop approaching her after she draws a line between herself and them. That kind of thing would never happen in real life. But children like to play with these kinds of rules that stop you from crossing some kind of boundary. I think it is important to hold on to that kind of sensitivity. It also is important to have the feeling that everything in the world has a life. That is why the girl observes civilities [toward bugs, trees and shrines].” Explaining the experimentation featured in the picture, Hayao Miyazaki stated, “The onomatopoeic sounds such as "zah" for pounding rain and "zawa-zawa" for a breeze in the forest were represented by the words themselves on the screen. All the sound effects and incidental "music" were performed vocally by [TV personality] Tamori and [pianist, singer and composer] Akiko Yano. We can't do this sort of thing in a typical film for the cinema.”

Also, included in the exclusive collection is Mizugumo monmon (Water Spider Monmon, 2006), a perilous pond tale about a water skater and water spider that fall in love; it utilized over thirty thousand animation cells. “To depict bubbles and the rippling of water takes a lot of cells, and the amount used is reflected in the cost,” declared Hayao Miyazaki. Asked about his attitude regarding awards, the anime artist replied, “Prizes do not mean anything to me. I think it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature, like a water spider that breathes through its backside.” In the same year another short film was produced called Hoshi o Katta Hi (The Day I Harvested a Star), a cinematic version of a story by Naohisa Inoue. Trading vegetables for a tiny blue rock, Nano finds himself looking after a planet which he eventually sets free. “Creators need to try hard to make their fake worlds seem as real as possible,” advised Miyazaki. “It’s not good enough to string together a bunch of clever ideas, for the effort required is fundamentally different. Lies must be layered upon lies to create a thoroughly believable fake world.”

Ponyo poster“I like underwater life. I don’t actually scuba-dive with a tank, but I’ve liked to swim in shallow areas with a snorkel from childhood to see what’s under the water,” stated Hayao Miyazaki who chose to set a classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale in the Japanese port town of Tomonoura. "The story is very simple, mixing an old tale and The Little Mermaid,” remarked Toshio Suzuk as to the origins of Gake no ueno Ponyo (Ponyo or Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, 2008). “A young female fish [Ponyo] is swimming and puts her head into a jar. She can't pull it off, is washed ashore and found by a five-year old boy [Sosuke]. The boy helps her and they quickly fall in love with each other.” Miyazaki is quick to point out that, “When I work on a new story, I think I’m writing a new story, but when I scrape things away to its core, I realize that there are fragments of these old folk tales or legends that form my stories. It’s not that I’m trying to resurrect an old legend, but naturally it’s there at the core. I think it shows that I’m in the flow of human civilization.”

“I started out thinking Ponyo was a tin frog with a little wind-up key on the back, and tried to build a story on that,” said the animator. “But once I had finalized the character I didn’t think I could make anything unique with that so I…decided to make her into a goldfish.” When depicting the fractured father and daughter relationship in the film, Mizayaki turned to his colleagues for inspiration. “Our staff who didn’t have children for a long time finally started having children. For example, [the character of] Fujimoto, Ponyo’s father in the film, is really [animation director] Katsuya Kondo. He’s also having difficulties dealing with his daughter. He is being treated like a mule or a pony. He’s very restless, just like Fujimoto in the way he acts. That’s the kind of atmosphere that brought about Ponyo.”

“In one of my favorite scenes, Ponyo arrives at Sosuke’s house as a girl while a storm rages,” enthused John Lasseter, the Chief Creative Officer for Disney and Pixar. “Sosuke’s mother makes noodles for her — which she discovers she loves. It’s so special, because Ponyo is a little girl but she’s a brand-new little girl and everything is brand new to her.” A significant challenge for the production was in the rendering of the water. “At first I was quite hesitant about portraying water as fish but I started working on the storyboards and showed it to my staff and they didn’t seem to mind,” remarked Hayao Miyazaki. “Actually they approved. So we decided to go with this. I think I was the most hesitant about drawing eyeballs on the waves and making them look like creatures.” Lasseter was impressed with his animation idol’s ingenuity for the project which required the use of 170,000 animation cells. “It reminded me of when I was on holiday at the beach with my boys. The waves were very different—coming up out of the water and smashing right on the boys. They were scared, so I started giving the waves personality—like they’re hiding from the kids and waiting for them to come close and then they’d reach up and get them. In Ponyo, Miyazaki actually made the ocean a character. The waves become creatures and the style of the water is actually very believable for the world that he created.” The anime artist revealed the trick he employed to achieve the splashing waves, “The secret was keeping the squiggly lines moving all the time.”

Ponyo Studio Ghibli“I didn’t set out trying to make an environmental-message film,” clarified Hayao Miyazaki. “The actual sea that children see is full of junk and maybe even dirtier than the sea that’s depicted in the movie. Maybe we made it a little too clean.” Miyazaki added, “The most important thing is, I think, that even within such an environment, children grow up, they learn to love and they enjoy living in that environment. I think what is most important is that parents and children see each other as being very valuable and very precious to each other, and if they can get that out of the movie that’s fine.” For John Lasseter, he has a great deal of admiration for the hand-drawn picture. “Ponyo transcends age groups, everybody enjoys this film. I’ve watched it with many audiences and people are truly entertained by it. There’s a depth and a beauty to the film; it really works for all ages.” Earning $201 million worldwide the movie won Best Animated Film and Best Film Score at the Japanese Academy Awards as well as the Ofuji Noboru Award at the Mainichi Film Concours. Outside of Japan, the picture contended for Best Animation Feature and Best Music at the Annies.

“No matter how delightful a scene is, if it only plays a tiny role in the overall story, you might find that you have to invest your energy in another, more important area,” stated the moviemaker. “And the overall balance of the film is usually determined not by a group of animators, but by someone who is in the position to see the work as a whole – the director. This need to see the big picture may explain the emergence of a division of labour between director and animator.” A sequel to Hayao Miyazaki’s Starting Point: 1979 to 1996 was published in 2008 titled Turning Point: 1997 to 2008.

Studio Ghibli, like its co-founder, is currently experiencing a turning point. “The greatest challenge we have right now is that my staff has aged along with me, and so we need to get some fresh blood into our studio,” remarked Miyazaki. “We want to use…younger directors because we’ll disappear if we keep relying on old people.” Among the new talent recruited was Gorô Miyazaki, the son of the legendary animator who directed the critically divisive cinematic adaptation of the fantasy novels by Ursula K. Le Guin called Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea, 2006). Another individual making his directorial debut for Studio Ghibli is Hiromasa Yonebayashi with Karigurashi no Arrietty (The Borrowers, 2010) based on the book by Mary Norton about a tiny group of people dwelling under a kitchen floor, who secretly borrow everything they need from the humans inhabiting an old house.

The Borrowers Studio Ghibli“About forty years ago this project was once considered by both Miyazaki and [Isao] Takahata, and Miyazaki suddenly recalled it and recommended me to read the book,” explained Toshio Suzuki on how he became familiar with the British-set tale authored by Norton. “He strong-armed me into accepting his idea…We often have this kind of trouble at Studio Ghibli. So why The Borrowers now? To that question Miya-san answered, ‘The situation of “karigurashi” [borrowing life] is very nice. It just fits into our present age.”

In the original project plan dated July 30, 2008, Hayao Miyazaki wrote, “They can’t use magic, nor are they fairies. Instead, they fight against mice, suffer termites, dodge pesticide spray attacks, escape cockroach traps and live cautiously in order not to be seen.” Describing the 10cm-tall family, the anime artist remarked, “The father has enough bravery and patience to go hunting for his family, the mother is responsible for keeping the house with creative thinking, and the daughter Arrietty is a curious girl with a rich sensibility.” Miyazaki added, “The story starts with the tiny people’s life. Arrietty meets a boy, makes a fellowship...Finally, they escape from the storm blown up by the callous humans, and go into the field. The wish for this film is to comfort and encourage people who live in this chaotic and anxious time.”

Also in the works is a new ten minute short film by Hayao Miyazaki which will feature no dialogue; recruiting the help of major Japanese advertising agency Denstu, Studio Ghibli is exploring such options as releasing the production on YouTube. “To my way of thinking, creating animation means creating a fictional world,” began Miyazaki. “That world soothes the spirit of those who are disheartened and exhausted from dealing with the sharp-edges of reality, or are suffering from a nearsighted distortion of their emotions. When the audience is watching animation, they are apt to feel either light and cheerful or purified and refreshed.”

To emotionally connect with audience members, Hayao Miyazaki believes a movie requires a couple of key elements. “What’s really important, I think, is to have fully fleshed-out characters, characters who are life-affirming and have clear hopes and goals, and then to make sure that the story develops as efficiently and simply as possible. If the scenario fulfills these requirements, then the animator’s job consists of applying the decoration. He or she must accurately grasp the meaning or intent of the particular scenes, and conceive some drama and action that makes sense of the way the characters in the story would think.” The other essential factor is the conclusion. “A film has to have an ending. There are those who claim that a film can be anything the director wants, or a film should be like this or that. But if you show a paying audience something that seems to say, ‘The rest is up to you to think about,’ you’re liable to hear people cry, ‘I’ve paid my money to have you think about it. So you come up with the answer.’ If I were in the audience, I know I’d make the same demand.”

As much as Hayao Miyazaki likes to develop unconventional stories, he maintains a pragmatic philosophy. “We are in the entertainment business, so our projects should be entertainment projects. I have quite a few scripts and ideas that wouldn’t be that entertaining, that are more serious, but if I insist on making those, then Studio Ghibli would sink.” Contemplating future projects, he would like to produce, Miyazaki remarked, “If I were told I could make a film on any theme I liked, I would like to do the legendary story of the people who escaped the fire during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. Those people took refuge on the Sumidagawa River aboard small boats tied up in the Fukagawa area of Tokyo. It is said that the people worked together to cool down the wooden boats, which were crackling in the intense heat, by showering them with water. I would love to re-create those scenes in an animation.” Miyazaki went on to say, “There's one unreleased screenplay I've already completed. It's the story of transportation at the end of Meiji era [1868-1912] on the Shinkashigawa River. I've had our staff animators visit local museums and read books to research the techniques of boatmen of the time...I’ve wanted to make a movie with that scenario so reference libraries could use it as educational material. But it's too long--30 minutes long--so I had to give up on the idea. I'm still ready to produce it if there's someone willing to fund the rest of the project.”

Hayao Miyazaki is proud of his chosen profession. “Being allowed to make films for young children is a wonderful gift that other generations haven’t been able to experience. This is priceless to me. I doubt that I would have wanted to make films for little children if I hadn’t become a parent. Most of all we want to make films to satisfy ourselves.” After forty-seven years, life as a moviemaker remains a constant creative challenge for Miyazaki. “It takes great effort to create significant work, given the current flood of animation. It is like pouring clear water drop by drop into muddy flood waters. I can’t help but feel lonely that, just because it is such an effort, some decide to settle for sending out mediocre work to be pushed along with the rest of the deluge. Having chosen animation as my occupation, I think it would be better if I risked my life for it – though that is an exaggeration – and continued to look for solutions.”

Starting Point 1979 to 1996 - a collection of essays and sketches by Hayao Miyazaki.

Ghibli Museum - Official Website

For more, visit Studio Ghibli fansites Online Ghibli, StudioGhibli.net and GhibliWorld.com, along with the GhibliWiki.

Movies... For Free! Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

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

Thoughts on... The Collector (2009)

The Collector, 2009.

Directed by Marcus Dunstan.
Starring Josh Stewart, Michael Reilly Burke, Andrea Roth, Karley Scott Collins and Juan Fernández.

The Collector poster
SYNOPSIS:

An ex-con aims to repay a debt to his ex-wife by robbing his new employer's country home only to discover a second criminal known as "The Collector" has imprisoned the family and rigged the property with a series of deadly traps...


Saw meets Home Alone.

Back in 2004, I went to go and see a low budget psychological horror called Saw, a film that had me on the edge of my seat and gripped me all the way up to its fantastic climax. Little did I know as I walked out of that cinema that I would spend the next 6 years of my life watching that idea degenerate into turgid soft core snuff torture porn. As the series went on, it faced competition from Eli Roth’s Hostel and felt that it needed to “one up it” to keep in the game. The pair of them have made a load of terrible films that are devoid of plot and substance and are just flat out soulless gore fests. So when I discovered that I would be going to see The Collector, a film by the writers of the last 3 Saw films (and the upcoming 7th instalment), I had very low expectations.

Imagine my surprise when I left that cinema having quite enjoyed the film.

The film focuses itself on the oddly named Arkin (Josh Stewart) who, in order to help his wife from loan sharks, decides to rob the house of a jewel merchant played by Michael Reilly Burke who should be on holiday with his family. Unfortunately for Arkin, and the family, someone else got there first. A masked maniac who goes by the moniker of “The Collector”. Arkin discovers that the family didn’t go on holiday – they are chained up and are being tortured in the basement. Their youngest daughter is lost in the house, the eldest daughter isn’t aware of what’s going on and the house is filled with elaborate traps intended for killing. Arkin now faces a race against time to not only save the family from this masked man’s evil clutches, but also to steal from the family so he can save his own.

This film is more than just torture porn. It has an intriguing premise, some wonderfully amoral characters and some phenomenally orchestrated set pieces. The acting is a lot better than can be expected of this sort of film and Marcus Dunstan, for a first time director, does a great job of keeping the tension ramped up and in a high gear – something that is missing from most modern day horror films. But disappointingly, the film is not without its flaws.

The film has plot holes the size of a life sized photo of the moon that has been enlarged. The biggest of which unfortunately falls in the shape of The Collector’s booby traps. Cool though they may be, it’s rather unbelievable and inconceivable that he could set the traps up within the few hours in between Arkin leaving the house and returning. The Collector’s character motivations are left very ambiguous and no reasons are given behind his attack. This can sometimes work in a film's favour, but here it just feels a weak and unconvincing. There is also a gapping plot hole as to why the family didn’t go on holiday and why the daughter went out – but I don’t have enough time to go into every inconsistency. It’s a bit buggy in places and kind of detracts away from the otherwise great moments.

The other major problem I had with the film came in the last 20-25 minutes of the film. After an hour or so of great tension filled gory horror fun, the film nose dived into nothing more than a poor man’s Hostel. Gone was the tension, gone was the cleverly implemented horror set pieces, all that remained was a flat, limp and rushed mess. Just after I sang its praises for being more than just a torture porn film, it took the giant leap into the territory I hoped it wouldn’t.

Here’s my issues with these types of films. With each film having to go one step further than its predecessor, there’s going to come to a point where you’ll hit a brick wall. The easiest way to describe this is to compare it to the hardcore matches in professional wrestling. One day many years ago, two wrestlers did a match where one of the guys hits the other guy with a chair. But when the audience saw chair shots over and over again it lost its impact. So they slammed each other through tables. When that died down, you slam them into thumbtacks. When that runs out of steam, you set them on fire or slam them on broken glass or cut them with barbed wire. But when the crowd stop reacting to that, where do you go next?

The torture porn horror sub genre is suffering from the same problem. There were parts of The Collector that got no reaction from the audience, myself in particular, because we’d either seen it all before or it wasn’t as hardcore as something from the previous Saw films. There was a scene in the film in which The Collector sews a woman’s mouth shut which didn’t even raise a murmur from the film viewers. Don’t get me wrong, the film does have some innovative gruesome deaths that will test the stomachs of even the most hardened horror veteran, but you know that the next film is going to have to raise the bar to get those reactions again. But what if they can’t?

The Collector is ¾ of a great film with a disappointing flat ending. It will make back the money that was spent on it and it will probably spawn off a load of sequels which will probably make their money back too. But I do have my reservations about the longevity of this niche market.

Watch the trailer here.

Comments and suggestions to boddicker_scripts@yahoo.co.uk or visit my website www.boddicker-scripts.moonfruit.com

Luke Owen

Movie Review Archive

UK Box Office Top Ten - weekend commencing 18/06/10

UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 18th - Sunday 20th June 2010.

It was hard to imagine things getting worse after last week's disastrous performance but that's exactly what's happened as the UK box office tumbles to its worst weekend in over five years (December 2004 to be exact), with hot weather, World Cup football (hey, we had that in 2006) and a lack of decent releases all combining to strike a major blow for UK cinemas.

Top of the pile this week is the newly released (and critically mauled) romantic action comedy Killers, which limps to number one with just over £1m in receipts and pushes reigning champion Sex and the City 2 down into second place in its fourth week (although SATC2 is the highest grossing film in the chart with almost £20m, it now looks very unlikely to exceed the original's haul of £26.5m).

Only one other new release managed to crack the top ten with Brit comedy Wild Target debuting in seventh with £282,498, while fellow debutants Our Family Wedding and MacGruber failed to make an impact registering just £96k and £33k respectively.

Elsewhere in the chart StreetDance 3D (third) and Prince of Persia (fourth) continue to perform well (or as well as can be expected, given the current climate) and hold onto their positions from last week, a feat matched by Death at a Funeral in sixth. Less fortunate are Tooth Fairy and Robin Hood, both of which fall one place to claim eighth and ninth, while Letters to Juliet falls three to fifth and Brooklyn's Finest suffers the biggest drop of the week, plummeting five spots to prop up the chart in tenth.

Number one this time last year: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
















































































Pos.FilmWeekend GrossWeekTotal UK Gross
1Killers
£1,053,0741£1,053,074
2Sex and the City 2£710,2384





















































£19,376,325
3StreetDance 3D£463,8415































































£10,960,576
4Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time£389,7155































































£8,035,706
5Letters to Juliet£304,3192











































































£1,463,111
6Death at a Funeral£287,0733£2,128,373
7Wild Target
£282,4981

























































£282,498
8Tooth Fairy£249,5784















































































£3,375,473
9Robin Hood£240,8426









































































£14,886,310
10Brooklyn's Finest£203,2042













































































£935,868


Incoming...

This week's big release is the Judd Apatow-produced comedy Get Him to the Greek (cert.15) starring Brit comedian Russell Brand and Apatow regular Jonah Hill, which should look to claim the number one spot after a barren couple of weeks and hopefully reignite the UK box office.

Distributors seem to be moving forward with the new releases despite the World Cup (but likely sensing England's impending exit) with Friday also seeing a host of new releases including rom-coms When in Rome (cert. PG) and Whatever Works (cert. 12A), horror The Collector (cert. 18), Francis Ford Coppola mystery Tetro (cert. 15) and comedy documentary Good Hair (cert. 12A) featuring Chris Rock.

U.K. Box Office Archive