BIGLENS THE KENT FILM MAGAZINE | VOLUME 7, ISSUE 4 | SUMMER 2011
INDIE 2.0 NIC CAGE THE HOBBIT TOMMY WISEAU AND MUCH MUCH MORE
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EDITORIAL
COVER: CLERKS II | THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
OUT WITH THE OLD...
I’ve been a writer for this fine magazine for four years now, and editor for three. In these heady years I’ve overseen countless (if only because I can’t be bothered to count them) articles from budding young writers, and I feel as if I’ve learnt about as much from reading them as I did from my BA in Film. It is a slightly heavy heart with which I am finally handing over the reins of BIGLENS, but the times are a-changin’, both literally and figuratively. Am I worried about placing my child (figuratively but not literally) in the hands of these fine new editors? Yes and no. Yes, because what happens if they turn out to be much better than me? With a wider knowledge of all things film and an eagle eye for spotting spelling mistakes. But I’m not really worried: I know that all of you - that’s right, you, the person reading this - have gravitated here because of a huge passion for film, and all the new editorial team are the same. The great thing about film is that it can cater for all tastes - the new, the old, the murky bits in the 70s and 80s. So whatever your passion, be it Arnie, indie, trash, or the almighty Nicolas Cage, you’re sure to find a home amongst the loving pages of BIGLENS. So snuggle up, get involved, and get your film on. Tom Brown
SMALLPRINT Editor: Tom Brown Editor: Chris Fennell Art Editor: Hannah Charles
If you have a passion for film and would like to contribute to BIGLENS, please email tb283@kent.ac.uk or cf202@kent.ac.uk or visit www.kentfilm.net. BIGLENS is produced with the support of Kent Film, a society of the University of Kent Students Union. | All information is provided in good faith. | Articles are not necessarily the opinions of the editors of BIGLENS, of the Kent Film Society or of Kent Union. | Everything that is already copyrighted, is theirs. | Everything not, is the intellectual property of the individual writer, so no thieving.
VAMPIRE’S KISS | MAGALLEN PICTURES
Check out the Kent Film society hub at www.kentfilm.net for society news, BIGLENS movie reviews and all that good stuff.
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IAN CLAYDON KEVIN SMITH AND INDIE 2.0
THIS YEAR’S Sundance Film Festival, America’s biggest independent film festival, hosted a big, unwitting fuck you to the film industry. This middle finger salute came courtesy of Kevin Smith, most known for his wonderfully crude and majestically brazen dialogue in films such as Zach and Miri Make a Porno and Chasing Amy. Alas the majority of you reading this probably know the actors he introduced in his films more than the director himself: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Lee. Kevin Smith burst onto the scene in the early nineties with his first film Clerks, financed by maxing out credit cards, borrowing money from friends and relatives, and selling his comic book collection. It was made with friends he met at a brief four month stint at film school, dropping out so he could use his money for Clerks instead. After getting into Sundance in 1994, Clerks was picked up by Miramax, quickly becoming a cult hit and part of Miramax’s revolution of independent films getting widespread acclaim, inspired by the success of Slacker and Sex, Lies and Videotape a few years earlier. Returning to Sundance this year, Smith gathered representatives from many distribution companies in what was to be an unprecedented event, where the distribution rights to Smith’s latest film, Red State, would be auctioned off. But seconds after the bidding opened Smith bid and bought the rights himself and launched into an attack on the broken culture of filmmaking, calling the very people sat in the audience “lying whores”. He pointed the finger at the broken studio system, going to lengths to describe the complete insanity that marketing his film 4
“SMITH GAVE THE INDUSTRY A MIDDLE FINGER SALUTE.”
Although the culture of big budget Hollywood movies is never going to die, the foundation beneath it is beginning to crumble: ticket sales are down dramatically, the economy is bust and illegal downloading isn’t going away. The inherently risky business of having the majority of your films lose money in the hope of hitting gold is not financially viable anymore. With the studios going the way of almost exclusively making only sequels and remakes this year, thinking that name recognition is the only reason people go see movies and neglecting their smaller budget counterparts, Smith is trying to show that low budget films are still a viable endeavour, and he is trying to revolutionise the movie industry. We are at a time of change, but the studios are burying their heads in the sand, ignorantly thinking that they are immune to illegal file sharing and that what’s happened to the music industry can’t happen to them. But it can and it will. So despite the dismissal of Smith and the attacks on him after this stunt, everyone will be watching the opening of Red State with bated breath.
CLERKS II | THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
would cause. Marketing is a surprisingly little talked about subject despite its huge impact on the opening of a movie, with films like Tron Legacy and other big budget Hollywood productions reportedly having over a hundred million dollars spent on marketing, all in the hopes of making you go see their movie, not because you want to, but because ‘everyone’ is talking about it. And by everyone you actually mean your friends from inside the television, who are paid to talk about it. Take a film like Red State: a budget of four million dollars, it would have had the distributing rights bought for around five million, and then marketing of about twenty million (it is, after all, a small film) and suddenly the film costs twenty nine million dollars. This is then doubled when you take into account cinemas taking around half the revenue from ticket sales. So now this film that Kevin Smith spent years trying to raise enough money to independently finance, and made for only four million, something pretty small in the modern industry, has to make over forty million just to break even. He pointed out that it ‘takes no talent’ to market a movie, it’s easier to make money off of a bad film with Johnny Depp in, than a good film without Johnny Depp. In Smith’s own words: a process of “horseshit soulkilling uncreative backward-ass bullshit business.” He explained how he would tour the movie himself, taking it city to city showing it in a different venue every night followed by a Q&A session afterwards, until there would be a break before the film opens in October. He isn’t spending any money on marketing, using only social media networking to garner attention, because “true independence isn’t making a film and then selling it to some jackass, true independence is getting it to the people yourself.” He took things further, claiming that if this proves successful, he will stop making movies and use this new model to get other independent films out: “indie film isn’t dead, it just grew up. It’s Indie Film 2.0 and in indie film 2.0 we don’t let them sell our movie, we sell our movie ourselves.”
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CARYS RAMSEY THE HOBBIT COMETH
“IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE LIVED A HOBBIT...”
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IN A HOLE in the ground there lived a hobbit... but that was a long time ago and now he’s moving (because of a mole infestation) onto the big screen! With a number of setbacks I can now safely say that filming on Peter Jackson’s prequel to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, has begun. Yay! I won’t launch into a full blown election sized speech telling you why Lord of the Rings is one of the best things to happen to cinema because this is only a short article, and let’s be honest you know it’s true anyway. The filming started in late March after a number of delays including union strikes and Peter Jackson going to hospital. Many fans will know that The Hobbit has been in the pipe line for years, possibly even before LOTR was made, and so discussions about who would be cast as the iconic characters has been thick and fast. Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett and Ian Holm will all be reprising their reduced roles in the two part prequel, with Ian Holm playing the older counterpart to Martin Freeman’s young Bilbo Baggins. Flight of the Conchords fans will also be pleased to see
THE LORD OF THE RINGS | NEW LINE CINEMA
the return of Bret McKenzie’s elfish charm. McKenzie was in two of the LOTR movies as an extra and was quickly dubbed Figwit, which stands for ‘Frodo is great, who is that?’, but this time around he will actually be credited as Lindir, which means ‘singer’ giving a nod to his popular side project. It makes you wonder how many New Zealanders there actually are... Andy Serkis will also be returning as Gollum, and as the second seat director to help Jackson after the loss of Guillermo Del Toro, who sadly left the project after numerous delays. Some of the new names jotted on the credits are Aidan Turner (known for Being Human and Desperate Romantics), James Nesbitt (known for Cold Feet and his sexy Irish accent), Richard Armitage (Spooks and Robin Hood) and Lee Pace who played Ned in Pushing Daisies and has set himself the difficult task of playing Orlando Bloom’s father, the elven king Thranduil. Of course I have been saving the best for last: the seventh Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy will be playing the part of Radagast the Brown, who is of the same order of wizards as Gandalf.
Not only that, but Stephen Fry (the God of tea and intelligence) will be playing the master of Laketown. It has also been rumoured that Leonard Nimoy will be playing the voice of Smaug, which as long as they don’t pronounce the name Smaug wrong, will make me the happiest girl in the world. Whomever they cast they will be using the same design companies as they used for LOTR, primarily Weta workshop, and Weta Digital, which was founded by Jackson and others and has been raised to become an incredibly advanced design resource. They are also reusing composer Howard Shore who won three Oscars for his work on the LOTR trilogy. However, they are changing some things: The Hobbit will be shot with 3D cameras meaning Middle Earth will be even more engaging. Jackson has also chosen to film in 48 frames per second, which sounds fairly inconsequential to any non-film student, but this is double the amount of frames for regular filming meaning an overall smoother image but greater costs. This is something Jackson is very passionate about and urges other directors to follow him and develop cinema in turn. I know this article has been a little fact heavy so I will leave off now and let you build your own excitement until December 2012 – see you in the cinema.
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SAINT NIC TOM BROWN NICOLAS CAGE is not the finest actor of his generation. I know, sit down. Breathe in. You may not want to believe it, but there are many better actors out there. I have, quite frankly, no idea how he’s won an Oscar. But awards or not, I have a lot of respect for the man, if only for the sheer quantity of films he’s willing to star in. I have a theory that he either can’t read and thus picks his films depending on which font he likes, or that he actually writes pretty much every film he’s been in. I hope it’s the latter. Also, Nic Cage is absolutely bloody bananas. We’re talking radioactive levels of crazy. Just look at his face. Take a real moment and look at it. Mental. He’s a strange cross between a waxwork and a strung out homeless man offering illicit sex acts on the street corner, and as such has really managed to nail that particular niche of the Hollywood market. As he gets older, his hair increasingly continues to defy logic. I secretly hope that when he’s alone he talks to it and then answers back in
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a soft, feminine voice. The reason he’s in my head (and on this page) is because last night I gathered the usual crew and (taking a break from Arnie) we decided to watch Gone In 60 Seconds. It’s not a brilliant film, but it’s not without its moments. Vinnie Jones provides expected comic mistiming and the traditional Bruckheimer racial stereotypes are fun to spot. Even though Nic’s character is amazingly called Memphis Raines, there seemed to be something lacking in the film... There was something not quite right. Then it hit me: Nic Cage was trying to be restrained. When I realised that, the film became infinitely dull. Only in the last ten minutes or so did he finally start to lose it, and that insane grin and those CRAZY eyes burst out of the screen. There was a spontaneous cheer from everyone in the room: it was what we all wanted to see. He’s one of those few actors who you watch a film for, not to witness a moving and beautiful performance, but literally just to see him flip out and lose his shit. This is best illustrated by the classic youtube clip, “Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit”: four minutes of mental breakdowns spanning multiple films
“THERE IS NO EXPLANATION. IT NEEDS NO EXPLANATION. IT’S NIC CAGE GOING MENTAL.” ing his films. I’m even tempted to watch his universally deplored remake of The Wicker Man, just because I’ve seen a clip of him doing what Nic Cage does best, losing his shit and screaming: “Killing me won’t bring back your Goddamn honey!” I can’t imagine any other actor delivering this line in a more pleasing way. And thus ends this article, with my one target of the year finally achieved: get a massive picture of Nic Cage’s face in BIGLENS.
MATCHSTICK MEN | WARNER BROS
in a bizarre career. Face/Off is a personal favourite of mine, in terms of sheer asylum levels of nutter. There’s a scene where he stares at himself in a mirror and manages to contort his face into a position that no human face has ever managed before. He then holds this demonic grin for a good few seconds. There is no explanation. It needs no explanation. It’s Nic Cage going mental. Even the thought of it has made me laugh and seek out the picture on Google. This paragraph here exists for no other reason except to pay tribute to his performance in Con Air, his astonishing hair and my personal favourite quote: “Put the bunny back in the box.” It makes you wonder what makes a man so attracted to these particular types of role. Is there something so damaged about Nic Cage that he feels is necessary to portray characters who so frequently lose it? Should we really be quite worried for him, maybe politely and kindly suggest that he should go and see a doctor? No. I hope he gets even weirder. Unless he’s treading that thin line between insanity and, well, insanity, I have no interest in see-
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HOW NOT TO MAKE A MOVIE: OH HAI BIGLENS reader! The Room is written and directed by Tommy Wiseau. Starting Tommy Wiseau. Produced by…Tommy Wiseau…and…distributed by WiseauFilms. Hmm. Now some all round geniuses might be able to handle writing, directing, producing AND acting, Clint Eastwood, for example (although even he doesn’t risk writing on top of his other roles). But Tommy Wiseau is no Eastwood. Tommy Wiseau is not even so much as a Michael Bay. I have, however, spent over a year dying to see his 2003 debut, The Room. Why? Because I want to see for myself if it is as gloriously, beautifully awful as I have been lead to believe. Evidence so far makes me hopeful that I will not be disappointed. The Room is the story of a tangled love triangle between Johnny (Wiseau), his fiancé Lisa, and his best friend Mark, whom Lisa seduces. Subplots include Lisa’s mum flippantly announcing: ‘I definitely have breast cancer,’ which is then never referred to again. Also of note is the emergence of Denny’s under-explained drug problem, not
THE ROOM HANNAH CHARLES to mention sudden characters randomly turning up with no explanation. Exhibit A: the Psychologist, Phil. Hi, Phil. Bye, Phil. The screenplay is awful, the dialogue unnatural, the acting is atrocious, the sex scenes awkward, and the frequent dubbing doesn’t match the actions on screen. Examples of some of the more splendid scenes are on youtube - the infamous Flower Shop Scene, in particular, is a must see. However, as is wont to happen with the truly terrible, The Room has become a huge cult hit. It has inspired songs, drinking games, and is widely quoted. I have many friends obsessed with it. And a few who would also rather erase it from their memories Eternal Sunshine style. This level of Bad is not everyone’s cup of tea. Since its release, Wiseau has claimed that it is intentionally humorous. Some cast members, however, disagree. There are also some differing tales between Wiseau and his cast regarding the casting process and some on set activities during production. Production mysteries aside, whether this is a work of comic genius, or a deranged accident by a self obsessed idiot, I can’t wait to finally feast my eyes on this classic work of crap, and witness firsthand the epic wail of: ‘YOU ARE TEARING ME APAAART LISA!’ THE ROOM | WISEAU FILMS
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“GLORIOUSLY, BEAUTIFULLY, AWFUL.”
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OLIVIA MARSH
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DISNEY
“FAIRYTALES IN THEIR ORIGINAL FORM INCLUDED MURDER, INCEST AND VIOLENCE.”
RED RIDING HOOD | WARNER BROS
NO FAIRYTALE ENDING
DISNEY’S SOFT and cuddly goodconquers-evil ideology is famous the world round. They make a fortune creating animated films of some of the most popular and classical fairytales from around the world: Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid and notably The Brothers Grimm, who are responsible for recording and collecting so many of what are the best loved fairytales including the original Cinderella story and Sleeping Beauty. Disney had to adapt what were extremely didactic tales of the dark consequences of children being disobedient to their parents, also harbouring deep religious undertones. Disney’s most classic films are a far cry from their original tale form, but in the past few years Disney has caught on to the much darker times in which we live and has started to create a new generation of films and advertising that explore the fascinating allure of the malevolent forces which play so crucial a part in every fairytale. Disney’s most recent advertising campaign was created by Annie Leibovitz, the prolific photographer of Vanity Fair responsible for some of their most striking cover shoots and features, perhaps indicating a turn towards a more grown up and sophisticated styling. Leibovitz created a lavish dream portraits collection in which Hollywood stars feature as some of the most famous classic Disney cartoon characters. The images celebrate the wicked powers of Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid recreated by Queen Latifah, and the evil stepmother from Snow White portrayed by a regal looking Olivia Wilde with Alec Baldwin as the magic mirror. This campaign of dream portraits is sumptuous, decadent and vivid in its use of colour, and the digital effects extremely sophisticated, but what the dream portraits collection tacitly acknowledges is that the evil characters have always been the most compelling facet of fairytales.
Handsome Princes and beautiful Princesses who are hopelessly virtuous and romanticised make excellent moral role models for children and ultimately teach that being beautiful means that you are a good person and you will get your happy ending. What the evil characters teach us in Disney’s most recent advertising campaign is that the bad guys in fairytales can also be stunning, and as shown by Queen Latifah, revel in their own badness. Fairytales in their original form as recorded by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen featured more murder, incest, violence, cruelty, torture, fear and dark forces then you would potentially watch on a post-watershed programme on TV. Plots were driven by malevolent dark forces that were a far cry from the happily-everafters that we are now accustomed to. Hollywood appears to have attempted to bring the true spirit of fairytales to the screen in its most recent adapta-
tion of Red Riding Hood. The film’s star Amanda Seyfried instantly turns the protagonist’s role into a much more alluring and seductive part past childhood innocence. This change is to be expected when the film was realised by Catherine Hardwicke, director of the Twilight franchise. The story turns away from recent animated Disney versions of the classical narrative and instead is a horrorromance which explores the sinister potential of the deep, dark wood. It would appear that what we have waiting in store for us in the future is a reworking of classic fairytales which promise to be much closer to their true origins and look to explore the beauty, cruelty, fun, and extravagance of the larger than life wicked characters who far overshadow - in both charisma and character - the virtuous heroes. When fairytales step out of the realm of cartoon innocence and into the live action domain of grownup possibilities, it makes for a far more interesting exploration of the dark powers that have historically dominated the fantasy world.
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THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE CHEAP
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PARANORMAL ACTIVITY | BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS
VADIM A. MILEVSKIY
WHEN I FIRST had the idea to write an article about cheap films, I had a clear outline of which films I wanted to discuss and what I wanted to say about them. But now that I’ve started writing, I realised that without going deep into it, the first impression a reader gets when seeing the title is that this is just another article about the art house and trash genre. But that is not true at all! The main focus of the article are the cheap films that managed to break through and become a success. Overall, of course, there is a much defined difference between the trash and budget films. First of all trash does not necessarily have to be cheap! We all know a couple of trashy features that had millions spent on them. The most important difference is in the storylines. Budget films may follow any genre imaginable: it does not have to be trashy, it is just cheap. Whether their production crew did not have enough in their pockets, or the scenes in the film itself cost absolutely nothing, it does not matter. When I say cheap, I literally mean it. Perhaps they even spent everything they had on the actors rather than the movie set itself. Such a move could also make a movie itself worth nothing and below I am giving a few bright examples of these traits. Usually cheap and budget films are the ones where all or almost all the scenes take place in a single place. But the strangest thing here is that usually such films appear to be more interesting then they look or the public thinks. Perhaps it is because when there is nothing else going on around, the actors are forced to ‘’fill’’ the movie with improvisation and simple acts of human behaviour - and that is what is most interesting about it! Despite the fact that for almost two hours the viewer sees the same surrounding and place, he may still be sucked into the story and the actor’s play so much that there is absolutely no need for a room change.
BURIED | VERSES ENTERTAINMENT
An example would be the Canadian masterpiece Cube. Despite the fact that Cube has a number of sequels, they all take place in a serious of rooms, from which a selection of strangers are trying to escape. The characters in the film are the most interesting thing about it because we can all admit it - it is always interesting to observe what a person would do, what logic he may use, when he finds himself in a difficult situation. Buried is a two-hour long film that takes place in a space of two square meters: a coffin. Paul wakes up, finding himself being buried alive. I watched that film with a great deal of interest and despite the fact that you see almost nothing, but four wooden coffin walls throughout the duration of the entire film, it is still a very clever, a well-made and a powerful film. Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2. We all know them. It was a success and everyone has been, at least once, to the cinema to see it. But look at it! How much do you think they spent on it? Well, that is the point... Money should not define art: art should define money. People forget that when creating art it is already worth a lot. I doubt that Vincent van Gogh kept money in his mind whilst painting. But how much is Sunflow-
ers worth now? Art should carry a message and inspire the general public. Every time a man walks into a cinema, he should be doing it for a reason and not because someone has spent so much money on it. Devil is another one of the M. Night Shyamalan films with a twist. It was a quite a naive one of his features I thought, but overall it was still good. Since all of the acts and action were happening inside an elevator the production team did not spend much on it, but nonetheless it was still very captivating and, in my opinion, even better than lots of other expensive features. Exam is a British thriller, where all the scenes take place in a single room. A bunch of people trying to look for clues and hints on how to correctly answer one single question their employer asked. So simple, so smart, so cheap, yet amazing. At the end of the day, of course, it does not matter how much has been spent on making of a certain film. We all have absolutely different tastes and what really matters is what we experience watching it. And that is what I wanted to touch upon here. Sometimes it can be a lot more fun watching a film that has an amazing story, that has been filmed in one single room and whose budget consisted of one thousandth of what the industry is capable of. I guess that it’s never a bad thing to remind ourselves that money isn’t everything...
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