Author: BRWC

The Kickstarter.com initiative set up in 2008, is a God’s send for young filmmakers. As a source for funding from everyday folk for any sort of creative project, “Crowd Funding”, as it’s commonly known, has quickly become the go to for first time filmmakers looking to get a quick injection of cash to help get their project off the ground, into production and positively distributed. You’ll Know My Name, written, directed and starring the up and coming Joe Raffa, used the website to distribute his 2011 movie to film festivals and, in his words, “Find the audience it deserves”.

You’ll Know My Name stars it’s director as Nick, a high school senior hoping to get over his ex-girlfriend and being a more than “that guy who went out with that girl” by setting up a midnight confrontation with the man who stole her away.

It is very much in the same vain as the debut of another member of the Jersey alumni, Kevin Smith, but replaces geeks with Jersey tough guys (think of it as the illegitimate lovechild of Clerks and Jersey Shore). Conversations are extended explorations into nonsensical randomness, with the odd quirky character and utterance of sexual innuendo. And while it’s not a direct comparison to Kevin Smith’s 1994 debut, you can certainly see the inspiration in the simplicity of it’s shots, the dialogue, the wooden performances and even the setting (I swear it’s filmed at the Quick Stop).

The crux of the film nicely intercuts the advent of their relationship with the aftermath of it crumbling without ever being overtly blatant about it. It’s a very eloquent hop back and forth between their happy days and the events leading up to Nick waiting to throw down in a car park, and on the whole it is actually executed quite well. Similar to Hunter Richards vastly underrated London, it is very much a soured love story with a subtle use of flashbacks to show where and how it went wrong…but unfortunately the relationship between Nick and Christina just isn’t explored enough. Whereas London illustrated a relationship to a detailed degree, You’ll Know My Name sort of glosses over it. Being evidenced in that the film is only 75 minutes long, it’s a shame that any extra time wasn’t invested into developing Christina as a character a little more. We never really understand why she leaves Nick in the first place, and it’s quite unfortunate for the development of the story as it leaves a bit of a gaping hole in the movie.

The film is filled with the believable characters, something commonplace of American Indie. While it might be fair to suggest none of the lead performances will hardly set the world alight, they all do enough to sell their characters on screen. Ultimately, these people are supposed to be real people, and in that respect, it’s difficult to overly criticise any one performance in the film without sounding harsh. Alexander Mandell is convincing enough as the heavy-set douchebag, with Chuck Connors (Nick’s vain friend Chris), Brian Gallagher (as Nick’s police officer cousin) and Davy Raphaely (as the aptly named Tommy Tongues) all offering a much-appreciated douse of comic relief.

The non-existence of a soundtrack, a somewhat lack of creativity in shot selection and an occasional lapse in content do hamper it as an enjoyable piece of entertainment, but for a debut movie that cost only $35,000, a lot of the films shortcomings just have to be forgiven. It won’t win awards, it’s not the best indie film on a budget ever made (London was made on a similar budget, but looks and plays far better), but I think immense kudos needs to be sent Joe Raffa’s way purely for getting this film made and having the drive to push his talent in front of the noses of the movie community. While there may be the odd question mark over the quality of his feature debut, the one thing you cannot question is Raffa’s passion for the medium, and for his art.

Joe’s next feature, Six Degrees of Hell starring Corey Feldman, is slated for release later in the year.

Did that awful pun get your attention, yes? Good – apologies, it was a shameless, cheap artifice but it sounds a darn site more engaging than “The Book of Alien/Aliens Colonial Marines Technical Manual – Book Reviews”, and is far less of a mouthful. With Prometheus looming and palpable anticipation oozing from every sci-fi and cinegeek on the planet as to it’s link to the Alien franchise, what better time than to revisit two publications that delve into the first two movies from the series, Alien and Aliens. The Book of Alien (pictured below left) is a behind the scenes look at the production of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece of sci-fi horror, complete with artwork, production stills, and accompanying text. Aliens – Colonial Marines Technical Manual (pictured below right) is conversely a fictional guide and history to the United States Colonial Marine Corps, its weaponry, tech, vehicles, and operational strategies as featured in the movie along with some internal files, records, and rumours surrounding the incidents of the movie.

The Book of Alien

As an unabashed Alien franchise fan both of these books are fantastically engaging. The Book of Alien is, in paper form, a kind of making of featurette that might of (and indeed has) found it’s way onto a DVD/Blu-ray special features disc. It is filled with concept and pre-production art work, prop and set photos, behind the scenes images, artwork to film comparisons – in essence a veritable treasure trove of visual information regarding the production of Alien that will be a pleasure for fans of the movie, or anyone interested in cinema production.

In particular there’s a chartable course visible between the early concept artwork by Ron Cobb and Chris Foss and that of later pre-production artwork and models as Ridley Scott became involved. But if the startling difference between the various ship/vehicle ideas are interesting they are nothing compared to the dramatic visual turn the movie took with the involvement of infamous Swiss artist H.R. Giger who is responsible for the now iconic Xenomorph Alien design. Giger’s artwork is  equal parts stunning and disturbing and his flair for creating biomechanical visuals are what made the Alien, the derelict, and the space jockey so foreign and therefore horrifying back in 1979.

Spread throughout all the images is are a series of anecdotes and histories from Paul Scanlon and Michael Gross that chart the production of the movie from the genesis of the idea to the production and end result. What’s particularly engaging about this text are the ideas for the Alien and the planet that were never realised, things that Ridley Scott couldn’t make due to time and money restraints and things that had to be cut from the story – in particular it might prove very fascinating if any of these elements had any baring on his return to the Alien universe in Prometheus.

Though quite brief, coming in at a scant 112 pages, The Book of Alien’s information is at least illuminating – how illuminating will depend on your attraction to the series and whether you’ve invested the time to trawl through the extensive making of sections on the Quadrilogy/Anthology box sets. The physical quality of the book leaves a little to be desired, it’s paperback and printed on paper that’s just a bit too thin allowing occasional bleed through from pages behind, but it’s size probably doesn’t justify a hard back edition and this way keeps it’s selling point quite low. As a reprint of the original 1979 movie accompaniment the layout and design is outdated and very bare, bordering on bland, but what’s needed is present – plenty of rich visual stimuli. Certainly more than worth it for franchise fans and to appease those frothing at the mouth for Prometheus.

Aliens – Colonial Marines Technical Manual

In contrast to the non-fiction production account of the previous book, Aliens – CMTM is a fictitious expansion on the universe created in James Cameron’s epic 80’s action follow up Aliens. This book is rich with imagery just as above, but it’s of an entirely different variety, but for every image there are several more pages of text making up a far larger and more text heavy book than the one for Alien. In fact this book’s description and elaboration on the technology and weaponry used by the fictional United States Colonial Marines far exceeds what anyone would expect, or indeed require, from a movie tie-in. After a brief description of the purpose, function, and general structure of the USCM the book delves into descriptions, specifications, schematics and user advice for every piece of technology, weaponry, and vehicle seen in Aliens – and even some that aren’t. If suspension of disbelief was a burden for the viewer rather than the creator of a fiction then this book was created in order to throw that disbelief out the window.

Sprinkled throughout the, frankly alarming amount, of technical data are extracts from reports/interviews from marines that describe various situations, usually regarding the actual use of the tech being described. Some of these are brilliant little snippets of information that lend credence to the wealth of ‘fact’ being thrown at the reader. So technical and relentless is the stream of technical information that not only must it have been written by, or in consultation with, military personage but that after a while you find yourself skipping over large chunks and focussing on the anecdotal stories instead. The CMTM isn’t the sort of book you would necessarily pick up and read cover to cover – much like people rarely read the manual for anything in full – more likely is that you’ll focus on certain sections that are of interest to you and dip in and out over time.

In amongst all the data is a technical description of how the famous motion trackers work, providing a much more scientific explanation of how they work using ‘doppler-shift discrimination’ rather than Ash’s much lampooned bullshit line from Alien “micro changes in air density”. For those paying attention there’s also a passing reference to Cyberdyne Systems in one of the anecdotes surrounding androids, which acts as a subtle nod to Cameron’s other sci-fi masterpiece (pre-Avatar) The Terminator. Along the way there’s also a plethora of nonsense science, and sci-fi cliches like using a tachyon shunt for faster than light travel… real boilerplate nerd fodder.

Also present is an increasing amount of references to the Alien and the events of LV426, which build until the whole final section is an appendix of communication that would run concurrent to the movie narrative, the subject of which is “the company’s” internal/behind the scenes discussions on the Alien. This is a marvellous insight into the corruption and single-mindedness of Weyland-Yutani and the United States military and their propensity for deceit and cover ups. As an expansion of the Aliens narrative this is a great little aside that also ties together the two movies quite well. The ending communications, that I won’t spoil, have some particularly interesting implications for future stories/films, and since this book was also originally published after Alien³ this might have been early steps in Fox laying groundwork for a sequel that never happened.

Any production discrepancies that The Book of Alien is guilty of are not present here, while CMTM is still paperback it feels more robust than the former and the paper stock used inside a lot heavier and therefore not only more pleasing to turn the page and lacking in translucency, but also doesn’t blow around when reading outdoors. The sheer wealth of information alone makes this book a must for franchise fans, even if trying to read it all at once might make you go slightly nuts and believe you’re in some sort of future battlefield!

The Book of Alien and Aliens – Colonial Marines Technical Manual are both available now from Titan Books.

Almost Kings, previously known as The Wheeler Boys, was winner of the Netflix ‘Find Your Voice’ competition and is now getting a home cinema release courtesy of Breaking Glass Pictures. Almost Kings has a plot that on the face of it sounds largely at odds with the intensity of the movie you watch – as he reaches high school maths geek Ted (Lorenzo James Henrie) tries to live up to the spectacle of his older brother, Truck (Alex Ross, perhaps best known for being terrifying in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant), who is perceived as cooler and more popular surrounded by his gang of ‘Kings’ (a mixture between the cool kids, jocks, and the perpetual screw offs from every American high school movie ever made). In trying to become like his brother he succumbs to a world of partying, alcohol, and as it unravels malevolence, violence, deception, and betrayal.

There are moments when the movie flirts with being a trivial teen comedy, the central plot revolves around the idea of sleeping with as many freshman girls as possible, but unlike the jovial frivolity that might be found in that concept had this been a John Hughes movie or similar, Almost Kings opts for an ever diminishing spiral of dark drama. Director and co-writer Philip G. Flores has made an intense depiction of high school, and familial, anxieties tinged with realism (if slightly exaggerated).

Truck’s ‘Kings’ are of course patently obnoxious, that is how they are meant to be, we’re supposed to feel a mix of admiration for them that quickly becomes disgust at the things that they do, and encourage in others. Hass (played by Alex Russell who you might recognise from the recent hit Chronicle) in particular typifies the kind of self-entitled jack ass that can uniformly be found in the American high school movie setting. Truck himself is a bit of an enigma, his character flits backwards and forwards from being a protective older brother, fiancee, and future father to a reckless, violent, selfish, cesspool of teenage hormones and immorality – at one point he encourages Ted to essentially rape a passed out drunk girl.

However, while that is all true, the film is by no means without it’s flaws, it can be a bit slow which is exaggerated by the overall tone of despair. The ‘game’ of sleeping with as many girls as possible spills over into Ted’s academic world, as does his partying and he transforms, or at least plays at doing so, from the innocent studious boy from the beginning to a mirror of his brother. It’s his character that is the most annoying, his kamikaze mission to destroy all the relationships around him is at times painful to watch – not always because it’s intended to be, but because the movie feels like a bit of a chore to watch.

Russell and Henrie give decent, and believable, performances as the leads as do the rest of the supporting cast. Intense is, overall, the best way to describe Almost Kings, and indeed as it marks Flores’s first feature movie (always a notably difficult, often faltering, first step) it bodes well for his career that the movie feels, if not great, coherent and well assembled.

Almost Kings is out on DVD June 12.

Having just graduated from college, split up with her longtime boyfriend, and thrust into the ‘real world’, Aura returns to her family home in New York, directionless and unsure of herself. Tiny Furniture is from writer, director, and star Lena Dunham, whose latest TV series Girls is proving a hit on US network HBO. The movie is a comedy, but it’s an indie comedy so the humour is really derived from a kind of despair at the world and it’s various absurdities, centred squarely on the feeling of being adrift in a post education, pre-career haze without a sense of clear purpose or identity.

Moving back in with her famous artist mother, Siri, and her still in high school younger sister, Nadine, Aura finds herself back in a world that she doesn’t quite fit into anymore. Various other characters orbit around her: Frankie, a friend from College who is moving to New York to get an apartment with her; Charlotte, an old friend that she reunites with at a party and who helps to get her a job; Jed, a semi-famous YouTuber who she’s interested in but who seems a bit too concerned with himself; and Keith, the sous chef at the restaurant where she get’s a job as a day hostess. Siri and Nadine are played by Dunham’s real life mother and sister and the film is largely filmed in her mother’s actual Tribecca apartment so we can assume that, at the very least, the basis of Tiny Furniture is autobiographical. Even the title is derived from the photographs that Siri (and Laurie Simmons in reality) takes, which of course feature small furniture arrangements.

All of the characters succumb to the sort of witty self-involvement associated with arty intellectual types that are rife in indie cinema and whilst Aura comes across as quite real some of the others verge on being insufferable assholes. As Aura invites Jed to stay in her mothers apartment whilst she’s away it’s clear that he’s only too willing to sponge off of her good natured hospitality. Also as she gets closer to Keith at work it’s unclear which of the two she’s really interested in, perhaps Jed intellectually and Keith physically as an unvarnished and brief sex scene (that’s difficult to watch only for it’s proximity to the raw and unsatisfying nature of reality) between the two attests. Indeed all the films relationships are complex yet fairly unsatisfying, with Aura showing a frankly human potential for inadvertently being her own worst enemy. Her relationship with her mother is perhaps the most sincere, having found a diary of hers from when she was around the same age it is apparent that she too was equally lost at that age – as indeed are most.

As mentioned the comedy creeps in at the edges rather than supplying any particular bang, one of the standout moments involving trying to locate light bulbs in ‘the’ white cupboard when the apartment is an expanse of purely white cupboards, and another being the ill chosen setting for Aura and Keith’s sex scene. Tiny Furniture is a type of black comedy concerned with the crisis of people’s early twenties; certainly not laugh out loud funny, or even that pleasurable to watch. The pace is always languid and there’s sometimes a detached nature to the dialogue and fairly blank cinematography, but it’s Aura herself that makes it compelling enough to watch. It is an accomplishment of Dunham’s will that the movie exists, and whilst it might not make any big splash, to use TS Eliot “not with a bang but a whimper”, it is at least honest.

Tiny Furniture is out on DVD May 28.