The guys over at Two Trick Pony Productions sent over their latest short comedy film saying ‘if you find some free time, and are looking for a quick laugh’ to check it out. Well I had some free time and I was looking for a laugh – and laugh I did.
I do love a bit of comedy wordplay and the premise is simple, take a fairly serious topic and switch out a word to make it ludicrous and therefore hilarious. It’s well produced, succinct and doesn’t labour the point.
Check it out below:
Oliver Hermanus, born in Cape Town South Africa, is a filmmaker who is definitely on the one to watch list. Since graduating from his BA he was awarded a private scholarship to the film school of his choice, completing a Masters degree at the London Film School and going on to win numerous awards and attend the 19th session of the Cinefondation at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.
Following the success of his recent feature Beauty (Skoonheid), Oliver agreed to talk with us about cinema, writing and directing, and unfortunate car accidents.
Has cinema always been a big part of your life? Did you always want to become a director?
Yes, my parents would take me to the movies each Saturday. My dad was worked in a different town to where we lived, so he would come home on weekends and take me to the movies on a Saturday morning. The last film my parents and I watched together though was Requiem for a Dream… it was the end of our ritual.
Are there any films, or filmmakers, in particular that inspire you?
Many! Hitchcock, Haneke, The Dardennes, Billy Wilder… I love seeing new films and finding moments in them that really work for me and give me ideas, so most films I see often give me something. The list is long.
Beauty (Skoonheid) is your second feature. How did you find the filmmaking process the second time around, did you find you had more confidence, or are you very comfortable behind the camera?
Yes, you do feel a little more confident in the driver seat. But the car is bigger and faster, and the course is longer so you still have that fear that I think comes with every film no matter how seasoned you are as a filmmaker. I am a wreck during shooting, always having doubts.
How do you find the writing process – does it come easy to you?
It depends on the content. Skoonheid was a fast write because I was writing about a man in South Africa who I think we all know somehow. He was very familiar to me from the beginning so the writing was fairly swift, but other concepts are harder to write down and develop because I have to get comfortable owning the content or idea first.
So far you’ve been both writer and director on your projects, obviously this has the advantage that you can fulfill your vision – do you enjoy having this control over your creations?
I think it was necessary for the first two films but I am very much ready to work with writers now who can give me stronger scripts thus better films. I don’t really see myself as a writer.
How would you feel about either directing someone else’s story, or handing your writing off to another director?
I have handed my writing over to other directors and really love that. It’s so fun to let it go and then come back in a few months and see it alive and breathing. As for the other way around, I am very keen to interpret the scripts of other writers and make their films.
Beauty is such a complicated and wonderful story of both one man’s nature and also a depiction of a changing social atmosphere – how did you come up with the story, is it based on any real occurrence?
It is not based on anyone I actually know, but Francois is a character that is always hinted at in South African society – the repressed Afrikaner who just didn’t let go and embrace the change. He is a representative of that part of our society that refused to allow the change that came to influence their life choices or politics, and as a result they got left behind and are living in an Apartheid of their mind. I feel like he really just walked into my mind one day and was fairly complete in his construction as a character. I was living in Paris at the time and it was winter, so perhaps I was home sick.
These men in the movie, the ones that resort to clandestine orgies to express their repressed sexuality, hidden from their real lives by anonymity: do you think they represent a real fragment of South African society – are they a generational fracture existing between a conservative past and a present striving for equality?
Yes, indeed. They are a fallout of the previous system. And it’s not only sexual repression, but a host of other types of repression that has left a generation of South Africans feeling very uncomfortable and very fractured in post Apartheid South Africa. They were that age bracket that were in their mid twenties when the change happened, and their life choices were so cast in stone that, when suddenly everything changed and there was this incredible freedom, it simply frightened them.
Beauty has such a successful cast – in particular Deon Lotz and Charlie Keegan – was it an involved casting process, or did you see them and realise that they’d be the ones to embody your characters?
It was a fairly involved process but once I saw Deon’s tape I knew we had found our Francois. Charlie was recommended and he came in to meet with me, he’s a rising star and was keen to play this role to diversify his usual ‘football hottie’ persona.
The movie has been phenomenally successful, do you find this humbling?
I do. It calms me just a little bit. But now the challenge is to do something new and better, and stronger, so you shake off the complements and deem it your worse work and aim to make something of more value.
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share with us or get off your chest right now?
Great question! Erm, well I just had a car accident last week and want to say FUCK YOU to the guy who hit me. I feel better…thanks!
Beauty (Skooneid) is in UK theatres April 20 and our review of the movie can be read HERE.
Weekend, from writer and director Andrew Haigh, is a moving, heartwarming, sexually graphic depiction of the interaction between two men over the course of one weekend – a simple idea portrayed with a frank openness. Russell, played by Tom Cullen, is a reserved life guard who after skipping out on a bunch of his straight friends finds himself picking up Glen, Chris New, at a local gay bar and subsequently the pair develop instant chemistry.
The morning after Glen, an aspiring artist, records Russell’s experience (albeit drunkenly muddled) of the previous night on a dictaphone for an art project and the tentatively awkward interaction between the two characters as they sit in bed talking is at once realistic and devoid of pretence. The unabashed realism of the movie is consistent throughout as this intuitively written drama skips the need for reliance on any of the festival of cloying cliches that sometimes plague the depiction of gays in cinema. What develops is a genuine story of mutual attraction through absolutely stellar performances from the two stars. Set largely in Russell’s apartment, though occasionally moving around, Weekend is remarkably simple in its execution taking a mixture of handheld and static, documentary style camera work that really pulls in the viewer with plenty of intimate moments.
Powerfully intense chemistry between Tom Cullen and Chris New, along with an intelligent script, really bring this modern kitchen-sink drama to life. Russell’s character is shy, reserved, out but not in your face about it, and filled with anxiety – avoiding public displays of his homosexuality. In antithesis Glen is in many ways his mirror image, unfalteringly honest and brash, he is the political gay – arguing with straight people in a bar over the underlying homophobia, that may or not have been present, in their complaint about noise. The new relationship between the two hits a bump when Glen reveals he’s about to leave for Portland on a two year course, and it’s indicative of the level of acting that the anxiety of feelings between these two guys is highly apparent. Unable to stay away from each other they spend the time they have together, they go out, drink and take drugs and share the intimacies of themselves, covering a range of topics, trivial and profound, with the kind of rawness that his helped along by the influence of alcohol and drugs.
Andrew Haigh’s previous work editing on a plethora of well known movies, like Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, has led to this movies very fluid scene momentum and a brilliantly self-aware script that is honest and graphic in it’s depiction of emotion, sex, drug use, and relationships. In discussion of Glen’s post-coital dictaphone art project the film discusses the idea of its own audience stating that the gays will come to see it in order to glimpse some cock, but the straights won’t because it’s got nothing to do with their world – a view that perhaps has some merit, but is a massive over generalisation.
This self-awareness is present once again at the end, with Glen asking “so, is this our Notting Hill moment?”, drawing attention to the dramatic expectation within the viewer for a happy resolution, the film takes the altogether more natural approach in giving us a heartfelt and believable ending. In a scene recalling the end of Lost in Translation, dialogue is drowned out by background noise as Russell confronts Glen at the train station. A brilliant and emotional moment, hilariously fractured by catcalls of abuse from onlookers.
Emotionally intelligent and relevant, Weekend shows a frank reality of a male on male relationship heretofore unrealised in cinema. To call this a triumph of ‘gay cinema’ is to cheapen the reality of it as such semantic distinctions are irrelevant – good cinema is good cinema regardless of sexuality. Weekend is heartfelt, honest, filthy, and definitely good cinema.
Weekend is out now on Blu-ray and DVD
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a gloriously fun, comedy infused, movie whose effervescent stream of English talent provides a stunning success of geriatric entertainment. Unfulfilled by their twilight years and faced with concern for their future, both from a financial and an enjoyment standpoint, a group of pensioners uproot their lives from drab England to India for a life of promise at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the elderly and beautiful. In an amusing turn of events their plan to outsource their own retirement goes awry when the hotel is not everything it promised to be in the brochure.
Featuring a cast of some of the most respected and best loved British actors’ and actress’ over the age of 50, and almost like a geriatric take on The Inbetweeners Movie, there’s a character to represent everyone; A widow, an unhappy married couple, an enfeebled racist, a gay high court judge, a randy old man, and a tired old cougar. Upon arriving at the hotel they realise that false advertising has run amok as the hotel is a mere dank shell of its former glory, but under the unrelenting happiness of its manager Sonny, played by Dev Patel, the characters are (mostly) all slowly brought around the charm and beauty of not only the hotel, but also the country.
Putting aside the marvellous confluence of events that brings together Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton and Celia Imrie onto our screens all at the same time the movie is funny, moving, and enjoyable right from the start. The movie cleverly and humorously balances the alarmingly indignant treatment of older people with scenes depicting their bafflement with a modern world – the perfect example being a telephone exchange about wireless broadband. Meeting on the plane to Jaipur, and bonding through the adventurous journey they have to make to reach the hotel (after their connecting flight is cancelled), the characters bounce off each other wonderfully and are a pleasure to watch, be it Judi Dench’s sheltered widow, Evelyn, or Maggie Smith’s crabby racist, Muriel. Smith here showing that she’s queen of one liners even when far removed from Downton Abbey, her frequently unabashed racist remarks serve to illustrate the preposterous, and laughable, nature of ignorance – after all we do love it when our old people say something inflammatory don’t we.
Each character gets their own story – be it of love, loss, lust, or leisure – and each one is concerned with finding a place in the world. The product of going to India is that they ‘find’ themselves or discover that the lives they thought they had were either less than they’d hoped, or less than they could have. Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup try to slut around to hilarious effect. Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton’s characters have come to terms with the state of their marriage. Judi Dench finds realisation about her life, a job, and companionship. Tom Wilkinson searches for his first true love and to fix a life he feels he might have broken. Finally Maggie Smith is forced to reassess the boundaries between peoples and cultures and find a new way to help and be happy.
The older generation are influenced by the hotel’s charm, the country, and by Sonny’s youthful cheer and in turn influence him in making the decisions in his life, dealing with his family, and with the girl he loves. This is a movie about living, about staying relevant and refusing to fail. As Judi Dench’s character in the movie says, ‘real failure is the failure to try’ and the movie has a wonderfully positive attitude summed up beautifully by Sonny’s catchphrase ‘everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not alright then it is not yet the end.’
Anglophiles will be elated and charmed as this movie celebrates a wealth of British talent – indeed it’s only missing Patrick Stuart, Ian Mckellen, and Julie Walters, actors who presumably had to remain in Great Britian for fear of good ol’ Blighty ceasing to exist if everyone left at once. Moving, heartwarming, hilarious, perfectly acted, and well written The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is simultaneously poignant, believable, and thoroughly enjoyable.
In cinemas now.
Welcome to the second of a two part post belatedly discussing two of the biggest films at this years Academy Awards. Part one saw me wax lyrical about The Descendants, whilst this part is concerned with my thoughts on the movie that took the lion share of the awards, the oft commended The Artist.
Sometimes having watched a movie, particularly one that you’re aware has been gilded with a layer of dazzling admiration, you find yourself in the slightly alienated, but laughably tenable, position of wondering if you’re the only sane person left or whether your ticket was the only one missing that dropper of LSD required to really ‘get’ the movie. With an endless cavalcade of remakes, reboots, and rip-offs rammed into our faces these days a very pressing question presents itself when considering The Artist; did we really need a remake of a whole chapter of cinematic history, especially one that does it with no more than a superficial nod in its general direction?
It’s not that The Artist is irreverent to its source material but it just recycles it in an overly reductive manner, taking the rich and sometimes under appreciated (at least by a modern cinema audience) history of silent cinema and the transition to ‘talkies’ to tell us a story that has been told many times before and better, from Singin’ in the Rain to Sunset Boulevard. The scenario is fairly simple, set in Hollywood in 1927 George Valentin (played by Jean Dujardin) is a highly successful silent film star whose career stagnates and then combusts upon the introduction of sound to movies. Concurrently to this story we have the subsequent rise to fame of Peppy Miller (played by Bèrènice Bejo) who started her career as a result of a mishap with Valentin on the red carpet in a scene that, given the ridiculous success of this movie, seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To produce a movie, such as The Artist, in black and white and adhering to silent movie conventions, complete with intertitles for dialogue and a constant musical accompaniment, is a gimmick. There’s a reason that cinema transitioned to include sound in the late 1920’s. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly happy with silent cinema, or films without dialogue and indeed successful cinema is often about what you don’t show, or don’t say. However this movie, which is shot – it’s framing, it’s acting, it’s sets et al – in every way as if it were made in the 1920’s doesn’t come across as homage but rather as redundant. The single highlight to the contrary being the nightmare scene in which the movie breaks it’s silent film rules to create a world in which there is sound, objects make sounds when interacted with and people have voices, all except for George Valentin. That scene succeeds in being remarkable and was the first time I was interested, but from there it just returns to it’s festival of cliches, overly romanticised nonsense, and shots of a cute dog.
Because the movie is silent the actors have (hopefully intentionally) overacted most of the scenes, an effect which becomes quite tiring to watch, as if the mantra ‘actions speak louder than words’ were being repeated to them in between takes. Apart from the two leads quite a few recognisable faces turn up; James Cromwell, John Goodman, Missi Pyle and Malcolm McDowell appear at various junctures only serving to remind us that we’ve seen them in better things. There’s some beautiful cinematography by Guillaume Schiffman and that’s, ironically, the Oscar that it would have deserved to win but didn’t.
In the onslaught of repackaged and repurposed cinema The Artist differs in only one way; it decided to go further back in order to ransack and pillage for it’s motivation. It’s not that this film is bad, I mean it’s not great, but more importantly it’s just irrelevant. It’s baffling success is endemic of a bizarre trend of overreaction from media outlets, one which can be evidenced in reverse by the recent critical bulldozing received by John Carter. Whilst that film was by no means perfect, it isn’t deserving of the bashing it’s received, similarly The Artist isn’t deserving of the monolithic pedestal on which it has been placed.
It calls into the question the long arguable merit of The Academy Awards as a relevant reflection of the years best movie achievements. The movie that sweeps the board is often not necessarily the best work of cinema, the most successful, or the most loved, on the nomination list but the one that had the most backing in terms of Hollywood politics. The one that was campaigned for the most fiercely. Perhaps I’m wrong, everyone seems to love this film, it has near universal acclaim from everyone who’s reviewed it… But surely I can’t be the only one that was indifferent towards it and just wondered what all the fuss was about?
To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park; they were so preoccupied with whether they could make The Artist that they didn’t stop to think if they should.