film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Alton Williams

  • Heath Ledger Was Miserable On Set Of …


    … Brokeback Mountain.

    Reported here.

    Terry Gilliam said he felt alone and isolated. James Schamus, Brokeback Mountain producer stated that Heath had very difficult days and felt the pain he was going through.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Seat 13

    Seat 13 cover art by Los Angeles artist Misha


    Seat 13     is a new independent film magazine curated and edited by BRWC contribtor Owain Paciuszko. Issue one is out now and you can order it here.

    The first issue features Robocop, first cinema-going memories, Wall·E, The Orphanage, Cannibal Holocaust, Labyrinth, Alien Loves Predator and much, much more.

    Buy yourself a copy. Go on.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • The Macabre Masterpiece Of Terror

    B-Movies of the 1950s are the inspiration for The Macabre Masterpiece Of Terror, a exhibition at the Monica Bobinska gallery in London.

    The exhibition has new work by Kirsten Glass and Peter Lamb and includes composite paintings, installations and collages. All pieces address the aesthetics of the classics B-movie. Adam King features too.

    The Macabre Masterpiece Of Terror runs until 8 February at the Monika Bobinska gallery, 242 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA.

    The gallery is open Thursday to Saturday 1 – 6pm and 2 – 5pm on Sundays. For more info click here.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • My Critics Scream: In Defence of Frank Miller’s ‘The Spirit’

    There seems to be an awful lot of vitriol being herded in the direction of recent comic-book adaptation ‘The Spirit’, and though the film is – by no means – particularly good, I’ve continually found myself leaping to its defense because it’s not ‘wurst film eva’ and other such remarks, it’s just a bit of a mis-marketed mess with inconsistencies in tone that – when it works – is a Looney Tunes 40s-detective-fiction homaging delight with goofball charm, and – when it doesn’t work – an interesting assortment of ideas in need of a good editing and a couple of prods in the performances.

    My biggest bugbear with the film and its reception boils down to two things really; the way the film looks and the way the film has been advertised as a result of its look. Here is an adaptation by Frank Miller who has shot to mass media prominence of late with his co-directing credit on Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Sin City’ and Zack Snyder’s version of Miller’s ‘300’. Miller has continued to use the green screen technique adopted by both these films, and whilst ‘The Spirit’ sticks closer in palette to ‘Sin City’ it has some of those-sepia gauzy hues that give the film a look also similar to the unfairly-maligned ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’. Unfortunately, though often striking, this look just doesn’t really suit ‘The Spirit’ and the use of CGed backdrops, and a severely under-populated city is a huge mis-step in the feel of the film. What this movie needed was the primary coloured fantasia of Warren Beatty’s visually incredible ‘Dick Tracy’ adaptation to really push forward Miller’s blurred vision of a romantic-detective fantasy. In certain scenes you can see this edging its way to the fore; exchanges between Gabriel Macht’s The Spirit and Sarah Paulson’s dedicated nurse Ellen Dolan are filled with charm, and the scenes between Ellen and her police chief father are some of the more effective character scenes.

    Even if the look of the film had been akin to Alec Baldwin’s curio ‘The Shadow’ or Billy Zane’s camp romp ‘The Phantom’ the film would have benefited, as audiences wouldn’t have been expecting the guts, girls and gristle of ‘Sin City’ and walked out baffled and disappointed by the quite frankly bonkers and post-modern spin on old cops and crooks comics.

    Miller makes a number of other choices in the film that seem slightly at odds and unsure, and a more confident hand (or perhaps another co-director?) may have steered him right. There is an inconsistency of time that can work when handled correctly, but when a character whips out a mobile phone at one point it just seems jarring. Also the film can slow to a snail’s crawl at certain points, most notably in a sporadically entertaining expositional scene with Samuel L. Jackson’s villain The Octopus in full Nazi regalia; it is a scene of moments bridged by huge canyons of boring, though it is punctuated by one of my favourite lines from the film; “And this is for Muffin!”

    Indeed, for me, it is moments like that, where the film is post-modern, goofy, ridiculous and manic in its energy – whilst retaining that square-jawed comic book hero swagger, that the movie works best. There is an increasingly over-the-top scrap between The Spirit and The Octopus at the film’s opening that brings to mind Sam Raimi, and, indeed, Gabriel Macht seems to have attended a few-seminars at the Bruce Campbell school of hero acting. Unfortunately the film lacks the momentum of ‘Evil Dead 2’ or even ‘Darkman’, and the post-modernism isn’t quite as to-the-fore as – one of my favourite cult classics – ‘Hudson Hawk’, so, to some extent the audience is left behind a sheet of glass, trying to work out if the film is taking itself seriously or not.

    If you can figure it out and go with it then ‘The Spirit’ is one of the more imaginative efforts of recent comic book fare, Miller knows how to put together funny, snappy detective patter, but his directorial skills are still a bit wobbly. I can’t go so far as to actually recommend ‘The Spirit’ to anyway, I just feel sorry for it and the amount of fan-hate that seems to be thrown its way. I do think the film is destined for some sort of cult success for fans of campy, offbeat flicks that are content to rattle along at their own creaky pace trying any idea they fancy and seeing which ones stick.

    Owain Paciuszko

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Golden Globes In Blue & Green

    The winners are in blue. The ones I thought should have won are green.
    FILM CATEGORIES

    Best film (drama)
    Slumdog Millionaire
    The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Revolutionary Road

    Best film (musical or comedy)
    Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Also nominated: Burn After Reading, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges, Mamma Mia

    Best director
    Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
    Also nominated: Stephen Daldry (The Reader), David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon), Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road)

    Best actor (drama)
    Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
    Also nominated: Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Sean Penn (Milk), Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

    Best actress (drama)
    Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)
    Also nominated: Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Angelina Jolie (Changeling), Kristin Scott Thomas (I’ve Loved You So Long), Meryl Streep (Doubt)

    Best actor (musical or comedy)
    Colin Farrell (In Bruges)
    Also nominated: Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), James Franco (Pineapple Express), Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges), Dustin Hoffman (Last Chance Harvey)

    Best actress (musical or comedy)
    Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky)
    Also nominated: Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Frances McDormand (Burn After Reading), Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia), Emma Thompson (Last Chance Harvey)

    Best supporting actor
    Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
    Also nominated: Tom Cruise (Tropic Thunder), Robert Downey Jr (Tropic Thunder), Ralph Fiennes (The Duchess), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)

    Best supporting actress
    Kate Winslet (The Reader)
    Also nominated: Amy Adams (Doubt), Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Viola Davis (Doubt), Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

    Best foreign language film
    Waltz with Bashir
    Also nominated: The Baader Meinhof Complex, Gomorrah, I’ve Loved You So Long

    Best animated feature film
    Wall-E
    Also nominated: Bolt, Kung Fu Panda

    Best screenplay
    Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire)
    Also nominated: David Hare (The Reader), Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon), Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), John Patrick Shanley (Doubt)

    Best original song
    The Wrestler (The Wrestler)
    Also nominated: Down to Earth (Wall-E), Gran Torino (Gran Torino), I Thought I Lost You (Bolt), Once In A Lifetime (Cadillac Records)

    Best original score
    AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire)
    Also nominated: Alexandre Desplat (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Clint Eastwood (Changeling), James Newton Howard (Defiance), Hans Zimmer (Frost/Nixon)

    © BRWC 2010.