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  • MAMA: Spanish Horror Invasion

    MAMA: Spanish Horror Invasion

    Spanish horror appears to be the next big thing. The trend is creeping up on us constantly both in front of and behind the camera, with Spanish directors, Spanish filming locations and Spanish actors.  We take a look at the Spanish horror evolution, by going on a journey through the top horror films with a Spanish connection.

    Let’s start with El día de la bestia (1995) which translates as The Day of the Beast. This is a Spanish horror film set in Spain and directed by Álex de la Iglesia. In the film a Basque priest discovers that the anti-christ is due to be born in Madrid, Spain on Christmas Day. A more straightforward version of The Omen, the priest acquires the help of two unlikely individuals to kill the baby, making you squirm in your seat at every turn.

    Back in 2001, The Others was created by Spanish writer and director, Alejandro Amenábar. It’s a film that reminds you, you are not alone. Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) is an ordinary woman, who during the end of the Second World War retires with her children to Jersey. The children have an ailment which leads to strict and oppressive rules that could be deemed religious, until they welcome a new arrival and things begin to unravel in this breath-taking horror.

    What about Rec (2007)? It’s a Spanish documentary style feature film directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, like paranormal activity but without the paranormal activity. When a reporter and cameraman follow civil servants into a dark apartment building, who would have thought something scary would take place. If you thought the drama ended with Rec, Rec 2 picks up exactly where number one left off, continuing the documentary style, this time the actors are fitted with cameras and are separated into a sealed off compartment. Somebody help them.

    Kidnapped (2010) also known as Secuestrados is a horror directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas, a Spanish director, known for his work on film Reflection (2002). Jaime and his family move into their dream house in Madrid, planning a celebration for that very evening, what could go wrong? Well, when three violent hooded thieves invite themselves in, everything goes wrong. A film involving hostages, money, and terror, this is the best example of a Spanish horror invasion yet.

    Juan de los Muertos (2011) doesn’t sound too creepy in Spanish, but translates to Juan of the dead,  a spooky pun on Dia De Los Muertos, day of the dead.  Juan de los Muertos is a film written and directed by Alejandro Brugués about a guy who represents the dead, that doesn’t sound creepy or horrific at all. Juan (Alexis Díaz de Villegas) is the slacker attempting to reconnect with his family, and a similar story applies to his friends; this is until they notice that the locals are becoming cannibals, with the local government and media claiming that the coming of the zombies is imminent. Of course in a crisis like this most people don’t think “how can I make a profit on this”, fortunately for us Juan and his buddies do. Note to self, when in a scary situation turn it into a business venture.

    Most recently, in his directorial debut, Andy Muscietti from Spain, directed the paranormal thriller MAMA (2012) along with his sister Barbara Muscietti also produced the film. MAMA is the gripping tale of two little girls who disappear on the day that their mother is murdered. Alone and lost for five years deep within the woods, two sisters are unexplainably discovered alive in a decrepit cabin, in a search funded by their uncle, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). With the help of his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) he attempts to bring the completely feral young sisters back to civilisation. However, it soon becomes clear all is not what it seems, and the new family may not be the only ones living in the new house, as an unseen and untouchable MAMA prowls.

    With the use of old and new horror conventions, the Spanish horror genre is surprising us all making us grimace, scream, squirm and cry. Let it continue. Viva los Española’s horror!

    MAMA is available to buy from 17th June, 2013 on Blu-ray™ and DVD, both with UltraViolet, and to download.  MAMA is available to pre-order here now.

  • A Field In England Site Is Live

    A Field In England Site Is Live

    You should know that A Field In England will be the first ever UK film released simultaneously in cinemas, on DVD, on free TV and on VoD on Friday 5th July.

    Their website is now live, so you can find out the various ways they can see the film and on the launch date they will be able to watch a making of programme with some great behind the scenes access. Other information on the film will be added to the site in the lead up to July 5th.

  • Dimention Zero – Review

    Dimention Zero – Review

    Dimention Zero is an unfocused, poorly-paced, wildly self-indulgent piece of filmic navel-gazing that bored me rigid within 10 minutes of watching it. Unfortunately, it seems very much designed to be that way.

    The debut feature of director Andrew MacKenzie, Dimention Zero is the second feature made under the Pink8 manifesto, an anti-establishment, anti-conventional rulebook of film-making which imposes limits on directors such as “filming must be done without any preparation or a traditional script”, “your film must be 95% improvised” and “the cast must NOT know what your film is about.” Working within these parameters, MacKenzie’s film is 70% a loose-weave documentary about art, the meaning of life, the scottish youth culture and a myriad other themes, mostly filmed at raves, music festivals and on various city streets of Scotland and 30% an abstract narrative about a man (played by the director – another Pink8 rule) being freed from a life of dystopian repetition by spotting a pretty woman and dancing with her or something. It’s wilfully unclear.

    The manifesto restrictions placed upon the film – originated by Italian film-maker Fabrizio Federico whose film Black Biscuit is the premiere Pink8 production – finish by stating that “bewildering, vague, self-indulgent, plot-less, risky, egotistical, limpid, raw, ugly, and imperfect are perfect” and that film-makers must “answer to only one person – yourself” (whilst paradoxically not breaking a single one of Federico’s incredibly limiting rules it seems) all of which serves to make Dimention Zero frustratingly critic-proof.

    Whether I agree or not with the ethos of Pink8 (for the record: I do not. I prefer directors to know what kind of story they’re telling or point they’re making before they pick up the camera) it’s hard to deny that there’s some compelling footage in Dimention Zero – mostly of the Scottish underground music scene – but any interest generated by the film is quickly dissolved by the aimlessness of the direction. The main body of the piece lumbers from one segment of handheld footage to another, most accompanied by a different non-actor opining on a issue of some kind. These range from nuclear disarmament, to youthful apathy, to how everyone in the world is ignorant, to what is art, all with zero connective tissue, edited without any overarching message in mind, which creates a jarring mess of discordant sentiment. Is the film about Scottish culture, all culture? Is it about everything? Is it about nothing? Ironically, the film is rammed full of passionate voices, but doesn’t have one itself.

    Perhaps the most telling segment of all is a talking-head of a man who opines “Art is everything around us. (picking up a blade of grass) That is art. (pointing to a cloud formation) That is art. … We’re art. You’re art… if you believe you’re art, you’re art, baby. That’s all you need to know.” This spirit seems to resonate throughout Dimention Zero, MacKenzie never crafting his footage into an artistic statement of his own, but rather remaining content to simply point his camera at something happening and, trusting in something’s existence being its own artistic merit, plops it in front of the audience and goes “see? … Art.” At one point a topless woman takes a bath in Irn-Bru. Art. The film opens with 15 minutes of recycled footage of a man poaching an egg. Art. The film-maker confesses “for a great deal of the shooting I was drunk or under the influence of ecstasy.” Knock knock. Who’s there? Art. Art Who? Silence…

    Experimental film is the culture of film-making in which it’s most important to remember to be subjective, that artistic value can be only be properly judged by a single viewer at a time, and with this in mind I was going to tentatively recommend Dimention Zero, just because it’s fascinating in its tediousness. However, that was before a despicably manipulative segment towards the film’s conclusion, which presented a pseudo-profound monologue being read over footage of dancers with mental disorders. Using footage of people with Down’s Syndome to add philosophical weight to a vague, ill-defined point about art is exploitation at its ugliest and was the point that I decided to not be charitable to this tosh.

    It doesn’t feel pleasant to attack the debut work of a young director and I do not deny that the Pink8 agenda has the potential to great art of great interest, but presenting its film-makers with their own ‘get-out-of-criticism-free card’ is something I find directly provocative, especially when the film-making in discussion is so sloppy and generalised. Sometimes imperfect isn’t perfect.

  • Electricity Starts

    Electricity Starts

    Principal photography has commenced on Electricity, the powerful and uplifting story of Lily, a brash young woman who leaves her remote seaside town to go in search of her long lost brother. Agyness Deyn (Pusher) is Lily, and Alice Lowe (Sightseers) also star.

    Based on the award-winning novel by Ray Robinson, Electricity has been adapted for the screen by BAFTA-winner Joe Fisher (Soundproof) and will be directed by BAFTA-nominee Bryn Higgins (The King of Chaos).

    Electricity is the story of Lily O’Connor – brash, sexy, wittily defiant – who lives on the remote Northeast coast cut off from the world and her past. But when Lily’s long-absent mother dies, the past draws her back in. Her old brother Barry, pro poker player ‘Slick’, reveals that her younger brother Mikey ran off to London years ago and got in to trouble. As children, Mikey was the only one who loved and cared for Lily. Now she must find and help him. It’s a search that could kill her. Lily’s epilepsy brings on vivid hallucinations which we experience through her eyes on her extraordinary and deeply moving journey.

    Speaking from the set of Electricity, Agyness says on playing the role of Lily: “I love Lily’s journey, she is a survivor. Her strength and her ability to live in the present really drew me to her. She is a delight to discover and she’s teaching me a lot.”

  • The Seasoning House: An Interview With Kevin Howarth

    The Seasoning House: An Interview With Kevin Howarth

    The Seasoning House is movie that takes a look into the violent and corrupt world of military sex trafficking through the eyes of a deaf, mute orphan. BRWC spoke to Kevin Howarth, who plays main character Viktor, about the directorial debut feature from special effects artist Paul Hyett.

    In regards to your character, Viktor, he is obviously quite an evil man. How did you get into role for this?

    For fear of sounding like a broken record, I’m an actor. It’s what you do, it’s homework. You do whatever is necessary to get to your role. I have my ways of doing things, I do my homework, I try to get everything at my fingertips that I think is necessary to be in character and be one of those people from that world to the best of my ability. I have played quite a rogue’s gallery and for my role in Summer Scars, for instance, I had to play a man who was not well and who was psychotic. For that you have to dig very deep to keep it truthful. What I do is I try to look for what’s good about them and what I like about them. No one is just evil; they’re all somebody’s children. Here, in The Seasoning House, Victor is a man in a war zone. War makes people go in a direction that they wouldn’t normally go in. But I often look for what’s good in them because if I don’t have any joy about them or any feelings of humanity, I would never be able to give my performances any nuance and I like to pride myself on the fact that when you see me play a role it’s definitely 3-dimensional. I’d like to think that with Victor there is a sort of duplicity with him, but you’re never quite sure where you are going. You’re always wondering, does he care about Angel? Does he love her?

    Why do you think Viktor chose Angel?

    Paul is a top special effects and make-up artist. He comes from that world of detail and accuracy and I think that’s why Paul’s made a really good debut feature because of his eye for detail. So for me, I actually said to Paul at the beginning why doesn’t Viktor have a very nasty scar across one of his eyes? Something that’s very visible on his face and for him, when he sees Angel with the fact that she’s deaf and she’s mute and she’s also got this red, port wine birth mark on her face there’s a connection there for him. We decided in the end that having a big scar across my eye might be a bit too obvious but for me the emotions of that still stayed and I felt that what he sees in Angel are mirrors of scars in his own life.

    Is it true that Paul created the character with you in mind?

    Paul and I have known each other for about eighteen years and he has been in the business for a very long time. He always said that he wanted to direct in the future and that he’s always had me in mind because we’ve always been strong friends. He admires me, I admire him and it’s a mutual feeling. Then this script came up and I read it in one sitting. I thought it was really good and I thought the dialogue was well written and there was a lovely tone to it. So when I rang him up he said to me this script was never going to go to anyone else for Viktor, it was always going to go to me. So the rest was left to him and producer Michael Riley and that’s how the Genesis of The Seasoning House came about. Paul and I have spoken and there’s no doubt we’ll be working on other films in the future together.

    So did your friendship help during the filming of The Seasoning House?

    I think with friendships you trust each other. Paul knows exactly how I work. The only difference was, of course, I didn’t know how Paul worked as a director. But I know Paul and I knew he wasn’t going to disappoint and he didn’t because he’s a man who comes from the world of detail, which he carries with him. It’s also just great because Paul’s very quiet on set as a director, which is nice. Everybody loses their patience a little bit, but Paul, not a jot. He just got on with it very quietly. He knew what he wanted and it was great.

    With one of the central characters of The Seasoning House being a deaf and mute girl, along with the setting, do you think Paul, as a director, was trying to raise some issues in regards to feminism?

    You always get stories about sex traffickers in the press and people are often saying, “Oh these girls, they kept saying they went to the police. Nobody wanted to listen, nobody wanted to hear.” Be it by accident or be it by design, I feel that the metaphor of Angel being deaf and being mute is symbolic of the whole industry: that they don’t have a voice and they are afraid to say anything in fear of their lives. I love that side of it and for me that’s why I’m extremely proud of The Seasoning House. The work that’s gone into it from everybody, from Paul as a director, the camera guys, the whole cast, the crew, means that what we’ve made is a piece of work that is actually for me quite poetic and meaningful.

    How was the film received by its critics?

    So far it’s been received very well indeed, definitely more in the pluses than the minuses. The film went down extremely well in the continent. The Portuguese absolutely loved it. We won the Critics’ Award at Fantasporto. The Spanish, German and UK critics loved it as well. We haven’t had the UK release yet so when it goes on general release there will be another type of critic reviewing it. So that’s going to be interesting to see, but so far so good. What I was really pleased to see was how many young women liked it. They seem to have an affinity with it. You get that redemption with the heroine; this isn’t just some nasty little torture porn movie, which there’s been a glut of over the last decade.

    So what are your next moves as an actor?

    I’m reading a couple of scripts at the moment and I believe there may be another one on its way. There is a whisper of a movie that one of the producers has already contacted me about and I know I’m on his radar but that’s all in pre-production at the moment. And of course with Paul, if The Seasoning House looks like it could be a really good success for him and I know it will be, as a director I think he will do really well for himself. I think he’s already planning the next one so things are moving along as we speak.