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Why I loved Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

via youtube.com

I was lucky enough to see this last night at the Cineplex Eau Claire. My lovely girlfriend (@januarylark) scored a couple of premiere tickets.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a beautiful movie. Not one moment on screen was wasted.

I have never seen a show so closely marry photography, art direction and story together to capture a moment in time. The camera moves throughout scenes reminscient of great movies from the time period like Save the Tiger. Every thread, poster and piece of graffiti in a shot is perfectly true to the early 1970's.

The dialogue is never ham-handed. You learn who the characters are by their environment and their expression. In fact, Smiley (Gary Oldman) doesn't speak a word for the first 15 minutes of the movie. Lipstick and mascara sitting on his dreary bathroom counter tells you his wife has left him. Getting a new prescription for his failing eyes tells you time is passing quickly.

The movie is so dense it's hard to write a word without giving away the many tiny twists peppered throughout.

It's a must see for anyone who loves movies. It opens January 20th.

Violence Enhanced Through Story & Character

Behind-the-scenes-with-the-jok

Despite my best efforts I got sucked into a 9/11 article on Salon yesterday. It was a (fairly comprehensive) list of movies and books influenced or directly about the destruction of the trade centre towers and the war in Iraq.

In particular I was interested in how they were connecting those events to The Dark Knight, which I just watched for the second time recently.

More interesting, though, was this sentence in their synopsis:

… the film's extremely dark PG-13 violence and images of vigilante violence and necessary torture...

"PG-13, that can't be right?" I thought. Not with all the pencils disappearing into eyes, knives in mouths and pool cue beatings; not to mention facial burns that would make Freddy Kruger wince. This movie was surely rated R.

But when I really thought about it, it wasn't gory or overly violent. Certainly not like The Raid is going to be (thanks @darrennorthcott). 

There's no spatter when the Joker rams a thugs head into a pencil eyeball first. Pool cue beatings happen in your mind, since Nolan ends the scene just before the beatings start. People are shot, punched, kicked and dropped off high buildings and manage to have their insides inside.

I imagined it was more violent because I was set up to believe the setting and characters in it were capable of horrible things. Nolan's Gotham City is corrupt and dirty. Its villains – and heroes – loathsome sociopaths.

By the time Batman breaks Maroni's legs by dropping him from a ledge we don't even need the cracking sounds.

Before this I'd not considered that the same hallmarks of great horror direction – off-frame violence, bait-and-switch intensity – could be used in other genres. And not just through the lens. It could be the characters and story that make us trick ourselves.

Great writing makes cruel actions traumatic, and vengeance a touchdown by your favourite football team. Great storytelling amplifies everything in the movie. Real or perceived.

No Wonder Russell Crowe is Violent.

Russell-crowe-as-robin-hood1

I've never been disappointed by a Ridley Scott movie until this weekend. Robin Hood was a total piece of shit.

Even if I do reveal the plot as spoilers in this, I'm sure you'll thank me later. The movie isn't worth the price of discount bin rental.

Essentially it's something like this:

  • Robin isn't Robin at all, he's Robert Longstride the forgotten son of a stone mason and philosopher. At a certain point he takes up the mantle of Robin of Locksley to avoid being executed.
  • England seems to be having some kind of Dark Ages revival. Everything is muddy, shitty and poverty stricken. The King is a hapless child with a penchant for French tail (all of this seems reasonable now that I think about it)
  • There are children in the woods of Nottingham. Later we find they're orphans. I thought they were the kids from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome until that revelation is dropped on us. They steal grain from a village that'd probably take them in if they'd put on some shoes and stop wearing masks.
  • Marion doesn't like that Robert (now Robin) is impersonating her dead husband. Until she realizes he's Russell Crowe. Then she's cool with it. And to make us feel better that she's mourned her husband for 32 minutes before falling for Longstride she goes through an awkward dialogue about how she hardly knew him. But you know; waited ten years for his return anyway.
  • A member of the English court is a traitor and tries to spark civil war so the French can invade. He does this by making the English poor through taxation. Of course, they're already poor from taxation and ready to revolt anyway. So all he ends up doing is giving the English something to occupy themselves instead of their poverty.
  • Robert... Robin... Remembers how awesome his dad was and convinces all of Northern England that what they need is a declaration of independence.
  • The French land on the beach and are met by Marion and the orphan children. The orphans are riding ponies and fighting with sharp sticks (I'm not kidding). Marion apparently had some black chain mail and a lot of knightly training at the English Women's Liberation Camps when she was a kid.
  • Robin Hood rises in slow motion from the water on the beach in England. That's right: England has beaches.
  • The traitorous villain gets killed.
  • The King betrays his subjects.
  • Robin moves in with the orphans.
  • I try to slit my wrists with the edge of a popcorn bag.

Independence Day 2: Waiting For The Right Deal - Independence Day - io9

By Graeme McMillan, 2:14 PM on Mon Oct 12 2009, 6,791 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

If you've been waiting for Jeff Goldblum to save the world with his awesome hacker skills one more time, you may be in luck: Roland Emmerich says that the story for a sequel to Independence Day is ready and waiting.

Talking to Latino Review, the 2012 director said that he's ready to make a follow-up to the 1996 alien invasion epic as soon as Fox seals a deal with star Will Smith:

Dean Devlin and I are still set to make a sequel likely because we've found some sort of idea and we approached FOX and FOX has not quite figured out how to incorporate Dean's and my deal, and Will's (Smith) deal. Will wants to do it in some sort of a package they can live with. So it's just been in negations now since forever, and naturally FOX says "Why don't you do it without Will Smith?" I said Will is essential for us, for this movie and actually for the audience too. And, so, it's in limbo and lately the studios are fighting. Like gross players, and Will is a gross player and is probably the only gross player right now who's worth his gross. So we'll see what happens. I would love to do it.

Independence Day Sequel Stalled By Fox [Latino Review]

via io9.com

Like most things, this could go either way.

Adrien Brody to star in new take on Predators

Written by Rodriguez, Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, the script follows a group of elite warrior types who are being hunted by members of a race of merciless alien trackers called Predators.

Brody plays a man who ends up inheriting the role of leader and is known as a hunter of men. Grace would play an accountant type whose unassuming facade masks a dangerous serial killer.

via Reuters

 

I'm a big fan of the Predator and Alien franchises. There's a lot of ways to tell a lot of stories about people and how they behave.

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