In Contention

Tag: Control

  • ‘Moon’ redrawn: own a future classic

    I know there are a lot of “Moon” fans and collector types among you, so I thought this worth mention. The great British design studio All City, who dreamed up the justly famous poster for Duncan Jones’s sci-fi debut, have launched a new series of limited edition Redrawn poster concepts for some of their most famous titles of recent years — all of them available to purchase.

    The striking sketch-based prints are all eminently frameable: this rejigged take on the “Moon” poster appears to be the most popular, but I’m just as keen on what they’ve done with the likes of “Control,” “Let the Right One In” and “Spirited Away.” At around $120 to $240 a pop, they’re not quite bargainous, but should age pretty nicely. Check ’em out here; some of my favorites after the cut.

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  • Anton Corbijn blogs ‘The American’

    If only for the names involved, Focus Features’ thriller “The American” is one of my more anticipated films of 2010 — George Clooney stars, Rowan Joffe (who had a hand in my best-of-decade contender “Last Resort,” and also has “Brighton Rock” coming up this year) writes and, best of all, Anton Corbijn directs.

    Corbijn’s 2007 Ian Curtis biopic “Control” was a remarkable debut — though it felt less like an introduction than an extension of the director’s iconic work in the realms of photography and music video. I’m interested to see how he fares with a glossier genre piece. Blogging the shoot over at Focus’s site, he’s posted some production stills — they look a little like outtakes from one of his Depeche Mode videos, but that’s fine by me.

    The American

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Nowhere Boy” (**1/2)

    Nowhere BoyLondon Film Festival

    A bright, slight, mostly enjoyable portrait of the formative years of John Lennon, artist-turned-filmmaker Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Nowhere Boy” opens with a nudge-nudge tease, as the singular opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” reverberates through the theater over a shot of the 18 year-old Lennon running to school.

    That single-second strum, however, is all we get of the ubiquitous Beatles songbook, as Taylor-Wood and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (“Control”) go out of their way to distance their story from Fab Four iconography, even coyly dancing around any mention of the “B” word. “What do you call yourselves now?” Lennon’s weary Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) asks her nephew over breakfast, after he announces the band’s plans to travel to Hamburg. “Do you care?” is his tart reply.

    Even if this is a little too cute, it’s cause for commendation that the film largely avoids the contrived “inspiration” cues that usually plague the musical-biopic genre. A fleeting glimpse of the original Strawberry Fields house in Liverpool is about as on-the-nose as things get; we’re spared the mandatory montages of the artist scribbling lyrics in a battered notebook, and even the Beatles cuts performed towards the film’s end are authentic fledgling efforts. (Over-familiar 1950s rock n’ roll standards comprise the bulk of the soundtrack, while Goldfrapp’s incidental score hardly registers.)

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  • ‘Trainspotting’ named best British film of last 25 years

    Ewan McGregor in TrainspottingThe Observer has just assembled one of the more interesting lists I’ve seen in some time — a collective of the 25 best British films of the last quarter-century, compiled from the votes of over 60 critics, film professionals and assorted outside voices, ranging from Ben Kingsley to Peter Morgan to our friend Anne Thompson.

    Looking down the list, there are remarkably few inclusions that I really take issue with, whether I’d necessarily put them on my own such list or not — the majority of titles here are films I admire that have a legitimate sphere of influence in modern British film history, and they’ve lucked into an intelligent balance between arthouse and populist titles.

    “Trainspotting” is an obvious pick for number one, but sometimes obvious is fair. I don’t think it’s the greatest of the 25 titles listed here, but it’s an inarguably fine film that embodies the restless spirit of mid-1990s Britain from its whip-smart dialogue to its mega-selling soundtrack: its lightning-in-a-bottle blend of thrilling cinema and social document assures immortality.

    (Further discussion, and The Observer’s Top 10 list, after the cut.)

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  • Overture gets Clooney’s ‘Goats’

    George ClooneyThis strikes me as quite a coup for Overture Films, the young indie outfit that recently made their presence felt with a hard-won Oscar nod for “The Visitor.” In the biggest Cannes acquisition so far, Overture has nabbed the U.S. rights to Grant Heslov’s “Men Who Stare at Goats.”

    The film, a political satire from Heslov and George Clooney’s production company Smokehouse, stars Clooney as a military forces agent who possesses the secret to paranormal war tactics. Ewan McGregor co-stars as a journalist who becomes inveigled into the discovery, while Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges round out the powerhouse cast. It’s certainly a lofty-sounding title for the little studio. Good for them.

    Meanwhile, the Clooney updates are coming thick and fast. The actor, who it seems can put nary a foot wrong these days, has just signed on to headline Focus Features’ “A Very Private Gentleman,” an adaptation of Martin Booth’s well-regarded novel about an assassin whose plans for a simple final assignment in a rural Italian village are complicated by a series of personal engagements.

    Which is all well and good, but what’s really interesting about the project is that it is being helmed by Anton Corbijn, the music-video master whose debut feature, “Control,” was one of 2007’s finest. This is a very different proposition for the filmmaker, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he applies his trademark atmospherics to thriller territory.

  • Five reasons to pay attention to ‘Nowhere Boy’

    1. It’s a biopic chronicling the formative years of one of popular music’s most gifted and fascinating icons. (How has it taken this long for a John Lennon project of any significance to come to fruition?)

    2. It’s the feature film debut of Sam Taylor Wood — the British conceptual artist, musician, photographer, Anthony Minghella protegee and all-purpose celebrity. Her media ubiquity could arouse wariness if her award-winning 2008 short, “Love You More,” hadn’t been really rather lovely indeed. As it is, she could just be this year’s Steve McQueen.

    3. It is written by Matt Greenhaigh, who scored a home run with “Control,” another jagged, intimate portrait of a British rock legend. And anything or anyone connected with a film as brilliant as “Control” deserves our full attention. Fact.

    4. It stars Kristin Scott Thomas, inarguably one of the greatest thesps around these days, in the potentially rich role of Lennon’s loving but eternally disapproving aunt and guardian, Mimi Smith. It’s ideal casting, and Thomas carries a major IOU from this last awards season. Which brings me to my final point…

    5. Rights to the film have just been acquired by The Weinstein Company, with a view towards a year-end release.

    Harvey Weinstein reportedly “fell in love” with Greenhaigh’s script, which apparently focuses heavily on the emotionally charged custody battle between the aforementioned Smith and Lennon’s biological mother. It should be a meaty performance piece for Thomas and British TV actress Anne-Marie Duff (otherwise known as Mrs James McAvoy), and something tells me Weinstein might see a glimmer of awards potential there.

    It doesn’t hurt that that it’s being co-produced by Film4, which, between “Slumdog Millionaire,” “In Bruges,” “Happy-Go-Lucky” and “Hunger” had perhaps the most impressive slate of any production outfit last year.

    Okay, so it only started shooting on March 8, so there’s no way of knowing which way this one’s headed. Still one to keep an eye on, methinks.

  • Will BAFTA stick by their own?

    I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the BAFTA Awards. On the one hand, they can be far more daring and playful in their choices than the American Academy — this is an organisation, after all, that has handed their Best Film award to such enduring works as “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “GoodFellas” and “Lacombe, Lucien,” while nominating the Oscar-snubbed likes of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “The Usual Suspects.”

    Their technical awards are invariably more imaginatively awarded, too — take a look at their Best Film Editing category, for example, which in recent years has crowned “Eternal Sunshine,” “City of God” and “Mulholland Drive” as winners. And they can often be counted upon for gratifying upsets, as when Pedro Almodovar pushed past Sam Mendes for Best Director in 2000, or when “Trainspotting” blindsided “Sense and Sensibility” in the 1996 screenwriting race.

    For an awards show that fancies itself world-class, however, BAFTA can be infuriatingly parochial in their selections, stubbornly rewarding their own in the face of bigger, bolder competition. I doubt most of the voters could say with a straight face that “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was the very best film of 1994, nor “The Full Monty” of 1997, but they cleaned up nonetheless.

    For the last two years running, that kind of provincialism has ruled the voting, with this year’s awards looking particularly suspect. I think “Atonement” is a fine film, but handing it their top award seemed tokenistic at best, not least when the only other gong it took was for Best Art Direction.

    It’s a trend that Variety thinks could continue this year. In an article previewing the British contenders in the acting categories, they point out that Limeys have taken 16 acting BAFTAs in the last decade, compared to seven Oscars. Needless to say, they are frequently justified. It’s fair to say that this year, several British names will be cropping up in awards lists on either side of the Atlantic, and deservedly so — particularly in the Best Actress category, where thesps like Kristin Scott Thomas, Sally Hawkins and the ubiquitous Kate Winslet are all likely to figure.

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  • What was the debut of the year?

    Chances are it’s not a prize that studios are going to mount furious campaigns for, but the Guardian First Film Award has the classiest slate of nominees I’ve seen all year. Not so much an award as a nice little citation in their year-end Film&Music edition, their critics have drawn up a list of the ten best directorial debuts from the last 12 months, and have invited their readers to vote for the winner.

    They’re going by the UK release schedule, which is why you have 2007 fare like “Persepolis” rubbing up against more recent releases on the list. (And why “Waltz With Bashir” or “Synecdoche, New York,” surely the year’s most discussed freshman effort, aren’t on it.)

    So the ten are: “Caramel” (Nadine Labaki); “Control” (Anton Corbijn); “Eden Lake”  (James Watkins); “In Bruges” (Martin McDonagh); “I’ve Loved You So Long” (Philippe Claudel); “The Orphanage” (Juan Antonio Bayona); “Persepolis” (Vincent Parannaud and Marjane Satrapi); “Shotgun Stories” (Jeff Nichols); “Unrelated” (Joanna Hogg); “Water Lilies” (Céline Sclamma).

    Not much American content there, but hey, that’s the kind of year it’s been. I haven’t yet seen “Eden Lake” or “Unrelated,” I’m afraid to say, but besides that fact, I can’t argue too much with any of these inclusions. (Clearly I’m getting too sanguine.) What would you vote for? What have they left out?

    I’m still trying to break a three-way tie in my head between “Control,” “Persepolis” and “I’ve Loved You So Long,” which you may remember I kind of liked. (I’m just happy for an excuse to use the “Control” poster as illustration — seriously, has there been a better one in the last couple of years?) Check out all the details, and vote if you’re so inclined, here.

  • The top 10 shots of 2007: part one

    Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood2007 was, to my mind, the greatest year for cinematography in a long, long time.  I can’t recall the last time I was so thoroughly impressed with the visual artistry of film after film like I was last year, and I attribute that to the intriguing spark of creativity underway in the film medium as of late.  Newcomers and veterans alike were putting awe-inspiring images on film, some of the seasoned pros besting their already exceptional portfolios.

    I wanted to do something special in the way of commemorating the efforts of these individuals, and so I set out to interview a number of them as the year drew to a close.  Sadly, I was never able to piece those interviews together in a proper story like I would have wanted, but in recent weeks it has occurred to me that it may be just as beneficial to offer up something you don’t regularly see: a personal compilation of the greatest single images from the cinematic year.

    And so it goes that I offer the Top 10 Shots of 2007, a two part piece that will run down what I felt were the best of the best in a year full of exceptional cinematographic work.  Today, I’m running down shots 10 through 6, and tomorrow, we’ll wrap it up with the top 5.  Mixed in you’ll find sporadic comments from the lensers in question, as I feel it only appropriate that I give that small gateway into their process for readers and viewers alike.

    I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did compiling it.

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