The Horseman on the Roof is an incredible film. Not because of the plot – though that’s interesting enough: freedom fighters, secret police, damsels in distress, a rampaging epidemic, romance. And not because of the leads, though Juliette Binoche and Olivier Martinez do sufficient duty as the Lady and the Cavalry Officer respectively.

No: this is an incredible film because of the magical combination of light and landscape and celluloid film. Shot in the golden hues of a long French summer, the production took in more than 50 locations in a four month shoot. Every single scene ends up looks like an oil painting – though the opening moments in the wheatfields of Aix-en-Provence stand out. It is breath-taking and almost miraculous to look at.

convert this post to pdf.

A couple of years ago, in the middle of the night, we were woken by the sounds of shouting in the streets outside our loft. Sounded unnervingly like a riot – which would be unusual but not entirely unheard of in South Africa, after all. It turned out to be a movie production, featuring people dressed like punk rockers attacking a large vehicle, right on the steps of elegant City Hall. (You’d think that South African producers would be a bit more fastidious about neighbour notification – I remember a few years back a movie filming a gun battle, at night, in the middle of gang-land, and they hadn’t notified anyone. Gang members came running…..)

It turns out the movie that woke me was Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Rhona Mitra. It’s  something of a bit of a dog’s breakfast of a film – Mad Max meets Braveheart meets 28 Days Later. In short, it’s 30-odd years after a devastating Scottish plague, and the country’s been isolated ever since by its cynical southern neighbours. As a result, half the surviving population has gone feral, the remainder, medieval. And now a small team of scientists are sent in to find out what’s what…..

It’s completely inconsistent (cannibals in the midst of a massive herd of cattle) but all entertaining enough. (same director, Neil Marshall who made The Descent and Dog Soldiers, so not a surprise.) Rhona Mitra was good too. I thought the producers did very well to seamlessly merge the South African scenes with the Scottish ones; it was difficult to tell the difference. Wikipedia interestingly has the best stuff on how that was achieved.

convert this post to pdf.

Wolfman – baah, so-so. There’s plenty of spooky mist rolling in over wild and woolly moors, lots of flickering candles at night, lots of swoopy Victorian costumes, there’s even a troop of gor-blimey-guvner Gypseys. Blah blah blah. Reminded me of that other corker: Van Helsing. If anyone gets the kudos for this howler, it’s the editor. The cuts come quick and fast. (Actually, the cuts come in more ways than one; boy, it’s bloody.)

Basically though, I couldn’t get beyond Benicio del Toro as a British aristocrat; although they do try to explain him away, he still comes across as a pug-faced thug from South Central LA, with about as much class as a turned jug of jellied eels. And is he sleepwalking throughout??

The major architectural site is played by Chatsworth House, made suitably crusty with a coating of dead ivy. The unbelievably picturesque village is an actual place too; Lacock in Wilshire. Managed by the National Trust, it’s recently appeared on the small screen in the BBC’s Larkrise to Candleford.

convert this post to pdf.

Oh God. Watching Gosford Park is a lot like watching a car crash. Not that it’s a bad movie (though the swirl of inter-related characters at the start is a tad confusing); it’s a fascinating study of the utterly ugly, alien, repressed, hypocritical, upstairs / downstairs world of the British class system. Offensive, odious, awful.

Gosford Park itself is played by Syon House, just outside London. You’ve seen it in just about every other Britlit period drama from The Golden Bowl to The Madness of King George.

convert this post to pdf.

OK, so I’m jumping ahead of myself somewhat, but I’m back in Serbia for a couple of weeks of hoopla, including the first days of filming of Ralph Fiennes directorial debut Coriolanus.

Set in the early years of the Roman Republic, Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s most politically challenging examinations of the way power corrupts. Quite sharp then that the production aims to use actual tv footage of the mass demonstrations around the Serbian parliament building during the overthrow of Milosevic as an integral part of the production….

Now if only for a glimpse of Gerard Butler…..

convert this post to pdf.

Seems like the good fathers (I mean that as an oxymoron) of the Catholic Church in Brazil are tripping over the hems of their gilt-edged cassocks regarding the cinematic destruction of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Roland Emmerich’s 2012 movie. The Church is not cross because of the desecration of Christ’s image, but because they claim copyright of the statue – and by extension the right to some kind of fiscal compensation for its use. In the movie, you may recall, the iconic Rio landmark was destroyed in one big tidalwave, along with California, India and, apparently, the vestigal remains of the Church’s moral highground…..

convert this post to pdf.

A lot was made of the fact that Galaxy Quest – the 1999 movie starring a shirtless Tim Allen, a pneumatic Sigourney Weaver and a host of other huge stars in early roles – managed to spoof Star Trek fans but simultaneously honour them. Which is true. This is, after all, the story of a group of hapless has-been actors in a defunct sci-fi show forced to literally live their old roles in order to help a threatened alien race, only to be saved by the most ardent of Trekkie fans. However, not enough (in my mind, at least) was made of the fact that this is a genuinely exciting movie and genuinely funny to boot – with cracking one-liners that still make you laugh out loud. (”Quick, before they kill Guy…” – see? still laughing. Oh well, you probably had to be there.)

Most of the filming took place in the studio in Culver City, with one notable exception: a plot point sees our reluctant heroes land on a red planet of wierd, phallus-y, mushroom-y, rocks, where balls of metal are harvested by a gang of evil munchkins. This in fact is the aptly-named Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. Wow.

convert this post to pdf.

Body of Lies is a strange film that’s handicapped to a degree by the fact that its two towering leads – diCaprio and Crowe – conduct most of their interactions telephonically.

DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a CIA operative in Iraq who’s distinguished from his fellow countrymen by actually liking the Middle East and Middle Easterners generally. But in spite of his fervour and relative decency, Ferris is continually undermined by his boss (Russell Crowe), a lard-ass cynic who observes and controls Ferris’ every move via real-time images from a high altitude spyplane. This way he also fucks up Ferris’ more sensitive relationships – budding girlfriend, Jordanian spy chief, Arab stoolpigeon, that kind of thing. The plot such as it is revolves around attempts to lure out a shady Bin Laden-ish recluse, mostly by prodding his ego via the creation of a fake rival terror outfit. Frankly they could have made a really good hour-and-a-half movie about that subplot alone.

[Read more →]

convert this post to pdf.

Silence on the film-watching front, mainly because I’ve been flat out on developing a Media and Legacy Centre for Africa’s biggest visitor drawcard – the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.

Just a hop and a skip from the brand new Cape Town Stadium, the media centre will be offering a one-stop shop for premium media services, including:

• Press Conference venues and dedicated interview rooms
• Broadcast facilities including studios
• Dedicated camera positions throughout the V&A and at prime locations across Cape Town
• A media centre with hot desks, telephone lines, storage lockers, photocopy / fax etc.
• Video Production services
• Photographic Production services
• A/V and Photo Camera Rentals
• A/V and Photo Camera Repair
• A/V and Photographic Consumables & Equipment
• Photography Library
• Video Library
• Music Library
• Tourism services including flight bookings, accommodation, tours and transfers
• Concierge services
• Office Space for temporary Corporate HQs
• Conference and Meeting Rooms

We launch officially on March 1st, so I’ll have a purpose built website and centre registration details for you then. Phew.

convert this post to pdf.

Films of the Millenium from Paul Proulx. It’s location, location, location, isn’t it?

convert this post to pdf.