Martin Cuff Consulting

Here’s the trailer:

I realized again this week that no-one in my family and only a few in my circle of friends actually has much of a clue what I do for a living. This video on the making of The Hobbit in New Zealand I think offers a first class insight into the requirements of filming on location. Now film commissions don’t actually organize the logistics of on location filming themselves – that’s the production’s job. What a film commission does, on behalf of the local community, is to promote their specific locations as a great place to film, and then ensure that it actually IS a great place to film – by coordinating and promoting available crews and equipment and services and labor and permit issuing bodies, so that filming is easy and the maximum amount of money is spent in local area. And at the AFCI, I now coordinate between all of the governments in the world who offer this unique service to the film industry – we also provide the definitive training for Film Commissioners, and we host an annual event in LA where film commissions gather to market their destinations to Hollywood.

It’s pretty hard to write an update for an animated film on this locations-based blog, but with the Spielberg-directed, Peter Jackson-produced The Adventures of Tintin I’m going to try. Because the digital locations – from the Sahara to the historic Caribbean to muddy Belgium to the palaces and narrow streets of the Caliphate of Bugghar – are richly detailed and absolutely spectacular (we saw the movie in 2-D to avoid the horrid colour-deadening of the 3-D format). And vividly realistic too; that developments in this field will impact on the future of filming on location is entirely possible, I guess. The film’s fun too – an entertaining escapade and a couple of hours nostalgia thrown in.

Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an English man.

It’s been said that Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol is the movie that can make you forget quite how icky Tom Cruise is. True. Revisiting the role of Ethan Hunt, he’s lithe and agile and handsome and tight-panted and surprisingly compelling – ok, he’s hot: there, I said it – especially considering he’s turning fifty next year. Plus there’s Paula Patton too, who is probably the most beautiful woman on the planet at this very moment (sorry my-first-true-love-Rosamund-Pike, but she is – if only only just). Jeremy Renner adds some edge, that Swedish Nyqvist dude is suitably villainous as the bad guy intent on destroying the world, and there are all sorts of masks and gadgets and disguises and awesome locations. But I have to admit it, it felt like there was something missing. Or perhaps that we’d seen it all before somewhere. Not a bad evening of entertainment by any means, but naggingly disappointing nonetheless. Except for Tom.

Key locations in the film include Mumbai (the parking garage was built specifically for the movie), Budapest, and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Yes, Tom did his own dare-devil climbing. (the ropes were removed in post.)

I’m already pegging this for my Top Ten of 2012

It’s been a really odd year, with exhausting travel, moving house and even the advent of a full time job (gasp). So there’s not been as much movie-going as I would’ve liked. Nevertheless, here’s my top ten movie-watching experiences of the year:

10. The Conspirator- thought provoking

9. Bridesmaids – “Really?”

8. No Strings Attached – Sweet

7. The Rise of the Planet of the Apes – Eco-warrior

6. Easy A – Emma Stone

5. Morning Glory – Rachel McAdam

4. Meek’s Cutoff – Sunbonnets

3. Immortals – Henry Freakin’ Cavill

2. Fair Game – taut political thriller

1. Super 8 – ET meets Stand By Me.

Serbs, white South Africans and Colombians – they’re the kind of tripartite alliance of Hollywood bad guys. They’re the go-to nations for cartoon-ish stereotype, the people you portray when you can’t be bothered to create any characters with genuine emotions or motives or personality. Ah well. In Colombiana, the lithe, balletic Ms. Zoe Saldana plays a Colombian-born assassin who’s hell-bent on finding the evil drug lords who killed her parents. The bad guys (cue slick hair, gold chains, nasally accents) are actually being protected in the US by a corrupt CIA agent. Zoe has to force them into the open, which prompts much bizarrely-plotted violence that’s supposed to mark her as brilliant but actually seems contrived and, let’s face it, risky. (murder by shark? I mean, really.)

Colombiana is not a bad film, considering the confines of its genre. I actually quite like revenge flicks – at least there’s a nominal reason for the brutality – and Zoe is kind of the female Jason Statham, mesmerizingly athletic, but with bigger hair.

Colombiana filmed in New York and Chicago, with Mexico doing stand in for Bogota. Which begs the perennial Film Commission question: when you’ve got idiot film-makers making a mockery of your country and your people, do you encourage them to film in your location, take their money and work like hell to make them at least feel a little guilty about their quasi-racist assumptions? Or do you block filming, only for the movie to be shot elsewhere where you’ve got absolutely no influence, leaving you to watch from the sidelines as your homeland is trashed? There’s no easy answer to that.

Joss Whedon produces. And how frakkin’ cool does this look?

I like Katherine Heigl and everything, but Katherine Heigl as Stephanie Plum? And Irishman Jason O’Mara? Love him. But as the Italian cop Morelli? Surely the big hint is in the O’? Even Grandma was always more Sophia Petrello than Debbie Reynolds. So I don’t know about this; it feels as if a beloved group of friends and acquaintances is about to be body snatched by complete strangers.