Disappointments

Two news stories that have bubbled up to the surface today have left me feeling rather short on optimism, in two different ways. Please indulge me while I sulk a little.

Firstly: Stephen Chow is to no longer directed the Green Hornet film due to "creative differences" but is still "likely" to play Kato. That pretty much cuts off my enthusiasm for the project, and near the root too. Of course, we're only back to where we were some months ago, and I could muster up some energy then, so what's different now? Well, now we have a small stamp of disapproval from Chow. And, frankly, I trust Chow far more than I do Seth Rogen or, more importantly I suspect, producer Neil Moritz. Is Rogen going to can the whole thing all together? There's a possibility, if definitely not a probability, that this might happen. There's a stronger possibilty that if he doesn't, he'll one day wish he did.

Chow's attachment as solely an actor probably speaks more about paydays and contractual obligation than anything else. Crying shame.

Secondly: production on The Hobbit has been postponed for at least a year. Shooting is now set to start in 2010 with release on the first film only possible for 2012 or maybe even later. Again, this indicates possible problems with the production - most likely with the screenplay. Discord between Del Toro and Jackson could see the director depart or, possibly, a new writing arrangement struck. Only time will tell if either prove necessary.

Jackson has had a real run of bad luck of late - his Tintin film seems increasingly unlikely to ever go before the camera (or, rather, motion capture sensors); supposed creative differences saw Ryan Gosling duck out of The Lovely Bones; Susan Sarandon has publicly spoken out in criticism of the film and of Jackson's approach to characterisation; the production design and FX team on the film appeared to mount a mutiny that halted progress and highlighted possible serious cause for concern.

So, three of the upcoming films (four if we count The Hobbit as two) that I'd be most likely to get be getting excited by right now are, currently, looking a little worrisome instead. This time of year for film bloggers is very often about celebrating the best of the year gone by and looking forward with hope to the year to come but sadly, while I'm looking forward all right, it's with a definite set of mixed feelings.

Here's hoping Jackson can pull it all together down at Wingnut, and quickly, too; and that Chow bails entirely from this Hornet palaver and goes off to do something a whole lot more interesting instead.

Terry Gilliam Developing Zero Theorem

Pat Rushin's screenplay The Zero Theorem is currently undergoing development with director Terry Gilliam. Seeing as Gilliam's supposed next project - a remounting of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - depends somewhat on the compliance of one J. Depp, who is a very, very busy man, I think Zero Theorem has every chance of going before cameras next year...

Well, pending the development process, budgeting and funding... oh, and casting and scheduling.

But those things tend to take care of themselves, right?

This film would be somewhat smaller than the typical Gilliam project, in the way that The Fisher King was, for example (you know - the film with the magnificent and epic Waltz in Grand Central station and the chase with the flaming knight on horse back through the streets and parks of New York).

Rushin is an Associate Professor in the English dept. at the University of Central Florida. As well as several stories published in anthologies and magazines, Rushin also wrote the screenplay to a short film called Control, directed by Scott Hulan Jones... and so far, my trail goes cold there.

If Gilliam is seriously chewing over his screenplay, however, I can guarantee that it's a good one. Anybody got a copy? You know I want to read this really badly right now.

[EDIT: And Pat Rushin has now confirmed to me that, yes, he's working with Terry. He's a good man, though, and wouldn't leak me the script - of course! Which means I'll have to turn to other sources and start begging and promising favours and the like]

DVD Picks For Xmas

Want to get the film lover in your life something special for Xmas? I would hope so - even if that film lover is you.

Here's my list of DVDs you probably haven't even considered for them but really should. I got my hands on each of these this year and love them all. They didn't have big marketing budgets. They didn't generally get cinema runs. They didn't get love heaped upon them by big name critics...

...but they are, without exception, rather superb.

Click on the link where any of them is named to get to an Amazon dot Com page where you can make an order and still receive the disc in time for Xmas. Woo hoo!

It gets tricky now because, operating under the assumption you haven't seen any of these films, I don't know how little or how much I should tell you. Take it on faith, please, that I'm recommending only the films I'm most supremely in love with.

The first gem? The highest profile. Otis (also on Blu-ray) was the fourth Raw Feed film and the second to be directed by Tony Krantz. Starring Illeana Douglas - who regular readers will know I adore - and featuring a wonderful ensemble of other performers, this was not your typical horror fare. Some say it is a satire on torture porn; others a grand guignol comedy of errors; some have compared it to Juno, of all things; I just reckon its sharp, smart and ambitious. A serial killer gets a hold of a suburban girl and when her parents find out, they decide to go all Virgin Spring on his ass - but this time we're a few doors up from the Last House on the Left and nothing quite goes the way you'd expect...

I'd put Otis in a double bill with Carrie any night of the week. Not only as they are both exceptional horror films with a prom twist to their plots, but because then I could make a Carrie/Otis double bill poster and not have to put Wild Orchid or Simon Says on there.

Another satirical horror film would be my second recommendation. Blood Car
is a true indie, apparently funded with just enough shirt buttons to pay for a single shoe string. It did the rounds of festivals - mainly very small ones - and racked up a few lower profile commendations as it did so. The trailer also points out that Jonathan Demme is a fan - and that's good enough for some, I'm sure.

Blood Car takes the Blood for Oil metaphor and makes it literal. It also manages to ridicule vegans while, ultimately, commending veganism. More importantly, perhaps, it has some truly outrageous jokes about pet slaughter by BB gun, butter-and-sex-stained bed sheets, government conspiracy and how to get a hitchhiker to look into the trunk of your car so that you might... er... sacrifice them for the good of mankind.

This is exactly what a no-budget film can do so well. Score a bonus point for the inclusion of Anna Chlumsky, formerly the My Girl girl and two more for introducing the world to Mike Brune.

Even smaller in scale (and that's a pun, and it is intended) is Sean Meredith's film of Dante's Inferno. Quite amazingly, the entire film has been staged and filmed as a piece of Victorian toy theatre - each of the characters being portrayed not by a flesh and blood actor but a cardboard cut out, manipulated in real time. Think of a live action cut out animation - if you can.

Shot by shot, the puppets are replaced giving each the perfect articulation and expression for any necessary moment. The sheer depth and breadth of creative thinking on display here would be recommendation enough but with this Inferno, you come for the dazzlingly original, idisosyncratic visuals and stay for the witty script, smart updates to the original and supreme vocie acting from Dermot Mulroney and James Cromwell. I wasn't blown away by the trailer - though I know some who were - but I really was by the whole thing (which is a nice reversal on the typical state of play).

Etgar Keret is currently pretty hot property with his short stories forming the basis for Wristcutters: A Love Story and Tatia Rosenthal's Best Animated Feature Oscar contender, $9.99 - but he's also directed a film himself, alongside his wife Shira Geffen.

Jellyfish was a lower profile film than Waltz with Bashir this year, but both being Israeli, they have been bundled together by certain critics. Which is very odd, as they have so little in common - some kind of daft nationalism at play?

Jellfish is like a winningly magic realist take on the interleaved-stories subgenre (you might argue Magnolia was a previous entry in this tiny subgenre, but even if you don't, Jellyfish is a far, far better film than Magnolia).

Keret and Geffen are doubtlessly a team to watch - and I'd even expect their next collaboration to be a big international smash.

A few years back, Minoru Kawasaka had something of a cult hurricane on his hands with The Calamari Wrestler, the story of a Wrestler who is also a Calamari (not to be confused with the upcoming Aronofsky film, which, obviously, is a mistake you were about to make - have you seen Mickey Rourke without his Marv on lately?). The rapid shooting schedule - you could count the days of principal photography on your digits if not your fingers - and seemingly less-than-zero budget did nothing to dim Kawasaka's basic good directorial sense, unfettered energy and idiosyncratic, swerving imagination. The same can be said for the three other Kawasaka films released just in the last few months - Executive Koala (salaryman is accused of murder, has a Koala head but that's okay, he's supposed to); The Rug Cop (cop fights crime with his crime fighting wig and no small amount of panache); The World Sinks Except Japan (the world sinks - well, except Japan, anyway and the Nipponese have to pick up the pieces).

The World Sinks is a kind of slanted satire that could just confuse some but fans of, say, Borat will have a field day with it; the others are simpler genre-disruption exercises with infectious pep in spades. Whole shovels of pep, getting lumped at you. This is the Xmas that Kawasaka peaks - with four of his best films in English friendly distribution.

Are These The 20 Best Films Of 2008?

Roger Ebert has published his list of the 20 best films of the year on his website, and here they are in alphabetical order:

Ballast, The Band’s Visit, Che, Chop Shop, The Dark Knight, Doubt, The Fall, Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Happy-Go-Lucky, Iron Man, Milk, Rachel Getting Married, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, Shotgun Stories, Slumdog Millionaire, Synecdoche New York, W., Wall-E

Now, there's an awful lot of films on that list I would never dream of including on a list of my own (and, yes, I'm going to come back with such a list) and even a small handful of films I haven't yet seen (and, yes, that's why I'm not giving you my list now - there's still some contenders to be viewed) and even more still that I might render exempt as here in Blighty they'll not be given a full release here until next year, so I'll hold them over.

The one film on there that strikes me as most misplaced is The Dark Knight, but I'm definitely no fan of W. either. I swear to you, they won't be coming within a hundred miles of my best-of-year-end-a-thon. I might even write a special piece on why The Dark Knight is a genuine 2/10 ranker and just how - and for that matter, why - I think the wool has slipped, more than been pulled, over people's eyes.

Moving on. More encouraging is Ebert's support for Synecdoche New York which seemed to underwhelm most critics. Kaufman love is always welcome here.

So, which of these is on my longlist? Wall-E, without a doubt. The last two thirds are a mere shadow of the majesty and wondrousness on display in the first section but even those scenes stand head and shoulders above the competition - which is, while we're making lists like this, the remainder of 2008's films but could be extended to apply to all films, ever.

And... that's it, actually. None of the others are on my list. Yet. Mainly because I don't rate them, but other times because they've yet to unspool before my eyes in the first place.

Films not on Ebert's list that are pretty much shoo-ins for mine (or would be if it ran to more than 20, anyway)? There's.... The Mist. Burn After Reading. City of Ember. Juno. My Winnipeg. You, the Living. Garage. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. Be Kind Rewind. Chocolate. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Hellboy 2. Redacted. In Search of a Midnight Kiss. La Antena. No Country for Old Men. The Spiderwick Chronicles. Dan in Real Life. Teeth. The Savages. Walk Hard. River Queen. Honeydripper. CJ7. The Boss of it All. Talk to Me.

Of course, a number of those would have been 2007 movies for Ebert... not that he included them all a year ago either.

Films I really, really wish I had seen and feel pretty darn confident about include Rachel Getting Married, Frozen River, Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Che, Tears for Sale, American Teen and Encounters at the End of the World. From all available evidence, they'd be on my list had I been lucky enough to see them.

There's a bunch of lesser known films in the running too - but I won't reveal those now because - drum roll please - coming in the next few days is my Gift List recommendation post. A nice little pile of DVDs that you may not have heard of, each one a genuine and heartfelt recommendation as a gift for that special movie geek in your life. I've come across my own copy of each of these truly special gems this year and did so either by accident, by determination or by miracle - but definitely in spite of popular neglect.

So, coming next: the DVDs to treat yourself or your loved ones to for a gift; then, the official film ick 2008 Films of the Year, Alright? rundown; and finally, just before New Year, I'll tell you why 2009 looks like an even better year than 2008 (which was a better year than 2007, itself a better year than 2006, and - pretty much without exception - so on and so on...)

Michael Sheen Is NOT The Cheshire Cat

So, if Michael Sheen is not the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland...

Somebody out there must know who he's playing however. And I want to know.

Five Point Zero

Okay, so of the thousands of people to read the announcement here, a couple of dozen went over to the film ick community messageboard. A few links from other sites and still nothing.

So it won't live on. Not unless something miraculous happens.

I need to find a way to make film ick happen but not take up all of my life. I am so busy - 12 hour days regularly - but I don't want film ick to die.

So I need to keep experimenting. Trying new ideas.

Next up will be some kind of weekly format. A column. I'd do it as an audio podcast if anybdoy online hosted such things for free - but apparently they don't.

So while I wait for that, it will take the form of a column. And I'll post it here.

Hopefully it will be incredibly saturated with news - lots of obscure stuff, the odd scoop - and in the style of film ick as you've known it all the while.

How does that sound?

Let me know.

First Trailer For The Boat That Rocked

A leak has sprung and from it flowed the first trailer for The Boat that Rocked - not officially online yet. And perhaps this cut of the trailer never will be.

I've popped the link up over at the film ick community board. Please come get it.

film ick 4.0

To bridge the gap between film ick as you know it (which is probably in the 2.x Blogger incarnation) and the much more manageable Twitter flash-news feed, I've created a new film ick community.

Please come, join up and join in. Get my version of the news, sure, but also get your voice heard too.

To get the ball rolling, I am currently transposing the Twitter items over to this community.

Twitter Update

I'm now starting to get my head around the Twitter thing.

You can see me by clicking on this very sentence.

More followers, please. Without you, how do I know to carry on? A couple of weeks of continued (exponential?) growth would keep the wheels on.

Twitter

Let's try an experiment. Or play a game. Or dip our toes into some strange water.

I'm going to reprise film ick, sometime in the next two days. There might be any number of updates per day. What's the catch?

I'm going to do it via Twitter. I'm there as brendonconnelly. Does that give you all the info you need to find and follow me?

Jump on now, so I can see you in my stats. And then the Twittering will commence. 140 characters is more than enough for most stories. Anyway, it will teach me disciplines I previously denied even existed.

Oldboy Update

Will Smith has been pushed over the upcoming Oldboy remake, and what he had to say is likely to have varying results on people's anticipation levels.

Apparently, the remake won't be of the Chan Wook Park film at all, but another adaptation of the original manga. That means the most basic elements of the premise will be intact, but that the mystery will have an entirely different solution.

So, basically, all of the good work Park and co did fixing up the Manga will definitely be abandoned.

Personally, I think this cements the fact that Spielberg's film will flounder - creatively, of course, not commerically - as the source material will be inferior. On top of everything else going against the film... sheesh.

Of course, some might argue that the film is less likely to be truly offensive now, with Spielberg no longer in a position to graffiti all over Park's brilliant "original". I don't quite see it that way - Park's film will always be, no matter what Spielberg does, and it doesn't matter to Oldboy 1.0 what a turkey 2.0 is, but it does matter to 2.0 what source material it has to draw on.

Incidentally, the 2.0 script is to be by Mark Protosevich, (a) screenwriter of Thor, The Cell and various other things that hardly get my brim wet with the golden nectar of confidence.

Poor old Will Smith.

McG's Wonder Woman Versus Spielberg's Oldboy

Nice to see you again.

Lets get some basics straight, right off the bat - Whedon's Wonder Woman should have been given the greenlight years ago; the last film Spielberg made that I can care about, for the good at least, and in any significant way is Jurassic Park, and that was because of the work of Phil Tippet and Dennis Muren.

Two prospective projects are getting discussed at length on the geek pages this week. One is a McG film of Wonder Woman, possibly - or possibly not - starring Beyonce Knowles. The other is a remake of Chan Wook Park's Oldboy, directed by Spielberg and starring Will Smith.

Will Smith, okay. I can work with that. I can see a very fruitful process in taking Oldboy and adapting it to fit Smith. If you run his skillset and screen persona through Oldboy you will end up with something sufficiently interesting and different to warrant a remake in the first place. It definitely doesn't kill the film, just makes it stranger. Will Smith lives in a specific world and is set at a specific register and planting Oldboy, full plot intact, on the fringes of this world intrigues me. Tom Cruise would be even more interesting. George Clooney, about as interesting. Nicolas Cage, less so - no offense, Nic, I still love you. If I were remaking Oldboy, I'd try to get Tom Cruise onboard in the lead.

Spielberg is the big problem with the plan. I simply don't think he has anything like the skills required to balance the elements of the storytelling here. Oldboy's is not an easy story to tell well - even Park, one of the greatest of all filmmakers didn't play a perfect game, and I doubt he would deny it. But he did do an incredible job. The film is jaw dropping, entirely entertaining, almost entirely engrossing and, for 5/6ths of the time, technically awesome. It would take something like an on-form Hitchcock, desperately hungry Tarantino or calm, relaxed Gilliam to execute the maneuvers necessary to pull off Oldboy to perfection. Spielberg won't even come close.

McG's Wonder Woman on the other hand seems a brighter proposition.

A satisfying Wonder Woman film would not NEED the conceptual complexity of Oldboy (as much as it might benefit from it) just a strong, keen concept and super polished execution. I know McG can do this - I've seen his three films, at least twice each, and with the exception of some later sequences in Full Throttle, found them utterly convincing. Convincing, that is, that McG could take a Wonder Woman, or a Superman, even a Batman, a Star Wars, an Indiana Jones and hit it out of the park.

The best director to make an Indiana Jones film so far was Robert Zemeckis: Romancing the Stone . While it was a far better piece of visual filmmaking than any of the "real Indy" films, he didn't have a Lawrence Kasdan script. Shame. Kasdan sure knows how to write. With a script of that caliber, McG could make a popcorn flick for the ages, I have no doubt. Louis Letterier - sub McG, for sure - will get his chance with the upcoming Clash of the Titans, assuming, of course, that it is still a Kasdan script when it goes before the cameras.

(Actually, Danny the Dog aka Unleashed is a case in point. The end film definitely stays afloat despite Letterier's intermittently bad decisions blasting a few medium size holes in the hull)

So, Wonder Woman's fate rests now in the hands of the script writers - getting the plot right, the pacing and structure just so, the dialogue under control; Oldboy already has that all ready to be maintained, and the quality of the remake there rests more squarely in the hands of the director. So, if I were a gambling man, I'd be betting on McG's film being the better, and that's even with the risk of a Rossio-Elliot-Orci-Kurtzmann-Nathanson-Koepp screenplay.

Postscript: and, yes, that was a riff on a line in The Dark Knight but no, I didn't like the film. Not at all, really. Gary Oldman was great... er... and... er... Ledger was good... Eckhart was good most of the time... and... er...

Another time.

Heath Ledger In The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnasssus

Tell the world.

Educational Opportunites

Click on the ad, make it bigger, be seduced, e-mail for more info, sign up, get wowed and come back every term.

Wedding Bells

Rachael and I got married last Friday, 4th July. Independence Day. Woohoo for us! She's made some kind of honest man out of me.

Prompted by my UK passport and Rachel's US one, Rich Johnston (of LitG) commented at our reception: "Taking 'em back, one woman at a time".

I could have phrased that better. Not Rich's quip, the context. But I think you followed it. I hope. I thought it was a typical bolt of Rich genius.

So... as a wedding gift... anybody got the Inglorious Bastards/Basterds script? Pleeeeeease?

Send it over if you do.

Thanks.

Oxford Film School

I'm running a free film class. Tuesday 1st July, St. Anthony's College, Oxford. 6.30pm. It's on the Woodstock Road, so right near the very centre of town. It's a real class, so you'll be learning something - but there will also be a chance to ask questions about my courses, find out when and where they are next running, meet other people interested in film and film-making and so on.

Should be brilliant.

To see some of the films made by previous students of my Intensive Film Workshop, head on over and check out the Oxford Film School placeholder blog page.

Hellboy And Me

Rich Johnston over at Lying in the Gutters has put up a little report by me on Hellboy 2 and a roundtable interview with Guillermo del Toro. There's a couple of spoilers, but don't be too scared. Worth a click, I reckon.

Rich and I are apparently going to see Wanted this Thursday. We'll see. Don't know if it could possibly be worth getting up at 5am and rescheduling 5 of my students' lessons for....

Paul's Brain Trust - Once In A Lifetime Blade Runner Opportunity

Please read this.

I reckon that the greatest film of 2007 was Blade Runner: The Final Cut. It was also the best DVD set of last year - easily. And the Alien Quadrilogy boxset might still be the best DVD boxset on the market at all.

None of these things could have existed without Paul Prischman. He was a producer, or worked on the production team, on these and many more DVDs to treasure.

I remember the first e-mail I ever received from Paul, completely out of the blue. Just making conversation about something I had posted here. He was just a film fan, reading around - like me, and quite like you too.

The conversation went on through more e-mails and telephone calls. It didn't take long at all for me to realise how thoroughly decent Paul is, how knowledgeable, enthusiastic, interesting and, most importantly, I feel, how nice. As yet, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Paul face to face, but I would like to call him a friend. He's definitely been a good friend to film ick.

Some good friends of Paul's have now set up a charity called Paul's Brain Trust. Why have they done this? Because Paul has been diagnosed with "particularly aggressive" cancer in his brain. Because, while Paul does have medical insurance, it won't cover everything. And because they love him.

I dare say you've probably loved his work - on the DVDs I mentioned above, or on the discs for Monster House, Spider-Man 2, or countless others. Please, then, check out the Brain trust page. Just click on over and see what they're up to. You'll be amazed, actually - for example: a very special screening of Blade Runner, right there alongside the lot where it was shot, with Ridley Scott attending and carrying out a Q&A... and much, much more.

Keep your eyes on the Brain trust site (and here, too) for more. Fingers crossed, we'll be able to raise some support for Paul via film ick too.

Thanks for reading.

Again, The End?

Hey you! Yes, you. You can download a trailer for Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. It's in FLV, but is better quality than the version on YouTube - and doesn't have the placeholder bits of Buffy that the YouTube trailer did. This is the finished article and it's really very interesting indeed. Not to mention ahead of schedule: expect the show to start in January. 8 months from now. Better news, however, is that the show appears to have more than the initially understood 7 episode order because I've been sent some quotes from Whedon in which he mentions Tim Minear writing and directing not only the 7th but also 8th episode. If 8 instead is our lot or not, I have no idea, but I'm placing my chips on 13. Let's see a year or so from now how right or wrong I am.

I know that film ick officially finished up months ago, but recently I've been trying to get writing again. I'm currently negotiating for somewhere to publish my stuff... and negotiations, while convivial, promising and encouraging are also rather slow. But I think I'm about to start up very soon. Cross your fingers for me - it's a good platform, somewhere I'd be proud to contribute, and it will give me access to a lot more info, people, bits and pieces than I have managed alone.

Not to mention paying, just a tiny bit, meanign I can afford to make time to do the job. Which is nice.

Mad Skills And A Cameo From Me

Check it out.

Against All Odds

Kuntz and Maguire's Onion film is finally getting released. Yep. On the 3rd of June, the film will be slipped out on R1 DVD. Will it live up tot heir music video work? Will it live up to The Onion itself? Two "No" answers there, most likely, but this is, in modern times, one of the most conspicuously absent films and we should celebrate this news.

Too Good Not To Share

I'm back, because this is too good not to share.

So... did you ever wonder what could be "the greatest lie that Satan ever told"?

Find out.

(Personally, I can't see much difference between his old life and the new, expect the absence of 7k worth of silly trinkets and toys)

A Scene From Where The Wild Things Are

Can somebody please tell me if this is a legitimate clip or not? It... certainly... looks like it. And that certainly sounds like Benicio... and... well, it was a nice surprise to find it in my e-mail, let me tell you.

Yeah, let's face it. It is real. At the very least it was a real test. I love the suit. Spread the word.

I'm still very busy, working away on a couple of BIG film projects and teaching, teaching, teaching. I'm thinking of bringing back film ick as a weekly podcast... sound like a good idea? Where should I host it?

And... I don't know what to say about Heath Ledger. Sorry. I don't know what to say at all. But I'm obviously incredibly pleased that The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is going to be completed.

[EDIT: I'm now told this clip was a test shot in the summer of 2005 in Griffith Park. And that's not the final Max, but Griffin Armstorff who improvised everything you see him do here. Presumably, Benicio Del Toro was then given dialogue to match the improv lines, but it's also fairly clear that the basic scene outline was probably preplanned first of all. On top of everything else, I think we can expect the finished film to look even better than this does]

Heath Ledger, Swinger

Just Jared has on-set images from the shoot of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. See Heath Ledger hanging by the neck. It isn't a spoiler - it's the character's introduction in an early scene. But as to why he's doing this... that would be a spoiler.

Want to know why anyways? My age-old script review will tell you. Go into the archives for much, much more on this film.

Terry Gilliam's shooting a new film! It must be Christmas or something...

Look! It's The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus

This was worth coming out of semi-retirement for, surely?

The pics, taken by James Hatts, originated at London SE1.

Look What I Made

Just to keep my eye in, I'm hopefully going to be doing the occasional review for Daily Information, a primarily listings-and-classifieds website based here in Oxford. My review of We Own the Night (out in the UK on December 14th) has just gone live there. Please go and have a look.

They're going to be far shorter reviews than you'd be used to from film ick, but hopefully still well worth reading. Well, I say they're. I haven't been called upon to do another yet.

Talking of Oxford, I saw The Golden Compass and, frankly, can't quite work out where the fuss about it being castrated is coming from. As far as I could tell, all of Pullman's subtext was intact - so, yah boo sucks, Donahue. It was at least as clear as in, say The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - and that couldn't have been any more plain without putting the lion in sandals and giving him stigmata.

The subtext remaining, and readably so, was not what I expected, I have to admit - I thought this was going to be an utterly gutless, bloodless film without any kind of point of view or meaningful set of values - but it was definitely a pleasant surprise. Now, if only they'd made the onscreen version of the plotting a little cleaner and clearer and managed to relate Lyra's inner life more successfully. And tidied up some of the FX. And didn't end on a dull, drawn out pseudo-happy conclusion that rankled fans looking for the last few scenes and still failed to really create and closure for anybody else.

Gassner's production design was truly superb, though. And the blocking of the de-jawing shot was really rather clever. All in all, a six out of ten for Weitz' film, which is about four more than I anticipated it would rate. And a fairly respectable score for any film, I think.

[EDIT: A,N Wilson and Mark Lawson on the BBC's Front Row have agreed with me that, frankly, you'd have to be a bit dim to miss the subtext. Not a popular opinion - has everybody been so dim that in fact, they have missed it themselves?]

Oh, and quickly - before I vanish again for lord knows how long - a quick plug for the 5-Disc Blade Runner DVD set. I've spent hours and hours and hours with it and, frankly, it has proven to be the single best DVD set I have ever, ever encountered and not least because it includes The Final Cut, which is, ultimately, the best film of 2007. Here in the UK the price has been set at around the £22 mark, with several online deals undercutting that nicely. Come December 18th, US citizens will be shelling out a fat lot more, however, but all the same, it will be worth every last cent. Kudos to Charles de Lauzirika, Paul Prischman and the rest of the DVD team for all of the truly exemplary, engaging and entertaining supporting materials. These bonuses are a sweet heaven for movie lovers, even those as yet unswayed by Blade Runner itself.

If You're Still Out There, Reading This...

...and you're in the UK, then please, do me a favour and take a look at this. This is our attempt to use our excess capacity (our skills, video gear and weekends, essentially) to generate some work. Basically, Rachael and I are now a Videography business.

I'm particularly pleased with the second clip on the site - the christening one - but maybe that's because the wedding video is so heavily cut down in this excerpt.

Please share the link with anybody you know that might desire our services.

And thanks.

Once more.

Here's The Big Mad Max 4 News...

...there is none. It isn't happening. At all. Several details of the film that again won't be are coming out.

I've not been happy with my posts over the last week, so I've decided to call it a day here at film ick. I wanted the site to be something that I simply don't have the time or money to make it into. Maybe, one day, when I have the money, time and necessary support I'll come back with something slicker, but equally passionate and created with the same feelings.

So, now then. I'm outa here. Gone, sure, but hopefully not forgotten.

Thanks very much for you support. Antonello, Paul, Don, Mark... I could go on and on and on and on. You've been great to me over the months. I've enjoyed being in touch with you. I've loved hearing what you have to say. It's been my pleasure to simply get into the back and forth with you.

Goodbye. And thanks again.

Last thought: I saw Diary of the Dead last night. It's quite brilliant indeed - despite a few obvious problems with the overall concept. An angry, passionate, beautiful film that asks a lot of the right questions but doesn't pretend to have all the right answers. The US release is in February; there's no UK date yet; despite the AFM pre-sales hullaballoo, Romero claims to have no ideas for the next one yet and wouldn't want us to hold our breath for it.

I'd like to thank George Romero for being so committed to actually making films worth caring about, thinking about and, actually, loving. Diary repays your love. And it will join you when you stand up against the corruption, hypocrisy and greed.

Pinch Punch, First Day Of The Month

Following on from the last post: Stylus Magazine has closed it's doors this week also, I have learned. Not as much of a blow to me as DavisDVD, but a loss all the same.

I was having a lesson about 'Negotiated Meanings' this morning, with my student James. We came around to talking primarily about two films - Blade Runner and The Matrix. One he loved and one he didn't like at all. Much to my dismay, it was The Matrix he loved. After we went back and forth about it for ten or fifteen minutes, with me pulling up all kinds of issues with the film, or all manner of defenses or new avenues of understanding Blade Runner, we finally got to the heart of what the lesson was supposed to be about, just not in the way I anticipated. James was now accepting that the plot of The Matrix appeared to make little or no sense, but still asked "Maybe we're missing something. I don't believe they'd make a film that makes no sense at all".

Well, they did. And they will continue to make such films. And people will continue to passively sit back and have them shovelled into their open mouths. But I hope James has come one step closer to believing that he shouldn't simply assume the filmmakers know better than he does. Thinking that the Wachowskis actually know entirely what they're talking about might be sweetly naive but it's just one example of why we're constantly peddled half-conceived, tangled and ludicrous guff.

Definitely not talking of which: the production of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is now officially official in a mentioned-in-Variety kind of way. They have no new information to share, sadly, but at least word of a new Gilliam film is spreading.

Other Variety stories from today tell us that the comic book Hyperactive is to become a film courtesy of MTV and Benmderspink; Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control is to star Isaach de Bankole and will film in Spain next spring with an 'internationally appealing' cast; Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are reteaming in Tony Gilroy's corporate caper-flick Duplicity, which sounds to me like a cross between The Water Engine and The Spanish Prisoner though, most likely, will be very little like either; Meryl Streep is to play julia Child for Nora Ephron, with Amy Adams in a supporting role; Richard Curtis has described The Boat That Rocks like this: Eight of the most extreme disc jockeys you've ever imagined having to live in a corridor, and a corridor that moved. And with no girls." I can't wait to hear the casting for this one.

I know there's a huge amount of fuss across the web at the moment because Spaced is to get remade for US TV. Here's the bad news: neither Edgar Wrigtht or Simon Pegg have been consulted which is, at the very least, rude; that Adam Barr, the scriptwriter hardly has a sterling resume with Will and Grace being his highest profile gig; that it's being remade for Fox, who are likely to be less willing tot ake risks or field esoteric material than the UK's Channel 4, home of the original.

And now here's the good news: Adam Barr is untested enough that, actually, he might have the right stuff. Who saw Buffy the Vampire Slayer lurking in the scripts Joss Whedon wrote for Roseanne? Nobody. And Greg Garcia's Yes, Dear fell far, far short of My Name is Earl - at least the good episodes of My Name is Earl. There's no way I'm coming down on McG, either - I think the Charlies Angels films are just fine, thankyou. Indeed, they're really rather good examples of their subgenre and show a wide bunch of capabilities, skills and sensitivities that get overlooked. And, in many ways, he shows a failry suitable outlook for a project like Spaced.

The original Spaced isn't going to go away and a remake can't actually taint it in any real way. What it could do, however, is be its own thing, a new series that takes Edgar, Simon and Jessica Hynes' work as a starting point before developing an identity of it's own. Let's wait and see how good or bad it is before we deem it (as some online voices have) the worst UK-to-US sitcom transfer ever. Surely it has every chance of being much better than Damon Wayans in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em? Of course, that one isn't geek treasure, is it? Frank Spencer isn't going to get the spod army up in arms.

Despite being one of the best sitcoms of all time Spaced was nowhere nearly as good as people pretend, having several cop-outs, weak jokes and indulgent passages scattered amongst all of the really great stuff; Shaun of the Dead is probably even better than its reputation; Hot Fuzz was very good but had enough frustrating loose ends, distancing stylistic tics and confused elements to disappoint hugely. My point is: reamking Spaced should be considerably less controversial than remaking, say, Halloween. More controversial than remaking ET, perhaps - but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed.

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are two of the best writers at work today and Edgar is one of the better directors but neither of them is so unfathomably masterful that I can't conceive of their work being untouchable. Like Whedon, Tarantino and Rodriguez before them, it seems like they have been elevated to godly status by a horde of geeks desperate for representation and identification, irrrespective of the quality of their work. When the backlash comes, I fear it is going to be cruel and harsh and utterly without rationale - but it is going to come, for sure. Just like it came for the others.

And, while we're still sort of on the subject, the US version of The Office is much, much better than the often tiresome UK original and I'll never back down over that argument.

This whole fuss reminds me of the age-old tussle about cover versions. For my money, I'd like the cover to be markedly different from the original - otherwise, why bother in the first place? A straight-up rehash is only one step away from overdubbing a foreign language film, in truth - it only gets done to serve up a castrated version to the lazy, ignorant or bigoted folk who won't bother with or are frightened of the different cultural phasing of the first version. Actually remaking something is like creating a sibling, a side version, a new beastie with new cultural roots of its own and while this often fails spectacularly, or is often an utterly pointless enterprise to begin with (*cough* Rob Zombie *cough*) , it certainly doesn't deny anybody a chance to see the original.

And before you complain that Spaced isn't available on R1 DVD, let me remind you that there's no excuse for not owning a multi-region player.

Postscript: I'd love to remake ET.

I'm Not Alone

DavisDVD was always one of my favourite sites. Head on over there now for a sad Goodbye statement.

Thanks for all of your hard work over the years, Patrick. I look forward to whatever you do next.

Tell Me What I've Missed

Assume that I've been on Mars for the last fourteen days. What's gone on in Filmland? Please do stop by the comments and tell me what you know, what interests you in particular, what you think I may be most intrigued by.

It's Halloween, Isn't It?

Last night, Rachael and I watched quite a bit of Signs, which (like hundreds of the discs piled up behind me right now) I hadn't seen since I first bought the DVD. Not that I want this observation to reflect badly on the film, mind, because there's some brilliant, brilliant stuff in there. The scene in which Graham and Merrill run around the house shouting is particularly great, and if I'd have written and directed as much stuff like that as Shyamalan has I'd probably suffer from ego problems myself. (Come back in a few years to check on my progress in this regard).

We didn't make it to the end of Signs, however - perhaps it would have been more appropriate for tonight, the one night of the year Rachael seems more susceptible to scary fare. I even got her two thirds of the way through Dawn of the Dead a couple of years back (but how she ended up watching Hostel with me on Valentine's day, not to mention walking out of it before it was over, is another story altogether).

So, today being what it is, and all, the horror films are out in force. 30 Days of Night hits the UK today; Saw IV has been around since last weekend and is doing very well, it seems; the BBC are trotting out Carpenter's Halloween once again tonight - though I bet they ingratiously crop it down to 16:9, so don't bother - put the DVD on instead; and there's even a new, splattery clip from Aliens vs. Predator Requiem up for grabs. If you want to download it directly, I can offer you a WMV version, or my preferred Quicktime encode. Exploding heads and acid spurts to the face abound - and this version doesn't have th annoying IGN badge.

Paul W.S Anderson's involvement in this film has probably put most people off, and indeed, I'm epxecting little or nothing from the film. I certainly didn't think much of the first. I've gone into some detail about my feelings for Anderson already, and they haven't changed: he's a pretty capable hack who sets fairly easy targets and hits them sort-of-squarely most of the time. And that's not a bad thing, really - it just isn't a particularly good thing. While I haven't seen There Will Be Blood, I've seen all of PT Anderson's other features and I'll stick with his schlockier namesake, if I may - a fraction less ambition, a great deal less botchery.

I saw the third Resident Evil a week or so ago, and I did enjoy most of it, if only at a pretty low register. The odd bit here and there was even very interesting - the opening sequence that sets an Alice clone loose into a recreation of the first film's opening riffs quite enjoyably on the videogame mechanic of multiple lives/continues and repeatable levels (things we take for granted, they're so commonplace in games - but they didn't have to be). I liked the wireframe transitions from location to location again, which reminded me of nothing so much as negotating the map screen on a latter-day Metroid game. And the end of the film, which saw multiple Alices, ready to awaken and each try to defeat the evil Umbrella Corporation across the world seemed resonant with the myriad players of the games, globally controlling their identical avatars in identical missions.

Probably the film that best speaks to my experience of playing videogames in eXistenz, though this Resident Evil run a fairly close second (though, obviously, in this one respect only - I'm definitely not comparing Anderson to Cronenberg on any other terms).

So, I briefly mentioned the box office success of Saw IV. Looking at those opening weekend grosses, I'd say that every dollar over 20 million was worth another hearty laugh at Nikki Finke and her delusions of having halted the commercial success of so-called torture porn. That's over 11 million laughs, and I'll join you in every one.

On the other hand, each of those dollars is also worth a tear. How can a spiritless film like a Saw be so massively outgrossing Hostel Part 2? It was the angriest, smartest, most worthwhile horrror film since... er... well, at least Hostel Part 1 and it's getting trumped by the latest repetition of boring, witless carnival show.

And here's my prize Halloween link: The living horror of the looming strikes has studio execs and producers running hither and thither trying to put together their slates and sharpish. Variety's round-up does a good enough job of explaining which studio pictures are set to roll in time, so I won't paraphrase it here. Of specific interest to long time film ick readers, however, might be that Wolverine is getting a rewrite from Jamie Vanderbilt and Scott Silver. I say good. Very good. David Benioff's original script was as bad a script as I've ever read. I was concerned about this one because I've really been enjoying Gavin Hood's work so far - Tsotsi and Rendition - and now I'm just glad he looked past Benioff's, ill-structured, cliche stricken, senseless draft in order to sign on to a basic set-up that could so easily soar.

And..er... that's that. That being my first attempt at finding a new way to do this.

The Future: If You Only Read One film ick Post, Make It This One

Let me tell you a secret.

I don't want to do this anymore. Not the way I've been doing it in the past.

I've spent the last week trying to find ways to make this enterprise fit in with the rest of my life. Ways in which I can collect, collate, read and pass on film news; ways in which I can see films, write reviews and publish them; ways in which I can strip download links from trailers and post them for your enjoyment.

And, the bottom line is, I can't make it any more efficient, really, than it ever was.

For the best part of a year, film ick has taken an average of three hours out of my day. Each and every day. For a year before that, it was taking maybe one to two hours per day - but I improved things, became more serious, and that cost me the extra time.

I can't go on giving up 21 hours a week for this. There are all sorts of things that have suffered.

I'm very busy teaching, at the moment with several students needing up to four hours of personal tuition a week each; I'm working on the script for one feature film, one short film and - while we're revealing all of our secrets - I'm deep into development on another feature film that should be shooting before the year's end. And that, of course, takes even more of my time - and of course, it deserves it. And it deserves my energies.

And I have a personal life to attend to too, of course. A partner, parents, siblings, friends and a splendid dog and I'm glad for my time with all of them, and I don't want to miss out on so much any longer.

To be blunt, film ick has become something of a thorn in my side.

For the longest time, I felt like running this site was an almost painless endeavour. I was reading all of this information anyway, so what harm was there in passing it on? But then I actually started looking at the clock, seeing how much time was vanishing. When I was ill a few weeks ago it became incredibly obvious how much of my life film ick was chewing up.

So I don't want to do it anymore.

Sorry. Some readers here really seem to appreciate my work, which is touching and very much appreciated in return, while some others act as though they think they're entitled to it - as though they're paying me for this. There aren't even any ads on the page - and, in fact, it costs me to keep this place afloat. To you people I say: come here if you want, don't if you don't, but don't whinge at me for not providing the exact service you'd prefer. Instead, you can simply suggest some improvements, maybe? You never know - they might come to pass.

Now, I'm going to look for ways to make the process of creating the posts here more efficient for me, I swear. Any suggestions will be most gratefully received. If I can get the time required down to an average of 75 minutes or so a day, then I'll dive back in head first. You can have ten hours of my week for free - why not?

Until then... abnormal service is resumed. Irregular updates, of indeterminate size and content. Think of them like columns in a weekly magazine, perhaps. They won't be as rare as weekly, may sometimes be as regular as daily - or more frequent, even, when required or inspired.

I've had intermittent help from a good number of contributors, and I'd like to thank them all once again , but nobody became capable enough that they could hold the fort alone for two or three days a week (though Rachael did learn a lot of my techniques and secrets and, if she had the time, I'd trust her implicitly - but she absolutely doesn't, so it's moot). For better and worse, this has been pretty much a one man outfit pretty much all of the time.

I hope all of this gives you some context and helps you understand what you can expect from me in the future. Any possible solutions you can offer, please do. In the meantime, I'd suggest you sign up to film ick with an RSS reader or the e-mail subscription widget in the right hand column - that way the sporadic, unpredictable posting schedule to follow won't prevent you from getting the latest in a timely fashion.

Thanks again for all of your support and I hope you can hold on and stick with me. I'm back, at last - but the site is just going to have to share me.

Wait For It...

...I'll be back later today.

[EDIT: This is taking longer than expected. And I have a lot to catch up on. My apologies. But I will be back. And in a matter of hours, not days. Not minutes, admittedly, but hours]

Hiatus

film ick is going on hiatus. We will return on Monday 29th October with... some new ideas and new ways of doing things. Most of these will be behind the scenes, so up front, it'll still be the devil you know. More or less.

And, no - I'm not going on holiday.

And once these wrinkles are ironed out, we'll be back in business 24/7. Yep - all film ick, all the time.

Repo! The Genetic Opera - First Look

Some footage from Repo! was premiered at the Scream Awards last night and has now, as was inevitable, made its way online. Unfortunately, it's shaky-cam style; even more unfortunately, it looks like dull, cliched stuff with predictable lyrics and, in the song here showcased, a flat melody. The necessary imagination seems almost entirely absent.

A real shame because this was one of the most intriguing casts in a very long time and a full-on horror musical is definitely a novelty, if nothing more.

Daily Update - Saturday 20th October - Volume 2

Let's do this again, shall we?

- This confused me just a little. Aaron Jeffery has apparently auditioned for the role of Logan's brother in Wolverine. Shooting on the film is scheduled to take place from this December, with the release scheduled for May 1 2009.

- A slowly waning candle in a creepy Jack O'Lantern on the Dark Knight tie-in site WhySoSerious appears to be counting down to Halloween. What's going to happen?

- Stewart Lee is making a pilot for BBC2. It will feature sketches and stand-up and will probably be about ten times funnier than any other show to feature either sketches or stand-up.

- All UK readers, pay attention to this: Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em is being remade for the US. And who will be in the Michael Crawford role of Frank Spencer? Damon Wayans. Dear heavens above. I bet he won't be half as good at roller-skate based stunts but I can't wait to hear him say "Oooh Betty".

- Common has described Timur Bekmambetov as somewhat more open to improvisation than Joe Carnahan.

- If Darren Aranofsky is really directing The Wrestler in the new year, what has happened to The Fighter? I think wires may be crossed? Maybe?

- The next two Saw films may be filmed back-to-back. Why not?

- Martin Campbell is being wooed to direct a remake of The Birds. We don't really need it, but I'm sure he'll do a more than workmanlike job. I'd rather him than, say, Marc Forster anyway. And I definitely like the set-to-star Naomi Watts plenty enough.

- Dave Eggers is writing an 'adult novel' based upon Where the Wild Things Are. In case you've forgotten, Eggers co-scripted the upcoming Spike Jonze film - the screenplay of which, by the way, has been reviewed. I saw the links at BigScreenLittleScreen.

I'm still laughing about Damon Wayans as Frank Spencer. For non-UK readers, please check out a clip of the original from YouTube. Doesn't Michelle Dotrice have a vague whiff of PJ Soles about her?

Not enough? There's plenty more. Plenty.

Daily Update - Saturday 20th October

Here's a new way to get your film ick - daily bulletins that give you the best stories and links. Yes, I'm aware of the similarity to the now-defunct Movie Minesweeper.

[VARIETY] Aisling Walsh is to direct the supernatural drama The Daisy Chain. Samantha Morton is to star alongside Steven Mackintosh as grieving parents who take in an autistic child. I'm imagining something slightly more Don't Look Now than Godsend.

[VARIETY] Killer secretary comedy Miss Nobody is to be the debut film of Tim Cox. The cast will feature Adam Goldberg, film ick fave Missy Pyle, Kathy Baker and co-producer Leslie Bibb.

[VARIETY] I don't really have a sense of smell so the scent-centric Mistral is bound to go over my head a little (if that hasn't wound up a twisted metaphor that means nothing at all). Matt Williams is to direct the 'romantic fable'.

[VARIETY] The Film Department have snapped up Jason Graham and Haley Gilbert Fisher's script The Pre-Nup.

[VARIETY] Bruce Dern is keeping it in the family by casting daughter Laura and wife Diane Ladd in Hart's Location, his directorial debut. Ashley Reed specifically wrote the script with an eye to uniting the family for the project.

Listen, I'm not liking these square bracketed links - are you? Let's give this a rest for a short while as I work this out...