From Netribution

The London Film Festival will close tonight with the world premiere of the feature debut from artist Sam Taylor-Wood, Nowhere Boy. It takes a look at the early years of John Lennon, when he was being brought up by his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas in a fantastic performance), getting into music, and taking guitar lessons from a young squirt called Paul McCartney. Suchandrika Chakrabarti reviews.

As we’re used to with films from artists-turned-directors (see also: Hunger by Steve McQueen; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel; Control by Anton Corbijn), the film looks absolutely beautiful – as the cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, puts it: “One thing we didn’t want to do was make a kitchen sink drama, just because we were depicting post-war Liverpool during the depression of the 50s.” The smallness of Lennon’s suburban surroundings is enlivened by bold colour, and the exuberance of his mother (Anne-Marie Duff, another great performance) is contrasted with Aunt Mimi’s conventionality by dressing the former in various shades of red and a select few other bright shades, and the latter in buttoned-up earth tones. The lure of Julia Lennon’s life to her son John is easy to see, but the reds also signal danger – she has disappointed him before, and she will again. This is what Mimi fears for the boy she and her husband George have brought up since he was just 5, in the absence of any children of her own.

Lennon’s story before he became an icon is fascinating, and it is told movingly in Nowhere Boy. His mother was married to his father, Alf Lennon, but his extended absence, due to working at sea, led her to an affair, an illegitimate child called Victoria (given up for adoption and later renamed Ingrid) and co-habiting with a new boyfriend, Bobby Dykins (David Morrissey), with whom she had Lennon’s half-sisters, Jacqui and Julia – all of which made her an outcast in 50s/60s Liverpool. Today, her crimes don’t seem quite so bad. Yet, Julia is emotionally fragile, and weak when it comes to providing security for Lennon – and this affected him all of his life. Aunt Mimi is sterner, but provides a safe framework within which the teenage Lennon can grow, make mistakes and learn.

The film is based upon the memoirs of Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird, depicted as a child in the movie. As always with a deceased star of this magnitude, there are discrepancies between the story told here and told elsewhere; for instance, the film’s emotional core begins at Lennon discovering that his mother lives round the corner from his home at Mimi’s, meaning that she hasn’t bothered coming to see him in 10 years, since he was 5. However, other sources say that Julia was a regular chez Mimi and George, and had a warm relationship with her son, while never permanently sharing a home with him. Although the film isn’t explicitly from Julia Baird’s point of view, the source of the material shouldn’t be forgotten.

After John rediscovers his mother in the film, he flounders in attempting to place Julia in his life. She ’s his mother, but Mimi is more of a real mother. Julia’s younger and more fun – and oddly flirtatious. She whisks him off to Blackpool for a day trip – leaving her daughters in the care of John’s young cousin – and she treats him like a new boyfriend who’s a little less knowledgable her, constantly kissing him, then whispering that rock’n'roll is all about sex, then dancing in the middle of a quiet beachfront cafe, in front of variously shocked and intrigued punters. Poor Lennon doesn’t know what’s hit him.

The film really belongs to his two mothers, Julia and Mimi. At a late point in the film, Lennon begs Mimi to remember that they are sisters, and never are the divisions so plain as in the (slightly earlier) climactic scene on his birthday, when Mimi forces Julia to finally lay bare exactly what circumstances led to Lennon being raised by his aunt, rather than his mother who lives just over the field. After this dramatic, painful and completely believable scene, the reconciliation between the sisters seems a little too easy – Mimi in particular was a famously spiky lady and it’s the only element of the film that doesn’t ring true, the two sisters sitting happily sitting side-by-side in deckchairs in the Mendips garden on a warm afternoon (see picture above). Really? Can 10 years of estrangement – as the film has it – be mended so easily? Perhaps the thawing of sisterly relations was dramatised so because of the nearness of Julia’s death, run down by an off-duty policeman in 1958 at the mere age of 44? The narrative compression is forgivable in these terms because it is an attempt at showing us the calm – the happiness, even – before the storm that irrevocably changed John Lennon, Mimi and the rest of the family.

The film is full of wonderful performances, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff stealing the show as the two main women in John Lennon’s early life. When onscreen, they are never less than mesmerising, and you do keep hoping that they will be brought together to solve all the mysteries of Lennon’s existence; in time, that scene does arrive, and it does not disappoint.

Relative newcomer, 19-year-old Aaron Johnson is sometimes overshadowed in the central role of Lennon, undoubtedly mirroring the real Lennon’s early experiences. The Liverpool accent of the Buckinghamshire native sometimes wanders, but he does a good job of conveying Lennon’s fascination with his newly-found mother, his alternate affection for and frustration with Aunt Mimi, and his alpha-male ways when it comes to forming a band – look no farther than his amusingly quick dismissal of a young Paul McCartney’s skills, who, in the next scene, is teaching Lennon how to move from banjo chords (“easy”) to guitar ones. There are, in facy, very few Beatles tracks played in the film (at one point, McCartney plays ‘Love Me Do’ for Julia Lennon; she correctly surmises that it’s about his dead mother); instead, we are placed firmly within a 50s context, wherein Elvis really is the king, and Julia Lennon’s screams for him (well, she is not alone) provoke Lennon into fashioning his own mop into a quiff. For a star so asscoiated with the 60s, it’s a surprising thing to see.

For me, born three years after his death, and only really aware of Lennon in his beardy Bed-In phase (and of course, according to my mum, McCartney has always been the only one worth caring about), this portrayal of Lennon’s making is gripping, and the three main characters are easy to empathise with, despite their conflicting wishes and actions. Some have criticised the lack of foreshadowing, of hints towards future Beatles moments, but, for me, that’s the beauty of it. If John Lennon interests you, don’t you want to know how he was made? And all of this happened years before anyone could ever have dreamt of his success. Taylor-Wood’s film conveys the poignant, complex and innately suburban story beautifully, without resorting to cheap biopic clichés.

From Netribution

Starsuckers is the second feature-length documentary from writer/director Chris Atkins, who made the BAFTA-nominated Taking Liberties in 2007. The film takes an in-depth look into celebrity culture – and sleb journalism – and the results are both laugh-out-loud funny and worrying.

The issue of made-up stories making their way into showbiz gossip columns was discussed by George Clooney and Kevin Spacey at the press conference for Men Who Stare At Goats last week (after the London Film Festival press screening).

Of course, there was nothing new about the debate, but it was intriguing, hearing two celebrities, who have been hounded by the media, describing how it feels, right in front of us. In fact, we got to watch it happen – in each of the two press conferences I saw Clooney in (Goats and Fantastic Mr Fox), he was besieged by a number of questions about his private life, namely when the hell he was going to get married and have kids. Some of the non-tabloid journalists later complained about this hijacking of precious press conference time. Who really cares? Well, as Starsuckers shows, we’re all meant to, because caring about slebs makes us buy stuff…

Narrated by a jovial-sounding voice that uses “we” and is supposedly the representation of the media, Starsuckers takes us through the ways in which celeb culture takes hold of the public, including hooking children on it, and creating fake news. An interesting choice for a Friday morning press screening. As Atkins put it on his Twitter, “have been advised against going to the Starsuckers Press screening friday to avoid actual bodily harm,” but judging from the atmosphere in the room afterwards, he may well have found some sympathisers. It’s not hard to see why, judging by the quality of the film.

While Starsuckers explores how celeb culture exploits both the participants and the public, the thread holding the film together is that of six-year-old Ryan, whose cash-strapped (and rather sweet) parents want him to become a star. Heartbreakingly, even though the little guy can “barely read” at the age of 5, he knows the word “résumé,” and he is somwehat aware of his parents’ financial situation, and promises to buy his mother “a big house to live in” with his pay. This story provides the thing closest to an emotional heart to the film, as the narrator takes us through the scary links between celebrity, commerce, politics and power.

There are some Chris Morris-alike touches, such as Atkins and team setting up a stall in a shopping mall calling for child actors, named “x.ploit tv.” Parents willingly file in, ignoring the name, and the fact that their children are being asked to dress up as though they work in a slaughterhouse, or else pretend to be drunk for a show called “Baby Boozers.” In fact, the parents encourage their children to do well, envisioning a better life for the kids thanks ton TV money and fame. They’ve obviously never heard of Child Star Syndrome.

The most reported-on aspect of the film actually takes up very little time, but illiuminates the worrying state of journalism. The crew called up the media tip-off lines and span ridiculous tales of celebrity doings, such as Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud having loads of books on quantum physics and Amy Winehouse accidentally setting her own hair on fire. This episode illustrates the point that fact-checking is alien to celebrity gossip desks – they’ll take their material from anyone.

So far, so what, who cares what people write about slebs? This is where the film goes a bit visual-version-of-Flat Earth News, an investigation into the state of journalism today, and, indeed, the book’s author, journalist Nick Davies, gets a significant amount of screen time in the film. Flat Earth News coined the term “churnalism,” which signposts the tendency for journalists – under great time pressure, and possibly covering the jobs of laid-off colleagues – to use un-checked press releases and wire stories to fill space. This is why you often see very similar stories across a wide range of media – they may well have originated from the same email attachment. Sleb journalism is ideal for this, as everyone knows who they’re talking about, the subject will attract interest, and if they deny it, well, everyone’s lost interest by then.

Scarily, Atkins gets a lot of interest from reporters when attempting to sell medical records, which is illegal. Posing as the friend of a medical secretary who works in Harley Street, Atkins offers the information (celebrity-related, of course) to tabloid journalists. Those from the Sunday Mirror, the News of the World and the People bit, but the Sunday Express guy was the only one to point out that this was illegal and flouted the Press Complaints Commission Code. The illegality is more of a concern than the PCC, which is run by a group of editors, and is famously seen as a “toothless watchdog” within the industry – as admitted by one giggling journalist secretly filmed by Atkins’ crew during a medical records meeting.

Most unnerving of all is the celebrity power / political power axis. Of course, we’re not surprised that Americans are susceptible to star power – look at ex-matinee idol Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1981, and of course, the Governator of Florida. In Lithuania, they’ve gone several steps further: the second biggest party in their government is the National Revival or National Resurrection party, and is composed entirely of celebrities. Their introductions to camera become entertainingly, and then eerily, monotonous: “I was a TV presenter/actor/singer… and now? I’m a Member of Parliament.” Even the head of the nuclear committee has a starry past. Eek. It’s like putting Rik Waller in charge of defence. Or, alternatively, a London mayoral candidate into the jungle. Oh, wait.

It’s not as though it hasn’t happened here – how about Glenda Jackson? It seems as though people like voting for a familiar face; as one of the Lithuanian sleb MPs put it, politics has a theatricality to it, it’s all about performance. And yet, the candidates’ claims to fame and political expertise are getting ever shakier. Atkins speaks to John Smeaton, the baggage handler at Glasgow International Airport, who shot to fame as the man who stood up to terrorists back in 2007. He will be standing as an Independent candidate in the Glasgow North East by-election on 12th November 2009. He is currently the head of security at a private car park near Glasgow airport, having moved jobs since the incident. In his conversation with Atkins, he did not come across as highly articulate. What would be his plans for political office, were he to gain it? Here’s an idea:

Smeaton, who became famous after kicking and hitting one of the attempted airport bombers in July 2007 and was awarded the Queen’s gallantry medal, said Labour had failed to increase jobs and investment in a constituency known for its deprivation.

“Well I can,” he said. “And, if I’m elected, you’d better believe it – I will. I’ll bring a storm down on Westminster, knock down doors and badger them until they listen. No messing.

“We must have someone in parliament who knows how the public feels. I know I can do that.”

…

Smeaton said he knew the Glasgow North East constituency because his mother worked in a local pharmacy some years ago.

He explained that he had decided to stand because he was “angry and fed up by the way politicians have been behaving”.

“Like everybody I was shocked by the fiddling by the MPs … it really made my blood boil,” he said.

However, Smeaton appeared to be completely stumped when, at a press conference, he was asked about Jury Team policies on linking MPs’ pay to civil service pay grades and the holding of referendums on key policies.

Asked about the public electing Commons select committees, he said: “It’s something I will look into and get back to you on that.”

(The Guardian)

Right. Into the vacuum left by an MP shamed for expenses swindling (ex-Speaker Michael Martin), a pseudo-celeb must go. On the flipside, the bigger a celebrity for EU council president, the better.

Starsuckers ties together strands that look disparate from the outset, but increasingly look connected: lazy journalism, celebrity obsession, photogenic politicians, high-profile charity work such as Live Aid/8. Little Ryan’s story weaves through them all, and surely continues out in the real world. We see him becoming more spoilt and obsessed with being the centre of attention. The ending of the film isn’t comforting; it forces us to look more closely at what is really happening behind the overheated headlines, advertising to tweens and cease-and-desist letters.

From Netribution

An Education, which has its UK premiere tonight at the London Film Festival, is based on a short memoir written by newspaper journalist Lynn Barber, which was published in Granta. The story was adapted for the screen by Nicky Hornby, and stars Carey Mulligan in an acclaimed turn as 16-year-old Jenny (based on the young Lynn), and Peter Sarsgaard as David, the older man who shows her what life is like beyond school and the suburbs.

The film is beautifully shot, and painstaking attention is paid to all of the 1961 period details. The Twickenham that Jenny lives in, and longs to escape from, is a little grey and generally rainy, while Paris and Oxford are bathed in colour, and the clubs and restaurants that David impresses her with are full of life and excitement, as opposed to the stiff, dull little gatherings she sits through at her parents’ table.

Hornby’s screenplay gives the lion’s share of hilarious line to the father, played by Alfred Molina, although the result is that we’re often laughing at him rather than with him, and, anyway, Jenny is more than capable of firing back the zings at her old stick-in-the-mud dad. His brilliant, brow-beating interrogation of one poor schoolboy would-be suitor is a lesson for all fathers.

Her mother, however, is consigned to the background, and the film takes a mostly subtle, but though-provoking, look at how the roles of women were changing at this time. Jenny’s mother is a housewife, and while the daughter goes out with David and his friends, the mother spends about three hours scrubbing grease off a casserole dish. Jenny returns to tell her mother that she’s just had the best night of her life; her mother looks at her daughter both fondly and sadly, while still keeping up the scrubbing.

Jenny’s dream is to go to Oxford to study English, and her Latin preparation, exams and even her place at school are derailed by David’s increasingly important presence in her life. Her headmistress (played by Emma Thompson in stern mode) faces her with a stark choice – early marriage to David, or gaining a degree. Both can’t be done. An infatuated Jenny derides the choices of the educated women at the school – including her own personal champion, Miss Stubbs, the English teacher – but David’s betrayal soon brings her to her senses. That familiar teenage feeling that everyone a bit older than you is having an amazing time and you need to get out there as soon as possible – yes, that one – had been blinding her, but, well, it all works out happily in the end. Just take a look at Lynn Barber’s wikipedia entry.

Cutest blog ever.

From Netribution

Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox will have its world premiere at the London Film Festival’s opening gala tonight. Suchandrika Chakrabarti reviews.

In case you don’t know (shame on you if you don’t), Fantastic Mr Fox is a 1970 children’s novel by Roald Dahl. The film fleshes out the original storyline, which sees Mr Fox outsmarting the local triumvirate of mean farmers – Boggis, Bunce and Bean – by overcoming their attempts to kill him, and setting up a tunnel right into the farmers’ storehouses, ensuring that the local animal population will never go hungry, or get caught by the stupid farmers.

It’s so nice to see Anderson back on form. The movie is much more Anderson than Dahl; it has the look and feel of his other films, and he also fills in a lot of family detail that is missing from the book, but is recognisable from his other work, especially from The Royal Tenenbaums. As ever, there is a distant, talented father (George Clooney as the title character), a son trying to win his father’s approval (Jason Schwartzman), internal family rivalries and a loving but ultimately subjugated mother (only with Meryl Streep’s voice filling in for Anjelica Huston this time). We’ve seen these types (and, indeed, many of the actors) before in The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited, where they have felt tired, as though Anderson had mined those seams too far into the ground.

It all works this time, though. The stop-motion characters are charming – not cute, we see Mr Fox biting a chicken to death, and of course this story is all about animals stealing and eating other animals – and the cartoony quality of Anderson’s films works well here. Where it is just odd when his human characters never change clothes and exist in strictly colour-co-ordinated confines – mainly yellow, always with the yellow – this makes sense in the context of a film that looks as though it’s for children (it’s pretty good for adults too; you’ll get a lot more from it than they will) and is clearly a flight of fantasy.

More at Netribution

Ahead of the London Film Festival’s opening night tomorrow, here’s a round-up of some highlights from Suchandrika Chakrabarti.

The LFF’s press screenings begin before the festival begins, and carry on during it, with the previews of the big gala films, like the opening night’s Fantastic Mr Fox (gosh, they do love a bit of Wes Anderson) and the George Clooney-starring The Men Who Stare at Goats, are saved for the morning of the screening. So you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer for those.

In the meantime, you can read on for reviews of the latest Matt Damon movie and the mockumentary stylings of Michael “George Michael Bluth” Cera…

[The full article's at Netribution, but here's the bit on Paper Heart:]

Paper Heart

This mockumentary carries within it its own making-of, as well as sardonic commentary upon the difference between documentary and fiction (clue: not much). That’s a lot of meta to wade your way through, but if you like that sort of thing – I do – you’ll be charmed.

Charlyne Yi has never been in love and so, along with her director friend Nick Jasenovec (played in the film by Jake Johnson, but the real Nick is a friend of Charlyne’s and did co-write with her as well as direct), she sets out to make a documentary about love, as she’s afraid that she’s incapable of it. The film includes some interviews with long-married couples, whose stories are played out in Michel Gondry-esque little scenes with Yi moving paper puppets along. These interludes have divided viewers, but I did find them sweet and an interesting alternative to the usual taking-heads docu thing.

There has been confusion over whether Yi and Michael Cera – who plays the guy who becomes her boyfriend in the film – actually were or are a couple. Go on, see if you can work it out. Well? Without a doubt, this are-they-aren’t-they? helped the film’s publicity along, and their relationship in the movie seems more like mid-teens puppy love than your average early-20s couple. Still, you do find yourself rooting for them. The best bit, though, is when Yi questions some kids in a playground about love. One little girl who is clearly destined for great things says that love is “taking them to Applebee’s to give them wings!” Comedy aside, their answers drive home the point that kids are forcefed ideas of perfect romantic love from an early age, and perhaps that makes recognising it in real life all the harder.

From Netribution

“Anyone can be a filmmaker. What’s really hard is to make a good, interesting film. A computer doesn’t help you write a better novel; writing in a notebook longhand is just as good.

“So technology can’t do the job for you, but it can make the medium more accessible to more people… Within a short time, I could get 30,000 people coming to my site, from countries where Rage doesn’t have distribution, and they’re talking to each other about the themes they relate to in it. That’s something that’s so new and extraordinary, really.”

Orlando director Sally Potter’s latest film, Rage, will be the first feature-length film to premiere on mobile phones. With an ensemble cast including Eddie Izzard, Judi Dench, Diane Wiest, Jude Law and Steve Buscemi, the first of seven episodes of the film will be streamed on Monday on Babelgum’s free mobile platform, across the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, with a new episode of the film every day. The mobile launch will be closely followed by the DVD launch, an interactive satellite premiere across a number of UK cinemas (including the British Film Institute) and a live-stream on Justin.tv.

Phew. How can one film work in so many formats? Netribution asked Suchandrika Chakrabarti to meet up with Potter and find out.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of democratising filmmaking, and I’m not sure whether that’s really the case. I’ve used the phrase myself, but democracy is about one person, one vote. It’s about people having a voice. I’m not sure the goal is that every single person in the world should be making a film. There wouldn’t be enough people to watch.”

Netribution: So how does the film work with the various methods of distribution? People are going to be watching it in very different media.

Potter: The film itself is a story that happens over seven days, so by its nature it divides into seven parts. As it’s filmed in close-ups upon the actors’ faces, it can work on a small scale, but also looks very beautiful up on the big screen. I think it does work at both ends of the visual scale. As it’s a whodunnit, a murder mystery, it does keep you going into the next day and the next to find out how things unfold… each episode ends on a sort of cliffhanger.

People have the option to get the DVD later on, and there is also the premiere at the BFI, which is going out live on 40 screens across the country. There will be a Q&A after, and, for instance, Jude Law is going to be in New York, in his dressing room for Hamlet, and we’re going to Skype him in.

Babelgum saw the film and really liked the idea of distributing it. This is one of their first feature films; it feels like the beginning of a new way of looking at films, and for people to access them easily and properly. Streaming technology is so much better these days.

The rest is over at Netribution

From Netribution

Jackboots on Whitehall has been called the “British Team America,” countless times for its use of puppets, but there’s a lot more to the film than that.

It gives us an alternative World War II scenario, in which the Nazis managed to invade Britain. The debut writer/directors, brothers Ed (25) and Rory McHenry (22), have managed to entice an impressive array of stars into lending their voices to the film, including Ewan MacGregor, Rosamund Pike and Alan Cumming as a very camp Hitler.

The production is something of a family effort, as the brothers’ dad, David McHenry is on production design (his credits include Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and Becoming Jane (2007) among much TV work), their two younger brothers Dom and Jack are helping with the puppets and mum, actress Maureen Bennett is often on set.

The movie is being shot at the Three Mills Studio in Bow, East London. When I visited the set last month, the crew were pretty busy blowing up Hadrian’s Wall, the site of a spectacular battle between the Brits – led by MacGregor’s Chris, a farmer with exceptionally large hands – and the Nazis, who are copying the invasion tactics of the Romans.

Producer Karl Richards gave us a tour of the set and workshops, before we got the chance to sit down with the McHenry brothers. The sets are full of background details that will reward close watching, as famous London streets get a German-style makeover, whereas Scotland is portrayed as a mysterious, tribal nation that provides the backdrop to a showdown with the Nazis.

Click here for more…

From

From the latest issue of Film & Festivals magazine:

For some successful feature film directors, the music video has provided a useful training ground. For creating a mood, a visual signature or crafting a short, soundtracked story, there is no better medium. The director doesn’t need to worry about getting a script together, auditioning (let’s just use the band, that’s what the fans want to look at) or even making much sense. Yet, if the director does a good job, the video will play back in listeners’ minds every time they catch a bit of the song – just think of Blur’s Coffee & TV (1999), with that adorable little milk carton on a mission to find the missing Graham Coxon. You see?

Working with an act that’s about to become big – or is already there – can also introduce an existing fan base to the director’s work. Cast your mind back to 1999 and Fatboy Slim’s single, Praise You, the one with the amateur dance troupe giving an impromptu show in an anonymous shopping mall. The song hit number one in the UK charts, and the video, directed by (and featuring) then-rising star Spike Jonze, deserved its three MTV Video Music Awards, and made its director hugely famous.

The added advantage of making a music video is that it can really help the director to get noticed by powerful people, for instance, when Drew Barrymore scouted out McG to direct Charlie’s Angels (2000). Similarly, Björk’s admiration of Michel Gondry’s videos for his formed-in-school band, Oui Oui, led him on the path to the successful career he now enjoys.

Here’s a look at five directors have made the leap from music videos to feature films:

Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry’s strength lies in his quirky visuals, and his beginnings in making videos for equally oddball Björk gave him ample opportunity to experiment. His video for her first solo single, 1993’s Human Behaviour (http://bit.ly/DiXPk), includes animated cuddly animals, clouds that look as though they’re made out of cotton wool and sudden moves between settings that are reminiscent of dreams. His three most famous feature films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The Science of Sleep (2006) and Be Kind Rewind (2008), share this kind of hand-crafted look.

Some of Gondry’s other videos utilise effects that he is clearly fond of, as they crop up in his later, longer work. The video for Wyclef Jean’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ (1998; http://bit.ly/cr2wV) has a live-action cartoon feel, with Jean carrying around and singing to a model of Freddy Mercury, and a car that is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. All three of Gondry’s features have similarly cute props and sets.

His films show that he is also fond of playing with impossible scenarios, such as doubles of characters popping up, and this effect can be seen in Kylie Minogue’s Come into my World (2002; http://bit.ly/11z44o) and The White Stripes’ The Hardest Button to Button (2003; http://bit.ly/nEUqU). Only music videos could have given Gondry the freedom to experiment with his visual language, without worrying about a storyline. In much of his feature work, he has left that side of things down to writer/producer Charlie Kaufman.

Spike Jonze

Like Gondry, Spike Jonze is also a Kaufman collaborator, and worked with Björk and Daft Punk, who seem to embrace unusual, memorable video-making. Jonze’s video for Björk’s 1995 single, It’s Oh So Quiet (http://bit.ly/sr9NN), reached number four in the UK and, thanks to continuous play of the video on MTV, hit number nine in the US charts. The video features surreal elements, such as Björk dancing with a post box, and then floating up into the sky towards the camera at the end, clearly signposting his interest in pushing the boundaries of realism, which can also be seen in Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002).

Jonze’s music videos also display a delight in choreography – Björk makes her way through town dancing with anyone she meets in the up tempo sections of Quiet; Fatboy Slim’s Praise You even has Jonze leading the dance troupe himself; and of course Fatboy Slim single, Weapon of Choice (2001; http://bit.ly/10uonN), featuring the extraordinary dancing talents of Christopher Walken, which won a Grammy for Best Short Form Video. Sadly, dancing hasn’t really come up in his films that much – maybe there’ll be some room for it in his next project, an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are (to be released later this year; http://bit.ly/AoMRr)?

Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn started out as a music photographer in 1976, and his photos of Dutch music sensation Herman Brood helped propel both men towards fame. The photography garnered Corbijn an invite to start making music videos in 1983, and the stylised cinematography that defines the look of his feature film, Control (2007) can be seen in much of his work.

Corbijn’s videos for Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box (1993; http://bit.ly/EzJPg) and Mercury Rev’s Goddess on a Highway (1998; http://bit.ly/UWm8Z) show his photographer’s eye for setting the scene. In Box, a wizened Father Christmas climbs onto a cross and becomes Jesus, while Nirvana rock out under a discordant, vivid orange sky, the visual equivalent of their music. In Goddess, the video starts out sepia-toned, muted, but colour is suddenly introduced with the appearance of the gold-painted miniature Statues of Liberty as the chase gets underway.

Earlier than these videos, back in the ‘80s, Corbijn directed the video for Joy Division’s single, Atmosphere (1988; http://bit.ly/dUlcF), eight years after Ian Curtis’ death. The video is shot in black and white – like Control – set in bleak, slightly frightening landscapes peopled by strange people in hooded garments. He uses stills of Ian Curtis and the band, and the whole unsettling effect fits well with the typically downbeat, deep vocals of Curtis. This video, more than any other in Corbijn’s impressive back catalogue, is the stylistic precursor to Control.

David Fincher

David Fincher eschewed film school, instead starting out loading cameras and then working on the sets of two of the Indiana Jones movies. As befitting the director of Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), his music videos are often dramatic and strikingly lit.

Two of his videos for Madonna, Vogue (1990; http://bit.ly/fxsM2) and Express Yourself (1989; http://bit.ly/12evaK) have a film noir look, with the former shot in stark black and white, and the latter featuring blue neon lighting and Madonna made up to look like a ‘40s femme fatale. Similarly, his video for Aerosmith’s Janie’s Got a Gun (1989; http://bit.ly/QxkRy) opens with a crime scene (shades of Se7en) and the drama is enhanced by the black and white filming of Steven Tyler singing, lit up by rays of blinding white light.

Lighting and silhouette also dominates the video for George Michael’s Freedom ‘90 (1990; http://bit.ly/nKuWV), wherein various supermodels lip-sync to his voice and writhe around in darkened rooms illuminated by blue neon light coming through the window, a device that induces a feeling of claustrophobia, and proves useful in Fight Club.

Hammer & Tongs

This UK duo consists of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, who began making music videos in the mid-90s, and now have two feature films to their name, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and Son of Rambow (2007).

Their most memorable work would have to be the video for Blur’s 1998 single, Coffee & TV (http://bit.ly/3XGdd), which follows a milk carton (‘Milky’, who was sold at auction in 1999) who sets off on a mission to find the missing Graham Coxon, and, on the way, encounters love, death and heaven. The milk carton puppet was made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, and his facial features and epic journey give a narrative backbone to an otherwise nice but repetitive song. Dealing with puppets and other such props would crop up again in Hitchhiker’s.

The twosome’s video for Travis’s Driftwood (1999; http://bit.ly/wbHIO) fits the gentle, nostalgic song perfectly, with a dreamy rendition of a school photo in progress. From watching this video, it is unsurprising to find that that Hammer & Tongs’s second feature, Son of Rambow, which draws heavily upon their ‘80s childhoods, was postponed by the offer of Hitchhiker’s; it was the film that they had wanted to make first. That feeling of longing to recreate the past permeates the Driftwood video; they only had to wait eight years to use that in a feature film, but they got there in the end.

Amelia Gentleman’s article in The Guardian about a day in the life of an elderly care home is very hard to read, but very necessary, and compassionately written. The constant contrast between the residents’ past lives and their undignified present existence persistently reminds us that this could be our future too. She doesn’t criticise the quality of care that the patients receive, but just shows us what it feels like to grow so old that we become helpless again.

After the jump, a few examples of what I mean:

Life here is another era preserved. The names are from the 1920s (Ethel, Alfred, Dot, Winifred, Gladys), the accents are a thicker Suffolk than heard anywhere now, the residents are all white, and talk about jobs they had that no longer exist (seamstresses, drapers), using defunct exclamations (“Cor blimey”). No one here has a mobile, and the only electronic chirping is the alarm to say that someone needs to be taken out of the loo.

[...]

Someone has tried to sweeten her existence by putting a bird table outside the window, and inside there are other attempts to mitigate the misery of her life in this shoe-box shaped room – photos of relatives’ weddings, framed pictures of her long dead, bricklayer husband, looking handsome in a soldier’s uniform.

[...]

The process takes 45 minutes. When Diana no longer has the energy to whisper yes or no to offers of food, she raises a long and elegant manicured finger on the bed to indicate when she is ready for more. The bright carmine red nail polish is incongruous – it’s the fingernail of a 1940s femme fatale, not a dying woman in a flowered nightdress.

Diana just breaks my heart.