The Wafer-Thin Mint (A review of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover)

You will never see such a beautiful film about the ugliness of the world as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Peter Greenaway has long been dissatisfied with cinema being strictly a storytelling medium, and here has constructed the first attempt to capture the horror of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Remember those school trips to the Tate Modern, or the National Portrait Gallery? There was at least one watercolour, or sculpture, or statue, or piece of modern art that caught your attention because of how disturbing it was, the kind you couldn't take your eyes off of.

That's this film in a nutshell.

... (Review of The Artist)

Reviewing The Artist is a tricky thing. As a film geek, and someone who would quite like to make the jump to full-fledged film critic, this should be my favourite thing ever. It's a throwback to classic cinema, a silent film about silent films. It looks like a silent film, from the lighting used and the softness of the image, to the 1:33:1 aspect ratio used in that era. Even the soundtrack is uncanny, a constant orchestral accompaniment with no diegetic noises. Indeed, The Artist is very, very good. But I may end up further cementing myself into the amateur critic circle because I don't think it's the critical darling everyone else seems to think it is.

...

H+ - A short story

As I've mentioned before, I'm studying Creative Writing, and at the encouragement of some, I've decided to post some of the work I've done for it. We'll start by jumping into the deep end with my first creative piece, H+. A speculative fiction piece about the increasing role technology plays in our world. Enjoy.

This seems like an appropriate choice of image.

Same Old Thing in Brand New Drag

Some of you may have heard of a 2000 film called American Psycho. Prior to Batman Begins, this was the biggest and most critically acclaimed work Christian Bale appeared in. Adapted from the book by Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho is the heartwarming tale of Patrick Bateman, a young Wall Street banker who goes about brutally murdering people while trying to mask his own psychotic nature to his co-workers and loved ones.

It goes about as well as you'd expect. The film differs a lot from the book - it's less violent, some of the jokes are jettisoned for practicality - but it is still a wicked piece of satire and black comedy. If you can find it, watch it. It's one of the funniest things you'll see. It's an underrated classic that not many people in the mainstream have heard of. So naturally, Hollywood want to remake it.

He's ecstatic.

Yes, now that it's over ten years old, American Psycho is the latest property to get tarted up in new clothes assembled by bored music video directors looking to make waves, with Lionsgate ordering a script to be written and directed by Noble Jones, whose biggest credit to date is second-unit director on The Social Network. What with all those 80's horror film remakes (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Fright Night, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street) routinely getting stretched over a pommel horse by the critics, the studios are evidently trying a different tack. First came the prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, confusingly also titled The Thing, and now they're remaking a film that's set in the 80's.

Let's look at why this is a bad idea, and in a way that hopefully won't lead to me dumping molten lead over Lionsgate or Jones' heads:

1) Why remake it?

American Psycho is tailor-made for a specific purpose - lacerating the excess and shallow culture of 1980's America, the whole "Greed is good" message Gordon Gecko espoused in Wall Street. Ellis considered the book a response to the whole yuppie culture:

'It initiated because (of) my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself. That is where the tension of "American Psycho" came from.'

The only other reason I can think of why this is being remade is because of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and there was already another film about Wall Street not too long ago. The problem is that, right now, things are not as ridiculous or extravagant as they were in the 80's. The outfits and hair were cartoonish, the music was almost entirely embarrassing soft rock, and it was much more materialistic. You could argue that the latter point can be matched today, but having a Walkman in the 80s put you above lesser mortals. These days, everyone has an iPod, or a smartphone.

Most of the humour is driven by making fun of this excess, and the change in tastes, such as Bateman gushing about Phil Collins and Whitney Houston, who he seems to think is a sophisticated jazz singer. Jokes from hindsight. If you were to set the film today, who would be your prime targets? Justin Bieber? (Because God knows we don't have enough "bieber is a lesbian lolololol" jokes circulating the Internet) Pitbull? Ke$ha? They seem topical, but they're going to date quickly. Something the original was aware of.

"I think 'Tik Tok' is Kesha's undisputed masterpiece. It's a mediation on time, and how fleeting it flies when you're having fun. But it's also about rebelling against time, like how she adores Mick Jagger, a man well-past his physical prime, and that "the party don't stop" even when time runs out. Chantelle, on your knees, I left the hanger somewhere."

(Lionsgate, you can have that one. All I ask for in return is $10,000.)

2) Who is your lead battling against?

Prior to American Psycho, Christian Bale was known only to critics for his role as Jim in Empire of the Sun when he was 13. He starred in a few things in between, like Pocahontas, but it looked like he was fading out of critics' interests. And then this happened. Bale saw the dark streak of humour in the book, and supposedly got the role because no other candidate did. He and director Mary Barron were in hysterics during filming. He could have been just another once-promising child actor gone into the ether, but here he demanded people pay attention.

No, scratch that. He strolled into their houses, shook their hands, and cracked open a bottle of Chardonnay, then loudly called for attention.

Bale got the inspiration for Bateman's overall demeanour by watching Tom Cruise on a talk show, finding all of his mannerisms - the jokes, the smile - to be completely artificial, and marvelled at how hollow he seemed. This is replicated brilliantly by Bale, who plays Patrick Bateman as so smooth and charismatic he appears empty. As he himself puts it: 

There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.

Bale's performance was revelatory and downright pitch-perfect. He was terrifying, charming and, crucially, hilarious. The scene where he bangs two prostitutes while admiring his muscles to the tune of Phil Collins' "Sussudio" is a grotesquely funny bit of comedy. Who can you cast to top that? Josh Hammer? Garrett Hedlund? Andrew Garfield? They're all fine actors but however great they are, they're going to be in Bale's shadow, and it will just invite more unfavourable comparisons.


3) Remember the last time you tried to follow up on the original?

A lot of you might not know, but there was a direct-to-video sequel called American Psycho 2: All-American Girl. It wasn't based on any of Ellis' books, and starred Mila Kunis and William Shatner.

We do not talk about this.


4) What are you hoping to achieve from this?

I've had a theory that film studios release bad sequels or remakes of good movies so the original looks even better by comparison. Because otherwise stuff like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a prequel that detailed the origins of Leatherface and his family of inbred cannibal hicks which apparently we all wanted to know, has no reason to exist.

This is a problem I have with the upcoming Akira remake - what do you get out of this? Common sense would dictate it would be easier to just re-release the original, with remastered sound and image. A friend of mine already mentioned my idea, but it still stands. Put it out for a limited time, meaning tickets are higher in demand, and then follow it up with a DVD/Blu-Ray/digital release a few weeks later. It will save you money. Let's think about the logistics:

You're willing to spend somewhere between $30-50 million, hiring a completely new cast, crew, writer and producers, to make a film that will inevitably end up third in the box office on an off weekend before tailing off into obscurity, and get inevitably compared to the original film before being confined to the back shelves of HMV's horror section. This is what you're going to spend your money on.

Are you sure this is a smart decision?

Stop American Censorship

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The American Akira is somehow getting worse

So Acting Auditions, a website that lists casting calls for major Hollywood features, has announced one such call for extras to star in the upcoming remake of Akira, which is already doomed to die unmourned and unloved except by Warner Bros who are that desperate to get something out of development hell. Why is this significant? Well, they've announced the plot in a nutshell.

It honestly feels like they're trying to make it purposely bad to prove a point to Warner Bros, because otherwise I have to accept the possibility they're serious. And that's far too terrifying a possibility to consider. Here it is:

Kaneda (Garret Hedlund) is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel (Ken Watanabe). Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed (Kristen Stewart) and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers. Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo's mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel's troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother bfore Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

...

...

Triumph of the Will: A Green Lantern Review (may contain spoilers)

Another poster better than the film deserves, by James White.

Well, by my reckoning I'm about six or seven months late to the party with this one. This film has had the stench of death about it for quite some time. Not just the reviews, which could charitably be described as unkind, but the lead-up to it - there was the muted reaction to the first reveal of Ryan Reynolds' CGI sausage-man costume, then a lack of anything noteworthy at the Comic-Con preview, and the report that Warner Bros had spent $9m fixing up the special effects in post-production, on top of the film already having something like 1300 visual effects shots (according to director Martin Campbell). Several effects studios were working overtime on it until the film's release, and this has, on balance, not turned out well (see the big fat bomb Last Action Hero).

2011 would see the end of the Harry Potter franchise, meaning Warner Bros needed to find a new franchise they could print money with. DC Comics, a new subsidiary of Time Warner, also needed more exposure for their label, as so far they've been understated in the comic book movie business as of late. Oh sure, they had The Dark Knight grossing $1bn, but for every one major success, they had box office disappointments like Superman Returns and Watchmen. And with Marvel quickly dominating the superhero film field with their big tied-in universe, DC chose to throw Green Lantern in as their best bet. There was a lot riding on this film, so it came as a real shame that the resulting film was not very good.