Friday, February 04, 2011
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Kevin Smith, Red State and self-releasing
In 2002, Pip and I drove 26,000 miles around America. We didn't have a grand plan and went pretty much wherever we felt like. I did insist, however, that we stop in a tiny town called Leonardo in New Jersey. I tracked down the Quick Stop convenience store where Kevin Smith shot the movie Clerks. I bought 2 decks of Marlboro Light and two bottles of Mountain Dew, and marvelled at just how goddamn tiny the place was. Amazing how the camera can make things look bigger and more important. The only indication that this was anything remarkable about this particular convenience store was one tiny press cutting about Clerks blu-tacked up behind the counter.
I love an awful lot of Kevin Smith's work. Not all of it, but a lot of it. More than that, though, I love what Kevin Smith represents. Even more than Sam Raimi with his cabin, even more than Peter Jackson with his DIY gorefest, to me Smith represents the 'fuck it, I'll do it anyway' spirit. The idea that a guy working in a shop could do a day's work, then close the shutters and shoot a feature film that would go on to be distributed all over the world is an idea that I find vital and exciting. Hell, even if you can't stand Smith's work, if you don't find something to applaud about the methods and determination by which he got that work to a global audience then something inside you just ain't working right.
I've seen Kevin Smith doing live Q&As a couple of times.. The last time he came onstage at 7.30 and was still going strong well over 4 hours later with no interval. The guy can chat, endlessly. It's kind of remarkable to watch.
As you've probably already heard, this week KS used the Sundance festival to launch his new flick Red State, and (after a fake auction) sold himself the distribution rights. He gave an impassioned 25 minute speech about what's wrong with the Hollywood distribution model (specifically on how much is spent on marketing vs how much is spent on the movie) which you can check out over on YouTube, and explained how he's going to tour Red State prior to conventional release and bypass regular marketing by using word-of-mouth, social networking, podcasts and so on. Funnily enough, the reaction to this has been strangely hostile in certain parts of the internet. Anti-Smith articles and message-board diatribes have been popping up, saying that Smith's speech was spitting in the face the community he was purporting to be supporting.
Personally, I love seeing someone work outside their comfort zone and I love the fact that KS is trying to approach the distribution model in a different way. Yeah, of course his plan of four-walling works rather better when you've got a huge built-in audience like Smith has, but where did that audience come from in the first place? This was a guy who had no contacts, no industry experience, nothing but a shitty job in a convenience store and some black & white film stock. At this point, the man can do whatever the fuck he likes, and good luck to him.
I couldn't help but be fascinated by the bored-looking dude slumped behind the counter at that Leonardo Quick-Stop when I bought the smokes and sodas. I wondered about him all day. A wannabe filmmaker? Someone who was an acquiantance of Smith's crowd back when Clerks was shot? Or just a guy working in a shop for minimum wage, vaguely aware that someone once something there?
"Yeah, someone filmed something. Some movie with a load of dick jokes. I dunno. Listen, d'you wanna hear my band's demo? We're gonna be huge one day"
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
What's Going On..?
There have been a bunch of news reports lately about Strippers vs Werewolves, (a pretty typical example of which can be found over at Arrow in the Head) detailing various exciting new details about the project including the additions to the cast of Sarah Douglas (Ursa from Superman and Superman II) and Barbara Nedeljakova (from Hostel).
The more eagle-eyed of you may also have noticed the announcement of Jonathan Glendening (director of 13 Hrs) in the director's chair.
Yes, indeed, for the first time I'm entrusting one of my scripts to somebody other than me.
At the point that SvW starts shooting (April 18th), I'm going to be up to my neck in House on the Witchpit.
It's been a project close to my heart for years and years. Even in this rather endearing local press cutting from 2005 I was listing it as one of my next projects. That was back before TrashHouse had even been released. Yeah, me and the pit go back a long way, and the script has changed a great deal over the years (as I've rabbited on endlessly about in various previous blog entries). But the time was never right to shoot it.
Sometimes the stars just kind of align and the right circumstances arise, and 2011 is finally the point where everything has dropped into place for the Witchpit shoot. If I didn't take advantage of the moment, I'd always regret it. We'll be shooting in the first half of this year and, (as I've already promised), further details will be along soon.
For those of you who prefer the actual scary bits in my flicks to the trashy bits, this movie is going to be an all-you-can-eat buffet. The script still creeps me out. I shall be directing with one hand over my eyes.
Plus, this way, I get to settle down and watch Strippers vs Werewolves as a completed movie with everyone else.
2011 is going to be an amazing year.
The more eagle-eyed of you may also have noticed the announcement of Jonathan Glendening (director of 13 Hrs) in the director's chair.
Yes, indeed, for the first time I'm entrusting one of my scripts to somebody other than me.
At the point that SvW starts shooting (April 18th), I'm going to be up to my neck in House on the Witchpit.
It's been a project close to my heart for years and years. Even in this rather endearing local press cutting from 2005 I was listing it as one of my next projects. That was back before TrashHouse had even been released. Yeah, me and the pit go back a long way, and the script has changed a great deal over the years (as I've rabbited on endlessly about in various previous blog entries). But the time was never right to shoot it.
Sometimes the stars just kind of align and the right circumstances arise, and 2011 is finally the point where everything has dropped into place for the Witchpit shoot. If I didn't take advantage of the moment, I'd always regret it. We'll be shooting in the first half of this year and, (as I've already promised), further details will be along soon.
For those of you who prefer the actual scary bits in my flicks to the trashy bits, this movie is going to be an all-you-can-eat buffet. The script still creeps me out. I shall be directing with one hand over my eyes.
Plus, this way, I get to settle down and watch Strippers vs Werewolves as a completed movie with everyone else.
2011 is going to be an amazing year.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Stop! Hammer Time..
Actually took a moment to breathe over Christmas, and started making my way through a boxed set of Hammer films which I'd been given. Much as I'd like to think that my horror film knowledge is full, comprehensive and encyclopedic.. There are gaps. And one of those gaps, without doubt, has been Hammer shaped.
This fact has been even more evident to me during the last year or so, where the re-emergence of the long-dormant studio has made me ponder exactly what Hammer should mean in 2011 (and, by extension, what it meant last century too). The remake of The Woman In Black, in particular, has been pinging on my radar as an object of interest, and whatever mentality the studio shows when dealing with that property is likely to be an indication of the way they're going in general.
But, what of the Hammer of old? Over Christmas, I checked out five films: The Devil Rides Out, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Quatermass & The Pit and The Nanny. Of these, my favourite by a considerable margin was The Devil Rides Out; a full-blooded black magic flick with some terrific set-pieces and an unusually 'good guy' turn from Christopher Lee. It summed up everything that I'd enjoyed about the handful of Hammer flicks I'd seen previously and would have easily gone down as the best horror movie I'd seen over the holiday period, had I not also checked out the sublime Night of the Demon.. (Not being a Hammer flick, I don't want to digree too much and talk about NOTD here, but it was a real gem and made me feel incredibly remiss for not having watched it previously).
I spent a little while wondering whether the straight-faced approach of The Devil Rides Out would translate easily to the 21st century Hammer flicks and whether it would be wise to attempt to do so. Looking back to The Woman in Black in particular, both the stage play and the masterful 1989 TV movie rely on something that contemporary cinema seems positively allergic to; the slow burn. The devastating shocks in the original WIB depend entirely on the *lack* of scare tactics in the rest of the movie. Likewise, Quatermass & The Pit represented a slow ratcheting of tension building towards a single, large-scale set-piece. Is a 2011 audience prepared to accept that dynamic? Is Hammer going to be comfortable taking that approach? After all, their name may be synonymous with horror, but the word itself has very different connotations for a contemporary audience than it did in the company's heyday. The average viewer of Saw 3D will have genre expectations which the majority of my shiny Hammer boxed set is unlikely to coincide with.
As for me, I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the box has to offer. My last stop was cleavage-fest Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, a rip-roaring tale of a resurrected Egyptian Mummy with fantastic tits, which was probably closer structurally to a contemporary horror flick than any of the other examples I've mentioned thus far. So maybe the new Hammer doesn't need to differ from the old so much after all; it just needs to cherry pick the elements that'll work in this new century.
Speaking personally, I can't wait to see the results.
This fact has been even more evident to me during the last year or so, where the re-emergence of the long-dormant studio has made me ponder exactly what Hammer should mean in 2011 (and, by extension, what it meant last century too). The remake of The Woman In Black, in particular, has been pinging on my radar as an object of interest, and whatever mentality the studio shows when dealing with that property is likely to be an indication of the way they're going in general.
But, what of the Hammer of old? Over Christmas, I checked out five films: The Devil Rides Out, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Quatermass & The Pit and The Nanny. Of these, my favourite by a considerable margin was The Devil Rides Out; a full-blooded black magic flick with some terrific set-pieces and an unusually 'good guy' turn from Christopher Lee. It summed up everything that I'd enjoyed about the handful of Hammer flicks I'd seen previously and would have easily gone down as the best horror movie I'd seen over the holiday period, had I not also checked out the sublime Night of the Demon.. (Not being a Hammer flick, I don't want to digree too much and talk about NOTD here, but it was a real gem and made me feel incredibly remiss for not having watched it previously).
I spent a little while wondering whether the straight-faced approach of The Devil Rides Out would translate easily to the 21st century Hammer flicks and whether it would be wise to attempt to do so. Looking back to The Woman in Black in particular, both the stage play and the masterful 1989 TV movie rely on something that contemporary cinema seems positively allergic to; the slow burn. The devastating shocks in the original WIB depend entirely on the *lack* of scare tactics in the rest of the movie. Likewise, Quatermass & The Pit represented a slow ratcheting of tension building towards a single, large-scale set-piece. Is a 2011 audience prepared to accept that dynamic? Is Hammer going to be comfortable taking that approach? After all, their name may be synonymous with horror, but the word itself has very different connotations for a contemporary audience than it did in the company's heyday. The average viewer of Saw 3D will have genre expectations which the majority of my shiny Hammer boxed set is unlikely to coincide with.
As for me, I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the box has to offer. My last stop was cleavage-fest Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, a rip-roaring tale of a resurrected Egyptian Mummy with fantastic tits, which was probably closer structurally to a contemporary horror flick than any of the other examples I've mentioned thus far. So maybe the new Hammer doesn't need to differ from the old so much after all; it just needs to cherry pick the elements that'll work in this new century.
Speaking personally, I can't wait to see the results.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
2010 - The Year in Films I Watched
Well, that's 2010 done.
2011 is going to bring a lot of interesting stuff (not least of which being the shoots for both Strippers vs Werewolves and House on the Witchpit) but before we dive headlong into all that, let's take a quick look back at all the flicks that I watched in 2010. As usual, if I know someone involved with a shoot I'll usually decline to give it a rating. Ratings are subjective. No refunds will be issued. Etc. Etc.
These are the flicks..
January 8th
Gremlins (with commentary #1, 80-something viewing) - *****/5
January 9th
Moon - ****/5
January 11th
Mirrors - **/5
January 12th
The Princess Bride (?th viewing) - *****/5
January 15th
Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist - ***/5
Sorority Row - **/5
January 16th
Terminator Salvation - ***/5
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - **/5
January 19th
Rear Window - (4th-ish viewing) *****/5
January 23rd
Joy Ride 2: Dead End - ***/5
Sunshine Cleaning - ***/5
Road Trip: Beer Pong - **/5
Tormented - ***/5
Bride Wars - */5
January 24th
Antichrist - ****/5
The Visitor - ***/5
wAz - **/5
February 2nd
Super Size Me (2nd viewing) - ***/5
February 4th
Lesbian Vampire Killers - (Not rated as I know people involved)
February 8th
Bowling for Columbine (2nd viewing) - ****/5
February 9th
Up In the Air - ****/5
February 11th
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2nd viewing) - ****/5
February 13th
Isolation - **/5
February 15th
Timecrimes - ****/5
February 18th
Precious - ***/5
February 20th
The Hurt Locker - ****/5
February 23rd
March of the Penguins - ***/5
A Serious Man - ****/5
March 1st
Crazy Heart - ***/5
March 2nd
Minority Report (2nd viewing) - ****/5
An Education - ****/5
March 6th
The Lovely Bones - ***/5
March 7th
Dragonslayer (?th viewing) - ****/5
March 16th
Stand by Me (?th viewing) - *****/5
Shutter Island - ***/5
March 19th
I Love You, Beth Cooper - **/5
March 20th
The Fourth Kind - **/5
Ghoulies IV - */5
March 21st
Triangle - ****/5
March 23rd
Pan's Labyrinth (2nd viewing) - *****/5
I Love You Phillip Morris - ****/5
Infestation - ****/5
March 25th
Paranormal Activity (2nd viewing) - ****/5
March 28th
Eliminators - **/5 (***/5 for entertainment value)
April 2nd
Kick-Ass - *****/5
April 5th
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - ****/5
Lips of Blood - ***/5
April 6th
Class of 1999 (4th-ish viewing) - ****/5
A Bucket of Blood - ****/5
April 7th
Starsuckers - ***/5
Nosferatu the Vampyre -***/5
April 8th
Fear(s) of the Dark - ***/5
April 9th
Clash of the Titans (2010) (3D screening) - **/5
April 11th
Phantoms (1990) (2nd viewing) - **/5
His Girl Friday - ****/5
April 13th
2012 - **/5
April 14th
The Men Who Stare at Goats - ***/5
The Box - **/5
April 15th
My Boyfriend's Back (2nd viewing) - ****/5
April 20th
Blade Runner (Final Cut, ?th viewing) - *****/5
April 27th
12 Angry Men (2nd viewing) - *****/5
April 28th
Critters 3 (2nd viewing) - ***/5
Hot Tub Time Machine - ****/5
May 3rd
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnasuss - ***/5
May 6th
Night of the Comet (2nd viewing) - ***/5
May 8th
Erasing David - ***/5
May 9th
The Last House on the Left (2009) - **/5
May 10th
The Sixth Sense (2nd viewing) - ****/5
May 15th
Four Lions - ****/5
May 18th
The Truman Show (2nd viewing) - *****/5
Iron Man 2 - ***/5
May 20th
Dr No (2nd viewing) - ****/5
May 27th
Sherlock Holmes - ***/5
May 29th
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (3rd viewing) - ****/5
Alice in Wonderland (2010) - ***/5
May 30th
Prince of Persia - ***/5
May 31st
Capitalism: A Love Story - ***/5
June 1st
Speed - ****/5
June 2nd
Waxwork (?th viewing) - ****/5
June 3rd
Botched - ****/5
The Woods - **/5
June 5th
The Babysitters - ***/5
June 6th
Boogeyman 2 - **/5
June 7th
Exam - (Not rated because I know people involved)
June 8th
Alien - (?th viewing, Director's Cut) *****/5
RoboGeisha - ***/5 (**** for entertainment value)
June 14th (ish)
The Wolfman (2010) - ****/5
June 15th (ish)
April Fool's Day (2008) - **/5
June 23rd
Shaun of the Dead (4th viewing) - *****/5
June 24th
The Room - */5 (*** for entertainment value!)
June 28th
Fired Up! - **/5
June 29th
Solomon Kane - **/5
July 6th
American: The Bill Hicks Story - ****/5
July 12th
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - **/5
July 17th
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (3rd viewing) ****/5
July 19th
Inception - *****/5
July 24th
Bruno - ***/5
July 28th
Predators - ***/5
July 29th
When Harry Met Sally (?th viewing) - *****/5
July 30th
The Boondock Saints - ***/5
August 4th
The Odd Couple - ***/5
August 7th(ish)
Go (2nd viewing) - ***/5
August 8th(ish)
Wall Street (2nd viewing) - ****/5
August 9th(ish)
Clerks 2 (4th viewing) - *****/5
August 15th
Botched (2nd viewing) - ****/5
Toy Story 3 (3D version) - *****/5
August 17th
Youth in Revolt - ***/5
Whip It - ***/5
August 18th
Away We Go - ***/5
August 20th
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - ****/5
Piranha (2010, 3D screening) - ****/5
August 21st
Orphan - **/5
August 22nd
Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream - ***/5
August 25th
Confessions of a Shopaholic - */5
August 27th
Scott Pilgrim vs The World - *****/5
August 29th
Dagon - ***/5
August 30th
The Last Exorcism - ****/5
August 31st
Snatch - ****/5
September 3rd
Heartless - ***/5
September 4th
The Trouble with Harry - ****/5
September 5th
Tamara Drewe - ****/5
Godzilla: Final Wars - ***/5
American Grindhouse - ****/5
September 6th
The Awful Dr Orlof - ***/5
September 13th
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - ***/5
September 18th
Date Night - ***/5
September 20th
Citizen Kane (?th viewing) - *****/5
Cop Out - **/5
September 22nd (ish)
Just for the Record - (Not rated as I know people involved)
September 27th
Following - ***/5
October 2nd
Buried - ****/5
October 3rd
Dead Cert - (Not rated as I know people involved)
October 11th
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - ***/5
October 12th
Burning Bright - **/5
October 13th
Dance of the Dead - ***/5
October 15th
The Human Centipede - ****/5
October 16th
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) - ****/5
October 17th
The Assassination of Richard Nixon - ***/5
October 18th
Get Him to the Greek - ****/5
October 20th
It's A Wonderful Afterlife - ***/5
The Social Network - ****/5
October 23rd
The Abominable Dr Phibes - ***/5
Scream (4th-ish viewing) - *****/5
October 25th
Couples Retreat - **/5
October 26th-ish
O Brother Where Art Thou? (2nd viewing) - ****/5
October 31st
An American Werewolf In London (?th viewing) - *****/5
November 1st
Creepshow - ****/5
Black Death - ****/5
November 6th
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) - **/5
November 7th
The Faculty (2nd viewing) - ***/5
November 15th
Forrest Gump - **/5
November 18th
The Woman in Black (1989) (2nd viewing) - ****/5
November 25th
Devil's Playground - (Not rated as I know people involved)
November 29th
The Naked Gun (3rd-ish viewing) - ****/5
November 30th
Eat & Run - **/5
December 1st
The Muppet Christmas Carol - ****/5
December 3rd
The Lord of the Rings (1978) (?th viewing) - ***/5
December 4th
The A-Team - ***/5
December 6th
Four Christmases - **/5
December 11th
A Golden Christmas - */5
December 12th
Natural Born Killers (Director's Cut) (?th viewing) - *****/5
The Rocker - ***/5
December 18th
Christmas with the Kranks - */5
If.. - ***/5
Trading Places (3rd viewing) - ****/5
Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story - ***/5
December 20th
The War You Don't See - ***/5
Tron Legacy - ***/5
December 23rd
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (2nd viewing) - ***/5
December 26th
The Devil Rides Out - ****/5
December 27th
Catfish - ***/5
December 28th
Night of the Demon - *****/5
December 29th
Dracula: Prince of Darkness - ***/5
Quatermass and the Pit (1967) - ****/5
December 30th
Love and Other Drugs - ***/5
December 31st
The Nanny - ***/5
It Came from Beneath the Sea (4th-ish viewing) - ****/5
2011 is going to bring a lot of interesting stuff (not least of which being the shoots for both Strippers vs Werewolves and House on the Witchpit) but before we dive headlong into all that, let's take a quick look back at all the flicks that I watched in 2010. As usual, if I know someone involved with a shoot I'll usually decline to give it a rating. Ratings are subjective. No refunds will be issued. Etc. Etc.
These are the flicks..
January 8th
Gremlins (with commentary #1, 80-something viewing) - *****/5
January 9th
Moon - ****/5
January 11th
Mirrors - **/5
January 12th
The Princess Bride (?th viewing) - *****/5
January 15th
Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist - ***/5
Sorority Row - **/5
January 16th
Terminator Salvation - ***/5
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - **/5
January 19th
Rear Window - (4th-ish viewing) *****/5
January 23rd
Joy Ride 2: Dead End - ***/5
Sunshine Cleaning - ***/5
Road Trip: Beer Pong - **/5
Tormented - ***/5
Bride Wars - */5
January 24th
Antichrist - ****/5
The Visitor - ***/5
wAz - **/5
February 2nd
Super Size Me (2nd viewing) - ***/5
February 4th
Lesbian Vampire Killers - (Not rated as I know people involved)
February 8th
Bowling for Columbine (2nd viewing) - ****/5
February 9th
Up In the Air - ****/5
February 11th
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2nd viewing) - ****/5
February 13th
Isolation - **/5
February 15th
Timecrimes - ****/5
February 18th
Precious - ***/5
February 20th
The Hurt Locker - ****/5
February 23rd
March of the Penguins - ***/5
A Serious Man - ****/5
March 1st
Crazy Heart - ***/5
March 2nd
Minority Report (2nd viewing) - ****/5
An Education - ****/5
March 6th
The Lovely Bones - ***/5
March 7th
Dragonslayer (?th viewing) - ****/5
March 16th
Stand by Me (?th viewing) - *****/5
Shutter Island - ***/5
March 19th
I Love You, Beth Cooper - **/5
March 20th
The Fourth Kind - **/5
Ghoulies IV - */5
March 21st
Triangle - ****/5
March 23rd
Pan's Labyrinth (2nd viewing) - *****/5
I Love You Phillip Morris - ****/5
Infestation - ****/5
March 25th
Paranormal Activity (2nd viewing) - ****/5
March 28th
Eliminators - **/5 (***/5 for entertainment value)
April 2nd
Kick-Ass - *****/5
April 5th
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - ****/5
Lips of Blood - ***/5
April 6th
Class of 1999 (4th-ish viewing) - ****/5
A Bucket of Blood - ****/5
April 7th
Starsuckers - ***/5
Nosferatu the Vampyre -***/5
April 8th
Fear(s) of the Dark - ***/5
April 9th
Clash of the Titans (2010) (3D screening) - **/5
April 11th
Phantoms (1990) (2nd viewing) - **/5
His Girl Friday - ****/5
April 13th
2012 - **/5
April 14th
The Men Who Stare at Goats - ***/5
The Box - **/5
April 15th
My Boyfriend's Back (2nd viewing) - ****/5
April 20th
Blade Runner (Final Cut, ?th viewing) - *****/5
April 27th
12 Angry Men (2nd viewing) - *****/5
April 28th
Critters 3 (2nd viewing) - ***/5
Hot Tub Time Machine - ****/5
May 3rd
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnasuss - ***/5
May 6th
Night of the Comet (2nd viewing) - ***/5
May 8th
Erasing David - ***/5
May 9th
The Last House on the Left (2009) - **/5
May 10th
The Sixth Sense (2nd viewing) - ****/5
May 15th
Four Lions - ****/5
May 18th
The Truman Show (2nd viewing) - *****/5
Iron Man 2 - ***/5
May 20th
Dr No (2nd viewing) - ****/5
May 27th
Sherlock Holmes - ***/5
May 29th
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (3rd viewing) - ****/5
Alice in Wonderland (2010) - ***/5
May 30th
Prince of Persia - ***/5
May 31st
Capitalism: A Love Story - ***/5
June 1st
Speed - ****/5
June 2nd
Waxwork (?th viewing) - ****/5
June 3rd
Botched - ****/5
The Woods - **/5
June 5th
The Babysitters - ***/5
June 6th
Boogeyman 2 - **/5
June 7th
Exam - (Not rated because I know people involved)
June 8th
Alien - (?th viewing, Director's Cut) *****/5
RoboGeisha - ***/5 (**** for entertainment value)
June 14th (ish)
The Wolfman (2010) - ****/5
June 15th (ish)
April Fool's Day (2008) - **/5
June 23rd
Shaun of the Dead (4th viewing) - *****/5
June 24th
The Room - */5 (*** for entertainment value!)
June 28th
Fired Up! - **/5
June 29th
Solomon Kane - **/5
July 6th
American: The Bill Hicks Story - ****/5
July 12th
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - **/5
July 17th
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (3rd viewing) ****/5
July 19th
Inception - *****/5
July 24th
Bruno - ***/5
July 28th
Predators - ***/5
July 29th
When Harry Met Sally (?th viewing) - *****/5
July 30th
The Boondock Saints - ***/5
August 4th
The Odd Couple - ***/5
August 7th(ish)
Go (2nd viewing) - ***/5
August 8th(ish)
Wall Street (2nd viewing) - ****/5
August 9th(ish)
Clerks 2 (4th viewing) - *****/5
August 15th
Botched (2nd viewing) - ****/5
Toy Story 3 (3D version) - *****/5
August 17th
Youth in Revolt - ***/5
Whip It - ***/5
August 18th
Away We Go - ***/5
August 20th
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - ****/5
Piranha (2010, 3D screening) - ****/5
August 21st
Orphan - **/5
August 22nd
Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream - ***/5
August 25th
Confessions of a Shopaholic - */5
August 27th
Scott Pilgrim vs The World - *****/5
August 29th
Dagon - ***/5
August 30th
The Last Exorcism - ****/5
August 31st
Snatch - ****/5
September 3rd
Heartless - ***/5
September 4th
The Trouble with Harry - ****/5
September 5th
Tamara Drewe - ****/5
Godzilla: Final Wars - ***/5
American Grindhouse - ****/5
September 6th
The Awful Dr Orlof - ***/5
September 13th
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - ***/5
September 18th
Date Night - ***/5
September 20th
Citizen Kane (?th viewing) - *****/5
Cop Out - **/5
September 22nd (ish)
Just for the Record - (Not rated as I know people involved)
September 27th
Following - ***/5
October 2nd
Buried - ****/5
October 3rd
Dead Cert - (Not rated as I know people involved)
October 11th
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - ***/5
October 12th
Burning Bright - **/5
October 13th
Dance of the Dead - ***/5
October 15th
The Human Centipede - ****/5
October 16th
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) - ****/5
October 17th
The Assassination of Richard Nixon - ***/5
October 18th
Get Him to the Greek - ****/5
October 20th
It's A Wonderful Afterlife - ***/5
The Social Network - ****/5
October 23rd
The Abominable Dr Phibes - ***/5
Scream (4th-ish viewing) - *****/5
October 25th
Couples Retreat - **/5
October 26th-ish
O Brother Where Art Thou? (2nd viewing) - ****/5
October 31st
An American Werewolf In London (?th viewing) - *****/5
November 1st
Creepshow - ****/5
Black Death - ****/5
November 6th
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) - **/5
November 7th
The Faculty (2nd viewing) - ***/5
November 15th
Forrest Gump - **/5
November 18th
The Woman in Black (1989) (2nd viewing) - ****/5
November 25th
Devil's Playground - (Not rated as I know people involved)
November 29th
The Naked Gun (3rd-ish viewing) - ****/5
November 30th
Eat & Run - **/5
December 1st
The Muppet Christmas Carol - ****/5
December 3rd
The Lord of the Rings (1978) (?th viewing) - ***/5
December 4th
The A-Team - ***/5
December 6th
Four Christmases - **/5
December 11th
A Golden Christmas - */5
December 12th
Natural Born Killers (Director's Cut) (?th viewing) - *****/5
The Rocker - ***/5
December 18th
Christmas with the Kranks - */5
If.. - ***/5
Trading Places (3rd viewing) - ****/5
Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story - ***/5
December 20th
The War You Don't See - ***/5
Tron Legacy - ***/5
December 23rd
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (2nd viewing) - ***/5
December 26th
The Devil Rides Out - ****/5
December 27th
Catfish - ***/5
December 28th
Night of the Demon - *****/5
December 29th
Dracula: Prince of Darkness - ***/5
Quatermass and the Pit (1967) - ****/5
December 30th
Love and Other Drugs - ***/5
December 31st
The Nanny - ***/5
It Came from Beneath the Sea (4th-ish viewing) - ****/5
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
House on the Witchpit
Just threw my hat over the wall.
I'll be shooting House on the Witchpit in early 2011.
More details to follow.
Stay tuned.
I'll be shooting House on the Witchpit in early 2011.
More details to follow.
Stay tuned.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
That's due back on Tuesday before ten.
Back in 1996, I worked in a video shop.
Loads of people who want to make movies end up working in video shops and cinemas, for at least a while, whilst they try and get their careers started. I worked in Blockbuster Video, Westcliff. Blockbuster had just taken the store over when I joined; previously it had been a Ritz Video, and the takeover had meant all of those thousands of distinctive yellow sleeves had been replaced with blue and white ones. I'd attended an interview but failed to get a job at Ritz about a year previously, so the new regime of blue and white had bolstered my confidence to reapply. Exactly the same guy interviewed me, asking much the same questions, but this time I got the job.
Lucky, lucky me.
The vast majority of jobs are little loops of routine presented with very minor variations on a daily basis until you are fired or die, and this applies to jobs in shops even more than most. From the opening rituals to the closing rituals, it started out unfamiliar, then became comfortable, then became soul destroying. I can still picture every shelf, and could have a pretty good stab at telling you where the majority of individual titles were located upon them.
After I'd been there a few months, an edict came down from head office that all branches were to play a single 45 minute trailer tape, presented by Ulrika Johnson, on a loop throughout business hours. This is the sort of thing that doubtless sounds wonderful in a board room but can have a calamitous effect on the sanity and well-being of staff; at least Bill Murray had a whole day to play around with in Groundhog Day, whereas living the vast majority of your waking hours feeling trapped in a single 45 minute loop is cruel and unusual torture. I kept a tape of music labelled 'The Jonsson Solution' tucked under the counter, and would play it over the shop's PA system whenever I felt like I was at breaking point. To this day I can't hear her voice without wincing, and will forever associate the first song on that tape ("Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With)?" by The Buzzcocks) with sweet, sweet relief from Jonsson's voice.
I wrote the first odd little fragments of what would eventually become the screenplay for TrashHouse whilst standing in that video shop, although those fragments wouldn't end up gelling into any sort of coherent whole for six years or so. I can clearly remember writing 'It's raining. A girl in a red cloak walks up a hill towards a dark house' on a notepad beside the cash register, and that became the opening scene of the movie.
Except the hill.
And the cloak.
And the rain.
And it wasn't quite the opening scene, because we had to add a pre-credits sequence to get a gore shot in nice and early.
But there was definitely a girl and a house, so the point remains valid.
I quit Blockbuster at one point, then somehow ended up getting rehired a few months later when desperate for money. I can remember that first shift back, standing behind the same counter, looking at the same shelves, thinking "Fuck, I'm never going to get out of here". Every time I see the last shot of Clerks 2, it resonates within me so much I can't express it.
On 20th February 2006, TrashHouse was released on DVD across the UK. I went for a long walk that day and spent a lot of time thinking. In the early afternoon, I found myself in Blockbuster Westcliff. I hadn't been there for a few years, even as a customer, (I'd moved house a couple of times and it was no longer my closest branch), but I walked in and saw my movie on the shelf. It was, actually, the first time I'd seen one of my films on a shelf anywhere. Available to the public.
Available to rent in the shop where I'd stood for thousands upon thousands of hours, dreaming of making films but worrying in my heart of hearts that I'd never get to do it.
If I get ten moments as good as that in my whole life, I've got nothing to complain about.
Loads of people who want to make movies end up working in video shops and cinemas, for at least a while, whilst they try and get their careers started. I worked in Blockbuster Video, Westcliff. Blockbuster had just taken the store over when I joined; previously it had been a Ritz Video, and the takeover had meant all of those thousands of distinctive yellow sleeves had been replaced with blue and white ones. I'd attended an interview but failed to get a job at Ritz about a year previously, so the new regime of blue and white had bolstered my confidence to reapply. Exactly the same guy interviewed me, asking much the same questions, but this time I got the job.
Lucky, lucky me.
The vast majority of jobs are little loops of routine presented with very minor variations on a daily basis until you are fired or die, and this applies to jobs in shops even more than most. From the opening rituals to the closing rituals, it started out unfamiliar, then became comfortable, then became soul destroying. I can still picture every shelf, and could have a pretty good stab at telling you where the majority of individual titles were located upon them.
After I'd been there a few months, an edict came down from head office that all branches were to play a single 45 minute trailer tape, presented by Ulrika Johnson, on a loop throughout business hours. This is the sort of thing that doubtless sounds wonderful in a board room but can have a calamitous effect on the sanity and well-being of staff; at least Bill Murray had a whole day to play around with in Groundhog Day, whereas living the vast majority of your waking hours feeling trapped in a single 45 minute loop is cruel and unusual torture. I kept a tape of music labelled 'The Jonsson Solution' tucked under the counter, and would play it over the shop's PA system whenever I felt like I was at breaking point. To this day I can't hear her voice without wincing, and will forever associate the first song on that tape ("Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With)?" by The Buzzcocks) with sweet, sweet relief from Jonsson's voice.
I wrote the first odd little fragments of what would eventually become the screenplay for TrashHouse whilst standing in that video shop, although those fragments wouldn't end up gelling into any sort of coherent whole for six years or so. I can clearly remember writing 'It's raining. A girl in a red cloak walks up a hill towards a dark house' on a notepad beside the cash register, and that became the opening scene of the movie.
Except the hill.
And the cloak.
And the rain.
And it wasn't quite the opening scene, because we had to add a pre-credits sequence to get a gore shot in nice and early.
But there was definitely a girl and a house, so the point remains valid.
I quit Blockbuster at one point, then somehow ended up getting rehired a few months later when desperate for money. I can remember that first shift back, standing behind the same counter, looking at the same shelves, thinking "Fuck, I'm never going to get out of here". Every time I see the last shot of Clerks 2, it resonates within me so much I can't express it.
On 20th February 2006, TrashHouse was released on DVD across the UK. I went for a long walk that day and spent a lot of time thinking. In the early afternoon, I found myself in Blockbuster Westcliff. I hadn't been there for a few years, even as a customer, (I'd moved house a couple of times and it was no longer my closest branch), but I walked in and saw my movie on the shelf. It was, actually, the first time I'd seen one of my films on a shelf anywhere. Available to the public.
Available to rent in the shop where I'd stood for thousands upon thousands of hours, dreaming of making films but worrying in my heart of hearts that I'd never get to do it.
If I get ten moments as good as that in my whole life, I've got nothing to complain about.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Bordello Death Tales Festival Screenings
The first chances for the public to catch our sensational terror anthology Bordello Death Tales (with brand new interlaced stories from James Eaves, Al Ronald and my bad self) are coming up over the next couple of weeks.
The flick is nasty, funny and full-tilt.. The first online review can still be read over at MJ Simpson's site and the first festival dates are as follows..
September 1st , 7pm, at Cine Olido, Brazil (Part of Cinefantasy Festival)
September 4th - Portobello Film Festival, London, UK Click Here
September 9th , 6pm, at Centro Cultural, São Paulo (Part of Cinefantasy Festival)
Friday, August 13, 2010
Strippers vs Werewolves Announcement
The full story is over at Dread Central..
Click here to check out the full story & teaser art
The short version is that SvW is a go. Directed by me, produced by Jonathan Sothcott and starring the wonderful Adele Silva.
Folks, this one's gonna be great fun. Trust me.
Should be shooting either late this year or early 2011. I shall keep you posted!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The VHS Mountain
Back when I was doing my A-levels in 1991, I filmed a short documentary about film censorship. As the opening shot, I stacked up a selection of my VHS collection and made a wall out of them, so that I could crash through the wall, sending them tumbling, and deliver the line "In the UK, movies are big business" straight to camera. This anecdote will probably lead you to conclude a few things about me.
1) I have a flair for the over-dramatic which is probably better suited to fiction than documentary
2) I am no longer able to describe myself as being in my early 30s.
3) I had a VHS collection big enough to build a wall out of in 1991.
Buying movies was my thing, from the mid 80s onwards. It's easy to forget nowadays, but the retail market for films was non-existant back then; the tapes stayed on the shelves of rental shops until they snapped or got stolen. Very, very occasionally somewhere would sell off some tapes; in 1986, when I was twelve, my parents bought me an ex-rental copy of Gremlins for £56 because I had been renting it nearly every week since the film's release the previous November and it was bound to work out cheaper in the long run. The other early additions to the collection were also ex-rentals, which included Ghostbusters, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Spies Like Us.
Then, something strange happened. My family were on holiday one summer (presumably 1987) and a batch of feature films were for sale in the local WH Smiths. All Warner Brothers titles, and all brand new. All priced at £14.99. The video market in the UK had launched the idea of 'sell-through' pricing, where the units were priced for consumers to purchase rather than for rental shops. The market had caught up with me, and my insatiable desire to own movies, and suddenly the idea of building a collection became an actual possibility.
To say that I spent all of my money on videos would be an exaggeration. I also bought cheeseburgers, whenever I went into town at the weekends. To buy videos. Once the water had been tested and the public got the taste for buying rather than renting their movies, suddenly you could buy them everywhere.
And I did.
By 1991 I could, as previously mentioned, build a decent wall out of my collection. That was just the beginning. By this point, video stores selling off ex-rentals was the norm rather than an oddity, so I was not only assembling a collection of sell-through ("small box") titles, but a collection of ex-rental ("big box") and the collection just grew and grew. In 1992 I headed off to University, which meant that the collection had to be broken in two. A select couple of hundred titles accompanied me to Exeter, the remaining thousand or so stayed put at my parents' house. Like mythological beast or a simple earthworm, both sections of the collection continued to grow post-split, meaning that both my shared house in Exeter and my family home in Essex were groaning under the weight of eclectic videotapes by the time I graduated in 1995 and reunited the collection.
DVD killed it, of course. The arrival of the new format, so perfectly pitched at film fans like myself who had long dreamed of seeing deleted scenes, hear directors talk about their work or simply watch a movie in a format that didn't crop a third of the picture off, meant that my collection went from prized possession to retro throwback more or less overnight. Ebay was the other nail in the coffin, of course; it takes all of the damn fun out of collecting. My decade plus of rummaging around in second hand shops and car boot sales for titles was rendered meaningless by the takeoff of Ebay; there's nothing impressive about owning an obscure original pre-certification release of The Evil Dead when any bugger with a thick enough wallet and a little bit of patience could pick one up from Ebay any day of the week.
That's one of the reasons that my DVD collection has never grown to the size and diversity of my VHS one, too.. Collecting stuff just seems a bit pointless in the on-demand age.
My Blu-Ray collection numbers less than a dozen discs.
With apologies to Stand By Me, I never had a film collection later on like the one I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, does anyone?
1) I have a flair for the over-dramatic which is probably better suited to fiction than documentary
2) I am no longer able to describe myself as being in my early 30s.
3) I had a VHS collection big enough to build a wall out of in 1991.
Buying movies was my thing, from the mid 80s onwards. It's easy to forget nowadays, but the retail market for films was non-existant back then; the tapes stayed on the shelves of rental shops until they snapped or got stolen. Very, very occasionally somewhere would sell off some tapes; in 1986, when I was twelve, my parents bought me an ex-rental copy of Gremlins for £56 because I had been renting it nearly every week since the film's release the previous November and it was bound to work out cheaper in the long run. The other early additions to the collection were also ex-rentals, which included Ghostbusters, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment and Spies Like Us.
Then, something strange happened. My family were on holiday one summer (presumably 1987) and a batch of feature films were for sale in the local WH Smiths. All Warner Brothers titles, and all brand new. All priced at £14.99. The video market in the UK had launched the idea of 'sell-through' pricing, where the units were priced for consumers to purchase rather than for rental shops. The market had caught up with me, and my insatiable desire to own movies, and suddenly the idea of building a collection became an actual possibility.
To say that I spent all of my money on videos would be an exaggeration. I also bought cheeseburgers, whenever I went into town at the weekends. To buy videos. Once the water had been tested and the public got the taste for buying rather than renting their movies, suddenly you could buy them everywhere.
And I did.
By 1991 I could, as previously mentioned, build a decent wall out of my collection. That was just the beginning. By this point, video stores selling off ex-rentals was the norm rather than an oddity, so I was not only assembling a collection of sell-through ("small box") titles, but a collection of ex-rental ("big box") and the collection just grew and grew. In 1992 I headed off to University, which meant that the collection had to be broken in two. A select couple of hundred titles accompanied me to Exeter, the remaining thousand or so stayed put at my parents' house. Like mythological beast or a simple earthworm, both sections of the collection continued to grow post-split, meaning that both my shared house in Exeter and my family home in Essex were groaning under the weight of eclectic videotapes by the time I graduated in 1995 and reunited the collection.
DVD killed it, of course. The arrival of the new format, so perfectly pitched at film fans like myself who had long dreamed of seeing deleted scenes, hear directors talk about their work or simply watch a movie in a format that didn't crop a third of the picture off, meant that my collection went from prized possession to retro throwback more or less overnight. Ebay was the other nail in the coffin, of course; it takes all of the damn fun out of collecting. My decade plus of rummaging around in second hand shops and car boot sales for titles was rendered meaningless by the takeoff of Ebay; there's nothing impressive about owning an obscure original pre-certification release of The Evil Dead when any bugger with a thick enough wallet and a little bit of patience could pick one up from Ebay any day of the week.
That's one of the reasons that my DVD collection has never grown to the size and diversity of my VHS one, too.. Collecting stuff just seems a bit pointless in the on-demand age.
My Blu-Ray collection numbers less than a dozen discs.
With apologies to Stand By Me, I never had a film collection later on like the one I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, does anyone?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Live shows and writing
A lot of my time recently has been taken up with live shows and writing screenplays, which are a million miles apart in terms of action and reaction.
See, one of the things I used to love about doing stand-up (the gravestone of my stand-up "career" reads 1998-2002) was that the reaction was instantaneous. If I said something, I knew straight away whether people liked it or not. They laughed or didn't, applauded or didn't.. There was no real waiting involved. This principle carries across to doing live shows about filmmaking, to a degree; I know how a show is going from the reaction of the audience and the feedback/questions I get throughout. It's nice. No waiting.
Writing a screenplay, on the other hand, is nothing but waiting. I wrote a great gag for the Strippers vs Werewolves screenplay today. How long am I going to have to find out to hear an audience reaction to that gag? Best part of two years, in all likelhood, by which point I will be so sick to death of the gag that I won't actually find anything funny about it myself anymore. The delay between action and reaction is so interminable that I'll be a different person by the time I get to the payoff.
So maybe that's why I enjoyed the live shows so much. I'd be up for doing some more, so if any educational establishments/film festivals/film clubs or whatever fancy booking a 90 minute show about making low-budget horror movies and getting them distributed around the world, feel free to get in touch.
If I can keep the instant gratification itch scratched, that might hopefully prevent me from going back to the fickle arms of stand-up again. I suspect that my millennium bug routines are now somewhat dated..
See, one of the things I used to love about doing stand-up (the gravestone of my stand-up "career" reads 1998-2002) was that the reaction was instantaneous. If I said something, I knew straight away whether people liked it or not. They laughed or didn't, applauded or didn't.. There was no real waiting involved. This principle carries across to doing live shows about filmmaking, to a degree; I know how a show is going from the reaction of the audience and the feedback/questions I get throughout. It's nice. No waiting.
Writing a screenplay, on the other hand, is nothing but waiting. I wrote a great gag for the Strippers vs Werewolves screenplay today. How long am I going to have to find out to hear an audience reaction to that gag? Best part of two years, in all likelhood, by which point I will be so sick to death of the gag that I won't actually find anything funny about it myself anymore. The delay between action and reaction is so interminable that I'll be a different person by the time I get to the payoff.
So maybe that's why I enjoyed the live shows so much. I'd be up for doing some more, so if any educational establishments/film festivals/film clubs or whatever fancy booking a 90 minute show about making low-budget horror movies and getting them distributed around the world, feel free to get in touch.
If I can keep the instant gratification itch scratched, that might hopefully prevent me from going back to the fickle arms of stand-up again. I suspect that my millennium bug routines are now somewhat dated..
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Scene X
There's a video on YouTube that I don't want you to watch. You probably haven't seen it. It's one of the truly great moments in horror cinema, and I don't want you to go and check it out under any circumstances. In fact, I'll be genuinely pissed if any of you do go and check it out as a result of reading this blog. Don't do it, kids.
In fact, sod it, I'm going to call it 'Scene X' and won't even tell you which movie it's from. Because if you watch it on YouTube, you won't actually see it in any meaningful sense.
Scene X has got a whole load of heartbreakingly crass and badly written comments underneath it. "This is supposed to be scary? ROFL", "its not even scary", "I thought ti was hilarious" and so on, the dull echo chamber of fuckwittery reverberating through the bowels of the internet. The sound of the barely literate congratulating themselves on their lack of engagement with a thirty-year old clip removed from any sense of context.
The reason that Scene X is one of the greatest scenes in horror history isn't the scene itself, it's because of all the rest of the movie around it that isn't Scene X. An ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a Terminator movie might not even be noticed, whereas an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a film of a child playing would have a very different effect indeed. It's all context, and if you rob a powerful scene of that you reduce it to meaningless pixels on a screen and then wonder why it doesn't engage you.
So, no, I'm not going to tell you what Scene X is. Irritatingly, even knowing that there's a brilliant scare-shot on the way will massively dilute your experience of the movie. The movie which is almost impossible to get hold of regardless.
So now you'll probably never see it at all. Because I've painted myself into a corner, where telling you the title would be a meta-spoiler.
My name's Pat Higgins, and my conscience is clear.
In fact, sod it, I'm going to call it 'Scene X' and won't even tell you which movie it's from. Because if you watch it on YouTube, you won't actually see it in any meaningful sense.
Scene X has got a whole load of heartbreakingly crass and badly written comments underneath it. "This is supposed to be scary? ROFL", "its not even scary", "I thought ti was hilarious" and so on, the dull echo chamber of fuckwittery reverberating through the bowels of the internet. The sound of the barely literate congratulating themselves on their lack of engagement with a thirty-year old clip removed from any sense of context.
The reason that Scene X is one of the greatest scenes in horror history isn't the scene itself, it's because of all the rest of the movie around it that isn't Scene X. An ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a Terminator movie might not even be noticed, whereas an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a film of a child playing would have a very different effect indeed. It's all context, and if you rob a powerful scene of that you reduce it to meaningless pixels on a screen and then wonder why it doesn't engage you.
So, no, I'm not going to tell you what Scene X is. Irritatingly, even knowing that there's a brilliant scare-shot on the way will massively dilute your experience of the movie. The movie which is almost impossible to get hold of regardless.
So now you'll probably never see it at all. Because I've painted myself into a corner, where telling you the title would be a meta-spoiler.
My name's Pat Higgins, and my conscience is clear.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Indie Movies Online at Cannes
I'm kind of gutted that I won't be at Cannes this year. I love it and I want to get back there.. Hopefully next year. In the meantime, our good friends over at IMO have set up a special Cannes Film Festival site to help me keep up to date with what's going on and miss it even more. And whilst you're over in the IMO neck of the woods, don't forget that if you're based in the UK you can still check out our award-winning flick The Devil's Music by clicking below..
And if you've already seen TDM, why not check out one of the other movies on the site?
When I haven't been getting all nostalgic about long-closed cinemas or doing Q&A sessions, I've been working on the House on the Witchpit screenplay again. Don't know if it's my mood in general, but the pendulum is swinging back to slightly lighter tonally once more. Maybe I just can't handle writing dark stuff for months..
And if you've already seen TDM, why not check out one of the other movies on the site?
When I haven't been getting all nostalgic about long-closed cinemas or doing Q&A sessions, I've been working on the House on the Witchpit screenplay again. Don't know if it's my mood in general, but the pendulum is swinging back to slightly lighter tonally once more. Maybe I just can't handle writing dark stuff for months..
Thursday, May 06, 2010
The Classic, Westcliff on Sea
This is what I remember, although you can't call it a memory.
Poster frames outside. Six frames, left to right. The two central ones are advertising 'Now Showing'. When I try and focus on the one second from the left I can't get a firm image in my head. It might be advertising local businesses. It's certainly not as interesting as the others, which are advertising all sorts of coming attractions. The one furthest to the right is advertising late night shows on Fridays and Saturdays. The posters for the late shows are pretty lurid, and either scare me silly or tempt me with the forbidden depending how old I am at that particular moment. Scanners, Videodrome, Play Misty for Me, Come Play with Me, Lemon Popsicle, Confessions Of.. through to The Witches of Eastwick, Ruthless People and beyond. Movies I'm not allowed to see. By the time I'm old enough to do so, many of them will be quaint relics of another age.. So the power lies in the posters, and for me at least it always will. In the tease, not the strip. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
Inside, the lobby smells of cigarette smoke, candy and popcorn. An assistant looks out from behind glass, dispensing little numbered tickets depending on what screen I was heading to. The assistant, who much have changed a dozen times over the years but is present in my mind as either a cheerful balding guy or a faintly disapproving middle-aged woman. They ask my age once only (Lethal Weapon 2, 1989) and the rest of the time just check smoking or non-smoking.
Screen One is downstairs. A whole bunch of memories trip over one another as I try and picture the screen. I'm sitting looking at the pillars and the cladding on the walls whilst waiting nervously to watch The Black Hole, the advertising for which both scares and intrigued me. I glance at my Scooby Doo watch and wonder how many minutes until the film starts. Scooby's arms are the hands of the watch, and I'm getting pretty good at working out the time. Then suddenly, I'm sitting with my Mum eating Revels and watching Breakdance, whilst some kids smoke dope a couple of rows behind us. Then I'm watching Howard The Duck with my buddy Dan Rice, and we're the only people in the screen until about a minute before the film starts.
But this film isn't in Screen One. It's in the smaller screen upstairs, which means walking past another 'Coming Soon' poster midway up the staircase. It's for Damien: Omen II and now I'm too scared to go past it because I'm only a toddler. But somehow I manage it, and I end up in the upstairs lobby looking at a big cardboard stand for Battle Beyond The Stars which looks brilliant, and suddenly I'm a couple of years older and I'm at Saturday Morning Cinema. Screen Two is full of a hundred or so kids all about my age, and a long suffering member of staff called Uncle something is entertaining us and handing out prizes prior to the films. The films are a collection of shorts and cartoons. The main feature is called Electric Eskimo and is about 50 minutes long. There's a serial called Chimp Mates which we see a different episode of every week, except we don't because it's now 5 years later and Uncle something doesn't do the Saturday Morning Cinema anymore, and they show proper, actual films and don't give out prizes. The only criteria is that they have to be PG, so the films aren't always tailored to a crowd of 7-13 year olds. Thus we watch Police Academy 2. And then I'm once again too old to be going to Saturday morning cinema.
And then I'm making plans to go off to University, and I'm too busy thinking about sex and music and pubs and girls and videos to particularly worry about that little cinema down the road because I've, quite frankly, got a lot of other stuff on my mind. And I don't even bother to go to the final show there in 1991.
And then I'm 36, I'm married and I'm probably as grown up as I'm ever going to get.
I'm looking at a Halfords in Westcliff that happens to be standing where some cheap little second-run cinema used to stand. I've stopped by because I need some antifreeze for the car engine but, for some unknown reason, I'm fighting the urge to cry.
Poster frames outside. Six frames, left to right. The two central ones are advertising 'Now Showing'. When I try and focus on the one second from the left I can't get a firm image in my head. It might be advertising local businesses. It's certainly not as interesting as the others, which are advertising all sorts of coming attractions. The one furthest to the right is advertising late night shows on Fridays and Saturdays. The posters for the late shows are pretty lurid, and either scare me silly or tempt me with the forbidden depending how old I am at that particular moment. Scanners, Videodrome, Play Misty for Me, Come Play with Me, Lemon Popsicle, Confessions Of.. through to The Witches of Eastwick, Ruthless People and beyond. Movies I'm not allowed to see. By the time I'm old enough to do so, many of them will be quaint relics of another age.. So the power lies in the posters, and for me at least it always will. In the tease, not the strip. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
Inside, the lobby smells of cigarette smoke, candy and popcorn. An assistant looks out from behind glass, dispensing little numbered tickets depending on what screen I was heading to. The assistant, who much have changed a dozen times over the years but is present in my mind as either a cheerful balding guy or a faintly disapproving middle-aged woman. They ask my age once only (Lethal Weapon 2, 1989) and the rest of the time just check smoking or non-smoking.
Screen One is downstairs. A whole bunch of memories trip over one another as I try and picture the screen. I'm sitting looking at the pillars and the cladding on the walls whilst waiting nervously to watch The Black Hole, the advertising for which both scares and intrigued me. I glance at my Scooby Doo watch and wonder how many minutes until the film starts. Scooby's arms are the hands of the watch, and I'm getting pretty good at working out the time. Then suddenly, I'm sitting with my Mum eating Revels and watching Breakdance, whilst some kids smoke dope a couple of rows behind us. Then I'm watching Howard The Duck with my buddy Dan Rice, and we're the only people in the screen until about a minute before the film starts.
But this film isn't in Screen One. It's in the smaller screen upstairs, which means walking past another 'Coming Soon' poster midway up the staircase. It's for Damien: Omen II and now I'm too scared to go past it because I'm only a toddler. But somehow I manage it, and I end up in the upstairs lobby looking at a big cardboard stand for Battle Beyond The Stars which looks brilliant, and suddenly I'm a couple of years older and I'm at Saturday Morning Cinema. Screen Two is full of a hundred or so kids all about my age, and a long suffering member of staff called Uncle something is entertaining us and handing out prizes prior to the films. The films are a collection of shorts and cartoons. The main feature is called Electric Eskimo and is about 50 minutes long. There's a serial called Chimp Mates which we see a different episode of every week, except we don't because it's now 5 years later and Uncle something doesn't do the Saturday Morning Cinema anymore, and they show proper, actual films and don't give out prizes. The only criteria is that they have to be PG, so the films aren't always tailored to a crowd of 7-13 year olds. Thus we watch Police Academy 2. And then I'm once again too old to be going to Saturday morning cinema.
And then I'm making plans to go off to University, and I'm too busy thinking about sex and music and pubs and girls and videos to particularly worry about that little cinema down the road because I've, quite frankly, got a lot of other stuff on my mind. And I don't even bother to go to the final show there in 1991.
And then I'm 36, I'm married and I'm probably as grown up as I'm ever going to get.
I'm looking at a Halfords in Westcliff that happens to be standing where some cheap little second-run cinema used to stand. I've stopped by because I need some antifreeze for the car engine but, for some unknown reason, I'm fighting the urge to cry.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tickets for special festival screening of The Devil's Music
A rare chance to see The Devil's Music on the big screen with a Director's Q&A. I've never done a Q&A for this particular movie before, largely because it's more fun to lie about it. But, on Saturday, for one day only, I'm planning to tell the truth. So, if you're anywhere near Southend (which is only 45 minutes outside London) on Saturday 1st May, you can book your tickets here..
Click here to purchase tickets
Click here to purchase tickets
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