Tennant’s Two Voices

I am a geek. I’m a big geek, I have a comic book collection, I have ‘action figures’ still in the packet, I’ve even been inside a Games Workshop, although I do draw the line at war gaming and dressing like elves. As a child I’d watch anything that involved aliens, monsters, robots, or monster alien robots, and so I am a fan of Dr.Who.

I didn’t become a fan while the original series was still being made, I was around eight or nine when that was still in production, I remember watching it as a family, but only vaguely. I did have a Sylvester McCoy action figure and a couple of Daleks, which I bought at Longleat, back when they had the Exhibition. However it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that actually got into it.

I had a couple of friends, still do, who on numerous occasions would talk about characters and storylines, they had like me grown up with the programme, they were fans. It was after hearing many a Who related conversation which I couldn’t remotely follow, I decided to borrow a video of the programme, see what all the yapping was about, I don’t remember which one it was now, wish I did, it would be cool to pinpoint where my obsession began. So anyway I borrowed a video, and then another, and another, and the rest is history.

Now part of fandom involves taking an interest in other projects involving major players and cast members connected to your obsession. Not religiously watching something just because Christopher Eccleston is in it, but it is the reason I have seen episodes of both Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and Law & Order UK, as well as the horrendous Syfy version of Sherlock Holmes.

It’s this passing interest that first brought my attention to the Fright Night remake, starring doctor number ten, David Tennant, who displays marvellously within the film one of his two voices. His first voice is his natural voice, the one framed in a Scottish accent; the second is his English voice. The voice of the Doctor.

The original Fright Night, like a lot of eighties movies, has somewhat of a cult status, and given my love of eighties movies I was surprised I’d never seen it until recently, picking up a copy just after the remake was released.

I was looking forward to seeing the potential eighties gem, unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed. The premise was good, but the characters were either quite bland or incredibly annoying, a prime example of this is main character of bland Charlie and his best friend, the most irritating character since the bellhop in The Hudsucker Proxy. Okay technically Fright Night was made first, but remember the number one rule; this blog is all about my movie year and the order in which I experience films.

For me the only cool part about the film was the character of Peter Vincent, the only character you don’t despise or instantly forget about. The cool thing about Peter Vincent, and here’s where we get some fanboy symmetry, is played by David Tennant in the remake, and Roddy McDowell in the original. Being a big fan of the Planet of the Apes films it was cool to see McDowell play something other than a chimpanzee. The same character being played by two key players in two franchises which I love.

Basically the original, excuse the pun, sucks, but then such a pun only works if you know the film is about a vampire moving in next door, which is also something I have neglected to mention until now. Just assume I had laid out the facts, and groan accordingly.

Before I move on to the remake I must appease the fact gods with a knowledge sacrifice. The original Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Hollander. Hollander’s other major success was that of writer and director of fellow eighties cult horror Child’s Play. He is also the uncle of Offspring frontman Dexter Hollander. The gods are smiling.

Either Mr Hollander wasn’t happy with his original, and subsequent sequel, or he thought to himself ‘if anyone’s going to fuck it up its going to be me’, taking an active part in the remake’s story. But without being able to ask him I can’t say whether he’s happy with them or not, I can however say nothing was fucked, its been greatly improved upon. Obviously all the credit isn’t down to him; there was a new director, an excellent new cast featuring Toni Collette, Anton Yelchin, Collin Farrell and the previously ejaculated over Tennant. Hollander, along with screenwriter Marti Noxon, have greatly improved the script, rearranging elements of the story, offering much better dialogue and far more rounded characters, but then Hollander has had the best part of twenty years to mull it over.

Going back to the title of this rambling word vomit, Tennant’s two Voices. There is nothing wrong with his acting, or the accent he uses, it’s the previous association that voice has. When we first meet his character, Peter Vincent is dressed as his stage persona, long black wig, stick on beard and wash away tattoos, and before he removes all these things the voice is fine, he looks nothing like the tenth doctor. But when he does the voice is a little disconcerting, while he sits there rubbing his leather clad crouch and telling people to fuck off. Once you’ve made the mental adjustment everything works out fine.

It looks like this ramble may actually be approaching something close to real writing, having a beginning, middle and an end. A sense of continuity. Let’s not ruin it and keep talking.

Fright Night (2011) Trailer

Fright Night (1985) Trailer

In need of a clever title.

I’ve recently watched a number of films that were new to me, some old, some new, but rather than go in depth into each one, and bore you with numerous posts, I’m just going to talk about each one in the order in which I saw them, and if I feel like expanding on any of them I’ll bore you there and then. Deal.

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Based on the only successful escape attempt from the inescapable prison, starring Clint Eastwood. Like The Shawshank Redemption with less gang rape and Morgan Freeman voiceovers.

 A Fist Full of Dollars (1964)

Part of Sergio Leone’s celebrated man with no name trilogy, it was shit.

 The Way (2010)

Written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father Martin Sheen. Sheen plays Thomas Avery who travels to France in order to collect the body of his son, who had died while traveling the length of the Camino de Santiago, a route from southern France through Spain, ending at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where it's believed the remains of Apostle St. James are buried. Once there Avery decides to have his son cremated and rather than take him home, decides to walk the Camino, to complete the challenge his son had embarked upon and scatter his ashes along the way.

The film was inspired by a trip that Sheen and his grandson, Estevez’s son, had taken, driving the length of the Comino. Sheen had suggested the idea of a low budget documentary about the pilgrimage route, but his son was thinking a little bigger. Estevez went off and wrote a script with his father in mind for the lead role, and apart from the primary roles all the other people in the film are actual pilgrims, and people who live along the route, including the group of Romanov gypsies.

The film was described to me as being like The Straight Story, the 1999 David Lynch film, based on the true story of Alvin Straight who took his own pilgrimage, travelling from Iowa to Wisconsin on a lawnmower to visit his estranged and sickly brother. A description which I think is quite fitting, they’re both films about men past their prime travelling great distances in an unconventional fashion in the name of family, they’re both films where nothing major actually happens, just about the people they meet along the way, the trials of the traveller, and what they come to learn about themselves, and there both films that are completely engrossing.

I loved this film so much that after watching it I went straight on Amazon and bought the book its partially based upon, I just had to know more, but then The Way not only makes you want to read up on the pilgrims challenge, it also makes you want to go and do it yourself. I would say that’s the definition of an inspiring film.

 

 The Soloist (2009)

After the completion of his career resurrection with Iron Man, and the farcical comedy Tropic Thunder which followed, Robert Downey Jr. clearly decided to stretch his serious acting muscles. The Soloist follows the true story of a newspaper columnist who befriends a schizophrenic homeless man, who in his youth was a musical prodigy.
somewhere between The Fisher King and Shine, while not being quite as good as either.

Nick & Norah’s infinite Playlist (2008)

A tale of love for the cool kids, the ones that used to smoke behind the bike sheds, and love bands with a passion when they’ve all got day jobs and no one’s heard of them, and despises them as sell-outs as soon as they taste success. Starring Kat Denning (Thor, The House Bunny), and crown prince of geeky awkwardness Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, TV’s Arrested Development)

Warrior (2011)

The MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Rocky. Warrior is tale of two estranged brothers who take part in the first MMA world championships, featuring some brilliant performances from Joel Edgerton (Animal Kingdom, Star Wars episode II & III), Tom Hardy (Bronson, Inception) and Nick Nolte.

I really enjoyed this, not that I knew anything about MMA beforehand, but then I didn’t know anything about boxing the first time I saw Rocky 4. One of the things I particularly liked was the way the story of Edgerton’s brother was there from the start, you knew what his motivation was right from the beginning, what he had at stake, and the contrast with Hardy’s brother, who you know nothing about, the answers being filled in one at a time like a crossword as the film progesses.

Mission impossible III (2006)

Another slice of Hollywood midget Tom Cruise’s action franchise, this time directed by JJ Abrams (Super 8, Star Trek) entertaining enough, but ultimately as forgettable as the previous two. However it was good seeing Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a villain.

Ink (2009)

Imagine someone who’s just graduated from film school, read too many Neil Gaiman books, and watched too many Chris Cunningham videos, and then you’ve got Ink. I wanted to like this more than I actually did, it had some good ideas, some pretty good effects, especially since it clearly had no budget, and the Incubi are brilliantly creepy. Unfortunately it could do with some higher quality acting, not to say it’s bad, it’s just not always great, clearly the film student went next door and picked up some drama students.

The fight scenes are just a blur of rapid cuts, one to make the sequence seem exciting and two to cover up the fact none of the actors obviously have any previous stage fight experience; however it doesn’t accomplish either, just confusion and a possible seizure.

But it’s not just the fight scenes which are confusing, so are other chunks of the film. Ultimately two words can some this film up, Confusing & Pretentious.

And now to watch Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy

The Way Trailer

Warrior trailer

The Future of Animation?

I’ve always been a fan of animation, of course growing up I watched cartoons like any other kid, but I was rarely interested in any programme or film for that matter that wasn’t animated. I’d watch the same series over and over again, never getting bored. Certainly there were those which I didn’t like that much, but if there wasn’t anything else I’d still watch them anyway. You may say I had somewhat of a misspent youth, and you might be right, but then is any time truly misspent if it’s spent doing the things you enjoy. But then Gary Glitter likes molesting children, maybe he could spend his time more constructively.

Just as Glitter leaves children alone once they’ve grown up, so to do most children leave behind animation, which would beg the question did I ever grow up because I still like watching cartoons . Granted  there’s a lot of things I used to enjoy as a child that having seen them again in adulthood don’t stand up anymore, but then there are others that still do, generally it’s the programmes that had higher production values or more adult themes, like Transformers, Thundercats or Ulysses 31. If something is genuinely good to start with, it will always be so, even if it may seem dated by today’s standards.

As I’ve gotten older my taste for animation has developed as enjoying the world of anime, not that I would call myself a true anime fan, in my experience the true believes seem to like anything that falls under that banner, but given that the Japanese don’t really separate animation from live action, with a good third of their entire television and film output is animated, covering all subject matter and age certification, saying you like anime is like saying you like the BBC.

So we’ve established I like animation, but since this is a film blog, I should try and steer this rudderless boat down the right river. I tend to watch most animated film, be they from Disney or DreamWorks, Pixar to Studio Ghilbi. The thing all the major producers have is their own style, when you watch a Disney movie you know your watching a Disney movie, a fact which makes any new kids on the block tend to stand out, even more so when their a one off, made by an already established filmmaker, like Wes Anderson with Fantastic Mr Fox or Gore Verbinski with Rango.

Gore Verbinski’s biggest films to date have been the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but these films nor anything else from his back catalogue point towards animation, the closest is maybe the cartoon like family comedy Mouse Hunt, but that was live action.

It is perhaps this lack of experience in the field that lead Verbinski to make the film in a very different way to your average studio animation. That’s not to say it didn’t have studio backing, it did, just not from the usual big hitters. The studio in question, Nickelodeon, who have produced animations in the past, mainly big screen versions of their TV channel mainstays, such as Rugrats and SpongeBob. They've also produced a number of family friendly live action movies like The Spiderwick Chronicles and Nacho Libre. But last year they brought out the big guns, the now Oscar winning Rango and The Adventures of TinTin: Secret of the Unicorn, which won the Golden Globe for best animated film, the first non-Pixar film to do so since the category was introduced. Basically if 2011 is anything to go by Pixar have some non-DreamWorks competition, but then Pixar’s 2011 contribution was Cars 2, one of the worst films they’ve ever made.

Back to Rango, and how it could have changed the way animated films are made. At the early stages of development Verbinski assembled a group of artists and writers together, not all of whom are from the celluloid world, and tasked his collective with coming up with the story and the conceptual art for the characters. The four artists involved would go off and work on charters, come together, compare notes, steal ideas, go back to the drawing board, then convene again, repeating until each design was complete.

That was the first thing Verbinski did differently, the second was assemble his cast, which may not sound revolutionary, even sound pretty standard. But what happens usually in animation, the voice actors come in one by one, record their vocal track in a little booth all alone, then they go home, they may not even come into contact with the other cast members until the premiere, if at all. With Rango Verbinski took a different track. Johnny Depp (who voices Rango) had a couple of weeks where he was available to record, so Verbinski gathered together all the other actors, including Ned Beatty, Bill Nighy, Ray Winston & Isla Fisher together, and rather than record their dialogue alone, they played dress up (apparently to help them get into character) and acted out the scenes together, allowing them to react to each other as they would in any other film.

Thirdly Verbinski convinced ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) to animate the film, ILM who are a special effects house, and have never made an animated film before (that’s of course if you discount the Pixar connection, but if you want to know more about that find my blog entry entitled ‘Birthing the Giant’ where that connection has previously been explained, we’ll be here all day else)

All these elements together create a unique animated film, a classic western populated by desert creatures, a plot hijacked from Jack Nicholson classic Chinatown, and a stars wars style trench battle with bats.  It has a look and feel all of its own, it’s not full of bright colours like you’d find in something like Toy Story, nor child friendly cute and cuddly characters like Madagascar. It’s not a story of race cars rediscovering themselves (I think that sentence sums up how shit Cars is), nor is it a story about nomadic prehistoric creatures returning a child, or anything quite as innocent. It’s a story about a man (or Chameleon in this case) who has no identity of his own, a dreamer who becomes a hero to a town  being choked to death by corrupt officials and thugs, about the march of progress regardless of whoever stands in the way, it’s about community, it’s about hope.

Rango Trailer