Kevin Smith grew up

As a media student, later a full blown film student I like many gravitated towards certain film makers, John Woo, Martin Scorsese,  Sam Raimi, but for me it was John Hughes , Tim Burton and Kevin smith. Burton for his weird and wonderful creations, and Hughes for his farcical adventures and dialogue, and Smith for the same reason, that and his comic book & movie obsession.

In 1994, Kevin Smith brought us his feature film debut Clerks. Filmed in black & white over 21 days and costing a mere $27,575, a sum scrimped together by Smith, through numerous maxed-out credit cards, as well as selling a large portion of his comic book collection. Smith spent his days working at a convenience store, filming Clerks once the store was closed. This is the reason for Dante being unable to get the shutters open, because everything store related was filmed at night, the shutters would be down in the outside shots, while also making it appear darker within the store in the internal shots. Smith got around this by saying that someone had jammed gum in the locks, making Dante unable to bring the shutters up.

Once Smith had completed what may have been his one and only film, he took it to the Sundance Film Festival where it won  the Filmmaker’s Trophy and was picked up for distribution by Miramax, who at the time were great flag bearers for independent cinema. This was the beginning of great things for Smith, making a further nine films, having small acting roles in several others, such as the rubbish Daredevil, the rubbish Scream 3, and the considerably less rubbish 4,3,2,1. It also let Smith accomplish one of his other dreams, writing for various comic book titles including Batman, Spiderman & Daredevil.

There are a number of elements Smith’s movies are known for , mainly excessive dialogue and extreme toilet humour, for as Holden says in Smith’s third film Chasing Amy, ‘the big bucks are in dick and fart jokes’. But this was all set to change with his tenth film Red State.

Now usually I would ramble on about how wonderful/rubbish a film is, but with Red State, which I would currently call my film of the year so far, we’re gonna play it a little differently. I went into it blind, I didn’t have any idea what the film was about, let alone who was in it, or who made it. With that in mind I suggest also watching it blind, of course I want you to read my ramblings, but in this case I shall try to plant the seed of surprise. Watch the movie, then come back and agree with my opinion.

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Somewhere in the backwaters of middle America three typically horny teens travel to Cooper’s Dell  after responding to an older women’s online sex invitation. However their dirty little schoolboy fantasies are cut drastically short. The women they went to meet is part of a Christian extremist group, led by twisted preacher Abin Cooper, played brilliantly by Michael Parks. The group hold the boys captive in their compound, known locally as Five Points Church. Pastor Cooper and his congregation, who are all related to him either by marriage or blood, force them to witness the execution of an ‘Evil Homosexual’ before being prepared for their own demise. As if the situation wasn’t difficult enough, they then have to contend with the arrival of federal agent Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) and his team, armed and ready to take the preacher out. Problem is the Cooper family are just as ready and even more armed.

As you can see from that little synopsis, or from the film which you’ve just watched because you listen to everything I say, there are still signs of Smith everywhere, the dialogue, while being somewhat cleaner than usual is still golden. There’s still an open exploration of elements present in his previous works, themes of sex and homosexuality, something very much present in Chasing Amy, and Christianity, which was the main theme of Smith’s fourth film, Dogma.

The one thing that is missing, which is no slight on the film, is something that was heavily present in his earlier films, and one of the things that made me a fan of his particular brand of fiction. It’s not Jay & Silent Bob, the characters that featured in his first five efforts, though I do love them, it’s the interconnectivity of the characters, the way characters who appear in one film, are talked about by characters in another. Giving the films thier own reality, much like that of Marvel Comics.

Another regular occurrence in his movies was the reappearance, of actors, like Ben Affleck and Jason ‘My Name is Earl’ Lee, who had never acted before appearing in Smith’s second, Mallrats. As well as many of the still relatively unknowns, such as Brian O’Halloran.

But none of that shit matters, it’s all ghosts of Smith's past, and we’re here to talk about his future, not to be haunted by what went before. But the thing with Red State is, he’s not only changed the kind of films he makes, he’s also changed the way he makes them. Everything he’s made since Clerks has been financed and released by studios, with Red State Smith gathered his budget from a couple of investors, shot it over a couple of weeks, then took it to Sundance. Okay that does sound similar to the way he made Clerks, but this is where it gets interesting. Rather than auction off the distribution rights as he had originally intended, he decided to distribute it himself, taking the film from city to city, much like they didin the early days of cinema, before releasing it straight to DVD. But that’s not the best bit, none of the festival goers awaiting the auction knew this was the plan, but then neither did Smith, he only decided to tread this path after seeing the audience’s response to the film. He then let all the previously potential investors & distributors know his intentions with a brilliant bridge burning speech, all of which can be seen on YouTube if you’re so inclined.

To summarise, I used to like Kevin Smith, when he was puerile and wordy, wearing baggy trousers and a backwards cap, and now I like him in his grown up clothes.

Red State Trailer

Clerks Trailer

Horror-able

The only people who genuinely get scared by horror films are twelve year olds who’ve got hold of a copy of Evil Dead, thinking their all the more cool for it, and the kind of girls who carry ugly little rat dogs in their handbags. When was the last time you were genuinely scared by a movie, and I’m not talking about something making you jump, or was a bit creepy, or mindlessly gory like all the those over hyped and rather rubbish Saw movies. What I want, hopefully, would be all three, but with none of those elements being used just for the sake of it, but used as part of a fresh idea, or failing that, just a good story. Story is key.

Well with that little rambling introduction out of the way I’m going to ramble some more, this time with a slightly more specific target, namely the films I’ve watched in the past week which fit snuggly and warm in the loving embrace of the genre known as horror, or Dave to his friends.

Final Destination 5

Okay I know what you're thinking, mainly because I can read minds, but partly because you paid attention to the intro, underlining the civil partnered words fresh idea, and yes you would be right to question my all knowing glory, but in this case we see not a sign of mould. While not being straight out of the ground fresh, it still needs a rinse off. Rather than churning out a higher numbered clone, they’ve not only given the walls a fresh coat of paint they’ve changed the carpet as well.

That’s enough mixed metaphors for now, so anyone who is unfamiliar with this franchise here’s the gist. A group of people, generally played by actors with model looks, either straight out of stage school or from the cast of a teen drama where the characters are played by people in their thirties. After one of the group has a vision, allowing them and the rest of the main cast to avoid certain death in some freak disaster, death feeling somewhat cheated picks them off one by one, each of their deaths caused by a chain reaction of minor events.

An example of a minor events death would go something like this: Character A puts phone on the counter then washes some vegetables in the sink. Character A then takes these Vegetables to the counter to chop them up, dripping water on the floor in the process. Character B knocks at the door, character A goes to answer but slips on the water and falls to the floor, during the fall character A knocks the board the knife was on, leaving the knife balanced precariously. Character B, after Character A doesn’t come to the door, tries to phone A. The vibrations from the ringing phone cause the knife to fall, with Character A receiving it right between the eyes.

Now in the run up to each death, anything that could be remotely dangerous is focused on, most of which eventually become part of the chain reaction. But this is where number five flips it around, it plays on the fact that you know the rules, and then sideswipes you with something you just didn’t see coming. But not all the deaths take this approach, some just happen using the normal set up, which after the previous sideswipe you’re not expecting the film to play fairly, this coupled with concept that if you get someone to take your place in the oncoming Death scheduled accident, by for example pushing them in the way, your life is spared.

So while not being a shiny new still in the plastic wrap idea, it’s certainly rubbed shoulders with a few. They’ve managed to inject new life in to a dead horse, and anyone who saw number 4 will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Apollo 18

Here we have a fresh idea, executed through the gimmicks harnessed by two previously fresh ideas, the two being The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. The Blair Witch gimmick was that the characters within the film were the ones filming each other, allowing you to experience the fear up close, while also giving it a sense of realism. The gimmick which the Paranormal Activity films rely upon is having fixed cameras, security ones or others set up by the films characters to record the activity. In the case of the P.A. films it again allows a sense of realism as it just feels like a documentary, but when something does happen, its sudden and unexpected, because your given the idea that you can see everything that’s going on, unlike in your average horror where someone’s talking and the monster/killer/Gary Glitter is right behind them.

The basic premise of the film is this: Between 1967 & 1972 there were seventeen Apollo missions, six of which were successful lunar landings, the last of these Apollo 17, which begs the question why did we never go back? Apparently we did, one last time, finding something that we weren’t all that keen on.

The film is constructed from supposed recovered footage from this final mission, an element which works both for it and against it. It gives the film a unique look, yes its all the same home movie, CCTV visuals we've seen in the precedenting movies I previously mentioned, but this footage was supposed to be shot in 1974, giving a authentically vintage look, but it also leads to a lack of visual artistry, helping to give it a slow start. I hear what you're saying (remember I’m a mind reader) simple visuals shouldn’t be the unmaking of a film, and they don’t, it would just be nice having something interesting to look at while the story gets off the ground.

The slow start can be contributed to two things first the found footage only allows the story to start with home movies and pre-flight interviews, leading into flight checks, you’re a good 20 minutes in before it starts to get interesting. The second contributor is the lack of characters, because the film follows the idea of a traditional moon landing; our astronauts are limited to three, only two of which actually land on the surface itself. This means, unlike your average horror there’s no place for early kills, it has to slowly build and build, a slow reveal to the obvious conclusion.

But for all its faults I liked it, I liked the way it looked, I liked the fact it’s based in actual history, Apollo 18 was originally meant to be a further space mission, before its cancellation, making the whole covert mission seem plausible. I liked the fact that it’s a cast of relative unknowns, the closest being Warren Christie from Alphas, one of those good shows most people will never have seen. I like the production as a whole, it’s not a film I’d rush to watch again soon, but when it’s eventually on TV I’ll say to myself I’ll watch it, but inevitably forget to.

Final Destination 5 trailer

Apollo 18 Trailer

Birth of a giant

Some 25 years ago a boy in a beard attempted to make a film about samurai, imperialism and rebellion, and robots, the film was Star Wars and the hairy youth was George Lucas. For his shiny new film Mr Lucas wanted lots of spaceships and aliens, but rather than spend all his time in the basement making these things himself, he created his own special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, to construct these visual wonders.  After the release of Star Wars, while playgrounds everywhere were rife with imaginary lightsabre duels, ILM created its own off-shoot company, tasked with the development of computer effects. But due to financial difficulties he experienced later Lucas decided to sell on his SFX off shoot, passing it on to Apple founder Steve Jobs for $5 million, with a further $5 million being injected my Jobbs into the company, now known as Pixar.

Pixar at this time mainly dealt in high end hardware, probably why Jobbs was interested, but it also had a small animation division headed by former Disney employee John Lasseter. Their initial animations where designed to showcase the company’s hardware, but after poor sales of these products,  Lasseter’s division, in an effort to help pay the bills, began making commercials for such brands as Tropicana and Listerine, as well as inserts for Sesame Street. Pixar’s branching out was to be their making, it would eventually lead them into a three movie deal with Disney, and the rest is history.

In 1995 the world’s first computer generated feature film was produced, and the rest was history…that’s pretty poor writing using the same phrase at the tail end of two concurring sentences, but then Id woznt no gud at skool en stuff.

Toy Story was a phenomenon, and for anyone who's been living in cave since the early nineties, followed the misadventures of a group of toys, headed by a cowboy named Woody voiced by Tom Hanks, who at the time was Hollywood’s golden boy, having won best actor Oscars the two previous years with Philadelphia and Forest Gump respectively.

The second of the Pixar/Disney three movie deal came in the form of A Bug’s Life, a film while entertaining never came close to the brilliance of its predecessor. It was also the start of a trend of DreamWorks Animations and Pixar releasing films of a similar theme, in this first instance with DreamWorks releasing Antz a month before A Bug’s Life. While having nearly twice the budget, Antz only earned half as much as A Bug’s Life, and unfortunately while being far superior to Pixar’s effort is also often forgotten by most people, but I will always be its champion.

Next came a direct to video sequel to Toy Story, imaginatively titled Toy Story 2, which was later bumped up to a theatrical release, a fact which, in Pixar's view completed their contract, but Adolf Disney didn't agree. In Disney’s view it didn't qualify as the third movie of their deal with Pixar. A disagreement which saw Pixar attempt to distance themselves from Disney slightly once the deal was done with Monsters Inc. Their three following films, The Incredibles, Cars and Finding Nemo were produced entirely by Pixar, with Disney only distributing the films. A trend that was set to continue with Ratatouille, that was until Mr Jobs sold the company to Disney.

Ratatouille also marks what is currently my favourite period of Pixar, a period which includes their subsequent films Wall-E, Up and Toy Story 3 which, fact fans, is currently the highest grossing animated film of all time, as well as being only the third animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, the previous two being Disney’s Beauty & The Beast, and Pixar’s Up.

But all good things must come to an end, as did this glorious run, screeching to a halt  with a sequel to Cars. Cars 2 is essentially a spy movie, consisting of two tried and tested movie elements. The first being that of mistaken identity and the second, the classic embarrassing friend, who’s eventually excepted for who they are regardless of what the rest of the world think. The friend in question is Mater, the idiot tow truck, who in the sequel takes a more central role, skidding out from behind the bland shadow of the originals lead, Lightening McQueen. For all my bellyaching it was fairly entertaining, though just as weak as its predecessor. The Japanese airline being called  Sam-Air-ai was probably my favourite moment in the film, which I suppose doesn’t say much does it, if a 5 second sight gag was the highlight.

To be honest I was surprised when I first found out that they were planning a sequel to what in my opinion is one of the worst Pixar offerings, a view which is obviously shared by the ten people who voted in the poll recently posted on this very blog, which had a Bug’s Life, Cars & Cars 2 not receiving a single vote.

Hopefully Pixar can redeem themselves with the upcoming Brave and Monsters Inc. prequel, Monster University.