Side By Side – Evolution or revolution?

Let’s get digital, digital: Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese

The revolution will not be televised, it will be projected. That’s the message of Christopher Kenneally’s documentary Side By Side, which shows in great detail the effect digital filmmaking has had on the industry, beginning life as a budget-friendly side-show, before becoming the medium of choice for almost all the big players in the film business.

Briefly sketching the early history of filmmaking, Side By Side goes on to chart the rapid rise of digital cinematography since the release of the first feature-length movies shot on digital in 1997.

Hosted by actor Keanu Reeves, in conversation with a massive who’s who of contemporary filmmakers, Side By Side certainly covers most of the bases, but never quite qualifies its comparisons.

Amongst the interviewees are digital devotees such as James Cameron, George Lucas and Danny Boyle, while new converts include David Lynch and Martin Scorsese, who until only a few short years ago seemed steadfast in his support for traditional film stock. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, both major digital converts (although Spielberg shot 2011’s War Horse on film), are noteworthy in their absence from the doc.

Only Christopher Nolan is steadfastly opposed to shooting on digital, with even his cinematographer Wally Pfister unwilling to rule it out entirely in future. Elsewhere actor John Malkovich praises how digital allows you to continue shooting, and acting, without breaks for changing the magazine every 10 minutes, allowing continuous performance like in theatre. Actress Greta Gerwig counteracts that by saying how exhausting the non-stop-ness of digital filmmaking is, which David Fincher backs up with an unfortunate anecdote about Robert Downey Jr. on the set of Zodiac.

Aside from film directors and actors, a large number of cinematographers are interviewed, including Pfister (The Dark Knight, Inception), Vittorio Storaro (The Conformist, Apocalypse Now), Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) and Anthony Dod Mantle (Festen, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire), offering some fascinating insights. Side By Side also investigates the effect of the digital era on other aspects of the production process, from visual effects to editing and colour grading, providing an outlet for some less-sung heroes of the cinema to have their say. Recent developments such as Higher Frame Rate technology, 3D and 4K+ resolution are briefly touched upon.

Darth Innovator: George Lucas discusses the digital revolution in front of a scene from the best film he never made

While the interviews are Anglophone-centric, with only a brief trip to Denmark to interview the Dogme 95 pioneers of digital filmmaking, Kenneally and Reeves have gone out of their way to track down a far more representative selection of female filmmakers (including cinematography Ellen Kuras and director Lena Dunham) than similar documentaries have done in the past. The documentary should be lauded for these efforts.

The use of footage from representative films is mostly exceptional, although there are some poor choices along the way. When Steven Soderbergh mentions the “revolution” in filmmaking, Side By Side shows us a clip from Che, his digitally shot biopic set in revolutionary Latin America. It’s one of the few times this film patronises.

Where Side By Side fails is in giving film a fair hearing, other than defending it with a “it worked for 100 years, so why change now?” No one discusses the crispness of photochemical film imagery with any of the passion of your average muso down the local record shop defending vinyl over CDs. Keanu can’t quite get anyone to explain to him why film would be preferable to HD. When Soderbergh attacks the dirt that appears on traditionally projected film, no defence of it is offered up. Side By Side works brilliantly as a history of the digital revolution, but in terms of laying film and digital side-by-side, it is found wanting in regards the former.

The film leaves no doubt in the end that the death knell has been rung for film, and digital cinema is most definitely ruling the roost now, but does not manage to answer whether or not this is a good thing. To quote Orson Welles: “It’s pretty, but is it art?”

3/5

(originally published at http://www.filmireland.net)

I love the smell of free movie in the morning…

Smelled like… victory.

So a few weeks back, the Screen Cinema in town held a pub quiz to raise money for its rather run-down forecourt, and to give a nice polish to Mr Screen, the ever-so-creepy miniature usher statue that stands in the garden there. But it wasn’t just a pub quiz; it was a movie pub quiz.

Mr Screen, not so clean

Rarely one to miss a pub quiz, and never one to miss a movie quiz, I set about assembling a crack team to enter and win. None of that Ocean’s 11 nonsense mind, we’re talking full-on MASK here (except I texted them, no fancy watches). My crack team consisted of indie and ’50s specialist and fellow unpaid film critic Fergal, US arthouse and modern European cinema encyclopaedia Paul, collected all-rounder James and film studies master Pete. We thought we had it made…

So confident were we of winning that we decided to go for a team name that would, in theory, consign us to defeat. Now, it needs to be said that my pub quiz teams are known for their provocative titles. Some years ago our first film quiz name was the all too prophetic ‘Roman Polanski’s outstanding arrest warrant for statutory rape’. We came second. In a literature pub quiz shortly after, we kept the theme going with ‘Ayatollah Khomeini’s outstanding fatwā for Salman Rushdie’ – we won a sweeping victory. So the idea pitched for this quiz’s team name was to list off character traits in movies that would imply an early defeat (thus surprising everyone when we won). And that was how we came up with the team name ‘The corporate black guys wearing red shirts who have only one day to retirement’. Feeling this too long, we settled on the shorthand ‘Black guys in red shirts’, ensuring everyone at the quiz thought we were a pack of racists. You can’t win everything.

That over-confidence was shattered on arrival at MacTurcaills, the venue for the evening, when we saw the quality of some of the other teams, including one made up of the assembled film critics of Dublin, led by The Irish Times’ Donald Clarke, and friends from the Irish Independent and Hot Press magazine. *Gulp* we thought. And indeed some of us did – approaching drunkenness would be another spanner in the works of our otherwise well-oiled (and apparently racist) machine.

Do you know these men?

And yes, as a few rounds passed, we suddenly became aware that we were doing very well. The few we missed were close – the year the original Terminator was sent back from was 2029, not 2027. Then there were the lucky guesses – Nic Cage’s character Hi does in fact work at a Hudsucker plant in Raising Arizona, and somehow I remembered reading somewhere that The Wizard of Oz went through four different directors. And then there were the incredible moments – Fergal amazingly (and I might add ludicrously) naming all four Ghostbusters (first and last names); Paul delving into his brain to retrieve the name of Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson. But it was the themed rounds where we crucified. Quotes from films – 10/10. Matching actors to roles and roles to actors – 10/10. Naming foreign films based on their original titles – 10/10. That last one was a great round for me, if only because I always call Wild Strawberries ‘Smultronstället’; not out of pretension, the word just amuses me.

So yeah, we won. By a good margin, too. We triumphantly went up to claim our prize, with only one person coughing *racists* as we went. I’d rather be a racist than a loser. Though I’ll reiterate – not a racist.

Now, while in a way the real prize was beating the venerable Mr Clarke, whose own perplexing film quizzes have often ruined my Fridays, in another more accurate way, the real prize was the prize we received – a free screening of any film of our choice in the Screen. Win win.

There were complications of course: it had to be shown before the cinema opens at 2pm, so we’d need to start the film at 11am, limiting us to a 150min film. Also, only a Sunday would suit the five of us. More worrying, how do five people agree on the one film they want blown up on the big screen?  We each pitched five films, an odd mix of classics (The Adventures of Robin Hood, A Matter of Life and Death, À Bout de Souffle), blockbusters (Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and retro cult delights (Labyrinth, Repo Man, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension) that might never see a cineplex ever again. Then we each vetoed one film, leaving us with 20. Some good films fell by the wayside there, such as Battle Royale, Road House, Bridge on the River Kwai. To make the final decision, we turned to the cornerstone of Western democracy – Eurovision!

We each voted for our 12 favourites, giving them from one to 12 points, and some interesting films came to the fore. In fifth place came the delightfully manic Crank – probably for the best, as we’d have been so over-energised that Sunday morning we’d have spent the rest of the day running around punching strangers in the face. In fourth place came The Lion King, a nostalgic necessity (though soon for re-release, rumouredly in vile 3D). In joint third came Repo Man and T2 – both worthy contenders, especially since we were all too young to have seen T2 when it was originally released. Second came a pitch of mine, and one of the entries in my pantheon of great movies – Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. But the clear winner (with an impressive 39 votes to Mononoke’s 33) was Apocalypse Now.

Mr Clean, not so... not riddled with bullets

Surely if there is a list of the films you must see on the big screen before you die, then Apocalypse Now is amongst them. The broad visuals, the alarming soundscape, the terrifying performances. It was indeed a perfect choice (albeit a touch heavy for a Sunday morning – the horror… the horror…). So we arrived at the Screen on Sunday morning with a few extra friends (the ones who weren’t hungover) in tow and enjoyed an audiovisual feast. It really did smell like victory. And coffee.

The whole experience was a delight. I had, admittedly, never seen the original, non-Redux cut of Apocalypse, and enjoyed the smoother flow of the story. Our slim audience, seen embarrassingly out of focus below, were for the most part hugely impressed. Many had never seen any version of the film, and none on the big screen, especially a private big screen.

Not a full house

On our way out, the girl who ran the quiz asked us how we’d enjoyed the film, and told us that the quiz had indeed raised enough money for a little polish for Mr Screen and a sprucing up of his cobblestone garden. On the off-chance there will be another quiz, she asked us what hypothetical rounds we might do poorly in to give other teams a chance. We weren’t sure, so suggested romcoms – nothing we can’t bone up on in the interim. “You know you beat Donald Clarke?” she asked, still surprised. Yes. Yes we did.

And as an extra bonus, Apocalypse Now had totally vindicated our team name – the two black guys died first.

Satan’s Alley – Review

There is a lot to be said for Satan’s Alley, the new ever-so-slightly over-the-top drama starring Kirk Lazarus. Lazarus is by now notorious for his repeated shots at Oscar fame, and this film is, in a pleasant, crowd-pleasing and pretentiously boundary-pushing manner, the sort of film that does well at award ceremonies around the world.

Filmed in a world of shadows pierced by light, this tale of two infatuated priests in medieval Ireland involves itself in showing how the prejudices in our past still haunt the way we see the world today. The film often borders on the erotic, but always steers clear of it, intent on revealing how religious practices can indeed be more pornographic than any sexual encounter.

The film of course is clearly buying into that “homosexual films for straight people” genre that was popularised first by Brokeback Mountain, and the casting highlights it; Lazarus is the blonde and brooding Australian, Tobey Maguire is the innocent-faced Jake Gyllenhaal lookalike (the two will in fact play brothers in Jim Sheridan’s upcoming film Brothers). The duo have a surprising amount of onscreen chemistry, as the older and more world-weary Father O’Malley (Lazarus) takes the younger under his wing and teaches him things that priests aren’t supposed to know. There hasn’t been this much sin in a monastery since The Name of the Rose…

Ok, fine, I’m going to have to stop that there. I am, as many of you will already be aware, reviewing a fake film.

However, there is method to my madness; the above enjoyable diversion was designed to highlight the fact that while some films peak too soon, Tropic Thunder is a film that peaks before it even actually begins.

Tropic Thunder was expected all summer to be a comedy highlight of the year, and it doesn’t quite disappoint. In order to sell to us its would-be mockumentary behind-the-scenes style, it opens with a selection of trailers for fictional films starring Tropic Thunder’s fictional stars. The trailer for Scorcher VI: Global Meltdown presents Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) as a star who, despite the audience having grown up with him, has outlived his own greatest character and now fails to impress. The Fatties: Fart 2 conjures horrific memories Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor sequel, and is by far the weakest of the three trailers, presenting Jeff Portnoy as the sort of actor that shouldn’t be given work. The same could be said for his portrayer, Jack Black.

But as I’ve already highlighted it’s Robert Downey Jr’s Kirk Lazarus’s Satan’s Alley that steals the prologue and indeed the whole film, not just for its inspired innuendo but also for tapping into a very real and evident trend in modern melodrama; it’s ok to be gay provided you’re the underdog – audiences can relate to that.

The actual film itself is a sloppier affair than we might have hoped for. It’s never quite expressed what sort of film Tropic Thunder (that is, the film being made in this film) is supposed to be – its diverse cast (including the “5-time Oscar winner” Lazarus, method acting as a black man on and off camera) would seem to imply a large-budget Hollywood action film, rather than the artistic sort of war movie suggested by its writer and British director. For a film that we’re meant to think is meant to be Apocalypse Now, it never quite stops looking like Michael Bay’s Vietnam. The parody is diluted, if not utterly washed away.

Indeed, the revelation that the author, Vietnam vet Four Leaf, is actually a phoney, is meant to make us laugh at the thought of this farce not being true; but then none of the great Vietnam War movies claim to be based on true events. The audience is left at a loss for who to root for.

Anyways, when the film goes over-budget a more reality TV method is attempted, which in turn goes horribly wrong (in an awfully predictable gag – though a blessing since Steve Coogan hasn’t been this dreadful since Marie Antoinette). The actors are left in actual danger in the jungle and have to remain in character. Some genuine hilarity ensues – the infamous sequence in which the word “retard” is used repeatedly to discuss mentally challenged characters winning Oscars owes a lot to its predecessor in Extras (which had Kate Winslet make the same declaration to Ricky Gervais) but deserves credit, particularly for coining the now essential expression “going full retard”.

But there’s a lot that’s not funny. The one smart character, new-comer Kevin Sandusky (played by Jay Baruchel – getting confused yet?), is repeatedly ignored. Jeff Portnoy wants drugs (and does little else for two whole hours). A panda gets killed for the second time in a comedy in a year – ok, admittedly that was pretty funny this time!

As the film wears on its structure turns into the sort of rescue action picture that we were meant to assume this was not; a Missing in Action instead of a Platoon. There are again inspired moments, Lazarus’s “I’m a lead farmer” is perhaps one of the great one-liners of the decade. Speedman’s “I’m a rooster illusion” is the sort of wonderful non-sequitor that made Will Ferrell famous, but which he can no longer pull off.

What might have been a spectacular moment of comedy, Speedman’s adopted ethnic child (because all celebs must have one!) stabbing him in the neck repeatedly, was pointlessly, and one might argue unethically, spoiled in advertising for the film. Some jokes work a lot better unexpected and in context.

And while all of this is happening in the jungle there’s a whole subplot going on in LA. Tom Cruise, wearing prosthetics and a fat suit, plays Les Grossman, a vicious Hollywood executive and producer of the film-within-the-film. It’s an impressive turn for Cruise, who is surprisingly funny and carries of the grotesque excesses of the Hollywood execs and actually makes Grossman the monster we would expect him to be. But he is no doubt not the film’s highlight, as was assumedly anticipated by Stiller (who by the way co-wrote, co-produced and directed this film). The decision to have Grossman continue his hip-hop dancing throughout the film’s closing credits was a disastrous one that left the audience I saw it with cold and silent, uncertain if they were even supposed to laugh, let alone being tempted to.

There is a lot to like in Tropic Thunder, and it is certainly one of the best American comedies since Zoolander. But too many mistakes have been made. For example, Matthew McConaughey’s character, Speedman’s agent, is so entertaining that we might feel cheated we didn’t get to see the respective agents for Lazarus (assumedly a quivering wreck) and Portnoy (which might have given this waste of space something to do other than moan all film long). It holds together in the end, but only just, and largely because of inspired moments such as Satan’s Alley, Simple Jack and Lazarus (channelling Russell Crowe) and Speedman’s breakdown near the finale. Jon Voight deserves special mention for his brief cameo – he just looks so damned disappointed!

Tropic Thunder is a fun and clever action comedy, but it fails to be the one thing it wanted to be most: a satire. And failing that is the greatest sin of all.

3/5