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The Official
DAily Guide FRIDAY 20 February 09
What’s insIde? 2 » Tomorrow’s picks Our highlights of tomorrow’s films and events 2 » FrightFest Becky Bartlett checks out what’s in store for horror fans this weekend
PHOTO: SCOTT NEIL
Jobson’s Choice Michael Gillespie grabbed ten minutes with director Richard Jobson after the Scottish premiere of his new film, New Town Killers. An Edinburgh set thriller, the film betrays Jobson’s punk attitude and eastern inspirations, and will no doubt go down as the first film of the new recession. Richard Jobson is something of a jack-of-all-trades. Having fronted Scottish punk rockers The Skids (who recently reformed to sell out audiences), he has since turned his hands to modelling, TV presenting and film criticism. Now, he has fulfilled his dreams of becoming a filmmaker, with his fourth film in five years, New Town Killers, out in June. Despite debuting with semiautobiographical art film 16 Years of Alcohol, Jobson has been determined with his recent works to fly the flag for genre. “ I think there is a rather patronising attitude to genre in this country, that it’s silly and exploitative” he says. “I’d say it can be exciting, thrilling and of high quality, and at the same time completely serious in intent”. New Town Killers is indeed a genre movie, heavily indebted to The Most Dangerous Game and John Woo’s Hard Target. “It definitely has a lot in common with Hard Target, which I suppose represents what New Town Killers would have been with Hollywood money. That’s the cheesy way, whereas I wanted to go the monochromatic way”. The film follows credit-crunch hit Sean (James Anthony Pearson), paid by two mysterious strangers (Dougray Scott and Alistair Mackenzie) to be
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quarry for their dangerous hunt through the streets of Auld Reekie. It’s the third film Jobson has shot in the capital. What’s the appeal? “I want to expose marginalised cultures and express to the rest of the world that Scottish culture is unique. Edinburgh is such a cinematic city, it doesn’t matter where in the world people are watching it: Rio, Tokyo, New York, they really respond to it, that beautiful gothic quality. I’m telling universal stories with a distinct cinematic backdrop”. As the director points out, “many first time directors never make a second film. It’s a completely different culture now: nobody’s allowed to learn from their mistakes anymore, you need to be successful immediately”. Yet Jobson has now made four, all of which belie their limited resources. “The problem with many micro budget British films is that they are written with a 5 million dollar budget, get made for 3 million, yet the script never changes. I design all my scripts to work within the confines of a strict budget”. With a Sin City-style revision of Macbeth and a Hong Kong hitman movie with Wong Kar Wai on the cards, no one call fault this old punk for ambition.
3 » reviews My Life Inside Am I Black Enough for you? Rabbit Without Ears 4 » what’s new online Updating you on new online content FOR GFF 4 » DAWN OF THE DULL It’s Oscar season and Keir Hind is in the mood for separating the wheat from the chaff! 4 » win tickets! Enter our quiz and win 2 tickets to see Lake Tahoe
the cineskinny Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival editors Gail Tolley
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Michael Gillespie Eve McConnachie
GFF Box Office Order tickets from the box office at www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk or call 0141 332 6535 or visit Glasgow Film Theatre 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk
tomorrow’s
Picks
An All-Fright Night Becky Bartlett gets horror-fied for FrightFest.
Infinite Space
13.00 @ GFT
Architect John Lautner is the subject of this documentary by Scotland’s Murray Grigor
In Conversation with Bill Paterson
15.00 @ The Mitchell Theatre
Hear the veteran actor talk about his career
The Surprise Film
20.30 @ Cineworld
It really could be anything…
One-eyed Monster
12:45 @ GFT
Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Debbie Does Dallas.
Flame and Citron
13.15 @ Cineworld
WWII drama from Denmark
Horror films have been, quite frankly, horrific of recent years. With cinemas inundated with shock-free remakes and sequels, any original scare has been buried by endless reproduction or lack of interest. Even The Orphanage, the last heart-attack-inducing film to be released, was criticised for being too similar to The Devil’s Backbone, and as it was (gasp!) a foreign language film, did not reach the large audiences it deserved. Now Hollywood is planning the English language remake, which almost guarantees the atmosphere - surely what made the film so successful in the first place - will have dissipated. So it is a relief to see the film selection at Fright Fest. No remakes, no sequels, no subtitles. The latter is surprising, for it is widely acknowledged that the best horror films of the last few years have originated outside America and Britain. Optimistically one can only hope that 2009 marks the resurgence of scary Hollywood films that are actually scary, of original English language films that recognise not everyone is interested in increasingly more realistic, sadistic and simultaneously less shocking gore. Of the eight films included in Fright Fest (which does not encompass all horror films within the GFF), all have their own merits and sense of originality, and it appears there is at least one film for fans of each sub-genre. Children are the largest common factor, and if real life children are scary, then surely ghost children are infinitely more terrifying. The Unborn, the most publicised of the Fright Fest selection, encompasses supernatural horror, possession and a black-eyed evil spirit in the form of a little boy, with unnerving sequences akin to those in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. “It wants to be born now”, states the trailer. And with last year’s Fest proclaiming the benefits of abstinence for men in Teeth, this time it’s the women’s turn to clench their legs together for fear of Grace, a dead baby born with an unusual appetite. It is also reassuring to see current horror acknowledging its past. One imagines a perfect double bill of B-movie classic I Bury the Living with another Fright Fest option, I Sell the Dead, merely because of their titles. The latter harks back to Hammer-inspired Victorian England, recounting the tale of grave robber Arthur Blake. Most people will recognise the re-
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lationship between horror and sex how many times has a scantily clad blonde been chased by a murderous man/ ghost/ monster/ ravenous beast (delete as applicable)? Everything about One-Eyed Monster seems tongue-in-cheek, from its satirical, political teaser trailer to its premise - alien invasion during an adult film shoot - so is a welcome reprieve of black humour, sci-fi and porn late on a Saturday night. Finally Misha Barton stars in Walled In, the most conventional of the genre films within the Fright Fest. A word of warning though - it is getting a straight-to-DVD release in America, so a festival viewing may be the only chance to share her Poe-esque terror on the big screen.
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Reviews My Life Inside
Director: Lucia Gaja
The American judicial system has long proved a fruitful hunting ground for documentary makers on the look out for injustices to expose. In My Life Inside the Mexican director Lucía Gajá zeroes in on the trial of Rosa Estela Olvera in Austin, Texas. Rosa, an illegal immigrant who made her living as a child minder, is accused of killing a toddler in her care. She maintains the death was accidental. Through interviews with Rosa, her family, officials and other illegal immigrants Gajá suggests an American courtroom is a hard place to find justice if you happen to be
Am I Black Enough For You?
Dir. Göran Olsson
poor, female and Mexican. Artfully directed and powerfully affecting the documentary reaches its climax with the verdict. Yet after this flush of drama and emotion there is a disquieting sense that we have not been privy to the whole story, that in her determination to make her point Gajá has perhaps risked being too partisan. Keir Roper-Caldbeck
Rabbit Without Ears
Director: Til Schweiger
Billy Paul is most widely known as the singer of “Me and Mrs. Jones”, a song that sat atop the U.S. charts for three weeks in 1972 and went on to win a Grammy. The single that followed was “Am I Black Enough For You?” which, while possibly impeding Paul’s career to some degree, won him the respect and admiration of many a culturally engaged performer to come. Director Göran Olsson creates a portrait of Paul out of recent performances, archive footage, photographs and interviews. Besides extensive conversations with Paul and his wife Blanche Williams, we hear the reflections of songwriter Kenny Gamble, Questlove from The Roots, and the rapper Schooly D. The film meanders through memories, songs, and images past and present, finally leaving us with a broad perspective on a man who has managed after hard times to reconcile life with performance. Tyler Parks
One of Germany’s most successful commercial films, Rabbit Without Ears is a quintessential romantic comedy about a womanizing, self-confident reporter, Ludo (Til Schweiger), who has just been released on probation and is sentenced to 300 hours community service. He ends up working in a day-care centre, helping to look after precocious kids only to fall in love with the female lead, geeky
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bespectacled Anna (Nora Tschirner), whom he enjoyed teasing in their primary-school days. Thinking that his community service would be child’s play. Ludo becomes the subject of Anna’s revenge. He goes along with the torment and Anna can’t help but fall for him. While the storyline is familiar, it is well written with enough childlike humor, sexually driven adult themes, and tongue-in-cheek slapstick to keep it
from becoming a predictable mess. The moody international soundtrack (The Killers, Bloc Party, OneRepublic, Keane) adds to its romantic charm and is not to be missed. If you can ignore its formulaic aspects you’ll find Rabbit Without Ears to be a beautifully shot film, tenderly funny, and proof that true romantic comedies still exist. Elaine Cristomo
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DAWN OF THE DULL Wanna win undeserved prizes for your mediocre film? Here’s how! With the Oscars looming, it’s a good time to remind everyone that statuettes been handed out to mediocre films so often as to be no indicator of anything. Look down the list of Oscar winners and you’ll find skiploads of films that just don’t stand up today – one of the biggest winners of all being Ben Hur. This won a record 11 awards in its day, but now it’s just 4 hours of scenery that somehow contrives to end with the crucifixion of Christ. Bad idea: Charlton Heston is so wooden he makes the cross look like it’s overacting. Some critics did recognise this moneymaking bore for what it was at the time, but the religious angle helped make it a sacred cow back in the 50s. Not that awardgiving has gotten smarter. Look at the more recent ‘Best Pictures’ like The English Patient, a legendarily slow film which manages to make Ralph Fiennes’ death boring. Next year was Titanic, again an overlong waste of celluloid with more Celine Dion than the Geneva Convention should allow. It’s possible to make slow films fascinating, but dullness indicates worthiness in the minds of Academy voters. Good for Benjamin Button, bad for us. Some films are massively overrated by sections of audiences themselves. This later develops into undeserved cult status. Examples: the Hammer Horrors, god-awful nonsense with routinely terrible sets and scripts (and an extension of this is The Wicker Man); the Carry Ons, prized for their hilarity by the double-digit IQ brigade but even less funny than an ITV sitcom; Withnail and I, only funny if you’re actually having your first ever drink whilst watching it; and all the Kubrick films after Strangelove, prized only by critics eager for an auteur to call their own. But the worst offender is Lost In Translation. Two privileged people mope around Tokyo moaning about how empty their lives are and how weird Japan is (there’s borderline racism aplenty): who cares?! And whilst Scarlett Johansson probably doesn’t know any better, Bill Murray’s character is getting paid to drink whisky and play with prostitutes – the least he could do is act grateful. Much of the film’s supposed mystique revolves around what Murray whispers at the end. My bet’s on “For this mince I’m bound to get an Oscar nomination”. Keir Hind
What’s new online? Comment online at the GFF site, MySpace, Facebook & on The Skinny’s web forums. FORUMS
One Day Removals producer Kerwin Robertson wants to hear your thoughts. Let him know at www. theskinny.co.uk/forums
Pic of the day PHOTO: jen davies
Jodie Whittaker arrives to introduce the GFF Gala screening of Good.
VIDEO
Go to www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/videos for a Q&A with Richard Jobson and Control star James Anthony Pearson on New Town Killers.
CHAT
Awaydays has been illiciting a response. Why not add your own comments on this or any other film you’ve seen here: www.glasgowfilmfestival. org.uk/cineskinny
win tickets! We have two tickets for Lake Tahoe at Cineworld on Saturday 21 February at 20:45. A quirky, minimalist comedy from the director of Duck Season, the film follows Juan, who after crashing the family car finds himself on a woozily surreal odyssey (involving dogs, mechanics and martial arts enthusiasts) to find a replacement distributor harness. To win, answer the following question:
Mexico’s Alfonso Cuaron directed which Harry Potter movie? email michael@theskinny.co.uk by 10am 21 Feb to enter
What did you think? We asked those coming out of Captain Blood what they thought
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JAMES It was very good. It was the first film I saw as a child and brought back a lot of childhood memories.
stuart It was swashbuckling at its best and I thought it was really great.
Louis I loved it! They just don’t make them like that anymore. It was epic and really great being able to see it on the big screen. I love Errol Flynn!
James There were some moments that were unintentionally funny given the time period it was filmed in, but overall it was a great film. It was full of swashbuckling and charm and you couldn’t ask for more really.
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