Little White Lies 13 - The Control Issue by The Church of London

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COVER illustration by

paul willoughby WORDS BY

matt bochenski

002 THE CONTROL ISSUE

“I’m a believer in Joy Division, fuckin’ hallelujah!” This issue is dedicated to the memory of Anthony Howard Wilson (20.02.50 – 10.08.07)

003

004 THE CONTROL ISSUE

DIRECTED BY Anton Corbijn STARRING Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Alexandra Maria Lara

RELEASED Ocober 5

005

Rock photographer Anton Corbijn’s dazzling debut brings the real Ian Curtis triumphantly back to life.

Everybody loves a corpse, don’t they?

006 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Forget sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, only death

matters. Dead heroes are the best. Authentic, seductive

symbols of youth whose swaggering talent is frozen in time. Would the ’60s have the same mystique if Jimi Hendrix was alive today? Would John Lennon? Would Joy Division? In the late ’70s Manchester was a frontier of post-punk pioneers whose explosive energy revitalised British music. It was where a generation came of age, but it was Ian Curtis’ suicide in May 1980 that launched the city on the back of his legend. ▼

007

Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn was drawn to the

It’s shot almost entirely indoors, where Chris Roope’s vivid

scene by the allure of Ian and the raw power of Joy Division. They

production design possesses the physical texture of frayed curtains

were the forlorn hope of Factory Records – a band that flirted

and peeling wallpaper. But moreover, it’s a film that burrows inside

with fascist imagery and self-destruction. On stage Ian was darkly

the mind of Ian himself.

charismatic, bug-eyed and wiry, with that strange windmilling

So here he is, Ian Curtis, but not quite as you know him. He’s got long hair and

strut which too often spilled over into the epileptic fits that dogged his performances. It was Corbijn who took the photo that put them on the map – shot from behind on a flight of stairs in a tube station, as if balancing on a precipice. That was Joy Division; always teetering on the brink of something, whether genius or collapse. But looking back – Touching from a Distance as Ian’s wife, Debbie, called the autobiography that inspired Control – he’s just a kid who sang with haunted urgency, as if he knew that time was running out. “Existence, well, what does it matter?” he asks in the film’s opening frames, but he never did find an answer. Instead, he was dead at 23, hanging from a clothes line in his kitchen, one more good looking corpse to fuel the endless appetite of rock mythology. It’s that kid, that real person inside the armour of history, who’s the subject of Control, and it’s why – for all its imperfections – this is the first film about Ian Curtis that really matters. Ironically, the project has pure rock ‘n’ roll roots: producer Orian Williams had been a long time fan of Corbijn before a chance encounter with Bono set the seal on their collaboration. But for all its trappings, Control is no rock biopic. If anything, it’s an old-fashioned character piece. The music is there, of course, because the music proved that Ian was for real, but Control is an interior film, both literally and thematically.

008 THE CONTROL ISSUE

eye-liner,

he’s in

Ian and Debbie married young, and he never reconciled

school uniform, stealing drugs, listening to Lou Reed, reading

the responsibility of keeping a wife and child with the freedom of

TS Eliot and clutching Bowie’s Aladdin Sane. He lives on Abbey

life away from them. There’s a striking shot of him through the

Court (not Abbey Road – as if he was always destined to be a

bars of a playpen, trapped by domestic life, the enemy of creativity.

step away from the mainstream) surrounded by concrete flats

On the road, he fell for Belgian journalist Annik Honoré, an

built to withstand everything except existence.

otherworldly beauty who offered him everything that he knew he

There’s such sadness and beauty in these early frames that you can’t help but wonder what you’re in for. Is

couldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, have. But perhaps Corbijn is the only person who can tell this

Corbijn too close to Ian to tell this story? Is he ready, or even

story. After all, his photos are the era’s collective memory, the

able, to let his visual sense take a back seat to the demands

nearest thing to an objective truth among all the lies and legends

of Ian’s troubled life?

that followed. ▼

009

He shoots in black and white – Control isn’t going to be

It’s to the credit of the rest of the band (Joe Anderson as

a Technicolor joyride across the ‘Madchester’ landscape – but

bassist Peter Hook, Harry Treadaway as drummer Stephen

rather than recreate the menacing, high-contrast monochrome of

Morris and James Anthony Pearson as guitarist Bernard Sumner)

his photography, the palette is softer and more nuanced. The grim

that they manage to register as distinct personalities in spite of

details of Northern life are all there – the shit pubs, dressing rooms

Riley’s gravitational pull. Hooky is the film’s sardonic chorus,

and Ian’s nine-to-five in a job centre – and yet they’re shot in the

while Sumner looks like a choirboy playing rock star. Treadaway

kind of sumptuous tones that give Macclesfield the bizarrely

nails the role of the drummer by being effectively invisible for most

romantic presence of 1960s Paris.

of the action.

Gorgeous sunsets splash haloes across the camera, and

On stage they come together as Joy Division in the film’s

rain-lashed streets take on the seductive texture of a noir novella.

brief but pivotal gig scenes. There’s no languid cool about them;

And there’s Ian, not the one from the myths and legends that say he

the cast actually went away and learned to play, recording all the

was nothing but a suicide waiting to happen – but the kid with his

music themselves. It shows – they play the shit out of their

mates who, with his army bag and great coat, looks like he might

instruments, nailing the characteristics of the group, and

have stepped out from Brief Encounter rather than some squalid

hammering the tracks with a fearsome energy. Perhaps Riley’s

parable about the end of an era.

greatest achievement is to avoid caricaturing Ian’s distinctive style.

At the centre of it all is Sam Riley.

When the band play Tony Wilson’s So It Goes, seeing him launch

lead role, Riley throws the job lot at his portrayal of Ian. And he has

out of place in England’s industrial north. She’s entirely welcome

to, because Corbijn’s camera scarcely leaves his side – only the

whenever she’s on screen, but she floats in and out of the narrative

suicide remains a rare moment of privacy. It’s thanks to Riley that the

without ever really establishing an identity of her own.

In his first

film stays grounded and that it’s as much a love story as anything

into that flailing dance routine has something of the same, visceral shock it must have had all those years ago. It’s a powerful reminder that there’s never been anyone quite like him since. Not everything works. Morton and Lara are two of the most distinctive actresses around, but they struggle to make an impact in poorly written roles. Despite being based on Debbie’s novel, the film has little to say about her beyond her role as a wife and mother. The only scene she gets to herself is a jealous woman routine, and Morton plays her with a high-pitched squeak that makes her sound uncharacteristically spineless. On the other hand, Alexandra Maria Lara is a spectral presence, a pallid beauty

But then this is Ian’s film for better or worse. For worse

else. His scenes with Samantha Morton’s Debbie are touching and

because Corbijn is more forgiving of Ian’s dark side than he

confused, but it’s when he’s with Annik (played by Alexandra Maria

should be, which is unsatisfactory when it’s Ian’s obsessive nature

Lara) that the film achieves a kind of Zen stillness, albeit one it’s not

that gives the film its name. Then again, Control evokes the

afraid to punctuate with humour: “Tell me about Macclesfield,” Annik

sadness in its title, not the malice. In the end, Ian took control of

asks dreamily, as if it’s more alien to her than the surface of Mars.

his life in the most destructive way possible, and as the film’s

Riley isn’t the finished article yet – it’s hard to gauge whether

haunting last shot proves, the pain of that decision remains as

Ian occasionally comes off as an emo wanker deliberately or

fresh as ever for the people who loved him. Control is an enduring

because Riley doesn’t quite have the muscular chops to pull off all

testament to their grief

his scenes – but it’s undoubtedly a star-making turn.

We promise you that there’s an exclusive interview with Sam Riley on page 25.

010 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Anticipation. Anton Corbijn finally makes the move into filmmaking with the project for which he was surely born. Five Enjoyment.

Tender and heartfelt, Control is a technically accomplished and emotionally poignant portrayal of a modern icon made human again. Four

Enjoyment.

A welcome antidote to the fatuous genre of music biopics that deserves a place among the stalwarts of Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social realist tradition. Four 011

THE PRODUCER Orian Williams reflects on a decade bringing Control to the screen. Interview by danny bangs. Danny Bangs.

LWLies: How did you find your way into becoming a producer? Williams: The things that I love are photography, dialogue and

literature. Producing is really a cumulative effort – it’s like

the one thing that can bring all these things together. However,

I was a fan of music prior to being a fan of film. In the 1980s in

Houston there was a big alternative scene and all the bands I was into were British, from The Smiths and New Order to The Cure, Depeche Mode and the Thompson Twins. I worked for a magazine called

I dropped him a line saying that

LWLies: Do you remember your first

movies. The next morning, I

Williams: We were in London. Debbie

He said that he was thinking

were a bit wary as other people

I thought he should be directing

meeting with Debbie?

received an e-mail back from him.

walked in with her agent and they

about directing movies, although if it was anything to do with the music industry he wasn’t

interested. I had the Joy Division story on the books. I mentioned

it to him and he pretty much just said, ‘Good luck’. Then I started talking to him and we got very excited about the idea.

had tried to get the movie made

and had failed miserably. So for about 20 minutes she didn’t say a word but then she opened up

and we got along famously. She

said she would get back to me,

but by the time I flew back to LA I got an e-mail asking for a formal proposal.

LWLies: When you were trying to

LWLies: Are you concerned that the

Wireless and that mimicked the

get financial backing, was there any

closeness Debbie had in the project

design of the magazines that were

scepticism about Anton’s abilities?

compromised the story?

coming out of the UK. That all led me down this path.

Williams: It wasn’t easy. This one was specifically hard because it

Williams: Not at all. You are

had so much against it. It was

is still alive, but my job was to

LWLies: How did your collaboration with Anton come about? Williams: In 1997 I purchased the book [Touching from a Distance] and thought, ‘This will make a

great movie’. Then in mid 2001 I

was sitting at my desk and looking at a book of Anton’s called Werk.

012 THE CONTROL ISSUE

a biopic, a first time director,

shooting in London and in black and white. Every film about a musician that kills himself is not an easy ride financially. But what did

create the excitement was when

Anton came onboard because he is connected to the story itself.

making a movie about someone who make the best movie ever. If the

people involved are happy and you put it out, that’s the best you can do. It was quite difficult appeasing all these different

parties but at the end of the day, they wanted to be as truthful as possible with the story

ONE WOMAN DARED TO KEEP HOPE ALIVE

ANGELINA JOLIE

“Compelling” Empire “The sense of authenticity is thrilling” Nigel Andrews, Financial Times ★★★★ “An important film for many reasons...The most impressive performance of Angelina Jolie’s career... electric” James Christopher, The Times

THE TRUE STORY OF DANIEL PEARL. AN ORDINARY HERO AND EXTRAORDINARY LOVE.

www.amightyheart.co.uk www.paramountpictures.co.uk

AT CINEMAS SEPTEMBER 21 CHECK LISTINGS FOR DETAILS

This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. Is it like this In deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone. TS Eliot: The Hollow Men

018 THE CONTROL ISSUE

LWLies: What is it that you love about movies? Sam Riley: Ever since I was a child I’ve adored movies. I’ve always been a big movie fan; my father was a big movie fan. And they always... I don’t know. They’ve always captured my imagination. I believe. I believe what’s happening. Even though I now know a lot about the process, a good movie will still hook me into believing it completely. And I love that. I love the fantasy.

What I love time into cinema – I the

Alexandra Maria Lara: about movies is to disappear for a certain another world. And I love sitting in the love when it’s getting dark and you are in middle of whatever world can exist.

019

Honest, passionate and unmerciful.

Publisher

Editor

Creative Directors

Danny Miller

Matt Bochenski

danny@littlewhitelies.co.uk

matt@littlewhitelies.co.uk

Deputy Editor

Paul Willoughby paul@littlewhitelies.co.uk Rob Longworth rob@littlewhitelies.co.uk

David Jenkins

Monisha Rajesh

Sub Editor

Website Editor

Website Design

david@littlewhitelies.co.uk

monisha@littlewhitelies.co.uk

jon@littlewhitelies.co.uk

cullinan@littlewhitelies.co.uk

DVD Editor

Gaming Editor

Incoming Editor

Short Film Editor

georgie@littlewhitelies.co.uk

adrian@littlewhitelies.co.uk

neon@littlewhitelies.co.uk

james@littlewhitelies.co.uk

Georgie Hobbs

Jonathan Williams

Adrian D’Enrico

Contributing Editors Kevin Maher Vince Medeiros

Daniel Cullinan

Neon Kelly

Staff Writers

Andrea Kurland andy@littlewhitelies.co.uk Adrian Sandiford sandiford@littlewhitelies.co.uk

James Bramble

Editorial Assistant Ed Andrews

ed@littlewhitelies.co.uk

Advertising Director

Advertising Manager

steph@littlewhitelies.co.uk

dean@littlewhitelies.co.uk

Steph Pomphrey

Dean Faulkner

Words, pictures, thanks...

Danny Bangs, Henry Barnes, Anton Bitel, Jonathan Brant, Mike Brett, Ailsa Caine, Sam Christmas, Helen Cowley, Andrew Davidson, Craig Driver, Paul Fairclough, Matt Glasby, Holly Grigg-Spall, Lorien Haynes, Ellen E Jones, Adam LeeDavies, Ben Machell, Kayt Manson, David Mattin, Simon Mercer, Jonas Milk, Paul O’Callaghan, Ed Owles, John Robb, Holly Shackleton, Sally Skinner, Dan Stewart, Andrew Sutherland, Adam Tamswell, Mark Taplin, Zoe Taylor, Emma Tildsley, Steve Watson, Josh Widdicombe

Published by

The Church Of London Publishing

Distributed by COMAG Specialist

Printed by

Mayhew Mccrimmon

Studio 209, Curtain House, 134-146 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AR The articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinions and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publishers or editorial team.

SUBSCRIBE & WIN! Send us your name, address and e-mail, and in return we’ll bung you our next five issues for £15. This issue, the first 15 subscribers picked out of a pewter tankard will win a DVD of This Is England, a copy of the soundtrack to the film, or a Shane Meadows Box Set, courtesy of Optimum Releasing. All you have to do is send a cheque to:

LWLies Magazine Studio 209, Curtain House 134-146 Curtain Road London EC2A 3AR Cheques to be made payable to:

The Church Of London Publishing Ltd.

LETTERS This issue: Noodling, musing, praising and complaining from more stalwart readers.

NEED TO READ Just wanted to pick you up on something I’ve noticed

in a few issues. Some pages are really hard to read,

especially letters in the last issue. It all looks

atmosphere and the variety

his quirkier ‘gandering

last issue’s discussion

I’ll miss shopping in Fopp

thing. Little Norse Prince

which was a great article

of films on display. Plus beforehand, which became

isn’t Ghibli, it was

Hope you can get something

more than a decade before

a little ritual for me.

similar up and running soon.

pretty, but damn, let me

Ben Daley

Susie

HMV in the market for some

read what you’ve got to say!

GIMME GHIBLI First up, thanks for

having the balls to put

European settings (as in

who knows what the future will hold.

best Ghibli film ever made

animation special, a fine

Congratulations on your

but it’s pretty solid and

job. Now the pedantic

more though, it was great

to see Miyazaki and Ghibli given a proper discussion rather than the usual

‘Japanese Disney’ tag, which is getting pretty boring now. There are a lot of

Ghibli devotees in the UK

and it was about time these magical films were given their dues. Cheers. F Fleming

R.I.P. FOPP Just wanted to say I’m sorry to see the end of Fopp Film

Club. I came along regularly and always enjoyed the

022 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Finally, I’m provoked

of Fopp’s bigger stores,

cover. It may not be the

pumped out this summer. Even

Ghibli existed.

by the claim that Ghibli

LISTEN UP

of the animated shite being

released by Toei in 1968,

We’ll miss it too, but with

Tales From Earthsea on the

in a different class to most

into leftfield’ is a recent

quibbles. I realise

Kettner’s hatchet job on

Pixar was to challenge the

shouldn’t depict magic in Kiki, Porco and Howl’s

Moving Castle), as it’s

somehow less ‘evocative’

than magic rooted in Japan. Is this objective criticism or Orientalist prejudice

about the exotic Far East? I doubt if the locals see

it that way, given the huge popularity of Harry Potter

of giant rabbit movies,

and I did enjoy reading,

I was ultimately slightly disappointed due to the

fact that left out of the discussion was what is

probably my favourite giant rabbit movie - Moonwalker

- which features said giant rabbit in a great section of dancing (and a prize

piece of spinning) in the

‘Speed Demon’ section. Other than that though, I think you had it covered. I’m

not really dissappointed I

just wanted to find a way to express my generally secret love of Moonwalker - he

hagiographies, but the

in Japan.

was a shamefully low blow.

Thanks for setting us

Phil

the ‘dictator’ John

Kettner, she points out that

memorable giant rabbit

‘Auschwitz gates’ quip

Kettner also forgets that Lasseter had the sense to bring in Brad Bird (The

Incredibles) precisely to stop Pixar sinking into complacent formula.

Your panellists’ comments

on Studio Ghibli’s Earthsea also suggest short-term memory. Miyazaki senior

Andrew Osmond

turns into a car to get away from Joe Pesci!

straight. In defence of

Solid call on yet another

the fact that Pixar’s gates

moment to add to the list

reminded her of Auschwitz is “bizarre, and against all intentions”. It’s an

observation, a valid one, and at no point is she

actually comparing the two. Hear that, Disney lawyers?!

made plenty of ‘simple,

go! go! go! Aaow!

(Cagliostro, Kiki’s Delivery

in and discuss the fact

pure, straightforward’ tales

I feel compelled to write

Service, Porco Rosso) and

that after reading the

of general greatness. And

no longer should your love of Moonwalker be kept a secret – any film with a

robotic and/or automotive

transforming Michael Jackson ripping up the dance floor

while kicking ass for less-

than-entirely-clear purposes is okay by us. Plus, it’s a shit load better than that twat Moore in Moonraker.

024 THE CONTROL ISSUE

off the leash and on a roll, Sam Riley talks fame, fortune and being punched by a drunk. Words by Matt Bochenski PHOToGRAPHY BY SAM CHRISTMAS

025

026 THE CONTROL ISSUE

“As far as we were concerned, we were Joy Division. It was our responsibility to get this right – nobody was going to do it for us.” August 2006. It’s a blazing

is straightforward; they’ve just got to be

come to it with a bit more maturity and an

summer day in Nottingham and Sam Riley

physical and hit it hard. They’re as close to

understanding that it’s all bollocks really at

is perched precariously on a fire escape

Joy Division as you could ever see.”

the end of the day.”

smoking a cigarette. Half the cast and crew

Later on the extras arrive, 200 of them,

Spoken like a true Northerner. Sam

are out here puffing away, sweating from

and the day starts for real. Sam’s shirt is

is Leeds born and bred; he got into

the heat indoors and swearing like roadies.

artfully caked in sweat by the make-up girl

acting at school where a drama teacher

Behind him, Alexandra Maria Lara looks

and as the song kicks off he starts to move,

recommended he try out for the National

like an angel dropkicked into a boy’s toilet.

then the arms twitch and the head goes, the

Youth Theatre. After beating off stiff

Nine months later the news breaks that

eyes are a thousand-yard stare. “They keep

competition from kids around the country

they’re an item, but for now Sam just

calling me,” he sings as he stutters over the

he headed down to London to get his first

glances over his shoulder and muses, “It’s

mic stand, flailing then falling.

taste of the bright lights, only to find other

not a bad life, is it?” It’s a big day on the set of Control. Back

On stage Sam is a time warp, a dead

things that tasted better: “It was more of a

man brought back to life, but he could have

piss-up really because everybody was 17-

inside, in a pokey venue standing in for West

stepped straight off the page of a fashion

years-old, off the leash, and there was a bar

Hampstead’s Moonlight Club, it’s April 4,

shoot. The scene is cut and the spell breaks,

in the halls of residence. So I drank my way

1980. Joy Division are playing their fourth

and with a jolt you realise that this story of

through two weeks at the National Youth

gig in three days but things don’t go well.

icons and eras and social change is actually

Theatre, but I loved it.”

Ian Curtis collapses during ‘Dead Souls’

just about kids and their music and the

and has to be helped offstage. A little over a

sadness people felt at a friend’s death.

month later and he’ll be dead. The ‘band’ – Sam Riley as Ian, Joe

July 2007. It’s pissing down in London

Youth theatre led to the soul-destroying casting trail where Sam auditioned for “fucking everything”, mostly soaps and ads,

but Sam Riley is still perched outside

“Things that I didn’t feel very comfortable

Anderson as Hooky, James Anthony Pearson

smoking a cigarette. Less precariously,

with, and I knew that I’d have a real crisis if

as Bernard Sumner and Harry Treadaway

though. A lot has happened in the last year –

I was offered.”

as Stephen Morris – has spent the morning

Control went to Cannes where it got a special

rehearsing. Sam and director Anton

mention in the Camera d’Or competition

he was lead singer in a band, 10,000

Corbijn practise falling onto a crash mat;

and Sam, well, Sam became a movie star.

Things, and that was starting to cause

Harry is plugged into iTunes tapping on

“Bizarre and exhausting and enjoyable,”

While trying to make it as an actor

complications. “I was thinking that I still

his drumsticks while Joe and James swap

is how he describes the experience, but

wanted to be a musician but I was going to

chords onstage.

there must have been more to it than

have fuck-all credibility if I’m in Coronation

that? “Oh yeah, I mean, people talk to you

Street. I was terrified by the prospect of

them. He’s come down from Nottingham

differently,” he admits. “All of a sudden

becoming well known for something that I

College of Music to help whip the boys into

people want to kiss your bum, but that’s this

didn’t really want to be well known for, so

shape. Most of them had never played an

business – that’s this world. It came as no

I rang my agent and said, ‘Listen, I don’t

instrument before they started learning a

surprise to me.” Wise words for somebody

want to be an actor anymore’.”

few weeks ago, but he’s confident they’ve

with only two feature films under his belt,

got what it takes. “Joy Division are about

but at 27-years-old Sam isn’t some wide-

a smart decision. 10,000 Things got a

the live experience,” he says. “It’s about

eyed ingénu. “I’ve had a life beforehand,”

record deal with Polydor, did an EP with

feeling the emotion of the gig. The music

he says, “I’ve had time to develop, so I

Domino and put out an album with ▼

Off to one side Liam Maloy is watching

At the time it must have seemed like

027

“I liked him, and loved him actually. I love Ian Curtis. By the end of it he felt like, and still is, a big part of my life.”

Fiction. Meanwhile, Sam took the odd acting

were there. As far as we were concerned,

to dig up – “I was the pretty virginal type of

gig here and there to pay for equipment. But

we were Joy Division. It was our

singer.” They’re still together, living in Berlin

it didn’t work out. “We had a big fall out with

responsibility to get this right – nobody was

and keeping out of the tabloids as much as

the major label and then amongst ourselves

going to do it for us. We felt very strongly

possible. “It’s a one-off story,” says Sam,

because of the frustration of the deal,” he

about everything.”

“and I’m not perpetuating that myth by

Sam’s relationship with Ian himself was

himself working in a warehouse, his career

equally important. Being the only member

all but over.

of the band with experience as a musician

Then Anton came calling and

falling out of Berlin nightclubs with a note up my nose or anything.” But still, life is sweet. Not only is he

made it harder at first to assume Ian’s own

shacked up with a hot actress, his next

everything changed. With the four band

onstage persona, but once he’d cracked

two roles will see him play opposite Keira

members cast, the first job was to teach

that, his affinity with the character grew

Knightley and Eva Green. Bastard! Someone

them to play. They hired a room for a week

organically, even though Ian’s a hard man to

should smack him. Actually, someone did.

in Nottingham and started to practise. The

like. “At first I thought, you know, maybe he

original idea was to get good enough to

was a little petulant at times,” he confesses,

to play Stephen Morris in Michael

mime convincingly onstage, but it became

“but then I remembered what I was like at

Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People only

clear pretty quickly that they’d be able to

18 or 19 or 20. I think it’s quite harsh to

he got cast as Mark E Smith, lead singer

go one better. To hear them tell it, they

judge a guy at that age, although he only

of The Fall, instead because he’d got

went in there as Sam, Harry, Joe and

gives us that opportunity.” Ultimately, Sam’s

beaten up in Leeds the night before. What

James, and came out as Joy Division. A

feelings towards Ian are unequivocal: “I

happened? “I’ve just got one of those

bit like Stars in their Eyes, only cooler and,

liked him, and loved him actually. I love Ian

faces,” he says. “I once got punched while

by all accounts, much more raucous.

Curtis. By the end of it he felt like, and still

walking down the street with my mum.”

is, a big part of my life.”

By your mum? “By a drunk. I think my

Interesting rumours were floating around the set about exactly what else they might

Sounds like love was all around. After

We’re talking about how he auditioned

mum was talking about how worried about

have got up to that week – a posh hotel

playing on screen lovers in the film, Sam

me she was at the time, and I said, ‘You

in Macclesfield, lots of drink and bodily

and Alexandra were spotted holding hands

don’t have to worry about me mum,’ then

waste figured strongly in the stories. “I was

in Cannes and the press went nuts. They

smack!” It gets even better: “I got happy

impeccably behaved the whole time, as I

arrived back in Berlin, her hometown, to

slapped by a teenager just before I fucking

always have been my whole life,” claims Sam.

find themselves on the front page of every

went to do Control. I had a big fucking

Yeah, but Joe said… “Hooky should know

newspaper. One German tabloid sent a

hand print on my cheek, the little dirty

a golden rule: that what goes on tour stays

couple of reporters over to Leeds to find out

bastard. I went back home and said to my

on tour. I’m disappointed in him,” he jokes

(in the words of his ex-landlord), “Who you

ex-girlfriend, ‘I’m very contemporary, I’ve

before admitting, “I had a little word spoken

fucked, what drugs you done and what a

just been happy slapped!’ I was so tempted

to me by the producer just to watch it.”

bad lad you are.”

to give him a right good thumping, well, at

That’s another thing – on set the band

“That was pretty crazy and unnerving,”

least as much as a streak of piss like me

always called each other by their characters’

he admits. “I didn’t know how famous she

names and it’s a habit that Sam’s finding

was when she came to the set because

hard to quit. “It just seemed to make

she’s such a nice, down-to-earth person.”

goes, it looks pretty good to be living the life

sense,” he says. “We were brothers while we

Besides, he claims that there isn’t any dirt

of Riley n

028 THE CONTROL ISSUE

can give someone a thumping.” Streak of piss or not, like the saying

Hair and makeup by Zoe Taylor at Soho using MAC and MOP.

admits. They were dropped and Sam found

029

Words by Matt Bochenski

She made her name in Downfall, but Alexandra Maria Lara just keeps on rising.

You’re talking to Germany’s hottest young actress; she’s talented, has a fistful of international awards to her name and sent photographers crazy when she turned up in Cannes to promote her latest movie, Control. Naturally, there’s only one question playing on your mind. So, do you like David Hasselhoff? “I am not a David Hasselhoff fan!” she laughs. Really? Because you could admit it if you were. “In England they seem to think that everybody in Germany likes him. It’s not true!” Alexandra Maria Lara seemed to drop clean out of the sky in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s dazzling 2004 drama, Downfall. Only 26years-old, she was clearly the real thing – a fully fleshed dramatic actress, part soft curves, and part steely focus. She was ▼

030 THE CONTROL ISSUE

031

“I felt very free. I wanted to give something to Annik that is also sympathetic because I don’t like that blackand-white thinking.”

the classic overnight success, having spent

is a very decent person who never liked to

comes in with baby pictures. Talk about

a decade hard at work in Germany building

speak very much to the public about her

bursting the bubble.

a reputation in TV and on stage.

relationship with Ian Curtis. I respect her

After Downfall, the world snapped to

Maybe it’s just that Alex had other

privacy, I do respect that, but I think she is

things on her mind. One other thing, that

attention. Francis Ford Coppola sent her

probably an amazing woman and I would

is. One other person in fact. What about

a hand-written note asking her to star in

like to have the opportunity one day to say

that Sam Riley then? “I think Sam did an

his next film, Youth Without Youth

hello to her.”

amazing performance,” she deadpans.

(presumably it said something along the

The thing about Alex is, she’s just so

And? “I was absolutely impressed.” AND...?

lines of ‘I need you more than you need me,

damn nice. Trying to get her to say a bad

“Sam was incredible, but it was amazing

but come on, whadda ya say?’), while Anton

word about anybody is a futile experience.

to see all of them playing the songs.”

Corbijn cast her in the pivotal role of Ian

But if that sounds like the typical actor

Curtis’ lover Annik Honoré in his biopic of

crap that they all come out with, the weird

wasn’t just Riley’s onscreen performance

the Joy Division frontman.

thing is that in Alex’s case it really sounds

that must have impressed. But although

like she means it.

she’s not one to dish the dirt (and, hey,

It’s a measured, nuanced turn in the movie’s most difficult role. The wounds

In person, she’s disarmingly shy. She

What Alex isn’t quite saying is that it

we’re not really one to ask) she does admit

between Annik and Ian’s wife, Debbie, are

worries about her English and talks as

that being in a relationship with another

still raw, and with Debbie credited as an

if looking for reassurance. She’s tactile

actor has its ups and downs: “This job is

executive producer, as well as spending time

and charming and prone to sounding

a very weird job,” she says, “and there

on set, it can’t have been comfortable for

endearingly naïve. For instance, ask her

are a lot of difficulties that you have to

Alex. Did she worry about being cast as the

about the atmosphere on set – especially

learn to deal with. I think it can be difficult

enemy within? “Actually,” she says, “I felt

about being pretty much the only girl in a

for a relationship, but on the other hand it

very free. I wanted to give something

gang of boys – and she says, “I had the

can be very easy for a relationship too. I

to Annik that is also sympathetic because

best time ever. Of course, we were a lot

enjoy very much the possibility of being

I don’t like that black-and-white thinking.

of young people so we didn’t go to bed

able to talk to someone who shares the

She was a young woman who fell in love

after shooting...” Oh really? Regale us with

same love and passion for their profession

– it’s a tragic story.”

tales of debauchery! “We had a lot of

as I do. I find that very beautiful. I’m not

evenings sitting all together, talking and

too afraid of anything and I think he is not

came to England to cover Joy Division’s

having fun.” Sitting? Talking? Are you sure

afraid of anything because we just have no

music, only to end up embroiled in their

there wasn’t maybe a bit more to it than

reason to be.”

story, lives in her native Belgium. She

that? “Well, I am a lady and I saw only

rarely speaks about Ian, and that silence

what I wanted to see and that was very

for sure. “I am very aware of my lucky

extended to the movie. She stayed away

innocent and lovely.”

position,” she says about her career in the

These days, Annik, a journalist who

from the set and chose not to meet with

What about the boys themselves?

She can’t really complain, that’s

wake of Downfall. “It’s like a luxury – not

Alex, a reluctance that seems odd to the

They’ve been cultivating a reputation as

every actor on earth is so lucky that they

point of recklessness when a stranger

hard-partying band members, but Alex

can necessarily choose between offers.

is about to splash your life across the

doesn’t do them any favours when she calls

This is what you dream of but it is not what

screen. While regretting it, Alex says she

them, “Very polite and intelligent young

usually happens. I am just very grateful

understands Annik’s decision: “The only

men.” God, it’s like when you’re trying to

for every offer I got in the last 12 years, for

thing I know exactly is that Annik Honoré

show off to your mates and your mum

everything I did and every experience.” n

032 THE CONTROL ISSUE

“Full of vivid, utterly original characters... Guaranteed to leave you smiling” Daily Telegraph

Hal Hefner has his whole life... on the tip of his tongue.

Contains strong language and moderate sex references

“Simply superb... Truly funny”

“Warm, funny, affecting & original”

Psychologies

Uncut

★★★★

“A poignantly comic tale” Rolling Stone

★★★★

From the award-winning director of

“Spellbound”

WINNER

DRAMATIC DIRECTING PRIZE

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2007

HBO FILMS PRESENTS A DULY NOTED, INC./B&W FILMS PRODUCTION “ROCKET SCIENCE” REECE DANIEL THOMPSON CASTING BY MATTHEW LESSALL CSA MUSIC SUPERVISOR EVYEN J KLEAN MUSIC BY EEF BARZELAY EDITOR YANA GORSKAYA PRODUCTION DESIGNER RICK BUTLER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JO WILLEMS PRODUCED BY EFFIE T. BROWN AND SEAN WELCH WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JEFFREY BLITZ

OFFICIAL SELECTION

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IN CINEMAS SEPTEMBER 28TH

Legend has th the seminal po em as band – dark, st-punk and deathly co moody legends aren’t ol. But the whole st always ory. If anything, it’s the forgotten deta il s th at make Joy Division beguiling propossuch a ition. chell y Ben Ma Words b

034 THE CONTROL ISSUE

During the late 1970s, the city of Manchester possessed none

Remember the chubby 15-year-old girl from that French exchange? The morose one who wore a Joy Division T-shirt under a baggy jumper? She was just one of the countless thousands drawn to the band posthumously as monochrome harbingers of gloom; chugging out haunting music before their haunted singer hanged himself in a haunted northern town. There is, it seems, an appeal in that somewhere, especially if you’re from le sud de France. It’s not difficult, therefore, to imagine the (possibly haunted) disappointment she’d have felt were she to find out that Joy Division were mostly a laugh. When have four young men ever taken the time to form a band with the sole intention of making themselves and everyone else depressed? Especially young Northern men? “Sacré bleu!” she’d cry upon learning of their on-tour routine of stealing as much pale ale as possible before trying to follow ‘skirt’ into the bogs – “Alright, I’m in Joy Division. We’re named after the bit in a concentration camp where Nazis could shag the prisoners. Do you fancy a bunk-up in the back of me van?” Years later, guitarist Bernard Sumner would say that it wasn’t until he toured America with New Order that he really discovered what hedonism was, as pills replaced pale ale. But that’s not to say being in Joy Division wasn’t fun. Fun, at least, if you didn’t suffer one of their scatological on-tour forfeits. One of the less savoury involved being forced to hold a warm shit in your hand, produced gleefully by none other than nihilistic poetic visionary, Ian Curtis.

of the brash swagger it would boast a decade or so later. Indeed, no one in Joy Division even thought to suggest they were from the city. Ian Curtis and drummer Stephen Morris were from the Cheshire town of Macclesfield, while guitarist Bernard Sumner and bassist Peter Hook were technically Salford natives. Yet they were a band wholly born of Manchester. During the 19th century, it had been the most futuristic industrial city in the world, but by the time Joy Division had started rehearsing in TJ Davidson’s – a freezing former textile factory – much of the city centre was scarred with crumbling monuments to Victorian industry. Grimy canals, railway lines and chemical plants augmented the landscape. To someone who’d had a semi-rural upbringing like Curtis, it’s not hard to imagine these surroundings seeping into his musical mindset – claustrophobic, bleak and manmade. But perhaps the most important thing about Manchester was that it wasn’t London, a city where middle-class punks could rail against society from the luxury of a squat and a bohemian existence. Up North, the members of Joy Division could look at ’70s society from well within it because that’s where they’d always been placed. Sumner’s family were relocated from their Salford home to a tower block when he was a kid. Curtis had a full-time job with Manpower recruitment, his wife, Debbie, a kid and a terraced house. He voted Conservative. Hook, still in his early twenties, grew a beard rather than ripping his jeans or wearing safety-pinned bondage gear. Morris was shy, introverted. Onstage, it looked as if they’d gone shoplifting in the grey-and-beige section of C&A’s work wear department. They were skint. Factory boss Tony Wilson paid them to glue together the sandpaper sleeves of The Return of The Durutti Column album. The rest of the band, in turn, paid Curtis to do their share. If Joy Division sound uncertain and weary, it’s because they were never in a position to seem angry or sneering about their lot. They were normal. ▼ 035

At the band’s If Curtis and chums were such average Joes, however, why does so much of their music have a Gothic edge? Perhaps it’s because they were in thrall to writers like JG Ballard or proto-existentialist poster boy Fyodor Dostoevsky. A prolific writer since his teens, Curtis kept boxes of poetry and prose, and could talk Hesse and Sartre as well as anyone in Macclesfield. Even if he hadn’t been kicked out of his grammar school for a frazzled interest in amateur chemistry (solvents and barbiturates mostly), there’s no suggestion that he was ever interested in higher education, but he had an insatiable intellectual curiosity right to the end. On tour in Bruges he dragged the rest of the band to a local arts centre so that he could see a performance by beat writer William Burroughs and get a book signed. The others made merry with the strong Belgian ale on offer.

036 THE CONTROL ISSUE

first gig, they had been billed as ‘Stiff Kittens’. Onstage, they then announced they were actually called Warsaw before settling upon Joy Division. It was a name gleaned from Yehiel De-Nur’s House of Dolls, a novel in which the Auschwitz survivor details the lives of women kept as sex slaves in concentration camps. A niche subject? Not really. It was a bestseller, standard reading for British schoolboys, many of whom would develop something resembling a morbid interest in Nazi Germany by the 1970s. The Joy Division song ‘Warsaw’ opens with the phrase “350125 Go!”, while “31G” appears in the chorus – a reference, it seems, to Rudolf Hess’ prisoner of war number (the Nazi second-incommand and conspiracy theorist favourite had been captured during the war, and kept prisoner in Spandau until his suicide, aged 93, in 1987). Though Joy Division never adopted the swastika-chic of Siouxsie Sioux or Sid Vicious, their name alone was enough to draw blustery accusations of neo-Nazism. When Hook, Sumner and Morris founded New Order after the suicide of Curtis, they had to shrug off the suggestion that their new name was another reference to the Reich (as per one of Hitler’s favourite catchphrases: ‘The new order of the Reich’). It’s worth pointing out that, unless you’re remarkably well-attuned to picking up coded Nazi messages, there’s nothing in Joy Division or New Order’s lyrics that suggests a far-right political stance. Hooray!

Curtis was 23 when he killed himself. Maybe it’s the grown-up

“Isn’t it funny,” people will say, “that New Order turned out to be wholly different from Joy Division?” Electronic pop, dance and disco were the influences, with Sumner shouldering singing duties while Morris’ girlfriend Gillian was recruited to play keyboards. Hooky’s distinctive, melodic, high-up-the-neck bass guitar melodies were the only obvious evolutionary hang-up from the jump between the two bands – a habit he’d developed when in Joy Division because his gear was so crap that he could only hear himself if he played like that. New Order enjoyed success on a level Joy Division wouldn’t have even got around to considering – 1983’s ‘Blue Monday’ became the biggest-selling 12” single in chart history, and John Barnes briefly stepped into Curtis’ shoes on World Cup 90 anthem ‘World In Motion’. As Factory Records’ flagship act, they ended up playing a pivotal role in bringing the pills and thrills to Manchester, funding the creation of the Haçienda disco, where Madonna would stage her first UK performance, and spawning the dance-and-guitar mix up of ‘Madchester’. Guns and drugs eventually closed the club in the mid-’90s, but, just for fun, try listening to Joy Division’s ‘New Dawn Fades’ and imagining the people making that music being responsible for the UK’s first superclub. It’s not easy.

clothes, the deep singing voice or the fact that he had a wife and kid, but it always comes as a jolt to remember just how young he was. Before he hanged himself in the kitchen of his Macclesfield home, he watched German director Werner Herzog’s Stroszek on BBC2, while Iggy Pop’s 1977 LP The Idiot was on his turntable. The latter was a case of Curtis coming full-circle. Iggy and The Stooges’ proto-punk had charged his adolescent ambitions of rock stardom, and he modelled his onstage psychosis on Iggy’s. That The Idiot was produced and co-written by David Bowie, another pin-up, adds to the poignancy: here Curtis was, not as a doomed star, but as a still-young music fan, listening to the work of two older men who had, in their way, egged him on down this particular path. Stroszek is not a film you’d lightly recommend to a man considering suicide. Following three low-life Berliners and their immigration from Germany to Wisconsin, it ends with lead character Bruno Stroszek taking his own life, closing with the recurring Herzog motif of chickens, on this occasion, dancing chickens. If you happen to own an original pressing of the posthumous Joy Division album Still, check the vinyl groove notation. Side A reads ‘The Chicken Won’t Stop’, side B reads ‘The Chicken Stops Here’ n

037

038 THE CONTROL ISSUE

John Robb was 18-years-old when Joy Division played Blackpool on July 27 1979. That gig inspired him to cut his own career in the music industry, as a frontman for punk bands the Membranes and goldblade, and as a Sound magazine journalist who chronicled the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Madchesterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; scene. Here he remembers a unique night.

Weeks after Ian Curtis hanged himself and Joy Division finally have a Top 20 single. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is a great song and the band are all over the media. The tragic story caught a lot of people’s imagination, apart from Radio One DJ Peter Powell, who thought this was the new record from female singer Joy Davidson.

home-grown darkness, that rainy melancholy

sort of haircuts that you only saw in World

of the north west.

War II documentaries and they oozed an air

Joy Division’s music was perfect for the post-

since no one ever played our tatty seaside

punk comedown, the nihilistic hangover from

town. Joy Division’s debut album, Unknown

the promise and excitement of the punk era

Pleasures, had just been released and it

“Good evening, we’re Joy Division,” before

underlined by Curtis’ sad death. Punk had

defined the term ‘cult record’ by making a

crashing into their set. They sounded great.

been life changing. But what happened next?

massive impact on a few warped people. A

Ian Curtis was scarily intense. He did all that

couple of copies floated round school, taped

arm waving stuff and he had eyes that drilled

There was an interest in mental illness, heavy

by the freak coterie – the droogs who hung

holes into the venue’s wall. My mate Steve

drugs and dark introspection. All across the

around in the bogs smoking dope or around

asked Hooky to play ‘Transmission’ and the

UK we fought pitched battles over our trouser

the corridors talking revolution and punk rock.

ever-polite bass monster whacked him with his

Then the news went round that Section 25 had invited Joy Division to Blackpool to

sizes and got excited over seven-inch singles,

The first band on were two scruffy

play the Imperial Hotel. It was the perfect

looking blokes with beards who played a

venue. It had a salty, seaside mankiness to

song called ‘Electricity’. Twice. They then

it. The stage backdrop was smoke-stained

fucked off. They didn’t say much but claimed

grubby windows and faded felt curtains. It

that this was their first gig and they were

looked like a David Lynch set.

called ‘Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’.

At the time it seemed like a really big deal

We were truly a fucked-up generation.

of menace.

The album sounded fantastically bizarre

We thought we’d never hear of them again even if that song was damn good. When Joy Division came on they intoned,

guitar, a typically blunt Hooky reply.

even in Blackpool where we fought our own

at first – like a huge rolling monster of a record.

mini punk rock war.

It was dark and dense. No one in rock had

that haunting bass line. The song was a

It was a rite of passage with great music,

Of course, he then duly complied with

ever gone this far before. And it was northern,

spindly affair but packed a rare punch of its

rough hair and shit drugs. In the big city the

and even if they were from Manchester – that

own. You can hear echoes of Black Sabbath

battle must have been very intense, very

massive sprawl somewhere down south

somewhere in its moody power, as

creative. Where I grew up, by the seaside, it

– we felt attached, like we were some sort of

well as the Velvets, Krautrock, Iggy and The

was just plain dangerous. Anyone who looked

outpost of that scene. Joy Division were our

Lizard King all mixed together and spun

a bit punk was asking for a kicking but that

latest crush. And now they were coming to

back with its own unique twist.

didn’t matter with this glorious soundtrack.

play in Blackpool.

We would sit there waiting for the

Every punk type in town had turned up.

They were at the top of their game that night. Their set list reads like a headstone

next great twist in the plot, drinking endless

It was a sea of leather jackets and those tiny

of killer tunes: ‘Dead Souls’, ‘Glass’,

cups of tea, writing insane songs on guitars

little Better Badges. There were early New

‘Disorder’, ’Autosuggestion’, ’Transmission’,

and then tuning in to John Peel, trying to

Romantics and proto-Goths and a smattering

’She’s Lost Control’, ’Shadowplay’ and

tape all the great stuff pouring out of the

of long raincoats, Factory types and even the

‘Atrocity Exhibition’.

speakers from The Ruts to The Fall. We may

odd Bowie freak. This was the period when

have been growing up in a town that was

punk was fracturing into a myriad of tiny sub

showed just how far you could go in rock and

built for stag parties and cheap bed and

scenes and people were wandering off in their

how dark you could take it. They explored

breakfasts but we were hip.

own direction. Joy Division were unintentionally

places that no one else could be arsed to.

inventing post-punk, and Goth as well – their

Ian Curtis was a self-made, book-reading

influence was going to be massive.

intellectual who used a raw musical platform

As punk began to morph into new shapes, the one band that was really making everyone sit up was Joy Division. The clutch of serious

We wanted to make something of

Joy Division changed everything. They

to make his utterly original mark. The rest of

young men and wild-eyed punks that we hung

Blackpool so we printed our own fanzine

about with in town were on their case. They

and rallied the bands, but Joy Division were

were serious enough for the art mob but they

a step ahead of us. They knew guitar chords

after his suicide the DJ at the local punk club

also rocked hard enough for the punks. There

and could play in time. They had a look as

thought that it was Ian Dury that had died and

was darkness to them, a darkness that had

well. A dressed down look that was so

duly announced it. Everyone was very upset.

been hinted at in The Doors and The Stooges,

dressed down it looked dressed up. They

but that was American darkness, a different

looked like extras from some East European

recognised as one of the key bands of their

kind of stuff – all grown up weirdness to do

art house film – all tightly buttoned shirts

time, I often wonder if Peter Powell ever did

with heroin, which no one in Blackpool could

and weird, shiny slacks that you certainly

realise that there was no such person as

even find let alone take. Joy Division was

couldn’t buy in Blackpool. They had the

Joy Davidson. n

the band made a brilliant racket. Within a year he was dead. The night

All these years later, now they’ve been

039

040 THE CONTROL ISSUE

W s

r by n

M a

is h

J a oy r H D em a i ç v in ie is is nd io c a n in a g le nd ab ge N o nd ew u . t I O th t r e did de o n r ld ’t b d ta as ay k s s. e ist m P u e c t h e to r H g oo et k h is im

Ian Curtis probably never thought that his death would be the precursor to a party scene that would define the cult era of Manchester’s music and madness. When the surviving members of the band, rechristened New Order, toured America, they found themselves ducking in and out of dark, dingy and claustrophobic clubs, and they decided to bring a little bit of their new tastes back to the UK. Together with ubiquitous Factory Records ‘boss’ Tony Wilson, New Order founded the club that set an as yet unsurpassed precedent of hedonism for those who were, quite honestly, mad fer it. The dream wasn’t to make money but to live a 24-hour pillpopping party life, an ambition that quickly drained their finances. Though supported by record sales from New Order and royalties from Joy Division, the Haçienda still lost £15 million – the whereabouts of which are still a puzzle to the men who ran the show. Twenty-five years after the opening and subsequent demolition of the Haçienda, New Order bassist Peter ‘Hooky’ Hook talks to LWLies about his memories of a club that pushed boundaries, broke rules and introduced a generation of fucked up Manc animals to hedonistic excess. LWLies: Without Ian Curtis’ death, there would be no Haçienda. Is that right? Whose idea was it? Hooky: What, Ian’s death?! It was [Joy Division manager] Rob Gretton’s. He felt that people like us had nowhere to go. At that time in Manchester, clubbing was a jacket-and-tie affair. We were coming out of punk, and people literally had nowhere to go, dressed as we were dressed. LWLies: What was it like inside? Hooky: A huge, bright blue aircraft hangar with a massive glass roof. It was always really bright and full of fantastic designs. There was such a dramatic ‘wow’ effect when you walked through the door – a complete contrast to any club anyone had seen in England before. ▼

041

[Designer] Ben Kelly was just told to do something fantastic, so he went berserk. I only found out 30 years later that he’d spent a fortune on the design. LWLies: Who were the usual suspects who haunted the club? Hooky: People like us. Yes, there may have been a spark of interest because we owned it as New Order, and certainly other bands were always there, but it was a bit like a youth club. It wasn’t run as a business. I’m amazed at the bloody mistakes we made. It was like putting Busted in charge of sending a rocket to the moon. Why on earth would a group and three record company tossers who were literally flying by the seat of their pants think they could run the biggest club in the north west of England? It was ridiculous and pure idealism. It was uncontrollable because of the size of it. Bernard Manning said to us on the opening night, ‘Don’t give up your day jobs, lads.’ We couldn’t give up our day jobs as it was our day jobs that were paying for the bloody Haçienda. LWLies: It was basically a place of hedonistic masochism? Hooky: It probably was, actually. We were the centre point for the mad parties, which was us lot, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses and all the groups and all their hangers on – who were the worst of all. It really was hedonistic masochism. We were paying for our own party and feeding everybody else’s. The ideal was absolutely wonderful, and it changed Manchester, it changed clubbing and it changed the face of England along with Factory Records. But it was doomed to failure right from the second they opened the doors. It was like putting a baker in charge of a garage. He wouldn’t know what to do because he knows fuck all about cars. LWLies: Didn’t you see that coming? Hooky: We didn’t recognise it until we were on our knees. But it survived for 15 years. For the first half it survived as a successful gig venue, and for the second it was a very successful club venue. The two didn’t really mix. LWLies: What was it that made it so special for you? Hooky: Tony Wilson said, ‘It’s papered with your bloody money, so you’d better enjoy it!’ It was a wonderful collection of people – it was the place to go. I was a caner and a raver and it was like you’d died and gone to caner and raver heaven. LWLies: Like an English Studio 54? Hooky: Exactly. But not the drug scene. It always amused me when I found out later that most of the clubs in England profited from selling their own drugs. It was something we used to try and discourage in the Haçienda. We used to work with the police to try and prevent it. LWLies: That’s not quite the reputation you had in the later years. Hooky: Well, you don’t want people dying on your hands. When you’re running a club with 3,000 people in, you’ve got a responsibility to

042 THE CONTROL ISSUE

look after them. Trouble was that because of the climate we were in, especially the drug climate, you could never guarantee the safety of those people. It was a terrifying time when we had those horrible instances. There was also a place called the Gallery that was full of loonies, and when they closed it down they all came to us. LWLies: Are there any key characters that stick in your mind? Hooky: There were hundreds of them. From the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses to us lot, I mean, you’re full of characters already aren’t you? Even major drug dealers and gangsters. No wonder Tony and Rob almost had nervous breakdowns. They couldn’t ever concentrate on the business side of things because they were so busy concentrating on making sure that everyone who came through the door got out alive... It’s a funny thing though – the energy from any club comes from the edginess, and Haçienda did have that nervous edginess, which a lot of the time led to the lemming-like dash out of the doors. LWLies: And was it like home for you? Hooky: Well Haçienda means ‘home’ in Spanish, and I really did have a fantastic time there. But by 1994 my accountant said to me, ‘You’ve really got to decide whether you’re doing this for your ego or your wallet.’ And really, in all truth, it was purely for the ego. You’re in your own club, swanning around, king of the world. Peter Stringfellow must do it every night. It’s an addictive thing, power. LWLies: Why are people so desperate to be associated with the club and the era? Hooky: Well, I was pleasantly surprised when I came to do an exhibition on the Haçienda at the Urbis museum in Manchester as to how many people’s lives were lived through it. I was 23 when it opened and it saw my life through until age 38. Some people had the best night of their lives there, some had the worst, some had both, and, if you were really lucky, you had neither. Everybody remembers everything differently. I do think that our boys made the right decision for Manchester. Rob always thought that we should give something back – he just didn’t realise that it meant everything. LWLies: What was it like when it ended? Hooky: I started the bulldozer that pulled it down. In some ways it was a bit of a blessing. The responsibility and the financial drain were killing me, and I was delighted because watching a new ownership come in would have been like seeing your ex-girlfriend out with somebody else. Virgin were after it and I didn’t like the idea of them coming in and making a fucking fortune. We’d have looked really stupid. To my mind, it was better that it disappeared and that the block of flats in its place is called The Haçienda – it’s a lasting monument to it, and I think it’s really wonderful that people can finally go home to the Haçienda n Catch Hooky’s one-man show, ‘An Evening With Peter Hook’, to hear more about the myths and mayhem surrounding The Haçienda at the Urbis museum, Manchester, on September 6. www.urbis.org.uk

Words by Matt Bochenski Photography by Paul Willoughby

044 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Peter Saville’s cover designs for Joy Division epitomised the creative energy of the times. But those times are long gone, and nothing is so fragile as the spirit of youth.

“One great investment happened in Factory, and the investment was someone’s life. Literally, the life of Ian Curtis was the investment that made Factory happen. Ian’s life was the sacrifice that made it all work.” You can’t fuck around with a statement like that – you’ve got to earn the right to make it. Otherwise, who are you? Just some death junkie on Saturday night TV remembering why you heart the ’70s: yeah, slinkies and suicide, that decade rocked. But Peter Saville isn’t some fatuous pop scholar and he’s not pimping sound bites. His career is the stuff of history, so when he offers an opinion on the death of Ian Curtis and the rise of Factory Records, you’d best sit up and listen. Saville was part of the loose affiliation of artists that orbited Tony Wilson’s record label and Haçienda nightclub in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He graduated from Manchester Art College in ’78, part of a generation of young graphic designers who came out fighting for a new creative vision. “For my entire four years I was at odds with the prevailing educational culture of graphic design,” he says, perched at a desk in his studio, fag in hand, unshaven, tatty dressing gown – every inch the convincing maverick. That prevailing culture was the New York school of visual wit that touched genius in the hands of Saul Bass and Milton Glazer, but had become “tedious and clichéd” beyond that rarefied atmosphere. ▼

045

Saville saw the future elsewhere: “I was

recognise as Saville’s post-punk aesthetic. On

– get it done quick and get making money –

growing up in the school of subtle and silent

a pure black background rests an image of

conflicted with his meticulous and notoriously

visual communication; in the David Bowie,

100 successive pulses from CP19, the first

time-consuming approach to his work. He

Roxy Music school of post-modern pop. I was

neutron star discovered in 1967. That’s it. No

admits he was unpopular but blames it on

in that generation of middle-class British kids

title, no band name, no track listing. Nothing.

their “shabby standards”. Then he offers a

who, through pop, were learning to reference

Nothing to identify it as a commercial

more surprising explanation: “I knew that the

a broader visual canon of culture.”

product. It was a giant ‘Fuck you’ to the

work I was doing in the music industry was a

music industry.

playground for design, but it wasn’t serious,

Key to this style was a transition of power.

grown-up design. If I was going to do British

Record artwork was liberated from the grip

It’s a cover that could only have come from

Airways one day it was going to be about the

of advertisers, and became a nexus of art,

Factory, he reckons. “Because it wasn’t a

quality and the standard of the work, not how

fashion and music informed by, contributing

company, and because it wasn’t a business,

happy some cowboys at Virgin were.”

to and expanding on the pop cultural

and because nobody knew what they were

landscape. Designers like Saville weren’t

doing, I had no gatekeepers.” The only

Imagine at this point a mental screeching

going to be passive instruments of the music

guiding principle was that, “Anything that

of tyres. Hang on. That’s like Ian Curtis

business, they were going to create their own

looked like the record business was anathema

admitting that he wanted to duet with Abba.

identity. “That was the lesson from Professor

to us”. Here was a cover that didn’t care if

That’s not post-punk. You can’t complain

Bowie,” he says.

you couldn’t find it in the racks; didn’t care if

about the evil record industry and then dream

you didn’t like it; didn’t care if you didn’t get

of working for BA, can you? They’re, you

Saville was 23-years-old when he hooked up

it. That was the point: if you didn’t get it, it

know, BA. What’s going on here?

with the Factory crowd. But he was different.

wasn’t for you anyway.

Educated and from the affluent outskirts of

Suddenly, in Peter Saville, you recognise

Manchester, he had a different perspective on

But Saville was different in another way. He

the contradictions and complexities at

what was going on. Where Joy Division knew

was ambitious, and it’s that ambition that

the heart of the Factory era. Factory is a

Manchester from the inside, and gave voice

sets him apart from his contemporaries,

legend, but what that really means is that

to that experience in their music, Saville was

and goes some way to explaining his career

it’s been crystallised, frozen in time, and

an outsider with a kind of neo-noir take on

since Factory.

with it the people and the attitude that made

the city’s Victorian righteousness. Where Joy

it. They’ve come to represent something

Division experienced the grim reality of the

After producing the artwork for Joy Division’s

bigger than themselves – a sign of the times,

post-industrial condition, it was romanticism

second album, Closer, in 1980, Saville went

opportunity and opposition. Factory is a

that filtered into his work.

to work for Virgin Records, and the culture

symbol of change, but as a symbol it remains

shock still reverberates 25 years later. “When

unchanging itself. It’s a youthful ideal fixed

Joy Division released Unknown Pleasures in

I started working within Virgin,” he says, “I

in our collective memory, but we forget that

1979, and its cover epitomises what we now

met the rules.” The demands of the industry

those youths have long since grown up and ▼

046 THE CONTROL ISSUE

047

their ideals have long since changed shape.

want to deny anybody else the same chance;

airline. Just as Factory wasn’t BA, neither

And in fact, maybe they didn’t all share those

as if that might make the memory of their

are the countless independent record labels,

ideals in the first place, and why should they?

youth (which, for some of them, is all they’ve

film distributors and – yes – magazine

Unfrozen, the sad, inevitable truth of age

got left) less special.

publishers around today. It’s easy to call

is that it leaves little room for noble ideals,

the world ‘all business’ when you make your

and our heroes are prone to beliefs that are

No one could accuse Saville of living off the

cash as an image consultant to some of the

violently disappointing.

past, but he’s blithely dismissive of today’s

world’s premier brands, safely tucked inside

creative environment as being entirely

the bosom of the mainstream, but the fringe

So, on the one hand, Saville can be casually

business oriented. That’s why he says, ”The

is still the fringe, and to deny that people are

dismissive about his work post-Factory,

reality is that professional graphic design is

still fighting against that mainstream is

because none of it lives up to those youthful

not the right place for me... Even though I

just a tiny bit insulting to those people

ideals – “They’re okay,” he says of work

know business and I grew up in a business

when it’s every bit as hard to do that now

that has included commissions for Stella

family, I’m actually not interested in what

as it was then.

McCartney, Yohji Yamamoto and adidas,

I think of as a dimension of art or culture

“but they’re not interesting, they’re not

being bastardised by business. That’s what I

It’s unfair to single out Peter Saville for

important. All the important work is where I

have a problem with.”

criticism just because he’s honest enough

was able to express my own opinion about the

to share his misgivings. He’s not that starry

world I was living in.” But then what do those

As an example, he gives Martin Sorrell’s

eyed about the past either. Indeed, the one

opinions look like today? Truth is, they’ve

redesign of the BA (them again) tail plane

thing he still believes in (perhaps the one

taken on the crushing perspective of age:

logo. BA saw itself as the ‘world’s airline’

thing he ever believed in) is Ian Curtis. Ian,

“Record packaging and music is something

so Sorrell and co. removed Britannia from

he says, was “the last true story in pop”, and

you’re interested in as a teenager and when

the BA fleet and replaced it with designs

that makes him different – makes that period

you’re in your early twenties, but it’s not long

from around the world. It was, says Saville,

different. “Ian killed himself because of how

term and it’s not serious.”

a “wonderful response” to BA’s particular

he felt so this touches people,” he says. “It’s

conundrum, but Business Class passengers

very rare in contemporary culture for there

This sentiment is entirely legitimate except

– the ones who pay BA’s bills – wanted to fly

to be anything for people to believe in.” That,

for the pessimism it entails about the world

the flag, so the designs were removed. “It’s

in the end is the difference between then and

today. Sometimes it seems like there’s an

business,” he says, “it’s all business.”

now – Factory, Manchester and the ’70s paid

ugly protectiveness in people who’ve been

the price for their credibility; one that we’re

involved in creative movements, as if, having

Only, it’s not all business. BA is all business

yet to pay. And yet, if we’re all doomed to

had their own stab at youthful rebellion, they

because BA is a huge fucking worldwide

grow old, is it really worth it after all? n

048 THE CONTROL ISSUE

WINNER

AUDIENCE AWARD

WORLD CINEMA AUDIENCE AWARD

DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

“Just terrific.” “The musical of the year - if not the decade.”

�� DAILY MIRROR

“2007's most pleasant cinematic surprise - Once has enough heart, wit, verve and songwriting genius to ensure you’ll see it far more times than its title suggests”

�� EMPIRE

“A bold and poignant modern love-story that restores your faith in music, romance and film” TIME OUT

“A rare gem - one of the year's most magical films” I.D

HOW OFTEN DO YOU FIND THE RIGHT PERSON...

IN CINEMAS OCTOBER 19 www.oncethemovie.co.uk

050 THE CONTROL ISSUE

As a photographer, Anton Corbijn understands the power of a perfect image. On screen, the cinematographer is the true visual artist of filmmaking, but most people know little about these unsung heroes. We gathered three of the world’s best – Janusz Kaminski, Matthew Libatique and Danny Cohen, who between them are responsible for Saving Private Ryan, The Fountain and This Is England – to find out more.

Literally meaning ‘writing in movement’,

Matthew Libatique met Darren Aronofsky while studying at the

cinematography remains the most mysterious role in film

American Film Institute. He has DP’d all three of Aronofsky’s

production. While the director revels in the aura of auteur, the

features in addition to Tigerland, Phone Booth and next summer’s

cinematographer, or director of photography, is caught in the

Iron Man.

half-light of recognition, both defined and diminished by proximity to the big man. While other roles may be underrated, they at

“I wasn’t really that conscious of the position of DP,” he admits.

least have a clear position in the division of labour. The role of

“I thought everything was funnelled through the director. But then

DP, however, is defined from set to set, by personality as much as

someone introduced me to the concept of DP, and to films by

ability. Yet the importance of the cinematographer lies in the fact

Bertolucci and Storaro. At the same time there was Spike Lee and

that while making films may be an inexact science, no one has a

Do The Right Thing happening. I was attracted to that partnership

greater impact on their visual style.

aspect of it, you know, like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.”

A list of the most celebrated cinematographers is evocative of

If film students don’t enrol in film school with the intention of

the history of cinema; its international influences, rich history

becoming cinematographers it’s perhaps partly a result of the

and greatest triumphs: Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane), Vittorio

ambiguity of this very ‘partnership’. Libatique, however, is clear

Storaro (The Last Emperor), Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter),

that his role is to be led by the director: “In a one-line phrase, I

Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver), Haskell Wexler (One Flew Over The

think I am really just the articulator of a vision, whether it’s partly

Cuckoo’s Nest), Tak Fujimoto (The Sixth Sense). DPs have a justified

mine or not mine at all. I’m the one who has to visualise and

reputation as artists of the medium in the truest sense, freed from

articulate the idea that is coming out of the director’s mind, or

the directorial distraction of coaxing performances from actors,

from a screenplay, and put it in a film.”

and hence absorbed purely in the visual embodiment of the story, from framing and lensing to the use of light and shade, the texture of the film stock, and the colour palette.

This sentiment is echoed by rising star Danny Cohen, cinematographer on Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England. “Every job you do is absolutely different because of

Yet, perhaps surprisingly, it is still a career some have simply

the degree that directors have a visual brand,” he says. “Some are

stumbled into. Janusz Kaminski fled Poland for the USA in 1981

incredibly visually literate and know exactly what they want their

where he enrolled at film school in Chicago. He has been DP on all

film to look like, other directors... It’s not that they’re not interested

of Steven Spielberg’s films since Schindler’s List, and is currently

in how the film is, they just completely pass that to you, and that’s

working on the fourth Indiana Jones instalment.

what you take up when you take the job. Obviously, there are no two directors who work the same or think the same, so in a way you’ve

“As a young man,” he says, “what do you know about movie

got to be slightly chameleon about making it work.”

making? There’s a director, there’s a producer with a cigar, there’s a story to be involved and entertained by. I didn’t know there were

However, veteran DP Kaminski is more definitive about the role:

other professions. Once we started making a lot of movies, totally

“Anything that goes in front of the lens I am responsible for. If

by accident I was taken to be the cinematographer and I just fell in

something doesn’t look right, either the cinematographer ignored

love with the whole idea of creating an image and being proud of

it, or wasn’t that knowledgeable, or just got lazy. Everything that

the work. I was never really told I was good at anything, but from

goes in front has to go to my eye, it has to be approved and

the very first time I shot a load of film, I was told I was good at it.

analysed by me. Some guys are very anal and very thorough – I

A little bit of positive reinforcement at an early age can do magic.”

operate slightly more on the instinctual level.” ▼

051

052 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Kaminski’s pride in the importance of his role boils down to the

But perhaps it’s Cohen who puts it most succinctly: “I think in

fact that, despite the enviable position of working with Spielberg,

a way [having a style] is the kiss of death. If you say, ‘Yes, I’ve

he has not achieved it by compromise. “It’s a very rewarding and

got a style’, you pigeonhole yourself. For me, I like to keep mixing

involved profession if you want that,” he says. “There are plenty of

it up. The work I did with [Stephen] Poliakoff was slick, high-end

guys who don’t really care; they make good money, they make sure

TV drama. If you compare that with This Is England, you could

it gets done. That’s not what I am. You can reduce the position to,

link the way things are framed or something, but as films they’re

‘Hey, I’ll make sure that you can see the actors’. I provide exposure,

not similar in any way. I think if you ended up having a style

but that’s not photography. That’s just the light.”

you’d end up getting asked to do the same sort of work, which you do very well, all the time. If anything, style is just what’s

Within every cinematographer lies this conflict between

underneath the images.”

professionalism and pride. Take the issue of style. For a cinematographer, a distinctive style is a double-edged sword:

It’s interesting that those cinematographers, like Storaro, who

on the one hand inherently contradictory to the spirit of realising

have most obviously developed an individual style or patina (in

a director’s vision; on the other the mark of authority and

his case even a new aspect ratio, ‘Univisium’) have done so within

artistic achievement.

the parameters of an established relationship with a director (in his case, Bernardo Bertolucci). Both Libatique and Kaminski are

When asked if they have a style, Kaminski, Libatique and Cohen

effusive in praise for the freedom that their partnerships give.

all have a similar refrain. “I don’t think I have a style,” demurs Kaminski. “I look at all the films I’ve done – from Munich to AI to

“I’m not really interested in making a popcorn movie that

Private Ryan, now we’re making Indy IV – the beauty of these

communicates on a very visceral but somehow very shallow

movies is that none of them are set in the same time frame, and

level,” says Kaminski. “I want to make movies that combine

none of them has the same story. What you can have is a certain

both things. That’s why I’m with Steven, because he has that

aesthetic. I think I’m hired for a certain aesthetic.”

ability to make movies that provide entertainment but also have some substance to them, and they give me a chance to create a

Says Libatique: “I’d like to think that I cater to the story. I build

non-verbal language which has emotional impact on the viewer

the visual language based on the screenplay and the main

while at the same time they are entertained by Steven’s ability to

character. I think if there was a ‘style’ for me, it would be that I

communicate with large audiences.”

am trying to adhere to what is necessary for the film to be visualised. I feel comfortable but I am still striving in every film.”

Libatique: “He [Aronofksy] is very specific, chiefly about composition, and it’s very geometric what he does in terms of visuals, but at the same time he’s not. The specifics of light he doesn’t really get into, he leaves that up to me, so there is this level of creativity. It’s almost like I have more freedom to light with him even though he’s so specific about his frame.” Security through artistic partnership, then, is the modus operandi of the cinematographer. But with the right personalities, it is a happy and productive union. Matthew Libatique again: “I still believe it’s a director’s medium, which is what I enjoy. For me, the beauty of it is being that close to the visionary and being that right-hand person who articulates that vision – having that responsibility and having that contribution is the rush. The director who walks the red carpet at Cannes completely deserves it, you know, and for us if that’s what we wanted, we should be directors. I think we are almost like the drummer. We sit in the background.”

n 053

While Factory records reflected Manchesterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gloomy postindustrial music scene, down south, an altogether different sound was emerging. The label on everybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lips was ZTT. Their mission: nothing less than the rebirth of pop. Words by Jonas Milk

054 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Like many of the best things in life, it came in a plain cover. Discussed in marvelling tones at the back of the classroom, the record captivated our fertile imaginations. The group dressed in bondage gear and performed unspeakable acts on the video. They were called Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and the single was ‘Relax’.

Slave to the Rhythm, an album of half-a-dozen versions of the same title track that reputedly took nine months to perfect. However, things were no better in the Frankie camp: the group’s five members were unhappy about their lack of involvement in the recording process. “To people in the street, the five of our faces are Frankie Goes To Hollywood,” said lead singer Holly Johnson. “It’s only a certain elite that thinks otherwise. No one’s going to shout ‘Frankie’

Although the record had been released before the end of the previous year, it took the hilarious antics of Radio One DJ Mike Read – who

at Paul Morley or Trevor Horn in the street.” They were packed off to Ireland with Lipson to write their second

snapped it in half live on air – to catapult it to number one in January

album, Liverpool, but it was to be their last. Art and artifice was no

1984. By then the song was subject to a total BBC ban, but this only

longer enough to support the carefully constructed pantheon of ZTT.

added to its mystique.

A series of legal actions heralded the departures of the label’s three

Behind it all, printed on the centre of the 12” disc, was the motto Zang Tuum Tumb. Named after an obscure Italian futurist art movement, the label was set up by ace producer and one-time Yes man Trevor Horn

foundation acts: the Art of Noise, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Propaganda. Only in 1989 did the label truly find its feet again, thanks to

alongside his wife Jill Sinclair, who provided the business input, and

pioneering British dance group 808 State, first with album 90 and

NME journalist Paul Morley. Horn and Morley established themselves as

then follow-up Ex: El, which included hits ‘In Yer Face’ and ‘Cubik’,

partners in crime, waging an unfashionable crusade to inject big sounds

as well as astute collaborations with New Order’s Bernard Sumner

and even bigger hype into the world of pop.

and Björk, then lead singer of bonkers Icelandic group The

Factory Records provided much of the inspiration – ZTT releases

Sugarcubes. Initially, Horn transferred some of the same electro

were numbered in the ‘Action’ and ‘Incidental’ series – but in contrast

know-how to new signing Seal, but their work quickly moved from

to Factory’s post-industrial Manchester gloom, ZTT was a purveyor of

cutting edge pop to AOR pap.

pristine, power-tooled pop from a studio in Notting Hill, West London: well-heeled, bohemian and, yes, slightly pretentious. ‘Two Tribes’, the follow-up to ‘Relax’ that played on Cold War

By the time of ZTT’s tenth anniversary celebrations in 1994, the pattern had been set for the following years. The label that pioneered the possibilities of the remix – causing chart rules to be altered to

paranoia, announced itself with an air raid siren, crashing cymbals and

limit the number of different versions of a single that can be released

a nuclear attack warning. Coupled with lavishly designed record sleeves

– was now preoccupied with remastering, repackaging, re-releasing

and a controversy-stoking video, the message was simple: pop matters.

and, yes, remixing its prestigious catalogue.

Looking back, the conspiratorial mutterings over whether Frankie

Horn even proved naysayer Holly Johnson wrong when in 2004

Goes To Hollywood performed their own material seem strangely

he mounted a Prince’s Trust concert featuring many of the acts he

innocent. Horn’s euphoric, expansive sound gave ‘Two Tribes’ and

had produced – some from ZTT’s heyday – to celebrate 25 years of

‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’ – the title track of Frankie’s debut

his own career in the record industry. The finale was a performance by

album, which had then-record advance sales of £1 million in Britain –

Frankie Goes To Hollywood, with Johnson’s place in the line-up taken

an exhilarating wallop that’s still palpable today.

by a TV-style audition-winner.

One year on, ZTT also had major critical and public successes

These days Stephen Lipson provides the meticulous production

with the Art of Noise – an invisible supergroup of producers – and three

on Will Young’s memorable singles, and the label’s legacy can be

Düsseldorfers called Propaganda. The latter’s first album, A Secret Wish,

heard elsewhere. Who else but Trevor Horn could be behind faux

produced by Horn accomplice Stephen Lipson, represents the label’s

lesbians Tatu’s synth stabs? Just listen to the care and attention

most successful mix of pseudo-intellectual bombast and pop hooks,

afforded to throwaway acts like Girls Aloud or Rachel Stevens, say,

heralded by a single, ‘Dr Mabuse’, whose video provided photographer

and ask yourself where that attitude came from. No wonder Paul

Anton Corbijn with his directorial debut. At the height of its fame in June 1985, ZTT took over the Ambassadors Theatre in London to showcase its diverse roster, which

Morley’s book, Words and Music, is a blush-free hagiography to Kylie’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. A year ago, Horn’s wife Jill Sinclair had an accident that left her in

by now included a French cabaret artiste, Anne Pigalle, and avant-garde

a coma. Newspaper reports recently suggested Horn is selling their

composer Andrew Poppy. But all was not well behind the scenes.

home – with attached superstudio – because it is too painful for him

Propaganda claimed that precedence was being given to the

to live there. But he continues to work, and looks like he’s back to

Frankie campaign, which meant that their brilliant second single, ‘Duel’

what he does best. With old cohorts Lol Creme and Lipson, he’s just

(described by Morley as ‘Abba in heaven’), was delayed. Perhaps Horn

released a single, ‘Barking Up The Right Tree’. They’re called The

was also distracted by work on his own masterpiece, Grace Jones’

Producers. It sounds like a blast n

055

Roll up, roll up: there’s a soul for sale. Death isn’t the end, you know, it’s just a pit stop on the road to success.

056 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Freddie Mercury ~

by ANDREA KURLAND 057

The Notorious B.I.G. ~

by MARK TAPLIN 058 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Rick James ~

by ROB LONGWORTH 059

Sid Vicious ~

by PAUL WILLOUGHBY 060 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Elvis Presley ~

by AUSTIN @ NEW STUDIO 061

In the music industry a simple rule prevails: if you want to be big, be dead. But as record companies cultivate the mythology of death in the search for profits, is our obsession with self-destructive rock stars sending a dangerous message to the medium’s young fans? Words by David Mattin

Our generation is too young to remember the suicide of Ian Curtis on May 18, 1980. For us, Curtis has always been shaped by the legend that enveloped him; a distant, shimmering object of seductive fascination.

do with back catalogues. If so, what might be the effect of that on the music’s consumers? Norka Malberg is a psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre in London, which specialises in helping children and adolescents with mental health problems. She says that the messages teens receive from,

But another suicide helped define pop music when we were teenagers.

and about, the rock stars they listen to are important: “Adolescence is

Back in 1994, Kurt Cobain’s death was shocking because it was the

the second stage of psychological vulnerability, after infancy,” she says.

abrupt, incomprehensible end to a part of our living cultural landscape.

“Studies show that, in fact, you regress a little in terms of your ability to

Whether or not you liked Nirvana, you understood that they were a part of

cope with the world.

the ‘now’, suddenly stopped. It seems strange today that a new generation stands in relation to

“At that age you are letting go of your parents, and starting to seek your own identity. This means teens constantly seek new objects of

Cobain as we did to Curtis; they see him as an artfully made postscript

identification. Who do they want to be like? Music and rock stars become

– the magazine retrospective, the re-packaged music, the documentary

a very powerful answer to that question.”

film – covered in the mystique that attaches itself to those artefacts. Instead of the real Cobain, they have their own, mythical version. What is this strange relationship between rock music and self-

Malberg knows from first-hand experience that when teens are encouraged to identify with a dysfunctional persona, the effect can be damaging: “These days, I see a lot of teens who are into music which

destructive death? Why do stars such as Curtis and Cobain – as well as

sends the message that it’s okay to hate yourself. Some of the teens I see

Jim Morrison, Jeff Buckley, Janis Joplin and others – attain a status in

cut themselves, and I start to wonder if they see this as something that

death that their music, however brilliant, could never have afforded them

they have to do in order to be the person that they want to be.

in life? How, exactly, does that transformation occur; and, moreover, what is the music industry’s role in it? Perhaps the idea that record company executives in dark suits set

“An event such as the suicide of Kurt Cobain is at the extreme end of all this. It’s dangerous if his suicide is presented, even implicitly, as a legitimate way of dealing with problems. It’s easy to demonise the music

out to glamorise suicide is simplistic. Still, it seems apparent that the

industry, but what about doing more to say that the suicide of Cobain,

industry – and its media, too – somehow end up selling teenagers a fairy

and the self-destructive behaviour of someone like Pete Doherty, are not

tale about these rock stars that has little to do with truth, and lots to

legitimate lifestyle choices?”

062 THE CONTROL ISSUE

If teens are vulnerable to the messages we give them about rock

“Interest in these stars is out there and it is legitimate. If it’s done well

stars, living or dead, what kind of responsibility should the music industry

and by the right people – as with Control – then there’s nothing wrong

shoulder? Or is a fascination with extremes of behaviour just a natural

with serving that interest. A whole new generation are discovering Joy

part of the way teenagers are? Gareth Grundy, deputy editor of Q

Division now, and that’s a good thing.”

magazine, argues for a more subtle view of what is going on. “It’s easy to

Grundy points to the sensitive handling of the Joy Division legacy to

see that record companies make a lot of money out of dead rock stars,”

make a further point; that record executives – in this case those at Joy

he says, “but it’s much harder to see what their role is in that.”

Division’s label, Factory Records – are often friends with the artists that

Grundy sees the creation of myths around dead stars as a ground-up

they represent. Zoe Miller of Mute Records agrees: “At Mute, we know

phenomenon: “You get a fascination when certain artists die young where

our artists personally,” she says. “Yes, we’re a smaller company, but that

that fact lifts their appeal, and future generations become interested in

will be true at any record company to an extent. The executives who sign

them in a new way. Look at Jeff Buckley. He was highly regarded when he

an artist will develop, at least, a working relationship with those people.”

was alive, but no one could have predicted the huge influence he came to

Perhaps the answers we’re looking for are more subtle than the

have over a new generation of artists such as Coldplay and Muse. That’s

questions allow. And what of the messages in the music itself? The lyrics

not imposed by executives or journalists; it’s organic.

of Cobain and Curtis might be depressive and dysfunctional in tone,

“When an artist such as Cobain or Buckley dies, and it’s your job to

but they possess a beauty that means they will always be of interest to

write music news, of course you’re going to cover it, and of course some

teenagers hungry for portraits of adult life. At the very least, the suicides

outlets might go over the top – that’s part of the media landscape whether

of both singers proved that the music was real, and even if that means

you’re talking about Cobain or Diana. But I think the idea that any m

grappling with some weighty concepts, perhaps it’s better for kids to

agazine or writer would encourage suicide is absurd.”

understand that than tune out to whatever reality TV winner is being

As for the music companies, he argues, their handling of the back catalogue is governed by a raft of practicalities: “Often, the back catalogue

thrown at the charts. Perhaps we should listen more to Norka Malberg and others like

of an artist will be controlled by his family or former bandmates,” he says.

her, who are trying to tell us why teenagers are drawn to troubled rock

“If Geffen want to put out a new Nirvana record, for example, Dave Grohl

stars in the first place. Norka encourages the parents she sees to try to

and Krist Novoselic have to sign off. So this idea that record executives are

understand their teenager’s music, “If you simply criticise it, then they

cynically manipulating the legacy however they want doesn’t really work.

really will stop listening,” she says n

063

A LWLies review will not be inhibited by any perceived rules. Just as movies are about more than the two hours you spend sitting in the cinema, our reviews are a chance to talk about much more than the immediate experience of the film in question. There are many different aspects of the movie-going experience and we will embrace them all.

Anticipation

Ever waited six months for a boxoffice behemoth? Read a book that you loved and nervously watched the adaptation? Been pleasantly surprised by an off-the-radar independent? Anticipation plays a crucial role in your reaction to a movie. Rather than ignore it, we think it should be measured and acknowledged as part of the movie-going experience. Marked out of 5.

Enjoyment

All other things aside, how did you feel for those two hours? Were you glued to your seat? Did the film speak to your soul? Was it upsetting, disappointing, or just plain boring? Were you even awake? Marked out of 5.

In Retrospect

Great movies live with you; you carry them around wherever you go and the things they say shape the way you see the world. Did this movie fade away or was every moment burned into your retinas? Was it a quick fix action flick, good for a rainy Sunday afternoon? Or the first day of the rest of your life? Did you hate it with a fury only to fall in love with a passion? Or did that first love drain away like a doomed romance? Marked out of 5.

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death proof DIRECTED BY Quentin Tarantino STARRING Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead RELEASED September 21

Who would ever have

thought that the plug ugly poster boy of late ’90s American cinema would make a film to be filed directly next to such dim-witted, artistically bankrupt rot as Scary Movie, Date Movie and their ilk? Like those films, Death Proof pays homage for homage’s sake, inviting us into the hoary world of seedy fleapit cinemas and micro-budgeted, gung-ho exploitation pics. Except this was made with loads of money and will be screened in really nice cinemas. So...? Taking in the ultra violent travails of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) as he mercilessly prays on scantily-clad young women then drives over their faces in his souped-up black 1970 Chevy Nova, Death Proof – like the Kill Bill films before it – feels like a rag-bag compendium of oblique references to the ’70s and little else. Yes Quentin, we all know how good the ’70s were. Can we please move on now? To give it that bona fide grindhouse feel, the sound is muffled, the picture loses its colour, and the grain streaks are artificially accentuated. Ironically, such is the facile level at which Tarantino now pitches his oncehip, now crushingly tedious dialogue, you actually begin to appreciate the jumpy editing, especially when it saves you from a decent chunk of another dreary, self-congratulatory monologue which inevitably leads to someone saying how good Electra Glide in Blue is. The director, it seems, has ceased making films for audiences in order to appease his own

fanboy hubris by delivering another masturbatory boys fantasy with a keg of beer and gaggle of libidinous cheer girls where its soul should be. Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is about as useful to cinema as Martin Scorsese packing up his camera to open a chain of tanning salons in Harlem. Clocking in at an obscene 113 minutes, it’s an idea that

would’ve felt stretched at its original double-bill length (with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror) of 90 minutes. As such, it’s a low for the director, cinema and humanity. And who ever heard of a great car movie without Burt Reynolds? David Jenkins

Anticipation.

High-octane actioner seen through the ironic

gaze of QT? Sounds worth a spin. Three

Enjoyment. Is that

actually liquid smugness dripping from the screen? One

In Retrospect. A waste of time. A waste of celluloid. A waste of talent. One 067

The kingdom DIRECTED BY Peter Berg STARRING Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner RELEASED October 5

Anticipation.

Politics and popcorn; should beat Prime Minister’s Question Time. Three

Enjoyment. Full-

blooded action, in every sense. Three

In Retrospect. In

20 years this will look as subtle as an episode of Love Thy Neighbour. Two

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a mighty heart DIRECTED BY Michael Winterbottom STARRING Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irfan Khan RELEASED September 21

Anticipation.

Schmaltz or smash? Could go either way. Three

Enjoyment. Enjoyment’s

not the word. A breathless and compelling cinematic experience. Four

In Retrospect. Must watch it again. Can’t watch it again. A gutwrenching masterclass in contemporary filmmaking. Five

In case you hadn’t

noticed, the world has changed. The end of the Cold War should be a cause for celebration, but it has also left members of the filmmaking fraternity scratching their heads as to what baddies look like these days. In a ‘post-9/11 world’, the growing threat of international terrorism provides fertile ground for replacements. There’s only one problem; the ideological complexities of global Jihad are rather more difficult to dramatise than those of a disgruntled communist with a primed nuclear warhead and an itchy trigger finger. Such concerns did not appear to tax Peter Berg too strongly when he was sitting in the director’s chair of action thriller The Kingdom. Set against the backdrop of a tumultuous Middle East, Berg’s film opens with a minute-long potted history

of America’s role in Saudi Arabia, from 1933 to the present day. A slick marriage of VFX and historical analysis, this opening sequence is an aesthetically and technically breathtaking feat of contextualisation with an uncomfortable subtext: we’ve done the history, now let the action begin. And boy does it begin. Within minutes of the opening credits, a Little League baseball game becomes a massacre of the innocents as Wahabi extremists visit an appalling series of terrorist attacks on a compound for Western workers in Riyadh. When a follow-up explosion kills an FBI operative investigating the atrocities, Agent Ronald Fluery (Jamie Foxx) takes matters into his own hands, leading a crack team of investigators (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) from the US to avenge their colleague’s death.

Right from the outset, The Kingdom displays that peculiarly Hollywood combination of political engagement and intellectual reductionism. Despite occasional glimpses of subtlety and sympathy (the film’s closing lines offer a tantalising insight into What Might Have Been), Berg seems unwilling to let the complexities of reality stand in the way of a thumping good action film. Let’s not be churlish – reality has never had much to do with a genre whose credo is ‘bigger, better, faster, more’. And – putting political sensibilities to one side – it really is a thumping good action film, one that bears the thumbprint of producer Michael Mann. Guess what, Foxx and his team don’t do things by the book. What the heck, they put a few people’s backs up. But what’s wrong with flamboyantly disregarding the laws of a sovereign nation and inflaming tensions across the

Middle East when you’ve got a terrorist to catch? At times, Berg’s decision to anchor his story in contemporary political waters seems benignly simplistic. At others, it sails uncomfortably close to becoming distasteful. It’s hard to know how much to enjoy the irony of Bateman’s Agent Leavitt flicking through his Idiot’s Guide to the Koran in between missions, while Foxx’s assurance to a Saudi police chief that he and his team will flush out the terrorists responsible if given freedom to operate is likewise infused with ambiguity. His assertion that “America is not perfect... But we’re good at this” could apply equally to the work of his nation’s covert operations teams or their Hollywood compatriots’ ability to package aestheticised violence as entertainment. Although it shares loose political and geographical territory with The Kingdom, Michael

Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart might have been made on a different planet. Set in the volatile region of southern Pakistan, the film dramatises the true story of Mariane Pearl, whose husband – Wall Street Journal reporter Danny – was abducted and murdered by Islamist extremists while researching a story in 2002. At the heart of the narrative in every way, Angelina Jolie is mesmeric as Danny’s pregnant French-Cuban wife. Despite barbed comments from some critics who doubted the wisdom of casting her in the lead role, Jolie skilfully internalises unimaginable sorrow without surrendering herself to mawkishness, then finally unleashes her heartache with elemental force. As the hunt for Danny’s kidnappers intensifies, Marcel Zyskind’s photography brings the seething streets of Karachi to the screen in all their chaotic grime and glory. At times his masterful

camerawork approaches synaesthesia, evoking the stench of sweat and stinging our eyes with the pollution and glare of an Asian metropolis. Irfan Khan excels as the police captain who leads the investigation as it snakes into the political labyrinth of a schizophrenic nation, whose president’s outwardly pro-Western stance masks the corruption and extremism endemic in his country’s security forces. Biographical material isn’t easy to handle at the best of times, but Winterbottom shows mercifully sound judgement throughout, eschewing bombast and sentimentality in his pursuit of understated tragedy. This lightness of touch confirms Winterbottom’s continuing development into a filmmaker of real substance, allowing him to conduct a probing exploration of the human condition in which heroism is as evident in the bearing of defeat as the achievement of victory. Mike Brett

069

Superbad RELEASED September 14

Remember that

scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone orchestrates a hit on the heads of New York’s five mafia families? The same thing just happened in Hollywood. As of now, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn are dead. There’s a new king of comedy in town. Step forward Judd Apatow, and hell, take a bow Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. In a little over two years the team responsible for The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and now Superbad have dragged the genre away from the bloated budgets of yesterday’s in-crowd and given it back to the people, ordinary people, who drink,

070 THE CONTROL ISSUE

DIRECTED BY Greg Mottola STARRING Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen

smoke, swear, take drugs and talk shit about sex. It’s not rocket science and it’s not art, but it is a breath of fresh air to see normal kids on screen again. Witness best friends Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera). Seth is an overweight bundle of sexual frustration, Evan is a timid geek. It’s the end of their school days, they can’t admit they’re terrified of losing each other but, for the time being, they’re preoccupied with getting laid. That’s going to take them on one last, insane night out to score booze, get to a house party and get some action. That set-up evolves into an explosively funny ride that riffs on everything from Dazed and

Confused to American Pie to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. It’s a sprawling, skittish narrative, but director Greg Mottola marshals it expertly, dividing the screen time intelligently and pacing the big, big laughs against the moments of droll, gentle fun. Best of all, Rogen and Goldberg’s script doesn’t patronise these kids. Seth and Evan (and yeah, the clue is in the names) aren’t loveable losers, they’re just loveable and – crucially – they’re never forced to become the cool crowd before they get the girls. Perhaps the film is episodic to a fault. If anything, it lacks the sustained focus that made Dazed and Confused such a melancholy statement about the

end of youth. But when a film is so generous, so abundantly uncynical and such determinedly unwholesome fun, it really doesn’t matter. The future of comedy looks very, very bright indeed. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Apatow, Rogen and Goldberg have earned themselves skyhigh expectations. Five Enjoyment. The

technical term is ‘funny as fuck’. Four

In Retrospect.

Doesn’t quite have the insight of a classic, but it’ll have you smirking for weeks. Four

And When Did You Last See Your Father DIRECTED BY Anand Tucker STARRING Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson

RELEASED October 5

There’s no schmaltz

here – just the kind of truisms that explore the life-long parent/ child tussle; the one that makes Philip Larkin’s token phrase, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”, such a great cliché. Colin Firth takes the mantle of author Blake Morrison, on whose book the film is based, seething at his father Jim Broadbent’s demise from cancer, and collating a montage of memories which trigger anger, resentment and ambivalence. His sense of self and how parents and children reflect each other remains uncompromised by sentimentality, and this is what sets the film apart. Like

black sheep

life itself, Firth’s reconciliation is neither straightforward nor clear cut. Director Anand Tucker is a revelation. His use of reflection and mirrors throughout, adding layer upon layer, is fantastic – a clear indication of the psychological multidimensionality of watching a parent die.

And When Did You Last See Your Father is an intensely beautiful and brave film that confronts the grim logistics of death – both practical and emotional – with great humour and frankness. Lorien Haynes

Anticipation. Promised to be a bruising but

rewarding experience. Three

Enjoyment. And so

it is, but with a real lightness of touch. Three

In Retrospect. Prepare to look long and hard at your own relationships in the wee small hours. Four

RELEASED October 12

DIRECTED BY Jonathan King STARRING Nathan Meister, Danielle Mason, Peter Feeney

Ah, New Zealand,

with its bucolic, Hobbit-trodden hills, jocular locals and vast array of fluffy animals just waiting to be butchered, buggered, genetically messed with or, in this case, some unholy combination of all three. Channelling the spirit of early Peter Jackson with a touch more technical sophistication and a little less wit, Jonathan King’s debut follows ovinophobe Henry (Nathan Meister) as he heads back to his childhood home to discover that the distinctly suspect (and somewhat overliteral) animal husbandry favoured by his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has created a flock of marauding Frankensheep.

In a genre that delights in depictions of tree rape (The Evil Dead) and zombie rumpo (Braindead), the first half is genially goofy rather than funny or scary. But then the sheep really hits the fan, and WETA’s fearsome creatures come slathering to life in a Baa-

mageddon of entrail-ripping, penis-munching mutton chopsocky. The only people likely to feel hard done by are vegetarians, farmers and those whose stomachs are weaker than their sense of humour. Kiwis: 1 Taste: 0. Matt Glasby

Anticipation. Bad Taste with a budget? Score. Three Enjoyment. Critters

with a cruel streak. Three

In Retrospect. Three

bags full. Three

071

evening RELEASED September 21

It’s a very odd film

that can discuss heart-blackening guilt, loveless marriage, pain and regret only to taper off into a dryeyed ending. Two sisters, Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette), peer down at their shrivelled mother, Ann, as she breathes her last. Suddenly, a secret escapes from her morphine-induced mutterings, one that she’s carried to her deathbed. The secret is a man named Harris.

072 THE CONTROL ISSUE

DIRECTED BY Lajos Koltai STARRING Claire Danes, Meryl Streep, Toni Collette

Harris was the one who got away from Ann after a fling at her best friend’s wedding. And Harris is the one who comes back into Ann’s heart and mind as she tries to pass on lessons learned to her daughters. The film jumps back and forth to the young and vivacious Ann played by Claire Danes in a thorough, bold and self-assured performance. Sadly, Patrick Wilson’s Harris is one huge anticlimax. After a near perfect performance in Hard Candy,

here Wilson looks like he’d be more comfortable in Madame Tussauds. Or perhaps his tightly stretched face just makes it impossible to muster any kind of facial expression. The present day scenes linger almost as implausibly as the dying mother. And despite the overload of serious talent – including Vanessa Redgrave and Meryl Streep alongside their real-life offspring – Evening says nothing new about the mistakes we make,

the regret we harbour and the love we should have allowed in. Monisha Rajesh

Anticipation.

Streep, Redgrave, Danes, Close – yikes! Five

Enjoyment. Slightly

tedious. Slightly. Three

In Retrospect.

Worth visiting for the phenomenal talent, but not revisiting. Two

Hot Rod

Here’s the thing

about dumb-ass comedies: some people dig this kinda stuff. They’re around – moviegoers whose comedic threshold is so low they’ll laugh at pretty much anything. You’ll hear them when you see Hot Rod, erupting in intriguingly raucous laughter every couple of minutes at the botched bike stunts, the fake porn moustache and maybe even at the crazy jump cuts as the main character yells, ‘Coool beannnns!’ about a hundred times in a row.

DIRECTED BY Akiva Schaffer STARRING Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, Jorma Taccone

RELEASED September 28

Here’s what you need to know: Andy Samberg plays Rod Kimble, a wannabe stuntman who leads a crew of deadwood types stuck in small town USA. Though his friends respect him, Rod’s stepfather, Frank, thinks he’s king of losers and his stunts are a joke. When Rod finds out that Frank needs a $50,000 heart transplant, he sets out on a mission to jump over 15 school buses to raise cash for the operation. Why? So he can kick some stepdad ass and gain his

respect once and for all. Like it or not, that’s the plot, which is padded out with a series of sketches that repeat themselves, in various types and format, over and over as they lead you to the inevitable jump-overbus climax. Hot Rod’s got all the right ingredients: heavily caricatured roles, entertaining sight gags, and even Isla Fisher, token hot chick in a low-cut dress. But in the end, the film revs but never takes off. And though some of it might be

funny, it still doesn’t mean it’s a great film. Vince Medeiros

Anticipation. At least Isla Fisher’s in it. One Enjoyment. Okay, ha,

ha, this is actually kinda funny. Kinda. Just don’t expect cinematic genius. Three

In Retrospect. Mental image of Isla Fisher in a tight red dress. Two

073

the witnesses RELEASED October 19

Paris, 1984: Manu

(Johan Libéreau), a young man fresh from the country, throws himself with some relish into the city’s gay pick-up scene, where he is befriended by an older doctor, Adrien (a typically engaging Michel Blanc). Manu has a knack for making friends, and it’s not long before he embarks on an affair with policeman Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), partner of Adrien’s friend Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart). Of course, the real drama comes when Manu is diagnosed with a mysterious new disease. The outline may sound

074 THE CONTROL ISSUE

DIRECTED BY André Téchiné STARRING Michel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart, Sami Bouajila

vaguely reminiscent of Téchiné’s 1991 outing, J’embrasse pas, but if anything, The Witnesses serves as a counterpoint to that flashy but rather shallow affair. Téchiné has pitched his latest film against the grim reality of AIDS, which the director envisions as a war. It’s a cliché of many films based on fact that time gives a welcome perspective. But compared to, say, Cyril Collard’s incendiary 1992 dispatch from the frontline, Les Nuits Fauves, one of the very best films to tackle the subject of the disease, here there is an

unavoidable feeling of hindsight. Indeed, the director’s camera is curiously inconstant as it follows the repercussions among the quartet of friends, which includes Manu’s sister, Julie (Julie Depardieu). Intriguing too is how on different occasions characters are pictured in the same clothes (Sarah’s yellow summer dress, a red polo shirt of Mehdi’s), revisiting the same settings. That’s true to life, but it also suggests a circle of society caught in a repeating cycle – an interesting idea which, like the film itself, remains curiously undeveloped. Jonas Milk

Anticipation.

The director may have gone off the boil lately but this does star Emmanuelle Béart. Three

Enjoyment. Téchiné

seems detached, but when the emotions hit, they come out of the blue. Three

In Retrospect. Béart’s bruised expression is as haunting as Libéreau’s ravaged skin. Three

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3:10 to yuma RELEASED September 14

So, the western is

back. Yay! And no doubt media theorists, academics and daddy’s boy columnists are already reaching for their polemical sixshooters and giddily describing how the likes of 3:10 to Yuma, Seraphim Falls and The Assassination of Jesse James represent nothing less than the reimagining of the American psyche in the face of Bush-era aggression, paranoia and moral turpitude. And yet, you look at 3:10 to Yuma, you look closely, and it’s just not there. For here is a movie, a contemporary remake of a lowrent 1957 B-western, that is positively resistant to subtext. It follows the fortunes of one-legged farmer and Civil War veteran Dan Evans (Christian Bale) as he

076 THE CONTROL ISSUE

DIRECTED BY James Mangold STARRING Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Gretchen Mol

attempts, with the aid of a dwindling posse, to bring notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the frontier town of Contention, in order to catch the titular prison train. Along the way, Evans repels Apache attacks, corrupt railroaders and the inexorable pursuit of Wade’s increasingly dangerous gang (led by a deliciously seedy Ben Foster). The movie builds to an epiphany of sorts, with the emasculated Evans rediscovering his inner gunslinger, and the homicidal Wade nurturing his hitherto hidden morality. And that’s about it. No clunky dialogue about the nature of war. No speeches about the essence of America, and how ‘this country’ will one day be great (for that you need to rent The Searchers).

Instead, it’s just two men on horseback, chasing the shit out of each other across the desert. And that, pilgrim, is part of the movie’s sneaky and seductive appeal. For it’s a film that has an unusually high regard for the fundamentals of storytelling, thanks to some muscular direction from James Mangold (Walk the Line), a tight Elmore Leonard short story source, and two typically empathetic turns from heavyweights Bale and Crowe, with the former employing his now infamous hollow cheeked stare to devastating effect. When he pleads with wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) in the movie’s cri de coeur, “I been standing on one leg for three goddamn years, waiting for God to do me a favour, and he ain’t listening!” you will believe him.

And yes, of course, you could read lots into Bale’s leg injury (Iraqi landmine, anyone?), or into the scene where Wade is tortured by psychopathic gang masters (Abu Ghraib?). But really, you could also get a life. Kevin Maher

Anticipation. A remake of a slightly boring 1950s western? Not sure. Two Enjoyment. Bale!

Crowe! Guns! Big guns! Shooting! More shooting! And emotional epiphanies! Four

In Retrospect. They don’t make them like that anymore. But, hang on, they just did! Three

atonement

In the 1980s Merchant Ivory epitomised Englishnessfor-export in all its dapper, dubious glory. Now Atonement seeks to re-establish this heritage cinema with the story of a brief encounter during World War II given a contemporary twist courtesy of the dark currents of Ian McEwan’s novel. It also qualifies director Joe Wright as a major talent; his active camera is so visceral that a soldier framed against a bleeding sky in a field of scorching poppies brings tears

DIRECTED BY Joe Wright STARRING Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai

RELEASED September 7

to the eyes. And again as he weaves through decrepit bodies on the beaches singing dour, heavy-hearted hymns. The structural, non-linear story-telling is superior too, switching from Chatterleyesque lovers Robbie (James McAvoy) and Cecilia (Keira Knightley), to child/woman Briony (Romola Garai) whose jealousy and false accusation tears them asunder. It’s in the acceptance of its audience’s sophistication that – whatever your fellowship with the novel –

the film finds its own language. Atonement is a near masterpiece that only lacks the substance of great performances. McAvoy is charming as ever, yet the mistresses of the manor – who both love and resent the housekeeper’s son – disappoint. Knightley is all vacant petulance while Garai is insipid and damp. Where the film desperately needed a female heavyweight, what we have instead is a bottle green satin butterfly which McAvoy pins against the

library wall, with no real women in sight. Lorien Haynes

Anticipation. A match for the novel? Four Enjoyment. Meat for

the eyes and muscle for the heart. Four

In Retrospect.

Miscast actresses, but it’s not their fault – production went for box-office, director went for objectification. Three 077

michael clayton RELEASED September 28

Think TS Eliot

without the poetry; think The Hollow Men, think corporate lawyers in their wasteland of bland. Michael Clayton is so grey it leaves a metallic taste in the mouth. Make that grey and beige with salt and pepper sideburns. George Clooney is cop/lawyer crossover Michael Clayton – he’s the guy who cleans up when the legal eagles turn a blind eye to a chemicals client who’s been poisoning the public. For Clayton, it’s usually a case of industrial bleach, marigolds and a service wash –

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DIRECTED BY Tony Gilroy STARRING George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton

but this time he’s compromised. Looking for a pay-off, his mentor, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), threatens to expose the whole shebang, only to end up a ‘suicide’ statistic. Smelling a sardine, Clayton turns investigator, sleuthing slap bang into a plot so full holes and so lacking in humour that you’ll be willing him to turn into Danny Ocean. And yet the film is redeemed by a few remarkable features. The first is the symbolism of three horses on a hillside. They save Clayton’s life and, more, represent an element of

spiritualism – that there is hope beyond corporate matters. The second is a shocking murder, a sequence that’s so cold-blooded, brutal, efficient and without sentiment that it intrudes on the film with gut-punching impact. And the third is the last five minutes – surely the reason Clooney agreed to do the film in the first place and a blessed relief. Everything absent from Michael Clayton is sandwiched into the pay-off; it’s funny, satisfying, involves a man and a woman (albeit Tilda Swinton in snow-queen mode) and, for once, is one step ahead before throwing

you into an interesting coda. If director Tony Gilroy had started there and worked backwards, Michael Clayton might have been more Magritte and less paintingby-numbers. Lorien Haynes

Anticipation. Star vehicle for George equals sure-fire hit. Four Enjoyment. Think

old chewing gum with a masculine flavour. Two

In Retrospect. Send your parents and friends who wear suits. Two

disturbia RELEASED September 7

A year after the death

of his father, smart-ass student Kale (Shia LaBeouf) clouts a teacher and is placed under house arrest. On the bright side, he gets to wear young Hollywood’s hottest accessory – an ankle bracelet with a direct link to the cop shop. As if that’s not enough, he peers out of his suburban window to discover a hot bikini babe (Sarah Roemer) moving in next door. Things would be perfect, if it wasn’t for the potential serial killer up the road. Disturbia is an effective update of Hitchcock’s Rear Window for the YouTube generation. Is it Kale’s overactive imagination or is there really a murderer in their midst? Sadly, by the time you find out, the blood and guts have arrived to cater for the teen market, but that doesn’t mean the movie is without merit. The cast wisely choose to play it straight, and LaBeouf, particularly, stands out. The rising star reins in the over-the-top

DIRECTED BY DJ Caruso STARRING Shia LaBeouf, Sarah Roemer, CarrieAnne Moss

antics to provide a credible performance as a confused teen who simply can’t handle life without his father. Indeed, the film is well acted, competently directed and has flashes of humour. The tension builds slowly, propelled by some genuine scares along the way, mostly in the shape of David Morse’s nuanced turn as the suspected killer. Adam Tanswell

Anticipation. Another step in Shia LaBeouf’s journey towards becoming the new Tom Hanks. Three Enjoyment. Not quite Rear Window, but can certainly hold its own with The ’Burbs. Three

In Retrospect. Wasn’t The ’Burbs part of Tom Hanks’ journey towards becoming Jimmy Stewart? Hmm, interesting. Three

in the hands of the gods In the Hands of the

Gods is the inspirational true story of five British freestyle footballers busking their way from New York to Buenos Aires in order to meet their hero, Diego Maradona. We see them using their impressive ball skills, laddish charm and sheer determination to get by, putting on shows in such varied places as Times Square, Copacobana Beach, a Dallas football stadium and a riotous Mexican nightclub. But we also see the strains that hunger, sleeping rough and money put on their friendships, as well as the tumultuous and deeply saddening personal lives they have left back home.

DIRECTED BY Gabe Turner, Benjamin Turner STARRING Sami Hall Bassam, Mikey Fisher, Jeremy Lynch

RELEASED September 14

In the hands of brothers Benjamin and Gabe Turner, however, this documentary possesses enough subtlety and tact to avoid sentimentality. It’s a fine debut, in fact – stylishly shot, featuring some truly breathtaking scenery and a fantastic soundtrack. It will leave you feeling elated. Ed Andrews

Anticipation. Not another Goal is it? Two Enjoyment. An absolute pleasure from beginning to end. Four

In Retrospect. A joyous, life-affirming documentary. Four 079

once RELEASED October 19

“Where words fail,

DIRECTED BY John Carney STARRING Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, Mal Whyte

music speaks.” So said fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen, and nowhere is the power of music more persuasive than in the truly magical Once. Made for next to nothing on the streets of Dublin, Once follows a lone Irish busker known simply as ‘Guy’ (Glen Hansard of band The Frames) whose chance encounter with a young Czech pianist – ‘Girl’ (Markéta Irglová) – ignites a relationship that, on the surface, is based on their mutual love of music, but in reality cuts much deeper. A visual album’of sorts, Once

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is punctuated with the kind of songs that tell the story of the pair more eloquently, and with a greater sense of depth and pain, than any exposition could express. The music, a kind of folksy Damien Rice infused with eastern European guitars, was written and performed by Hansard and Irglová, and while it may not be to all tastes, its simple sentiment is powerful enough to hit even the hardest of hearts. It’s augmented by director John Carney’s fauxguerrilla style, all shaking cameras and natural lighting. Though this grates at times, it fuels the feeling

of rawness and spontaneity that the songs provoke. As trite as the couple’s troubles initially sound – he is attempting to forget a past love, she is caring for her struggling family – Once is both whimsical and amicable, buoyed enormously by newcomer Markéta Irglová’s performance. Her innocent and playful air – with her penchant for wearing men’s jackets and her quirky attempts at swearing in English – is irresistible. Lovingly composed, Once rarely hits a bum note. At times, the fanciful narrative can be a little excessive, but Carney’s light

touch is forgiving enough to let the irregularities slide. With a pared down approach to filmmaking, and a desire to let the songs do the talking, Once should strike a resounding chord with audiences. Helen Cowley

Anticipation. An Irish musical about buskers. Two Enjoyment. Hey, they

can actually sing, and it sounds good. Nice one. Four

In Retrospect. A simply sung tale that deserves attention. Four

ratatouille RELEASED October 19

When you’re cooking, reveals chef Gusteau, “the only limit is your soul”. The same applies to Pixar, whose films to date haven’t so much been touched as manhandled by genius. They’ve built a body of work unrivalled since the days of Uncle Walt precisely because the depth of their soul, and the breadth of their imagination, have been limitless. And now they bring us... the Food Network? With a rat? That rat is Remy, a whiskered gourmand torn between loyalty to his uncouth family and his dreams of becoming a chef under the tutelage of the great (late) Gusteau. Remy, you see, has a nose that can sniff out the finest ingredients, and he will put it to good use when he finds himself in the kitchen of Gusteau’s oncemighty, now faded restaurant in Paris where he hooks up with a forlorn floor mopper, Linguini,

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DIRECTED BY Brad Bird STARRING Patton Oswalt, Janeane Garofalo, Lou Romano

and together the two of them set about reviving the restaurant’s fortunes. With Brad Bird directing, Ratatouille has its moments of wide-eyed wonder and thrilling action scenes (the opening shoot-out with a psycho granny is excellent), but is there anything quite so ubiquitous, and therefore quite so mundane, as cooking? Where previously Pixar have led us, gawping, into a magical wonderland beyond our imagination but connected, somehow, to our dreams, here they’ve simply added their voice to a cacophony of gobby TV shows. This is Ready, Steady, Ratatouille, filled with half-decent ideas that rarely go anywhere beyond the tediously formulaic. There is family drama – the same family drama as Nemo, only more cynical. There is romance –the same romance as

Cars, and just as rote. And there is a further echo of that film in the xenophobia bubbling beneath its surface. Americans hate the French. Paris is established in a montage of resentful clichés, and it’s revealing that, for all the film’s professed love of cooking, the chefs are mincing Frenchmen who will let you down at the first sign of trouble, while the rats are blue-collar Yanks who believe in family and guts. Take that, cheese eaters! Pixar will tell you that story is king, but here the story is an emperor with no clothes. As Remy effectively body-snatches Linguini, Ratatouille goes out of its way to apologise for its ridiculous premise – the jerking marionette is constantly having to explain that he knows the whole thing is ridiculous, but if you just bear with him, it really is going somewhere, honest.

And eventually, right at the end, it does go somewhere. For 30 seconds, there is a flash of pure genius through the eyes of an evil food critic. In this one moment of inspiration Ratatouille tells you more about the magic of food than the rest of the film manages in two interminable hours. That aside, all we’re left with is a film that exhorts us to ‘be all you can be’. And you know who that sounds like? Not Pixar. Not even Uncle Walt. Just today’s depressing Disney Co. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. It’s

Pixar! Five

Enjoyment. Occasionally

inspired, but mostly trivial and pointless. Two

In Retrospect. Um... It might get better second time round? Three

rocket Science RELEASED September 28

Rocket Science is the

embodiment of all those familiar adjectives which surface when describing standard American indie fare: ‘charming’, ‘touching’, ‘offbeat’, and it’s complemented by the obligatory ‘quirky’ soundtrack for which we have Wes Anderson to blame. The story follows Hal Hefner’s (Reece Thompson) attempt to join his high school debate team despite his inhibiting stammer. His participation is masterminded by the admirably obnoxious Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick), with whom he inevitably falls in love. Where Rocket Science departs from its genre counterparts is in its emotional intelligence. Director Jeffrey Blitz

DIRECTED BY Jeffrey Blitz STARRING Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Vincent Piazza

achieves the kind of understated beauty you would expect from a man used to examining the simmering ironies of society. He gleans such a pure performance from his young male lead that we engage with every missed syllable and prolonged exhale that the character must endure. Furthermore, Hal’s disability serves as an ideal tool to capture all the frustrations associated with unrequited high school love, and it is for these reasons that it’s easy to forgive the coming-ofage clichés to which Rocket Science succumbs. It won’t lead you to any great epiphany on the meaning of life, nor does it broach revolutionary cinematic ground.

However, Rocket Science will remind you that American independent cinema has more to offer than the insipid fantasies of Zach Braff. As such, it’s worth commending Blitz’s first fiction effort and hope that, if future projects are to tackle more challenging material, this could be the start of great things to come. Ailsa Caine

Drawing Restraint 9 For a film that should

be weird, inventive and visually absorbing considering the fine art work of its director Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 9 just isn’t, well, crazy enough. The setting is a whaling ship which, on its top deck, has a mould filled with petroleum jelly. Barney gets taken on board, as does Björk, who provides the soundtrack. Björk takes a bath. They drink tea. The room fills with liquid, then... Actually, we won’t tell you what happens next as, even though it can be assumed the film is supposed to arrest you aesthetically rather than narratively, knowing will kill your curiosity. For all the lengths to which Barney must have gone – the set alone looks terrifyingly expensive – it’s a film unequal to the task of articulating the director’s complex thoughts. It’s pedantically slow and precise, but when you start shifting in your

Anticipation.

Spellbound’s fictional offspring. Four

Enjoyment. Charming, touching, offbeat and quirky. Three

In Retrospect. Blitz eases himself in gently but with promise. Three

DIRECTED BY Matthew Barney STARRING Björk, Matthew Barney, Tomoyuki Ogawa

RELEASED September 28

seat, it won’t be because of some MTV-bred impatience, but a desire for more. More mad costumes on Björk; more of the webbed feet and giant shells that show so much promise; more shots of the strange routines of the whaling ship workers; more art work within this work of art. DR9 would be better suited to an art gallery where people can wander through a darkened, curtained room and ingest it 10 minutes at a time. In glimpses it’s intriguing, but in the cinema it’s just out of place. Holly Grigg-Spall

Anticipation. What does Björk look like these days? Three Enjoyment. Eh, did we miss something? Two

In Retrospect. Seems Björk hasn’t aged at all. One 083

the serpent RELEASED September 14

DIRECTED BY Eric Barbier STARRING Yvan Attal, Clovis Cornillac, Pierre Richard

The Serpent could be

seen as proof that the French love affair with film noir is alive and well. The story of a fashion photographer, Vincent (Yvan Attal), whose life is torn apart by an old classmate with a grievance contains all the elements that made that genre so attractive to the New Wave: the dark underbelly of bourgeois society, corruption, sex, revenge, betrayal and murder. But while French filmmakers from Godard to Besson have taken that most American genre and given it a French twist, there is something confused about The Serpent. Based on a novel

(Plender) by the British writer Ted Lewis, the film not only looks but breathes like an Anglo Saxon. As the plot becomes increasingly unbelievable, loose ends are hastily tied and story gives way to Action Man dramatics, it is unclear if this is an

homage to American cinema or a showreel for American producers. That aside, The Serpent is an occasionally effective and stylish piece of filmmaking, capturing both the gloss and grime of the best thrillers, and delivering the odd shock as well. James Bramble

Anticipation.

The pitched battles between rival football thugs have been seen before but are shot with energy and relish, and the scene of the West Ham cavalry arriving to rescue Leach and his mates from a Man United kicking trips all sorts of guilty pleasure receptors. The transition to working as a bouncer provides more gore at close quarters, while the move to

the rave scene and Leach’s first pill are played for daft laughs. Leach doesn’t have charisma but he does at least provide a narrative thread, so when he steps back from the violence and the story switches to two or three new lumps and their bloody capers the whole derivative tale loses its way and the boredom becomes terminal. Steve Watson

Anticipation. Another dip into London’s murky underworld. One

Noir. Three

Enjoyment. Latte. Three

In Retrospect. Americano. Three

rise of the footsoldier DIRECTED BY Julian Gilbey STARRING Ricci Harnett, Craig Fairbrass, Roland Manookian

RELEASED September 7

From football hooligan to underworld enforcer, Rise of the Footsoldier follows the violent career of Carlton Leach, portrayed here as a huffing, puffing lump of charmless scowl by Casualty fodder Ricci Harnett. An intertitle at the start reassures the audience that what they are about to see is based on a true story, so all the torture, drug use and spittle-spattered use of the word ‘cant’ is made even more arresting by the fact that it, or something like it, might once have sort of happened. That’s the plan at least, and an over-eager soundtrack of punches like gunshots and deafening match flares suggest director Julian Gilbey is going all out to deliver a proper kick in the teeth.

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Enjoyment. Morons

assault each other while swearing. Two

In Retrospect. Brings nothing new to a tiresome and bloated genre. One

The Lookout DIRECTED BY Scott Frank STARRING Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Jeff Daniels

Without Joseph

Gordon-Levitt, The Lookout would be a jumbled mixture of thriller and drama that struggles for meaningful depth. Fortunately, the young actor’s powerful performance gives the film an intensity it would otherwise have lacked. Levitt plays Chris, a young athlete whose promising career is cut short by a car accident that leaves him mentally disabled. He’s not a vegetable, but his inability to perform simple tasks or communicate with anyone save blind roommate Lewis (Jeff Daniels) leaves him lonely and frustrated. Then former schoolmate Gary (a magnetic

RELEASED September 7

Matthew Goode) breezes into his life, offering Chris the chance to regain some of his former glory. Scott Frank’s pedigree as a screenwriter is top notch – Out of Sight, Get Shorty and Minority Report all come from his pen – but he has forced too many ideas into his directorial debut. It’s an emotional drama, it’s a revenge thriller, it’s a heist movie, it’s a buddy flick, and yet it’s none of these things at all. Mixing genres is fine if the narrative is clear, but there are too many interlinking plot-lines and characters here to prevent the neat ending from feeling anything other than contrived.

Levitt’s performance, however, saves the film. It’s a subtle portrayal of a young man alternately angry, sad and frightened that he can no longer make his brain work properly. A heartbreaking moment comes when Chris confidently starts telling his bank manager boss he feels ready to be promoted from cleaner to teller, but falters halfway through as he cannot remember the script he has prepared. The genius is in the simplicity. Levitt’s look of utter failure and self-pity as he has to reach for the script on his trusty notepad are worth any number of stuttering verbal tics. In his intensity, Levitt resembles

Ed Norton; let’s hope that he doesn’t fall into the same trap of redeeming average movies with transcendent performances. Like this one. Dan Stewart

Anticipation. An icecold noir thriller from the writer of Out of Sight sounds promising. Four Enjoyment. A killer

opening and great work from Levitt, but where is it going? Three

In Retrospect. Its mediocrity is made up for by its central performance. Three

085

stardust RELEASED October 19 DIRECTED BY Matthew Vaughn STARRING Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Robert De Niro

You’ve got to admire

Matthew Vaughn. Not many directors would have walked away from X3 to take a punt on Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, even if it is the kind of whimsical fantasy that’s practically begging to be sprinkled with some movie magic. Charlie Cox plays Tristan, a young Englishman in the backwater village of Wall, the border between the real world and the magical realm of Stormhold. Here, the dying king sets his sons a quest to decide who should succeed him, one that will pit them against a sisterhood of witches led by Michelle Pfeiffer, a band of flying pirates captained by Robert De Niro, and young Tristan himself, who has his own quest to fulfil to win the heart of local beauty Sienna Miller. The key to all their adventures is a star, Yvaine (Claire Danes), who has fallen to earth, thus kick-starting a proper kerfuffle. You’ll desperately want to believe in Stardust. You’ll want to applaud its ambition and admire its old-fashioned emphasis on story and character. You’ll want to be swept up by its action and swept away by its romance. You will, however, do none of these things, and no matter how much you admire the man, the blame for that is to be laid squarely at the door of Matthew Vaughn. The first half-hour of Stardust is a catastrophe of poor story-telling that practically sinks the entire film. Naturally, you need to suspend your disbelief when dealing with parallel universes, wise-cracking ghosts and the unstoppable rise of Ricky Gervais, but Stardust does nothing to earn its audience’s trust. There are such

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alarming gaps in the film’s internal logic that it’s simply unreasonable to expect the audience not to ask questions. For instance, why, in the age of global expansion, has Britain failed to notice a magical realm on its doorstep? Or did they mistake it for Wales? Why did Tristan’s mum allow his dad to hop over the wall, knock her up and bugger off as if he’s on some kind of fantastical stag do? Why are the flying pirates bottling lightning? Why is this movie so utterly out of control? Moreover, on the odd occasion that Stardust does establish some rules – like,

‘Whenever Michelle Pfeiffer uses her powers, lo, she will age and this will be the occasion for hilarious eye-rolling and, “Man, I’m so old” gags’ – it then feels free to turn its back on those rules whenever they start to hinder the dramatic potential of the plot. After an hour or so being pistol-whipped into submission, you’ll start to notice, with a kind of addled stupefaction, the film’s bold, Gilliam-esque visuals and the easy, affectionate chemistry between Charlie Cox and Claire Danes that hints at what might have been. Then Robert De Niro turns up in drag for a musical number and

you realise that you’re watching Matthew Vaughn base jump off the A List without a parachute, and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Neil Gaiman and Matthew Vaughn bring us The Princess Bride 2. Four Enjoyment. Oh no, no they don’t. Two

In Retrospect. Full marks for effort, zero marks for execution. Stardust is brutally disappointing. Two

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Lagerfeld Confidential RELEASED October 26

Often referred to as

Chanel’s ‘Knight In Shining Armour’, when Lagerfeld joined the label as chief executive of design in 1983 he lifted the fashion house from relative dormancy to global success story. But until recently he never discussed his private life in public, remaining to many a fashion enigma defined purely by his trademark white ponytail, severe collars, black shades and fabulous creations. After two years of work, from over 200 hours of footage, director Rodolphe Marconi presents the first up-close-andpersonal portrait of the fashion icon. Meet Karl Lagerfeld the photographer and painter, the great lover of cinema, the book collector and art connoisseur. See him at home in his Parisian

DIRECTED BY Rodolphe Marconi STARRING Karl Lagerfeld, Nicole Kidman, Princess Caroline of Monaco

apartment, a magpie’s treasure chest piled high with books, drawers stuffed full of papers and bowls overflowing with his signature rings. Watch him sketch in private, as his pen translates visions from his ‘dreams’ to the naked page with eloquence. Watch him meet and greet press and interact with concierges, flight assistants and staff with good humour and courtesy. From presenting his collection in the glare of the catwalk to relaxing in his Biarritz mansion, dining alone in his hotel suite to a photo-shoot with Nicole Kidman, Marconi leaves nothing hidden. And Lagerfeld is a willing subject. He’s amusingly wry, responding with candour to questions about his private life, and offering views on the world

that are both astute and thought provoking. Intellectually insatiable, he devours literature, film and painting, and insists he is only as good as his last collection. In short, this is an intimate and human portrayal of the man who has singlehandedly kept Chanel the gold standard of designer labels. It’s an invaluable, unmissable peek at the man behind the

sunglasses. Holly Shackleton

Anticipation. An insight into the life of a legend. Four Enjoyment. And it is! Four

In Retrospect. Will have fashion mavens squawking for weeks. Three

yella DIRECTED BY Christian Petzold STARRING Nina Hoss, Devid Striesow, Hinnerk Schönemann

If you’ve ever thought

that you’re having a bad day, rest assured, Yella (Nina Hoss) is having a stinker. She’s being stalked by her floundering exhusband, Ben (Hinnerk Schönemann), the job she thought was hers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and things are only going to get worse from here... Yella is an attractive, confident young German woman who finds herself financing a failed business concern in return for a large stake in the bankrupt company. It’s a powerful issue in Germany that also arose in the last part of director Edgar Reitz’s Heimat trilogy, as the corpses of firms in the country’s East are picked over by the still-affluent West. This new career is

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RELEASED September 21

complicated by an odd psychic development, heralded by wind in the trees, a croaking crow and supersonic booms. And, it has to be said, Yella’s taste in men hardly improves, though there are moments of humour with new boss Philipp (Devid Striesow) that promise a brighter future. Director Christian Petzold is assured at the transitions between the apparently supernatural and the ultra efficient business world, which he views in metallic greys and blues. If anything, the endless hotel corridors, motel car parks and office boardrooms are reminiscent of Laurent Cantet’s existentialist Time Out. The milieu might also be familiar from Dominik Moll’s Lemming: this is Mitteleuropa

of the early twenty-first century, all concrete and steel edifices with huge glass windows. In Petzold’s eyes – and ours – it all adds up to something rather spooky. Jonas Milk

not just Yella’s financial spreadsheets that hide surprises in this otherworldly business thriller. Four

Anticipation. German

A haunting suspense drama, which compares favourably with some of the best continental cinema. Four

cinema is on a bit of a roll. Three

Enjoyment. It’s

In Retrospect.

the singer

DIRECTED BY Xavier Giannoli STARRING Gérard Depardieu, Cécile de France, Mathieu Amalric

Men in shiny shirts

plod their way through a crooning tune, old ladies sway in time to the music and Gérard Depardieu pauses to announce that this week the tombola has been organised by the town hall. It’s a Gallic vision of the Phoenix Club, and whether he’s hefting his bulk between line dancing pensioners or wooing a beautiful younger woman, Depardieu sends himself up with tender charm as the chanteur and ageing romantic Alain. The younger woman is Marion (Cécile de France), a colleague of Alain’s estate agent friend Bruno (Mathieu Amalric), and after Alain and Marion spend a

RELEASED September 28

drunken night together he sets out to win her heart. The odds are clearly stacked against Alain, not only in his love life but also in his career, as karaoke nights and DJs encroach on his territory. Defiant in the face of adversity, however, he continues in his quest, and it soon becomes clear that Marion needs Alain – or at least something like him – in her life. Giannoli is careful not to reveal too much of his characters’ lives, hinting at histories that sketch out rather than reveal the characters before us. A beautiful fatalism prevails; there’s never a sense that it’s all going to be alright in the end, and when the

lovers hurt one another they must simply pick themselves up and carry on. Many of the conversations between Alain and Marion take place in stark spaces – empty houses, a bright white kitchen or a bare dressing room – as Giannoli strips away social norms and common values to allow us to appreciate the unlikely lovers for exactly who they are. Ultimately, however, pieces of the story are left just a little too opaque. For example, Marion’s unreliability and infidelities are impossible to fathom, as is Alain’s career, which sees him veering from an old people’s home to a packed

arena within what seems to be a couple of weeks. A tale of two misfits finding their own confused happiness, their motivation can be difficult to grasp at times but The Singer remains an interesting and unusual love story. Steve Watson

Anticipation.

Gérard Depardieu does Jerry St Clair. Three

Enjoyment. Offbeat

romance in small town France. Three

In Retrospect. Gosh, those French people are enigmatic. Two 089

Reprise RELEASED September 7

Reprise is one of

those rare gems of a movie that steals up on you not so much with a bang as a whisper of silky seduction. Phillip and Erik (Anders Danielsen Lie and Espen Klouman-Høiner) are two would-be writers gripped by youthful ambition. As we meet them, they’ve just posted their first manuscripts to a publisher, and they’re lost in a woozy fantasy of future glory. But their story will take a radical turn. Phillip’s novel is accepted and he becomes an overnight sensation, while Erik deals with a painful rejection. Then, in a dramatic about

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DIRECTED BY Joachim Trier STARRING Anders Danielsen Lie, Espen Klouman-Høiner, Viktoria Winge

face, Phillip’s life spirals out of control as he struggles to deal with depression and the burden of fame. He shifts restlessly between inspiration and despair, from state care to the streets of Paris accompanied by his longsuffering girlfriend, Kari (Viktoria Winge), and the ghost of his friendship with Erik, who still toils back home. This is a stunningly accomplished feature debut from Joachim Trier. What begins as a frenetic explosion of punk energy and hip-hop camera work becomes a sophisticated and bitterly poignant examination of youth, and the fragile nature of our dreams.

And yet this is no gloomy indie flick. Trier is a real filmmaker; too in love with the medium to affect arty indifference and not interested in staffing his frame with hipster friends. He embraces beauty and absurdity, and he’s not afraid to stare the complex ambivalence of real life right in the eye before punctuating the tension with a gag or two. It’s impossible to resist his sincerity, or the passion in the performances of the three non-professional leads. Anders Danielsen Lie is all gaunt cheekbones and haunted eyes; Espen Klouman-Høiner is a languidly charismatic

presence; while Viktoria Winge adds just the right amount of sugary sass. These are exciting times for them, and for fans of bold new voices too. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation.

Suicidal Scando navel gazing. Two

Enjoyment. Joyously openhearted filmmaking carried by a bravura dash of technical sophistication. Four

In Retrospect. Has all the hallmarks of an enduring work. Four

the counterfeiters DIRECTED BY Stefan Ruzowitzky STARRING Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow

Holocaust films are,

for the most part, difficult. By the nature of celluloid, they’re rendered on the same stuff as Hollywood glory, where every tear shed for Schindler is undone by a sneaky one for Braveheart. It’s simply hard to elicit raw emotions from an audience when we’re so far removed from the agony; kicking back at the local multiplex, chugging popcorn while demanding the next new sensation. So when The Counterfeiters evokes a merciless

emotional response, it’s as surprising as it is disturbing. Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch is a Jew and highly successful counterfeiter who is taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he’s to lead a hand picked group of prisoners enlisted to forge the British and American currency on behalf of the Nazis. The prisoners are rewarded for their efforts by residing in the Golden Cage, a luxury area with beds, food, sanitation and the clothes of

RELEASED October 12

murdered Auschwitz inmates. It’s as the men begin fighting over whether to comply and survive or sabotage the project for the greater good that The Counterfeiters creeps under your skin, forcing you to relate to Sally’s guilty survival instinct while others behind the wall suffer. The result is a film that all but ignores the usual wartime moralising, dealing in issues that we can relate to rather than the unimaginable horror of the gas chambers. But don’t be

fooled, the view from the coveted seat of historical hindsight is by no means a pretty one. Ailsa Caine

Anticipation.

Holocaust films can be torture. Two

Enjoyment. Pulls

you in, kicking and squirming. Four

In Retrospect.

Haunting, horrible, brilliant. Four

091

No Reservations

DIRECTED BY Scott Hicks STARRING Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin

RELEASED August 31

across the universe

DIRECTED BY Julie Taymor STARRING Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood, Joe Anderson

RELEASED September 28

Welsh strumpet Catherine Zeta-Jones is Kate, an

Part gritty drama, part 1960s musical, and part

uptight chef in an uptown joint, and the only woman in town to work gruelling shifts in flawless make-up. However, life is turned upside down when the death of her sister lands Kate with a young niece (Abigail Breslin) and a new boyfriend (Aaron Eckhart). No Reservations is cynically targeted at Cosmo reading airheads who, frankly, need to be blinded for their own good. There’s a war on, and you’re either with the faceless studio whores spoon-feeding clichés to an audience they hate, or you’re on the side of real, honest cinema. Which is it? Matt Bochenski

psychedelic puppet show; Across the Universe could have fallen flat. Instead, this hybrid from Julie Taymor is a qualified triumph. We follow Jude (Jim Sturgess) from his dockyard job in early 1960s Liverpool to counter-culture NYC, where he falls in love with Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a rich girl turned Vietnam War protestor. The characters communicate in part via a host of Beatles songs, which could have been cheesy – and occasionally is – but good casting and the wonderful strangeness of Taymor’s vision means that this movie is great fun. David Mattin

run, fat boy, run

DIRECTED BY David Schwimmer STARRING Simon Pegg, Hank Azaria, Thandie Newton

RELEASED September 7

A Few days in september

DIRECTED BY Santiago Amigorena STARRING Juliette Binoche, John Turturro, Nick Nolte

RELEASED September 14

A heart-warming rom-com- about one man’s

This duff addition to the ever-expanding canon of

struggle to win back his ex-wife with just the right balance of laughs and pathos along the way... this is not. A painfully unfunny, cliché-fest following a worn-to-the-ground story arc with stilted dialogue, a sad parade of insipid British cameos and shamelessly ripped off skits which both represents, and is in some way responsible for, not only the worst of British cinema but everything that’s wrong and evil in the world today from the crisis in Darfur to the Spice Girls reunion... this is. Dylan Moran as the best friend is adequate. Jonathan Williams

9/11 movies sees Juliet Binoche shockingly miscast as a French secret agent who is asked to escort a son and daughter to visit their ex-CIA agent father (Nick Nolte) who turns out to be the lynchpin of a huge stock market conspiracy. Playing out as a sub-Ludlum thriller, the direction and performances never reach a quality where we are able to sympathise with the graveness of the situation at hand. John Turturro does single-handedly makes the film worth a peek as a poetry-reciting assassin, but it’s too little and too late. David Jenkins

092 THE CONTROL ISSUE

Kenny

DIRECTED BY Clayton Jacobson STARRING Shane Jacobson, Chris Davis, Travis Golland

RELEASED September 28

The Yacoubian Building

DIRECTED BY Marwan Hamed STARRING Adel Imam, Nour El-Sherif, Youssra

RELEASED September 14

Kenny is perfectly happy with his lot in life,

The most expensive film ever produced in Egypt,

cleaning the grimmest of toilets with the pride of a master craftsman. He’s the consummate blue-collar slob, content with beer and faeces much to the disdain of his snobbish brother and father, who refers to his son as a “glorified turd burglar”. One expects, and is duly served, a large dose of scatological humour from Kenny, but it’s far from a total stinker. Anyone who enjoys BBC comedy Kath and Kim’s dry style will find much to like here. Those expecting Crocodile Dundee with shit could be left cold. Andrew Davidson

based on the novel by Dr Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building is a thrilling exception to the rule that an abundance of cash always leads to empty tat. The residents of a 1930s tenement block offer an ironic depiction of their numerous trials and tribulations, all of which play out under God’s unforgiving gaze. But it’s not just Middle EastEnders – the throbbing pace, constantly moving camera and relentless, Arabic-tinged Waltz score ensure your eyes are glued to the screen throughout in a story that covers acres of thematic and emotional ground. David Jenkins

Day watch

DIRECTED BY Timur Bekmambetov STARRING Konstantin Khabensky, Mariya Poroshina, Vladimir Menshov

RELEASED October 5

my nikifor

DIRECTED BY Krzysztof Krauze STARRING Krystyna Feldman, Roman Gancarczyk, Jerzy Gudejko

RELEASED September 21

The sequel to vampire flick Night Watch is Timur

Hailed as one of the great Polish folk artists,

Bekmambetov’s fourth feature, but our Russian protagonist’s (hopefully) inimitable manner is still pointedly based upon his origins as a pop video director, and shows few signs of reaching maturity. Scenes whirr past like a tornado, tossing plotlines, characters and all sense of logic asunder. His schooling in the sub-four-minute art forms has ultimately constrained his directorial pace to the staccato rhythm of marketing media and lends this effort the feeling of a patchwork quilt of elements; part zombie, part vampire and all a pain in the neck. Adrian D’Enrico

Nikifor is an elderly man (played by a woman, Krystyna Feldman) riddled with TB and absent of friends or family. Renowned for imposing himself upon various abodes to set up shop, he arrives at the doorstep of local artist Marian. While Nikifor’s presence threatens his health and sanity, it’s not enough to distance Marian from the artist’s alluring genius. Luckily My Nikifor doesn’t take a scenic tour of artistry through the Vaseline smeared lens of romanticism, but for those of you unfamiliar with Poland’s national treasures, it may be a struggle through coldly beautiful waters. Ailsa Caine

093

syndromes and a century

DIRECTED BY Apichatpong Weerasethakul STARRING Sakda Kaewbuadee, Nu Nimsomboon, Jaruchai Iamaram

RELEASED September 21

Two Days in Paris

DIRECTED BY Julie Delpy STARRING Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Daniel Brühl

RELEASED August 31

Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest is

Julie Delpy returns to familiar themes in Two Days

a richly rewarding hall-of-mirrors which comprises a series of vignettes stitched into a vast blanket of meandering dialogue and set in two provincial Thai hospitals. Ironic juxtapositions abound, with the confines of the hospital off-set by the tropical idyll outside, and a nurse offering scientific analysis to a Buddhist monk who is being kept awake with dreams about chickens. The film’s gauzey atmosphere is served well by clinical, immaculately framed camerawork and an ambient soundtrack which continually bubbles underneath the surface. David Jenkins

in Paris, the story of an American/French couple in the city of love, but the result is an unfamiliar film – a fun romantic comedy done the European way. Delpy and Adam Goldberg are the bickering couple stumbling around the city trying to figure out how to salvage their relationship from a two-year rut. It’s lighter fare than perhaps it sounds, skipping along happily with just the right amount of pathos. Delpy struggled for years to get her first feature made, but on this basis she shouldn’t have the same trouble again. Jonathan Williams

As You Like It

DIRECTED BY Kenneth Branagh STARRING Alfred Molina, Bryce Dallas Howard, Kevin Kline

RELEASED September 21

Hallam Foe

DIRECTED BY David Mackenzie STARRING Jamie Bell, Sophia Myles, Ciarán Hinds

RELEASED August 31

Film number five in Kenneth Branagh’s ongoing

With its David Shrigley-penned credit sequence

love-in with Shakespeare sees the actor/director relocate this comedyof-errors to the minimalist climes of eighteenth-century Japan. Bryce Dallas Howard sparkles in the role of Rosalind, the spurned love interest of Orlando (David Oyelowo), who is forced to flee to the country and disguise herself as a man. With so many heavyweights jockeying for position on screen, the range of styles can be a little distracting. But when you have sumo wrestling followed by flirtatious wordplay, a loss of consistency is only to be expected. Simon Mercer

and cool-as-fuck soundtrack, Hallam Foe is the kind of film that Mike Leigh might make if he’d received funding from the Sundance Foundation. Jamie Bell is exceptional as Hallam, a young teen convinced that his step-mother (Claire Forlani) is after his father’s fortune, so he heads to Edinburgh where he finds solace in a woman who is the exact double of his (deceased) maternal mum. On the plus side, there’s some lovely location shooting in Edinburgh, but it would have been a markedly better film had it had chosen the road less travelled. David Jenkins

094 THE CONTROL ISSUE

someone else

DIRECTED BY Col Spector STARRING Stephen Mangan, Lara Belmont, Shaun Dingwall

RELEASED September 7

Year Of The Dog

DIRECTED BY Mike White STARRING Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, John C Reilly

RELEASED August 31

There are three ways to depict human-canine

mould is a great showcase for the nuanced talent of up-and-coming director Col Spector. Someone Else offers a fascinating insight into the process of emotional break-up, tenderly side-stepping the whimsy of Bridget Jones in its search for the cold, hard truths of the relationship game. Stephen Mangan (an actor who has made as many friends as he has enemies with his role as Guy in Green Wing) is superb as David, a jobbing photographer who decides to throw caution to the wind and reembrace the life of a swinging bachelor. Top stuff. David Jenkins

relations – vaudevillian wholesomeness (Beethoven), buddy-cop isolationism (K9) and Greyfriars Bobby-esque mawkishness. Credit to Mike White, then, for exploring the subject with satire, poise and indie sangfroid. Well, that’s the theory. The reality runs thus: woman loves beagle; beagle dies; woman has love to give; nearly gives it to John C Reilly; instead undergoes Zen-like moment of lacto-vegetarianism. Though not without comedic merit, Year of the Dog proves once again that man’s best friend is anything but cinema’s. Andrew Sutherland

For all the latest reviews of films that didn’t quite make it into the mag this issue, check out www.littlewhitelies.co.uk.

This bittersweet British comedy in the Manhattan

Razzle Dazzle

DIRECTED BY Darren Ashton STARRING Ben Miller, Nadine Garner, Jane Hall

RELEASED October 26

Tough Enough

DIRECTED BY Detlev Buck STARRING David Kross, Jenny Elvers-Elbertzhagen, Erhan Emre

RELEASED September 21

A satire of the ferocious world of kids’ dance

Tough Enough is the story of Polischka, a weedy

competitions, Razzle Dazzle owes something to the Christopher Guest school of visual wit, but far more to the mundane humour of The Office, whose style it closely resembles. Yes, the subject matter is fish-in-abarrel, and the stock characters (pushy mum, maverick teacher) never achieve the dramatic pathos of real life (see ITV horror show Baby Ballroom for that) but Razzle Dazzle is charming fun and has a hit-tastic ’80s soundtrack that just about makes up for the psychic disquiet of seeing pre-teen girls dressed as sex workers. Matt Bochenski

teenage boy who moves out of the posh gaff of his mum’s boyfriend and starts school in a rough neighbourhood of Berlin. In an attempt to survive the attentions of a happy-slapping gang of thugs, he hooks up with a pair of hoodlums and soon finds himself running drugs for the Turkish mafia, with predictably dire consequences. Shot in gritty, mutedgrey tones with some intense acting and a dark wit, this is something the German tourist board would prefer you not to see, but you owe it to yourself to check it out anyway. Ed Andrews

095

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEANNE LOPEZ

With his black jeans, leather jacket and straggly beard, Neil Gaiman wouldn’t look out of place riding storm clouds on the deck of Stardust’s flying pirate ship. As it is, he’s more of a literary swashbuckler, rampaging across the known boundaries of the comic book in The Sandman; scaling the walls of BBC prime time with Neverwhere; and conquering Hollywood with adaptations (Beowulf) and original screenplays (Mirrormask). He’s a novelist, too, and a poet; an award winner, of course, with a shelf full of Nebulas (impressive) and Hugos (majorly impressive). The Dictionary of National Biography describes him as a ‘post-modernist’, although he calls himself “a pack rat”, somebody who’ll steal stuff from anywhere and use it in his work. Put simply, Gaiman is a storyteller and one of the best we’ve got. He made his name in the late ’80s, long before Hollywood treated comic books as a knock-off script shop. It wasn’t exactly a more innocent era (comics have never had one of those) but it did give him a grounding in healthy scepticism. Gaiman is a no-bullshit guy and that makes him a rarity in a world where writers are supposed to put up and shut up. That’s a trait that he shares with Alan Moore, also a Brit and probably his closest contemporary. Moore shares a similar mystique, only exaggerated, like a shamanic recluse with his druid’s hair and scary eyes. After practically rebooting the entire industry with Watchmen, he went on to write some of the defining works of the genre including From Hell, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Unlike Gaiman, however, he never strayed too far from his roots, and it’s that insularity that might account for their differing perceptions of the movie business. Moore is a vocal critic of the industry’s treatment of his work – hardly surprising

when you consider the results. He publicly feuded with producer Joel Silver during the production of V for Vendetta, and after being dragged into a lawsuit with Fox in which he was forced to defend the original League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from accusations of plagiarism, he declared that he would have been better treated had he “molested and murdered a busload of retarded children after giving them heroin”. Gaiman has some sympathy for his plight (on the adaptation of Extraordinary Gentlemen: “I can manage about seven minutes before it starts hurting enough that I actually have to go and do something else”) but he’s hardly all camaraderie and fellowship. As he explains, “Initially Alan’s attitude was, ‘If you want to go and make a movie, just give me a cheque… I don’t care.’ And I don’t think it’s possible to describe somebody who begins from an attitude of ‘I don’t care’ as being ill-used. Because he didn’t care, you know?” Dave Lloyd, the illustrator of V for Vendetta, was also equivocal when pressed by The New York Times about the decision to sell the rights in the first place. “We didn’t do it innocently,” he said. “Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Sell the rights to your work and it’s a bit rich to complain that people are mistreating your baby. But Gaiman doesn’t own the copyright on all his early stuff – The Sandman being a prime example – so why don’t we hear him shooting his mouth off in the media? “Partly I’ve been lucky,” he admits. “There have been really bad Sandman scripts which Warner Bros could have signed off on. But also, for me, it’s like walking across a field strewn with landmines. You go, ‘Okay, don’t go there.’” That’s easy to say now. Success brings

its own freedom and guarantees that aren’t available to other writers. Surely some people get dragged across the landmines whether they want to or not. “There are things that you can do,” he insists. “If you care about something that much, you put it in your fucking contract. It’s not hard.” And those who don’t? “They have no right to whinge if Hollywood pisses all over their creation. You always have the right to say ‘No’.” Then again, such is the fickle nature of the movie industry that even if you do retain control of your work, there are no guarantees of a successful outcome. Gaiman may claim, “Anything that I control, I’ll stop somebody making a crap movie,” but the irony in all this is that Stardust, the latest adaptation of his work, is, of course, deeply flawed. But maybe that’s not the point. It’s not perfect but it does, at least, respect the original material. Besides, it could have been far, far worse. Up to a dozen suitors wafted bank notes under his nose, but Gaiman wasn’t just going to roll over for anybody. He turned down an offer from Disney and at least one unnamed actress who saw it as a perfect star vehicle – for her and her boyfriend. So Gaiman may role with the ups and downs of this business but he’s not giving in or giving up. He’s bullish about rumours of trouble on the Stardust set (“That’s what we in the business technically call a lie, and that’s not even me being polite, it’s just bollocks”) but it seems fair to say that, like Alan Moore, he won’t be in the queue for the opening weekend of Zac Snyder’s Watchmen: “No, but then I’ve never had any interest in seeing a Watchmen movie. Not even back when they were talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger painted blue.” Arnie painted blue? Now there’s an idea… Matt Bochenski See page 86 for our review of Stardust

Using the internet to hone your script seems like a logical move for a vacuous action movie like Snakes on a Plane. But what if you did the same for an eccentric Brit drama?  By the time you read these words, David Mackenzie’s Hallam Foe will have opened the 2007 Edinburgh Film Festival to rapturous ovations and overzealous rounds of whooping, we suspect. It’s the story of a feral teenage boy played by Jamie Bell who decamps from his rural Scottish dwelling where his mother died in a freak boating accident to Edinburgh were he takes up a job as a kitchen hand in a large hotel. With its rum themes of voyeurism and sexual oneupmanship, Mackenzie does well to deliver a sweet-natured and loveable film which also dares to traipse through the dank quagmire of adolescence in all its gritty glory. Although, there’s a funny twist to the story… Unlike his previous films (which include 2002’s The Last Great Wilderness and 2003’s Young Adam), Mackenzie decided to go all Snakes on a Plane on our asses and post his script on the internet to gauge the reaction from the (if you’ll excuse the term) ‘blogosphere’. “The problem is, I’ve got a friend called Hugh MacLeod who is a blogger and I do whatever he asks me to do,” he says. This chap must be some buddy if he convinced Mackenzie to allow a bunch of Kevin Smith/Joss Whedon obsessives to tamper with his delicate little Brit drama. “I was very reluctant to put it online. I had butterflies in my stomach when I finally uploaded it. You don’t really know what the

ramifications are, but then when you look at who is actually downloading it and reading it, it’s a very small, tight-knit community of hardened bloggers who have very strong opinions.”  So what was the response? “They weren’t all really that interesting to be honest. In fact, some of the comments were kind of hurtful because they were coming from these people who weren’t really that well informed about the kind of films I make. In the end, I just thought that I can’t afford the emotional damage of opinionated people throwing their ideas at me so I just thought, ‘I’ve had enough’.” Talking to MacKenzie, with his ultrarelaxed yet genial manner, you get the impression that he is a filmmaker of the old school, and you can’t really see him making the decision to place his film in (perhaps) less sturdy hands. “As Hugh has said to me – and he is right – the dinosaur media do have to pay attention to what’s happening on the internet. The problem for me is that I get the impression that the nature of blogging comes from people who value their own opinions too highly and are not editing out the dross. We’re living in a world where opinion is currency and, therefore, it generates hot air and misinformation in vast quantities. As a whole, though, it is the future so filmmakers have just got to grow up and face the facts.” David Jenkins

Hallam Foe is out in cinemas now.

Moustachioed Ukrainian expat Eugene Hütz is a weird one. Born Evgen Nikolaev, he was only 14 when Chernobyl exploded and he was relocated first to Italy and then to America to start anew. Like so many US immigrants, he’s on a quest to find a sense of authenticity back in Europe, but he’s only a quarter gypsy on his grandmother’s side and she’s been assimilated into mainstream Ukrainian culture. He doesn’t speak Romany.  In the real world, Hütz is a successful fashion model, actor (he starred in Liev Schreiber’s Everything Is Illuminated), critic, grandson and founding father of gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello. He is also a bit of a heart-breaker. It’s important that you know this, otherwise you might just fall into the same trap that filmmaker Pavla Fleischer did. You might meet him at a part – him wearing nothing but skin-tight trousers and gold-toothed grin – share a

taxi ride home then never see him again. You might decide you had a ‘missed connection’ and your only recourse is to pay for his flight from New York to see you in Prague (and any other country he fancies) under the guise of making a worthy film about ‘gypsy music’. You might, then, be shocked to find that he’ll accept your offer – but bring his girlfriend along too and forbid you to film her.  It took the smitten Fleischer a whole movie (and a whole lot of money) to realise Hütz was a modern-day Pied Piper, the kind of prick tease you kick yourself for following. Fleischer even forgot to record the end of their trip. She was too busy flirting. Hütz is the living embodiment of the cliché: nice guys finish last. But it’s not like he hides it.  Every Thursday, he DJs at the Bulgarian Bar in New York where he’s straddled by girls in bum-cheek-skimming

kilts as he spins gypsy dub. Equally, you’ll see him attract an enraptured audience despite singing deeply unfashionable folk songs on the crumbling Kiev streets, as in Fleischer’s film. Even when he rocks up with a broken guitar and very British film crew to an enclosed gypsy camp in the Ukraine, you can almost see the onlookers’ pupils turn into little hearts, Looney Toon style.

And Hütz is like a cartoon. So when he appears in ex-Soviet outposts with posterperfect handlebar moustache and oozing New World chutzpah, is it any wonder people coyly approach the camera, asking in Russian, “Did he really come from here? Take me back with you.” He, of course, doesn’t notice them; too busy entertaining the next crowd before always moving on. Georgie Hobbs The Pied Piper of Hützovina is available on DVD from September 3

Adam Smith has directed videos for the likes of The Streets and Jamie T, toured with The Chemical Brothers, made documentaries about MCs and GIs, helmed the best episodes of Channel 4’s Skins, and is now gearing up to shoot his first feature film. He did not, however, write The Wealth of Nations. We caught up with Mr Smith for a chat in London’s Soho and were delighted to discover that he’s one of life’s good guys. We could wax lyrical about his work. Instead, we simply bring you seven reasons to love this man: 1. He ran away from college Smith initially started

off at the London College of Printing. They wanted him to make political films. He wanted to do live music visuals. “I left after two years. Instead of the circus I ran off with a band and some 16mm projectors” Rock ‘n’ roll — literally.

2. He’s an honorary Chemical Brother Directing visuals for Tom and Ed is part of Smith’s “heritage and history”. Not only did he used

to tour with them (his Japanese visa read ‘Occupation: Entertainer’) but he’ll be behind the picture show for their gig in Trafalgar Square on September 9.

3. He had an epiphany in Camden’s Roundhouse A decade-long career in visuals for bands, events “and spinning logos around” came to an abrupt end in north London with a show for L’Oréal. “I spent two weeks making slides saying ‘Because you can be whoever you want to be’. The epiphany came — hell, I don’t want to be doing this.” 4. He served in ’Nam The L’Oréal wake-up call coincided with Smith stumbling upon a man who ran an intriguing club. “They were all English but spent their time reenacting the Vietnam War; in Kent. I just thought, ‘That’s the film to make!’ We had to get dressed up as a documentary crew of the time for them to trust us. If someone wasn’t wearing the right underpants they were sent home.” 5. He likes music that tells a story Working with

Wiley led to Smith covering grime before anyone else had even heard of it. “I liked the fact that all these MCs were telling stories. Even if that story was just, ‘I want to shoot your mother, kidnap your brother and put him in a garage.”

6. He’s unashamedly enthusiastic about what he does “When directing Skins I realised that I love working with actors. It’s what I’m meant to do.” The series may not have been to everyone’s liking but look at Smith’s work on Episode Four and you’d have to agree with him. Directing is his destiny. 7. He’s making a film with Warp It’s still early days but we can reveal that he’s working with a boxer and a dancer, will mix real documentary footage with fiction and intends to use everything from 16mm to Super 8 to create a melting pot of textures. All we’re saying is, Corbijn, watch out… Adrian Sandiford See Adam’s images on the Chemical Brothers’ September tour. Skins is out on DVD on September 24

A midget zombie eating intestines and five other unforgettable sights from Omar Khan, director of Zibahkhana. There’s ‘guerrilla filmmaking’, and then there’s making movies in a city where the last cinema was razed to the ground by Islamic extremists at the height of monsoon season and during an outbreak of dengue fever. Omar Ali Kahn, director of Pakistan’s first ever zombie flick, Zibahkhana, makes the Blair Witch team look like a bunch of little girls at a tea party. At its peak in the ’60s and ’70s, the Lahore-based film industry, or ‘Lollywood’ as it’s known, filled cinemas with a combination of anti-Western romps and good-natured sleaze. Since then, however, the election of a Taliban-style government in the north-western area of Pakistan, plus an influx of pirated Bollywood films, has all but ground the local industry to a halt. Hopefully, zombies won’t be the only thing Zibahkhana brings back to life. With nods to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its ‘brownsploitation’ predecessors, it tells of five teenagers who are attacked by undead villagers on their

way to a rock concert. Packed with cultureclash moments, it’s an exhilarating, splattertastic gorefest and geo-political education in one. Here’s a few oddities you’re unlikely to see again: People Eating Raw Sheep Intestines “The entire butcher shop was brought to the set,” says Kahn, on the refreshingly CGI-free gore. “All the zombies were chomping on real, nasty intestines.” Kahn’s experience blending all-natural ice cream at his café chain also paid off: “The whisks did come in handy here and there.” A Film Set That’s Also A Crime Scene Zombie movies aren’t usually noted for their realism, but so authentically sinister were Zibahkhana’s sets that a real-life murderer mistook them for a dumping ground. “The police found two corpses the day after we finished shooting,” reveals Kahn. “We never found out who was responsible.” The Return of Lollywood Legend Rehan Convincing Pakistan’s answer to Christopher Lee to return to the screen after a 28-year absence was quite a coup for Kahn. Best

remembered as Dracula in the 1967 Pakistani horror classic The Living Corpse, Rehan plays a creepy tea vendor in Zibahkhana. “The whole village had gathered round to watch the shoot,” says Kahn. “After he did his scene they burst into spontaneous applause.” An Undead Blonde Bombshell “People have accused Baba Gulzar of being a fake blonde,” says Kahn of the bit-part actor who plays a particularly striking zombie. “Come and say that in front of the guy and he’ll punch you in the eye.” A Serial Killer In A Burkha “All the best slasher movies had masked killers,” explains Kahn. “It works for me as an addition to the Freddies and the Leatherfaces.” And as for any potential controversy? “I’ve had people in hijab come up to me and say they enjoyed the film. There’s no targeting of Islam. The underlying message is in fact that the good Muslim girl is protected.” Ellen E Jones For information on upcoming screenings of Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground) see www.mondomacabrodvd.com

Tempting Fate is one thing, but I now realise that writing a lead character with a broken ankle into a short film is tantamount to sending Fate an embossed dinner invitation, complete with free suit hire and a complimentary pyramid of Ferrero Rochers. After a lacklustre casting session at Hollyoaks HQ – the highlight of which was an unexpected sighting of the legendary Grange Hill school building – we weren’t a million miles closer to assembling the cast of our dreams. Fortunately a chance encounter with a member of comedy group The Cowards (recently of Radio 4 and BBC 3 fame) allowed us to strike a deal with a genuinely top leading man. With everything set for a May shoot, I shouldn’t have been surprised to get a phone call in April with the news that our newfound lead had suffered an inebriated altercation with a piece of pavement, resulting in a compound fracture of his elbow. It’s not easy to throw yourself into a part involving the use of crutches

when your right arm is basted to the hilt in plaster of Paris. By now Fate was frankly relieving itself all over our production plans. The irony was not lost on me when, while playing football a few weeks later, my co-producer Steve shattered his ankle into a multitude of distantly related pieces. With one collaborator unable to use crutches and another incapable of getting around without them, it looked like things couldn’t get a lot worse for the remaining members of the team. Then again, as any director will tell you, solidarity is everything in the filmmaking process. It was clearly meant to be, then, that I should complete our project’s hat-trick of ailments by succumbing to a mystery virus and landing myself in hospital for a week of inconclusive tests and unnecessary surgery. I emerged blinking into the sunlight 10 days later, with one appendix fewer than I remembered having, and a newly psychedelic shooting script to work

from. Useful tip #612: Never attempt a redraft while on a morphine drip. I’d like to report that my determination to complete the shoot on schedule was undiminished by the fact that our production team now qualified for NHS Bandage Miles. Unfortunately, short of hiring a fleet of gurneys to wheel the cast and crew onto the set, the prospect of a May shoot was a certified impossibility. On the plus side, our entirely healthy composer managed to deliver a title track several weeks ahead of schedule, leaving us in the bizarre position of polishing a soundtrack before having a single reel of rushes to inspect. Still, there’s nothing quite like doing things differently and with a little bit of extra spice to keep the filmmaking process interesting. Just as long as our location hasn’t been razed to the ground by a marauding horde of newly unemployed doctors, there’s even talk that we’ll be in the edit suite by Christmas. Ho ho ho. Mike Brett

Hamburg may be a shadow of its former self, its stevedores displaced by stag nights, but it still retains the sort of artistic vibrance that reveals Shoreditch’s trust fund bohemia for the sham it is. Witness Hamburg’s International Film Festival; low-key, proudly alternative and unique. Whereas other festivals juxtapose individual shorts, Hamburg pitches whole programmes against each other. Films from the Lebanon compete with disturbing and hilarious archive footage (such as 1908’s A Bushman Speaks into the Phonograph), shots of microscopic scientific phenomena set to electronica, and gritty documentaries on the lot of the worker worldwide.

The festival’s main programmes of fiction shorts were divided into German, International, and No Budget competitions. While the quality was sometimes inconsistent, by far the best programme was No Budget which included a fantastic selection of psychadelic experimentia and the standout Ronak, an Iranian film about a blind man who survives by repairing tape recorders. Scorching weather may have driven many into the cinemas simply for the air conditioning, but they had good reason to stay. James Bramble

The 2007 Britdoc festival dodged summer floods and took place between July 25-27 beneath the somewhat damp but still dreaming spires of Oxford. The ‘industry’ flavour of this festival meant the biggest crowds and buzz were generated by the networking and funding forums, especially a Britdoc version of Dragons’ Den. Twelve plucky would-be-filmmakers pitched their ideas to an international panel of funders and distributors, watched by delegates packed into the University’s ancient Sheldonian Theatre. The founder of the website www.soyouvebeendumped.com had the bean-counters swooning at the commercial possibilities of her documentary idea and was told, “Get yourself to Hollywood and get yourself an agent; this is your retirement fund!” The winner of the prize for the best pitch, a tankard jammed with £1000 in notes, was Paul Berceller with a fascinating project about murder, conspiracy and the CIA named Through a Glass Darkly (allegations that the shocking title theft finally killed off Ingmar Bergman are as-yet unproven). The emphasis on deal-making shouldn’t imply the films themselves were forgotten, a rewardingly diverse selection of the best of recent documentaries was screened. What Would Jesus Buy? directed by Rob VanAlkemade and produced by Morgan

Spurlock was a film as high-octane and frenetic as its subject matter – the mission of the self-styled Reverend Billy and his Church of No Shopping to save the American public from their lemminglike Christmas rush down to the Malls and off into debt. Bravely resisting the temptation to buy into hype or hyperbole was Alejandro Landes’ Cocalero. When the indigenous candidate Evo Morales, to whom Landes had been given unprecedented access, pulled-off his epoch-making victory in Bolivia’s presidential elections, the filmmaker must have considered using his footage to create a run-of-the-mill triumph-of-the-underdog biopic. Instead, Landes stood firm and produced a balanced and insightful portrait, hinting at both the charisma that propels this ex-coca farmer towards greatness and the character flaws that could lead to another dictatorship. The Devil Came on Horseback won the international prize. Directors Anne Sundberg and Ricki Stern documented the carnage of the Darfur crisis with horrifying completeness using thousands of images obtained from a military observer with the African Union whose ‘access all areas’ role had taken him to places no journalist could reach. The winner of the British competition, Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go directed by Kim

Longinotto, was about Mulberry Bush, a school for children deemed beyond the help of other institutions. Our personal favourite, The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories won only an honourable mention. Director Andrey Paounov allows your impression of the small Bulgarian town of Belene to develop slowly as you absorb the urban and rural landscapes and whimsically staged tableaux of local citizens chatting among themselves. Gradually, the feeling grows that this locality, with its idiosyncratic inhabitants praying for the re-opening of the local nuclear power station and obsessing about mosquitoes, might be plagued by more virulent ills. Beauty and horror stand cheek-by-jowl at every level of the film: notably, in the sensitive depiction of a daughter mourning the passing of her mother (who turns out to be a concentration camp guard convicted of murder); and in the closing shots of children swooping on foot and on bicycles through gorgeous, billowing, cumulo-nimbus clouds of toxic insecticide pouring from the back of the municipal fumigation truck. Britdoc offers a fascinating insight into the whole process of documentary film-making. We’re already planning a pitch for our assault on the den of next year’s dragons. Jonathan Brant

Things have got a little easier since the Sarajevo Film Festival’s inaugural year. Back in 1995, festival director Mirsad Purivatra risked life and limb to smuggle a copy of Pulp Fiction through enemy lines. Twelve years on, film tourists are starting to pour in but Sarajevo’s indomitable spirit remains a refreshing departure from the bloated excesses of Cannes, with its plastic surgery, pretension and PR stunts. Somehow you can’t picture Jerry Seinfeld promoting his new movie by deathsliding in between bullet-scarred Balkan apartment blocks in a bumble bee costume, as he did at this year’s jolly on the Côte d’Azur. Bees or no bees, an audible buzz is growing in Sarajevo as the festival’s activities continue to fuel a cultural renaissance in the city. One year-round initiative funds a mobile cinema to tour outlying villages, while children enjoy their own mini-festival in the summer, combining ice-cream sundaes and directorial seminars. After a wellreceived screening of Lemony Snicket’s Series

of Unfortunate Events back in 2005, director Brad Silberling found himself in the unusual position of being more interesting to a group of youngsters than the huge bowls of jelly babies dotted around the interview room. This year’s festival sees Jeremy Irons take on the mantle of Jury President, while upcoming filmmakers from across the region share screen time with the likes of Gus van Sant’s Paranoid Park, Carlos Reygadas’ acclaimed Silent Light and Cannes Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Given Sarajevo’s unshakeable ability to flourish against the odds, don’t be surprised if Mirsad Purivatra pulls off an unscheduled screening of Tarantino’s Deathproof at the last. With the Sarajevo festival closing on August 25, die-hard film fans have a little less than a week to hail a bus to Dubrovnik, hop a few islands up the Croatian coast towards Split, and then take an overnight ferry to Chioggia. Venice’s Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica takes place a little

way down the coast and is a must-visit event, overflowing with upcoming releases. Just try to get there before run-off from the waters of Tewkesbury sinks the world’s most mesmeric floating museum.

In the pecking order of European film festivals, Venice is second only to Cannes, both in terms of glamour (read: pairs of sunglasses per square foot) and the profile of the films on offer. Big events scheduled for this year include an opening night screening of Joe Wright’s Atonement, Andrew Dominik’s tongue-twisting The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, as well as returns from Ken Loach, Ang Lee and Wes Anderson. Just remember that Italian audiences are never afraid to vocalise their feelings about the films on show; if passions run as high as they did during last year’s screenings of World Trade Center and The Fountain (where there was an actual critic-on-critic bitch fight), you’d be well advised to pack your body armour along with the sun cream. Mike Brett

Rushes Soho Shorts has sometimes felt like something of an industry beanfeast, a self-congratulatory exercise for assorted media types content to knock back free beer and talk over some short films.  No longer. This years Rushes embraced the variety of talent in the short film sector like no other, reaching out to old favourites such as Shooting People, Encounters, Straight 8, CobraVision and Dazzle, and giving them a seat on its long, expensive, chaise longue. The festival offered free classes on filming, pitching , funding and promoting, in addition to networking events and a panoply of screenings. It’s an approach that can only bolster the festival’s credentials in a market where the festivals and distributors of short film seem to be increasingly joining forces. Here’s to it going from strength to strength in that spirit. James Bramble Rushes Soho Shorts ran from July 28 – August 3 in London’s West End.

Raindance has long been the most rock ‘n’ roll of the country’s main film festivals, championing independent filmmaking no matter how rough and ready. This year it formalises that marriage by adding protopunk luminaries Iggy Pop and Mick Jones to a jury which has previously featured Lou Reed and Marky Ramone. Other jurists include director of last year’s ace Red Road, Andrea Arnold and Brit cinematographer, Brian Tufano. As well as showing independent films

from around the world, the festival will host the usual array of special events including masterclasses, Q&A sessions with industry professionals, its renowned pitching event and one-off versions of the courses they run year-round. In 2006, the festival showcased over 90 features and 160 shorts from over 40 countries, attracting in excess of 10,000 people. James Bramble Raindance will take place from September 25 – October 7 in London’s West End.

In the sterile Hampshire town of Basingstoke, Zooms and Happy Feet were once dispensed to the disconsolate tones of Anton Karas’ zither-based theme from The Third Man. An odd choice, perhaps, but the laziest of pub vox pops reveals hundreds of childhoods subverted by ding-a-ling discordances from the Battle Of The Planets title music to an off-key ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ that lent the nursery rhyme all the charm of Rose West guesting on Pipkins. For filmmakers, the ice cream man and his frigid world was never going to rock the multiplexes, but the bourgeois fantasy of the lone provider of nature-conquering luxuries is ripe for subversion. The truly incisive vanilla epic defies expectation and is unafraid to gaze on the isolation of the ice cream man whose existential dislocation is of a type with Travis Bickle’s slow-burning rage. They are willing, in other words, to confront God’s Lonely Van. Raymond, the Greek chorus of Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog (1999), enjoys a kind of Gallic noblesse as he observes the life of Forest Whitaker’s modern-day Samurai from the Olympian serenity of his van. He is of the world and yet apart from it by virtue of three removable steps and a slidey window. Amid the pseudo-mystical, beautifully silly conceit of the movie, Raymond is a calm centre. The fact that he speaks no English and sells precious little ice cream would clearly be a problem in the real world, but in Jarmusch’s mythical landscape he remains a philosopher, freed from earthly bounds by his creamy trade. His mirror image is Steve Buscemi’s Tommy, the snaggle-toothed loser of Trees Lounge (1996), for whom peddling the cold stuff on an uncle’s ice cream round offers his only shot at freedom. Sadly, all it introduces him to is pie-faced i-D jailbait Chloe Sevigny, although in fairness and with visible effort, she for once hits ‘Not Bad’ on the actometer. In the recesses of the titular lounge, Tommy was a great loser, one of the best. But as an ice cream vendor contemplating a sweaty bunk-up with his pregnant ex-girlfriend’s little sister, it’s impossible not to feel that his travails have reached a nadir. Whatever the movie’s intention, the reality – and the love – is in the bar scenes, uncannily capturing the moment when the sense of cheeky transgression that comes with murky daytime drinking tips over into a befuddled intoxication tinged with invulnerability; a damning combination in anyone’s book. In 1984’s Comfort and Joy, Bill Forsyth succumbed to the lure of the Cornetto saga, with Bill ‘Wryman’ Paterson cast as a man

in a mid-life crisis waving goodbye to his missus, house and career before a chance encounter with an ice cream selling siren gives him something to live for. The plot was right there on his doorstep, but Forsyth’s quirky love is hard to swallow. Describing it as ‘bittersweet’ would probably be a compliment to the director’s whimsy-addled brain, but this was based around actual events: a turf war on Glasgow’s ice cream van routes that escalated from pick-axe handles and shotguns to the deaths of six family members in an arson attack. Needless to say, the frivolity misfires badly. Among all this lonely soul-searching, Ice Cream Man (1995) stands out, and not just for its inappropriate juxtaposition of cannibalism and Goonies-style kiddie detectives. Nor is it simply the casting of gonad-headed Clint Howard, whose previous career best was alongside Scott Bakula in the short-lived TV spin-off of Japanoia classic Gung-Ho, following a minor role in the original movie shot by his brother Ron. Rather, Ice Cream Man at last does away with notions of spirituality and explores the vast potential for evil by men to whom the young and innocent willingly flock. Grinding dead boys and doggies alike into his product, the damaged Gregory peddles his wares through a Spielbergian suburbia, seeking closure for witnessing a mob hit on his favourite vendor as a child by chasing kids with cones until they die in a variety of horrible but consistently gelato-related ways. The tragic/amusing presence of Olivia Hussey and David Warner offset the inexplicable presence of one character who is clearly intended to be the gang’s obligatory ‘fat kid’, but who is played by a pencil-necked boy with a lot of padding under his jumper. Despite director Norman Apstein’s assertion to Variety that he was pushing boundaries – “This movie is unique because it’s for kids!” – the film shitcanned at the box office. For Norman, his foray into the mainstream was over, and as alter ego Paul Norman he returned to the bongo flicks he knew best, although at time of press Sperm Bitches hasn’t won any awards either. Paul Fairclough

See Also... Ice Cream in Alex For America’s dry states, J Lee Thompson reshot the climactic drinking scene of his desert war classic, Ice Cold In Alex, in a mocked up Malt Shop with Knickerbocker Glories. After 15 takes, actor John Mills had a terrible ice cream headache.

This Is Shane Meadows Box Set (1997-2006) Dir: Shane Meadows Available: September 3

Before Polly Toynbee (or whoever) made up the word ‘chav’, Shane Meadows cast his first film, TwentyFourSeven full of them. That was 1997 and finally British cinema fans had a real reason to celebrate. A decade later Meadows gave them another; the pro-punk, anti-Thatcher, This Is England, which steel-toe-stomped its way to the top of the box office charts. Mid-way, he gave us two more, A Room for Romeo Brass (1999) and Dead Man’s Shoes (2004). Mostly set on council estates, his films are chocka with chavs. Even his minor characters are marked by their bruised egos, idiosyncratic names (Fag Ash, Milky, Gadgit), fucked-up biographies and skewed Midland accents. They hang out at bus stops, scrabble over the last few soggy chips and dream about going on holiday. To Scarborough. They don’t have dads, make bad ones themselves and are looking for someone to blame. Their limited options include the Tories, immigrants, drugs or all three. Despite wearing ‘My First Film’ on its sleeve (black and white, voice over narration to provide backstory, shoestring budget), TwentyFourSeven is still one hell of a debut. With a deep earnestness, there’s an intimacy between the ragged, predominantly male cast more reminiscent of a play than a film. There’s a reason why you feel like it’s your own dad being beaten when Meadows’ men unleash the inevitable brutality on Bob Hoskins’ boxing instructor – even from the start, his talent for creating honest characters is unabashed. Check out, Three Tears For Jimmy Prophet – an early Meadows short starring Paddy Considine as a self-destructive father filled with regret, included here in the extras. In A Room For Romeo Brass, Considine returns to play the world’s worst flirt. As ex-army loon, Morell, he befriends two pre-teen boys to woo one of their sisters. Emotionally ill-equipped to deal with rejection, he does his best to destroy some lives while Frank Harper plays a Jimmy Prophet-style father to heart-breaking effect. In his superb homage to the spaghetti western, Meadows offers up a full English thriller, Dead Man’s Shoes. Again starring Considine as a kind of Clint Eastwood hardnut, you can forget all about Meadow’s Once Upon A Time In The Midlands (this boxset certainly has) and watch this on repeat. PS: great soundtrack. Last but not least, This Is England comes with a whole DVD of extras. Choice cuts include behind the scenes footage of Smell kissing 11-year-old Shaun and the little lad getting his first skinhead. Bless. Georgie Hobbs

Real Outlaws (2007) Dir: Peter Crystal Available: Now   This film would no doubt like you to think that it’s a gritty, no-holds barred documentary which exposes the shocking casual violence that ls plagues the mean streets of Britain, then venerates the brave individua it who tackle this epidemic by taking the law into their own hands. What actually delivers is some moronic musings from bouncers and probation officers, a cringeworthy, expletive-laden narration courtesy of mockney goon-for-hire Alan Ford (Snatch, Lock Stock), and seemingly endless CCTV footage of people beating the shit out of each other. Quite why this sub-Channel Five toss was deemed worthy of a DVD release is anyone’s guess. Paul O’Callaghan

Jacques Becker Classics: Casque D’Or (1952) Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954) Le Trou (1960) Dir: Jacques Becker Available: Now

be That Jacques Becker isn’t as well known as he deserves should resolved by the (individual) DVD releases of these beautiful masterpieces. It may be that his work feels faintly familiar, but a closer look immediately rectifies any misconceptions. Touchez pas au Grisbi le (‘Hands off the Loot’) was a big influence on Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob Flambeur (1956), and has Jean Gabin in fine form as an ageing gangster planning his retirement. Costume drama Casque d’Or reunites Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani from Max Ophüls’ La Ronde (1950) for a tale of doomed love among Paris’ ‘apache’ hoodlums. And Beckers final film, Le Trou, meticulously details the minutiae of prison life s and a planned escape, much like Robert Bresson’s equally wondrou y A Man Escaped (1956). All three possess a distinct, bittersweet sensibilit by and are perfectly measured, full of luminous close-ups inspired Becker’s own mentor, Jean Renoir. Jonas Milk

The Contract (2006) Dir: Bruce Beresford Available: Now

a In which John Cusack and Morgan Freeman slop their sauce all over mega-tonne turkey. Cusack plays Chris Keene, a damaged ex-cop who tries to re-connect with his wayward teenage son by taking him hiking, only to have his Hallmark moment spoiled when they stumble upon Frank to Cordell, an escaped convict played by Freeman. Keene is determined of return Cordell to police custody, if only they could find their way out the woods... Part The River Wild with a dash of Deliverance, The Contract lacks the camp wit of the former or the genuine terror of the latter. Freeman is more genial grandpa than emotionally detached killer, which a isn’t helped by a laboured script that turns a cat-and-mouse game into turtle-and-snail snoozeathon. Henry Barnes

Blue (1993) Dir: Derek Jarman Available: Now

a The last film by the late, great British auteur Derek Jarman is provocatively avant-garde affair. Against a plain blue screen, the director’s experiences of AIDS is relayed by several distinct voices, whilst an eclectic score ensures that the general mood of intense a claustrophobia is punctuated with moments of elation. The concept of blank screen serving as a metaphor for Jarman’s encroaching blindness may to sound obvious and heavy-handed, but the experience is akin as inhabiting the mindset of this truly remarkable artist. Included of an extra on this DVD release is Glitterbug, a fascinating document Jarman’s life and times assembled from 20 years’ worth of Super-8 footage. Paul O’Callaghan

10th & Wolf (2006) Dir: Robert Moresco Available: Now

A gang of Italian-American childhood friends led by a charming sociopath (Giovanni Ribisi) reunites, only to find that their drug-dealing street-life clashes with the previous generation’s (James Old Country ways. Meanwhile one of their number Marsden - way out of his depth) has been compromised by the cops and must rat on the people he’s come to love as family. Stereotypes abound – at one point, a dinner party is stopped to allow one of the diners to sing some opera, and it all ends with a highly improbable act of vengeance by a dying man with a grenade. To be kind we’ll call 10th and Wolf a misguided homage to the rich and ever-growing canon of & gangster tales that have hit both TV and movie screens. It’s either that or a complete ripoff. Henry Barnes

Fast Food Nation (2006) Dir: Richard Linklater Available: Now

Like the head of an unemployed scientist, this Richard Linklater adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s acclaimed food industry exposé is full of ideas, but ultimately doesn’t work. Leaving aside the bizarre decision to dramatise a non-fiction book which could have made a thumping documentary, the film isn’t helped by a creaking subtext which is marginally less nuanced than a Jeremy Clarkson column on climate change. Any guesses as to what will happen to the two wide-eyed immigrant workers who pass a one-armed supervisor on their first day of work at the massive, poorly-regulated meat packing factory? Yes, the film’s socially educative aim is laudable – heck, give us a petition against irresponsible industrialised food production and we’ll sign it. Just please don’t make us watch Fast Food Nation again. Mike Brett

Haxan – Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) Dir: Benjamin Christensen Available: September 24   When originally released in 1922, this part-dramatised documentary on the genesis of witchcraft and superstition in the middle-ages essentially ended the career of director Benjamin Christensen. Dark representations of Satan, witches and torture shot through blood red filters possessed far too much of a sinister subject matter for cinema’s early audiences. Revived in 1968 with William Burroughs’ stern voiceover atop an unsettling avant-garde jazz score by Jean-Luc Ponty, the project became a beautiful meditation on the role of religious belief and the understanding of mental illness, and has since found favour with modern audiences. While a documentary at its core, Haxan set many of the parameters and conventions for horror films and remains a defining text of cinematic representations of evil and human understanding. Josh Widdicombe

Half Nelson (2007) Dir. Ryan Fleck Available: September 24

Director Ryan Fleck and star Ryan Gosling conspire to produce a high school drama that might just be the most honest examination of drugs, youth and inner-city living for a long, long time. Brilliantly subverting the notion of the crusading white teacher, Gosling plays strung out junkie Dan Dunne, who strikes up an unusual and giddily unhealthy relationship with 13-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps) after she catches him smoking crack in the bathroom. What follows is an intricately worked, multi-faceted drama that plots an expert line between preachy clichés, ghetto posturing and drugs-are-bad dramatics. Check the look in Epps’ and Gosling’s eyes when they end up on either side of a deal in a seedy motel. Beautiful stuff. DVD extras are unconfirmed as yet, but Fleck is going to want his film to come fully loaded. Matt Bochenski

Inland Empire (2006) Dir: David Lynch Available: Now

Before making Mulholland Drive, David Lynch considered filming the book Goddess: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe. He took inspiration from the Old Hollywood classic Sunset Boulevard in which a grasping young actor becomes a gigolo for an ageing actress. Inland Empire shows how Hollywood makes gigolos of us all. The film features a television sitcom which stars a family of rabbits. Everything they say is welcomed with canned laughter. In criticising the tyranny of a Hollywood that has vehemently kept him out, Lynch goes to its victims and what they must do to be kept in the picture. His actresses are ’50s pin-ups, with bodies so sexual in comparison to the skinny static of modern day that it feels perverse. When he films women naked (which he often does) it is not in panting voyeurism but in hyper reality, what we used to call plain old every day. The sex scene in Inland Empire is grotesque, or should that be human? It has certainly not been thrown in the mix for the sake of realism. The lesbianism of his female characters is an affront to men, a call for camaraderie. When the group of actresses in Inland Empire discuss their futures, which rest on their breasts, one lifts up her T-shirt, “Pretty baby,” they say, “Tits and ass,” they say. Lynch says he is interested in “a woman in trouble” and his films show a compassion for the exploitation of women in movies, the actresses and what they are asked to represent. Fire Walk With Me shows a father unable to control his sexual thoughts, and overtaken by dark energy, he abuses his daughter. The depiction of humanity in Sex in the City is more reprehensible, more inhuman than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is more dangerous. Holly Grigg-Spall Sergei Eisenstein: VOLUME 1 (1925-1927) DIR: Sergei Eisenstein Available: Now

Without Sergei Eisenstein, modern cinema as we know it would simply not exist. Alongside Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), FW Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), Battleship Potemkin laid the foundations for the entire language of contemporary film. This Tartan volume collects Eisenstein’s definitive masterpiece with two other entries from his early career. Strike! (1924) revolves around a peaceful factory protest that descends into a massacre. While it lacks the strong narrative threads of the other films here, the broad mix of visual tricks – including a classic moment where a man’s face is compared to that of an owl – means that this is a decent jumping-in point for wary newcomers. Battleship Potemkin (1925) is based upon the real-life mutiny of a naval crew who inspired a rebellion against the Tsarist regime. Among its many pleasures is the famous Odessa Steps sequence, where a dying mother sends her pram careering downhill. After 82 years, it remains essential viewing. Finally we have October (1927), commissioned to celebrate the decade anniversary of the communist revolution. It tends to sit in the shadow of its celebrated predecessor – Stalin didn’t much like it either – but the style here is generally more experimental than the previous two films, which makes for interesting comparisons. Plus, you can always say it’s your favourite to impress people at parties. It would be naïve to infer that silent, montage-heavy cinema is everyone’s cup of tea, but the truth is that these films are surprisingly easy to enjoy. This release offers new soundtracks for Strike! and Potemkin for those who don’t like the original scores, but it goes without saying that the main draw is getting yourself a decent print of some of history’s most iconic film imagery. Anyone with half an interest in the medium owes it to themselves to give it a go: the chances are it’ll rock your world. Neon Kelly

After over a decade bombarding the charts, French electro-house duo Daft Punk have decided to turn their hands to filmmaking with their new project, Electroma.

For the benefit of many with ‘Whatthe-fuck-is-that-all-about?’ reactions, the film plays out as an extended music video, albeit sans the Punk’s trademark beats and bleeps. It’s the story of two robots and their quest to become human. After driving into a town populated by robots living a suburban existence, they stroll on in to the local hi-tech lab to be fitted with some natty human masks. They’re soon strutting around town looking like something out of a bank clerk’s worst nightmare, only to find themselves chased out of Robotville as their new faces melt in the blazing sun. Setting out on a trek into the desert, they ultimately choose self-destruction as their dream lies in tatters. Confused? Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo laid out their bizarre vision to LWLies. “We are not aiming for an audience, we are just expressing ourselves,” says a resolute Homem-Christo. “It is obscure in terms of the mainstream cinema and music industry,” adds Bangalter, “but if you look at it from an artistic point of view, it’s not as obscure as some other artists or photographers. It is on a limited release as it doesn’t fit with the regular channels of mainstream culture. It’s not an intellectual film; it’s more a psychedelic, sensual experience.

“We would say we are making music for the eyes that people can experience without really thinking. It’s not at all intelligent. It only triggers some kind of physical and emotional reaction.” That’s all well and good, of course, but others may still be scratching their heads as to what the film is all about. “The essential theme, to be really broad, is this reflection of technology and humanity and how they react,” says Bangalter. “The robots are a good metaphor for the integration of technology and life because they are almost a hybrid of the two – even though they are not human at all,” he adds. “Robots are really sexy, stylish and exciting but on the other hand, they are not characters, they are just a machine, they are cold and completely fake. “What is more interesting for us is the audience. What can they imprint on the characters? To what extent are people moved by the robots? What instinctive drive does the audience as humans have to imprint some motivation onto those machines?” So, as the viewer, it’s up to you to find your own meaning behind this strange experiment in automatronic psychedelia. With no dialogue whatsoever, you don’t really have much choice. Just expect many long, drawn out scenic shots, various depths of symbolism and some pretty damn freaky robots. Ed Andrews Electroma is out on DVD on September 24

Romuald et Juliette (1989) Dir: Coline Serreau Available: September 17

As you might guess from its title, the subject of Romuald et Juliette is an unlikely romance, this time between the (rich, white) president of a yoghurt empire, and his (poor, black) cleaning lady. Likewise there are few surprises in the plot but, if you can look past the odd cliché, the charming lead performances (who couldn’t fall for Firmine Richard making her middle-aged debut as the strong hearted mother-of-five Juliette, or Daniel Auteuil as the dynamic but deluded Romuald?) make this a deservedly-named classic of its genre. So if ‘’80s French rom-com’ doesn’t sound like the recipe for a great night in, you might be in for a surprise after all. Sally Skinner

Take Care Of My Cat (2001) Dir: Jae-eun Jeong Available: September 3

Sometimes in film you get a moment so exquisitely observed, it has the hallmark of real life. And sometimes you get a film composed entirely of such moments, like this quietly beautiful portrait of a group of five former school friends entering adulthood in small town Korea. Detailed, intricate, and lovingly crafted, Take Care Of My Cat has much in common with the mosaic-like textiles designed by one of the main characters. But whereas these are declared “a little boring” to make, the director’s affection for her subject is obvious, and it’s precisely the everyday texture of her creation that makes it so absorbing. Sally Skinner

Play (2005) Dir: Alicia Scherson Available: Now

This rather odd Chilean comedy picked up a smattering of awards on the indie festival circuit, and it’s not hard to see why. Our heroine is the reclusive Cristina, a lonely nurse who spends her days caring for a mute old man and hanging around the local arcade. The chance discovery of a briefcase sends Cristina in search of its mystery owner – a jilted architect named Tristán. Meanwhile Tristán has problems of his own: his job is in jeopardy and a Lothario magician is banging his blind mother. The ensuing love story is both playfully surreal and gently moving, and it’s beautifully shot too. Neon Kelly

After the Wedding (2006) Dir: Susanne Bier Available: Now

Personal sacrifice and regret abound in this superior offering from Denmark mapping the reconnection of several divergent lives. After the Wedding just missed out on the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it contains a similar depth of compassion and careful observation as the eventual victor, The Lives of Others. Mads Mikkelsen is a socially awkward aid worker invited back to Denmark for a donation that could salvage his struggling hostel. Once back in Europe, however, things begin to unravel, and the combination of ostentatious wealth together with the reappearance of an old flame render him so displeased that it would not have been a surprise to see a Le Chiffre-esque red tear moisten his closely shot features. Although it occasionally veers towards melodrama, excellent performances throughout ensure that the poignancy of the film’s denouement is definitively more Bier than Bond. Ed Owles

Les Bronzés (1978) Dir: Patrice Leconte Available: September 17

The Family Friend (2006) Dir: Paolo Sorrentino Available: Now

Following the high jinks of a group of Club Med tourists over seven days and seven nights on the Ivory Coast, Les Bronzés is about as much fun as being there yourself. Ninety-four minutes of heaven for fans of enforced, group-based fun, boat-trips, catchphrases and Lotharios with receding hairlines. Ninety-four minutes of joyless banality for the rest of us. A massive hit on home-turf when it first appeared in 1978, Les Bronzés quickly became a staple of lowbrow culture in France. A bit like a brazen version of the Carry On films, swapping innuendo for free love and plenty of scandalous ’70s swimwear. Whatever floats your boat. Sally Skinner

‘Never trust a man wearing a potato-lined bandana’ is the moral of this latest offering from maverick Italian director Paolo Sorrentino. Stylish and unnerving, The Family Friend charts the darkly comic travails of ageing loan shark Geremia De Geremei (Giacomo Rizzo) as he conspires with a line dance-loving accomplice to build a vast stash of euros. Things begin to unravel for the marvellously cantankerous Geremia though, as he falls for the stunning daughter of one of his ‘clients’ (Laura Chiatti), who proves more than a match for his perverted avarice. Charmingly surreal, this caper will keep you hooked right up until its bittersweet finale. Ed Owles

Jindabyne (2006) Dir: Ray Lawrence Available: September 17

Off The Black (2006) Dir: James Ponsoldt Available: Now

The vast Australian landscape plays a leading role in Jindabyne, and a brooding backdrop for the tensions of a small town community that are as deeply-riven as the countryside itself. Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne give expert performances as the couple at the centre of events when a testosterone-fuelled fishing trip is stymied by Byrne’s discovery of a murdered Aboriginal woman. Cue much twitching of curtains as locals are horrified and unsurprised in equal measure by the men’s decision to continue fishing for three days. Ultimately, the murder becomes a sideshow for an intriguing exploration of the prejudice and grief that emerge when our darkest transgressions float to the surface. Ed Owles

Nick Nolte plays an alcoholic baseball umpire in this debut from the impressively young Ponsoldt (26 at the time of shooting). The film charts Nolte’s burgeoning relationship with a young pitcher (Trevor Morgan) who reminds him of the son he used to have, and their mutual efforts to offset some hefty emotional baggage. The actors do their best with a sleepy, homespun script, and the discordant love-of-sorts that develops between the two leads is unusual enough to be sporadically diverting. Unfortunately, both Nolte and the plotline too frequently slip into an almost catatonic stupor that, like Morgan’s barnet, is eerily reminiscent of Dawson’s Creek in its heyday. Ed Owles

Prospects for planet earth have moved into nearapocalyptic territory in this post-Inconvenient Truth era. While Powerpoint documentaries might begin to show us where we’re heading, the horror genre is now swooping in to bludgeon our eyes with even scarier prospects.

Global warming thaws out malevolent ghostly unknowns in Larry Fessenden’s Alaskan eco-chiller The Last Winter (2006). Luckily, it also heats up Ron Perlman’s scene-chewing acting chops as the uncompromising oil man, giving this claustrophobic ensemble piece some real heft. Reminiscent of Howard Hawk’s The Thing, it concentrates on group dynamics in an isolated northern outpost with the ‘story’ and its unknown terror taking a back seat. Meanwhile, in some small town, more enviro-neglect reaps beaked havoc, from the coverup of sickly livestock by stoic Mennonite isolationists in Kaw (2007). The collective name for a group of ravens is ‘an unkindness’, and it seems the filmmakers have done their ornithological homework as they turn this into the understatement of the year. After contracting mad cow disease through their carnivorous cravings, they swarm, maim and kill the townsfolk. Familiarity to a certain Hitchcock classic is underlined with the casting of Rod Taylor, who also starred in The Birds. More disease tests the preparedness of the citizenry in The Zombie Diaries (2006). Presumably well-suited to their budgetary needs, it is shot on DV, with a fauxdocumentary approach chronicling the effects of a zombie outbreak in London. Following the imaginative 28 Days Later ultimately cripples the chances of making any headway in this revived genre, while Dead and Deader (2006) fairs only slightly better in its kick at the undead can. In this ‘zomedy’, Dean Cain from television’s Superman goes for his own niche typecast – as the actor who plays guys who can’t get wounded by bullets. Every zombie film needs its twist, and here it’s that Lt. Bobby Quinn (Cain) is, gasp, only part-zombie. It’s also set in the classic buddymovie mould, as he ‘humourously’ fights for a cure with his wisecracking sidekick, Guy Tory. Desperation for a cure also features in The Thirst (2006), with cancer and addiction getting the quick fix as once-suffering protagonists transform into blood sucking vampires living the eternal vida loca. Alas, we learn that serious matters such as terminal illness and lost love have no easy solution, and much like the film itself, become insufferable albatrosses around their (bloody) necks. Last, a comedy horror shifting focus from the ecological to the sociological. Murder Party (2007) skewers the easy-target art scene crowd through a nifty bloodsoaked parody for the Napolean Dynamite crowd. Asked for puns by his humour-seeking tormentors, the murderee (Chris Sharp) expresses that, unlike most horror film victims these days, he “doesn’t deserve to be pun-ished”. (B)arf. Simon Mercer

Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006) Dir: Bobcat Goldthwait Available: Now

It was probably not a good idea for Amy (Melinda Page Hamilton), while a bored student in college, to give her pet dog an experimental blowjob, but her real problems begin years later when she confides in fiancé John (Bryce Johnson). And so what starts as a new low point in transgressive gross-out turns into a restrained and surprisingly sensitive study of relationships, honesty, and the virtue of keeping your mouth shut. The low budget of Bobcat Goldthwait’s dramedy may show, but there is wit enough to get most viewers flashing their canines. Hamilton and the Bobcat himself are interviewed in the extras. Anton Bitel

Typhoon (2005) Director: Kwak Kyung-taek Available: Now

When psychotic North Korean dissident Sin steals nuclear devices on a vessel secretly bound for South Korea, top intelligence agent Gang Se-Jong is dispatched to retrieve them. Despite the pair striking up sympathetic rapport, it is up to Gang to stop Sin’s dastardly plan to nukea the Korean peninsula whilst giving two fingers to Korean diplomat ic relations with the US. Giving a hearty nod to James Bond via a plethora of locations, some ludicrous stunts and a slightly overdone John Barrieesque soundtrack, Typhoon is to be taken with a pinch of salt but possibly forgiven for spinning an entertaining enough yarn. Ed Andrews

The Lives of Others (2006) Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Available: September 17

Set somewhat appropriately in 1984, this 2007 Oscar winner is a darkly wry exploration of East German totalitarianism. The film focuses on the successful dramatist Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his partner Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), both of whom are intellectual darlings of the socialist state. Events turn decidedly bleak when (the late) Ulrich Mühe’s fastidious government agent is enlisted to spy on the couple. At time when mainstream cinema seems only too happy to settle for haphazar a remakes and incoherent mewling , von Donnersmarck’s directorial debut d is a bleak but stylistically sharp act of artistic resuscitation. Craig Driver

Macbeth (2006) Dir: Geoffrey Wright Available: September 10

Geoffrey Wright’s present-day riff on Shakespeare’s classic relocates the action to Melbourne’s criminal underworld, and tries ever so hard to be edgy and provocative at every turn. And so our protagonist’s first encounter with the ‘weird sisters’ is re-imagined as a drug-induced hallucination in a deserted nightclub, Lady M delivers her ‘out damned spot’ speech topless, and the film builds to an epic Scarface-style shootout finale. Problem is, in doing this Wright has somehow managed to turn one of the pinnacles of mankind’s artistic achievement into a really tedious exploitation thriller, one complete ly devoid of tension, intrigue or insight. Nice one Geoff. Paul O’Callaghan

Director: Renny Harlin Starring: Andrew Dice Clay Priscilla Presley Johnny West Tagline: ‘Meet Ford Fairlane. To his clients, he’s the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll detective. To everyone else, he’s just a dick.’ Trailers: Miller’s Crossing Buddy’s Song Pacific Heights Desperate Hours Predator 2 Home Alone Cherrypick: ‘You sick, confusing motherfuckers!’

“There was an old lady, Who lived in a shoe, She had so many kids – Her uterus fell out. OHH!!!” Whatever opinion you harbour about ’80s comedy behemoth Andrew Dice Clay – either as the misunderstood barrack-room raconteur whose ‘Diceman’ alter-ego overran the monster truck rally of his fractured mind, or simply as a shit-forbrains harbinger of the New Reich – what remains undeniable is that his immense whoop-n-holler popularity proves once and for all that democracy simply doesn’t work. Whipping the Emperor’s clothes off liberal poster-boy Bill Hicks to reveal nothing more than a grumpy, pallid onanist, and unmasking Denis Leary for the whiny spudfucker we knew he was, Clay’s stage act offered American audiences exactly what they wanted from their entertainers: to be insulted, belittled and, above all, offended. But though he endures as a comic touchstone for each new generation, his blue-collar fag ’n’ hag baiting meant that, by 1990, he bestrode Madison Square Garden like some goombah colossus and was racking up more PC-gone-mad column inches than Don King’s ‘stage schools’. With a budget-to-quality ratio equivalent to that of Ishtar, the pleasures of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane come from speculating on the meetings that led to Clay’s first starring vehicle, and not the splenetic, misogynist vodka advert that was subsequently spunked across our screens. Meetings, one senses, that were held in a New Jersey Jacuzzi showroom and

concentrated less on story, tone and texture, but rather on optimum sideburn length and location of casting couch.   The film itself sees Dice as LA music industry detective Ford Fairlane who waddles up and down the Sunset Strip while making endless quips about, “Raping somebuddy’s mudder”. He’s also decked out in hand-tooled cowboy boots, skimpy muscle top and a variety of hideous leather jackets that make him look less like the been-there, done-that rockabilly hepcat he imagines himself to be than the fabled ‘Welsh Rodeo Clown’ character that was left on the cutting room floor of the Village People’s ‘Can’t Stop The Music’. The putative comedy spins around some missing CDs and pounds to the 4/4 beat of desperation as the ERH Camelot of Wayne Newton and Priscilla Presley collect paycheques they don’t need from a film neither will ever see. Clay breezes through a series of elaborately pointless ERH staples (backlot nightclub, garden party and the ever-dependable pier) spouting a lo-cal version of his shitty schtick that – they hope – will ‘play in the boonies’. Like a born-to-lose street hood, the Diceman had gone straight for the chump change. His successors, ass-clown Adam Sandler and dadalike Will Ferrell, would strategically bide their time and hold out for long money. Sandler, the calculating bastard, had the advantage of having graduated from Yale. Exactly what school the Diceman went to is hard to judge – but wherever it was, they taught some fucked up nursery rhymes. OHH!!!

China Moo Young’s progression through the ranks is a model for any aspiring direc tor. Having studied Drama, Film, Thea & Television at university, she becametre a runner, then director’s assistant, then creative researcher, working for six years with many of advertising’s leading direc and writing and directing Super 8 films tors, in her spare time, including five for Strai ght8, and devised a multi-media theatre performance set in disused railway tunn els in the East End of London. In 2003 a directed Sony Playstation’s The GetaChin way Black Monday, and in 2005, her first majo short film Liar. She has recently finish r ed Juvenile; backed by the UK Film Coun will premiere at Edinburgh Film Festicil it val as part of The First Past The Post case. China’s next project is directing a show drama for C4’s Coming Up. James Bramble

Asitha Ameresekere’s short, Do Not Eras e, recently won a BAFTA for Best Short Film Born in London, a classics graduate with . an MFA in Directing for Theatre, Video & Cine from the California Institute of the Arts, ma he is also about to have a collection of shor t stories published in Sri Lanka. Do Not Erase studi the impact of the Iraq war on an ordin es ary family in the north of England, through the video diaries sent home by a soldier. “When the coalition forces first went Iraq, and there was lots of information into in the newspapers and TV about soldiers on the frontline, I began to think about the fami lies of those soldiers back at home. There was a column in Metro about missing people and I tried to find some correlation between these

two. I thought a video diary rather than the usual letter that families write to their children would be more pertinent. “I did think about the film on and off for about two years, but once I got into it, it only took me two days to write, three days to shoot and two days to edit. I originally wanted it to be quite a short piece, 15 minutes, but I soon realised that I had absolutely no cont over the film because the actors would rol play it in their own time – there’d be no editi ng. Seven months later it had a premiere at Hamburg where it won the audience award. I have plans to do another short film on the subject of abuse in the family, and a featu re set on the border of America, all in Span ish. I like a challenge.” James Bramble

No longer will you be forced to go topless through the streets, ’cos we’ve got two rather spanking T-shirts to give away, courtesy of fashion heroes Bench.

They’re part of a limited edition 51-piece collection designed by Bobby Langley and ably assisted by Joy Division and New Order legend Peter Hook to tie in with the 25th anniversary of Manchester super club The Haçienda. One T-shirt is black, the other is grey, and both bear the imprint ‘51 25 07’ in white, bright yellow and silver (’cos it’s a silver anniversary, innit!) and have a little legend saying ‘FAC51 THE HAÇIENDA’ in a box. You can almost see it now, right? To be in with a chance of winning, send your answer to

the following question to editorial@littlewhitelies.co.uk. Q. Who designed the original Haçienda nightclub?

International fashion brand Carolina Herrera launched the 212 Innovation Awards in 2006 in order to discover and nurture new film directing talent in the UK. They will be retaining the focus on film for 2007 and working in conjunction with the National Film and Television School to a create a competition with a truly vocational prize. The simple brief is to send in an innovative short film, which will be considered by an  expert jury to include Carolina Herrera, the designer’s daughter, who began her career in film before launching the 212 fragrance line, and Nik Powell, internationally renowned film

producer and head of the NFTS. The winner will have the opportunity to attend a course at the National Film and Television School plus invaluable career advice prior to shadowing a major director in the UK on their latest project. Suggested length for entries is around five minutes (although shorter and longer work will also be considered) and films should be submitted on DVD or VHS format no later than October 15. Full details of the brief, competition and entry forms are available on the dedicated website – www.carolinaherrera.com/212awards

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Dir. Julian Schnabel

Jean-Dominique Bauby used to edit Elle. Then he had a stroke, which left his mind alive but his body dead. Despite being completely paralysed, Bauby wrote a book, spelling out words by blinking his left eye — the only part of his body he could still move. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is his story. Bad boy artist turned director (and awesome Lebowski look-alike) Julian Schnabel seems well up for the challenge: not only did he fight a studio attempt to Americanise Bauby’s story, he went so far as to learn French, wowing Cannes with the result. He’s a dedicated man, unlike Johnny Depp, who dropped the role to fuck about with pirates. ETA: Early 2008

The Passenger.

Dir. Nick Gomez

Elijah Wood as Iggy Pop? No, we don’t see it either. It’s hard enough to envisage the former hobbit being old enough to sip a glass of weak beer without passing out, so heaven knows how Nick Gomez will turn him into a long-haired hellraiser with a 12-inch cock. Maybe they’ll do a CGI job. Anyhow, there’s a certain novelty in making a rock biopic while the subject is still alive, and for the time being his Iggyness has given the project his blessing, describing Wood as “talented” and “very poised”. Which sounds a bit like something a judge at Crufts might say. ETA: Summer 2008 new

Dir. TBC

There is a surprising amount of gay porn on the internet involving the Thundercats. How do we know this? Simple, by typing ‘gay Thundercats porn’ into Google. Now that Transformers has taken a stink load of cash at the box office and 10 times as much again in merchandise and toy sales, the bandwagon is rolling and Warners have optioned a new script for a CGI animated feature of the beloved ’80s cartoon. As one of the better Saturday morning efforts, expectation runs high, but few details are known other than the guy behind the script – Paul Sopocy – has done the square root of fuck all in the past and the project is officially ‘In Development’. As for the gay porn angle, watch this space. ETA: 2010

Where The Wild Things Are.

Dir. Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze still isn’t giving much away on his first feature gig since 2002’s Adaptation. We do know the obvious stuff: the film is an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s kids’ book about a boy called Max whose overactive imagination leads him to a kingdom of strange and scary monsters. Literary gunslinger Dave Eggers is behind the screenplay, and Forest Whitaker is lending his distinctive tones. All we’ve really got to chew on, however, is an intriguing picture that MTV got their hands on, showing Max wearing a paper crown in a forest with two huge, obscured beasties in the foreground of the frame. One of them looks like a distant relative of Aloysius Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street – clearly, a harbinger of good things. ETA: Late 2008 Update

Thundercats.

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Dir. Sergei Bodrov

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Possibly the first part of a trilogy, this look at the early life of Genghis Khan is getting a good buzz but also whispers of irresponsible filmmaking; allegations of racism abound and the film hasn’t even been screened yet. Possibly as a counter measure, Channing Tatum is now out of the lead role and has been replaced by an unknown but, crucially, Asian actor, Tadanobu Asano, playing Genghis under his given name, Temudjin. This could be a release to rival some of the excellent historical epics to come out of China and Korea in recent years, but may suffer from increasingly negative press. ETA: December 2007

Funny Games.

Dir. Michael Haneke

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Michael Haneke has long been a vocal critic of Hollywood, so when he announced a Stateside remake of Funny Games, his violently moral video nasty from 1997, a fair few eyebrows were raised. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play the ma’ and da’ whose holiday is crashed by a pair of existentialist psychos. The original was a great but excruciatingly painful take on the hostage genre, and given Haneke’s politics it’s hard to imagine that he’ll pull his punches second time around. ‘Torture porn’ is all the rage with kids these days, but maybe this time they’ll get more than they bargained for. Be warned. ETA: Early 2008

Watchmen.

Dir. Zack Snyder

Update

So the cast is set and there’s not one true superstar in the bunch. Matthew Goode is golden boy Ozymandias, Carla Gugino is Sally Jupiter, while Jackie Earle Haley is versatile enough to bypass the ‘Mr A-List is so wrong for Rorschach’ comments. A poster has been released and a synopsis put out, though both are unenlightening. These trivialities will be enough to amuse the faithful for the next few months, but the real question remains whether Zack Snyder can handle the complexity and depth of the Watchmen story. Then again, can cinema? Watchmen is the 12-part story that redefined one aspect of popular culture, but will it come a cropper on another? Surely Snyder has taken on an impossible task. Tread carefully Zack, we’re watching. ETA: Summer 2009

Untitled JJ Abrams Film (Codename: Cloverfield). Dir. Matt Reeves

new

Super-producer JJ Abrams certainly knows how to hype his projects. A magnificent teaser trailer set the ball rolling for ‘Cloverfield’, in the form of handheld DV footage from a trendy New York loft party. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on, but the rumour mill believes we’re in for some kind of giant-monster-attackscity shenanigans – possibly filmed entirely in the same hand-held style. Other clues to go on include a wave of confusing websites for a non-existent soft drink (check out slusho.jp), and more recently a poster showing the Statue of Liberty with its top ripped off. What does it all mean? No one really knows, but it’s bound to be fun finding out, even if the Comic Con buzz is true and the title really does turn out to be something as crappy as Monstrous. ETA: January 2008

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The King of Kong.

Dir. Seth Gordon

Brace yourself for a titanic struggle: Billy Mitchell versus Steve Wiebe. What do you mean you don’t know who they are? Granted, Steve Wiebe is an everyday loser, but Billy Mitchell... well, he’s The Video Game Player of the Century, goddamnit! No, seriously. He’s the guy who recorded the first perfect score in Pac-Man! You hear that? He beat the machine. Like Neo. And when Wiebe tries to prove his self-worth by taking on Mitchell’s 20-year-old-plus record score on Donkey Kong, the gamer comes out fighting. As documentaries go, this should be fiery stuff: Mitchell is like a living version of Ben Stiller’s character in Dodgeball. “No matter what I say, it draws controversy,” he cries. “It’s sort of like the abortion issue.” Yes, Billy, it is! ETA: Late 2007 Update

Mongol.

Dir. James Cameron

Update

Jim C has already started filming on his latest sci-fi romp, but we won’t be seeing it for quite a while yet. Why? Because he’s spending 18 months – and a sizeable chunk of his $195 million budget – on post production, that’s why. Given the man’s track record, it’ll be a huge disappointment if the effects on this project are anything less than groundbreaking, particularly given that the whole shebang will be in 3D. The two leads have gone to relatively unknown actors: Aussie Sam Worthington will put on his hero boots, while American Zoë Saldaña will play his alien love-interest – an entirely computer-generated character. Let’s hope she’s better looking than Gollum. ETA: Summer 2009

The Darjeeling Limited. Dir. Wes Anderson

new

Avatar.

A trailer has been released for the new Wes Anderson adventure and it already looks like more of the same from the oddball auteur. India is the backdrop for the Anderson retinue’s melancholy comedy, with a cast that brings together the old (Jason Schwartzman), the regular (Owen Wilson) and the new (Adrien Brody) as three brothers reunited after their father’s death. Anderson and Roman Coppola have written the script, which seems to favour surreal quirkiness over crowdpleasing gags. More excitement will come from seeing how Robert Yeoman’s lush cinematography translates to the Indian landscape. ETA: November 2007

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Tintin.

Dir. Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson

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Geek lips are nervously atwitch in anticipation of the first instalment of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s trilogy of Tintin adventures. Purists worried that the Hollywood giants will fail to capture the spirit of Hergé’s much-loved books should rest assured that the directors will use 3-D animation in the style of the Belgian artist, and that Hergé himself declared before his death in 1983 that no one but Spielberg should be allowed to direct a Tintin film. Production will begin next year after Spielberg and Jackson respectively finish shooting Indy IV and The Lovely Bones. Also, we knew that Spielberg was working on test shots for this over a year ago. But we didn’t tell anyone. Sorry. ETA: 2009

The Dark Knight.

Dir. Chris Nolan

Update

There’s still almost a year until Batman returns and everyone seems fixed on one question: what will Heath Ledger’s Joker look like? Due to the popularity of Adobe Photoshop, there are dozens of fake images online – then at last Warner Bros threw out a reassuring pic of a man in a creepy homicidal clown mask. Hurray! Thanks to a brief trailer, we also know what Ledger will sound like: a laughing, homicidal nut job. Okay, so that’s not a big surprise – it would be a major departure from comic lore if he sounded like Alf Garnett – but it’s still good to know that things are shaping up well. Though pictures of a new Bat-bike contraption are worryingly reminiscent of those dark Joel Silver days. ETA: July 2008

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.

Dir. Zach Helm

Update

Hmm. A magic toyshop, Dustin Hoffman in full-on Gene Wilder mode, and more bright colours than a bucketful of Smarties: Egon says he’s getting massive readings on the Roald Dahl-o-meter. Emporium certainly looks polished, but we can’t help but feel that the trailer is missing something. Still, we’re not jaded enough to give up on this yet: the shop itself seems like a fun place to visit for two hours, and Natalie Portman’s character is called Molly Mahoney, so maybe there’ll be a load of references to the Police Academy series. Or not, as the case most definitely will be. ETA: December 2007

Untitled X-Files Sequel. Dir. Chris Carter

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At last! Another film based on ’90s TV fix The X-Files, and not a minute too soon – just seven years after the series was cancelled. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are reportedly signed up, series veteran Chris Carter is ready to take helming duties, and a script has been written. Early word says the story is a standalone creature feature unconnected to the labyrinthine alien conspiracies that weighed the series down like a big pile of red herrings. The only conspiracy that remains now is surely why anyone would want to make or watch a second X-Files film more than a decade after the last one. ETA: 2009

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UNBECOMING.

One member of LWLies lays the smackdown on an inbound cine-offender. This month, Matt Bochenski picks a fight with the world’s favourite whip-cracking archaeologist.

Indiana Jones IV.

Dir. Steven Spielberg

Harrison Ford has never died on screen, but that hasn’t stopped him killing his reputation over the last 15 years. In fact, it doesn’t matter that Sean Connery won’t be returning for Indy IV, because that’s exactly who Ford now resembles; a faded, faintly embarrassing has-been living off former glories who, for his own good as much as our own, should be taken behind the nearest studio and shot. He’s a joke – a sad old man in a midlife crisis desperately trying to deny the fact of his own irrelevance by shacking up with a basket case and wearing an earring. Let’s be clear: anybody looking forward to Indiana Jones IV is an idiot. The franchise was already creaking at part three, and its artistic direction is in the hands of the man who brought us an operatic space saga about trade disputes and pure-blooded super warriors. Maybe this time round the Nazis will finally get to be the good guys...? So consider this a heartfelt plea: don’t go and see Indy IV. Don’t read about it (as of now). Don’t care about it. Don’t even be curious for old time’s sake. Like Billy Joel said, the good old days weren’t always good, but in a world where Harrison Ford has another mega-hit on his hands, tomorrow truly will be as bad as it seems. ETA: May 2008

UNCOMINGS.

Raising a glass to the films that got away.

To The White Sea.

Supposed director: Joel Coen

If the legends are true (and even if they’re not, we’ll still believe it anyway), the homes of Joel and Ethan Coen are filled with half-finished scripts and abandoned projects. At some point towards the turn of the millennium, To The White Sea became one of these lost souls. Arriving at what was arguably the peak of the siblings’ blisteringly creative career, White Sea would have seen the pair teaming up with Brad Pitt for a survival saga based upon the novel by James Dickey, author of Deliverance. Dickey’s book tells the story of a World War II pilot shot down over Japan, who must somehow fight his way through the heart of enemy territory. The Coens’ films are often praised for their razorsharp dialogue, but after the first 15 minutes or so, To The White Sea would have been something approaching a silent movie. The protagonist, Muldrow, cannot speak to the locals, nor does he want to; he only wants to kill and move on, to survive. His story exists entirely on a visual level, in cold black and white. To The White Sea could have been the Coens’ Rambo – a serious departure from the chatty style of their other work. Alas, it was not to be. The project is long dead, and neither the Coens nor Pitt have shown an interest in future collaboration. Chance of resurrection: Slim to none.

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Issue 14, On Sale October 26 In the meantime, check out www.littlewhitelies.co.uk for a host of exclusive reviews, features and interviews not available in the print edition, as well as a regular newsfeed, information on festivals and events coverage.

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