Little White Lies 23 ­ The Star Trek Issue

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RELEASED May 8 DIRECTED BY JJ Abrams STARRING Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana

jj abRams’ FRaNcHIsE REINVENTIoN Is sTaR TREk, jIm, buT NoT as You kNow IT 005

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Corkscrewing past space debris, photon fi re and blazing starships, we are sent hurtling headfirst into JJ Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek universe – just minutes before baby James Tiberius Kirk is too. Blasted out of the womb just as he’s blasted out of an escape pod, Kirk will never meet his father, who single-handedly crash-courses the decimated USS Kelvin into its Romulan attacker to save his newborn son.

But, briefly and crucially, we do meet Kirk Snr. And it’s surely no accident that Abrams sends a Starfleet captain to an explosive hero-death in the opening scene. It’s more like a symbolic passing. More like a mission statement. More than Bond or Batman, Abrams’ Star Trek is a radical franchise rebirth – as bald as its title.

Speed and style are what Abrams pumps into the heart of Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi saga. He barely lets the credit sequence cool off before

we warp forward a decade to find that Kirk is his father’s son. To the soundtrack yawps of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’, tween wild-child Kirk joyrides a sports car across the Iowa desert with a police hoverbike in hot pursuit.

We warp again, past Kirk’s teen years. Because we see them all in Chris Pine’s face. Handsome but lived-in, Pine looks less like a cardboard jock from The Hills than a hotshot who’s grown up hitting the bottle, the books and the guy next to him. He’s been slapped by a lot of women and screwed a lot more.

Cocky, impulsive and embarrassingly likeable, Pine’s Kirk is all Good Will Hunting – genius dropout, lost boy, rebel without a cause. Destiny waits for him at Starfleet. His interview involves being dragged drunk and bloodied out of another bar brawl after a fumbled pass at Uhura

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“ it ’ s m a veri c k k ir k ’ s m irr o r t w in riv a l ry w ith z a c h a ry q u int o ’ s i c e - m a n s p o c k th a t give s s t a r tre k it s gri s t l e . b o th a re b r u i s e d fr u it fr o m b r o k en roots.”

(Zoe Saldana). Again, Abrams just hits the fast-forward button to assemble the Enterprise crew at Starfleet Academy: Karl Urban’s grumbling ‘Bones’ McCoy, Anton Yelchin’s quizzical Chekov, and John Cho’s sword-slinging Sulu all shine in zippy, colourful intros.

But it’s maverick Kirk’s mirror-twin rivalry with Zachary Quinto’s iceman Spock that gives Star Trek its gristle. Both are bruised fruit from broken roots, both are played to perfection by Pine and Quinto. Kirk lives in the shadow of a father who was a captain for 12 minutes and saved 800 lives – but was never a part of his son’s life. Spock’s human mother is his only weakness – but maybe his greatest strength. Deadlocked in a silent struggle between his emotional/logical DNA, Quinto’s Spock is another prodigy.

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He aces the Vulcan Academy, and then snubs them for referring to his human mother as a ‘disadvantage’.

“Who was that pointy-eared bastard?” asks Kirk when they first butt skulls at the Academy. We almost forgot to mention: Star Trek is funny. Very funny. Comedy is Abrams’ big ace card, with Pine’s comic timing bang-on even when the humour is broad as a planet. Bones causes Kirk’s hands to swell to Gondry-esque proportions. Chekov realises he can’t say ‘Wulcan’.

Simon Pegg’s Scotty – wonky accent, brilliant line delivery – is accidentally beamed into a grid of Willy Wonka-style water tubes. Even Quinto brandishes a few zingers. “Out of the chair,” he says briskly, as Kirk slumps casually in the captain’s seat.

That would be the other thing we forgot to mention: in Abrams’ Trek, Spock is captain of the Enterprise. Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman shake up the franchise with some fearless redux revelations that will have hardcore Trekkers grating their teeth, while still keeping its grand heritage safely at touching distance. Don’t worry: the guy in the red suit still gets it bad. Bones and Scotty splutter mantras like “Dammit man! I’m a doctor not a physicist!” Or, “I’m giving it all she’s got, captain!” Vulcan nerve grips, short skirts, spirally teleporters… The in-jokes and nods are all there. But Uhura isn’t Kirk’s babe this time.

Cleverly, in just the kind of conceit that was beamed casually into the Trek TV shows on a weekly basis, Orci and Kurtzman work their alternative

reality in as a plausible plot point. What they don’t do is come up with much of a story to go with it. Sketching together a flimsy through-line about planeteating black holes and some MacGuffin ‘red matter’, their script gives Eric Bana’s rogue Romulan thug little to do except sneer and snarl.

Shame, because a great villain would have added depth and drama to the dynamism of Trek’s vibrant young cast. More balls than brains, the film loses its heading on a couple of occasions, chiefly when Kirk is dumped on an ice planet (was that a cough or a ‘Hoth’?) to be chased by B-movie monsters and discovered by a much-talked-about guest from another reality.

It’s the one moment where Abrams dares you to call bullshit on his movie.

Then, brilliantly, Kirk does it himself.

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But mostly, there’s no time to notice the space-rifts, no space to argue the time-rifts. Because as much as this is a Star Trek movie, it’s a JJ Abrams movie. Which means it moves. The truth is that few moviemakers in Hollywood can direct action scenes. Abrams made his big-screen directorial debut by turning M:I:III into the longest, most lung-busting action scene in modern cinema.

He stacks action sequences, fitting them together like Lego bricks into one giant superstructure glued together with adrenaline. Think Cruise’s Ethan Hunt crashing out of a skyscraper window, struggling with his parachute, smashing through a window several storeys down, coming to rest on a boardroom table in front of a quizzical janitor, being dragged back out by a gust of wind, crash-landing in a busy highway, and chasing a stolen capsule as it rolls between speeding traffic.

Amid the space skirmishes and phaser fights, Star Trek’s classic Abrams action-stack arrives as another dazzling base-jump: Kirk and Sulu freefall

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from outer space, bullet through Vulcan’s orbit, narrowly avoid incineration, go hand-to-hand with Romulan brutes on a drill-platform in the sky, then survive another freefall to the planet surface – this time without ‘chutes.

Kirk grits his teeth as he falls in a blur towards the ground. Chekov scrabbles at the teleporter controls back on the Enterprise. Spock races to save his home planet from obliteration. Star Trek used to be smarter. But it was never this fast, fresh and exciting. Jonathan Crocker

Anticipation. Star Trek meets M:I:III meets Star Wars.

Enjoyment. Kirk is a bar-fighting boozehound? Spock is getting it on with Uhura? Beam us up!

In Retrospect. The most purely enjoyable blockbuster of the summer. And we can say that in May. Engage warp drive to page 24 for an interview with Star Trek director JJ Abrams.

IF sTaR TREk Has INsPIREd You To sEEk ouT sTRaNGE NEw scI-FI ExPERIENcEs, TRY boldlY cHEckING ouT THEsE alTERNaTIVE sPacE oddITIEs.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976) DIRECTED BY Nicolas Roeg

David Bowie – the original spider from Mars – is ingeniously cast as a visitor from another world in Nic Roeg’s follow up to Don’t Look Now. Ripe for reassessment, this story of an intergalactic refugee who comes to Earth to find water to save his planet, only to be sidetracked and eventually destroyed by our world, is steeped in desolate cynicism. It’s a classic piece of post-Watergate nihilism that peers into the heart of human nature and finds only cavernous darkness. It’s far from perfect, but it’s an enthralling period piece all the same. Check out the original before the re-make hits next year.

PRIMER (2004) DIRECTED BY Shane Carruth

Though easily missed on its initial release, Shane Carruth’s Primer is one of the most unusual and personal science-fiction projects you’ll ever see. An engineer with a degree in mathematics, Carruth turned his hand to filmmaking for this story of two scientists who stumble upon a working design for a time machine. Taking its cues more from the world of Charlie Kaufman than Robert Zemeckis, the result is an intoxicatingly plausible parable about the limits of friendship and the nature of greed. Densely plotted and provocatively low budget, it’s one of the most intriguing sci-fi debuts since Dark Star.

THE LAST STARFIGHTER (1984) DIRECTED BY Nick Castle

The greatest videogame movie of all time follows Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) on his journey from a trailer park to an intergalactic war. Stuck in the middle of Hicksville, Arizona, Alex spends his evenings pumping quarters into Starfighter, an arcade machine outside the local store. One night, he’s approached by Centauri (Robert Preston), who tells Alex that the machine is actually a training simulator, and he’s being recruited to save an alien race from extinction. Part of the post-Star Wars boom, The Last Starfighter treated the burgeoning video game craze with the respect it deserved. It also fuelled a million boys’ fantasies, providing the perfect excuse for ‘just one more go’. After all, if it could happen to Alex…

FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966) DIRECTED BY Richard Fleischer

In a mid-’60s maelstrom of LSD and simmering sexual revolution, Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage broke the final physical boundaries of self-discovery. It’s a psychedelic but schizophrenic journey into the depths of the ’60s’ soul, which sees Russian scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) escaping to the West with the secret of how to shrink atoms. But before he can talk, Benes is shot and left in a coma, forcing CIA agent Charles Grant (Stephen Boyd) to enter his body in a shrunken submarine to save the doctor’s life. Fantastic Voyage is about the victory of Science over the body, but it’s also a victory for The Man – the government spooks fighting a secret war.

This fantastic voyage is headed to an uncertain destination.

LA JETÉE (1962) DIRECTED BY Chris Marker

Clocking in at 28 minutes, Chris Marker’s La Jetée is one of the most influential short films ever made, and that’s without even factoring in Terry Gilliam’s feature length re-imagining, Twelve Monkeys. Composed entirely of still photography, the film follows a survivor of World War III who journeys back and forth through time trying to come to terms with humanity’s fate.

It is, in that sense, a fixed meditation on the human condition, superbly disciplined, but whose ‘meaning’ is in constant flux. Where some directors approach film with the eye of a painter, Marker did so with the soul of a poet.

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From Oscar® Winner Charlie Kaufman, Screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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Out of the void, a spark of life bursts into consciousness. This is the beginning of all things. From the man re-imagining Star Trek to the countries re-igniting the space race; from super sonics to sexual subversion, let LW L i e s ta k e y o u b e y o n d t h e i n f i n i t e .

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lW l i e s s p e a k s e x c lu s i v e ly tO J J a b r a m s , t h e d i r e c tO r at t h e helm Of a neW star trek enterprise. WOrds by matt bOchenski

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fter 43 years, six iterations, 10 films and hundreds of millions of dollars, JJ Abrams’ re-imagining of the Star Trek universe all hinges on his missus. “This movie was not made by a group of people for whom Star Trek was the end-all,” he reveals.

“Our concern was that we wanted to make a movie that our wives would love.”

There’s no bigger gig than Star Trek.

James Bond might be the largest franchise by numbers, and Star Wars the cultural touchstone, but no other series is loved as obsessively, as intimately and as jealously as Gene Rodenberry’s epic. Created in 1966, five years after President Kennedy called for ‘a new American enterprise’ in space, and a mere three years before Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, Star Trek embodied the hopes and dreams of a generation.

“The great thing about what Gene Rodenberry created,” says Abrams, “is that it was an optimistic view of our future. It’s not ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’. This is a version of ‘us’.” Star Trek was the serious geek’s programme of choice, a television show with one eye on the future but both feet planted firmly in the here and now. What other series had its scripts parsed by science advisors, or gave birth to books on the politics and religion of its fictional universe? Combined with iconic casting, intergalactic romance and a progressive social agenda, it resonated in an age where America battled the ‘evil empire’ of communism for supremacy of the stars.

After the heady success of the Robert Evans era, in the ’80s, it was Star Trek (and Eddie Murphy) that kept Paramount afloat. Enter the ’90s, however, and the franchise became less and less bold, struggling to go anywhere that it hadn’t been before. After a decade of diminishing returns – financially and creatively – Star Trek finally ran out of steam. Nemesis was

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released to global indifference in 2002, while the final series, Enterprise, was cancelled by CBS in 2005.

At the same time that Star Trek foundered, Abrams’ own career hit warp speed. The son of Gerald, a successful TV executive, and Carol, an award-winning producer, the business was in his bones. The common image of Abrams is the Hollywood hotshot who exploded into the big time with the hit show Alias, before cementing his reputation with Lost and getting his big screen break with Mission: Impossible III, the most expensive film ever made by a first time director. But that’s only part of the story.

A budding writer and musician, Abrams has been working in the industry since he was 16-years-old. He wrote music for schlock hack Don Dohler’s Nightbeast, had his first screenplay developed while still in college, sold the script for Forever Young for $2m, and was one of six writers who worked on Armageddon. If Abrams is now one of the most powerful hyphenates in Hollywood – producer, director, writer, composer – it’s because he’s earned it. He’s no overnight success, but a harbinger of a tectonic shift in the power structure of Hollywood, away from the old industry players towards a new breed of tech-literate, TV-schooled tastemakers in touch with their inner geek. Abrams is the new ‘New Hollywood’ incarnate.

All of which is a way of saying that when the franchise came calling, Star Trek needed him a hell of a lot more than he needed it. And what’s more, everybody knew it. In the past, he says, the keepers of the franchise were “concerned simply with maintaining their fan base”, making movies “with a conscious effort to keep the club closed.” This time it was going to be different.

Because although he was born in the same year that Rodenberry created the show, Abrams

“thi s mO vie is On e t h at Was direct ed by s Om eOne WhO did nOt grOW up a fan O f star t r ek. ”

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“ Yo u d o a m o v i e like Star Trek a n d i t c o m p l e t e ly fucks with your whole approach to filmmaking.”

has no special affinity for the franchise. More than that, he’s on record as saying that he was never really a fan. “I didn’t even realise that Spock was half-human,” he admits.

explaining. “We were not going out there to say, ‘Let’s make a movie for that one [guy] who is a huge fan of Star Trek’,” he reveals. “To make a movie for that group is an exercise in myopia.”

Twenty years ago, this wouldn’t – couldn’t – have happened. But with its cinematic reputation in tatters, with its legacy and legitimacy in doubt, Star Trek had nothing left to lose by looking beyond its limited horizons.

Forget the final frontier, what the franchise needed was a new direction.

In fact, so on-message has Abrams been about how he’s coming at this from a non-fan’s point of view, he’s in danger of sounding more like a one-man marketing campaign than a committed creative. And with good reason: Paramount is betting the farm on this franchise (they don’t have much choice – DreamWorks coined most of the profits from Transformers, while the Mission: Impossible cash cow ended with Tom Cruise’s Oprah meltdown), and they know that they won’t make the mega bucks they need from Trekkers alone.

Abrams signed on as a producer, hiring writing buddies Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to produce a script that appealed to his own sensibilities. “For better or worse, I knew that I wanted to make sure that this Star Trek had a level of roller coaster fun that I had never seen in a Star Trek movie before,” he explains. “For the first time, we had the resources and technology to realise the promise of that universe.”

As soon as he saw the final draft, Abrams knew that his involvement with the project was going to change: “Once we had a script for it, I realised that we had succeeded and that I would have been ridiculously envious of whomever was on the set calling ‘Action!’ and ‘Cut!’ While I had the opportunity, I thought that directing this movie was something I should do.”

Not everybody agreed. There was the inevitable scepticism among the fan community who had waited seven years for a new film and didn’t want it ruined by a director who couldn’t tell a holodeck from a dilithium crystal. And there was the affronted reaction of William Shatner, who left Abrams a series of messages on YouTube complaining about being left out.

But they were the old world and this was the new, as Abrams never seems to get tired of

But there’s a creeping sense that Abrams has been protesting too much – performing a kind of pre-emptive damage control rather than speaking from the heart. “Sometimes the truth can sound like manipulation,” he replies when this is put to him. “I’ve taken a lot of flak for the simple fact that I didn’t grow up a Trek fan, and certainly I don’t think that marketing sell is necessarily the smartest thing everywhere.

It would have been far easier not to say that and not to talk about it. But I gotta say,” he adds, “I think that whatever it is, whether it’s something as trivial as entertainment or as important as politics, I think when you speak the truth, people feel it and they know it. This movie is one that, for better or worse, was directed by someone who did not grow up a fan of Star Trek, didn‘t quite get it and always felt that there was a more exciting and thrilling and emotional story to be told.”

But with so much history behind the franchise, is it even possible to re-start Star Trek from scratch? Just look at the casting of Leonard Nimoy, who’s nothing if not a throwback to that earlier age – the very one that Abrams professes to be rejecting. “The reality is that we had an opportunity to make a movie that stands on its own, [but there is] all of this existing footage

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in the series and the films that is our backstory.

So not to use that would be ridiculous,” he argues. “It wasn’t about being burdened by this fractured, non-functional albatross that we had to wrestle with and ultimately try and apologise for. Quite the contrary, it was rife with potential.” On the subject of Nimoy, he’s equally uncompromising: “To use him in a wonderful, wise, mentor role felt like a terrific way not just to acknowledge but grace the fabric from which this was made, and at the same time, if you look at the movie, you’ve never seen Star Trek like this before.”

It’s clearly a balancing act for Abrams, but some things remain beyond his control. Not least the fact that he’s launching this new enterprise in a vastly different climate than the age of optimism that greeted Rodenberry’s original series. With the fall of communism, the space race became a relic of history – an expensive proxy war fuelled by ego and ideology. The ‘idea’ of space is something very different today, just another adjunct of corporate culture, populated by TV satellites and stellar junk. What place is there for Star Trek in this cynical world?

“The idea of ‘space, the final frontier’ is a cliché,” Abrams acknowledges, “and things that are so familiar and ubiquitous become invisible after a while and taken for granted. But if you actually stop and consider what that means, you know, ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’, that idea is actually really exciting and thrilling.”

Abrams, at least, retains an almost poetic sense of the possibilities of space travel, and of Star Trek. “I just think there’s something that is remarkable and inspiring and thrilling and terrifying about that prospect, and it is only our lack of technology and experience that allows us to feel safe and unrequired to actually

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consider the ramifications,” he enthuses.

“But that’s one of the things that Star Trek did, and now continues to do, which is embrace the very real possibility that one day we are going to be able to go far beyond what is familiar and, hopefully, go boldly.”

In the final analysis, that boldness is evident in Abrams’ film. It’s a grand vision of a world – a universe – painted in vivid hues and strong dynamics. Like so much about the project, though, it didn’t come easily. “You do a movie like Star Trek and it completely fucks with your whole approach to filmmaking,” he laughs.

“Typically, you know, an establishing shot is a building, on occasion it’s a city – in Star Trek it’s a planet. You have to literally change the way you consider orienting the audience.”

The result is a future that lives and breathes – a rare example of a world which, like Blade Runner’s or Alien’s, feels fully and realistically integrated into the one that we know. And that’s because Abrams was influenced not just by the exciting space opera of Star Wars, but more down-to-earth elements, like an iron works in Maine that inspired the shot of the Enterprise under construction.

Underpinning all of it, though – the grand visuals, the stunning spectacle, even the fans’ discontent and our changing relationship with space itself – is the one essential point to which Abrams constantly returns: “We’ve seen so many space movies, no one’s going to care about a space movie. That’s not enough.

And no one’s going to care about a ship flying by – that’s not a spectacular vision anymore.

But what people will care about are the people who are on the ship. So what I’m hoping is that as we move forward people will embrace this movie not because of what’s come before and not because it takes place in space and not even because the effects are as good as ILM made them. But rather because the characters make you laugh, they make you feel and they make you ultimately believe.”

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W h e n S ta r T r e k f i n a l ly s l i p p e d f r o m o u r s c r e e n s in 2005, there were some among the 25 million T r e k k e r s w o r l d w i d e w h o r e f u s e d to l e t t h e m at t e r l i e . O n e f a n t e l l s LW L i e s h o w h e m a d e t h e j u m p f r o m consumption to creation, how fandom has helped the franchise, and what he makes of Star Trek’s new retro frontier. Words by Paul Fairclough

t was the fourth season of Enterprise, the prequel show that detailed the earliest voyages of the legendary starship. But as ratings slipped, CBS pulled the plug.

While many Trekkers were outraged, the hardcore among them had a plan. Like other fan communities from Star Wars to Ace Ventura (no, really), they hit the web with their own homemade movies.

Nick Cook took the demise of his Dundee fan club as the cue to power down the VCR and get himself and his fellow enthusiasts off the sofa and onto their very own film set. He’d been impressed with the fan films already out there, particularly the high-end Hidden Frontier. It took two years, but with no knowledge of filmmaking and little in the way of writing experience, Captain Cook and his crew had created the first Star Trek: Intrepid episode, ‘Heavy Lies The Crown’, as he explains to LWLies.

LWLies: Fan fiction has been around for a while, how have fan films avoided some of the pitfalls of the written stuff?

Cook: I’ve never been a huge reader of fan fiction; I think what weeds people out from doing fan films is the practical aspect. It’s very difficult for one person to say, ‘Right, I’m going to do this thing myself.’ To film, you need to get people who will act for you, you need props, camera equipment, people who will edit and do lighting and effects – it’s hard to source all these things.

How do you manage to fund everything?

Fortunately, most people involved are happy to donate their time because it’s a project they have fun doing. If it wasn’t for that, we couldn’t do it.

What’s your view of the relationship that the fan community has with Star Trek’s parent studios, Paramount and CBS? Fandom seems broken into factions that love, hate or don’t care about Paramount as long as they get a new Star Trek. I’m very grateful to Paramount and CBS – they haven’t cease-and-desisted me, so I don’t have any bones to pick with them even though I might disagree with some of their artistic choices.

Do you think that fandom has any influence on them?

I wonder… Star Trek: Phase II, the big brother of all fan films, is very well known by the makers of Star Trek. They’ve had Walter Koenig and George Takei guesting as Chekov and Sulu, and [long-time Star Trek scripter and producer] Dorothy Fontana has written for them. They’re very ambitious, and what they’re doing is professional quality, so much so that their last film was nominated for a Hugo Award.

How did Star Trek come to have such an important role in your life?

I’ve never really thought about it too much. It’s always been important, but the whole filmmaking thing has become a more dominant part of my life. The Star Trek thing is almost incidental – it’s an old friend.

If you want to make a film and you have a load of Star Trek fans around you, it becomes a lot easier than for one guy with a new idea. That common interest is probably the only reason we managed to finish it in the first place.

How do you feel about the new Star Trek movie and the claim that it’s ‘not for fans’?

I have mixed feelings. I know where they’re coming from, and I can’t blame them – Star Trek’s earned itself an image as kind of geeky. I don’t think that’s entirely true but it’s certainly become a niche show that’s looked down on by a large proportion of the public. Trying to make it popular again and accessible is really what was needed. Would I have gone back to Kirk and crew? No. But I think JJ Abrams will do a good job. Chris Pine looks fantastic as Kirk – there’ll be a generation who will remember Chris Pine as Kirk and not Shatner, which will be kind of weird. There was no way they could have made this look like the original series and had it sell. I’m not so sure about the whole alternate universe schtick, but I’m not going to prejudge.

What’s more important to you, filmmaking or Star Trek?

The more important thing has become the storytelling experience – the ability to express my creative side. I love crafting a story, seeing it come to life. If I can do it in a Star Trek milieu, that’s a bonus Intrepid’s new episode, ‘Transitions and Lamentations’, is out now. www.starshipintrepid.net, www.hiddenfrontier.com, www.startreknewvoyages.com

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Nigerian journalist Toni Kan reports from the frontline of the African space industry, where a new generation of ambitious countries are vying to get their intergalactic groove o n. Words by Toni Kan

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he urge to explore the boundaries of outer space has gripped mankind for millennia. First was a fascination with rockets.

The Chinese used them as weapons as far back as the Song Dynasty, circa 960AD, but it was pioneering Russian space scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose space flight equations were made public in the 1880s, who upped the ante with the first theoretical description of rockets which might reach space, as well as man-made satellites.

Fascination and theory concretised into space exploration reality on October 4, 1957, when Russia launched Sputnik I – the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. It made the former USSR the first space power and launched what would become the ‘space race’, an almost three-decade battle for exploration supremacy between the United States of America and the Soviet Union fought under the shadow of the Cold War. America launched its own satellite four months after Sputnik blasted off, joining a technological tug of war that would see the US setting out on the first manned lunar mission. Launched on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 carried Commander Neil Alden Armstrong and a veteran crew comprising Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.

Fifty years after the race to space began, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, finally got in on the game when NigeriaSat-1, a low-Earth orbit micro satellite for disaster monitoring, was launched on September 27, 2003, with a promise that the $13m investment would help the country in defence and security, as well as monitoring crop types, urban growth and development, population and power supplies, while providing pipeline surveillance, mineral mapping and hydro/drainage cartography. The nation was also expected to reap significant foreign exchange from the commercialisation of the satellite station.

NigeriaSat-1 is one of five satellites that make up a network called the Disaster Monitoring Constellation. The other partners in the international consortium are the UK, China, Algeria, Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam.

Each satellite belongs to one country, but they will share information with each other when disaster monitoring is needed. The Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites, which cost less than $10m each, are built by a British-based company, Surrey Satellite Technology, which has also trained technicians from Nigeria and other countries involved in the network. The processed images from the DMC will be distributed to relief teams by the Reuters AlterNet Foundation.

The successful launch of its first satellite marked Nigeria’s emergence as one of a new generation of African space powers alongside the likes of South Africa and Algeria, which launched their own space programmes in 1999 and 2002 respectively.

South Africa’s space programme gathered steam when its government approved the establishment of the South African Space Agency in 2006, a body charged with the responsibility of driving the space programme;

while the Algerian equivalent was entrusted to the Algerian National Space Technology Centre.

While the space race between the US and the now-defunct USSR was a battle for national pride and military supremacy, the space race for Nigeria and other African countries is geared more towards technology and commerce, especially with the increasing awareness of the importance of information and communication technology, and its corollaries, in boosting GDP. Commenting on the importance of a space programme to a developing nation like Nigeria, Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu, former Country Manager of Microsoft Nigeria, says, “I do believe that as a tool for socio-economic development, it is absolutely vital that we develop and pursue, with vigour, a space programme in the context of building and harnessing information and communications technologies [ICTs] to the national project.

“There is no confusion in my mind as to the fact that ICTs are the single most important pivot for any country in pursuing an enlightened self-interest. ICT is not an option or even arguably on a par with any other component of the national economic equation.”

Chike Nwangwu, MD of the technology and business consulting firm iCAP Nigeria, and member of the Nigerian Software Development Initiative, believes that a space programme is “laudable, but on the other hand you could say that it’s ill conceived in the sense that the primary objectives have not been met because of improper planning. And then we have not focused on building local content but on buying technology from China.”

The Nigerian space programme was midwifed by the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), which was established by the Federal Government of Nigeria. The administration also set up a National Council on Space Science Technology to oversee the programme.

To underscore the importance he attached to it, former President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed himself Chairman, while his Vice President, Abubakar Atiku, was the Vice Chairman of the council.

NASRDA was established as an agency under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology with the primary objective of establishing a fundamental policy for the development of space science and technology.

It was also set up to coordinate the activities of Space Research Centres in the country. The agency was expected to spend $93m in the development of a space programme, with initial funding spread over four years beginning in 2001, after which NASRDA was expected to generate its own revenue.

It was structurally designed to have six centres, including one handling space transport and propulsion; a space command centre at the Nigerian Defence Ministry; and four campus-based Centres for Space Science and Technology. The first of these, the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences and Astronomy (CASA), is located at the University of Nigeria Nsukka.

Critics of the space programme have noted that while the South African space agency is a full-fledged domestic entity, NASRDA is no more than an adjunct of the Chinese space industry. And this is no idle charge. China has become the major exporter of space technology to Africa, Asia and

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Latin America, and the reason is simple: China offers cheap commercial satellite launches at about $40m compared to between $80m and $100m for Western countries. Another issue is the relative flexibility of the Chinese space industry. While the US and other Western companies demand a two-year waiting period, China allows a flexible schedule which accommodates clients’ needs. It has launched 15 commercial satelites into orbit since 2002. The final reason has to do with China’s proximity to the equator. China’s Wenchang launch facility on Hainan island is just 19 degrees north of the equator. Because the Earth moves faster here, rockets receive an extra boost and spin as they power off, allowing them to bear heavier payloads.

Writing in their essay Of Shackled Strides and Missed Opportunities (A Review of Nigeria’s Telecommunications Industry), in the wake of the loss of NigComSat-1, Gbenga Sesan and Titi Omo-Ettu noted that the government’s explanation and apology missed the point. “The ‘apology’ kept talking about Nigeria being in space,” they wrote, “when in actual fact it is China, and not Nigeria, that is re-asserting itself in space using Nigeria’s petrodollars.”

Criticisms aside, NASRDA has powered on with its mandate and recorded modest gains with NigeriaSat-1 after it was deployed in monitoring and managing two recent world disasters – Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami. In December 2004, the agency signed an agreement with the China Great Wall Industry Corporation for the design, manufacture and launch of the NigComSat-1 (Nigerian Communication Satellite). It was based on the Chinese DFH-4 Bus and featured four C-band, 14 Ku-band, eight Ka-band and two L-band transponders. The satellite was successfully launched on May 13, 2007, on a CZ-3B booster. Unfortunately, NigComSat-1 lost power in April 2008 and then failed in November 2008 due to a technical error in the satellite’s northern solar array, and was sent to a graveyard orbit after it became apparent that the satellite couldn’t be recovered.

That incident generated a lot of debate about the need or otherwise for a Nigerian space programme. Gbenga Sesan and Titi Omo-Ettu blamed the loss on “insufficient maintenance skills.”

Further plans to develop a communication satellite, NigeriaSat-2, are in progress based on the recognition of the fact that ineffective communications represents one of the greatest barriers to socio-economic development in Africa. NigeriaSat-2 would be designed to contribute to providing an adequate telecommunications system throughout Nigeria, as well as regional coverage to West African countries.

The Director General of NASRDA, Professor Robert Borrofice, promised, in a burst of optimism, that Nigeria would send her first astronaut to space by the year 2015, and launch an indigenous satellite from the country without foreign assistance by 2018.

Most industry watchers do not think this will happen for reasons that include a lack of autonomy for NASRDA, paucity of funds, insufficient local manpower and maintenance skills, not to mention a failure of will on the part of the government to pursue an aggressive and vigorous space programme.

Chike Nwangwu does not really think this is feasible in the time frame.

“Let’s look at it this way,” he says. “If we continue to buy technology we can have a man in space next year. But if you mean a home grown, fully Nigerian project, you are talking about something that will cost about $2bn – that’s the equivalent of one quarter of our GDP. So I don’t think it’s realistic right now. We need long-term planning and committed funds.”

Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu, however, is hopeful, believing that “in an Information Age and at this tipping point in the nature, character and structure of the global economic formation, we need to be bold and decisive in seizing the opportunity offered by embracing a transformational ICT agenda, including a well thought-out, economically sound and transparent space programme. Surely, even in space, our past need not be our destiny.”

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MAKE THE HOMIES SAY HO AND THE GIRLIES WANNA SCREAM

“TOMORROW CAN BE A WONDERFUL AGE. OUR SCIENTISTS TODAY ARE OPENING THE DOORS OF THE SPACE AGE TO ACHIEVEMENTS THAT WILL BENEFIT OUR CHILDREN AND GENERATIONS TO COME. THE TOMORROWLAND ATTRACTIONS HAVE BEEN DESIGNED TO GIVE YOU AN OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPATE IN A D V E N T U R E S T H AT A R E A L I V I N G B LU E P R I N T O F O U R F U T U R E . ” W A LT D I S N E Y On July 17, 1955, Tomorrowland opened its doors at Disneyland, California. The culmination of Walt Disney’s obsession with progress, it offered a seductive vision of the future to a million starstruck punters. Today, collectors scour garage sales and eBay for vintage photographs of this world of Tomorrow, seen through the eyes of Yesterday.

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A spaceman stands at the entrance to Tomorrowland. 1956

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Guests pose with the spacegirl and spaceman of the future. 1961

The Rocket to the Moon attraction offered views of the solar system, the moon and Earth from space. 1965

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The Skyway travels from Tomorrowland through the Matterhorn to the Fantasyland Skyway Station. 1961

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The Tomorrowland Autopia had been at Disneyland since its opening day. Undated 1950s

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A guest relaxes in the renovated â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;New Tomorrowlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. 1968

A guest wears one of the popular souvenir hats with a feather in it. 1960

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film has a chequered history when it comes to a c c u r at e ly r e p r e s e n t i n g o u r f u t u r e i n s pa c e .

We gathered a series of experts to discuss the heroes and villains of cinematic sci-fi, and whether s p e c u l at i v e s c i e n c e w i l l a lw ay s s u f f e r w h e n t r a n s l at e d to t h e b i g s c r e e n . W o r d s b y A d a m L e e D a v i e s

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ver its various incarnations, Star Trek has given millions of viewers their first glimpse of strange new worlds, offered an open introduction to wildly imaginative yet curiously practicable scientific advancements and manhandled all of us through an often demanding assault course of improbably literate space jargon.

With JJ Abrams’ reboot of this enduring space serial upon us, LWLies invited some of the movers and shakers in various fields of science to share their expert opinions on the big bangs and dark matter produced when splitting the silvery atom of big-screen sci-fi.

‘Engage!’ and so forth…

THE AUTHORITY: DAVID DARLING

David Darling is the author of popular science books that have explored everything from the birth of the universe to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life. He holds a PhD in Astronomy and maintains the award-winning website, The Internet Encyclopedia of Science.

LWLies: How well have sci-fi films kept pace with emerging scientific concepts?

Darling: I think they’ve kept pace amazingly well, and in many cases have raced well ahead of conventional science. Faster-than-light travel, parallel universes, machine intelligence and virtual realities have all been tackled in movies, often with great success. In some cases they’ve helped drive the science by envisaging new possibilities or inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Are there any films that manage to trade in hard science without doing so at the expense of the story?

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey still stands out as the film that got it spot on regarding the environment of space and the physics of space travel. The science was uncannily right for a movie made before the first moon landing.

What scientific principles do sci-fi films most frequently ignore or mistreat?

The fact that sound can’t travel through a vacuum. Again, 2001 was accurate with the science of this, but the directors of other SF films have been unable to resist putting in the sounds of rocket engines or explosions in space in an effort to liven up the action.

Which sci-fi film do you feel presents the clearest picture of future space travel or possible interaction with alien species?

Contact did a pretty good job of speculating credibly on our first meeting with advanced extraterrestrials and on how superluminal travel might be achieved – not surprising since the novel it was based on was written by Carl Sagan with input from his physicist buddies at Caltech. Tarkovsky’s Solaris was probably the best attempt to show how truly alien an intelligent ET might be. While Alien had a realistic – i.e. cramped – spacecraft. But a film would be pretty dull if it tried to be too accurate: astrobiologists suspect that the highest form of life on most worlds is going to be microbial. Having said that, The Andromeda Strain managed to spin a suspenseful yarn around microscopic invaders.

Does your scientific knowledge ever impinge on your enjoyment of big-screen sci-fi?

Being a science nerd, I enjoy most SF films, from the old ’50s classics like This Island Earth and It Came From Outer Space to Star Trek, and I have no problem switching off my credibility circuits. The fact that the universe probably isn’t populated with Romulans, Vulcans and the rest doesn’t mean I can’t escape for a while into an alternative cosmos where they do.

The Astrophysicist: Chris Lintott

Chris Lintott is an astronomer and astrophysicist currently studying the formation of stars and galaxies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and copresenter of the BBC’s The Sky at Night with Patrick Moore.

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Sunshine (2007)

LWLies: Are there any films that you feel manage to successfully harness hard science to achieve narrative ends in an elegant way?

Lintott: It’s easier to think of misuses. I think the thing that’s hardest for filmmakers to cope with is the fact that the odds are we won’t ever be able to travel faster than light – starships will take generations to get anywhere. 2001 gets a lot of the science it deals with right. More recently, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine got some things wrong, but it made the sun look magnificent, just as it does in modern scientific images.

Which scientific concept or theory has been most consistently abused on the big screen?

It must be the principle that nothing can travel faster than light. It’s too tempting to insist on breaking this fundamental rule, but Einstein says it just can’t happen. Failing that, I’d give a lot of money to get away from the idea that scientists always wear white coats.

What current scientific developments do you imagine will provide material for future films?

One of the most amazing things happening at the moment is the discovery of planets around other stars; we now know of more than 300, and we might only be a few months away from discovering the first Earth-like planet. I’m

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looking forward to seeing films set in real places, rather than made up solar systems. Imagine knowing that around a particular nearby star there was an Earth-sized planet with liquid water and hints of life in its atmosphere. What stories could filmmakers tell us about that?

The Author: Alistair Reynolds

Alistair Reynolds is a hugely successful British sci-fi author whose blend of speculative science and space opera has few peers. He has a PhD in Astronomy and has worked at the European Space Research and Technology Centre.

LWLies: Your writing has been described as ‘hard’ science-fiction.

Reynolds: I’ve always balked against the ‘hard SF’ tag as I don’t think it particularly describes the type of SF I find most exciting, but there’s no doubt that I do like to respect the science as much as possible. I find this as liberating as it is challenging. Sticking to a rule like ‘no faster than light travel’ opens up as many possibilities as it closes.

I still feel that SF is at its best as a written medium, but there are undoubtedly narrative devices that filmmakers can employ that writers can’t really use in the same fashion. I often make use of multiple narrative strands, for instance.

In a novel, it becomes too choppy if you cut between strands that are anything less than several paragraphs, even a short chapter, in length, whereas a director can cut away to another strand for just a few seconds – a guy in an office putting down a phone and saying, ‘They’ve killed the president!’ or something. Ultimately it’s all about film being primarily a visual medium, and the novel being primarily an interiorised form.

The Futurist: Syd Mead

Be it under the title of ‘conceptual artist’ or ‘visual futurist’, designer Syd Mead has worked on some of the most iconic sci-fi films of all time. From Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Tron, from Blade Runner to Aliens, he has reshaped the iconography of the genre.

LWLies: You’ve helped create some of the most fully realised futurescapes in sci-fi cinema. How do you begin visualising these worlds?

Mead: Movies are stories. Movies are to storytelling what the symphonic orchestra is to music. Science-fiction stories are told in relation to their narrative time frame, their stylistic visual base and filmic style. These stories take place in specific, imaginary worlds. That world needs all the same things that make our world recognisable – ambience, fashion, transport, enclosure.

What better way to adjust familiarity to an alternate reality than to take real world experience into the story world at hand?

What are the challenges faced when translating hardware from the page to the screen?

The immediate challenge is to appreciate what the story is about. Once I understand that I can start to invent the various props that the story requires. I have a degree in Industrial Design, which helps me to synthesise future manufacturing techniques and stylistic motifs tha t make the resulting designs innovative, nouveaux and visually logical.

Why do you think it’s so difficult translating speculative science to the screen?

I don’t think many people are that interested, to be honest – least of all the people involved in hands-on filmmaking. Look at Sunshine, for instance – they made a big hoo-ha about calling in a scientific consultant, but as far as I can tell none of their input had any measurable effect on what we saw on the screen. The end result contained a number of glaring absurdities that could easily have been eliminated at the script stage.

Is it possible for you to watch a sci-fi film with any suspension of disbelief or are you constantly aware of the science at play?

I just switch my brain off most of the time – it’s easier that way. Most of the SF films I’ve enjoyed lately haven’t really been ‘hard’ in either intention or execution. My favourite of the last 10-15 years is probably Dark City, which I enjoyed for its narrative energy, but the science is minimal. My least favourite would have to be the abysmal Lost in Space. The Core was pretty stupid, as was Armageddon, but there were enjoyable touches in both.

Are there any techniques that filmmakers have in their arsenal that you envy?

How important is the look of a sci-fi film to its ultimate success?

I think the design of a movie’s artefacts and visual style has very much to do with a sci-fi film’s success. Once the storytelling style is established, the design complements that editorial determination. Brazil, for instance, is a spoof on extreme bureaucracy enabled by rinky-dink, slap-dash technology.

The result is genius. The Fifth Element uses an over-the-top, elaborate design that is very funny, dramatically explosive and simply wonderful. Blade Runner, being deliberately styled as a noir film, demanded an overlay of urban desiccation that illustrated the dysfunctional cross-section that typified the movie’s story-base as written by Philip K Dick.

How has the recent surge of technology assisted sci-fi filmmakers to fulfil their visions?

I think it has made the movie making process more accurate and allows image presentation that would have been literally impossible a decade ago.

However, advanced techniques in creating special effects have nothing to do with the quality of the story being told or how it is told. You don’t have to go very far to dig up the $2OOm movie that is awful. Too many current releases are simply long demo-reels for SFX houses. The story is totally massacred in the process of producing a continuous string of eye-candy for juvenile minds

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Since man first stared at the stars he has dreamed of the conquest of space. And nobody lived that dream like James T Kirk, whose conquests s t r e t c h e d a c r o ss t h e g a l a x y . T o d a y , t h e l e g a c y of this alien sex addict lives on in the twisted world of Supervert. A unique combination of intellect and deviance, vanguard aesthetics, novel pathologies and outré pornography, Supervert is a moniker, a corporation, a self-conferred brand name. Part Douglas Adams, part Marquis de Sade, his (her/its) Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish is a cutting-edge synthesis of fiction, philosophy a n d f i lt h t h at f o l lo w s t h e p e r v e r s e a d v e n t u r e s of an intergalactic ‘exophile’ and earthbound sex pest. Read on with care…Words by Supervert

INDEX ABSTRACT

MOD 01 Alpha Exophile

he way the abduction myth has it, hicks driving their cars along lonely roads surrounded by cornfields suddenly experience vehicular weirdness and temporal distortion.

Extraterrestrials swoop down on them like hawks on mice, taking them onboard their flying saucers for invasive medical examinations. Proctologists from Polaris probe the rectum with metal instruments not designed for human bodies, gynaecologists from the Crab nebula insert speculums intended for crab vaginas, thus causing unspeakable damage to earthly orifices – bizarrely, unspeakable damage that disappears the next day, except for the psychic wounds, horrible traumas that appear under hypnosis, “And then the gray felt my cervix with his claw, it was terrible…” That’s the myth, a nice myth, a myth that Mercury de Sade likes to fantasise about, though he’s not sure which role to assume. On the one hand, he prefers the active, sadistic role of the alien probing the human body with gynaecological instruments from Mars. On the other hand, Mercury de Sade is not really interested in the human body. What he wants is something new. To do this he plainly has either to redesign the human body – which is not so easy to do, given that it would take thousands of years of evolution to outfit the old bag of meat with a really new orifice – or to find new bodies, alien anatomies, extraterrestrial sex organs.

And this isn’t so easy either. Practical restrictions on space travel make it impossible for the sex fetishist to travel to other worlds. And though rumour has it that aliens do come to Earth, their visits are, to say the very least, unpredictable. What is the exophile to do – put out a little sign, ‘Aliens welcome’? You can’t blame Mercury de Sade for his compensation strategies, which largely consist of trying to jam humans into alien moulds. Ninfa XVIII, for example, he compels to don a white body stocking, which he then soaks in a green fluid, Lime Gatorade. The idea is to make her resemble a Little Green Man – except that she’s not really green, nor is she a man, except in the broadest sense that she’s human, which, from the vantage point of Mercury de Sade, is precisely the trouble with her. She is little, anyway: a 15-year-old girl picked up in the public atrium of the Citicorp Building, where a lot of high school kids hang out after class. He brings her back to Casa de Sade, gets her stoned, ties her up, prepares to have his way with her – but Lord, that smell. You ever fuck a giant lime? It’s hard to convince yourself that the object – and she is an object – of your affections hails from outer space when she smells like an advertisement for citrus fruit. It takes a lot of concentration to put Anita Bryant out of your head and concentrate on the girl to hand. The ironic part is that Anita Bryant was a great opponent of the homosexual lifestyle, and yet Mercury de Sade avails himself of Ninfa XVIII as though she really were a Little Green Man – which is to say that he fucks her the way one man fucks another. It may not be a new orifice, but, from the girl’s vantage point, it certainly is a new sexual organ.

051

INDEX ABSTRACT

ASS 15 Omicron T i me W h o r es

Mercury de Sade paused at a corner beneath the elevated rocket rail. Decrepit arc lamps punctuated the dark, which had a grimy feel as though somebody had stamped out the sun with a muddy boot.

The street was desolate and empty until a rocket shrieked by overhead: in the scalding orange glow he was able to make out a homeless alien curled up in a dirty Tyvek blanket. On any other planet the alien would be drunk on cheap wine, thought Mercury de Sade, but on this one he has probably had the very soul sucked out of him. The Omicron spaceport was notorious for the illicit pleasures it offered, as also for the risks incurred by those who furnished both the supply and the demand. Sometimes a man came here looking for his grail and was subject to sudden, brutal act of violence before ever laying eyes on it. He was raided by exotic pirates, cheated by whores from Uranus, snuffed out by bounty hunters from another world, robbed by pick-pockets with multiple arms like Hindu gods. At other times a man came here and lived to seize on his grail – only to discover that this was worse than being killed in the pursuit. He would ingest a drug thought to give eternal life, learning too late that its equally eternal side effect was a loud, ceaseless buzzing in the brain. Or he would sodomise a young boy, but during the act the golden youth would turn into a Martian insect and eat him alive. It was only one man in a thousand who came to Omicron and walked away happy, but for the obsessed and the possessed these were odds good enough.

Mercury de Sade put a coin in the payphone and dialled a numerical formula. A voice synthesiser answered, and Mercury de Sade punched in another series of numbers. While the computer processed the input, he inspected the inscrutable graffiti written on the grubby wall behind the phone: fuck you in a thousand weird tongues, dirty limericks in the idioms of Sirius and Rigel, contact information for whorehouses in the asteroid belt. The computer came back online and announced a nearby address.

The most exotic, most dangerous kick on planet Omicron was not simply to make love to an alien. It was to visit a time whore. Here a man could indulge in perversities that were no longer bodily and hence spatial. On Omicron there were temporal perversities. A man could have sex with his own memory, or even run the entire fuck film backwards: his penis erects quickly, sucks in a geyser of its own ejaculate, pumps in and out of his partner until the man finds himself putting on his clothes during a purely cerebral climax of foreplay and kisses. Some libertines came to Omicron for the time travel equivalent of sexual tourism: they wanted to go back to the nineteenth century and live out a Toulouse-Lautrec fantasy; they wanted to go back to Ancient Greece to indulge burning pederastic longings; some even wanted to go far back into the evolution of man so that they could come home to their depraved friends and brag of having raped the missing link. The most dangerous fetish of all, however, was to fuck back into time itself. This ran the risk of changing the order of events in a man’s life. Every old time whore could tell a story about some adventurer in orgasm who fucked himself into non-existence by diddling around with his past: perhaps his death ended up at the beginning of his life, or his birth ended up at the end, so that either way there was a short circuit between existence and non-existence – in which case the life fuse would invariably blow, resulting in complete personal blackout.

Mercury de Sade did not travel to Omicron for past kicks, however. What he wanted was to fuck the future – to experience the last possible moment in the evolution of sex before the universe explodes or collapses or exhausts itself. He explained to the time whore what he was after, and did not haggle when she named an exorbitant amount. She led him by the hand into a private cubicle. They lay down together on a clean, white bunk, and he inserted himself inside her. When he approached climax, neutron stars exploded beneath his eyelids. Animals began to look like plants, and plants like rocks. Nipples became stalactites and brains hardened like minerals. He felt as though he had added himself to a great copulation already in progress: flora fornicated flora, germs ejaculated forces into the sky, sub-atomic particles clutched in amorous embraces on orders too microscopic to perceive, and Mercury de Sade had only to press himself into these copulating congeries like a peanut into balls of caramel corn. However, this gave him no direct, personal pleasure. He sensed, rather, that his presence increased the general orgasmic index of the entire humping manifold, which then flowed back down to him in the form of electro-genital streamings that coursed through his body. I have wings, a carapace, a skin, he thought, I am everywhere, in everything. I mingle with smells, grow with plants, flow with water, vibrate with sound, shine with light. I penetrate each atom. Perhaps I am no longer even a man, he exulted, but a simple molecule of fuck Edited extracts taken from Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish by Supervert. www.supervert.com

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MARTIN WANTED A FAMILY. INSTEAD HE GOT A GUN.

THE LAST OF THE CRAZY PEOPLE (LE DERNIER DES FOUS)

A FILM BY LAURENT ACHARD

BASED ON THE NOVEL BY TIMOTHY FINDLEY Martin is not like other children. Neglected by his parents, he watches the extraordinary events that occur in and around the family home from a distance.

When his brother Didier discovers that his next-door neighbour and lover want to get married, all hell breaks loose and the family disintegrates, with terrifying results. Martin decides to take matters into his own hands…

Based on the harrowing novel by controversial novelist and playwright Timothy Findley, The Last of The Crazy People is like nothing you have seen before.

“Achard ratchets up the tension with chilling control” Variety WINNER

WINNER

LOCARNO INT’L FILM FESTIVAL

PRIX JEAN VIGO

BEST DIRECTOR

BEST FILM

“Heartbreaking and shocking in equal measures...a gripping stand-out feature”

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AVAILABLE ON DVD 25 MAY

Disorder Magazine

Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy is at the forefront of Europe’s very o w n g a l a x y q u e s t . H e g i v e s LWL i e s a window into his astonishing world. Words by Matt Bochenski

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n October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the Sputnik satellite into a low altitude elliptical orbit. It provoked what became known as the ‘Sputnik crisis’, scaring the shit out of America, which had blithely assumed that it was ahead in the burgeoning space race.

Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce described the satellite as ‘an intercontinental outer-space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of our national superiority.’

But it wasn’t just the US that felt the ramifications of the launch. Western Europe, the likely front line of a war between the two superpowers, had a stake in this too, and as early as 1959 a group of scientists began to galvanise their governments to collaborate on a European-wide space project. In 1964, Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK formed the European Space Research Organisation, which was swiftly followed by the European Launcher Development Organisation. These multinational consortia had their successes, but were beset by financial self-interest and political squabbling. In 1974, the two entities were merged into a single body: the European Space Agency.

As the space race slowed and budgets were slashed in the late ’70s, ESA emerged as a bold new player – a major organisation that today has 18 member countries and is at the forefront of scientific research and space exploration. It co-operated with NASA in launching the world’s first high-orbit telescope, the International Ultraviolet Explorer; sent deepspace missions to study the Halley and GriggSkejllerup comets; and launched the furthest man-made object in the universe, the space probe Huygens that landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. There is even an exciting plan to launch a manned mission to Mars by 2030.

Not even NASA has that kind of ambition.

“By doing this we demonstrate that our society in Europe is capable of very high level accomplishments that all Europeans can be proud of, and which attract all the best engineers and scientists,” says Jean-François Clervoy. Clervoy is the Chairman of Novespace, a subsidiary of the French Space Agency in charge of a parabolic flight programme that allows scientists to perform experiments in zero gravity without

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actually going into space. But more than that, Clervoy is one of only eight active members of the European Astronaut Corp.

Today, there are around 400 men and women who have been into space, only 37 of whom are European. Clervoy is one of the lucky few, having flown three missions between 1994 and 1999.

On his first flight, the STS-66, he used a robotic arm to deploy an atmospheric research satellite to determine the Earth’s energy balance. On the second, the STS-84, he docked NASA’s Atlantis orbiter with the Mir space station, transferring four tons of equipment between the two. And on the third, STS-103, he served as flight engineer on an eight-day mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. In other words: cool shit.

For Clervoy, space had been a passion from a young age. “When I was in primary school,” he remembers, “our teacher was telling us that progress was going so fast that we would be able to go to the moon on vacation when we were grown-ups, like the way I can buy a ticket to go to the USA for my holiday. And we believed him. I grew up believing that I would go on vacation in space.” It was at this time, too, that he was first introduced to Star Trek, which, he says, “has probably played somewhere in my destiny.” To this day, when he lectures new recruits to the Astronaut Corp, he begins with the opening strains of Roddenberry’s original series, that spine-tingling note and classic voiceover. “Our destiny is to go where no man has gone before,” Clervoy enthuses.

Of course, every little boy (and plenty of grown men) wants to be an astronaut, but you can’t just click your fingers and make it happen.

Clervoy came from a military background – his father was a fighter pilot – and he was naturally drawn to the thrills of flying. He got his private pilot’s licence while excelling in scientific studies at the Collège Militaire de Saint Cyr l’École and the Prytanée Militaire, La Flèche. In 1981, he graduated from Paris’ prestigious Polytechnique, from where he was accepted into the aeronautic and space school in Toulouse. By this time, Clervoy had established himself as one of the most highly qualified flight test engineers in the country, but even that was no guarantee of success when the time came to apply to the Astronaut Corp, based in Cologne, Germany.

Application takes an entire year. Around 8,000 candidates begin the process, which in Clervoy’s day involved filling in a couple of pieces

of paper before receiving a 40-page dossier if you were lucky; now this first step is taken online.

Ten per cent will make it through to the next stage – a series of psychotechnical and psychometric tests to evaluate aptitude, ability, personality, interests and professional values – “just to see if your brain is properly organised,” according to Clervoy. From here, 20 per cent might pass on to the psychological evaluation, “to measure the motivation, the interpersonal skills of people.” For the 20 per cent who get through that stage, it starts to get serious – Gattaca-style. “The next step is a very deep medical screening,” reveals Clervoy. “It’s a one week long, six to eight hours a day medical test, so they know everything about your body. Here you have to count on your stars to be lucky enough to make it through, because you may be very happy in general with nothing that prevents you from living a very good life, but they may find the little things here and there in your blood, in your heart, in your eyes that are not acceptable for space flight.” And when Clervoy applied, “we also had very strange physiological tests, which could look like torture tests – centrifuge, altitude chamber, rotating chair…

Those tests don’t exist any more.”

Out of the 30 or so candidates who survived this gruelling experience in 2008, only four would go on to become astronauts after an interview with the EAC board. “They were motivated, they really wanted to become astronauts,” says Clervoy of this tiny minority. “We saw very good candidates who applied just because it was an opportunity at that time. Others were deeply motivated to dedicate their lives to the job.”

Just because you’ve joined the Corp doesn’t mean you get to jump straight into a spaceship and start yelling ‘Engage warp!’ at your crewmembers, however. The mantra of the astronaut is ‘training, training and more training’.

Before he was allowed anywhere near a real-life mission, Clervoy was dispatched to Star City, the once-top-secret cosmonaut facility 32km north-east of Moscow. It was 1991, and here was Clervoy walking into what, only two years before, would have been considered enemy territory. “I was not in the military forces, but for my colleagues or some US military astronauts that I flew with it was very strange to be in the middle of a secret base near Moscow when a few years before they were training to fight against the Russians,” he admits. “But I never felt that I was going to be spied on or looked at strangely by the Russians, because talks had already started between Russia, the European Space Agency, and in particular the French Space Agency. We felt we were already in an international programme.”

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In this hidden city in the woods, bedecked with life-size models of Soviet spacecraft and a huge East German planetarium capable of projecting more than 9,000 stars, Clervoy underwent a period of intensive training designed to prepare him for space flight. “In six weeks we were taught what is normally taught to astronauts for more than one year,” he says.

“We went through all the Soviet systems, Mir systems, rendezvous, parabolic flights… It was very intensive and very exciting. We felt for the first time that we were in the real thing, and very close to actual flight.”

How does it feel, finally, to be sat in that shuttle, on that launch pad, knowing that right now you are about to leave your planet and follow a path marked by so few before you?

“Nothing can prepare you,” says Clervoy. “In effect, your mind is split into several boxes.

In one box, you think it is normal; you program yourself for that day so when it happens, it’s normal. In another box your emotions are very excited. You think, ‘Wow, it’s really going to happen! It’s unbelievable – I am really here to do this.’ And finally a piece of your thoughts is for your family and friends. You are proud to show them what’s going to happen, and you feel happy for them because it’s a very moving event to attend the launch of a space shuttle.”

It’s not, he says, until a few years have passed since your last mission that the reality, or perhaps the surreality, of what you’ve achieved begins to sink in. “You reach a point where you think, ‘Have I done this for real? Was that me?’ You start feeling that this is really extraordinary, this is really

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amazing, this is really incredible. Sometimes I surprise myself having done this.”

And what of the fear-factor involved in space travel? The ancient Greeks told the story of Bellerophon, a mythological hero who captured the winged horse Pegasus and flew to the summit of Mount Olympus. Enraged by his hubris, Zeus struck him back to earth. From Bellerophon to Battle Angel, we may have dreamed of the stars, but we’ve always been slightly nervous of what might happen if we ever get there. For Clervoy, the issue is more prosaic: “The fear is the fear of the unknown,” he argues, “but when we fly in space, we know everything; and when you know everything there’s no place for the unknown.

So you feel comfortable in your capability to cope with any anomaly, any abnormal situation.

Once you are in space, you have to trust the hardware and your spaceship,” he continues.

“You love your spaceship like a living friend.

And you trust your spaceship like you trust your mother when she takes you for the first time to something you have never done.”

From the sounds of it, astronauts are too busy during their missions to give much thought to the unknown. According to Clervoy, on a short mission – usually 10 to 15 days – the crew works up to 16 hours a day, leaving them very little time to enjoy the experience of space for itself. But on the longer missions – anything from four to six months – things are different. “The crew has more time to relax,” says Clervoy, “but they never, never get bored. Whenever you think you may get bored, you just stick your nose on the window looking at Earth, at the starry sky, and you can never get bored of that vision. I would look at Earth for hours and hours every day for weeks or months, I think, without ever getting bored.”

Cliché that it is, Clervoy firmly believes in the life-changing quality of that new perspective.

“When you are working in your cabin reading checklists, throwing switches, and then you look out the window, you see the Earth in the pure black sky of the universe and you realise we are alone,” he says. “But then if you switch off all the lights in the cockpit and you wait for some minutes for your pupils to open, then the sky is not black anymore – it’s bright with stars. Then you realise that we are probably not alone in the universe and it makes you feel even smaller.”

It seems unlikely that Clervoy himself will ever have the chance to experience that sensation again, but ESA is pushing boldly forward into the twenty-first century. Even if a manned mission to Mars still feels like a subject for John Carpenter rather than Jean-François, the astronaut is still optimistic about the future, and about the necessity of an organisation like ESA in an era when the space race looks more likely to be led by China, India and Africa rather than the old superpowers. “I think that ESA, by achieving very complex missions, maintains the capabilities of our engineers and scientists at the highest level from a technological point of view and scientific point of view, with a lot of derived benefits to the rest of the engineering and scientific communities, including non-space communities,” he says.

“It is the destiny of human kind to explore, because by exploring we increase our knowledge of what is around us and where we come from, who we are and where we are going. And the more we know about our environment, the better chance we have to help our own species survive.”

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In the late 1960s, the easy riders of New Hollywood brought about two revolutions in the movie business. The first involved new modes of marketing, production and aesthetics; the second occurred in sound. Pioneering figures such as Walter Murch, Ben Burtt and Lalo Schifrin changed the way we hear film forever. And it began with a science-fiction movie, as they explain exclusively to LWLies.

Words by Kingsley Marshall HX 1138, released in 1971, was the first film to emerge from American Zoetrope, a studio established

by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola at the end of the 1960s. The film, based upon a short shot four years earlier, marked the feature debut of Lucas. Perhaps ironically considering his future output, he later stated that it had been his intention to react against the fantastical elements of science-fiction with what he referred to as ‘science-fact’; drawing his influence from European features such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than the comic-book heroism which continued to dominate the genre.

Included in the opening sequence of the original theatrical release is a clip from William Cameron Menzies’ adaptation of HG Wells’ Things to Come, replaced later with a scene from a Buck Rogers serial. These adventures were literally shoved aside by a more believable account of the escape of a worker from a totalitarian dystopia. Governed by surveillance and pacifying drugs, this amounted to a galaxy far, far away from the subsequent space opera of Star Wars. It wasn’t just genre conventions that the director hoped to topple either. A 25-yearold wunderkind when the film entered production, Lucas had first met Coppola on the set of The Rain People in ’69 after winning an internship at Warners following his graduation. The formation by the pair of American Zoetrope shortly afterwards was intended as anathema to the stuffy systems of Hollywood, with THX 1138 their first shot across the bows of the old guard.

Science-fiction films of this period were beginning to reflect a social and political anxiety. This paranoia was fed by the escalation of the Cold War into the napalm heat of US operations in Vietnam. All over television at the time was coverage of a space race whose glamour had quickly faded once Kennedy’s pledge to reach the moon had been accomplished and, as early as 1970, questions were being raised as to the huge cost of NASA’s grand project and its benefits. THX 1138 reflected all of these feelings and, in addition to its rejection of the films that had preceded it, Lucas also played against many of the accepted traditions of filmmaking, perhaps most notably through his inversion of the relationship between sound and visuals.

Working closely with co-writer and sound editor Walter Murch, Lucas’ plan for the film was that sound would not be secondary to the image, but equal to it. In describing the brief for THX 1138, Murch stated that he and Lucas had “wanted a film from the future, rather than a film about the future.” Their intention was to find this future through the design of a soundtrack that featured complex montages of recordings built from over 20 layers of sound, which took Murch

061

a year to complete. These blended dialogue, effects and music to create a cacophony of noise that rarely let up across the film, with each scene constructed entirely differently from the one that preceded it, and that which followed.

The accompanying publicity played up these new approaches.

While the studios would traditionally rely on a pre-recorded sound library, Murch had created every single sound in the film from scratch.

He played with the speed of his tape recorder and used a variety of microphone techniques, in addition to experimenting with what he would later describe as ‘worldizing’; the re-recording of sound played through loudspeakers in real spaces. On one occasion, Lucas transmitted dialogue over a ham radio, with Murch re-recording the broadcast from the ether. These techniques allowed Murch to create effects that evoked the filmic space with which they were associated or, more often, were deliberately manipulated in order to disorientate the audience. These effects moved away from traditional attempts to mimic reality in sound, in much the same way that Brecht broke the fourth wall of theatre, and served to challenge notions of realism in film.

“I love escaping into new worlds,” admits Ben Burtt today. Burtt is the sound designer who worked with Lucas on all six of the Star Wars films, and was thrust into the spotlight for his work on WALL-E last year. He also contributed to the sound design of JJ Abrams’ reimagining of Star Trek. “It is especially exciting when you do sciencefiction, as that kind of film requires sound for things no one has ever heard before; vehicles, places or mechanics and robots. It’s quite challenging, but a wonderfully creative opportunity where you are free to be inventive and not held to any particular ground rules.”

Perhaps ironically, the sound of science-fiction is often surprisingly low tech. Consider the creaking of the ship in Alien, the clanking of the Death Star, or the servo whine of the titular Terminator. Technology, in spite of miniaturisation, must remain both audible and visible – the sound designer reinforcing the sense of the real in an audience no matter how fantastical the narrative. “People think we do everything in the computer,” explains Burtt, “but although we process the sounds there, almost all of the sounds we use are those that we have gone out and collected from somewhere. WALL-E’s environment, for example, is dominated by wind noise, made from the sound of dragging a canvas bag across a carpet – an old idea that has been used for a few hundred years to create the sound of wind in opera – coupled with the sound of Niagara Falls run through an echo chamber. Often you go out to record something specific and end up recording something else. I live near a police officer and asked him to come around as I wanted to record the buzz and snap of his Taser. Unfortunately the sound wasn’t very interesting, just a pop and a click, and I ended up recording the opening and closing of his handcuffs, using them for the body movements of a cockroach. I’m always grabbing little pieces from my life and weaving them into a new fabric.

“My criteria for good sound is in opposition to what people might think, in that it’s not the quantity of sound,” adds Burtt. “It is pretty easy nowadays to take a sound effects library and really pile things on – it’s like word processing, you just cut and paste and make a really busy, noisy soundtrack. Instead, I look for films which create a world that the audience really believes, has depth and the right character to it. It is hard to make something really articulate and specific where if you took away the sound the story would not be the same. I owe a debt of thanks to the freedom of the Star Wars films, where I created lightsabers, the breathing of Darth Vader and the scream of the Tie Fighter – all things that have since entered cinema folklore.” Murch

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reiterates this notion: “To record a telephone ring, I think of recording the space between myself and the telephone. What I’m really recording is a relationship between the telephone and the space around it. Sound without air has no smell.”

These revolutions in sound were reinforced in the music to THX 1138. Lalo Schifrin was brought onto the production in the summer of 1970 – taken on, he explains, as he was not “a typical Hollywood composer.” Schifrin was still best known for his scores for 1968’s Bullitt and the Mission: Impossible series, but had turned his hand to increasingly avant-garde projects by the late 1960s. As he explains, “I first met George Lucas on the Warner Brothers lot in Los Angeles in the spring. I didn’t have any screenplay or anything to read at that time, and it wasn’t until I was hired to write the score that I went up to Marin County and saw the movie. I liked it very much and he talked through the concept with me; a future police state which existed in a subterranean world created following an exchange of nuclear weapons in a war between the super powers.

“He gave me some direction but otherwise I had complete freedom, which I liked. My concept came from the subterranean setting, and was of a hermetic environment where the textures in the score were asphyxiating, with no space between the individual sounds.” Though Schifrin had used a 50-piece orchestra, the score had an electronic quality. “That density was created by the tonal and sound clusters I used,” he explains. “In addition, all of the individual string notes were sustained near the bridge of the string and, as such, had no vibrato.

That makes a very cold sound, which, in conjunction with the notes that were written next to it, further served to dehumanise the score.

I wanted to reflect that these characters were living in an impossible position, and hoped that this would create an atmosphere of a totalitarian and tyrannical state.

“There are many depressing musical moments in THX 1138,” he continues. “I was not depressed, but I had to contribute that kind of depression to the movie.” These components of the score are countered with source music, chirpy jingles of bossa nova which play intermittently in the film’s public spaces. ”The background music was purposefully mediocre and stupid, and represented another way in which the state was tranquilising the population.” Not included in the film, but on a recent re-release of the original soundtrack, is the psychotic chirpiness of a piece of music entitled ‘Be Happy Again’.

“George Lucas liked that very much,” Schifrin explains, laughing.

“After the scoring session everyone was singing that song.

“What distinguishes the film for me was that while there were many science-fiction films led by action, this was an entirely different kind of story, more Orwellian,” he adds. “There are no battles happening in space, there is no tolerance of transgression and the population are afraid to talk and are told what to do – in that sense, this was a different kind of science-fiction completely. There are chases, but even these happen in the subterranean world that Lucas had conceived, and the music I wrote for these was very different from a chase I would score in other circumstances. I have approached every film that I have worked on differently, as they each involved a different concept and a different idea, but this was such a special movie that I haven’t written music like that before or since. Every film is like a thumb print, and the good thing about this discipline is that there are no laws – everything is allowed.”

THX 1138 is available on DVD now through Warner Home Video.

Lalo Schifrin’s original soundtrack is available through www.filmscoremonthly.com.

Other Schifrin scores are available through www.laloschifrin.com.

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coraLine RELEASED May 8

DIRECTED BY Henry Selick STARRING Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Keith David

“I’m way too old for dolls.”

So says 11-year-old Coraline (Dakota Fanning), on the cusp of adolescence and already beginning to acquire the sort of dismissive contempt for what the world has to offer that will no doubt dominate her teen years. Still, bored in her new, drab Oregon home and ignored by her deadline-driven parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), our young heroine will become beguiled by the gift of a doll that is the spitting image of herself apart from its two button eyes.

She will enter a narcissistic fantasy universe – before, that is, she is truly ready to appreciate reality and to put away childish things.

Coraline may imagine that the alternative world next door, with its more elaborate gardens, its more entertaining neighbours (Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Ian McShane), and its Other Mother (also Teri Hatcher) who somehow has everything that Coraline’s real mother seems to lack, is a haven from the disappointments of her

actual existence. But we can see, long before her dream turns into a nightmare, that this universe of pure wish-fulfilment is, for all its attractive wrapping, an empty and sterile confection that will lead at best to solipsism and self-absorption.

And, at worst, to the loss of everything Coraline holds dear.

If the Other Mother becomes the focus of all Coraline’s hopes and fears, this ultra-needy, gameplaying weaver of fictions bears a closer resemblance in many ways to Coraline herself than to her overworked, underrated parent.

In confronting her Other Mother, Coraline is only facing up to her own dark half.

Henry Selick might not quite be a household name, but he is one of very few mainstream animators with a truly distinctive vision. The stop-motion gothic of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach resembles no other helmsman’s work (even if the direction of the former has often been mistakenly

attributed to its better known writer Tim Burton). Coraline continues Selick’s aesthetic of carnivalesque dread, while pushing its boundaries even further, as the first-ever full-length stop-motion feature to have been conceived and photographed in 3D. The results are simply astonishing. Selick has created a richly detailed, beautifully realised set of parallel worlds and allows us to become as lost as Coraline herself in and between their exquisite textures. With its frame-by-frame manipulation of physical models in miniature sets, the animation offers the perfect aesthetic frame for a tale full of dolls, puppets and robots; one concerned precisely with the shadowlands between reality and the imagination.

If the film’s old-fashioned (yet cutting-edge) stop-motion form suggests a respect for the past and a refusal to embrace the voguish merely for its own sake, so too does the story (adapted by Selick from Neil Gaiman’s 2002 novel).

Complete with its own looking-glass world and talking cat, Coraline’s journey down the rabbit- (or at least mouse-) hole owes an obvious debt to Alice In Wonderland, even as Coraline’s monstrously distorted view of her own parents channels the long-dead ghost of Freud.

Where many contemporary CG movies seem likely to vanish once their moment has passed, Coraline has, matching its stateof-the-art craft, a story of real substance to lend it a timeless appeal. And in a nod to a fairytale tradition going back at least to the Brothers Grimm, it is also likely to embed itself for years to come in children’s psyches by scaring the eyeballs off any viewers not yet too old for dolls. Anton Bitel

Anticipation. Two worlds, three dimensions.

Enjoyment. Funny, scary and a quirky joy to behold.

In Retrospect. A macabre coming-of-age classic.

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firefLieS in THe garden RELEASED May 29

DIRECTED BY Dennis Lee STARRING Ryan Reynolds, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson

Ryan Reynolds leads a starry cast in this heavy, entertaining but forgettable family drama written and directed by Dennis Lee. The story revolves around the strained relationship between Michael Waechter (Reynolds) and his domineering father Charles (Willem Dafoe), which comes to a head when Michael grudgingly attends a family celebration. The reunion is derailed when his mother, Lisa (Julia Roberts), is killed in a car crash, which acts as a catalyst for reflection and flashbacks.

Death, affairs, abuse and failure are all hallmarks (or should that be Hallmarks?) of the genre, which often churns out clichéd messes more suited to daytime

anyTHing for Her

television than cinema. But Lee’s script, based on a poem by Robert Frost, has a few clever things to say about his characters, even if it isn’t all that original. Apart from the odd slap, Charles’ abuse towards his son is primarily emotional, while no explanation for his behaviour is offered beyond the fact that he’s a controlling man who rules his child and pregnant wife with an iron fist.

Despite suffering an unhappy childhood, it’s refreshing to find

that Michael is free of the overanalysis so beloved of American dramas. He’s the kind of strong, successful yet detached man who considers it acceptable to teach his young cousins how to fish with firecrackers, and screw his ex-wife quite loudly while the rest of the family has a minute’s silence downstairs at the funeral. In other words, he’s no more or less fucked up than most people. But the film hinges on that awkward relationship

between father and son, which is left free of resolution or revelation.

By the conclusion, no one has learned anything, which is some sort of lesson itself. Limara Salt

weather-beaten brows for a moment, though, and the cracks in the film’s dramatic structure start to widen into hairline fractures.

As Anything For Her gathers momentum, plot holes and narrative inconsistencies get papered over with alarmingly thin sheets of cliché.

Meanwhile, the moral questions at the heart of the drama (did she actually do it? When, if ever, can vigilantism be justified?) have long ago been swept aside in favour of prosaic plot devices. With Cavayé

seemingly intent on suffocating the film’s moral ambiguity, Anything For Her soon falters.

It doesn’t take the sharpest shrink to realise that the injustice meted out to Lisa, along with the increasingly unhinged steps Julien takes to remedy the situation, make their son, Oscar (Lancelot Roch), the real victim of the piece.

It’s ironic, then, that – with a psychological simplicity that would try the credulity of any five-year-old – their child is largely treated as a

blond-haired, blue-eyed prop rather than a character in his own right.

Anything For Her proves a competent candyfloss film, but with a suspicious aftertaste of ripe fromage. Mike Brett

Anticipation. A family torn apart! Unexpected tragedy! Dark secrets! Whatever!

Enjoyment. Surprisingly not a bad way to spend 100 minutes.

In Retrospect. What’s it about again?

RELEASED June 5

DIRECTED BY Fred Cavayé STARRING Vincent Lindon, Diane Kruger, Lancelot Roch Following in the footsteps of Gallic-tinged thrillers Tell No One and Taken, Anything For Her confirms that vigilantism is firmly in vogue on the cinematic catwalk.

Now it’s everyman schoolteacher Julien (Vincent Lindon) walking the moral tightrope, as he moves heaven, earth and his Volvo estate to combat his beloved wife Lisa’s (Diane Kruger) wrongful imprisonment for murder.

Director Fred Cavayé manages to mask the vacuum of originality at the heart of this narrative by coaxing emotive performances from his excellent leads. Kruger’s porcelain fragility never fails to pluck the heartstrings, while Lindon’s face is a portrait of careworn suffering.

Haul your eyes away from his

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Anticipation. Sounds like a L’Oréal ad, but the cast is intriguing.

Enjoyment. A familiar story, but there’s just enough tension holding it together.

In Retrospect. What’s the French for ‘déjà vu’?

juST anoTHer LoVe STory RELEASED June 12 DIRECTED BY Ole Bornedal STARRING Anders W Berthelsen, Rebecka Hemse, Nikolaj Lie Kaas When unfulfilled father Jonas (Anders W Berthelsen) inadvertently causes a terrible road accident, he decides to assuage his guilt by visiting the pretty young victim, Julia (Rebecka Hemse), in hospital, where she is in a coma. But Julia’s family mistake him for her boyfriend Sebastian (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), due back any day from Cambodia, where the couple met.

Just Another Love Story immediately hits you with a sense of director Ole Bornedal’s forceful personality, as he denies Jonas any opportunity to correct the misconception. Jonas is a romantic who grasps this ill-conceived opportunity to escape from his nice,

middle-class life. And it is precisely his niceness that, paradoxically, allows Julia’s family to accept what is in fact a cruel deception.

Of course, it’s not long before the recovering Julia begins to regain some of her old memories – crucially of her Cambodian trip – which hold the key to the drama.

Meanwhile, mysterious events in the hospital add to the tension.

If you had to write the poster line for this crazy, rollicking and,

it has to be said, extremely violent Danish thriller, it would be tempting to go for ‘Lars von Trier does The Beach’. Those haunting hospital corridors and back-projected scenes of Berthelsen are all reminiscent of von Trier’s early work in the likes of The Kingdom and Europa.

Like a good first novel, it feels as if Bornedal is trying to cram a lot in here. And though a dig at Islam from a supporting character seems gratuitous, he is always in

control; delivering a well paced, though hardly credible, piece of noir. Jonas Milk

Anticipation. Bornedal’s biggest claim to fame outside Denmark is the straight-to-video Nightwatch with Ewan McGregor.

Enjoyment. Well made, gripping and packed with ideas.

In Retrospect. Anticipation will be lifted for Bornedal’s next film.

Bad Film Club From 20 May 09 Enjoy cinematic catastrophes at our infamous monthly Bad Film Club, each screened with live comedy commentary from Nicko & Joe. Coming soon: I Know Who Killed Me, Bats and Snakes on a Train.

london’s most diverse cinema www.barbican.org.uk/film 0845 121 6830

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation

Tormented: Set Visit Words by Limara Salt

Even as Tormented was in pre-production, news of young students committing suicide due to malicious and unrelenting bullying hit the headlines and provoked a national debate that ran from the House of Commons to The Wright Stuff. Call it bad timing – or good, depending on your point of view – but writer Stephen Prentice had clearly hit a nerve, attempting to turn an issue of national importance into a gory, trashy teen flick.

In a style more suited to commercial American horror movies, director Jon Wright scoured the country for a group of gorgeous up-and-coming guys and girls to fill his cast of teen tearaways. And that’s what he got: a mixture of child stars, new faces and a few of Skins’ first series cast make up the ensemble, and with our first steps onto the set on a typically grey English summer’s day it’s clear that all involved are having a ball.

The story of Tormented – a film that will no doubt be referred to as the latest British ‘zom-com’ – goes like this: Darren Mullet kills himself after being bullied by the resident in-crowd at Fairview High. The group show no remorse whatsoever and carry on their ruthless ways until they start receiving lewd texts from his phone. Meanwhile, the school’s head girl, Justine (Tuppence Middleton), is bored of her prim friends and starts flirting dangerously with Alexis (Dimitri Leonidas). Soon enough, the students start seeing Mullet everywhere until, one by one, they each bite the dust in ways that are as fun to watch as they evidently were to film.

Olly Alexander plays Jason Banks who, despite being Mullet’s only friend, meets his maker thanks to the business end of two pencils. “Jason is tortured, and for the death I had to wear this nose piece that had blood and snot gushing out. I’ve had a death scene before, but nothing as disgusting as that,” he explains. Although he says he only fell into film by accident, when asked, Olly rattles off an eclectic range of movies and directors he admires, including Tim Burton, Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam as well as My Own Private Idaho and Spirited Away. On the other hand, “I’ve never seen some of the films that we’re all apparently supposed to love,” he says with a grimace. “Grease, Top Gun, Terminator, Die Hard: I’ve never seen any of them and I’m sure I could think of more.” Unfortunately, it’s too tempting not to pass this on to his co-star Tom Hopper, who freely admits to watching Terminator 2 everyday after school for God knows how long. “I’m gonna have a word with him,” he promises.

Considering Tom is about a foot taller and twice as wide, that’s a worrying thought for Jason. Then again, that’s why he landed this gig.

Tom is Marcus, one of the popular kids and leader Bradley’s right-hand

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man. “Marcus is a little bit slow, immature, easily strayed and generally a follower of Bradley,” he reveals. Like most of the cast, he’s a fan of the horror genre and revelled in filming the gory and overblown death scenes, even if he knows that in a short time the shock factor will probably be gone.

“I love horror, films like The Cottage. Stuff like The Exorcist doesn’t affect me as they are dated and a bit farcical, but in its day it would have been horrendous. Everything was left to your imagination but now it’s all about how can you film it and make it look real.”

Of course, the elephant in the room is whether or not the film is exploiting a serious and current issue without truly addressing it; bullying may be mentioned, but not in such a way that you could take it seriously, and it’s all too quickly forgotten thanks to a whole lot of blood. Actress Mary Nighy, who plays Helena, is keen to point out that they are avoiding the propaganda that surrounds the issue. “It’s not just the people who do the bullying that get their comeuppance,” she says, “it’s the people who stand by and allow it to happen that get it too.” The most established and experienced of the group with a credit in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette to her name, Nighy admits that this is the biggest troupe of young actors she’s worked with, while Olly Alexander likens it to being back at school.

While practising a post-funeral scene, Georgia King (Sophie) and Larissa Wilson (Khalillah) are so natural with each other that their primary concern is whether their skirts are revealing too much, or their too-high-forschool heels are going to get stuck in the mud. Across the set, Tom and Alex Pettyfer, who plays Bradley, are mock fighting while everyone else busies themselves setting up the shot.

The two Skins alumni, Larissa and April Pearson, reveal that it was easier to mesh with their co-stars as they’ve all done the rounds of British television and are around the same age. “Because of Skins and other shows we didn’t feel as intimidated,” admits April. “When you do a show or film you only have a short period of time to make friends so it’s easier if you’ve already crossed paths.”

In the four weeks of filming, each actor seems to have taken something from the experience, whether it’s doing blood curdling stunts or surprisingly realistic sex scenes (at least for a teen flick). Either way, the cast of relative newcomers all seem to have enjoyed the process. And for those worried that the grim subject matter isn’t shown enough respect in this trashy, gory flick, April promises, “We’re not making a mockery of bullying. It’s an issue and it isn’t being promoted or undermined.”

TormenTed RELEASED May 22

Take I Know What You Did Last Summer, mix it with Skins, and you’re somewhere in the cinematic ballpark of Tormented.

Set in an English comprehensive, it begins at the funeral of Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean), an overweight outcast who was driven to suicide by bullies.

On the other side is the in crowd; a group of mean, vindictive and ridiculously good-looking kids led by Tasha (April Pearson) and Bradley (Alex Pettyfer). There’s also head girl Justine (Tuppence Middleton); Mullet’s only friend and bullied geek Jason (Olly Alexander); and deputy head girl Helena (Mary Nighy).

After the funeral, everyone starts receiving vulgar texts from Mullet’s

DIRECTED BY Jon Wright STARRING Alex Pettyfer, April Pearson, Dimitri Leonidas

phone, until slowly but surely they start kicking the bucket in a series of gory but hilariously ridiculous ways.

Suicide as a result of extreme bullying makes headlines whenever it happens as it shines a light on the torture that some kids endure on a daily basis. Tormented attempts to address these issues by highlighting the teachers who ignore the abuse, the parents who disregard pleas to stay at home and the students who may not have done the bullying but never did anything to stop it either. The problem, however, is that the film doesn’t know whether it wants to be a social commentary or a throwaway teen film, and that lack of focus begets a muddled experience.

Any good horror film needs not only blood spattered deaths aplenty but a good murderer too.

Tormented fails that test, offering us little more than a regulation sinister stalker powered by an asthma inhaler. The same lack of credibility extends to the bullies – if you want an audience to believe that a group of students are so malicious that they drove someone to suicide, you need to show them doing something slightly meaner than pulling ears and nicknaming an ugly kid ‘Shrek’.

That said, the script mostly sparkles, creating a few laugh out loud moments delivered with glee by the young cast. Mary Nighy is so prim you can practically see

the stick up her backside, while Olly Alexander not only gets the best line (“Of course he knows who you are, everybody knows who you are, you’re like Princess Diana in this fucking dump!”), he’s the only one who you feel sorry for when he meets a messy end – via pencils no less. Indeed, the film itself is somewhat messy, and convoluted too, but it’s no horror show either. Limara Salt

Anticipation. Not another teen horror movie.

Enjoyment. Complete trash, but then again it’s meant to be.

In Retrospect. We’re still awaiting a worthy successor to Shaun of the Dead.

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kiSSeS DIRECTED BY Lance Daly STARRING Kelly O’Neill, Shane Curry, Paul Roe The opening moments of Lance Daly’s feisty, captivating comingof-ager are uncompromisingly bleak. A dead dog lies rotting by the roadside. Busted bikes nestle amid festering, scattered debris.

This could be hell, and for young tweens Dylan (Shane Curry) and Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) living on the outskirts of Dublin, it might as well be. Inhabiting a literally black-andwhite world with little prospects, their neighbouring families are as bad as each other – scrapping and abusive, they put Shameless to shame. Not even Christmas alleviates their spirits. And after a bust-up with his brutish dad, Dylan sets out into the big city to find his AWOL older brother, with Kylie along for the haul.

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RELEASED June 5

Devoid of colour and up to its eyeballs in domestic turbulence, Kisses fosters a painful, monochrome melancholy. Then, as Dylan and Kylie take flight, skipping down river aboard a junk barge, the black and white blushes. Iridescent hues whisper into their surroundings.

Gradually the colour builds until the screen is saturated with the glow of Dublin’s kaleidoscopic city lights. It’s a showy contrivance that is never gaudy, never puckers, tapping into the childish pleasures that our duo have rarely, if ever, experienced.

But if the whimsical visuals seem to suggest an escapist, wishfulfilment adventure, think again.

The more they wrench at their council estate leashes, the more futile our duo’s struggle appears.

And as their twilight search/ exploration wears on, the nefarious streetfolk that the kids encounter grow increasingly more dangerous.

Childish fears quickly harden into something more real and terrifying.

“There’s no devil, just people,” Kylie realises after one explosive, if overdramatic, encounter.

In their first ever acting roles, Curry and O’Neill are phenomenal. At once bullish, immature and naïve, their struggle for understanding, for more, is as moving as it is ultimately hopeless.

It’s fitting that their journey is pitched to the strains of Bob Dylan; both kids inexplicably drawn to the counterculture king without ever knowing why. The film’s emblematic anti-theme tune,

Dylan’s ‘Shelter from the Storm’, says it all.

By journey’s end, Daly’s fusion of youthful anxiety and childlike yearning has established itself as a beautifully realised epitaph to social unrest. Part celebration, part call to arms, it’s a sarky, quirky delight. “I’ve nothing else to give, only kisses,” explains one brief encounter. “When you kiss, you give or you take.”

Kisses is a giver. Josh Winning

Anticipation. Looks a bit like This Is Ireland.

Enjoyment. These kids can act and they like Bob Dylan? Get to the head of the class, you beauts.

In Retrospect. A riveting, emotional spectacle with stacks of style and a song in its heart.

mark of an angeL RELEASED May 22

DIRECTED BY Safy Nebbou STARRING Catherine Frot, Sandrine Bonnaire, Wladimir Yordanoff

Put storytelling under the microscope and what you see is the careful shattering of daily life’s equilibrium. Mark of an Angel knows this. And it also knows that there’s no more precariously balanced equilibrium than the cosseted world of the French middle-class.

Elsa (Catherine Frot) is thirtysomething, the mother of a young son, and recently separated from her husband. There is, it’s hinted, something dark in Elsa’s past, which has led to the failure of her marriage and the concern and caution with which she’s treated by her family.

When Elsa starts taking an unnaturally close interest in Lola (Héloïse Cunin), a little girl at her son’s school, we’re left wondering

just how dark her previous transgressions were – and where her obsessive behaviour will lead.

Skilfully building the disturbing ambiguity in Elsa’s motivations, writer/director Safy Nebbou ensures that while her behaviour seems cold and inscrutable, she also remains plausibly innocent. This ambiguity is further heightened by a knowing trek across the difficult terrain of intra-gender female politics, without stumbling into stereotypes. Lola’s mother, Claire (Sandrine Bonnaire),

has all the trappings of a boho ideal: understatedly attractive and blessed with a happy family and beautiful home. Nebbou has the smarts to pull back and let the audience’s personal and political sympathy be irrationally drawn to Elsa’s more mundane existence. Elsa may be dangerously deranged, the film subtly insinuates, but at least she’s not a self-satisfied bitch.

And herein lies the disturbed equilibrium – the balanced world of bourgeois domesticity pitched

against a wobbly reality where calm always foretells a storm, and nothing is as fragile as contentment.

Mark of an Angel is formulaic, but it’s an intriguing addition to the métier. James Bramble

Anticipation. Another middle-class drama from France.

Enjoyment. Formulaic but intelligent.

In Retrospect. A nuanced addition to a fine tradition.

Objectified From 22 May 09 The director of cult design film Helvetica returns with this engrossing look at the impact of manufactured objects on our lives, personal expression, identity, consumerism and sustainability.

The best new releases all year round from just £7.50 per ticket online.

london’s most diverse cinema www.barbican.org.uk/film 0845 121 6830

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation

Anne-Marie Duff: acting junkie Interview by Nick Hasted

For most of Is Anybody There?, Anne-Marie Duff stays selflessly in the background, as Michael Caine’s decrepit magician Clarence takes centrestage. But when she lets rip at her lazy husband (David Morrissey), then lets a shattered Clarence heal himself by kissing her, her face becomes a powerhouse of emotion, lit with fervour. It’s a part typical of a career which took off when the then-34-year-old Duff played Fiona, the 20-year-old daughter lifting feckless father Frank Gallagher’s family on her shoulders in Shameless.

“I’m always drawn to people who bruise themselves; anyone who has an addiction,” she’s said, proving it in parts like Is Anybody There’s sacrificial mum, Fiona, and heavily pregnant, homeless Michelle, on the run from a brutal husband in Dominic Savage’s TV film Born Equal (2006).

Even as omnipotent Elizabeth I in the BBC’s The Virgin Queen (2005), Duff was fuelled by a secret sense of her inadequacy to play it. She learned these deep sympathies in Hayes, the nondescript north-west London suburb where she grew up.

“It was a very working-class environment,” she says today, “and a very loving home. But I have a lot of extended family that isn’t perfect.

There were terrible sadnesses in my youth. I ran away from home and did lots of silly things. But you either choose to wear your tragedies like a fedora. Or you go: ‘Let’s try and get on with it.’”

Acting was a massive leap from that world. “I was so bloody-minded about it,” she recalls, “and it felt like such a safe haven for me, because I didn’t fit in. It was at the height of Thatcherite bollocks, and I didn’t want to go and work in a bank, I didn’t want to wear chinos and a blazer. And so acting became this special sort of paradise. I’m sure that most people I went to school with thought I was an arsehole for wanting to do it. But when you’re 19, you’re absolutely committed and you feel invincible. All I thought was, ‘If I can just get into drama school…’ Because unless Ken Loach lands in your town and plucks you out of obscurity, you don’t feel if you’re working-class that there’s any other way.”

It doesn’t sound much different to the early 1960s, when young working-class northern actors such as Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney bulldozed their way into stiff-upper-lipped British cinema. That British New Wave of kitchen-sink dramas was the seed of Shameless and Born Equal. Duff grew up holding them dear. “That’s always been my absolute favourite period of films. I’ve always been obsessed with it. And maybe on some level I feel a connection with it. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning [1960] could be made now, if you think of binge-drinking culture, and all that pent-up anger. And Billy Liar [1963], about a young man too frightened to fulfil himself.” Duff feels echoes of those times now.

“I hope at the moment, because we’re in this weird economic climate,

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FILMOGRAPHY Anne-Marie Duff Is Anybody There? (2008) The Waiting Room (2007) Garage (2007) Notes on a Scandal (2006) The Magdalene Sisters (2002) Enigma (2001)

some amazing low-budget movement may be born.” The final death of Thatcherism – and something new rising from it? “Please God…” Is Anybody There? found Duff working with the Cockney king of ’60s working-class cinema, Michael Caine. “I was so in love with him in The Ipcress File [1965],” she bashfully admits, “that when I first met him I found it very difficult to talk to him for a while. You just want to sit down and open a bottle of something and force him to let rip. I tell you one thing – he’s such a grafter. I don’t know why, but he works as hard as if it’s his first job.”

Duff and Morrissey were surrounded by still older veterans on-set – Leslie Phillips and Sylvia Syms among them. They found common ground.

“You do feel like they’re of this other world. They all started in repertory theatre. Pre-television mania, it was all about potential and slowly building a career, and now you have to achieve things by 24 or you’re fucked. But both David and I are actors who pootle along and try and do interesting work, and so we could talk to them about lots of things.”

After The Last Station, as Tolstoy’s unhealthily devoted daughter Sasha (“An hilarious obsessive, total Elektra complex!”), we’ll finally see Duff in the lost northern world of the films she loves, playing John Lennon’s mother Julia in Turner-winning artist Sam Taylor Wood’s Nowhere Boy, set in ’50s Liverpool. “You can see the wit, the creativity of John in her, that fluidity,” Duff says. “His was a more intellectual, mercurial quality; hers was emotional.

You only have to listen to tapes of interviews to know that he was capable of moments of terrifying honesty. He was so bright, you wonder at times: is it terrifying honesty? Or is he fucking with us? It’s a fascinating world.”

Though married to her Shameless co-star James McAvoy, Duff has made no accommodation to celebrity culture, or leather-catsuited, brain-dead action epics. “The kind of work you choose helps,” she muses. “That means that certain aspects of the [media] nonsense just aren’t interested in me.

People either think they recognise me, or say they loved some bit of work.

I don’t want them saying, ‘Oh, brilliant. You buy semi-skimmed, same as me…’” Careerism doesn’t interest her either. “People try to make it strategic – that you should do jobs for awards, instead of because they’re interesting and brilliant.”

Being bruised or addicted, in good or bad ways, are Duff’s touchstones.

Acting’s her addiction. “I’m a total junkie for it,” she admits. “And if I was told that I had to stop tomorrow I’d probably kill someone. Sometimes you have days where you hate yourself and think, ‘I can’t do this, why am I even kidding myself?’ But it’s like an abusive lover – the moments that are really good make up for the crap.”

The full transcript of this interview will be available online in the week of the film’s release.

iS anybody THere?

DIRECTED BY John Crowley STARRING Michael Caine, AnneMarie Duff, David Morrissey

“Rage against the dying of the light!” Michael Caine’s ageing magician Clarence predictably rails, finding himself washed up in a Yorkshire old people’s home in 1987. But in John Crowley’s unlikely follow-up to Boy A, his light fails anyway. Death has rarely been considered with this mixture of Ealing whimsy and cold-eyed clarity.

The only person as furious as Clarence at ending up in the optimistically named Lark House is Edward (Son of Rambow’s Bill Milner), the 10-year-old whose parents (Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey) have filled their home with paying pensioners to survive Thatcherite hard times.

The distracted adults leave him a bullied misfit at school. Morbidly obsessed with ghosts, he trails his

RELEASED May 1

shuffling housemates with a taperecorder, hoping to catch their last breaths. Clarence and Edward find common ground in their helpless presence among disparate old-timers they wouldn’t choose as company.

Writer Peter Harness has drawn heavily on his own childhood in a 1980s Yorkshire that Crowley emphatically reminds us had changed little since the shabby ’70s. In lazier hands, his odd tale would be a pensioners’ Cuckoo’s Nest, with Clarence the cathartic old rebel. The foul-mouthed magician instead offers disgust at the indignity of decrepitude as his main life lesson. Innocence and experience then swap places as Edward leads him on a road trip to heal old hurts, and Clarence’s

senile identity shatters like great shards of plate glass.

Is Anybody There? joins a list of sharp, independent British films Caine has made in a career third act as impressive in its way as his cockney class-warrior youth. As with Shiner, Last Orders and Little Voice (whose veteran showbiz faker Clarence benignly echoes), this is a film of messy last chances.

He leads an ensemble in which expert old-stagers Leslie Phillips, Sylvia Syms and Peter Vaughan show their own enduring humanity, as they’re abandoned to afternoons in a shared lounge with condescending council entertainers, and One Man And His Dog on TV. Morrissey’s moustache, mullet and knackered lust for the home’s teenage

help, meanwhile, is as selfless a supporting turn as Duff ’s overworked mum. But in the home strait where the film’s emotional payload waits, she makes the screen glow with a longing to love.

Is Anybody There? lets the thought that helpless infirmity is where we’re all headed sink in gently. Unassumingly wise, its jagged edges stick with you. Nick Hasted

Anticipation. Sir Michael in a retirement home? Be still, oh pacemaker.

Enjoyment. First and second childhoods are entertainingly compared in a funny, surprising tale.

In Retrospect. Takes life’s final, frightening stage in its stride. This is a modest but nourishing treat.

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cHÉri DIRECTED BY Stephen Frears STARRING Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Rupert Friend

RELEASED May 8

Chéri has all the required ingredients of a classy costume drama. Two decades since their last collaboration, Stephen Frears reunites with screenwriter Christopher Hampton and Michelle Pfeiffer for another French literary adap; though this time round it’s Dangerous Liaisons-lite. Add to the mix Rupert Friend in the title role, stunning sets and costumes evoking the Belle Époque bons vivants of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette’s 1920s novels, and all signs point to corsetbusting heaven.

There is a good deal of Wildean banter between Pfeiffer’s retired courtesan Léa and her erstwhile colleague Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates), who palms her twentysomething son off on to the younger

woman, only to reel him back years into their relationship so she can profitably marry him off. Peloux presides over the drama in her grotesquely overgrown conservatory which, along with piquant one-liners (to Léa: “You smell so good! Don’t you find that as the skin gets a little looser it holds perfume so much better?”), locates her somewhere between Miss Havisham and Katharine Hepburn’s Violet Venable in Suddenly, Last Summer on the scale of overbearing matriarchs.

For mainstream fare, Chéri is novel in allowing a woman over 50 to carry the film. Léa’s fears of ridicule about her young lovers and ageing are deftly played. What she sees in Chéri himself remains a mystery, however. It’s not that Chéri is a selfish, shallow fop that’s the problem – in fact, that’s the point, and Hampton and Frears do their best to stick to Colette’s unsentimental characterisation and droll gender reversals. But the

author’s impressionistic style fails to translate to the screen. Frears’ wry voiceover, meanwhile, leaves the viewer struggling to read between the lines. Sophie Ivan

both refugees and artists – found a home and made a life. Trefeurig is a landscape and town that’s changing rapidly as small-scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Koppel very quietly and skilfully observes this change as the population grows older, the local primary school faces closure, and the mobile library (The Library Van was the original title) resists a move into the twenty-first century.

Acting as his own

cinematographer, Koppel allows Sleep Furiously to unfold in long, static and resolutely unhurried takes, treating the camera as, in his own words, “a microscope through which I can explore the world.” There are shots here that are as beautiful as anything in recent cinema (Reygadas’ Silent Light is an apt visual reference), and it’s this distinctive aesthetic that captures the passage from nature to culture and the rhythm and ritual of the world Koppel portrays.

Despite Trefeurig being the

source of Koppel’s childhood, there isn’t an ounce of nostalgia or sentiment here, but merely a reflection of the unavoidable march of progress and the oftencontradictory circularity of life.

Jason Wood

Anticipation. Frears and Pfeiffer back for another dangerous liaison.

Enjoyment. Sharp, droll script but Chéri himself goes missing.

In Retrospect. Doesn’t quite make the jump from page to screen.

SLeeP furiouSLy DIRECTED BY Gideon Koppel

RELEASED May 29

Influenced by the writing of Peter Handke (best known for his association with Wim Wenders), and with a Chomsky-nodding title, Sleep Furiously filmmaker Gideon Koppel leads us on a poetic, profound and contemplative journey into a world of endings and beginnings.

Refuting categorisation as a documentary in the traditional sense (though the director is an admirer of Humphrey Jennings), the film is an evocation of a time and place in which sparks of intimacy, human interaction and incident are juxtaposed with the bucolic landscape.

Set in a small farming community in mid Wales, about 50 miles north of Dylan Thomas’ fictional village of Llareggub, is a place where the director’s parents –

074 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

Anticipation. Much admired at festivals but still an unknown quantity.

Enjoyment. Unusual, haunting and beautiful.

In Retrospect. A film that exerts a hypnotic hold.

Quite unlike anything else you’ll see this year.

figHTing RELEASED May 15

DIRECTED BY Dito Montiel STARRING Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Zulay Henao

The rowdy Guide To Recognising Your Saints was Dito Montiel’s excellent first film, compared to Mean Streets in its naturalistic depiction of New York hoodlums attempting to rise above their roots.

Montiel clearly took the Scorsese comparisons to heart – Fighting is another paean to the grifters and wiseguys who populate the Big Apple. But he’s no Marty, and Fighting sacrifices imagination for cliché at almost every turn.

Shawn (Channing Tatum) is a young counterfeiter who’s taken under the wing of streetwise hustler Harvey (Terrence Howard) after his skills as a fighter are displayed during a street brawl. Harvey introduces Shawn to a shady

underworld of bare-knuckle fighting for cash. But – wouldn’t you know it? – the young fighter has to learn how to defeat his demons as well as his opponents.

Fighting may have higher aspirations than simply being a film about a load of dudes beating the crap out of each other, but it never manages to convince us of them.

It wants us to believe that this is a realist film, but also accept the idea that New York has a high-level network of illegal streetfighting

competitions. It tries to present Shawn as a conflicted soul, but never really gives the character any chance to learn about or redeem himself. And it takes the idea of masculinity very seriously indeed, almost as if the filmmakers don’t realise that Fight Club is a satire.

It’s lifted slightly by the performances of Howard and Tatum, even though the latter’s delivery is more Stallone than De Niro. But even Rocky’s narrative had a redemptive arc. Fighting

progresses to a dramatic showdown without once feeling real. As a result, the overwhelming impression is of a violent version of Step Up 2 The Streets. Dan Stewart

Anticipation. A Guide To Recognising Your Saints packed a punch.

Enjoyment. Aims high but doesn’t land its blows.

In Retrospect. Less an uppercut than a slap in the face.

The Directorspective: Ingmar Bergman 20–12 Jul 09 Major works from the master of symbolism and existential angst, experimenter and multifaceted director, who laid bare the human soul on celluloid.

Screening will all be accompanied by an installation The Man Who Asked Hard Questions, a visual insight into the Bergman’s work.

london’s most diverse cinema www.barbican.org.uk/film 0845 121 6830

The Barbican is provided by the City of London Corporation

Ludivine Sagnier: More Than Just A Pretty Face Interview by Matt Bochenski Younger siblings are annoying. That’s a fact. But if you thought that being embarrassed in front of your friends was as bad as it gets, spare a thought for Delphine Sagnier.

Delphine wanted to be an actress. She went to a few auditions. Then one day her little sis comes along to see what it’s all about. Eight-years-old and in the kind of mood that only little girls are capable of, she’s stomping around the corridor with a face on when somebody spots her. “I didn’t want to be an actress [but] someone saw me and said, ‘Hey you, little sulking girl, do you want to do an audition?’ I said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And they hired me.”

Just like that. Anybody who still believes that the world is about fairness, hard work and just rewards better look away now. This is a story about talent, yes, but it’s also about the cold hard facts of life – where the good fortune to be golden haired and smoking hot plays an inordinately large part.

It would take Ludivine Sagnier another 10 years until she flowered as an actress, when François Ozon cast her in Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000) as a seemingly innocent young girl learning about the power of sex.

That film was the amouse-bouche before Sagnier’s unforgettable turn in Swimming Pool (2003) where, ably supported by a tiny striped bikini, she caught the attention of the world as the steamingly sexy Julie, a role that saw her compared to Brigitte Bardot.

But that was all to come for the sulking little sister. Back then, Sagnier never saw acting as a real job. Her parents kept her in school, only allowing her out in the holidays. “To me,” she explains, “[acting] was summer camp with adults.” If that sounds like adding insult to injury, apparently Delphine forgave her – “She’s not annoyed, she’s proud because she didn’t make it as an actress. We get along well,” Ludivine promises.

Before becoming Ozon’s muse, Sagnier enrolled in university and studied literature. But it didn’t last. She dropped out to do a stage tour, then a short film that caught the director’s imagination. Now, she describes him as “a brother, like we’re the same blood.” But although it was Ozon who propelled her into the top rank of contemporary French actresses, by the same token, he’s the director who has done more than anybody to put Sagnier in a gilded cage.

She has spoken in the past of her desire to do smart, challenging work, and a quick glance at her CV suggests she isn’t kidding. But so powerful are the images of Sagnier that Ozon created, so alive with the promise of youth and innocence and sex and allure, it’s been difficult for her to shed that image of the quintessential blonde bombshell – the one that the camera loves to gaze at, but no one’s too keen to listen to.

It’s no surprise that the American poster for The Girl Cut In Two (a film that couldn’t be less sexy if it tried) shows Sagnier perched on all fours in her underwear – hair tousled, legs flowing, cleavage resplendent. As Sagnier moves on as an actress, the representation of her stays the same. And if that’s due in part to an audience that’s still spellbound by her looks, it’s also

076 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

select FILMOGRAPHY Ludivine Sagnier The Girl Cut In Two (2007) The Secret (2007) Les Chansons d’Amour (2007) Molière (2007) Peter Pan (2003) Swimming Pool (2003) 8 Women (2002) Water Drops On Burning Rocks (2000)

the fault of film marketers who know that sex – and Sagnier – sells.

She’s learned through experience to become sanguine about it. “When Swimming Pool went out, it’s true that I was afraid because I don’t consider myself a sex symbol and suddenly I didn’t understand why people had confused me with the character,” she says. “But in a way, now that I’m a grown up, I’m kind of proud of that.”

The important thing for Sagnier is that the audience’s expectations don’t influence the roles that she takes. She points to The Secret (2007), a film by another long-time collaborator, Claude Miller, in which she plays a “shady, dark, sour” Jewish woman in Occupied France while the more glamorous role (relatively speaking) went to Cécile De France. “I don’t mind if it helps the movie,” she says, of The Girl Cut In Two’s less-than-subtle poster, “and I don’t mind what people think because I’m completely satisfied.”

Or maybe not. There must be some creative impulse left unfulfilled by cinema because the big news for Sagnier is that she’s working on her first album. If that sends chills down the spine of right-thinking people (she’s following in the footsteps of Scarlett Johansson and Milla Jovovich, after all), it’s a trepidation that Sagnier shares. Talking about her music (although in fairness she doesn’t actually talk about ‘my music’, which would be too much to take), her natural confidence subsides and she becomes almost shy.

“It’s hard to see myself as a singer because I’m not a singer,” she says with disarming honesty. “The ideal thing would be just to release the album for myself and my family to have fun. The thing is, as it costs money, I will have to release it for the audience but it’s not my goal, you know? My goal is to have fun recording it.”

To that end, she’s started work with Future Cut, the producers behind Lily Allen’s first album, but having given birth to a second child just a few months ago (of which there is no sign at all on her five-foot-three-inch frame), she’s in no rush. “I’ve slowed down a little because of my baby and all that, so I’m not going to release it tomorrow.”

Before then there’s the publicity tour for The Girl Cut In Two. We’re running out of time, but there’s just long enough to ruin the happy atmosphere by falling out over her character, Gabrielle. Claude Chabrol’s would-be erotic drama is a pale mockery of female sexuality, which Sagnier nevertheless defends robustly: “I definitely wouldn’t let myself go like this,” she says of Gabrielle’s catatonic grief at being deprived the joys of a wrinkled penis (and the old man attached to it), “but I understand it. When you fall in love, you just don’t have any references any more – experience won’t help. You can fall into the trap so easily.”

And given that Sagnier is so much more than just a pretty face, it’s only fair to let her have the final say.

The full transcript of this interview will be available online in the week of the film’s release.

THe girL cuT in TWo RELEASED May 22

In the opening scene of Claude Chabrol’s The Girl Cut In Two, a romantic aria from Puccini’s Turandot is offset by a sinister blood red sky. It’s just the first in a series of intense juxtapositions: between young and old, male and female, Puritanism and decadence. But none of these conflicts will be resolved convincingly in a story that, although based on truth, is hermetically sealed from the real world.

This is an airless, artless haunt of aristocrats and libertines playing out their coy perversions in oakpanelled clubs and country estates.

It’s a world where an attractive TV presenter can be lured into bed by a wrinkled windbag. Where physical assault is no barrier to romance.

And where the only cure for a broken heart is another good fuck.

That TV presenter is Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier), a perky weather girl who catches the eye of wealthy novelist Charles (François Berléand). Charles is a man who likes to be surrounded by ‘beauty’, which means an

DIRECTED BY Claude Chabrol STARRING Ludivine Sagnier, Benoît Magimel, François Berléand

antiseptic mansion on the outskirts of the city, and a publicist modelled on a blow-up doll. Of course, the film being directed by a 79-yearold French director, Gabrielle finds him irresistibly sexy, and the pair are soon sequestered in his pied à terre, where she manages the heroic feat of performing a blowjob on the old duffer without gagging.

Enter bored rich kid Paul (Benoît Magimel), who despises the arriviste Charles, but also falls in love with Gabrielle. Despite the fact that Paul is quite obviously psychotic, Gabrielle can’t say ‘no’ to this new man in her life, and when Charles dumps her the stage is set for a series of dark events to unfold.

Although relatively chaste, Chabrol has said that The Girl Cut In Two is his first porn film.

It’s all about sex, baby – with Sagnier playing against type as the doe-eyed submissive being introduced (patronisingly) to the world of adulthood, which in this case means putting peacock feathers in strange places, and allowing

Charles’ rich mates to ‘have a go’.

We’re stalking similar territory to Steven Shainberg’s Secretary, but far from showing that film’s erotic charge (or tenderness, or transgression), Chabrol’s porno is about as sexy as a tax return.

Sagnier and Berléand have all the chemistry of two mannequins being rubbed together. When they kiss, it looks like an uncle acting inappropriately with his niece.

And Magimel plays Paul as the kind of simpering rich kid so suffused in self-pity (and cliché) that it’s a miracle he can get it up at all.

Chabrol may be one of the great survivors of the New Wave, but this is an old man’s film. The Oedipal conflict between Paul and Charles is framed against a resentful, paranoid fear of the young; while Gabrielle is a poor advertisement for the modern woman. A twenty-first century girl, she nevertheless throws herself at the first two rich guys to flash their wallets, despite the fact that one of them practically tries to rape

her on the first date. “Everybody treats me like a kid,” she complains, before spending the rest of the film acting like one. If she really thought that Charles was going to leave his wife – as she confidently tells her mum – never mind being cut in two, she needs a lobotomy.

And on the subject of that metaphor, by the end of the film it’s been so crudely overstated that there might as well be a flashing neon sign that literally spells it out.

But this is not the world – this place of dangerous liaisons, simple dualities and upper crust peccadilloes.

“Life is not easy for most people,” opines Charles. “Oh, fuck off,” you’ll reply. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Claude Chabrol is one of those New Wave directors who’s not just still working, but still worthwhile.

Enjoyment. Sagnier is luminous, but the rest of the film is as flaccid as an old man’s, um, waistline.

In Retrospect. Neither sexy nor insightful. A resounding dud.

077

drag me To HeLL

RELEASED May 29 DIRECTED BY Sam Raimi STARRING Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver

Sam Raimi was born to make balls-to-the-wall exploitation films, but since the mid-’90s he’s been too busy buffing up shiny studio product to bother. The question, after the stultifying Spider-Man series, is not whether he’ll ever go back to the basics of Evil Deadstyle lo-fi – the cinematic equivalent of Sir Alan Sugar having another crack at being a barrow boy – but whether he’ll ever make another film which refuses to round off its rough edges in the name of Hollywood homogeny.

The answer, happily, is a resounding ‘yes’. Owing as much to Looney Tunes as the J-horror films he’s recently been repackaging for subtitle-averse Sarah Michelle Gellar fans, Raimi’s return to the splatter genre is absolutely, unrelentingly mental. Terrifying in places, screamingly stupid in others, it’s a riot from OTT start to ADHD finish.

078 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

A former fatty with one eye on the cake-shop window and the other on rigorous self-betterment, Christine (Alison Lohman) is a loan adviser trying to break the glass ceiling in the Boy’s Own world of banking. She’s got a nice boyfriend (Justin Long) and a cute kitten (although whether either of them will make it to the end credits is questionable to say the least); all is bright and shiny, WASPish and well. Until, that is, gammy-faced gypsy Mrs Ganush (Lorna Raver) arrives on the scene.

With her gleaming glass eye, sputum-flecked cough and stinky, nicotine-stained fingers, Mrs Ganush is a dead cert for a Best Supporting Crone of the Year award. Unfortunately for just about all concerned, Christine refuses to extend the old lady’s home loan to prove to her boss (David Paymer) that she’s got the

stones for promotion – even as Ganush gets down on her knees and begs. Big mistake. After an almighty, eye-popping smackdown in a spooky car park, Ganush curses Christine with a ‘Lamia’, a spirit intent on dragging her… well, you can guess the rest.

Or can you? Amid the creaky plot twists, phew-it-was-all-a-dream sequences and general lunacy, Raimi’s refusal to back down leads to some truly gob-smacking scenes.

Besides various manifestations of vomiting hags toothlessly gumming her face, Lohman is menaced by leaves, pots, shadows, flies, CGI hankies, talking goats and a possessed cake, as buckets of blood, goo and embalming fluid slosh across the screen. There’s no let up, so even when what you’re seeing is patently ludicrous, the tension never dissipates into derision.

Admittedly, lines such as, “Get

your filthy pig knuckle off my desk!” might sound better coming from the cleft chin of Bruce Campbell; Long and some of the supporting cast err on the side of earnestness; and the climatic séance is more Fantasia than Fangoria, but this is still a Technicolor cheese nightmare that will stay with you for weeks.

For once, the repeated Evil Dead in-jokes aren’t redundant references to former glories. Raimi has an unerring grasp of horror film grammar and his return to form is an exclamation-mark movie of the first order. Matt Glasby

Anticipation. Raimi has been away from his spiritual home for too long. Or: The Bleeuuuurgh Witch Project.

Enjoyment. A sick and twisted gem. Or: Gurn, Witch, Gurn.

In Retrospect. Every Witch Way – But Lose.

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Ken Loach: the genuine article Interview by Ellen E Jones

Somewhere on the outskirts of Soho is an inconspicuous green door squeezed between two fast food take-aways. Behind this door is a narrow staircase that leads up past the offices of Sixteen Films to a light, airy attic.

This room, as evidenced by the piles of files and boxes, is used mostly for storage, and just occasionally for an interview with Ken Loach, the film director and co-founder of Sixteen.

Now in his seventies, Loach is a giant of the British film industry.

Revered both here and on the continent, he could, if he chose, fill lecture theatres with adoring film students, command an army of runner-flunkies to do his bidding or simply park himself in a director’s chair and bark orders through a megaphone. Yet as he sits down to begin the interview, his manner is as humble as a monk and he speaks so softly that the Dictaphone struggles to pick up his voice.

Everything about Ken Loach is a rejection of the Hollywood notion of dream-making. For him, there is no hoopla, no glamour, no stars, no giant sets and no crew of thousands. “The little I know of the American industry makes it sound like the last place you’d want to go and work,” he says.

“I just don’t find it attractive. I don’t find the work they do interesting.

I find it predictable. It’s like if you’re interested in food you wouldn’t go to a hamburger chain. And nobody’s waved a lot of notes in my face, anyway.”

Since his debut feature, Poor Cow (1967), Loach has made historical dramas like the Spanish Civil War film Land and Freedom (1995) or controversial Palme d’Or-winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) as well as more intimate tales of personal struggle like My Name is Joe (1998) and Kes (1969). Despite differences in period and location, all have shared a naturalistic style, a social conscience and a desire to put the lives of ordinary working people on screen. And now during this time of mass unemployment and economic crisis – a plum Loach period if ever there was one – he has decided to make a film about… Eric Cantona?

“It just began with the idea of working with Eric,” says Loach. “We were put in touch by a French producer called Pascal Caucheteux, and we met and despite being very awestruck by meeting this legendary figure, Paul Laverty, the writer, and I thought, ‘What film can we make that will really do justice to him?’”

The answer was Looking For Eric, the story of postie and Man U fan Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), who realises the benefits of relying on friends and co-workers when his life starts spinning out of control. Eric Cantona, playing himself, appears as a figment of Bishop’s troubled mind to deliver nuggets of (characteristically cryptic) wisdom.

It’s a brilliantly funny, moving film, and Loach, a devoted supporter of Bath City FC, manages to communicate the magnetism of Cantona’s fabulous arrogance to those without the slightest interest in the game.

But doesn’t this veneration of a celebrity contradict Loach’s films’ usual insistence on the importance of ‘ordinary’ lives? “Well, I hope it worked the other way. By showing Cantona as someone very human and fallible who

080 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

select FILMOGRAPHY Ken Loach Looking For Eric (2008) It’s A Free World (2007) The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006) Sweet Sixteen (2002) Bread and Roses (2000) My Name Is Joe (1998) Land and Freedom (1995) Riff-Raff (1991) Kes (1969)

can take the mickey out of himself, it made him seem human rather than turning him into a celebrity,” he says.

In fact, more than a celebration of Cantona in particular, Looking For Eric is a celebration of football in general – its power to unite otherwise disparate people, to evoke both elation and despair within a safe framework, and to offer an escape from everyday drudgery. Yet if football can do that, why can’t cinema? Certainly no one would ever describe a Loach film as escapist. “I think that trivialises cinema,” counters Loach. “If you take it seriously, like a book or like poetry or visual arts, one of the points of cinema can be to reflect on why things are bad. They are not acts of God. You want to be able to understand why things are bad because you go out strengthened. If you’re just bemused by why things are bad and all cinema does is distract your attention, then it’s a pretty useless medium. You might as well have a lobotomy.”

Unsurprisingly, Loach doesn’t have much time for mainstream Hollywood output and says he rarely goes to the cinema. “No – I just get irritated by [Hollywood films]. Maybe that’s my loss, but I don’t [go to the cinema]. If you win at football, if your team wins, that does keep you going to the next game, it really does. And I can’t remember the last time I had that feeling in a cinema. I remember enjoying films but not that sense of exhilaration.”

Yet while Eric Bishop, or Kes’ Billy, or Joe Kavanagh from My Name Is Joe, or most of the people that populate his films, would probably go to the football and might pop into their local multiplex, it’s hard to imagine them queuing up to see the latest Ken Loach. Doesn’t he worry that his reputation as a left-wing filmmaker means he’ll end up preaching to the converted?

“I don’t know, I think that’s just inevitable, really. I mean, the thing is, the people that tend to go to see independent films or non-mainstream Hollywood films will tend to be more radical anyway, so it’s almost a selfselecting group.”

Which is a shame because while crusading epics like Land and Freedom are probably an acquired taste, much of his output is as funny and moving as your average drama – and a thousand times more genuine.

Loach says he is oblivious to how he’s popularly perceived, but he will admit there’s a problem. “I’ll be really pleased never to read the word ‘gritty’ again.

You want an audience to come in without preconceptions and just enjoy what’s there,” he argues.

There’s certainly a lot to enjoy in Looking For Eric. In fact, thanks to Cantona’s presence, the film’s humour and the uplifting spirit of camaraderie, it’s easily Loach’s most commercial film yet. It might even be a hit. Though Loach, naturally, is loathe to take credit. “I’ve got the least commercial sense of anybody in the industry, so I never get excited at that level,” he admits.

“No, the excitement of making it is to work with Cantona and Paul on a subject like this.”

The full transcript of this interview will be available online in the week of the film’s release.

Looking for eric DIRECTED BY Ken Loach STARRING Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, John Henshaw

RELEASED June 12

Ken Loach, maker of worthy pieces of social realism. Admirable, but not much fun on a Saturday night at the multiplex – right?

Wrong. And Looking For Eric is the film that will prove it. As genuinely entertaining as it is politically relevant, it’s the feel-good hit of the summer. No, seriously.

Eric Bishop (played by local Mancunian actor, Steve Evets) is a postman and Man U supporter on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

He never got over his divorce from his first wife; his second wife has left him in loco parentis for two wayward stepsons; and now he’s having visions of Eric Cantona. Is this the first sign of madness? Or are the wise words of the charismatic Frenchman just what Eric needs?

It’s often forgotten, but many of

Loach’s films contain humour – the football pitch scene in Kes ranks among the comedic greats – but you’d have to go back to 1991’s Riff-Raff for something as laugh-outloud funny as Looking For Eric. John Henshaw (the fat guy from the Post Office ads) is great as Meatballs, the de facto leader of Bishop’s gang of fellow posties. Between them they come up with a way out of Bishop’s fix, and it’s from their scenes together that the film derives much of its heart and humour. This isn’t just a little sugar to sweeten the bitter pill of Loach’s message, though. It is his message. As Cantona sums up: “You must trust your teammates. Always.”

So far, so Full Monty. Then just when you think you’re watching a familiar tale of male camaraderie, the plot veers off in a wonderfully

unexpected direction. Loach and his screenwriter Laverty have introduced thriller-esque plotlines before with less success. The gangster elements of My Name Is Joe felt like genre film cliché plonked in an otherwise realistic film. This time, though, they make the villains (never Loach’s most nuanced characters) work by minimising their on-screen time, and sticking to action which feels entirely plausible in modern-day Manchester.

You expect note-perfect naturalism from Loach, but Looking For Eric also has all the baffling charm of a genuine oddity. The casting of Cantona is bizarre in itself, but his role as a kind of therapist-cum-guardian angel also injects an enchanting note of Capra-esque whimsy. It’s an

odd combo, but it works.

Successful on several levels, Looking For Eric is powerful enough to satisfy Loach loyalists, and appealing enough to win over everyone else – if they would only go to see it. As Ken Loach has spent a 40-year career demonstrating, there’s little justice in this world, but if there was, this would be a massive, massive hit. Ellen E Jones

Anticipation. Footballers-turned-actors aren’t usually a mark of quality. But Cantona? In a Ken Loach film? This we have to see.

Enjoyment. It’s got all the heart and humour of a mainstream comedy-drama, with none of the tedious predictability.

In Retrospect. We’re already on the DVD waiting list.

081

rudo y curSi

DIRECTED BY Carlos Cuarón STARRING Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Jessica Mas RELEASED June 26

With Rudo Y Cursi, the three titans of the Mexican New Wave – Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro – have turned their hand to producing. And while this film doesn’t quite hit the heights of Amores Perros, Y Tu Mamá También and the like, Carlos Cuarón’s Mexican box-office smash has its nationality written through it like a stick of rock.

Cuarón penned Y Tu Mamá for his big bro’, and as writer/director turns again to a double-handed plot starring Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. They play rustic half-brothers Beto (Luna) and Tato (Bernal), whose life consists of manual work on a banana plantation, sharing a home with their extended family and bouts of football for kicks. In short, they are emblematic working-class Mexicans.

Theirs is a banter-fuelled but amicable relationship – until a talent scout (who also serves as

082 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

the film’s deeply ironic narrator) enters the scene with the promise of professional football representation. But only for one of them. Fiery ’keeper Beto insists on a penalty shootout for a decider and, since his football ambitions outweigh would-be singer Tato’s, engineers things to go his way.

Of course, they don’t.

So Tato goes to the big smoke to play football and hopefully make it as a singer too, although his voice leaves something to be desired (he’s like a Mexican John Barnes).

A furious Beto is left behind with his wife and child, but soon steals away to join his brother, turning pro for an opposing team. It’s here they earn their nicknames – Beto as ‘Rudo’ (‘rough’) for his aggressive style, and Tato as ‘Cursi’ (‘prissy’) for his elegant footwork – and embark on a lifestyle that befits moneyed football stars.

Rudo Y Cursi is a run-of-themill tale about the perils of instant

fame, but the talent and presence of the lead duo gives the film a raw energy. Bernal and Luna recreate their on-screen chemistry from Y Tu Mamá También, creating a pair of compelling characters who endure both highs and humiliations as they scramble for a better life.

Despite their sudden riches, Beto and Tato can’t escape the trappings of their modest roots.

Beto can’t control his greed, while Tato goes straight for a trophy girlfriend who has him wrapped around her finger in no time. It’s with no sense of irony that Tato calls an old friend a ‘hick’ at his sister’s wedding, even as he pursues a pop career in all its gaudy glory. Money can’t buy them class.

Despite being mega football stars, we never see Rudo or Cursi in action – the film cuts instead to a wry commentary from the stands.

And it’s not without its darker moments, like the boys’ initiation into their respective teams (think

dropping the soap in the shower) or the trouble Beto’s gambling addiction gets him into. As well as showing brotherly comradeship, Rudo Y Cursi also touches on the savage ways boys sometimes treat each other.

Whether the moral of the film is not to stretch beyond one’s limits is debatable; the tone is far from preachy. It’s a tale of two humble Mexican boys filmed with rougharound-the-edges production values and lots of energy, whose appeal will stretch to footie fans who wouldn’t normally park themselves in front of a subtitled film. Laura Bushell

Anticipation. The credits read like a Who’s Who of Mexican cinema – should be great.

Enjoyment. Surprisingly quite pedestrian in its storytelling. Without Bernal and Luna it would drag.

In Retrospect. Enjoy it for what it is – a well-acted and engaging trip into Mexican culture.

THINKSYNC FILMS CALL FOR ENTRIES

ThinkSync Films aims to search out, celebrate and reward creative, new independent filmmaking talent, with particular attention being paid to the role music plays.

The competition deadline is Friday 12th June 2009.

Please visit www.thinksyncfilms.com for details and downloads.

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Jamie Jay Johnson: The Making Of Interview by Matt Bochenski It all started when Jamie Jay Johnson, a 32-year-old graduate of St Martin’s College in London, broke both his legs. Convalescing at home, presumably with the remote control out of reach, he watched the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest conclude with a victory for Finnish make-up metallers Lordi. Having already shot a number of small-scale documentaries on everything from bizarre AIBO owners to the BAFTA-nominated Holiday Around My Bedroom – both of which shared an affectionate comic sensibility – a light bulb went off in his head.

“I thought Eurovision had gone beyond that pantomime level,” he says today, “and would make a really good subject for that [kind of doc].” He wrote a treatment for BBC Films who loved the idea but had a number of Eurovision projects already in the pipeline. Undeterred, Johnson told them about a strange offshoot of the adult competition that had started in 2003.

Junior Eurovision grew out of a Scandinavian pop festival, and invited participating countries to send a representative aged between 10 and 15years-old to perform their own original material in front of a TV audience.

Clearly, this was documentary gold dust: “I found out about this Croatian Bon Jovi fan who wrote the song that won the first year and toured round all the Croatian communities in Australia,” recalls Johnson. “And this Spanish girl who did a song called ‘Better Dead Than Plain’ about having a Chanel handbag. And I was just, like, ‘This is really twisted!’”

Armed with a new treatment, Johnson approached all the production companies he knew (“whored it!” he says) looking for start-up cash to shoot a pilot at that year’s festival. Eventually, the Film Council came through and he was off to Bucharest, expecting to find a world ripe for piss take and parody.

Only it didn’t work out that way. After he’d seen the contest up close, “I kind of realised that it wasn’t about pushy parents and it wasn’t about really obnoxious kids,” he says. “Actually they had a really great time, and I thought, ‘This is a good vehicle for exploring growing up and cultural differences and lots of different things’.”

Where the obvious model for this kind of documentary was the Cutting Edge-style exposé, Johnson knew he had a chance to do something different. “I didn’t want it to be about kids who wanted to be famous because I just thought, you know, there’s stuff about that on telly every night,” he says. “I wanted it to be much more a celebration, and about something more universal. About growing up or about what’s really important to these kids – the passion. It was really an opportunity to get this window into what these kids are actually thinking.”

The result is a warm, funny and profoundly sympathetic documentary about the pleasure and pain of childhood that sees Johnson – and therefore his audience – make a real emotional connection with the kids in the competition. We focus on four main acts, each one with a narrative thread that proves to be eloquent and profound in its own way.

And that is down to more than just luck on the filmmaker’s part. Johnson embarked on a gruelling schedule to make sure he picked the right ‘cast’ for his documentary – criss-crossing Europe from audition to audition, national

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FILMOGRAPHY Jamie Jay Johnson Sounds Like Teen Spirit (2008)

final to national final, interviewing a bewildering number of kids to see which ones would be right for the final cut. “I went to 14 different countries over about six weeks, which was really exhausting,” he recalls, “shooting a couple of days rehearsals and interviewing the kids. That would be where I would say, ‘Okay, what’s this kid interested in? What’s their story? What’s their background? Are they somebody I feel I can relate to or will open up?’”

This, he says, was a period of “back breaking” work, “carrying a fucking tripod that I never used through the whole thing. It was fucking long, long days.” At one point, he got desperate enough to appeal to the production company for reinforcements – something he was denied. “They were like, ‘No, you can’t do that. It’s your relationship with the kids.’ And they were right,” he admits.

After choosing a final four, Johnson spent time in their homes, getting to know the kids and their families, which was where the tone of the film – its poignancy and raw emotional honesty – really took shape. Like the scene in which a little girl tries to explain to him how proud she is of her brother. “I was filming and her mum was a metre away, and when she said it I started welling up,” he remembers with a laugh. “I looked over at her mum and we were both wiping away a little tear, and it was so ridiculous but it was really amazing.”

If there’s a question hanging over the film, it’s about Johnson’s journalistic integrity. He admits that it was difficult to stay objective: “I think I’ve got the tendency to be too nice,” he says. “I know that other documentary makers would probably be more brutal and ask harder questions and so forth.” But then, that isn’t really the point of Sounds Like Teen Spirit. It’s a celebration rather than an enquiry, and there’s something touching, even triumphant, about Johnson’s personal investment.

With 200 hours of footage edited down, the film was finished in time for Toronto, only to be comprehensively overshadowed by Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. “Loads of people were like, ‘You’re going to get the Audience Award!’” recalls Johnson. “Then I went to a screening of Slumdog that was1,500 people, three standing ovations, and I was like, ‘I don’t think we are actually, guys.’”

The film’s lack of festival success is a sore point. It’s got that kind of Man on Wire or King of Kong vibe that should make it a crowd-pleasing hit. But the film has only been to four festivals – an oversight on the part of production company Number 9. “It’s really depressing for me because this is my first feature and it’s good exposure for me to go to festivals and try and promote the film,” Johnson continues. “It’s been, like, three year’s work so I may as well try and get all I can out of it.” But awards aren’t everything.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit might not be as garlanded as it could, perhaps should be, but as the film itself shows, winning isn’t everything. “These kids are so pure, and so innocent,” says Johnson, “it’s really lovely just to revisit that, and spend time with them.”

The full transcript of this interview will be available online in the week of the film’s release.

SoundS Like Teen SPiriT RELEASED May 8

If you’ve never heard of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, don’t worry; you’re in good company. It may well be celebrating its sixth year and command a TV audience of 23 million, but let’s face it – none of those viewers are British. Because this is Europe’s cheesiest festival, a spin off of that monument to national spite, where underage entrants write songs about love and hope only to be dispatched like cannon fodder into a no man’s land of commercial cynicism. The Eurovision Somme Contest, more like.

Thanks to a mixture of innate scepticism, triumphant xenophobia and a finely honed nose for European bullshit, we’ve kept Our Boys (and Girls) well clear of this federalist masquerade. But one brave filmmaker has entered the breach, going behind the scenes of the 2007 competition to expose the whole event as the corporate sham of childhood-ending hypocrisy it so obviously is.

Only, here’s the twist: it’s not.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is, in fact, a celebratory snapshot of youthful

DIRECTED BY Jamie Jay Johnson STARRING Marina Baltadzi, Giorgos Ioannides, Mariam Romelashvili

optimism, brimful of warmth, humanity and a charming, cheering honesty. It’s the most intoxicating thing to emerge from Eurovision since Cheryl Baker’s legs.

Much of the credit for that goes to director Jamie Jay Johnson.

It’s his curiosity and affection, not so much for the competition but for the kids themselves, that provides the film with its beating heart. He follows four acts from national final to big night, and you can’t help but root for all of them.

There’s Trüst from Belgium, a quartet that includes Laurens, a gangly clown who, at 15, is at the upper limit of the contest’s age range. In Georgia we meet Mariam, a young girl with the air of an adult whose difficult life is betrayed by the bullet-scarred walls of her home. Marina is a 14-your-old Bulgarian – beautiful, popular and rich – who hopes that her dad will see her on television and come home. And there’s Giorgos, a 10year-old Cypriot. Bullied at school, he hopes to prove something to himself through the contest.

But it’s not how it sounds. This

isn’t a heart-warming tale of struggle against the odds; it’s not about the uneasy integration of Europe, or the schism between rich and poor; it’s not about the ethics of competition or beauty pageant perversity; it’s not about pushy parents or national pride. All these ideas are floating around the ether of Johnson’s film, but at its core, it’s something much more compelling and universal.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is a film about the simple pleasures and exquisite pain of childhood.

But where childhood in cinema is so often something to be shrugged off – a way station on the road to somewhere better – here, Johnson asks us to recognise the preciousness of childhood for its own sake; for that brief point when innocence and sincerity coalesce to create something that, as cheesy and uncool and ‘Eurovision’ as it sounds, is beautiful.

For all that the film is shot with a wry sense of absurdity, Johnson doesn’t mock or judge these kids.

And while he might have chosen his subjects because they echo movie archetypes, they’re recognisable as

people. These aren’t the ‘loveable losers’ of Spellbound, or the highschool zombies of American Teen.

They’re normal kids captured at a point of transition to uncertain maturity, acting and speaking in ways that are more truthful and funny and affecting than a scripted movie could hope to be.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is a joyously populist piece of filmmaking that wears its heart on its sleeve. Johnson has managed to articulate something simple but profound in a shamelessly uplifting documentary that never resorts to manipulation to tug the heartstrings.

And as for Junior Eurovision – who’s up for a British entry next year? Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. A documentary about Junior Eurovision? Set the irony alert to DEFCON 1.

Enjoyment. An exquisitely poignant, hilarious and uplifting reminder of the power of music, and cinema, to enrich your life.

In Retrospect. Perhaps Johnson could have asked more determined questions about the nature of the competition, but that’s a minor quibble.

085

Sugar RELEASED June 5

DIRECTED BY Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck STARRING Algenis Perez Soto, Alina Vargas, Andre Holland

Extending their sights beyond American borders, Sugar is the assured follow-up from Half Nelson writer/director duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Continuing their analysis of contemporary American life and the ordinary folk struggling to resist its darker recesses, the pair also deliberates over vanquished dreams, cultural barriers and exploitation.

Plucked from poverty in the Dominican Republic, and seemingly blessed with a God-given talent, Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) is invited to spring training in Arizona with a major league baseball team. Subsequently seconded to a minor league in Iowa, Sugar, who speaks hardly any English, soon finds that he is ill

equipped for a life far from home.

Resisting the traditional arc of the sports drama – and this is a film about baseball only in the sense that Hoop Dreams was a film about basketball – with its march to victory and self-realisation, Sugar instead focuses on the flipside: injury, potential unfulfilled and profound disappointment. And yet despite these factors, the film never becomes monotonous in its depiction of disillusion. Sugar also finds time for the small but significant acts of compassion and human

kindness that give pause for thought, and cause for hope.

Beautifully shot by Andrij Parekh, and sensitively scored by Michael Brook, Fleck and Boden also maintain the thread of introspection that defined Half Nelson, allowing the audience to endure both the physical and the spiritual journey their protagonist undertakes.

Recruited by the directors on a lengthy research trip to the Dominican Republic (the film was meticulously planned), Perez Soto lends Sugar a potent authenticity

Sissener (Espen Skjønberg) whose philosophy – “Everything comes too late in life, therefore nothing does too” – inspires the old man to pull himself out of his decadeslong slump.

Beyond the hackneyed quality of Bent Hamer’s script, the film benefits from the careful and considered approach of his collaborators.

Production designer Karl Júlíusson has drawn on Twin Peaks-era Lynch for the look of his interiors; all dark red glamour or deep green

sophistication. The film is fogged by a disorienting palette of faux-richness that mimics Horten’s own feelings on the path his life has taken.

Its sound design likewise illustrates our protagonist’s state of mind. The first 30 minutes are dominated by the repetitive thud of train cars rolling over tracks, and incidental noise that all but dies out as Horten moves further away from his old life, realising that he be can whatever he wants to be, even this late in the game.

and naturalism, shining brightly in the central role. Jason Wood

Anticipation. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson is one of the most intelligent US indie films in recent memory.

Enjoyment. Exerts a tremendous hold over the viewer with its unending insights and assured aesthetic.

In Retrospect. Poignant and beautifully performed, Sugar confirms Boden and Fleck as eloquent chroniclers of the underbelly of the American dream.

o’HorTen DIRECTED BY Bent Hamer STARRING Bård Owe, Espen Skjønberg, Ghita Nørby

RELEASED May 8

In this mildly charming, stubbornly naïve exploration of unhappy ageing, Odd Horten (Bård Owe) lives his life by the railway.

Both literally (his kitchen backs directly onto the line on which he works as an engine driver) and figuratively (his daily routine is as regular and predictable as Norway’s transport system). As he heads into retirement, there’s no suggestion of misery in his life, but there’s no joy either – just disappointment.

It’s etched onto Horten’s face in a serenely depressed smile; an acknowledgement that, though the majority of his life is behind him, he’s yet to experience the best of it.

When a missed train throws his routine out of sync, Horten encounters the drunken Dr

086 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

A skilled and gentle piece of filmmaking, it’s just a shame that the storyline is as old and tired as Horten himself. Henry Barnes

Anticipation. All aboard! Hamer has got us safely from A to B before. Should be a smooth ride.

Enjoyment. O’Horten is delayed by poorly maintained (plot) lines.

In Retrospect. Zips in and out of the mind faster than the 11:34 from Bergen to Sandefjord Lufthavn Torp.

fugiTiVe PieceS RELEASED May 29

DIRECTED BY Jeremy Podeswa STARRING Stephen Dillane, Rosamund Pike, Robbie Kay

It’s hard to believe that there are any highbrow Holocaust novels yet to be plundered by Hollywood.

Perhaps Fugitive Pieces will put an end to the trend. Based on Canadian Anne Michaels’ Orange Prize-winner, the film touches on themes of survivor guilt but only manages to tread the deep psychological water.

After witnessing the death of his parents and his older sister’s abduction by Nazi guards, Polishborn Jakob (newcomer Robbie Kay) flees his family home. He is unearthed quivering, half-buried and corpse-like in a pile of leaves

by Greek archaeologist Athos (Rade Serbedzija), who smuggles him to his native island and keeps him in hiding throughout the war.

The arresting opening sequence gives way to a lukewarm examination of the middle-aged Jakob’s (Stephen Dillane) sorry life. The childhood scenes are the most compelling, with Kay’s largely wordless performance conveying the physically and emotionally stunting effects of his early trauma.

Tellingly, Jakob only pipes up when, after the war, he and Athos move to Canada, and he overhears his new neighbours speaking Yiddish.

Despite a rich premise, the soul-searching of the older Jakob

is, at best, curiously colourless; at worst, positively grating. This is in no way helped by the paper-thin characterisation of his free spirited wife, Alex (Rosamund Pike), whom Jakob married in the doomed hope of curing his gloomy demeanour.

Her fun-loving credentials are sealed by flashback montages of their blooming relationship, which show her buying and wearing (straight off the shelf!) red stilettos in a downpour, and gleefully delivering such asinine announcements as, “I’ve learnt some Jewish!”

Once she’s out of the way, Jakob is free to explore his identity with a little downtime in Greece, exorcising his ghosts and discovering the redemptive power of love. Who needs history when the movies tell it so much better? Sophie Ivan

Anticipation. Would it be wrong to confess to Holocaust movie ennui?

Enjoyment. Beige in Yiddish, beige in Greek, beige in Canada.

In Retrospect. A whiter shade of beige.

Charlie Kaufman: Explorer Interview by Matt Bochenski

On a list of things you’d expect Charlie Kaufman to say, “I don’t consider myself a writer” sits somewhere alongside “I’d love it if Uwe Boll directed one of my scripts.” But we’re sat here and he’s saying it and it’s all gone a bit, well, Kaufmanesque.

Actually, he hates that word. He hates its imprecision, its resistance to meaning. Which is ironic, because he’s in no position to criticise.

Charlie Kaufman has built his reputation on the elusive nature of his writing – multi-layered, meta-textual and mind-bending. His creations include a puppeteer who finds a portal into the brain of a famous actor (Being John Malkovich, 1999); a young man raised as an ape (Human Nature, 2001); twin incarnations of himself struggling with art and commerce (Adaptation., 2002); two lovers losing their memories (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004); and now, in Synecdoche, New York, a theatre director who spends a lifetime proving Shakespeare’s maxim that the world is a stage.

Maybe he’s not a writer, after all. Writers put words on paper; Kaufman seems somehow to invest them with life, his own life, as if the pen was a subtle knife, capable of dissecting parts of his soul. “I recognise that I have a career writing screenplays and I make money out of them and I’ve achieved a certain level of recognition for it, but it’s weird to walk around saying that you’re something,” he explains. “It’s like a defence mechanism, like, ‘Oh, look, I’m okay. I’m validated!’”

Instead, says Kaufman, he’s “trying to explore my truth, or what I see as the experience that I’m having at that time of being a human being.

That’s why I feel this responsibility when I put something in the world – that it should be honest. And that makes me open to being wounded, but I feel like it’s my job and I feel that if I’m not doing that then I’m cheating people and I’m putting garbage into the world. I don’t feel ethical.”

That are plenty of myths propagated about Charlie Kaufman: that he’s media shy, nervous, scattergun. A lot of that comes from the Kaufman we see in Adaptation., where Nicolas Cage played him as a sweating, stammering bundle of nerves. But that isn’t half the story.

He’s already done a ton of US press for Synecdoche, much of it combative. He hates the fact that it was seen as a failure at Cannes (where, like every other American film, it failed to find a distributor) and he’s frustrated that some critics have been unwilling to engage with it.

But he’s starting to mellow out now, as the film finds a core, committed audience. “I’m hopeful that someone can have an experience that’s somewhat satisfying with it,” he says. “I mean, it’s my intention that they would, but my work is done.”

The embers of frustration remain, however. He’s spent a long time refusing to discuss the ‘meaning’ of the movie in the face of people who

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FILMOGRAPHY Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York (2008) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Adaptation. (2002) Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) Human Nature (2001) Being John Malkovich (1999)

haven’t been able to let it go, and that led to “a lot of resistance when it opened in the United States.” To Kaufman, “If I could tell you what something means then there’s no point in making it,” which, to some people, just sounds like he doesn’t know what it means at all.

The problem, he says, is that people have got too used to films that don’t ask anything of them, that don’t require the audience to bring anything to the table. His films, by contrast, are structured like a book – “You bring your life and your history and your memory and your prejudices and your hopes and your thoughts and all that stuff. You can’t help but do that. And the proof of that is that if you read a book now and you read it next week, or you read it 10 years from now, it’s a different book because you’re different.

And I’m trying for that as my goal.”

Far from being the nervous, tortured artist, Kaufman is making a conscious, even courageous decision to step knowingly into the firing line and see what happens. “I’ve got my experiences in the world, and in what I see as a very generous and vulnerable way I’m saying, ‘These are the things I’m thinking about – maybe they’re interesting to you or maybe they’re not,’” he explains.

“I’m not presumptuous. I mean, I’m hopeful I can make a connection with other people because I like that, you know? I like it when you give something of yourself and other people respond to it; it’s communicative. I’m not pretending anything. I’m really honestly trying to explore stuff that concerns me – in the world and my life and my history – and being a human being.”

For somebody whose scripts are the genius juice powering a new generation of post-pop video directors, it’s something of a shock to learn that Kaufman turned 50 last year. He got his break in the early nineties, writing for forgettable sitcoms like Get A Life and The Trouble With Larry.

Somewhere buried in the mists of time is even an unmade spec script for The Simpsons. “It took me a long time to come out here. I was very scared of it; I was a very timid person in that way,” Kaufman admits. Before writing, he worked for a lot of “assholes”, making five dollars an hour, but turning 30 gave him a new impetus. “I felt like the writing was on the wall in a way and I had to do something because this was gonna be my life, and it was a very difficult life. I mean, I couldn’t really support myself and it wasn’t fulfilling in any way, so, you know, I got the idea to be very tenacious and actually get a job.”

It took two years of toil to get an agent and get his first script produced, and another eight until Being John Malkovich catapulted him into the big time. Now Kaufman is there to stay, not so much part of the scenery as a whole different scene altogether.

The full transcript of this interview will be available online in the week of the film’s release.

SynecdocHe, neW york RELEASED May 15

Is Synecdoche, New York selfindulgent? Perhaps. It’s most definitely self-conscious. And selfreflexive, too. It’s over complicated and infuriating. It’s arch, mannered and pretentious. Because this is Charlie Kaufman, and over complicated, self-reflexive and infuriating isn’t just what he does, it’s who he is.

But somewhere inside the hyper-awareness, the metaphors, the in-jokes, the sly smarts and clever quirks is a real film. An ambitious and strange and beautiful film of bold but elusive truths.

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a theatre director and hypochondriac. His wife, Adele (Catherine Keener), has left him to purse her career as an artist in Berlin, taking their daughter, Olive, and her friend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). After a failed affair with his assistant, Hazel (Samantha Morton), Caden takes his troop to a vast warehouse in New York to work on a piece of art that will “stare truth in the face”. As two decades slip by, Caden will recreate a model of the city inside the warehouse, where a

DIRECTED BY Charlie Kaufman STARRING Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams

concentric cast of actors will play the actors playing the actors playing the actors in the story of his, their and our lives.

This is barely to scratch the surface of a film whose structure is at once as self-contained as a Russian doll, and as free form as a fever dream. Its nearest contemporary is Harmony Korine’s Mr. Lonely, but a better reference point might be Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. While it’s not as dark as that nightmare, Synecdoche is powered by the same kind of rigorous intelligence and uncompromising vision.

But a vision of what, exactly?

This is a film that doesn’t yield its secrets easily. Instead, they’re buried somewhere beneath, or perhaps within, the meta-textual layers stretched across this strange, sprawling canvas.

Kaufman is obsessed with the power of artifice. And it’s not just that giant model city – the film is full of odd and arresting details that invite then defy explanation. Look closely, and Kaufman’s chronology is as cracked and splintered as his

futuristic city streets. A Zeppelin is rendered in all-too-obvious CGI. Actors age with painfully transparent prosthetics. A children’s cartoon echoes Caden’s subconscious.

Fascist clowns herd citizens onto buses for ‘Funland’. Eye drops replace tears. A petal falls from a tattoo. A burning house punctuates the film like a question mark.

But just as you’re beginning to lose yourself completely in this world of actors, fakes and facsimile, the artifice begins to assume its own kind of truth. When there are so many acts of invention, the difference between the ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’ eventually shades into nothingness.

Whatever you make of it, you have to admire Kaufman’s bold, boundless ambition. Is Synecdoche the story of a man losing his grip on reality, or finding his place in it for the first time? Is it about a decline into madness? Or is it a blind leap into the unknown and unknowable depths of the soul?

Certainly, it’s a film that keeps itself at a distance, and that makes it difficult to respond to on an

emotional as well as an intellectual level. Anxious and jittery, Kaufman’s direction is consistent with his writing. Scenes are short and restless; dialogue is packed tight together, spat out of the mouth like rotten fruit.

Some people will hate it, and those people will be impossible to persuade. But all art is vanity.

To harangue any filmmaker for self-indulgence doesn’t make sense. “You never really looked at yourself,” says Hazel to Caden.

But Charlie Kaufman did. In Synecdoche he’s looked at himself, at life and at death long and hard and honestly. And he deserves to be indulged. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Kaufman is a unique voice, albeit one that can be hard to decipher. And he’s untested behind the camera.

Enjoyment. A difficult, maddening and elusive film that’s also intriguing, profound and darkly funny.

In Retrospect. Absolutely demands to be churned over and considered at length. Will lend itself to multiple screenings – if you can face them.

089

Lake TaHoe RELEASED June 26

DIRECTED BY Fernando Eimbcke STARRING Diego Cataño, Héctor Herrera, Daniela Valentine

The winner of the FIPRESCI prize (awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics) at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, Lake Tahoe is the second film from young Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke, a graduate of the prestigious Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, and contemporary of Mexican filmmakers including Carlos Reygadas, Amat Escalante and Francisco Vargas. Similar in tone to Duck Season, Eimbcke’s auspicious and seductive 2004 debut, this wholly assured return similarly concerns itself with the uneasy passage from adolescence to adulthood.

Set in a small harbour town somewhere in the Yucatan peninsula, Lake Tahoe takes place during a single day, beginning with a resolutely non-dramatic car crash.

The car in question belongs to

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16-year-old Juan (Diego Cataño), who has had enough of his family problems, and in an attempt to escape is cruising around the outskirts of his municipality in his parent’s shiny new motor. During his attempts to find a mechanic capable of getting the vehicle back on the road, Juan has a number of escapades involving a lethargic dog-loving repairman (Hector Herrera); Lucia (Daniela Valentine), a punkish young waif with an infant son; and a Bruce Lee-obsessed teenager (Juan Carlos Lara II) who turns out to be an expert in all things mechanical. In one single day, the absurd and completely irreconcilable worlds of these people help Juan to understand that there are things that are as inevitable and inexplicable as death.

Developed with support from the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, this beautifully judged and deftly

directed coming-of-age tale confirms Eimbcke as one of the brightest voices in Mexican cinema’s current crop of emerging young talents.

Something of a paradox in that it manages to be terrifically funny while simultaneously incredibly sad, the film emerged from a pivotal incident in the director’s own life: a simple accident born of Eimbcke’s attempts to come to terms with his father’s untimely death.

Enigmatically titled (though its meaning is ultimately revealed to heartbreaking effect), Lake Tahoe gradually reveals itself to be less about seemingly random incidents and encounters – though these also count for much – and more about tragedy, loss and the near catatonic state induced by grief.

Shot in the spare, minimalist style of Ozu, and clearly indebted to Jim Jarmusch in its concentration on incidental details and its

favouring of static, tableauxstyle sequences (the director terms it ‘voyeuristic cinema’), Eimbcke, working in harmony with cinematographer Alexis Zabé (Silent Light), displays an astonishing precision. Of equal note are the tremendously endearing and naturalistic performances from an ensemble of largely non-actors.

Cataño (who was recently seen in Jonas Cuarón’s equally startling Año Uña) particularly excels and looks set to become the latest poster boy of Mexican cinema. Jason Wood

Anticipation. Though relatively rarely seen, Duck Season set the bar pretty high.

Enjoyment. Deceptively simple, this is a film that works a slow but potent magic.

In Retrospect. A quietly audacious work, superbly composed with boundless charm and subtle surprises.

Paul Dano: Independent Soul Interview by Limara Salt

Paul Dano is a hard man to get hold of. After weeks of scrambling to get in touch with his reps, a date is finally set but at the last minute the time is changed then changed again. Once you’ve tracked him down, however, even if he’s sounding sleepy after a day-long junket, he’s more than happy to talk about his passion for films and upcoming projects.

His latest, Gigantic, sees him take the role not only of the male lead but also of executive producer. This, he says, wasn’t so much a career decision as something he did simply to get the film made. “It was more of a collaborative effort; I wasn’t on the phone with financers or anything like that. It was just because I was involved in it for a long time that I stayed active and helped the film get made.”

A good thing too, as the script by Matt Aselton (who also directed) and Adam Nagata languished for many years before finally being picked up. The story of a 28-year-old mattress salesman with an unrelenting need to adopt a Chinese baby was inspired by Aselton’s own childhood. As the youngest kid in his family, Aselton wanted his parents to adopt a Chinese baby so he could have a younger sibling. After telling the story to Nagata, the film soon evolved.

Its unusual premise and lead character, Brian, intrigued Dano when his agent dropped the script through his door. “I read the script and just really liked it, and really identified with the Brian character. I loved his combination of depression mixed with confidence; he seemed like a normal guy on the surface but kept surprising me throughout the film with the girl and the baby. I just felt something for him. From that I got in touch with Matt Aselton and we got along, saw the same film, saw the same character and decided to do it together.”

While Brian is intriguing enough, Gigantic is filled with peculiar yet believable characters like Harriet, aka Happy (Zooey Deschanel), a quirky rich girl who runs into Brian while buying a mattress for her wonderfully inappropriate businessman father with back problems, played by John Goodman. Although acting as exec producer, Dano admits he had little to do with the casting, even if he did map out some ideas through conversations with the director. “We just talked about it and it was clear that Goodman would be right. I think Matt had that idea. I’ve been a fan of his for a long time and luckily we got him and he’s just a wonderful human being, great actor, I loved working with him. And Zooey we definitely talked about because the male role was cast first and you try and cast a girl who you think is gonna work, and she wanted to do the movie after meeting with Matt. We got along great. She is just a very vibrant woman and it was great to work with her.”

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FILMOGRAPHY PAUL DANO Gigantic (2008) Explicit Ills (2008) There Will Be Blood (2007) Weapons (2007) Fast Food Nation (2007) Little Miss Sunshine (2006) The King (2005) The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) Taking Lives (2004) The Girl Next Door (2004) Light and the Sufferer (2004) The Emperor’s Club (2002) L.I.E. (2001)

Gigantic is the latest in a long line of independent films that Dano has put his name to after starring in 2001’s L.I.E., aged just 15. But he’s never made a conscious decision to avoid more mainstream Hollywood films.

“I don’t feel like I discriminate between independent and studio films,” he says. “I definitely do need to feel inspired by material and that’s just the way it works out. I like to have a character that I can learn something from and be in a film I might like. Also, I like something you can discover, because generic stuff where you know what the film’s gonna be is uninteresting to me.”

Along with the romantic elements that dominate the film, Brian finds himself constantly under attack from a homeless hitman – something that’s as random as it is intriguing. Dano insists it isn’t one of those unanswered mysteries designed to set internet chatrooms alight. “I loved that element when I read it,” he says. “It just kept me on my toes and I do think it serves a purpose – I think it says a lot about Brian and I think it’s a manifestation or repression of his frustration and depression. I think it shows that the character is living with something else and there’s something darker happening underneath the exterior. For me, it says quite a bit but it is supposed to have that element of mystery or have an abstraction to it.”

After the runaway success of 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine and the critical acclaim of There Will Be Blood the following year, Dano has leant his voice to the eagerly anticipated Spike Jonze adaptation of the classic children’s book Where The Wild Things Are, although it was much more of an acting experience than it may seem. “The actors would get together on a sound stage and we would act it out for almost a month, and they recorded us and recorded our voices and then they moulded the puppets based on what we did,” he explains. “I wasn’t in front of a green screen and I wasn’t in the recording booth – I was actually playing around with all the other actors, which was great.”

After Gigantic’s release, Dano intends to take a break, get a new phone (after being cut off he proclaims his current one a “piece of crap”) and “just have a life” in his native New York with all his non-actor friends.

But despite getting occasionally spotted on the subway, don’t expect to see him getting papped falling out of clubs with a bunch of knickerless girls. “I honestly believe that you can avoid all that if you want to by choice,” he says. “For me, it’s all about learning how to deal with everything while keeping focused on the work.”

A full transcript of this interview will be available online in the week of the film’s release.

giganTic DIRECTED BY Matt Aselton STARRING Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman

People who adopt foreign orphans are one of three things: a) too old to procreate; b) unable to procreate; or c) a Hollywood star looking for a bit of positive publicity. Brian (Paul Dano) doesn’t fit any of those categories, which immediately makes him a little bit weird.

He’s 28, single, works as a mattress salesman and was the afterthought child of elderly parents.

Apart from harbouring a lifelong obsession to adopt a Chinese baby, he meanders between odd jobs occupied by equally odd people, all the while avoiding a homicidal, homeless hitman. But a wrench is thrown in the works when the daughter of a wealthy and overbearing customer (Zooey Deschanel and John Goodman

RELEASED June 19

respectively) inadvertently falls asleep on one of Brian’s beds, and becomes yet another eccentric character in his life.

Paul Dano has made his name playing interesting characters in quirky films, and Brian is no different. Languishing in a schizophrenic state of confidence and depression, he drifts from encounter to encounter while fixated on the goal of becoming a single father. Zooey Deschanel plays to type, but is no less charming as Harriet ‘Happy’ Lolly, who falls first and thinks later after her chance encounter with Brian. Unsurprisingly, there aren’t enough superlatives to shower on John Goodman.

His performance as the rich, brash and abrasive businessman is as offensive as it is funny.

What makes Gigantic interesting is that it centres on a young man who, at the outset, leads us to believe that he has little or no interest in doing the things that 28-year-olds are supposed to do. His constant and unrelenting desire for a baby is largely unexplained, and yet it comes across, quite curiously, as a strange kind of strength, rather than making Brian seem like a lost soul looking for something to give him a sense of self-worth.

Eschewing a traditional threeact structure, writers Adam Nagata and Matt Aselton (who also directed) offer us a snippet of Brian’s life, which peters out rather than builds to a climax. Normally that’s a weakness, but here the characters drive everything –

they’re quirky without being annoying, funny without being clownish and odd but realistic.

As funny and interesting as it is, however, the film raises more question than it answers. Why is Brian obsessed with having a Chinese baby? Why is a homeless man trying to kill him? And why the hell is it called Gigantic, anyway? There may be no answers, but the ride is so interesting and entertaining you’ll hardly mind. Limara Salt

Anticipation. Paul Dano is carving a distinct career in independent film.

Enjoyment. Quirky, original and interesting.

In Retrospect. It’s an odd experience, but one that seems ever more charming in hindsight.

093

deLTa RELEASED May 8

DIRECTED BY Kornél Mundruczó STARRING Félix Lajkó, Orsolya Tóth, Sándor Gáspár

Reminiscent of Rodrigo Plá’s The Desert Within in its exploration of the biblical forces of punishment stirred against a transgressive relationship between a brother and sister, Delta is a sparse and shattering film.

It begins with the silent return of Mihail (Félix Lajkó). We aren’t told where he’s been or for how long – indeed, for the first five minutes of the film we’re denied a glimpse of his face. Thereafter, director Kornél Mundruczó will return to Mihail’s impassive features in close up again and again, looking for some crack in this rock-like exterior that will offer us access to whatever lies beneath.

But he never finds one.

Mihail has returned to his mother (Lili Monori) who owns

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a bar in which the locals radiate sullen hostility towards this exotic outsider. And none more so than the mother’s lover (Sándor Gáspár), a man who remains unnamed – an avatar of anger, vengeance and jealousy. That jealousy is directed at Mihail’s connection with Fauna (Orsolya Tóth), a sister close to him in age but one whom he appears never to have met. The two of them move to an island in the middle of a river where, in another echo of The Desert Within, they set about building a home for themselves away from prying eyes.

In isolation, Mihail and Fauna drift inexorably closer. These are raw and tender performances from Lajkó and Tóth. Tóth is a striking creature – fragile and frightened,

skin pulled taut over a fleshless body, she looks like a concentration camp survivor. Lajkó is burdened by an inexpressible weight. His is a terse, reactive performance, but one which is never less than magnetic.

There are moments of poetry in Mundruczó’s direction: a slowmotion swarm of mourners on boats at sunset; landscapes that evoke impressionist paintings; and one shot of flowers on beer glasses that has something profound and magical to say about the fragility of love. But this is a film suffused in venality, intolerance and hatred.

There’s an inevitability to Fauna’s fate at the hands of her stepfather that seems not just cruel but crass. And the director treats the film’s climax with a sense of helpless

sadness rather than the shock and outrage it deserves. When it really matters, Mundruczó’s first instinct is aesthetic rather than emotive. But if that strips the film of a measure of moral authority, it only adds to the feeling of hollow nihilism that stays with you long after the closing credits. Matt Bochenski

Anticipation. Declared ‘the best film in Cannes’ by in-the-know critics when it screened there last year.

Enjoyment. The disturbing subject matter is made more palatable by gorgeous photography and wonderful performances.

In Retrospect. There’s something that doesn’t quite sit right about Mundruczó’s emotional impassivity.

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HannaH monTana: THe moVie

RELEASED May 1

DIRECTED BY Peter Chelsom STARRING Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Emily Osment

Far from filling the bathtub with quicklime in which to dump the gaudy corpse of another live-action Disney dud akin to the Aryan mob of High School Musical, you might be surprised at just how likeable the bubblegum teen romance of Hannah Montana: The Movie actually is. And this is due to the superior comic chops of amiable songbird, Miley Cyrus. The story, for those interested, sees Miley Stewart (Cyrus) lapping up life in the guise of LA pop sensation Hannah Montana. That is, until she’s forced to rediscover her Tennessee roots and come to terms with the meaning of family, friendship, yada, yada. It’s an easy-to-dismiss tale directed with enough panache to drag it across the finish line, but Cyrus’ performance supplies the material with a much-needed sharpness. Better things are ahead. Alan Mack

THe grocer’S Son

RELEASED April 24

DIRECTED BY Eric Guirado STARRING Nicolas Cazalé, Clotilde Hesme, Stephan Guérin-Tillié

Returning to the old homestead has provided the catalyst for countless films over the years, and Eric Guirado revisits the prodigal son set-up for his enjoyable second feature. When his father is taken ill, cynical city slicker Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé) begrudgingly moves back home to Provence to help out with the family business. As Antoine struggles to keep a level head when confronted with his often eccentric clientele, family tensions rise, while Antoine’s brother, François (Stéphan Guérin-Tillié), suffers quietly with his own set of problems. While The Grocer’s Son treads familiar ground, its steps are delicate and graceful, allowing us to dwell on those quiet moments of family dysfunction and the charismatic characters that populate the countryside, with a few genuinely laugh out loud moments. Lee Griffiths

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aWaydayS

RELEASED May 22

DIRECTED BY Pat Holden STARRING Stephen Graham, Nicky Bell, Liam Boyle

Based on the memoir by Kevin Sampson, Awaydays is a ham-fisted coming-of-age drama that fails to say anything interesting about male bonding, violence or the peculiar northern soul of Liverpool. The early ’80s on the Wirral, Maggie Thatcher is in power, stripping this traditional industrial community of its cohesion and identity. Paul Carty (Nicky Bell) falls in with the local football hooligans, perhaps in love with the seductive appeal of Elvis (Liam Boyle), who dreams of escaping this grim, grey world for better things. Director Pat Holden also dreams – of relevance, insight and empathy. But all he can manage is the empty spectacle of male violence. With a flatulent script, muddy photography and pedestrian pacing, Awaydays is one giant missed opportunity. Matt Bochenski

LiTTLe aSHeS

RELEASED May 8

DIRECTED BY Paul Morrison STARRING Matthew McNulty, Robert Pattinson, Javier Beltrán

Salvador Dalí: master of the surreal, inventor of the Lobster Phone and bearer of one of the most recognisable moustaches in history. Federico García Lorca: dramatist, poet and thinly masked homosexual. Friends? Yes. Lovers? Here’s where it gets controversial. British director Paul Morrison presents an uncompromising take on a story of love, loss and the creative influences of three men – Dalí (Robert Pattinson), Lorca (Javier Beltrán) and Luis Buñuel (Matthew McNulty) – who would go on to become revolutionary artists. This stunningly shot peek into their world perfectly evokes the creative and political undercurrent of 1920s Madrid. Wretched rather than titillating, the pivotal love affair is beautifully handled, resulting in an intense piece throbbing with sexual repression. Kat Halstead

momma’S man

RELEASED May 8

DIRECTED BY Azazel Jacobs STARRING Matt Boren, Ken Jacobs, Richard Edson

Momma’s Man is the story of Mikey, a soul searching thirty-something who, after visiting his parents in New York, becomes reluctant to return to his wife, child and responsibilities in California. Azazel Jacobs’ direction is sensitive and considered, but Mikey is so tedious that it’s hard to find any interest in his plight or the questions raised by the film. There is a glimmer of hope in the form of Mikey’s father, played by Ken Jacobs, who becomes frustrated by his son’s quickening regression into adolescence. However, this hope is soon thwarted when he neglects to act upon his irritation. By the end of Momma’s Man’s 94-minute running time, the only connection you’ll share with Mikey is a desire to bury your head in the sand and make it all go away. Ailsa Caine

THe end of THe Line

RELEASED June 12

DIRECTED BY Rupert Murray STARRING Charles Clover, Roberto Mielgo

Environment journo Charles Clover takes us through the grotesque narrative of an enterprise decimating oceans and their ecosystems. With populations of almost every edible species plummeting across the world, the fishing industry is in crisis. But quotas are still too high, set by politicians rather than scientists, and disregarded by the fleets. It’s hard-hitting stuff, but the film lacks direction. Local industries are tarred with the same brush as corporate giants; while a tug of war pulls consumers between government health advice and ecological imperatives. To fill the void, tense music, journalistic platitudes and outrage feigned to camera are a staple of Clover’s didactic interjections. Important questions are raised, but the insubstantiality of the film’s arguments nags. Olly Zanetti

bLue eyeLidS

RELEASED May 8

DIRECTED BY Ernesto Contreras STARRING Cecilia Suárez, Enrique Arreola, Andrés Montiel

Ernesto Contreras’ slow and subtle study of abject loneliness is a curious affair. When Marina (Cecilia Suárez), a nervy, bird-like creature (and much is made of the metaphor) who works in a uniform store, wins a trip for two to a swanky resort, it forces her to face the fact that she has no one to take. Enter Vincent (Enrique Arreola), an equally lonesome dove who steps into Marina’s life at an opportune time and agrees to go with her. First, however, they need to get to know one another. At this stage, Blue Eyelids enters a theatre of humiliation as Marina and Vincent act out a courtship that resurrects painful memories of adolescence. But a feeling of quiet tenderness takes hold as these two souls are entwined inexorably around each other. Matt Bochenski

bLind LoVeS

RELEASED May 22

DIRECTED BY Juraj Lehotský

Coming off the back of two triumphant awards at Cannes and Zurich last year, this documentary from Slovakian director Juraj Lehotský follows the stories of four different visually-impaired couples and their search for love. The fly-on-the-wall style of filming may seem a little slow-paced but it’s to the credit of Lehotský, who manages to use this to focus in on the sensual details of each person’s everyday life. The result is a perceptive and warmly empathetic film that thankfully manages to avoid the common pitfalls of schmaltz and pathos that are so often befallen when dealing with such subject matter. However, the brief flirtation with animation seems faintly ridiculous, and in the face of what is otherwise a thoughtful film, it should have been left on the cutting room floor. Ed Andrews

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BACK SECTION

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDY MILLER

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THE INTERNET HAS BECOME THE PREMIER AVENUE FOR FRUSTRATED CREATIVES ON THE EDGE OF THE BIG-SCREEN SYSTEM. THESE ARE THE NEW HEROES OF CINEMA. WORDS BY LAURA SWINTON Cinema purists look away now. YouTube is crawling with people who enjoy nothing better than fucking around with your favourite films.

And judging by the squillions of hits on mashedup movie trailers like Brokeback to the Future and Ten Things I Hate About Commandments, we’re more than happy to piddle away our time watching them.

But just who is it that sits around creating these gems for our idle consumption?

Unattractive fanboys cloistered away in bedrooms? So you’d think. But many of the remixed trailers sloshing about the ’Tube are the labours of established and aspiring DJs, VJs, editors and filmmakers.

The Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) runs Splice Capades, a regular competition for assistant editors. Entrants are given a list of films and can either re-cut a trailer as a different genre or they can select two films from the list and fuse them together.

The competition was launched as Trailer Park back in 2001. “Our mission was to give our hard working assistants an opportunity to edit, meet other AICE members and to showcase their creative storytelling capabilities,” say the Chicago-based editors Kathryn Hempel and Steve Stein, who conceived it.

Twenty minutes meddling with iMovies this is not. “It is not really a game,” explains Burke Moody, executive director of AICE, “because it takes an enormous amount of time – which most assistants have very little of. It is a valuable editing and writing exercise, and a great way to encourage and give recognition to aspiring editors.”

Editors aren’t the only professionals recutting films. Addictive TV are internationally renowned VJs, using clips from films like Slumdog Millionaire, Iron Man and, most recently, Fast & Furious to conjure up dance tracks and create alternative trailers.

They got their big break after some bootleg movie experiments found their way on to the web. “We started playing these bootlegs live, and one or two found their way onto the web, and

this was before YouTube,” explains Addictive’s Tolly. “Within a couple of years some people in Hollywood saw them and instead of suing us, which is what we thought was happening when New Line first rang up, they asked us to cut a trailer in our style to act as a web viral.”

But while fiddling around with films is a phenomenon that has exploded online in recent years, it’s not a new idea. Art student Todd Graham created one of the earliest movie mash-ups. In 1987 he spliced together Apocalypse Now with Winnie the Pooh, to create Apocalypse Pooh. It had all the ingredients of an instant YouTube classic – except there was no YouTube. Instead, it played at art forums, underground screenings and was passed around as a bootleg VHS. And in the ’90s, groups like EBN in the US were remixing video and news footage.

Today, it’s not just the movies that are mangled beyond recognition. Commercials, celebrity rants and even YouTube clips are being re-cut by amateurs and professionals alike. Unlike Apocalypse Pooh, which had to wait decades for YouTube to come along, aspiring filmmakers, editors and DJs can reach enormous audiences within hours, and if they’re savvy and lucky they could just boost their creative career.

Case in point: Christian Bale’s DOP-bashing hissy fit had barely hit the web when producer Lucian Piane, aka RevoLucian, posted his track ‘Bale Out’. “I heard the original audio on TMZ.com and I immediately knew I had to remix it. I was under major pressure that week to finish RuPaul’s new album Champion, which I was producing, so I really didn’t have the time,” he explains. “I gave myself a time limit of two hours to do it and I just put it up and got back to working on RuPaul.”

But the real motive driving these creatives isn’t fame. “It was never really about artistic recognition, though that was certainly a factor,” muses Addictive’s Tolly. “We started developing the kind of show we would like to see as punters.”

SELECTION OF THE BEST ADDICTIVE TV VS SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE – HTTP://TINY.CC/LYEZL Danny Boyle’s neo-Dickensian romp is more banging dance hit than Bollywood in this percussive alternative trailer from Addictive TV.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE IS MISSING – HTTP://TINY.CC/LSKQD This AICE trailer from 2007 sees Little Miss Sunshine re-imagined as a horror. The granddad character is now cast as a pervy paedophile, the soundtrack is overlaid with interference and the trailer’s in black and white. Wrong on more or less every level, it just goes to show how powerful good editing can be.

FRANK SENT US – HTTP://TINY.CC/8IDDP Italian audiovisual art collective Frank Sent Us describe their work as ‘where music and video completely melt down’. They create live sets and mashed-up films. Especially effective is their self-titled moody spaghetti western remix, Frank Sent Us.

APOCALYPSE POOH – HTTP://TINY.CC/OOEUC One of the oldest mash-ups doing the rounds on YouTube, an episode of Winnie the Pooh is cut to fit the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now. Without the sharp cuts or thumping soundtracks that characterise today’s movie remixes, Apocalypse Pooh is hypnotically slow burning. Despite inspired moments – like Kurtz’s ‘The horror! The horror!’ being replaced with Pooh’s ‘Oh bother! Oh bother!’ – it’s dark and disturbing rather than funny.

THE MOTHER OF ALL FUNK CHORDS – HTTP://TINY.CC/VGA9U Proving conclusively that the internet will eat itself, Israeli collective Kutiman prefer to mash-up YouTube clips rather than movie classics. This rather funky number splices together YouTube blues guitar tutorials with performance footage.

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hOLLYWOOD AgENT ChRIS SNYDER’S NEW BOOK, huNTINg AND ECCENTRICITIES Of LA-LA-LAND, INCLuDINg ThE

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WITh BARRACuDAS, LIfTS ThE LID ON ThE EXCESSES LIfE AND DEATh Of RIVER phOENIX. WORDS BY SOphIE IVAN Since Joaquin Phoenix’s announcement that he’s downing method acting tools to pursue a hip-hop career, culminating in a much chewedover appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman, all bets are off as to the whereabouts of his marbles. Whether his fidgety, beardy, monosyllabic appearance simply pointed towards his enduring shyness, or a post-everything, living joke on an industry that doesn’t sit easily with non-conformism, remains anyone’s guess.

If anyone should have a clue, though, it’s Chris Snyder, former assistant to onetime New York showgirl turned Hollywood child agent, the late Iris Burton – whose clients included the young Phoenix siblings (whom she discovered singing for loose change on an LA street corner), Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett. His new book, Hunting With Barracudas, an account of the 13 years he spent helping manage Burton’s books, pivots on River’s demise and his brother’s early career.

Yet when questioned about Phoenix’s recent behaviour, Snyder is as non-plussed as most.

“I really haven’t seen Joaquin, except one time last year, which was at Iris’ funeral,” he says.

“Prior to that, I had not heard from or seen him in seven-and-a-half years since I put him into a limo on the way to the Oscars for Gladiator. Joaquin has always been a lousy interviewer. For some reason he doesn’t like doing it. And River didn’t like doing it…”

Phoenix, is, he says, “truly a gifted and incredibly talented actor, and he’s not a promotions person. He’s not a Tom Cruise, who can go from city to city promoting a product – that’s not his gig, so to speak. But what he did

on Letterman, I have no idea, I mean, I was just as mystified…” He trails off. “I had 40 e-mails the next morning – I’d missed it, I had to watch it on YouTube… I was just like, ‘Hey, I don’t understand what you’re doing but I’m glad I don’t have to be dealing with that situation.’”

That last remark hints at the kernel of Snyder’s book, a near 300-page lament about everything he had to ‘deal with’ as Burton’s sole employee and whipping boy. It’s not exactly a flattering testament to his late boss, or any of the celebrities (or anyone else, in fact) that Snyder came into contact with during the years the book covers. It seems that when Burton wasn’t trying to squeeze every last drop of profit for herself out of clients’ studio contracts, she was helping herself to the contents of luxury Christmas hampers intended for them, or claiming credit for Snyder’s successes (“I found Virgin Suicides for Kirsten and Josh; nobody else really wanted to do that project,” he explains). And yet she stubbornly refused to promote him from assistant to agent.

Snyder had been working intermittently on the book for 14 years, “since River’s death, trying to figure out exactly what had happened.”

It was bought by Constable & Robinson four years ago but they became ‘concerned’ about how Iris might respond, so it sat there until last year. “Iris passed away and then it kind of went full throttle,” Snyder explains. Not that he shared his publisher’s concern: “I didn’t write anything that wasn’t the truth. I didn’t really go out to write something mean about Iris. I don’t think it comes off that way at all. She was this icon of

talent developers, and they don’t exist any more.”

While Snyder is much more sympathetic in conversation than in his book, one suspects that a lifetime spent running around after Hollywood’s upcoming stars doesn’t exactly do wonders for your sense of perspective.

Especially when their demands include providing (forged) death certificates for reptiles, as when River refused to continue work on his last, unfinished film, Dark Blood, until he had proof that a snake used in filming had died of natural causes. You’d think that such behaviour might have alerted River’s circle to the fact that he might not be in a fit state to look after himself, let alone work, in the weeks before his death.

“Nobody can control whether or not somebody goes off and does something; nobody can control whether or not somebody does drugs or drink, or any of that,” reflects Snyder, “and that took me 15 years of thinking – that was why the book was written – of trying to understand what I could have done differently.”

Besides, River’s behaviour probably didn’t stand out much in Crazytown, if Snyder’s account of his funeral is anything to go by. When River’s mother, Heart, asks for thoughts from the congregation, Jane Campion stands up and says, “I didn’t know River but I just lost my 10day-old son. I had to come so that I could try to understand why these things happen.” As Heart embraces Campion, Peter Bogdanovich’s wife throws her 50 cents in: “Peter and I adopted this stray cat that came around the house every day.

We know my sister Dorothy is reincarnated in the cat.” Gotta love showbiz.

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DVDSYMPHONY CONDUCTED BY GEORGIE HOBBS 104 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

US VS THEM:

DOCumENTINg ALT AmERICA TITICUT FOLLIES 1967 DIRECTED BY fRedeRiCK WiseMan

AVAILABLE June 22 DIRECTED BY JOHN SCAGLIOTTI, GRETA SCHILLER, ROBERT ROSENBERG STARRING RITA MAE BROWN, ALLAN GINSBERG, KENNETH ANGER Imagine a world without John Waters: one where it’s safe to bring up your sprogs without worrying about their exposure to cinematic chicken-sex, naked pogoing or DIY castration. Bo-ring! But were it not for the gay rights movement, we’d inhabit a celluloid hell devoid of Waters, van Sant, Jarman, Schlesinger and so many more unique voices.

But despite the prevalence of gay filmmakers today, it is shockingly easy to forget how mainstream homophobia was just 40 years ago.

So it’s perhaps necessary that Before Stonewall, a 1984 documentary charting the events leading up to the infamous three-day Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, is being re-released.

“It was just everything coming together, one of those moments in history when, if you were there, you knew this is it – this is what we’ve been waiting for,” muses bookshop owner Craig Rodwell in John Scagliotti and Greta Schiller’s landmark doc.

From 1920s Harlem to the McCarthy witchhunts of the ’50s, the film tracks the progress of both the gay community and specific individuals as they seek to establish themselves in mainstream America.

Though finding temporary acceptance in the bohemian subcultures of a country in flux, the doc suggests that it wasn’t until World War II that the lives of American homosexuals started to change. Men and women of all sexual orientations worked together for their country: women relocating to the cities lived together

in cramped apartments, cut their hair and wore trousers; while affection grew between men at war. “I remember,” recounts one interviewee recalling a fleeting relationship with a fellow soldier, “we were on a bridge… We kinda had sex… But the traumatic thing about it was that three days later he was dead.”

Post-war, the election of Senator McCarthy in 1948 led to social and political repression that damaged the gay community almost beyond repair. Gay government employees were sacked from their posts, while homosexuals were forced to bow to social pressure and marry. On the other hand, the backlash against McCarthyism encouraged the growth of homosexual organisations and created a network of likeminded Americans. “I was in a room with 12 other lesbians for the first time in my life,” says Johnnie Phelps, with a twinkle in her eye. “Oh, what a thrill that was!”

It took balls to come out in the ’50s, and what Before Stonewall makes so transparent is the way decades of repression forced even openly gay Americans to question their lifestyle choices. Homosexuality was classified a mental disorder until the ’60s, while it took until 1967 for American homosexuals to accept their sexuality without resorting to stereotypes.

Finally “we could just be guys who liked guys,” as one interviewee puts it.

Black Power militancy and the Civil Rights Movement inspired the gay community further, encouraging them to stand up to the vigilantelike local authorities. What had become a volatile political atmosphere culminated in the nowlegendary Stonewall Riots: a spontaneous show of support and frustration by the victimised American gay community.

“From Stonehenge to Stonewall, it’s been a struggle,” reminisces one interviewee, “but we’re winning.”

Before Stonewall is available on DVD from June 22. Extras include interviews with Greta Schiller, Peter Tatchell and Ken Livingstone, who, for once, isn’t talking about London’s congestion charge. ANNABEL WIGODER

Cinéma vérité US-style. Steering well-clear of voiceover narration or excess explanation, Wiseman refuses to turn the camera off in the face of shocking images, while a brazen editing style hammers home his message.

A deadpan doc that simultaneously lifted the lid on state mental institutions and revolutionised documentary filmmaking.

TRADE OFF 2000

DIRECTED BY shaya MeRCeR Black bloc. Tear gas. Smashed Starbucks windows. In 1999, anti-globalisation activists took to the streets to protest the meeting of the G8, and thankfully Seattle-native and activist Shaya Mercer captured the now-historic riots on camera. Award-winning indie doc that lords over Stuart Townsend’s Battle in Seattle because of its eye-witness cred.

WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS 2006 DIRECTED BY spiKe lee

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? Probably not, but this four-hour HBO documentary from Spike Lee – arguing that the fall-out from Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided – definitely helps.

THE FOG OF WAR: ELEVEN LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT S. MCNAMARA 2003 DIRECTED BY eRRol MoRRis

A breathtaking overview of American foreign policy through the eyes of McNamara, US military strategist and Secretary of Defence during Vietnam. Morris sews up modern US history with a mesmerising soundtrack, interviews and oldskool footage.

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND 2002

DIRECTED BY saM GReen, bill sieGel You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows… and when a bunch of students start bombing the Pentagon and Capitol building, and issuing a Declaration of a State of War against the US government, you know a fair wind won’t linger. Radical leftists The Weathermen tell it like it was in this engrossing doc, which picks up pace when the protestors’ pro-peace politics turned into self-destructive direct action, landing them spots on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

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AN AT-A-GLANCE GUIDE TO THE DVDS AVAILABLE apRil 20 COMING YOUR WAY OVER THE NEXT THE BAADERTWO MONTHS. FOR FULL REVIEWS OF MEINHOF COMPLEX 2008 ALL THESE FILMS, HEAD OVER TO DIRECTED BY uli edel WWW.LITTLEWHITELIES.CO.UK ON THE WEEK OF RELEASE, OR SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

West Berlin, 1967. A state visit from the Shah of Persia, coupled with strong-arm policing of an otherwise peaceful protest serves to radicalise those present. Edel’s adaptation of Stefan Aust’s bestselling account of the Red Army Faction and their 20-year campaign of terrorism is complex indeed. KM

ULTRÀ 1990 DIRECTED BY RiCKy ToGnaZZi Cringingly billed as ‘Football Factory Italianstyle’, this hooligan-centric film is more evocative of the football experience than a million Danny Dyer swearwords, but is undermined by a pedestrian plot. TG

KALEIDOSCOPE 1966 DIRECTED BY JaCK sMiGhT

Rom-com crime caper in which Warren Beatty and Susannah York roll around Europe’s casinos on the back of a ludicrous card cheating scam.

Makes Clive Owen and Julia Roberts’ crime ‘thriller’ Duplicity look as sexy as bingo. HB

AVAILABLE apRil 27 AUSTRALIA 2008 DIRECTED BY baZ luhRMann

106 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

A Hard Day’s Night director Richard Lester’s dark and viciously quirky relationship drama sees George C Scott representing the generation that came of age in the ’50s, gamely failing to engage with those of the new (seemingly) liberated era. HB

HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS 2007

DIRECTED BY Joe sWanbeRG

Hannah is a trumpet-playing wannabe playwright with a sideline in heartbreakin’. She’s sex on legs for indie boyz. Starring Greta Gerwig, so-called ‘muse of Mumblecore’, and Andrew Bujalski, this DIY improv might be achingly hip, but too often veers on the wrong side of banal. GH

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION 1971

DIRECTED BY paul neWMan

Directed by screen legend and all-round Hollywood good guy Paul Newman, with a script adapted from the Ken Kesey novel of the same name, Sometimes A Great Notion has all the ingredients of a true classic. Time to take another look. AW

PARIS IS BURNING 1990 DIRECTED BY Jennie liVinGsTon

Strike a pose – seven years were spent on this cult exposé of the 1980s New York Drag Ball phenomenon that was ‘vogueing’. Exploring Manhattan’s LGBT catwalk-like dance floor at its peak, this is social history with style. Don’t miss. GH

TROUBLE THE WATER 2008

Luhrmann. Kidman. Jackman. No doubt it all sounded great on paper but, though visually stunning, the clichéd story, clunky dialogue and two-dimensional characters leave a lot to be desired, with Luhrmann’s homeland homage bogged down in a billabong between colonial comment and screwball comedy. KM

DIRECTED BY Tia lessin, CaRl deal

THE SMALL BACK ROOM 1949 DIRECTED BY MiChael poWell, eMeRiC pRessbuRGeR

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW 1959

An unflinching depiction of war-time life on the home front, The Small Back Room is a surprisingly honest film for its era, dealing with alcoholism, sex and omnipresent discontent. AW

A disgraced former cop bounds unashamedly over the thin blue line to plot a bank robbery with two initially reluctant accomplices – a nightclub entertainer and a racist, psychotic ex-con. It’s odds against, all right. WH

DEAN SPANLEY 2008

BY JACK ARNOTT, HENRY BARNES, ANTON BITEL, THOM GIBBS, WILL HENLEY, GEORGIE HOBBS, MATT HUSSEY, KINGSLEY MARSHALL, REBECCA RIBICHINI, IAN VIGGARS, ANNA WINSTON

PETULIA 1968 DIRECTED BY RiChaRd lesTeR

Powerful doc which attempts to make sense of Hurricane Katrina – one of the darkest chapters of recent American history. Centred on one displaced family who happened to record their plight on camcorder, this film offers unparalleled insight into the lives of the victims of the disaster. JA

DIRECTED BY RobeRT Wise

DIRECTED BY Toa fRaseR

THE PROMISE 2005

In Edwardian England, a cranky father (Peter O’Toole) reconnects to his son thanks to a strange encounter with a curious Dean (Sam Neill) whom he knew in a previous life. The Proustian plot is unusual, the dialogue quirky and the ending unforgettable. Kind of like a Christmas movie, released in spring. RR

A slave who can outrun stampeding bulls and battle treetop warriors meets a princess torn between destiny and desire. A classic boy-meets-girl tale, and the most expensive special effects film in Chinese cinema from the director of Farewell My Concubine. WH

DIRECTED BY KaiGe Chen

AVAILABLE May 4

AVAILABLE May 18

LISZTOMANIA 1975

MULBERRY STREET 2006

DIRECTED BY Ken Russell

DIRECTED BY Jim Mickle

Roger Daltry as Franz Liszt! Rick Wakeman as Thor, God of Thunder! Ringo-bleeding-Starr as the bloody Pope! A tale of booze, screws and symphonic movements in 4/2-time. This is what too much money and ever-present sycophants will do to you. HB

This resourceful low-budget horror makes great use of its grimly atmospheric New York setting and faintly ridiculous premise (half-human, half-rat zombies), making it an odd but engaging addition to the undead movie canon. IV

CLUBBED 2008

DIRECTED BY Neil Thompson The 1980s setting and a nicely selected soundtrack provide the saving grace for Thompson’s directorial debut, a loose adaptation of the bouncer memoir Watch My Back. It starts well, but is soon swept into the same-old same-old; a journey through the British underworld in a tale of retribution told against a backdrop of clubs, drugs and ’ard men. KM

COMMON THREADS: STORIES FROM THE QUILT 1989 DIRECTED BY Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

Drawing together news footage, documentary film and straight-to-camera interviews, Common Threads (narrated by Dustin Hoffman) offers a moving insight into the first decade of the AIDS epidemic. AW

The Celluloid Closet 1995

DIRECTED BY Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

This critical examination of over 100 Hollywood movies, including Spartacus, Rope and Thelma & Louise, charts the passage of gay and lesbian stereotypes in twentieth-century cinema. WH

AVAILABLE May 11 ZENZEN DAIJOBU 2008

DIRECTED BY Yosuke Fujita

Two stay-at-home brothers fall for the same oddball woman just shy of their thirtieth birthdays in this quirky comedy. Fine debut feature from Fujita, a former hospital janitor who’s been beavering away on experimental shorts for two decades. GH

FUNUKE SHOW SOME LOVE, YOU LOSERS! 2007

DIRECTED BY DAIHACHI YOSHIDA

Superbly titled adaptation of a novel by Japanese playwright Yukiko Motoya. In equal parts wacky, creepy and laugh-out-loud silly, this domestic farce will please fans of Wes Anderson and ‘out-there’ Asian films alike.

Extras are non-existent. GH

CENTRAL BAZAAR 1976 DIRECTED BY STEPHEN DWOSKIN

Precursor to reality TV with all the associated psychological trauma. Dwoskin gathers his actors, shuts them in a room together (with a lot of alcohol) and lets them lead the film where they will. And only we know when there’s film in the camera. Pity them, but you won’t turn off. HB

PARADE 1974

DIRECTED BY Jacques Tati Made just before he went broke, Tati’s joyous final film sees the charming French director star as a circus ringmaster, deftly leading a live big top audience through daft mimes and thrilling stunts. It ain’t Monsieur Hulot, but as swansongs go it swings. HB

DEFIANCE 2008 DIRECTED BY Ed Zwick Daniel Craig’s extra-curricular activity continues, with the reluctant Bond turning his hand to more armed struggle. Here he stars as Bielski, Tuvia Bielski, leader of a group of Jewish partisans whose armed resistance slowed the invading Nazis through the forests of Belarus during World War II. KM

AVAILABLE May 25 MARTYRS 2008

DIRECTED BY PASCAL LAUGIER

This French take on the seemingly inexhaustible stream of torture-porn movies makes for grim, joyless viewing. It has some pompous point to make about martyrdom but its unrelenting violence is incredibly tiresome. IV

THE SPIRIT 2008

DIRECTED BY Frank Miller

Samuel L Jackson, Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson star in Miller’s highly stylised attempt to turn a 1940s newspaper cartoon strip into a blockbuster. Extras include audio commentary by Miller and producer Deborah Del Prete, plus an alternative ending. GH

THE LAST OF THE CRAZY PEOPLE 2006 DIRECTED BY Laurent Achard

Achard’s award-winning and, quite frankly, unnerving account of a family’s breakdown told through the eyes of a disturbing looking child.

Disturbed, not in the Haley Joel Osment, ‘I see dead people’ sense, but more, ‘When did children under the age of 10 get so fucked up?’ Not one for those considering parenthood. MH

AVAILABLE June 1 THE WRESTLER 2008 DIRECTED BY DARREN ARONOFSKY

Mickey Rourke’s bruised performance as a washed up wrestler may be the film’s driving force, but Darren Aronofsky’s brilliantly bleak direction shouldn’t be overlooked. Still every bit as impressive as it was on the big screen. IV

AVAILABLE June 8 THIS FILTHY EARTH 2001 DIRECTED BY ANDREW KOTTING

Wow, but aren’t things grim up north? Andrew Kotting’s dark and haunting tale of death, sex, crucifixion, grief and the fickle nature of farming, is more rural grotesque than period adaptation. NF

PARTNER 1968

DIRECTED BY BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI

Multiple Personality Disorder, politics and cinema; as heady a combination as vodka and washing powder. This is the story of a schizophrenic drama teacher and his murderous second self (the ‘partner’). Classic 1960s psycho-delia. NF

LA VALLÉe 1972

DIRECTED BY BARBET SCHROEDER

Barbet Schroeder reveals the tension between hippydom and the cultures it sought to explore, as the wife of a diplomat gets swept up in a search for the hidden Valley of the Gods in New Guinea. NF

AVAILABLE June 15 Manolete 2007 DIRECTED BY menno meyjes Despite starring acting award-winners Penélope Cruz and Adrien Brody, this period romantic drama, based on the real life story of a legendary Spanish bullfighter, went straight to DVD. Now you can make your own judgment. GH

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Ed Zwick sits comfortably, talks eloquently and unequivocally, and doesn’t allow complacency anywhere near his films. But you might expect this from a man with roots in a Harvard education, with filmmaking smarts fine-tuned at the American Film Institute. But even so, Zwick’s arsenal of films haven’t always grabbed audiences. In fact, his most recent films, Blood Diamond and Defiance, conjured fury among victims of the African diamond trade, and activists for the Israel/ Palestine conflicts respectively.

Let’s rewind nearly 40 years. The 1970s, Zwick is growing up in an era when, as he puts it, “Film culture wasn’t disposable culture, it was essential culture. We would see films without any guarantee of ever being able to see them again, so the experience of going to a movie was very imminent.” Zwick is a man of many fascinations, who indulged himself in numerous revival theatres across America, nurturing a passion for European cinema and an enduring respect for early American powerhouses. “I had always loved John Ford and Howard Hawks and George Stevens and some of the great narrative American filmmakers,” he muses.

It’s been a long journey for Zwick, one that began with his initial work in television. “I went to film school, to the American Film Institute, and made a short film and it became very clear to me that no one was about to give me a film based on half-an-hour,” he explains. “It wasn’t that it was that bad or that good, it just didn’t have that kind of allure, so I began writing. I had been a writer. I was able to begin writing for the television show that Mike Nichols had produced, it was called Family.”

In 1989, with a tailwind of television success, Zwick released Glory to major award-winning kudos.

This marked his first endeavour with the volatility of history – in this case the American Civil War – and exposing it to the treacherous medium of film. In May, we’ll see his latest, Defiance, hit DVD. “What could I possibly add and how dare I presume to add?” he asks about the thought of adapting Nechama Tec’s book, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. “As far as adaptations go, there are plenty worse than Defiance, if you can forgive the Eastern European accents occasionally going from gruff James Bond villain to brawny West End grocer.

Zwick’s attention to detail was instead focused on the journey of the Jewish refugees – the things they sacrificed and abandoned: “Part of which was love, marriage, brotherhood, faith, humour and community,” he says. These are all things that could be attached to Zwick like replacement limbs; here is a man with serious passion, and a knowledge and understanding of what it means to embark on a film, with all the (admittedly benign) conflict that comes with it.

This doesn’t stop him dropping us in at the deep end. “Audiences have become so sophisticated in film language that they can pick up the exposition on the fly and I am perfectly content with that,” he says, exhaling, almost as if to pass on the lightest of compliments to his industry. Could directing be getting easier? “It’s never easier, I guarantee you. Every time it feels like a one-off.” JAMIE ISBELL Defiance is released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 18, courtesy of Momentum Pictures.

108 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

EXRENT HELL

1986

DIRECTED BY ‘saVaGe’ sTeVe holland STARRINg John CusaCK, deMi MooRe, bobCaT GoldThWaiT BOX NOTABLES WaRneR ClaMshell ii pRoToType TAgLINE ‘They’Re ouT of sChool, ouT on nanTuCKeT, and ouT of TheiR Minds!’

TRAILERS The Mission, liTTle shop of hoRRoRs, heaRTbReaK RidGe, CasTaWay ChERRYpICK “habib haboo bib boo boo, ThaT’s Who – he sells oil.”

After witnessing Bobcat Goldthwait dressed in a Godzilla costume screaming ‘Oh, the humanity!’ into a starry Nantucket sky, there is a calm that envelopes the soul which frees it from all desire, delusion and ignorance wherein one glimpses the earthly Nirvana of the Arhat, or Holy One, of Buddhist philosophy. Like a shooting star, it is a thing precious not only for itself, but for bejewelling the very face of heaven. We have experienced what is undoubtedly a moment of true filmic perfection. And yet, like any form of enlightenment, such rewards are hard won.

Hot off the back of teen suicide romp Better Off Dead…, and recently released on probation after a 60-day stretch for his part in the botched kidnapping of DJ out of Rosanne, director ‘Savage’ Steve Holland once again has the wearisome vagaries of high school romance in his beady sights. However, instead of viewing it through the darkling lens of selfassisted euthanasia, he has this time opted for the (ironically more challenging) genre that was soon to be known to renters the world over as the ‘Spring Break!’ comedy.

At the tender age of 15, John Cusack’s ‘Hoops’ McCann is already a burn-out case; a failed basketball player-slash-garbage man and unreconstituted Cheez Whiz addict turned

talentless animator, whose deranged, subAnimalympics doodlings all culminate in his crudely scrawled alter-ego – a mysteriously Beirut-bound hippo – mowing down families of fluffy bunny rabbits with an Israeli sub-machine gun. Disney have slapped a restraining order on him, he has no girlfriend and his mom has lined him up with a summer job at Wild Emmett’s Gator Bait. What’s a guy to do?

This time, fortunately, his answer is not at the end of a noose but at the start of a road trip with his fat-faced friend to the island of Nantucket in a souped-up hearse (a sly nod from Savage there) with a Christmas tree on the roof and a case of Colt .45 in the footwell. Fling an electric guitarslinging Demi Moore into the back seat and we’re all set for crazy!

Nantucket itself is a broadly drawn mix of out-of-season Klan theme park and unregistered mental hospital. Representing one, both or either of these sides is Bobcat, playing an unemployed tugboat mechanic called Egg Stork (’nuff said), and a splenetic property developer resembling Bruce Dern’s reanimated corpse. Within mere minutes of docking, Cusack and Moore are embroiled in dealings that were far too fastforwarded to recount here – but suffice to say that Demi is soon strumming her way to the

three thousand bucks she needs to save her granddad’s house (which, for budgetary reasons, we never see) from the machinations of the evil Dern-alike; while Cusack, for some tantalisingly under-explored reason, needs to triumph in that shamelessly trotted out deus ex machina of the ERH years – the apropos-of-nothing, last-act, must-win boat-race…

It would be refreshing to be able to say that we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, but it simply wouldn’t be the case. Yes, further events unfold, but other than, perhaps, the Dalí-esque apparition of a dog in a nurse’s uniform pushing a hospital bed through a cornfield, you, reader, can assuredly predict them all with diabolical accuracy. Does friendship triumph? Check. Does Bobcat wrestle with a small, deformed child in a bowl of punch? Affirmative. Does ‘Savage’ Steve’s probation officer turn up with a court order? Roger that. And is Hoops’ reward for winning the most incident packed boat race in American sailing history (a crossbow exchange, two deaths, sundry explosions and a mechanical shark attack) a randy slam with Demi in an upturned children’s paddling pool? Well, what do you think?

‘The humanity’? Maybe next summer, Bobcat.

Maybe next summer… ADAM LEE DAVIES

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LWLies salutes the visionaries whose imagination, passion, madness and genius inspired our love of movies.

Words by paul fairclough 110 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

Before Dan O’Bannon, space was sleek. From Buck Rogers’ tight skimpies to the rompersuited Robinsons of Lost in Space, the future was bold, bright and stripped of the pesky inessentials that made contemporary life so grindingly workaday. Star Trek had instant cuisine and incomprehensible 3-D chess; Kubrick’s 2001 imagined an interstellar alphamale country club where malfunctioning hardware served only as a literal deus ex machina; George Lucas’ THX 1138 envisaged a streamlined, if sterile, society where, it seemed, even dystopian police states would have excellent facilities. But with a pair of films just a few years apart, O’Bannon changed the face of the future.

In 1974, with director John Carpenter, he took the disillusionment of a million cosmically minded West Coast peaceniks and shot it into space with the idly genre-mangling Dark Star. The titular starship, with the air of an intergalactic VW Camper, is charged with the very Vietnam-era concept of blowing up ‘unstable’ planets to make way for colonial

expansion. Crewed by a bunch of morose beardies whose only common interest is their loathing for one another, the ship’s mission has dragged on long after the captain has died and the toilet paper supply has been torched.

Momentarily joyous bouts of planet-killing aside, their lives are dedicated to avoiding one another, and are enlivened only by occasional violent rage. One (at least) is insane, while another, played by O’Bannon as a dweebish office joker, isn’t even supposed to be on the flight. It is a tiny world of short tempers, paranoia and petty grudges born of unending boredom. It is, in short, the modern workplace travelling at lightspeed.

As a film school project, the movie looked high-end. Granted, household objects and spray paint were big on the budget tax-deductibles and, yes, the brattish pet alien is a beachball, but O’Bannon’s effects expertise and Carpenter’s love of low lighting and claustrophobic closeups filled a lot of holes. But when the film was picked up for cinematic release, as O’Bannon put it, “Instead of the most impressive student

film ever made, we had the least impressive professional film ever made.” The critics were not kind: “Much of the movie takes place in the cinematic equivalent of zero gravity,” wrote The New York Times, “and one of the astronaut’s silver-colored suits has a front panel that looks suspiciously like a muffin tin.”

But these arriviste sci-fi cineastes were missing the point. Dark Star wasn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the movie’s production designer, as well as writer and star, O’Bannon had created a vision of things to come that owed more to the physical and moral decay of the Nixon years than to Kubrick’s brightly lit corporate millennium. This was a future in which things didn’t work as they should, and people were still stupid. It was a universe where the meeting of fickle technology and human fallibility was merely the engine for mankind’s great leap forward in the world of super-charged fuck-ups.

O’Bannon called it ‘used future’, and when he came to write Alien five years later (after an experience with Dune worse even than sitting

through a screening of David Lynch’s film), he had already conceived an over-arching sensibility that made the earthy, naturalistic crew scenes on the Nostromo stand out as something entirely new in a mainstream scifi movie. He would go on to break box office records with his script for Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall, but it was his blue-collar space movies that made it okay to describe a future that, though less than ideal, breathed as believably as the world outside the cinema.

Dan O’Bannon once claimed that Alien had “a dire effect on every [sci-fi] movie since.”

In terms of plotting he may be right. Despite their conflation of deep space and religious mysticism, ’90s sci-fi efforts like Event Horizon and Sphere were unable to get past the monster in the shadows that owed much to Alien.

But in the cinematic language of setting and dialogue, O’Bannon’s work is the foundation of the best of modern cinema’s dirty speculative worlds, replete with all the human failings and capricious technology that connect audiences on an experiential level to a future imperfect.

EPILOGUE: IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR SPLEEN Almost from the off, Dan O’Bannon’s relationship with Alien producers Walter Hill and David Giler was a tussle over tone, direction and, most importantly, ownership. Though O’Bannon came out (mostly) on top, he’s always had a pithy take on his erstwhile collaborators…

“As Walter himself said to us during preproduction, ‘The greatest thing I have to bring to this project is I don’t know anything about sciencefiction.’ And that was certainly reflected in the various drafts that [Hill and Giler] did.”

“Walter Hill spent several years telling everybody who would listen, any journalist, that he’d really written Alien and I stole his credit, until I finally got fed up and had my lawyer shut him up for good.”

“They’re only interested in the money with those sequels, anyway. These are not artistic fellows.”

“The reader who is familiar with the film will notice that the characters’ names are different.

This was one of Hill/Giler’s contributions. They changed all the names.”

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NO.03:ALPHAVILLE Originally titled Tarzan Versus IBM, Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution is a startling synthesis of science-fiction and film noir. One of the most significant films of the decade, its dystopian vision of a technology fixated future where emotion is outlawed continues to resonate, influencing a future generation of filmmakers inspired by Godard’s visual daring, treasure trove of ideas and playful referencing of popular culture. The film also spawned a number of gated communities in Brazil bearing its name. One can’t imagine anyone who has seen the film actually being tempted for even the slightest moment to live there.

Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine, reprising the French-speaking FBI agent he first made

112 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

popular in the 1950s) has been sent to Alphaville to bring back or assassinate renegade scientist Professor von Braun (aka Leonard Nosferatu), architect of this dehumanised computer-city of the future. Three agents have already failed the assignment: Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and Henri Dickson. Caution, disguised as Ivan Johnson, reporter for Figaro-Pravda, sets about his task and, in passing, in a galaxy where the concept of ‘love’ does not exist, tries to teach the Professor’s daughter, Natasha von Braun (Anna Karina, Godard’s muse and wife), the meaning of the word.

A project that only came to fruition after the possibility of Godard directing Bonnie and Clyde finally collapsed; Alphaville marked the

director’s ninth feature since his debut with 1960’s groundbreaking À Bout de Souffle. Totalling just five months from filming to release, the film, which scooped the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, typifies the director’s phenomenal productivity in the decade in which he secured his reputation as cinema’s greatest practitioner. Despite subsequent periods of decline and the loss of the majority of all but his most loyal audience members with a series of avant-garde and overtly politicised projects in the 1970s, it’s a position the director arguably retains to this day.

Expressive of Godard’s fascination with the comic strip, a format that draws upon urban mythology while also offering an alternative approach to narrative and an escape route from

constrictive linearity, Alphaville utilises almost no special effects and yet feels utterly and authentically futuristic. A car chase sequence in which the film is shown in its negative state aside, the rendering of a city of the future is achieved through numerous visual references to signs, symbols, flashing lights and Caution’s world-weary narration (at one point he is seen reading Chandler’s The Big Sleep).

Shooting almost exclusively on the outskirts of Paris in modernist buildings, Godard’s use of location is inspired. Thus, the Electricity Board doubles as the malevolent headquarters where the all-powerful Alpha-60 computer is housed.

An execution centre, where citizens are forced to walk a swimming pool diving board to then be machine-gunned by assassins and finished off

by knife wielding girls in bikinis is actually a local swimming baths.

Photojournalist-turned-cinematographer Raoul Coutard served as Godard’s long-standing technical collaborator, and his input here is particularly significant in the rendering of a bureaucratic, totalitarian state. In his excellent monograph on Alphaville in the French Film Guides series, Chris Darke describes the film as being for its creator ‘an experiment in seeing how far he could push black-and-white film when shooting in available, artificial light with little or no extra lighting’. Coutard’s technique of deliberately under-lighting contributes much to the menacing, neurotic and otherworldly atmosphere.

The use of sound is similarly effective, not least

Alpha-60’s parched death rattle drawl, which resembles a particularly crude voice box and which epitomises the central motif of the conflict between man and machine.

Alphaville’s cocktail of intellect, allusion and entertainment make it arguably the director’s most readily accessible and popularly enduring work. It undoubtedly offers a perfect portal into the cinematic world of a director who, as von Braun comments of Caution, has in his own lifetime achieved legendary status. In closing it is worth noting that the film spawned a rarely seen 1991 made-for-TV sequel titled Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro. In characteristic Godard fashion, it reportedly makes but a cursory reference to the original.

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THE FRONT LINE: LAWRENCE PEARCE Recently, a 3am online chat with Greg Mottola (director of Superbad and the forthcoming Adventureland) turned into a surre al therapy session. With Greg patiently listen ing to my sleep-deprived drivel, I ranted over that loved and loathed area of every new film ventu re; the trials and tribulations of the film finance strug gle.

Having just returned from his travels promoting Adventureland around the world, Greg has no such worries. Studios and distributors throw money at him. I, on the other hand, at the start of my directing career with one cult vampire hit under my belt, am the proverbial hobo with a cup and a sign simply reading ‘Pleas e?’ His reply was, “Yeah, I know… I’m lucky,” which I’m sure he meant in a sincere and sympathetic way.

Rewind one week. I find myself sitting in a plush leather chair and peering over a solid oak desk at one of the British film indus try’s most

114 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

renowned casting agents. Having alread y attached Brian Cox to one of my two features in finance, Cain’s Awakening, I was there to persu ade the casting agent to find me a handsome male lead that distributors would be excited about ; although we had no money to aim for the stars.

“Even the Yanks are struggling to finance indep endent films now,” he barked. “Even the Yanks!”

He was, of course, in his own unique way, trying to explain to me how independent film financing is going down the toilet.

With the rise of DVD piracy, renta l services delivering to your door, online strea ming and countless new cable channels (some showing blockbusters mere months after they have vacated the cinema), DVD sales have plumm eted in recent years. However, the entertainment industry has always had an adverse reaction to economic conditions; during times of recession audiences have flocked to the cinema in order to escape the worries and drudgery of their lives. And so cinema figures have risen with the growing fi nancial crisis that is taking over the Western world . From $895m in 2005, to $1.2bn in 2009, box office sales are up a whopping 37 per cent in just four years .

With cinema going great guns and DVD dying an achingly slow death, how does this affect the independent filmmaker? Distributor faith in DVD has diminished to a point where low budget films, without the stars and famous direct ors to pull in a cinema audience, are seen as high risk. Add to that the number of outlets for DVD disappearing (Woolworths and Zavvi in the last few months) and there just isn’t the scope for the money men to make their quick buck on the small er titles.

This leads to an even greater focus placed on making mainstream cinema, and thus squeezing out the independent filmma ker with a thirst for exploring alternative subje cts. Some of Hollywood’s most important studio directors started out as micro-budget indie filmmakers tackling fresh and original ideas : Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, even Georg e Lucas. But I wonder how many more true mavericks we will see releasing films in the next five years . My greatest concern isn’t the recession; it’s the future of the small independent film. I may have to start holding my sign even higher.

www.lawrencepearce.com

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116 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

where the wilD thinGs are DIRECTED BY Spike Jonze ETA December 2009

How many times have you watched the trailer for Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic? Ten? Twenty? Put simply: it’s one of the most stirring trailers we’ve ever seen, with stunning use of a re-recorded version of Arcade Fire’s ‘Wake Up’.

FootaGe

MaChete

DIRECTED BY Robert Rodriguez ETA Late 2010 Speaking at SXSW in March, Robert Rodriguez confirmed that the Sin City sequels have been pushed to the back burner in favour of Machete – the Danny Trejo vehicle that began life as a fake trailer in Grindhouse. The short was fairly amusing, but will a full-length release stretch the joke a bit too far?

news

PubliC eneMies

the three stooGes

There’s no denying FootaGe that the two new trailers for Public Enemies look very slick, and yet they also lookscuriously modern for a film that’s supposed to be set over 70 years ago. Still, this is essentially Johnny Depp and Christian Bale doing Heat in your granddad’s old clothes. Who isn’t excited by that prospect?

Casting After months of rumours that everybody from Johnny Depp to Russell Crowe to Mel Gibson was due to step into the wigs of Moe, Larry and Curly, it now looks like Sean Penn, Jim Carrey and Benicio del Toro will make up the final trio of the Farrelly brothers’ comic re-launch.

DIRECTED BY Michael Mann ETA July 2009

antiChrist

Das weisse avatar banD DIRECTED BY Michael Haneke ETA October 2009

DIRECTED BY James Cameron ETA December 2009

A couple make love iMaGes against a sinister tree, its roots entwined with human limbs.

This is the first image from Antichrist, von Trier’s forthcoming horror film.

What it all means is anyone’s guess, but we’re thoroughly creeped out already, and the recently released trailer didn’t help either.

Little is known about GossiP the latest work from shock-master Haneke, barring the fact that it’s set in 1913 and supposedly deals with the rise of National Socialism. It’s in post now, and speculation suggests we may see an appearance at Cannes this year.

What credit crunch?

James Cameron’s Avatar is now the most expensive motion picture ever made, with a reported budget of over $300 million. Time magazine caught a brief peek at some footage and reported it to be ‘startling and absorbing’. Let’s hope all that cash was well spent.

DIRECTED BY Lars von Trier ETA TBC

GossiP

DIRECTED BY Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly ETA 2010

CastinG

sPrinG Fever DIRECTED BY Lou Ye ETA TBC

The erotic themes and content of Spring Fever have landed Lou Ye in hot water with Chinese authorities, but he’s also picking up a load of enthusiastic support from critics.

Expect the film to surface at Cannes in the summer.

Festivals

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1939

The Debt

This BBC-funded venture news is Poliakoff ’s first stab at feature directing in 10 years, so it’s bound to be worth a look. The project is currently wrapping up post-production, aiming for a release later this year. Romola Garai stars alongside Bill Nighy, Julie Christie and David Tennant.

Tom Wilkinson is rumoured to be joining Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington (the new Terminator) for this forthcoming Nazi-hunting thriller. Mirren is purportedly learning Hebrew and studying the history of Mossad in preparation for her role as a former intelligence agent.

DIRECTED BY Stephen Poliakoff ETA 2009

Ghostbusters iii DIRECTED BY TBC ETA 2011

Columbia Pictures have ruled out Judd Apatow as a possible contributor to a new Ghostbusters sequel. However, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd are confirmed as working on a new script, so if this year’s twenty-fifth anniversary re-release goes well there’s a decent chance that more details will be released.

news

King Shot

DIRECTED BY Alejandro Jodorowsky ETA Early 2010 Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond has revealed that he expects to start work on Jodorowsky’s ‘metaphysical gangster film’ (produced by David Lynch) this summer. Plot details are still thin, but we know that it’s set in the desert and that Marilyn Manson is rumoured to play a 300-year-old Pope.

news

Funny People

DIRECTED BY Judd Apatow ETA August 2009 The first glimpse footage of Apatow’s third directorial outing has a sentimental appearance – a tone that seems to be verging on schmaltz. Given the quality of his past work, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Adam Sandler looks to be more subtle and restrained than usual, thank God.

118 THE STAR TREK ISSUE

DIRECTED BY John Madden ETA TBC

Casting

Never Let Me Go DIRECTED BY Mark Romanek ETA 2011

Keira Knightley takes the lead role in this adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s widely praised novel, set in a dystopian Britain where genetic clones are farmed for their organs.

Alex Garland is on script-writing duties. Shooting began just as this issue went to print.

casting

Nowhere Boy DIRECTED BY Sam Taylor Wood ETA 2010

Shooting is now underway on this Weinstein-supported take on John Lennon’s childhood. The iconic round specs have gone to Aaron Johnson, a 19-year-old actor who previously appeared in 2006’s The Illusionist. Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff are also on the cast list.

casting

Greenberg DIRECTED BY Noah Baumbach ETA TBC

Baumbach’s follow-up to Margot at the Wedding has now rolled into production, with Rhys Ifans and Ben Stiller appearing alongside Mumblecore muse Greta Gerwig. Details are thin, but cringe-inducing black comedy is sure to feature heavily.

news

uP

DIRECTED BY Pete Docter ETA October 2009 Everyone’s a critic.

The New York Times has quoted a financial analyst as saying that Wall Street is worried about Pixar’s latest film. Yeah, well, we think that the economic crisis is the result of witchcraft but, you know, no one’s listening to us are they? Stick to what you know, douche bags.

GossiP

the ruM Diary DIRECTED BY Bruce Robinson ETA 2010

Giovanni Ribisi is set to join Johnny Depp for this adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s novel, following their collaboration on Michael Mann’s Public Enemies. Shooting in Puerto Rico should have begun by the time you read this very magazine.

CastinG

the teMPest DIRECTED BY Julie Taymor ETA TBC

Apparently Russell Brand gave Helen Mirren a pair of his un-washed pants during filming of this Shakespearian adaptation.

Theatrical purists are probably more interested in the fact that Mirren is playing Prospera – formerly the male wizard, Prospero.

GossiP

sCott PilGriM vs. the worlD DIRECTED BY Edgar Wright ETA Late 2009

Fans of the Scott Pilgrim comics can now check out the first images of Michael Cera as the eponymous hero – a slacker musician forced to battle his new lady’s ex-boyfriends.

Meanwhile, it’s also been announced that cinematography will be handled by The Matrix DP Bill Pope.

GossiP

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Broken Embraces

DIRECTED BY Pedro Almodóvar ETA August 2009 The ingredients footage may be familiar, but Almodóvar’s latest offering is looking extremely enticing: Penélope Cruz, Spanish passion and a mournful air of mystery. The new trailer is filled with some brilliantly striking colours too; we can’t wait to see a bit more.

Footloose DIRECTED BY Kenny Ortega ETA April 2010

Bad news for Zac Efron fans: he’s just bailed on playing the Kevin Bacon role in Disney’s forthcoming Footloose remake. Worse news for the rest of us: the project is still likely to go on without him.

casting

Inglourious Basterds DIRECTED BY Quentin Tarantino ETA August 2009

Basterds’ trailer suggests a film every bit as nasty as you might expect from Tarantino doing The Dirty Dozen, but after the lukewarm reception to Death Proof, we’d say he has quite a bit to prove.

footage

True Grit DIRECTED BY Joel Coen, Ethan Coen ETA TBC

Given the provenance of this story, take it with a pinch of salt, but Joel Coen recently told The Daily Mail that he and Ethan are planning to remake the John Wayne classic True Grit, sticking closer to Charles Portis’ 1968 source novel.

news

Untitled Joaquin Phoenix Documentary DIRECTED BY Casey Affleck ETA 2010

Everyone wants to know if Joaquin Phoenix is pulling some form of elaborate stunt or if he’s just gone nuts. Following the actor’s bizarrely vacant appearance on Letterman in February, many people seem to be favouring the latter opinion.

Affleck’s documentary is currently in production, so hopefully we’ll discover the truth next year.

news

Biutiful

DIRECTED BY Alejandro González Iñárritu ETA December 2009 Javier Bardem halted work for a week after injuring his spine during the filming of Iñárritu’s latest.

He plays a drug dealer who runs into conflict with a cop who also happens to be an old childhood friend.

news

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead DIRECTED BY Jordan Galland ETA Late 2009

In which a layabout lothario is persuaded to direct a production of Hamlet, only to find himself embroiled in a strange conspiracy involving sexedup vampires and the Holy Grail.

It sounds extremely odd, but it’s bound to be better than Lesbian Vampire Killers.

wtf?!

Film is a fickle business, so here we salute the movies that never quite made it. This issue, James Wright looks at Star Trek: The Beginning.

“It’s a fact, sure as day follows night, sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every oddnumbered Star Trek movie is shit.” Simon Pegg, Spaced There’s a lot riding on JJ Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek franchise, not least the hopes and dreams of millions of dedicated fans. But even before Abrams’ welcome involvement, there was light at the end of the wormhole for long-suffering Trekkers. Four years ago, Erik Jendresen’s script offered them the sort of solution that they’d been awaiting for decades.

Riding high on the success of Band of Brothers, Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter Jendresen was commissioned to revive Star Trek’s fortunes after the abysmal tenth feature, Nemesis, in 2002. What he turned in was 121 pages of radical changes to the Trek universe, tentatively titled Star Trek: The Beginning. Not only did Jendresen effectively throw out the Star Fleet manual, he also ditched any previously seen central characters.

Jendresen described recent Trek films as “just another crew in jeopardy where the captain does something brilliant in the end.” He wanted to avoid this structure, as well as the tedious time travel get-out clause that many of the films had fallen back on. Instead, he opted for a complete overhaul, taking the film in a sinister direction and moving far away from Star Trek’s traditional sterile look.

Taking place after the events of prequel show Enterprise but before the original Star Trek series, the script portrayed the human-Romulan war, commonly depicted as a major interstellar conflict of atomic nature.

This choice led one commentator to describe the script as ‘a classic war story set in the Star Trek universe’. The film would have seen a whole new narrative without the typical captain and crew, instead focussing on a band of rebels acting against Starfleet’s commands. They were to be lead by Tiberius Chase, progenitor of a certain James Tiberius Kirk.

Despite the rather tantalising glimpse of what Star Trek could have been, the introduction of a new studio president at Paramount saw the project scrapped in favour of Abrams’, and a reboot of an earlier script entitled Star Trek: The Academy Years – a title that for many fans treads uncomfortably close to Police Academy.

It’s impossible to say if Jendresen’s sweeping changes would have been successful with its legions of Klingon-speaking followers, but based on films such as Starship Troopers, Serenity and even The Dark Knight – all of which embraced a darker and more nihilistic approach to their source material – there’s every reason to believe that The Beginning could have been the start of something great. As things stand, Abrams’ vision is now the final frontier.

Chances of boldly being resurrected: As likely as the warp drive neutralising the magnetospheric collar. That’s very unlikely, in case you don’t speak Trek.

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“People who don’t belive in aliens are a bit weird.”