If the 20 minutes he spent…

❝ If the 20 minutes he spent on the show are any indication, then Cruise never stops working because he apparently spends his every waking moment playing a character named Tom Cruise.

It’s a role that demands huge commitment, discipline and dedication. Most of all it means never letting your guard down, never giving anything away, never appearing out of control and, from the looks of things, never relaxing. ❞

On Tom Cruise’s role in Jack Reacher — or on Tom Cruise diligently playing “Tom Cruise” (which he does all the time) — from The Marlborough Express

Related articles

• Tom Cruise defends Jack Reacher role
• Jack Reacher could be me: Tom Cruise spends hours with fans at Leicester Square premiere of Jack Reacher
• Character’s Reach Isn’t Important At All: Tom Cruise Defends Jack Reacher Role
• Tom Cruise: no sleep is the secret to looking young

Plot structures in Polanski’s films | Leo Robson | The Guardian

☞ To say that most of Polanski’s films have one of three plot structures may sound too formulaic, but it is hard to argue against this article’s main contention. Polanski’s vision is not only in the recreation of bleak and unforgiving settings, or, according to Roger Ebert (!), in the recurrence of characters who, like Charles Manson, are “anti-intellectual, witless, and driven by deep, shameful wells of lust and violence.” It also lies in the reiteration of a restricted range of plot structures that run across many of his films. They are of course not plot formulas in the conventional or generic sense, but they also highlight the fact that, in spite of his films’ variety, Polanski does not engage in significantly new thematic departures in many of his films.

Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion. Photograph: BFI/Ronald Grant

“The backbone of Polanski‘s body of work is formed by three kinds of narrative – the testing of an unequal marriage, the humbling of a complacent professional, and the crumbling of a lonely mind – and few of his films buck all trends to any significant degree. Frantic, for example, a cleverly exasperating thriller about a Paris kidnapping, has similarities with other humbling narratives – Chinatown, The Ninth Gate and The Ghost – including a tendency to frustrate a major star, this time Harrison Ford, in petty ways, but it lacks some of the things they share: a corpse in water, the sense of thwarted rebellion against one’s place in the food chain, a downbeat ending. The Pianist, one of two films, along with Oliver Twist, that deals directly with the personal experience to which Polanski’s other work gives oblique or allusive treatment, belongs to the lonely-mind genre only in its second half, once ghetto turns to wasteland. (Polanski started off writing his own films, or working closely with the authors of original screenplays, then, having found his formula, turned to adapting source material, much of it strikingly well-matched to his interests and strengths.)

But even these different narrative formations are telling, at bottom, the same story. Polanski has no favourite technique, favourite actor, or favourite genre; he does, however, have a pet concern, one that adapts well. If there are two men on board, both will indeed want to be captain, but it is the woman – a wife or girlfriend, never a mother – who decides which man, and the judging process is sure to be characterised by tickled malignity or scornful glee. (“The women we like,” Christoph Waltz tells Jodie Foster in Polanski’s most recent film, Carnage, speaking on behalf of men unnerved by feminism, “are sensual, crazy, shot full of hormones. The ones who want to show off how perceptive they are, the gatekeepers of the world, they’re a huge turnoff.”) Polanski’s film of Macbeth, which he adapted with Kenneth Tynan, is usually seen as his response to the murders at his house in Cielo Drive, in which his wife Sharon Tate was killed, but given that it involves a man who over-reaches himself at the insistence of his wife, it is easy to imagine him making it at more or less any point. (Of his adaptations of classics, it is more in line with his sensibility, and a stronger, more convincing performance, than Oliver Twist or Tess.)”

Read more…

Related articles

• Roman Polanski: the great survivor
• Film Review: Roman Polanski – Wanted and Desired
• Repulsion; Chinatown – review

 

The curse of the back-story

A scene from Table no. 21

☞ My latest entry on the main narrativeblog is on the back-story in revising a novel. This article is an interesting complement to it: on the endemic resort to the back-story in Hindi films.

“Indian filmmakers – specifically Hindi ones – have always, annoyingly, felt this need to ‘explain’ the story, using pointless dialogues to spell out every last detail about plot and character. In other cases – like Table No 21 – you have what you call the ‘back-story’, a smaller part of the narrative, used to explain character motivation, or to help put pieces of the jigsaw together. The back-story itself isn’t a problem; Thakur taking his revenge on Gabbar Singh in Sholay wouldn’t have been as rewarding if you hadn’t witnessed how brutally the dacoit killed his family.

However, in a film like Table No 21, which is supposed to be a straightforward, snappy thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat for a little under two hours, to have a back-story is the worst idea possible, especially since it’s not required. Worse, it comes at a point when you want the film to come to a quick finish. You have invested over 90 minutes already, enjoying bits, not caring much about others, and want to know how the story ties up together eventually. Then comes the back-story.”

Read more…

Review of The Girl | John Crace | The Guardian

☞ Since my previous post was a quotation from Toby Jones, on the challenge of acting as Hitchcock in The Girl, I thought I should quote from one of the favourable reviews of the television movie. Not everyone views the movie positively: some other reviewers, television viewers or friends of Hitchcock view the movie as a false portrayal of the director, and would question Crace’s assertion below that “it’s a fairly accurate account.” Again, the question of authenticity, although from a different angle, crops up.

Beauty and the beastly Hitchcock: a peerless study of sexual obsession

“”Blondes make the best victims,” Alfred Hitchcock once said. The Girl (BBC2) was Tippi Hedren, the blonde who ultimately refused to be his victim and, as this HBO film was largely based on Hedren’s own interviews and Donald Spoto‘s Hitchcock biography, it is reasonable to assume it’s a fairly accurate account.

Directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Gwyneth Hughes, it began with Hitchcock choosing Hedren, an unknown New York model, to star in two of his finest films, The Birds and Marnie. It ended with her frozen out of Hollywood for five years after a stand-off in which she refused to work for him and he refused to release her from her contract. As a study of Hitchcock’s peculiar and demanding directorial methods, together with some eye-catching early 60s Hollywood period detail, The Girl was a class act: as a study in sexual obsession it was peerless.”

Read more…

Related articles

• Tippi Hedren, ‘The Birds’ Star: Alfred Hitchcock Ruined My Career (VIDEO)
• The Girl: Hitchcock and the unmaking of Tippi Hedren
• Was Hitchcock Psycho?

There’s always panic…

There’s always panic when you’re playing someone as iconic as Hitchcock,… There’s that suspicion you might not have done that bit of research that would be crucial. I’m trying to make myself enough like that person so that it doesn’t become distracting.

Toby Jones on playing Hitchcock, in HBO’s The Girl

---

Related articles

• Toby Jones: dial H for Hitchcock
• HBO’s The Girl – Hitchcock Part 1
• The Girl DVD Review
• Sacha Gervasi: Hitchcock portrayals are accurate
• The Girl (UK 2012)
• [Review] The Girl

 

Animated and life-action character interactions: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

☞ While the discussion on the influence of an animated character on life-action characters is still fresh (see the discussion below on the television character Daria), let us go on to a film in which the interactions between animated and life action characters occur within the film itself: Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The animated characters in this film, or what are called toons, are not mere dispensable decorations, as in Mary Poppins, but form an essential part of the narrative. There is also a social structure in the film where the toons are discriminated against. As the article notes, the film represents a significant advance on earlier use of animation — or more specifically, animated characters — in life action movies.

✼ “The story’s ingenious conceit is that human-created cartoons, including some of the most recognizable characters in the animated species, coexist with Homo sapiens — off-screen and three-dimensionally, that is. These “toons,” as they’re called, make up a kind of movie-industry underclass that is exploited for profit-making laughs. That’s a pretty audacious motif in a work ostensibly for children, and when you add the superimposition onto the crowded thematic canvas of a top-notch spoof on film noir, you’ve got a movie working overtime in the ideas department.”

✼ “Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Vertigo, and especially Chinatown — Roger Rabbit borrows from them all. There’s even a great bit of economical storytelling lifted from Rear Window, in which we’re brought up to speed on Eddie’s entire history solely through photographs and newspaper clips.

The technical virtuosity is even more impressive. As director Zemeckis recently explained on Fresh Air, the animators devised a process that endowed each cel with the same lighting as in the corresponding live-action scene. The film also breaks a longstanding rule of hybrid human-cartoon projects by allowing the camera to roam. In films like Mary Poppins, Zemeckis said, the recording device was always static “because it would be so difficult to draw different changes of perspective as the camera moves.” But he shot the film “like I would any live action movie. And the animators actually found that it worked better by having the camera moving. That they were able to actually give more life to the cartoon characters and have them feel like they’re more integrated into the actual two-dimensional set.””

Read more…

Related articles

• Sequel in the works for Who Killed Roger Rabbit?
• Robert Zemeckis Says ‘Roger Rabbit’ Sequel Still Ready, Wants 2D Animation Done “With 3D Tools”
• Robert Zemeckis Talks WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT Sequel, a Possible 3D Re-Release, 3D Post-Conversions and Possible Remakes of His Other Films
• 3D Roger Rabbit sequel will be set in the past, still hand drawn

From its opening shot of a dimming light bulb…

From its opening shot of a dimming light bulb, the film defies expectations. According to 1930’s film grammar, a dimming light bulb signified only one thing: an execution. In the case of Sabotage, however, the bulb announces a widespread London blackout caused by the introduction of sand into a power station generator.

John Seal on Hitchcock’s Sabotage

BTW, Don’t ask me what film “grammar” is. But from the quotation above, I think I can figure out what is being said here: some convention that existed during that time. Anyway (just in case you’ve been away with John Carter on Mars for the past few months), the light bulb does not reveal that the guy on the left is not Hitchcock (just someone pretending to be him; see also, below).

---

 

Daria as character prototype: 5 characters who owe their existence to her | Andrew Daglas

☞ Characters do not arise out of thin air of course, nor are they merely an imitation of real persons. One of the major sources of characterisation and character formation is other characters. On popular media, such as cinema and television, major characters in some well-known movies or television serials may have an influence on subsequent characters. This article convincingly argues that the main character of the MTV serial Daria does have an influence on important female characters in subsequent television serials, such as the main characters of Parks and Recreation, Suburgatory, Awkward, Community and Girls. What is also interesting about the claim is the influence that a character from an animated serial has on characters in live-action serials.

“If only Daria Morgendorffer could see the world she wrought.

It’s been a decade since the Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn animated series went off the air, but the impact of its eponymous heroine and her deadpan journey through life in the suburbs is still felt. Some of the sharpest female protagonists on television right now can trace their identity, at least partially, to the central figure of MTV’s teen comedy “Daria,” which ran for five season and two TV movies, the second of which, “Is It College Yet?,” found Daria bidding farewell to the high school life she found so trying. While her contemporary, Tony Soprano, spawned a legion of tortured male antiheroes, Daria pulled off a feat less discussed but all the more difficult — she made the world a little safer for brainy, independent, socially maladroit young women everywhere. Here’s a look at a few current TV characters who, but for this turn-of-the-millennium heroine, might not exist.”

Read more…

Related article

• Next, on Sick, Sad, World

The question of authenticity again: Mandingo fighting in Django Unchained — was it true?

Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of a slaveowner who deals in Mandingo fights.

☞ The question of authenticity in Django Unchained again. This time, it’s not to do with the profuse use of profanities or with the use of the N-word, but with Mandingo fighting. The controversy here reminds one of the debate on the authenticity of the Russian roulette sequences in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). Again, the question is how true should a movie be to history? Couldn’t a movie take liberties with facts in order to make the narrative more interesting?

“A key plot point of Quentin Tarantino’s western-blaxploitation-revenge movie is the supposed sport of Mandingo fighting, in which two (black) slaves fight in a bare-knuckle death match, for no reason other than the (white) slaveowners’ enjoyment. The search for the perfect Mandingo, or wrestler, is the vehicle Tarantino (who, of course, wrote and directed the film) builds the rest of his movie around. But a bevy of historians say it probably never happened.

One expert tells Slate (which says that “no slavery historian we spoke with had ever come across anything that closely resembled this human version of cockfighting”) that the very notion that Southerners would send off their slaves to die is logically flawed. Given the entire structure of slavery was based on economic expedience, it just doesn’t make much sense that a slaveowner would be willing to lose one of his strongest and healthiest men to death for sport.”

From HuffPost Entertainment: read more…

Related articles

• Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ Fact or Fiction: Mandingo Fighting, Bounty Hunters, and More
• Django Unchained: Hollywood and the Slavery of Our Imaginations
• Does ‘Django Unchained’ get the history of slavery right?
• Quentin Taratino Responds To Spike Lee: “Django Wasn’t Real But Neither Was Roots!”

Narrative in Charlie Jane Anders’ “Best and Worst Science Fiction/Fantasy Movies of 2012” «selections»

☞ Another list of 2012’s films. This time listing both the best and worst science fiction films of the year. Again, narrative plays a prominent part in determining the quality of the films. All other aspects of cinema should contribute to the narrative if the film is to be regarded as successful or well executed. Science fiction movies are clearly not an exception to this rule. Curiously, Cloud Atlas is found in both the best films and worst films lists, which perhaps indicates the ambivalence that many people feel towards its narrative complications.

The Best (Selections)

Cloud Atlas

“David Mitchell‘s centuries-spanning novel, with its six interlocking stories, poses a nearly impossible challenge for a movie adaptation. But the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer found a way to create a complex structure in which the six time periods dovetail together and create resonances and harmonics, almost like the piece of music that gives the movie its name.”

Chronicle

“There’s nothing about this film that you haven’t seen a million times before: the “found footage” camerawork, the story of people who get uncanny mental powers and abuse them, the downward spiral, etc. But this film still felt amazingly fresh, because of some really clever storytelling choices and some amazingly strong performances. It was also really refreshing to see a movie conveying superpowers in the brisk, matter-of-fact way this film does. Most of all, though, Chronicle creates fully realized teen characters with real emotional lives, and uses its mysterious psychic powers to tell a great story about the nightmares of high school social life.”

The Cabin in the Woods

“[In its third act…] This movie turns a critique of rote storytelling into something larger and more existential, to the point where it actually earns its massive conclusion — but it also manages to imbue all of these poor saps with life and reality before tossing them into the abyss.”

Looper

“Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis are terrific as a man meeting himself, and between the two of them they manage to create a really complex character who evolves over the course of the film even as he butts heads with himself.”

The Avengers

“This movie accomplished several heroic feats, including bringing together wildly disparate characters and giving them all a worthy storyline — but its biggest accomplishment was probably just recreating the joy and urgency of a great superhero comic on the big screen.”

The Worst (Selections)

Cloud Atlas

“God, what a mess. Adapting David Mitchell’s sweeping novel, with its historical and far-future settings, wasn’t challenging enough — the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer had to add a totally insane additional element, having the same troupe of actors play different roles in each storyline. Which means one thing: hideous, claw-your-face-off makeup, including white actors playing Asian roles.”

Prometheus

“…after months of reflection, we’ve come down on the “Prometheus is a genuinely terrible film” side. The “idiot ball” plotting, the bland characters, the shoehorned daddy issues, and the huge philosophical questions that are raised only to be coated with drool… it’s just a giant ball of stupid. The only really memorable character is the android David, and we wind up with less insight into him at the end of the film than at the beginning. And for all Scott’s feverish insistence that this film isn’t an Alien prequel, any true storytelling potential is hobbled by the OCD need to connect every last dot with Alien.”

The Bourne Legacy

“Edward Norton does nothing but stand around discussing obscure plot points from the first three Bourne movies. And meanwhile, Jeremy Renner‘s storyline as an enhanced superspy who’s rushing to hold onto his pill-endowed super-intelligence never quite takes off or achieves any urgency. This film is more interested in establishing its ties to the Matt Damon movies than it is in launching Renner’s character as the new hero of the franchise. And it all culminates in one of the least thrilling final action sequences we’ve seen in recent years. Jason Bourne couldn’t remember who he really was, but this new hero doesn’t have any identity to discover.”

Dark Shadows

“This film has no characters to identify with, no story to invest in, and nothing else that would ground its comedy in any way. It’s gothic in the most pro-forma, stylized manner, and silly without any joy or inventiveness.”

Read more…