Beneath The Earth Film Festival Winners

As I mentioned last week, I was recently invited onto a panel of voters for a New York-based film festival called Beneath the Earth, the primary point being to watch and review a selection of seven short films. Well, as of yesterday the winners have been announced, and they were...

Best Film - Photographs
Audience Award - After Ever After
Best Screenplay - Photographs
Best Soundtrack - Photographs
Best Editing - It's Natural to Be Afraid
Best Cinematography - #omgimtrending

I gotta say, I'm pretty happy with that. My vote went towards Photographs as the Best Film so it feels good to see that opinion vindicated to some degree, haha. Make your way over to the Beneath the Earth website to check it out, along with the other great short films. I can say pretty confidently that none of the seven films completely suck (there's really only two that were a little bit iffy).

I'll be reviewing all of these films over the coming weeks, one of them (It's Natural to Be Afraid) has already been reviewed.

I just want to add as a general comment that I find the name of this film festival really confusing! Is it 'Beneath the Earth' or 'BeneathEarth?' The logo jumbles my brain.

Sanshiro Sugata

Sanshiro Sugata (also known as Sugata Sanshiro) was Akira Kurosawa's first film as a director, a 'safe' sports film made during WWII-era Japan that was so popular amongst the war-impoverished populace that it led to an immediate sequel and gave Kurosawa's early career a rather healthy boost. The director had already worked in films for five years, handling advanced second unit directing duties on several movies, and he threw himself into Sanshiro Sugata with an ethusiasm for populist filmmaking that he would seldom embrace again (especially once he was given the freedom to choose and mould his own projects at his own pace). The result is one heck of an entertaining film, a template for many sports and martial arts movies to come.

The title character is a rather eager young man who becomes a student of judo in the year 1882 (the choice of a pre-imperialist setting sidesteps any issues pertaining to Japan's involvement in the war at the time of the film's production). The film follows Sugata's journey from inexperience to headstrong arrogance, and beyond this to a truer understanding of the Judo code. Through learning about judo Sugata also becomes a better man, beats the bad guy, gets the girl, and rocks out on a hilltop. The counterpart to this character development is a rivalry between the schools of judo and jujitsu, setting up a Rocky-like story of sportsmanship and belief in oneself that culminates in a mixed-martial arts tournament where the combatants vie for the honour of teaching their particular martial art to the police.

I have to admit that I knew next to nothing about judo prior to watching this film. The object of judo and jujitsu is to grab, trip and throw your opponent, making it much more akin to something like greco-roman wrestling as opposed to more popular Asian martial arts. The central theme of this film is to highlight the very essence of martial arts like judo, placing an emphasis on peace and humanity over the use of such skills in a lighthearted or callous manner, and Sugata's transformation from worm to tiger also involves a much-needed lesson in humility that allows the viewer to root for this underdog all the way through.

It's quite amazing that this is really Kurosawa's first film as a director. From the ambitious opening tracking shot through a 19th century Japanese street through to the use of vertical wipes and revolutionary slow motion, the director displays more than a steady hand in dynamic storytelling. He uses some really inventive transitions, such as a dramatic and sudden wipe to a scene that shows a man thrown crashing into a wall, or consciously focusing on a small and seemingly irrelevant detail to depict the passage of time (such as a montage that depicts the fate of Sugata's shoes after he discards them for a chance to train with a legendary judo master). He quickly and assuredly moves through plotpoints in such a bold and exciting way, prefiguring modern directors like Quentin Tarantino with a seminal potency. I particularly loved the way Kurosawa only portrays significant portions of the narrative... in Sanshiro Sugata he simply skips over anything that isn't interesting or important, using intertitles and dramatic jumps in time to show the highlights of Sugata's rise to prominence.

Susumu Fujita is great as Sugata, he brings a vulnerability and childlike eagerness to a character that might've otherwise seemed too cocky. The contrast between Sugata and his nemesis couldn't have been more plain, and Higaki (Ryunosuke Tsukigata) is identifiable as the 'bad guy' almost immediately. We know he's bad news when he ashes his cigarette onto a flower, and the showdown on the windswept hillside feels like one of the great unseen moments of cinema history. I can't praise this film enough, for me it's every bit as perfect as Kurosawa's famous samurai adventures like Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress, and a rare show of the director's ability to entertain in the most crowd-pleasing way. It's a film full of heart, action and a myriad of memorable moments.

DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
WRITER/SOURCE: Akira Kurosawa, based on a novel by Tsuneo Tumita.
KEY ACTORS: Susumu Fujita, Ryonosuke Tsukigata, Denjiro Okochi, Takashi Shimura, Yukiko Todoroki.

RELATED TEXTS
- The novel Sanshiro Sugata by Tsuneo Tumita. Tumita was the son of a real-life judo legend.
- This film was followed by a sequel, Sanshiro Sugata II, made two years later and also written and directed by Akira Kurosawa.
- Five other film versions have been made of this story. The first two (made in 1955 and 1965) were based on Kurosawa's film, whereas the latter three (made in 1966, 1970 and 1977) were all based directly on the novel.
- To my knowledge there have only been two other films about judo made: Throw Down (a Hong Kong film made in 2004 by Johnnie To) and Redbelt (based on Brazilian jujitsu).

Submarine

Poor Oliver Tate! Witty, selfish, clueless, unappreciated Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) languishes in emotional oblivion as a social outsider, indulging the fantasies of his mind with the zest of an imagined genius. In sharp contrast to his delusions of cultural grandeur are the crass trappings of his easily-amused peers and the drab brickwork of Welsh village life. He's almost like the submarine of the title; submerged in mediocrity (though I don't believe this is what the title directly refers to) as he swims his way towards the promise of love with a girl named Jordana (Yasmin Paige). Unfortunately he's just a 16 year old boy, with all the cowardice and selfishness of the inexperienced when it comes to love. Meanwhile, his parents are drifting towards irreconcilable isolation from one another, and Oliver has it in mind to help his hapless dad before it's too late.

Richard Ayoade is perhaps best known for playing Moss on the cult British sitcom The I.T. Crowd, but he has also long had a career in directing music videos, and here he makes his feature film debut as director with an astounding clarity of purpose and style. He has a very well-read eye when it comes to film, allowing for a high degree of flow that encourgaes a lot of cinematic invention. The best examples of this are perhaps his vivid montages, which use super 8 footage and involve creative images such as a bed adrift on choppy waters. It's the sort of thing most directors would find too physically (and symbolically) difficult, but Ayoade's confidence has been honed by his great work as music video director for artists like Vampire Weekend and The Arctic Monkeys.

The coming-of-age/bildungsroman film has become some pretty well-trodden territory over the years, especially for young directors looking to make some artistic, semi-autobiographical statement. Much like Oliver himself, Ayoade manages to dance on the line between natural cleverness and sharp self-awareness, using an acute mix of irony and sincerity to get just the right tone. The use of Oliver as narrator is colourfully postmodern and lively, with the camera getting right inside his head for flights of fancy, extreme close ups, enlightening camera angles and so on. The casting of the brilliant Noah Taylor as Tate Sr. feels like a direct reference to Taylor's own work as a similar character to Oliver in two classic Australian films, and the relationship is used to comment on the inheritance of flawed behaviour in fathers and sons.

The themes explored aren't particularly new. For a teenage romance it takes in the expected dizzying heights and the soul-destroyingly awkward falls, but it's all in Ayoade's execution. There's also this idea of how well one person can truly know another (and this is what I took to be the submarine metaphor), and this is looked at through the distance that grows between Oliver's parents, and Jordana's resistance to romance and sentiment. I actually found Jordana to be a really interesting character, she starts out as this two-dimensional caricature - a collection of ideals that Oliver puts on a pedastal, but as he gets to know her better so too does the audience, and she shifts into a character just as complex and realistic as Oliver. Anyway, it's a very funny and inventive film, the sort of thing I could watch over and over again, and a modern indie classic steeped in decades of energetic art films.

HIGHLIGHTS: Some brief examples of this film's brilliance...

Oliver says, "I wish life was like the American soaps and when things got too melodramatic everything would just fade to black", and then it fades to black.

Also, Oliver seduces Jordana by writing the following on his hand and showing it to her: "Possible reasons to have sex. 1) You've fallen in love with me, 2. Best to do it before it's legal, 3. Bound to be disappointing so why wait?"

DIRECTOR: Richard Ayoade
WRITER/SOURCE: Richard Ayoade, based on a book by Joe Dunthorne.
KEY ACTORS: Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor, Paddy Considine, Gemma Chan, Ben Stiller

RELATED TEXTS
- The novel Submarine by Joe Dunthorne.
- The film takes its cues from American indie films such as The Squid and the Whale, Thumbsucker, Rushmore, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Wackness.
- For a more subdued Australian perspective on similar themes, see Noah Taylor's two performances as Danny Embing in The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting. Also the Australian coming-of-age film The Rage in Placid Lake.
- Going a lot further back, I think there's a touch of Breathless in Submarine as well.

The Silver Chair

The Silver Chair is the sixth book in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. It is also one of the few books in the series to not feature the Pevensie children.

Like most of the Narnia books I've read so far, I enjoyed this adventure immensely. Eustace (previously introduced to us in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) goes to a rather horribly new age school known as Experiment House. Hoping to escape some bullies, he and his friend Jill run and hide in some bushes and Eustace tells Jill about Narnia. At this point, Aslan calls them to his own country - a high and beautiful land that overlooks all of Narnia and the seas surrounding it. Aslan has a quest for the two children, he asks that they find King Caspian's long-lost son.

And so the two children find themselves bound for the harsh Giant-dwelling lands to the north of Narnia, accompanied by a pessimistic but good-hearted Marshwiggle named Puddleglum. Lewis dazzles us with more fantastic peoples and lands... we meet the Lady of the Green Kirtle and her loyal but insane Black Knight, see into the less-than-pleasant homelands of the Giants, and also visit the Underland - a vast underground world of caverns and catacombs inhabited by dour and bizarrely-hewn creatures known as Earthmen.

Of course, there is also the obligatory lessons to be learned as Jill visits Narnia for the first time, and the Silver Chair of the title is only a brief (albeit important) part of the story. Puddleglum is a great character and I loved his hearty and resigned pessimism throughout the adventure. There were also a few aspects of the story that felt like setups for the final Narnia volume to come, especially the brief appearance of a sleeping titan known as Father Time, and I can't wait to see how it all ends.

I really tore through this one, read it no time. I was afraid I wouldn't like it as I knew the Pevensie children didn't feature but Eustace and Jill were more than apt substitutes, and the ending of the book back at Experiment House was brilliant (I'd love to say why I liked it, but I don't want to spoil it!). Bring on The Last Battle.

The Virgin Spring

"The Lord is more merciful than you think"

After making a colossal inernational splash with The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman revisited the middle ages once again to tell a much more focused story in The Virgin Spring. Whilst the physical parameters of the story are lot smaller, the themes it deals with are no less complex or wide-reaching, with the director wading once more into the trouble arena of faith and punishment on Earth. In this case he crafts what could be seen as the first rape-vigilantism film (though it couldn't be more tonally different in comparison to Straw Dogs or Death Wish), and asks the question: why does God allow such horrible deeds to be committed? We don't neccessarily get a direct answer to that question, but Bergman examines the issues surrounding it with typical maturity and stone-faced clarity.

Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is the doted-upon daughter of Tore (Max Von Sydow) and Mareta (Birgitta Valberg), a well-off Christian couple living in the Swedish forest. As a virgin, Karin is called upon to take the virgin candles to mass, and so she leaves on horseback with the household's servant, Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom). In the forest the two become seperated, and Karin meets up with some wandering goatherders. The goatherders are men without morals, and after sitting to share the spoilt girl's food they rape and kill her. Later that day, the goatherders come to Tore and Mareta's and ask for shelter. Being good Christians, the couple take the men in, unaware that their daughter has just been killed by them.

I probably gave away a bit too much of the plot just now, but predictability isn't really all that important in this film... the events are more or less inevitable, it's the themes and execution that make it so engaging. There is a strict contrast between Sweden's old gods (in particular, Odin) and the new religion (Christianity)... Ingeri is seen appealing to Odin at the film's beginning, a practice illustrated as a kind of paganism akin to devil-worship. When the servant wanders away from Karin in the forest (sealing the younger girl's fate), she meets a sinister one-eyed man who talks of human sacrifice. This old man contributes to a series of bad omens leading up to Karin's grisly end, such as her mother's unsettling nightmare and a frog that emerges from a loaf of bread. A lot of this plays into an all-pervading fear of the Devil and the seducing nature of evil... Ingeri isn't directly responsible for Karin's rape (Bergman isn't that kind of filmmaker) but her connection to it throws up certain questions that are open to interpretation. One possible interpretation would be that the virginal and naive Karin (who represents the purity and innocence of Christianity) may have been ill-equipped to deal with the evils of the world, whereas Ingeri's adherence to the tough Paganistic gods makes her all too aware of the possibility of evil (to the extent that she knows when to run away, whereas Karin doesn't).

The heavy religious themes also give way to themes of jealousy, guilt and judgment. There are comparisons made between human life under God to the lives of small, defenceless animals under humans - the clearest of these being when the woman at the beginning of the film almost steps on some baby chickens. It obliquely suggests that God may not have the awareness required to intervene in the small lives of humans. The medieval setting is no accident either, it's a time when religion was a bigger part of everyday life, a creative decision that renders the themes immediate and relevant.

There's a memorable part in the film where Tore is sitting in his chair, contemplating the three goatherders before him after realising what they've done. A knife sticks out of the table in front of him and he looks out over the room as judge, jury and excecutioner. It's a powerful image, and Von Sydow is perfectly intense at this moment. The point where he boils over and erupts into violence is starkly staged and framed by Bergman, who uses fire in the foreground to symbolise Tore's condemnation to hell. You might expect the film to end around this point, but Bergman is even more interested in what happens next, and he opens up the story with a slightly ambiguous ending that encompasses man's struggle to understand God and the relationship between tragedy, vengeance and supplication. Bergman later said that he regretted the obvious piece of imagery that memorably closes the film, but as one of the few clear allusions in The Virgin Spring I think it's great way to end what is essentially quite a morally complex story.

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman
WRITER/SOURCE: Ulla Isaksson, based on a medieval ballad.
KEY ACTORS: Max Von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgetta Pettersson, Axel Duberg, Tor Isedal

RELATED TEXTS
- Tore's Daughters in Vange, the 13th century Swedish ballad on which the film is based. See also, The Three Dead Kings, a 15th century English poem that also served as inspiration.
- The Last House on the Left, Wes Craven's directorial debut, is pretty much a low budget horror remake of The Virgin Spring.
- Bergman previously examined faith in the middle ages in The Seventh Seal.
- Rashomon is an even earlier film that deals with rape in the middle ages.
- Films where a man seeks revenge for the rape of a woman/girl he loves: Death Wish, Straw Dogs, The Horseman, Law Abiding Citizen and Seeking Justice.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Foreign Language Film. Also nominated for Best Costume Design.
Cannes Film Festival - 'won' a Special Mention. Also nominated for the Palme d'Or.
Golden Globes - won the Samuel Goldwyn Award.

Pleasantville

The Truman Shows meets Leave It to Beaver in this high concept fantasy-drama about a pair of teenagers who get trapped inside a 1950s sitcom. Pleasantville uses a gimmicky idea to pass comment on the ways that our world has changed, contrasting the cynicism of the late '90s with the American apple pie ideology found in hokey '50s television. It becomes a life-affirming experience for each of the major characters, calling to mind classic literature like The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, and tackles some big issues in a refreshingly positive and entertaining fashion.

David (Tobey Maguire) is a dorky kid who harbours an obsession with the fictional '50s sitcom Pleasantville. He yearns for the simpler, traditional life that the characters in the show enjoy, finding comfort in their wholesomeness. His sister, Jennifer (Reece Witherspoon), is less idealistic - a mildly slutty and typically boy-mad girl who prioritises her social life over school work. One night, David and Jennifer are fighting over the remote to the television and cause it to break. A mysterious TV repairman (played wonderfully by sitcom legend Don Knotts) ominously appears and gives them a replacement remote; a strange device that actually transports both teenagers into the black and white world of Pleasantville, where they become the two teenage leads. David is elated, Jennifer is less than impressed, and soon they find themselves inadvertantly affecting a disquietening amount of change amongst the idyllised inhabitants.

The first thing that will pop out to anyone watching this film is the way that it uses colour. The titular sitcom is a black and white TV show, so everything becomes black and white once the two leads get transported through the fourth wall. As they begin to affect change this means that other colours begin to get introduced into the film, something that the characters are startlingly aware of. The use of colour is interesting for two big reasons, the first is that it puts the films' themes right at the forefront of the viewing experience (it's easy to viewers to understand what's going on, which means they can actively engage in thinking about what is happening). The second of these is that it allows a civil rights parallel with use of the word 'coloured' taking on a slightly different meaning. At the heart of this is a message that's essentially about daring to dream, questioning the parameters of your existence and making your own destiny. The 'coloured' label calls to mind segregation and the civil rights movement of the '60s (which fits with the pre-60s setting of the sitcom). The adult characters mostly represent a fear of change, and they also represent the status quo fighting back against the rebelling youth. It's the story of our lives... the liberals vs the conservative, the open-minded vs. the close-minded.

The contrasting of the '90s and '50s is very important too. We initially expect for the cynical '90s to get a kicking from the moral '50s, but this film is really about taking the best bits from both to create a better world... I guess it's about the importance in differentiating between cynicism and idealism. The '90s were an era that brought increased awareness of environmental decay and other issues like famine, disease, AIDS and divorce. Pleasantville starts out by talking about how the modern world has gone to hell, and then contrasts this with the idealised version of the world as seen in the '50s. David and Jennifer infect this '50s-world's wholesomeness by seemingly introducing imperfections (sex, swearing, routine-disrupting, breaking with conformity) but then the paradigm flips around (EG. The civil rights subtext) to show how the modern world has also changed for the better - equality, sexual freedom, freedom of choice, etc.

The best thing that Pleasantville has going for it is the fact that it happens to be a really fun, entertaining and original film. The fact that it also happens to be quite thematically dense and complex is just a bonus. I especially like the fascistic iconography that the disgruntled adult characters in Pleasantville come up with; the shaking-hands symbol calls to mind right wing icons like the Mosley lightning bolt and Hitler's swastika. Anyway, this is a great, underrated film, easily on par with the similar and more acclaimed The Truman Show.

DIRECTOR: Gary Ross
WRITER/SOURCE: Gary Ross
KEY ACTORS: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, J. T. Walsh, Don Knotts, Marisa Ribisi, Paul Walker

RELATED TEXTS
- As mentioned, the most obvious parallel is The Truman Show, about one man's attempts to break out of a TV show.
- Director Gary Ross and Tobey Maguire worked together again on Seabiscuit.
- Maguire also starred in a more sombre dissection of a bygone era in The Ice Storm.
- For other '50s/modern contrasts, see Peggy Sue Got Married and Back to the Future.
- Gary Ross also wrote the similarly uplifting comedy-classics Big and Dave.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Music

It's Natural to Be Afraid

I was recently invited onto a panel of voters for a New York-based film festival called Beneath the Earth, the primary point being to watch and review a selection of seven short films. Voting just closed a few days ago, so over the coming weeks I'll be reviewing each of the seven shorts here on the ol' blog. If you want to watch them just click on the link I provided for 'Beneath the Earth', they're all of a high quality and definitely worth checking out. Anyway, here is the first of these films...

It's Natural to Be Afraid was one of my three favourites (though not my absolute favourite) of the competition. Overall, I liked the way it revisited the same material more than once from different angles to reveal layers of meaning - it was really well done and completely self-assured. I think that kind of editing can be hard to pull off sometimes, but it was brilliant in this film. Technically speaking, the cinematography and editing are top notch. There's a really lucious use of deep focus and some thoughtful framing. In short: it's no bum deal, this is a high quality film, and an absolute pleasure to watch from a technical standpoint.

The plot behind this short film is that the Ryan (James Clarke) is getting over the death of the love of his life, and he meets up with a new potential love in Mya (Mika Hockman). I won't give away the circumstances of this meeting as that's pretty much the whole point of the film, but suffice to say it's a film about transitions and it tackles this big idea in as much breadth as a film of nine minutes can probably manage without getting weighed down in unecessary dialogue. The only aspect of this film that let me down a bit was that the story isn't really all that unique, it's definitely a case of style over substance. I don't mean to downplay the importance of stories like this, but I felt like the use of voiceover was a little bit pretentious and the film might've breathed better without out. That aside though, it's a wonderfully put together piece of art and is worth ten minutes of your time.

DIRECTOR: Justin Doherty
WRITER/SOURCE: Neil Fox
KEY ACTORS: James Clarke, Mika Hockman, Mark Drake

RELATED TEXTS:
- Some similar themes of intersection, grief and love are dealt with in more detail in the film 21 Grams.
- Doherty previously worked on the short film Somewhere, Anywhere.
- Lead actor James Clarke's main previous credit was as 'Shaun' in the film Son of Rambow.

The Hurricane Express

John Wayne's career had an interesting trajectory to begin with; after having worked as a prop assistant and extra in silent films he eventually got his big break as the lead in the epic 1930 western The Big Trail. Fox Studios signed Wayne up as a leading man, but after the box office failure of The Big Trail they dropped him after just two more films and he was forced to slink his way back to small supporting roles. The low budget studio Mascot Pictures offered a partial reprieve to this, giving Wayne leading roles in their serials. The Hurricane Express is the 2nd of three serials that Wayne made for the studio.

The serial starts off with some lofty talk about civilisation and progress having given birth to new vehicles such as the plane. Wayne plays Larry Baker, an airplane pilot. The story isn't initially about him though... Jim Baker (Larry's dad) is a railroad engineer who operates a train known as the Hurricane Express. He boasts that it's the 'fastest train' in the country, despite the fact that it's becoming dated due to the rise of commercial flight. Before you know it, Jim gets killed due to industrial espionage, and it's up to Larry to find his father's killer and bring him to justice. The killer is a mysterious character known only as 'the Wrecker'... he hijacks trains and wrecks them, wearing a variety of lifelike human masks to conceal his true identity.

Any hope for an interesting subtext about new technologies supplanting old ones goes out the window in the first episode. The serial runs for 12 chapters, and it quickly becomes very episodic and repetitive, though I guess that's a redundant criticism as a 1930s serial isn't really the same thing as a television show or a film. Larry gets framed and compromised over and over again in his quest to catch the Wrecker, and the Wrecker's identity is kept hidden right up until the final episode. Each episode finishes on a startling cliffhanger (such as our hero crashing his plane) and each following episode is almost half-made up of footage that recaps from the previous episode (meaning that the serial isn't really anywhere near as long as it seems). Be prepared for lots of shots of John Wayne looking indignant and throwing punches in that shaky sped-up way common to silent films and early talkies.

Some of the supporting actors are pretty damn terrible, their stilted delivery of pulpish dialogue makes the still relatively inexperienced Wayne seem like a superstar. Wayne is probably at his best in the first episode when Larry's dad gets killed right before his eyes, it prompts one of the most naked displays of grief I've ever seen from the actor. It belies his youth, because it certainly isn't the way the older Wayner would've opted to play such a scene. Also watch out for an early appearance from Fred 'Snowflake' Toones in his first major role. Toones would go on to have a big career as comedy black characters (the kind that were later disparaged by the civil rights movement for reinforcing racist stereotypes).

You can't really judge these serials by standards used to review regular films... they're cheaply made, inconsistent, poorly edited, flippantly constructed and some episodes only run for about 7 minutes if you don't include the recap. A lot of the plot mechanics really push credibility, but if you're up for nearly 4 hours of rubber face masks, tommy guns, car chases, parachutes, train wrecks and lots of brawling, then you might enjoy The Hurricane Express in a nostalgic sort of way. I'd strongly advise against watching more than an episode at a time, it isn't designed to be watched in one big sitting and doing so will just make you hate it.

DIRECTOR: Armand Shaeffer and J. P. McGowan.
WRITER/SOURCE: Colbert Clark, Barney Sarecky, J. P. McGowan, Wyndham Gittens and George Morgan.
KEY ACTORS: John Wayne, Shirley Grey, Edmund Breese, Tully Marshall, Fred Toones

RELATED TEXTS
- The two other serials that John Wayne made for Mascot Pictures were The Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Muskateers.
- Mascot Pictures were the first studio to produce a serial with sound, The King of the Kongo.

The Tree of Life

"Why does he hurt us? Our father?"

Terence Malick is a unique voice in the world of cinema, his style of filmmaking is unlike anyone else's, and he has continued to revisit and refine this style over the course of just five films in a 40 year-long career. It seems that he's gathering momentum as he goes, his work as a director is becoming more frequent (if you could call it that) as he gets older, suggesting an increased clarity in what he wants to say and the way that he's saying it. It's hard to attribute adjectives to Malick's filmmaking style, especially as it's such an intensely and purely visual way of storytelling... it's the sort of thing that needs to be experienced firsthand to be understood.

Malick's film The Tree of Life is a project that started life about thirty years ago as a film named Q. Malick worked on this film throughout the 1980s but never actually got it to the production stage. He later revisited these long-held ideas for this film, an epic undertaking that looks at one man's childhood in 1960s America. After tackling war (The Thin Red Line) and America's foundations (The New World), Malick nows tackles faith and life itself, attempting to grasp at the very meaning behind our existence. It's ambitious, and audacious, and I would describe it as an almost holy experience... I don't use that term lightly, nor do I mean it as a piece of hyperbole to demonstrate how much I liked the film. I'm not sure I really liked the film at all, but it definitely left a residue in my mind. I'd describe it more as a work of art than a film.

"If the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, then that's the way He is. He sends flies to wounds that he should heal"

Jack (played as a child by Hunter McCracken, and as an adult by Sean Penn) is the eldest son of Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) and Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chaistain). We watch Jack grow from his birth to his maturation as an adolescent, a journey that sees him under the strict tutelage of his father. A friction eventually grows between Jack and his father, mostly due to the father's authoritarian parenting style, and Jack begins to act out as a result. He resents his dad, and the film travels through the contours of their relationship. Meanwhile, we also watch some dinosaurs hanging out together.

Yes. There are dinosaurs in this movie.

Let me clear this up right now, because I went into this film thinking there would be two storylines - one about the family, and one about the beginnings of life on Earth. In a way, this is true, but the dinosaur sequences are quite short in comparison to the main narrative. Malick uses these sequences in the first half of the film to open up questions about life on our planet and the mysteries behind it, but this is abandoned about halfway through to focus on the O'Brien family more exclusively. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I wouldn't want anyone to go into this movie thinking it's about dinosaurs because the dinosaurs barely figure into it. It's funny, but when you think about it there's a whole section of Earth's history (the bulk of it, in fact) that has never been depicted in films... such as the birth of life, and its spread across the planet. Malick depicts this here, and I guess part of the reason for this is to make the viewer think a bit more about context and what they're seeing. It's a process that deliberately forces the viewer to take on a more active role rather than just passively watching a kiss kiss, bang bang-type story unfold. The point of an 'art' film is to make the viewer question or try to work out what they're seeing... to this end, it isn't really straight up entertainment, but this doesn't make it any less worthless as a film (quite the opposite in fact).

Admittedly, I found the shift between the 'life erupts on Earth' sequences to the family-based narrative quite hard to adjust to. The O'Brien narrative doesn't really start properly until about an hour into the film. Malick has this eliptical way of editing that gives his films a unique rhythm that's intrinsically his, and this is also accompanied by these hushed, reverential and slightly unemotional voiceovers that represent stream-of-consciousness insights from the characters. It's an enigmatic and non-linear style that lends the director his trademark. I guess he's getting a lot more confident with this style he singlehandedly developed, hence the fact that he finally made this film after having worked on it for decades.


What I really liked about this film was the way that the relationship between Mr O'Brien and his son was as multifaceted as life itself. Any other film would depict an abusive dad like Mr O'Brien as an outright monster, but here there are no heroes or villains in this film. He's not a cliche, and Brad Pitt does a brilliant job of keeping a handle on this real and complex individual. He's stern and religious, but he's also quite loving and affectionate at times. Ultimately he's a bitter man prone to abuse, a tyrant in his house and a hard man to keep pleased, but I liked the way the film moved past this in a realistic way that few films are willing to explore.

Meanwhile, Jessica Chainstain is suitably aloof as the devoutly religious mother... this character acts as a counterweight to Mr. O'Brien, promoting co-operation between her sons in contrast to his preference for competitiveness. In a way, Mr O'Brien represents science and Mrs. O'Brien represents religion, a central theme of the overall film. Whilst Mr O'Brien is a Christian, he's also a dyed-in-the-woold capitalist and a would-be inventor - representing the enterprise of Man. His wife on the other hand is as enigmatic as faith itself, and both their parenting styles represent extensions of these concepts to a certain degree. It's fitting that the film should use science and religion in such a way, as these are humanity's two main modes of attributing meaning to life, which is what the film is all about.

Sean Penn's role is basically a ten minute cameo. Penn has spoken up in contrast to the critical acclaim the film has been gathering, saying that he thought the story would've been better served by more traditional storytelling methods. You could argue that the story of the O'Brien family is hamstrung by the overly experimental narrative, but who needs another story about an abusive father and his alpha son in the 1960s? I wouldn't want to take Malick's opus away from him in any way, shape or form, so I think the criticism is a bit pointless. The film has a lot more to say than a regular drama... it's like God made a home video. There are these snippets of weirdness, like the image of Mrs. O'Brien dancing as she floats through the air, or a chair moving on its own accord, and I watched these thinking, "What the... did I really just see that?" It literally made me question my own eyes, and even in this age of CGI there aren't many films that can push that kind of reaction out of me.

I'm starting to go on a bit now, but there are at least two more things I loved about this movie. The special effects were actually achieved the old-fashioned way, mostly through fluids and without the aid of computers (especially in the pre-dinosaur bits of the Earth's history) and they look absolutely sumptuous as a result. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey, only way more realistic. The other thing I love is the way that Malick films nature itself... he gives his films this hi-tech documentary look that's unlike most other fiction-films.

DIRECTOR: Terence Malick
WRITER/SOURCE: Terence Malick
KEY ACTORS: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chaistain, Hunter McCracken, Sean Penn, Fiona Shaw, Michael Showers

RELATED TEXTS
- Malick's other films are Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World. I find The New World of particular note in relation to The Tree of Life as they both feature extinct animals in incidental details... in The Tree of Life it's the dinosaurs, in The New World Malick went to some effort to depict a Carolina Parrot.
- The Fountain is a sci-fi film that looks at similar concepts such as the meaning of life. It also made use of similar fluid-based special effects that involved minimal CGI.
- See also 2001: A Space Odyssey.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography.
AFIs - nominated for Best International Film and Best International Director.
Cannes Film Festival - won the Palme d'Or.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The fifth book in The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, once again features the Pevensie children and is set only three years on from the events of Prince Caspian. Of the five Narnia books I have read so far, I think this one is my favourite

Edmund and Lucy are whisked off to Narnia once again (their older siblings are now too old to go there), this time via a magically-realistic painting of a ship. Along for the journey this time is Eustace Scrubb - their cousin, a rather bothersome and rotten little boy always out to spoil other people's fun and ready to moan and complain about anything and everything.

Upon their arrival in Narnia, the Pevensie children and Eustace find themselves aboard the Dawn Treader, a ship under the command of King Caspian (from the previous novel). He is on a double-quest, of sorts. He is sailing east to explore the various islands - discovered and undiscovered alike - in the hopes of finding seven loyal lords that his treacherous uncle had sent away some years previously, and (mainly at the behest of the valiant mouse Reepicheep) aims to sail as far east as possible - to see what lies beyond their maps, and maybe to find Aslan's country.

This is probably the most epic of the Narnia books so far... the story follows a quest format, our heroes travelling from island to island and encountering all manner of strange, disturbing and wonderful phenomena. We meet dragons, dufflepuds, sea serpents and retired stars, witness the Island Where Dreams Come True (a rather nightmarish sequence) and see a kingdom of merpeople. Most memorable of all is the book's final sequences, which I won't spoil here.

My favourite character in the Narnia books so far would have to be the fearless mouse Reepicheep, a more fitting end to such a moving (and amusing) hero could not have been written. Aslan only features a little in this book, but his words - as always - are steeped in Christian-like parable and never has C. S. Lewis' Christian agenda been more apparent than in one particular sentence spoken by Aslan here, but I think it's forgiveable because Lewis still manages to be a little bit subtle about it and it's only a brief part of the book. The character of Eustace makes for some of the book's more interesting sequences and his eventual redemption (which I suspected was coming from the start) is one of the more touching chapters in the entire series so far.

Starring Michael Caine

I got given this book for Christmas a couple of years ago, mainly because I go nuts for Michael Caine and I think he's the ducks guts when it comes to actors and all-round-smashing dudes. Ever since I first saw Zulu when I was about 12 I've always been impressed by his onscreen charm. In recent years I've managed to see a fair few more of his films, and the feeling hasn't dimmed.

Caine has roughly 100 films to his name, which is no mean feat. He's played working class spies, cockney womanisers, toff soldiers, gay playwrights, messed up cross-dressing serial killers, pot-smoking old hippies, brutal gangsters and alcoholic professors - employing a wide range of convincing accents, controlled body language and a whole lot of screen charisma. You might be forgiven for thinking I have an unhealthy love for Caine but I really do think he is one of the true treasures of 20th and 21st century pop culture.

This book takes us through all of his films up to around 2003, listing them in alphabetical order and affording each and every one a fairly measured space in the book. The author David Bishop gives us each film's plot, Caine's role in the film and how he came to get it, how he performed, how the critics saw his peformance, how the critics saw the film, how Caine saw the film and, at the end of each entry, what Bishop thinks of the film. It doesn't get much more indepth than that, and there isn't really much more that you could ask for.

Now, Caine has done his fair share of stinkers (you'd be hard-pressed to appear in 100 films without being in a few bombs), but he almost always gave a decent performance. For every Zulu, Get Carter, The Ipcress File, Alfie, The Italian Job, The Man Who Would Be King, Educating Rita, The Cider House Rules, The Quiet American, etc, there's also a Jaws 4, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm, Blame it on Rio or Ashanti. But on top of all that there's also rare information and quotes from Caine on his many hard-to-find films - including the mostly-unreleased The Debtors, an apparently dreadful comedy directed and financed by Randy Quaid's wife that saw the Quaids eventually file for bankruptcy.

Anyway, this is a must-have for any Michael Caine fans or diehard film fans in general.

Dirty Deeds

I remember being so excited about Dirty Deeds back when it first came out. I thought to myself, finally, a full-blown Aussie gangster flick... like it was something the world was crying out for! The sheen on this film has dulled a fair bit over the last few years, a lot of its flashiness now seems a bit dated, but it's still quite an entertaining film. Ever wanted to see how the Mafia would fare up against fair dinkum Aussie pokie-machine gangsters? Well, this film is your chance to see exactly that. It features an all-star cast, a larger-than-usual budget for an Australian film, and some fine filmmaking from underrated Australian writer/drector David Caeser (Idiot Box, Mullet).

Darcy (Sam Worthington, in one of his earliest roles) is our hero; a young lad recently returned from the Vietnam War and looking to make a living for himself. He soon falls in with his uncle Barry (Bryan Brown), who wastes no time in putting Darcy to work, in particular keeping an eye on his mistress. Things start to heat up for Barry when the Mafia arrive in town, looking to do 'business' with someone, and his pug-faced rival Freddie (Gary Waddell) starts to muscle in. From here the plot twists and turns in the usual post-Lock, Stock gangster manner, but where it physically takes the viewer is its biggest strength. Caeser gives us a glorious tour of late '60s Australia; complete with brown suits, gaudy wallpaper, and black eyeliner. Through the eyes of the visiting mafioso we see the Australian-ness of the film tenfold, especially in the later acts of the film, which are set against the backdrop of the outback.

The performances are all top-notch. Bryan Brown isn't afraid to shed his usual charm when the character demands it (even if the role is a bit of a retread of his lauded work in Two Hands), and Toni Collette in particular is surprisingly affective as Barry's equally-vicious wife. It's also great to see John Goodman share the screen with some Aussie talent. Sam Neill on the other hand is underused and I felt myself wondering why his character was in the film at all.

Anyway, if you enjoy watching tough-guys bust up poker machines, then this is for you.

DIRECTOR: David Caesar
WRITER/SOURCE: David Caesar
KEY ACTORS: Sam Worthington, Bryan Brown, Toni Collette, John Goodman, Sam Neill, William McInnes, Andrew S. Gilbert, Gary Waddell, Felix Williamson

RELATED TEXTS
- David Caesar has written and directed five feature films, the other four are: Greenkeeping, Idiot Box, Mullet and Prime Mover.
- Dirty Deeds can be seen as Australia's answer to films like Goodfellas, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, The Grifters and Reservoir Dogs.
- Other Australian 'gangster' films include Two Hands (arguably the film that started the subgenre of the semi-comedic Australian gangster movie), Chopper (starring Eric Bana in his breakthrough role), The Hard Word (starring Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton) and Gettin' Square (also featuring Sam Worthington).

AWARDS
AFIs - won Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. Also nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Editing.

Hanna

"He has truly limited you from all the wonderful things the world has to offer".

Hanna completely took me by surprise as I was simply expecting yet another crisp, detail-heavy action film about a superspy along the lines of The Bourne Identity. This film is nothing like that, it actually manages to breathe a lot of new life into some pretty tired concepts by combining some unlikely genres and subtexts. Joe Wright brings the same level of depth and detail to these characters and setting that made his adaptation of Atonement so successful. His direction of action is both inspired and wonderfully simplistic... in short, it's a film that's easy to follow and easy to get caught up in, despite some unusual touches.

The titular Hanna (Saorise Ronan) is a teenage girl brought up in a cold, unforgiving European wilderness by her father Erik (Eric Bana, armed with a East European accent). Erik is a former FSK/CIA operative who went rogue several years earlier in order to protect Hanna from Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), his former boss. Hanna has been in training throughout her entire childhood, preparing herself for the day that she and her father emerge from the wilderness to face Wiegler. That day comes, and Erik's complicated plan almost works... and Hanna finds herself alone in Europe and pursued by some very dangerous people as a result.

It's an absolutely standout film for a couple of reasons. It combines a typical spy-fi story with a bildungsroman (coming-of-age) framework, but the buldungsroman element is actually abortive. This is demonstrated by the way the final scene repeats the very first scene, which shows that Hanna hasn't really learned anything on her journey. The reason she doesn't learn though is because of the way she has been brought up in isolation (and also the fact that she has a reduced capacity for pity, but this isn't really all that important).

I think the film is actually partially about the dangers of home-schooling kids. Hanna is unable to socialise properly because her education has made her abnormal in relation to wider society... she's been shaped into an instrument of destruction. Her skills reflect the myopic view of her father and his own damaged background. This is evidenced by the way that Hanna doesn't really understand music (an important motif in the film), and the way that she interacts with the British family she travels with for a while.


What also makes the film really interesting is the way that it plays out these themes by using references to fairytales. The film score (an Oscar-worthy effort from the Chemical Brothers) is like some futuristic Eurotrash underworld by way of the Grimm Brothers. The music even references this directly by using Under the Hall of the Mountain King at point, and the film itself features a climax set in a rundown fairytale theme park. A lot of the characters are analogous to fairytale archetypes... Isaacs (the perverted assassin sent after Hanna) is the Big Bad Wolf, Hanna is Snow White/Little Red Riding Hood, Erik is the Hunter who protects/saves Snow White (this is reinforced by the fact that he isn't Hanna's biological dad), Wiegler is the Evil Stepmother, and there's even a kindly grandmother who gets killed by the bad guys before Hanna even gets to meet her.

The use of intelligence agencies as a backdrop/narrative device also alludes to the darker aspects of traditional fairytales, with numerous references made to the folklore and urban legends that surround institutions like the CIA and FSK. This is demonstrated in the film via Hanna herself (the way they misuse and mistreat children) and a tolerance for depravity that allows the CIA to get what they want (this is why the contracter that Wiegler uses has socially unacceptable sexual preferences; EG. The mentions of pedophilia and hermaphoroditism). This theme also shows up again towards the film's end when Erik mentions recruiting women at abortion clinics.

Saoirse Ronan is turning out to be quite the one to watch, and Blanchett (with a slight Southern twang) gives a great performance as Wiegler - on one level she's a character who has sacrificed her humanity for her job, and on another level she's the Devil; manipulative and completely self-interested. Anyway, I think Hanna is a fantastic film, and I was disappointed to see some negativity about it on the IMDB boards - especially when a lot of this negativity seems to stem from people placing certain expectations on the film. It's not a standard action movie, it's something a lot more interesting than that.

DIRECTOR: Joe Wright
WRITER/SOURCE: David Farr and Seth Lochhead.
KEY ACTORS: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng

RELATED TEXTS
- Saoirse Ronan and director Joe Wright previously worked together on Atonement, a film that Ronan got an Oscar nomination for.
- Ronan also starred as an assassin in another 2011 film, Violet and Daisy.
- Bana's role (and accent) is remniscent of his performance as a Mossad agent in Munich (which was also partially set in Europe and the '70s/'80s).
- See also Leon, another film about a child assassin.

Ten Stop Motion Movies

The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Just an all-round brilliant example of how stop motion can give a true auteur like Wes Anderson the room to create something wonderful and unique. In practical terms, his tableaus and blocking translate to the medium perfectly, and his inventiveness (like the use of cotton-wool for smoke) makes it a great experience. This is a traditional stop motion story with adult-level subtexts... Anderson keeps the darkness of Dahl's work intact whilst injecting his own themes and interpretations; philosophising about why Mr. Fox (George Clooney) does what he does and offering in-depth analysis of other characters as well. I loved the wonderfully scary farmers and all the running jokes (such as fox years vs. human years). I think this is Anderson's best film to date.

DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
WRITER/SOURCE: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbuch. Based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
KEY ACTORS: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Chase Anderson, Wallace Wolodarsky, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Michael Gambon, Helen McCrory, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Cox, Adrien Brody
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Harvie Krumpet
Director/writer Adam Elliott tackles a wide range of themes and breaks new conceptual ground for stop motion animation in this Oscar-winning film. Harvie Krumpet is a Jewish migrant with tourettes syndrome who escapes the Holocaust to live in Australia, tries to assimilate, falls in love and eventually winds up in a retirement home. Elliott amazingly manages to say more in his 21 minutes than most filmmakers accomplish in up to 5 times that amount, depicting the entirety of a life that encompasses love, death, disability, nudism, alzheimers, and mediocrity. Underlying all this is a message of universal humanity, Elliott champions those marginalised by cultural background and mental or physical disability by expousing a 'never say die' mentality ("Life is like a cigarette. Smoke it to the butt"). Part of the film's appeal lies in the director's purist aesthetic, Elliott painstakingly worked with analog technology and a minimalist palette to create a life-affirming tale that doesn't shirk away from the horribleness of life despite its alarmingly child-friendly veneer.

DIRECTOR: Adam Elliot
WRITER/SOURCE: Adam Elliot
KEY ACTORS: Geoffrey Rush, Kamahl
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Coraline
I'm not sure how much this film was 'assisted' by computers but the stop motion in Coraline is amazingly fluid. I couldn't get over how slick it was, it really came alive for me. Anyway, this film captures the essence of Tim Burton's better films without becoming the outright parody that a lot of his recent work is. It's like director Henry Selick is better at being Tim Burton than Tim Burton is. Coraline is a girl whose parents don't have time for her and so she travels into a parallel world where she finds button-eyed alternatives to her parents who seek to cajole her into a new life in this new dimension. It's rife with symbolism and visual motifs, and works as a great fairytale-ish allegory about negligent parenting and relocation. Shades of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (but in a good way). Also, look out for the arrestingly gothic title sequence involving the deconstruction and reconstruction of dolls.

DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
WRITER/SOURCE: Henry Selick. Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.
KEY ACTORS: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Keith David, Jennifer Saunders, Ian McShane.
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A Town Called Panic
This marvellously bizarre and kitschy action-figure adventure is based on a French TV series of the same name. Imagine if a gorilla or a dog with above-average intelligence was given creative control of a film and you're halfway to understanding the miraculously silly and inoffensive sense of humour that permeates this movie. Every frame made me laugh joyously. The plot concerns three figurines that live together; Horse, Cowboy and Indian. Horse is quite sensible and responsible, but Cowboy and Indian have a nose for trouble. Things go wrong, complications pile up, and the three of them embark on a crazy adventure to the centre of the Earth and beyond. Some of it is so unashamedly and innocently juvenile (like a giant snowball-throwing robot penguin) that it reminded me a little of the classic newspaper cartoon The Far Side. The stop motion used is crude but it's completely part of the film's unique charm and sense of fun.

DIRECTOR: Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar
WRITER/SOURCE: Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar. Based on their television of the same name.
KEY ACTORS: Jeanne Balibar, Stephane Aubier, Bouli Lanners, Benoit Poelvoorde
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Vincent
This early short film from Tim Burton features Vincent Price's silky tones narrating the rhyme-laden story of a seven year-old boy who idolises Vincent Price. Throughout the course of the short the boy's imagination gets the best of him while he plays a variety of games based on Vincent Price films, the last of which leads to him digging up his mother's flowerbed and earning her wrath. It's filmed in a creaky style of cheap black and white, and the stop motion comes across as a bit archaic in comparison to Burton's later attempts, but it all suits the tone completely. The protagonist actually looks like Tim Burton (I'm unsure if this is intentional or not) and from this macabre and self-contained little vision you can see all the branches of Burton's future career... films like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride, etc, germinating from this one seed.

DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
WRITER/SOURCE: Tim Burton
KEY ACTORS: Vincent Price
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Mary and Max
In a list of films that includes A Town Called Panic and $9.99, this is still probably the most unique and original film of the lot. Mary and Max takes claymation well and truly into adult territory; a bittersweet and fable-like black comedy about two unlikely penpals on opposite sides of the world. Mary is a young Australian girl growing up in poverty, whilst Max is an overweight New Yorker with Asperger Sydnrome. We follow their lives into loveless marriages, loneliness, depression, closet homosexuality, agoraphobia, and winning the lottery, amongst other things. Director/writer Adam Elliot creates a strangely affecting world of grey tones (literally) as he explores the neuroses and tragedies of both characters and the highs and lows of their international friendship. It might sound depressing from what I've told you, but it isn't, it's quite funny in a non-exploitative way and the vocal talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, etc, really help make the characters come alive despite their odd looks and the idiosyncratic nature of the story.

DIRECTOR: Adam Elliot
WRITER/SOURCE: Adam Elliot
KEY ACTORS: Barry Humphries, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana, Ian 'Molly' Meldrum, Renee Geyer
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The Nightmare Before Christmas
The modern wave of cinematic stop motion films started with this Tim Burton-produced (but not directed) musical of gorgeously twisted proportions. Jack Skellington is the bored superstar of Halloween Town... whilst moping around after yet another successful Halloween, a chance discovery leads him to Christmas Town where decides he wants to take over Christmas as the new Santa Claus. It's kind of an anti-Christmas film told from the perspective of the villain, but unlike the Grinch, Jack actually has good (if misguided) intentions. It's all so vivacious and cheeky that it's hard not to like... The Nightmare Before Christmas is darkly joyous in its acknowledgement that kids loved to be scared, and a whole range of inspired horror archetypes are given life through a combination of pathos and cute psychosis. I loved the gambling-crazy Boogie Oogie in particular. A modern classic, and a success that Burton later tried (and failed) to repeat with his own stop motion directorial effort, The Corpse Bride.

DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Caroline Thompson, with story input from Tim Burton and Michael McDowell
KEY ACTORS: Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, Ken Page, Danny Elfman
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James and the Giant Peach
I wouldn't put this in the same class as a lot of these other films. Whilst I love the way that Dahl takes dark everyday topics and turns them into fantastical tales of childhood triumph, I don't think this film really captures the essence of his style as well as it could've. The stop motion story is actually framed by some live action sequences, and I think these bits are the key to the film's overall failure. The live action production design is garish and expressionistic, and feels cheap and over-laboured compared to the animated sequences, which are a lot more attractive and remniscent of '30s and '40s-era art deco. I liked the stop motion design, but I loved the brief traditionally-animated sequence (if only the whole film had been like that). There's some witty character interplay, and Pete Postlethwaite even shows up as a mysterious unnamed character that I interpreted to be Roald Dahl himself (he certainly seemed and looked a bit like him), though I could've done without the forgettable piecemeal songs. Anyway, it's a fun enough adventure for kids, but there have been better Dahl adaptations.

DIRECTOR: Henry Selick
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Steven Bloom, Karey Kirkpatrick and Jonathan Roberts. Based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
KEY ACTORS: Paul Terry, Miriam Margoyles, Joanna Lumley, Pete Postlethwaite, Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane Leeves, Susan Sarandon, David Thewlis
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Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Disliking Aardman's Wallace and Gromit is like disliking a soup kitchen for homeless people; it just makes you a joyless arsehole. In case you're unaware, Wallace is a homely British eccentric with a love for cheese and inventing things, and Gromit is his faithful and sensible dog. Together they find themselves investigating some mysterious village attacks by a fabled Were-Rabbit, while further plot stuff happens. Anyway, the plot isn't important, the balance between quirky humour and claymation spectacle is perfect. There's something so loveable about Aardman's stuff that makes the Wallace and Gromit film a really fun and watchable experience. I was expecting something well-cut but relatively routine, but I actually found myself surprised by a lot of the plot twists and the places the film went. I hope to one day see at least one more Wallace and Gromit film - in comparison to Tim Burton's stop-motion stuff this film is criminally underrated (yeah, yeah I know it won a lot of awards, but it doesn't seem to have the fan following it deserves!)

DIRECTOR: Nick Park, Steve Box
WRITER/SOURCE: Nick Park, Steve Box, Bob Baker and Mark Burton. Based on characters created by Nick Park.
KEY ACTORS: Peter Sallis, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter, Peter Kay, Nicholas Smith, Dicken Ashworth, Liz Smith, Edward Kelsey
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$9.99
Another Australian stop motion film, and one that's even more adult than Mary and Max. $9.99 embraces a uniquely distinctive visual style of animation and design in order to distance itself from more child-aimed forms of stop motion. $9.99 is a multi-character drama in the mould of critic-aimed live action films like Lantana, Crash, 21 Grams, etc. The key difference between $9.99 and those films though is that the animation allows for a more open-ended tone that encompasses satire, fantasy and tragedy. Amongst the characters is a homeless man (Geoffrey Rush) who kills himself only to come back as a bitter angel who tells people Heaven is just like the Sunshine Coast. There's also a variety of aimless city-dwellers who share the same apartment block, each one looking for some kind of validation or meaning in their life. It's sarcastic, epiphanising and even occasionally horrifying; a dark comic fantasy of the urban mind that inspires incredulous laughter and twinges of the heart. A hugely underrated film.

DIRECTOR: Tatia Rosenthal
WRITER/SOURCE: Tatia Rosenthal, Etgar Keret
KEY ACTORS: Geoffrey Rush, AnthonyLaPaglia, Samuel Johnson, Claudia Karvan, Joel Edgerton, Barry Otto, Leeanna Walsman, Ben Mendelsohn
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For more stop motion, see reviews of Chicken Run and The Corpse Bride.

Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian is the 4th book in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series, though it was originally published second (and written third!). The Pevensie children from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe are once again the main stars of the action and find themselves whisked away back to Narnia some time after their original adventures there.

A lot of time has passed since the Pevensie children ruled over Narnia... their old castle has fallen to ruins, and even the landscape has changed somewhat. We're not told exactly how much time has passed, but it's fair to guess that it could be anywhere up to 1000 years. The land of Narnia is no longer the jolly land of talking animals and mythical creatures, it has been annexed by the Telmarines (rather stuffy and conservative types from a kingdom to the west, who have seen fit to 'civilise' Narnia). Mention of dwarves and talking animals is forbidden and the original inhabitants of the land have been forced to go underground. King Miraz, of the Telmarines, is doubly treacherous - for he isn't he even the rightful Telmarine King, let alone the rightful King of Narnia. His nephew, the Narnia-friendly Prince Caspian, is to be next in line for the throne... but Prince Caspian's life is in danger, the King seeks to have him 'meet' an accident, and so he must seek out Narnia's original inhabitants in the hope that they will shelter him.

It's through these chain of events that the Pevensie children are called back to Narnia. They must help champion the creatures of Old Narnia and drive out the Telmarines. Aslan seems to be long gone, and one of Lewis' themes here (keeping with the religious overtones of the series) is that of faith. Only Lucy, the youngest of the Pevensie children, seems to have kept faith in Aslan. The Telmarines doubt Aslan's existence, but fear him nonetheless, and the Old Narnians must have faith in 'the King of Kings' if they're to have lawful governance of their once-wonderful kingdom again.

Of the four Narnia books I've read so far, this one seems to be the most pedestrian. Aslan barely features, and the religious aspects are at their subtlest, and most of the book is spent setting up the situation and filling us in on the land's history since the Pevensie children were last Kings and Queens. I sense that Prince Caspian's importance is mainly in setting up the three last books of the Chronicles... seeing as The Voyage of the Dawn Treader probably carries on a bit more directly from this adventure, whereas all four of the previous adventures are set some years apart and show different eras in Narnia's existence.

I liked the fact that Lewis set this tale a long, long time after The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, as it left him room to change things up and show how history can change a great manner of things that are often taken for granted. It was nice that this book was set almost entirely in Narnia too - The Horse and His Boy doesn't feature any sequences at all in the magical land, and it was good to see some classic Narnians again - dwarfs, talking badgers, Reepicheep the valiant mouse (who provides most of the book's best moments), docile but friendly giants, fauns and demi-gods. Can't wait to get stuck into the next adventure!