Our BAFTA Predictions
You can listen to the podcast on which we ‘discussed’ these here but, for the purposes of finality, here are the predictions we made for this year’s BAFTAs. Also, make sure to follow us Live Tweeting the show this evening.
BAFTA Thoughts…
Though I could gripe immediately with a bunch of the nominations given, I’m going to give the first part only of this over to the minor grips I have with the BAFTA nominations, announced this morning (and here in full via Empire Magazine).
The leading nominees, each with eight, are Avatar, The Hurt Locker and An Education. The overrating of An Education, at the expense of better British films like In the Loop and Fish Tank, is a little irritating, but the acting is so strong in the film that it seems to have elevated everything around it, including the nominated script by Nick Hornby and the nominated directing by Lone Scherfig. Avatar’s eight is mostly taken up with technical nods, which is entirely fair, but its picture nod, over Inglourious Basterds and Up, is predictable but wrong. Obviously, for those who read or listen to anything I say or write, know that I wholly agree with all The Hurt Locker nods, with my only desire to see much more attention given to Anthony Mackie in the supporting categories.
As with the Golden Globes, I can’t possibly pass this opportunity up to criticise the nomination of The Hangover for script, specifically given it is just a slightly adjusted take on Dude, Where’s My Car?. On personal taste, I probably wouldn’t have sought to reward the script for An Education, but kudos for adding District 9 which, despite a host of action movie tropes peppered throughout, is a much smarter film that the credit given would suggest.
The acting sections are all pretty good. That said, I wouldn’t have given Alec Baldwin a nod for It’s Complicated due to Anthony Mackie’s great performance in The Hurt Locker, but Baldwin is good so not too much annoyance there. Also very good indeed to see Christian McKay nominated for his amazing performance in Me and Orson Welles. Also great nod for Anne-Marie Duff for supporting actress in Nowhere Boy. This seems like the only place where Mo’Nique just might not win for Precious, so Duff and the others could nick it.
It’s a decent enough selection from BAFTA. They are slightly over-praising, as most have, An Education and, as most haven’t, Coco Before Chanel. The nomination of Audrey Tautou over the incredible debut by Katie Jarvis is jarring, but sometimes you have to give concession to BAFTA’s predeliction for costume drama, no matter the costume. But nothing but praise should be given to the nods for The Hurt Locker and District 9, though you might wish that some of the better British films, notably Moon and In the Loop, were given a little more attention outside of nods in those Brit-focused categories.
Chris’ Twenty Films of the Decade
Our brand new writer, Chris Inman, has not only provided the world with his top five movies of 2009, he now furnishes you lucky people with his top twenty movies of the decade. A couple of controversial more recent choices are included and should be debated immediately, but otherwise it’s a bloody strong list that will definitely find one followers amongst the existing MOD clan who will thoroughly agree with the winner.
Onwards then, and look our for more articles to come from Chris in the very near future as he kicks off his tenure with us in earnest.
Chris’ Top Five Movies of 2009
Give a big welcome to Chris Inman, our brand new writer on the site. Better known to many as Spanky Patterson, Chris is a long-time listener of the podcast and has now moved on to become the first writer (outside of Sam) to join the site.
As a way of introduction, to allow you all to get to know him a little bit, here’s his five favourite movies of 2009, in ascending order, with his favourites of the decade to come in the next few days.
Sam’s Top Ten of the Year
You can listen to us discussing these films at length on the podcast on the show, but please do check out the list below for perpetuity. Sam’s list is annotated and included below, Tom’s is not annotated and its right here. This just means you will have to check out the podcast to hear Tom’s viewpoints. So check out Sam’s choices after the jump, along with a few choice thoughts and honourable mentions. Enjoy!
Tom’s Top Ten Movies of 2009
So here’s Tommy’s list of the top ten films of 2009. No annotations, so you’ll just have to listen to the podcast to hear his thoughts. For just the list, jump in. Continue reading →
MOD Summer Round-Up #2 (July to September)
So, in the wake of Transformers revenging the fallen all over our minds, we were in need of cooling down from the sheer anger and exhaustion felt in the studio. Though Sunshine Cleaning should have been a great example of an indie to bring us back onto home turf, it ended up an underwhelming experience. The eminently crushworthy pairing of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, along with the solid Alan Arkin and roles for Steve Zahn and Clifton Collins Jr, just couldn’t quite drive us into anything beyond a tepid lack of satisfaction. Ideas involved were strong, but the execution was half-hearted, even if all of the above tried really hard to elevate the material. Continue reading →
CGI, Moon and a Dearth of Problem-Solving
There’s a great blog post on The Guardian from Phelim O’Neill extolling the virtues of the “old-fashioned, miniature model work’ done for Moon. As anyone who listens to our podcast will know, Tom and I are luddite-esque on our anti-CGI attitudes, something pushed to a mass-extreme over the summer from Wolverine, through Terminator: Salvation and Transformers 2 and ending with GI Joe.
We are not wholly luddites in our view on using CGI. The belief here is that CGI should be used very sparingly, only ever to allow filmmakers to achieve visual aesthetics and objects which simply cannot be done any other way. The problem with many films now is that CGI becomes the dominant technology on screen, overtaking even using actual landscapes which could so easily be found and would be so much more tangible on screen. CGI can never, ever, replace actual, physical objects and beings. Beings most notably. I Am Legend has become our go to for films with terrible CGI which completely ruins the experience. Those ‘vampires’ in the film are useless, there is just nothing interesting or frightening about these things because they are not there, they are not standing next to Will Smith.
Moon is a wonderful example of how to use CGI. The effects are used only to prevent the miniature work from looking too much like Button Moon, to further the overall aims of the filmmaker rather than substitute any sense of imagination or ingenuity in the process. O’Neill notes that CGI has killed such a significant amount of problem-solving amongst filmmakers. They can rely so much on computers to create what they want that they simply give up on trying to create worlds with any sense of reality. The expectation is that, taking GI Joe as example, a massive underwater base with obese shark-like fish swimming around it will be awe-inspiring. It isn’t because, although you certainly would struggle to build something like that, it looks so wildly unreal that the only visceral reaction to that reveal is one of laughter at the utter ridiculousness of the creation.
We have questioned whether studios may start to cut budgets for filmmakers amid the recession, something which does not appear to have happened at all. If this happened, I would argue this would produce a rise in filmmakers trying to solve problems through a little lateral thinking, or pairing back on overblown CGI creations to create tangible worlds and beings. A man in a suit will always be better than a prancing sprite.
Producer John: Moon Review
***Spoiler warnings! This review discusses some of the finer points of Moon which do contain a few spoilers, read at your own risk!***
I love science fiction, a fact that has been established on our show a number of times. It’s fair to say that Primer changed the way I look at the genre in regards to films, I now have this ridiculously high standard when it comes to narrative but also low standard when it comes to effects or other aspects of the film. It’s a strange way to watch a film genre being equally hyper-critical and lovingly forgiving. In Primer for example some of the sound mixing is very poor but you can forgive it easily considering the film’s painfully restrictive budget and how well it achieves its main goal of portraying a convincing depiction of time travel and the breakdown of a once close friendship. It’s hard to describe but this is the kind of mentality that I took into the cinema when I saw Moon recently.
Moon has often been compared to such stalwarts of the sci fi genre such as 2001 and Silent Running, it’s easy to see why. The film wears its influences on its sleeve with a heartfelt sincerity that’s instantly endearing. From the grainy and dirty look of the station exteriors to the pseudo-1970s design of the interiors, this film is already steeped in science fiction history from the very start. Everything in this film is a treat to fans of the genre. The premise, the design, the characters, everything.
The crux of the narrative reads like a thousand early Philip K Dick short stories. A lone worker on a Moon base carrying out the kind of maintenance that robots can’t perform wakes up in the base infirmary after suffering an accident outside on the surface. When he goes back out to investigate the crash he discovers his own body in the wreckage. What a hook! This kind of high concept science fiction is exactly what I look for in a film and Moon delivers on every level.
Considering Sam Rockwell is essentially the only visible cast member bar the ones we see fleetingly on video screens, he does a remarkable job of pulling the audience through the film. You’re with him every step and he carries the right amount of emotional weight during the heavier scenes while expertly judging the shifts in tone to more lighter comedic moments. It’s an incredibly detailed and rich performance, a performance that this film really needs its lead actor to command otherwise it’d be a crushingly dull flick.
Moon is played out with a conviction and reverence to science fiction sensibilities that’s sometimes overwhelming. Just like Primer, I couldn’t quite believe how perfect the film is in its purity as a good slice of sci fi. For all its little faults Moon is a spectacularly entertaining story near-flawlessly told.
5/5
Edinburgh Film Festival Line-Up Announced
The line-up for the Edinburgh International Film Festival has been announced with a few reasonably big hitters to join in the fun, including Steven Soderbergh and the world premiere of Shane Meadows’ new film, Le Donk.
The latter, which stars Paddy Considine, with whom Meadows worked on Dead Man’s Shoes, is being heavily anticipated given the reuniting of the two and the brilliance of Meadows’ last two films, This is England and Somers Town.
Soderbergh will come to show The Girlfriend Experience, starring adult film star Sasha Grey, while Sam Mendes will also make an appearance to open the festival with Away We Go.
Mendes’ film comes from a script by Dave Eggers and The Believer-founder Vendela Vida and follows the travails of newly-pregnant couple John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph.
The festival is to be closed by Adam, a romantic drama from Max Meyer following the burgeoning relationship between a man with asberger’s syndrome and a young lady, the latter played by Damages’ Rose Byrne.
Other notables include Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Duncan Jones’ Moon, Vincent Cassell in Mesrine and Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna in Rudo y Cursi.
The announcements also notes some interesting in-depth interviews to take place, including ones with Darren Aronofsky, Joe Dante and Local Hero-director Bill Forsyth.
Duncan Jones Talking Moon
Duncan Jones has given an interview to Popular Mechanics (found thanks to First Showing) during which he discusses, at length, his upcoming Moon. The trailer for the film, which stars Sam Rockwell in essentially a one-man show, is outstanding, looking very much like all of the scenes from 2001 when they are on the space station will HAL put into a single movie. It has that same feel of creepy calmness and strange happenings without explanation.
Asked about where the idea for the film came from, Jones said he had read a book called Entering Space by Robert Zubrin, specially being attracted to a chapter on the colonisation of the moon and the use of helium-3 as a source for fusion power. He goes on:
“It did seem to be a very logical argument about why you would have a reason to set up a moon base. I think one of the things that is limiting about NASA leading the space race is that everything they do is researched, but it doesn’t have any direct relevance to how it affects our lives. But with helium-3, there is a very direct link to how we could use that as a resource here on Earth and why it would be profitable.”
Jones himself appears to either have done a massive amount of research or is just a major space-head himself. He goes on to discuss screening the film for NASA, the mining techniques used during the film and GERTY, the robot being Rockwell is stuck on the station with.
The interview is quite heavy on the tech details but it’s a fascinating read, enough to get me very excited indeed about his upcoming sci-fi work and his future projects. He says at the conclusion of the interview that he plans to make something akin to Blade Runner.
New Trailers: Extract, Moon
The trailer for Mike Judge’s Extract, starring an ensemble headed by the likes of Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis, has been posted on Cinematical. It looks mighty amusing, with a return to his Office Space sensibilities following the dumb genius of Idiocracy, surely one of the most underrated movies of the past few years. You can check that out here.
Also out is the trailer for Moon, the Duncan Jones-directed, Sam Rockwell-starring spiritual successor to Silent Running. The film looks about what you might expect, but the key issue will be how you fell about Sam Rockwell and spending a whole movie in his company. See it below and let us know what you think.
We’ve also got another look at Michael Mann’s John Dillinger movie, Public Enemies, which still looks really interesting, even if some of the early buzz has been somewhat negative.
The Movie Overdose 
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