Joel Moore interview at OWF

Here is another update for today! I don't want to overshadow my Cannes roundup below, but I just wanted to let you all know that my interview with the actor Joel Moore is now up at Obsessed with Film. Moore talks about his time working with James Cameron on 'Avatar', his time working with Paris Hilton on 'The Hottie & the Nottie' as well as telling me about the DVD release of his directorial debut 'Spiral' in the UK.

Cannes 2010 winners: video roundup

As many (if not all) of you know, the winners of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival were announced yesterday as the event came to its conclusion. Apparently this year has been a little underwhelming with nothing like last year’s ‘White Ribbon’ or ‘Un Prophet’ to shout about (of course, it opened with the terrible 'Robin Hood'), but here is a list of the winners, as picked by a Tim Burton led jury:

Palm d’Or Thai film 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives' (directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul) was a surprise winner of the top prize.



Grand Prix The runner up prize was awarded to the French film 'Of Gods and Men' by Xavier Beauvois, which recounts a 1996 terrorist incident in Algeria in which monks were captured and beheaded by an Islamic group... or were they, as the film deals with the idea that perhaps the French army comitted the murders.



Prix du Jury The festival's third most prestigious prize went to another French film, 'A Screaming Man', by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun - a Chadian director.



Prix de la mise en scène The 'best director' award was given to Mathieu Amalric for 'On Tour'. Amalric was seen acting in last year's 'Mesrine: Public Enemy No.1' alongside Vincent Cassel (and also played the baddie in the Bond film 'Quantum of Solace' in 2008).



Prix d'interprétation féminine The 'best actress' prize went to the native Juliette Binoche for her role in 'Certified Copy'.



Whilst the Prix d'interprétation masculine was split between Spannish Academy Award winner Javier Bardem for 'Biutiful' and the Italian Elio Germano for 'Our Life'.





Prix Un Certain Regard was this year awarded to the South Korean film 'Ha Ha Ha' by Hong Sang-soo. This award is always pretty interesting, as it tends to be given to promising, lower-profile filmmakers (last year's winner 'Dogtooth' was outstanding).



East Asian cinema was well rewarded, not only with the above winner and the Palm d'Or sucess of 'Uncle Boonmee', but also with an award for the South Korean film 'Poetry' in the writers category (Lee Chang-dong won the Prix du scénario).



Of the films which competed, but did not win prizes, the following are noteworthy:

Mike Leigh's 'Another Year' was, for many, a favourite for the top prize:



Takeshi Kitano's new film 'Outrage' also played to lukewarm response (although I'm always excited to see a new 'Beat' Kitano movie):



Ken Loach returned to Cannes a year after 'Looking for Eric' with a drama about the Iraq war, 'Route Irish', which was generally well recieved. The veteran director also voiced his concern at Iraq war movies which focus on American soliders, such as the 'Hurt Locker', saying that they ignore the suffering of the population:



Doug Liman showed his thriller 'Fair Game', starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts:



J-horror legend Hideo Nakata ('The Ring', 'Dark Water') showed his new film, 'Chatroom', which is a UK-Japan co-production, which stars Aaron Johnson ('Kick-Ass' and 'Nowhere Boy'):



Jean-Luc Godard showed off his new film, 'Socialism', in the Un Certain Regard category. Depending on who you believe it was either the worst (Mark Kermode) or best (Mark Cousins) film of the festival:



Finally, Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' and Woody Allen's 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger' both screened out of competition and got good reviews:






I'll be reviewing most of these films over the next year as they find UK releases.

Q&A with live silent film scoring quartet MINIMA

I have been lucky enough to do an e-mail Q&A with Alex Hogg from the brilliant band MINIMA, who specialize in performing live scores for silent films. I saw MINIMA when they performed at the Duke of York's, doing a score for the German Expressionist classic 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' and was awestruck both by how much more effective such a film is with a good live score (becoming much more of an experience) and also by the fact that the group don't do silent film scores in the classic style (they don't use a piano or an organ at all, using drums and string instruments). Here is what Alex had to say to my blog:

When did you guys first hit upon the idea of scoring old, silent classics in this way?
Minima came out of an experimental project with the theatre collective Shunt. Being part of live theatre is very rewarding but ultimately restricts a band to the schedule of the theatre company. Moving to film was a logical step, especially given our love of film as well as music. One of the band members was working at the British Film Institute at the time and hit on the idea of silent film accompaniment. So in 2006 we played our first performances of The Seashell and the Clergyman, in the underground, labyrinthine corridors of the Shunt Vaults, underneath London Bridge station.

I was surprised there was no one at a piano. How did you decide to use such an unusual array of instruments for silent film scoring?
Our eclectic range of personal influences, gives us what we consider a unique take on silent film accompaniment. We can go from drum ‘n’ bass to tango, and from wall-of-sound to folk lament in the space of a few minutes. We are a four-piece outfit: drums, bass, guitar and cello and although we have no backing tracks and play with no pre-recorded sounds, the instruments are put through an array of effects to give us a very big palate of sounds and voices.

Have there ever been any silent movies that you wanted to do live scores for, which (for whatever reason) didn't work? Does German Expressionist cinema suit your style especially well?
We tend to be drawn to the darker side of cinema. We were commissioned to write a score to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by the Wellcome Trust in 2008 – they made the connection between the film’s angular stage sets and angst-ridden characters, and our music. But our own choices of film, such as Nosferatu, are edgy and dramatic - and Nosferatu is a great piece of cinema - as this is what inspires us. It also helps that this film is so well known; it is a real crowd-pleaser! It’s good to be asked to do something off your normal radar though – it’s surprising what you can come up with when you’re on unfamiliar ground. We have done a few improvised performances to British silent melodramas and we were very happy with what we came up with as a group when we were put on the spot. We are open to any genre of film and we would also love to work with contemporary filmmakers.

What makes a good silent movie score, in your view?
A good silent film score should not distract from what's happening on the screen - if the audience watch the band too much then it becomes about the band, and you lose the point, which is to watch the film. You have an element of power in performing to silent film: the music imposes a lot of the meaning upon the images, and it sets the tone and the mood for each scene. You have to strike a balance between having an understanding of what the filmmaker intended and having the confidence not to have to follow the images too slavishly. Films from the 1920s have a different pace, and for the uninitiated it can be hard work so a contemporary interpretation by musicians can really help. You can make people laugh, cry and jump out of there seats but we only do this in the name of accompanying the film and helping people to watch the film.

Which score are you proudest of?
Each of our scores has been approached in a different way. The Seashell and the Clergyman was our first and so we’re very fond of it and the attention to detail that we gave it. Nosferatu was written in much more collaborative way and features such a variety of different styles of music. It’s a real romp and matches the film, which is such a rollercoaster and full of now-iconic imagery. Dr. Caligari is in the Minima hot seat at the moment as we’ve just finished a two-month tour with it. We’re now turning our attention to brushing up our score for the Soviet science fiction silent film Aelita, Queen of Mars, which we’ll be playing at BFI Southbank in July.

You guys, obviously, perform live, but I was wondering if you've ever been commissioned to record a silent film score for a DVD release? I know silent movies often get re-scored for new releases.
This is something that's on the cards and we hope that before the end of the year that we might be in talks with DVD production companies to do just this. We have a couple of scores already recorded and ready to go!

Outside of your work, are there any old silent scores you are big fans of? I love Chaplin's 'Smile' from 'Modern Times', personally.
Our musical influences stem from all kinds of genres, as well as film soundtracks. Film composers that spring to mind are Bernard Herrmann, Carter Burwell and Danny Elfman rather than 1920s composers. We tend to write the music for its own sake and enjoy this creative process, rather than feel that we have to stick too closely to the images and the era they were made in.

MINIMA can often be seen touring the countries cinemas. Their current tour dates can be seen here.

REMAKING THEMSELVES Remakes: They aren't all bad...

Here are an unusal lot, directors who remade their own films later in their careers. Comedy directing legend Leo McCarey remade his own 1939 film 'Love Affair' (itself nominated for 6 Academy Awards) as the 1957 movie 'An Affair to Remember' starring Cary Grant. The remake, which used the same screenplay, is now even better regarded than the original:





Alfred Hitchcock remade one of his British sound films, 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' (1934), during his Hollywood years n 1956, with James Stewart and Doris Day starring (though the original didn't have a bad cast either - Peter Lorre!). Hitchcock felt that his earlier film was the work of a gifted amateur and his remake the work of a professional director. You can watch the original in full here:





Frank Capra remade his acclaimed 1933 film 'Lady for a Day' (which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars) as the 1961 film 'Pocketful of Miracles'. Ok, so this time the results were not so great, largely due to the fact Capra chose to adapt Robert Riskind's original script and, his last film, it was also the work of a director whose powers had sadly diminished. But regardless, it is still a fun film (apparently Jackie Chan's favourite ever - he remade it in Chinese in 1989 as 'Miracles'):

There is not an embed code, but you can watch a clip for the original here and the trailer for the remake here.

Capra, Hitchcock and McCarey's remakes all share something in common: an old black and white film had been turned into a colour film. In Capra's case, it was his first (and only) film in colour. When the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu turned to colour filmmaking at the end of his career, he also turned to remakes. But in his case they were not just to add colour to his older work, but also sound. In 1959 Ozu remade both his 1932 silent 'I Was Born, But...' and his 1934 film 'A Story of Floating Weeds' as 'Good Morning' and 'Floating Weeds' respectively.









Anyway, an eclectic mix. Let me know if you can think of any other cases of this happening. These are just the ones I knew of. There must be loads.

FELLINI Remakes: they aren't all bad...

Continuing this week's look at the "remake", I have decided to take a brief look at how the work of another "master" director's work has been adapted and remade over the years: that of Federico Fellini. Interestingly, the two most famous adaptations of his work took very similar routes to the screen, although the results were very different...

Both 'Nights of Cabiria' (1957) and '8 1/2' were remade in the English speaking world as Broadway musicals, before becoming films based upon those musicals. 'Nights of Cabiria' became Neil Simon's 'Sweet Charity' (directed by Bob Fosse in 1969), in which Shirley MacLaine took the lead role:





Of course Bob "Cabaret" Fosse and Neil "Odd Couple" Simon combine with the brilliant MacLaine to turn Fellini's movie into something entirely different, but almost equally good... whereas Rob Marshall (director of the 2002 screen adaptation of Fosse's own 'Chicago') turned the stage adaptation of '8 1/2' (1963), 'Nine', into a big, all-star musical film last year. The results, despite the pressence of a stellar cast (including Marion Cotillard, Daniel Day-Lewis and Penelope Cruz - although the Black Eyed Peas singer 'Fergie' gives the best performance), are truly awful:





I don't know why Fellini has twice been turned into a Broadway musical. Perhaps it has something to do with the percieved glamour and high-fashion of Italian culture. Kate Hudson sings a song about it in 'Nine', funnily enough:



Anyway, more of a mixed bag with Fellini remakes than Kurosawa in any case. The cliche is always the Kurosawa's films have a western (or Western) sensibility - something he disputed. Could that be the reason Kurosawa's films suit American adaptations quite readily?

KUROSAWA Remakes: they aren't all bad...

The news that Chris Rock is re-writing Akira Kurosawa's 'High and Low' (one of my favourite movies of all-time) for Mike Nichols to direct, has made me think about remakes. Usually, and probably rightly, remakes are dismissed as rubbish before they have even been released. There is this idea that they are terrible movies by default: that no movie should ever be remade at all. I wish to refute that logic here and now, looking specifically at remakes of Kurosawa films, which generally seem to be quite good...

Remade at the hands of John Sturges and starring Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner (among others), Kurosawa's 'The Seven Samurai' (1954) became 'The Magnificent Seven' in 1960.





Kurosawa would again see one of his finest Samurai pictures turned into a western, when 'Yojimbo' (1961) was unofficially (but blatantly) remade by Sergio Leone a few years later as 'A Fistful of Dollars' in 1964. Some scenes are shot-for-shot reproductions of those from the earlier movie, with the long "three coffins" tracking shot through the town virtually identical in both. Clint Eastwood has also admitted that he heavily based his depiction of the "the man with no name" on Toshiro Mifune's.





It is often said that Kurosawa's 'The Hidden Fortress' (1958) was the main source of inspiration for George Lucas' first 'Star Wars' film in 1977. Lucas has said that the two comedy-relief peasants from the Japanese film were the direct inspiration for R2-D2 and C3P0, as he liked the fact the narrative seemed to be told from the point of view of the lowliest characters. There is also a Princess in peril who the band of heroes must rescue and add to that Toshiro Mifune as 'the General', who is very much a model for Han Solo (an antagonistic rouge with a good heart who wins the Princess with whom he argues - although Lucas tried to cast Mifune as Obi-Wan Kenobi). From a technical point of view, Lucas also borrowed Kurosawa's use of screen wipes and the horse chase sequence seems to have been an inspiration for the speeder bike sequence in the later 'Star Wars' sequel: 'Return of the Jedi' (1983). Lucas' love of Kurosawa movies was made even clearer in 1980, when he and Francis Ford Coppola helped the Japanese master fund his epic 'Kagemusha'.





Of course, there have been some less good ones too...

In 1996 'Last Man Standing', starring Bruce Willis, was a direct remake of 'Yojimbo' which fared rather less well than Leone's:



Many films have been inspired by Kurosawa's 1950 film 'Rashomon', with the so-called 'Rashomon effect' being when the same story is told from multiple, changing points of view, shedding new light on an event. However, one film, 1964's 'The Outrage'
(starring Paul Newman as a Mexican bandit, no less)...



Here is how all that should have looked:

Obsessed With Film Feature: The Best in Film Music...

Just a quick post to say that I've compiled a feature for OWF, which sees the site's staff of writer's telling us their personal favourite film scores and composers.

Go and check it out and leave a comment telling us your own choices!