Flashbacks of a fool

When not on a James Bond mission, or pretending to talk to animated cats in The Golden Compass,

Daniel Craig, is actually one of the UK’s finest, serious actors.
Before going back into the world of 007 he took a break by signing on to writer/director Baillie Walsh’s feature debut, an artsy movie called Flashbacks of a Fool.

From the movie trailer, starring such an A-list celebrity as Daniel Craig, to the opening credit sequence of a night with booze, coke and hookers, we are meant to assume that the playboy narcissist Joe Scot (Daniel Craig) is in a very bad way. We could have expect a load of drug taking scenes and thought the whole film would have a dirty feel to it, drifting to a shallow entertainment, but Baillie Walsh's film is sincere about its portrayal of moral burnout, impressively directed, a genuinely moving drama about making peace with the past.

Beautiful even in his drug-addled 40s, Daniel Craig plays a Hollywood fading actor, living a direction-less, lonely life in his opulent Malibu mansion whilst outside his popularity is at its lowest. The death of his childhood best friend prompts him to journey back home to his English seaside hometown. He begins to think about his life over the years, and more specifically his teenage years. Confronted by tragedy he is forced to face up to the ghosts of his past.

Flashback to 1970's England and small town life set to the beat of Roxy Music and David Bowie. Joe's rites of passage as a young man (Harry Eden) in a tiny British seaside community lay the foundations for the Hollywood dream he goes on to experience. His budding sexuality, his boyhood camaraderie, the untoward advances of a voluptuous older woman and his teenage actions lead to unforeseen, tragic consequences, which will ultimately force him to run away in search of a new life.

The performances are fantastic, with each member of the cast creating strong characters. However, the stand-out is rising British star Felicity Jones, who's simply magnetic, particularly in the film's key scene where Joe and Ruth shared mutual love of David Bowie and Roxy Music.
Writer-director Baillie Walsh creates a strong sense of period atmosphere, with a carefully chosen soundtrack and the idyllic seaside location.
Though the film was mainly shot in Cape Town, South Africa. Slightly confusing for whose who know these landscape, as the director doesn’t establish a fairly important part of the beach's geography earlier in the film. In spite this tiny mistake, the script covers up very well the real reason Joe leaves home until the last moment, while the central theme of making peace with the past is extremely moving.

Flashbacks of a Fool is a well made, beautifully acted drama, nostalgia-fulled, that wraps a powerful emotional blow. Bravo to Daniel Craig for helping to get such a personal project made, and to his friend Walsh for putting his heart and soul into it.

Published in www.deadfoxfanzine.com

Haneke's remake resuscitates horror films.

Despite an abundance of articles to the contrary, assign as "torture porn" never really developed into anything more than a collection of movies covering up gratuitous violence as halfhearted social commentary.

Previously, the remakes and films series that go to commercial success essentially brought about the subgenre's downfall by being flimsy, vulgar and just plain unentertaining.

The fact that Michael Haneke's Funny Games was first made 10 years ago in Austria excludes its inclusion in the torture porn canon, since at that time (not to mention in that country) the term hadn't yet been invented. But newly remade for U.S. audiences by Michael Haneke himself, and debuting in a fortunate timing wake of the genre's so-called commercially dead, his film takes on greater artistic proportions than likely the director or the film's distributor, Warner Independent.

In fact, in creating a film that effectively takes all of the hallmarks of torture porn, Michael Haneke has not only made a gripping and terrifying work of art, but also effectively revives the horror genre as a whole by completely deconstructing it. We are not in a typical horror movie, the deadly reality of Funny Games could have been in the news in brief in our daily paper.

Funny Games stars Naomi Watts as Anna and Tim Roth as George, an affluent couple who goes with their son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) for the weekend at their lake house, only to be intercepted by two unfailingly polite young men named Peter (Brady Corbet) and Paul (Michael Pitt). Initially dropping in only to request some eggs for a neighbor's breakfast, Peter and Paul soon insinuate themselves into the house, disable George and hold the family hostage. As Peter and Paul engage the family in an escalating series of dehumanizing games, Anna, George and Georgie quickly discover that the horrors of monster movies are nothing in comparison to the fatal triggering event of two bored young men exercising their disturbed imaginations.

In several of his films, most recently his 2005 effort Cache, Michael Haneke has examined the relationship between the filmmaker and his audience, not to mention the voyeuristic aspect of being tickled by watching films.

Funny Games is a remake of his own 1997 film of the same name is itself a commentary on the nature of our obsession with familiar ideas, but recontextualized within the actual framework of horror films. Ironically, however, it's this intelligence, not to mention his almost complete avoidance of any and all on-screen violence which may likely turn some viewers off. But for whose who prefer to see gore meticulously captured in their horror movies need not (or at least may not want to) apply to Michael Haneke's genre study.

Remarkable, however, is fearlessness of Michael Haneke's desire to really address the common clichés and themes in contemporary suspense stories. In the film's opening scenes, he coldly shows a minute of a family's idyllic weekend getaway, from their cheerful name-that-tune exchanges in the car to the unexciting unpacking of groceries to the annoyed hand-off of dog-watching responsibilities. Pointing us the reality of life. He's not trying to make us feel of a familial disharmony. He is only documenting the undercurrent of suburban irritation that comes with tackling boring everyday responsibilities. In other words, there's nothing in Funny Games that happens in a world other than our own, making the violence that much more real when it finally happens.

The irony, is that horror films are typically shot and produced on the cheap precisely because they attract a lowest-common-denominator audience looking for easy, graphic, and gratuitous thrills.
In Funny Games, it's a realism meant to demonstrate how people who enjoy such movies are accessories to the proliferation of violence in media, and Michael Haneke pulls it off with a master's touch. That this relentless barrage of psychological and physical torture is extremely well made and powerfully performed, Naomi Watts hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction.

Funny Games exploits, examines and deconstructs these same conventions, and will haunt viewers long after they leave the theater.
Funny Games is a truly artistic achievement, remarkably thrilling and unique cinematic experience.

Published in www.deadfoxfanzine.com

Lars and the Real Girl

Lars and the Real Girl is an Academy Award-nominated film written by Nancy Oliver, American playwright, television and film writer and directed by Graig Gillespie, who has directed TV commercials for 16 years, Lars and the Real Girl is his second film.

Ryan Gosling who became notorious playing along Anthony Hopkins in Fracture(2007), stars as Lars Lindstrom, as a strange but like able young man who manages to keep down a job but keeps mostly to himself. He barely leaves the garage where he lives when his older brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and adorable sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer) drag him to their house next door for dinner.

Lars is so shy that it’s nearly impossible for him to reply to any questions, so the uncomfortable level of his isolation is never openly discussed. It’s only when he announces he has a girlfriend in the form of plastic doll he purchased via the internet that the all community where he lives must admit his fragile mental state. No one quite knows what to do or how to help Lars, so they play along, careful not to do anything that might hurt him. The results are touching efforts of all those who love him.

To go through the surreal relationship Lars has with his doll, his psychologist (Patricia Clarkson) assures it’s maybe only a stage.

Lars and the Real Girl is a sweet love story and a film which deals with mental illness in subtle ways. The film achieves quirky humor in parts but mainly touching observations about the nature of delusions, and has been able to make such an endearing, intelligent and tender comedy.

Utterly charming and carefully and delicately directed.

Published in www.deadfoxfanzine.com

Looking for Cormac

Looking for Cormac is a 33 1/3 minute, documentary that follows three filmmakers as they travel across the South West in search of the well known, solitaire author Cormac McCarthy, author of « All the Pretty Horses », and the very well known « No country for Old Men » due to the success of the Coen’s Brother’s adaptation.
So, i have found myself « looking for Cormac » as well, and interviewed Eric Davies, one of the filmmakers of Looking for Cormac.

-You were 3 involved into the making of Looking for Cormac, how did that happen? And when?

We made the film twelve years ago, in 1995. This was when Cormac was still slightly unknown. His books had been reprinted by Vintage. And the three of us, we were friends, I knew John from Japan, and Jim from New York. We also were all trying to write - we had a writing group that met infrequently and always dissolved into more of a drinking group. So we got to talking – just like it says in the film…


-Which books of his, made you decided to do your documentary, or had the biggest influence on you at the time, if there is one?

I think Blood Meridian was our favorite book, it was so big, and so bleak and violent. Outer Dark too, and Suttree to a lesser degree. I think it is important to say that we all felt like we had ‘discovered’ this guy, the next Faulkner or whatever they were calling him back then.

-Have you been to Texas before shooting your documentary?

Yeah, I think I had been there. For work, doing some film research on the Kennedy Assassination. I am not sure about the other guys. Jim has since won some awards down in Texas for his paintings, coincidentally.

-What was your motivation(s)? Knowing the man as very reclusive.
Don’t you think, it was going to go to a dead end, a little risky, or simply provocative?

That was part of the draw – the reclusive thing. I mean, truthfully, and without robbing the film of any real motivation, we never thought we would find him. But when you look around at other great writers/recluses – Salinger, Pynchon – isn’t that part of the attraction? They seem almost mythic, these writers who are hiding out, ignoring the world. Could be we were pathetic fans, I don’t know, but I do know that if we had found him we did not have any idea what we were going to say.

-Where you aware of the ignorance of the people you have met through your travel?
I mean they didn’t have a clue who was Cormac McCarthy.

Well, it felt like Cormac McCarthy was pretty unknown at this point. Much to his chagrin, I am sure. English Majors knew who he was, but the average guy on the street had never heard of him. So finding anyone, I mean anyone outside that community of writers and readers, who knew anything about Cormac McCarthy was a real challenge. We even interviewed some other authors – they did not make the final cut – and they were also somewhat in the dark when it came to Mr. McCarthy. What was really shocking, and was really the downfall of the project, was how, in 1995, few people in the FILM world knew about McCarthy, or cared about him. Since the film is actually one big homage to this man’s writing, it would have helped if everyone we showed it to had known who the f#@k he was. I suppose if we had made it NOW, things would be different.

-It really became fascinating to watch your documentary as we really have the feeling we are stepping in one of the novel of Cormac McCarthy with the number of characters running into your quest, referring to the sequence with the conversation or I’d rather say the monologue of the homeless man, who imagines where Cormac could be living, there’s a lot of irony in it. How did you handle that?

Well, we intentionally followed Cormac’s own course through America – and we visited places that he had written about – like Knoxville – but we were overwhelmed by the random characters we met. Really shocked. And we did not set out to instigate all of those interactions. That homeless man, he appeared out of nowhere, and I cannot really say we understood it, or understood the irony of the situation. Nor can I remember when we felt it – that amazing feeling like we were inside a McCarthy novel – but by the time we reached the border of Texas things had started to get really weird. You know if you have read his books, esp. his latest book, being inside the world he writes about is not necessarily the safest place to be. But we just kept shooting, letting the camera roll.

-What was the general feeling during and specially after 2 weeks of shooting for the 3 of you?

We were lost in America. It is a big place, and there are so many sad and beautiful stories. We took to drinking a lot of whiskey at the end of the day.

- Why choosing that format for the filming, a question of budget, or simply an exercise of style?

Budget. I owned the camera – a consumer-quality Hi-8 camera. Radio Shack mics. We took the color out mostly because it looked better, once we hit the post process. I am an editor now, and most of the time I know how to make something look better than it is.

-Adding more reality?

It is all reality – although people on YouTube have accused us of faking our run in with the law, when the police descended on us in El Paso. If only we had the wherewithal, or the resources, to think up something like that.

-Combining the influence of Easy Rider, and On the Road, it’s clearly a road-movie, but there’s also an other dimension to it.
In French(I’m French, by the way), we say "cinema-photographie", when we have lot’s of landscapes, the film gives us time to absorb the surroundings, like Jim Jarmusch movies, ( Dead man, Down by Law), right?

I hope so, that sounds maybe a little better, and a little more deliberate, than the film actually is. The music had a lot to do with it, the pace I mean. Most of what you hear was the banjo, played by John McKay. He had never played the banjo before but he knows a guitar backwards and forwards. Once we got back, and heard the banjo music that John had improvised, we knew we had the soundtrack. The music really lends itself to the images of the passing landscape. And we had hours of landscapes to choose from.

-After the huge success of No Country for Old Men, at the cinema, did you or do you have many people coming to you?

We have been interviewed by a Spanish journalist (based in Madrid) and we have had sporadic inquiries through YouTube (most of that unwanted interest), but aside from that – not much. One PBS producer considered incorporating the film in a series on American Authors. A professor in Ohio has used the film to teach McCarthy to his students. I guess the film has the same steady stream of interest it has always had (You used to be able to rent it from some of the eclectic video stores in New York City), and that is because people love Cormac McCarthy. They love his writing. I suppose if we were more adept at self-promotion we would have made a bigger deal of the film, riding on Cormac’s own success… like re-releasing the film on DVD, with liner notes, and a bonus track, and stuff like that. Getting a foreign distributor, that’s what we’ll do.



*(I think I mentioned, a producer and friend of mine met Mr. McCarthy and gave him a copy of the film, back in 2002. He had no comment.)

- With an honorable success, awarded at a video festival in United States( before the movie No Country For Old Men came out), did it change things career wise? For the 3 of you.

Well, it did change things, but we did not become big stars. For me, as an editor of films and documentaries, I have to say Looking for Cormac has gotten me more work than anything else I have ever done. Lots of starving filmmakers find it inspirational, and they ask me to help them with their films. Of course they have no money, so that kind of success is tempered by reality. Jim became an editor as well, after being an Art Director for years – I think the film helped him along to that career choice, but he insists he had no idea what we were up to in Texas (I should mention, Jim Collier has also had one of his screenplays optioned, so I think he knew exactly what we were up to, and just used the experience to become a better writer). John McKay has an album planned, as well as another film – based on the long-lost music of Jack Foy, a sort of Dylanesque musician, and another mythic figure – but John was already a success in the music business, and we had nothing to do with that.

So, going backwards, back in the late 90’s, we all tried to move past the ‘fame’, and the awards (film festivals are a sham actually) and we attempted to make a follow-up picture on the writer Madison Smart Bell, and bars in America. That film hit a bit of a snag when we drank the budget. We then worked apart on various films, and real life projects – like relationships and careers and families – but we hope to get back on the road someday. ‘Make another picture’ as John says.

Just so you know the version of Looking for Cormac up on YouTube is the enigmatic re-cut, done by Jim Collier. Like a re-mix. Someday soon we hope to put the original version up. Hopefully before The Road comes out as a movie, and the world rediscovers Cormac McCarthy all over again.

I really enjoyed your film, I find it exquisite! Well done!

THANKS. Cheers.



-Laure Brosson-

Published in www.artnouveaumagazine.com