knee deep in static

When Canadian director Sturla Gunnarsson and his cast and crew, including Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård, set upon Iceland to film Beowulf & Grendel in 2004, they expected the usual complications involved in making a major motion picture.

What they encountered was a ruthless Icelandic winter on a foreboding landscape, financing complications and a bizarre run of bad luck that led some of them to believe they were in an epic battle with the Norse gods themselves. Filmmaker Jon Gustafsson was along for the ride. Hired to play one of Beowulf’s warriors, he’s one set with his camera as the crew battles hurricane force winds and he’s in the backroom as the producers scramble to shore up a collapsing deal, creating an intimate portrait of filmmakers fighting the odds in pursuit of a vision.

I really enjoyed Wrath of Gods. Not only is it good value for money (it has hours and hours of stuff to watch), but watching all the problems that they had making the film Beowulf & Grendel was bizarrely interesting, as was seeing what kind of sort of “normal” things go on behind the scenes. Like stuff to do with cashflow and accounting and health and safety and mud. And it make makes me want to see Beowulf & Grendel even more, because the little bits you get to see to do with the film look wicked cool.

Plus Iceland is a beautiful place.

The number of people going to the cinema in the UK fell for the second consecutive year in 2006, despite an increase in the number of films shown.

…going to the cinema is bloomin’ expensive and there seems to be some surprise that less people are going?

For one adult ticket at my local cinema it’s about £7.50. Now on orange Wednesdays, I bring my mum along and then it’s two for £7.50. Which is tolerable, except I like going to the cinema on my own.

In Birmingham however, one adult ticket is about £3.50 and then with Orange Wednesdays again, it’s two for £3.50. Far more tolerable.

So why is there the huge variation in ticket price? For the cost of one ticket to my local cinema, I could WAIT until the film comes out on DVD and then buy that. It’d probably end up cheaper.

A new film reviving the cult 1990s TV series The X-Files is moving closer to being made, according to reports

So exciting. I’m still suffering from 90s nostalgia brought on by getting a box-set of the entire series last Christmas, so this may just satisfy it.

Of course, they’ve been saying there’ll be another X-Files films for years.

Went a bit mad last week and ordered a bunch of DVDs, most of which arrived yesterday. Last night I watched A for Andromeda, which was really good. It’s a remake of a sixties tv series of the same name condensed down into one episode/tvmovie. I’ve not seen the original and I know that a number of changes have been made from the original, but I enjoyed this production.

The idea of an alien civilisation sending us the instructions to build a computer which is then found to be able to potentially save lives and bring us everything we could dream of is an interesting one and the question of whether we should blindly do what we are told and not question why they might be doing it is something that is addressed in the film. Although, of course, we never find out in “A for Andromeda” why (other than to destroy humanity) the computer design is sent - it’s suggested that it might be because this alien intelligence is looking for a new place to live as their current home is under some kind of threat.

The characters, especially John Fleming, all undergo some sort of transformation - with Professor Dawney and Dr Fleming swapping viewpoints. Initially Dr Fleming wants to keep working on his quantum computer and deciphering the message that they are being sent and Prof Dawney tells him to stop (or at least, passes on instructions from the powers that be). Then, when Prof Dawney is building Andromeda according to the instructions from the alien civilisation’s computer, Dr Fleming voices his doubts and misgivings and says that she should stop.

All in all, a good film.

The other day I went to see Shooter. It’s a fun action film with a dash of conspiracy. Also, nice to see that the easy romantic set-up between Swagger and Sarah wasn’t taken - the slight tension from her being the widow of his partner and him feeling responsible for his partner’s death was a nice touch and certainly the single-minded focus on revenge on Swagger’s part shouldn’t have allowed time for romance!

Another small point that I liked was Swagger always standing to attention when faced with any kind of authority - even vague authority, which he kind of mentions later on, saying something about being trained to follow orders.

I think I will probably go and see Next or Spiderman 3 next, but I’ve not really heard anything good about Spiderman and at least if Next is bad, it’ll be hilariously bad. Whereas Spiderman will be just… meh. I don’t remember seeing the other two films in the cinema. In fact, I don’t remember seeing the second film at all. I’ll probably just wait until it is on tv.

Brick is a really really great film. Yesterday I watched it twice in a row, the second time with the director and cast commentary, and today I’m watching it again.
It’s basically a detective story that happens to be smushed into an American high school setting; although I don’t remember there being much of the actual school showing up aside from a few hallways and the vice-principal’s office a couple of times. And while it hardly uses the kind of language that a typical teenager would use, it revolves entirely around the things that teenagers are taken up by; who hangs out with who, the cliques and circles that spring up in a community, love, lust, drugs, popularity, wanting to belong, the kind of single-minded obsession with someone that you can only get when you’re young.

In some ways, this films reminds me of 8mm. Maybe it’s the way that it’s shot more than the general investigating a death theme. Although Nicholas Cage’s character in that film has more to lose than Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Brendan, does in this one - he has no friends, no family that you ever see (though they must be there) and in fact, I think all he does have is his dead ex-girlfriend. Who’s dead, of course.

Incidentally, while the way that this film is shot reminds me of 8mm, Brick is shot really beautifully. I could just watch this with the sound off and enjoy the composition of the scenes. I could watch single frames in random orders and I would still enjoy it. I could take screencaps and put the stills in a frame and hang them on my wall and it would work well. I would love to see this turned into a sketchy animated film too, because I think that visually that would look cool too. With a stick-figure Brendan mooching about and angry stick-figure Tug beating him occassionally. That kind of thing.

This next bit really goes after that last part of this entry, but that bit kinda spoilers things and well, this doesn’t really. Mmm coherency. Anyway, one of the other things I noticed when I first watched this film is that, at any point during it, there barely more than two speaking characters in a scene. That and the entire film follows Brendan, the main character, and his point of view - though without being able to hear his thoughts, like you might in a book, he always knows more than the viewer. Or at least, more than I do about how everything interconnects and works out. Then all is revealed with the exposition at the end, like he’s Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes. But I guess that’s just the nature of the genre really.

Also, the glasses & glasses case thing kind of works like the cigarette and cigerette packet seems to in a traditional detective film.

What follows may spoil the film for you (even though it doesn’t entirely have much to do with the actual film), so I’ve cut it from the main blog page. Click below to see it.
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On Saturday my mum and I went to see “Becoming Jane”, the film about Jane Austen. I think the general consensus from the rest of the cinema-goers was that it started off fairly slowly, which I didn’t really notice. Mostly, it was an ok film. I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it if my mum hadn’t have wanted to go and would have waited till it was on tv.

Sunday was Mother’s day, so there was presents and breakfast in bed for my mum. In the afternoon I was helping to run my local church’s confirmation class. So far, it looks like the classes will probably cover more of the actual theological stuff to do with confirmation than the classes I had did and will also touch on some of the other stuff that comes with making your own decisions and being an adult and that. The kids however, are all typical 14-year olds for the most part.

Iran condemns Hollywood war epic

But Iranian culture was strong enough to withstand the assault, Mr Shamaqdari insisted.

“American cultural officials thought they could get mental satisfaction by plundering Iran’s historic past and insulting this civilization,” he said.

“Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the US initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture.

Apart from the bit where the film is based on a graphic novel right?