The co-founder and former CEO of Apple died yesterday at the age of 56.
It says much about the impact of Steve Jobs on technology and culture that news of his death made headlines around the world.
Last night as the news broke my Twitter feed lit up with tributes (including the above logo by designer Jonathan Mak) and perhaps his true legacy lies in the fact that many of those tributes were written on devices made by his company.
As one of the key players in the computer revolution of the last forty years, he has played an instrumental role in how we use technical devices, listen to music and watch entertainment.
His first period at Apple (1976-1985) saw him co-found a company which helped introduce the idea of graphics based computing into the mainstream.
After being fired by the man he hired to run the company, he founded NeXT, a company which aimed to produce workstations for businesses and higher education.
This demo video featuring Jobs from 1987 shows how it pioneered many things we now take for granted:
Most significantly, a NeXT Computer was used by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1990s to create the first web browser and web server.
Around the same then bought part of the computer division of Lucasfilm and relaunched it as Pixar in 1986.
One of the most significant entertainment companies to emerge in the modern era, they used computers to make animated blockbusters such as Toy Story (1995) and Finding Nemo (2003).
In 1996 Jobs and John Lasseter described the history of Pixar on the Charlie Rose show and what they were trying to do with the company:
This profile of Jobs from the same year focuses on his career up to that point and features a particularly obnoxious news presenter (note the key quote from Jobs when he says: “Apple still has a future”):
This alone would have made him a key figure in the entertainment and technology worlds, but in 1997 he made a dramatic return to Apple, which was then in dire trouble.
Restoring the core computing products to their former glories he made bold moves into the music and film industries with the iTunes store, revolutionised how we listen to music with the iPod and reshaped mobile computing with the iPhone and iPad.
In recent years health issues have cast a shadow over Jobs, as he survived pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009.
After his first bout of cancer he gave this memorable commencement speech to Stanford University in 2005:
In January of this year he embarked on an extended leave of absence, despite making key public announcements and being involved in key strategic decisions.
His last public appearence was this proposal to his local city council for a new Apple Campus on Tuesday, June 7th:
The interviewees include Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Yoko Ono and Olivia and Dhani Harrison.
Like Scorsese’s previous documentary about Bob Dylan – No Direction Home – this is split into two parts: the first section (94 mins) covers Harrison’s early life in Liverpool and career as a Beatle up until their break up in 1970.
The second part (114 mins) charts his solo career during the 1970s and 80s, up until the end of his life in November 2001.
It is being screened at cinemas across the UK and Dublin on October 4th.
In the US it will air on HBO in two parts on October 5th and 6th and in the UK on the BBC at some point (although details are unclear, it may be on BBC2 in November for the 10th anniversary of his death).
The DVD and Blu-ray come out soon after on October 10th.
The recent announcement and subsequent u-turn by Netflix reflects a wider crisis facing Hollywood.
Before the 1950s Hollywood studios made their money renting their movies to cinemas and then splitting the profits.
When televison became a popular medium in the 1950s, it was a time of panic but eventually became another revenue stream as studios could monetise their libraries by selling them to a new emerging medium.
In the 1970s when Sony invented the Betamax format, which allowed viewers to record programming on videocassettes, it spurred a worried Hollywood into adopting a rival format (VHS), which ultimately created a new home entertainment revenue stream.
The video rental boom of the 1980s also gradually turned into a retail one as consumers bought videos of their favourite films.
When the DVD format was introduced in the late 1990s, consumers upgraded to the format in the same way they had replaced their analogue vinyl records and tapes with digital CDs.
Home video innovations that the studios thought would destroy them, actually turned out to be their salvation.
From 1998 until 2004 there was a DVD boom which saw profits pour into studio coffers, as consumers embraced the format as DVDs were often availble to buy and rent on the same day.
But dark clouds began to form in 2005 as the industry debated about what would be the high definition successor to DVD.
After a costly format war between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD, the former won in February 2008 partly due to the fact that they owned a movie studio and could put Blu-ray drives in the PS3 console (10 million PS3s outnumbered the million HD-DVD players in the market).
By early 2008 things looked to have stabilised for the manufacturers and studios as there was now one format which they could all get behind.
However, there were still some major challenges:
Consumer upgrade costs: The jump from DVD to Blu-ray was much more costly that VHS to DVD as it involved the cost of getting a new TV and player and at this stage costs of equipment and discs were unattractively high (even though they would later come down).
The Recession: The financial crisis of 2008 had many wide-ranging consequences as the world went into a global recession. For the entertainment industry the subsequent drop in consumer spending meant that people weren’t willing to replace their DVDs with Blu-rays.
Netflix and Digital Downloads: Over the last decade US service Netflix saw explosive growth in subscriptions, which has eaten away at the traditional DVD model as the company movies towards streaming.
Studios and retailers dealt with the cost issue by dropping prices and with many major titles folding in the Blu-ray and digital copy with the DVD release (sometimes known as a Triple play).
The recession poses a much greater problem, particularly as online retailers like Amazon can undercut traditional shops (thus reducing studio profits) and streaming services make consumers indulge in cheaper alternatives.
What are those alternatives?
Until recently Netflix subscribers in the US could gorge on an incredible back catalogue of films for a cheap monthly fee, whilst the price of back catalogue DVDs is ridiculously low.
So the last few years have seen a volatile environment emerge in which DVD profits have been eroded and Hollywood executives concerned about their balance sheets.
“This has become a major issue for the movie business,” says Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton. “Over the past decade, the DVD business has been perhaps the most important profit centre for the industry. But now it isn’t just contracting, it’s become more volatile and unpredictable than it used to be. And that very volatility is what makes your decision-making more difficult, because when you don’t really know why a lot of titles aren’t performing, the only rational response is to become more cautious when you’re deciding what movies to make.”
Another factor that Guardian article points out is that studios clouded their DVD profits in complexity:
The problem is that studios have invested years in obfuscating their DVD profits, fearful that A-list actors and filmmakers would get wind of how much money was pouring in and want a bigger piece of the action. By Sunday, everyone knows what movies made in cinemas – it’s a carefully monitored cash business.
DVD has little of that transparency, especially with some DVDs being rentals while others are purchases, making the numbers more difficult to quantify. When studios announce their opening-day DVD numbers, they aren’t actual sales figures – the numbers represent the amount of DVDs shipped to stores. The DVDs that don’t sell get shipped back to the studio. The industry abounds with stories of studios who have warehouses full to the ceiling with DVDs that went unsold and were shipped back, left to rot in storage.
Earlier this year, the problem has become something of a crisis with the Digital Entertainment Group reporting that DVD sales had plunged in the first quarter of 2011.
Retail sales had dropped 19% and high-street rentals had fallen by 36%, whilst video chain Blockbuster was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy (meaning essentially that it’s on the business equivalent of life support).
Although digital downloads and streaming have grown rapidly in recent years, there is a major shortfall as viewing habits are split between discs and streams and downloads.
On a more fundamental level the shift to rental from retail is proving problematic as the studios don’t make as much from consumers who use services like Netflix than they do from ones who buy physical discs.
Netflix is at the forefront of this problem, as for a monthly fee users can get DVDs through the post or stream films direct to their TVs or laptop at no extra charge.
This meant the company has seen explosive growth, with subscribers rising from 8 million users in 2008 to over 23 million this April.
The UK equivalent is LOVEFiLM, which has the same basic model, and that was recently bought by Amazon, presumably with an eye to where consumer habits are going.
Netflix has been incredibly successful in a relatively short period of time, with reports that it accounts for 20% of non-mobile internet traffic in America during the evenings.
Although studios still have the crucial bargaining chip of their movie and TV libraries, they are still probably concerned that Netflix have accrued so much dominance in so little time.
The Economist recently quoted Kevin Tsujihara, the head of home entertainment at Warner Bros, and analysed the current deals the studio system is negotiating with Netflix:
I have nothing against $1 rentalsāat some point,ā explains He just doesnāt want cheap rentals competing with disc sales. So last year Warner Bros, Fox and Universal Studios struck deals with Netflix. The service would keep its hands off their movies for 28 days, to give them a chance to sell in shops and in high-street video storesāin effect creating a new window. In return, the studios allow Netflix to stream more old films and television shows. Sony keeps big-budget films out of Netflixās hands for 28 days but not smaller films.
This brings us on to the issue of the release window, which sees studios open films in cinemas first and then stagger the opening over different platforms (DVD/Blu-ray/VOD, pay TV, free-to-air TV) in order to make money each time it hits them.
Studios are split on what the precise nature of these windows should be: Warner Bros and Fox feel that holding releases back from cheaper online platforms sees a bump in disc sales and rentals, whilst Sony don’t think that consumers care that much about a window.
In a recession, many people are probably prepared to wait a month for the price of a film to come down as opposed to buy it when it comes out.
Disney has another approach. With a huge merchandise division they can afford to try and get their films on as many platforms as possible and they have pushed for a shortening of windows, both video and theatrical.
When Alice in Wonderland came out last year, UK cinema chains almost pulled it from release because of Disney’s plans to release it on Blu-Ray and DVD earlier than was usual.
That particular spat was resolved but it highligthed the different ways in which studios want to monetise their assets in an uncertain digital age.
Back in April at Cinema Con, the annual convention of cinema owners in Las Vegas, four of the major studios (Warner Bros, Fox, Sony and Uniersal) shocked the conference by announcing a premium VOD service.
This reflects a shift towards the idea that the release window is not fit for the digital age and that audiences should be able to legally access films via download or pay-per-view sooner rather than later.
Paramount sided with the theater owners, citing piracy as a major concern (e.g. digital copies can leak sooner) and some observers feel it is a case of Hollywood shooting itself in the foot.
But what the row highlighted was the larger cultural and technological changes going on as consumers want greater control over their viewing experience and studios want to cut costs by moving to a digital distribution system.
Which brings us back to Netflix.
It seems odd that such a realtively new and successful company could be experiencing problems but recently they faced their own digital dilemma: do they focus on streaming or DVD?
The company decided to split its operations so that customers had to decide whether they wanted to pay for online streams, DVDs by mail, or both.
For users that currently pay $9.99 for the combined streaming-plus-one-DVD plan the hike to $15.98 per month felt like a major increase.
All this led to a furious backlash from Netflix users and an apologetic blog post from CEO Reed Hastings where he said:
“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation. It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.”
Why were loyal customers angry?
Partly it was the way it was handled, as although Netflix could see the business logic of raising subscription fees , it was a tone-deaf move during a recession.
This was compounded by the fact that one of the reason subscribers have traditionally loved Netflix is that they feel they get great value from the service.
That perception – for some – was wiped out overnight.
But why would Netflix do this?
The answer lies in what Hastings announced in the same post: that they would be spinning off their DVD-by-mail service into a separate service called Qwikster, whilst Netflix would be dedicated to streaming.
They clearly realise that streaming is the future because of the lower costs and greater technical flexibility across viewing devices.
Robert Cringely wrote this week about how Hastings has always seen digital delivery via the Internet as the goal of the company and that he would’ve done it sooner if he could:
I first met Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings in 2001 at a Maxtor event where I was the dinner speaker. He explained then that the company had always intended to deliver movies over the Internet (hence the name Netflix) but was starting with DVDs because the network infrastructure simply wasnāt ready for digital delivery. Theyād eventually drop the DVD deliveries, though I think his estimate of when that would happen was around 2007, not 2011 as the company announced this week.
However, the problem they face is that discs still form a huge part of their business and making people shift from this is going to be difficult when the overall media landscape is in a state of flux.
What happens when one part of your customer base wants DVDs by mail, another wants streaming and yet another wants both?
If you stay still your company could slow down and be overtaken by a rival and if you make necessary changes then you are bound to upset some users.
Even for a company as modern and data driven as Netflix, it’s difficult to adjust a stable business model to fit around shifting customer habits.
In a sense their dilemma represents the wider problems faced by the studios, who are struggling to adjust their business models in an era of rapid technological and social change.
But if the studios can’t make up the shortfall in profits caused in part by digital delivery systems, then how can they continue to fund the very films we watch over them?
Several Miramax titles have been re-issued on Blu-ray recently, including The English Patient (1996), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), City of God (2002) and The Quiet American (2002).
After being formed in 1979 by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Miramax grew from a small US indie distributor, releasing films such as The Secret Policemanās Other Ball (1979), before becoming the dominant US ‘independent’ distributor.
By the early 1990s they saw acclaim with films like sex, lies, and videotape (1989) and The Crying Game (1993) but after being acquired by Disney in 1993, the company went into overdrive with hits such as Pulp Fiction (1994), The English Patient (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1999).
With an eye for new talent, ruthless approach to rivals and an instinctive gift for marketing films, the Weinsteins almost perfected the art of appealing to Oscar voters.
Here’s my take on the best that have recently be released in the UK:
The English Patient (1996): Winner of 9 Oscars, including Best Picture, this adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s novel is an incredible feat ofĀ screen writing. Somehow managing to weave several interwining stories of a Hungarian count (Ralph Fiennes), the woman he falls for (Kristin Scott Thomas) and the effects of their love affair on others, it shouldn’t work but does.Ā Written and directed by Anthony Minghella, it also looks terrific, with cinematographer John Seale making great use of the North African desert and rural Italian landscapes. The performances are also memorable with Juliette Binoche and Willem Defoe both excellent in key roles.Ā It is a film that really benefits from HD visuals and sound, although it is still a mystery as to why it wasn’t shot in 2:35.Ā Notable extras on the disc include: a thoughtful audio commentary by Anthony Minghella, interviews with producer Saul Zaentz and editor Walter Murch (this was the first filmĀ editedĀ on an Avid to win Best Editing) and a historical look at the real Count Almasy.
The Talented Mr Ripley (1999): Adapting Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel might have been less tricky than his previous film but Anthony Minghella arguably went one step further with this rich and intelligent thriller.Ā Starring a young Matt Damon in the title role, as an American con-man in Italy during the 1950s, it had a ridiculously good cast: Jude Law (in easily his best role), Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jack Davenport.Ā Visually the film was a treat – the film features some great production design – and it repays repeated viewings as the different layers of deceit provide much food for thought.Ā The extras again feature a typically measured andĀ thoughtfulĀ commentary by Minghella, cast and crew interviews and a feature on the soundtrack.
The Quiet American (2002): After the watered down 1958 adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel, this version by director Phillip Noyce was much more successful. Set in 1950s Saigon, it explores the roots of the US involvement in Vietnam through the lens of a love triangle between an English journalist (Michael Caine), an enigmatic American (Brendan Fraser) and a local woman (Do Thi Hai Yen). Shot in the year before 9/11, it almost wasn’t released due to its subject matter but actually gained a new relevance in a new era of disastrous US foreign policy. The cinematography by Christopher Doyle is also outstanding. An audio commentary featuring Noyce and Caine is filled with details about the historical context and some candid insight into the production and release of the movie. Extra features include featurettes on the production and some cast interviews.
City of God (2002): The stunning breakthrough film from Fernando Meirelles depicting organized crime in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro still holds up remarkably well. Filled with stunningĀ camera workĀ and editing, the use of street kids give it a remarkable sense of energy and colour. Whilst the raw portrayal of violence can be uncomfortable to watch at times, it marked the arrival of Fernando Meirelles as a director who would go on to make The Constant Gardener. Features are a little slim on the ground but include a conversation with the director.
However, Bale and Malick were alsoĀ caught on camera in the crowd by Twitvid user Johnny Garcia:
The production crew were obviously aware that they would be shooting amongst a crowd and that photos and video were likely to be taken.
Perhaps that was the vibe Malick was going for, even though any film fans there may have been startled to see one of the legends of cinema and a leading A-list actor in the crowd of a music festival.
At one point Bale shoots a knowing glance to the (users) camera and then a woman called Sarah gives Malick a beer to give to Bale (both seemed very appreciative).
The Film Stage have alsoĀ posted photos of the filming along with some Twitter reaction.
Festival goers took note of the Redbud Pictures LLC signs throughout the grounds alerting the public of filming. Redbud Pictures was incorporated in Oklahoma and Texas in the spring of 2010. A representative in the Texas Secretary of State’s office confirmed Terrence Malick is the manager of Redbud Pictures.Ā Actress Olga Kurylenko was filmed interlacing with the Indian Summer crowd and was also filmed twirling with a local girl, who’s parents were taken aside to sign a release.Ā Locals were content to watch Hollywood unfold before them and remained respectful of Malick’s film crew while they moved freely, without security, throughout the Indian Summer crowd.
Note the similarities between the two different shoots – both involve crowds at a festival and the production company happens to have been based in Bartlesville and Austin.
Could it be that Bale was being filmed for The Burial?
Veteran studio executive John Calley has died aged 81.
Often actors and directors (rightly) get the acclaim when a film isĀ successfulĀ but often they need a patron and key supporter within the studio system.
For over four decades Calley performed this role, first during a golden period at Warner Bros. in the 1970s and later on in the 1990s at MGM/United Artists and then Sony Pictures.
After attending Columbia University and serving in the army, he worked at NBC in New York and fromĀ 1960 was an associate producer at Filmways Inc., where he produced films such The Loved One (1965) and Catch-22 (1970).
But it was when he joined Warner Bros. in 1969 as executive vice president in charge of production, that he presided over a a stream of indelible films, some of which rank amongst the finest to be released at a major studio.
Here he talks about the time Kubrick asked him to send him some rear projection cameras so that he could give Barry Lyndon it’s distinctive look:
In 1980 he signed a new deal with the studio butĀ surprised the industry by promptly quitting and retreating to Fishers Island in Long Island Sound.
He later said that he played the commodities markets, read novels and avoided watching movies and television.
It was nearly a decade before he eventually resurfaced as a producer on films like Postcards from the Edge (1990) and The Remains of the Day (1993) he became president of MGM/United Artists in 1993.
His time there saw hits such the relaunch of the Bond franchise with Goldeneye (1995), the critically acclaimed Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and the hit comedy The Birdcage (1996).
In 1996 he became president and chief operating officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which had endured a turbulent time under Jon Peters and Peter Gruber, and he stayed there until 2003.
The London Film Festival announced its 2011Ā lineupĀ today with the usual mix of British premieres and acclaimed films from the festival circuit.
Running from October 12th-27th, it opens with Fernando Meirelles’ 360 and closes with Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea.
One of the advantages of the festival is that it usually cherry picks the most buzzed about titles from the year’s major festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride and Toronto.
This means that although there isn’t usually the kind of excitement that surrounds a world premiere (such as The Tree of Life in Cannes this year), it can act as a useful filter for the festival hits and misses that year.
After scouring through the schedule here are those I’m most interesting in seeing this year, divided up into Absolute Must Sees, Definitely Worth Checking Out and Mildly Intrigued.
ABSOLUTE MUST SEES
Shame (Dir. Steve McQueen): The director’s follow up to Hunger (2008) is the study of a thirty something man (Michael Fassbender) in New York with an unhealthy sexual compulsion who is visited by his sister (Carey Mulligan). Reviews out of Venice and Telluride were very strong and given that his debut was one of the best films of the last decade, cinephiles will be eagerly awaiting this.
Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life (Dir. Werner Herzog): A Herzog documentary is automatically an event but when the German auteur explores violence and capital punishment through interviews with Death Row inmates, it automatically becomes a must-see. Raves at Telluride already suggest something special.
The Descendants (Dir. Alexander Payne): Payne’s first feature since Sideways (2004) is a comedy-drama about a father (George Clooney) living in Hawaii who is forced to cope with unexpected family issues. Strong reviews out of Telluride would suggest this is already an early Oscar frontrunner.
Alps (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos): The second feature from the director of the remarkable arthouse hit Dogtooth (2009) has attracted raves out of Venice, although some reccommend that you should know as little about it as possible. Intrigued? Me too.
DEFINITELYĀ WORTH CHECKING OUT
Michael (Dir. Markus Schleinzer): Austrian film about a mysterious 35 year old man and his relationship with a ten year old boy. The tough subject matter – which seems to be inspired by real lifecases in Austria – will make this a tough sell for even the arthouse audiences, but it has already drawn high praise after its debut in Cannes.
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Dir. Sean Durkin): One of the most buzzed about films at Sundance deals with a seemingly pleasant commune in the Catskills, which slowly reveals a different side. Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Brady Corbet and Hugh Dancy it is likely to send urban tastemakers into fits of cultural rapture.
Snowtown (Dir. Justin Kurzel): Australian serial killer drama that freaked some audiences out at Cannes back in May. The film adaptation of Australia’s most notorious serial killer case has been described as ‘horrific’ and ‘incredible’. It even topped a Cannes 2011 Abuse Checklist, which this year is really saying something.
The Ides of March (Dir. George Clooney): The ‘other’ Clooney film at the festival (shades of 2009?) is an adaptation of Farragut North, the play which was loosely based on Howard Dean‘s 2004 presidential campaign. Starring Ryan Gosling as an ambitious press spokesman for a Democratic candidate (Clooney), it boasts an impressive supporting cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti) and reviews out of Venice were (mostly) solid.
Like Crazy (Dir. Drake Doremus): The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance was this tale of a young couple (Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones) who find themselves stuck on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Quickly acquired by Paramount after wowing critics and buyers in Utah, agents and casting directors are already obsessed with Felicity Jones and the studio have big expectations for this. The use of a Twitter hashtag in the trailer suggests they already think it will tap into the zeitgeist.
Anonymous (Dir. Roland Emmerich): This might seem like the strangest film project in years as the director of apocalyptic blockbusters uses the Shakespeare authorship questionĀ to explore political intrigue in Elizabethan England. I’ve already seen it (but can’t talk about it yet as there is a review embargo) but it may surprise people when it debuts in Toronto and London.
The Deep Blue Sea (Dir. Terence Davies): The fact that Davis has actually been given money to make a film is cause for celebration, but an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play makes for added excitement. A tale of relationship problems in the 1950s, the combination of Davies, Rattigan and two fine leads (Rachel Weisz and Simon Russell Beale) could make for something interesting.
Coriolanus (Dir. Ralph Fiennes): The directorial debut of Fiennes is a modern day update of Shakespeare’s rarely filmed play and stars Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain and Vanessa Redgrave. Film fans may be excited about the presence of cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (who shot The Hurt Locker and United 93).
MILDLY INTRIGUED
Wuthering Heights (Dir. Andrea Arnold): In a year which has seen another Bronte adaptation (Cary Fukanaga’s Jane Eyre), director Andrea Arnold takes on this novel with what promises to be a radical adaptation. After the richley deserved acclaim of Fish Tank (2009) it will be interesting to see Arnold tackle the realm of corsets and country houses.
Trishna (Dir. Michael Winterbottom): Winterbottom can be a bit hit-or-miss but he’s undeniably one of the most prolific andtalented directors of his generation. Here he returns to Thomas Hardy – after Jude (1996) – for an ambitious adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles which is set in modern day India with Freida Pinto in the lead role.
This Must Be the PlaceĀ (Dir. Paolo Sorrentino): Although reviews were mixed out of Cannes this story of a retired rock star (Sean Penn) on a road trip across the USA has must-see value for both the star (in what seems a strange role even for him) and the director, who made the modern classic Il Divo (2008).
360 (Dir. Fernando Meirelles): His last film – Blindness (2008) – was a bit underwhelming but this is one of the few world premieres at the festival. Boasting a stellar cast (Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Anthony Hopkins) and a screenplay by Peter Morgan, it is modern update of Arthur SchnitzlerĆs play La Ronde.
We Need To Talk About Kevin (Dir. Lynne Ramsay, 1999): Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel this sees Ramsay’s long-awaited return to the big screen after Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002). The story of an American woman (Tilda Swinton), with a rather troublesome teenage son (Ezra Miller) probes into some dark areas and got mostly positive reviews out of Cannes.
50/50 (Dir. Jonathan Levine): The story of a writer coping with cancer (inspired by screenwriter Will Reiser’s own experiences) this stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead role and features a strong supporting cast which includes Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall.
Dark Horse (Dir. Todd Solondz): Solondz may have recovered from a mid-career dip with this dark comedy about two dysfunctional thirtysomethings (Jordan Gelber and Selma Blair) planning to marry. Solid supporting cast includes Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken.
Tonight marks the end of a radio era for me when Ian Collins presents his final show on TalkSPORT.
The very title of this website comes from Ian (“a bit of film detail”), whose show I started reviewing films on back in March 1999 when the station was called Talk Radio.
He was generous enough to let me come in every Friday and discuss the latest releases or interesting titles from the past.
His show has gone through several incarnations, not least a station name change, various moves around the schedule and different co-presenters and producers.
Aside from ‘what is your favourite film?’ the question I’m most often asked is ‘why don’t you write for ______ magazine?’.
The main reason – apart from the fact that I never really pursued it – is that I prefer the medium of radio to print.
I owe a great deal to Ian (and various team members down the years, some sadly no longer with us) for letting me come in and talk about films to the nation.
On Monday I was on Ian’s show and we had an hour long chat about the history of the film slot and various aspects of modern cinema, which you can listen to by clicking hereĀ (I have no idea why the web copy is completely wrong, but never mind).
But tonight (Thursday 1st September) is his last night, so I thought I’d publish a film-related timeline of the show from 1999-2011, which includes world events, some random things that happened, notable and quirky film stuff, my favourite films to be released between 1999-2011 and significant film trends of the period.
A RADIO TIMELINE
March 1999
Review of Arlington Road (1999) begins the ‘FILMdetail’ slot on the Ian Collins show on Talk Radio in London (the offices of ICM and Working Title are just a floor below)
Christopher Nolan’s Following (1998) is released at one cinema in London
Ian and the Creatures of the Night team go to a restaurant in North London, right near where Christopher Nolan grew up and filmed some of Following. Parts of which were also filmed in Central London (near the Talk Radio studios) and Southwark (not far from the TalkSPORT studios).
Sylvester Stallone explains to us that whilst filming Rambo III (1988) he didn’t realise the Afghan rebels he dedicated the film to would go on to become Al-Qaeda (āwho knew?ā)
A member of the show witnesses a senior UK television executive display an embarrassing lack of knowledge about US politics in front of a veteran British actor.
THE BEST FILMS TO BE RELEASED 1999-2011Ā (in chronological order)
Magnolia (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
The Insider (Dir. Michael Mann, 1999)
Three Kings (Dir. David O’Russell, 1999)
The Thin Red Line (Dir. Terrence Malick, 1999)
Memento (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2000)
In the Mood For Love (Dir. Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
Mulholland Drive (Dir. David Lynch, 2001)
Spirited Away (Dir. HayaoMiyazaki, 2001)
Hero (Dir. Zhang Yimou, 2002)
Adaptation. (Dir. Spike Jonze, 2002)
The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003)
The Triplets of Belleville (Dir. Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
Touching the Void (Dir. Kevin MacDonald, 2003)
Finding Nemo (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2003)
Sideways (Dir. Alexander Payne, 2004)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Dir. Michel Gondry, 2004)
The New World (Dir. Terence Malick, 2005)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Dir. Shane Black, 2005)
United 93 (Dir. Paul Greengrass, 2006)
Panās Labyrinth (Dir. Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)
Children of Men (Dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
The Lives of Others (Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
There Will Be Blood (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
No Country for Old Men (Dir. The Coen Brothers, 2007)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Dir. Julian Schnabel, 2007)
Zodiac (Dir. David Fincher, 2007)
Taxi to the Darkside (Dir. Alex Gibney, 2007)
Michael Clayton (Dir. TonyGilroy, 2007)
Iām Not There (Dir. Todd Haynes, 2007)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Dir. Christian Mungiu, 2007)
Hunger (Dir. Steve McQueen, 2008)
Waltz With Bashir (Dir. Ari Folman, 2008)
WALL-E (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008)
The Class (Dir. Laurent Cantet, 2008)
Il Divo (Dir. 2008)
A Prophet (Dir. Jacques Audiard, 2009)
The White Ribbon (Dir. Michael Haneke, 2009)
A Serious Man (Dir. The Coen Brothers, 2009)
Carlos (Dir. Olivier Assayas, 2010)
Exit Through The Gift Shop (Dir. Banksy, 2010)
Inception (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010)
Inside Job (Dir. CharlesFerguson, 2010)
The Social Network (Dir. David Fincher, 2010)
Senna (Dir. Asif Kapadia, 2011)
The Tree of Life (Dir. Terrence Malick, 2011)
The Interrupters (Dir. Steve James, 2011)
SIGNIFICANT FILM TRENDSĀ (March 1999 – September 2011)
The Rise of Digital: Movies are increasingly shot on digital cameras and now digital projection is common in both multiplex and arthouse cinemas in the UK
Pixar: Their astonishing run of animated films from the mid-90s continued with films like the Toy Story sequels, Finding Nemo, WALL-E and Up, which won Oscars and spawned many imitators.
The Decline of Retail: HMV is pretty much the only physical music and film retailer left standing after a decade in which Amazon and online shopping has eroded their profits.
HD: The rise in widescreen, high-definition televisions in the latter years of the decade has meant that many people have upgraded their home sets. But sales of Blu-ray have not replaced DVD and streaming (or downloading) content online looks to be the long-term future.
YouTube: One of the most significant websites of the last decade could have been sued out of existence but its survival ā after being bought by Google in 2006 – has changed consumer attitudes to content (TV, film and music) and also become the worldās largest video library.
Netflix and Downloads: The US DVD rental and movie streaming service has displaced Blockbuster in the US (the UK equivalent is Love Film) and looks set to expand globally in the coming years as downloads replace optical discs.
CGI Tentpoles: The end of year box-office has been dominated by big-spectacle franchises like Pirates of theCaribbean, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars prequels and The Matrix.
Special Effects: Increased computing power has allowed ever more sophisticated effects, most notably in The Matrix (1999), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-03), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Avatar (2009) and Inception (2010).
Documentaries: Films like Bowling For Columbine (2002), Touching the Void (2003), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) broke through at cinemas whilst near the end of a decade filled with global turmoil, films like An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Taxi to the Darkside (2007) and Inside Job (2010) helped explain key events. Later Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010) and Catfish (2010) played with the form in bold and inventive ways.
The Fall and Rise of The Indie: After indie movies got increasingly expensive in the 2000s, the bubble burst in 2008 and a newer generation of indie movies – made with cheaper digital technology – has come along with films like Catfish, Winter’s Bone, Another Earth and Monsters.
Torture Horror: The huge success of the Saw franchise and countless remakes of 1970s horror films has seen new levels of sadism and torture enter the multiplex.
Adult Comedies: Towards the end of the decade Hollywood realised that there was a gap in the market for slightly ruder comedies like Knocked Up (2007), Superbad (2007), The Hangover (2009) and Bridesmaids (2010).
War Films Prove a Box Office Turnoff: Mainstream US audiences rejected seeing movies aboutAfghanistan and Iraq, with even the Oscar winning The Hurt Locker (2009) only making its real money on DVD.
Chaos Cinema: Mainstream action movies such as The Bourne trilogy and Transformers increasingly used quick cutting and jerky camera movements to dizzying effect. Was modern technology to blame for the worst of these films?
The Best TV Got Really Good: The best US TV got really good with shows like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and Mad Men proving that movie production values could work on the small screen. It put a lot of crap British TV to shame.
Promising Signs in the UK: After a lean period of lottery-funded crap, homegrown UK cinema experienced something of a renaissance with films such as Hunger (2008), Fish Tank (2009) and Submarine (2011).
This video compilation by Dan Meth shows the World Trade Center appearing in several movies from 1969-2001.
The Hot Rock (1972), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Superman (1978), Wolfen (1981), Escape from New York (1981) and Being John Malkovich (1999) are just some of the films featured.
With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaching there’s going to be a lot of news media coverage about it over the next two weeks.
Aside from the enormous human cost and dreadful long-term consequences of that day, part of what made the Twin Towers resonate so much was that they formed an indelible part of the New York skyline for a generation.
In turn, they were reproduced around the world in movies and television for a generation, be it the opening of Friends (1994-2004) or various blockbusters like Independence Day (1996) and Armageddon (1998).
This website has an detail chronological list of the buildings appearing in movies, along with some screen shots.
It claims that the first appearence of the fledgling WTC building was this shot in William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971).
Another interesting development was how filmmakers featured the Towers after September 2001.
Famously, a teaser trailer for Spider-Man (2002) was pulled after featuring the two buildings (although glimpses of it could be seen in the final film) and a drama like Changing Lanes (2002) captured the towers before they fell, but actually came came out several months after the attacks.
Director Roger Michell edited out shots in the days after 9/11 but later put them back in as a tribute.
Later period films, such as Munich (2005), digitally reinserted the towers and this also reflected advances in visual effects as well as their historical importance to New York over three decades.
Perhaps the most unique use of the towers in a film was Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002) which used the ‘Tribute in Light‘ in the months after 9/11 for a memorable opening title sequence.
Whenever I think of the biggest news event of my lifetime, this sequence often springs to mind.
It says a lot about Steve Jobs that his resignation from Apple has sent waves throughout the worlds of technology and entertainment.
As one of the key players in the computer revolution of the last forty years, he has played an instrumental role in how we use technical devices, listen to music and watch entertainment.
His first period at Apple (1976-1985) saw him co-found a company which helped introduce the idea of graphics based computing into the mainstream.
After being fired by the man he hired to run the company, he founded NeXT, a company which aimed to produce workstations for businesses and higher education.
This demo video featuring Jobs from 1987 shows how it pioneered many things we now take for granted:
Most significantly, a NeXT Computer was used by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1990s to create the first web browser and web server.
Around the same then bought part of the computer division of Lucasfilm and relaunched it as Pixar in 1986.
One of the most significant entertainment companies to emerge in the modern era, they used computers to make animated blockbusters such as Toy Story (1995) and Finding Nemo (2003).
In 1996 Jobs and John Lasseter described the history of Pixar on the Charlie Rose show and what they were trying to do with the company:
This profile of Jobs from the same year focuses on his career up to that point and features aĀ particularlyĀ obnoxious news presenter (note the key quote from Jobs when he says: “Apple still has a future”):
This alone would have made him a key figure in the entertainment and technology worlds, but in 1997 he made a dramatic return to Apple, which was then in dire trouble.
Restoring the core computing products to their former glories he made bold moves into the music and film industries with the iTunes store, revolutionised how we listen to music with the iPod and reshaped mobile computing with the iPhone and iPad.
In recent years health issues have cast a shadow over Jobs, as he survived pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009.
After his first bout of cancer he gave this memorable commencement speech to Stanford University in 2005:
In January of this year he embarked on an extended leave of absence, despite making key public announcements and being involved in key strategic decisions.
His last public appearence was this proposal to his local city council for a new Apple Campus on Tuesday, June 7th:
When the news was announced earlier today about Jobs resigning, it made headlines around the world.
A warehouse vital to the distribution of independent music and films has been destroyed by fire in the recent UK riots.
On Monday night, the Sony DADC in Enfield was burnt to the ground leaving many prominent distribution labels badly affected.
The impact for many key independent film distributors has been devastating, with many losing their DVD and Blu-ray stock.
An official statement from Nick Hartley, chief operating officer of PIAS Entertainment Group, was published by Billboard:
“Sony DADC have identified a temporary distribution partner [yet-to-be-announced] and it is envisaged that they will be in a position to pick, pack and ship orders in the course of next week.Ā Our key focus at the moment is to get things re-manufactured and we are working with our labels on the best way of doing that is — identifying which lines are turning over the fastest and getting them to start re-manufacturing again.Ā At the same time we looking in our Brussels warehouse and [speaking to] other labels in Europe, if they don’t go through us, to see what stock there is to be able to ship back from Europe into the U.K. in order to keep supplies going.”
UK shops typically carry a reasonable amount of stock but Hartley highlighted the more pressing problem:
“Our biggest problem is going to be the depth of catalog. Remanufacturing and getting stock in [outlets] next week of the top several lines is do-able, but we had over 8,000 lines at Sony DADC. [As for] whether they will all ever be re-manufactured, there’s obvious issues there and I think some of them will lose out in that process.”
Companies directly impacted by the fire include the BFI (who re-release many classics), Artificial Eye (an established major arthouse label) and Dogwoof (a new and pioneering UK indie releasing many acclaimed documentaries).
The warehouse was engulfed in flames live on the BBC News channel.
Although DVD sales are declining they still represent a major revenue source for the industry as a whole and are vital for smaller companies operating on slimmer profit margins.
However, despite the short term problems, the contingency plans and insurance should prevent disaster.
The Guardian quote Anna Godas, the CEO of Dogwoof:
“DVD is still a strong revenue stream for us ā we have lost around 50,000 DVDs, worth around Ā£300,000”. She says that Dogwoof’s pipeline of new product is unlikely to be affected but steady sellers ā such as The Age of Stupid, Restrepo and Food Inc ā will be hit hard. Nevertheless, Godas is confident that any losses will be covered by Sony’s insurance. “We’ve been told by them they will be looking after it,” she said.
Steve Lewis, the home entertainment manager of Artificial Eye, also said:
“All our stock was there – more than 300 titles in our catalogue,” said Steve Lewis, Home entertainment manager at Artificial Eye, which has critical hits like Winter’s Bone, Of Gods and Men and Krzysztof KieÅlowski’s Three Colours trilogy in its back catalogue. “But we’ve been impressed by the speed at which Sony have put their contingency plans into action. Disruption should be kept to a minimum. Our stock is insured.”
BBC News reported earlier today that 900 people were arrested over the recent looting and riots, including:
…two boys of 17 and a man of 18 held over an arson attack which destroyed a Sony warehouse in Enfield, north London, on Monday.
More positive developments since the fire have included various bloggers and people using social media to help.
If you want to purchase films you notice on their sites remember that many are available on video on demand sites such as iTunes UK, Lovefilm,Ā Film 4 on Demand, Curzon on Demand.
You can find out more and donate money via theirĀ website,Ā emailĀ [email protected]Ā and follow them on Twitter accountĀ @_label_love_Ā has been created, whilst users can also use the hashtagĀ #labellove.
If you have any other links to any related campaigns or ideas about spreading the word about helping the companies affected just get in touch.
Over the last few days London has been ravaged by severe riots which have unleashed carnage on the UK’s capital city.
I write this as someone from the South East who has worked in and around the city for years and I still regularly commute there for work.
It is a city where I’ve seen films since I was a young boy, worked with friends and colleagues in radio and I was in North London on Saturday night when I first got an inkling that something was wrong.
In time there will be consequences for what has happened as the public, politicians and media debate the causes of what has gone on.
There is a lot of media available on the web, both social and traditional, so I thought I’d include some here in order to try and make sense of what’s gone on and to function as a running archive for what is still a developing story.
There is this Google Map which shows the scale of violent incidents across London and the UK on August 8th:
This AP report shows how the riots first kicked off in Tottenham on Saturday:
The Boston Globe have posted a series of images from the carnage of Saturday night.
This Flickr group from The Guardian has pooled hundreds of photos shot over the last few days:
This video of an injured man being mugged in Queens Road, Barking surfaced on Facebook and quickly went viral:
This video of a Hackney woman raging against the rioters was filmed and uploaded to TwitVid, and so far her impromptu speech has been viewed over 1.4 million times:
After words from the director of the film office and governor of Pennsylvania, Nolan mentioned that he was drawn to the “unique architecture” of the city and that it will be “somewhat disrupted” within the story of the film.
Bale also made a joke about wearing the rubber batsuit in the hot weather despite the fake snow being used for some scenes and that they’ll be “fighting on the streets”, which suggests large outdoor action scenes.
I’m not sure whether the reason for switching to Pittsburgh was financial (better tax breaks), artistic (maybe the look of the city was more suited to this film) or a mixture of both.
By the way, this is what that house looks like on Google Street View:
It seems odd that they are filming a massive blockbuster on what seems to be a small residential street, but perhaps Nolan wanted the raw feel of an actual location, rather than just duplicate buildings on a large soundstage.
This CBS Pittsburgh report shows a bit more background, including how the production has paid for local residents to take their dogs away for a day (in case they bark during filming) and how a particular house has been completely taken over.
Footage has also surfaced of three Batmobiles, painted in the camoflage colours we saw in Batman Begins.
Steelers fans can see the filming of āThe Dark Knight Rises,ā in person as the movie will be shot in Pittsburgh and is looking for fans to be a part of a stadium crowd. The movie is looking for fans to fill a stadium in the Pittsburgh area on Saturday, August 6. The one-day filming runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and is open to anyone 14-years old and up. Anyone under 18-years old must be accompanied by an adult. Fans will be asked to bring the same energy they do to Steelers games as they cheer on the Gotham Rogues in a football game against their rival the Rapid City Monuments.
In recent movies involving large stadium crowds, such as Invictus (2009), the trend was to use visual effects to fill out the ground, but it seems like Nolan and his team want to create the live action atmosphere of a real game.
One theory about the new film is that there is a strong connection with the first Nolan Batman film.
If you’ve seen the recent teaser trailer, the scene with Gordon (Gary Oldman) in a hospital bed suggests that Bruce Wayne reneged on the deal they struck at the end of The Dark Knight.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the evil that Gordon talks of is something to do with Bane (Tom Hardy) and my guess is that for the new film Batman has to begin all over again.
Not only does Gotham presuambly blame him for the death of Harvey Dent, but I suspect that Nolan wants to bring things full circle with the first film so that the franchise has a neat resolution (I think he has decided that this will definitely be his last).
We shall find out what happens when the film opens next July, but it is interesting to see that they are utilising the exterior locations of an American city.
Part of what has made the franchise work so well is the mixture of fantastical subject matter within a believable, urban world.
It seems that Pittsburgh is going to provide another side to Nolan’s Gotham.
Although you might think that such a claim was the result of a reader poll or a subjective list by journalists, it turns out to have a basis in science.
Franco Zefirelli’s boxing drama starring Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway and Ricky Schroder has a special place in the hearts of scientists, who have used a scene from the filmĀ (spoiler alert if you click through) to gauge subject’s emotions.
The Champ has been used in experiments to see if depressed people are more likely to cry than non-depressed people (they arenāt). It has helped determine whether people are more likely to spend money when they are sad (they are) and whether older people are more sensitive to grief than younger people (older people did report more sadness when they watched the scene). Dutch scientists used the scene when they studied the effect of sadness on people with binge eating disorders (sadness didnāt increase eating).
It dates back to research conducted by the University of California in 1988, when psychology researchers were looking for movie scenes that triggered a single emotion at a time.
The emotions and films used to trigger them were as follows:
After numerous tests it was found that the pivotal scene in The Champ triggered sadness exclusively more than any other film they screened (Bambi was second).
Since then the three-minute clip has been cited in hundreds of scientific articles and even been used as a humane way to make test subjects sad in other studies.
But of course, emotions triggered when watching a film can be acutely personal and sad scenes can easily lapse into sentimentality.
It’s obvious that this story deserves better than some wishy-washy one-off BBC2 drama, so how about reuniting the creative team behind The Social Network?
The first teaser trailer for the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight Rises was officially released today.
It will be released on July 20th next year and as the film is currently shooting, there is only a couple of new bits of footage mixed in with clips from Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008).
Interestingly, Warner Bros released it on the official Facebook page for the film (the official site links directly to it), which is a clever move as it allows them to track ‘likes’ and comments from fans, as opposed to an embedded trailer which merely tracks page views and plays.
Obviously this is one of the most anticipated films in years, so how does a studio like Warner Bros go about releasing the first teaser?
They decided to attach it to cinema prints of the latest Harry Potter film (thus tapping in to a huge audience) but part of the problem is that these days people just film it on their smart phone and upload it to YouTube.
That meant that although some got taken down, it wasn’t hard to see one on the popular video site and, if you were really keen, /Film even posted a detailed description.
The official trailer in HD finally dropped on Facebook at around 5pm London time and predictably was linked all over the place.
But it raises the question – shouldn’t studios just premiere big trailers like this on YouTube?
As for the content, we get a glimpse of what the story might involve, the main villain, a brief new clip of Batman and that weird chant music which was playing on the official website until recently.
Also, freeze frame the trailer at 1:24 and you’ll notice a blurry figure in the background who some are already speculating about.
Finally AndrewSS7 has created this wonderful montage of the posters from the three Batman films (Warner Bros should hire this guy).
But you know a scandal has truly taken hold when someone makes a Downfall parody about it.
YouTube mashups involving the 2004 film about Hitler’s final days have become an internet meme used to parody prominent figures or organisations brought low by topical events.
One scene in particular, in which Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) realises that the war is essentially lost, has been re-subtitled countless times to fit a bewildering number of topics.
But now someone has ingeniousy re-cut other sequences from the film so that they fit with the News of the World phone hacking affair.
If you are unfamiliar with what’s been going on, just read the Wikipedia entry handily titled “News of the World phone hacking affair” to familiarise yourself with the details.
Incidentally, Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel said last year that he not only finds all these parodies funny but that they actually serve to make a wider point:
“The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality. I think it’s only fair if now it’s taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like.”
The first video of Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher in the upcoming film The Iron Lady has surfaced.
A short teaser clip, it features two political advisers talking to her in what seems to be the early 1970s and most incongruously features Clint Mansell’s score to Duncan Jones’ sci-fi drama Moon (2009).
Hugh Grant : Ah . . . I think that was one of the questions asked last week at one of the parliamentary committees. They asked Yates [John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] if it was true that he thought that the NoW had been hacking the phones of friends and family of those girls who were murdered . . . the Soham murder and the Milly girl [Milly Dowler].
Paul McMullan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s more than likely. Yeah . . . It was quite routine. Yeah – friends and family is something that’s not as easy to justify as the other things.
Speaking on BBC 5 Live yesterday to Victoria Derbyshire, he not only stated his case eloquently but there was a lively discussion as his former tabloid nemesis McMullan joined him live on air.
Have a listen here:
He also appeared on the BBC News channel later in the day, where his second confrontation with McMullen became very popular on the web (many Reddit commenters seemed thrilled the the BBC media player literally goes up to 11):
One of the greatest film composers of all time would have been 100 today.
Bernard Herrmann is best known for his long term collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock, but his career was a remarkable one that saw him score for directors such as Orson Welles, Fred Zinneman, Nicholas Ray, FranƧois Truffaut, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese.
After working in radio with Welles at the Mercury Theater company, he joined the precocious director for his debut feature film Citizen Kane (1941).
Groundbreaking in so many ways, Herrmann’s distinctive score marked him out as a composer to watch and he won an Oscar for his second film, William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941).
His work with Hitchcock began with The The Trouble with Harry (1955) and was followed up when the director remade his own movie The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) – Herrmann even makes a cameo appearence as the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra during the sequence at the Royal Albert Hall.
Arguably the most famous director and composer team ever, Herrmann’s scores for Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960) are gold-plated classics and on The Birds (1963) he created an innovative sound design instead of a traditional soundtrack.
His later years saw him move to London, but in the final year of his life he worked with Hitchcock devotee Brian De Palma on Obsession (1976) and Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver (1976).
The latter film provided a fitting epitaph with its brilliant use of percusion, strings and saxophone. Scorsese dedicated the finished picture to him.
Since his death, his reputation has continued to grow with directors like Quentin Tarantino (theme from ‘Twisted Nerve’) and even pop stars like Lady Gaga (main theme from ‘Vertigo’) using his music.
The Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Austin, Texas has created this video highlighting its no ‘talking or texting during a movie’ policy.
As they say:
“We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film, we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn’t follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voicemail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome.”
Director Lars Von Trier caused controversy by making jokes about Hitler at the Cannes press conference for his latest film.
Melancholia is a “psychological disaster drama” about the dispute between two sisters (played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) as a rogue planet hurtles towards Earth.
It screened for the press this morning and whilst the Danish director usually divides opinion, it got some of the more positive notices of his recent career.
For about 20 minutes, the press conference passed by with the usual questions from the foreign press to the filmmaker and actors.
It should be noted that questions during press conferences at Cannes can be unbelievably tedious and anodyne, which is why Von Trier perhaps decided to stir things up around the 20 minute mark.
He claimed he was making an explicit porn film with Kirsten Dunst, which elicited nervous laughter from the actress and journalists, and how it would be connected with the Church (this really has to be heard for the full effect).
So far, it was Von Trier playing his usual games, which I suspect he does to confuse, annoy and create publicity at the world’s biggest film festival.
But 3 minutes towards the end Von Trier proceeded to make, even by his own standards, some pretty inflammatory remarks.
When asked by Kate Muir of The Times about a previous comment he made regarding his interest in ‘Nazi asthetic’ in his films Von Trier said:
“I thought I was a Jew for a long time and was very happy being a Jew. Then later on came Susanne Bier [Jewish and Danish director] and then suddenly I wasn’t so happy about being a Jew. No, that was a joke, sorry.Ā But it turned out I was not a Jew but even if I’d been a Jew I would be kind of a second rate Jew because there is kind of a hierarchy in the Jewish population. But anyway, I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out I was really a Nazi, you know, because my family was German … which also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler. I think he did some wrong things, yes absolutely, but I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end”
At this point Dunst (sitting next to him) seemed physically uncomfortable, prompting Von Trier to say that there would be a point to his jokey ramblings.
“I think I understand the man. He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War, and I’m not against Jews. I am of course very much for Jews. No, not too much because Israel is a pain in the ass. But still, …how can I get out of this sentence?”
He then expressed admiration for Nazi architect Albert Speer before ending another rambling sentence with:
“OK, I’m a Nazi.”
Peter Howell of the Toronto Sun then asked whether he would make a movie even bigger in scale than Melancholia:
“Yeah, that’s what we Nazis … we have a tendency to try to do things on a greater scale. Yeah, may be you could persuade me …the final solution with journalists.”
I don’t think any sane person would take Von Trier’s comments literally but many around the world would certainly take offence at his flippant joking about the mass murder and genocide of World War II.
The festival were quick to issue a press release:
“The Festival de Cannes was disturbed about the statements made by Lars von Trier in his press conference this morning in Cannes. Therefore the festival asked him to provide an explanation for his comments. The director states that he let himself be egged on by a provocation. He presents his apology. The direction of the festival acknowledges this and is passing on Lars von Trier’s apology. The festival is adamant that it would never allow the event to become the forum for such pronouncements on such subjects.
Then followed an apology from Von Trier’s official apology:
“If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologise. I am not anti-semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi.”
Although this will undoubtedly get Von Trier and his latest film a lot of worldwide press, how it affects his career will be an open question.
A lot of people in the film world will dismiss this as the usual provocative statement that Von Trier is fond of making.
He angered some US critics with his trilogy about America – Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005) – as they presented an ironic flipside of the American dream and the director proudly claimed he had never been to the country.
In 2009, Antichrist scandalised some of the audience in Cannes with scenes of explicit sex and violence, whilst the ensuing press conference became rather heated.
Although a talented director, he remains a cinematic prankster who seems to revel in the publicity he gets for making provocative films and statements.
But this time he has made comments which, although intended as some kind of joke, will reverberate around the world.
Given that Mel Gibson was in Cannes last night maybe they should team up for a project?
The book deals with a man visiting a congress at a Hotel in Costa Rica and explores a futuristic world where hallucinations have replaced reality.
Clips were recently screened at the Cartoon Movie festival in Lyon back in March where Folman explained that the film would have some notable differences to the book.
A French-German co-production, live action footage will be shot in the US this summer and it will star Jon Hamm and Robin Wright (playing an analog of herself).
The budget is a reported $11m (8m Euros), with half of that going on the animation (which is being done in France) and the release is scheduled for 2013.
The US government has released previously unseen videos of Osama bin Laden, which include footage of him channel surfing satellite TV and out-takes from a propaganda video.
But whilst they were there, they also took a ‘treasure trove’ of information on the world’s most wanted terrorist including computers and thumb drives.
Yesterday they released the first of the videos from the compound, with the sound turned off.
First, there is this four minute video of bin Laden flipping channels to watch images of himself on various news outlets:
Then there is this other video of him giving some kind of speech:
Plus, we get an outtake of a speech, which appears to have lighting problems:
It reminds me of this scene from True Lies (1994):
And also this unused scene from Four Lions (2010):
But the weirdest story to come out of these latest revelations is the news that Osama apparently watched the UK comedy series The IT Crowd.
Yes, been advised not to comment ATM RT @Mike_FTW: yep, CNN is now reporting on the IT Crowd / Osama thing. You seeing this @Glinner?
Does anyone have any video or an image of Osama watching The IT Crowd?
UPDATE 09/05/11: Graham Linehan said he got hold of an unaired copy of the videos from the Irish embassy in Washington and has claimed that Osama was actually watching US sitcom The Big Bang Theory and not The IT Crowd.
One of the perils about thinking and writing about films is that just as you are about to write something about the box office success of the Fast and the Furious franchise, a massive news story breaks to remind you of more important things.
A major news event like this eventually getsĀ reflectedĀ on the big screen, but one story is that director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (the Oscar winning team behind The Hurt Locker) were actually working on a film project surrounding the hunt for bin Laden.
Given the raft of non-fiction films that have been made about the war on terror unleashed by the 9/11 attacks (the best among them The Falling Man and Taxi to the Darkside) perhaps some documentary filmmakers are already exploring how can make a film which incorporates the current news story.
Back in 2008 I spoke to director Morgan Spurlock about his film Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? and we discussed why bin Laden hadn’t been captured.
The received wisdom then was that he had eluded capture because he was in the rural, lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Doesn’t it seem a little odd that the US had to stage a secret mission without the knowledge of their (supposed) ally in the War on Terror, to snatch the world’s most wanted man?
The annual dinner has been a Washington tradition since 1920 and usually sees the President get spoofed by a comedian.
What added a little spice this year was that reality TV star Donald Trump was in the audience and Obama decided to have a little fun with the current outbreak of birther nonsense that has gripped parts of the US.
The White House even prepared a self-deprecating trailer for the event, using outtakes from Obama’s video addresses and Joe Biden’s gaffes:
Full video of the dinner can be seen here:
Some highlights included Obama doing the following:
Showing footage from The Lion King (1994) as his ‘birth video’ and explaining to the Fox News table that this was a joke.
Replying to Matt Damon’s disappointment in his presidency (“Well, Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau, so…right back atcha, buddy.”)
On Michelle Bachman’s possible run for president in 2012 (“I hear she was born in Canada. Yes Michelle, this is how it starts.”)
Saturday Night Live comedian Seth Meyers continued Obama’s jokes.
Check out his full speech here:
Key quote:
“Donald Trump often talks about running as a Republican, which is surprising, I just assumed he was running as a joke.”
How does news about a fake Sofia Coppola film spread on the web?
Pretty quickly as it turns out.
First, The Playlist (usually one of the better film news sites) spots what appeared to be the official Twitter account of American Zoetrope (Coppola’s usual production company) which ‘announced‘:
Happy to announce that Kirsten Dunst has agreed to be in Sofia Coppola’s new film ‘Secret Door’. Script is still being finished. Stay tuned!
However, it turned out that it was probably a hoax account. (Note that this was the only tweet on the account and it doesn’t appear to be linked to Zoetrope’s official site).
The very idea of Coppola (or someone at Zoetrope) uploading part of her screenplay to the web and then announcing it to the world on Twitter seems highly unlikely to me.
There also appeared to be no mention of the story from trade sites such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter or Deadline (although searching on the traditional trades made me think they need to hire someone to build a more usable archive).
“Sorry, Coppola fans, looks like weāve been had by a hoaxer. When we ran the story yesterday, the account looked genuine enough, but subsequent tweets were more suspicious, in particular 8 pages of script āleakedā onto the account, 8 pages of some of the worst writing weāve ever seen (Sample: āIt was he, I pondered most ofā). With the legitimacy looking increasingly fishy, itās now been confirmed that the account is a fake. Weāre not quite sure who has the goddamn time to write a script pretending to be Sofia Coppola, but there we go. Apologies”
But a quick Google News search reveals that many sites picked up the original, uncorrected version of the story:
Itās extremely tough to write a news article when all the details are being kept secret.
Quite.
But this whole affair does raise some interesting questions.
Does bad news stick, even if quickly corrected?
You could argue that the crowd-sourcing nature of sites like Twitter and Facebook, helped to quickly flag this as being a false story and that sites can quickly admit to honest errors (which in this case happened).
But are parts of the web just an unthinking copy-and-paste machine?
With large site owners like AOL relentlessly pressing for page views, maybe writers will find it hard to resist quickly feeding readers a diet of stories, which don’t always completely check out.
Can traditional outlets devoted to accuracy, like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, edit and fact check for several days? Probably not. There is some kind of balance to be struck, but the line seems blurry.
What strikes me from the fake Sofia Coppola movie is the slippery nature of information on the web and the ease with which it was absorbed into the news cycle.
Think about it. Someone actually took the time to create a fake Twitter account for a production company, write 8 pages of screenplay and, presumably, alert some websites of it.
Like a cyber-pinball, that false information rattles around blogs, social media and possibly printed outlets too.
For a long time no-one was really sure if I’m Still Here was actually depicting Joaquin Phoenix having a real meltdown or spoofing how the media were covering a fake one.
Although only a small fraction of the films total audience would have seen them, they presumably wanted to monitor reactions to the mystery surrounding the film, as well use the enigma of the film as a marketing tool.
It would strike me as odd if Coppola and Zoetrope actually did start an official Twitter feed on which to make announcements and maybe after this fake story they should, just to get their official voice out there.
But let’s go further down the rabbit hole.
Could it be conceivable that Sofia Coppola and American Zoetrope hired some kind of viral marketing guru to create a fake movie called ‘The Secret Door’?
Personally I don’t think so, but if they did would the poster look something like this?
Although I should stress the above image isn’t real, perhaps this whole episode highlights the immediacy of information in the modern age and how it might be used (or abused) by individuals, studios and filmmakers in the future.
Could some digital prankster actually make a fake Sofia Coppola movie, imitating her visual style, recreating marketing materials on Photoshop and then upload it to YouTube?
Since the rise of the web in the mid-to-late 90s, films like The Matrix (1999), Avatar (2009) and Inception (2010) have played around with the idea of ‘dual realities’.
But maybe they, the current batch of ‘fake documentaries’ and even a non-existent project like ‘The Secret Room’ also signify a growing cultural trend.
As we read our web connected devices aren’t we experiencing an uncertain virtual world, as we cautiously rely on information reproduced over a vast, digital echo chamber?
Sad news Tim Hetherington died in Misrata now when covering the front line. Chris Hondros is in a serious status. Michel Brown and Guy are wounded but fine.
A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Hetherington reported on wars for the last decade and along with author and journalist Sebastian Junger, co-directed the recent documentary Restrepo.
Detailing a year in the life of US soldiers stationed in the Korengal valley in Afghanistan, it won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and got nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar.
This is a lengthy discussion about the film Hetherington did with Peter Bergen at the New America Foundation last summer:
Also worth looking at is this short film he made called ‘Diary’, which he uploaded to his offical Vimeo page.
Of it, he says:
‘Diary’ is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.
He was also a cameraman on the documentaries Liberia: An Uncivil War (2004) and The Devil Came on Horseback (2007), in addition to winning numerous awards for his photography including the World Press Photo of the Year 2007, the Rory Peck Award for Features and an Alfred I duPont award.
Filming has got started on The Hobbit and director Peter Jackson has released the first video diary from the set.
The Lord of the Rings prequel follows the early adventures of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and will be released in two parts, with some of the old characters returning.
Jackson introduces us to the set, some pre-production meetings (with key art-work blurred out) and the first day of filming which involves the blessing of the soundstage in Wellington.
With the original trilogy and King Kong Jackson bucked the tradition of secrecy that some studios have had over their productions by being quite open with the fans via video journals.
It was a smart move as increased excitement and expectation for the films.
We are indeed shooting at the higher frame rate. The key thing to understand is that this process requires both shooting and projecting at 48 fps, rather than the usual 24 fps (films have been shot at 24 frames per second since the late 1920ā²s). So the result looks like normal speed, but the image has hugely enhanced clarity and smoothness. Looking at 24 frames every second may seem okāand weāve all seen thousands of films like this over the last 90 yearsābut there is often quite a lot of blur in each frame, during fast movements, and if the camera is moving around quickly, the image can judder or āstrobe.ā Shooting and projecting at 48 fps does a lot to get rid of these issues. It looks much more lifelike, and it is much easier to watch, especially in 3-D.
After all the pre-production difficulties, which involved various delays and Guillermo Del Toro leaving the project, Jackson must be relieved to finally start shooting.
The Hobbit Part 1 is scheduled for release in 2012 with Part 2 to follow in 2013
This could be because the New Statesman have elected to save the full article for their print edition, but if you can I would urge you to read it in full.
Figures such as News International executive Rebekah Brooks, Prime Minister David Cameron, his former spin doctor Andy Coulson and even Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson all feature in what is a riveting tale of an actor delving deep into the murky world of the UK tabloid press.
First, a bit of background.
Since 2006 Britain’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper the News of the World has been caught up in an ongoing scandal involving journalists who interecpted private voicemail messages for stories.
In 2007 the paper’s royal editor went to jail for accessing voicemails belonging to the royal family and the editor Andy Coulson also resigned, before eventually going to work as David Cameron’s spin doctor (and resigning again as the story resurfaced).
Ever since then, questions have been asked about what really went on and how much parent company News International knew about it.
Various high profile figures who claim that their phones were intercepted have brought legal action against the newspaper group owned by Rupert Murdoch, who until now have always denied widespread wrongdoing.
But last week the company did an about turn and offered an astonishing, unreserved apology and compensation to eight people affected, saying:
“Past behaviour at the News of the World in relation to voicemail interception is a matter of genuine regret. It is now apparent that our previous inquiries failed to uncover important evidence and we acknowledge our actions then were not sufficiently robust.”
Last Christmas his car broke down in Kent and when a former News of the World journalist named Paul McMullan offered him a lift they got into a conversation about the paper’s rather creative approach to getting stories.
In what plays out like a like a comedy hybrid of All the President’s Men (1976) and Notting Hill (1999), Grant then went back to the former journalist’s pub (he’s now a landlord) armed with a hidden tape recorder.
There is something hilarious in the actor exposing a tabloid journalist, especially given his previous run-ins with them.
Imagine the scene.Ā Hugh Grant and a friend go into the pub armed with a secret tape recorder and greet the landlord and former News of the World hack Paul McMullan.
The following highlights from the article would actually make the basis for a decent Grant comeback movie produced by Working Title Films.
But the actor could also consider a career as an investigative reporter as he managed to reveal some eye-opening details.
McMullan claims Andy Coulson knew more than he hasĀ so farĀ admitted:
“Coulson knew all about it and regularly ordered it… He [Coulson] rose quickly to the top; he wanted to cover his tracks all the time”
Then there is the idea put forward that the Daily Mail were alsoĀ interceptingĀ voice mails:
Grant: … it wasn’t just the News of the World. It was, you know – the Mail?
McMullan: Oh absolutely, yeah. When I went freelance in 2004 the biggest payers – you’d have thought it would be the NoW, but actually it was the Daily Mail.
(That certainly puts this recent Mail story in a different light and demonstrates how the paper spun it. In fact, it initially appears McMullan had stitched up Grant, claiming the actor didn’t pay for his drinks. Only little did he know that Grant was several steps ahead of him with a tape recorder in his pocket).
It is then claimed that when the scandal involving Clive Goodman blew up in 2006, the Mail stopped accessing celebrity voice mail.
According to McMullan:
“For about four or five years they’ve absolutely been cleaner than clean. And before that they weren’t. They were as dirty as anyone … They had the most money”
There’a a comedy moment when he denies that News International overlord Rupert Murdoch knew about this:
“He’s a funny bloke given that-he owns the Sun and the Screws …quite puritanical. Sorry to talk about Divine Brown, but when that carne out … Murdoch was furious: “What are you putting that on our front page for? You’re bringing down the tone of our papers.”
Grant then reminds him that he was promoting the film Nine Months for Fox (the studio owned by Murdoch) at the time the Divine Brown episode blew up in 1995.
Then comes the bit that could’ve been scripted by Richard Curtis:
Grant: So everyone knew? I mean, would Rebekah [Brooks] have known all this stuff was going on?
McMullan: Good question. You’re not taping, are you?
Grant: [slightly shrill voice] No.
McMullan: Well,yeah.
Just when you thought then things could get any more bizarre, McMullan claims that The Guardian paid him to get a picture of Rebekah Brooks riding horses with David Cameron in Oxfordshire:
“I’ve also doorstepped my ex-boss [Brooks] by hiding in the bushes, waiting for her to come past with Cameron on a horse. The Guardian paid me to do it.”
So a former News of the World hack was paid to snoop on our Prime Minister and a News International executive by The Guardian – the very paper that has led the way in exposing the phone hacking revelations.
But it gets even better.
McMullan claims our Prime Minister dressed up as as The Stig from Top Gear in order to record a message for presenter Jeremy Clarkson‘s 50th birthday party.
As McMullan memorably puts it:
“Is that demeaning for a prime minister? It should be the other way round, shouldn’t it?”
Then there is this contender for quote of the year:
“So basically, Cameron is very much in debt to Rebekah for helping him not quite win the election”
I can’t remember the last time a politician thanked someone for helping them ‘not-quite win an election’ but we live in strange times.
Then we get the rumor that a ‘much-loved TV actress in her sixties’ might have once worked as a prostitute, and collusion between the police and the tabloid press:
“So I asked a copper to get his hands on the phone files, but because it’s only a caution it’s not there any more. So that’s the tip …it’s a policeman ringing up a tabloid reporter and asking him for ten grand because this girl had been cautioned right at the start of his career. And then I ask another policeman to go and check the records …so that’s happening regularly. So the police don’t particularly want to investigate.”
So far, we have celebrities getting their phones intercepted, Hugh Grant putting Colombo to shame, David Cameron dressed as The Stig and a police force that doesn’t want to investigate itself, because they could find themselves to be corrupt.
Is just me or is this the greatest story of the year so far?
But things take a darker turn when Grant asks about possibility of the police re-opening the investigation as McMullan says:
“…20 per cent of the Met has taken backhanders from tabloid hacks. So why would they want to open that can of worms?”
So if he is right, we basically have a London police force that is about as honest as the bad cops in Serpico (1973)?
More disturbingly, the conversation touches on the possibility that the News of the World intercepted the phones of friends and families of high-profile murder victims:
“Yeah. Yeah. It’s more than likely. It was quite routine.”
If true, the moral depths UK newspapers are sinking to here is truly staggering.Ā But why did McMullan blow the whistle? He says:
“a friend of mine at The Guardian kept hassling me for an interview. I said, “well if you put the name of the Castle [his pub] on the front page of The Guardian, I’ll do anything you like.”
So basically he basically admits it was all about publicity for his pub. Hardly Daniel Ellsberg is he?
On the future of the phone hacking revelations he promises:
“…there’s people who have much better records – my records are non-existent. There are people who actually have tapes and transcripts they did for Andy Coulson”
But what about these tapes, transcripts and other evidence which must have piled up in the offices of journalists ordered to hack into voicemails up and down the land?
Grant: “And where are these tapes and transcripts? Do you think they’ve been destroyed?
McMullan: No, I’m sure they’re saving them till they retire”
I was semi-joking that this whole affair would make a great film, but it is a fantastic morality tale.
Grant and the New Statesman have not only probed where few in the UK newspaper industry have dared to go, but they’ve also provided one of the most entertaining stories in recent memory.
But the great thing is, if this were actually a film, we are still awaiting a dramatic climax.
Director Sidney Lumet has died in New York at the age of 86.
He was best known for films such as 12 Angry Men (1957), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982), all of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director.
With over 50 films to his credit he was easily one of the most prolific directors of his era and some of his more overlooked works are well worth seeking out, especially Fail-Safe (1964),
He began directing for live television in 1950 and broke through in to features with the classic court-room drama Twelve Angry Men (1957), which starred Henry Fonda as a member of a jury deliberating over a case.
The 1970s was something of a golden decade for Lumet.
The dark and unjustly neglected dramaĀ The Offence (1972) was one of Sean Connery’s best roles as a police officer investigating a series of murders in an English town.
Serpico (1973) was a powerful depiction of police corruption in New York city, with a great lead performance fromĀ Al Pacino.
The bank-heist drama Dog Day Afternoon (1975) immediately established itself as one of the great films of that decade and again featured Pacino in one of his most memorable roles.
Network (1976) was also an acclaimed social drama, with Peter Finch as a news anchor who becomes an instant celebrity after his memorably angry speeches connect with the disillusioned public.
Written by Paddy Chayefsky and co-starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden and Robert Duvall, its satire of television and the media is still amazingly relevant 35 years on.
After this extraordinary run of films, it would be a few years before he returned to comparable form with The Verdict (1982), a legal drama about a veteran Boston lawyer (Paul Newman) who seeks redemption in a medical malpractice case.
His output shifted from genre to genre with mixed results over the next three decades, although Prince of the City (1981), Running on Empty (1988) and Q & A (1990) are well worth revisiting.
In 2005 was the recipient of an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement for his “brilliant services to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture.”
At the age of 82, he directed the acclaimed thriller Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke and Marisa Tomei.
Intriguingly, he as was a big supporter of digital filmmaking and at the New York Film Festival in 2007 sang the praises of shooting on digital over celluloid.
The New York Times reported a quote of Lumet’s which serves as a fitting epitaph:
“While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing.”
Last week some major questions about the cinema experience were raised at Cinema Con, the annual convention of American theater owners in Las Vegas.
Previously known as ShoWest, the convention has been relaunched and gathers the National Association of Theatre Owners, who represent over 30,000 movie screens in the US and additional cinema chains from around the world.
Studios go there to preview their big summer blockbusters and get exhibitors excited for upcoming titles like Super 8 and Real Steel.
It is an important place to spot industry trends this year two of the big ones were: higher frame rates and a controversial video on demand scheme backed by four of the major studios.
HIGHER FRAME-RATES
One of the fundamentals of cinema is that films are shown at 24 frames per second, as light is projected through a print on to a screen.
Even with the rise of digital projection systems, this has essentially stayed the same as audiences have got used to this particular look.
Cameron was advocating that films in cinemas should be projected at 48 fps or 60fps and that the current generation of digital projectors could easily adopt this with a software upgrade.
But what would films screened at higher frame rates actually look like?
This NBC news clip in 1984 shows Trumbull promoting Showscan:
For various reasons, it never took off even though in 1993, Trumbull, Geoffrey Williamson, Robert Auguste and Edmund DiGiulio were awarded a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for devloping the system.
Trumbull persisted with a digital version of Showscan, which he thinks has a place in modern cinemas and can improve regular movies as well as those shot on 3D.
In this 2010 video, Trumbull demonstrates Showscan Digital:
Back at CinemaCon, Cameron indicated that he plans to shoot his upcoming Avatar sequels using a technique similar to Showscan.
He unveiled a series of basic scenes shot by Russell Carpenter (his DP on True Lies and Titanic) which involved a medieval set.
They included a lot of camera movements such as pans and sweeps that often cause “strobing” or the appearance of flicker.
The scenes involved included a banquet and a sword fight and part of the presentation was to compare them at different framerates: 24, 48 and 60, as well as 3D.
He spoke earlier this year of his desire for higher frame rates in a talk with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
Part of the argument against higher frame rates is that 24fps is the established look of film and to mess with it is unwise and will make films look weird.
It could also be argued that it would tend to benefit the action spectaculars Cameron specialises in.
But given how much money the director has generated for cinema owners with Terminator 2 (1991), Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), the audience would have given serious consideration to his idea.
As studios struggle to deal with declining DVD profits and cinema owners struggle to adapt to shifting audience expectations, it is a development worth watching over the next couple of years.
But that wasn’t the biggest news story to come out of Cinema Con as four of the major studios dropped a major bombshell regarding how films are distributed.
VIDEO ON DEMAND or STUDIOS vs EXHIBITORS
One of the hot topics for the film industry that has been smouldering for a number of years is the issue of the release window.
Since the advent of home video in the early 1980s, there was an established pattern of release for a movie which allowed it to be screened first at cinemas, then on video a few months later and eventually on TV platforms.
Each stage made money for the studios and it was important that one didn’t cannibalise the other.
But over the years the window has gradually shortened to the point that films hit DVD and Blu-ray around 3 months after they have opened in cinemas.
There is a now a growing movement of people that feel the release window is outdated and that audiences should be able to legally access films via download or pay-per-view at the same time as they are released in cinemas.
Obviously, the exhibitors are dead against this.
Not only would it potentially cut into their profits but could be the beginning of a slippery slope where the cinema experience would be badly damaged, perhaps fatally.
So when the news broke during CinemaCon that four of the major studios (Warner Bros., Fox, Sony and Universal) had signed up to a premium VOD service with satellite company DirectTV, it was a major slap in the face to exhibitors.
The details are that DirecTV will allow users to stream titles to their home from April, beginning with titles such as Unknown (the Liam Neeson thriller which came out in the US on February 18th) and Just Go With It (the Adam Sandler comedy which had a February 11th release in the US).
Wide theatrical releases will become available on this service just 60 days after they open at cinemas, at a cost of $30.
This means that the window of release has been shortened even further and NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) issued a swift statement, expressing “surprise and strong disappointment” at the move.
Firstly, they were pissed at the basic idea:
On March 30, it was reported that Warner Bros., Fox, Sony and Universal planned to release a certain number of their films to the home 60 days after their theatrical release in āpremiumā Video on Demand at a price point of $30. On behalf of its members, the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) expresses our surprise and strong disappointment.
Then there was the timing (although I guess the studios plan was to ruffle feathers and get attention):
Theater operators were not consulted or informed of the substance, details or timing of this announcement. Itās particularly disappointing to confront this issue today, while we are celebrating our industry partnerships at our annual convention ā CinemaCon ā in Las Vegas. NATO has repeatedly, publicly and privately, raised concerns and questions about the wisdom of shortening the theatrical release window to address the studiosā difficulties in the home market.
Then there was the risks of ‘early-to-the-home VoD’:
We have pointed out the strength of theatrical exhibition ā revenues have grown in four of the last five years ā and that early-to-the-home VoD will import the problems of the home entertainment market into the theatrical market without fixing those problems. The studios have not managed to maintain a price point in the home market and we expect that they will be unable to do so with early VoD. They risk accelerating the already intense need to maximize revenues on every screen opening weekend and driving out films that need time to developālike many of the recent Academy Award-nominated pictures.
Piracy also got a mention:
They risk exacerbating the scourge of movie theft by delivering a pristine, high definition, digital copy to pirates months earlier than they had previously been available.
Interestingly, Paramount is mentioned as being a hold out. (Could this be because Viacom boss Sumner Redstone has a background in movie exhibition?):
Paramount has explicitly cited piracy as a reason they will not pursue early VoD. Further, they risk damaging theatrical revenues without actually delivering what the home consumer seems to want, which is flexibility, portability and a low price.
Then the big guns really came out:
These plans fundamentally alter the economic relationship between exhibitors, filmmakers and producers, and the studios taking part in this misguided venture. We would expect cinema owners to respond to such a fundamental change and to reevaluate all aspects of their relationships with these four studios. As NATOās Executive Board noted in their open letter of June 16, 2010, the length of a movieās release window is an important economic consideration for theater owners in whether, how widely and under what terms they book a film.
Additionally, cinema owners devote countless hours of screen time each year to trailers promoting the movies that will play on their screens. With those trailers now arguably promoting movies that will appear shortly in the home market to the detriment of theater admissions, we can expect theater owners to calculate just how much that valuable screen time is worth to their bottom lines and to the studios that have collapsed the release window. The same consideration will no doubt be given to the acres of wall and floor space devoted to posters and standees.
And to finish there was what appeared to be a thinly veiled threat:
In the end, the entire motion picture community will have a say in how the industry moves forward. These studios have made their decision in what they no doubt perceive to be their best interests. Theater owners will do the same.
The above words could be read as: “You want to put Liam Neeson thrillers and Adam Sandler comedies on to VOD? Fine, we just won’t show them”.
Exhibitors still have this powerful weapon.
If they choose not to promote or even screen films, then that would almost certainly turn an expensively assembled theatrical release into a straight-to-DVD leper.
Earlier this year, the UK’s three big cinema chains ā Odeon, Vue and Cineworld ā threatened to boycott Alice in Wonderland in protest against Disney’s plan to shorten the theatrical run by bringing forward the DVD release date.
Eventually, agreements were reached but it highlighted the fact that big studios also have a powerful bargaining chip: they have the hit films cinemas need in order to survive.
But is it conceivable that in the future they could make a major film available on home platforms and bypass cinemas?
It would appear that established filmmakers are on the side of the cinemas.
During a Warner Bros presentation for The Hangover Part II, director Todd Phillips got wild applause for pledging his support for exhibitors.
Even futurists like Cameron and Lucas are still big believers in the theatrical experience.
But if you are on the studio side advocating the VOD argument, you might think that this is a bridge that should be crossed sooner rather than later.
The costs of digital distribution are lower and VOD potentially reaches the audiences who can’t make it to a cinema.
With lower-budget films dependent of word of mouth such as 127 Hours or Win Win, a studio like Fox Searchlight might argue that a mixed model of theatrical and VOD might benefit those films, as they would get more people watching and paying for them than is currently the case.
Strangely, it could be the more specialised films with lower marketing budgets that benefit more from the current plans.
But there are also those arguing that folding the release window is a suicidal move that would kill profits.
Every time [a film] plays the studios are earning back more money. If you eliminate all that to one window, it is completely destructive to the overall film business. This is myopic …very short-sighted and a very bad idea.
Film studios seem determined to kill the movie business completely. After putting video stores out of business by authorizing Redbox to rent videos for $1 per day from what amounts to a Coke machine, now they want to put movie theaters in a coma by authorizing a new at-home video-on-demand release during what has until now been the exclusive first-run theater window. As for the impact on theatrical attendance, I believe it will be devastating. However, among studio execs the best case quoted to me was a 10 percent drop in attendance with the executives insisting that, “Some theaters will close, others will raise prices … it’s all good.” The reality is that a 10 percent drop in total attendance, across the board and permanent, will cause 2/3 of all the theaters in the U.S. to close their doors and never open again.
Perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that there is a larger cultural change going on.
Although large numbers of the general public enjoy going to the cinema, the pace of technological change in devices (TVs, computers) and the distribution of films has made a key section of the audience impatient as to what, when and where the see something.
Major studios can gauge this and are willing to burn bridges with exhibitors in order to satisfy this demand and reduce their distribution costs.
I don’t think anyone film fan wants to see the theatrical experience go away, as it remains the best way to experience the medium.
But this move by the big studios makes it feel like major changes are just over the horizon.
