Film Review: Cloud Atlas (2012)

Ask anyone familiar with David Mitchell's 2004 novel Cloud Atlas about whether it can be turned into a film and they will tell you that it's "unadaptable." Not because of the story, which is actually quite linear, but because of the structure. Consisting of six separate yet subtly interconnected stories that span hundreds of years, from a nineteenth-century merchant ship to a far-flung futuristic wasteland, Mitchell cuts all but one story in half, then shifts from one story to the next as each reaches a cliffhanger, then returns to tell the second half of each story as the novel moves towards its end. (Or, to put it into numerical terms, the stories progress thusly: 1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1.) It's a Russian doll of a novel in which each story contains the next, and as such would be dramatically frustrating in any medium.

Film Review: Vampyr (1932)

As anyone who has read a short story by H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe can tell you, great works of horror transcend the time in which they were created. References, language or style might change, but something elemental remains, something still chills. The eerie and the uncanny retain their power in works of literature, though this is not always the case with cinema. Whilst an individual's imagination can make the fevered words of a drunken lunatic come alive in terrifying detail over a century after they were written, visual effects can often render what was once scary tame, or even silly.

Film Review: Frankenweenie (2012)

Tim Burton's latest film, Frankenweenie, has its roots in the earliest days of the director's career. Burton directed the original live action short of Frankenweenie in 1984 whilst working as an animator for Disney, and it was intended to accompany screenings of Pinocchio when it was re-released that year. The short was ultimately deemed too dark and Burton was fired from Disney for using company money to make films that they did not consider to be suitable. There's a certain delightful symmetry in Burton making a feature-length version for Disney nearly three decades later, especially since the new version seems to find him regaining some of the spark that has eluded him in recent years.

Hope Lies on Television #15 - Only Forward

After a lengthy break which was largely due to me moving countries, I have now started writing the Hope Lies on Television column for Hope Lies at 24 Frames per Second. Since this is in some sense a reboot of the series, and because it's nearly Halloween, I decided that the subject of the first new addition to the series would be remakes. Using the remake of The Munsters (renamed Mockingbird Lane) as the jumping off point for a broader discussion about the differences between cinematic and televisiual remakes, it returns to key themes that I've written about before - the importance of character and length of time - whilst also taking in the different economic models that film and television are based upon.

I'm really pleased to be writing the columns again since I find them really fun and rewarding, and I'm hopeful that the new monthly schedule (with the occasional extra column when appropriate) will offer plenty of time for research without leading to the lengthy breaks that have marked the column in the past.

Film Review: Playtime (1967)

There are certain phrases which are so frequently used in critical parlance that they wind up being stripped of all meaning. Chief amongst these is, "a triumph of the human spirit." On its own, it's an evocative expression of the potential for some inner, indefinable element of humanity to overcome any obstacle, yet in practice, it is used so often that it ends up becoming trite and cliche. So much so, in fact, that whenever I think of the phrase, which is admittedly not that often, it is in relation to stand-up comedian Kyle Kinane sardonically describing a story of using a bathroom in a less than reputable bar as such. In short, it's a phrase that has been robbed of its power through overly enthusiastic repetition.

Film Review: Pitch Perfect (2012)

Starting college is not an easy time for anyone, but it's particularly hard when you don't want to be there in the first place. Such is this case for Beca (Anna Kendrick), a freshman who finds herself attending Barden College pretty much against her will. Beca is a budding DJ and producer who wants to go to L.A. to try to break into the music industry, but her father, who is a professor at Barden, insists that she has to get an education first. The two come to an agreement, albeit one that is both so slight as to be unimportant yet to convoluted to ignore. If Beca really makes a go of it and tries to have the true college experience, if she joins clubs, makes friends and actually tries to enjoy herself, but winds up deciding that it isn't for her, then she can drop out and go to L.A. The only problem is that she actually needs to make that effort in the first place.

Film Review: Ill Manors (2012)

Covering a week in the lives of the denizens of a London estate, the debut feature from Ben Drew (better known as Plan B) initially seems to be a fairly standard entry into the gritty, British crime drama sub-genre. Its collection of small time criminals, drug dealers, prostitutes and wayward youth are pretty standard archetypes, whilst its multiple storylines, taken separarely, are overly familiar.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 18 - What's The Worst Movie You've Ever Seen?

In the first minisode of October, Joe and I talk about the worst films that we have ever seen, which encompasses a fairly wide-ranging discussion of what constitutes a bad film - whether there are certain objective criteria by which such a thing can be determined - and whether anyone ever sets out to make a bad film. We also talk about how budget is no defense against a film being terrible, the depths to which Coreys Feldman and Haim sank after their '80s heyday, and the curious way in which midnight screenings have changed from being a showcase for cult - but good - films to opportunities for people to mock bad ones.

We also give Zack Snyder a break and decide to lay into Michael Bay, our other preferred punching bag.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably (from our point of view) you can subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate and review it.

Album Review: "Live" by Tig Notaro

For fear of making a gross generalisation, I think it's safe to say that most people, if they were diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, would not make going onstage to talk about it to strangers a priority. Not only that, but I think that even fewer people would want to get onstage and perform comedy about the disease they literally just found out that they had. I mean, what with all the tearful phone calls and general despair, where would you find the time?

Shot/Reverse Shot: Episode 17 - Adaptation

In this episode, Joe and I discuss the difficulties of adapting an existing property for the big screen, whether there are any properties that are truly "unadaptable", and what criteria we should use when trying to decide if an adaptation is a good one or not. Along the way, we talk about great adaptations like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, bad adaptations like Watchmen, and perplexing adaptations like Naked Lunch. It's a typically odd and free-wheeling episode that somehow winds up with us casting a version of Hamlet that any right-thinking person would murder their loved ones to see happen. Though you should probably not do that unless you're really, really sure it'd work.

As always, you can stream the podcast using the link below, or preferably subscribe using iTunes. If you choose the later, please rate and review it.

Film Review: Looper (2012)

Time travel will be invented in 2074, and because it is such a dangerous invention, it will almost instantly be outlawed. This does little to stop the technology becoming the sole domain of criminal organisations who use it as a completely untraceable way of killing. They send people back through time to 2044, where assassins known as 'Loopers' kill and dispose of them for huge sums of money, allowing them to live out a glamorous lifestyle amongst the poverty and violence of their own time. The one caveat to the arrangement is that one day they will have to kill their future selves in order to "close the loop" of their existence. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one such Looper who has reached the end of his contract, but at the crucial moment he allows his future (Bruce Willis) to slip away from him. With his former colleagues pursuing him on account of his failure, Joe has to figure out what his future self hopes to achieve and close the loop. Which is where things get complicated.