Super 8 - a little bit super.

The director of Star Trek (2009) and Mission Impossible 3 (2006) once again demonstrates his immense love for lens flair in this nostalgic ode to films and filmmaking in the 1980’s.

Some may find it irritating, but I really appreciate a director who steadfastly adheres so an aesthetic choice, even if it makes little sense to the plot. What’s that in the sky? Is it a UFO? Nope, in this case it’s just light reflecting off the lens. Brilliant. Lenses are an important factor of the tension in Super 8, which sees a gang of early teens, in the style of The Goonies (1985) or E.T (1982), investigate an alien presence in their small town in Ohio. Shot on a combination of RED digital, the eponymous 8mm and 35mm – the tradition of analogue filmmaking is very much at the heart of Abrams’ Spielberg distilled Sci-Fi. The tension comes from the deliberately 1980’s aesthetic - the production design seeming to owe so much to Spielberg’s 1982 classic, from the brown home interiors to the nod to the emergence of the Sony WALKMAN. This combined with the appearance of the grain on the filmstrip – a visible signifier of the pre-digital past. The grain is all part of the nostalgia, but this being a film made nearly thirty years after Elliot discovered an alien in his back yard, the effects are far from attributable to the analogue. As a result we get beautiful scenes of the chaos of small-town life looking as if it has been literally lifted from E.T and a motion-capture CG alien running tearing up a train crash and running amok at the local gas station. What’s interesting is where the love of the grain colludes with the necessity of delivering a creature that will comply with a 21^st century’s audience expectation. No longer can we be satisfied with Bruce the shark, in all his rubbery menace. Two scenes in the film show the gang watching super 8 films, in which the alien can be seen, all fluid movements of its spider-like limbs. Knowing that this is a digital effect, presented as supposedly the past within the time frame of the films’ events, juxtaposes old technology with new, in a brilliant demonstration of multiple mediation in the post-photographic age. We love the grain, but we don’t need the grain in order to signify the past, we can fake it with digital effects. A film that is so obviously a love affair with past filmmaking practices belies its integrity through the force of invention.

This is not to say that the film isn’t hugely enjoyable. Though lacking originality – (any parent would be wise to simply sit their kids down with a screening of E.T rather than this: it’s for those who can remember riding a Chopper or using a CB radio). Abrams creates enough thrills and humour to entertain for the duration of the running time. The choice to cast relative unknown’s as the kids, (with the exception of Elle Fanning as Alice who was last seen in Sophia Coppolas’ Somewhere) is also an effective one and the chemistry between them as they bicker their way through making a zombie film and escaping death-by-alien is very entertaining. Unfortunately the film’s Spielberg-ness extends all the way to its conclusion, with the creature defying expectations based on its previous behaviour, in favour of a family friendly face-off between boy and deadly extra-terrestrial.

Like, Slack ... er, films ...

- Got any plans for today?

-I have got a bit of a project actually, I’m going to be as inactive as I can in order to really get into the psyche of someone who’s say, I dunno, unemployed, not just vocationally but cerebrally, to see if the predicament of enforced passivity actually exhausts itself, you know; does inactivity breed laziness?

- Oh, right, are you gonna write an article about it?

- Nah I can’t be bothered.

Such is the wit of Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg in Spaced (episode ‘Help’ 2001), summing up in one exchange the apathy of the slacker in the millennial generation. In this particular episode, the inactive Daisy (Hynes) is berated for her passive attitude by her flatmate, Tim (Pegg) and landlord Marsha (Julia Deakin), eventually bated into going running with the latter, in an hilarious demonstration of competitiveness. In contrast to Daisy’s inertia, Tim and best friend Mike (Nick Frost) embark on an action-packed adventure to retrieve a caricatured portrait of the man about to assess Tim’s suitability to work for DarkStar Comics.

Pegg, Hynes and director Edgar Wright’s portrayal of the twenty-something adrift in post millennium London is a brilliant example of a generation. A g

eneration post Gen-X, (Gen-Y?) no longer simply stepping back from their aimless lives and viewing them through the mediation of the video camera and reality TV as seen in Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites (1994) or Cameron Crowe’s Singles (1992) – literally seeing not doing. This generation is so steeped in pop culture, demonstrable via the ubiquitous screen: TV, laptops, mobile phone

s, cinema, that every moment of their lives is not simply an instant unto itself, but viewed as reference to some film, or game, or pop song, Just as Mike imagines breaking into the offices of Tim’s would-be boss as a scene from The Matrix, or a heroic save by Brian (Mark Heap) is accompanied by the theme from The Magnificent Seven and Daisy’s recollection of a netball match back in high school is narrated as a series of comic-book frames accompanied by the theme from TV’s Grange Hill.

Spaced can be considered a commentary of what could ostensibly be called the sub-genre of the Slacker film, despite being TV. It sits at a mid-point between the cool passivity of Jarmusch’s Permanent Vacation (1980) in which apathetic Allie wanders around Manhattan, dances to Charlie Parker and ignores his girlfriend and the so called Mumblecore movement that emerged in the past ten years, with such titles as Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha (2002) and Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007). In the latter movement the term slacker is taken to a whole new level in which so loose is the aesthetic that the presence of a script would be unthinkable.

Perhaps the epitome of this genre is Richard Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker. Structured as a relay-race of interweaving encounters with the (mostly) twenty-something inhabitants of Austin, Texas, Slacker combines meandering mini-narratives with snapshots of philosophical, political and artistic opinions, all delivered in a typically earnest and impassioned style. Whereas Linklater’s style was criticised for this earnestness – the idealism of talking big and seemingly doing very little, seen again in later work such as Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995) and Waking Life (2001) - the mumblecore movement is slack for reasons other than the inactivity of its protagonists. Most cite Funny Ha Ha as the earliest and best example of the classic characteristics of the decade’s work in low-fi filmmaking. Characters played by non-actor friends of the writer/director, location shooting, loose framing, no script thereby leading to an overwhelming presence of hesitating interjections in the dialogue, e.g. “So, like, what do want to do?” “I, er, [sigh], don’t know, er, how ‘bout you?” and so forth. It is in the dialogue that mumblecore (the clue’s in the name) differs so greatly to the work of Linklater and his contemporaries Crowe and Kevin Smith who were so highly praised for their work as screenwriters, capturing the concerns and articulations of their generation.

In Funny Ha Ha, central character Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer), a recent graduate, wanders through a series of encounters with her peers, losing a job here, kissing her friends’ boyfriend there, and making to-do lists that will most likely never be accomplished. She is slack in every sense of the word. Non-committal, passive when confronted with her failings, apathetic about which image to be tattooed with, literally shutting down, unwilling to engage in conversation even, seemingly unable to articulate her feelings. Whilst watching this pathetic display of inertia I wondered whether the characters name was a reference to the Hitchcock film of the same, in which Tippi Hedren in the title role, is ‘broken’ by Sean Connery’s Mark Rutland, who considers that Marnie needs to be made passive and agreeable in order to function in society as a woman. The perspective in Funny Ha Ha is not a particularly female one, as the pool of people floating around Marnie all talk and act as though ideas and opinions are not worth having.

It is exactly this excruciating mundanity that has garnered praise for the mumblecore movement. Critics rarely demonstrate whole-hearted enthusiasm for the work of Bujalski, Swanberg, Greta Gerwig and the Duplass brothers, but note warmly, for example that ‘Bujalski's improv approach is gracefully married with a style that is not overly-dramatic, and therefore seems just a hair short of pure documentary’ (Robert Koeller, Variety, 2003). Mumblecore, (a term the filmmakers now dislike) can be at best be seen as being like life, if your life involves being a partially employed, twenty-something graduate living in semi-poverty. The argument against these films being in the slacker genre is the hardworking attitude of the filmmakers, as Andrea Hubert noted in The Guardian back in 2007, ‘In five years, they have produced a total of 14 self-financed films between them’ now Mark and Jay Duplass work with the likes of John C. Riley and Marisa Tomei (Cyrus, 2010), where they transferring their improvisational directorial style to extract comedy from the super-awkwardness of the concerns of middle-aged singles.

For my own part, I have little patience for the so-called realism on display in Bujalski’s work. I liked Joe Swanberg’s Night’s and Weekends (2008), if only for the sweetness of Gerwig’s performance (seen recently playing alongside Ben Stiller in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg, another wandering protagonist film). Wah Do Dem (2009) directed by Ben Chase and Sam Fleischner is a more successful portrait of a slacker, as musician Max (Sean Bones), recently dumped by his girlfriend finds himself literally alone and adrift on a cruise to Jamaica. The film almost loses itself to pointless repetition and an unlikeable central character, but is saved when this slack-jawed slacker gets his comeuppance for being arrogant enough to assume that the worst had already happened to him.

Whereas the mumblecore movement exposes the myth that doing little and having few responsibilities is cool and funny - as seen in the work of Linklater, Jarmusch, Smith, Crowe and of course Pegg, Hynes and Wright, it is exactly because of this that I find it so unengageing. Slackers are at their most entertaining when thrust into action against their base desires, as seen in Greg Araki’s Smiley Face (2007), in which Anna Faris’s Jane eats her flatmates hash cupcakes and has to replace them, and pay back her dealer by 3pm. Even Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green, 2008) managed to be intermittently hilarious for it depiction of stoner’s thrust into an action film.

The idea here being, and in of course Spaced and Wright’s most recent Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (2010) that the inactive only relate to action in a mediated form. The characters only become active in their being removed from such action, i.e. un-real and within a fantasy/pop culture world. Inaction is moderated by a world they cannot in reality inhabit, unlike in mumblecore, where being and doing nothing are the only course, and that’s just plain dull.

For a nice little parody of mumblecore click here

“What would you say if I said I hadn’t seen Evil Dead 2 yet?” - “I’d think you were a cinematic idiot and I’d feel sorry for you.”

Bruce Campbell as Ash.

Saturday night in screen one at the Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh was one of those special film outings: eagerly anticipated, enthusiastically enjoyed and remembered fondly: Sam Raimi’s 1987 horror comedy, Evil Dead 2. I do feel sorry for anyone who wasn’t present to appreciate this fantastic piece of cinema.

The title of this post refers to the scene/passage in High Fidelity when Rob tries to elicit advice from Barry about the likelihood of a person seeing said film after they had said they hadn’t seen it yet, (actually a thinly veiled analogy for whether Rob’s ex-girlfriend will sleep with her new man). During the screening of Evil Dead 2 at the Cameo I couldn’t help thinking of Barry’s description of the film; “it’s so funny, and violent, and the soundtrack kicks fucking ass!” This is indeed true, I can’t think of a better way to summarise the films cult appeal, but the sheer pleasure that myself and the other cinema goers got from seeing it on the big screen (some for the first time, lucky swine’s!) warrants a more in-dept discussion of the many instances of greatness that the film has to offer.

For starters the film was screening at midnight on the eve of Halloween so the large audience in attendance were bound to be the kind who have seen it several times before and maybe own it on DVD, therefore there was a level of familiarity with certain scenes in the film. To begin with the mere presence of Bruce Campbell on screen as reluctant hero Ash, garnered a palpable sense of good will from the crowd, laughing during the re-cap on Evil Dead when he reassures his girlfriend Linda that they will be safe for their romantic evening in an abandoned cabin in the woods. A personal pleasure for me was the transparency of the technology: the magnetic wavy lines visible due to presumably a film-to-video-to-digital transfer. Knowing that this was the best copy available somewhat added to the cult nature of the screening.

For those unfamiliar with Evil Dead 2, I’ll give a brief plot synopsis: man unleashes evil from beyond the grave and defends himself and other temporary inhabitants of a cabin in the woods, from the relentless onslaught of possessed demons and (normally) inanimate objects. This doesn’t sound like it would be particularly funny, but Raimi, Campbell et al managed to strike the right balance between horrific violence and slapstick comedy (more on slapstick later). Raimi literally employed any and every camera technique you can think of to enhance the otherworldly nature of his subject matter. When I say camera movement, I don’t mean simple dolly or zoom shots, but the actually strapping of the camera to ropes, planks and body parts in order to get the right shot. When Ash wakes up, face down in a puddle in the woods at dawn the shot is framed from above, as though observing Ash from the tree. Suddenly the camera spins and pulls away, in a movement that thematically mimics the twisted events of the previous night. Another inspired (or perhaps sadistic) shot is that of Ash being dragged backwards through the forest, being thrown in the path of branches and bushes. For this shot Raimi tied Campbell to the back of a truck facing the camera, and had him literally driven backwards. In order to have the right amount of foliage, Raimi had spare branches thrown at his lead actor; throughout the film Campbell shows amazing willingness to be put through a veritable mill of tough stunts and physical comedy.

One particular scene involving such physical comedy is what has become known to fans as the “Who’s laughing now?!” scene. Set in the kitchen, after Ash’s now possessed hand has attempted to strangle him, it sets about trying to kill him by any means necessary, giggling demonically throughout. The scene is pure slapstick, as Campbell smashes plates off his head and throws himself to the floor. Raimi has expressed his love for The Three Stooges, but the scene also resembles both Laurel and Hardy type pratfalls and Loony Tunes cartoons, demonstrating the films tone perfectly – the exaggerated performance in reaction to horrific events: the logic of, you have to laugh otherwise you’ll cry. The commitment Campbell shows to throwing himself about is on par with Donald O’Connor’s famous clowning in Singin’ in the Rain when he sings ‘Make ‘em Laugh’.

See 'Who's laughing now?!" scene, here.

Evil Dead 2 demonstrates a clear character arc in the transformation of Ash from traditional alpha male hero, to well-adapted demon slayer. As with the classic action film, our protagonist must overcome escalating challenges in order to save the day, and in the process he changes physically. Initially dressed in blue denim shirt and jeans, Bruce Campbell’s prominent chin and dark hair signal his seemingly Hollywood leading man masculinity. Once he has experienced the trauma of killing his demon girlfriend, and taking a chainsaw to his own hand, his appearance is understandably rough around the edges with ripped shirt and bloodied face. Eventually the horror of the evil dead expresses itself more forcibly on him, as he armours himself, replacing his hand with the chainsaw that claimed it, and eventually strapping a sawn off shotgun to his back. The final change comes when Ash is faced with evil made physical, and the shock creates a streak of white hair above his ear. Since the release of Evil Dead 2 and the sequel Army Of Darkness (1992), these different manifestations of Ash have become subjects for collectable dolls, making available to buy: ‘Ash’, ‘Evil Ash’, ‘Medieval Ash’ and ‘S-Mart Ash’, further capitalising on the films cult appeal. The term ‘cult’ is perhaps too big to discuss fruitfully here, but it goes without saying that the screenings time and place seem to confirm its status. Only the fans or extremely curious would venture to the cinema at 11.15pm on a Saturday night to watch a horror-comedy.

Time is a playful element in Evil Dead 2, as Ash sees a figure remarkably similar to himself in the pages of The Book of the Dead, prophesising that he will fall from the sky to save the people of medieval times from the evil that pervades their land. This page from the past predicting Ash’s future means that his adventure won’t be over after evil has been overcome. Instead the audience gets a hint of Army of Darkness at the end of the film as Ash is framed centre - having shot a winged beast out of the sky the armour clad knights cheer him as their saviour, to which Ash’s response is that brilliant movie cliché, the hero’s wail: “Nnoooooooooooooo!”

All this made for pure joy in the cinema that night. A collection of film fans familiar enough to bring a certain amount of participation to the experience: cheers and whoops during the montage of Ash armouring up for a fight, culminating in the much imitated and parodied (see Spaced, TV, Edgar Wright) “Grooovy” line. Just as with the screening of Fred C. Newmayer’s Safety Last! Starring Harold Lloyd at the Filmhouse earlier this year, this was for me, event cinema. The particularity of a single or limited screenings, coupled with an awareness of the rarity of its appearance on the big screen. I couldn’t help thinking of Sontag’s lamentation The Decay of Cinema (1996), an essay in which she decries the increase of television and other viewing options. In it she claims that in order to truly experience a film you have to be ‘kidnapped’ by it, taken over by the size of the screen, the darkness and the communality of the auditorium. This was the feeling I had seeing Evil Dead 2. Despite the obvious special effects: the visible seams in Ted Raimi’s costume as possessed granny Henrietta, the far-from-seamless transition between actor Denise Bixler as Linda and her latex counterpart. None of that was important; in fact it was refreshing not to be watching a CGI heavy, uncanny, overblown farce. Or as Nick Roddick in Sight and Sound recently wrote, about watching Bullit, (Dir, Peter Yates, 1968) ‘The result is far more exciting than the thrill-a-minute movies that have cluttered up this summer’s schedules’.

Next time you see a late night or one-off screening scheduled at your local cinema – actually go to it! Don’t just think about it, do it, you will be rewarded for your enthusiasm for cinema.

Adventures at the London Film Festival

The Nine Muses.

Yuliya Aug as Miron's wife Tanya in Silent Souls.

Last week I boarded the train and headed southwards to England’s bustling capital to check out a selection of films screening at the festival. Choosing films based on the websites description is always a difficult enterprise as even the best recommendations are tainted by the bias of the individual programmers who selected them. They love the films, but will I? Then again, the spirit of a festival is to take a chance and see something you wouldn’t ordinarily see - relish the risk, rather than playing it safe. My choices were based on an attempt to not see American independents; I’d seen a lot of those at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. As much as it pained me turn down the chance of seeing Will Ferrell play it straight in Everything Must Go (Dir, Dan Rush) I was rewarded with some quietly brilliant films. In the end my choices turned out to share similar themes, perhaps a result of the inherent fine-tuning that my tastes have undergone.

Undergoing the festival triple bill is a pleasure that comes around only once in a while for me, so on Friday I opted to start my day at the Vue Leicester Square, wander over to Curzon Mayfair and end at the ICA. First up, a Russian film directed by Aleksei Fedorchenko about the traditions and rituals that have survived from the Merjan folk culture, which emerged at the former Finnish enclave that was incorporated with Russia during the rule of Ivan the Terrible. Silent Souls was ostensibly a road movie, following Miron, the director of a paper factory in Neya, as he and his friend Aist set out to give his wife a traditional burial at the place where they honeymooned. Along for the ride are two buntings, the birds which Aist carries with him on their journey.

Wonderfully paced and beautifully shot, every phase of the films narrative and composition gave primacy to the ritual processes of their mission, (of sorts) to return the body to the water. There was a tenderness to the cinematography that lent itself well to the humanist activity of these two men, carefully carrying out the preparations and ultimate cremation of Miron’s dearly loved wife. Some of these were entertainingly bizarre, such as their tying of string to the pubic hair, as is the custom to prepare a bride for her wedding, others simply showed the respect and preservation of both the Merjan rituals and the integrity of the marital relationship, with it’s emphasis on the coming together of two individuals.

The buntings that Aist carries seemed to serve as a representation of the audience to an extent, quietly observing the rituals of a fading culture and inevitably effecting the actions of the men, just as any observational perspective cannot help but influence the conclusion.

At Curzon Mayfair I saw Love Like Poison, a French film directed by Katell Quillévére about a young woman struggling with the contradictions of her Catholic family, separated parents and burgeoning sexuality. Again, beautifully shot, the film focused on fourteen year-old Anna (Clara Augarde) and from this perspective showed the ill-defined boundaries between youth and adulthood. Much like Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone we Know (2005), the notion of the child as capable of understanding sexuality more competently than the adults was at the fore as Anna encounters both her granddads desire to feel the pride of his handsome youth, and the affection from some-time suitor Pierre (Youen Leboulanger-Gourvil), who politely celebrates Anna’s fast developing body. Despite the familiarity of the themes explored by the film, the directors assured direction ensured a freshness to the narrative, and though there was perhaps too obvious a connection to Little Miss Sunshine (2006) in it’s portrayal of the anarchic grandfather exerting a last rebellion through his granddaughters public reading of a dirty poem, this only exposed the cultural differences, however maintaining the comedic affect.

Lastly on Friday evening at the ICA I saw Sandcastle, a film about a family in Singapore, fractured and coming to terms with personal and political history. Directed by Boo Junfeng, the film centres around En (Joshua Tan) an 18 year-old awaiting military conscription, who discovers the hidden alternative past about his parents, when his ageing grandparents hint that his late father was more radical than his repressed mother has led him to believe. Prior to the screening, actor Joshua Tan introduced the film and asked the audience to consider the film more as a coming of age tale than being deliberately political. Nevertheless the emotions felt by En as he discovers more about his own identity are effectively balanced with the gradual revelations of his parents’ involvement with anti-conformist protests. The film is also very touching and funny, particularly about the generational gap that can often come with regard to old and new technology. En’s look of disgust at the PC his Mother’s boyfriend buys him while he’s waiting for his Mac to be repaired brilliantly captured the sense of the frustrated adolescent, who feels like they know more than their elders.

In parallel with En’s journey of self-discovery is that of his mother’s (played by Elena Chia) facing up to the person she once was, and the new strict etiquette that she lives by. The scenes between mother and grandmother were particularly affecting, as the younger generation learns to let go a little, and that responsibility doesn’t have to be a burden based on tradition and respectability. I really enjoyed the tone of the film, which was meditative at times, and paced to gradually reveal what En sets out to discover.

My fourth and final film at the festival was The Nine Muses, perhaps an essay film, though it could be considered docu/fiction too. The unclassifiable nature of the film was one of its many pleasures. Directed by John Akomfrah, this was a re-telling of the mass migration to post-war Britain, combining elements of archive film, quotation from The Odyssey, literary readings (as voice-over) from such sources as Beckett, Dickinson and Shakespeare, music extracts that ranged from pop, through tribal to classical, and newly shot footage that symbolically demonstrated the feelings of migrants on their arrival in Britain. Slow in pace, but tightly edited, the layering of images, voice and music conveyed the overall theme of loss, explored via memory. Akomfrah, who attended the screening and discussed it afterward, described his reasons for the using the extract of ‘The Nine Muses’ from The Odyssey. Intending to weave the narrative of the migrant’s journey, Akomfrah argued, based on not only testimony’s gleaned during research but his own family’s that this journey is literal, emotional and figurative as the individual adjusts to the new climate, culture and questions of assimilation or appropriation of new norms and values. I felt that the decision to create a tapestry of cultural influences combined with archive television (which included interviews with migrants and angry British natives) was a more meaningful and lyrical method, than a straight documentary might have been.

Akomfrah talked of his desire to understand and make use of the literary texts that had come to influence him, saying that he loved Beckett, but why? And how had this influenced his previous work? With its strong focus on memory and trauma, The Nine Muses clearly answers these questions, demonstrating the fluidity and variety of culture and influence.

Overall, I enjoyed my time at LFF; somehow I managed to see four films of high quality that expressed to me the important themes of memory, family, time and place.

A Slacker's Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World.

Above, L-R: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Johhny Simmons, Ellen Wong, Alison Pill, Mark Webber.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010) Director: Edgar Wright. Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin, Alison Pill, Jason Schwartzman.

Edgar Wright continues his focus on the slacker as protagonist in this pastiche of video games, the Indie music scene, super hero movies, and generally everything pop cultural. Just as Tim and Daisy in Wright’s Spaced (TV series, 1999-2001) were twenty-something’s, portrayed as lazy, partially employed, preoccupied with ‘Scooby Doo’ style adventures referencing everything from Pulp Fiction to Grange Hill, so too do Scott and his friends do very little between each bout of battle of the bands, with their own Sex Bob-Omb and as Scott faces each of his opponents. The plot is simple: Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is twenty-three, between jobs and living in Toronto with his gay roommate, Wallis Wells (Keiran Culkin). He’s dating a seventeen-year-old catholic schoolgirl called Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) but really wants to abandon his ‘fake’ nearly platonic relationship for the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers, (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). His problem is that in order to do so, he must defeat her seven evil exes, who are all intent on destroying Scott and controlling the future of Ramona’s love life.

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original graphic novels, on which the film is based, are witty and energetic, drawn with an awareness of Manga-style naivety and Indie-comic book cool. The film follows the aesthetics of the books to the letter, mostly mimicking exact frames and panels, in some scenes the transfer from page to screen adds little, as in the ownership diagram in Scott and Wallis’s apartment, (though it must be said that adding little isn’t to be taken negatively, it simply demonstrates the brilliance of O’Malley’s work). In other scenes Wright really displays the seamlessness of the adaptation to the screen medium, the fight sequences are deliriously entertaining, blending video game choreography and bombastic cartoon-like action (see Scott being thrown 100 metres in to air by Lucas Lee (Chris Evans). Fans of Cera might be tiring of his repeat performances as the shy, awkward, nerdy but nice guy in everything from Arrested Development to Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, but in Scott Pilgrim Cera’s character has an unintentionally oblivious edge, and he sticks closely to O’Malley’s creation. Scott is not a perfect gentlemen, he’s lazy and lacks compassion for the relationships he has left behind including the drummer in his own band, Kim (Alison Pill, continuing to be impressive since Pieces of April), his ultimate victory comes from realising how he has wronged the people in his life. That sounds very saccharine when summarised in such a way but Wright avoids sentimentality through the clever distance that the film’s intertextuality provides. In fact, despite the call to action that Ramona’s exes provide for Scott, it is arguable that his innate slackerdom remains intact even as each victory is won, by the use of exaggerated video game fantasy sequences, which literally transforms Scott and his friends from ordinary inactive young adults into kick-ass super fighters. By defining action in these terms, both O’Malley and Wright have continued to characterise both the 20^th and 21^st century twenty-something as entrenched within the pop-culture they view and participate in. Just as in Spaced, Tim’s paranoid anxiety over his ex-girlfriend is played-out as a Resident Evil style zombie shoot-em up, or Daisy’s futile efforts to remain gainfully employed take her to a restaurant kitchen institutionalised by the Nurse Ratched-like manager, Scott moves from semi-active, bass-playing platonic boyfriend of a high-schooler, to hero of the beat-em up, collecting coins as each evil ex is defeated. The problems of the video game playing slacker can only be solved when made equivalent to the pop-culture that they absorb.

All this is of course thrillingly entertaining, right down to the smaller comic touches, such as Julie Powers (Aubrey Plaza) ability to self-censor with an black cross appearing over her mouth when her anger at Scott elevates to cursing. Each of the actors is excellent, but Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong and Anna Kendrick (as Scott’s sister, Stacey, rated ‘T’ for teen) deserve special mention for pretty much stealing the show from Cera.

Scott Pilgrim Vs the World is gleefully funny, with Wright proving that further to Hot Fuzz, he is more than capable of handling proper action and shit.

Dear Cinema

I haven't blogged in a while, recent essay deadlines have kept me away from sprawling notes about the cinema, but tonight I write because I feel impelled to.
My reading of late has tumbled into the subject of cinephilia, having looked at Susan Sontag's The Decay of Cinema, reading Nick James's editorial in Sight and Sound this month seemed unusually prescient to my studies in general, one of those moments in research when you feel strangely clued in to current debate. I've also been thinking (and talking) a lot about choice. Mark Cousins recent column on the subject in the aforementioned magazine posed the question of how we are ever to decide what to watch, when so much is available to us.
If cinephiles aren't 'as special as we like to think we are' (James) and we have too much choice, is one cinematic experience (dare I use the word) de-valued in relation to the next? I may say that I saw a rare print of a Renoir, but that will be countered just as quickly by "ah, but did you see The Limits of Control?" How can I begin to convey to you how wonderful it was to see Safety Last! at the Filmhouse tonight?
This is what I really want to talk about. I headed out to the cinema with the Edinburgh sunset behind me and a spring in my step. I always get a self-conscious feeling when I walk about listening to music on my Walkman, I'm aware that tuning in to my own private soundtrack is akin to scoring my own movie in real- time, but as everyone seems to have this experience I'll let that go for the moment. I strode up the hill to the cinema in anticipation of seeing a classic of the silent age, and having bought my ticket, chatted to the usher and found my seat I looked back to check out the audience and the projectionist's booth.
The film has been restored from an old print and it was the new 35mm print that I saw projected in Cinema 1 tonight. Evi (the usher) told me that she doesn't like the digi-beta copy they have been screening in the smaller theatre, and this information further enhanced my excitement (or simply the myth) of the film experience.
Having seen not enough silent films and never having seen a Harold Lloyd comedy, I could only imagine how my expectations would be met. Knowing that Lloyd et al did all their own stunts, no wires (that I could see) and no stunt doubles was simply amazing to see. The climatic climb up a sky scraper with the famous clock scene was remarkable, and the audience was laughing and letting out sighs of fear with me! Harold Lloyd had such an expressive face, and each gag is so well timed, I don't want to gush too much so I'll just say it was a joy.

This is the crux of how I'm feeling at the moment, I don't feel I can put my finger on what it was to be in the cinema tonight, watching that particular film, call it magic if you like (maybe I will come to that) but when everyone clapped as the curtains closed on the screen, I felt present with my fellow film fans, and elated that each of us was still smiling and chuckling. Maybe you have had a similar experience, when you really felt the communality of the film experience? I had the same thing seeing Singin' in the Rain in the same screen and there's really nothing like it.
I'm glad I chose to see Safety Last! tonight, it was a tough decision, but it paid off, the reward of collective 'cine-love' as Sontag would call it. I wonder when I'll feel the same way again?

A Post about The Host.

I have been (along with my fellow students) going through a process of articulating the why's and how's of our chosen areas of research. In fine tuning a proposal for my dissertation I have become frustrated in continually 'pointing' towards theories and work done by others, that I am not yet an authority on. The question that leaps from that is of course, will I ever be an authority on anything?! In being bogged down with this I sought solace in the Cinema, the place that is of course the inspiration and fascination that fuels all my interests and passion to begin with. I went to see Up in the Air (Dir, Jason Reitman) on Tuesday afternoon, a time of day I particularly like to be in the cinema because the auditorium is usually very quiet and I get to be alone with the screen. It's a strange kind of worship, one that I related very much to Terrance Davies poetic description of screen in his film Of Time and the City (though the cinema is a presence in most of his previous work too).
I don't really want to discuss the film; I liked it, though I can place it in a category of 'epiphany' movies when the central protagonist has some revelation about the way they should be living their life. In this case demonstrated with cliché and musical montage! Being in the cinema though - that was lovely, like going home and getting into slouchy clothes. Each screen is different though and I was in cinema 1 at Cineworld, which is laid out as a traditional half collosseum, so that when I sat in the middle seat half way down the rows I was facing straight on with the screen, unlike in other cinemas when some area of a stage or exit sign can be seen in relation to the screen. Relating directly to it's surface, I could see a few scratches on the screen too and this was something that almost improved the experience for me. Far from ruining the illusion that is highly sought after in film, the imperfection of the projected experience had the effect of bringing me closer to the mechanics of the cinema, appreciating all the combined elements that comntribute to the place I prize so highly.
This is a comfort, as I seemed to conclude, a year and a half after one of my film professors asked us new students whether we thought studying film will ruin it for us; that in fact I feel enriched by a more full awareness of all that encompasses the ' thing' that is film.

With this in mind, films I have watched since last Sunday;
The White Ribbon. Michael Haneke
Histoire(s) Du Cinema. Jean-Luc Godard.
An American Werewolf in London. John Landis
Sexy Beast. Jonathan Glazer
The Host (Gwoemul). Bong Joon-Ho.
Amadeus (Directors Cut). Milos Foreman.
28 Weeks Later. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
Funny People. Judd Apatow.

Sexy Beast and The Host I watched as a double bill on Wednesday night, the former being a film I had intended to watch for a long time and the latter being one of my favorite films. centers around the Park family, and particularly Gan- Du, whose daughter Hyun-Seo is captured by the chemically mutated beast that emerges from the Han river one sunny afternoon. Unlike other monster movies that build tension by leaving the revealing of the creature to the second act, in The Host, the camera loves the giant tadpole/slug beast, following it as craches around on land terrorising people as the laze on the grass enjoying the sunshine.
Gan-Du is first introduced to us, asleep in the food kiosk owned by his father. He is a slacker, lazy and inept, his hippyish blond hair marking him out as a non-conformist to the action of everyday life. It was with this perscpective that I re-veiwed The Host on Wednesday, focusing on the characterisation of Gan-Du, his father, brother and sister.
Despite being portryed as lazy in the first instant, Gan-Du is quick to act when the beast begins to trample over the peaceful inhabitants of the riverside. Alongside an American man, he picks up slates and a traffick sign to attack the creature, even after he witnesses its ferocious roar as it devours both an overweight civilian and the American hero.
It is the tension between action/inaction and comedy/tragedy that makes the film such a captivating watch. Gan-Du's brother, Nam-il is derided by their father for failing to acheive success despite being college educated, something that Nam-il has a sense of bitterness about also, "I sacrificed my youth for the democracy of this country and they won't even give me a job".
Combined with this, Gan-Du's sister, Nam-Joo is a competitve archer; we see Gan-Du and Hyun-Seo watching her compete on television before the creature attack. Her problem however, is the inability to let go the arrow in time to make a winning shot; she leaves the competition with a bronze medal, for being too hestitant to act. Hie-Bong, the father, attempts to uphold some sense of honour, even if this expresses itself in trying to bribe officials in order to escape and rescue Hyun-Seo.
The family's ecape from quaratine is set to jovial acordian music, a tone of farce and comedy, rather than tense action scene, in keeping with a previous scene in which, greiving at the loss of Hyun-Seo, the family collapses on the floor wailing and weeping. It's tragic, but then somehow it all becomes hilarious, as though one kind of excess simply mutates into another.

In the final scenes, our slacker and inactive family members, now separated are called into action for a showdown with the beast. Each of them is allowed to overcome their previous failings; action instead of inaction and all fuelled by their collective incentive to avenge Hyun-Seo.