Tribeca Drive-In

Tribeca Film Festival

The course kicked off with LOCO’s founders Denise Hicks and Jonathan Wakeham explaining the ethos of the festival: to not only champion the craft of filmed comedy, but also to foster the next generation of British comedy talent. With Locollege events set to continue all year round, it is this grass roots approach that marks LOCO as a festival to watch, understanding as it does the need to create a space for filmmakers to not only exhibit their work, but to come together to learn, to share and to experiment. Whilst the subjectivity of what exactly makes good comedy is a potential minefield for those looking to teach it, Locollege wisely concentrated on sharing practical experiences from a wide range of professionals, whilst offering all important networking opportunities.

Straight away the Locollege students were confronted with the comedy powers that be – the TV commissioners – with a panel made up of Shane Allen (Channel 4), Lucy Lumsden (Sky) and Simon London (BBC), and chaired by Paul Jackson (Eyeworks UK). As the experts shared examples of how recent comedy successes like The Inbetweenersand Peep Show were radically changed from their very humble beginnings, they also related a few horror stories of how difficult the transition between live stand up acts to sitcom series can sometimes be. It quickly became clear that there is no single definitive route to being commissioned but budding comedy writers should make sure they have a vision of the sustainability of their material.

Other topics covered included crafting comedy characters, with insights from Emma Frost (Shameless) and writer/producer Adrian Mackinder, and the advantages of working in different formats such as short film, TV, online and feature films, featuring panelists director/writer Ben Blaine and collaborators Abi Blackmore and Cavan Clerkin whose short film Blind Date was an hysterical and successful result of ‘just doing it’ thinking. An afternoon session presented by Domino Publishing revealed the intricacies of adding music to comedy with a focus on soundtracking Marc Wootton’s La La Land and an example of live scoring by David Lowe. The next day saw a minor set back with the unavailability of a guest panelist, but the LOCO team deftly improvised a pitching session with a few selected course attendees relating their projects to a panel of experts in under 3 minutes. What could have been an unfortunate cancellation was turned into an inspirational event that gave informative tips on how best to present comedic endeavours.

The rest of the second day covered developing comedy features with insights from actor/writer Alice Lowe (Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace) on her upcoming film Sightseers. That film’s director Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List) took part in the next panel, which focused on directing actors, and offered the greatest laughs of the course. Through the anecdotes, attendees gained fascinating insights about handling corpsing actors, the advantages of improvisation and how to hone their material. As Mark Gill talked about his current comedy short, The Voorman Problem, his ingenuity and ability to gain the talents of Martin Freeman and Tom Hollander solely through the quality of its script was truly inspirational. The final part of Locollege examined the look of comedy by talking to experienced production designers, art directors and editors, revealing how they all help transform a script to an actual piece of filmed entertainment.

By covering a wide range of subjects, Locollege could have exhausted its attendees, but instead, it became clear that each facet of comedy writing is a potential tool when writing a script or pitching a project. Offering a stimulating opportunity to budding comedy writers to engage with experts, Locollege also allowed its participants room to discuss their own ideas with like-minded individuals, gaining confidence in their material. With an emphasis on collaboration, the festival organisers hope to inspire attendees to work together, establishing a LOCO Pro membership scheme and with the goal of Locollege students returning next year to present their own films in the festival. Watch this space: the next comedy genius might well be raised by LOCO.

LoCo will be running more comedy courses throughout the year http://locofilmfestival.com/locollege/

This is what we said about it:

Cinematic, poetic and subtly interactive, Insitu explores the
way architects, artists, city planners, philosophers and artists intervene
in public space.

Both linear and non-linear, Insitu is a city poem that you can move through
and explore, interrogating efforts to breath life back into our cities and
shared public spaces.

The interactivity is surprising, playful and doesn’t distract from the
narrative experience and the production values are excellent across the
board, from the clear navigation and experience design to the video and
sound quality.

Insitu delivers both technically and creatively with a clear artistic vision
and demonstrates how new technologies in the hands of a filmmaker can be a
truly cinematic experience.

The other nominations went to Barcode.tv and Beyond 9/11. You can explore all the projects on the Doclab site which is a real treat and it’s well worth spending some time investigating everything from interactive infographics (Sexperience), an innovative iPad platform (Condition One), an ambitious and groundbreaking immersive web experience (One Millionth Tower) and a project that started when a bunch of old friends reconnected on Facebook (Goa Hippy Tribe).

If you’d like to read more about the emerging field of web and interactive documentaries have a look at the first few chapters from Mattieu Lietaert’s book on Web Docs

When it was announced that David Cronenberg was to direct the screen adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play The Talking Cure, there was a palpable buzz in the air. Given Cronenberg’s history of producing idiosyncratic and rigorously intellectual films with a taste for the psychoanalytic, the idea that he was to venture forth into the combative relationship between Freud and Jung was a tantalisingly sexy prospect. Set in turn of the century Vienna, A Dangerous Method details the relationship between psychoanalysists Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and a disturbed young woman named Sabina, who will later become the renowned female psychoanalysist Sabina Speilrein. When Jung begins an affair with the girl, the fallout ruptures the relationship between the two men and sets them both on different ideological paths; Freud in favour of a treatment rooted in scientific method whilst Jung drifts towards a counsel of hypothetical mysticism.

Given all we know about the film there was hope of this giving rise to a jamboree of sexual peccadilloes, strained Germanic accents, death and an air of haughty perversion.  The question that must be asked then, is, what in Christ’s name went wrong? The fact that I was unable to determine whether this was in fact a comedy or not seems as good a place to start as any. Admittedly I laughed: lots in fact, but the stoic, hardened faces of its cast whilst delivering its diluted crib-notes on psychoanalysis and shamanism seemed at odds with the bountiful laughter occurring around me.  That said, Cronenberg has always garnished even his most disturbing work with a perverse sense of humour, however if that same fact applies to A Dangerous Method it would appear that Cronenberg’s idea of comedy has regressed to that of a child learning about the birds and the bees.  The other fairly major stumbling block is that for a film so concerned with the concept of sex, is how unbelievably impotent the whole affair feels. Apart from Sabina getting herself royally spanked by an over eager Jung, the film barely visualises the topic that get Freud and Jung all hot and heavy in the first place, instead restricting it to the world of musty drawing rooms where the smell of sex is nowhere near as potent as the smoke emanating from Freud’s phallic cigar.

Despite the initial guffaws that surrounded the casting of Nordic cave-dweller Viggo Mortensen as the elderly, bearded Freud, he’s actually one of the only actors to leave the film with their dignity intact, instead he seemingly has a blast subverting everyone’s expectations by delivering every line with a cock of the head and an ironic twinkle in his eye. Keira Knightley as Sabina fares much worse, when we first see her; screaming and contorting her body with such vigorous abandon she seems in fear of wrenching the whole film from its sprockets and cart-wheeling off down the road with it. Strangely though it’s Michael Fassbinder as the central figure Jung who comes off worst. Although not as violently grating as Knightley, at least the screen is somewhat illuminated by her schizophrenic energy, with Fassbinder the film comes to a stop; not so much a performance but a black hole of inertia that threatens to entropy everything in its path. After his charismatic turn in Shame it really is profoundly stunning that the man has managed to produce a performance of such claustrophobic tedium.  Finally, there is Vincent Cassel whose only purpose seems to be to demonstrate the compulsive, hedonistic pleasure principle (perfect casting) of Freud’s most famous concept. We know this because he uses cocaine and talks about his many, many mistresses; he couldn’t be more obvious if he had ‘id’ branded across his forehead. At least he has the decency to disappear within the first half an hour.

It really is incredibly perplexing how awful this film is at times, Cronenberg has definitely had his misfires over the years, but it’s certainly rare for a director of such regard to sink to such amateurish depths within only a short space of time, although History of Violence was serviceable; displaying moments of wit and genuine danger, Eastern Promises heralded a dramatic downturn in his talents and with A Dangerous Method now in tow the future looks less than promising. With his next film also on the horizon; an adaptation of Don Delilo’s Cosmopolis, we can only hope that the safety net of familiar postmodernist territory can shield him from the looming sense of castration that effectively killed off the careers of Brian de Palma and Paul Verehoven.

The Descendants is the latest film from indie kingpin Alexander Payne. Whereas directors such as Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach have snared the market for disenfranchised New York youth, Payne has been slowly chipping away at securing the thirty to forty demographic with his brand of ever so slightly acerbic elegies to Middle America.  However, with his latest film, also his first in seven years, the bile seems to have evaporated and instead been replaced by a mawkish, touchy-feely sensibility that feels worlds away from the razor sharp satire of Citizen Ruth and Election. Payne has been in danger of this for years with About Schmidt and Sideways both heralding a slow decline into tug-at-your-heartstrings poignancy. However, here he’s made the full slippery body plunge into sickly sweet tedium.

As always with Payne, the story is very rarely the point; his films generally contrive to get depressed sad-sacks journeying on a voyage of self discovery, whilst enduring a series of slightly embarrassing faux-pas’.  His last three have followed this formula to a tee. This time George Clooney stars as Matt King a land baron in Hawaii who is negotiating the selling off of ancestral land. When his wife is killed in a freak boating accident, his life is thrown into disarray by the revelation that his wife had been having a long term affair. Sinking into his own ‘slough of despond’ Matt sets off with his daughters in tow in order to confront his wife’s lover.

To condemn The Descendents as a bad film would admittedly be unfair. The performances are uniformly strong, especially Clooney who it seems is now impossible of turning in an anything less than charismatic performance and he’s sturdily supported by Matthew Lillard, Judy Greer and tween star Shailene Woodley in a variety of heartfelt turns.  The other admirable strength of the film is in its depiction of Hawaiian suburbia and its decision to not focus too heavily on its postcard bothering beaches and tourist traps. The problems arise however whenever the film dares to express an element of cynicism or wit; all is glossed over with some twangy Hawaiian guitar and a tear-duct popping voiceover that leans heavily on cliché.  The film’s cruellest and best laugh comes early on when Matt intentionally upsets his dead wife’s friend by reminding her of the makeover she gave her whilst in hospital ‘you were putting lipstick on a corpse!’ Other than that though, the film is relatively dry, instead, offering up a ‘Cameron Crowe’ style view of family life, where the youngsters are cute, sassy and irritatingly precocious.

The most irritating problem though is that the whole smug affair is smothered in a Teflon-coated layer of professionalism that disarms you until long after the credits have rolled. On a technical level the film is competently inoffensive but Payne has never been one for a fragrant aesthetic anyway. The characters act in the way we expect them to act; where even its moments of subversion have been bought wholesale from his earlier better films. In an About Schmidt recap, Matt’s eldest daughter Alexandra is involved with a dumb yet happy-go-lucky lunkhead whose only purpose is to spout stoner wisdom and later on reveal his inevitable hidden depths (His mum’s dead and he likes chess).What this amounts to though is a transitory feeling of nourishment; where beat for beat the emotional cues are satisfyingly predictable and we leave the cinema as sedate as Hindu cows.  Whereas Payne once picked at America’s rot he’s now become the purveyor of status-quo morals and ideals, where the sanctity of the family is unimpeachable and as long as you can forgive and love one another everything will turn out hunky-dory.

And the Oscar for best film goes to..?

Carnage might be the most efficient film Roman Polanski has ever made. Sprinting in at a nimble eighty-one minutes, it contains only four main speaking roles (minus a few phone conversations) and apart from the opening and closing shots is contained entirely within the fussy confines of an upper-middle class New York apartment.  Based on Yasmina Reza’s award-winning comedy The God of Carnage , the film concerns itself with two couples who have come together to sort out an altercation that has occurred between their children.  One child has hit another in the face with a stick and now the victims’ parents, played by Jodie Foster and John. C. Reilly, have requested a meeting with the parents of the aggressor, played by Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz. However what begins as an attempt to calmly resolve the situation quickly descends into a firestorm of frayed nerves and accusations; new allegiances are formed and broken, tempers are lost and vomit is spewed.

It’s easy to see why Polanski was attracted to the project. In his films the apartment is often a symbol of security and assurance, which explains the hysteria that occurs when those spaces are violently compromised. Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant all deal with the horrors of urban-life and form a loose ‘Apartment Trilogy.’ Whilst The Pianist is basically about a man who moves house a lot. However, despite working with his regular team of technical collaborators, the film bares little of his authorial stamp and admittedly is all the better for it.  His most recent film, The Ghost; liked by many, felt like a by numbers attempt to recreate the ghoulish paranoia of his heyday. By paring down and focusing on the verbal pyrotechnics, he’s discarded the visual excess that has occasionally plagued him since the 1980s.

Where Carnage really excels though is in its performances, with Winslet, Waltz, Foster and Reilly all relishing the opportunity to scream, pout, berate, sulk, snipe and generally be on their most outrageous behaviour. What start off as minor blips in their failure to see eye to eye escalates into full blown ideological warfare, with topics as innocuous as mobile phones and pear cobbler suddenly taking on sinister properties under the weight of dogmatic tension. It’s both Waltz and Foster though who are most diametrically opposed. Foster perfectly embodies the holier than thou, bleeding heart liberal whose interest in Darfur provides her with a self-serving moral superiority. Whilst Waltz’s smug mobile-phone bothering lawyer couldn’t give a cobblers as to the outcome of what he perceives as a pointless endeavour. He even gives name, ‘The God of Carnage’ to what he perceives as the true order of things; that conflict and aggression will always win out in the end. What Carnage does well is to not appeal to any specific ideology, at no point is any character seen to have gained the upper hand; they’re all too ridiculous for that. Instead Polanski allows the camera to act as a passive observer filming predominantly in medium/long shot, allowing its characters to dig their own graves.

There are problems though. Often the motivation for keeping both couples locked together mutual hatred feels contrived and the same opposing ideologies are hammered down again and again and again. However the sprightly momentum, barrage of inventive insults and sense of impending violence does mean the film doesn’t outstay its welcome.  Also seeing actresses like Foster and Winslet, who are often cast for their sense of propriety, descend into childish name calling is in fact a perverse treat.  How often do you see Kate Winslet, drunkenly flailing across a room, whilst screaming, ‘I’M GLAD MY SON BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR SON.’?

Shame the latest film from Turner Prize winner artist turned filmmaker Steve McQueen, has slinked into town on a wave of tremendous hype and prestige.  Having gone down a dirty little treat in Toronto and been awarded the Volpi Cup at Venice for Michael Fassbinder’s all too revealing performance, Shame dares to look at the sheet stained world of sex addiction. Whilst drug dependency has often been a source of dramatic tension in cinema, sex addiction is often presented in comedic fashion. Probably on the assumption that sex addiction looks a lot more fun than the grubby world of infected needles and constipated heroin sufferers. See John Water’s A Dirty Shame, Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus and Michael Douglas for further details.

McQueen along with flavour of the month screenwriter Abi Morgan have attempted to turn this preconceived notion on its head by showing how sex addiction, like any other habit, is a mechanical, compulsive process that infects and corrupts the day to day life of its sufferer. When we first see Fassbinder’s Brandon, lying in bed strung out and corpse-like, the repetitious nature of his affliction is conveyed through an expertly crafted montage that conflates three separate mornings into a series of recurring actions and movements. When his emotionally damaged sister Cissy turns up at his door, played by a doe-eyed Carey Mulligan; Brandon’s self-serving bubble of hardcore pornography, angry sex and even angrier masturbation tumbles beyond his grasp.

Coming off the acclaim of his debut film Hunger, Shame has a lot to live up to and on many accounts surpasses his beautiful yet overwrought debut. Whereas Hunger displayed an autistic devotion to its bruised, blunt imagery that bordered on the fascistic, Shame, although imaginative in its composition, allows its subjects space to breathe and doesn’t place them at the mercy of its aesthetic.  However McQueen is still partial to the odd visual cliché, which prevents Shame from being wholly satisfying. Brandon’s apartment for example is dumbly metaphorical; a clinical white cube that points to his shallow lack of emotion.  Also the constant use of reflective surfaces are as tired as Fassbinder’s bed springs.

Shame’s standout qualities though are the film’s central performances. Fassbinder has never been better and proves he is still an imaginative and instinctual performer. What could have ended up as Bateman-lite vacuity is negated by Fassbinder’s natural charm, which contrasts nicely with the predatorial desperation of his night time activities. There is one standout sequence towards the climax (ho ho) of the film that surely won him the Volpi Cup, where Brandon engaged in a threesome, climaxes. His face contorts under golden light into a paradoxical display of conflicting emotions; pleasure, guilt and of course shame.  It’s a tremendously spine-chilling moment of mania that borders on the religious. Mulligan is impressive, yet her role is underwritten and a little too much like the free-spirited, blousy stereotype we have come to expect all damaged women of fiction to be.  Many have written about her, ‘devastating’ pared down performance of ‘New York, New York’ however I personally found it to be emotionally unjustified and a little too pointedly sentimental to truly work as the teary-eyed showstopper that many claim it is. Both though should be acclaimed on the revealing nature of their performances; the sex, which is both frequent and graphic and will undoubtedly score the dreaded NC 17 rating in the US, does actually serve to compliment and further the film’s narrative. Only one scene proves clumsy, where Brandon in the midst of a mental breakdown stumbles desperately into a gay club, which is not only offensive for its visual clichés of bearded, leather types writhing under a red light, but also in its implication that homosexual lifestyles are representative of hitting rock bottom.

Whilst Shame is undoubtedly a tough film, it’s both brave and unflinchingly honest and whilst it’s occasionally immature in its staging, especially in the scenes depicting Brandon’s vapid work life, it’s also the work of a director who is certainly on the road to success. With two unique and honest films under his belt, for Steve McQueen, just like Brandon’s libido, the only way is up.

Take Shelter is the second feature from director Jeff Nichols which has already acquired a fair amount of hype in the UK after its well received screenings at both Sundance and Cannes; where it won the Critics Week Grand Prize.  The film stars Michael Shannon, whose reptilian features and cracked southern drawl (think Buffalo Bill a la Silence of the Lambs) have secured him the role of Hollywood’s latest psychopath du jour (next seen as General Zod in the latest Superman reboot Man of Steel).

The film deals with the plight of Curtis, a local construction worker whose simple, but blessed family life is rudely interrupted by a series of increasingly nightmarish and apocalyptic visions. As Curtis begins to unravel; increasingly paranoid and estranged from his family he renovates the abandoned storm shelter in the backyard in order to prepare for the oncoming storm.

Where the film excels most regularly is in the ambiguity surrounding Curtis’ visions; which range from angry, swirling, tornados on the horizon to sinister figures moving around the house. As an audience we are often in the dark as to whether Curtis’ is at the mercy of some intelligent higher power, God possibly but Curtis’ lack of conviction helps deny any specific religious reading. Or whether his psychosis is a little closer to home; as in the hereditary effects of his mothers own schizophrenia. The film also cleverly shifts its perspective whilst the hallucinations are occurring, alternating between a subjective and objective viewpoint that helps to undermine a singular reading. The highlight though is Shannon who is masterful. In a performance that could have descended into anguished histrionics is actually remarkably subtle; spending most of the film with a crumpled, hang-dog expression that ever so often erupts into Vesuvian rage. One sequence in particular, where Curtis berates his friends and family at a community dinner is compelling for its fury as much as its sadness: a man finally descending into the void.  Plaudits though should also be extended to the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain as his long-suffering wife and Kathy Baker contributes an understated cameo as Curtis’ mother.

Where the film suffers though is in its denouement, as the film attempts to have its cake and eat it by trying to offer a conclusive triumph over adversity ending, whilst also wanting to provide food for thought with an all too obvious twist. Twists only work when they show a new dimension to the preceding events, that the answer was there all along. Here the twist ultimately negates and renders the journey up until this point as strangely impotent.

This Must Be the Place, the latest release from Il Divo director Paolo Sorrentino, exists paradoxically as one of the best, most refreshing, films of the year, whilst simultaneously displaying such a perverse disregard for taste, logic and convention that it’s surprising how well its exceptionally disparate parts hold together.

Seemingly influenced by David Byrne’s directorial début True Stories ( the evidence being that both films share an idiosyncratic view of brash, primary coloured Americana, the Talking Heads title song and Byrne appearing in a cameo role as himself), This Must Be the Place tells the story of Cheyenne; played by a fright-wigged, squeaky-voiced (about an octave higher then I Am Sam)  Sean Penn. A Goth-rocker, who after the suicide of two teenage fans has undergone a twenty-year, self imposed exile in the recesses of suburban Dublin. He spends his days, staring slack-jawed at Jamie Oliver, awkwardly shunting around his manor and fretting about why his house has turned into a post-modernist nightmare. The word ‘CUISINE’ is humorously etched with neon back light on the wall of his granite grey kitchen. Paralysed with depression and unable to engage with anyone other than teenage fan Mary and his permanently good-natured, fire-fighting, wife (!?), played by an open-heartedly chipper Frances McDormand, Cheyenne attempts to give new meaning to his flaccid existence by attempting to hunt down the SS officer who had tormented his recently deceased father whilst imprisoned at Auschwitz.

Those of you anticipating a Troma styled ‘Robert Smith vs Klaus Barbe’ though will unfortunately be extremely disappointed. Indebted to the meandering, episodic narratives of Wim Wenders, Cheyenne’s odyssey is more a rogue’s gallery of small town whimsy; a through the looking glass of Midwestern life, than an exploitative exercise in dangerously near the knuckle quirkiness. In fact, the films dramatic left-turn into Nazi hunting is concluded with an even more surprising elegiac grace note, rather than the anticipated violence that slowly seeps into Cheyenne’s pursuit. Staying on the right side of indulgent and saturated with eye-popping primary colours, and rich, clear sky, Ed Ruscha terrains, it expresses a sheer, unadulterated joy in its swooping, hyperactive camera-work and off-kilter framing. One sequence in particular that features the aforementioned Mr Byrne is simultaneously one of the most heartbreaking yet rapturous scenes committed to 21 century celluloid.

The sticking point, upon which the film will undoubtedly live or die, is in Penn’s utterly bewildered (and bewildering) performance. Unlike anything he’s ever done before, Cheyenne is an absurd creation, yet, like the miracle that he is, functions perfectly on screen. Brimming with vulnerability, slyness, humour and anger, every half-croaked word, fey gesture or flick of the hair, concurrently contains all of these contradictory emotions. Supported by an excellent cast including Judd Hirsch and road-movie extraordinaire Harry Dean Stanton, These Must Be the Place is refreshingly bold film-making; passionate, achingly beautiful, idiosyncratic (yet sidestepping the ubiquitous ‘Q’ word),  that instils in me the belief that in cinema, not all stones have been left unturned.