OHMYGOD. Only 10 days, 21 hours, 37 minutes, and 56 seconds until it’s released in the UK (well, the day that it’s released).
That is all I have to say.
Jenn
Interview with Warwick alumni Martin Baker, who is now Head of Commercial Affairs at Channel 4, with some useful tips on how to break into the media industry.
Enjoy!
Steff
Gregory Peck is an outlaw. His reputation is legendary. 13 recognised kills to his name. The fastest hand in the West. So why not stay an outlaw? Because the chance of salvation from the love of a good woman and a small boy is too big an opportunity to let go.
Originally achieving some sort of semblance of fame as the singer-guitarist of ’80s alternative band Pop Will Eat Itself, Clint Mansell is today the man I will happily and enthusiastically call the best film score composer working today. Born in Coventry in 1963, Mansell’s work as an indie musician revealed a spirit keen to explore new ground, encompassing pop, hip-hop, electronica and rock over their 10 year existence from from ’86 to ’96.
After the band members went their separate ways, Mansell was approached by young filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to score his debut feature, π (sometimes written as Pi). Following the success of π, Aronofsky and Mansell collaborated again, resulting in one of the most iconic pieces of film composition of all time. Reused everywhere from the trailers for Lord of the Rings to Sky Sports News, ‘Lux Aeterna’, taken from Mansell’s soundtrack for Requiem for a Dream is a swirling, menacing orchestral arrangement that almost anyone will recognise if you sing it to them, even if they don’t know where it came from. The refrain of ‘Lux Aeterna’ appears in Requiem for a Dream in several different forms, as Mansell blends the classical strings piece with trip-hop, trance and techno versions, alongside made-up gameshow themes and crazed dance tunes. Aronofsky’s second film is a masterpiece for many reasons, but I’m certain nobody would disagree with the assertion that Mansell’s score is a very important part of that; the film’s infamously harrowing climax would be a lesser sequence without ‘Lux Aeterna’ on the soundtrack.
The soundtrack for Requiem for a Dream made Mansell’s reputation as a film score composer, and he began to accept regular jobs, including working on films as diverse as The Hole, Sahara and Doom.
In 2006, Mansell’s 3rd film with Darren Aronofsky, The Fountain was released. Although the film continues to divide critics and audiences, there can be no dispute that the score is one of the most moving, exhilarating film scores of all time. Made while working with the respected Kronos String Quartet and the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, The Fountain includes several solo piano pieces, as well as Mansell’s more familiar electronic quirks and orchestral grandeur, and is arguably both the most ambitious and most successful musically of his work to date. Wherever you stand on the film as a whole (and I happen to regard The Fountain as one of the finest works of cinema it has ever been my privilege to see), the soundtrack just works perfectly, both with and without the accompanying visuals.
For Smokin’ Aces in 2007, the director, Joe Carnahan, gave Clint Mansell just six weeks to compose and record the entire score, with no guiding rough cut. And he did it. On time. Not only were Mansell’s fans satisfied with the work, but when the Smokin’ Aces soundtrack was released without Mansell’s compositions, Carnahan claims to have had fans driving past his house in the dead of night playing the Requiem for a Dream score at full volume. Carnahan even jokingly suggests that he had received threats of physical violence: true or not, the fans’ demands were heard, and Mansell’s score for Smokin’ Aces got an album release.
Over the last couple of years, Clint Mansell has worked again with director Darren Aronofsky on the Oscar-nominated The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke. Although The Wrestler does not have the same kind of scene-stealing music as Mansell’s previous work with Aronofsky, it is nonetheless an effective, subtler attempt at a score. This year, Mansell created a sparse piano, guitar, drums and effects score for Duncan Jones’s debut sci-fi, Moon. One of my favourite films of this year, Moon is a brooding, quiet, atmospheric movie that is really made great by four things: Sam Rockwell’s career-best performance; Jones’s assured, note-perfect direction; the eye-catching production design by Tony Noble; and Mansell’s routinely great score.
I haven’t heard nearly as much of his work as I would like to, but he’s a rare figure in cinema; a composer whose involvement in a project would be enough to make me see a film. Everything I have heard by Clint Mansell has been distinctive and beautiful in equal measure. I’m hoping that his work with Aronofsky will continue, and hope that he’ll be working on Duncan Jones’s second film, the sci-fi-noir Mute (currently set for release in 2011).
As I close this article up, the penultimate track of The Fountain is playing on my iTunes library. One of the tracks featuring both the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai, ‘Death Is The Road To Awe’ is an 8 minute epic of guitar, piano, orchestra, choir and percussion, with a chiming glockenspiel melody alongside the grand sweeping strings section. It’s a fitting sonic accompaniment to the end to one of the few films that I would identify as “life changing”.
David
The Notebook (dir. Nick Cassavetes, 2004) *****
reviewed by Natasha Bullen
Tales of romance usually fall into two categories – epically sensationalist or simply downright pathetic. Then director Nick Cassavetes comes along and creates an absolutely beautiful account of a love divided by class in 1940s South Carolina. The film begins in a modern nursing home with an elderly man reading a story to an aged woman. Cassavetes relocates us into the past with the characters, landing us in the midst of a carnival – so begins the story of The Notebook.
Rachel McAdams delivers a flawless performance as seventeen year old Allie Hamilton, a highly privileged heiress with her life all planned out for her. That is, until she meets Noah (Ryan Gosling), an extremely ordinary country boy who quite literally sweeps her off her feet. With such an unlikely attraction, you would think the film would struggle from start to finish, creating a romance never really plausible. Yet the chemistry between McAdams and Gosling is electric and this is what makes the film work so magnificently. Their volatile relationship is unmatchable, fights are always followed by making up. Then the summer ends. Allie’s parents forbid her from seeing Noah again. Allie must go to college in New York. Noah belongs in the country. Noah sees this, so the couple fight and this time actually break up. Their lives separated, there is one question burning in everyone’s mind – is it over?
If this film does not bring you to tears you have no heart. It’s that simple.
(This review was originally published with a score of 4/5. The score has been revised to 5/5 at Natasha’s request. – ed.)
David
Finally! A confirmed UK release! Probably in May. Which is ages away. And the DVD is already out in America. I’ll wait. Because I want to see it on a big screen first time.
The Brothers Bloom is the second film from writer/director Rian Johnson, the creator of Brick, my favourite film in the whole wide world. It is a con-man/heist film starring Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi and Robbie Coltrane.
Wait, what? Why has this only just been confirmed for a UK release, you ask? Why has a film with a bankable mainstream star like Mark Ruffalo that cost a decent amount not been pushed here? A film that stars two Oscar winners in Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz, plus another (Maximillian Schell) and a recent nominee (Rinko Kikuchi), from a critically acclaimed writer/director, whose first film made more money in the UK than it did in the US?
What the hell, Summit?! Too busy with your little vampires to spare a thought for the rest of us and find a UK distributor?
This really has me puzzled. Is this merely an issue of UK audiences, or the producers focussing on the Twilight movies, or what?
In other news, Johnson has also created a tumblr for his next film, a sci-fi/gangster flick called Looper. There’s some interesting bits and pieces about Looper floating around, not least the little quotations and images on the tumblr account. I’m excited already!
David
The Rocky movies. OK. Raging Bull. Brilliant. Million Dollar Baby. Fine. The Greatest. Good. BUT, why isn’t there more movies about the oldest of sports?
At the beginning of human existence there was only 3 ways in which man could compete. 3 ways in which the Hunter-Gatherer could better his fellow man. They were running, swimming and fighting. The lefty-led bashing of the noble sport of boxing has been futile. There is something inside of a lot of people which compels them to be interested in the battle between 2 men. I am one of these people.
Boxing requires not only strength but also skill, technique, speed, tactics, knowledge of your own strengths/weaknesses, hours of training and willpower. There are numerous boxing stories: the rise to world champion, the slippery slope of continuing after your peak, the need to fight on after your prime for money, competitive spirit, the need in a man to better his peer etc.
Boxing is filled with potential storylines. So why isn’t there more boxing movies? Especially ones based on real boxers.
p.s. Mayweather JR vs Pacquiao has to happen. The 2 best boxers in the world (pound-for-pound). For Mayweather JR to cry-off (just to maintain his zero loss record) would bring the boxing world to its knees. This could be the fight that reinvigorates boxing as a mainstream sport.
Paz
“Wussy-wushy scenes just bore the hell out of me. I just want them to get on and start bashing people up.” (Guy Ritchie in interview with the Daily Telegraph in, February 1999)
The more I get into my undergrad dissertation on the British crime film, the more often I find myself re-assessing my opinion of Guy Ritchie. Initially, he annoyed the hell out of me. I found his visual style amazing. He has such an eye for shots and exciting editing patterns. But, what always stood out was his cliched dialogue and 2-D characters. I began to loathe him (enough to rate him as bad as Nick Love). However, the more I read about him, and the more I watch his films, the more I like him.
I hated him so much that I bet Mike Glass (on his radio show Your Opinion Is Worthless – film reviews on a Monday from 3-5pm) that if the new Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes movie got 3 stars or more in a broadsheet that I would give him £100. But now, I love him. He’s misogynistic. He glamourises violence. I love that.
In the world of “New Men”, it’s refreshing that blokes can be blokes. That the sensitive men (the strong and silent type women like) and the emotionally intelligent man are actually NOT MEN! Men play football, fuck birds and drink beer. Fact. Blokes are no longer allowed to be blokes. So thank god Ritchie provides an escape to a nostalgic world of 1960s men. Men who shat on feminism. Men who could be vulgar and disgusting, but at least had some backbone.
I’m not trying to be contrary and get a reaction from the progressive and liberal among you. I just want to say that if we can have namby-pamby, indie films about emotions and feelings then why can’t we have “Guns ‘N’ Geezers”? If women can escape in fantasies about some Vampire kid, then why can’t men dream of a time when women were silent and men used violence to solve all their problems?
Paz
Warwick Film Studies Society 