by hutchwp

The Star Wars Saga – Orchestral performance by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Nottingham Trent University Choir

Setlist

Opening
20th Century Fox Fanfare
Star Wars Main Theme

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Flag Parade
Anakin’s Theme
Adventures of Jar – Jar Binks
Duel of the Fates

Episode 2: The Attack of the Clones
Across the Stars
Yoda’s Theme
The Imperial March

Episode 3: The Revenge of the Sith
Battle of the Heroes

– Interval –

Episode 4: A New Hope
Here they Come!
The Cantina Band
Princess Leia’s Theme
The Throne Room

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back
The Asteroid Field

Episode 6: The Return of the Jedi
Luke and Leia’s Theme
Parade of the Ewoks
The Forest Battle

Review

The prequel trilogy of Star Wars has gone down in history as an underwhelming disappointment. The mixture of poor CGI, terrible acting from the pivotal role of Anakin by both actors, disjointed pacing and lack of interesting plot were four of the critical issues. One thing that has never been disputed, however, is the successes of the John Williams scores.

John Williams was one of the few elements of consistency across all six Star Wars films, providing a score that fuelled the anticipation for the films, especially Episode One. Seeing Duel of the Fates performed by a live orchestra and choir was reason enough to buy the tickets, and proved to be one of many highlights of the night.

The night unravelled in a structured fashion, with each film taken on in chronological order and introduced by voice actor Marc Silk. Conducted by Michael Seal with much vigor, the selections were made to highlight the dynamics on display across the saga. Whilst most people can hum the main themes for each film, it was a night to reflect on just how good the entire scores were.

The members of the large orchestra looked like they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. They looked genuinely thrilled to be getting a positive and engaged reaction from the audience, and were well received. I’m sure they will have more high-brow performances this year, but there didn’t seem to be anyone complaining – on or off the stage.

The real highlights came when the 100-strong choir joined in to add extra passion and power to the performance. They were used sparingly, such is the nature of the source material, but when they opened up their lungs the whole auditorium was blown away.

I left wondering how feasible it would be to perform the original film with a live orchestral score. Now THAT would be a popular night out for fans.

A perfect night of entertainment and a wonderful way to whet our appetites ahead of the release of Episode VII in three weeks’ time.

 

by hutchwp

UK Festival of Zombie Culture (Phoenix Cinema, Leicester, 14/11/2015) – Review

I had an excellent day at the UK Festival of Zombie Culture in Leicester. It was packed and the films we saw all had their own charm, though the overriding feeling was that of community. There’s nothing quite comparable to a cinema packed with zombie film fans cheering as a woman has her eye poked out in the most gruesome of fashions.

As is a common theme at this event (this isn’t my first time here), plenty of time was spent on The Typing of the Dead, an amazing game that is basically The House of the Dead 2 but instead of guns you have a keyboard. The goal is to type words as fast as they pop up on the screen, in particular faster than your partner. It’s well worth playing if you get the chance and really does test your typing speed and accuracy.

 

Just a type-ical shooter

 

There was also a charity challenge to raise money for Help For Heroes, which involved killing zombies on Dead Rising for three minutes. The photo below shows a powerful play by my good wife to kill zombies using patio furniture. Well played. Well played.

 

Pati-OOOOHHHH!!!

The best-received film of the day was Me and My Mates vs The Zombie Apocalypse, an Australian horror comedy set largely inside a telephone communications compound as a group of friends try to figure out how to survive and escape the oncoming zombies. A review will no doubt follow shortly, but it was a truly hilarious film and a huge win for the festival as it was the UK premiere.

I can’t recommend this festival enough to fans of the zombie genre of films. With the added bonus of authors on hand to sell and sign books to you, there’s definitely something for everyone. Even if it’s just to confirm that you’re not a complete loner lunatic, make sure you join in next year.

Review of Maggie
Review of Nightmare City

by hutchwp

Nightmare City (Umberto Lenzi, 1980)

Nightmare City falls under the category of “so bad it’s good”. Umberto Lenzi manages to pull off some ridiculous scenes but gets away with it through consistency and dedication.

First off, if you’re new to Italian horror, you need to know that it can be quite off-putting watching a film in Italian with English subtitles, especially when it’s obviously been dubbed from English into Italian. If you’re quick you can read the sentence then lip-read the actors and realise they’re actually saying what is written. It can take getting used to but once you’re past that you’ll quickly realise that the acting is about as bad as you initially thought it was.

The plot doesn’t stray far from the norm for a zombie horror film. A group of humans have been subject to nuclear contamination, leaving them with superhuman strength. They are running riot in an unnamed city and television news reporter Dean (played by Hugo Stiglitz) is trying to survive as the city falls apart. As each person is killed, of course, the victim joins their cause, meaning their strength is ever-growing.

This film contains a number of hilarious shots and it worked exceptionally well in a packed and jovial cinema. A frequent feature is the appearance of young women’s breasts. You never quite know when the next pair is going to appear. The frequency of it was a source of great amusement. I’m not sure if this was common at the time but it definitely seemed out of place.

 

She certainly had an eye for detail.

 
Equally, barring the main characters, everyone was completely stupid. Getting attacked by zombies? Let’s just run from left to right panicking, then run from right to left doing the same thing until we get attacked. Brilliant.

Our hero, Dean, wasn’t very supportable and lacked the charisma required to get away with the things he was doing. He regularly screws over fellow survivors, at one point he punches his girlfriend in the face, he leaves a group of people trapped in an elevator. It made it hard to get behind him, even when it seemed he was the only one set to survive and we were forced to follow his story alone.

SPOILER ALERT!! The ending was the kind that all ten-year-olds go for when they run out of time and ideas in a story-writing class. Yes that’s right, it was all just a dream. It was disappointing and was rightly met with groans across the crowd. Nobody’s story was tied up. They just must have ran out of money.

It’s a bit of lighthearted old-fashioned gory horror that will no doubt entertain you, but probably won’t change your life. The ending is so disappointing it unravels any of the successes it has managed to pull off.

Nightmare City is available on Arrow Video Blu-ray now.

by hutchwp

Maggie (Henry Hobson, 2015)

Post-apocalpyptic zombie horror film Maggie was screened as the opening film of the UK Festival of Zombie Horror Culture at Phoenix Cinema in Leicester in November 2015. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Wade, a man whose daughter Maggie, played by Abigail Breslin (best known for her performance in Little Miss Sunshine), has been infected by a zombie virus. Having been bit, she has fled home to protect the rest of her family. The film opens with Wade finding his daughter, who has been missing for two weeks, and taking her home to his wife. It then follows her slow transformation towards “the turn”, and the affect that has on her and her mother and father.

Drop Undead

Drop Undead

One thing we’ve come to expect when watching an Arnie film is an over-the-top performance with lots of one-liners and a handful of big set pieces. These are not present here. Instead, we get Arnie in an extremely restrained mood, and the result is perhaps the most convincing performance of his career. As one of the first films announced after his return to film from his political career, this was a perfect choice and is a great advert for more roles in a similar vain as he moves into the next phase of his career.

Breslin also shines in a complicated role where a girl is facing certain death. Having attempted to go through this on her own, she is desperately in need of her father. This complexity isn’t easy to pull off but she does it well, showing an increasing amount of fear as she gets further infected.

Where the film falls down is its slow pacing. It draws us in at first, but a slow pace clearly designed to explore the emotional side of the key characters paves the way for a few too many “switch off” moments. Admittedly, there is no room for a big stand-off and that kind of thing would have been out of place, but montages of time passing are easy to put together and allow the viewer to disingage for a couple of minutes.

Overall, well worth watching for the chance to see Arnie’s acting credentials and as an interesting angle on the genre.

Maggie is available on Blu-ray and DVD now.

by hutchwp

UK Festival of Zombie Culture (Phoenix Cinema, Leicester, 14/11/2015)

I’m off to the UK Festival of Zombie Culture, an annual event held at Phoenix CInema and Cafebar in Leicester.

There are six films on offer today:

Maggie
Nightmare City
Darkest Day
Me and My Mates vs the Zombie Apocalypse
Cooties
A Mystery Sixth Film

There’s also a ton of special guests, book signings, talks and The Arcade of the Dead to check out. It’s going to be a great day. I’ll report back later with how it went.

by hutchwp

Film review – THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971) – Asian Dub Foundation Re-score

A long time ago, precisely ten years before Star Wars hit the big screen in 1977, George Lucas was a young and experimental college student at film school at The University of Southern California. Packed with rich ideas and concepts of science fiction and Orwellian futures, he set about making the short film that would first bring him to the attention of Stephen Spielberg – Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB. This short won prizes and accolades, including first prize at the National Student Film Festival in 1968.
Soon after Lucas left college, production began on a feature length adaptation of the story, using the short film as a basis of the climax to the film and providing a backstory and richer background to the concept.
The film stars Robert Duvall as THX 1138, a worker at a factory that manufactures android police officers. His roommate LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie, in her only major film role) is a CCTV operative. After she switches their mind-controlling pills, they disobey strict rules and have sexual intercourse, which is a punishable crime. Imprisoned with SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance), LUH’s co-worker, and fuelled by the fear of being trapped for the rest of his life, THX launches an attempt to escape from this underground dystopian prison.

At times overwhelming

At times overwhelming

I have to confess that this live scoring event was the first time I’d seen THX 1138. This is a film that is itself much less immediate than the Lucasfilms pictures we are now more familiar of, and one that requires a level of concentration to follow the plot. Unfortunately, Asian Dub Foundation’s live scoring was somewhat relentless and unforgiving. On several occasions it simply drowned out the limited dialogue, making understanding the film almost impossible. Not only that, but the music didn’t really match up with what was happening on the screen. It felt like an Asian Dub Foundation gig for which they’d decided to use the film as a backdrop for their performance.

Sadly for the film and the musicians, a large portion of the crowd decided they weren’t on board with either element and left before the end. Perhaps it was a victim of clashing with the opening night of the latest Bond film Spectre, and maybe some of the attendees decided to catch a late showing instead of seeing how THX’s escape plan player out.

Where it did work, it was very impressive. The car chase in the final act of the film was excellent and the music added a lot to the scene. This is one of the most exhilarating car chases I’ve ever seen and is a worthy pay-off the often times slow paced story development in the preceding hour of film.

I’ll be seeking out the original version of the film to see if I enjoy it more without the distracting score.

THX 1138 is available on Blu Ray and DVD now. Of course, this is a George Lucas release so it is impossible to see the original film in its originally planned state. It has been tampered with. Since most probably never saw it in its original form, however, there shouldn’t be many issues here.

by hutchwp

What About 2045?

Whilst everyone compares what has happened in 2015 to what was predicted in Back to the Future Part II, I thought it would be more fun to make a few predictions about what 2045 will be like. Here goes…

Franchise Films

Whilst Jaws 19 still hasn’t been released, the prediction that 30 years on from 1985 franchised films will be the most popular was a very accurate suggestion. By 2045, I don’t think much will have changed on this front. The most likely franchises to still be churning out big films are Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Marvel or DC superhero films or, most pertinently, James Bond. Sadly the person playing Bond at that point may not even be born yet.

Back to the Past

Another film prediction: a film production company lacking in imagination releases the film “Back to the Past”. Set initially in 2045, the film sees the grandson of Marty McFly, Marty McFly Jnr. Jnr. travel back to 2015. Using footage from Back to the Future Part II, he set off a chain of events that make the plot so convoluted and impenetrable that the film is an instant flop. Plans to travel to 1925 in Part V are instantly shelved.

Technology

Flying cars are still a thing of sci-fi cinema and have failed to hit the market, although luxury hoverboards briefly hit the market before being banned due to health and safety and a lack of control over the speed and direction of the devices.

Coldplay

Coldplay release their 17th album “The Chosen Sword”, again announced as their final album. They headline Glastonbury for a record 8th time, bringing out Tim Rice Oxley for a duet of “Somewhere Only We Know” to a bemused crowd.

Blogging

I schedule in a blog post for 2045 to see how I did and forget about it, only to see the post not go viral, much like all my other posts here.

by hutchwp

Blogs I like – 52 French Films (Helen Van Kruyssen)

I keep an eye on a lot of blogs on WordPress. I find the original writing on the carefully selected bloggers a breath of fresh air from the published media and I’ve discovered a huge amount of fantastic books, films and games by simply reading about other things people like.

As a concept, the blog “52 French Films” is excellent. It is coming towards the end of its year-long run now, but there’s still time to get involved. Basically, the blog covers one French film every week. The author, Helen Van Kruyssen, writes passionately about each and every film and there never a hint that she has lost interest in the blog. That’s not something to be underrated – maintaining interest in a blog of this type can only be achieved by someone passionate about the subject. I picked it up back in July with the fascinating review of The Chorus. It was a film I’d bought a while ago but for whatever reason had failed to watch. I’m glad I read the review and I’m glad I’ve since watched the film.

Head over there and check it out – there are only 11 weeks left!

by hutchwp

Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015)

The 2015 BFI London Film Festival came to a close this evening with the European Premiere of Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs. With all the stars out on the red carpet, it had all the hallmarks of a blockbuster finale on the scale of any of the Apple product launches we’ve become so accustomed to.

The biopic plays out in three distinct acts, all during iconic Jobs-headed product launches: the 1984 launch of the first Macintosh home computer; the 1988 launch of the NeXT Computer for NeXT Inc. (the company Jobs set up after being forced out of Apple); and ending with the 1998 launch of the first iMac computer.

Jobs worth

Jobs worth

Whilst it may risk being a big advert for Apple, the poor picture painted of the figurehead of the company throughout ensures that is never the case. The Steve Jobs we get to know over the course of the three acts, which play out in real time in the lead up to each of the presentations Jobs is giving, is narcissistic and self-centred, only relenting from the power trip when he finally achieves the success he has been driving for. It shows softer sides of his personality and attempts to justify his unique traits but the focus on his tempestuous relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan and their child Lisa ensures his best side is never seen.

It is actually a difficult watch throughout. It is basically two hours of arguments, eventually becoming tiring. It does successfully portray the frantic and intense atmosphere of a huge-scale product launch in a very real manner. It fails, however, to convince that this is a good platform for great cinema.

Michael Fassbender plays the Steve Jobs we see here to perfection, capturing the nuances required of someone who is heartless to the extent of being cruel. Kate Winslet’s turn as Joanna Hoffman is steadier than her accent, and Seth Roger puts in an adequate performance as Steve Wozniak. The standout performance is quite minor but nontheless critical: Michael Stuhbarg is exceptional as the bullied inventor Andy Hertzfield.

The biggest success is the genius move to film the picture on era-appropriate equipment. The three scenes were each filmed using totally different techniques: 1984 was captured on beautiful 16mm film, 1988 on 35mm film and 1998 on digital film. The evolution of technology is reflected in the format change and portrays each era in a manner that would have been impossible with digital post-production.

Whilst it isn’t a let down, it will be difficult to find a sustainable market for this film. It’s not a straight biopic, it isn’t hugely in favour of Apple, nor is it against it. It’s a struggle to watch and is unlikely to have people raving about its successes as they leave the cinema. 

It could be Danny Boyle’s Newton moment.

Steve Jobs is released in cinemas in the UK in November.

Further Viewing

If you enjoyed the film so much you’re interested in some further viewing, then check out the below videos. In the film you see the 40 minutes building up to the release of three products, but never get to see the keynotes themselves.

1984 – Original Macintosh home computer

The original keynote:

The Superbowl “1984” advert:

1988 – NeXT

The 1988 keynote speech isn’t available on YouTube, but this ABC news segment is a close fit:

1998 – iMac

The full video in all its glory: