No Love For Nick Love, Sunshine Pimp Gets Personal

Ryan Gilbey knocked Nick Love's Outlaw before release, and his piece was suddenly subject to a slew of suspicious rebuttals. Of course, they came from folk in the employ of the film's producers or distributors, and it all smelled so fishy nobody was swallowing it.

The ongoing stream of comments, from readers real and fake, makes for interesting reading, however.

For the record, I am quite clear on the matter of Nick Love: he is not a good filmmaker, and he shows no signs of ever becoming one. I'd sincerely recommend you skip his films entirely.

Luckily, film ick flies under the radar - mostly - and I won't have to fend off paid spammers trying to flog Outlaw to the site's too-savvy-to-be-interested readers.

Meanwhile, somebody paid by DNA to hawk Sunshine has taken issue with my cynicism about the film on the IMDB messageboards. All I did as a) state that I expected the film to be bad and that b) a small group of people who have seen it agreed with my expectations. I even mentioned that most disagreed with me and liked the film (as per anything else Danny Boyle ever directed).

The DNA flunky got rather personal, of course - which is, frankly, quite disappointing. Can't they just pimp the film politely, cash their check and leave those of us with a degree of healthy cynicism unpestered? Do they really have to berate me in order to ensure their film's reputation doesn't even encounter the tiny scratching I could ever hope to give it?

I look forward to reviewing Sunshine. I'll do so the way I review anything else - fairly, and based upon what I see and hear, not upon my previous expectations. If it so happens that I'm wrong, and it isn't a heap of pretentious, confused twaddle, I'll eat my words, sincerely.

Russian Sunshine

Hot on the heels of confirmation that Sunshine is being held back until December in the US, here arrives the Russian site for the film. You may find it tricky to navigate directly if you don't speak the language, but clicking systematically through all of the options always works.

Independent, If Only In Spirit

Little Miss Sunshine won the Best Feature, Best Director, Best First Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor categories at the Independent Spirit Awards. You'll not hear so much about these awards - not as compared to those Oscars - but it is every bit the same modelled, poised, crowd-pleasing affair, just with the agenda to support and promote independent films in particular.

Well, those films that are independent in reputation and 'independent' in style, at least. In this way, the Miramax-ification of the film world has affected the Independent Spirit Awards even more so than the Oscars.

The Magic Bullet

According to Nikki Finke, the bearded triumvirate of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg have been lined up to present the Best Director Oscar together this Sunday. The thinking seems to be that Scorsese is a shoo in, and the four of them will make for a historical photo opportunity.

The only thing that could come close to turning this shudder-fest around would be Little Miss Sunshine picking up Best Picture right afterwards but, sadly, I'm not expecting that to happen.

Half Time Oranges At The Baftas

The BAFTA ceremony is on hold for twenty minutes of news and about seven hundred man hours of urination, so I thought: well, why not blog a little on part one.

Well, so far I was disappointed by Andrea Arnold not thanking Lars von Trier; for Happy Feet beating Cars; for anything beating Children of Men for special effects - and I mean anything. Ever. In the history of film. That it was Pirates 2 just made it even more silly.

I was pleased by Michael Arndt winning for his Little Miss Sunshine screenplay; for Pan's Labyrinth winning Film Not in the English language; for Emanuel Lebezki netting best cinematographer.

The rest? No strong emotions, or divided feelings at least. I'm still hoping that The Departed is shut out and doesn't take a thing, even though my hopes of Babel being cold-shouldered entirely are over.

Who Is Writing Toy Story 3? And What Is Going To Happen To Chris Sanders An American Dog?

Reuters have the straight scoop from a Disney-Pixar press conference. Most exciting news? That Lee Unkrich is directing Toy Story 3 from a script by Michael Arndt, the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine. Unkrich is Pixar's master of montage and was a co-director on Toy Story 2.

Several clips and pre-production reels were shown from a number of films, including Ratatouille, Wall-E, Toy Story 3 and Chris Sanders' feared-dead An American Dog.

Ed Catmull confirmed that hand-drawn animation was indeed retruning to Disney, but that the 'main studio', Walt Disney Feature Animation, would also be making CG films quite seperately from Pixar's.

I'd open a bottle of champagne if I had one.

Son Of Rambow Bidding War

What did I tell you? Son of Rambow has ignited one of the biggest bidding wars in Sundance history. Variety have a piece on the ongoing negotiations, placing Paramount Vantage ahead of Fox Searchlight and the already resigned Miramax.

One executive described the film as "Billy Elliot as directed by Tim Burton" while Variety draw parallels with Little Miss Sunshine - today nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and deservedly so. Could this be a hint of what is to come for Rambow in the next 12 months?

There's months worth of Son of Rambow coverage here on film ick, including the synopsis, stills, comments from director Garth Jennings, the poster (a premiere!) and much, much more. Use the tags below and the search box to find it all.

Bafta Nominations Announced

The full set of Bafta Film Award nominations is out, and there's one blank space yet to be filled in the listing. Where Little Miss Sunshine is undoubtedly nominated for best film, the actual producer nominees have yet to be named. Bafta arbitration as to who actually produced the film is clearly underway and might, just might, get mildly controversial. Yawn.

Many of the usual suspects are up for multiple gongs - The Queen, The Departed, Babel - but one notable stand out is Daniel Craig's nomination as Best Actor. This is the first time a Bafta nomination has been handed out for playing Bond, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it also become the first time a Bond has won.

The awards are to be dished out on Sunday 11th February from a new home at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Sadly, this time the ceremony will also be without Stephen Fry who handled matters so very well over the last few years.

Hog's Top 10 of 2006

[EDIT: The below list is the work of sometime film ick contributor Hog. My official film ick list of 2006's Ten Best is a few posts back. Enjoy]

Disclaimer: despite having sat through hundreds of hours of films this year, there are a few that I have managed to miss completely which I imagine would have made it into this list. So, apologies to John Lasseter, Guillermo del Toro and Peyton Reed. I’m almost certain that your films are much better than some of these choices, but I just need to be sure. I know you won’t lose sleep over it…

Okay – so, in (almost) no particular order…

1. Tideland

quite obviously any terry Gilliam film released in any given year will automatically be at the number one spot in any list. Why? How often do you read this blog? Check the archives for the reasons.

2. Little Miss Sunshine

It would have been a lovely surprise to discover this indie hit and be genuinely wowed by it, but since films get released about 3 months later in Germany, I had already been told by all my friends and all their friends that it was the film of the year. I was almost inclined to agree with them…except, of course, it was a Gilliam year.

3. Dave Chapelle’s Block Party

Michel Gondry proves to the world that a) documentaries are more than just pointing a camera at something that happens and hoping for the best and b) you don’t have to make witty cute off-beat fiction films to demonstrate your genius as a filmmaker. Probably his best work to date, and easily one of the best documentaries of recent times, along with…

4. Grizzly Man

Herzog on top form with this wonderful two-tier film that is possibly his most successful mingling of his interest in outsider figures (in this case the bear loving Timothy Treadwell) and the nature of filmmaking ‘truth’. A film that is educational AND entertaining. Grierson would be proud. (NB whilst this is a film produced in 2005, it didn’t make it to UK cinemas until 2006, thus making my list for this year. That’s fair, right? I saw Where the Truth Lies in 2005, for instance…)

[EDIT: Indeed, Grizzly Man was on my 2005 list]

5. Brick

Rian Johnson has obviously delved into my brain one night whilst I was sleeping, poked about and found a half-baked idea I’d planned on developing into something once I’d stopped wasting my life. While I slept he whipped it up into something better than I could ever have imagined – the ultimate wit-packed high-school drama-meets-the big sleep. And then put my favourite song over the closing credits. Sneaky bugger.

6. Children of Men

Alfonso Cuaron’s dystopian future shock looks identical to many post-Threads nightmares I’ve had over the years. An amazing degree of accuracy, some genuinely thrilling action set-pieces and some of the best special effects in a film…maybe ever.

7. Casino Royale

Never loved Bond. Loved this. That says a lot. As well as being a lot smarter than any of it's predecessors, it was also a lot more fun. I was like a wide eyed child whilst watching this, - though those wide eyes also noticed a great many faults. Nothing quite so bad as Roger Moore’s eyebrows though…

8. Superman Returns

…and returns in style. A disappointing year generally for comic book movies, so rather nice to see that after a dozen(?) years of development hell, Superman’s return to the big screen was deftly done. And after Bill’s big speech before being Killed, nice to see that someone else had taken the time to consider the characters in the mythology and not just the special effects.

9. Hostel

I took my mum to see this and even she loved it. I had to put my hands over her eyes during the sex scenes though – how times change. A film that, like many great works of horror before it, is greatly underrated and completely misunderstood. And still gets a sequel. For once I’m glad.

10. INLAND EMPIRE

Okay – so you might well wonder what this is doing on here. I fully accept that things are wrong when an artist’s work reaches the point where someone could parody it and do a better job - and at times it looked as if Adam and Joe were working closely with Lynch on this one – but to be fair, I personally enjoyed it. It is nowhere near the best film I have seen this year, but as a personal indulgence it was probably one of the most enjoyable. And besides, if Lynch has sunk to the level of hawking a cow around Hollywood, then he needs all the press he can get.

Honourable mentions: Paprika, Lunacy, The Homecoming (does that count? I saw it in a cinema), The Fountain, The Science of Sleep, Borat.

The Best Films Of 2006

Here is my list of 2006's ten best films. At least, of the ones I've been lucky enough to see. I'll wrap things up with a couple of additional lists: films I didn't see that would have, otherwise, made it onto this list I think; and films that were pretty darn good but didn't make the ten, with special reference to a few derided films that didn't deserve all of the stick.

We'll start at number ten and work up the list, I think. I reserve the right to edit this should my awful memory remind me of a great film that, somehow, I overlooked (I suppose that's kind of cheating).

I'm not going to go into my reasons that much here - if you're a regular reader, you'll already know; if not, you most likely don't care.

10. The Break-Up

Peyton Reed is one of American studio cinema's secret weapons, like Peter Chelsom, Joseph Ruben, Audrey Wells or Richard LaGravanese. Every one of his films has been smart, very well crafted and undervalued.

9. Where the Truth Lies

Atom Egoyan understands Hitchcock better than most other contemporary directors, learning from his more subtle techniques but not aping his more obvious stylings. A rich, complex film.

8. The Queen

Peter Morgan's Longford script was better on paper, but The Queen was the better crafted film. And, in fact, Helen Mirren was better in the final Prime Suspect but... hang on. I'm having a moment of doubt here. Maybe TV is better than cinema after all...

7. Pan's Labyrinth

The most overrated film on this list, Pan's Labyrinth has much in common with the films at positions 2 and 1, particularly 1 but simply isn't as sophisticated or as well constructed. Not to say it isn't extremely well constructed. Another astonishing film from Guillermo del Toro - though it is reputed to be much better than his others, it simply is isn't. They're wonderful, every one.

6. Dave Chappelle's Block Party

Michel Gondry showed an entire skillset he hadn't flexed publicly before in what was, essentially, a documentary. Wonderfully judged, perfectly paced and - this year at least - unparallelled in creating a roof-raising atmosphere.

5. Cars

Perhaps the most handsome film ever committed to celluloid, Cars faced innumerable cinematic challenges head on and overcame them all with great invention and imagination. Case in point: the body of the car being immediately, and without question, accepted as a stand-in for both the 'body' and 'head' of a living being, at times shifting from one to the other in a single frame. This kind of design solution is the genius that sets Pixar apart from all other studios.

4. Children of Men

Forrest Gump was, until now, the most intelligent and visually perfected example of computer effects in film - but not anymore: what Alfonso Cuaron imagined, his FX and camera teams bought vividly (sometimes, seemingly impossibly) to life. Children of Men is a simply structured film, walking a fine line between parable and a sci-fi slice-of-life, but on the clean, driving story hang a wealth of astute character moments, tense suspense scenes and questions that deserve careful consideration.

3. Hostel

A wonderful union of populist crowd-pleasing and onion-skinned satire, Hostel was for some months the most impressive film I'd seen this year. I'm certain that this movie will be considered a classic - both widely and very seriously - in the years to come. Hostel is not only a film with a lot of brilliantly dramatised ideas, it is a film that targets the audiences that both need to hear these ideas most and also those who will be most responsive to them (two very different audiences, mind) with pin-point accuracy - a bit like Borat, actually.

2. Little Miss Sunshine

Simply, a masterpiece of mise-en-scene, editing and fuss-free, elegant, eloquent visual storytelling. The cast are wonderful, the script is witty but most of all, the film works best as a full, finished film. Dayton and Faris have blown me away with their sense of composition, camera and montage. Not a popular appraisal, I know, but watch it again, and pay close attention.

1. Tideland

Sophisticated, rich, bold and brilliantly built, Tideland is Gilliam's best film since Brazil and one of the very few best films I have ever seen. Being this unpredictable can have costs to a film's integrity, but not here: no matter where we go with Jeliza Rose, no matter how Gilliam takes his next slice into the film's subtext, it's all part of one incredible argument, one amazing, but coherent world view. A Vertigo for this age.

I've got lots more to say about Tideland in the next couple of weeks, as the DVD release draws near.

The following films could easily have made the list: Brick, Superman Returns, Borat, Rumour Has It, Breakfast on Pluto, Syriana, The Dark, Volver, Angel-A, Monster House, Thank You For Smoking, Casino Royale; and these films were far from bad - in fact, really rather good - just not anything particularly 'special': The Hills Have Eyes, The Night Listener, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, Match Point, Sophie Scholl, Factotum.

In fact, Casino Royale was perhaps my favourite film of the year - simply as I expected much, much less. This year's 40 Year Old Virgin.

Here are the films I missed which I suspect could maybe have made the list (from what I know of them, or of their cast and crew's previous work, maybe from their coverage in the press): The Science of Sleep, Duck Season, Satellite, Don't Come Knocking, Bubble, The Illusionist, The Last King of Scotland, Edmond, The Puffy Chair, Art School Confidential, The Boss of it All, The Host, Lunacy, Stick It, Half Nelson, Find Me Guilty, The Fountain, A Scanner Darkly.

This last section is for films that I found somewhat lacking, though many were rather well received elsewhere: Tzameti, Ellie Parker, Snakes on a Plane, Running Scared, Hard Candy, Nacho Libre, Lucky Number Slevin, Firewall, Talladega Nights, Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

I am disappointed with the low number of films from beyond the US and UK film industries in my top 10 list for the year, but this is more a result of the distribution patterns and the films offered to me than any personal taste. Looking back at the films of 2006 in, say, 2008, once I have been able to see and appreciate a larger range of films, I am certain that any list I might make would be very different. For sure, a great number of the films on an "all-time list" I might make would not be in the English language, though still, truth be told, not a majority, just a far bigger minority. Again, distribution factors are largely to blame, I'm sure (though, in fact, I would argue that more great films have been made in Hollywood than any other specific film industry, both recently and back during the 'heyday' of the studio system - but that's a discussion for another time).

Paying For It

It was 111 years ago today that the first ever paying audience assembled to watch a film together. The screening, held at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris, was of La Sortie des usines Lumière or, in English, The Exit from the Lumière Factory. Of course, films had been seen before then, and in groups, but the practice of shelling out to sit down and check out a movie was born that day.

It's been a few days since I paid to see a film myself - Night at the Museum on Boxing Day. Tomorrow, I think I'll be doing it again - Miss Potter, most likely, possibly as well as or just instead of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, which I've been putting off for a few weeks, for one reason or another. I know I'm part of a dying breed - and in fact, in the last couple of years, my cinemagoing has cooled off considerably (not because I don't want to see, or pay for, the films being released, but for other, personal, ancillary reasons). I wish I could go much more regularly.

All the same, I think that ticket prices are criminally high and that this is, pretty much alone, the reason that cinema admissions are tumbling. Sure, home cinema screens are getting bigger, new iterations of digital disc media offer better and better picture quality and your own armchair is likely to be more comfortable to you than anything at the multiplex but the group atmosphere in a decent sized audience and the build-up of heading to a specific location for a specific showtime can really give the experience a boost.

And it is an experience. Imagine trying to read a good book in the middle of a nightclub, or eat a good meal from your lap on the back seat of a bumpy double decker bus - I can find trying to watch a film at home a little too like this, at times.

Some cinemas are getting it more right than others. Take, for example, the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Place, central London. The seats are comfortable enough, the projection is always of a decent standard, the selection of films is varied - and I mean that in the best possible sense - and the staff are more than proficient in their ticket retailing and tearing and customer greeting duties. What makes the Prince Charles really work, though, is the pricing.

Say I want to go next Wednesday. The films they are showing are Zidane, Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Little Miss Sunshine and Red Road. More than likely something for you in that little lot. If I want to sit and see all four back-to-back, how much will it cost me?

At most, £14. At the nearest cinema, I'd be spending over £10 to see just one film (and out here, in Oxford, that's two normally-priced, £7 tickets) and the Prince Charles total could be as low as £9 for members of the cinema's loyalty scheme (I became a lifetime member for £15).

If I lived in London, I'd surely be one of the Prince Charles' most regular customers. As it is, I still scan ahead on their listings, on the lookout for a double, triple or quadruple bill that will make the trip to London worth it. Thankfully, they're fairly common.

So, paying for it is 111 years old... but what happens now? I'll speculate a little. Why not?

Cinema going will either become (relatively speaking) much more expensive, or much less so. I don't know which, wouldn't like to hazard a guess. Ticket prices could soar to around the £20 mark quite easily, making the 'theatrical experience' more akin to an... er... theatrical experience. With the great unwashed settling for DVDs at home and the big screen experience pushed towards (at least) the middle classes, what will that do for the blockbuster industry?

Or perhaps ticket prices will drop and the box office will swing upwards again. This one is what I'm hoping for.

Either way, it isn't hard to imagine that so-called independent or specialist interest films will be pulling in as much cinema business as the bigger budget fare before long. Furthermore, it is isn't inconceivable that the next generation of blockbusters will be made for and marketed to a more affluent audience so that, say, Miss Potter may become the model of big studio films, instead of Ghost Rider.

Dayton And Faris Sizing Up Second Feature

Surprises like Little Miss Sunshine are all too rare. At the start of the year, I had barely any awareness of it at all - beyond knowing that the cast was really very interesting and that directors Dayton and Faris had made some pretty strong music videos. The, after Sundance and the record breaking pay-out that secured distribution rights for Fox Searchlight, I was very keen to see the film and suss out the fuss. I was going to have to wait quite some time.

It was six months later, when I finally managed to scoop tickets to a preview, keen and intrigued but hardly expecting a masterpiece. Seldom do I so underestimate a movie from having seen it's trailers.

The film is a classic example of good sense, good taste, skill and impeccable craftsmanship. From beginning to end, I was rivetted, and I don't appear to be alone in this - actually, I expect Little Miss Sunshine to swag a whole bag of Golden Globes and Oscars, for what it's worth. Then again, I said this about Maria Full of Grace - almost every word.

Dayton and Faris are now in talks to firm up their second feature film and it sounds like a massively promising prospect. The Abstinence Teacher is to be adapted by Tom Perotta from his own novel - as-yet unpublished, due in the Autumn. The lead character is a sex-ed teacher in 'small town America' who fights Conservative groups for her right to tell the kids all about the birds and the bees, all the while starting a romance with a born-again soccer coach. Certainly sounds like Perotta.

We're going to have to wait sometime to see this film and I can't help but hope that it ends up being the third film from Dayton and Faris - if only so they can get something moving in the meantime. I don't cope so well with waiting for films from my favourite directors - I can get quite boring, going on and on and on and on about them...

So, prepare yourselves for two years (or more) of posts about The Abstinence Teacher.

Singalonga Oscar

The list of songs eligible for next year's Best Original Song Academy Award is, of course, a mixed bunch. There are a total of 56 and giving them the once over, the first thing that struck me was how completely unaware I was that most of these songs even existed - and that includes a number apparently included in films I had seen, sometimes even loved. Where on earth does The Book I Write appear in Stranger Than Fiction, for example? Over the end credits? Would that even count?

Here's my list of picks - based mostly on the song, though sometimes (and admittedly spuriously - in the style of the Academy) on the film the song was apparently written for. Despite Dreamgirls and Over The Hedge placing three songs each, I'm not going to select even one from either:

The Girl in Byakkoya - White Tiger Field from Paprika; O Kazakhstan from Borat; Real Gone from Cars; PJ and Rooster from Idlewild; 'Til The End of Time from Little Miss Sunshine; Upside Down from Curious George.

The next stage is an odd one. A meeting will be held where clips from the 56 films will be played so that the 'music branch' of the Academy might select three to five nominations. Who makes up this 'music branch'? How many people? And will they hear the entire songs, or just the fragments featured in the films? If a song is reprised several time sin the movie, will they get to hear every slice?

As ever, the Academy's approach is far from an exact science.

I precit that 'Til The End of Time from Little Miss Sunshine will win - in fact, I expect something of a Little Miss landslide come awards night.