Masculinity in a Post-Apocalyptic World

When you think of post-apocalyptic movies, the soon to be rebooted 'Mad Max' series tends to be among the first that spring to mind. They paint a bleak but not unfamiliar image of the future; with barren and flattened landscapes, oil living up to its name as being "black gold", and an aggressive male-dominated world where violence, slavery and sexual abuse are the norm.

There are many films like this of which most are, more often than not, humourously bad low budget affairs. However, one such movie in particular that I had the chance of seeing last year has remained with me, but not for the reasons that you might expect.

'The New Barbarians' (1983), set in the aftermath of nuclear war, follows a ruthless gang by the name of "The Templars"; intent on eliminating what dregs of humanity remain. Meanwhile, a bunch of lone warriors band together as a resistance to their tyranny.

The film itself is nothing special, but its protagonist "Scorpion" goes through an experience which seemed to me like quite a strange idea to explore. Towards the final third of the movie he is captured by The Templars, and in front of the entire gang is forced to bend over before being sexually abused by their also male leader; "One".

In a dystopian world where leadership tends to be determined by virility, Scorpion not only recovers from this trauma the next morning but also manages to maintain his masculinity and gain the respect of the people as their appointed leader. All of this respect is earned despite a bizarre change in his wardrobe to a slightly homoerotic suit of see-through armour.

However, One does eventually get his comeuppance during a final moderately high speed car chase, whereby Scorpion manages to drive a large pneumatic drill into his backside. His final demise being the head-on collision and subsequent explosion of his vehicle, naturally.

The Problem with Foreign Musicals

I like movie musicals; but I tend to prefer the ones that have a mixture of songs and traditional drama throughout, some examples being 'Oliver' (1968), 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' (1971) and 'On the Town' (1949). I tend to be less keen on the films like 'West Side Story' (1961), which have very little dialogue and are almost entirely communicated via the songs. Having said this, I didn't find 'Les Misérables' (2012) to be all that bad.

I recently watched the 1964 Palme d'Or winner 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg', a musical which is played out entirely through song. Stylistically, I loved almost everything about this movie: the bold colours, the patterns and fashion, beautiful ladies dressed beautifully. It had the 1960s written all over it. But as a musical it didn't have quite the impact on me that I would have liked.

As the image above suggests; the movie is French and it is communicated in its native tongue. This I have no problem with, it's a wonderful sounding language and I am more than used to reading subtitles. But this becomes a bit of a problem when speaking of musicals. Not only for the fact that the translation naturally won't rhyme with the original words in the song, but also due to the different nature in which sentences are structured in two seperate languages.

The result of this is that those reading the subtitled translation, whilst understanding the meaning and getting the content of the story, are at a complete loss to the rhythm of the songs. I often found myself just listening to the song in French in order to get a sense of the rhyming sounds, but in doing so it sometimes took my attention away from the subtitles.

Ultimately this didn't effect my overall comprehension of the film and I enjoyed the narrative, but it served as a warning with regards to watching musicals in a language foreign to my own.

Ennio Morricone UK tour

One would think that at the age of 85, the stress and pressures that come with certain professions would be something a person would be glad to leave behind. However; famed movie composer Ennio Morricone has not let age get in the way of his work, with a career spanning over 50 years and 500 movie scores, he is showing no signs of slowing.

Though many people may not be as familiar with his name than some of the more mainstream composers, there will be at least a few of his themes that most will have heard. Probably most famous for his work on Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy ('A Fistful of Dollars', 'For a Few Dollars More' and 'The Good, The Bad and the Ugly'), in recent years he has reached a new audience with music featured in movies such as Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' and 'Django Unchained'.

In December he will be conducting a collection of his most loved pieces, as he embarks on a brief tour of the UK and Ireland. It's a rare chance to see a real movie music legend perform his finest works, but it'll set you back a penny or two; with tickets ranging from £50 to £120 each.

Goblin UK Live Score Film Screenings

Fans of the horror genre in the UK will no doubt be intrigued by the lineup of this year's Grimm Fest, as it will feature two classic film screenings with live music accompaniment from the original artist.

The event will offer the chance to see Dario Argento's 'Suspiria' and George A. Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead' on the big screen, but along with the unique aspect of having their scores performed live by Claudio Simonetti's Goblin. The event will form part of Manchester's Grimm Fest, usually held in October, but single performances of each film can also be seen down in London next Monday and Tuesday.

Earlier in the year Goblin made a rare tour of the UK, performing one-off gigs of their (or rather; Claudio Simonetti's) music from various cult horror movies of the 1970s/80s. I was lucky enough to be at the Manchester part of the tour held at the city's Gorilla venue, and it was quite an experience, so this set of film screenings promises to be something special.

Sacrifice safety and ethics for the sake of cinema?

Over the past week or so, I have been doing a spot of research on movies set during World War II. And although most of the titles were familiar to me, though I may not have seen them, there was one film that seemed to crop up on lists everywhere; 'Come and See' (1985).

I'd never heard of it. But the more I read about it, the more eager I was to seek it out. And I finally got to see it yesterday evening.

The film follows a teenage Belarusian boy named Florya. Excited by the prospect of joining the Soviet Army, the ensuing two hours depict his descent into madness as he experiences first-hand the tyranny of war.

You really do get a sense of the change in the character going into the final third of the movie, and various scenes throughout are quite vividly presented. I often found myself thinking about the actors themselves, as they must have gone through quite an ordeal to achieve what they did. And it is in this that lies the issue proposed in the title of the post.

In order to create a realistic atmosphere and performance from the actors, live rounds were used during filming of the movie. Aleksey Kravchenko (Florya) comments in an interview how these real bullets were flying just mere centimeters above his head, and that the crew also attempted to use hypnosis on him to induce a shellshocked state. Additional to this are a number of scenes which seem to suggest that some animals were harmed, and although there is no statement to clarify this it is clear to see in one instance that a horse is seemingly struggling on the ground.

So it does beg the question of how far the bounderies should be pushed for the sake of an authentic film experience. It's probably hard to imagine in the current state of cinema, and perhaps we'll never see films as gritty and dark as this one again, but those risks certainly paid for this production. I wouldn't particularly call 'Come and See' a great film, but I think it is one that will certainly stay with me for a long time.

Round up: Oscars for 'Best Animated Short'

As someone with a degree in Animation, I certainly should know a lot more about it than I do. I've always been fascinated by traditionally drawn animations as well as the magical world of stop motion, and despite a few exceptions not quite as much when it comes to contemporary 3D work.

Towards the end of 2013, I had decided that in the following year I was going to watch all of the Academy Award 'Best Picture' winners. The outcome of that particular journey will be the subject of a subsequent post, however, I also felt a desire to watch all of the animated short winners. I didn't want to overwhelm myself with lists upon lists of films to take a look at, but I knew that most of the shorts would probably only stretch to around 30 minutes at the most.

The Oscar for 'Best Animated Short' was first awarded in 1932, and in every year of that 30s decade the prize went to the same man; Walt Disney. Not surprisingly, most of the other nominees were made up of his other productions. Ultimately, he still holds the record for the most Academy Award wins and nominations by some considerable margin.

 

The Films

In order to keep this post concise and free of blubber, I will simply just mention what I felt were some of the high and low points over the past 90 or so Oscar winners. In chronical order, they are as follows:

'Winners'

'Mouse Trouble' - Fred Quimby, 1944.

'The Little Orphan' - Fred Quimby, 1948.

'Johann Mouse' - Fred Quimby, 1952.

'Speedy Gonzales' - Edward Selzer, 1955.

'Birds Anonymous' - Edward Selzer, 1957.

'Special Delivery' - Eunice Macauley & John Weldon, 1978.

'Tango' - Zbigniew Rybczynski, 1982.

'The Man Who Planted Trees' - Frederic Back, 1987.

'The Wrong Trousers' - Nick Park, 1993.

'Logorama' - Nicolas Schmerkin, 2009. 

'Binners'

'Moonbird' - John Hubley & Faith Elliott Hubley, 1959.

'Is it Always Right to be Right?' - Lee Mishkin, 1970.

'Frank Film' - Frank Mouris, 1973.

'Bunny' - Chris Wedge, 1998.

'Peter & the Wolf' - Suzie Templeton & Hugh Welchman, 2007.

With regards to the above film 'Peter & the Wolf', I really have to say that it is probably one of the most amazing and best looking stop motion sets that it's ever seen. However, for me it was vastly outweighed by the poor telling of its story. Beauty alone can't tame the hearts of the audience, the Academy Awards judging panel; maybe.

Special mentions should go to Bob Godfrey's 'Great' (1975) and John Canemaker & Peggy Stern's 'The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation' (2005) as these two films in particular inspired me as an animator in terms of what animation can really be used for in a more personalised but meaningful way.

I'll admit I was disappointed that the two animated shorts I usually consider to be my favourites were not even nominated for an Academy Award, but this is par for the course with many things. I would certainly recommened seeking them out; should you be in need for inspiration. They are William Hanna & Joseph Barbera's 'Mouse in Manhattan' (1945) and David Fleischer's 'Big Bad Sinbad' (1957), truly great animated shorts.

I shall leave you with the most recent animated short that I really enjoyed, Nina Paley's 'This Land is Mine' (2012). I happened to catch a screening of it at the Berlin Pictoplasma festival in 2013, and unlike the vast majority of animations on show there I was moved by its message; despite it being carried through a satire that had the audience in stitches.