Hello

Lets see if I'm up again. Up again.

Subterranean Grandeur

I'm a lover of subterranean labyrinths, structures and edifices so when we visited this underground cathedral in St Emillion last weekend it was pretty mind blowing... I love how the metal structural foundation blocks give it a real industrial gothic, David Lynch 'Dune' feel.

Enjoy.

Holy Wow this is Great

Sometimes, out of the blue, a piece of work comes along that answers your every deepest need. Almost as if someone had been rootling around in your brain, discovered everything you love the most and then out it all together in place. This is such a work. It is a work of genius:



Great f***in' song too.

It's Back!

After an absence of over a year, I'm back to indulge myself and you (wherever you may be) with titbits, observations and short discussions on everything from Korean cinema to charming single matls (and fine blends) to amusing moments in global geopolitics to the breeding habits of Pacific octopuses. Or something like that.

And I'm gonna keep it short, sweet and to the point, filter out the random ramblings of my brain and just put out the pure unfiltered shit such as it is.

So here goes and...

Good morning to you all, Spring has arrived and London looks beautiful!

Love, peace and controlled madness xOlly

Top Ten of 2008

Here are my Top 10 films of the year just passed. It's a Spinal Tap top ten - cos this one goes to 11.

1.Let The Right One In
A beautiful, moving, poetic, humane film about... adolescent vampires in remote Sweden during the early 1980s. No, really. An amazing story, directed beautifully, channelling the Gothic poetry of Night of the Hunter and David Lynch.

2. Gomorrah
Because it's about as close as a fiction film can come to news reportage, like a Magnum photo essay brought to life. Because it's the definitive essay on modern crime. Crime as socio-economic structure that inhabiting a nether region between street violence and legitimacy - from top to bottom, infiltrating and penetrating societies, economies and psychologies. Gomorrah made the links and the connections real, human and visual. And it was cinema.

3. Waltz With Bashir
Because it was heart-rending. Because the animation showed a unique way into the war film cliches - young kids sent into a cauldron of chaos. Because it was human and spiritual - those dream sequences still live on. And because the bold, utterly simple ending took me to pieces.

4. Cloverfield
Because it was a committed reinvention of the monster film that pulled no punches, gave you everything you wanted and made it real. It had no stars. Because pushed the medium (my ears were ringing and the floors still shook after we left the theatre). For once, Hollywood approached a genre remix the same way a crazy Asian director would - shake it up, add tons of style, and kill off all the heroes.

5. Wall-E
An animated film about two robots who never speak which had more romance and pathos than a hundred romantic comedies. And it was really very funny. And, yes, of course it was a bloody allegory about what we're doing to the planet.

6. Mongol
Whoa baby, the private life of Ghenghis Khan and guess what...? He was just a simple peasant kid, with a devoted wife and a crazy best friend who got sold into slavery and came back to TAKE OVER ALL OF ASIA!!!!! There's always room for a huge epic that does things seriously (and I don't mean a big Kleenex commercial with lots of extras and sunsets - yes Baz Lurhmann, I am speaking to you) - windswept shots of the steppes, sequences involving hundreds of thousands of Mongol hordes riding into battle under a storm black sky, vast mud cities with towering fetid prisons containing the Emperor of the steppes - these things are like human catnip. We need them. Cinema must provide. And Sergei Bodrov did. And this was just the beginning of the story. Part Two will bring the pain - Genghis unbound.

7. Linha de Passe
Because the spirit of Rosselini lives strong in this beautifully rendered portrait of working class life in Sao Paolo. Four brothers (hullo, gods of neo-realism) each with a different father live under one matriarch's roof. One wants to be a football star, one is a smalltime criminal, one is born again and the youngest is a bus-riding whippersnapper. Lives unfold and fray at the edges but the spirit of compassionate humanism runs strong through every frame distilled into the final image - funny, surreal, tragic and strangely human.

8. The Edge of Heaven
While the Oscar drones hoover up their nominations with this years' slabs of relentlessly middle brow noodlings on faith, redemption and love (films which exist in a strange limbo between the Hallmark Channel and GCSE English Lit Passnotes, a netherzone which is, I am told, one of the Circles of Hell - look that up in your Clift notes motherfucker!) - this is the real deal. A mature, meditative and affecting study of loss, betrayal and redemption that has the feel and weight of an early century novel. Beautifully, elegantly made and acted with great sincerity and emotion this is a wonderful variation on Fateh Akin's previous crazy/beautiful speedball of a film 'Head-On' and reminded me that he's a great fucking director unafraid of big emotions and deep themes.

9. You, The Living
For me, the art movie of the year. No one does Roy Andersson quite like Roy Andersson does Roy Andersson with his Monty Python-meets-Ingmar Bergman worldview. The trademark single shot, static frames full of drama and action and magnificent detail was taken a step further (the camera actually moved, like, 5 times?). There's something about his apocalyptic Buster Keaton slapstick that is so true.

10. Hellboy 2
Yes, there were some excellent comic book adaptations this year - like the Dark Knight (could have lost a subplot and 45 minutes) and Ironman - but I go with this because this is why I love cinema... Those rare, brief moments in cinema when an artist gets handed the keys to the car and is allowed to make exactly the film he wants to make, using all the vast resources, knowledge and expertise of the studio system. And that's how you get Hellboy 2. A comic book adaptation, yes, but entirely from the mind of Guillermo del Toro with new characters and setpieces (like the dying tree monster turning an entire city block into a verdant forest) that were near-hallucinatory in their visual power. Sure, it made no money but thats fine cos he's going to make the Hobbit now.

11. Tropic Thunder/Pineapple Express
OK, the list is more like 11.5. But I put these two together because they're companion pieces - crazed action comedies that used Bruckheimer violence as sight gags like Michael Bay sized banana peels. The 50% of Tropic Thunder that isn't pure noise is one of the funniest satires on Hollywood acting ever by a troupe of actors who play what they know. Robert Downey Junior's bullet point acting tips ("I don't read the script, script reads me") sound so good they'd be taken seriously in an episode of the Inside the Actor's Studio and an unrecogniseable Tom Cruise proves that he is an awesome comic actor. Meanwhile Pineapple Express - WTF? The fact that David Gordon Green directed a big Hollywood stoner comedy which was so determinedly weird (scenes played like sitcoms, some of the weirdest casting in a studio film ever, committed John Woo-esque action scenes that made you laugh like a drain) and it did really well is cause for celebration.

And there you go.

There were lots of other good films this year, I have a list of the worst films of 2008, the Alan Shearer 'good but not that good' prize for the most overrated film and the honorary Amanda Platell Donkey Punch Award for the best film called Donkey Punch about a Donkey Punch involving a Donkey Punch and not made by a Donkey but packing a punch... But the dog ate the notebook and now I've forgotten them all.

Happy New Year

And That was That

That is a picture of our midnight screening in SLC.

We got there just before midnight - Angus sick as a dog, I was really tired and Natasha had got sick too and bottled it. The theatre was a cool kind of fleapit from the 20s. They sold dvds - director ranked, foreign and cult - in the lobby and it was in what looked like SLCs version of Williamsburg. Mormom hipsters, there you go.

WE racked the sound up to 8 which helped and let the film go.

We had our first walk outs! Two couples during the sex scene. The theatre manager told me afterwards that one of them - a young woman - was so nauseous she had to lie down in the foyer while her boyfriend tried to stop her from fainting. He said the only other time a film had had that kind of effect was when they played 'Irreversible'! COOL!

We had good audience participation - yet again. The big moments seem to be Bluey getting done, the flare, and the Josh torture stuff.

Afterwards almost the entire audience stayed and we had a great Q&A session - just Angus and me. Really missed the others, especially having the actors on stage because so many people are genuinely fascinated to know how this was acted and because they come across so damn well. We had most of the usual questions - quite detailed and intelligent about the genesis of the script, where Donkey Punch came from, shooting and rehearsal methods etc. My 1st confrontational question - challenging the decision to include gore and asking me why I was so obvious and didn't rely more on suspense like Hitchcock. Think I answered well - and I did point out that if Hitchcock had half the chance he would have loved to have shot a sex scene like this. The guy was completely obsessed by sex. Interestingly, no one objected to that scene, at least not yet. One cool thing we're finding - people, men and women, really love it when these female characters fight back. Even when they're shredding guys up with outboard motors and burning them alive people REALLY root for these girls and Jaime has had a few 'Girl Power!' greetings after the shows.

Everyone always completely blown away by what we all achieved on our budget - shooting, cutting, sound design, music (which people LOVE), and the way it was all shot in schedule and to such quality. To all you out there - Nanu, Kate, Greg, Barry, Francois - well fucking done. You're being noticed.

OK. That was it. Sundance is over. I have no idea who's won what even though we spent a few minutes at their awards party before our screening. I'm off for a couple of days in LA to enjoy the attention, then it's back home and back to plugging away on everything else, a few swims at the Queen Mother, listening to the clanking heating and finally watching Season 4 of the Wire on dvd.

Peace out my droogies.

xxx

O

The 3rd screening happens at midnight tonight

Today we have our 3rd - and last - screening, in Salt Lake City.

This will be very interesting - seeing how a non-festival, non-industry - for Christs sakes, a Mormon audience - react to the film. It's just Angus and me left now. I'll intro the film, we'll watch it with them then we'll Q&A afterward. I'm thinking of reciting the Lords Prayer backwards into the mic as the lights come up, just to kind of break the ice.

If you read no more - it because we've been hunted down by a crazed Mormon lynch mob.

Meanwhile, today was beautiful --

The Second Screening

So we had our second screening yesterday in the Egyptian at 3pm.

I spent the morning trying to chill and hanging with filmakers. I've been meeting up with alot of people from Austin, Texas. There's a director I was at NYU with called Margaret Brown who has a documentary here called the 'Order of Myths' which everyone has been saying is pretty great. anyway, she's from Austin, there's a bunch of other films from there, I like chilli, Richard Linklater and Texas politics so I want to hag out with these people - and they're having a party tonight.

The screening was sold out. There were 100 people waiting outside for tickets. Here's Caroline Libresco introducing me before the film started -


For this screening, I didn't stay. Me and Val went for a cup of tea, then I came back for the last 20 minutes. I tell you what is cool - standing outside the auditorium and just listening to the sound echo out. Especially when all the thriller/horror stuff kicks in - screaming and music and bass rumbles. It sounds really intense and ominous.

The Q&A after was awesome. We had Jaime and Julian and David and Angus and the audience loved the film and responded with really smart questions about how we wrote it, how the idea was originated and the acting process. Julian actually referred to me directing him as 'a process' which made me very excited in the wrong sort of ways. But him and Jaime came off as being really smart and intense actors and people are really digging the quality of the performances and the hard work they did. It's just great. David is loving the mike and a captive audience - his answers turn into standup and I swear tio Gid he actually works the crowd. Someone wanted to know about distribution and if the film would get an NC17 - Dave answered "actually, we want a triple X".

I guess I should have thought about all this before we came but the NC17 thing is a big issue with this film - to be blunt, it's too hardcore for America. At least, the sex is. All the torture and mutilation - that's fine. But show a naked woman or - horror of horrors - a willy and you're a moral destroyer. What a country, huh?

Unfortunately we ran out of time on the questions, but there were lots of people coming up afterwards to say how much they loved it. Then me and Natasha went and met a very interesting agent from a very big agency who had a very impressive super sales pitch tailored to young independent filmmakers. This is fun, having people come after you after so many years when I couldn't get arrested. Now I know - and I do KNOW - all this is ephemeral, it can pass as quickly as it came, life is but a fleeting dream or whatever it is that Confucius or Buddha or Richard Nixon once said. But this is alright, and in a weeks time I'll be back in London trying to swing a Head and Shoulders commercial.

We all went to the Austin party - we actually got in! - in this incredible 6 story condo about 10 mins out of Park City. Some Texan high rollers showing their love for all their hipster filmmakers. And the Austin filmakers are kind of the definition of hipster, cords, grubby t-shirts, softened up metrosexual southern drawl and all. Then we all headed over to a party at the William Morris house, which was a completely weird mock Alpine edifice - like the Overlook hotel. It was quite crazy and by this time my head was literally reeling from sleep loss, andrenalin, cigarettes, high altitude and red wine. So everyone started to look like this --


We called a car and headed out but the director of Half Nelson had just arrived and Val and Julian freaked out and ran back in and almost bum rushed him. I think he was quite taken aback.

Back home, I crashed.

On the 24th...

I can't really recall what we did during the day. Oh yeah, I took some time out to go to some filmmaker events and hang out with other directors. That really is the best part of this, just kicking back with a bunch of people who are the only people who really know what you do and trading stories. It's really nice and establishes a sense of community. Everyone thinks directing is this super sexy Orson Welles thing, but really i's about suffering setbacks, having bad weather fuck up the shoot you've waited years for, dodgy cameras going wrong - and only finding out in post, and other boring shit like that. So...

... it is nice to talk with those who know.

Me and Natasha met a producer, I hung with some of the actors and I tagged along with them for a bit. Here's a picture of Julian midflow, attempting to blag a HD dvd palyer from one of the people at a hospitality suite. As you can see, there is no shame --



And here's a nice picture of Natasha, Jay and Angus. Jay is really good looking, but when you take a picture of him... he just becomes even better looking. All of them are like that, it's just a different world --



Then me and Natasha met with an agent in a big posh hotel that looked like an Alpine retreat. Then we had dinner at... A steakhouse (I had tuna). Then we went to see the new Alan Ball film 'Towelhead' with Valerie and Dave. I'm a huge Alan Ball fan, 6 Feet Under is so good and deep and epic i can't actually describe it. But this film was incredibly odd. I'm not really sure if I understood what it was trying to do. I think he understood what he was trying to do, but I don't know if he did it.

Then after that we went to the WarpX condo to party with the actors before Jay and Rob went home the next day.


Living the dream babay!

After the hottub --



Valerie looking moody in the dark --


And round the corner from the condo, just as we went back home --

What Happened Next

Wow. It's been a while since I last posted. At least, it seems like ages. I am literally unable to sleep more than a few hours before waking up bolt upright and full of nerves. Therefore I'm in a weird state of permanent brain craze.

After the press and industry screenings we did some interviews at a round table (have I already written this?) Then I tried to rest, but I couldn't. Then, in a weird half daze me and Val got dinner at Grub steakhouse but because I've eaten so much steak out here already I just had some clams and a salad. Then we went to join all the others at the World Cinema Party and guess what...... It was so overcrowded we couldn't get in. Here are some pictures we took while we freezed our asses in the cold for 30 minutes --



Then we all went to Mulligans bar where there were a bunch of industry people were having a party. I was gesticulating wildy during a conversation - as I like to do - and as I threw my hand back my finger connected with the eye socket of a fast approaching agent from Endeavour. By some miracle I didn't blind him, though he said it didn't hurt. That's where I am right now - I can mutilate these people and they pretend it didn't happen. Living the dream! Then we went home and I got at least 3 hours sleep.