In Defence of Horror

When it comes to the world of respected cinema, horror movies tend to be the poor cousins. They are rarely showered with the awards and plaudits that rain down upon more ‘worthy’ genres, and remain firmly entrenched in their cult status. I can think of no horror movies that won the best picture Oscar, and few that were even nominated. The Exorcist was nominated in 1973, Jaws in 1975, and The Sixth Sense in 1999. That’s it, friends and neighbours, since the Academy Awards began in the Twenties. It’s a pretty pathetic haul for a genre that has been around as long as cinema and, in fact, as long as storytelling itself. People often hold up The Silence of the Lambs, which won the award in 1991, as an example to the contrary, but there is a case to be made that The Silence of the Lambs isn’t really a horror movie at all. It’s horrific, to be sure, but that doesn’t make it a horror movie. Anyway, don’t get me started because the topic of what makes a horror movie is a whole other blog.

I grew up with a love of all things horror. I was an avid reader of ghost stories (both fictional and factual), a keen researcher of paranormal phenomena, and of course, lover of horror movies. Little Richard Lamb was never happier than when he was scaring the bejesus out of himself with some true account of a spectral visitation, or a spine-chilling tale of the supernatural. Tales of the macabre fired my imagination like nothing else, because it was here where the most imagination, the most creativity, was to be mined. I’ve always found the horror genre itself to be a rich depository of ideas and inspiration, and it’s for this reason that I find the genre’s lowly standing in the eyes of many serious cineastes so perplexing.

There certainly seems to be a strange kind of snobbery toward horror movies. At best, they are treated as disposable, childish, and often unworthy of serious consideration. At worst, they are treated as disgraceful, dangerous triggers for all the violent crimes of the world. And yet, if you look a little closer at some of the best the genre has to offer, you will find as much pathos, drama, humour, emotional resonance, and intellectual stimulation as can be found in any number of cinema’s more acclaimed pictures. You will also find the same level of accomplished performances, technical artistry, and engaging writing.

Of course, this is not to say that every horror movie can boast these attributes. Far from it. Unfortunately, around 70% of the horror movies released these days are total shit. But this is not a problem with the genre, just a problem with current trends, and the quick buck philosophy that permeates the industry. After all, it’s much safer to finance yet another dreadful, but sure-fire, Saw sequel than it is to channel that money into a new and untested idea. Hollywood is a pretty gutless provider of entertainment, and you often have to look beyond the US to find the best horror movies. Hollywood often looks beyond its borders too, ironically, churning out an endless parade of inferior remakes for the subtitle shy.

Tales of the macabre have formed the backbone of storytelling since man could communicate beyond grunts. People gather round campfires to tell each other ghost stories, testing their mettle against mankind’s inherent fear of the dark. We tell our children fairy tales and fables which are riddled with horrific imagery; the old woman in the candy house who eats children, the ogre living under the bridge, the wolf who dresses as Grandma so he can eat Red Riding Hood.

So, look fondly on the horror movie. Recognise the genre for what it is; a valuable, vicarious, vent for all our fears and darkness. It’s okay to look through your fingers, it’s okay to peer above the cushion, and it’s okay to look over your shoulder from time to time. That’s all part of the fun. I guarantee you that early man, thousands of years ago, was doing the same thing after a night round the fire. Okay, maybe without the cushions, but you get the idea.

Now that I’ve (hopefully) got you in the mood for a good horror movie, here’s a selection of some of my favourites from around the world. Horror movies are like comedies; what gets to some just won’t get to others, but give these a go. They all scared me, and I’ve seen so many that this doesn’t happen very often. Watch them with the lights out and a cushion to hand.

.

Evil Dead

US – 1981

A group of vacationers go to stay in a run-down cabin. In the cellar they find an old tape recording, the research of a professor who was investigating supposed demons in the woods surrounding the cabin. The demons are inadvertently awoken and begin to possess the group, one by one.

The movie that put the fun back into horror, and introduced the world to the one and only Bruce Campbell. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead is one of those examples of micro-budget filmmaking at its best. Armed with only five friends, a barrel of fake blood, and a 16mm camera, Raimi somehow produced a surprisingly innovative masterpiece. Often overlooked in favour of Evil Dead II, which was essentially the same film with money thrown at it, the original is still, for me, the superior of the two. The difference is simple; both movies are fun, tongue-in-cheek affairs, but whereas Evil Dead II is a little too heavy on the slapstick, Evil Dead is just plain scary. Sure, it’s over the top, ridiculously gory, and with appalling acting throughout, but it’s just so much damn fun, you can’t help but be pulled along for the ride.

.

The Eye (Gin Gwai)

Hong Kong – 2002

Young violinist Wong Kar Mun has been blind since birth and is admitted for a cornea transplant. Following the procedure, she begins to experience bizarre visions and sees ghosts wherever she goes, some friendly and some otherwise. Together with her doctor, she determines to find out the identity of her eye donor.

Written and directed by two brothers, Danny and Oxide Pang, The Eye starts off as an effectively spooky ghost story, but deepens into something more heartbreaking as the mystery behind Wong Kar Mun’s new eyes is uncovered. The ghostly encounters make the hair stand up on the back of the neck, particularly a great scene in an elevator, and you’ll never look at the hanging food in Chinatown the same way again. The film does suffer from a pretty cheesy soundtrack, but that’s really just a minor gripe. Angelica Lee is entirely sympathetic as the protagonist, finally finding her sight only to wish she were blind again, and just when you think the story is resolved, The Eye throws in a surprise ending.

Remade in the US as The Eye.

.

Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma In)

Sweden – 2008

12-year-old Oskar lives with his mother in a run down estate in Stockholm. He’s a lonely figure, bullied at school and harbouring violent dreams of revenge. When a 12-year-old girl called Eli moves in next door, living with an ageing man, Oskar strikes up a tentative friendship with her. At the same time, a series of grisly murders begin befalling the residents of the estate. As Oskar’s feelings for Eli deepen, he learns the truth about who she really is and is faced with the question of how much you can forgive for love.

Let The Right One In, adapted by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own novel and directed by Tomas Alfredson, eschews the recent trend for making vampires glamorous, placing the story in a setting that is cold, bleak and grey. Snowbound Stockholm is not glamorous and Eli is far from cool. Instead she is a lonely, sometimes heartbreaking figure. She’s not evil or good. She just is what she is; as trapped in herself as we all are. So, too, is Oskar. But together they form the dark, beating heart of this movie. Alfredson lets the story move along at a relaxed pace, but there are startling moments of violence, all the more effective for punctuating such a subtle mood. However, building throughout the picture is as touching a romance as you’re likely to see, blossoming and captivating in such dark surroundings.

Remade in the US as Let Me In.

.

The Mist

US – 2007

A group of people become trapped in a supermarket when a strange mist descends on their small town. As it becomes clear that there are bizarre and deadly creatures lurking within the mist, the group slowly fragment into different ideological factions, and begin to turn on each other. Meanwhile, the monsters are trying to get in.

Frank Darabont’s third Stephen King adaptation (after The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile) is also his least known. The film performed poorly in the cinemas, which is a terrible shame because this is one of the most intelligent horror movies to be released in recent years. As the besieged group of characters begin to cave in to their fear, it becomes clear that the threat from inside the supermarket is just as great as the threat from outside. Both are given equal attention, so in addition to the timely depiction of human stupidity in the face of an unknown enemy, there are also a handful of very effective scenes involving the nightmarish creatures outside. The best of these scenes involves a handful of survivors venturing out into the mist to retrieve medicines from the Pharmacy next door, only to find something gruesome waiting for them.

Then, on top of all this, there is that ending. Darabont accepted a significant reduction in budget to keep the ending he had written, and boy does it pay off. I’m a firm believer that horror movies should not have upbeat endings, but The Mist left even my jaw on the floor. Brilliant.

.

Rec

Spain – 2007

Spanish late night TV presenter, Angela Vidal, and her cameraman, Pablo, are recording an episode of their show, While You Sleep, following a group of Barcelona firemen through a typical night’s work. When they are called out to an apartment building to rescue a trapped woman, Angela and Pablo go with them, camera running. On arrival, however, it becomes clear that something is infecting the tenants, turning them into crazed zombies. Finding themselves locked inside by the authorities outside, the group must try to survive as, one by one, they succumb to the disease.

This little gem from Spain was not the first horror movie to adopt the faux documentary style, but no other movie has utilised the format to such exhilarating, gut wrenching, and plain terrifying effect. From the second the hapless crew step into the apartment building, the pace hardly lets up. That it remains so believable is thanks largely to performances which are totally convincing, and a series of inspired little camera tricks and clever editing. There are some genuinely chilling moments, and shocks that you just do not see coming. And then, as the two remaining survivors reach the room at the top of the building, Rec changes gears completely, and delivers a closing scene that stays in your mind for days.

Remade in the US as Quarantine.

.

Ring (Ringu)

Japan – 1998

Journalist Reiko Asakawa’s niece dies of a heart attack, one week after viewing a mysterious video tape with her friends. On discovering that the friends all died at exactly the same time, Reiko views the tape herself and is warned, by way of a phone call, that she now has only one week to live. After catching her son watching the tape, Reiko and her ex-husband, Ryuji, race against the clock to discover the secret behind the cursed video.

A hugely influential movie, which spawned many imitators, Ring is heavy on atmosphere from the outset. The grainy look of the movie lends it an unsettling mood, and its languid pacing gives it an almost dreamlike quality. Rather than subject the viewer to a series of shocks (although there are one or two) Ring slowly builds itself up to a single, extremely scary, moment. The cursed video itself is remarkably disturbing, especially in hindsight, and the DVD offers you the chance to watch it independently of the movie. You may not want to, however. Ring is that effective.

Ring spawned a series of sequels, of varying quality. Ring 2 was much less effective as a horror movie, but Ring 0 is much more interesting as a heartbreaking thriller in the mould of Carrie.

Remade in the US as The Ring.

.

The Woman in Black

UK – 1989

A young solicitor, Arthur Kidd, is sent to the English coastal town of Crythin Gifford, to settle the estate of a recently deceased widow, Alice Drablow. Arthur discovers that Drablow was a recluse, living alone in the remote Eel Marsh House, and the locals are reluctant to discuss both her and the mysterious woman in black who appears in the town from time to time. Arthur decides to go alone to the house, in an attempt to unravel the truth behind the town’s fear. However, he has already attracted the attention of something malevolent and vengeful.

This little known, English television production is based on the Susan Hill novel of the same name, and is without a doubt one of the scariest things I have ever seen. I’ve always found ghost stories far more chilling than anything else, and The Woman in Black is the perfect ghost story. The atmosphere is potent from the outset, and the director uses everything available to generate this atmosphere, particularly the use of sound. The ghost herself is seen only a few times, and yet she is a constant presence, especially on the first viewing, as you sit wondering when she will appear next. When she does appear, particularly in a scene toward the end (which made my blood run cold), she is terrifying. If you enjoy an old fashioned, chilling ghost story, you won’t find anything better than this on film.

Unfortunately, The Woman in Black is a little hard to come by these days. No longer on release on DVD, the rights were bought up by Universal, who inexplicably announced that they have no plans to release it. Also, Hammer is planning a new version for release in 2012. In 3D, for fuck’s sake. I would urge you to seek out the original by any means necessary. You won’t regret it.

.

Zombie Flesh Eaters (Gli Ultimi Zombie/Zombi 2)

Italy – 1979

A boat sails into New York harbour, apparently adrift. When the harbour patrol guards board and are attacked by a zombie, the daughter of the boat’s owner returns to the tropical island it came from to find her father. Joined by a reporter, and two others, she discovers the island is being overrun with zombies, and a reclusive doctor is desperately trying to find a cure to the disease.

This is definitely not a movie for the weak of stomach, and as with most of director Lucio Fulci’s work, hardly a subtle addition to the genre. Zombie Flesh Eaters is gruesome, gory and violent. Banned for a long time in the UK, then released with cuts, it wasn’t until 2005 that the full version became available. Fulci’s movies certainly aren’t to everyone’s taste, but beyond the buckets of fake blood and eye gouging, there is a fantastic atmosphere to his movies. Along with City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, Zombie Flesh Eaters manages to create an almost apocalyptic tone. You get the sense throughout that the world around the events onscreen is changing. The wind blows differently, the life goes out of the world, and the air feels heavy. It is quite an achievement. Plus, unlike the bulk of American zombie movies, Fulci’s zombies actually look like the walking dead. They are dirty, decomposed and revolting, and that’s pretty much what a walking corpse should be, wouldn’t you say? Just don’t watch it after dinner.

The Giant Clockwork

When I was a student, in my final year of Art College, I created a piece entitled The Giant Clockwork. It was a screen-printed poster, depicting a large crowd of people, pointing upwards as they were dragged and crushed between two gargantuan cogs. It had great meaning to me, this poster. It represented my determination never to allow my life to be reduced to a mundane routine, subject to the limited trappings which I believed society would seek to impose on it. I was going to be different. I was going to light up the sky. I was going to resist the norms, reject the grind, and be exceptional.

That was twenty years ago. I was nineteen, looking down the barrel of my twenties, about to be released from the ease of higher education and out into the wild. I was a burning ball of pure potential. I considered The Giant Clockwork to be a profound piece of work; my testament, my statement of intent. Needless to say, looking back, it pretty much sucked. It was derivative, amateurish, and obvious. But I didn’t think so then, and probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, because it made the statement I wanted it to make. And like a lot of art, that’s all it was ever supposed to do.

Twenty years have left that student behind. I’m now thirty-nine, and staring down the barrel of my forties. As I approach that milestone, I’m surprised to find myself experiencing an awakening. Returning to consciousness to find that time really is the slyest of creatures. Time slips out of the back door while your head is turned. Time leaves you feeling like the victim of some awful sleight of hand; hit with the sudden, sinking, realisation that you were watching the left hand while the right swiftly pinched five, ten, twenty years from you. If only you'd been paying attention, you might have seen it coming and called it out.

But you didn’t. You were suckered. I was suckered.

Until recently, I was a very nostalgic man. I would look back on the good times I had left behind me with affection and longing, sometimes at the expense of the present. No, that’s not quite true. It was often at the expense of the present, and by default, at the expense of the future too. Not anymore, though. Something happened. My perception changed, and now I find myself looking back with a very different tint to my glasses. It seems rose is out this year.

I look back these days and see, not the things I did, but the many things I didn’t do. I see twenty years, not spent, but given away. I see a dead person. John Lennon once said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Well, John, life is also what happens while you’re not making them.

In my mind, I stand before that student, proudly hanging The Giant Clockwork on his wall, and confess to him that I failed to light up the sky. I have not been exceptional. I allowed my life to be reduced to a mundane routine, and the worst part is it had nothing to do with society at all. I was not crushed by gargantuan cogs. The Giant Clockwork was not out there, it was in here all along.

The student doesn’t understand, of course. And you know what? I don’t need him to. Not now. The student knows what I need. He just smiles his crooked smile, gently turns my head forward, and says, ‘you may be seeing more clearly now, old man, but you’re still looking in the wrong direction’. I smile my crooked smile because I know he’s right.

In twenty years I didn’t change a thing. This simply means that nothing has changed. I’m a burning ball of pure potential. I’m going to be different. I’m going to resist the norms, reject the grind, and be exceptional.

When Is a Writer Not a Writer?

My name is Richard, and I am a writer.

Sounds good, doesn't it? It's the one thing about myself that I'm always proud to tell people (for 'people', read 'anyone who'll listen'). But, am I? A writer, I mean. What is a writer? At what point, or by what criteria, can one rightly refer to oneself as ‘a writer’? This may seem, at first glance, a rather odd question, but it is one I wrestle with from time to time. Usually around the time I tell someone I’m a writer and feel a faint lack of authenticity, coupled with a loathsome voice in my head, telling me I’m a total phoney.

‘I’m a writer', I say.
‘You’re a total phoney', the loathsome voice says.
‘I have every right to call myself that'.
‘Yeah, but you’re not telling the whole story, are you?’
‘I’m relating the important bits’.
‘You’re a big phoney and you smell of poo’.

Let me explain, and at the same time assure you that I do not smell of poo. Not that I’m aware of, anyway.

I’ve written seven screenplays, two of which were optioned for a short while. I’m in the process of writing two novels and I’m a semi-conscientious blogger. I write. I love to write. It’s what I was meant to do. However, like most writers, I haven’t yet reached the point where my craft is my primary source of income. So, I am currently cursed with what people call ‘a day job’. You know, the thing that people advise you not to give up? Actually, my day job is a night job. I work the night shift in a hotel. It’s a thankless, tedious and demeaning job and certainly not the kind of thing you’re going to tell people you do. Not if you have a plausible alternative. Which, God be praised, I do. You see, I’m a writer.

‘Phoney'.
‘Oh, fuck off'.
‘Touched a nerve, have we?’

You see the issue?

So, the questions is, what labour defines you? The work which pays the rent or the work which you love but presently pays you little to nothing? Have I earned the right to tell people I’m a writer, or should I, in all honesty, tell people I work the night shift in a hotel? It’s like being Clark Kent, forever compelled to present that mild-mannered persona to the world, while desperate to tell people you meet that you’re actually Superman. After all, you really are Superman. Clark Kent just pays the rent. Ironically enough, he’s a writer too. I wonder if he gets the loathsome voice in his head?

Is it, in fact, the case that the simple of act of writing makes you a writer, regardless of whether you ever get paid for it? Surely it’s the act that earns the definition, not the result of that act. I mean, is a musician only a musician if his songs are recorded? Is a rapist only a rapist if he gets convicted? No, of course not. That’s just ridiculous, right?

So why, when I tell people I’m a writer, do I feel like such a fraud?

And how much thinking is too much thinking?

British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards - the results

For those who are interested, here are the full results for last night's BAFTA awards. Personally, I was thrilled to see Kathryn Bigelow win Best Director. There are precious few female directors winning major awards. It's about time.

ACADEMY FELLOWSHIP
VANESSA REDGRAVE

OUTSTANDING BRITISH CONTRIBUTION TO CINEMA
JOE DUNTON

BEST FILM
AVATAR James Cameron, Jon Landau
AN EDUCATION Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
UP IN THE AIR Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman, Daniel Dubiecki

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
AN EDUCATION Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey, Lone Scherfig, Nick Hornby
FISH TANK Kees Kasander, Nick Laws, Andrea Arnold
IN THE LOOP Kevin Loader, Adam Tandy, Armando Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche
MOON Stuart Fenegan, Trudie Styler, Duncan Jones, Nathan Parker
NOWHERE BOY Robert Bernstein, Douglas Rae, Kevin Loader, Sam Taylor-Wood, Matt Greenhalgh

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
LUCY BAILEY, ANDREW THOMPSON, ELIZABETH MORGAN HEMLOCK, DAVID PEARSON Directors, Producers – Mugabe and the White African
ERAN CREEVY Writer/Director – Shifty
STUART HAZELDINE Writer/Director – Exam
DUNCAN JONES Director – Moon
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD Director – Nowhere Boy

DIRECTOR
AVATAR James Cameron
DISTRICT 9 Neill Blomkamp
AN EDUCATION Lone Scherfig
THE HURT LOCKER Kathryn Bigelow
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Quentin Tarantino

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
THE HANGOVER Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
THE HURT LOCKER Mark Boal
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Quentin Tarantino
A SERIOUS MAN Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
UP Pete Docter, Bob Peterson

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
DISTRICT 9 Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
AN EDUCATION Nick Hornby
IN THE LOOP Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE Geoffrey Fletcher
UP IN THE AIR Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
BROKEN EMBRACES Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo, Philippe Carcassonne, Anne Fontaine
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Carl Molinder, John Nordling, Tomas Alfredson
A PROPHET Pascal Caucheteux, Marco Cherqui, Alix Raynaud, Jacques Audiard
THE WHITE RIBBON Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, Margaret Menegoz, Michael Haneke

ANIMATED FILM
CORALINE Henry Selick
FANTASTIC MR FOX Wes Anderson
UP Pete Docter

LEADING ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES Crazy Heart
GEORGE CLOONEY Up in the Air
COLIN FIRTH A Single Man
JEREMY RENNER The Hurt Locker
ANDY SERKIS Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

LEADING ACTRESS
CAREY MULLIGAN An Education
SAOIRSE RONAN The Lovely Bones
GABOUREY SIDIBE Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
MERYL STREEP Julie & Julia
AUDREY TAUTOU Coco Before Chanel

SUPPORTING ACTOR
ALEC BALDWIN It’s Complicated
CHRISTIAN McKAY Me and Orson Welles
ALFRED MOLINA An Education
STANLEY TUCCI The Lovely Bones
CHRISTOPH WALTZ Inglourious Basterds

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
ANNE-MARIE DUFF Nowhere Boy
VERA FARMIGA Up in the Air
ANNA KENDRICK Up in the Air
MO’NIQUE Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS Nowhere Boy

MUSIC
AVATAR James Horner
CRAZY HEART T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton
FANTASTIC MR FOX Alexandre Desplat
SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL Chaz Jankel
UP Michael Giacchino

CINEMATOGRAPHY
AVATAR Mauro Fiore
DISTRICT 9 Trent Opaloch
THE HURT LOCKER Barry Ackroyd
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Robert Richardson
THE ROAD Javier Aguirresarobe

EDITING
AVATAR Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron
DISTRICT 9 Julian Clarke
THE HURT LOCKER Bob Murawski, Chris Innis
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS Sally Menke
UP IN THE AIR Dana E. Glauberman

PRODUCTION DESIGN
AVATAR Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Kim Sinclair
DISTRICT 9 Philip Ivey, Guy Potgieter
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS Dave Warren, Anastasia Masaro, Caroline Smith
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds Wasco

COSTUME DESIGN
BRIGHT STAR Janet Patterson
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Catherine Leterrier
AN EDUCATION Odile Dicks-Mireaux
A SINGLE MAN Arianne Phillips
THE YOUNG VICTORIA Sandy Powell

SOUND
AVATAR Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Tony Johnson, Addison Teague
DISTRICT 9 Brent Burge, Chris Ward, Dave Whitehead, Michael Hedges, Ken Saville
THE HURT LOCKER Ray Beckett, Paul N. J. Ottosson
STAR TREK Peter J. Devlin, Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, Mark Stoeckinger, Ben Burtt
UP Tom Myers, Michael Silvers, Michael Semanick, Doc Kane

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
AVATAR Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones
DISTRICT 9 Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros, Matt Aitken
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE John Richardson, Tim Burke, Tim Alexander, Nicolas Aithadi
THE HURT LOCKER Richard Stutsman
STAR TREK Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh, Burt Dalton

MAKE UP & HAIR
COCO BEFORE CHANEL Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen, Madeleine Cofano, Jane Milon
AN EDUCATION Lizzie Yianni Georgiou
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS Sarah Monzani
NINE Peter Swords King
THE YOUNG VICTORIA Jenny Shircore

SHORT ANIMATION
THE GRUFFALO Michael Rose, Martin Pope, Jakob Schuh, Max Lang
THE HAPPY DUCKLING Gili Dolev
MOTHER OF MANY Sally Arthur, Emma Lazenby

SHORT FILM
14 Asitha Ameresekere
I DO AIR James Bolton, Martina Amati
JADE Samm Haillay, Daniel Elliott
MIXTAPE Luti Fagbenle, Luke Snellin
OFF SEASON Jacob Jaffke, Jonathan van Tulleken

THE ORANGE RISING STAR AWARD (voted for by the public)
JESSE EISENBERG
NICHOLAS HOULT
CAREY MULLIGAN
TAHAR RAHIM
KRISTEN STEWART

Two Hours In Another World

I love movies. I love them. I’ve always loved them and I always will. I love watching them, I love writing them and I love collecting them. To me, there is no other medium like it. I enjoy music, I enjoy books, but it is in cinema that I find the true spark of passion and joy that can only come from knowing you are where you belong, you are in a place where everyone speaks your language. It’s in the shiver that runs down my spine when the camera slowly moves toward Harrison Ford’s face, as he studies the golden idol he is about to steal in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s in the way my heart breaks when Al Pacino opens his mouth and lets a lifetime of regret emerge as an animal howl at the end of The Godfather III. It’s Morgan Freeman’s eyes in Seven, the Orca sailing out to sea through the teeth of a shark in Jaws, or John Hurt starting to cough during dinner in Alien. It’s two hours in another world. It’s magic.

It started with my father. And, no doubt, some genetic predisposition, since my brother did not develop the same passion. From an early age, dad passed to me this love of cinema. I would sit and watch countless movies with him, while he would explain to me why certain shots were set up a certain way. How, for example, Hitchcock would often frame his characters claustrophobically, using stair banisters to simulate bars and signify their entrapment. Through years of viewing, I began to understand the language of cinema, recognising the style of certain directors, the signatures that appeared in their work. I would smile when Spielberg used a shadow because I could name all the other times he had done it. I recognised the way John Carpenter took the basic premise of his favourite movie, Rio Bravo, and made a series of brilliant horror movies from it. I saw the symbolism of oranges in the Godfather movies. No, honestly. Oranges. Oranges signify death. Watch all three movies again and you’ll see.

I’ve accumulated a vast wealth of, let’s face it, potentially useless movie knowledge. I mean, who cares if Scorsese slowed the frame rate of a certain zoom on Robert De Niro in Goodfellas, just ever so slightly, because it made him appear more menacing? Who cares that Hitchcock made Psycho in black and white because he didn’t have enough of a budget to make it in colour? I care. Because this is my passion.

I’m old enough to remember a time when movies were almost a once only experience. It was either a trip to the cinema or catch them on television, three years later. So, I look back very fondly at the early eighties, and the advent of home video. The sense of wonder I felt at the fact that it was now possible to own a movie, in a box with a cover, was absolutely overwhelming. The local video rental store became a holy place for me; thirteen years old and staring, wide-eyed, at the store walls, lined with movies. In boxes, with covers! I could choose one of those movies, take it home and watch it whenever I felt like it. It was incredible. And what a choice! At the cinema it was a choice of three. Here, I had a choice of hundreds. My appetite increased in direct proportion to the nourishment available.

Of course, when I try to convey that sense of awe to my son, himself now thirteen, I’m met with the same kind of amused condescension I used to give my dad when he told me how cool his Davy Crockett hat was when he was thirteen. The wheels keep turning.

Movies have been the one constant in my life. While other loves have come and gone, my love for film has remained, concrete and undiminished. This, I’m afraid, is carried through to my love of movie memorabilia. I’m not an insane collector. I can’t afford to be, but I do have my own little movie shrine set above the fire in my lounge. And on the walls. And a few other places. They say that men never truly put away their toys, they just move up to more expensive ones. For some it's cars or bikes, for some it's sports, and for some it's hi-tech gadgets. For me, it's movie memorabilia. Posters, books, and yes, toys. You can call them that, if you must. I mean, I don't run around playing with them. They just sit there, which to my mind puts them under the category of 'ornaments', right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I always had aspirations towards working in the movie industry. As a child, I vacillated between all manner of the more whimsical ambitions. Actor, stuntman, special effects, storyboard artist. Each month I moved onto a new career path. In my early thirties, I took the more pragmatic step of running my own video rental store. I hoped I could recapture the magic of those places from my childhood, but by that time the rental industry had become commonplace, corporate and regimented. The magic had gone. I was just a faceless guy in a T-shirt, handing out video cases to an undemanding public.

So, finally, I sat down one night and decided to start writing a movie. I don’t know why it had never occurred to me before, and I couldn’t tell you why I decided, on that particular night, to start. Something in my head just clicked. A few months later, I had my first completed screenplay, Dark Road. I immediately started another, and shortly after that, Dark Road was optioned. The option was dropped a few years later, but my fourth screenplay, Debunking Dad, won the BAFTA/Rocliffe New Writers Forum in 2008. There have been successes and failures, and the ultimate success has not yet been reached, but I’m confident I will get there.

Who knows? Maybe one day, a scene from one of my movies will give someone a shiver down their spine. Maybe one day, something I wrote will inspire someone else to do the same. And maybe, just maybe, there’ll be magic. And toys.

Sorry, I mean ornaments.

A Phone with a QWERTY Keyboard

I like my phone. My phone has a QWERTY keyboard. Granted, it's a very small QWERTY keyboard, but a QWERTY keyboard it most assuredly is.

I'm using it right now, to write this. Exciting stuff, eh? I've had the damn thing for about a year and this is the first time I've actually used it to write a blog. Sad, really, when you consider that the reason I chose a phone with a QWERTY keyboard was so I could write on the go, with the familiar key layout which would set me apart from all those QWERTY-less people who have to tap a number key several times to get the right letter.

As usual, however, my actions fall short of my aspirations and I pretty much use my wonderful phone to write texts, emails and the occasional Facebook update.

But no more. You are now witness to history in the making. A blog written on my QWERTY keyboard equipped phone. Sorry it's not longer and more interesting. My fingers are starting to ache from trying to type on these ridiculously small keys.

Who designed this thing, a fucking hamster?

Antichrist and an Amusingly Victorian Review

I just sat and watched an art house horror movie called Antichrist by the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. You may or may not have heard of it, but it gained some notoriety at the Cannes Film Festival this year where it was adored and reviled in equal measure due to its very graphic nature.

It’s the story of a couple (Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) whose young son falls from a window and dies, unnoticed by them while they are having sex. They retreat to a cabin in the woods to recover but fear, guilt and resentment lead them to begin systematically torturing each other, first mentally and then physically. All the while the woods around them begin to come alive.

Lars von Trier is not one of my favourite filmmakers by a long shot. I find his movies are usually pretentious, self-important and plodding and Antichrist isn’t much different. It’s not your average Cineplex popcorn seller, with scenes of close-up penetrative sex and genital mutilation among other things, but it is deeply unsettling, haunting and one of the most beautifully shot movies I’ve seen in a long time. Not one for the shelf, but a good movie nonetheless.

So, after watching a movie like this I like to go and read some reviews; see what the rest of the world thought. I prefer to read the bulk of movie reviews after the event. One stop I always find enjoyable is my old friend The Daily Mail. For those of you who don’t know, The Daily Mail is a British newspaper. It is a bastion of Victorian values and insane Conservatism and either gives me a good chuckle or sends me into a foaming rage, depending on the topic. I simply had to know what The Daily Mail film reviewer thought about Antichrist.

This is what I found. It’s long, and much like the films of Lars von Trier, it’s pretentious, self-important and plodding. But it is well worth the read!


What DOES it take for a film to get banned these days?

By Christopher Hart

As censors approve a movie that plumbs grotesque new depths of sexual explicitness and violence, one critic (who prides himself on being broad-minded) despairs...

A film which plumbs new depths of sexual explicitness, excruciating violence and degradation has just been passed as fit for general consumption by the British Board of Film Classification. They have given the film an 18 certificate. As we all know, this is meaningless nowadays in the age of the DVD because sooner or later, thanks to the gross irresponsibility of some parents, any film that is given general release will be seen by children.

You do not need to see Lars von Trier's Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is. I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I - and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency. But merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-turning, and enough to form a judgment. As Ernest Hemingway said of obscenity in a justifiably disgusting image, you don't need to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know they're scabs.

Here is the 'plot' of Antichrist, with apologies in advance. But since this is coming to a cinema near you soon - and then a DVD, a website and a late-night TV channel - you might want know about it. A couple are having sex. Graphically close-up. While they are doing so, their toddler falls to his death from a balcony. The husband and wife go to stay in a log cabin to recover from their grief. There, horrors the likes of which I have never witnessed unfold in graphic detail. Eventually, the husband strangles her and escapes through the woods, where he is surrounded by hundreds of children with blurred faces. The end.

Now the anonymous moral guardians of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), in their infinite wisdom, have passed this foul film for general consumption. Another bizarre but typical judgment from this panel of experts whose names we don't even know (and so we don't even know if they are parents). We do know that its president, Sir Quentin Thomas, gets £28,000 for 25 days' work a year. Nice job if you can get it. In a jaded and degraded culture, Antichrist is presumably intended to shock. In fact, it doesn't shock, it merely nauseates.

It doesn't shock or surprise me in the slightest that Europe now produces such pieces of sick, pretentious trash, fully confirming our jihadist enemies' view of us as a society in the last stages of corruption and decay. It doesn't surprise me that Antichrist was heavily subsidised by the Danish Film Institute to the tune of 1.5 million euros.

I tried to find out more from the Institute, but to my small surprise they disdained to reply. But you can be sure that they in turn are funded by the EU and so by my taxes - and yours. How do you feel about that? If not shocked, then weary, furious, disgusted? Well you can complain all you like, but no one is listening. Our arts mandarins, along with the rest of our lofty liberal elite, don't work like that. Their job is to take our money and spend it on such fashionable torture porn - sorry, art - not ask us our opinion.

Since sex and violence are both intrinsic parts of human experience, art and literature will necessarily contain both. There are few more horrific moments on the English stage than in King Lear, when the Duke of Cornwall gouges out the aged Gloucester's eyes. I must have seen the scene 20 times and it never fails to appal. But although superficially similar to the atrocities of Lars von Trier's Antichrist, it differs in every significant respect. Shakespeare is dramatising the tragic universe we inhabit, human evil at its worst, and the hidden moral process by which Cornwall will eventually be punished for his cruelty.

The world of Antichrist, by contrast, is blatantly amoral, without any sense of justice or retribution whatever. Its mingling of sex and violence, the cheapest and nastiest trick in the book, is usually one which the BBFC pounces on in a straight horror film. But here they are blinded by their own cultural snobbery, swallowing the lie that Antichrist is Art. Von Trier, the film's writer and director, naturally scorns as a philistine rabble those who don't appreciate his rare genius. 'I don't think about the audience when I make a film. I don't care. I make films for myself.'

A pity he doesn't fund those films for himself too, then. But he cannot be blamed for his atrocities, he explains. 'It's the hand of God, I'm afraid. And I am the best film director in the world. I'm not sure God is the best god in the world.' Willem Dafoe, meanwhile, who plays the father, is evidently proud of his work in Antichrist too. He believes that all that child death and sexual violence is 'poetry', that the film is 'true and fresh and living', and dismisses any objections as 'very conservative.' In quintessential luvviepseak, he explains: 'Your responsibility is to the integrity of what you do to yourself.'

Now bearing the stamp of BBFC approval, Antichrist is to be released uncut into our cultural bloodstream. In artistic terms, it is the equivalent of food poisoning. How odd that while government-appointed health czars are so obsessed with anything that might harm the nation's physical wellbeing - hanging flower baskets, conkers, too much sunshine, not enough sunshine - any concern with the nation's moral or spiritual well-being has completely vanished. Its approval by the BBFC raises the question: what on earth does it take for a film to be banned nowadays? If the visceral sadism of Von Trier's film passes muster, surely anything will?

Censorship today seems to have been reduced to the feeble principle that if it doesn't harm children, then it should be allowed. As soon as it's released on DVD, Antichrist will harm children anyway, deeply and irrevocably. But when did this principle of protecting only children arise anyway? What about harming adults? If I were to see Antichrist, I don't believe for a moment that it would incite me into copycat violent behaviour or make me a danger to others. But it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.

Isn't that good enough reason to ban it, or at least demand extensive cuts? But have we - that is to say, the hesitant, fumbling, comfortably cushioned, value-free Leftish elite who now govern us - got the guts? I doubt it.

Just remember, he hasn’t actually seen the film but…