FILMS, FESTIVALS, FOOD, TERRORISM COMEDIES…10 days of Euro Fun, if you exclude the exchange rate.
July 19, 2010
Paris in July.
Heaven on a stick. Actually I am referring to the main course of my first night’s dinner. I was so impressed I had to photograph it. Vegans, please avert your eyes.
Wherever I go, arresting images tend to trigger scene concepts. The hanging skewer of shashlick could be the sharp handy weapon the unarmed assassin plans to be served near his victim, and so on. I know, I’m a sick puppy…
Paris Cinema Festival staged a midnight to dawn Ozploitation section, programmed by Festival director Aude Hesbert, and I was brought in to do the introductions, kicking off with DEAD END DRIVE IN presented in the original Australian patois with French subtitles.
Trivia footnote: When we sold the film to New World Pictures, they wanted to dub Aussie accents and slang into ” American” as had been done to MAD MAX. ( I saw it once. Horrible.) I believe an “American” version of DEDI was prepared, then abandoned, when we resisted so vociferously. Does it sit forgotten in a vault gathering dust? I have a little masochistic curiosity. For those interested in contrasting advertising approaches, here first is a rarely seen Australian TV spot for the film’s 1986 release.
Now, here is the New World Pictures trailer for the US release.
The theater was 4 seats short of full, the audience was patient as I mangled their language, they totally got the movie and 80% stayed for the 4 am TURKEY SHOOT. The stamina of French cinephiles is legendary.
Then, on to the Czech Republic and the Karlovy Vary Festival, where a chauffeur driven Audi speeds you to screenings down narrow streets that resemble rows of wedding cakes.
A selection of Ozploitation classics, programmed by Karel Och, and accompanied by Mark Hartley’s NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, were playing through the week.
Producer and old friend Richard Brennan (LONG WEEKEND) joined me for introductions and interviews.
On our second night, we were dinner guests of another old friend, legendary Australian critic and author David Stratton, who was on the Festival Jury. David has been a tireless supporter of the Australian film industry for 40 years. He ran the 1973 Sydney Film Festival where my first film THE STUNTMEN won Best Documentary. Richard Brennan produced over 26 movies, including exec-producing my DEATHCHEATERS. There was much discussion of the current state of Australian film. The quality and success of ANIMAL KINGDOM is certainly encouraging. Which reminds me, I ordered my first ever plate of roast goose, succulent with a guilty residue. No problem eating duck, Donald notwithstanding. Perhaps it’s Mother Goose that gives me a twinge…
I had to leave early to introduce THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, virtually unseen in the Czech Republic, now graced with Czech subtitles. So gratifying to watch 1000 young Czechs enjoying the action and getting the satire. ( The Australian DVD is the fullest version for those that don’t know the film)
Between Ozploitation duties, I had time to see a number of movies. Here’s four I particularly enjoyed:
I knew nothing about LA DOPPIA ORA ( The Double Hour) before the screening started and that’s the best way to see this Italian romantic paranormal thriller. Suffice to say, I had the rare experience of not knowing what was going to happen next from the first 10 minutes to the end. Yet at each new surprise, each Ah-Huh moment, I never felt cheated by the writer. It’s a fantastic script, directed with style and a very sure hand, that started a bidding war for English language remake rights after the star Ksenyia Rappoport won Best Actress at Venice earlier in the year. It’s a great date movie, but don’t let anyone tell you a thing before it starts. Here’s the unsubtitled Italian trailer, which manages to sell without spoiling the twists.
SOUND OF NOISE is a delightful Swedish comedy about musical terrorists.
They adore rhythm, and abhor musical instruments. Their ideology is free form drumming using everyday objects.
Their agenda is to disrupt public areas, a bank, a hospital, etc. and stage brief anarchic concerts before the police arrive. They are pursued by a tone deaf detective, who hates music, to the disappointment of his family of musical prodigies. The climax, when the musical anarchists use the city’s electrical grid as their instrument is hilarious. ( But don’t try this at home!) If the concept sounds very esoteric, it’s not. SOUND OF NOISE is easy to grasp, charming, whimsical, and frequently laugh out loud funny.
I think it deserves to be Sweden’s contender for this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar. Co-directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson have a comedic flair that transcends cultural borders, judging by the response of the Czech audience, and their movie could do well in the US with the right handling. At the Q & A, Simonsson and Nilsson revealed that their inspiration was a short film they had made 6 years earlier. So here it is. ” Music For One Apartment And Six Drummers”.
Terrorism Comedy would be a pretty sparse sub-genre, you might think, but there was another example screening at the Festival after its highly successful run in British cinemas.
FOUR LIONS is probably the most confronting black comedy I have ever seen.
It depicts a group of home grown Brit Muslim extremists, even less skilled with explosives than The 3 Stooges. Incendiary satirist Chris Morris ( TV’s THE THICK OF IT) walks the razor’s edge with his feature debut, but he keeps it pitch perfect throughout, with an unexpected coda of political criticism that lifts the film to another level. I would have laughed even more if guffaws from the Czech audience, aided by Czech subtitles, did not make the Bradford/Pakistani accents of the gang even harder for me to decipher. An English subtitled version is being prepared for US release, I hope. I’ll let this magazine piece from a Brit TV program fill you in on the issues. Personally, I think it’s one of the most important political films of the decade.
Another pitch perfect comedy of a different genre is TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL.
I’ve done a few horror comedies, so I know how hard it is to achieve the right tone on the short schedules these things are given. So a tip of the hat to first time director Eli Craig for grounding the satire in well developed characters, ( Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine have great chemistry as the luckless rednecks) then going on to affectionately trash every Friday The Thirteenth/Serial Killer in the Woods cliche we have known and loved over the last quarter century. But not in predictable ways. This is a very clever piece of work.
Undoubtedly Eli Craig is headed for bigger opportunities. Good luck. Here’s the trailer.
So back to Los Angeles just in time for the opening weekend of INCEPTION. Wow! Just shows you, it is possible for a high octane movie to feed the mind as well as the senses.
