Post festival Q&A with Bill Gosden

Post festival Q&A with Bill Gosden

So it's done in Auckland - another New Zealand International Film Festival and a load of cinematic treats are now being bundled up and sent around the country for others to enjoy.
I caught up with festival director Bill Gosden to get his thoughts on the cinematic circus leaving town.

Auckland is completed and Wellington’s in full swing, how do you see the 2013 festival going so far?
The biggest relief has been the technical/logistical achievement it represents. Everything played on schedule! We had some very close calls, not least a missing code to activate the very last screening on the programme, The Dream of Reality on Sunday night at the Civic. We had to rouse French crew from their beds at 6.00am on a Paris Sunday to extract the magic formula. It’s been great to see the almost universally positive responses to Antarctica and Gardening with Soul. I’d been touting these with such confidence from the get-go that certain cinephile commentators were accusing me of rank hucksterism.

And adding extra screenings of some films as well?
Some films have been popular this year and it's good to report that extra screenings of the Human Scale and Utu Redux were added in Wellington due to public demand.

Gardening with Soul

What’s been the best bit of an audience Q&A you’ve attended?
We’ve had a lot of help in that department in Auckland this year with some expert guest moderators, so I haven’t always been in the thick of it myself. My own biggest kick was seeing producer Leanne Saunders turn the tables and solicit some very thoughtful responses from the kids in the audience at The Weight of Elephants.

What have been the early break out hits this year?
Antarctica, Gardening, Candelabra , Only Lovers Left Alive,  The Gilded Cage,  Blinged –up Emma Watson, Blinged-up ponies....

Conversely, which film do you feel more people should have been at?
The Broken Circle Breakdown and The Past fell far short of our expectations, but I’m sure we’ll see some improvement as the word spreads.

The Broken Circle Breakdown

What’s been your highlight of the Auckland festival?
Revisiting 1928 and coming away enriched.  Jo Contag’s score for The Crowd is a wonderful work of sympathetic imagination across the decades. Tim Brock’s scores for the two Keaton movies are both fiendishly fast and precise.  Marc Taddei marshalled the APO players into a miraculous match of music, movie and live performance.

Wellington was hit with nervousness due to the earthquakes – have audiences headed out a bit more since things have quietened down?
Yes, but we have not made up for that initial cessation in sales. Spring-like weather has not helped (though it has probably settled shaken spirits somewhat).

What’s been the best bit of audience / punter feedback you’ve had?
The person who didn’t tell me how tired I look.

With the festival heading off to the provinces, including Gore for the first time, what would you recommend people don’t miss out on?
I don’t change my tune for the provinces. The programme may be smaller but it’s still a great mix of hot international features, documentaries and NZ work.

Antarctica- a Year on Ice

Which film do you feel will play the best around the country?
Gardening with Soul is an instant classic.

So, Auckland’s ending for 2013 – what’s next for you?
Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch - and a lot of taking stock.

What can we expect at the festival in 2014?
A major sponsor would be good....

Jack The Giant Slayer: Blu Ray Review

Jack The Giant Slayer: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Warner Home Video

Fe, fi, fo, fum. Another fairy-tale film this way does come.

In the latest to be released (after Oz: The Great and Powerful, Snow White), Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, Warm Bodies) plays Jack, who, as a young boy, was enthralled by the stories of the giants in the heavens above.

He's not alone in that admiration of all things tall as Princess Isabelle (Tomlinson) is also fascinated by the fairy tale.

The pair meet in later life when Jack is a young farmhand and Princess Isabelle is, well, a princess. Jack's sent to the market to sell off the horse and cart to ensure there's money for the farm to survive. However, he comes back with only a couple of magic beans - as the story goes.

Those beans are also being sought as well by Stanley Tucci's toothy Roderick, who's determined to enslave the giants and use them to wreak havoc below. But when Jack accidentally drops a bean in his cabin, while fending off a visit from the princess, it sprouts a beanstalk re-connecting the humans to the Giant kingdom - and unleashing all manner of complications as well as a potential for war.

Jack The Giant Slayer (aka Jack The Giant Killer) is a perfectly fine, adequately re-telling of a tale so familiar to many. Bryan Singer manages to slightly subvert your expectations of what you may believe the fairy tale is telling by bringing a final section battle sequence to life that challenges anything proffered up by the Lord of the Rings series (albeit on a slightly smaller scale). He's also fond of the work done by his FX team, throwing in numerous swirling shots of the Giants' world to show off the scale of what's ahead and what's been achieved. 

But he doesn't lose sight of the human side of the story; Hoult is warm and affable (if a little wet) as Jack; Tomlinson is a little wishy washy as the princess / romantic lead; Tucci is (as previously mentioned) toothy and a bit hammy as the villain of the piece (as is an OTT foppish Ewen Bremner as his snickering buffoonish No2) and Ewan McGregor rocks out a terribly stilted Obi-Wanesque accent as the head of the guard. Some dignity is provided by Ian McShane's king, but to be honest, they're all second fiddle to the FX and the Giants themselves (which inexplicably all speak with Irish accents)

All in all, Jack The Giant Slayer delivers more on its Less Stalk, More Action (as one wag has coined it) and presents a perfectly enjoyable, if entirely forgettable and relatively unoriginal, family movie. If anything, you could say it's a case of Fe, Fi, Ho-Hum.

Rating:

New Thor: The Dark World trailer is here

New Thor: The Dark World trailer is here

A brand new trailer for Thor: The Dark World has arrived

The first official trailer for Thor - Dark World has dropped.

The sequel to Marvel's Thor, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston and Christopher Eccleston.





We've got a first look at Thor- Dark World with the launch of the new Thor Dark World poster.

Oz: The Great and Powerful: Blu Ray Review

Oz: The Great and Powerful: Blu Ray Review

Rating: PG
Released by Walt Disney films

A prequel to The Wizard of Oz, you say?

What a bizarre idea - and one that I have to admit, I didn't see coming. Yet, Disney has released this latest in the hope of attracting the same share of box office that Alice in Wonderland did a few years back. James Franco stars as Oscar Diggs (aka Oz), a shallow womaniser, conman and magical shyster working at a travelling circus in Kansas in 1905. When Oz is forced to escape from the circus rather than being torn apart by an angry mob after he seduced yet another woman, he makes off in a hot air balloon.

Which flies straight into the path of a tornado....transporting him directly to the world of Oz 2013. There, he meets naive witch Theodora The Good (Mila Kunis) who believes he's the prophesied wizard who will rid the kingdom of the evil of the Wicked Witch.  However, Oz is anything but a good man (despite aspirations to be a great man) and initially only takes the job on because of the promise of mountains of gold from the royal protector, Evanora (Rachel Weisz).

He soon discovers that in order to take the throne of Oz and the gold, he must kill the witch - and so sets out into the Dark Forest to carry out his mission. However, there he meets Glinda the Good (Michelle Williams) and discovers that all is not as it seems - and is recruited into freeing Oz from the Wicked Witch.

Oz: The Great and Powerful is an odd film, working in some parts, failing in others and presenting a conundrum as to whether a prequel was needed in the first place.

Visually, it's nothing short of stunning - from its opening puppet show titles to the black and white old style prologue, it's a wonderful homage to Hollywood past. And once Oz lands in the world somewhere over the rainbow, the colours which unfold on the screen are stunning, vibrant and beautiful (even if the 3D glasses do a little to dull their brightness).

But that's where Sam Raimi's film starts to come apart at the narrative seams with little in the mix.

Essentially, it becomes a hollow FX-fest, James Franco doesn't quite have the charisma to bring it as a powerful wizard, with his smirk and also pantomime-esque acting initially unconvincing. While he grows during the fantastical adventure, his speech to rouse the troops at the end is no more than the wet whinings of someone who's out of their depth. Equally, Michelle Williams is way too wishy-washy as Glinda, and is so insipid in her goodness, it's too gooey to be effective. Weisz and Mila Kunis are a good pair of witches, whose morality is somewhat compromised. Zach Braff provides the laughs as a bell-hopped bedecked flying monkey, brought in to puncture some of the darker scenes later on and keep the kids on side.

It's not that Oz: The Great and Powerful is a complete disaster; it's visually spectacular and beautifully costumed, but it's overlong and its pacing occasionally feels off, but the script doesn't quite give us the insights we need into the characters. The Wicked Witch was essentially a woman scorned? Oz, despite his initial shyster behaviour and protestations that he can be a great man, doesn't quite convince in the final stages.

Essentially, Oz: The Great And Powerful is like a cheap magician's trick - it promises much, but peek behind the curtain and beyond the smoke and mirrors, and you'll see a hollow, emptiness which is disappointing to older viewers, but may prove enchanting to younger audiences.
Rating:

Pain and Gain: Movie Review

Pain and Gain: Movie Review

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Tony Shalhoub, Antony Mackie, Rebel Wilson, Ed Harris, Rob Corddry
Director: Michael Bay

A Michael Bay movie with only one explosion and shot for just $25 million?

Has the Bay-meister gone arthouse?

In among the body-conscious world of Miami, Mark Wahlberg plays bodybuilder Daniel Lugo, a believer in the American dream, but not in the reality of working towards it. After taking on a rich new client, Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), Lugo concocts a scheme to kidnap him and get him to sign over all his wealth and wordly possessions, believing he's entitled to it.

Lugo co-opts fellow gym buddy, Adrian (Anthony Mackie) a steroid riddled impotent into helping - and the final link of Dwayne Johnson's Paul Doyle, a former convict who's discovered religion and is trying to go straight - but faces temptation left, right and centre.

But Lugo's plan doesn't quite go as expected...and Ed Harris' PI, Ed DuBois is called in to track the group down.

Pain and Gain is a rather odd beast.

Stylish rather than something with substance, it's an odd mix of the garish world of Miami with the ineptitude of three wannabe criminals whose ideas are executed laughably. There's a kernel of a sermon here about the American dream and how to aspire for it rather than simply to take it, but it's lost midway through.

Worst of all, the story goes for black comedy, but the reality of what happened (the film opens with a disclaimer that "Unfortunately, this is a true story") is actually quite horrific and you're left feeling unsure whether it's the right choice of material for a film in the first place, mixing in queasy laughs with some horrific situations in the sun soaked world of Miami with its glistening and perfectly sculpted bodies.

Wahlberg commits fully to the role as does Johnson (who spectacularly goes off the rails) but none of them are empathetic or sympathetic characters; even the kidnapped Kershaw is a beast to his employees and never really fully deserving of our care or time. A real lack of compassion is fatal in a story like this.

The end result is that Michael Bay's concocted something that feels an unusual film - potentially torn from the lurid pulpy crime novels world, it doesn't quite work on the screen and which descends into hysterically OTT violence as it reaches its climax. Feeling wildly uneven and tonally a bit up and down, the film hits some stylish highs and can't sustain the initial satirical tone it was aiming for. Gallows humour there may be, but some of it just doesn't sit right as it unspools.

Over-long and flawed, this piece ends up being a little more about the pain, rather than the gain.

Rating:

Byzantium: Movie Review

Byzantium: Movie Review

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Daniel Mays, Caleb Landry Jones, Jonny Lee Miller, Sam Riley
Director: Neil Jordan

Ah, vampires.

The eternal souls of damnation wandering the night and the earth and providing countless opportunities for story-telling and moping.

This latest, from Interview with the Vampire director Neil Jordan, relocates to Britain's coastal towns and follows a mother / daughter duo of Clara (a rather buxom Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) as they negotiate life.

The nomadic duo is constantly on the run or never close to settling down thanks to something jeopardising their new lives; and when the pair end up being forced to leave another town and on the run, they fall into a disused hotel, Byzantium, run by grieving son Noel (Daniel Mays).

Before too long, Clara's turned the hotel into a brothel (a mother's got to provide, right?) and Eleanor's fallen for ailing teenager Frank (Caleb Landry-Jones) and has revealed a little more of their past to him than perhaps Clara would have liked.

However, with forces catching up with them, the duo face the possibility of facing fate once and for all - or moving on once again and facing damnation throughout their eternal life.

Byzantium is a different vampire film than what we've come to expect on a diet of True Blood and Twilight.

Jordan's crafted a piece which is sombre, moody and atmospheric as it weaves back and forth into Clara's past. Arterton and Ronan are great as their characters and present a real contrast to each other; Arterton delights in company as opposed to Ronan's ethereal loner. (She seems to be delighting in these character roles). It's their relationship which is central to the story and which proves to be affecting and engaging as this tale of the damnation of an eternal existence plays out.

Visually, there are some arresting images as well - such as waterfalls turning red with blood after a vampire is created and Jordan gives these killers an extended fingernail to kill rather than the traditional fangs but these moments are somewhat lost in the second half of the film.

It begins to drag a little where the tension should be starting to bite - and some of the historical background becomes a little dull. Sam Riley and Jonny Lee Miller hardly figure in the final mix as well - and given the ending, it would have been better if Jordan had used the Riley character a little more throughout.

All in all though, Byzantium is a commendable and occasionally fresh take on a genre which has been drained of originality over the years.

Rating:

Zero Dark Thirty: Blu Ray Review

Zero Dark Thirty: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow and Icon

From the Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow, comes this film, a look at the decade long hunt to track down and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. Based on first hand accounts of what happened, Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, a CIA agent brought in to the hunt for bin Laden after the September 11th terror attacks. Initially reticent to take part in the controversial methods of torture (water-boarding, deprivation techniques) the CIA used out in the field, Maya begins to work a series of leads which she thinks will find bin Laden's courier.

But, at every turn, she finds obstacles in her path to pursuing this route - from the bosses at the CIA insisting she prevent attacks on the homeland rather than following a vendetta which isn't coming to fruition to reticence from agents in the region who believe she's wasting her time.

However, when Maya finds the compound where bin Laden's hiding, suddenly her decade long quest moves into sharp focus...

Zero Dark Thirty is a terrifically thrilling film, which takes its time to inveigle its way under your skin, but when it does, it refuses to let go. Chastain is electrifying as Maya, the initially wet behind the ears agent, who refuses to take part in the torture of suspects but whose life outlook is changed when her friends are killed and she goes from wavering agent to steely determined agent, who's looking for success no matter what the outcome. But Chastain's great strength in this role is how it gradually builds up to this point and how plausible she makes the character's motivations. When her friends are killed in a bomb attack, Maya explains how she believes she was spared and intones that she's going to "smoke everyone involved in the operation. And then I'm going to kill bin Laden." It's to Chastain's credit that this key line is delivered plausibly and not in true Hollywood fashion with gung ho music and fists being punched in the air. We also know little of Maya outside of the job too - so it's understandable that she's so consumed by it all - and none of that lack of outside life matters to the portrayal as everything we need to know is up there on the screen.

And some of that credit must also be given to director Bigelow, who's fashioned a quiet thriller of a film which builds to a stunning final sequence which follows the Navy SEALS who took down bin Laden's compound. That edge of your seat action is so compelling, heart-stopping and clinical in its direction and execution. Tautly paced, superbly directed and powerfully acted, Zero Dark Thirty is a must own.

Extras: Behind the scenes pieces

Rating: