The Big Picture Issue 17

www.thebigpicturemagazine.com September/October 2012

There's more to film than meets the eye...

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0 4 | Reel WorldThe Eyes of Tammy Faye

2 0 | Four FramesThe Truman Show

2 6 | On LocationMebourne, Australia

3 1 | ScreengemKermit's Bicycle in The Muppet Movie

3 4 | Parting ShotComin' Atcha: Breaking free from TV

3 8 | ListingsA Roundup of this Issue's Featured Films

contents Issue Seventeen. September/October 2012

Features

0 6 | SpotlightHere's Looking At You: TV on Film

1 4 | WidescreenFlash Forward: Future Cinema and the Evolution of Moviegoing

1 8 | Architecture & FilmScene Setter: The Spatial Genius of Scenographer Ken Adam

2 2 | 1000 WordsOn Your Marks: Killer Gameshows

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intellect | www.intellectbooks.co.ukPublished by

'I just keep wishing I could think of a way to show them that they don't own me. If I'm gonna die, I wanna still be me. Does it make any sense?' Peeta Mellark

Published as a bi-monthly, Film International covers all aspects of film culture in a visually dynamic

way. This new breed of film magazine brings together

established film scholars with renowned journalists to provide an

informed and animated commentary on the spectacle of world cinema.

WWW.FILMINT.NU

Film International

* * *DIALOGUE

AROUND

THE MOVING

IMAGE

***

The Big Picture ISSN 1759-0922 © 2012 intellect Ltd. Published by Intellect Ltd. The Mill, Parnall Road. Bristol BS16 3JG / www.intellectbooks.com

Editorial office Tel. 0117 9589910 / E: [email protected] Publisher Masoud Yazdani Chief Editor & Art Direction Gabriel Solomons Editor Neil Mitchell Contributors Jez Conolly, Nicola Balkind, Chris Rogers, Rob Beames, Neil Mitchell, Leon McDermott, Helen Cox, Scott Jordan Harris, Dean Brandum, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Please send all email enquiries to: [email protected] / www.thebigpicturemagazine.com

- including telethons to fund a multi-million dollar resort - The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) is a personal odyssey of the woman whose life was left in tatters. But its reverential narration from famous drag queen RuPaul never touches on the motivations of Faye.The title is inspired by

Tammy Faye's heavily-lined lids that would stream black during broadcasts in moments of penitent rapture. Her eyes are also an apt symbol for suffering, and this film extolls her victim status with attempts at confrontations with those who wronged her, skimming history while packing it with painful pinches of failure along the way.While The Eyes of Tammy

Faye proves that TV personalities are people too, it also demonstrates the harms of the spotlight that are strikingly prevalent in today's reality televisual society. There Will Be Tears. [tbp]


gofurther [weB] www.tammyfaye.com [Book] Questioning evangelism by Randy Newman

Her eyes are an apt symbol for suffering, and this film extolls her victim status with attempts at confrontations with those who wronged her.

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye was, if nothing else, revealing of a troubled life. N i c o l a b a l k i N d takes a closer look.

N o wa d ay s , t h e m e N t i o N of Christian broadcasting is likely to bring to mind a certain degree of notoriety. Where Tammy Faye Messner and her ex-husband Jim Bakker's names are concerned, infamy is the first thing that springs to mind. Hagiographies like this one have no business calling themselves documentaries, and there's a distinct MTV Behind the Music feel to this aspirational film directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.The Bakkers rose to fame

within Christian television programming in the mid-60s with shows on Pat Robertson's Christian Programming Network, before moving on to launch their own PTL Television Network. They sparked the revolution of TV evangelism that we recognise today. Avoiding almost all talk of Jim Bakker's adultery and money-scheming scandals

f i l m b e yo n d t h e b o r d e r s o f t h e s c r e e n

reel world

above © 2000 cinemax, FilmFour, world oF wonder

Seeing Double

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spotlight

Cinema and television have for some time been uncomfortable bedfellows, but the power and influence of the small screen has long been prime source material

for the big screen. R o b b e a m e s and h e l e N c ox settle into their seats and grab their remotes.

above andY griFFiths

Unfairly overlooked upon its original release, this dark and disturbing chronicle of the media – as a mass manipulator with undue influence over political affairs – is now regarded as something of a prescient classic. In it Andy Griffith portrays a drunken, abusive drifter who, after becoming a national radio and television celebrity, comes to represent the film’s highly cynical view of the media as he maintains an affable public persona whilst actually having nothing but contempt for his audience. After “Lonesome” Larry Rhodes gains this sudden fame and fortune as a charismatic singer, Kazan’s gripping polemic examines how this power to influence people can become an extremely dangerous force in the hands of unscrupulous and egocentric individuals. For instance, not long after referring to the American people as his “flock of sheep”, Rhodes delivers perhaps the film’s key lines at the climax of a snarling tirade volleyed at his visibly frightened mistress (Patricia Neal): “they’re even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for ‘em... I’ll be the power behind the president and you’ll be the power behind me.”[Rob Beames]

A fAce in tHe crowd (1957)Dir. Elia Kazan

coverfeatureY

Kazan’s gripping polemic examines how

the power to influence people can become an extremely dangerous

force in the hands of unscrupulous

and egocentric individuals.

➜

At you Here's Looking

September/October 2012 7 6 www.thebigpicturemagazine.com

aboveJames woods

toP leFtPeter Finch

the choice of renn as a protagonist was no mistake, he is so deeply desensitised that when he initially watches a tape in which a desperate woman is tortured his only focus is on the production values.

Perhaps the seminal film about television, Paddy chayefsky’s oscar winning screenplay is a satirical masterpiece and incisive piece of social commentary that only seems to improve with age.

Image: © 1983 Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC)Image: © 1976 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” So rants veteran primetime news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in this most enduringly relevant of movies: a dark-hearted cross-examination of the state of television, in which producers eagerly broadcast a crass public spectacle in pursuit of higher ratings. After Beale states on air that he is going to kill himself, the clearly unhinged broadcaster is re-branded as the “mad prophet of the airwaves” and – in a move that seems to foreshadow the coming of Glenn Beck – becomes an overnight sensation watched by millions of Americans eager to witness the next meltdown and, potentially, his live suicide. Perhaps the seminal film about television, Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning screenplay is a satirical masterpiece and incisive piece of social commentary that only seems to improve with age. A sign of its increasing relevance and power decades later can be seen in the fact that it’s often still self-consciously imitated and referenced – most obviously in the pilot of Aaron Sorkin’s ill-fated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (with Judd Hirsch filling in for Finch) and a recent episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.[Rob Beames]

network (1976)Dir. Sidney Lumet

“Do you think erotic and violent TV shows lead to desensitisation? To dehumanisation?” This question is posed not fifteen minutes into David Cronenberg’s classic body horror movie, the query underlines every second of the remaining runtime. Seedy TV programmer Max Renn (James Woods) is physically disfig-ured by his quest to uncover the truth about snuff TV show Videodrome; becoming less than human to the point that his stomach eventually accepts a carefully-placed Betamax tape. The choice of Renn as a protag-onist was no mistake, he is so deeply desensitised that when he initially watches a tape in which a desperate woman is tortured his only focus is on the production values. To further desensitise Renn, Cronenberg bends and removes him from reality. Is it co-incidence that the movie was released at a time when increasingly gruesome scenes were playing out on tape re-corders across the western world? Or that, within the narrative, Videodrome was produced in Pittsburgh, home to Romero’s inhuman flesh-eaters? Given that it is David Cronenberg playing God here, it’s highly unlikely that anything was left to chance. [Helen Cox]

Videodrome (1983)Dir. David Cronenberg

spotlight here's looKing at you

8 www.thebigpicturemagazine.com September/October 2012 9


spotlight here's looKing at you

On its release Time Out described Stay Tuned as a 'pointless 'satire' with the 'emotional depth of a 30-second soap commercial.' Clearly, they had missed the social relevance of this quirky fantasy comedy in which John Ritter plays Roy Knable – a plumbing salesman who is sucked into a hell dimension inside his TV set. In the late 1980s Rupert Murdoch started Sky TV, making satellite dishes one of the most desirable home commodities of all time. According to the commercials, there was no itch 30+ channels couldn’t scratch. Stay Tuned highlighted the epidemic of couch potato-ism in contemporary America, comparing Murdoch to the devil himself as John Ritter signs away his soul to Jeffrey Jones' demonic Mr Spike in exchange for the ultimate TV package. Only when Knable realises how much he has to lose by tuning out of reality is he able to save himself and his wife from an untimely televised doom. Even though it contains lame puns on well-known pop-culture greats such as 'Duane’s Underworld' and 'I Love Lucifer’, Stay Tuned should still be recognised for its critique of an over-dependence on TV culture and commercialism as a whole. [Helen Cox]

StAy tuned (1992)Dir. Peter Hyams

Stay tuned highlighted the epidemic of couch potato-ism in contemporary America, comparing murdoch to the devil himself...

Image: © 1992 Morgan Creek Productions

right nicole kidman

In To Die For, Nicole Kidman plays ruthless TV wannabe Suzanne Stone, the dark side to Curley’s Wife in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. America, home to Hollywood, has always deemed movie star status more significant than any other (perhaps save presidency). In the 90s, with television an established, ubiquitous household necessity, small screen celebrities became equally as adored and often transitioned to film (Will Smith and Melissa Joan Hart for example). This obsession with being seen is something that director Gus Van Sant keenly explores, hinting that people generally believe that being watched somehow lends our actions a greater substance. 'What’s the point of doing something good if nobody’s watching?' Stone asks in the opening sequence, breaking the fourth wall; communing with the audience and coercing them to consider why we watch people and why they like to be watched. Given the glut of Reality TV shows that have dominated schedules for the past 15 years, the question of why people urgently crave recognition is more relevant to popular culture than it has ever been. [Helen Cox]

to die for (1995)Dir. Gus Van Sant

Given the glut of reality tV shows that have dominated schedules for the past 15 years, the question of why people urgently crave recognition is more relevant to popular culture than it has ever been.

Image: © 1995 Columbia Pictures Corporation / The Rank Organisation



spotlight here's looKing at youImage: © 1994 Baltimore Pictures / Hollywood Pictures

redford’s well-liked drama looks at the tV set’s place of reverence in the average American living room and how public trust in it can be exploited by corrupt forces.

A star-powered account of a real life 1950s television scandal, Redford’s well-liked drama looks at the TV set’s place of reverence in the average American living room and how public trust in it can be exploited by corrupt forces. While following Rob Morrow’s congressional investigator – a man who excitedly declares he’s 'going to put television on trial' – it recounts how the game show Twenty One was rigged, with the programme’s producers and sponsor giving their preferred contestant the questions in advance in the name of ratings. In the screen version, John Turturro’s gawky schlemiel, a long-running champion on the quiz, is found to be a less photogenic and aspirational figure than Ralph Fiennes’ handsome challenger, a clean-cut college intellectual, and is forced by those in charge to 'take a dive' live on air. His replacement and subsequent fall into obscurity enables the film to explore the superficial and fleeting nature of celebrity, something which resonates even stronger in contemporary times.[Rob Beames]

Quiz SHow (1994)Dir. Robert Redford

oPPosite ralPh Fiennes, christoPher mcdonald and John turturro

[Book] The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to ‘Reality’ TV and Beyond (www.intellectbooks.com)gofurther


f i l m i n a w i d e r c o n t e x t

widescreen


La HaineAsian Dub Foundation providing the score for The Other Cinema at Broadwater Farm

Bugsy MaloneTransfroming East End's Troxy into Fat Sam's Grand Slam in April 2012

Top GunA screening and immersive event at Canary Wharf summer 2011

Since 2003, Future Cinema have been transforming how people watch films. This summer, they staged their biggest spectacular yet – taking over an entire music festival with an immersive live movie experience. Founder and creative director Fabien Riggall explains how they did it.

i N t e R V i e w b y l e o N m c d e R m o t t

FlashForward

future cinema started as the future Shorts film festival, in 2003. can you give us an idea of why you set it up in the first place?I was a film-maker, going to a lot of film festivals, but also to lots of clubs and music festivals. With Future Shorts, we wanted to create an experience-led film festival – combining a gig or a club with a film festival, which allowed people to experience films in another way. We wanted it to be about the collective experience, because I truly believe that – however much technology takes us away from connecting – people do want to connect and feel part of a community. Future Shorts started as that, and from that one event has spawned into 300, in over 50 countries. It’s this global community, who can connect online and through social media, who are looking for something different. They want to be shaken, as it were, rather than just have a passive experience. Disruption is my favourite thing in the world – it’s what makes me happy, and when you see something unusual, it flips your mind from its daily routine and I think that’s what people are looking for today, when everything is so laid out: you know where you’re going, what’s happening, you’ve read the reviews and so on. Short films can be incredibly good at breaking with that; they’re little bursts of creativity, and we thought, if we can bring them into a non-theatrical setting and build things around that, why can’t we do it with feature films?


Photos Sandra Ciampone (botoom)

'...however much technology takes us away from connecting – people do want to connect and feel part of a community.'


The Wolf Man (©2008)4-color screenprintPart of the 'Universal Series'

widescreen future cinema

in 2007, you put on a screening of one flew over the cuckoo’s nest which took this idea even further, keeping the film itself secret until the event. How did that work?That was really about building a parallel world for the film before it screened, so you have this gang or community who are engaged in what the film might be, in actually entering the narrative and becoming characters. With One Flew … we worked with Mind, the mental health charity. We created the Oregon State hospital and took the audience around there; we had actors playing the doctors, who knew every member of the audience because we got them to fill out profiles beforehand. We took them on a surreal fishing trip, had them play basketball on the roof, and got them to break out of the hospital. This all culminated in a screening, and the audience watches the film having spent two hours experiencing that. So they’re more engaged with the film than with any other film they’ve ever been to.

you took over the wilderness festival, in oxfordshire, this August, with screenings of Bugsy malone, La Haine and one secret film. what are the challenges there?It was kind of crazy. Bugsy Malone was such a nostalgic hit when we staged it in London; it was such a happy, positive project. So we talked to the Wilderness organisers, and thought about the idea of taking over the whole festival – so you have Fat Sam being the biggest guy in town, and essentially turning the whole festival into New York, but over the course of the day, Dandy Dan started taking back the territory. And we worked with all the festival partners – the other stages, the food stalls, everyone – taking over the festival for one day and turned it into this Bugsy Malone wonderland, where we had splurge fights, gambling, shakedowns, everything. the screening of La Haine had a live soundtrack by Asian dub foundation. what were your aims with taking such an urban, inner city film into the countryside?We screened La Haine in Broadwater Farm in London

earlier this year. We’re very passionate that cinema can have a big part to play in giving young people an opportunity to experience something different, and this film – which is a witness and a mirror to the riots which happened in London last year – gave them that opportunity. And we wanted to practice what we preach, by giving a chance to some of the people who the film is about to do something different, so we had some of the people from Broadwater Farm who came with us, working with us, at Wilderness. We created a show around the film: we had breakdancers, a boxer, and even a cow. And Asian Dub Foundation were just phenomenal – they lifted the film on to another level, and created yet another way of engaging with it.

do you think that what you’re doing – creating this broad, immersive, total experience - is a more fruitful direction for the future of cinema than just selling it on the technological advances like 3d?I think that what we’ve tapped in our audiences is that there could be another way of experiencing film, beyond 3D. We’ve just finished an event with Prometheus in 3D, and the 3D experience is fantastic but I do think that we’re taking it up a level. I think that in combining film with music, with theatre, to create a multi-layered thing, we’ve genuinely created another way for film. We’re not going to replace what’s already there – the traditional exhibition is the heart of cinema – but we’re asking people to do something different – to dress up, to take part, to become part of the world we’re creating. That, for me, is our mission: to find a new format. And the fact that we’re doing it at Wilderness – disrupting, in a good way, this amazing festival with a crazy, fun movie we all saw when we were kids, and then with another about disadvantaged, inner-city youth – I think is a good sign. I genuinely think that this could be the future.

Bugsy MaloneMore shenanigans and tomfollery of the cream pie kind at East End's Troxy. April 2012

Photo Melanie GowPhotos Jeff Moore


[weB] www.futurecinema.co.uk [weB] theothercinema.orggofurther

Paul (©2010)4-color screenprintproduced for the US premiere of the film at the SXSW festival

Monsters, Inc. [Variant] (©2011)5-color screenprintsize: 18" x 24"

a dv e n t u r e s t h r o u g h t h e b u i lt a n d f i l m e d e n v i r o n m e n t s

architecture & film

“ Y o u k n o w , w e n e e d a set for that”. This reminder from director Terence Young to production designer Ken Adam during the making of Dr No not only resulted in a hastily-conceived yet brilliant solution from Adam for the ‘spider room’ – a small space dominated by a disquietingly sloping, forced-perspective roof whose circular grille casts ominous shadows – but also laid the foundations for a series of designs that, if realised in bricks and mortar, would surely have seen the German-born artist crowned a post-war architect of some talent.By 1962 Adam was already a

seasoned professional, having designed for the cinema since the late 1940s when he left the Royal Air Force. Though he worked across genres, it is the very particular look he developed for seven Bond films that is his legacy in film.

Undoubtedly informed by study of architecture and employment in a British practice before the war and his experiences piloting the snarling Typhoon fighter-bomber during it, Adam’s philosophy blended extravagant technology with a dramatic and often unsettling use of geometric forms. Rightly celebrated for audaciously grand constructs, whether Blofeld’s volcano, Stromberg’s tanker or the vaults of Fort Knox, each film also contains more intimate spaces that are equally worthy of attention. Common elements such as ramps, bridges and open-tread staircases and a concern for finishes tie all these projects together.The offices of Osato

Chemicals in You Only Live Twice are an exquisite nod to traditional Japanese architecture updated for Western tastes, with sliding screens, finely-crafted woods and clean lines, all in a sympathetic palette of colours. Willard Whyte’s penthouse in Diamonds are Forever is a carefully-orchestrated symphony in chromed steel and glass with activity in every plane, from the chandelier in the ceiling to the picture window and eye-like wall safe to the model landscape set into the transparent floor. Circles feature heavily. Adam’s work here shows

a real sympathy for the Panavision frame, although he has admitted to the current writer a preference for films shot in Academy. In fact his Bond sets tend to fit the picture

space perfectly, regardless of its proportion. Ceilings are low and often canted; floors separate into layers, reflecting the ‘60s fashion for split-level living and conversation pits; end walls are usually shown, often defined by a window. Adam has an intelligent

eye for actual architecture as both inspiration and location. Goldfinger’s rumpus room, with its angled structural members, rubble walls and exposed timber, is clearly influenced by the great Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home and studio. In Diamonds are Forever the Las Vegas Hilton is extended by a matte painting to become The Whyte House, whilst the wonderfully sculptural desert dwelling in which Bond does battle with Bambi and Thumper may appear to be classic Adam but is in fact the Elrod house by noted California architect and Wright disciple John Lautner.In The Spy Who Loved Me, the soft curves of Stromberg’s Atlantis have affinities with the organic 1970s designs of Luigi Colani.These spaces exist between

reality and fantasy, thrusting Expressionism into the Swinging Sixties to generate a world perfectly matched to an aspirational audience and the new architecture they saw emerging around them.

‘Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style’ is at the Barbican Art Gallery, London until 5 September 2012. The new James Bond film Skyfall is released in the UK 28 October.

[Book] ken Adam Designs the Movies: James Bond and Beyondgofurther

Responsible for creating some of the most iconic and memorable sets in the history of film, production designer Ken Adam knows a thing or two about dreaming on a grand scale. c h R i s R o g e R s takes us on a brief tour.

SceneSette�

AboveSketches of the modified Lotus Espritas seen in The Spy Who LOved MeOppositeVolcano set design as seen in You Only Live Twice © 1967 Danjaq, LLC & United Artists Corporation. All rights reserved

BelowPentagon War Room designed for Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove


i n m i l d - m a n n e r e d insurance salesman Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is unwittingly the star of a perpetual reality TV show. His world, the town of Seahaven, is a Norman Rockwell-inspired idyll of heart-warming dependability, a saccharine stasis that Truman never thinks to doubt – until the sky falls in on him. Exiting his perfect house on another perfect sunny morning, he waves to his smiling neighbours and prepares to take the short drive to work when from out of the blue drops ‘Sirius (9 Canis Major)’, a television stage lamp that smashes onto the road before him. Truman investigates but when he looks up in the direction it has come from all he can see is clear blue sky. Sirius, the falling ‘star’ is Truman’s first clue as to the reality of his existence (Seahaven is a huge, elaborate television sound stage) and despite being passed off later by a radio announcer as a piece of space junk it is the catalyst that sparks Truman’s process of questioning everything that he has come to know.

Read More f o u r f r a m e s online at www.thebigpicturemagazine.com

t h e a rt o f a b b r e v i at e d s to ry t e l l i n g

four frames

tHe Sky iS fALLinG The Truman Show, Dir. Peter Weir, 1998

1 2

43

The moment of revelation comes with a bang. J e z c o N o l ly sidesteps the falling debris to delve deeper.

Images: © 1998 Paramount Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions


Marks...above/below JenniFer lawrence as katniss everdeen

w i t h g a r Y r o s s ' adaptation of Suzanne Collins' Young Adult novel, The Hunger Games, a new generation of cinema-goers were introduced to the concept of a future world in which watching people being killed live on television is a national pastime. Collins' post-apocalyptic narrative was inspired by graphic footage of the Iraq War and Reality TV and drew from the Greek myth of Theseus and Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story, The Lottery. The Hunger Games' vision of lethal televised violence is a neat entry point into the world of killer gameshows in the movies. Gladiatorial combat, war, sport and violence dominate gameshows within movies that address, satirize and deconstruct themes

1000 wordsm o m e n t s t h at c h a n g e d c i n e m a f o r e v e r

➜Let's hope the future of televised entertainment is nothing like it is in the movies, where death, conspiracies and ratings go hand in hand. N e i l m i tc h e l l channel surfs the world of killer gameshows.

of suppression, lowest common denominator entertainment, voyeurism, commercialism and celebrity culture in the name of political power and ratings. Existing Reality TV and gameshow formats, aesthetics and emotionally manipulative, constructed narratives have been taken to their (il)logical end point in this and a number of other cinematic, televisual and literary antecedents.The Ur-texts for the killer

gameshow movies came from American author Robert Sheckley. His short stories Seventh Victim (1953) and The Prize of Peril (1958) anticipated Reality TV and gameshows during which contestants kill or attempt to avoid being killed for a big cash prize. Seventh Victim was loosely adapted in 1965 by Elio Petri as The Tenth Victim, a gaudy, camp exercise in satire starring Marcello Mastroiannii and Ursula Andress as contestants in The Big Hunt, a show broadcast worldwide and devised to allow the violent tendencies of its bored, bourgeoisie contestants to be released. The Prize of Peril was adapted as the German TV movie Das Millionspiel (Tom Toelle, 1970) and again as Le Prix du Danger (Yves Boisett, 1983). The tale of an ordinary Joe with the habit of winning dangerous reality television shows, The Prize of Peril – in both

On you�Image: © 2012 Color Force, Larger Than Life Productions, Lionsgate


its official, downbeat adaptations – sees its central figure uncover a conspiracy behind a popular televised manhunt. If that scenario sounds familiar, it should. The team behind Paul Michael Glaser's The Running Man (1986), were successfully sued by those behind Le Prix du Danger for liberally remaking their movie while ostensibly adapting Stephen King/Richard Bachman's novel of the same name. The cartoonish Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie, with its ads for other killer gameshows – Climbing For Dollars anyone? - catchphrases, audience participation, political oppression, underground revolutionaries and lethal violence brought killer gameshows, and the themes explored via them, to a mainstream Hollywood audience in wildly bombastic fashion. Paul Bartel's earlier Death Race 2000 (1975) similarly saw a revolutionary front attempting to destabilize a dictatorship via sabotaging an ultra-violent, televised event – the annual staging of the murderous Transcontinental Road Race. British director Peter Watkins' The Gladiators (1969), is an under-seen vision of a near future world in which wars are averted and national security maintained by The International Peace Games; a series of televised military games, based on Roman gladiatorial events, sponsored by a Pasta company. Orwell may have written that sport was war minus the shooting but for Watkins war will become sport endorsed by your favourite brands. Concerns regarding a perceived degradation of moral, ethical and spiritual values in the real world have been addressed through these fictional visions of killer gameshows; standing as reflective, self-reflexive and pointedly critical works that themselves are often as hyper-violent and sensationalist as the fake gameshows they imagine.Some killer gameshow movies

eschew a future-world environment, playing out in a recognisable here and now. Daniel Minahan's lo-fi Series 7: The Contenders, which, like The Hunger Games, uses a state controlled lottery to throw unwitting citizens into a life or death situation, takes the killer gameshow aesthetic one step further by playing out entirely as an episode of the titular programme. Shot and edited to

closely resemble actual reality TV shows – with onscreen narration, highlights packages, to camera interviews, viewer discretionary warnings and episode recaps – Series 7: The Contenders places 'real people in real danger' and enthusiastically reminds us that 'these cats don't have nine lives'. Symbolically climaxing on an American Football field – the modern gladiatorial arena – and in a cinema – heavily implicating the viewer in the action – Minahan's low budget satire takes aim at the form itself; its addictive, emotionally manipulative construction and base, schedule filling vacuity. Bill Guttentag's mockumentary, Live! (2007), follows Eva Mendes' ambitious TV exec, Katy, as she brings a Russian Roulette gameshow to the airwaves. With its 'One Shot. $5 million. Killer Ratings' tagline, Live! presents itself as a movie seeking to court the controversy that Katy's killer gameshow achieves within the narrative by using a format – the

fake documentary – that aims to add a level of televisual realism to its fictional cinematic tale. As Glaser's The Running Man

did, Mark Pirro's Deathrow Gameshow (1987) places condemned prisoners in the limelight. This time as they compete in the quiz-show 'Live or Die', hoping to win a reprieve or, failing that, prizes for their next of kin in lieu of their live executions. A crude, comedic and outrageous vision of television it may be but, with Reality TV shows such as Cell Block 6: Female Lock Up and JAIL appearing on American television, an appetite for following the lives of incarcerated citizens for entertainment is evident. Prisoners again feature in Scott Wiper's The Condemned (2007), starring Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones. Appealing to lovers of graphic, knuckle-headed action movies, The Condemned, in

which purchased criminals fight to the death, is primarily of interest as its murderous action is broadcast online. Unscrupulous TV producer Breckel (Robert Mammone), airs his killer gameshow to anyone with a credit card, across the globe and free of television's boundaries of acceptability. In this vision of murder as entertainment, the constrained nature of television is the obstacle to be circumvented, with the internet the brave new frontier for unrestricted, uncensored and unedited Reality TV. The recurring viewpoints of the majority of these movies are that life is becoming increasingly cheap, television is the mouthpiece of the state, the general public will watch anything and that an Orwellian fate awaits us all. According to the movies, in the future Big Brother is watching you die... and so is everybody else. [tbp]

abovearnie in the running man

above oPPositegérard lanvin in le Prix du danger

1000 words on your marKs...

go further...

the team behind Paul michael Glaser's the running man (1986), were successfully sued by those behind Le Prix du danger for liberally remaking their movie while ostensibly adapting Stephen king/richard Bachman's novel of the same name.

[weB] 1000 words: Through a glass darkly: reflections on M and its descendents by Jez Conolly THe BIg PICTuRe issue 18: Cinema of the Mind / Due out November 2012

Images: (opposite) © 1987 Braveworld Productions, Home Box Office (HBO) / (Below) © 1983 Avala Film / Swabie Production


t h e p l ac e s t h at m a k e t h e m ov i e s

on location

Chopper begins with a disclaimer that the narrative to follow is a dramatization and not a biography. Functioning as an exploration on the notion of myth, the film recreates various infamous set-pieces from the criminal life of notorious stand-over man, Mark ‘Chopper’ Read and then leaves the veracity of his claims open to dispute. For the purposes of the exercise two infamous Melbourne landmarks are also recreated – the maximum security H division of Pentridge Prison in the northern suburb of Coburg (where the blood of Chopper and his enemies flows freely) and the vice-rife Bojangles nightclub in the bayside St. Kilda (in which Chopper more than once drew his gun against a backdrop of harsh lighting, big hair, bad jewelry and hard 80s rock). In both cases the filmmakers use the original locations, yet the former is now home to upmarket apartments and the latter a lifestyle complex. The facades of each still stand as their histories are kept alive in the mythology of Melbourne’s dark past.

cHoPPer (2000)Dir. Andrew DominikAUS, 94 minutesStarring: Eric Bana, Simon Lyndon and David Field

oPPositeeric bana in choPPer

belowben mendelsohn in animal kingdom

Melbourn�It may not be one of the first cities that springs to mind as a hotbed of cinematic creativity, but Melbourne has a long, rich history of evocative, striking movie-making. Melburnian d e a N b R a N d u m takes us on a journey around its multicultural suburbs, criminal underbelly and tram lined streets.

The notorious Pettingill crime family was a staple of tabloid reportage in the 1980s, especially due to their involvement in the revenge killing of two young police officers in 1988. The unraveling of the family is the inspiration for Michod's film, which eschews the regulation crime beat of inner-Melbourne for the city’s nondescript northern suburbs. The post-war brick veneer of Ivanhoe features prominently, including its church, shopping strip and restaurants. The anonymity of the suburban setting offers a stark contrast to the ruthless violence inherent within the dysfunctional clan. An early view of St. Kilda offers false promise that familiar landmarks will permit a sense of inclusion for local viewers, but although certain places are name-checked, there is little visual evidence of this being a Melbourne story. The one establishing shot within the Central Business District (in Little Collins St) is from an area rarely traveled, yet the prominent “Victoria Hotel” signage slyly alludes to the state where this drama unfolds.

AnimAL kinGdom (2010)Dir. David MichôdAUS, 113 minutesStarring: James Frecheville, Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton

leFtPenridge Prison as seen in choPPer

Images: (opposite) © Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC) / (Below) © 2010 Porchlight Films, Screen Australia


t h e p l ac e s t h at m a k e t h e m ov i e s

on location

[Book] To order your copy of world Film Locations: Melbourne Simply visit www.Intellectbooks.com for further information [weB] 'Like' world Film Locations on Facebookgo further...

right graeme blundell is alvin PurPle

below colin Friels in malcolm

Ari (Alex Dimitriades), the young, gay, Greek-Australian protagonist of Head On is always on the move, whether by foot, tram or car his is a constant strive to escape from the suffocating pressure of his strict family and his community’s cultural expectations. Thus we are provided with many location shots of the western suburbs, with Footscray most prominently featured. An area that was settled with many Greeks and Italians after the post war migration influx, Head On also acknowledges the later influence of the Vietnamese migration which has characterized the suburb. In one striking sequence the aural and visual cacophony of the Footscray Market is used to relate Ari’s anxiety and confusion; in another, Victoria Dock overlooking the city lends itself to reminding us of the transport many Greek immigrants used to travel to Melbourne, but for Ari the now disused precinct offers no means of escape.

HeAd on (1998)Dir. Ana KokkinosAUS, 104 minutesStarring: Alex Dimitriades, Paul Capsis and Julian Garner

The introduction of the ‘R-certificate’ in 1971 was intended to usher in a new era of cinema for liberated Australian adults; yet the initial result was a bevy of boobs and bums across the screens to the delight of both audiences and, in turn, theatre owners. Getting in on this action was the sex romp Alvin Purple, which would become the then highest grossing Australian film of all time. For locals this offered the combined attractions of seeing a number of popular television actresses unclothed and familiar surroundings including both Bourke Street (in a lovely night-time montage) and Swanston Street (during a Benny Hill style chase sequence) and the banks of the Yarra river (including a rare backdrop shot of Flinders Street’s detested Gas and Fuel buildings). Most notable is the capturing of the south eastern suburbs, from leafy Caulfield to the emerging Moorabbin : areas seldom captured on film for footage perhaps of more value to historians than to Alvin Purple’s narrative.

Although the inner suburbs of Melbourne were riddled with murderous thugs, crooked cops, drugs and vice in the 1980s, Malcolm utilized Collingwood for a more genteel crime caper narrative in which a likeable ne’er-do-well and his partner team with a socially awkward (possibly autistic) tram lover to pull off a heist involving a charming array of mechanical devices. One has a vague sense of an Antipodean Ealing comedy at play in which the antiquated eccentrics of an anachronistic working class community overcome the high-tech measures of the big city finance companies. Malcolm depicts a vanishing world of terraced housing, faded pubs and milkbars, bluestone streets and trams. Lots of trams. The final Melbourne shots (prior to an international coda) show a tram disappearing over “The Hump” of Thornbury, an oddly charming little linking section of track (over a train-line) that was decommissioned from passenger use several years ago – the ideal homage to the inner suburban milieu and its characters.

ALVin PurPLe (1973)Dir. Tim BurstallAUS, 95 minutes Starring: Graeme Blundell, Abigail and Lynette Curran

mALcoLm (1986)Dir. Nadia TassAUS, 90 minutes Starring: Colin Friels, John Hargreaves and Lindy Davies

malcolm depicts a vanishing world of terraced housing, faded pubs and milkbars, bluestone streets and trams. Lots of trams.

Images: (opposite) © 1986 Cascade Films, Film Victoria / (Below) © 1973 Bi-Jay, Hexagon Productions


nowadays , it’s impossible to understand how much of a commotion was caused by Kermit the Frog’s bicycle. Its appearance was the main event of The Muppet Movie, the 1979 film debut of Jim Henson’s iconic creatures. Roger Ebert’s review began: ‘Jolson sang, Barrymore spoke, Garbo laughed, and now Kermit the Frog rides a bicycle.’ He wasn’t being funny. The bicycle was big business. People bought tickets just to see it. And, having seen it, they argued about how it could possibly exist.

When Kermit hopped from the small screen to the big, he needed to do something he couldn’t do

on TV to entice his fans to follow him into cinemas. Something like ride a bicycle. The bicycle’s first appearance is not built up within the film: Kermit simply needs to cycle somewhere, and so he does. The bicycle, too, is not in itself extraordinary: it looks like a bicycle you or I might ride. And that is the point of it: it is a bicycle you or I might ride that, through the magic of the movies, is being ridden by a Muppet. I’ve never been sure it is true that once you learn to ride a bike you never forgot – but I am certain that once you’ve seen Kermit the Frog ride a bike you will always remember it. [tbp]

e vo c at i v e o b j e c t s o n s c r e e n

screengem

The Muppet Movie (1979)

In the 1970s, a puppet’s bicycle created more of a sensation among cinemagoers than anything in The Exorcist or Emmanuelle. s c o t t J o R d a N h a R R i s takes off his stabilisers.Bicycle

Kermit's

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WORLDFILMLOCATIONSexpLORINgThe CITy ONSCReeNA new film book series from Intellect / www.intellectbooks.com

One of the most dynamic capital cities of the twenty-first century, Berlin also has one of the most tumultuous modern histories. A city that came of age, in many senses, with the cinema, it has been captured on film during periods of exurberance, devastation, division, and reconstruction. World Film Locations: Berlin offers a broad overview of these varied cinematic representations. Covering an array of films that ranges from early classics to contemporary star vehicles, this volume features detailed analyses of 46 key scenes from productions shot on location across the city as well as spotlight essays in which contributors with expertise in German studies, urban history, and film studies focus on issues central to understanding Berlin film, such as rubble, construction sites, and music, and controversial film personalities from Berlin, such as Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. With the help of full-color illustrations that include film stills and contemporary location shots, World Film Locations: Berlin cinematically maps the city’s long twentieth and early twenty first century, taking readers behind the scenes and shedding new light on the connections between many favorite and possibly soon-to-be-favorite films.

Tracing cinematic depictions of life in Melbourne from the Victorian era to the present day, World Film Locations: Melbourne serves as an illuminating and visually rich guide to films set wholly or partially in one of Australia’s most diverse and culturally important cities. In a series of short analyses of iconic scenes and longer essays focusing on key directors, recurring themes, and notable locations, the contributors examine the city’s relationship to cinema from a variety of angles. Covering everything from sporting dramas to representations of the outlaw Ned Kelly to the coming-of-age films of the 1980s and beyond, this accessible trip around the birthplace of Australian cinema validates Melbourne’s reputation as a creative hotbed and reveals the true significance of the films and filmmakers associated with the city. Illustrated throughout with full-color film stills and photographs of the locations as they are now, World Film Locations: Melbourne also contains city maps for those wishing to explore Melbourne’s cinematic streets with this volume’s expert guidance.

ISBN 9781841506401Paperback £9.95

MeLBOURNeeDITeD By NeIL MITCheLL

eDITeD By SUSAN INgRAM

BeRLIN

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£9.95paperbacKY

ISBN 9781841506319Paperback £9.95

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Image: © 1979 Henson Associates (HA), ITC Films, Walt Disney Productions


The Directory of World Cinema aims to play a part in moving intelligent, scholarly criticism beyond the academy. Each volume of the Directory provides a culturally representative insight into a national or regional cinema through a collection of reviews, essays, resources, and film stills highlighting significant films and players. Over time, new editions are being published for each volume, gradually building a comprehensive guide to the cinema of each region. To contribute to the project or purchase copies please visit the website.

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EXPERIENCE GLOBAL CULTURE THROUGH THE MAGIC OF FILM

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DIRECTORY OF

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Directory of World Cinema: FranceEdited by Tim Palmer and Charlie Michael

ISBN 9781841505633Price £15.95, $25


i m i tat i o n i s t h e s i n c e r e s t f o r m o f f l at t e ry

parting shot

Comin, Atch�

Sadako shifts through the screen from terrifying video abstraction into the ‘real’ world to enact her revenge is as frightening as the violence she commits upon the cursed itself. In Lamberto Bava’s Demons 2 (1986), a demon escapes from a TV horror film, and approaches his prey from a first person point-of-view perspective as he walks down a long dark corridor toward the screen. Unlike Sadako, however, he struggles to break through before he can attack. While in Ringu and Demons 2 this ghastly transformative ability lies in the ability of the monsters to utilise the screen as a transport system, in The Video Dead (Robert Scott, 1987) it is one particular television set that contains the capacity to send forth killers and ghouls from its fantastic realm into that of the protagonists through the screen. Whatever the specific contexts from which these gruesome otherwordly figures manifest, the image of the television screen as a portal into darkness is a familiar one in horror, demonstrating the genre’s fundamental self-reflexivity. [tbp]

The television set may be a window into different worlds, but for some directors it is also a dangerous portal for all manner of evil.

a l e x a N d R a h e l l e R - N i c h o l a s can't look away as a number of supernatural entities give new meaning to interactive viewing.

Parting Shot: The Dance of the Bread Rolls by Scott Jordan Harris on www.thebigpicturemagazine.comgo further...

f r o m t h e e a r l i e s t days of silent actuality films, the screen has functioned as a gateway to other places. In Sherlock Jr. (1924), the self-referential capacity of the diegetic screen to act as a portal into the fantastic became clear as Buster Keaton was transported through the cinema screen into an alternate world ruled by his imagination. Horror’s signature dark twist has shared this fascination and screens have often acted as windows into sinister and supernatural worlds in films including Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983), TerrorVision (Ted Nicolaou, 1986), Remote Control (Jeff Lieberman, 1988), Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (Chuck Russell, 1987) and Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982).

The television screen in particular functions as a liminal space between the private sphere of domestic viewing and the world beyond. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Japanese horror film Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998), and the ease with which ghostly

the television screen in particular functions as a liminal space between the private sphere of domestic viewing and the world beyond.

toP sherlock Jr. / above the video dead

toP ringu above demons 2

Images: (Below) © 1924 Buster Keaton Productions (Bottom) © 1987 Interstate 5 Productions, Highlight Productions


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Europe and Love in Cinema

Edited by Jo Labanyi and Luisa Passerini and Karen Diehl

ISBN 9781841503790 | Paperback | Price £19.95, $35

Europe and Love in Cinema explores the relationship between love and Europeanness in a wide range of films from the 1920s to the present. A critical look at the manner in which love - in its broadest sense - is portrayed in cinema from across Europe and the United States, this volume exposes constructed no-tions of ‘Europeanness’ that both set Europe apart and define some parts of it as more ‘European’ than others. Through the international distribution process, these films engage with ideas of Europe from both outside and within, while some, treated extensively in this volume, offer alternative models of love. A bracing collection of essays from top film scholars, Eu-rope and Love in Cinema demonstrates the centrality of desire to film narrative and explores multiple models of love within Europe’s frontiers.

Studies in Eastern European Cinema

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ISSN: 2040350X Online ISSN: 20403518

In the years since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the politi-cal changes of 1989/90, there has been a growing interest in the cinemas of the former countries of the Eastern Bloc. There is a growing community of scholars, including a number of students working for post-graduate qualifications, who are engaged with film but also media, culture, and art (of one form or another) from the region. This is not a community existing on the margins of academia but one which is nationally and internationally recognised for the centrality and high quality of its scholarship. Studies in Eastern European Cinema provides a dynamic, in-novative, regular, specialised peer-reviewed academic outlet and discursive focus for the world-wide community of Eastern European film scholars, edited by a board of experienced, internationally recognised experts in the field.

Intellect is an independent academic publisher of books and journals, to view our catalogue or order our titles visit www.intellectbooks.com or E-mail: [email protected]. Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, UK, BS16 3JG.

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The eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) Dirs. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato

g see page 4/5

A Face in the Crowd (1957) Dir. elia kazan

g see page 6/7

Network (1976) Dir. Sydney Lumet

g see page 8

Videodrome (1983) Dir. David Cronenberg

g see page 9

Stay Tuned (1992) Dir. Peter Hyams

g see page 10

To Die For (1995) Dir. gus Van Sant

g see page 10/11

Quiz Show (1994)Robert Redford

g see page 12/13

The Truman Show (1998) Dir. Peter weir

g see page 20/21

The Hunger games (2012) Dir. gary Ross

g see page 22/23

The Running Man (1987) Dir. Paul Michael glaser

g see page 24

Le Prix Du Danger (1983)Dir. Yves Boisset

g see page 25

Chopper (2000) Dir. Andrew Dominik

g see page 26

Animal kingdom (2010)Dir. David Michôd

g see page 27

Malcolm (1986) Dir. Nadia Tass

g see page 28/29

Alvin Purple (1973) Dir. Tim Burstall

g see page 29

Head on (1998) Dir. Ana kokkinos

g see page 29

The Muppett Movie (1979) Dir. James Frawley

g see page 31

Ringu (1998) Dir. Hideo Nakata

g see page 34

Demons 2 (1986) Dir. Lamberto Bava

g see page 34

Sherlock Jr. (1924) Dir. Buster keaton

g see page 35

The Video Dead (1987) Dir. Robert Scott

g see page 35

Film Index


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