Something 4 The Weekend by
Why are there only Bounty Hunters? Where's the Crunchie, Mars and Curly-Wurly Hunters?
Welcome ladies, gentlemen and film
fans everywhere to entertainment manchester's weekly
feature 'Something for the Weekend'. Every Friday, we
deliver to you the best (and, in the interest of balance,
worst) of this week's new cinematic releases. If, as
Forrest Gump once might have said were he a film fan,
cinema really is like a box of chocolates, then think
of us as your mini-menu, steering you away from the
coffee creams and towards the Turkish delights of the
movie world.
The Big Picture
Is it just me or are kids films getting better? Bemoan the '80s all you like (and, believe me, I like nothing more), but back then kids films had a bit of edge. The likes of The Goonies, Back to the Future and anything the criminally underrated Joe Dante put his hand to were kids films par excellence, mixing a nice bit of heart with a darkness which resolutely refused to patronise its pre-teen audience - if you've seen Gremlins recently, you'll know what I mean.
As the '80s turned into the '90s, however, there seemed to be a shift, a movement from the moral majority against the kind of films I as a kid had enjoyed. Suddenly, the sight of terrifying little critters driving snow-ploughs into the residents of sleepy American towns became unacceptable, time-travelling oedipal sagas became out-of-bounds and films about a man called One Eyed Willy wouldn't be touched with a 10 foot barge pole. Alas, the heady days of good natured sadistic fun were gone, banished to the cinematic ether and replaced by the passe likes of Home Alone, Kindergarten Cop and such Hulk Hogan-starring masterpieces as Mr Nanny and Suburban Commando.
Still, there were some brief shafts of light cutting through the dark. Disney threw down one last slab of quality in the shape of 1994's The Lion King. Pixar rose to prominence after a couple of charming shorts with 1995's Toy Story, marrying the perfect kiddie-friendly tale with an impressively mature subtext (Sid's bedroom, for example, represents a particularly brutal toy hell). Tim Burton, meanwhile, ever the iconoclast, spun the elegant fairy tale Nightmare Before Christmas. And, of course, there was also our very own Wallace and Gromit.
Emerging at the end of the 80s with the crude but adorable A Grand Day Out, crackpot inventor Wallace and his loyal pooch Gromit were the brainchild of animator Nick Park. A softly spoken inventive type of guy (perhaps not too different from Wallace himself), Park's short film showed promise and comprised part of his graduation project from the National Film and Television School. However, it wasn't until the follow-up, 1993's The Wrong Trousers, that the Wallace and Gromit craze began in earnest.
Earning Park his first Oscar at the 1994 ceremony, it not only marked a dramatic improvement in the actual animation but struck a bone fide formula, blending gentle Ealing style wit with quintessentially British whimsy and at least one undeniably cute animal - in this case a scheming penguin using a red rubber glove to disguise himself as a chicken - and frankly, what's not to like about that? Third short A Close Shave changed the formula very little (if it ain't broke...), swapping Feathers the Penguin for Shaun the Sheep and giving Wallace an oddly moving love story. It earned Park a second Oscar statue and sealed Aardman's reputation as Britain's premier export.
However, since then the world has been sadly bereft of Wallace and his newspaper reading hound. Aardman's quirky Chicken Run sated audiences' appetites in 2000, but the Great-Escape-relocated-to-a-chicken-coup story was no replacement for our northern heroes. Even the long-running Creature Comforts, which still continues to charm TV audiences, couldn’t make up for the conspicuous absence of the quintessential one man and his dog.
So where have the tank-top wearing OAP and his mutt been hiding? Well, it seems that Park and his Bristol-based team have been holed up at Aardman working day in day out on a new W&G feature. Lured from shorts by the animation wing of Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio, Park has been playing with the big boys (as well as a bigger budget) to produce the feature length (83 minutes to be precise) Curse of the Were Rabbit.
So, have the bright-lights of Hollywood blinded Park to the British whimsy which made his name? Evidently not, with the Bristolian insisting that Curse will be as British as tea, cricket and, yes, cheese and crackers. Indeed, whereas the previous shorts riffed on Ealing style comedy, this is more indebted to another English institution: Hammer Horror with a trailer which Peter Cushing wouldn't look out of place in.
Thankfully, the press have embraced the film and its British eccentricity with Empire calling it a "consistently hilarious slice of Britannia" while Total Film declares that "Wallace and Gromit make an effortless transition to feature film format in this bona fide British success." Hell, even The Guardian gave it five stars. Judge for yourself from today...
Also Playing...
"My name is Domino Harvey. I am a bounty hunter," says Keira Knightly in the absurd trailer for the second of this week's new releases Domino. Based on the true life tale of model-turned-bounty hunter (told you it was silly) Domino Harvey, Tony Scott's film hit some controversy recently when its tongue in cheek tone was criticised after the real Domino's mysterious death in June.
However, despite its, shall we say, more radical excesses, with Scott directing, Mikey Rourke co-starring and writer Richard 'Donnie Darko' Kelly describing it as "a satirical interpretation of the Hollywood biopic", it certainly sounds interesting. But Knightly's starring role wreaks of stunt-casting.
It's unfair to criticise the Pirates of the Caribbean star this early into her career. She is, after all, still only 20 and Domino marks her first dramatic break-away from the English Rose image she’s perfected of late in Pride and Prejudice. However, there's something unmistakably 'let's play dress up' about her demeanour (and indeed the film as a whole), almost like a little girl who's just found her mother's make-up bag. Surely someone with the grimy credentials of Julliette Lewis would have been more apt for the role?
Still, with Scott behind the camera, it's sure to have loads of big explosions and, judging from the trailer, a wise-cracking Christopher Walken to distract us from the absurdities. Just don't expect her to be as good as Boba Fett. Now there's a bounty hunter with real class.
More gun-toting action comes in the form of Lord of War. This intriguing Nicolas Cage-starrer seems like an anti-gun parable, with Cage’s Yuri Orlov eventually feeling the repercussions of a life of gun trafficking. However, the wildly over the top trailer, set to no less than Edwin Starr's War, gives a false impression, building it up as some kind of Steven Segal action thriller.
So which one is it? Hotdog certainly seems impressed, calling it "a proper indie" which is "chilling in its implications". However, others have been less enthusiastic with Empire complaining that despite its "impressive performances, fascinating info-bytes and pertinent editorial, it feels too much like an illustrated lecture". Meanwhile, Jonathan Ross on Film 2005 simply slaughtered it, brandishing Niccol's film "completely and unjustifiably in love with its own effort at breezy style ".
Finally, we go to Japan for the return of a movie legend. No, it's not The Pink Panther’s Burt Kwouk, but giant lizard and destroyer of all things large and skyscrapery, Godzilla! After years of entertainingly bizarre spin-offs, including bouts with Mothra, King Kong and, my personal favourite, Mecha-Godzilla, the Tokyo destroying scaly one is back in his original form. That means no American dubbing, no hastily inserted sequences to make it make sense and, best of all, no Roland Emmerich! Hooray. Godzilla opens in selected cinemas from today and will be released on DVD shortly. ROAR!!!
Next week: necrophiliacs get excited in Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, The Lord High God Almighty Bill Murray plays...well... The Lord High God Almighty Bill Murray in Broken Flowers and Jessica Alba is sent Into the Blue (and back to 1987 if the trailer's anything to go by). Be there or get sent into a demonic netherworld populated by show-tune singing skeletons and half-dead ladies. Hey, that sounds quite fun actually...
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