Dunkirk and Film Format Snobbery

I’ve been accused of being a film snob numerous times. Any time you disagree with someone about the merits of a film, particularly a blockbuster action film or comedy, you open yourself up to accusations of snobbery. In general I say, each to their own. We all like what we like, and hate with equal individuality and vigour. I reserve my right to prattle on about Footloose but turn my nose up at Step Brothers; there’s no accounting for taste.

The advance of digital filmmaking and projection has brought with it a new flavour of film snobbery; one that focusses on what format the film is projected in. This snobbery tends to favour 35mm film projection over digital and when Christopher Nolan gets involved it goes even further.

A few weeks back after the first press screenings of Nolan’s Dunkirk my Twitter feed was littered with critics and more successful bloggers tweeting about how everyone has to go see Dunkirk and more importantly how they must see it:

A. On the big screen

B. Projected on film

C. In 70mm

D. In IMAX

Seeing it in any other format simply will not suffice apparently.

I have lots of issues with this fetishisation of projection format. But first, some concessions. Yes, I have seen Nolan’s Interstellar projected in 70mm. Yes, Christopher Nolan does specifically use IMAX cameras because he ideally wants people to see the film that way. But… The fact is that not everybody can, nor should they.

If I want to see Dunkirk tonight I have the choice of heading to Waterloo for a 70mm IMAX screening and pay £18.50 or go down to the excellent Peckhamplex and pay £4.99. I will get different experiences at both and the IMAX isn’t necessarily the better. I would say roughly 70% of seat in an IMAX screen are in suboptimal positions that will result in a cricked neck or awkward viewing angle (this is not a scientific measure). Add to this the increase in cost and IMAX is simply too pricey for everyone to consider seeing the film in this format.

I suppose my real problem with the snobbery around film projection format is that it is inherently elitist. Suggesting that there is a proper, and more expensive, way to watch a film creates a strange hierarchy of viewers that only benefits the larger wallets. Let’s not forget that the critics, and sometimes little old me, have seen this film in their “best” format for free with the occasional glass of wine thrown in. They have also only seen the film in the one format so have no comparison to make.

I remain of the opinion that if a film is any good then it doesn’t matter how it is projected. A film that is beautiful and immersive should draw you in whether projected from celluloid of any size or whatever science happens inside a digital projector. So long as the format isn’t obstructing you then stop worrying about pixels or film grain, sit back, and enjoy the film.

Heck, Nolan himself doesn’t mind you streaming his films so long as they’ve had a chance in the cinema first.

Films are, and should remain, an accessible part of British culture. The obsession with 70mm over 35mm over digital may be grounded in truth but the most important consideration should be what film to watch, not what box it comes in.

Top Ten Films of 2016

I want to write about all the good films that we’ve had already in the first few weeks of 2017 but I still need to put a line underneath 2016. As such here are my top ten films of last year, a by no means definitive list but hopefully a good representation of the quality year of cinema we had while the rest of the world burned.

If there’s one conclusion to be drawn from these films it is that women suffer and men cause nothing but trouble.

10: Notes on Blindness

In order to look suitably cultured it was important for me to include a documentary on this list and no other non-fiction film last year was so cinematic and immersive. The film takes the audio diaries of writer and theologian John Hull that he made as he lost his sight in the 1980s and put his words into the mouth of Dan Renton Skinner. The result is a surprisingly visual journey through the loss of vision as John philosophises about his changing world as his family grows and his senses reduce to four. A beautiful, dreamlike documentary.

9: Mustang

The first in a tragic triptych running through this list is a Turkish drama about five sisters who innocently flirt with a group of local boys and find themselves imprisoned in their home. Their family decides that homeschooling and arranged marriages will help to preserve the girls’ purity away from the temptation lying in the outside world. Trapped inside the girls fill their days by lounging around the house, making each other laugh, and plotting their brief escapes. Throughout the film we see the girls’ spirits slowly decline as they gradually accept their fates or give up entirely. Much like Sofia Coppola’s comparable Virgin Suicides this is a beautifully shot film about the tragedy of young girls’ lives being restricted as they blossom into women.

8: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Sticking with women in captivity we have Dan Trachtenberg’s genre-ambiguous bunker-dwelling marvel. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is this film’s hero who we meet chained up in a bomb shelter. Upon regaining consciousness Winstead meets her host, John Goodman, who she must try to decipher and identify as either her captor or her saviour. 10 Cloverfield Lane plays its card close to its chest and the result is a taut, tense, and tantalising puzzle that dials things up to 11 before revealing there’s a whole other set of gears. Marvellous fun.

7: Hell or High Water

It is rare for a crime drama to allow the audience to develop equal sympathy for both the criminals and the police who pursue them but in David Mackenzie’s modern Western both sides of the coin are given equal weight. We experience the thrills of two brothers robbing banks to save their family land and share the slow jovial investigations of the local Texas Rangers who patiently track their exploits. When the sides finally collide with unglamorous, brutal violence it is hard to know what side to choose and whether to cheer or cry. A timeless drama of crime and punishment.

6: A Bigger Splash

Luca Guadagnino’s English language interpretation of La Piscine came and went without much fanfare last year but when I saw it I adored it. A drama filled with sun, sex, and jealousy as a quartet of characters spend a few weeks on a small Italian island. Tilda Swinton is as captivating in her silent role as recovering rock star as Ralph Fiennes is as a bombastic, occasionally naked, dad-dancer. A big, bold, brash drama that really delivers.

5: Arrival

I still need to rewatch this idea-driven piece of science fiction as the true workings of the tale are only clear at the film’s ends. Watched for the first time the film is teetering at the high end of very good but would surely shoot up to great given a second viewing. Aliens land and they do not attack, instead they want to talk. It is up to Amy Adam’s linguist to figure out a method of communication before the army do what they do best and attack the interplanetary immigrants. A film for the mind and the heart assembled with beauty and brains.

4: Anomalisa

Though painstakingly made in stop-motion animation this human drama is not for kids; this is full frontal animation. Michael Stone is a walking mid-life crisis who is a big fish in the small pond of customer service. Staying at a hotel while he gives a keynote speech at a conference he picks the scab of an old love, contemplates a new love, and tries to ignore the love he has waiting for him at home. Michael is not a sympathetic man but he feels incredibly real despite his detachable face. The film as a whole is surreal and charming with a lot to say about the human condition.

3: Green Room

The sadly departed Anton Yelchin gave one of his final performances in this relentlessly nerve-shredding horror about a punk band trapped in a neo-Nazi club. Without hesitation this near perfect feature pulls its protagonists from one excruciating situation to another as their numbers slowly dwindle. The joy of the film is in its execution. An execution that holds nothing back and constantly surprises and horrifies. I gasped, I groaned, and I hid my face.

2: The Witch

Another horror here in the top three with a god-fearing family in 17th century New England being terrorised by a neighbouring witch. Forget broomsticks and cauldrons and instead think of old hags grinding the bones of a baby and you’re closer to the bone-deep terror that The Witch has to offer. The Witch is a pure, gimmick-free piece of cinema. It is delightfully terrifying and filled with an air of unrelenting fear and genuine horror. Don’t expect any sudden jumps just a consistent feeling that all is not well. It certainly isn’t.

1: Room

My personal favourite film of 2016 is not the most enjoyable to watch. At numerous positions on this list are women being persecuted and none more so than Joy as portrayed by Brie Larson. For years Joy is kept in captivity; initially alone and then with the gift and curse of a young son to keep her company. Room has affected me in numerous ways each time I have watched it, with three different types of tear running down my face. Often with films containing this level of bleakness the work is admirable but hard to actually recommend anyone see. Room is different. Room is an easy film to recommend. Room is devastating and uplifting and finally brought the talents of Brie Larson to the world’s attention. I could watch this film countless times and no doubt I will.

Check Yourself Before You Trainwreck Yourself

I loved Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck. It was painfully funny, genuinely moving, and featured an almost unrecognisable Tilda Swinton. There is so much to love and yet… and yet… Before I went to see Trainwreck someone mentioned that perhaps the film had a surprising number of jokes about race and sexuality for a romantic comedy about a straight white couple.

Just like that the seed was planted.

I have a confession to make. I am privileged. I took the quiz on CheckMyPrivilege.com and scored 170 earning myself the title of “Shitlord”. I am a white able-bodied heterosexual cis-male atheist who was born in a prosperous Western country and as time goes by I learn more and more how lucky that makes me. This means that I do often having to stop and think about aspects of media that would otherwise pass me by. The main result of this has been an exploration of feminism and learning to understand all sorts of new phrases like “patriarchy”, “the male gaze”, and “victim blaming”. It makes certain types of film a lot harder to enjoy but ultimately is a good thing.

Trainwreck is arguably a huge feminist success story. In the lead role is a woman who enjoys sex, has a decent job, and talks to other women about subjects other than men. Good stuff. We have a winner. Let’s move along now. Oh crap there’s still racism and homophobia to deal with.

With my mind tainted by the idea that Trainwreck might not be completely kosher I couldn’t watch the film without each joke about race or sexuality sticking out. I kept a tally and reached a count of 16 jokes in total that boiled down to either “Ha! You’re gay!” or “Ha! You’re black!”. As I said before this is made all the more jarring considering the film was about a white woman falling in love with a white man. That’s not to say the cast is entirely white; Schumer’s love interest, played by Bill Hader, has a best friend who just happens to be black (and LeBron James) but the race jokes still find their way in.

Just to be clear I am not saying Trainwreck is ground zero for all racist and homophobic comedy. I’m not even saying that Trainwreck is either homophobic or racist. What am I saying then? I guess I am asking questions; I am wondering whether a comedy can exist that not only shows feminist qualities but does so without turning race or sexuality into cheap jokes. Does comedy need a target to be funny? Can you have a joke without someone being the butt? Amy Schumer is an excellent comedian and writer and has created a film bursting at the seams with jokes that will make you weep. Could it have done without those 16 jokes? I’d say so. Am I being over-sensitive? Perhaps.

Go and see Trainwreck and judge for yourself. It really is a magnificent comedy.

Priced Out of Indie Cinemas

The Cineworld in London’s Trocadero near Leicester Square was a grim place; mice scuttled across the floor and every surface was sticky. When the lights went down and a film started to play it was a sweet release to be lost in a fictional world but when the final credits rolled the horror of the surroundings dragged you back to reality with a bump. A sticky, slightly squelchy, bump. Thankfully the dark days of the Trocadero Cineworld are behind us and the era of Picturehouse Central is here.

 

If you enjoyed the company of our mice during your film, you can now buy your very own from the kiosk as part of a £7 combo deal.

— Cineworld Trocadero (@CineTrocadero) September 5, 2014

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Picturehouse Central is a beautiful temple to cinema with exposed brickwork, a grand staircase, and an inefficient but effective use of light-bulbs. While the Cineworld was an ugly duckling the site has now grown into a gorgeous Picturehouse swan. What films do they show you ask? Why only the finest selection of mainstream and art house films of course! (And Ted 2.) So why did I go to book tickets last week and balk at the idea?

£18 a ticket is why.

This combined with a £1.50 booking fee makes the new Picturehouse Cinema more expensive (for a standard adult ticket) than going to the country’s biggest screen at the BFI IMAX. Admittedly a closer look at the ticket prices does reveal discounts for Picturehouse members and £8 tickets until 2016 for a select group of screenings including Picturehouse DOCS, Discover Tuesdays, Vintage Sundays and Culture Shock. Sadly no sign of the £7 tickets on a Monday as mentioned when the cinema first opened last month.

The independent cinema chains (an oxymoron surely?) do tend to be a bit pricier but even the Curzon Soho, just up the road from the Trocadero, only charges £14 and the truly independent, and truly spectacular, Price Charles Cinema clocks in at £11 at peak times.

I love films and I love Picturehouses, Greenwich and Hackney Picturehouses have been graced with my presence on multiple occasions, but I struggle to justify spending more than £15 on a single cinema ticket. Call me cheap or call me sane but prices this high will simply make most screenings at an otherwise fantastic cinema inaccessible to those below a certain salary band. My main point is that I really, really want to go to Picturehouse Central. I want to eat organic snacks in tastefully upholstered seating but don’t have enough disposable income to do so.

To put the £18 ticket fee in context, and to find a more affordable place to spend time in the dark, I have taken a look at all the cinemas you can find in central London to see how much they charge. I’ve even put them all on a map for you. Clicking on each cinema on the map shows the price of a single adult ticket for a Thursday evening 2D screening with no concessions or membership deals taken into account. Booking fees are shown in brackets where available.

If you are looking for a mainstream movie your best bet is to visit one of the not too sticky smaller Odeons and for smaller films the Prince Charles Cinema is always worth a look. When you’re feeling a bit more flush then maybe you’ll want to give Picturehouse Central a try. Take me with you when you go, I’ll buy dinner if you get the tickets.

For updates on events, offers, and openings in and around London sign up to The Slice from Metro.

Eurovision 2015 Scoring Spreadsheet

Saturday night brings with it the annual European celebration of all things glittery. With David Cameron and Nigel Farage set to pull us out of the EU could this be our final year in the competition? Almost certainly not… Regardless the show is sure to be a mixture of bizarre and fantastical performances and something best watched with a group of friends voting on the countries they think have performed the best.

To help you enjoy yourselves I have once again put together a spreadsheet to help you recreate the Eurovision voting process in your own home. This is so that your party can better handle the mathematical part of the evening once all the songs have been sung and booze has been drunk. Two years ago we had that year’s version of this spreadsheet projected onto the wall and had a whale of a time. Without the spreadsheet how would we have known how to have fun?

Before you turn on BBC One at 8:00PM give everyone who will be voting some paper so they can make notes on each song against whatever metric they think is important to the Eurovision contest. For some it is singing talent that matters, for me it is all about being flamboyant. It is up to everyone to come up with their own top ten ranking out of all the performances.

Once all songs have been performed everyone then makes sure they are happy with their personal ranking and perhaps hilariously messes up their neighbour’s notes/scraps of paper before apologising and blaming the drink. After this it is time to collate the votes. To the spreadsheet!! Click on the Excel symbol to the right and within moments you will have your very own Mild Concern Eurovision 2015 Party Score Collation Spreadsheet for Maximum Fun and Mathematical Accuracy^TM.

It is all pretty self-explanatory, I hope, but here’s a quick guide. When you first open the spreadsheet make sure you have macros enabled. If you see a warning like this…
…deal with it.

The first thing you see with be an empty white box. Type in the first voter’s name and hit Enter, then continue until you can see everyone’s name in the list. If someone goes to the loo at this point and is pretty forgettable they may be in trouble. Once you’re done click on the grey button.

Now you are at the heart of the spreadsheet. The table to the left will show you which country is winning based on your party’s votes and the table on the right is where everyone enters their scores. When prompted each person should list their top ten countries to the group, preferably with reasons and a generic European accent, while the Spreadsheet Master^TM uses the drop-down lists to put these countries into the table. Once all ten are entered the voter should verify the list, salute the Spreadsheet Master^TM (optional), and they will hit the “Submit Scores” button which will… submit the scores (I told you it was self-explanatory).

Once everyone has voted you will have your winner! What mathematically accurate fun we’ve all had in replicating the voting process of the Eurovision Song Contest. If only all parties had spreadsheets…

Oscar Predictions 2015 – Breaking the Enigma with Data, Maths, and Educated Guesswork

Last year I used maths to successfully predict 10 out of 11 key Oscar winners and now want to try it again to take all the glory for me and my calculator. I’ve had to leave it relatively late in the day to share my findings as the Independent Spirit awards can be key Oscar predictors and only take place the day before the Academy awards. Below I will take you through my methods, my predictions, and make clear where the data, and my sanity, has let me down.

If at anytime the heady mix of maths and popular culture becomes too much excitement for you to bear please close your browser, have a ten minute nap, and then come back and resume reading.

For each category I will be showing three predictions for each category; they have each been worked out in a different way to help me decide the best method to use going forward. The methods are as follows…

Statistical Method 1: This is the same method used last year. Every award a nominee wins leading up to the Oscars increases their chance of winning on the night. How accurate each award has been since the year 2000 in predicting the Oscar winner affects the amount it increases the nominees chances. If the BAFTA matches the Oscar 80% of the time it has greater weight than an Independent Spirit Award that agrees with the Oscars 24% of the time. Make sense? Good stuff. All maths here is performed in trusty Excel.

Statistical Method 2: In order to get a little more statistically robust this year I built a second set of predictive models using stepwise regression in R. This might be a good point to look away if you’re feeling faint. For each category I am looking at which other awards Oscar nominees win before the Academy awards and throwing Box Office and Rotten Tomatoes data into the mix too. I have built a model that only takes into account factors that have statistically significant correlation with Oscar winners, leaving some data points null and void, and allows for the fact that some awards might actually have been seen to have a negative impact on Oscar chances. Pretty sexy stuff.

Statistical Method 3: I emailed Adam Richmond from the late and great film podcast Out of the Canon and asked who he thought would win. One of the simpler techniques I’ve used.

Enough bad explanations of statistics. On with the guesswork!

 

Best Picture

 

Most commentators seem to have Birdman down as taking the top award but both my statistical models have settled on Boyhood while Adam has selected Selma. Adam is clearly delusional and my regression model (Method 2) is very healthy for this category and ranks Birdman in second to last position so I think it is Boyhood‘s to lose.

Prediction: Boyhood

 

Directing

 

The old Excel technique gives Richard Linklater a clear lead for Boyhood but the newer model ignores a lot of the data and fixates on the DGA award which went to Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman. Adam agrees with this prediction so statistical significance and film knowledge win this round.

Prediction: Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman

 

Actress in a Leading Role

 

Having won endless awards Julianne Moore has bamboozled both my models into giving her an insurmountable lead for her performance in Still Alice. Interestingly a lower Rotten Tomatoes critics score here actually makes you more likely to win the Oscar. Make of that what you will. Adam has gone for Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything which I would love but is a complete fantasy.

Prediction: Julianne Moore for Still Alice

 

Actor in a Leading Role

 

What can I say? Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton. Consensus feels like it is behind Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything but he only takes second place in my old method whereas the regression analysis and Adam give it to Michael Keaton in Birdman easily. For this award a good Rotten Tomatoes audience score helps you win suggesting there is definitely something going on with the reception of films and the gender of their lead actors. Analysis for another time perhaps.

Prediction: Michael Keaton for Birdman

 

Actress in a Supporting Role

 

Another hat trick of predictions here for Patricia Arquette in Boyhood. In model 1 you need as many awards as possible. Done. In model 2 you just need the BAFTA and SAG awards. Done. In model 3 you need Adam’s blessing. Done. Nobody else has a chance.

Prediction: Patricia Arquette for Boyhood

 

Actor in a Supporting Role

 

A clean sweep for J.K. Simmons in Whiplash. He has won all but one of my predictor awards and my second, stricter methodology only looks at who won the Golden Globe which Simmons has somewhere on his crowded mantelpiece. Even Adam agrees which means that Simmons will not only win but deserves to do so.

Prediction: J.K. Simmons for Whiplash

 

Original Screenplay

 

My old technique for predicting the screenplay awards was a big shaky but with consensus across the three methods we can safely give the Oscar to Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel now and not even bother having the ceremony. Key predictors here are the BAFTA and WGA awards but weirdly the lower the Box Office the better.

Prediction: Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel

 

Adapted Screenplay

 

Interestingly here methods 1 and 2 use almost completely different factors for this award but come out with the same result. Method 2, the sexy new technique using only the most robust predictors, eschews nearly all award ceremonies preferring to look at just the WGA awards, Box Office takings, and Rotten Tomatoes critics scores. Either way you do the sums The Imitation Game by Graham Moore takes it. Unless you are Adam in which case Whiplash by Damien Chazelle is the favourite.

Prediction: Graham Moore for The Imitation Game

 

Animated Feature Film

 

This is where the new method falls over drunk. The main awards to look at for the Animated Feature category are the BAFTA and Critics Choice which both went to The Lego Movie making it the clear favourite for the Oscar. This category also has the strongest predictive model from a statistical point of view so should be the easiest for me to get right. The only issue here being that it isn’t even nominated. Bugger. Both Adam and my old technique suggest How to Train Your Dragon 2 whereas the new technique is confused and says it could be any nominee but most likely not How to Train Your Dragon 2. Stupid Oscars.

Prediction: How to Train Your Dragon 2

 

Foreign Language Film

 

This is the category that is hardest to predict. Very few factors align with the Oscars in a statistically significant way so my new method simply shrugs and says to look at the Golden Globes but that it really isn’t sure. Most of my models claim to be around 60% accurate, 80% for Animated Film (HA!), but here we’re at 12.6%. Model 1 gives the award to Ida with a narrow lead over Leviathan whereas Model 2 and Adam say it is going to Leviathan. Frankly I have no idea.

Prediction: Leviathan

 

Documentary Feature

 

Another tricky one. Citizenfour has the greatest sheer volume of awards, and has Adam’s vote to boot. The regression model however is uncertain and with some hesitation has settled on Virunga. It is worrying how these statistical techniques have taken on human qualities for me now. I am going to have to go with my gut, and Adam’s brain, on this one.

Prediction: Citizenfour

There you have it. Eleven categories predicted in various way and with differing levels of accuracy. In the early hours of tomorrow morning we will see who was right and once again wonder if it really matters.

Freddy vs. Jason vs. Michael: Quantifying Cinematic Killers

As Halloween rolls around and you dig out some horror films to watch I imagine you debating with yourself and loved ones; just who is the greatest cinematic serial killer? Is it A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees or Halloween‘s Michael Myers? To help you settle the debate in the only way I know how, with data to back you up, I have built a dashboard collecting some statistics on the three murderers and their franchises.

To gauge each killer’s critical appeal I have collected critic and audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes. To compare the monetary value of each film I have taken budget and box office figures from The Numbers, adjusted for inflation, and calculated profitability as the box office as a proportion of the budget. Finally I have collated the most important metric of all; how many kills our three supernatural psychopaths racked up per film.

As the more astute horror fans will know already the homicidal trio don’t actually appear in all of the films in their respective franchises, Jason first kills in the second Friday the 13th, so I have given you the option of filtering out those anomalies. You can also see the charts for just one killer by selecting their face or filter by year if you want to snub the modern remakes in favour of only considering the classic films.

So with all the preamble done who is the best cinematic serial killer?

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If you ask my opinion I’d have to say that from a popularity standpoint Freddy Krueger comes out on top with the best average audience and critic scores whereas if you want quantity rather than quality then Jason Voorhees wins with the most money rolling in and the most bodies piling up. As for Michael Myers? The original Halloween film not only came first but has not yet been beaten for pleasing fans and critics alike while raking in serious money.

Who is the best of these three? I think I’d like to see them fight it out…

WIGS – Strong Female Characters Ahoy!

While searching for something completely unrelated on YouTube last week I stumbled, as I often seem to do, over something a little different. WIGS is an online channel that has been producing high quality scripted drama and releasing it on the internet for free since 2012. I realise that this makes me somewhat late to the game but my research technique mostly involves me clicking through the internet one page at a time so forgive my lateness.

If you are already aware of WIGS then please move along but if not bear with me a second.

What made WIGS stick out to me was firstly the fact that the short films and web series starred actual actors whose names and faces I recognised. Much as I realise this shouldn’t matter to me I have to acknowledge that it does, particularly in the Wild West of YouTube filled with plenty of videos so awful you’d be better off watching the adverts that precede them. I am to blame for some of these videos so I know what I’m talking about.

Faces you might recognise include Julia Stiles, Jennifer Garner, Dakota Fanning, Michael C. Hall, America Ferrera, Stephen Moyer, Jason Isaacs, Jena Malone, Alfred Molina, Allison Janney, Alison Pill, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and plenty others.

The second thing that intrigued me about WIGS may have become evident while reading that artfully copy and pasted list of names; there are women all over the place. It has not been a great time for women on the internet recently/ever and it was refreshing to be offered the opportunity to see female actors take on complex leading roles rather than being offered the opportunity to see female actors take off their shirts without their permission. The phrase “strong female characters” is bandied about a lot and often refers to examples of women in dystopian futures being manipulated and punching authority figures in the throat. A strong female character doesn’t need to possess physical strength just character, real motivations, and to be a protagonists not just a prop or pawn. WIGS provides these in abundance.

I have not been asked to push this particular channel so hard but liked what I saw and wanted to share it with you. To watch their videos I advise visiting their YouTube channel and I have embedded some highlights below:

Serena
Jennifer Garner & Alfred Molina star in a short about a woman taking confession.

Celia
Allison Janney & Dakota Fanning star in a short about a young woman visiting a doctor who also happens to be a friend of her mother.

Denise
Alison Pill & Chris Messina star in a short about an actress being picked up by a man she may have met before.

Dakota
Jena Malone stars in a series about a young mother relying on poker wins to survive.

Michael Apted’s Boyhood

As an aspiring film writer and chronic procrastinator an above average amount of my spare time is spent reading what the rest of the world has got to say about film. Doing so allows me to stay in touch with the latest fads, deepens my belief that a good sub-editor is vital, and highlights when someone has been copying somebody else’s homework.

The numerous glowing reviews for Boyhood are a key example of when film journalists seem to be influencing one another or tapping into a limited group archive of cultural references. A striking number of reviews for Boyhood have made at least a passing reference to Michael Apted’s Up documentary series and I call shenanigans.

To back up my case I have performed a literature review of sorts and checked the coverage of Boyhood in 14 popular UK publications, skipping lowly blogs like this, to see how frequently Apted’s documentary oeuvre was mentioned alongside Linklater’s opus. The result is below:

As you can see exactly half the reviews I read mentioned Michael Apted or the Up series. I am being generous to myself here and including Mark Kermode’s review in the Observer which merely refers to all the other critics referencing Apted because 50% is much more satisfying a figure than 42.86%. As I see it there can be only two reasons for the ubiquity of the comparison:

1. It is a valid and obvious observation.
2. One person had the idea and everybody else copied.

First let’s see if Apted’s Up series is a valid and obvious companion piece for Linklater’s Boyhood.

Up is a series of documentaries following the lives of fourteen British children. The first installment was made when the kids were just seven years old in 1964 and the series has revisited the participants every seven years with the most recent film made when they were fifty-six. In contrast Boyhood was filmed for a few days every year for 12 years taking the lead character Mason from the age of six to eighteen.

While both do follow children growing up I would argue that the comparison of Up and Boyhood is neither obvious nor valid. Boyhood‘s filming process may have been periodical but compared to Up it has a relatively smooth flow. Watching the former it isn’t always obvious when one year moves into the next apart from when hairstyles or levels of pubescence have dramatically changed. The two projects have completely different rhythms with Up actually following a similar beat to Linklater’s other most popular cinematic work; the Before trilogy.

In the Before trilogy we follow the romance of Jesse and Céline at nine-year intervals taking them from youthful love to embittered marriage in the space of three films. This pattern is much closer to the Up series if we really do have to find an Apted-Linklater connection. I have visualised the pattern of filming for the three works below to prove my point beyond any doubt and perhaps beyond all reason.

Boyhood‘s filming schedule is a relative uninterrupted shoot when compared to both the Before and Up franchises. I think we can happily dismiss the first option and say that referring to Michael Apted when discussing Boyhood is both invalid and disputable. Linklater himself has dismissed Up as being a source of inspiration and now we have the charts to back him up.

Maybe it’s just because of my age – the Up kids have always been grown ups closer to Jesse and Céline but for older wiser critics they are always going to be seen as the children that started the series decades ago. If only they could have seen my charts before they submitted their reviews.

All of this leaves us with the second option; that one critic had the crazy notion to compare the documentaries to the story of Mason and everyone else jumped on their wobbly bandwagon. I’m not saying they did this maliciously but by foul means or fair the idea lodged in their brains and resurfaced when time came to write their reviews. Perhaps a critic loudly made the comparison at a press screening, critics do love to say impressive things to each other, and it was subconsciously picked up by those seated nearby. Only a seating plan for all Boyhood screenings can prove or disprove this theory.

There really is no other conclusion; Boyhood is not akin to the Up series (but the Before trilogy may be) and if you read too many reviews for the same film certain analogies and opinions will start to repeat themselves until the cinema journalism community starts to resemble one hive mind.

A worthwhile investigation I am sure you’ll agree.

Appendix

Reviews mentioning Apted:
Radio Times
Independent
Telegraph
Guardian
The Times
Daily Mail
Sight & Sound
Observer

Reviews not mentioning Apted:
Empire
Total Film
Financial Times
Express
Mirror
Daily Star
Little White Lies

Kickstarter is Eating Itself

Good grief everyone. Good grief.

Debate Kickstarter all you like but at the end of the day it is a decent tool to get money to a creative type from those who want to help them create their art, craft, or food. We can debate all day whether Zach Braff was a little cheeky asking for fans to fund his latest film but this pales in comparison to the gluttony of spam that is currently clogging the arteries of the crowdfunding site.

On 3rd July 2014 a Ohioan going by the name Zack Danger Brown started a Kickstarter project to make himself a potato salad. Yes, you read that correctly; a potato salad. Zack was only looking for $10 and his humourous project somehow caught the imagination of thousands of backers who have given him well above his most target. The widget below shows you just how bizarre things have gotten and unsurprisingly other people are keen to cash in on this hopefully short-lived phenomenon.

I daren’t even look at the American side of the equation but at the time of writing there are dozens of UK imitators hoping to make it rich by boiling an egg or making a cup of tea. The full list of current UK rip-offs is as follows; lemonade, more potato salad, egg salad, frying a frozen egg, boiling an egg, cookies, chocolate chip cookies, curry, a mega pizza, a regular pizza, another regular pizza, yet more pizza, random pizza(!), an oreo milkshake, evil cream pie, couscous, cake, another cake, the ultimate cake, a really nice cake, pie, potato brownies, “a dinner”, peanut dessert, hotdogs, pimped out pasta, crumpets, punk burgers, porridge fingers, steak, coleslaw, cheese on toast, a sandwich, secret fudge, and a £100 cup of tea.

Phew.

To clarify none of these are people setting up a business, creating art, pursuing a dream, or doing anything other than trying to get money for a making some food for themselves. What is most annoying is that they have simply seen someone make a joke and are now producing poor imitations in the hope of getting reflected glory. I realise that this is what the internet is largely made up of but… it really annoys me.

Anyone with a genuine food based project is currently lost in an avalanche of secondhand jokes and stock photos of food. I don’t know why Kickstarter has become such an issue with me, perhaps it is because I am fond of the site and have happily backed over a dozen projects including comics, films, and podcasts and even helped a man his own pasta stall in exchange from some delicious samples of his produce. On the other hand it might just be that I hate seeing people being so lazy as to simply repeat the same joke they have seen and not come out with their own way to be ironic online.

And if I need to get particularly righteous here is the first of Kickstarter’s three rules:

Let’s just wait and see how easy it is to share out a pizza funded by thousands.

Long live Kickstarter! And may the “hilarious” faux projects be short-lived.