How I Live Now Review

Adaptations of popular novels for young adults are clogging up Hollywood production lines quicker than authors can write them. Following the success of Twilight and The Hunger Games comes a far grittier, grounded tale of ordinary kids at war starring Saoirse Ronan.

As American abroad Daisy, Ronan is outstanding, at first precocious teen before becoming a slowly budding flower when shipped to the English countryside to stay with her cousins. With World War 3 about to break out, her Aunt Penn leaves Daisy with the children; hunky Edmond (George MacKay), nerdy Isaac (Tom Holland) and their imaginative but annoying little sister Piper (Harley Bird).

Just as Daisy starts to let herself go, breaking down the barriers she puts up against the world, a nuke devastates London and worse still, she starts to fall in love with cousin Edmond. Heartbreak ensues as the kids are split up, forced to survive the war apart and desperate to find a way back home.

Director Kevin Macdonald creates two very distinct moods; optimism, hope, beauty and the joy of being young and free in the outdoors before the second half paints a bleak portrait of life under occupation. Despite the mood swing, Franz Lustig’s gorgeous bursts of close up photography stay beautiful throughout, adding pathos to the already emotional story.

While some elements of the novel appear lost in translation (the telepathic stuff sits uneasily with the realism of the rest of the film), Saoirse Ronan gives a magnificent performance transforming slowly from self-centred teen to terrified but determined victim and finally to something more.

Adapted from the novel by Meg Rosoff, it really treats its audience as adults containing mild incest, plenty of swearing, a dash of sex and some shocking moments of violence. It is admirable for not toning down the brutality of war (hello Hunger Games) or the language and lust of its protagonists (goodbye Twilight).

THE VERDICT A YA adaptation with the focus firmly on the adult, How I Live Now mixes forbidden romance with a bleak vision of World War 3. Twilight it ain’t.   

Certificate 15 Director Kevin MacDonald Starring Saoirse Ronan, George MacKay, Tom Holland, Harley Bird, Anna Chancellor Screenplay Jeremy Brock, Tony Grisoni, Penelope Skinner, Jack Thorne Distributor Entertainment One Running time 101 mins

Watch the trailer:

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Upcoming Screenings: Sunshine on Leith, Filth, How I Live Now

This week is looking a bit hectic with one premiere to attend and two preview screenings. First up on Monday I am going to interview the stars and director of Sunshine On Leith, Dexter Fletcher's new film. Then on Tuesday it's James McAvoy starring dirty cop black comedy Filth and finally on Wednesday, I'm going to a free student screening of How I Live Now from director Kevin MacDonald and starring Saoirse Ronan.

The cast in attendance at the Sunshine on Leith premiere will include Jane Horrocks, Freya Mavor, Kevin Guthrie, George Mackay, Antonia Thomas and apparently special guests The Proclaimers will also be there along with director Dexter Fletcher. Booooo no Peter Mullan though. I'll be standing in the press pen interviewing the attendees for Tastic Film so hopefully you will be able to see the videos up on the Tastic Film YouTube channel soon after. 

If this film is even half as good as Fletcher's directorial debut Wild Bill, I'll be very pleased!

Here is the trailer for Sunshine on Leith:



Then on Tuesday it's off to see the adaptation of Irvine Welsh's horrible novel Filth starring James McAvoy as a despicable copper with a tapeworm and highly dubious morals. I hated the book (from the same author as Trainspotting) but the trailer makes this look like it might actually be a bit of guilty, sick and twisted fun!



Then finally it's a young adult adaptation from awesome director Kevin MacDonald that sounds much darker than your average Twilight, Mortal Instruments or any other number of fantasy adaptations for teens. Stick with the trailer past the first 40 seconds of sunshine and laughing. When war breaks out in our recognisable reality this looks like it should get far more exciting than a bunch of CG supernatural creatures flying about the place!



Any of these take your fancy?

Real Entertainment: Star Directors and the Modern Documentary

Possibly not the most exciting post but just giving myself a shout out for getting an article published in Splice: Studying Contemporary Cinema Volume 6 Issue 1 Spring 2012 journal.  It is 5000 words long and took me a lot of time to complete.  I only wish I could share it with you all here.  Unfortunately I cannot but if you do want to get yourself a copy or want to subscribe to Splice, head to the Auteur website here to find out how.

Each issue sells for £12.00 or you can subscribe to get 3 issues per year for £38.  Not a penny too much for such high quality writing I can assure you!  Anyway here's a quick bit about what I wrote:

The title is Real Entertainment: Star Directors and the Modern Documentary and here is the opening paragraph:

'The term documentary is tricky to define and the films are often even more challenging to watch, enjoy and categorise. Is documentary a genre, a form or a mode? Much ink has been spilt defining, grouping and identifying documentaries as an alternative to fiction cinema. Perhaps this is the most useful place to start when discussing documentary. This group of films are non-fiction or as Patricia Aufderheide puts it, ‘documentary is a film genre in which a pledge is made to the viewer that what we will see and hear is about something true and real’ (2007: 56).'

Here is a further snippet that gives a clearer idea of the thrust of the article:

'The three documentaries that will be focused on in this article were all released to critical acclaim and varying degrees of box-office success in the last ten years. Two are made by recognisable figures that feature in their own documentaries, Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, while the third is directed by a film-maker becoming better known for his work in fiction film, Kevin Macdonald. Bowling for Columbine (2002) is an extremely controversial film that explores gun culture in America in the wake of the Columbine High school tragedy. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards in 2003 and grossed over $35 million worldwide. Super Size Me (2004) continued the trend of director/stars putting themselves in their films front and centre in an attempt to make their documentaries more accessible and entertaining. Spurlock attempts to eat nothing but food from McDonald’s for 30 days in order to investigate the effects such a diet would have on his body. Finally Life in a Day (2011) is an ambitious experiment that combines footage shot by people from all around the world on their own cameras and endeavours to cut it together into a feature film about one day in the life of planet Earth and its inhabitants. These examples reflect the range of documentary films that have been made in recent years and also the impact they can have, both at the box office and in society more generally.'

  

I hope you like the sound of it.  I enjoyed writing it and seeing my name in print!  Just to prove I'm not making this all up or dreaming it, here is a lovely picture from the new issue.

So that's it from me today!  Hope you all have a lovely weekend and if you ever want me to contribute anything to any of your wonderful blogs, I'd be more over the moon than a slobbery puppy getting a new owner!  So please feel free to drop me a line just like Andina and Keith did.

I Love That Film Loves You All Movie Blogging Buddies!  Happy freaking weekend!

Two articles for the price of one!

My ninth and tenth articles are both published in the February issue of the amazing Media Magazine.  You can subscribe to the magazine here.  The magazine and the articles are aimed at A Level and BTEC media students but I'm sure anyone with an interest in film audience research or Kevin Macdonald's recent documentary Life in a Day will find them interesting.  If you have not seen the wonderful Life in a Day yet, I insist you must.  It's online for free and totally legal right here.  

My articles are titled Test Screenings: Exhibition, Participation and Intervention and Life in a Day: Creation through Participation.  The theme of the issue was participation and the media, hence the titles!

The issue also contains an article from the always interesting James Rose on feature films made about participatory TV. 

This follows my articles in previous issues on:

1. Participating in a reality TV show (December 2009)
2. Sacha Baron Cohen's mock-docs (April 2010)
3. Stop-motion animation (September 2010)
4. Michael Moore's Documentaries (December 2010)
5. Ghetto Culture in City of God and La Haine (February 2011)
6. The collaborations of Fincher and Pitt (April 2011)
7. The cinema of 9/11 (September 2011)
8. Documentaries that attack America (December 2011) 

Here is a brief sample of the new articles:

Test Screenings are the most common form of audience research used by Hollywood and the film industry as a whole.  Long in advance of the release of a film, a small audience will be invited to a secret preview.  Effects may not be completed, the soundtrack may be temporary and the film will sometimes have barely left the edit suite before it is screened to a few film fans to gain feedback from the audience.  A questionnaire is generally handed out after the film and the audience asked to complete it.  Questions could be on anything from the opening of the film, to individual characters, to the soundtrack, or even to the ending of the film.  The audience will be responsible for giving the filmmakers feedback on what does and doesn’t work and the responses could lead to drastic changes in the film or the marketing strategy before it is finally released.  Attendees are asked to sign a non-disclosure form so they cannot leak details of the film on their blogs or to the press.  With test screenings becoming increasingly common, the question is; should the artist or the audience get the final cut?

AND

With participants that range from a little boy that shines shoes for a living in Peru to a smug American Lamborghini owner, Life in a Day crosses the globe and brings viewers a taste of a huge range of cultures, from the super rich to those that have nothing.  As a social experiment, not just a feature documentary film, the filmmakers wanted to make this a global project.  No doubt to avoid accusations of ethnocentrism and an attempt to eliminate too great a focus on ‘narcissistic, bedroom-bound western teenagers’ (Macdonald, 2011), the filmmakers wanted to include people from the developing world that don’t traditionally have access to cameras, computers or any means to upload their footage to Youtube.  So Macdonald and his team spent £40,000 on 400 HD cameras and had ‘various aid organisations distribute them among people in remote towns and villages’ (Macdonald, 2011) in around forty different developing countries.  The images and sounds of Angolan women that sing as they work, the men who herd goats and the people who dwell in the rainforests are testament to the films attempt to bring representation of all corners of the globe to the big screen.

 So what are you waiting for?  Go subscribe now here.  And thanks for reading!

Life in a Day online for FREE! Get involved.

Life in a Day, the surprisingly brilliant documentary completely cut together from Youtube users' footage, has just been made available completely free to watch (legally) online.  Directed by Kevin Macdonald, who I recently heard talk at the London Film Festival (about the blurring boundaries of fact and fiction), it is a strangely moving piece of cinema history.  Please check out my full review here.  Depending on your view, this must have been an editor's dream job or nightmare.  Sorting through 4500 hours of footage to create something intelligent, coherent and unforgettable.  It is quite an achievement.  a day in the life of the planet Earth and it's wierd and wonderful residents.

But I'm not just here to encourage you to watch this great film for absolutely nothing.  I'm also here to encourage you to get involved with the (sort of) sequel, Britain in a Day.  Ewan McGregor, Ridley Scott and more are all here to encourage you to get involved.  Film your day, Saturday 12th November 2011, make it personal and upload it to Youtube to be a part of an amazing social experiment and hopefully a big part of British cinema history.  Go here for more information.  If you own a camera and ever wanted a shot at making or being in a movie, this is your goddamn chance!

For now, get inspired by watching Life in a Day below:

Fact VS Fiction at the London Film Festival

Tonight I've got tickets to the BFI London Film Festival. In previous years I have been up to see a Q&A with notorious director of cinematic headfucks Irreversible and Enter the Void, Gaspar Noe to find out if he is more dribbling madman or groundbreaking artist. Another year I saw the lovely creator of Wallace and Gromit, Nick Park to hear about how he got into animation. But this year I'm heading to the festival to hear 'a discussion on the line between fact and fiction with filmmakers from this year's programme'.

'Panellists confirmed so far include directors Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void), Asif Kapadia (Senna, Far North), Carol Morley (Dreams of a Life, Edge) and Marc Evans (Hunky Dory).' http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/events/other_events/1970

Kevin Macdonald is a bit of a hero of mine after Life in a Day.  I've banged on about it on this blog a couple of times now.  He's a great documentary maker but I'm not a massive fan of his fiction feature films like The Last King of Scotland.  I will be very curious to hear why he decides to shoot some films as documentaries and some as fiction films.



I'm hoping that the discussion may also touch on questions relevant to my PhD.  Why are so many recent horror filmmakers playing with the mock-doc format?  It seems like barely a month goes by without an addition to this sub-genre.  Most recently Apollo 18 took horror mock-docs into space and the upcoming Paranormal Activity 3 will likely show there is still high demand for films following this trend.

The director of Senna, Asif Kapadia, is also going to be there and I hear this is an excellent documentary.  It also ties into my interest in cinematic depictions of death.  Many horror mock-docs relish in killing the characters in front of and behind the cameras and presenting this as real footage.  This documentary presents the real footage of Senna's death, perhaps making it cinematic snuff.  Is real death something to include in films sold for entertainment?



Michael Moore has used the moment the second plane hit the WTC in Bowling for Columbine.  This was also a moment of murder.  Do documentary makers have more license to show the truth?  Even the truth of death?  Is it their responsibility to show reality?  Even the reality of death?  And are horror filmmakers capitalising on the increase of 'real deaths' in documentary and TV when making mock-docs?

Anyway it will be interesting to here from these filmmakers.  I hope the discussion will shed some light on 'what motivates the decision to present a story as documentary or fiction'.

A Decade of Documentary Excellence

Writing my latest article for Media Magazine about the documentaries that have criticised America for so many reasons over the last decade got me thinking about how great these non-fiction films are. The likes of Michael Moore, Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock and Charles Ferguson are giving docs a reputable name with many cinema-goers.

Box-office records have been broken, awards have been won (including Cannes' Palme D'Or), critics have drooled and audiences have cued up like never before to see docs on the big screen.

And it's not just muckraking. Yes, many docs have laid into America's foreign policy, illegal and immoral war-mongering, inhumane treatment of prisoners, obesity problems, economic crisis and alleged covering up of the truth of what happened on 9/11, but there have been so many other docs that also deserve a mention for raising issues, confronting the powerful and sometimes just being bloody entertaining.

Michael Moore may have brought non-fiction film to the masses with Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit 9/11, but other filmmakers are working hard to catch some of that box office appeal. Morgan Spurlock with his gimmicky, silly docs for one.





But most interesting is the direction of Kevin Macdonald. With Touching the Void using vivid reconstructions of a mountain top disaster accompanied by interviews with the real-life stars of the story, a documentary became a gripping thriller in the hands of a skilled filmmaker. Following this with a couple of less interesting and significantly less thrilling fiction films (The Last King of Scotland and State of Play), he then returned with this year's brilliant doc Life in a Day. Taking thousands of hours of footage uploaded by ordinary people to You Tube and turning it into something beautiful, mesmerising, depressing, uplifting and life-affirming is one of the greatest achievements in cinema history. (See my review on this blog back in June 2011)





In the Media Magazine article I look at a range of documentaries that have attacked America from Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007) to Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010) but a couple of other docs not mentioned due to their subject matter are Collapse (Chris Smith, 2009) and Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001).



Collapse is a terrifying must-see, particularly for anyone who enjoys conspiracy theories or just thinks that civilisation is always on the brink of collapsing. It might be just one guy sitting in a chair but by the end I was quaking in my boots and could not stop thinking about this doc for weeks after.



Waking Life is not generally considered a documentary but, and I quote, 'Waking Life is more a documentary than a work of fiction, because most of the speakers play themselves and talk about their real views' (http://www.aboutfilm.com/movies/w/wakinglife4.htm). This amazing film's use of animation (or more specifically rotoscoping) and its ideas about 'identity, dreams, consciousness, and free will' are mind-boggling and great fun to watch.



So if you don't like documentaries or you think they're boring, next time you start mindlessly watching a piece of reality TV crapola, try finding a classic doc to watch instead. Here's my top 10 in chronological order:

1. Gimme Shelter (Albert and David Maysles, 1970)
2. Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001)
3. Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)
4. Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald, 2003)
5. Farenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004)
6. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (Robert Greenwald, 2004)
7. Glastonbury (Julien Temple, 2006)
   
8. Taxi to the Darkside (Alex Gibney, 2007)
9. Collapse (Chris Smith, 2009)
10. Life in a Day (Kevin Macdonald, 2011)

Seek them out, engage your brain, laugh, cry, be outraged and never forget! What have I missed? Is there any doc missing from this list that I need to see or include? If you read this, don't be scared to let me know....

Review of 'Life in a Day' (Kevin Macdonald, 2011)

Synopsis: A day in the life of the planet Earth and the human race; this is the 24^th of July, 2010 as recorded by anyone with a video camera.

Democracy. Power to the people. Digital technology. Video cameras, the internet, editing software and music. Life in a Day is a unique, ambitious experiment. And boy does it work! A call went out from director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland) and executive producer Ridley Scott to the YouTube community. Capture your life in a day. Anyone with a video camera and access to the internet could enter and submit a video of what was happening in their life on the 24^th July 2010. Cameras were even sent out to far-flung places to allow people who do not have access to these filmmaking tools to contribute to the film. So is this a documentary, an experimental film or a social action media production? Well it’s all three and more. It’s also a narrativised piece of thrilling, enjoyable and inspirational cinema that will leave audiences crying, smiling and feeling blessed for their own lives and loved ones.

The narrative is not forced; the film begins in the early hours of the morning and takes the audience through the day to midnight. Characters occasionally reappear throughout the day and others come and go in the blink of an eye. The ordinary, everyday lives of the people of the planet are given an epic quality by the capturing of the full moon and many time lapse shots of changing landscapes and in one brief sequence the beauty of the northern lights. People rise early; people have stayed up all night drinking and one man howls and barks at the moon. The film then has many montages, people taking a morning leak, eating breakfast, taking their first steps out of bed in the morning. The soundtrack adds to the feel of the ordinary becoming extraordinary and the editing emphasizes the universal ways that people go about their days. It might sound boring but it’s not. The pace is swift with moments of humour, sadness and plentiful details that will strike a chord with many an audience member.

People play themselves and I say ‘play themselves’ because there are moments when the camera set ups draw attention to the constructedness of the scenarios. For example the montage of people waking up in the morning is rather let down by the people who have clearly set up the camera on the tripod and then pretended to wake up in front of it. Much more ‘real’ feeling are the moments of people filming their partners as they sleep and capturing true moments of awakening. There is also a notable emphasis on children which seems to tie in to a major theme of the film. Children are filmed by their parents (from sonograms to babies to a young man’s first shave) and in fact this is one of the first moments of the film when it settles on a character for more than a brief moment. The pride and love these parents feel shines through with the following of their children and cannot fail to put a smile on your face.

The task of editing 4500 hours down to just over 90 minutes must have been a monumental task and it’s a wonder that the film has been released in just under a year from the date that all the filming was done and uploaded. The editor, Joe Walker and the researchers must have sifted through countless hours of crap and should be applauded for their selections and for managing to also keep the film to a concise 90 minutes. I imagine there are also numerous moments that were fought over and eventually ended up unceremoniously dumped on the cutting room floor.

Life in a Day is thought-provoking and life-affirming. Though no message is forced down the audiences throat, there are many ideas presented here that should be thought about and discussed for hours after watching. The global origins of the footage, the various languages spoken, the colours, sounds and sights of people of varying cultures brought together in one film emphasizes the similarities between the people of the planet. The footage of rituals, customs, and celebrations from around the world show that love and loss are universal, that family is universally important to all cultures. Juxtaposing an Afghan photographer with an American soldier’s partner or a grinning Lamborghini owner with a shoe shining child suggests a political agenda but again, no message is forced. The viewer decides what to make of what they are seeing. There are some horrific moments; the tragic outcome of the German Love Parade, the killing of a cow, but these are contextualized in a positive film that does not dwell on the sadness of life but focuses more on the joy.

At just over 90 minutes the film does not outstay its welcome and I dare to suggest that a sequel would be worthwhile in a few years time. Life in a Day is a time capsule and a treasure trove of the ordinary. Through skilful editing, beautiful and emotive music and the desire for the people of this planet to share themselves honestly and openly with others, Life in a Day becomes more than a film, more than a documentary and more than an experiment. The ordinary becomes extraordinary and the film becomes a gift, a statement and a powerful dedication to love, family and unity. Watch it and embrace it.