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22 Screen Calum Baker & David Brake - screen@exepose.com march 7 2011 Exeposé NEWSREEL WHERE to start this week The past seven days have seen the greatest Hollywood meltdown since Mel Gibson - and Charlie Sheen’s inadvertent, mildly antisemitic slips seem even funnier because we know he doesn’t mean them. After a spectacularly drugged-up TV interview, Sheen became something of an internet meme, joined Twitter and amassed 940,000+ followers within about 24 hours. Now THERE’S a story to watch! We’ve got the biggest story of the Oscars covered opposite, but equally important were the Golden Raspberry Awards for 2010’s worst films. The Last Airbender and M. Night Shyamalan led with 5 wins including Worst Film, Director, Screenplay, Supporting Actor and Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3D. Sarah Jessica Parker, meanwhile, became the first actress to scoop two awards for the same role in the same film: Worst Actress and Worst Ensemble for Sex and the City 2. Finally, we are lamenting the passing of silver screen icon/sexpot Jane Russell, who died February 28 aged 89. RIP. COMPETITION THIS week, we are again offering THREE PAIRS of tickets for any film at any time that you fancy at ODEON. All you need to do is email us with the subject line “I LOVE MACHETE”, and you’ll get entered into the draw. It’s easy, know what I mean All entries should be sent to: screen@exepose.com Deadline is March 18. Danny Trey-ho kay! Calum Baker and David Brake, Screen Editors, chat to Hollywood A-lister Danny Trejo. BEFORE conducting this interview, we were setting out the very pages you read now. To fill space, we stuck in a fake account of our fictional meeting with Danny Trejo (we actually spoke to him over the phone), indulging ourselves with our, and the public’s, image of the man. Phrases such as ‘he leaps across the table, foaming at the mouth’, were bandied about to general amusement, playing up to Trejo’s typecast role as a hardcore killer. How wrong we were. Trejo, one of the consummate ‘faces-without-names’ of Hollywood, cropping up occasionally to eviscerate people and whatnot, has steadily carved a profitable career in some 85 films over 20 years, but 2011 is his biggest year yet. Following his first starring role, in the entertaining Grindhouse spinoff Machete, Trejo has become the name behind the face - and that’s quite a face to live up to - and found himself in more flicks than ever. “I’ve just finished The Muppets. The Muppets!” he says, a little bewilderedly, before launching into a loud rendition of the iconic ‘Phenomenon’ song amidst genuinely crazed giggles. “I can’t get that damn song out of my head! I have a beautiful Range Rover, got 26 inch tyres, and lowered, and all scaried up. It’s got a huge sound system, and I’ve been running around town bumping the Muppets song!” Is this the Danny Trejo we’ve grown accustomed to Singing along to childhood cacophonies Well, for- Classic Films #16: Throne of Blood (1957) Dir: Akira Kurosawa Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Minoru Chiaki (PG) 110mins get what’s on his stereo and look again at how he describes his vehicle. “It doesn’t even look like a Range Rover!” possibly sums it up. No matter how many puppets he stars with, this man is a true action nut. “If you’re going to watch a drama don’t invite me, ‘cos I’ll bother everybody.’ Action, I love action movies, action characters who kill eight people in the first five minutes and blow up two buildings.” He could be describing his own films. ‘You know like a lot of actors will say no, you know, I don’t watch myself [onscreen] - Hell YEAH! ... My only problem is I ruin it for everybody: “OH watch, look at it!’’’ In essence, this is Danny Trejo’s entire ethos: he knows what he likes and will rarely make anything different. Quite the artist-spectator. “I’m an action movie fan, and people like Robert Rodriguez - so is he. We’re big action movie fans, so you know, it’s just like ‘let’s do what we like’, and what the public like too, because they’re fans,” says Trejo. Being a man’s man with little pretension has clearly worked, now bringing him up to $2 million per film. Trejo’s attitude towards o t h e r AKIRA KUROSAWA is undoubtedly one of history’s greatest film directors. Not only are his works masterpieces in their own right, but without them, western cinema would be missing so many of its own classics. George Lucas found inspiration for Star Wars in The Hidden Fortress, The Usual Suspects drew from Rashomon, and without Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo we wouldn’t have The Magnificent Seven or A Fistful of Dollars. However, one of my favourite films by this legendary Japanese auteur is his 1957 work Throne of Blood. This film, rather than inspiring another, took its story from one of western cultures most famous plays – Macbeth. Kurosawa twice adapted Shakespeare into historical Japanese settings: Ran and a re-imagining of King Lear being the other. Although the magnificence of Shakespeare’s language is lost in translation and adaptation, his stories are nonetheless timeless classics. However, the joy of Kurosawa’s interpretations lies in his direction – artistic, theatrical and atmospheric – and the wonder of seeing the well-loved dramas come alive in the Japanese settings, complete with castles and palaces, and populated by samurai, slaves, and geishas. Toshiro Mifune, a frequent Kurosawa-collaborator, is incredible as the katana-wielding samurai Macbeth, Washizu. As ever, he is a commanding on-screen presence, bringing his usual mix of ferocity and humour to the role, while perfectly portraying the moral actors is telling in this respect; his heroes include Charles Bronson, and he’s “been watching Clint Eastwood since he was in Rawhide [late ‘50s TV series]... those guys just bring a... a certain... realism, you know what I mean Because I’m sorry, but it’s really hard for me to watch, like... Leonardo di Caprio and George Clooney and Johnny Depp play bad guys - you know, like, they’re beautiful! It’s hard for me to say ‘I’d be scared of that guy!’ It seems all Trejo wants to do is create films to be watched, rather than think pieces. Remember: “Dialogue sucks!” It is perhaps, with attitudes such as these, quite easy to label Trejo as some sort of meathead, an action nut with no real substance. But there’s something about his friendliness and love for people that’s infectious and proves to us that, rather than anything else, he just wants to keep us entertained. He describes Clooney et al. as “great actors,” but points out: “I love people who go to a movie called Ma-CHETe, and they say ‘there’s a lot of blood!’, you know, that’s like going to the desert and saying ‘it’s hot!’’ A man who only wants to keep us excited in the cinema is simply... well, if we applied the following word to an actor like Clooney it seems indulgent, but here it seems apt: Trejo is generous. and mental disintegration the character undergoes. His performance is complimented, too, by Isuzu Yamada as the scheming, kimono-clad, Lady Washizu. The true star of the film, though, remains Kurosawa’s visuals. “Ambition is false fame and will fall, death will reign, man falls in vain” Macbeth has never been more nightmarish; much of the action takes place in ‘Spider Web Castle’ (the Japanese title of the film), a sombre and haunting building on the slopes of Mount Fuji, that is revealed to us through swirling mist and This generosity, the need to give something back to people, extends further than Trejo’s average audience however. Having been a teenage crack addict, and spending 11 years in and out of penitentiaries for various petty crimes, the 66-year-old has devoted a great deal of his life to drug counselling and youth programmes. “When I got into this I was a drug counsellor.” This comes as a surprise to us, having asked if he would have done counselling at all if he hadn’t moved into movies. Perhaps the question should be whether fame has diminished Trejo’s sense of community Listen: “I’m still a drug counsellor, and I still go to juvenile halls, and penitentiaries... this thing that the movies have done for me is when I walk into a juvenile hall, a prison, anything, I have everybody’s attention - already!’ If anything, then, fame has made the man of the people even more humble, even more willing to preach his admirable message: ‘My lesson is ‘stay away from drugs’, and ‘education is the key to anything you wanna do.’ ’’ This is incredibly refreshing amongst all the Clooney-types, whose humanitarian work seems suspiciously well-publicised and perhaps self-serving. For Trejo, it appears, the most important thing about working in Hollywood is to keep the entertainment side of your life as entertainment - good, fun, spectacle - and to make any charity and community work really count. Trejo actually goes out, making a difference, and it is arguably this, above all, that defeats his knuckleheaded tough guy persona. Ultimately, make what you will of a person, but look up George Clooney’s wonderfully self-congratulatory Oscar acceptance speech and ask: who’s the better man The Star or the Bad Ass fog. However, when Washizu visits the three ‘witches’, he enters a classically creepy forest, similarly filled with thick fog that funnels the character into a small clearing where, amidst piles of skulls and swords, three ghost-samurai appear to taunt him with prophetic riddles. Washizu’s demise, too, is wonderfully erratic and visually arresting, involving hundreds of (mainly real) arrows impaling themselves in and around the frenzied protagonist. An oft-forgotten gem, Throne of Blood is fascinating and superb for fans of history, Shakespeare, Japanese culture, and film-fans in general. It is a timeless story retold in a refreshingly different setting, with wonderfully creepy visuals, exciting action, and complete with mesmerising performances. CHRIS DAVIES
Exeposé week twenty 23 Screen Should The King’s Speech have won Best Picture Maddie Soper asks: just why not PROBABLY the last thing anyone was expecting was a crowned prince who can’t get his words out, an Australian with more nerve than Birmingham City football club, and a de-cloaked, defrizzed Helena Bonham Carter to create such a recipe for success as The King’s Speech has turned out to be. But after establishing itself as the greatest thing to emerge from British cinema since… well, name something, clean up at the Oscars you would expect The King’s Speech to do, and indeed, clean up it did. But the extent to which the floor was wiped is surely quite the surprise – not least since its contenders were of such high calibre in themselves. “They did manage to at least get the Best Picture one right this year” Don’t get me wrong, I am utterly delighted The King’s Speech won Best Picture and feel it was most deserved. The acting was sublime; Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush gave the performances of their careers, which ensure they will not forever be remembered as “that bloke in the wet shirt and that one what wasn’t Johnny Depp,” and Helena Bonham Carter was a pillar of strength in the impossibly-supportive-loving-wife role. The cinematography captured the tone and style of inter-war London perfectly, feeling pleasantly artistic, and yet never fake. In short, the film was utterly believable throughout, with a moving finale, but also remaining acutely aware of its slightly romanticised angle - which is a very hard balance to achieve in any fictional reimagining of real events. But I remain more than slightly irritated that The King’s Speech also claimed the other most coveted award at the expense of another cinematic triumph that now feels overlooked. David Fincher’s social commentary The Social Network surely deserved to win Best Director. Fincher’s unique and provocative style translated beautifully to the content, and he now appears, quite frankly, robbed. Any other year, The Social Network would have triumphed in practically every area it graced, but in the same year as The King’s Speech it wasn’t to get a look in besides Adapted Screenplay and Score, and consequentially lost the enormous amount of recognition it deserved. Yet the long and short of it is (despite what the Academy may like to think) the Oscars are not the be-all and end-all of the cinema experience. If you think another film deserved that award, then just because Oscar failed to give them that golden statue that’s probably made out of chocolate these days anyways, it doesn’t detract from the triumph that you think it was. Too much official recognition all over the place can get tedious after a while anyway (See Titanic: all right, you think it’s a classic, we get it). Even if they did manage to at least get the Best Picture one right this year. Christopher Preston asks us to look closer at Speech’s reputation. BEFORE you read this, you should know that I am a huge fan of The King’s Speech. I pre-booked an advance screening to see it, and then waxed lyrical about its content to every man and his dog. I made claims, bold claims; about how Firth’s performance had actually surpassed sliced bread, and how this film had managed to rejuvenate a feeling of national pride within me, despite The Jeremy Kyle Show almost robbing me of it just months before. But, even after all these, none of my claims were as bold as giving The King’s Speech the muchcoveted Best Picture award at the Oscars. Did this movie really deserve the highest honour film can bestow The answer is, of course, no. Don’t get me wrong, the film is charming, the script is wonderful, and the acting cast is stellar (kudos to the criminally underrated Geoffrey Rush.) I’ll even say that Tom Hooper handles his direction well, and certainly translates the material warmly onto the silver screen (although certainly didn’t do enough to earn his Best Director award. We all feel your pain, Mr Fincher). However, just for a moment, let’s step away from the media hype. Let’s divorce ourselves from the overwhelming urge to fanboy Firth’s star turn. For heaven’s sake, let’s forget, just for one moment, that we are all British and this is a British film and stop applying the archaic, football-hooligan’s logic of ‘it’s from our country, so we’ll support it despite everything’ and just watch the film. Yes, it’s wonderful but was I really the only one who saw it for what it was The King’s Speech was merely a Hollywood take on a BBC drama. As much as I enjoyed the story, and I really can’t state enough that I did, I found myself thinking of how well it would fit into the Beeb’s Sunday night schedule – just after Songs of Praise. Because of this, it doesn’t quite boast the cinematic cojones to have won Best Picture. The piece was a warm, woolly jumper of a film – something that was comfortable and nice, rather than breathtaking, original or innovative. “Let’s step away from the media hype” Something that was all three of these things, and more, was the sublime The Social Network – a film that, through a wonderful story, and equally brilliant script and acting performances, is a cinematic checklist of what Best Picture should be. It should have romped home with the gold – and taken Best Director for good measure. If the award had been given to the right film, this year’s ceremony might have been a bit more memorable. The ‘jumping-on-the-bandwagon’ aftertaste, however, merely consigns it to the ‘meh’ pile in history, and makes us hope for a more impressive, and dare I say controversial, year next year. Roll on February 2012 (but well done Firth, you DID deserve it…!) Esther Privett defends the British triumph over America. BEING British, The King’s Speech Best Picture win could not be anything but brilliant. It’s very hard to tell whether it deserved to win; taste in film is such a personal thing it seems almost silly to say which is best, but I’m glad the voters came to that conclusion. There wasn’t a single moment in the film where they lost me, excluding when Firth first appeared and that’s only because I’m passionately in love with him. The whole production was one seamless spectacle of exquisiteness. Each actor performed extraordinarily well. It shows a good film when the likes of Jennifer Ehle (Pride and Prejudice) and Adrian Scarborough (Gavin and Stacy) are on screen for no more than four minutes. Even Lionel Logue’s sons, who barely had three lines between them, were complete characters. “There wasn’t a single moment in the film where they lost me” But the real stars were Firth, Bonham Carter, and Rush. The chemistry between the three central performers was astonishing. One could believe that ‘Bertie’ had befriended his speech therapist without any trouble at all. The love between husband and wife was there, but not overtly. The nerves of the Queen as she listened to her husband’s final speech mirrored the nerves felt by the audience. By the end of the film I had completely invested all my emotional capacity into the outcome of that final speech. To be able to evoke that much emotion clearly signals a good film. Seeing as all three central actors were nominated for an Oscar it does not seem unreasonable that the film should win Best Picture. Great performances rarely come out of a shoddy production; they need a good film to nourish them. The costumes, the scenery, the set were all perfect. The film had the complete package. Tom Hooper’s Best Director win sealed this. People have said it was undeserved, but this simply raises the question of what they think a director actually does. Good actors don’t become great actors without direction. It wasn’t a coincidence that all three leading actors got a nomination; they were being instructed by Hooper. Yes, other films in the Best Picture category were also good but they didn’t have the same appeal. The King’s Speech had spectacular actors, a brilliant director, and the necessary bit of je ne sais quoi that made it that little bit better than the rest. Tori Brazier questions the legacy of this year’s Best Picture. THE 2011 Oscar ceremony proved to be pretty predictable. Natalie Portman ‘swanned’ off as Best Actress and Colin Firth also completed his sweep of the board by winning Best Actor. The Best Picture winner, however, did prove a slight surprise as The King’s Speech prevailed in the face of stiff competition, particularly amongst ten nominees - surely a sign of the abundance of quality pictures this year. The King’s Speech is a good film, crowd-pleasing in every aspect - but is it perhaps a little... well, safe The plot trundles along pleasantly and the acting is, with a cast of this calibre, naturally admirable. With composer Alexandre Desplat on board, the music was Oscar nom’d too. Everything falls into place for this solid four star film, but this is also its downfall. There is nothing unexpected in The King’s Speech, nothing that seems ground-breaking, and it is this quality that should perhaps feature in a Best Picture; it is this which arguably makes a movie five stars and allows words such as ‘outstanding’ and in years to come - dare I say it -‘masterpiece’. It may be too much to realistically ask of filmmakers year on year; I’m probably being idealistic and naïve in hoping for a sensational clean-sweep of the awards à la Ben-Hur; it would certainly be more exciting. Looking at the other films nominated, there were the early favourites Inception and 127 Hours and the even earlier critics’ darling Winter’s Bone. There was Toy Story 3 (also nominated for Best Animated Feature and a deserved winner there), The Kids Are Alright (but when has the Academy ever liked such “light-hearted” fare), and quieter but no less laudable latecomers The Fighter and True Grit who could have snatched it away from likely winner, and the other Film of 2010, The Social Network (but would the Academy want to deify a film about Facebook It might look a bit daft in 10 years time). Then there was the phenomenon of Black Swan, the film everyone talked about but no one granted rewards (except to Portman). My choice for the Oscar - it is original, different, and a full-on visual experience. It is not, however, perfect - there are uncomfortable moments and Vincent Cassel’s character is hardly well-rounded. Choosing the recipient of 2011’s award is in fact pretty tricky. The King’s Speech is a beautifully British film, and its win is bittersweet after the abolition of the UKFC. As it’s a struggle to find the ‘perfect’ choice amongst the other nominees, I guess for the glory of Britain I can let it slide.
Page 1 and 2: ExeposéPhoto: Henry Monday March 7
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Page 5 and 6: The Exeter Award is an achievement
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