These go to eleven

Did you know that the IMDb rating for Spinal Tap goes to 11?

So cool.

Forrest Gump

#28 at time of writing.

A nostalgic history of the latter half of 20th century America through the eyes of Forrest Gump, an endearing simpleton who happens to find himself involved in a surprising variety of key cultural moments, all the while dreaming about his elusive childhood sweetheart Jenny.

Disguised beneath the cheery sentimentality and catchy contemporary music is a cutting indictment of American society, and for all its quirky lightheartedness this film is an immensely moving tragedy. Like every fairytale, it has its dark side - yet Forrest Gump himself retains his innocence throughout.

This sixfold Oscar winner is flawlessly acted (except maybe for the dated CGI that reanimates some long dead historical figures), endlessly quotable and wonderfully directed.

Allegedly, Tom Hanks wasn't paid for the film. Instead he took percentage points which ultimately netted him in the region of $40 million. And despite earning over $350 million at the box office, Paramount claimed that they were still $62 million out of profit due to the costs of promotion, distribution and interest. Sheesh.

Gone with the Wind

#161 at time of writing.

The idea of sitting still for a four hour film might seem daunting, but the running time of this masterful epic somehow flies past (helped by the enforced interval and "entr'acte", which allows for a natural break).

The film tells the story of a despicable, manipulative, but very charming woman (Scarlett O'Hara played by Brit Vivien Leigh) who is obsessed with a man she can't have. A host of suitors throw themselves at her - and some stick for a while - in particular, a charismatic self-confessed cad who is cockily confident that she will fall for him eventually (Rhett Butler played by Clark Gable).

Meanwhile, the American Civil War reaches a crescendo and Scarlett's wealthy friends and family find themselves facing the consequences of being on the losing side. This provides a compelling historical backdrop and sparks off plenty of drama, but essentially the story never veers from exploring the ever-worsening consequences of spoilt little rich kid Scarlett's exploitative behaviour.

And therein lies the genius. Somehow, director Victor Fleming's most successful film (the highest grossing film of all time ever if you adjust for inflation) has us sympathising with a pair of truly atrocious characters. Time and history marches on - the film often jumps ahead several months in the blink of an eye - and yet these two repeatedly fail to redeem themselves. Couple this with an unusually sentimental portrayal of life in the Confederate South, and frame it all in gorgeous cinematography. Gloriously unconventional, and brilliantly executed.

There's some fascinating trivia about the film on IMDb, worth a read.

The Artist

#224 at time of writing.

This film is proof, if any were needed, that you don't need colour, sound and spectacle to keep an audience entertained. This nod to the golden age of cinema tells its story in black and white, without dialogue, widescreen or CGI.

Set in 1920s and 30s Hollywood, this is the story of a fictional silent film actor; the peak and fall of his career and the people whose lives he touches. It brims with charm and humour, with characters that you will enjoy spending time with.

It is both wonderfully naive (the story) and yet thoroughly knowing (the loving homages). Very refreshing to see a movie so unabashedly dramatic, romantic, funny, visual. Deservedly collecting many awards, and bound to catch an Oscar or two as well.

Thank goodness profiteering Hollywood studio execs aren't the only people who can get films made; well done to Michel Hazanavicius for persisting with his dream of making a silent movie. This is a gem.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

#192 at time of writing.

I very much enjoyed the Harry Potter series of books, and I massively admire Jo Rowling both for her ability to tell a good story and for nobly dealing with the consequences of becoming a millionaire international celebrity whether she wanted it or not. She's a real role model.

The films, however, have been of very variable quality. Rowling's insistence on an all British cast was laudable, but unfortunately we got - how can I put it charitably - not the best child actors I've ever seen. Their occasionally cringeworthy performances are at the core of most of my criticism of the films.

The first two installments, directed by Chris Columbus, were lackluster. After that, they picked up, with an increasingly darker tone appealing to a broader audience than just children. I enjoyed the fourth, fifth and sixth films most.

The decision to split the last book into two films meant that the first suffered from feeling drawn out (and suffered doubly from some of the most awkward and ridiculous "love" scenes ever committed to film); and the last movie was so full of spectacle it almost got crushed underneath its own weight.

I can understand how somebody discovering Harry Potter's story and his world for the first time through watching the films would rave about them, but I find them too deeply flawed. I seriously doubt that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is the 192nd best film ever made, by any decent measure.

J K Rowling stated that her preferred director for the films would have been Terry Gilliam. Now THAT I'd love to have seen. Reboot?

Britain in a Day

I just watched Life in a Day, a 90-minute collation of hundreds of video clips from around the world featuring everyday life on 24 July 2010. It's an ambitious idea - there were 80,000 submissions totalling 4,500 hours of footage - but it is brilliantly executed. There is laughter in here, and regret, the sublime and the mundane, love and hate, poverty and wealth, dreams and fears. A glorious tapestry of small moments that builds up to far more than the sum of its parts.

Excitingly, there is an opportunity to contribute to a similar endeavour on a more local scale. You can film  your life on this coming Saturday 12 November 2011 and submit it to Britain in a Day. I want in!

(Meanwhile, if you liked this film, I recommend What About Me? and Koyaanisqatsi.)

Oldboy

#93 at time of writing.

This film has little hooks and surprises around every corner, so much so that I hesitate to say anything about it for fear of ruining the surprise. Suffice to say, it is dark, stylish, violent, bizarre, and very very cool. Min-Sik Choi's performance in the lead role is particularly memorable.

The story kicks off with a man being kidnapped out of the blue and locked in a small room by his mysterious captor. For 15 years. The core question (which is right there on the poster, if you can read Korean) is WHY? A thoroughly compelling question if you ask me.

I'm not sure I've seen any other Korean films. The style reminded me of Japanese horror movies I've seen, but with a much more satisfyingly cohesive story. In fact, the story is based on a Japanese manga, which you can read online here.

This is the second installment of director Chan-wook Park's Revenge trilogy; I'd be interested to see the other two, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance.

Life of Brian

#168 at time of writing.

Very few films can really make you laugh. I'm not talking wry smiles, although Monty Python's Life of Brian delivers plenty of those too, I'm talking infectious belly laughs that make your cheeks hurt. The jokes-per-minute ratio rivals the likes of Airplane! and Duck Soup; the sheer weight of quotable lines ensures that this comedy masterpiece will forever echo through the ages.

And behind the juvenile gags this is a surprisingly intellectual film, featuring a well-researched representation of historical Judea and some insightful satire.

Despite the reverential subject matter (the film is about a man living in the time of Christ who is mistaken for the messiah), the panto-esque comedy is gloriously irreverent, in the true low-budget home-grown scruffy and often surreal Footlights tradition.

Speaking of reverence, this film caused quite a stir when it was released in 1979. It sparked a moral panic centering on its supposedly blasphemous content, and got banned in several countries and UK councils.

At the climax of the controversy, two of the Pythons engaged in a notorious TV debate with the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge on BBC2 chat show Friday Night, Saturday Morning. The debate itself is wonderfully and hilariously dramatised in the feature-length quasi-documentary Holy Flying Circus, which you can currently watch on BBC's iPlayer. Strongly recommended.

The Life of Brian script was written in the Caribbean, where the Pythons hobnobbed with (among others) Keith Moon, the drummer from The Who. Moon was slated to play a street prophet in the scene where Brian hides among them. Eric Idle saw Moon the night of his death, and remembers him expressing excitement about the role, which eventually went to Terry Gilliam. The script is dedicated to Moon.

According to IMDb's trivia, after the first take of the scene where a nude Brian (Graham Chapman) addresses the crowd from his window, Terry Jones pulled Chapman aside and said "I think we can see that you're not Jewish," referring to Chapman being uncircumcised. This was corrected in subsequent takes with the application of a rubber band.

Always look at the bright side of life...

Howl's Moving Castle

#219 at time of writing.

It doesn't have to make sense when it's so beautiful!

Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have produced some astonishing films, often casting their characters into strange and colourful lands with mad rules of conduct as a metaphor for growing up.

This particular offering is a loose adaptation of the eponymous novel by Diana Wynne Jones, in which a girl suffers a curse that turns her into an old woman, and she must seek the help of an enigmatic young wizard to restore her youth, averting a war in the process.

The thoroughly Japanese perspective on this British fantasy is enchanting. The lush, ambitious animation is endlessly fascinating. The motivation and arc of the main characters is perhaps not as well developed as in some other Miyazaki masterpieces, but that doesn't stop this from being an inspiring, moving and brilliant piece of work.

I shall have to watch me some more Ghibli.

BBC writersroom: The first step to becoming a jobbing screenwriter?

There is a myriad of resources and opportunities up for grabs at the BBC writersroom website.

Of particular interest is the screenwriting course that you actually get paid to attend (deadline for entry 1 November 2011); and the Immersive Writing Lab competition to create a story world along the lines of Doctor Who or Lost (deadline 21 November 2011).

Drive

#98 at time of writing.

Caught this at the cinema today. The board said sold out, but I queued up anyway and got lucky with a single seat. And no wonder it's sold out, the hype for it seems to be huge.

The first half sets up the main character as a tight-lipped stunt slash getaway driver (Ryan Gosling) with a habit of replacing conversation with smouldering silences. He falls for his pretty neighbour and her son, but then Daddy comes back from prison and brings unwanted criminal attention with him. Our hero, inevitably, gets caught up in the ensuing mess.

The halfway point - a straightforward heist - is so tense that my heart was beating in my throat.

But then it almost turns into a different film. Gosling's character turns into a superhuman avenger, dishing out grisly death all over the place. It risks going a little over the top, compromising the subtlety of the story. Thankfully, in the end, the story holds together.

So, does it deserve the hype? Probably. But I reckon I've seen better.

Das Boot

#62 at time of writing.

This is a fantastically involving and claustrophobic film about a German U-boat crew during World War II. Their months at sea are represented as seemingly endless tedium and frustration while they wallow in their own filth, punctuated by moments of sheer panic. It comes across as an exhausting and demoralising existence. You end up rooting for the well-drawn characters - or at least deeply pitying them. Yes, they are Nazis (albeit not the most ardent of Nazis), but in this film they are lonely and suffering human beings first.

The camerawork is impressive, effectively conveying the close, sweaty conditions, and peppered with a mixture of technically challenging and occasionally beautiful shots.

Most of the filming was done over the course of a year, with scenes filmed in sequence to ensure natural growth of beards and hair, increasing skin pallor and signs of strain on the actors, who were forbidden to go out in sunlight for the duration of the long shoot.

One of the actors genuinely injured himself falling off the bridge - the moment is captured in the final film as an unscripted scene in which one of the actors shouts "Mann über Bord!"

Its high production cost (about $18.5 million) ranks it among the most expensive films in the history of German cinema. In 1981, when it was released, it was the second most expensive after Metropolis. It was worth every pfennig.

Gandhi

#184 at time of writing.

My brother in law said that to appreciate the range and talent of Ben Kingsley, I had to watch Sexy Beast and Gandhi back to back.

I did, and they're both brilliant films, with Kingsley delivering truly exceptional performances. Gangster or guru, he makes the part his own.

In fact, Kingsley (born Krishna Bhanji) has Gujarati ancestry, and Gandhi himself came from Gujarat. Kingsley achieved such a good emulation that locals were said to have thought he was Gandhi's ghost.

Gandhi is a sweeping epic with a cast of thousands and a brisk pace that belies its three hour running time. Telling the story of the man who led India to independence and inspired the world through his philosophy of nonviolent resistance, the film captures the essence of the legend without ever straying too far from the truth for the sake of the story.

The film achieves a fine balance. The British Empire's administrators come across as arrogant and often misguided, but only with such a thoroughly civilised nation would nonviolent resistance ever have worked. In the end, the Empire's respect for the rules and sense of shame for its mistakes earn a measure of credit. There are plenty of oppressive regimes around the world against which Gandhi's enormous discipline would have been wasted.

This is pretty much the best film that could have been made about Gandhi's life, and a testament to Richard Attenborough's talent and commitment - particularly considering he had to find funding for the film himself.

And funding was no mean feat for such an ambitious film. 300,000 extras appeared in the funeral sequence. About 200,000 were volunteers and 94,560 were paid a small fee. The sequence was filmed on 31st Jan 1981, the 33rd anniversary of Gandhi's funeral. 11 crews shot over 20,000 feet of film, which was pared down to 125 seconds in the final release. That had to be an expensive sequence - easy to imagine a studio refusing to bankroll it.

X-Men: First Class

#234 at time of writing.

This film inspires in me such mediocre praise as "entertaining, but...", "bit of a cash-in", and "well, the trailers were fun". Even the posters are lacklustre.

The Noughties was great for superhero movies, but with cheesy action-over-substance sequels like this competing against half-baked efforts like Green Lantern, perhaps they've had their day for now.

This is the story of how the X-Men first came together; it hijacks the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop. I'm sure I would have enjoyed this origins story more if I knew more of the X-Men universe, but as a stand-alone film it doesn't compare to the epic genius of the rebooted Batman films or Watchmen, nor to the charismatic wit of Iron Man or Kick-Ass.

Fun, but I predict this will have fallen off the Top 250 before you can say "when's the next X-Men sequel?"

According to IMDb trivia, the filmmakers hired an X-Men specialist to help the cast understand their roles. Coolest job title ever?

The Seventh Seal

#112 at time of writing.

This film is pretty cool with its overblown metaphors, visually striking set-pieces, pseudo-medieval setting and funky-sounding Swedish. But I felt like it went over my head. I let the story wash over me, but never really got into it.

It's about a knight who is trying to escape the spread of the Black Death, while playing a game of chess with the Grim Reaper.

Director Ingmar Bergman was inspired by a 15th century church painting of a man playing chess with a skeletal Death, in Täby kyrka, north of Stockholm.

Penny for your thoughts...

I haven't posted for a while, mainly because my beautiful daughter was born at the beginning of April and has been keeping us rather occupied since. Yay! :)

My wife has been spending more time than usual on BBC iPlayer while on maternity leave. Recently, we've been watching Paul Merton's fascinating series on the history of Hollywood. Check it out.

Into the Wild

#146 at time of writing.

This is a mostly true, albeit heavily romanticised, account of an American university graduate (Christopher McCandless) who abandoned civilisation for two years to escape his toxic family and get close to nature.

Everybody dreams sometimes of running away from it all, of shedding responsibilities and embracing simple freedoms. This story is a wonderful testament to what that dream could become if we chose to pursue it - both the good and the bad.

Engrossing and beautiful without being too schmaltzy, and populated with characters that you will enjoy spending time with.

The best science fiction books

In preparation for writing a comic science fiction novel at the end of last year, I bought myself a pile of science fiction books. I visited various websites to try and work out some of the greatest classics of sci-fi that I never got around to reading as a child.

It's been years since I read good science fiction, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is. Three months of reading, and I'm still only halfway through the pile - but only because I acquired more books along the way.

Calling science fiction a genre is, in my opinion, misleading. The range of science fiction stories is as broad as all literature - the one thing they have in common is a particularly rich imagination.

Here's what I've been enjoying. (The absence of Harrison, Clarke and Adams is because I read pretty much their entire works in my teenage years.)

• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (Vonnegut bowls me over with the confidence and ambition of his writing. Despite the extreme weirdness of this book I felt surprisingly emotionally involved by the end.)
• The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem (I loved the idea of the two competing cosmic constructors, and the timeless style.)
• Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick (Such a complete and thorough vision of a culture darkly parallel to our own. A little difficult to follow sometimes, but compelling.)
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (A grand political drama with wonderful characters. Led me to read a much earlier work of feminist science fiction, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.)
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (I read the original short story rather than the novel; it's a truly excellent story.)
• Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss (Relentlessly pacey, great characters, twist after twist, and a dramatic finale. What more could you want?)
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov (Based on this epic alone, I'm convinced Asimov earned every bit of his reputation as one of the masters of science fiction. It's a series of linked short stories - fascinating individually, and astounding as a whole.)
• The Player of Games by Iain M Banks (Board games! Cheeky robots! A utopian empire! A violent and colourful enemy! So much fun!)
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (Charismatic, hugely witty and deeply profound. It feels like he predicted the entire Sixties counterculture. Possibly my favourite so far. Front!)

And here's what I have left in the considerably expanded pile.

• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• Last And First Men and Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Earth Abides by George R Stewart
• Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
• A few more Dicks and Heinleins

So many worlds of joy!

Interview at Dark Moon Digest

Check out my interview at Last Writes, the blog of the horror fiction quarterly Dark Moon Digest. One of my short stories features in the current issue of the magazine.

True Grit

#223 at time of writing.

I admit Westerns are generally a genre I avoid, but this remake of a 1969 John Wayne film serves up perfectly entertaining fare. Possibly no more than that, but an amusing way to pass a couple of hours for sure.

The core of this film is Mattie Ross, the spunky 14-year-old played impressively well by Hailee Steinfeld, and her relationship with slurring drunkard bounty hunter Rooster Cogburn, delightfully portrayed by Jeff Bridges. She hires him to find and capture her father's killer - cue sweeping American landscapes, horses in sunset, and plenty of gunslinging.

For all their place as darlings of Hollywood's quirky fringe, this is the first time the Coen Brothers have managed to generate over $100 million at the US box office, so clearly it went down very well across the pond...

Click here to read the script.