{"id":1400,"date":"2011-07-21T12:15:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T12:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=1400"},"modified":"2014-07-12T21:51:08","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T20:51:08","slug":"sci-fi-london-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=1400","title":{"rendered":"SCI FI LONDON 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Includes reviews of Dinoshark<\/em> (2010), Sharktopus<\/em> (2010), One Hundred Mornings<\/em> (2009), Zenith<\/em> (2010), Gantz<\/em> (2011) and Super<\/em> (2010) [p5-6]<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love B-movies. That\u2019s why, while most of the rest of the country was sitting down to ogle the frocks and sigh at kisses on a balcony on royal wedding day, I was in a dark cinema in the West End with a bunch of other weirdoes watching a Roger Corman double bill. Anything had to be better than listening to Hugh Edwards whisper on and on about hand-made lace and the wonder of monarchy, didn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Well, maybe, but only just.<\/p>\n

In his essay \u2018Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture\u2019 Frederic Jameson describes how Stephen Spielberg\u2019s adaptation of Jaws<\/em> (1975) systematically removes a layer of \u201cundisguised expression of class conflict between the island cop and the high-society oceanographer\u201d that is present in Peter Benchley\u2019s original novel. I\u2019m not sure if I accept the idea of Hollywood stripping away an author\u2019s implicitly political subtext \u2013 Benchley, after all, co-wrote the screenplay for the movie. Nevertheless, if Jameson thought that Jaws<\/em> dumbed-down the monster-in-the-ocean genre, I\u2019m pretty sure that sitting through either Dinoshark<\/em> or Sharktopus<\/em> would make his head implode.<\/p>\n

Roger Corman (with his wife Julie) produced both these films for the American Sy-Fy channel. They are cheap and they are trashy, as one expects from a film with Corman\u2019s name attached, but they are also empty and dull and stupid and that\u2019s a disappointment. Roger Corman used to be better than this. Corman is, contrary to his hucksterish public persona, a smart guy. Under his ownership New World Pictures provided the conduit into America for films by Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini and more. And, later, when a generation of important American filmmakers was emerging inspired (at least in part) by the filmmakers he\u2019d championed he gave the likes of Copolla, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Cameron, Demme, Howard, Dante, Sayles, Hanson and Towne their first breaks in Hollywood. As a director he made over 60 movies, many are instantly forgettable exploitation flicks but amongst them were strong features like The Pit and the Pendulum<\/em> (1961) and The Intruder<\/em> (1962) and films like A Bucket of Blood<\/em> (1959) and X <\/em>(1963) that make up for what they lack in quality with boundless energy and flashes of humour.<\/p>\n

Corman hasn\u2019t made a film since the pretty awful adaptation of the Brian Aldiss novel Frankenstein Unbound<\/em> (1990) but as a producer he\u2019s still delivering up to four movies each year. Sadly his ability or interest in unearthing new talent seems to have deserted him. Timur Bekmambetov, who made the execrable The Arena<\/em> (2001) and Escape from Afghanistan<\/em> (2002) for Corman, is probably the last director of a Corman production to go on to bigger (if not necessarily better) things with the Night Watch<\/em> films (2004-6) and the forthcoming Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

These days Corman is working with the likes of Declan O\u2019Brien (Sharktopus<\/em>) and Kevin O\u2019Neill (Dinoshark<\/em>). I\u2019m sure both men are kind to their mothers and loved by their children but they are shockingly bad filmmakers. These days Corman\u2019s collaborators aren\u2019t young Turks on the rise, they\u2019re established TV and straight-to-video hacks who\u2019ve made a career out of tripe. It may be that the film industry has changed. The days of the B-movie getting released to cinema are long gone and even the tide of \u201cstraight-to-video\u201d releases is beginning to wane. Increasingly the only outlet for low-budget filmmakers who want to make commercial cinema are cable television channels like Sy-Fy. The budgets are miniscule, even by Corman\u2019s standards, but more crucially it\u2019s a market where there\u2019s little creative freedom and no appetite for risk-taking.<\/p>\n

So Sharktopus<\/em> and Dinoshark<\/em>. Two intensely stupid movies with interchangeable plots shot in the same Mexican locations, often using the same stock footage, low-rent digital special effects, hackneyed scripts and casts so stiff that to call them wooden would insult trees. If one were looking, pace<\/em> Jameson, for some layer of subtext, some secret pleasure that the masses might eke from the sequence of banal and increasingly depressing images that flash before you while watching this nonsense, then it might be that there is a joy to be found in watching irritating people die spectacularly, but frankly this has been done better and more amusingly elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Corman films, it appears, no longer have any faint spark of talent or intelligence lurking behind the schlock. They’ve become drab and these two don’t even offer anything for afficianados of the kitsch and the deliberately silly.<\/p>\n

Not that low-budget movies have to be intrinsically stupid, as Sci-Fi London demonstrated to considerable effect elsewhere in its long and eclectic programme. I enjoyed One Hundred Mornings<\/em> immensely. It is subtle, smart and disturbing and as far removed from the failed kinetics of the Corman double bill as it is possible to imagine. Set in a rural Irish community in the aftermath of some distant apocalypse this is a deliberate piece of cinema, purposefully slow-paced (almost to the point of distraction) and eschewing (mostly) familiar end-of-the-world imagery. One Hundred Mornings <\/em>is at its strongest when it makes the breakdown of community intensely personal. Two young couples, sharing a small cabin, gradually tear themselves apart as it becomes clear that the world around them has also fallen to pieces. This isn\u2019t an easy movie. It is bleak and harsh and it doesn\u2019t offer much in the way of exposition or explanation and those seeking happy endings should look elsewhere, but there\u2019s something powerful here that kept me gripped. Writer and director Conor Horgan clearly has talent and he gets some strong performances from his cast and the cinematography makes great use of the cruel Irish countryside.<\/p>\n

Zenith<\/em> is an altogether flashier proposition than One Hundred Mornings<\/em>. Shot in a mish-mash of styles, Zenith<\/em> is a bit of a mess in places and certainly over-earnest (there\u2019s a great deal of impassioned talking to camera and the portentous conspiracy-based plot that contains some glaring improbabilities) but it is, for all that, entertaining. It is set in 2044 in a world where \u201cwords are lost\u201d and the numbed population, gene-engineered to be content, pay the protagonist, Jack, for drugs that make them feel pain. Jack also \u201cknows words\u201d and that makes him special. He can express himself and not just follow the paths laid out for him by the (oddly distant) authoritarian forces controlling this future. Jack follows a trail of videos left by his father, Ed, that catalogue his descent from respectable Catholic priest to conspiracy-driven paranoiac. Jack becomes involved with a prostitute, Lisa, who turns out to be as linguistically adept as he is and slumming it from a wealthy background. All this eventually comes together in a mostly satisfying conclusion but Zenith <\/em>is flawed.<\/p>\n

Parts of the film are supposed to follow Ed from a video camera carried by his sidekick but the director (Vladan Nikolic, credited as Anonymous) either loses his nerve or can\u2019t sustain the artifice because soon we\u2019re shown shots that can\u2019t possibly have been recorded on the tape. Similarly, in Jack\u2019s section of the story, the camera\u2019s point of view twitches interminably in a frenetic display of directorial incontinence and, perhaps, a desire to distract us from the film\u2019s low budget. It\u2019s a shame because it isn\u2019t necessary, the use of location and the grimy cinematography work well when they\u2019re allowed to take centre stage.<\/p>\n

The story also suffers from serious failures of logic. This is an oppressed society where access to knowledge is strictly controlled but Jack (son of a prostitute mother who abandoned him at the age of four and a missing, supposedly deranged, father) is, conveniently, a drop-out medical student. Language is on the decline but there are extensively stocked bookshops. The most fundamental flaw, however, is the sense that even at just 90 minutes, Nikolic is padding out his story with a surplus of sex scenes and fights.<\/p>\n

Despite this the film is held together by a strong central performance by Peter Scanavino as Jack and the sheer number of ideas that Nikolic throws at the camera. Many of the ideas behind Zenith<\/em> are familiar to the point of being clich\u00e9d but the energy and conviction of the filmmaking mostly papers over the cracks.<\/p>\n

Live action adaptations of anime and manga series are a god-forsaken territory that I\u2019ve stumbled into before \u2013 Casshern <\/em>(2004), Dragonball Evolution <\/em>(2009), The Last Airbender<\/em> (2010) \u2013 and I have invariably left bruised, battered and bewildered. I\u2019m not quite sure, therefore, what it was that persuaded me to buy a ticket for Gantz<\/em>, perhaps an unquenchable optimism or it might just have been that the screening coincided usefully with an empty space in my schedule. Whatever the reason, I\u2019m glad I saw it.<\/p>\n

On one level Gantz<\/em> is just another biggish-budget teen-adventure movie but underneath there\u2019s a satisfyingly dark heart. It starts in a train station. Kurono, is a young man preparing for a job interview when a drunk falls on the tracks. An old friend of his, Kato, rescues the man but is threatened by an approaching express train. Kurono, reluctantly, offers aid and they both end up beneath the wheels of the train. They awake (via a neat slow-motion teleportation effect) in a room overlooking Tokyo. Gantz, a strange black orb (with a bald man on a ventilator inside it) gives them instructions to hunt down aliens, a set of futuristic weapons and super-powered suits.\u00a0 Joined by various other reanimated dead they are periodically called upon to do battle with an array of increasingly powerful alien creatures. In between, however, they are dropped back into their own lives, struggling with the changes they have experienced and the everyday problems of love, family and society\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n

Lessons are learned and enemies are defeated in gigantic set-pieces but Gantz<\/em> (unlike many high-concept movies) keeps its focus firmly on its nicely delineated characters, it keeps the audience off-balance and while it\u2019s brutal in places it finishes on a convincingly upbeat note. There are echoes here of eight-bit video games, superhero tropes and samurai movies which give the film a pleasing depth.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Sci-Fi London festival closed with Super<\/em>, the new feature from Slither<\/em> writer and director James Gunn. It\u2019s the story of Frank (Rainn Wilson), an idiot, who first loses his wife (Liv Tyler) to a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon) and then loses his mind. He has visions featuring an evangelical television superhero The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) and is prompted to dress up as costumed vigilante The Crimson Bolt to fight crime with an adjustable wrench and his sidekick Boltie (Ellen Page). I wanted to love this film but couldn\u2019t, despite its fine cast and strong direction. My problem with Super <\/em>was that I\u2019ve already seen Defendor<\/em> (2009),which covers almost exactly the same ground but has a fantastic performance by Woody Harrelson in the lead role. Wilson\u2019s performance here is respectable but he never draws out the deep empathy for his character that Harrelson elicits and, as a result, the film never quite delivers Defendor<\/em>\u2019s emotional pay-off. Super<\/em> isn\u2019t a bad film, it\u2019s just been beaten to the punch.<\/p>\n

Sci-Fi London has always given space to short films. There were three separate programmes of shorts this year and the annual 48 Hour Film Challenge delivered a bumper crop of interesting films five-minute movies. The judges picked The Intention of Miles<\/em> as the winner. It is a disturbing little film but for my money the first-contact story The White Box<\/em>, with a slightly Spooks<\/em> feel and a strong sense of tension, was the best of the lot. I also thought Sit In Silence<\/em> was a clever and effective piece of filmmaking, enjoyed the ironic slacker apocalypse in Red Rain<\/em> and the well-developed atmosphere of No Escape<\/em>. But you can judge for yourself, the films are all still available to view online via the Sci-Fi London website.<\/p>\n

In its early days Sci-Fi London billed itself as the science fiction festival for people who weren\u2019t science fiction fans. The tenth iteration of the festival now encompasses the presentation of the Clarke Awards and a growing number of literary events. It is growing every year, gradually encompassing all types of science fiction from the trashy to the profound, but the energy and enthusiasm of festival director Louis Savy is still the obvious driving force behind the scenes. 2011 was another entertaining year that provided much needed respite from the royal shenanigans down the road and delivered a number of treats.<\/p>\n

This review was originally published in Vector<\/em> 267.
\nThis is a slightly longer draft which includes a review of Gantz<\/em>
\nthat didn’t (for good reasons) make the final printed version.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Includes reviews of Dinoshark (2010), Sharktopus (2010), One Hundred Mornings (2009), Zenith (2010), Gantz (2011) and Super (2010) [p5-6] I love B-movies. That\u2019s why, while most of the rest of the country was sitting down to ogle the frocks and sigh at kisses on a balcony on royal wedding day, I was in a dark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11],"tags":[51,47,63,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-mA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2671,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions\/2671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}