The famed Spanish director known for discovering the likes of Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas is returning with a new comedy, currently titled I’m So Excited , which the two will also take part in. The ensemble comedy is written and directed by Almodóvar and will begin production in July for release next summer. The filmmaker’s longtime American distributor Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in North America. The cast includes Javier Cámara, Cecilia Roth, Lola Dueñas, Raul Arévalo, Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Hugo Silva, Willy Toledo, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Blanca Suárez, José Luis Torrijo, José María Yazpik, Laya Martí with “special collaborations” from Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Paz Vega. Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker and Tom Bernard have long worked with Almodóvar beginning with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at Orion Classics and has continued on with seven more films at SPC, including his most recent The Skin I Live In , which debuted in Cannes in 2011 and released in the States last fall following its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival.
‘Weeds’ actor, who was up for the role of Peeta in ‘Hunger Games,’ tells MTV News he’d ‘love’ to play Finnick in the sequel. By Kara Warner Hunter Parrish Photo: Our fellow “Hunger Games” fans will likely recall the fact that the casting process for the first film garnered more than a few headlines, particularly regarding the roles of Katniss, Peeta and Gale. Now that those roles have long been filled and the movie has gone on to break box-office records, we have been focused on the casting rumors around its sequel, “Catching Fire.” While Lionsgate hasn’t made any announcements about who will join the cast for the sequel, particularly as fan-favorite character Finnick Odair, that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning out likely prospects. One of the fan-supported candidates is “Weeds” actor Hunter Parrish, who was also an early favorite to play Peeta until Josh Hutcherson won the role. When MTV News caught up with Parrish recently to discuss the release of his first single, “Sitting at Home,” we couldn’t help but ask for his thoughts on the franchise and also being considered for Finnick. “This whole ‘Hunger Games’ thing, man … I’ve read all of the books, because I’ve been through this once before,” Parrish said. “It was very exciting for me [to be considered] for the first movie, to be a part of that, and I read all of the books at that time, and I loved the script and the director and Jennifer Lawrence who was cast at that point. I saw it as something very exciting, and I was very excited about it, but it wasn’t [meant to be]. Josh is also a friend of mine, and I haven’t seen the film yet, but people say amazing things about it, and he’s great, he’s perfect. We’ve worked together before, and he’s a great actor,” Parrish said sincerely. While Parrish is grateful for the fan support behind the Finnick campaign, his experience from the first round of casting has him feeling more cautious about things this time around. “I kind of dove in for that one, so for this one, I don’t know,” he said. “I think you just kind of step back, and if it happens, it happens. I’m not going to really spend too much time thinking about it, but I’d love to. I wouldn’t cast myself, but that’s not helping me getting cast for that movie,” he joked. “But I’m a fan of the books. I think there’s fantastic actors that would probably be better. So there’s that for getting me a job!” In continuing with his gracious thoughts about other actors he’d consider for Finnick, we asked Parrish if he wanted to give a shout-out to any for fun. “No, I wouldn’t go that far!” he laughed. “I still want the job, I’m just saying … ” Check out everything we’ve got on “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” For young Hollywood news, fashion and “Twilight” updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com .
Also in Monday morning’s news round-up, Your Sister’s Sister leads in the specialty box office over a very quiet weekend for limited release titles, Warner Bros. beats the rap after Louis Vuitton tries to bag the studio for knockoff joke, and you too can figure out how to find a bad movie. No Twilight Reboot Planned by Lionsgate Summit’s parent, Lionsgate, is denying rumors that it is planning a fifth anniversary remake of the massively successful book and film series, Deadline reports . Your Sister’s Sister OK in Debut; Moonrise Kingdom Fierce in Week 4 IFC Films’ Your Sister’s Sister trumped the weekend’s openers in a generally quiet weekend in the specialty box office. Sundance doc Marina Abramovic The Artist Is Present bowed in two theaters, grossing just under $11K for a middling $5,495 average, Deadline reports . Sheffield Doc/Fest: Our Programme will Not be Censored by China Chinese delegates withdraw from attending the UK’s Sheffield Doc/Fest after a request to cancel screenings of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and High Tech, Low Life were refused by festival organizers, The Guardian reports . Warner Bros Beats Louis Vuitton in Hangover II Knockoff Handbag Dispute A judge has dismissed Louis Vuitton’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. over knockoff handbags in a scene in The Hangover Part II . “In the film, the character played by Zach Galifianakis carries a bag marked LVM, and when it gets pushed, he admonishes another character, ‘Be careful, that is … that is a Lewis Vuitton,’ THR reports . Summermetrics: 10 Ways of Looking at a Very Bad Movie “We as summer moviegoers should probably be grateful for Rock of Ages , the first big film of this blockbuster season to signify nothing other than good old-fashioned Hollywood narcissism — no knotty questions about the soupy, staple-y origins of man and xenomorph; no referendums on anyone’s increasingly perplexing career; no hyena laughing about the misfortune of the hubris-salted studio executives who green lighted John Carter . Just Tom Cruise in leather pants, with a tattoo of a heart above his actual biological heart. It’s the platonic ideal of summer cinema: You are going to go to the theater, and people are going to entertain you inside of it,” writes Grantland .
Writer-director David Fenster’s PINCUS is earning raves at the LA Film Fest , where it debuted this weekend in narrative competition. Drawing acclaim for its naturalistic documentary-style storytelling, Pincus follows one man’s spiritual search — part autobiographical film, part fiction, part slacker comedy — using footage of filmmaker Fenster’s conversations with his real life father, who lives with Parkinson’s disease. Pincus premiered to kudos last weekend at the LA Film Fest, and screens again on Thursday. Find more info on the film here . Previously, Fenster made his directorial debut with 2004’s Trona , which also starred actor David Nordstrom. Bonus endorsement: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs / 21 Jump Street co-director Phil Lord serves as executive producer and has been enthusiastically supporting the film on Twitter . Synopsis: Pincus Finster is in way over his head: trying to find a way to stall his father’s Parkinson’s, halfheartedly taking up yoga to meet girls, and letting his only friend Dietmar, an aging German illegal alien, get drunk and sleep in the homes they’re supposed to be remodeling. Pincus spends his time stoned and fumbling for some sort of spiritual truth. Drawing from his own life, director and writer David Fenster has cast his family and friends (including his father, Paul Fenster, who has been living with Parkinson’s for 13 years) and woven documentary footage shot in and around his hometown of Miami, Florida into the story. Seamlessly combining naturalistic storytelling with documentary elements and hints of metaphysic mystery, PINCUS is a soulfully handcrafted film that explores the gulf between cynicism and wonder with quiet revelation. Read more of Movieline’s coverage of the LA Film Fest here . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Watching a thriller requires a certain willingness to be a dupe. The whole idea is to give yourself over, and the ideal is to find yourself moving from scene to scene – as if you were cautiously exploring the rooms of a very mysterious house — asking, “And then what?” In the Paris-underworld thriller The Woman in the Fifth , director Pawel Pawlikowski is skillful enough to keep you wondering, from scene to scene, exactly what that what is going to be, and I was with the movie every step of the way, right until the final credits began rolling – at which point I realized that the whole thing made no sense whatsoever, and that none of my nagging questions about what the hell was going on would ever be answered. There’s a distinction to be made between being a dupe and being had. I know, I know, I’m being way too literal – The Woman in the Fifth is one of those movies of the “It was only a dream!” variety, designed to tickle our imagination as we ponder the distinction between what’s real and what’s only illusion. Some “It was only a dream!” movies work beautifully — The Wizard of Oz is one of them; Femme Fatale is another. But The Woman in the Fifth leaves a tantalizing trail of breadcrumbs only to lead us to…one last breadcrumb. I enjoyed watching Kristin Scott Thomas shimmer through the picture as a sultry viper woman, and I felt a kind of embarrassed tenderness for Ethan Hawke as his character tried to express himself in stubby blurts of bad French. But by the end, I only wished I had some stinky cheese rinds to throw at them. That may be less their fault than Pawlikowski’s. (Pawlikowski adapted the screenplay from Douglas Kennedy’s novel of the same name, which I have not read, though now I’m extremely curious – I need to read it to find out if it has an actual ending.) Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) is an American college professor who, as the movie opens, shows up in Paris to reconnect with his estranged wife (Delphine Chuillot) and the couple’s young daughter (Julie Papillon). The wife is none too happy to see him – she not only bars him from seeing his child, but calls the police on him. He runs off, boards a bus, falls asleep and awakens at the last stop — in a crap neighborhood, naturally – only to find that his bags have been stolen, though luckily he still has his passport. He makes his way to a shabby café where a tired-looking but beautiful Polish blonde named Ania (Joanna Kulig) waits on him cautiously. Ricks needs a room – is there one available? Ania waves him over to her bass, the café’s owner, the super-shady-looking Sezer (Samir Guesmi), who agrees to give him lodging but insists on keeping his passport as a formality. In his desperation, Ricks obliges without even a blink. That’s one of those deliciously ill-advised decisions that only fictional characters are allowed to make, and you can’t help wondering what it’s going to set in motion. During the course of the movie, Sezer gives Ricks a job, Ricks is forced to share a bathroom with a big black guy who won’t flush the toilet, and a mysterious femme fatale insinuates her way into Ricks’ life. That would be Thomas’s Margit, a mesmerizing creature who works as a translator. The two meet at a half-pretentious, half-pathetic literary party, and she slips him her card, urging him to call her. “Anytime after four,” she purrs. Up to this point, and really pretty much up to the end, The Woman in the Fifth is beautifully noirish. Shot by Ryszard Lenczewski – in Paris, no less! – the picture has a dull glow that’s both elegant and ominous. The performances are suitably low-key and intriguing: Hawkes’ Ricks is a walking pile of trouble, a man whose anguish virtually sweats through his pores. Hawkes is a shambling actor, often so understated that it looks as if he’s doing nothing, or as if he were simply on his way somewhere else and got caught up in a detour – I’ve always liked that about him. As for Thomas, I don’t believe there’s any beautiful actress working who looks more like a lizard – and I mean that as a compliment. Those heavy-lidded eyes, that patrician sculpted jawline: In The Woman in the Fifth , she looks as if she should be perpetually sunning herself on a rock, if only it wouldn’t wreak havoc on her aristocratic milky pallor. I loved watching The Woman in the Fifth . But the ending is both so oblique and so murderously obvious that I felt I’d been had. Where the devil were those stinky cheese rinds, which I know I should carry with me at all times? Pawlikowski – director of the 2004 My Summer of Love , which featured a then not-so-well-known Emily Blunt – guides us artfully through the picture, keeping us asking all sorts of questions, only to leave us at the wrong bus stop. With no luggage. Did I really just spend 90 minutes watching this thing, pretty much enraptured for most of the time? No! It was only a dream! If only.
Also rounding out Friday’s round up of news briefs, Harvey Weinstein receives UCLA honors, New York’s LGBT Festival sets its opener, the Austin Film Festival touts its record submission and California is chided for not doing enough to keep productions from ditching the state. Harvey Weinstein Receives UCLA Honors The Weinstein Company chief was feted by UCLA’s student directors as the school’s Champion Spirit Award recipient. The ceremony took place Thursday night at the Directors Guild of America as part of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Film Festival. The award was created in 2010 recognizing a person in the entertainment industry who has “courage, integrity, insight and inspiration and is dedicated to fostering and nurturing emerging talent.” Recent winners include Stacey Snider and Roger Corman. Joshua Sanchez’s Four to Kick Off NYC LGBT Festival The film follows four people as they spend a holiday encountering life changing moments, both subtle and writ large and learn to cope with the lack of honesty in their lives. Closing the event will be Marialy Rivas’ acclaimed Chilean film Young & Wild . Based on the life of co-screenwriter Camila Gutiérrez, the film is a sexually-charged, stunning and energetic look at family and youth culture in contemporary Chile. The film was the recipient of the World Cinema Screenwriting Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. NewFest will take place July 27 – 31 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. Austin Film Festival Touts Record Submissions The event said it has received a record number of entries for its 19th annual Screenplay competition. 6,500 entries came in, up by 12% from last year’s 5,800. The 19th annual Austin Film Festival & Conference will be held Oct 18 – 25, 2012 in Austin, TX. Around the ‘net… Madagascar 3 Should Win Box Office Father’s Day Weekend New comers Rock of Ages and That’s My Boy are expected to perform modestly this weekend, which should see Madagascar 3 reigning at the box office, Variety reports . Christina Ricci Boards Australian Indie Set in an inner-city beset with riots, Ricci stars as an American drama teacher who forms a connection to a troubled Aboriginal teen. The project is the debut feature of writer-director Sarah Spillane, Deadline reports . Report Warns California Not Doing Enough to Keep Movie/TV Productions The Milken Institute says the state’s efforts to halt runaway production falls short even with an extension of the $100 million annual tax incentive, THR reports .
Tom Cruise rescues rock and roll musical that ‘wins no prizes for originality,’ critics say. By Kara Warner Julianne Hough in “Rock of Ages” Photo: It’s relatively safe to say “Rock of Ages” has built-in appeal: It’s based on a hit Broadway musical of the same name and features a slew of A-list actors singing and dancing along to some of the biggest hits of the 1980s. Despite all those charms, including the top billing of action star turned rock star Tom Cruise, the whimsical musical is not quite a surefire hit among critics and sits at a less-than-fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes . Sing along as we take a walk through the “Rock of Ages” reviews. The Story ” ‘Rock of Ages,’ a rags-to-riches rock ‘n’ roll musical set mostly in a music club on Sunset Strip, wins no prizes for originality. A lot of it is zesty entertainment, with some energetic musical numbers; several big names (Tom Cruise, Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin) prove they can sing well enough to play the Strip if they lose the day job. The two leads are Diego Boneta, as a bartender in the Strip’s hottest club, and Julianne Hough, as a naive kid just off the bus from the Midwest. They’re both gifted singers and join the others in doing covers of 1980s rock classics. Of course they also fall in love. Of course they have heartfelt conversations while standing behind the ‘Hollywood’ sign. Of course they break up because of a tragic misunderstanding. Of course their mistake is repaired and (spoiler!) they’re back together at the end. Has ever a romance in a musical been otherwise?” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times The Music and Singing “It looks like Disneyland and sounds, well, like a bad Broadway musical, with all the power belting and jazz-hand choreography that implies. To put it another way, there’s way too much Journey on the soundtrack, and Foreigner. There’s also an REO Speedwagon ditty, a few from Twisted Sister, Def Leppard and Poison, and at least two hits that were released after 1987 (‘More Than Words’ and ‘I Remember You’). All the songs are sung, mostly without shame or distinction, by the actors themselves, who slide into the warbling as if into a conversation. A grizzled, bewigged Mr. Baldwin enunciates through his songs, in the Rex Harrison mold, to play a rock survivor, Dennis Dupree, who runs the Bourbon with his sidekick, Lonny (Mr. Brand). They make their stale buddy routine and romance amusing and, as with the rest of the adults, make the movie bearable. A whispering and writhing Mr. Cruise makes it watchable.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times The Cruise Factor “The real reason to see ‘Rock of Ages,’ though, is Tom Cruise. He doesn’t sing much, and the one big onstage number he’s given — shredding Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ under a rain of shaken-up beer from the audience — relies heavily on postproduction and backup singing, probably to mask his vocal shortcomings. But especially in his scenes with [Paul] Giamatti and Malin Akerman (as a Rolling Stone critic who’s the only one with the guts to call Stacee on his ersatz-Marlon Brando B.S.), Cruise goes to a deep, dark, almost deliberately repellent place I’m not sure he’s ever been before (in ‘Magnolia,’ maybe, and in a comic mode as the profane studio head Les Grossman in ‘Tropic Thunder’). The isolation and paranoia brought on by extreme fame is something Tom Cruise clearly understands from the inside out — and what we know, or think we know, about the actor’s personal eccentricities can’t help but color our understanding of Stacee as well. When Cruise and Akerman have lurid (but still PG-13) sex atop an air-hockey table while singing Foreigner’s ‘I Want to Know What Love Is,’ Cruise’s expressions of erotic anguish are like something out of Steve McQueen’s sex-addiction drama ‘Shame,’ with a hint of tragic drag queen thrown in. Cruise’s portrait of the rock star as empty-eyed nihilist doesn’t really belong in this gaudy pop trinket of a movie — it’s both too outsized and too inward — but that’s precisely what makes for its fascination. ‘Rock of Ages’ is only recommended for audiences with a taste for highly processed cheese, but it did leave me hopeful that the next decade may see the rise of Weird Tom Cruise.” — Dana Stevens, Slate The Final Word ” ‘Rock of Ages’ is an effulgent celebration of fakeness. It isn’t trying to be real; it’s trying to be faker than any fake thing has ever been before. Compared to this fake musical set in a fake version of the past that spins a ridiculously fake narrative of pop-culture history, ‘Mamma Mia’ (the last jukebox musical to be vilified by critics and embraced by the public) is pretty much a mumblecore movie. ‘Rock of Ages’ is so remarkably fake it’s almost ur-fake or meta-fake; you can watch the globs of trans fats congealing on its preternaturally bright surfaces as it cools. This movie could hardly seem more weirdly artificial if it had been jointly hatched by David Lynch and John Waters, and raised in a lab on a steady diet of Foreigner hits and original Broadway-cast recordings. I’m not claiming this movie is good for you, Lord knows. It’s a little bit like eating a Happy Meal at 4:30 in the morning after a long night of Jagermeister and nitrous oxide. But not to put too fine a point on it, if you ain’t lookin’ for nothin’ but a good time, why should you resist? Some people who claim to understand the public appetite smell an expensive flop here, and that well may be. But I’m here to tell you that this movie is almost too weird to be believed, and that if you share even a fraction of my taste for perversity you should check it out.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon Check out everything we’ve got on “Rock of Ages.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Rock Of Ages’
Was Disney’s John Carter the victim of our increasing cultural overstimulation? IndieWire’s Matt Singer considers the tentpole’s reception — and suggests parallels with Kenneth Lonergan’s troubled production-cum-critical darling, Margaret : “[As] perpetual sneak preview culture becomes normalized, audiences are being conditioned to weigh in on a movie before it even comes out. They’re trained not only to trust their expectations, but to express them constantly. ‘I knew this movie was going to be bad from the first trailer,’ is a commonly expressed opinion online. At a certain point, it begins to feel like people want a movie to fail, if only to prove their expectations right.” [ IndieWire ]
I went to see Prometheus over the weekend, and like many of you, I was disappointed (to put it lightly). Although a technical achievement in every way, the narrative and characters left much to be desired. The mystery I wanted solved was not the black goo or the Engineers — it was how the creative team of Ridley Scott , Damon Lindelof , and Jon Spaihts could produce a movie with such rudimentary mistakes . There have been casts of Scream movies with more intelligence than this lineup of characters. The connective tissue between the film’s big set pieces felt as if plucked from a Random Idea Generator program online; even the mythology was mucked up as the film dissolved into a by-the-book sci-fi thriller by the end. Baffled, I thought about the simple brilliance of 1979’s Alien . The 1970s were a fertile time for Hollywood. What we consider to be some of the greatest movies ever came from the “New Hollywood” era, including Scott’s Alien and works by the likes of Coppola, Kubrick, Altman, and more; these were directors who were the first wave of “film buffs” who emerged from university film programs having studied and loved the medium for years. They were awed and inspired by cinema, and introduced fresh technologies and darker and more subversive subject matter to wider audiences for the first time under a creative freedom Hollywood hasn’t allowed since. But all eras come to an end, and not every great director has a perfect score (except maybe Scorsese and Hitchcock). Even if Prometheus didn’t disappoint you, chances are one of these movies from nine New Hollywood filmmakers did. 9. Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001), Robin Hood (2010), and Prometheus (2012) There are two kinds of Ridley Scott camps: Those who think Scott is a middlebrow director with mediocre titles that appeal to AMPAS voters only, and those who believe Alien and Blade Runner constitute a lifetime pass. That’s not to say Scott isn’t an accomplished and respectable director even today. Prometheus is his most technically beautiful film in ages, and Matchstick Men and Kingdom of Heaven are underrated achievements. But let’s face it: Prometheus is a narrative mess, his Robin Hood was a bafflingly bland Russell Crowe vehicle that famously massacred a fabulous spec script that was intended to tell the Sheriff of Nottingham’s story, and… well, just watch Scott talk up Hannibal in this commentary track clip. — 8. Robert Altman’s Dr. T. and the Women (2000) Not inherently a bad movie, Altman’s Dr. T. and the Women is often delightful, but a bit too broad and soapy for the man behind MASH and Nashville . As an unconventional rom-com, Altman’s film retains much of the director’s trademark style, with charm and emphasis on character relationships over plot — obviously, since a magical tornado comes out of nowhere at the end to wipe slates clean. — 7. Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999) From the director who brought you Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown comes The Ninth Gate , starring a subdued Johnny Depp, who seems perpetually in danger of getting hit by cars, and Emmanuelle Seigner, delivering roundhouse kicks to baddies and floating down staircases. Like Altman’s Dr. T. , this isn’t Polanski hitting an extreme low — he’s just not hitting any highs, either. The film’s production values go a long way to delivering an elegant yet creepy atmosphere, but the business of the horror-fantasy plot falls deeper and deeper into absurdity with generic thriller frights. — 6. Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars (2000) and The Black Dahlia (2006) You could also probably slide 1998’s Snake Eyes into this lineup to prove a point that, like Prometheus , no matter how technically capable you are as a visual director, sometimes the narratives just don’t measure up. Black Dahlia also carried the negative weight of bizarre miscasting (Hilary Swank, I’m looking at you), while Mission to Mars succumbs to shallow writing and absence of thrills. Snake Eyes , for what it’s worth, tries to cover up mediocrity and frustratingly silly webs of intrigue under an abundance of style and visual prowess. Movies are a sensory experience, and if what you’re hearing doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter if what you’re seeing is the most beautiful image ever shot. — 5. John Schlesinger’s The Next Best Thing (2000) This is the man who directed Midnight Cowboy , Sunday Bloody Sunday , and Marathon Man . Obviously we can chalk this one up to the Madonna poison she obviously secretes onto every set she steps foot on. Right? — Continued on page 2…
The film: Shallow Grave (1994) Why It’s an Inessential Essential: Today, Danny Boyle is commonly known as “the director of Slumdog Millionaire .” (Or: Olympian designer !) After that, he’s usually “the director of Trainspotting ,” or 127 Hours or even Millions . So it’s nice to see that the Criterion Collection’s first DVD/Blu-Ray release of a Boyle film is Shallow Grave , an early film by Boyle but an especially worthy one. Scripted by regular collaborator John Hodge ( Trainspotting , A Life Less Ordinary ), Shallow Grave is a nasty little neo-noir about three apathetic yuppies that cover up a crime involving a dead body and a bag full of cash. Juliet (Kerry Fox), Alex ( Ewan McGregor in his second film role), and David ( Doctor Who ‘s Christopher Eccleston) are a trio of casually petty young things that are equally bored, cruel and self-absorbed. They tentatively sublet the fourth bedroom in their Edinburgh flat to a stranger, who promptly dies and leaves a suitcase full of money beside his corpse. A decision is hastily made: they’ll keep the money and dispose of the body. The consequences of that decision naturally haunt and subsequently push the film’s group of sociopathic friends over the edge. How the DVD/Blu Ray Makes the Case for the Film: During his audio commentary soundtrack, Boyle behaves exactly how you’d think he would based on his films. He’s a reactive filmmaker, one that prioritizes sensationalism over moralism. That totally suits a film like Shallow Grave , a movie that Boyle, according to film critic Philip Kemp’s liner notes, originally conceived of as being similar to Blood Simple . During the director’s commentary (there’s also a separate commentary track that features Hodge in conversation with producer Andrew Macdonald), Boyle professes to have great reverence for British social realists like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. But he also talks about how the film’s bright, lurid color palette, which he characterizes as “swathes of color,” were his way of getting away from “British realism,” which he said had “become very standard” at the time. Shallow Grave is about the perils of being young, British, materialistic and without a moral compass. But like Trainspotting , Boyle’s follow-up feature and breakthrough film, Shallow Grave , is a young filmmaker’s way of trying to, “just smash it up a bit, if we could.” Left to his own devices, Boyle tellingly only mentions the film’s political subtext infrequently and mostly in passing. He’s much more interested in talking about trick shots, effect-driven photography and the sense of visual “perspective” he achieved by making his antiheroes’ apartment, the film’s central location, built with an elevated foundation. Boyle did this for the same reason he had his cast lug around a crash test dummy when they simulated carrying a body down a flight of stairs. Boyle knew even then that to properly push buttons, he had to achieve a hyper-real effect. And he did: Boyle jokes that the dummy made his three lead actors mad at him, but that that an air of tension on-set is, “always a good thing.” Other trivia: Boyle is a great talker and goes on a number of funny tangents during his audio commentary, like when he warns anyone unfamiliar with The Wicker Man , which is playing in the background in one scene in Shallow Grave , not to watch the remake. His anecdote about gauging the success of Shallow Grave on the attendance of a single matinee screening in Hamilton, Scotland is especially funny. Boyle says that his contacts at Polygram Filmed Entertainment, the film’s distribution company, informed him that four people showed up to Hamilton’s first screening, but that that was a very good sign. “If there’s one person there,” Boyle recalled, “it’s going to be ok. If there’s nobody there, they don’t know. It’s bizarre, it’s all statistics, of course.” Previously: Inessential Essentials: Revisiting Joe Eszterhas’s Telling Lies in America Simon Abrams is a NY-based freelance film critic whose work has been featured in outlets like The Village Voice , Time Out New York , Vulture and Esquire . Additionally, some people like his writing, which he collects at Extended Cut .
