Why did October feel SO LONG? The first two weeks was *fun* as my university’s entire Internet servers were down, but now things are fine. Emergency over? Yeah, a bit of an anti-climax there, no dramatic narrative. But that did mean I had to use downloads and DVDs for the first two weeks. A few cinema trips, a lot of films after the Internet came back… let’s dive straight in.
There Will Be Blood
How did No Country For Old Men beat this at the Oscars for Best Picture? JUST taking those two into consideration for the award, There Will Be Blood is a million times better by virtue of there actually being a story. It’s a modern day Citizen Kane about one man’s life and the people who get damaged by it. Daniel Plainview is one of my all-time favourite characters with one of my all-time favourite performances – it may be a cliche to say it, but Daniel Day-Lewis really *becomes* his characters. Plainview wants nothing more than power and control, who hides his corrupt, cynical nature behind a kindly persona, one that disintegrates as the film progresses and he loses control of everything. Unlike Kane, there’s no redemption – Plainview just SUCKS, and it’s fascinating to see unfold. Countering this is the way in which the community he takes over uses religion to hide their own insecurities. Excellently directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, a beautiful score by Johnny Greenwood, and perfect cinematography by Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood is the perfect antidote to pretentious, Oscar bait “I’m so smart” films I’ve completely run out of patience for.
This month’s been… something. I spent the first half of it in perpetual short story mode and editing my final essays to perfection, then I celebrated no more university with a cinema trip two weeks ago. Now, I could say that the reason I haven’t been writing is because Godzilla Vs Kong (which I’ve obviously already talked about) blew my mind so much I had to emotionally recover, but the truth is I just forgot to think of anything. No worries, I still watched some great films. Let’s talk about them –
Last Night in Soho looks great, doesn’t it? Here’s some films to watch beforehand
The first trailer to Edgar Wright’s upcoming psychological thriller/horror/this is gonna be the film event of the decade Last Night in Soho dropped about a week ago. In that time, I’ve done some rapid fire catchup on some of the film’s obvious horror influences, namely Messers Bava and Argento. But first, a rewatch of Baby Driver, his last film. Overshadowed by the presence of Kevin Spacey and, more recently, Ansel Elgort, it’s unfortunate this film is defined by the controversies surrounding the cast now because this is an awesome, awesome film. Stunning car chases, a fun cast, especially Jamie Foxx, and a brilliant soundtrack. Baby Driver has it all – it’s a filmmaker at the top of his game working with one of the best cinematographers (Bill Pope) and editor (Paul Machliss) around to create a thrilling action film that manages to be both original and a homage to several older films, namely Walter Hill’s The Driver which I’ve still yet to see but am keen to.
This is one of the funniest scenes in any Edgar Wright film, and that’s saying something.
The next twelve months are going to be quite interesting in terms of films. Finally, stuff might start coming out! Now obviously you all know my most anticipated film of the year is Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, so to make this list more interesting, let’s talk about the non-Edgar Wright stuff shall we? Here are some OTHER films I’m desperate to see in 2021 –
No Time to Die
I have had a Casino Royale blog post waiting to be published for literally a year now, Bond 25 better come out! Daniel Craig’s final Bond film looks to be fantastic – he’s “my” Bond in terms of being the actor I personally associate with the role, having been around since 2006. His last two films have been the centrepoint of massive birthdays. I don’t really need to go too much into this one – it’s Bond, I’m British, this is by both by far the film I’m second most excited for and my second most anticipated film coming out in April (three guesses what number one is, no prizes for correct answers). A Bond film only happens rarely now, so this is, of course, an event.
In the age of streaming, video on demand and rentals, it’s easy to forget that DVDs were, and to an extent still are, a valuable form of media consumption. A DVD shouldn’t just contain the film, it should be a package that’s worth your money – on top of the film (which you would have already seen, given how I highly doubt people would pay ten pounds for a film they don’t know if they like), you should be getting extras like interviews, deleted scenes, bloopers and documentaries. But for me, the cherry on the top of a DVD is the audio commentary. A good audio commentary can improve a viewing experience completely. So in defence of this often neglected aspect of a DVD/Blu Ray, I’m going to look at some great ones.
An audio commentary is essentially when creatives involved with the production – usually the director, writers or cast members – watch the film and talk over it, giving the audience insights into their perspectives and viewpoints. They’re not for everyone, but I love them, especially when I already love the work in question.
For me, the greatest DVD commentaries are the fantastic ones that come with classic series Doctor Who DVDs. All 150+ stories have commentaries with the actors and crew members remembering the good, bad and ugly. I’ve only watched a fraction, mostly the ones with Peter Davison because he is. HILARIOUS. Davison is utterly on point with the problems in his run and 80’s Who as a whole and does not hold back on criticism when he feels like the story is flawed.
The best example of this is Black Orchid, an… OK story, but the commentary is wonderfully sarcastic. Some find him and Janet Fielding too negative, but when the story is good they will complement and discuss it fairly, whilst also making fun of it. Kinda and Snakedance are two such examples, but as much as I love hearing anecdotes from great stories it’s the way less than stellar stuff like Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity (which sees Colin Baker also join in the fun) is torn to pieces that brings me back to Davison’s commentaries. Warriors of the Deep is a fascinating commentary, with the cast and crew perfectly aware of the awful nature of it but also pointing out how it went wrong, such as the director’s complete inexperience with a story of that scale. But my favourite Davison commentary is him, Nicola Bryant and Graeme Harper on The Caves of Androzani, where Harper’s discussions on how he directed it and the state of television directing then and now being a major insight into why he’s considered one of the best Doctor Who directors ever.
Other great commentaries I’ve listened to are Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen looking back on their first story Robot and The Leisure Hive, where script editor Christopher Bidmead criticises director Lovett Bickford’s direction, with Bickford also in the commentary! It’s still interesting though as I find the story very well directed and hearing the behind the scenes was great. Colin Baker is, in contrast to his Doctor, quite mellow and calm with his criticisms even with legendary failure The Twin Dilemma, where he is both honest and fair in what went both right and wrong.
I hardly listened to any new series commentaries, but that’s because there aren’t that many! RTD’s seasons have commentaries for all episodes (I have listened to the Midnight commentary, a very insightful and great discussion on a great episode) but Moffat and Chibnall’s seasons only have select commentary for episodes. Also, unlike the Classic Who DVD’s where the participants can be honest, I have a feeling the commentaries are moderated to stop cast members from being too negative on certain episodes as the show is in production and it’ll be a bit awkward to have cast members mock the show – I doubt we’ll get a Black Orchid style riffing on Fear Her, Kill the Moon or Orphan 55. Maybe in the future we’ll hear the cast’s TRUE thoughts on certain episodes.
The other TV show with a load of commentaries is Futurama, which has an audio track for every single episode and Matt Groening is on basically all of them. I personally find these a bit more mixed, as sometimes there are about six or seven people on the commentary and with only 20 minutes to cover sometimes the episode itself isn’t discussed too much. But all I’ve heard have merit, especially when the writers are discussing the writer’s room, an American writing concept I don’t really understand (how many producers do you need?) or how the insane ideas were conceived or animated.
I first got into commentary tracks during my time at college, where I would frequently borrow DVDs from the library and watch films for the first time with the director’s commentary as subtitles with the film playing at the same time. As many commentators point out, having commentary on a first watch is a bad idea, which I soon learnt. For example, I watched Get Out for the first time on DVD with Jordan Peele’s commentary as text on the bottom. All well and good apart from the fact that he (understandably) discusses the twist before it happens so… whoops.
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner commentary is great – we were studying the film as part of the course but due to timing we couldn’t watch the film in class so we were expected to watch the film at home. I’d already seen it so decided to watch with commentary and, say what you will about his films, but Scott is a master director when he puts his mind to it and has something to say about everything, particularly the meticulous set design and stylistic choices.
Rewatching a film you love with commentary is just as rewarding as rewatching it for the first time. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell are so much fun on the Big Trouble in Little China track – they only discuss the film about half the time but the rest of the time they’re discussing each other’s work, the state of films, random action films and it’s an absolute blast. Commentaries are always better when the participants clearly want to be there, and Carpenter and Russell definitely want to be there. But no one puts more work into their commentary tracks than Edgar Wright. My Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy box set is one of my prized possessions, not just because of the films but also the commentaries. Let’s break them down –
Shaun of the Dead has four commentaries – one with Wright and Simon Pegg as the writers/director commentary, then one with the main cast, then one with Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton, and finally one with some of the zombie extras. I’ve only listened to the first one with Wright and Pegg (and it’s GLORIOUS), but the fact that there are so many is proof that this is a guy who cares about giving someone their money’s worth on a DVD.
Hot Fuzz has FIVE tracks – the Wright/Pegg one, one with the Sanford police actors, one with the Neighbourhood Watch actors, one with two Wells police officers who served as consultants and one with Wright and Quentin Tarantino. I haven’t heard any of these yet but look forward to doing so.
The World’s End was, naturally, the first commentary I listened to when I got the set. There are three – the Wright/Pegg double act, which was, of course, fantastic. These two are a script writing team made in heaven and have such a clear understanding and passion of their own work and manage to be intelligent and discuss many different aspects of the film without losing the carefree vibe of a casual commentary track. The other two are a cast commentary and one with Wright and cinematographer Bill Pope that I really should listen to as I love Pope’s work with Wright, Sam Raimi and the Wachowskis. Edgar Wright also has multiple commentary tracks on Scott Pilgrim (which I have on DVD so should probably watch) and Baby Driver (which I do not, yet) but I greatly admire his dedication to the commentary track as they really are a valuable insight into a film’s background.
Sadly, many DVDs now do not have commentary tracks. But the Blu Rays do. My Marvel Blu Rays have commentaries (including Endgame, which I look forward to rewatching with commentary immensely) and now we have a Blu Ray player we can now get more obscure releases with more commentaries and extras. If you’re paying more, surely you should get a good set of extras? Many distributors seem to think extras don’t matter, certainly not commentaries – “what’s the point? Surely people just want to watch the film?”. But no. Many people value the special features and if I just wanted to just watch the film I would simply rent it. I wish streaming services would offer the commentary track as a language option as I really love listening to them if the participants are interesting, which they usually are.
No real conclusion here, just appreciating commentary tracks and the people and companies that put extra effort into them.
Haven’t done one of these in a while! Yes, on top of random musings about pop culture, I do occasionally talk about my trips across the country and the world. This time however, it’s absolutely EVERYTHING to do with pop culture. Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz was filmed almost entirely in England’s smallest city (technically smallest free standing city, but whatever) and his hometown, Wells. But it’s not just a tiny city in Somerset, it also has a large cathedral, considered one of the finest in the country. And you know me, I’m a sucker for these things. So I ticked off two birds with one stone – filming locations and cathedrals, and hey, I have enough for a piece of writing! Next year I’m doing a series of blog posts on Edgar Wright as a lead up to his upcoming horror film Last Night in Soho, so I considered this trip research for my Hot Fuzz sections.
One of my favourite filmmakers is Edgar Wright, director of the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy, the amazing TV show Spaced, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, 2017’s surprise hit Baby Driver and the upcoming horror film Last Night in Soho. Am I looking forward to that film? Do I need to answer that question? You had me at “new film”, Edgar, then you go cast my favourite Doctor in a lead role! Of course I’m excited!
There are so many reasons why I adore Wright’s work, and upon reflection a key part of why myself, and so many others, are attached to his filmography is because they are a reflection on who we are as people. And with so many of us changing lifestyles recently, it’s time to explore what that means. I’ll be exploring all five of Edgar Wright’s feature films (with spoilers, so if you by some miracle haven’t seen any of his films, you literally have no excuse so go do that) and study his protagonists, all of whom are brilliantly layered individuals.
At last, summer is here. I’ve spent most of this month relishing in the freedom I now have following my exams, which means a lot of films were burnt through. This is in part to make up for next month, which will be lacking in the film front due to my long holiday coming up. With that said, how did I mark the halfway point of the year? Let’s find out.
Whilst there’s no series of Doctor Who this year, Chris Chibnall and his team are busy working on a fantastic somophore season for Jodie Whittaker and the Thirteenth Doctor for 2020. Whilst her first season wasn’t perfect (I’m looking at you Tsuranga Conundrum) it was a great series overall and the viewing figures have spoken- Doctor Who is a household name again and is dominating the pop culture discussion once again. It is a great time to be a Doctor Who fan, as for the first time in years the average person on the street might know what you’re talking about and the quality of stories have reflected the level of attention the series is now getting (not you Pting). Chibnall’s all-new writing team were great and actually better than the man himself- I wouldn’t mind any of them returning, which leads me to this post. Here are twelve writers I would love to see write for Series 12 and make the next season as good as possible-
Toby Whithouse
Would I really say no to the writer of my favourite Doctor Who story returning? Toby Whithouse is a Who veteran, first contributing the amazing Series 2 story School Reunion which still holds up as the strongest story from that series. His main contributions were to the Eleventh Doctor era, where his vision of the Doctor as a dark, mythical figure cropped up first in the underrated Vampires of Venice and then the magnum opus of the entire show, The God Complex, which masterfully deconstructed then reconstructed who the Doctor is. A Town Called Mercy and the Fisher King two parter are both great too, and whilst Lie of the Land was incredibly… not good I can’t really blame that entirely on him due to the difficult behind the scenes circumstances surrounding that arc. In short, any season without Whithouse is poorer off without him and his idea of the Doctor is one that I support 100%. I would have preferably wanted him as showrunner but if that’s not the case, another story would do just fine. Whithouse is a master of genre storytelling and is one of the finest writers this show has had and Lie of the Land is such a poor way to end a fantastic collection of stories.
Alrighty righty let’s get straight back into my monthly list of every film I saw in 2019. I still didn’t see anything at the cinema (although that will have changed in a month’s time) but I still saw plenty of quality films. Let’s dive straight in-
A Nightmare on Elm Street
One of the most iconic horror films of all time, this timeless 80’s classic is often imitated, never bettered. Focused on a group of teenagers being haunted in their dreams by the mysterious Freddie Krueger, the film gave birth to one of horror’s greatest heroines- Nancy Thompson. We all know who Kruger is now after endless sequels and saturation but in this original film he is an enigma and a terrifying presence brought to life by the great Robert Englund. This film is also known for being Johnny Depp’s first film and even if you haven’t seen the film you know what happens to him- it’s a memorable and brilliant scene. If there’s one film that captures the 80’s suburban nightmare, then this is it. It’s been referenced so much, most memorably in Rick and Morty, but the impact is still immense. The best way to watch this film is when you’re on the verge of sleeping, and it’s how I’ll watch it next time. It’s one of the great slasher films and any horror fan should watch it.
Ben Williams' World 