Well, those dwarves are certainly...something!

But in a shrinking movie industry, DIY microbudget filmmaking may increasingly be left to fill some of the void left by risk-averse, corporate-driven Hollywood.

“I hope people can stop shooting things to make them look like commercials and just get back to more of the nitty gritty and letting your imagination flow,” says Tews, who also co-wrote the movie with Cheslik. “I just hope we stop bowing down to Hollywood and thinking they’re the gold standard. Because they just aren’t.”

John Mathieson, the cinematographer for both Gladiator films, has slammed Ridley Scott's recent filmmaking habits in a new interview.

Speaking on The DocFix podcast, Mathieson described Scott's tendency to leave things in shot to be later cleaned up in post-production as "lazy".

“It’s really lazy. It’s the CG elements now of tidying-up, leaving things in shot, cameras in shot, microphones in shot, bits of set hanging down, shadows from [boom mics]. And they just said [on Gladiator 2], ‘Well, clean it up.'"

The cinematographer didn't stop there, calling Scott "impatient" for getting "as much as he can" using a multi-camera setup.

“Having lots of cameras I don’t think has made the films any better," Mathieson said. "It’s a bit rush, rush, rush. That’s changed in him. But that’s the way he wants to do it and I don’t like it and I don’t think many people do, but people love his films and he’s Ridley Scott and can do what he wants.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20673255

Part of the enduring appeal of Wallace & Gromit is its British charm. The quaint mannerisms of the hapless inventor and his canine pal–from their love of a cup of tea to their knowing colloquialisms–reflect an admiral sense of national pride, both at home and abroad. But while that British-ness is part of the appeal, it doesn’t defend Aardman from being able to get in jokes that might be a little too close to home.

Now that the latest entry in the series, Vengeance Most Fowl, is making its way around the world in January thanks to Netflix, some of the creatives behind the film revealed at recent press conference for the film that they did have to make some acquiescence to notes from the streamer on a joke that wasn’t going to play well outside of the UK.

“There’s some actually that we’ve had to sort of take out, because just in terms of the Britishness of the film and the sort of cultural references, there’s certain things that don’t travel,” Vengeance Most Fowl executive producer Carla Shelley said. “I remember we had a sort of gag about a bog chain at one point… for anybody that doesn’t out there, that’s like a toilet flush. We were talking to Netflix and [the note back] was like ‘what’s a bog chain!?’ There are certain sorts of references that we might pull back on now.

Great twist, enjoyable use of the horror genre, good acting

Here's what bothered me though.

With all the talk about God, there's never any mention of vampires' souls.

We see the human die and come back as a vampire. And when a person dies their soul leaves their body.

So do these vampires have souls or not? And if not, why do they still act so human? One of the characters even says, "[becoming a vampire] doesn't change who you are." but bro, it's a series about death and the afterlife, and you're saying that undead creatures with no soul behave the same as they did in life?

It feels like a huge swing and a miss in terms of horror potential: imagine seeing the uncanny valley effect of a person who used to be your friend, suddenly without their soul. It would have fit the theme so well and I'm devastated it was never brought up.

Also,

a few major loopholes in the last few episodes:

1. The sherrif's son turns, then helps his human father get to the beach. It's a long walk, and the son is helping his injured father. But no terrible "I'm going to drink your blood even though you're my family" moment the way we see in every other vampire. Why does this kid act so differently?

2. None of the vampires try to hide from the sun in the end. Literally every one of them stands on the beach singing. Lol what the fuck. They're so driven by need that they're eating their loved ones, but they're all going to stand upright and burn to death while singing hymns?

3. "You're not a good person Bev. God doesn’t love you more than he loves anyone else. You aren’t ... a victim." This is supposed to be a social justice scene where the bitch finally gets told off. But the complaints are how Bev acted in church, her attitude towards God, her arrogance. Not the fact that she's standing there with a molotov burning people's houses down so she can drink their blood lol.

Sorry to vent here, I'm just tired of being let down by lazy writing.

For anyone unfamiliar with Neil Breen’s work, I don’t know whether to feel sorry for you or shield you from the baffling peculiarity of his films that demand to be endlessly mocked but are somehow still entertaining. Breen has declared himself as “the most independent filmmaker in the world” on his website, making a questionable name for himself through his extremely low-budget films that he writes, directs, edits, produces and stars in, also often taking on most of the crew roles himself. When watching the credits roll, it is rarer to see a name on there that isn’t his.

But regardless of his reluctance to collaborate, the man has undeniable joie de vivre. Despite the very public ridiculing of his work, they have built up their own unique fanbase, with people enjoying them for this very reason.

Breen funds all of his projects himself, which is evident in the low production value of the films. His movies are known for their extensive (and I mean extensive) use of the green screen, with nearly every other shot containing an AI-looking image with superimposed and comically out-of-place footage of Breen walking through spaceships and leisurely strolling through violent explosions. The special effects are either extremely minimal or barely existent, making use of the term ‘creative license’ as we’re encouraged to broaden our minds when watching, mentally filling in the gaps that Breen has left on screen.

The plots are often centred around global catastrophes, exploring corporate cover-ups, evil government plots and pesky scientists with too much power. Breen, unsurprisingly, always plays the hero, writing in noticeably much younger love interests for himself and an all-knowing ability that only he possesses to save the world from mass destruction. We watch him leap from burning buildings (or see an image of himself that is unceremoniously animated to move from one point of the screen to the other), hack into heavily protected cyberspaces and or gain mysterious supernatural abilities.

The dialogue is fairly sparse and isn’t performed very well. His films feel like what the future of filmmaking will look like if artificial intelligence takes over; it’s very stilted, stiff and honestly ridiculous. But because it was all eagerly made by one man and his unwavering vision, it’s somehow quite entertaining. It has the same core as a bad X-Factor audition – you want to look away but can’t quite stop watching it. It’s a car crash in which no one gets hurt.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20691238

In 1953, the BBC aired a science-fiction serial that entranced the nation of Britain. It was the first of its kind, and it was such a raging success that an enterprising movie producer quickly snapped up the rights to turn the story into a feature film. Two years later, that movie raked in money at the UK box office and, in the process, helped give an identity to one of the most iconic movie studios the British Isles has ever seen. Even more impressively, the film crossed the water to the US, becoming Britain’s most influential sci-fi film ever.

When the BBC’s Head of Television Drama, Michael Barry, looked at the schedule for summer 1953, he saw something he didn’t like: nothing. A gap of six Saturday nights in a row needed to be filled with a serial, so he tasked one of the company’s screenwriters with filling that gap. Nigel Kneale had always been fascinated by the idea of science going wrong, so he wrote The Quatermass Experiment, the tale of the fictional British Experimental Rocket Group’s first manned flight into outer space. Two crew members are missing when the craft returns to Earth, and the third begins transforming into a terrifying alien creature. Professor Bernard Quatermass and Scotland Yard Inspector Lomax are forced to team up to prevent the mutated crewman from destroying the world.

Quatermass was the BBC’s first adult science-fiction drama, performed live at the Alexandra Palace studio in London. By the time the sixth and final episode aired, nearly five million people were watching. To put that into context, only a year before Quatermass, the entire television audience in the UK was four million, and in March 1953, it was estimated that the BBC’s average evening audience was 2.25m. By anyone’s standards, Quatermass was a phenomenon.

One of the five million Quatermass viewers was Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds, who immediately knew the story would make a great film. He contacted the BBC only two days after the finale aired to ask about the status of the rights. As Kneale was a BBC employee, he didn’t receive a fee for the rights being sold to Hammer for a £500 advance, and this would stick in his craw until the company begrudgingly paid him £3,000 in 1967 to officially recognise his creation of Quatermass.

...

Once again, Quatermass was a roaring success in the UK, this time at the box office. Interestingly, though, when it was shown in the US, it had another title change. The Creeping Unknown was shown as the second part of a double bill with the Gothic horror movie The Black Sheep and was so popular that United Artists immediately commissioned a sequel. Two years later, Quatermass 2 hit cinema screens, again produced by Hammer and directed by Val Guest, before Quatermass and the Pit followed in 1967.

The success of its Quatermass films helped cement Hammer’s reputation as a producer of horror movies, and the studio is still synonymous with that genre today. The films also reached a much wider audience than the BBC’s serial. Kneale’s biographer Andy Murray noted that several generations of sci-fi and horror creatives have spoken in glowing terms about Quatermass’s influence on them.

I like the sound of this.

The story follows a disgraced former astronaut hired to take a submersible to the deepest part of the ocean to explore a newly discovered trench. Supernatural events transpire as the vehicle gets closer to its destination and he is confronted by a sinister and dangerous force.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20565434

Len Deighton published his first spy novel, The Ipcress File, shortly after the blockbuster success of the very first Bond movie, Dr. No. When The Ipcress File became a bestseller, Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli tapped Deighton to pen the script for the sequel, From Russia with Love. Not much of his screenplay made it to the final film, but the producers enjoyed working with Deighton.

Saltzman decided to adapt The Ipcress File for the screen in the hope of launching a second spy movie franchise that could run alongside the Bond films. He cast Caine to play the lead role of Palmer, with the aim of bringing him back for an endless string of sequels. The Ipcress File was conceived as the polar opposite of the Bond films, with a naturalistic style drawing from the world of kitchen-sink drama. It seemed like a sure-fire path to success, but the Palmer movies never reached the same blockbuster heights as the Bond movies.

...

Palmer’s stories are the opposite of Bond’s in every way. Whereas the Bond movies offered lighthearted escapism, the Palmer movies offered gritty realism. Whereas Bond is characterized as posh and upper-class, Palmer is a working-class hero. Whereas the Bond films carried an optimistic message about good triumphing over evil and maintaining the world order, the Palmer films took a bleaker and more pessimistic approach to their storytelling. The cynical tone and grounded, naturalistic style of the Palmer movies had more in common with John le Carré’s espionage stories than 007’s globetrotting adventures.

While investigating the history of a newly discovered ancient artifact, a renowned archaeologist (Jackie Chan) unwittingly establishes a mystical connection with a heroic Han dynasty general, blurring the lines between past and present right as the general prepares to wage war against the brutal Hun army.

Featuring a de-aged Jackie Chan!

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1gwc08m/oc_the_10_highest_grossing_film_directors_of_all/