Jasper Sharp : Widescreen Weekend

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16
Jan
Easing into 2012 (and looking back, although not in anger…)

Happy New Year!

Yes, I know we’re already some way into it by now, but as you can probably guess by the date of my last post, I’ve not been too quick on updating this website of late. I’ve been so busy with other things, and not just Zipangu Fest; I’ve barely even really had time to think about promoting my last book, The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema, yet, it has been out, I’m told, since October. I’ll be of course blogging and tweeting about any reviews as they come in, but for now the best I can really do is point you towards the publisher’s website and the info on this very site here in the Books section. I also aim to post a summary of all the reviews of Zipangu Fest 2011, similar to what I did with 2010′s inaugural Zipangu Fest, but really beyond that, I can’t promise I’m going to have much time to keep up with regular posting over the coming months.

I've not really mentioned it yet, but my new book Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema has been out since last October.

I also feel a bit remiss that I’ve not had time to share my ‘Best of 2011’ lists with anyone yet. I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s worth holding back on such things till the year in question is actually over, rather than trying to get in there first, say at the beginning of December. Due to print publishing deadlines, I had to get my top 5 for Sight & Sound in the midst of an extremely busy November. Hopefully my Midnight Eye top 10 will be a little more meaningful when it goes up in the next week or so, because I’ve had a little more time to reflect on things. I should also take time to mention now, as it cannot have escaped the notice of Midnight Eye fans, that the site remained in a state of suspended animation for much of 2011, and some might even have suspected that we were thinking of pulling the plug. Well, you’ll be happy to hear that there’s some heavy technical tinkering going on behind the scenes and Midnight Eye should be back in action some time in 2012 in a new and improved version. In the meantime, Tom and my ‘Best ofs’ will be appearing on the Midnight Eye facebook page, which is here, if you haven’t discovered it yet.

What with my Sight and Sound Top 5 and my forthcoming list for the Midnight Eye facebook page, I don’t think there’s much point in going over the same ground here at the moment. I think anyway, that my favourites from Japan are already pretty obvious when you look at the programme for Zipangu Fest 2011, even though we haven’t got the kind of budget to pay the major studios for the bigger films (not that bigger equates to better, of course…), so there might be a few others in my final list. And I should add, that like the previous year, I simply didn’t see that many new films in the cinema. Anyway, you can get an idea of my general feelings about ‘Best of’ lists if you look at my posts from 2009 and 2010 .

My best screening of last year, that's for sure, even if the film is almost 30 years old.

I think the best use for my look back at 2011 here is to talk about the kind of events that really stood out, about the kind of films and viewing experiences that others might have missed, rather than try and cover everything of note. In this respect, the definite high point of last year was discovering Dance Craze at Bradford Film Festival’s Widescreen Weekend last April (see my original post), screened for the first time in decades in the format in which is was meant to be seen, in 70mm on a big, big, big screen. As well as celebrating one of the greatest forms of music that this country has ever produced, 2 Tone Ska, it also marks a historical landmark in which black and white Britons first started playing on stage together on an equal footing. Coupled with it’s technical virtues, this film should be celebrated as a landmark of British cultural history, not lying unwatched on a faded 70mm print, and I pray that one bloody day before too long, someone is going to take the plunge and get this film back in circulation to be appreciated by modern audiences, and not just leave solitary voices like my own to sing its praises.

Words such as ‘culture’, ‘heritage’ and ‘legacy’ are going to come up for considerable scrutiny in the year of the London 2012 Olympics. Given how good British films were last year, there’s a particularly bitter irony to the Tory Government’s decision to scrap the UK Film Council and slash funding for filmmakers without a proven track record of box-office smashes behind them and to only make commercial films. David Cameron’s comments last week are so misguided, naïve, and lets face it, just plain idiotic, that it hardly calls for me to add to the throng of voices from the more culturally aware who have already picked them apart – I can’t say it any better than Charlie Brooker has already done, in his Guardian article “How to save the British film industry, David Cameron style” published yesterday, Sunday 15 January.

Endless choices for the British cinema-goer over the coming years, as long as it's tomato soup. A scene from one of last year's finest, We Need to Talk About Kevin, from one of our best filmmakers, Lynne Ramsay, who in Cameron's Britain probably wouldn't have a job.

Lets remember 2011 instead as a final flourish for the British film industry in which a variety of filmmaking talent nurtured under the very environment that the Tories have vowed to discard gave the world a variety of works whose quality was just as notable as its diversity. There was the success of the middlebrow Oscar-baiting heritage piece The King’s Speech at both the awards ceremonies and the box office; the surprise Summer hit of the foul-mouthed, teen-oriented TV tie-in The Inbetweeners; more challenging, critically-acclaimed though less commercially-minded quality auteur work such as Steve McQueen’s Shame, Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea, Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights; some very British international co-productions like Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre and Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin; Asif Kapadia’s mass-appeal documentary Senna; international crossover cult hits including Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block; and last but by no means least, Mark Cousins’ monumental The Story of Film: An Odyssey series, which, for all the quibbles one might raise about its content and Cousins’ delivery, was both hugely ambitious and boasts a cultural value that will be felt for years to come, if only because of its raising the game for future TV documentary serials and proving you don’t have to play to the lowest common denominator to be popular.

Is this the kind of film you want to watch, Daily Mail readers? Because that's what's going to happen! One of last year's most commercial films from the UK.

I list all these films and apologise for any I might have overlooked, because we’re probably not going to see the likes of such a vintage year for some time now. I can’t claim I’ve seen all (or even most) of these films, but that’s not the point – many of these titles have travelled across international borders and helped in their own way in boosting Britain’s cultural profile, and more than paid their way in the process, as have so many filmmakers and performers who have made their name in similar productions that have benefited from state funding in the preceding years. No, if there’s any problem with the British film industry, it is embodied by Andrew Haigh’s low-budget indie feature Weekend, which won critical plaudits among all who saw it as well as a number of prizes at foreign festivals – yet which could barely find a screen to play on among the swathes of ‘commercial’ crap such as Cowboys and Aliens that our dear leader would clearly rather we be watching in this country.

Who decides what we watch in this country? Critics, censors, politicans? No, foreign-owned distribution chains, meaning the odds are firmly stacked against well-regarded indie films such as the Nottingham-set Weekend.

I’ve still got a few more things to say about our last year in films, but I’ll leave it for another day. I’ll just end this post by stating the obvious. It takes years and years to build up cultural and educational organisations and institutions, be they libraries, university courses, film-financing bodies or filmmakers themselves. Pulling the plug to save what in proportional terms amounts to a tiny percentage of our national expenditure in comparison with the amount lost through unpaid taxes from multinationals or bailing out the banks is just so short-sighted, because it takes a lot more money to build up the levels of expertise back again to where they were. Let’s pray that this current government actually takes some time to think about these cultural acts of vandalism instead of just trying to come up with dramatic headlines to please Middle England, before the rot becomes irreversible.

Posted at 12:55 on 16 January 2012 Filed under news.
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26
May
Widescreen Weekend 2011 report, part 3: Rediscovering Cinerama, Circlorama, and also cinephilia….

Anamorphic widescreen, wide-gauge 70mm and state-of-the art digital projection, these were but a few of the joys I’ve already mentioned in part 1 and part 2 of my report on Bradford’s wonderful Widescreen Weekend way back in March, but there’s one other aspect of what one might term as expanded cinema that the city’s National Media Museum is particularly well suited for serving up, namely multi-screen cinema, the subject of this long-overdue final installment. On top of boasting the UK’s first ever IMAX screen, the venue also plays host to Europe’s only functioning Cinerama system – in fact, the only regularly-programmed Cinerama screen anywhere in the world opened here back in June 1993 in its Pictureville theatre. Not only do we have the fully louvred curved screen, but also original carpets and fixtures and fittings acquired from a now-defunct Cinerama venue in America.

A peak into the Pictureville's projection booth through the Cinerama window.

What better way to celebrate then than with the restored 3-strip version of the first Cinerama fictional feature, How the West Was Won, an epic Western released in 1962 with sequences directed by Hollywood veterans including John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall. I’ve actually rather a soft spot for this admittedly rather bloated and bombastic cinematic spectacular, since I first caught it on the rather wonderful Blu-ray release that came out in 2008. For those not within travelling distance of a Cinerama screen (ie, most of the world), it is the only way you’ll get to witness the film in a manner at least approximating the way it was meant to be seen, with one of the versions on the disk emulating the wraparound curved screen effect.

An image from the Blu-ray release of How the West Was Won (1962) emulating the curved screen effect of the original 3-strip presentation, although without the visible join marks between the screens.

This episodic intergenerational story of wild west pioneers whisks you from era to era with all the monumental extravagance of a James Michener novel and boasts some truly wonderful sequences such as a bison stampede and a gunfight on top of a runaway train, all staged so that the viewer feels central to the action. It also features an all-star cast including James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Debbie Reynolds and that George Peppard fellow. Yes, it is overblown and triumphalist and incredibly long, as well as rather one-dimensional in its politics compared with other Westerns of its era, but it is still a lot of fun, and I lapped up the chance to see it in the manner it was originally intended. Sir Christopher Frayling was at hand to provide a thorough introduction to the film, which should be appearing on the in70mm.com website at some point, along with all the rest of our introductions.

Not just the original projector and screen, the Pictureville also boasts an original Cinerama theatre carpet!

For me however, this three-panel presentation was a mere taster for the topic of Sunday morning’s highly elucidating onstage discussion between Thomas Hauerslev and Stanley Long about Circlorama Cavalcade, a British production made with the intention of filling all eleven screens at the 360° panoramic Circlorama Cinema that some of the audience members remembered located in Piccadilly Circus for a brief period of little more than a year back in the early 1960s.

Stanley Long onstage with Thomas Hauerslev at Bradford's Pictureville.

Perhaps Circlorama might be considered a precursor to the curved dome of the IMAX screen. Its antecedents stretch right back to the origins of cinema, but the first real commercial endeavour was the 9-screen Circle-Vision 360° or Circarama system that Disney opened in a number of its theme parks in the 1950s. Circlorama had an even more immediate ancestor in the form of the Circular Kinopanorama system developed in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, which as I mentioned in my own introduction to Dersu Uzala, can still be experienced in the All-Russia Exhibition Centre in Moscow, built in 1959 (unsurprisingly, the in70mm.com site also features a page devoted to this system, which will certainly be top of my tourist agenda should I ever visit Moscow). The London attraction was a venture between Leonard Urry and the Russian entrepreneur Leon Heppner, who’d been based in London for several years before deciding that introducing the Russian system might be a lucrative commercial proposition – although ultimately he was proven wrong. We were all given a handout of a magazine article from the time (I still need to chase down a reference for this) extolling it’s virtues:

“Eleven screens surround a circular auditorium, the perimeter of which is 150 feet, and the eleven films making up the wrap-around picture are projected through small portholes on the side masking of each screen. The films, each of 35mm. width, are shown by Philips FP 20’s, which are spaced equi-distantly around a “gallery” surrounding the circular auditorium. All the projectors are electrically synchronised, and all are started and stopped from a master control. Adjacent to each machine is the pulsator unit. A nine-channel magnetic sound system feeds fifty-one speakers situated behind the screens, in the ceiling and under the floor.”

Original ad for Circlorama Cavalcade.

Stanley Long’s part in the story begins when he was called in by Urry to provide a film for the system. By his account, the Russian film that was playing there, Russian Roundabout, was failing to pull in the London crowds, so he was hired to make something with more local interest, which is how Circlorama Cavalcade came about. The result film, which clocked in at just under 30 minutes, was actually shot on 16mm in the end, and the number of soundtracks reduced to three from the original nine, all for budgetary reasons. Its contents sound rather familiar for a film of this type – a trip down the Thames and other London landmarks interspersed with performances such as a scene with circus lion tamers (shot on the day of Kennedy’s assassination, apparently) and a live concert in the Empire Leicester Square from the 60s Merseybeat pop combo The Swinging Blue Jeans. You can read a lot more about the production in a full interview with Stanley Long on in70mm.com. I have to say, I found the talk a fascinating one, albeit rather tantalising – even if there were the facilities to show the film in Bradford, all the prints were lost after the Circlorama company went bust shortly after it was made.

Stanley Long recounts the story of Circlorama.

Incidentally, if the name Stanley Long sounds familiar, it is because in later years he became more associated with a richer vein of cinematic showmanship that proved rather more lucrative to the British film industry, shooting and producing such landmarks of UK tit-and-bumillation as Naughty (1971), Eskimo Nell (1975) and Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976) and its variants. I made sure I picked up a copy of his autobiography X-rated: Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker, co-written with Simon Sheridan, which he was signing after the talk, which also includes some information on Circlorama Cavalcade – essential reading for anyone even vaguely interested in the history of UK film exhibition.

X-rated: Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker, Stanley Long's revealing autobiography.

I’ve covered what were for me the most interesting aspects of Widescreen Weekend 2011, but there was plenty else on offer. Not only was it an education into aspects of film history, exhibition and production that I was not familiar with, nor just a chance to catch up with familiar, much-loved titles on the grandest scale imaginable. There were also some genuinely wonderful discoveries to be had, and I was amazed by the passion and knowledge of everyone involved in the event. For someone whose formative years of cinephilia were instructed by home video, it really brought home the kind of thrills and pleasure that cinema used to provide to audiences, and maybe still can. I for one am really excited about returning in 2012, and can’t urge enough anyone reading this to do likewise.

Posted at 15:07 on 26 May 2011 Filed under news.
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19
Apr
Widescreen Weekend 2011 report, part 2: The Dark Crystal and Dance Craze

It’s much, much later than planned, but here’s the second instalment of my report on Bradford Film Festival’s Widescreen Weekend… It already seems such a long time ago, as the weather has undergone a miraculous transformation in the meantime, but here seems as good a time as any to point out that my intro to Dersu Uzala is now online on the in70mm website. But anyway, onto Day 2.

It is no real surprise that a festival devoted to widescreen cinema should feature such epic films as those mentioned in my previous post, monumental works by the likes of David Lean and Akira Kurosawa that seek to overwhelm the viewer with their sheer sense of scale and in which landscape plays a crucial role. Adventure films, war films, religious epics and period dramas – these are the genres traditionally favoured by those who choose to work on such large canvasses. The second day of the festival, however, featured two titles that initially seemed rather misplaced; one, a children’s fantasy film realised with puppets, and the other an 85-minute concert film featuring artists from one of British pop history’s most unassuming of genres. Nostalgia played a role in my appreciation of both, but it certainly wasn’t the only factor.

The Skeksis lock swords in The Dark Crystal, in 70mm.

I saw The Muppet Show-creators Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s The Dark Crystal when it came out back in 1982. I’d have been about eleven or twelve at the time, and I can pretty much guarantee that the print the Astor Cinema in Barnstaple played would not have been a 70mm one. I probably saw it a couple of times on TV back in the 1980s, but I think it’s fair to say that this is a film that has pretty much receded back into the mists of time for me. Given how we’ve become so accustomed to CG over the past decade, I’d geared myself up to be pretty disappointed by its use of old-school live-action puppetry upon its Saturday morning airing in Bradford (ostensibly a Kids Screening ticketed at a give-away quid a kid, although the audience seemed predominantly made up of Widescreen Weekend passholders at the other end of the age spectrum).

Jen the Gelfling, in the undergrowth of The Dark Crystal's lush and detailed world.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the film held up to scrutiny. OK, so the story is basically Lord of the Rings-Lite and the general approach to it as portentous as any other fantasy made in the 1980s, but the general look of the film was as impressive as ever, benefiting from its mist-shrouded locations and atmospheric background mattes rather than the hyper-real sheen of, for example, Peter Jackson’s takes on Tolkein – and without such moments of video-game action silliness as the scene in Jackson’s third film of Legolas bounding up the Oliphaunt’s leg. I kept looking for the strings on its Gelfling main characters of Jen and Kira, but The Dark Crystal successfully managed to pass off its illusion. The other thing I loved about it, apart from the fact that the characters all had British accents, was the level of periphery detail, especially in the forest scenes, which teem with all sorts of bizarre critters who pop out of holes or flounder around in swamps, filmed in a surreal but witty manner that recalls a puppet version of the weird nature documentaries of Jean Painlevé. Doing a bit of background research, I noticed a sequel was announced just last year, which is to be filmed in 3D. I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry, but anyway, I did enjoy my 70mm reacquaintance with the original immensely, so I’ll be following the news on the upcoming film’s website with some interest, and while I can safely say that I’ll never see the film looking as good as it did on its wide-gauge projection on the massive screen of Bradford’s Pictureville cinema, I should point you in the direction of the Region Free Blu-Ray of the film which can be currently had for a mere £6.99 on Amazon.

Puppetry in motion - The pre-CG world of The Dark Crystal.

What I love most about film festivals is that thrill of stumbling upon absolute gems where you’d least expect them. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Dance Craze (1981), mainly because I’d barely registered its presence until I looked at the catalogue to see what the next screening held for me. The lack of stills in the Bradford International Film Festival catalogue meant it didn’t exactly leap out from the line-up, but at the end of the day, not only was it the highpoint of the weekend for me. I honestly don’t think I’ll see another film this whole year that will put such a huge smile on my face and keep it plastered there, not just for its hour-and-a-half duration, but for the entire week after. Dance Craze was ineffably brilliant, a bare bones concert film featuring the top talent ska bands of the era, The Beat, The Specials, The Selector (my favourite), The Bodysnatchers (no, I don’t remember them), and Madness and Bad Manners, before they both degenerated into the Top-of-the-Pop silliness I remember them for (a fate avoided by the first four bands, who either split up, renamed or regrouped before we had a chance to get bored of them). A number of people I’ve subsequently spoken to remember the tie-in Dance Craze album released by Chrysalis, but it seems hardly anyone remembers the film itself.

Dance Craze, not screened since the days you could buy a soundtrack album on vinyl for only £3.49 AND get a free poster!

So why the hell had I never heard about it before? Well, the lack of suitable venues with the facilities to project it seems to be the main reason. According to cinematographer Joe Dunton, who was not only on hand to introduce the film, but his illuminating onstage interview with Thomas Hauerslev following the screening can be found here on in70mm.com, a decision was made to produce the film in 70mm (or more accurately in SUPER 35, which was then blown up to 70mm), in order to exploit a format that seemed in danger of going out of fashion, as the declining fortunes of the film industry in the late-1970s saw a general retrenchment of the type of films Widescreen Weekend celebrates in the wake of the new phenomena of winner-takes-all blockbusters like Jaws, Star Wars and Grease. As Dunton explained, “I then had the idea to make a film that was not ‘a third row film’, – not shot from the audience, from the third row; everyone shot concert films from the third row, and it does not mean anything, and because the bands were young bands I ended up being on stage with them.” While Joe Massot, who had helmed the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same (1976) is credited as director, the heavy use of Steadicams operated by an onstage Dunton means it was more likely he who really controlled the show – if we can indeed say that, as he’s so close up to the action (including some a few pretty rowdy stage invasions) he often feels like another organic component of the bands, one of the musicians himself, and very much a part of the onstage madness. It is this up-close-and-personal style that makes the film such a joy, as well as the sheer exuberance of the songs themselves, gems such as The Specials’ “Too Much Too Young”, The Beat’s “Mirror in the Bathroom” , The Selector’s “On My Radio” and Madness’ “One Step Beyond”.

Coventry's finest, The Selector, in Dance Craze as screened at Widescreen Weekend. As you can see, the print has deteriorated a little, and is a tad pink-tinged. Photo taken by Thomas Hauerslev and originally appearing on the in70mm.com website.

So as far as I could work out, this was the first screening of Dance Craze in the UK pretty much since it came out, as there have simply been no prints available to screen from except the one in Dunton’s possession. Sure, it has circulated on bootleg video, DVD and now online, but lets put it plain and simply, these versions look and sound shit, and Dunton himself seems pretty annoyed that a film that was meant to be so immersive has been put out illegally in such inferior copies. He did hint that he was going to make a digital version, possibly for Blu-Ray release and for film festivals, and I really pray that he does. As he said, this film was not made for television, and works optimally on as large a screen as possible. What I think would be amazing is to do this as an outdoor screening with all seats removed and the volume pumped up as loud as possible so audiences can just mosh along to it. Not only are there no concert films quite like it, but it captures a uniquely English form of music at a unique time in British history, when you first saw black and white musicians onstage together, when it was still possible to smoke onstage, and when bands could pack out sizeable concert venues without all the Simon Cowell glitz and flimflam, performing on basic, unadorned stages and with little division between the bands and the audiences.

Latterly known as The English Beat, these guys were sitll very much The Beat at the time of Dance Craze.

So I’ll just end by saying, I don’t know whether Dunton will hold true to his promise of striking up a new digital print of the film, but if there are any interested film festivals, venues or distributors out there who are interested, heh, do you fancy getting together and lobbying for this to happen? It’s simply too depressing to imagine I might never see the film again as it should be seen, on the big screen, and I really think there are a lot of people out there who would appreciate it being resurrected for other festivals.

As you can read on the in70mm.com profile on him here, Joe Dunton is actually a pretty legendary figure in film technical circles, having come up with numerous inventions to do with video assists, cranes, lenses and eye-pieces that have revolutionised the industry, and for this reason, he was given his Widescreen Academy Award just after the screening. In my next update, I’m going to move on from discussions of widescreen to multi-screen, and the innovations of another living legend of British cinema, Stanley Long.

Posted at 11:46 on 19 April 2011 Filed under news.
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