J J Abrams registers births, marriages and deaths The most emotionally satisfying and thrilling sequence in J J Abrams’ reboot of Gene Rodenberry’s “wagon train to the stars” must be the pre-title opener. Yet it barely (!) features any of the characters we know and love. What it does do is boldly set out the motivation [...]
All border towns bring out the worst in a country.” – Vargas This month Orson Welles’ 1958 classic Touch Of Evil gets the Scene Is Believing treatment as we celebrate that films opening sequence, one of, if not the, greatest continuous tracking shots in cinematic history. Welles had spent a decade in the Hollywood [...]
In cinema, to attempt the previously unattempted takes bravery – to be that lone trailblazer can be a real tightrope; mess it up and you look stupid, get it right and you will go down in history. In the 1970s, when John Landis talked to Rick Baker about making a werewolf film, he wanted to [...]
The T-Rex Comes Out To Play With Jaws in 1975, Steven Spielberg was plagued by problems from his leading man, or should I say, shark. So much so that Bruce (named after his lawyer Bruce Ramer) was kept under water much of the time, his approaching menace signalled by a fin, that music, and the [...]
Searching for Silva-man In The City of Lost Children Director Sam Mendes’ intention with James Bond’s Straw Dogs meets Home Alone siege at Skyfall, his gloomy ancestral home, was to “go back in time”; to both exorcise some manufactured ghosts in the two dimensional agents life, and acknowledge a “purer” period before “exploding pens.” Equally, villain Silva (Javier Bardem) is [...]
The Indianapolis speech There’s an old truism that goes “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.” That doesn’t necessarily mean a screenplay arrives at day one, take one, fully formed, immaculate. Many hands seemingly made light work of the Jaws script: novelist Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb (the main man), director Steven Spielberg, [...]
“Revenge is a dish best served cold” - only Quentin Tarantino would attribute that quote to Star Trek’s Klingons in his introduction to Kill Bill Vol.I, rather than the original Pashtun. That gives you an idea of how his movies, the dialogue and situations within, are “movie movies”. An interesting quote from Stanley Kubrick in the introduction to “Quentin [...]
On June 21, 1979, on Stage 5 at Elstree Studios, one of the most iconic lines in cinema history was created. But it didn’t come from Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett’s original script. Instead it, and many more elements of this seemingly straightforward scene, came about from a great deal of rehearsal and script [...]
The IMAX prologue: Bane takes the plane Early positive reviews for Sam Mendes’ Skyfall are hailing it as James Bond’s renaissance, Nolan-esque in terms of scale and depth. Mendes himself has acknowledged The Dark Knight in particular as a big influence – “What Nolan proved was that you can make a huge movie that [...]
The Peruvian Temple set, stage 4, Elstree Studios “Throw me the whip.” “Throw me the Idol.” Ever since Goldfinger, the James Bond series has come up with a spectacular opening pre-credit sequence. Appropriately enough, since Steven Spielberg had professed a desire to George Lucas to direct a Bond film, Raiders Of The Lost Ark [...]
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