Film forum off topic/random chat thread

The Black Oil

BBC radio 4 have Jaws book on audio form, if you're so inclined.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bggnxf

Sad Professor

This was raised in the Dail today but it's been going on for a while.

Mel Gibson Accuses ‘Professor and the Madman’ Producer of Ireland Film Scam

Mel Gibson’s attorneys are accusing the producer of “The Professor and the Madman” of seeking to swindle Ireland’s tax authorities.

Gibson is engaged in a pitched legal battle with producer Voltage Pictures over the film, which tells the dark origin story of the Oxford English Dictionary. The director, Farhad Safinia, first accused Voltage in July of trying to inflate expenses on the film, which would result in a larger tax rebate from the Irish government.

Gibson, who co-produced and starred in the film as lexicographer James Murray, filed an answer to a cross-complaint on Wednesday, in which he joined in the accusation. Gibson’s attorneys allege that producer Zev Foreman offered a $1.3 million fee to Safinia, on the condition that Safinia then rebate $1 million to Voltage under the guise of buying a literary property.

“Mr. Foreman also indicated he had perpetrated similar fraudulent transactions in connection with Voltage’s production of films in the State of Louisiana to obtain tax credits there,” Gibson’s attorneys state.

mikhail

It's based on an interesting story, or so I presume from what you've quoted.

The OED was created by getting a lot of people to catelogue the words in lots of books. One guy was particularly prolific at this. It later turned out he was an American man in a psychatric institution in the UK. So the OED is largely the work of a madman! I read about it in a curious ittle book called The Etymologicon, a rambling, eccentric book about where different words come from. It's a fun read.

Agent Coulson

Disney are in talks with Deadpool & Zombieland writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick to reboot Pirates Of The Caribbean

pixelburp

Wait. But ... why?

p to the e

pixelburp wrote: »

Wait. But ... why?

Sad Professor

Didn't the last one make 800 million dollars?

I wouldn't mind "reboot" too much. I assume that's just studio code for "Johnny won't be in it".

pixelburp

Well obviously 'money' is the motivator in most cases, but beyond that: just looking at the figures and 'Dead Men Tell no Tales' had the worst domestic haul vs a worldwide take of $700 million, so I guess it was still a money spinner? Just seemed like franchise well run out of steam and ideas and the novelty of Jack Sparrow & the first films "one n' done" story was the main draw.

p to the e

Disney will keep churning them out as long as they make money. They're making Toy Story 4 for the love of gravy. Why!!?

pixelburp

Well the last PotC made $172 million in China alone, so like most of these blockbusters that Fail Upwards, you can blame the Chinese

Agent Coulson

It's a multi-billion dollar franchise with it's own Theme Parks around the world no way is Disney going to let it fade away.

johnny_ultimate

Sad Professor wrote: »

I assume that's just studio code for "Johnny won't be in it".

Harsh - I haven’t even done the audition yet! :pac:

The Black Oil

Pirates of the Plastic Filled Oceans.

pixelburp

Mentioned it in the Toy Story 4 thread, but looks like Aardman Animations has taken steps to remain independent and avoid a corporate takeover - by giving ownership of the company to the staff via a Trust;

https://news.avclub.com/cracking-toast-comrade-aardman-animations-belong-to-t-1830359455

Tony EH

pixelburp wrote: »

Mentioned it in the Toy Story 4 thread, but looks like Aardman Animations has taken steps to remain independent and avoid a corporate takeover - by giving ownership of the company to the staff via a Trust;

https://news.avclub.com/cracking-toast-comrade-aardman-animations-belong-to-t-1830359455

Nice to hear.

pixelburp

Definitely: I didn't think First Man was the studio's strongest film - though had to laugh how it managed to stealth a football film into my living room - but it's a bold and welcome decision to at least try and maintain some kind of creative independence in face of the erosion of other studios' own.

johnny_ultimate

Fair play to Aardman, a refreshing move in an age of endless corporate takeovers.

On a completely different note... had a free evening in Zurich last week, so decided to catch a film (Overlord). Film was going along nicely (well, within its obvious limits), the tension building... when suddenly the film just cut out and the lights went up. Just at a seemingly arbitrary point in the film. Most of the audience got up without hesitation and came back with ice-creams. Film started up again after 10 minutes or so.

Cursory google suggests intermissions are still the norm in Switzerland. Really strange quirk, especially since most films don’t have obvious interval points. Outside films with actual intermissions or marathon screenings, only other time I’ve encountered it before was in a small, quirky cinema in New Zealand where they as a point of difference have a break so the audience can order some hot food. That at least is the cinema’s ‘thing’, but the Swiss model is very odd indeed!

Tony EH

FFS... :rolleyes:

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/11/british-film-institute-not-fund-movies-facial-scars-villains-1202024278/

Time to put an end to these # lobby groups. Ridiculous bloody nonsense.

What next? No bald villains?

mikhail

You'd think they'd ban villains being British first. It's just as cliché, and millions of times more relevant.

FunLover18

Meh, it's a fairly lazy trope anyway and I can't imagine walking out of a film thinking "if only the villain had had facial scar". The only people I see actually being affected by this are facially scarred actors who want to play villains but I would hope they'd thought of that.

Mickeroo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Fair play to Aardman, a refreshing move in an age of endless corporate takeovers.

On a completely different note... had a free evening in Zurich last week, so decided to catch a film (Overlord). Film was going along nicely (well, within its obvious limits), the tension building... when suddenly the film just cut out and the lights went up. Just at a seemingly arbitrary point in the film. Most of the audience got up without hesitation and came back with ice-creams. Film started up again after 10 minutes or so.

Cursory google suggests intermissions are still the norm in Switzerland. Really strange quirk, especially since most films don’t have obvious interval points. Outside films with actual intermissions or marathon screenings, only other time I’ve encountered it before was in a small, quirky cinema in New Zealand where they as a point of difference have a break so the audience can order some hot food. That at least is the cinema’s ‘thing’, but the Swiss model is very odd indeed!

Was that the cinema paradiso in Wanaka by any chance? I saw both Black Sheep and Science of Sleep there about 11 years ago. Really cool little cinema and the cookies were great.

johnny_ultimate

We all know Tom Cruise deserves much criticism for all the weirdness, but he can occasionally do good (and not just MI Fallout good). Throwing his support behind one of the greatest causes known to film-kind here:

https://twitter.com/tomcruise/status/1070071781757616128?s=21

Mickeroo wrote: »

Was that the cinema paradiso in Wanaka by any chance? I saw both Black Sheep and Science of Sleep there about 11 years ago. Really cool little cinema and the cookies were great.

That’s the one!

Sad Professor

I've never actually had a motion smoothing setting on any of my televisions, so I feel like I'm missing out on being able to disable it. The closest thing on my old Sony HDTV is a "film mode" which seems to only be for interlaced signals and doesn't work otherwise. I still disable everything to be safe.

p to the e

FunLover18 wrote: »

Meh, it's a fairly lazy trope anyway and I can't imagine walking out of a film thinking "if only the villain had had facial scar". The only people I see actually being affected by this are facially scarred actors who want to play villains but I would hope they'd thought of that.

I completely agree that it's cliched but that should be up the director/film crew to decide not the BFI. It sets a dangerous precedent in my opinion.

pixelburp

Meh from me: film production has always operated under the hidden edicts of studios, lobby groups or governments. 58 years ago Hitchcock defied directives in showing a flushing toilet, so the more things change n' all that.

It's well and good getting uppity about precedents, declarations of PC-gone-mad etc, but at the end of the day Film - popular Hollywood film at that - is a very powerful cultural tool for informing the masses in their various biases. It's not without reason that certain physical tropes and casting is favoured over others (particularly when trying to imply a character's status), and when that bleeds into real life & peoples' perceptions of other cultures or demographics - that's the dangerous element.

FunLover18

p to the e wrote: »

I completely agree that it's cliched but that should be up the director/film crew to decide not the BFI. It sets a dangerous precedent in my opinion.

I can see that it does set a dangerous precedent because a film should be judged on more important aspects, that said it's such a minor aspect that vast majority of potential films will not be affected. I'm just struggling to bring myself to care either way; I personally don't see all people with facial scars as antagonistic as a results of film portrayals (although I can see that if I was someone with a facial scars, I might find it disheartening) and on the other hand, like I've already said I can't see this policy having a major impact on filmmakers.

Tony EH

p to the e wrote: »

I completely agree that it's cliched but that should be up the director/film crew to decide not the BFI. It sets a dangerous precedent in my opinion.

It's not even the BFI who has decided. It's some minor charity who's called the shots FOR the BFI using #iamnotyourvillain on Twitter as a weapon. That's the point.

Sure, it's a cliche. But where do you stop? This campaign - which it seems nobody was even aware of - aims to get "casting directors, film producers, production companies and directors - to stop using scars, burns or marks as shorthand for villainy."

Those things usually aren't "shorthand for villainy" in any case, and under these rules for instance, the likes of 'Skyfall' doesn't get BFI funding, because Raoul Silva has severe burns from a failed cyanide suicide, which was an important part of his character's history. In fact, such measures could even stretch to somebody like Voldemort, whose facial scarring resembles a burn victim, which can understandably affect some people - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11633853/Skin-camouflage-I-lost-my-face-in-a-car-fire.-Make-up-changed-my-life.html - But nonetheless, it remains a ridiculous restriction and has the potential to be too elastic in its interpretation and application.

People have facial scars, good, bad and indifferent and it shouldn't be off limits for film producers to give their character's a scar of some sort, if they so wish.

Sad Professor

Scarred villains is an overused trope which I'd mostly associate with Bond movies from the 60s and 70s. But even if it wasn't it's still a silly campaign. Villains are often the strongest and most empowered characters in a film. That anyone would want their identity group to never be represented as villains seems absurd to me. The way to deal with tropes is to reverse to them, but tbh I can already think of several facially scarred or deformed heroes off the top of my head, so I guess that's not what this is about. As with the #problemwithapu campaign I'm guessing it's more about trying to get people in the #FaceEquality identity group into higher positions in the film industry.

FunLover18

Looking at the wording of the statement, it say that the BFI is "committing to not having negative representations depicted through scars or facial difference" which suggests to me that it's not a blanket ban on negative representations with scars or facial differences (I'm open to correction if someone can find a further clarification). The statement also mentions that the policy speaks directly to the criteria in the BFI Diversity Standards, so they're not changing the diversity standards and there's nothing in them at the moment that specifically mentions scars.

pixelburp

So assuming you're correct FunLover18, this is boiling down to another situation best summarised as "nuanced wording taken over by ravenous internet hoards baying for blood?".

In the same week the same hoards screamed over the (revealed to be fake) news Irish hospitals would ban referring to patients as 'dear' and 'love'.