The Screengrab : jules verne

Crowdfunding: The Filmmaking Teenage Jules Verne Enthusiast's Friend

Phil Nugent — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Many years ago, when I was working for a small film festival, I met some hairy young self-starters who were in the process of Scotch taping together their first feature film, a padded-out gutbucket horror movie, which they wanted to submit to the festival, even though there was some question as to whether they could actually get it finished in time. I did my best to give the impression that I was going out of my way to shepherd them along while hoping they'd all step into an open manhole and criticizing their mothers to anyone I met. The night their film was shown, I was standing at the back of the theater, staring at the slowly crawling, interminable list of final credits, cursing under my breath and thinking about setting fire to the screen so I could go ahead and lock up and maybe make it home in time for Conan, when I saw my own name, very nearly spelled correctly, listed no lower than three hundredth among those accorded "Special Thanks". At that moment, I wanted to throw my arms around them, call them each "Brother", and offer them pie. I offer this tender memory as my way of saying that I can sort of see where Adrian Bliss, Benjamin Robbins and Toby Stubbs are coming from.

Bliss, 18, Robbins, 18, and Stubbs, 17, are British, and are keen to produce and direct a film version of an obscure 1897 Jules Verne novel called Clovis Dardentor. Their pitch likens it to Indiana Jones meets Four Weddings and a Funeral. You might think that if three teenagers want to film a Jules Verne novel that you've never heard of, all they need to do is whisper it to a blue jay and then lie back to wait for the money to fall from the clouds, but apparently it takes a little more work than that. But maybe not a lot more. Having promoted their idea on the Internet, the guys started raking in money in exchange for their effort to credit contributors onscreen in the movie. Minimum charge for inclusion is a pound. You can donate, or just check out their pitch here. The relative slickness of their site inspires admiration for their potential filmmaking careers even as it sends chills down my spine. I'm tempted to send them a few bucks on condition that they lose my name but instead give whoever composed that music a wedgie.

Apparently the term for this sort of thing is "crowdfunding". The Dardentor boys didn't invent the concept, and not every crowdfunder peddles screen credits in exchange for cash. Artemis Eternal, a short sci-fi film whose director, Jessie Mae Stover, promoted it at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, inducts its contributors into the ranks of "The Artemis Eternal WINGMEN." And "Franny Armstrong, a documentary director, raised £450,000 for The Age of Stupid, a recently released film on global warming, through gifts from hundreds of donors." The Times also cites recent examples from outside the world of filmmaking: "Four years ago a British student, Alex Tew, set up a Web page to raise money for his university education, selling off pieces of a digital mural on the site for $1 each. He ended up raising more than $1 million. More recently, the Cologne soccer club in Germany has been selling chunks of a Web portrait of Lukas Podolski, a star striker, to help finance the cost of acquiring him from another team, Bayern Munich." Who knows? Perhaps the crowdfunding concept can even be tweaked in a way that it could be used to provide extra cash and the odd sexual favor for hard-working and underappreciated movie bloggers. Feel free to put your work on that cancer cure on hold to flesh that one out.

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DVD Digest for August 28, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

It’s a good week for fans of classic comedy of both the big-screen and televised varieties. Plus, the Christmas DVD season officially begins.

DVD of the Week: Tough call this week, with no real world-beaters in the bunch. But in terms of sheer quantity, nothing tops the release of the mammoth Abbott & Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection. Over the length of 29 DVDs, Universal has compiled every single one of their Abbott & Costello features, as well as plenty of trailers and production notes. In addition, they’ve recorded commentary tracks on six of the movies, plus three new documentaries on one of comedy’s most legendary duos. Also included in the set is the companion book Abbott and Costello: The Universal Story. So if you’re an Abbott and Costello fan, today is your lucky day.

Other laughs can be had in this week’s new TV on DVD releases. For the seventies-era TV watcher, there’s Good Times: The Complete Series and Sanford and Son: The Complete Series (both Sony). For something a little more recent, check out the woefully underwatched-in-its-day NewsRadio: The Complete Series (Sony). Fans of animated sitcoms should enjoy The Flintstones: The Complete Series (Warner). And we shouldn’t forget about Mystery Science Theatre 3000 20th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory), which collects four of the gang’s most-requested episodes (First Spaceship on Venus, Laserblast, Werewolf and Future War), plus new interviews with the whole gang and a snazzy new Crow T. Robot figurine that’s sure to make you the envy of all your geeky friends (i.e. the only ones who really count).

Recent releases on coming to DVD this week include: Brendan Fraser treading all over Jules Verne in Journey to the Center of the Earth (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Abigail Breslin in her seventeenth movie of 2008, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Catherine Zeta Jones and Guy Pearce (as Houdini) in Gillian Armstrong’s Death Defying Acts (Weinstein); and a movie everyone will want to add to his DVD collection, Zombie Strippers (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

Finally, this week’s classics selection includes two of Warner’s recent Christmas favorites, The Polar Express Presented in 3D (Warner, also Blu-Ray, includes four pairs of 3D glasses), and Elf (Warner, Blu-Ray only, includes plentiful images of Will Ferrell in tights). And while Roger Ebert has gone gaga over the new DVD/Blu-Ray remastering of Ron Fricke’s Baraka (MPI, also Blu-Ray), allow me to stump for another sentimental favorite of mine. I’m referring, of course, to Juan Piquer-Simon’s Pieces (Ryko Distribution), one of the trashiest, dumbest, and irresistibly entertaining bad movies ever made. If that doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, stay far away. But if you’ve got a taste for gloriously fragrant cinematic garbage, Pieces is required viewing, Halloween or any other time of year.

Yesterday's Hits: Around the World in 80 Days (1956, Michael Anderson)

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

If there’s one thing Hollywood is sorely lacking nowadays, it’s larger-than-life figures. Nowadays, most moviegoers want their industry types to be down to earth, but in the classical era of Hollywood, it was a different story. Tinseltown was ruled by grandiose, even vulgar men who flaunted their wealth, made bold statements and engaged in dangerous behavior just to fuel their taste for adventure. Today’s peekaboo paparazzi photos and pregnancy gossip pale in comparison to the stories of Errol Flynn’s legendary parties and John Huston deciding to make a movie in Africa with the notion of shooting an elephant while he was there.

Michael Todd was one of these men. Todd began his career in Hollywood by running a construction company that specialized in soundproofing studio stages, but after he was bankrupted by the Depression, his colorful life really began. He began producing stage shows, often of ill repute. He romanced Gypsy Rose Lee, star of one of his productions. He married Joan Blondell, after his first wife died under suspicious circumstances. He gambled and spent money like a decadent prince, causing Blondell to divorce him and leading to his second bankruptcy. He staged a nudie musical written by the future king of Thailand. And if that’s not enough drama for one lifetime, he later married Liz Taylor. Todd also had a hand in the development of the three-screen Cinerama process before pioneering a technological breakthrough of his own, the Todd-AO process, which Todd envisioned as being “Cinerama coming from one hole.” And the crown jewel of Todd-AO was 1956’s Around the World in 80 Days.

What made Around the World in 80 Days a hit?: In addition to its wide screen and greater clarity (Todd-AO cameras shot at 30 frames per second instead of the usual 24), Todd-AO also employed the widest-angle lens of the era, approximately 150 degrees. These factors made the format ideal for filming grand epics and panoramic vistas. The first Todd-AO release was 1955’s Oklahoma!, but the maximum potential of the format was realized the following year with Around the World in 80 Days. A long in-development project that had yet to come to fruition, Todd used his newly-regained resources- much of which had been earned by his stake in 1952’s This Is Cinerama- to film his adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel on location all around the world, showing off what Todd-AO was truly capable of doing.

For such an ambitious production, it was only fitting that Todd would fill it to the brim with international stars, all the better to draw in moviegoing audiences worldwide. After pairing up-and-coming Hollywood leading man David Niven with popular Mexican entertainer Cantinflas (as Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, respectively), Todd then surrounded them with a galaxy of stars in cameo roles. It seemed like wherever the travelers went, another handful of familiar faces would drop in to greet them, with bit roles for the likes of Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Charles Boyer, Ronald Colman, Charles Coburn, Peter Lorre, George Raft, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, Buster Keaton, and Edward R. Murrow as the narrator of the film’s introduction. The combination of globetrotting adventure and big stars worked like gangbusters, with the Around the World in 80 Days pulling in $23.1 million dollars- the second-highest gross of 1956 behind The Ten Commandments- and taking home five Oscars including Best Picture.

What happened?: Jules Verne’s novel, written in 1872, was meant to inspire a sense of wonder in its readers. But as is often the case with gee-whiz science fiction, much of the wonder evaporated once the fantasy became reality. By 1956, humanity had long since “conquered the air,” and the notion of circumnavigating the globe in four score days didn’t hold too much magic. So while Around the World in 80 Days offered audiences the irresistible combination of big stars and widescreen vistas, the story was little more than an excuse for a series of misadventures involving Phileas and/or Passepartout rather than the wondrous futuristic spectacle Verne had intended.

In addition, while Michael Anderson was credited as the director, this was without a doubt Mike Todd’s film, something that was discovered early on by the film’s original director, John Farrow. But Todd wouldn’t be around much longer to enjoy his success. In 1958, while flying his unfortunately-monikered plane “The Lucky Liz,” Todd suffered a fatal crash. This negated the possibility of any more ambitious Todd-produced epics, as well as beginning the slow decline of the Todd-AO process, which continued in a more conventional 24fps format through the sixties before dying out altogether.

Does Around the World in 80 Days still work?: Not really. If the film was charming in 1956, it’s merely quaint today. For one thing, the much-ballyhooed international shoot comes across mostly as hype nowadays. To modern audiences’ more sophisticated eyes, the seams in the production really show, as when the film cuts from a sweeping foreign vista to a shot of the stars gazing at it in wonder. Much of the action that actually involves the actors looks like it was filmed on soundstages. This isn’t categorically a problem, but when a movie’s primary selling point is that it was filmed on locations around the world, it feels like something of a cheat when the international shots appear to be second-unit work.

In addition, the principal actors in the film are consistently underwhelming. Watching his work as Phileas Fogg, it’s clear why David Niven never became a superstar- not only does he lack the necessary star presence, but his screen persona isn’t very interesting. Phileas Fogg is clearly meant to be an upper-class eccentric- independently wealthy, time-obsessed yet impulsive. Yet with Niven in the role, we have to take the movie’s word for it as regards his eccentricity, since all he brings to the table is a vague air of urbane sophistication. Perhaps a leading man who was more adept at comedy- Cary Grant, perhaps, or Alec Guinness- could have made the role enjoyable, but with Niven it just sort of sits there.

Similarly, despite his celebrity status south of the border, Cantinflas wasn’t cut out for stardom stateside. He looks fairly uncomfortable acting in English, and his physical schtick isn’t very funny, although Anderson and Todd’s insistence on extreme long shots doesn’t help any. Shirley MacLaine, in one of her first films, is sorely miscast as the Indian maiden Aouda, in keeping with classic Hollywood’s highly uncool tradition of “browning-up” white actors for ethnic parts. And while Around the World in 80 Days popularized the practice of “cameo” roles, they’re almost always distracting. Is that brief flash of recognition that comes over audience members when the piano player turns out to be Frank Sinatra really worth the tedious setup? I would argue that it’s not.

In the end, Around the World in 80 Days hardly seems to warrant the “epic” label that many ascribe to it. Far from justifying the largesse of the production, the film feels like an amusing trifle with some picturesque scenes interspersed in order to make the film feel like an event. With comedy that isn’t especially funny and lead actors who get outshone by both the scenery and the stars in the bit roles, Around the World in 80 Days amounts to little more than a widescreen travelogue- diverting in spots with some pleasant company, but not very interesting cinematically, and not really worth revisiting.

Vintage Trailer: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I haven't seen this movie since I was a kid, and even then I thought it was pretty corny. But after getting my snark on earlier today with the trailer for the new Journey movie, I thought I'd post the trailer for the 1959 version as well. Everything looks more or less the same, although naturally there are some differences. Back then, I remember being a little confused by the fact that Captain Nemo didn't have facial hair anymore, but now I'm more puzzled by the fact that Pat Boone is credited over James Mason. Gertrude the Duck, on the other hand, is just as I remember her. The more things change, etc.

Trailer Review: Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Every so often, Brendan Fraser will step outside his acting comfort zone and do some serious acting, as in Gods and Monsters and The Quiet American. This isn't one of those times. Returning once again to the warm bosom of family adventure/comedy, Fraser headlines Hollywood's latest attempt to update Jules Verne for a new generation. Because, y'know, Around the World in 80 Days turned out so well. But Journey has something that 80 Days, with all its silly cameos, didn't... the magic of 3D! What a wondrous age we live in when we can go to a movie theatre, put on some uncomfortable glasses, and behold while stuff that gets hurtled directly toward the camera looks like it's going to land on us. Whatever will they think of next? Dare I dream that one day television might be broadcast in color? Or that I'll be able to type something on a keyboard and transmit it over my phone lines? I can't wait to see what the future has in store for us!