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News update
From an oft-repeated Friends episode in which Ross, the nerdy paleontologist, is seen watching on TV 1969’s The Valley of Gwangi to the recent remake of 1981’s Clash of the Titans, there are constant reminders of the art of Ray Harryhausen.
In his glowing foreword to a 2005 book on that very subject, Peter Jackson reveals how he created a special “Harryhausen scene” – the fight with the cave troll in Balin’s tomb – in the first of his Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Now comes news that as Harryhausen turns 90, his own archive containing more than 20,000 items and several hundred models is likely to be acquired by the National Media Museum in Bradford.
Born in Los Angeles, Harryhausen was just 13 when he saw and was conquered by King
Kong, especially the effects work of Willis O’Brien. Fifteen years later, he landed his breakthrough job as an assistant to O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young.
Harryhausen’s own finest hours came in the Sixties with a succession of UK-based sfx stop-motion delights like The 7thVoyage of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, Jason and The Argonauts, One Million Years BC and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
As well as the anticipated NMM initiative, there has also been a joint BAFTA / BFI tribute to Harryhausen.
Meanwhile the London Film Museum has just opened a year-long exhibition devoted to the wizard and his work.
MODEL OF GENIUS: Ray Harryhausen
NMM salutes the wizard of movie-making
After more than 20 years in the West End and in various touring versions since it was first staged in 1987, Susan Hill’s ghostly audience-pleasing thriller The Woman in Black is finally set to be filmed in the autumn.
Starring Daniel Radcliiffe with James (Eden Lake) Watkins as director, the movie will also mark the return of Hammer Films to the world of big screen filmmaking for the first time in some 30 years.
The story follows a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), who is ordered to travel to a remote corner of the UK and sort out a recently deceased client’s papers.
As he works alone in an old and isolated house, Kipps begins to uncover its tragic secrets, and his unease grows when he discovers that the local village is held hostage by the ghost of a scorned woman set on vengeance.
According to Watkins: “'When I met Dan, it was quite uncanny how closely our thoughts on the story mirrored each other: I can't wait to get down to work with him to fashion a compelling character and a classy ghost story that tugs at the heart and chills to the bone.”
The screenplay is by Jane Goldman, aka Mrs Jonathan Ross, who has also penned the X-Men prequel, X Men: First Class, which starts shooting soon in the UK. It co-stars James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender in the roles created by Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
Ghost
in the machine
in the machine
The UK Film Council has launched its 2010 Statistical Yearbook which is
now fully available online for the first time.
now fully available online for the first time.
Compiled by the UKFC’s Research and Statistics Unit, the Yearbook once again presents the most comprehensive picture of UK film and provides the richest available source of data and analysis from right across the film sector.
It shows that:
• The 2009 UK box office saw record receipts of £944 million and the highest admissions since 2002 (173.5 million), up 5.6% since 2008
• Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time at the UK box office, earning over £91 million
• 3D films accounted for 16% of UK and Republic of Ireland box office revenues
• Avatar became the highest grossing film of all time at the UK box office, earning over £91 million
• 3D films accounted for 16% of UK and Republic of Ireland box office revenues
in 2009 (£176 million), up from just 0.4% in 2008
• Both in the UK and global markets, independent UK films were at their most popular since records began, taking 8.2% of the UK and 2.3% of the global market share
• In 2009, UK films and talent scooped 36 major film awards, 17% of the total available
• Women made up 17% of the screenwriters and 17% of the
directors of UK films released in the UK in 2009
• The UK film industry has a turnover of £6.8 billion and contributes directly £3.1 billion to UK GDP (£4.6 billion including all indirect effects)
• Total UK production activity rose from £613 million in 2008 to £957 million in 2009
• Both in the UK and global markets, independent UK films were at their most popular since records began, taking 8.2% of the UK and 2.3% of the global market share
• In 2009, UK films and talent scooped 36 major film awards, 17% of the total available
• Women made up 17% of the screenwriters and 17% of the
directors of UK films released in the UK in 2009
• The UK film industry has a turnover of £6.8 billion and contributes directly £3.1 billion to UK GDP (£4.6 billion including all indirect effects)
• Total UK production activity rose from £613 million in 2008 to £957 million in 2009
• At £752.7m, 2009 had the highest ever level of inward investment, up 111% on 2008
• UK film exports were 92% higher in 2008 than in 2001, totalling £1.3 billion
• UK film exports were 92% higher in 2008 than in 2001, totalling £1.3 billion
Behind the good news lurks a somewhat darker reality in terms of domestic filmmaking, with UK production down from 77 to 71.
According to the UKFC’s chief executive John Woodward: “Independent production has always been a tough business but the overall value of low budget independent film production in the UK fell by 18% in 2009.
“I’m not saying it is a catastrophe; what I am saying is that there is something quite serious going on,” he added.
Go figures ...
Ahead of Film Education’s 15th annual National Schools Film Week – October 14-22 in England and Wales, October 28 - November 5 in Scotland – its organisers have called on teachers to use the opportunity of the free school trips to the movies to cultivate “cinema behaviour” among their pupils and students.
In addition to exploring the many opportunities on offer to those attending the 2500 screenings planned for this year’s festival – published this year in a special on-line Not Just A Trip To The Movies guide – Film Education will be highlighting the potential such events offer young people to develop the behaviour that’s appropriate in such a setting.
“Quite apart from the fact that we find a lot of children and young people have not had the opportunity to go to the cinema before, what makes a NSFW screening important, is that it combines all the entertainment and thrills of seeing a film as part of a collective experience, with friends, in the dark and ten-feet high on a screen but also under moderately formal circumstances,” explains Film Education director Ian Wall.
“Under these conditions it is possible to insist on the kind of engagement and behaviour that enables young people to concentrate properly on what they are seeing and also not ruin other people’s enjoyment.”
The festival’s director Nick Walker suggests that the trouble lies not with some children and young people being particularly insensitive but is instead a symptom of their lack of experience of seeing films in such a public setting.
“If, as is true of many children, you are used only to seeing film in domestic settings with all the distractions of
The ultimate watch and learn
home, mobile phones or the internet around one, then being asked to concentrate exclusively on a film in a cinema can be challenging.”
Film Ed highlights:
* munching their way though family-sized cartons of pop-corn and, even if this is allowed, making sure the vast proportion of the contents does not land up on the floor;
* controlling the urge to talk or be persistently noisy;
* to turn off mobile phones and not just leave them on mute -- the point being that illuminated mobile screen and the presence of people reading and sending texts or surfing the web can be hugely distracting for other audience members;
* to avoid putting feet up on seats or wedging knees or otherwise bashing the seat backs of those sitting in front of them;
* to get all the loo-going out of the way before the film screens so that they can enjoy the film at a single sitting
* to avoid at all costs the temptation to record anything in the cinema and to realise that a film is someone else’s intellectual property.
* to turn off mobile phones and not just leave them on mute -
* to get all the loo-
As well as this are other tips to teachers suggesting the broad range of ways in which they and their students might make the most of a NSFW screening, before, during and afterwards.
The advice covers everything from playing a part in choosing the films that are on offer to writing reviews following a screening – reviews which are then eligible for entry to the national Young Film Critics Awards competition that runs in parallel to the festival each year.