Okay, peeps and fellow geeks, listen up, because we have a remarkable “money can’t buy it” type of prize up for grabs thanks to our friends arranging the screenings of Sir Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated ‘Alien sort-of prequel’ (Sir Ridley notes it started that way but ‘evolved into another universe’)  Prometheus, starring Girl With a Dragon Tattoo’s superb Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba (anything with Idris is good in our books!), Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Michael Fassbender.The film marks the triumphant return to the science fiction genre of one of our best directors who made such a huge impact on the film incarnation of SF with his early masterpieces Blade Runner and Alien, yet hasn’t returned to the genre for decades:

“Over the past few decades, we’ve been ‘action filmed-out’ and ‘monster filmed-out’ and almost ‘science fiction filmed-out,. So the baseline question is: how original are you going to be? The reason I haven’t made another sci-fi film in so many years, apart from the fact I’ve been busy making other films and exploring different genres, is because frankly I haven’t come across anything worthwhile for me to do with enough truth, originality and strength.  Prometheus has all three,” Sir Ridley Scott on why he was away from the genre he has a fondness for and what drew him back to it after so long. He went on to explain the iconic ‘Space Jockey’ – the gigantic alien skeleton in the pilot’s seat of the derelict in Alien – has remained in his mind since he made that film: “Something that had stayed with me ever since Alien, was the mystery behind it  Who was he?  Where was he from?   What was his mission? What kind of technology would his kind possess?  I thought those questions could provide a springboard for even larger ideas… Out of the creative process in developing the picture energed a new, grand mythology, in which this original story takes place.  The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, far-reaching and provocative.  Prometheus is the singular genre tale I’d been searching for.”

Prometheus opens in the UK on the 1st of June, but thanks to our film chums we have an exceptional prize for one lucky fan – two tickets to the premiere of Prometheus at London’s Leicester Square on Thursday May 31st. The package includes return rail travel to London from anywhere in the country and a night’s bed and breakfast in a top London hotel. Of course the winner has to be able to travel to London on the 31st of May and return on June 1st; the film has not had its final rating yet so the winner must be over 15 and at least one of the two people using the ticket must be over 18. In order to be in with a chance to bag this fabulous prize answer this simple question: who is the director of Prometheus? Email your answers to joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk, please mark emails Prometheus Competition and include your full contact details including a phone number, please, as arrangements for travel will have to be made very quickly for the lucky winners! Closing date for entries is Sunday 27th of May – best of luck! And if you do win, make sure you take a photo at the premiere and send it to us to post up!

I’m eagerly looking forward to the film myself and quite jealous of whoever gets to the premiere! You can learn more about the film on the official website here and naturally there are Facebook, YouTube and Twitter streams to follow for more information too.

Star Trek:

Shaun of the Dead:

Love this idea for a Caprica World Fair!

There are dozens of others to enjoy, but I think these two Batman related ones stood out for me:

And this gem:

(all pics by Brandon Schaefer, borrowed from his Flickr)

Edward Ross, self published

Regular readers will know that I’m a bit of a cinephile and so it is no surprise that when Edward Ross started his Filmish series, combining film studies with comics, I was rather pleased to see two of my favourite things coming together. The brand new third entry in the series, like the second issue, eschews the multiple subject approach of the first issue to concentrate instead on a single theme, which, as I noted with the second issue (reviewed here; first issue reviewed here), made the comic stronger and more focussed, important attributes in a relatively short work. The theme this time is Technology and Technophobia, an extremely apt subject matter for film – as Edward notes himself early on the entire medium of film is built on technology. Technology gave birth to first of all the still camera then the moving image; technology’s increasingly rapid advance throughout the 20th century is mirrored in the movies, not only in the subjects those films dealt with but in the very mechanisms and means of production of film itself, from the introduction of sound and colour to the modern, wide-screen panoramas and at the other end of the scale the almost handmade, independent, micro-budget flicks which are a direct result of the new, low cost but high quality digital tech.

The comic takes a more or less chronological look at technology and the movies, starting with the Lumière Brothers and their very simple shorts where the film itself was the technological marvel of the age, a true scientific wonder of the late Victorian era, amazing audiences who had never seen a moving image before, save for the basic, flickering animations of a zoetrope lantern, perhaps (it’s an era captured beautifully in a scene in Coppola’s Dracula). But it isn’t long before the makers of this nascent, new medium discover it has an almost unique ability to use technology to both tell an engrossing story and to amaze the viewers with visual splendour, from A Trip to the Moon onwards.

(scenes from the introduction to Filmish #3 by and (c) Edward Ross)

It would be very, very easy to pretty much stick to science fiction for this issue and of course Edward does indeed make great use of the genre to illustrate his chosen subject, drawing on well known SF films from Shape of Things to Come to the Terminator. But it is to his credit that he ensures that his net is cast wider than a single genre to cover this subject: Chaplin’s great classic Modern Times (still a film I find both funny and with relevant points to make even 80 years on) might be an obvious non-SF film to include when discussing technology, technophobia and the movies, but Edward also discusses the emergence of film comedy in the silent era and how the actual technology of film-making changed the face of long-established comedy and I appreciated him making these less obvious points (besides which any comic which sneaks in a cameo from the great Buster Keaton has to be good in my book).

(Modern Times prove problematic for Chaplin, from Filmish #3 by and (c) Edward Ross)

Edward also (quite correctly) compares technology projected in the movies with the real world technology of their era, from Wells’ utopian (if somewhat elitist, verging almost on techno-fascist) vision of science and reason in Shape of Things to Come to the more downbeat films which expressed increasing societal disquiet at the rapid expansion of technology and scientific knowledge and the fears that it we were pushing too far and too swiftly into areas we perhaps had no right to investigate in the first place. This is, understandably, most especially noticeable in the post-war years following the dropping of the new atomic weapons; it was hardly surprising that the huge fear such potent symbols of scientific advancements embodied would be mirrored by film-makers.

It isn’t just the raw power of nuclear physics which Edward includes here though, he also brings in other emerging technologies that worried society such as television in the home (a technology that also worried film-makers). David Cronenberg’s powerful and disturbing Videodrome is pretty much the poster child for worry about television’s pervasive influence (and the emergence of less regulated multi-channel viewing and direct access to videos to watch on demand, all of which actually lead to moral panics and even parliamentary legislation in the 80s. Videodrome itself remains a film very much ahead of its time in terms of addressing the multimedia age and our worries about its influence, a much recommended film).

Videodrome isn’t just about the ‘hard’ technology of the media though, like much of Cronenberg’s work it includes a strong element of ‘body horror’, with scenes where the protagonist imagines (or is it real?) his own body mutating in response to new technology, including growing a vaginal like orifice in his torso which a video cassette (amusingly in the context of this subject a now obsolete technology already) can be inserted and extracted from. This, in turn, leads into new ‘soft’ technologies, the advancements in cybernetics and biological and genetic research, and the way film has again mirrored societal concerns about ‘mad scientists’ dabbling with powers they cannot possibly comprehend, the human body and the machine not just working in tandem but actually merging, with Tetsuo’s Iron Man as a prime example or the Terminator’s combination of deadly machine over human flesh as the ultimate in human-machine. Or the cracking of the human genome and unravelling of the myriad of computer like instructions that tell our bodies how to be us, almost as if we were in fact flesh and blood machines, bringing us right up to date with filmic examples like the recent Splice, alongside digital imaging tech that allows us to have ‘synthetic’ characters. It isn’t all techno-fear though, Edward also covers the hugely accessible and affordable nature of digital tech and how this had given birth to a whole new generation of movie makers, from those in the cinema with microbudget works like Blair Witch to people putting together their own shorts (or reworking other people’s works) online.

(the cameras, the ‘film’, the editing and now even life itself, all gone digital… From Filmish #3 by and (c) Edward Ross)

As with the first two issues Edward packs a lot into a short comic but always keeps the tone fairly light rather than lecturing (which would have been an easy trap for some to fall into, he avoids it neatly), informative yet entertaining and above all making the subject of film studies very accessible even to anyone who has never sat through a series of academic lectures by men in beards and corduroy. And for those (like me) who have, it is still an enjoyable read and Edward still flagged up some notions I hadn’t considered before. Again he backs this up by giving a short bibliography at the end (tied to properly referencing his quotes in the actual comic) and a filmography too, meaning anyone who enjoys this and wants to read and watch more has a good list at their fingertips already (and again, as in previous reviews, for anyone interested in film studies I still recommend Pam Cook’s BFI publication The Cinema Book as a fine, all-purpose introduction title). Filmish #3 marks another strong entry into Edward’s marriage of film theory and comics (in a scene where it seems we are constantly seeing comics being adapted for cinema it is also amusing to me to see a comic dissecting and commenting on the medium of film) and it remains a nice example of how adaptable the comics medium is to tackling so many different subjects effectively.

And it might just be me, but with three issues of Filmish now I couldn’t help but think as I read this one that the idea could also translate rather nicely into a nice and relatively simple animated style – a few short animations based on Filmish would make for a lovely (and again very accessible to all) wee series on films for some enterprising TV channel (paging BBC4?). But until some television programmer thinks likewise then at least we have the comics; Filmish 3 is just back from the publishers (in fact Edward should have had the first batch at the weekend’s small press bash in London and I hope some of you picked it up) and is available from his website and should also be available at the Edinburgh Filmhouse as usual. Oh and since the theme for this issue was technology I should probably tell you that I actually read it as a PDF on a tablet; I still prefer the physical print version of books and comics, but must confess the wee tablet is proving quite handy for reading PDF versions of upcoming comics form indy creators and presses. There’s that technology again… And on another related technology story Edward has decided to make issue one of Filmish available as a pay-what-you-think download from his site. You can also read Edward’s guest Best of the Year choices here on the blog.

BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels from françois vautier on Vimeo.

Crimefighters is a cracking wee comics-inspired black and white movie set in York, from Miles Watt (who is also involved in Zomblogalypse online), made on a shoestring budget and shot in a really nice, crisp, luminous black and white which makes the most of the small resources available to the film-makers. A trio of friends are attempting one of the most difficult endeavours of modern life – trying to avoid drinking for a month. Sipping soft drinks in the pub they start to notice that things in the fair city of York are getting worse – is anti-social behaviour (that great bugbear of modern Brit society that politicians so love to rant on about) really on the rise in the city or is it just because they’ve stopped drinking they’re getting a little paranoid?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXYs9QDDw78

An increase in fights and muggings does seem to be occurring and when the town’s CCTV cameras are deliberately targeted too it seems that it isn’t just random violent outbursts after closing time but part of someone’s diabolical plan. But why would someone want to cause more trouble in town? And with the authorities seemingly helpless isn’t it time to don the (home-made) masks and take the law into their own hands? Some of the dialogue and acting is a tad clunky; I’m not sure if that’s deliberate or not, but to be honest I got the impression that it was mostly by design, a nod to the often clichéd superhero comics which were part of the inspiration for the film and the foundation of the masked Crimefighters vigilantes. It may not be about to challenge Iron Man at the box office, but Crimefighters makes up for its minuscule budget with a good sense of fun, a knowing nod to its comics and movies inspirations and, more important than big budgets or sparkling dialogue re-writes, it’s got a lot of heart and I think that makes it a great Friday night movie for comics geeks. Crimefighters is getting a limited release this month and will be going around the UK via the Picturehouse chain of cinemas (starting in York today), so check their site for venue and screening date details and give them a bit of support if you can.

The People Versus George Lucas is Alexandre Philippe’s labour of love documentary, over two years in the making and involving a humongous amount of footage and then editing it down (apparently there are acres of scenes which didn’t make the final cut, including some famous contributors). Despite the adversarial title, this isn’t a Lucas-bashing movie; actually if anything it is a celebration of Star Wars and the huge part it’s played in the lives of legions of fans over the years. The film draws on archive footage, animations, photos, fan videos (and oh boy, has our Star Wars inspired a multitude of fan films!) and a slew of talking heads, from ordinary fans to some very famous ones, including David Brin, Francis Ford Coppola, Dave Prowse and Neil Gaiman among others (apparently Ray Harryhausen was also interviewed but didn’t make the final cut, which gives you an idea of the sheer amount of footage the film-makers had to try and edit in to the final cut).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoc3roT81nU

The film dives into just why Star Wars, right from the start in ’77 (nostalgic sigh) became such a subject of passion for so many of us and how some aspects of the saga have had the opposite effect, infuriating fans – re-jigging the first trilogy years later and then not allowing the original cuts to be re-released for the many who want them (this was contrasted against a much younger Lucas who argues against the hideous 80s vogue for tinkering with classic movies), the still ongoing rumble over the ‘Han shot first’ in the reworked Episode IV and the contrast between the original trilogy and the later prequels. And oh yes, the Jar Jar thing (with due homage to Simon Pegg’s Spaced scene). Even when fans are venting their spleens about aspects of the series which annoy the hell out of them, though, it’s never mean – it’s the sort of emotion that can only be generated by people who really love the series. You can’t get that worked up if you don’t care, so even the criticism is a form of fan love. And before anyone outside of geekdom thinks typical geek behaviour to obsess over niggling points in something, it’s no different from the obsessive behaviour shown in any area where people have a passionate interest (take football for instance, where fans have memorised results from decades ago and still endlessly debate the minutiae of a play from 10 years back. It no different. Except we have cool lightsabres. And Slave Leias at conventions). Taking a balanced approach the film also discusses the creator’s right to make changes to their own works, whether it is what some fans want or not – Gaiman’s particularly good on this point, understanding both from the fan point of view but also from the successful creator perspective, where some fans really want you to continue doing what you did before.

The film also talks about how the enormous, unexpected success of Star Wars also, in a way, boxed in Lucas as a film-maker – as his friend and mentor Coppola put it, while he’s had huge success it also means he’s spent the rest of his life making Star Wars for the most part and we never got to see the other films that the man who made THX-1138 and American Graffiti might have made. I must confess I hadn’t considered that point before and I suppose it is the flipside of the cosmic level of success Star Wars enjoyed – it’s given Lucas fame, wealth and the love of millions, but did it also mean he never got to work on some of the other film projects the Lucas of the early 70s seemed eager to make? Overall though it’s a positive film about a series of amazing films that may drive us nuts sometimes but at the end of the day we still love deeply, laced with much affection (even when criticising) and often very, very funny. A great flick for Star Wars fans and indeed for any sort of fans – there’s a lot of ourselves to be recognised in the people in this film, because they’re us.

Gareth Edwards’ Monsters is another Indy movie and one where I didn’t know much more about it other than the blurb in the Film Fest programme – reporter is told by his boss to get his daughter back over the Mexican-US border. Problem being several years before a space probe sent to retrieve proof of organic life samples beyond Earth crash landed in northern Mexico and the lifeforms got free, mutated rapidly and spread, leaving the Zone, a quarantined area of alien monsters between most of Mexico and its border with America. Starting with some shaky night vision footage of an enormous monster attacking a city and being repelled by troops (in a scene that looks like CNN footage of combat from Baghdad, but with giant, tentacled aliens) Monsters straight away establishes an atmosphere of unease – talking to their taxi driver our protagonists ask how he can stay here when an attack like that can happen so randomly out of the Zone. Where else would I go, he asks. His life, his job, his family are all there. It’s another obvious echo of the problems faced by ordinary folks who happen to live in a city that’s become a trouble hotspot, be it insurgents in Iraq or Kabul or aliens in Mexico.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH9NswxZyAQ

Photojournalist Kaulder is not happy at effectively being ordered to escort rich kid Samantha Wyden back over the border after her dad decides the attacks are getting too close. He’s there to cover them and looking for the one great shot that will make his name, seemingly less concerned with the human cost of what is happening than with how it will look in a news photo. But since Sam’s father owns his newspaper he doesn’t have much choice and as the infection leads to increasing disruption of transport links they have to take an increasingly off the beaten track route back home to the US, imbuing the monster flick with some of the road movie genre along the way. There are elements of other movies, from District 9 to Apocalypse Now in this belting, lo-fi movie (much of which was semi improvised along the way as they shot, for instance some of the armed troops you see aren’t all actors, some were the bodyguards provided for the crew by Mexican authorities, so they used them in their shots to work that small budget even further). Of course as they travel together Sam and Kaulder start to get to know one another more and the audience gets to know them right alongside. The effects are used sparingly – the budget would doubtless not stretch to too much of the monsters anyway but, like the much larger budgeted Cloverfield, Edwards knows that it is more about atmosphere and he deploys his monster shots sparsely but very effectively throughout (the director picked up the Moët New Directors Award at the Festival, in fact). Like District 9 this is a bit of a left field science fiction flick with a nice, Indy feel to it; one to watch for when it snags a general release.

(left to right: actors Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able with director Gareth Edwards and one of the Film Fest organisers on stage in the Filmhouse at the Edinburgh International Film Festival Q&A after Monsters, pic from my Flickr)

One of the last films I saw during my Festival break was the French live action movie of the classic European comic Lucky Luke, by Goscinny and Morris, which Wim talked about a few months back when it was released on the Continent. I remember a wee bit of the comics cowboy from my childhood reading, although he was never as big here as he was in France (although I am glad to say Cinebook are doing their best to make his books available again here in English), so I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially since live action movies based on other European all-ages comics like Asterix have been less than stellar. Boy, was I in for a very pleasant surprise – it wasn’t just okay, it wasn’t just good, it was bloody brilliant. Seriously. The style is somewhere between the comics (the sets are fabulous – the town is all weirdly shaped buildings, as if they were made from plans drawn without a ruler), Sergio Leone’s Westerns and a less adult version of Mel Brook’s Blazing Saddles (still one of the funniest movies ever in my book). And it’s funny. Oh god, but it’s funny. Three of us went to see it and we laughed pretty much throughout the entire film (and indeed on into the credits, which had some jokes – in French – peppered throughout the credits and an extra little scene that makes a nod to the fact that in this day and age the child-friendly cowboy hero can’t be seen to smoke, but does so with some panache).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBl0FclxqN4

There are some great touches – the live action leans towards the real world but retains enough of a cartoons sensibility to make it recognisably Lucky Luke (the cowboy takes a bath but of course he keeps his cowboy boots on; the terrified locals of the town hide from the bad guys who run it by always hiding in barrels). A lot of the humour is visual and slapstick in nature, with plenty to make the younger audience members laugh, but there are plenty of lines there just for the adults too (after all, many who will watch this are adults who grew up reading the comics many years ago and they want – and get – a film that pleases the kid in them and the adult). For example Luke no longer smokes, as we know, so now he has a blade of grass in his mouth, which leads to Jesse James trying to smoke it and exclaiming that this grass is too strong to be smoking, a joke going past they kids in the audience but hitting the adults (and along the way paying homage to the scene in Blazing Saddles where our heroes get high); a scene in the president’s carriage if so full of powerful men smoking cigars that there is a cloud inside the train. I’m not going to go on too much about it – trying to explain how funny some scenes are to someone who hasn’t seen them yet rarely works and besides I don’t want to spoil it. I will say it is creative, incredibly funny and it is stuffed full of wonderful little details – when it gets its DVD release it’s a film that you can easily re-watch and spot even more that you missed first time around. No details on a UK release yet, but I’d imagine now it has subtitles added prints will make their way onto the arthouse circuit in due course, and if you want a great laugh you should saddle up when Lucky Luke comes to town.

Regular readers will know that I’m a huge admirer of Sylvain Chomet, who brought us the brilliant Bellevile Rendezvous, with its Scarfe-influenced characters and that I’ve been following the progress of his new animated feature as it came together in an Edinburgh studio. Rather appropriately, since much of the film is set in the Scottish capital. Adapted from an unused script by the great Jacques Tati (truly one of world’s cinema’s greats, easily up there in my book with Keaton), we follow Tatichef (another Tati reference), a tall, ungainly stage magician, struggling in 1950s Paris, so he takes himself off to London, only to find even less success there – old theatrical acts are out of fashion, the hip, young crowds of the post-war world want screaming rock’n'roll (cue some brilliant pastiche of 50s rock acts). Looking around for another gig to pay the rent an encounter with a (naturally drunk) Scotsman at a party leads to a booking in a wee village out on the islands off the west coast of Scotland, where he meets a young lass who, convinced he is a real magician, follows him to Edinburgh, where again Tatichef goes through a variety of gigs to try and get past in a world where his kind of act is now old-fashioned and no longer in demand.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHVG1JmbU30

As with Belleville Rendezvous, however, the story is only part of the enjoyment – the visual aspect is another, from the OTT comedy of the pelvis-swinging rock bands who steal Tatichef’s audience to a wonderfully drawn array of secondary characters (most notably the short ventriloquist). And then there are the landscapes; when the film moves to Scotland the artwork for the scenery is simply gorgeous (as indeed it is in real life), from the steam train thundering northwards to the boat to the islands, where of course it, being Scotland, is raining. And as the boat approaches the island and castle, in a scene paying homage to Tintin’s Scottish visit (although with a bit more visible under the kilt!), the rain stops and sunlight filters through gaps in the clouds creating the shimmering, golden dappled light effect anyone who’s been to Scotland has no doubt seen and it’s beautifully done.

The arrival in 50s Edinburgh is similarly beautiful and romantic, the steam train pulling into Waverley Station in its deep cutting between Old and New Town, landmarks surrounding it. As with Paris and New York in Belleville it isn’t an exact replica of the city but an idealised version, easily recognisable as Edinburgh (the Castle, the Scott Monument, Jenner’s, Balmoral, the rearing bulk of Arthur’s Seat) but a sort of magical, fantasy version of the city and again Chomet recreates the constantly changing quality of light we enjoy in Edinburgh, to quite beautiful effect. Okay, obviously I am totally biased here – being both an admirer of Chomet’s work and since I’m lucky enough to have Edinburgh as a home. If you know the city you will love the depiction of it that Chomet and his artists have created. And if you don’t then you will probably fall in love with it – as he did with the city – and want to see it for yourself; he’s talked about the changing quality of light in Scotland and how it inspired him, how it changes everything (it does, the same scenes are endlessly refreshed and changed a little) and there are some scenic passages which are clearly a love letter to the city.

(Sylvain Chomet on stage at the Festival Theatre with the EIFF’s Hannah McGill at the opening night gala screening of The Illusionist at the Edinburgh Film Fest, pic from my Flickr)

For all that beauty though and for the comedic elements – and they have given the cartoon Tatichef a wonderfully physical, very Jacques Tati feel – there is a strong melancholy running through The Illusionist. The young, naïve girl is lovely and obviously a little bit of company and sunshine in the older Tatichef’s life, but at the same time it serves to show that he is much older and that he has little to show for his lifetime of efforts but an act that no-one wants anymore, no home, no wife, no children. Her childlike belief that he actually is a real magician is touching, but it’s also an impossible image for Tatichef to live up to (and he tries so hard to make her happy) and something will have to give at some point. Throw in the complication of a young girl turning into a young woman and starting to notice boys (including a character who has more than a passing resemblance to a very young Sean Connery) and you begin to suspect that perhaps this won’t be as upbeat as Belleville. But over all that there’s the sheer beauty of the visuals – from the Flying Scotsman steaming in Waverley Station to a dizzying aerial spectacle of Edinburgh’s astonishing landmarks rotating below us. There’s laughter and sadness, often at the same time, some wonderful characters and above all some gorgeous artwork you can lose yourself in. You want to see it.

The Illusionist is out now in France and is expected in the autumn in the UK and winter in the US. Next from the Film Fest: geeking out with The People Versus George Lucas, the lonesome cowboy Lucky Luke delivers with both barrels, comics-style crime fighters in York, zombies in Athens and there are monsters on the Mexican border.

When French comic genius Jacques Tati (born as Tatischeff) died in 1982, he left an unused scenario.  The Tati family wanted to make a film of it, so as not let it go to waste, but they were rather hesitant to cast a real life actor as the title role, which Tati had written with himself in mind (as were all his movies).  In 2001, while working on Les Triplettes De Belleville, French animator Sylvain Chomet asked Tati’s youngest daughter Sophie whether he could use a short clip from one of Tati’s films in his production.  Sophie liked Chomet’s work, and in turn she asked him if he would be interested in turning her father’s last script into a film.  Chomet agreed, and L’illusioniste was released this week in the Belgian and French cinemas.

As is the case with most of Tati’s films, the story in itself is very simple : an older man who is working in an even older vaudeville theatre in Paris, tries to make it in the roaring London of the 1960′s.  Since nobody is interested in an old-school stage magician, he travels further North, to Edinburgh.  Along the way, he meets a young chamber maid who travels along with him.  It has been said on numerous occasions that the relationship between the young girl and the older man is the main drive for the film, which Tati wrote as a gift for his daughter from whom he was estranged.  Still, even though the film contains quite a number of hilarious moments, it’s not an all’s-well-that-ends-well Hollywood affair.

According to Flemish film critic Dave Mestdagh in Focus, the film may be a tad too intimate and the tempo a little too slow to sell it to the same audience that fell in love with the frenetic Triplettes.  Still, in a time when animation seems to be synonymous for high-tech geekery, a completely hand-drawn gem of a warm film deserves all the attention and love it can get.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZElAeVdDCDs

The Illusionist, as it will be titled when released internationally, was made in the Django Films studios in Edinburgh and ink.digital in Dundee, by an international group of creatives.  According to wikipedia, further animation was done in studios in Paris and London, while inbetweening and clean-up work was completed in South Korea.  With its Scottish production history, and the recent demise of the Django Films studios in mind, it’s only fitting that the film opened the 2010 Edinburgh film festival on June 16th.  No doubt our good editor Joe will report on that at length.

(George Romero talking at the 2005 Edinburgh International Film Festival, (c) EIFF; sadly no embed function on this so you will need to follow the link to see it)

(writer Scott MacKay and director David Barras of Dugbus, pic from my Flickr)

Jazz and Wolf run a comic shop in Edinburgh and things are not going well – with cash in short supply and the landlord knocking on their door for overdue rent they need a miracle. And that’s what they think they have when they find a copy of Electric Man #1 from 1937 in their stock, an incredibly rare and valuable issue. Except it isn’t their comic, it’s been placed there by a mystery figure and a whole group of people are after it. In best Maltese Falcon type tradition there are heroes who don’t quite know what they’ve stumbled into, a gangster heavy and a femme fatale. As I was watching the team’s presentation I had the Maltese Falcon very much in mind, perhaps crossed with a US indy movie vibe too, when the guys themselves actually said they were aiming for a sort of maltese Falcon meets Clerks feel to the flick.

The presentation was very well put together and the team consists of folks with some serious media experience (including work on major programmes such as Coast and Ashes to Ashes); they clearly know what they’re about and have a clear plan for how to get there (and on a tiny budget). And more importantly they’re clearly very enthusiastic about the film – as was singer and songwriter Fish who has just been announced as a cast member; Fish made an off the cuff speech to last night’s audience enthusiastically supporting the project and is also investing in the film himself. I have to say after last night I’m pretty keen to see it made too – the presentation and plot outline was a winner and I’d love to see the film made so we can enjoy watching it. And I strongly suspect a lot of you would really enjoy it too – it’s got a nice comics meet indy movie vibe to it that I really liked.

(Electric Man #1 cover art by Stuart Beel, (c) Dugbus)

Dugbus is already part of the way to their quite modest budget target and yes, they are still looking for donations and investments – last night was partly for larger investors – and if you check their site you can find ways you can take part, from small donations (David and Scott were taking just such small donations from folks at their Hi-Ex table recently – a chance for fans to actually feel a part of the movie) to larger, formal investments (they have a prospectus for people with larger funds who wish to invest and the clever way they are structuring the film work means even the larger investments aren’t very large figures; give them a shout if you’re interested and they can furnish you with more details).

The guys are already starting to generate a bit of buzz online, which will hopefully grow over the coming months; when they hit their budget target filming is due to begin in Edinburgh in the autumn.  I’ve got a huge amount of respect for folks who try to get independent arts projects off the ground – some of the quirkiest and most enjoyable movies I’ve seen at film festivals have come from just those sorts of film-makers, just as some of the most interesting comics I’ve read in recent years have come from the indy presses and creators – and obviously I love the comics angle to it as well (and there’s talk of a side project with an actual comic based on the ideas in the film). If you like the idea too then do them a favour and spread the word around; the main Dugbus site is here and there’s a blog and Twitter too. The promotional video they showed to us last night in Edinburgh (which as well as being quite clever and funny also featured some cool comics artwork explaining Electric Man’s origins) should hopefully go online at some point too and of course I’ll flag that up for you if and when I hear about it.

(David Barras and Scott MacKay on the  Electric Man stand at Hi-Ex in Inverness last month, pic from my Flickr)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw2_HZTuQBE

One of the things I like about the BAA is that it covers a good range of animation, not just TV or film series but also areas like student films (where the new talent is coming from) and music videos and adverts, which is where a lot of animators earn their daily crust between working on short or feature length projects of their own. Philip Bacon won the Best Student Film for Yellow belly End, while the best animation in a music video went to Karni and Saul’s work on Float for Flogging Molly.  Stephen Irwin’s Black Dog’s Progress won the Best Short Film award; for the full list check the BAA site.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUn1TrjMm3s