It must be a great time to be a young energetic and imaginative film-maker at the moment. “The world is your lobster!” as Derek Trotter might have said. Why do I say that?  Because it seems to me that they have more options now than their predecessors ever had.

It was not so long ago that fresh-faced graduates of film schools would get on the ladder of major film-making through the auspices of the large production companies. Getting their face known, showing their skills and abilities and eventually climbing the corporate ladder

But there are some trends that are evident now that could cut through all of the traditional ways of making films, marketing, distributing and presenting them.

Digital video is one of the most significant developments that is starting to democratise film-making. In theory, any one can make a film as long as you have a DV recorder and a PC with the right software. True you still need to have talent and vision but it doesn’t cost the earth to get started. The cost of storing and manipulating moving images has plumetted as processing power becomes greater and the price of hard disks and storge media decreases. Special effects are available to all with low cost, chromakey technology. The quality of DV recorders is improving daily and excellent sound capture equipment is within the reach of most budding movie makers. Editing can be done on the PC.

The technical and cost barriers to making your own film have been eroded away. Just get together with a few talented mates, use your imagination and ingenuity, get organised with a script and actors and go and make your film! Just take some inspiration from the original “Evil Dead”, “The Blair Witch Project” and “Napolean Dynamite”. Even major film makers are converting to DV. Mike Figgis has experimented with DV on ”Time Code” (2000) and just recently David Lynch has released “Inland Empire” (2007) to critical acclaim.

So what happens then. Who is going to see your masterpiece? How can you get paid for your efforts? When are you going to be invited to Hollywood?

Apart from your parents and interested friends is any one else likely to see your creation? Well, if you get out there and market it, quite probably. There is a huge audience out there to tap into. Just look at the rise of YouTube. People making small films of themselves or things and events around them and making them available to any one who has a PC across the globe. This site gets millions of hits every day. No surpirise that Google has taken them over. Why not use it as a marketing opportunity to show a trailer of your film? David Lynch did this with “Inland Empire”. Viral marketing and word of mouth could hook you up with thousands of potential viewers and get that precious PR and buzz. All for free!

As video streaming technology improves you could distribute your film yourself over the net. Bypassing the traditional means of film distribution. There are already loads of internet operations that sell films by download. The infrastructure is already there for you to make money.

Going straight to video is usually filmspeak for poor quality films that are likely to do poorly at the box office. Actually you could turn that round and make quality films that will only be seen in the home and not at the cinemas. People will be able to still have a great film experience with all the new Home Cinema technology (50+ inch screens, Dolby Digital sound through a multitude of speakers etc) being sold at the moment.

So in effect you don’t need the big procduction companies, the big distribution companies and the big cinema multiplex chains. Granted if you want to make an enormous epic like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings then it might be a little difficult to do it a home DV recorder but who knows with a little imagination……..

I was watching the television when The Straight Story was showing last night. It reminded me of the first time that I’d seen that film and the emotions that I’d experienced.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting on a bit in years that I found it very moving. And it was all the more moving because it was based on a true story.

The plot is very simple. Two brothers, who haven’t seen each other for ten years, suffer a stroke and a fall respectively at about the same time. One of the brothers, Alvin, decides to visit the other, Lyle, to see how he is and put right the past. Problem – he has no money to pay for the trip. Solution – he ties up a trailer to his lawnmower and sets off on a 350 mile trip down to Wisconsin where his brother now lives.

The film is about the journey but explores lots of themes. The film is gentle and rhythmic (almost lyrical) and is governed by the pace of the lawnmower (which becomes a small John Deere Tractor by the end). There is no whiz bang here, it is a quiet character piece that hints at bigger themes - struggling with old age, the importance of family ties, getting lost on all sorts of different levels , the words left unsaid. It is a beautifully hypnotic film.

One of the most amazing things about the film is that it is directed by David Lynch, he of the surreal Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the bewildering Twin Peaks (TV). One commentator said of Lynch that “he has the power to disturb and bewitch” at the same time. However, this is a quiet meditation.

This film, set in the mid west small towns, is played straight (no pun intended)  yet Lynch is able to bewitch (if not disturb us) through the surrealness of the ordinary.The odd characters, the unusual nature of the journey, the stunning visuals. The acting, particularly by Richard Farnsworth as Alvin, is excellent as we are drawn into his world and struggle with him. We are aching for him to reach his brother’s place and willing them to reconcile. The final bitter-sweet scene on Lyle’s ramshackle porch (with hardly any dialogue) conveys the obvious rift there has been between them and a brotherly indifference masking the hint of a reconciliation.

I suppose many younger film goers brought up on a fare of action movies and special effects might find the film boring. Older film goers will probably relate to many aspects of the film feeling apprehension at the thought of growing old and joy at the eventual triumph of the will (or equally apt, stubbornness). It’s one of the films that will stick in my memory until the day I die.

One of my favourite film directors is Akira Kurosawa. Sadly, he is no longer with us but he has left a fantastic legacy of fine films which have had so much influence in the film world.

Most people will know of him as the maker of “The Seven Samurai” – a film that told the story of seven itinerant swords-for-hire who come together to defend a village from a large gang robbers. It was remade in Hollywood as “The Magnificent Seven”.  This is extremely interesting as Kurosawa has always acknowledged the influence on him of John Ford westerns!

He was perhaps the only Japanese film maker of his era to gain wider acceptance in the west although in Japan his staus was not as pronounced. His long career spanned over from the 1930s as a young assistant director to the 2000s just before his death. He made over 30 films as director and many more as writer, editor or producer, sometimes combining the roles on one film.

His golden era started in the 1950s with a series of critically acclaimed but mostly historical films. In addition to “The Seven Samurai”, he directed the savage and cynical revenge piece “Yojimbo” translated as The Bodyguard. This film was remade in the West as “A Fistful of Dollars”  – the classic spaghetti western that spawned a whole new genre of films.

More interestingly, he made the superb “Rashomon” – a tale of the (supposed) rape of a woman in the forest told from several different character viewpoints. As well as winning several awards in its day, you can see its influence on more recent Hollywood films such as “The Usual Suspects” and many court room dramas.

Speilberg and Lucas have acknowledged their debt to Kurosawa. Indeed, the arguing robots in Star Wars are based on a couple of soldiers in Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress”.

He also had the power to take Shakespearian material and remould it into a medieval Japanese setting. His “Throne of Blood” was a bloody version of Macbeth in the tradition of a No play. One of his greatest works was the masterful “Ran” (literally translated as Chaos) – an epic tragedy based on  ”King Lear”.

In his later works, there were a number of common strands and themes:

• Strong stories – he was a master story teller and he made sure that these shone through his writings.
• Beautiful cinematography – he was also a painter and used to storyboard his pictures as paintings and works of art in their own right. The landscape photography in “Dersu Uzala” is breath-taking. The burning castle in “Ran” is beautiful but terrible. The final scene in “Kagemusha” as the camera pans out to see the extent of death on the battle field is wondrous with the rivers literally running red.
• The weather – he used the weather as a metaphor and also to induce moods in his films. The wind represented  chaos and upheaval in “Throne of Blood” and “Ran”. The rain in Seven Samurai accentuated the slaughter of the robbers at the climax with horses and robbers struggling to fight in the mud. Fog and mist were used to denote the mystical and supernatural and invoke fear in the characters
• Believably human characters – his characters were multi-faceted, mixing the good traits with the bad, making the stories come alive. They all have their own particular mannerisms, foibles, fears and beliefs.
• Action sequences – he was extremely skillful in staging large scale battle sequences as evidenced in “Throne of Blood”, “Kagemusha” and “Ran”. They are stirring, exciting, epic and tragic
• Humour – Kurosawa could use humour to let the audience catch their breath before the next action or show a different side to a particular character.

There is much to admire in Kurosawa’s films if you can get over the inevitable sub titles. He has given Hollywood and the West, in general, many insights in to great film-making. Let’s hope that the newer breeds of director, during their filmic upbringing, have learnt from  an acknowledged master of his craft.

Hooray for Hollywood. The Academy got it right in the end. Best Director went belatedly to Martin Scorcese.

I don’t know about you but it felt like The Academy were clearing up a mess in the best way they knew how. Scorcese had been overlooked so many times with infinitely superior films that they had to do something special.

So, one of the worst kept secrets of the awards ceremony was let out of the bag when the triumvirate of Copolla, Spielberg and Lucas came out of the wings to present the award. It must have been really disheartening for the other directors in the running for Best Director. “I’ll get my coat” time!

How better to receive your Oscar than from your mates, your contemporaries? It was like the Academy was saying “sorry” for all the past rejections. Even Scorcese displayed a little cynicism when he asked for them to check the name on the card. But like any true Hollywood professional he quickly gave in to the schmaltz and saccharine. Why oh why couldn’t it have been for Raging Bull or Good Fellas or, even, Taxi Driver.

Still, the monkey is off his back now. Let’s hope he continues making superior Hollywood films for many years to come.

I’ve always had a fascination for this film. I’m not quite sure whether it’s the sort of fascination you get when you stumble upon a car crash (a rubber-necking sort of fascination) or an admiration for what the film was striving for and, maybe, could have been. The facts and figures around Heaven’s Gate are astounding. Michael Cimino’s vision of the Johnson County Wars was not only the costliest film of its time but its burgeoning budget brought down a Hollywood studio – United Artists. Its takings were miniscule in America as the public stayed away in their hordes. You do actually see a lot of the money up there on the screen in the form of authentic-looking costumes and massive sets. This film effectively ended Cimino’s career as a director in Hollywood. Cimino, after his critical and financial success with The Deer Hunter, was the darling of Hollywood. He was given free rein on Heaven’s Gate, a western covering a particularly nasty episode in the development of the USA. The story had some broad similarities to The Deer Hunter – the struggle of immigrants to survive in a terrible situation, the loss of innocence and hope. However, instead of fighting the Vietnamese as in The Deer Hunter, the immigrants in Heaven’s Gate were fighting their own adopted country or the people who ran it.

Masterpiece?

• Fantastic cinematography – you get a real sense of size and proportion of the landscape which gives a real epic feel to the film. Scenes on the prairies with the big open sky are breathtaking.
• Authenticity – millions of dollars were spent trying to make the film look representative of the period. Thousands of handmade costumes and many newly built sets.
• Action – when the action does come, it is brutal, bloody and believable
• Experimentation – Cimino clearly borrows techniques and style from the European Cinema to try and give this western a different edge and feel. The use of a circling camera in action scenes is reminiscent of the work of the obscure Hungarian film director Miklos Jansco. In many ways, it is successful in conveying the clash of cultures

Mess!

• No big stars – For a big budget epic it had no bankable star. Of the main stars only Kris Kristofferson had any sort of kudos for a Western as he had taken one of the leads in Peckinpah’s iconic Pat Garret ad Billy the Kid. Isabelle Hupert, as the love interest, was virtually unknown in America although well respected in Europe.
• Film Length – The film is either too long or too short depending on who you talk to. The original cut of the film was over three and a half hours which was cut by the studio by nearly an hour after a week’s performance. This created problems for the narrative and played havoc with the cadence of the film. It became disjointed and difficult to follow. A Director’s Cut was unveiled in 2004 being nearer the original length and addresses some of the narrative problems.
• Characters – It is difficult to identify with the main characters and warm to them. The film revolves around the Kristofferson character. However, the performance isn’t large enough to fill the hole at the centre of the film.
• Problematic subject – a story about genocide planned by the establishment and a storyline with a whiff of communism about it did not endear itself to the American public at that time. The western had all but died after The Wild Bunch so its timing was poor.
• Poor sound quality – you may think I’m nit-picking here but when important developments in the story are missed because you didn’t hear what the characters were saying…
• Out of Control Director – indulgence on a grand scale proving that more can be less

I would definitely recommend you to go and see whatever version of the film you can get to see although I also recommend you take a comfy cushion to sit on. I’m sure you can get it on DVD. I think it is a magnificent, interesting, infuriating mess with the odd touch of masterpiece about it. You don’t always want to see the best films do you? There is a famous book – Final Cut – written by one of the production executives in charge of the film (haha) detailing the progress of the fated production and the downfall of the studio. An interesting read on its own.

When I was following my Film Studies A Level course I got the chance to brush up on my auteurs or authors. Kubrick is usually held up as the quintessential example of the auteur. An auteur or author is a concept developed by French critics to denote a director (usually) who is more than just the guy who makes sure the job gets done. They actually put their own unique and indelible stamp on a production. Typically, you can look at the body of work from an author director and see his signature whether it be in the form of recurring themes in the subject matter, visual style, etc. Stanley Kubrick is a great example because his films cross a whole range of genres. Just think of :

• War films (Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket),
• Sci Fi (2001 - A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange),
• Horror (The Shining),
• Historical Epic (Spartacus, Barry Lyndon),
• Comedy/ Satire (Dr Strangelove)
• Love and Sex (Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut).

With a Kubrick film you expect to see certain things like:

• Controversy – a lot of his films entertained controversy at the time of their release. Lolita was about adaptation of a controversial novel about what we would now see as paedophilia; Paths of Glory portrayed the shocking treatment of French soldiers in the trenches by their generals; and, A Clockwork Orange was banned because of its graphic violence before Kubrick himself withdrew it from general circulation.
• Arresting images – In each of Kubrick’s films there are images that linger on in the memory. The battle scenes in Spartacus, the balletic violence of the fight scenes in A Clockwork Orange, Slim Pickens final hurrah astride a nuclear warhead in Dr Strangelove…There are so many.
• Technical Excellence and Innovation – For a great many of his later films Kubrick experimented with the latest technology to achieve originality on screen. Barry Lyndon is a good example. Kubrick and his cinematographer found a way to shoot scenes in candlelight and the results achieved provide a remarkable quality of picture. In 2001 - A Space Odyssey, a highly-engineered, circular, revolving stage with camera set up was built to simulate the scenes in a space station. In addition, some of the most sophisticated special effects of that time went into that movie.
• Recurrent themes – Don’t expect a happy ending in a Kubrick film. Even the funniest (Dr Strangelove) ends with the world being destroyed by nuclear bombs! The stench of death is never very far away. Society brutalising the common man – the soldiers in Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket, the slaves in Spartacus, Alex in A Clockwork Orange (eventually). There always seems to be an objectivity or detachment in Kubrick’s work. There is always something that makes you think, some shock or contravention of the genre rules. The Shining was described by some critics as the first horror film with the lights on. Music is used in subtle ways to heighten the message being conveyed. Who can forget the spaceships in 2001 waltzing in space to the Blue Danube. Or the world ending in Dr Strangelove to the strains of Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again. And where music met controversy when Kubrick had the temerity to use electronic synthesiser versions of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in A Clockwork Orange.
• Control -  Ever since his early films up to and including Spartacus, Kubrick would always have total control over the output and finished product. This personal requirement meant that he did not work that often (only 16 films in over 48 years) as studios shyed away from giving a director that much control. He was a perfectionist and would only release a film when he was happy with it. That also meant painstaking and long shooting schedules. Obsessive might be one way of describing him.

As he is no longer with us we can only look back at the significant body of films he left rather than anticipating the next Kubrick controversy.

Many critics place Citizen Kane at the top of their list of best films of all time. I think it would be best described as the most influential film of all time.

Personally, I have no great love for the film. I find it hard to have empathy for the central characters and it leaves me rather cold. But I do have tons of admiration for it. Orson Welles’ film was ground-breaking in many senses of the word. Its greatest gift was that of a new grammar for film-makers.

There are so many technical and stylistic innovations in the film that any audience at the time of its release would have been wowed by the “special effects”. Do you remember seeing Star Wars or The Matrix for the first time? Something like that!

Just to list a few of the innovations (mainly cinematography):

• Camera Angles – upward and downward camera angles to help create moods and points of view
• Depth of field – camera shots that show the back and the foreground in focus to create space and depth between the characters
• Tracking shots – camera movement over buildings, through windows to follow the action
• Use of flashbacks – creative use to dramatise the narrative
• Editing – different types of editing to convey pace and time and place

I am sure that there are many more if you analyse the film in detail but the point to be made was that it provided film makers who followed a broader range of techniques to call on to enhance their story telling and set the mood of their films. Welles was pronounced a genius after the opening of the film but it is Greg Toland’s photography that sets it apart from the films of that time. Was it Welles or Toland that was the genius?

Citizen Kane has its rightful place in history because it moved the film community forward and lit the fire of imagination for many generations to come. And in that respect it is by far the most influential film of all time.