One of my great passions in movies is to watch epic films. You know the ones - grand scale, sweeping visuals and action and heroic stories. A good epic film needs the big screen to fit in the cast of thousands and the panoramic view of the action. There have been many epics made over the years (some good, some not so good) but the genre is still alive and well but mainly populated by CGI “casts of thousands”.

As a younger whipper snapper my early view of epics were that they were historical stories based on Greek or Roman tales and myths. I cannot tally up how many subtitled Italian “sword and sandal” epics I watched at the local cinema. Romulus and Remus, Helen of Troy, The Wooden Horse of Troy and many others. They were exciting, colourful, wide screen and action-laced. I can’t say, looking back, that any of them had any great merit but for a young lad of 12 years old they stirred the imagination.

But there were two that stood out during this period as worthy contenders for the best epic ever made. The first is Spartacus and I have mentioned this elsewhere in this blog. I can’t remember whether I blagged my way into the cinema as it was an adult certificate or whether my dad took me but anyway…It had all the trappings of a great epic film - wonderful story of one man against Rome, exquisite photography (you would expect that of Stanley Kubrick though), fine leading actor performance by Kirk Douglas (who also produced the film) and tremendous supporting cast filling in the gaps between the battle scenes. Ah, the battle scenes… Whenever I watch the final battle scene with the Roman legions marching I just marvel at it. It looks like a well-oiled machine but you can see every penny up there on the screen. A definite cast of thousands.

The second and perhaps underrated epic film is El Cid. An unusual subject for an epic at the time of its making produced by the maverick Samuel Bronston and directed by Anthony Mann. A Spanish nobleman unites warring kingdoms in medieval Spain to fight the invading Moors from Africa. The story was not well known but still remarkable for that. A complex story involving political intrigue and family jealousy and betrayal interwoven with grand scale conflict. Many reviewers over the years have said that it is the greatest epic film of all time as long as it keeps its mouth shut. Granted some of the dialogue is clunky and jars occasionally. But there is so much more to marvel at. I watched it on television again for the first time in many years the other day and I must say I was still wowed by it overall. The production design was breathtaking, sumptuous colours, designs and fabrics popping out of the screen. Incredible locations and interiors. I used to think that some of the acting was over the top but I now realise that the actors were fighting to be noticed in the midst of such a visual back drop. Nevertheless, with a strong lead performance from the recently-deceased Charlton Heston and excellent supporting cast it was bound to be a winner. The cream on top of the cake was the action. Robust, bloody and spectacular. The scale and grandeur were there to see. The sight of thousands of Moors marching along the sandy crescent towards Valencia was frightening and blood curdling to a young boy immersed in the story. And the ending is unforgettable with The Cid (already dead but strapped to his horse) leading out his men to meet the Moors in battle and riding away along the sand into the distance after the battle is won. If there is a more iconic scene in a film let me know.

I did watch Ben Hur around the same time but it did not have quite the same impact on me as these two films.

As I grew older two more epic films had an impact on me. They were both directed by the same man, Sergei Bondarchuk. The first was his Russian version of War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy. Now I should say at the start this is not my favourite by any means - it is long (I saw it originally it in two three and a half hour segments) and fairly boring in places unless you are fan of the book. But it sprung into life in the battle scenes. His depiction of the battle of Borodino was amazing and the final shot as the camera tracked back and upwards from just a couple of bodies to show literally thousands of bodies on the battlefield was just heart stopping. A similar device was used in Kurosawa’s Kagemusha as the extent of the carnage is shown and the rivers running red with blood. His photography of the cavalrymen riding into battle with their lances created a fantastic tension and during parts of the battle he freeze framed scenes to make them look like portraits that could be hung in an art gallery.

In the second film, Bondarchuk concentrated on his strengths and produced the rousing Waterloo. More battle action and memorable scenes playing out the events that lead to a very detailed and rousing climax. Again the cavalry scenes were brilliantly realised and the choreographed splendour of the infantry made for action on an epic scale. Aerial shots of the battle field show how difficult it must have been to coordinate the action and make it believable. Again, the film doesn’t get into my top three because there are moments in the film where the momentum of the story is lost but for dramatic and full on epic action in the battle scenes it is hard to beat it.

So little time, so many epics…….

I’m on a roll now. The Song Remains The Same just started me thinking again about pop music films again. It’s funny how one thing leads to another. I’d almost forgotten about probably the greatest film about popular music and culture. And it was made by a bone fide film maker with a host of cinematic as well as musical talent.

The Last Waltz is a film documentary by Martin Scorcese based around the final(?) gig of The Band, that legendary but cultish rock band, that became famous through being Bob Dylan’s backing band for a while. The film came out only two years later than The Song Remains The Same yet as films they are poles apart.

The Band were more legends in the American music industry rather than world wide famous rock stars. Their pedigree was impeccable, they were killer live performers and they commanded respect amongst their peers. Their friends numbered among the royalty of the 1970s American music scene. Individually, they were not household names like Led Zeppelin or The Who. But together they created a small phenomonen.

Martin Scorcese obviously was a fan and he conducts several interviews personally with The Band about their career. But the main event is the concert footage with guest appearances by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Dr John and countless others. Not only is the sound reproduction high quality as is the camerwork and lighting but there is a great feeling of celebration in the performances. Judicial use of editing makes the action always interesting. Scorcese displays the concert footage in its best light and highlights the variety of musical styles on display with The Band accompanying the musical guests on many of the songs. It’s almost like you’re there. There are no great stylistic cinematic tricks to distract you from the performances.

The film is worth watching as a historical document and shows a slice of the 1970s American music scene with many of its movers and shakers but for me it’s all about the music. No pyrotechnics, no real myth making agenda just a record of high quality music for the sake of it. Beautiful.

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I thought I just had to write this piece after having watched The Song Remains The Same on television last night. You probably realise by now that one of my areas of interest is films or movies about popular music and culture. When I saw that this was on the TV last night the closet Led Zeppelin fan in me came to life briefly. I had never seen the film before (strangely) and had almost forgotten about its existence. So I watched it with some anticipation. With all the hoohaa about Led Zeppelin’s reunion gig around Christmas I wasn’t surprised that this surfaced.

In summary The Song Remains The Same documents the Led Zeppelin gig at Madison Square in New York and was released in 1976 when the group were at their zenith. It is interspersed with various dream-like sequences I assume were meant to be representations of the personality of the members of the band. There are also gritty sequences of the hard-nosed manager and his cronies taking the stadium management to task with copious amounts of adult language. As the film was financed entirely by the band it is safe to say that the overall effect is to try and extend the myth of Led Zeppelin. It is designed to make you think that there is more to the band than there actually is. As the camera looks into the crowd you get the feeling that they are mesmerised by the presence of the band. This isn’t just a gig but a religious experience. An alternative explanation is that the looks of love and awe were chemically induced! 

My overall impression of the film is that of variable quality in both the movie sense and music sense. There are some moments in the film that are absolutely electric, during the concert footage, where you can understand why they were hailed as the best band in the world. The opening - Rock and Roll - gets things off to a tremendous start and many of the more famous riff-based songs fare well. But they do retreat into the more self indulgent, long versions of various songs that was symptomatic of that “progressive” era which can be a big yawn after a while. More jazz than rock. Maybe that’s why there are the dream sequences which tend to be played over an extended solo in the concert. However, Stairway To Heaven does provide one of the highpoints. There is more than a little technical proficiency and panache in Jimmy Page’s guitar work but he tries to prove it time and time again. But I guess that this is what fans expected at the time and much of the filming is based around close ups of Page playing his guitar and posing. However, he is outgunned in the posing department by the lion-haired, lead singer Robert Plant who stands and wiggles his hips in an almost effeminate posture before unleashing his powerful and unique voice.

The film can be magnificent and irritating at the same time. I can’t help but compare it to The Kids Are Alright with The Who. Kids has a vibrant energy as a film and a record of performances that The Song… only reaches in small segments. But there are large parts of The Song… when it just seems a bit too pretentious and a bit too much like fodder for the Spinal Tap script. I am still a fan of the music but I can’t buy into the Led Zeppelin myth. Having read many reports of their live gigs over the years it seems they tended to be a bit hit and miss as a live band (although the Madison Square Garden performance was very good). So when you see that 20 million people tried to get tickets for the reunion gig I find that a bit surprising. But I am an old cynic and all the myth building in the intervening years has clearly done its job to herald the return of the rock messiahs. I am sure that The Song Remains The Same has also played its part in this process.

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1999 was one of my favourite years. I studied film and the cinema for a year at John Leggott sixth form college in Scunthorpe and ended up with an “A” Level in Film Studies. For years I had avidly watched movies at the cinema and on the television and more recently on video. I had even done a short course on the effects of media on society in my university degree in 1973. But I had never been introduced to appreciating films critically. I knew a little about the history of the cinema, a little about the grammar and business of films but this course put it all together and gave me a much greater appreciation of the whole package.

There I was, a forty something guy, going through this course with a group of young sixth form students (18 years old at the most). The lecturer - Alistair Mickie - was a joy, really enthusiastic about his subject and it rubbed off on to everybody. It gave me a great lift to go down to the college one night a week and forget about the worries of the day job. I had decades of experience of watching films over the kids and could quite easily pull out specific examples from my memory. I particularly enjoyed the detailed analyses of parts of films and found new meanings and images that I had never seen before. You suddenly start to understand what the director or the actors meant to get across. The theory gave me an insight into how to watch and understand films better than before. It gave me a new lease of life.

Watching Eisenstein and the old Russian directors showed me what montage was all about. We even tried to do a Proppian analysis of the story in Casablanca - the first time that the teacher had even tried this. Even analysis of more recent films (not necessarily great ones) such as Speed and The Net provided insights into the grammar of film and the underlying story telling. Studying Kubrick as an auteur/author and the rules on different genres and being able to discuss them and listen to different views was quite liberating. We had to watch Citizen Kane, every one had to not because it is supposed to be the greatest film of all time but because, as a student it gave you examples of so many cinematic and editing techniques that it could be an example in almost all of the exam questions. And you could choose to analyse more closely some of your favourite films. I chose Seven Samurai and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Very different but very rewarding.

I don’t consider myself a film geek or even an authority. I am an enthusiast. I can still watch new films and appreciate them better than I used to. I have very eclectic tastes. From Hollywood to Art House, studio blockbusters to small independent films, english, american or sub titled and virtually any genre (although I am not too keen on romantic weepies - my better half loves them wouldn’t you know!). I do know that following that course helped me appreciate films and the cinema a lot more. Reading books is fine but discussion and debate makes it better. I suppose film forums and film chat rooms can provide that sort of outlet for your views nowadays. It opens your eyes and sharpens your senses and gives you a vocabulary to talk about a visual medium.

My main message from this post is to keep learning about film. That way you can get a better appreciation and ultimately more satisfaction watching films whether they are good or bad.

Why is it that you don’t see any decent films about pop music any more? In the sixties and seventies there were films like Woodstock, Monterey Pop, The Kids Are Alright and numerous other commercial films covering either pop music events or the rock lifestyle. I suppose the easy answer is that we are in the MTV generation where kids have access to so much choice in pop music programming on television that the market is saturated. To undertake a full blown movie would be a risky business in terms of competition. Just look at the number of pop music events covered on the television. Even the BBC provides copious coverage of Glastonbury. If there’s a festival happening there will be some coverage of it through the TV medium whether it be terrestrial or satellite.

But aren’t we missing something? True, there is so much choice but it is fairly sanitised and regimented and self censoring. Some of the great pop music films happened at key times during the last century. They were pioneers in the medium and upset the establishment. They said something about the social and cultural setting in which they were made. They were not just tapes of live performances but social commentaries on the times of upheaval in young people’s lives.

Woodstock exposed the hippy culture to the world and for few short years influenced the young people of the world until the reality of drug use hit home. Not many great performances other than Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner but the atmosphere, the smell of the event and the times was palpable. It was only supposed to be a small music festival for a few thousand punters but caught the imagination of the young people of America who showed up in their hundreds of thousands. The orgainsers were overwhelmed for the three days of the festival - and it descended into chaos. No rules, no boundaries - a big mess for the authorities. Nirvana for the youth of America.

Monterey Pop showed the music establishment trying to deal with changes in music and unleashed the career of Jimi Hendrix. A short time before it had been a folk and jazz festival but all of that changed when Bob Dylan did the unthinkable and went electric. When he did that he was booed by the way! Monterey Pop showed a great diversity of music and performances from mainstream Mamas and Papas to big blues with Big Brother and the Holding Company (lead singer a certain Janis Joplin) to the Who and Hendrix.

My favourite pop music film of that era is The Kids Are Alright featuring the rise of The Who. Or the ‘orrible Who as Roger Daltrey calls them. It shows the group as individuals and what makes them tick interspersed with some electric live performances and iconic TV moments. It conveys a real sense of youthful anger and restlessness not only in the music but in the interviews as well as some madcap moments with Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. See where instrument bashing and destruction originally came from! It’s nice to see that The Who (or the remaining members - Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey) are still touring and can still see off the young ‘uns - just watch their performance at Glastonbury 2007 to check that out. Getting on a bit now but you still see the odd spark of that unrest and anger. Even something like The Great Rock and Roll Swindle in the seventies featuring the Sex Pistols does not show the rebelliousness of youth so well as The Kids Are Alright.

Are kids still rebellious? Of course they are. But they seem to be channeled through main stream media. The establishment has learnt its lesson from the anarchy of the past. Could a Woodstock happen again? Not likely, too much organization, health and safety etc., rules and regulations. Even Glastonbury is safe, socially and culturally speaking. For goodness sake, parents want to go as well! Management of events and the music industry are tightly controlled and not easily changed. Events rarely have the danger (physical or otherwise) and naughtiness attached to them now. Although it was comforting to see youthful rebellion can still rear its head at events when the crowd invaded the stage during Iggy Pop and The Stooges performance at Glastonbury this year and caused mayhem for several minutes.

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It is quite common now to see graphic violence in films. You can even watch it on prime time television in the UK - just sit through a few episodes of Rome. We are used to going to the cinema now and seeing buckets of blood and gore, limbs and heads being hacked or sawed off. Most horror films now have more and more ingenious ways of dispatching their victims. It is inescapable. Even serious films, “Saving Private Ryan”, Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima double bill etc. show the realities of war in great detail. Kids’ movies also have plenty of fantasy violence nowadays and this is what kids expect.

I’m not going to get into the debate about whether it has got too extreme because we are where we are now. Taking something away is much more difficult than letting some one have something in the first place. But when did it all start to get out of hand.

My first memory as a child of seeing something graphic on a film screen was when my dad took me to see “The Alamo” (1960) with John Wayne. I had been brought up on a diet of western TV series on the television but seeing this huge spectacle was exciting. But the scenes that stuck in my mind were during the final battle scenes where Davy Crockett (John Wayne) was killed by a Mexican cavalryman’s lance and the end of Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) being bayoneted by Mexican infantrymen. I had never seen anything so graphic before and certainly not in my TV westerns.

But I think that the real opening of the floodgates happened with Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969). Watch it now and you may think that it is not a great deal different to a lot of films today in its depiction of violence. However, at the time there was a great uproar in the artistic community and the public at large and opinion was very much divided. Peckinpah made violence and death an artistic statement in the film. The use of slow motion and explosive blood pouches to simulate real bullet wounds made some of the fight scenes seem balletic, horrific and intriguing all at the same time. Peckinpah had a penchant for violence and this is encapsulated in the Wild Bunch’s final battle where hundreds of Mexican army soldiers are dispatched by a Gatling gun in slow motion with blood bursting from their gunshot wounds falling helplessly backwards down steps. To much critical acclaim I might add.

It had an incredible impact on making  action movies. No longer could you make westerns where one cowboy shot a gun and another fell off his horse. The boundary had been shifted. A new aesthetic of violence had been created. It quickly spread across other genres and boundaries were pushed and crossed and the system of censorship was tested severely over the next two decades. There was also a leap forward in the use of make up and special effects to emphasise the violence at this time.

Films like “The Exorcist” (1973) tested the boundaries in the horror genre creating not only physical violence but more disturbingly psychological and supernatural violence. The special effects and make up on this film produced some stomach churning results. The Censors worked overtime with this as nothing as graphic or detailed or disturbing had been seen on the screen before. There was a lot of hype around the film before it opened and people went to the screenings t be terrified. News of some individuals having heart attacks during the film only served to widen its notoriety and its appeal in some quarters. A number of scenes were deleted before it passed the censors for theatrical release. Only in recent years with the rise of DVDs  have some of the deleted scenes been reinserted.

Two years before in 1971, Stanley Kubrick had released “A Clockwork Orange” which had told the story of a group of disaffected young men and one in particular - Alex -  and the alienating world they lived in. It had been criticised for its extreme, almost glorified, ultraviolence and graphic rape scenes. There were a number of copycat violent incidents following the release of the film which sparked off a very heated public debate over the links between film violence and its impact on impressionable people. It grew so heated that Kubrick removed the film from the public domain with no one being able to see the film for over 25 years. The debate overshadowed the themes of the film which were very relevant at the time - the alienation of young people in the early 1970s; the brutal concrete landscape and environment that people were living in; and the violent reaction of the state to rebellious youth.

I believe these films were turning points in the depiction and expansion of graphic violence in the cinema and paved the way for graphic violence in realistic and fantasy films of today.Whether that is a good thing or not I leave to you. 

I’ve just been taken back to my childhood this afternoon. “The 300 Spartans” has been shown on ITV1. A friend and I saw this at one of the cinemas in Scunthorpe (my home town) when I was 11 during a wonderful and formative time in my life.

I guess this latest TV showing is tied into the upcoming release of “300″, a retelling of the classic graphical novel by Frank Miller as a dark comic book fantasy.

I saw “The 300 Spartans” as child as part of my induction into sword and sandal epics. Just another one of a large number of epics made about events in ancient Rome or Greece made as co-productions usually with Italians taking the lead. I remember “The Wooden Horse of Troy” (later retitled “The Trojan Wars”), “Romulus and Remus”, “The Colossus of Rhodes” and a few more.

“The 300 Spartans” was in that genre but had largely Hollywood values and the cream of British acting talent taking the supporting roles at the time. It is not the best film in the world but to an impressionable 11 year old in 1964 it was exciting and captivating. The scale, the action, the excitement, the heroism, the sacrifice.

As a more cynical 54 year old the scenes that invoked my attention this time round were the politics, the oratory, the history and the arguments between the city states of Greece before unification. Ralph Richardson was wonderful as Thermistocles. It’s not quite in the league of the darkly menacing and acidic sparring between Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton in the Roman Senate in “Spartacus” but interesting nevertheless.

The action scenes were quite impressive as spectacle but a few close battlefield shots let them down ultimately. And the final rain of transparent arrows drawn on to the film that kill the remaining Spartans is a bit laughable. But it was 1963. No CGI then. At the end of the day it was a traditional Hollywood film about a worthy subject - self sacrifice to  protect freedom and democracy against tyranny. Some have seen it having Cold War overtones. Looking back there are many parallels with “El Cid” which came out two years earlier in 1961.

Now back to the here and now. I confess to not having seen the film yet but “300″ looks very promising. The trailers are sensational. Clearly this is no remake. And the stamp of “Sin City” on the look of this film is undeniable. I hope the acting and the narrative are as good as the graphics. This time style is paramount. It appears as if bronze statues have come to life. Realism and historical accuracy are put to one side as the tale becomes a fantasy. And maybe a homoerotic one at that.

What it does share in common with its predecessor is the epic qualities in the battle scenes. Nowadays, we cannot expect to see live action epics that just happen to use half of the Greek army to act as the hoardes of Persian invaders. It would be just too costly. So CGI steps in and we can manufacture virtual warriors. Scores of them at much less cost and much more manageable.

Violence as we all now know has to be shown graphically today. Audiences of most ages have come to expect it. Tons of gore and hacked off limbs. Stop motion fight sequences. Blood splashes in slow motion. But there has to be “wow” factor, something that hasn’t been seen before to single it out from the crowd. Even in the trailers you can see that “300″ has it, the “wow” factor.

I just hope there is sufficient back story, character development, and narrative nuance to satisfy us old timers. Otherwise, it may just be a Pyrrhic victory for style over content. I have cheated and looked at the IMDB feedback which at the moment is terrific. I’ll have to see for myself!

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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.

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I am not a great fan of film remakes as they rarely live up to the original but when I heard that George Romero’s cult classic “Zombies - Dawn of the Dead” (or better, Zombies at Woolworth’s) was to be remade then my ears pricked up a little.

I first tried to see the original in a cinema in Sunderland in the NE of England many years ago. I only managed to see about twenty minutes of it before my then-girlfriend decided that she could stomach no more and we had to leave. The sight of a zombie having the top of his head sliced off by a helicopter blade and the shooting of two young child zombies just about finished her off. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about (only kidding).

I eventually got to see it one video several years later. For the late 1970s this was graphic, gut churning stuff and extremely scary in a very creepy way.   The special effects make-up was great, pieces of flesh hanging off faces. Zombies blindly following the smell of live humans around. The rigor mortis-type walks. And the all-important eating of limbs with relish.

Any one could out run one of Romero’s zombies but they just kept on coming at you. Just wait till you run out of bullets.It was a case of how long could you postpone the inevitable. It created a siege mentality in the audience particularly in the scenes within the shopping mall. Could they escape? If so, which ones? Would there be a happy ending? (I don’t think we knew at the time that this was the second in a trilogy). It delivered quite a punch at the time and, although time has dulled its effect a tad, it can still shock and disgust in equal measure.

I was never one to invest much time in the notion that it was a hidden swipe at the consumer society (mindless morons going shopping?). It’s just a superb working piece of horror history.

In the intervening period the boundaries of horror have been pushed ever further outwards and our expectations have been raised. Indeed our constitutions have been lined with steel. It takes a lot to shock people any more.

So when I saw the remake I was a little trepidatious. I needn’t have been anxious though. The story was remarkably similar to the original but the realization was very, very different. It works more as a superior Hollywood action thriller with a few twists and turns and is all the better for it. Rather than creeping up on you, it slaps you in the first right from the get go.

The first twenty minutes of the film is absolutely fantastic. The threat and peril to the heroine is cranked up so highly that you are holding your breath to see if she can survive. And all set in a middle class housing area that any one can recognize. But in this case the zombies are like world class sprinters. There is a clear, present and immediate danger from these suckers. Which makes for a much faster pace of film (with much faster editing). The scenes in the shopping mall are a time to catch your breath before the final action sequences.

I think this is a case of a film and a remake being able to happily co-exist with detriment to one another. It is interesting to see the difference in the endings though. Remarkably, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead has the happier ending with the survivors managing to land their helicopter on a deserted island. The remake has no such happy ending as, over the credits, you see that their escape by boat in an effort to try and reach an island haven is short-lived.

Backlit Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) Film Cell Display

Isn’t it wonderful how the mind works? No matter what pictures are put in front of our eyes our mind tries to make sense of it. It took a Russian called Kuleshev near the turn of the 20th century to bring it to the world’s attention and had a profound effect on film art and particularly early Russian cinema.

Kuleshev found out that if you linked several unrelated shots to the same facial gesture then different interpretations of the meaning of that gesture could be reached. The mind tries to make sense of the gesture in the context of the what it sees around the gesture. Perhaps, an example will clarify. If we see a person crying but we see a coffin beforehand then our mind will surmise that the tears are expressing sadness at a person dying. However, if we see the same crying gesture juxtaposed with a shot of a mother smiling with a new born baby then the mind is likely to interpret the crying as tears of joy. I hope that explains it better. As editing is the process of putting bits of film together in a particular sequence to convey meaning, this discovery lead to development of two strands of editing - Continuity and Montage editing.

Continuity editing is by far the most prevalent form of editing and is seen as being in the Western story telling tradition. Its whole purpose is to knit together scenes seamlessly in a chronological order in order to provide a continuity of narrative. There is a grammar within this for pauses, new chapters, action etc. Most Hollywood movies use continuity editing although some have montage type sequences within the film.

Montage editing was developed in the early Russian cinema and is based on discontinuity and has affected a lot of European cinema. Art House cinema thrives on it. It is more expressive and “arty” but is still used today. In many of the early Russian films you regularly see two very different short sequences of film followed by a third which leads you in the direction of the meaning. It makes you think (it’s designed to make you think) and is difficult to appreciate at first particularly for people brought up on the Hollywood style of continuity editing. The apparent clash of images brings about new meaning to the shots that follow. In the film Strike by Eisenstein, shots of a slaughterhouse which on the face of it seem out of context are used to depict the killing of strikers by soldiers. A couple of examples. In The Godfather a series of killings in different locations  are cut with scenes of the baptism of Michael Corleone’s child towards the end of the film. There is a sharp contrast betwen the pious religious context of the baptism and the business and culture of revenge. The continuity of the church service soundtrack over all the events gives the cue that the events are happening at the same time. Another example can be seen in Apocalypse Now (right) where the execution of the renegade Colnel Kurtz is cut with the slaughter of an ox by the tribesmen who follow him. Interesting that both examples feature in films by the same director, Francis Ford Coppolla. Even in the film Gladiator the early sequences where the muddy preparations for the battle in the forest and cut with and contrasted with Maximus’ hand serenely stroking the barley in a field.

Both types of editing can exist in the same movie and produce very satisfying results for the filmgoer.

Avid Media Composer : Professional Film & Video Editing

The Technique of Film and Video Editing | Ken Dancyger

The Technique of Film and Video Editing | Ken Dancyger

The Technique of Film and Video Editing | Ken Dancyger

Fine Cuts The Art of European Film Editing Book