As you can see from the first part of this I am a fan of the old style epics which are usually historical stories with universal themes involving large scale conflict, and where no expense is spared, either on the costumes, settings or numbers of extras to fill the  . However, apart from Gladiator and possibly Troy in the recent past, there are fewer of these types of epic that are made any more. Braveheart (and possibly Dances With Wolves and my favourite, Last of The Mohicans) might also slip into the bottom half of the category.

That is not to say that epic films are not made but they now tend to inhabit different genres. The definition of epic has changed slightly because you can now see Science Fiction epics, Western epics, War epics etc. They are not confined to historical subjects or reality for that matter but they still rely on big stories with universal themes and more CGI effects than any normal film can handle.

Just think of the impact of Star Wars at the time of its release.The first major science fiction epic. You might argue with me that 2001 - A Space Odyssey was really the first space epic but I contend that it paved the way for Star Wars. Nothing had really been seen like this before. The special effects were eye-popping, the scale of the sets huge and the galactic gallivanting and action sequences better than the most advanced computer game at the time.

Like all true epics you need to see it on a wide screen to appreciate its epic qualities. Each episode got bigger and more CGI laden (not always for the better) and pushed the envelope in terms of CGI and what the audience could take in visually. The story of a band of renegades taking on an evil empire is a classic story dressed up in science fiction garb. Like all good stories it follows the Hero’s Journey structure described by Christopher Vogler. Weird and wonderful (and most importantly, memorable) characters also litter the Star Wars films and the energy and superb sound and editing make it an assault on the senses and a roller-coaster ride of action.

No less impressive is The Matrix trilogy although the epic concept, story and visualisation tend to rely more and more on CGI as the mind boggling narrative loses steam and coherence in the third episode. Not to say that the final battle against the machines isn’t exciting and adrenalin-pumping, no siree.

But the real daddy of them all has to be The Lord of The Rings trilogy. This fantasy adventure that brings the well loved Tolkien story to the silver screen has to be the biggest labour of love and the greatest triumph in recent years. Peter Jackson and the cast quite simply have created a series of believable and engrossing characters that interact with each other an imaginary world that soon become an alternative reality throughout the playing time of the films. The films are fantastic but adult in their visualisation. This is not child’s play. And here we have an example of where the CGI definitely enhances the story telling and is not there just to show off. The journey of the Hobbits through the weird and wonderful landscapes imagined by Tolkien provides a strong backbone of narrative against which the colourful characters and sub plots are introduced. Large scale epic story, action and visuals connected to individual emotion and drama in a seamless presentation to the viewer. Not a weak link in the trilogy and something to truly marvel at.

What is interesting is that the true spirit of the epic is still alive …. and living in China. For the past few years, if you want to see a cast of thousands then you need look no further than some of the historical Chinese films such as Hero and The Curse of the Golden Flower. The rich sensual qualities of the fabrics and colours and the large scale settings coupled with balletic action and fighting sequences clearly put these films into the epic category. They carry on the oriental epic tradition elegantly promoted by Kurosawa in Kagemusha and Ran. Choreography and organisation rather than CGI are the order of the day but the final product is no less stirring and spectacular.

It will be interesting to see if the forthcoming Mongol, the story of Genghis Khan, furthers the epic tradition.

No, I’m not talking about his drunken rants against Jews but the dark side of his more recent films. Has any one noticed that you have to have a fairly strong stomach to watch the films directed by Mel Gibson? Of course you have. You have to wade through a lot of gore.

It obviously started with Braveheart which is Hollywood through and through. But the violence was quite strong for its time of release. The graphic slitting of throats was a hark back to Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. And I feel sure that the final hanging, drawing and quartering scenes might have been even more graphic had it not been for trepidations about censorship. We hadn’t seen anything like this before in such detail and it gave us a feeling of revulsion. But he got away with it and precedents were set. One could argue that the scenes were justified in terms of the film narrative. Wallace had to have a strong motivation to hate the English. What better than to show us (not him, by the way, in the film) the graphic death of his wife at the hands of an English Lord. And the final execution scenes were pure Hollywood to show his lasting legacy to Scotland in the form of continuing rebellion.

Next, The Passion of the Christ, gave us Gibson’s account of the final days of Christ up to an including his crucifixion. He stated that the film was about “faith, hope, love and forgiveness”. I am sorry but the abiding memory I will have of the film is of brutality, graphic scenes of violence and revulsion again. His messages were lost in a sea of gore. The film was unbalanced by the long scenes of torture and violence of the flesh. You could almost put the film into the new Gorno category. There seems to be a delight in the violence.

I have not seen Apocalypto yet but I understand from people who have seen it and from reviews that it is no exception to the Gibson “buckets of gore” mantra. It is stunningly beautiful to look at (the cinematography looks exquisite) and perhaps it is a more fitting historical vehicle for him to explore the darker side of human nature and society’s evils. Human sacrifice in the Mayan civilisation is a central issue here in the narrative and as such gives him licence to explore the issue in detail.

Nevertheless, Gibson makes us (un)willing accomplices or voyeurs in these films. You cannot take your eyes off the screen. Is it real violence? Of course not. But how do they achieve that effect? Is it heightened realism? Over the top for the sake of dramatic effect. Probably. Is it meant to offend and cause revulsion? Again probably. Debate and controversy in the media before opening night always guarantees a decent box office with people wanting to make up their own minds. Does it cater to our baser instincts? Has he tapped into an older human consciousness that is in everyone but is rarely awakened? Don’t know is my answer at the moment. Now I am no prude when it comes to watching violence on screen but Mel Gibson’s violence makes me feel revulsion, titillation and guilt in equal measure. The titillation is that I cannot take my eyes off the screen and the guilt is that I cannot defend not taking my eyes off the screen.

His films are never less than interesting but if his films reflect his thoughts, feelings and predispositions then Mel Gibson has already gone to the dark side.

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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. 

Well, I took my son to see 300 at the local Empire multiplex on Wednesday to see for myself what all the hype was about. I have to admit that it was far better than I had imagined. As long as you watch it  as a fantasy rendition of a true life event, then you see a stunning piece of cinematography and special effects.

At the centre of the film are two strong performances by Gerard Butler (Leonidas) and Lena Headey as his queen. My prayers for some back story and a bit of political intrigue in the plot were answered although it was never going to score highly in these. Why? Because its focus is the battle itself. The scenes in Sparta are merely pauses for you to get your breath back after what are incredible and adrenalin-laced set pieces.

The film revels in war and mayhem. The action scenes are balletic in their choreography and the sense of overwhelming force is always in the background of the shots.  There is even a bit of grim humour as Leonidas, eating an apple, and his captain carry on an everyday conversation whilst wounded Persians are being speared to death around them after the battle. No prisoners. They are Spartans.

The final scenes where Leonidas and his men are slaughtered by arrows is realized in spectacular fashion although surprisingly you don’t feel the emotional pull of, say, “Gladiator”. The sense of a doomed enterprise is overridden by the battle lust. The only hint of vulnerability is when the captain’s son is killed in front of this eyes and he goes mad for a while.

The enemy, Xerxes the god king of Persia, is portrayed as an exotic, exaggerated, charming devil who uses persuasion and seduction to get what he wants. If all else fails he falls back on barbaric cruelty. He looks and feels like a monster, almost other-worldly. I guess this was done to contrast starkly against the heroic and human Leonidas.

All in all, 300 is a roller coaster of an action movie with a look and feel that we have never really seen before in epic movies. Well done Zack Snyder again. A pretty staggering follow up to “Dawn of the Dead”. Even my son loved it.

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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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 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.

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