Category Archives: Genres

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Events, offers and releases 25/11/13

A movie still from the new film 'Free Birds'.
A movie still from the new film 'Free Birds' featuring two animated turkeys running.

Image via IGN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Cinemas – Friday 29th November

Saving Mr Banks – For over 20 years Walt Disney sought the rights to the now much beloved Mary Poppins, and for over 20 years author P. L. Travers refused. Starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson, Saving Mr Banks explores that difficult relationship between these two big characters and their journey from book, to music, to script and eventually to the big screen. For any die hard Disney fan this film will not fail to disappoint and shed some light on the method behind the magic.

Free Birds – Two turkeys from opposite sides of the tracks must put aside their differences and team up to travel back in time to change the course of history – and get turkey off the holiday menu for good. With voice talents from Owen Wilson, Amy Poehler and Woody Harrleson. Now with the nights drawing in, this is the perfect film to entertain the kids on those cold winter nights.

Carrie – If you’re looking for something a bit different, or enjoy the occasional thrill check out this new release. Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass) stars as the title character in this re imagining of the classic horror tale. A shy girl outcast by her peers and sheltered by her deeply religious mother, who unleashes telekinetic terror on her small town after being pushed too far at her senior prom. Co-starring Julianne Moore.

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Places to visit: Pride and Prejudice

An old english country house in the sunshine.
An old english country house in the sunshine.

Groombridge Place or Longbourn. (Image via www.flickr.com/photos/turboff)

The 2005 adaptation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a period classic. The picture was filmed at a handful of stately homes, historic towns and rural locations. Here are five worth visiting.

Let’s begin with the home of the Bennet family, Longbourn manor, also known as Groombridge Place. In Austen’s novel, and the 1995 film, the real Longbourn was imagined in Hertfordshire. It is thought that the fictional home of the Bennets might lie in the small village of Redbourn(1) (there is even a resemblance in the name). However the 350 year old moated manor house, Groombridge Place, actually resides in the village of Groombridge four miles west of Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Groombridge Place is now a beautiful tourist attraction home to several stunning gardens, an ‘enchanted’ forest and a bird of prey centre. The house is even available for private hire and offers wedding receptions in the oak panelled Baronial Hall. Adult tickets are £8.95/9.95

Next, Basildon Park, the Georgian mansion that plays the part of Netherfield. Netherfield is the house that Mr Bingly rents near Longbourn and we first see it when Elizabeth visits her sister Jane.

The grand house was rescued from ruin by Lord and Lady Iliffe in the mid 1950’s and today the mansion is decorated with salvaged 18th century fixtures and fittings alongside fifties themed rooms like the 1950’s kitchen which is a still used today. If you visit in the Christmas period you might be lucky enough to sample a homemade mince pie from one of the volunteers.

Basildon Park is situated in Berkshire, seven miles north of Reading. For non-National Trust members, an adult ticket is £10.90.

Moving a little further north we have Burghley house, otherwise known as Rosings Park the home to Lady Catherine De Bourgh. In the Novel Rosings is described as an impressive mansion in which the glazing alone is worth over five hundred pounds. Burghley house certainly does not disappoint.

The Elizabethan house was built in the mid-16th century by William Cecil, and has well over one hundred rooms. The entrance to the house takes you through to the old Brewhouse which has been renovated into a modern visitor center. You can find Burghley House 20 miles from Peterborough, near Stamford where some scenes were also filmed. An adult ticket is £12.70

Two small yet significant locations worth noting are Stourhead Garden and Stanage Edge. Stourhead is a huge 2,650 acre estate with an impressive house built in the early 1700’s. But it is also home to one of the film’s most romantic locations – the Temple of Apollo – where Darcy first proposes while sheltering from the stormy rain. Without a National Trust membership, admission to the garden only is £7.70.

Stanage Edge is a spectacular place; it is four miles long and stands at 458m tall – the highest point of the gritstone crags. It is the peak which Elizabeth stands pensively staring into the distance on her visit to the Peak District. You can find the crag to the west of Sheffield City close to Hathersage. In the summer months buses run to Stanage Edge on Sundays.

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Secrets of the horror film – a Q&A with Peter Jukes

Man screaming being attacked by an alien

The art of the horror film is a complex one, to say the least. What is it that really gets viewers terrified?

Personally, I am a great fan of horror fiction. I just can’t get enough; from the literary genius of Stephen King to the directing prowess of John Carpenter. But as much as I love a good scary flick, I just find books of the same genre so much scarier.

At Inside Film we strive to give you the very best in behind-the-scenes knowledge on everything film. I sat down with horror aficionado and author Peter Jukes to chat about what makes fear in both of these mediums, and how the great horror novel compares to and influences the film counterpart.

Peter Jukes stood in a car park

Image via: unbound.com

Josh: Hi Peter, good to speak with you. I’m going to give you a few statements, let me know what your opinions are on them.

Peter: Sure.

Josh: Modern forms of horror adhere more to the anxieties of modern life than the more classic ‘monster horror’.

Peter: There was a time, from the mid 70s to the 90s, when modern forms of horror did address the anxieties of modern life. Whether it was a viral selfish replicator ‘thing’ in the Antarctic Ice, or zombies in the local shopping mall, or reincarnation and telepathy in a remote mountain hotel, the classic movies of the independent era spoke to our understanding of a godless universe, or the hollowness of consumerism and the unpredictability of human motivation. Now, however, I think the genres have become exploitative, nostalgic, and lack innovation. Another remake of Cabin in the Woods addresses our previous knowledge of cinema, not real life. Apart from DC and Marvel comic books, Zombies and Vampires dominate Hollywood in its infantile regression to stereotypes. But at least Zombies and Vampires have some real inner life compared with Iron Man and Superman.

Josh: Horror novels convey a greater feeling of fear by pulling readers in far more than a film can. They are more immersive, and the reader can really become more invested into the story, and therefore the horror.

Peter: There’s little doubt that the best horror is invisible, and composed in the mind’s eye. Val Lewton, master of the 40s Cat People and early Voodou movies, understood that it is what you expect, the psychology of what Freud described as the ‘uncanny’ is much more powerful than any overt graphic content. Lewton‘s movies are full of threat. The realisation of violence is always much less scary than the possibility of it. Hitchcock exploited the ‘fear of fear itself’ in movies such as Vertigo and Psycho. The violence was never seen, but implied in the montage of shots, the blood flowing down the shower sinkhole (in black and white). One of the best monsters ever created in the last fifty years, Ridley Scott‘s alien was never seen whole, only in implied fragments. The power of obscenity lies in it being off-scene. As soon as horror is filmed, exposed, and visible, it loses its power, and often becomes laughable.

Josh: Thanks for that.

Peter: No problem.

Josh: Just a few more questions. In the news media today, topics that have far more of a shock factor than 50 years ago. It is my own opinion that horror films therefore have to increase their own shock factors and fear in order to become scarier than what people see everyday. Does this apply to horror novels?

Peter: The media has certainly become more graphic in its depiction of war, famine and catastrophe. Dead bodies are shown more often, and there’s an imperative to show the reality of violence as a moral corrective to complacency. But by any standards this increasingly graphic depiction of violence in the media has been accompanied by a rapid fall in violence in our everyday lives, from street robberies to armed conflict abroad. We live, as Stephen Pinker has shown in his book The Better Angels of our Nature, in a time of unprecedented peace and personal safety. As a result, compared to the gratuitous violence of the 70s and 80s, I notice that most movies now explore the psychological and personal consequences of violence, much more than the physical effects. The TV Batman of my youth was always punching and killing people. The Batman Begins trilogy by Christopher Nolan explored personal trauma, and our attitudes to combating violence. Horror novels deal with the same debate. They explore the psychology of victimhood or sadism – not just the physical impact of torture or abuse. In short, violence has become a metaphor for a loss of trust, or (sometimes) the sexual complicity in subordination and domination. In essence, it’s moved on to a complex debate about the parameters of personal desire and responsibility.

Josh: With the shock and gore tactics of a lot of modern ‘torture porn’ films that are so popular now, there are an abundance of horror experiences that are quicker, more convenient and some would say easier to access and digest. As a huge reader and fan of horror novels, I would say there is nothing better than getting into a good book. What is your opinion on this?

Peter: As I’ve written in the New Statesman on a Short History of Violence (some 20 years ago) the ability to conjure up technical effects of shock and horror is a classic virtuouso performance from every artist from Sophocles and Virgil to Caravaggio and Shakespeare. But what we are in danger of losing in our technical appreciations of the spectacle of fear is the inner dimension of tragedy. A horror story causes us to disengage from the hero or heroine at the moment of personal exposure. Tragedy does the reverse. Rather than shaking us out of the fiction with shock and horror, tragedy causes us to both be inside and outside the fiction with the cathartic emotions of pity and terror: pity at the hero’s predicament and lack and self insight: terror at the impending doom we can see will ensue. Tragedy makes us enter the hero subjectively but see his or her fate objectively. Horror does the reverse: we become objective about the pathology of their flesh, and subjective about their fate.

Josh: Thank you Peter, that was all fantastic and really insightful.

Peter: No worries Josh, great talking with you.

So, do the great horror novels have an influence on the best scary films? Give us a comment below, or chat to us on our Twitter page.

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Back to the Present

The poster image for the 1989 Back to the Future film
The poster image for the 1989 Back to the Future film

Image via www.hardzine.com

Predictions Back to the Future II got right, and wrong

According to Robert Zemeckis’ 1989 sequel “Back to the Future II”, Marty Mcfly should be arriving in the present in just over a year. Zemeckis has been adamant since its release that the sequel was not meant to be an accurate depiction of the future. “For me, filming the future scenes of the movie were the least enjoyable of making the whole trilogy because I don’t really like films that try and predict the future.”

However, albeit accidentally, Zemeckis’ portrayal of Hill Valley in the 21st century throws up more similarities that anyone could have predicted.

One of the most popular gimmicks in film over recent years has been the explosion of 3D technology in our cinemas and homes. It seems every Hollywood blockbuster released over the last four to five years has been accompanied with a more expensive, 3D version.  Although 3D films have existed in some form since 1915, the recent growth in popularity, driven by the unprecedented success of Avatar in 2009, was a major aspect of Zemeckis’ portrayal of the future. A 3D advertisement for “Jaws 19” in Back to the Future II, in which a virtual shark attempts to eat Michael J. Fox, is one prediction Zemeckis got right.

That is just the beginning. Have you ever heard of the iPad or the electronic tablet? Nobody had in 1989, but it didn’t stop Zemeckis including handheld technological devices that have become the driving force of global communication in the 21st century. Zemeckis even managed to preview the way we use our technology to communicate, with references to video conferencing. Today, apps such as Skype are an integral part of our society, but in 1989 it was a different story. The mobile phone was still at a very basic stage, and the webcam would not been invented until 1991, by Cambridge University students to monitor coffee levels from their desks.

Back to the Future even included: devices similar to Google Glass; digitally received television; voice control; easily accessible, digital recording equipment; and handless video games.

Zemeckis later explained that rather than trying to make a scientifically sound prediction that we were probably going to get wrong anyway, we figured, let’s just make it funny.” Not a bad effort from somebody who essentially allowed his imagination to run wild.

He didn’t get it all right though. We do have hover boards, but they cannot be used in anyway yet and we’re all still waiting for flying cars, a concept that is still lurking around the drawing board.
The 2015 version of Hill Valley still also commonly use the “Laserdisc” which has long since become obsolete. Zemeckis also missed the idea of instant messaging or email, using the fax machine as the preferred form of communication, despite video conferencing technologies also at their disposal.

But as we draw closer to 2015, there is still time for more of Zemeckis’ ideas of the future to come true, except the double tie. The double tie will never be acceptable.