Review: ‘Down Terrace’
You have to admire filmmakers who scrape together the money to produce a feature film with a unique point of view. The films go largely unnoticed, play on the festival circuit and if lucky, land a cable or home video deal, widening the exposure. As a result, some interesting gems surface but it’s always hit or miss.
That phrase also applies to Ben Wheatley’s [[[Down Terrace]]], a film shot over eight days in 2009 and recently released on DVD by Magnolia Home Entertainment. Wheatley is a Brit who cut his teeth on second unit, advertising and webisodes, all of which was a good training ground. When he finally managed his first feature, he received good notices, even winning the Next Wave prize at Fantastic Fest in Austin and Best UK Feature at London’s Raindance.
This is a claustrophobic crime drama that has been described as a low budget version of [[[The Sopranos]]] but this is smaller, darker, and grimmer. Starring Wheatley’s frequent collaborators, Robert and Robin Hill as a father and son, they are small-time criminals who just were acquitted of a crime. Both want revenge against the rat who sold them out and that forms the story’s spine, but it’s a thin spine since we’re distracted by other familial complications.
This is a working class crime family drama told in chapters named after the days of the week. The dialogue is sparse and feels largely improvised as bickering betrays character while the film’s low budget leads to consistent audio issues. You’d think it would have worked better considering the majority of this mostly engaging film is set in the cramped Brighton house. The characters come and go, and largely feel real while at the same time also feel not fully thought out.
William and Karl, father and son, seek the snitch while mom Maggie (Julia Deakin) seems to while away the day, smoking and staring. She’s the least interesting one in the mix but also the one who might have the most interesting things to say. Instead, she’s mute while William rages and summons Pringle (Michael Smiley) to take out the suspected squealer. Once the violence begins, it gets pretty relentless, and beyond the realism the rest of the film nicely captures. More true to the sorry state of their lives is Karl’s partner, Valda (Kerry Peacock), who turns up, announcing she’s pregnant, adding to the tension.
Overall, there’s more to like than not in this production and its entertainment is not in the violence but in the emotions these misfits wear on their sleeves. Wheatley is someone to watch as he grows in confidence as a director.
The movie looks fine on DVD and it comes sans extras.
If a television series lasts long enough, it will eventually get around to taking their turn at retelling Charles Dickens’ [[[A Christmas Carol]]] and after fifty years, it was finally the Doctor’s turn. For its annual Christmas special, Doctor Who offered up a strong hour’s entertainment despite the overly familiar premise. Unlike most other versions, this time the Doctor freely admits his inspiration and has great fun with it.
How far would you go for a sibling? A lot of drama has been produced of late showing organ transplants and similar sacrifices but while major events, are relatively short-term activities. Imaging spending eighteen years working to help a brother in jail. [[[Conviction]]], a movie starring Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell as the siblings, takes an amazing true story and turns it into a compelling drama.
Movies and television shows have been created after something has caught the public’s imaginations be it a Twitter feed, a commercial, or a persona. Perhaps the best of the lot, though, is [[[Machete]]], inspired by a fake movie trailer. The film, now out on DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, came about when director Robert Rodríguez fashioned a B-film trailer as part of [[[Grindhouse]]], the homage to trashy films of the past, made with Quentin Tarantino. Machete, with Danny Trejo in the lead, captured imaginations so Rodriguez and his brother Alvaro wrote a film to do the trailer justice.
When a show deviates too far from the source material, its fate is in the hands of the writing staff who can take the raw elements and run with them or spin their wheels and grind the freshness out of the subject matter. Much as [[[Smallville]]] ran out of steam six seasons back, its spiritual successor, the BBC’s [[[Merlin]]], quickly lost its way in the first season. The second season, out on DVD now from BBC Video, takes great legendary figures and turns them into maudlin soap characters. When the first season came to America, NBC tried it out and the low ratings relegated season two to SyFy where the mediocre can rule.
The original [[[Wall Street]]] was a reflection of the times, showing how enticing working in the financial sector can be and how the huge sums of money involved can blind people to depths they will sink to chase it. It was a story about seduction and about family. That it came out when the markets were in the headlines gave it additional strength coupled with Michael Dogulas’ winning performance as Gordon Gecko. His “Greed is Good” was the most overused catchphrase in America until “Show me the Money.”
The final chapter in The Good Neighbors trilogy brings to a close the story of Rue Silver, a somewhat typical young adult fantasy heroine. She discovers that she is actually a human/faerie hybrid destined to be heir to the faerie throne. Of course, the faerie in general don’t like the humans and there’s a movement at foot that endangers Rue’s friends and neighbors. She’s trapped between opposing forces that have been moving ever closer to a final conflict.
Its always a challenge when reading the second part of anything without knowledge of the first. Its also a good test of the creators to see if they’ve done their job of informing readers, new and old, of their characters and world. In the case of the French graphic novel [[[Miss pas touche 2: Du sang sur les mains]]], the creators failed.
Walt Disney saw possibilities where others did not. He turned Mickey Mouse into an American icon and launched a bustling animation business, but wasn’t satisfied with his amusing shorts. Instead, he wanted more and defied the critics who thought a full-length animated feature would hurt viewers’ eyes and test their patience.[[[Snow White]]] proved them wrong. Emboldened, Disney spent the 1930s experimenting with animation in ways none of his peers tried. He adapted classics and he gave us indelible characters and song. He even tried for Art with a capital ‘A’.
People have been adapting works of art since time immemorial adjusting the details for the era and culture. There appear to be countless versions of what happens when a sorcerer leaves his apprentice alone to complete his chores. This led to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1797 ballad, which was adapted into a symphonic poem by Paul Dukas in 1890. In the 1940s Walt Disney used both as an inspiration for the most beloved sequence in [[[Fantasia]]], as Mickey Mouse plays the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. These days, with everything from the Disney vaults ripe for reinterpretation, it was inevitable that someone would turn this enchanting sequence into an over-the-top spectacle.
