‘Telstar’ Tells Joe Meek Story

The film Telstar, released March 20 on DVD ($26.98) by Inception Media Group, tells the story of Joe Meek, the record producer who produced such songs as the 1962 Tornados hit “Telstar.” The instrumental song, with eerie atmospherics and distinctive melody played on the space-age-sounding clavioline keyboard, went to No. 1 in the United Kingdom and won the prestigious Ivor Novello Award, given solely on recording and composing talents.

Meek sank into depression in the following years and killed both his landlady and himself in 1967. Telstar, which Nick Moran wrote and directed, based on his own play (co-written with James Hicks), tells of those years when the tone-deaf Meek (played by Con O’Neill, who played Meek onstage as well) struggled to get the songs he heard in his head played back through session musicians such as John Leyton and the Outlaws (seen in the film recording his haunting ) while operating his recording studio above a leather-good store.

However, Meek’s scatterbrained genius came with its share of baggage. The volatile producer thought he could speak with the dead — he said Buddy Holly helped him write songs and would set up tape machines in graveyards — and he was gay at a time when that was still illegal in the United Kingdom, as seen through his tumultuous relationship with pop singer Heinz.

Moran said the genesis for the play and film came after a drunken night out with co-writer Hicks.

“Many years ago, about 1995 I think, my best mate Jim and I were staggering drunk towards a taxi on the Holloway Road with another pal, who pointed up to a plaque over 304 Holloway road above our heads,” Moran explained. “‘You know who lived there? Some mad old poof who wrote and recorded all these No. 1’s in a studio he built in his kitchen. Took loads of drugs and worshipped the devil. Shot the landlady then himself.’ My ears pricked up, obviously I thought there was a story to be told here.”

Moran said at the time he was an underemployed actor barely making a living (before he starred in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels).

“After a little research, we could see that Joe's life, as well as being macabre and bizarre, was also arched like a Greek tragedy,” Moran said. “A man who becomes a king, but the same strength that makes him great becomes what destroyed him. His determination becomes his blinkered arrogance. … All set to the backdrop of ’60s London and filled with colorful characters who were to go to be huge stars.”

Moran said the first readthrough of the play was at a pub with then-little-known actors Jude Law and Samantha Morton, alongside O’Neill and the rest of the cast. He said he couldn’t dream it would become a West End play and a feature film with an Oscar winner — the film also stars Kevin Spacey as Meek’s studio’s financier.

“Once he is on set, you forget that he’s a star and just think of him as a really good actor, which is what he is,” Moran said of Spacey. “He is a fantastic example to everyone else on set and a joy to direct. We had some fun as well. There's a very funny gag reel. Kevin is a too-rare example of someone who becomes a star because of how talented they are.”

Moran said he did extensive research into the film’s story, interviewing those who were involved and still alive, and that translated into an authentic retelling of Meek’s history.

“Telstar is quite rare because absolutely everything that happens in the film happened in real life, in the same places and in the right order,” Moran said. “It might have improved the story if we changed things, but I don't think so. One Hollywood producer I spoke with was interested in the script but wanted Joe to be heterosexual so he could attach a female star as a love interest. That's just not the film I wanted to make.”

Joe Cornish Talks 'Attack the Block' on Disc

Writer-director Joe Cornish takes the kids ‘n’ aliens sci-fi genre and gives it a decidedly modern and British twist in Attack the Block, which Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released Oct. 25 on DVD ($30.99) and Blu-ray ($35.99). The discs come with five featurettes and three commentaries. We took a minute to talk to Cornish about the film and its home video release.

IndieFile: What films influenced you in making Attack the Block?

Cornish: Attack The Block was influenced by all the great American creature features I loved when I was growing up. Movies like E.T, Critters and Gremlins. I loved the way movies like that were set in a recognisable world, but then added a dash of pure fantasy. I'd never seen a story like that set where I lived and grew up, in South London.

IndieFile: I've heard people here refer to it as like a British version of Super 8, which came out here around the same time. Do you think that's a fair comparison?

Cornish: I guess both movies are about a group of kids dealing with an outer-space visitor, and both are inspired by eighties fantasy movies, but I think that's about where the comparison ends. I'm a big fan of Super 8 and of JJ Abrams, but I think Attack The Block is a very different film.

IndieFile: How do you explain the popularity of the sorts of British TV shows and movies here in the states suddenly that you've been involved with? All of them seem to have a cult following here, from “Little Britain” to Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.

Cornish: I don't know what makes British fantasy shows so popular in the U.S. I guess maybe because they're pretty good? America produces some incredibly high quality TV comedy and drama too, but I guess sometimes British stuff can afford to be a little more out-there, unusual and inventive.

IndieFile: Why did you include three commentaries on the disc of Attack the Block, and what can we expect from those?

Cornish: Audio commentaries are a good bet because they don't take up much space on the disc, but they can give you a lot of value if you're interested. Attack The Block has one commentary track with the young cast, another with the adult cast, and a third with myself and executive producer Edgar Wright.  We've tried hard to make the commentaries more like fun podcasts than the usual boring commentary on what's happening on screen.

IndieFile: Can you tell me a little bit about the other featurettes on the disc?

Cornish: There's a great hour-long making-of on the disc, as well as a 10-minute piece about how we did the creature effects. There are profiles of all the cast members, plus a great little bonus extra where they display their freestyle skills - which are pretty impressive. I'm a big home cinema enthusiast, so it was very important to me to make this a great disc, in terms of technical quality and bonus content.

IndieFile: How did you come up with the concept for Attack the Block? On the press materials it says "Inner city vs. outter space," which I love, was that sort of thing a guiding principle in your writing?

Cornish: Attack The Block is about a gang of teenagers defending their housing project from an alien invasion, so 'inner city versus outer space' was always the premise. It's a crazy, fun-packed, scary chase movie. But it's also a looking at teenagers who've had to grow up in a tough environment, and shows how the skills they've had to build up could one day be the key to saving the world.

First Run Pitches ‘Circo’

Often documentary films made about or in Mexico focus on the immigrant experience. The desire to do something different — to make a film about everyday people struggling to make it in Mexico — is what drove Aaron Schock to make his first film, first envisioned as a documentary about corn farmers in Mexico.

But, by happenstance, he watched a traveling circus come into town while filming in Mexico. He became intrigued by the family behind the traveling circus and after hitting it off with them, ended up filming them on-and-off for 21 months.

The resulting film is the lively Circo, which First Run Features will release on DVD Sept. 20 at $27.95. The film follows the Ponce family as they take their family-owned and -operated circus around rural towns in Mexico.

“I was fortunate to find folks who were open to outsiders and having someone enter their unique world,” Schock explained. “They’re also people who are used to being seen, in some ways. They’re performers; they’re used to being on the stage and having an audience. I think for them, from the beginning, for me to go in and film them doing their show — even filming them in their daily lives, setting up and taking down the circus — seemed normal to them.”

The result is quite candid, as we see the struggles the Ponce family deals with. Tino keeps the show together, with his wife, Ivonne, and their children, who perform in the show as contortionists and tightrope walkers. But Ivonne wants her children to have a more normal life — and for the family to make their own money, instead of handing over the lion’s share to Tino’s father, who runs the show, causing marital tension.

“The themes that kind of became of interest to me [while filming] were this question of filial responsibility — what it is we owe to parents and what they owe to us — and how complicated that can be,” Schock said. “Different times, different cultures and so on have different ways of dealing with that, and I felt I was [filming during] a time in which that was changing from one generation to the next.

“I think that’s what you’re seeing in Mexico now,” he added. “People are coming to the U.S. for their kids, not for themselves.”

But the film is not necessarily political in nature, Schock said.

“It’s about how tradition can be a gift, as well as a burden,” he said. “I think more simply it’s really about a family that is just struggling to make a living in rural Mexico. If I have any real agenda with the film, other than exploring universal themes and entertaining audiences … it’s to have some sense of sympathy for how hard people really do work in that part of the world, and have some kind of sympathy for people who eventually do have to flee that to come to the U.S.”

The Circo DVD comes with three featurettes: a making-of featurette with Schock, a follow-up with Ponces and a featurette with the band Calexico, who scored the film and released a soundtrack separately on CD via their own Casa de Calexico label. And for those who fall in love with the Ponces, as Schock did, donations can be made to the family at .
 

David Lynch Slates Solo Album

David Lynch, auteur behind some of our generation’s best films (Mulholland Dr., The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet) and one awesomely weird, massively influential TV show (“Twin Peaks”) has slated his first album.

Crazy Clown Time (LOL) will be released Nov. 8 by British label Sunday Best Recordings/PIAS in America. He’s already released two tracks, the noirish “Good Day Today” and “I Know,” and his new album will feature guest spots from the likes of Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Music always has figured in greatly to Lynch’s films, and he’s no stranger to musical composition — Eraserhead had “In Heaven,” which he wrote with Peter Ivers, and Inland Empire had several songs written by Lynch. Thus far, the new songs have a tone similar to his films … so fans have a lot to look forward to.

Just for fun, I thought I’d name the top Lynch discs out there — and if you don’t have money to shell out for the “Twin Peaks” set, catch it on Netflix streaming!

Top 10 David Lynch Discs

• Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition (Paramount)
• David Lynch The Lime Green Set (with Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Wild At Heart, The Short Films of David Lynch and more) (Absurda)
• Blue Velvet (Special Edition) (MGM)
• Mulholland Dr. (Universal)
• Inland Empire (Limited Edition Two-Disc Set) (Absurda/Rhino)
• Eraserhead (Absurda/Ryko)
• Lost Highway (Universal)
• The Elephant Man (Paramount)
• Lynch: One (Absurda)
• Dune (Blu-ray) (Universal)

P.S. Write to Lynch to demand more of his films be made available on Blu-ray Disc.
 

Sony Pictures Reunites 'Boyz,' 'Boot' Casts at LA Film Fest

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is reuniting the cast and crew of the Oscar-nominated film Boyz in the Hood at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival, June 23 at at 8 p.m., to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary.

Sony Pictures releases the film as a 20th-anniversary Blu-ray July 19 at $19.95. Cuba Gooding Jr., Nia Long and filmmaker John Singleton will participate in a Q&A following a screening at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live Stadium 14.

Sony Pictures also will also screen the director’s cut of Das Boot at the fest, as the studio releases the film on Blu-ray July 5 at $34.95. The two-disc Blu-ray includes 60 additional minutes to the original film, a making-of documentary, seven vignettes touring a German U-boat, two featurettes with first assistant director Maria Petersen and a featurette about the making of the director’s cut, among other featurettes. Sony Pictures will hold the Das Boot screening June 21 at 7 p.m., with a Q&A with director Wolfgang Petersen and star Jürgen Procnow before the film.

Director Loads ‘Blue Valentine’ Discs With More Narrative

Director Derek Cianfrance filmed hours and hours of footage before whittling it down to less than two hours for the heartbreaking Blue Valentine, which comes to DVD ($29.98) and Blu-ray Disc ($39.99) May 10 from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

“The two words I hate most as a filmmaker are ‘action’ and ‘cut,’” Cianfrance explained. “Once you get in the editing room, it’s just murder, ... especially a movie like this, because there are so many moments and gifts the actors will give you.”

The movie stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, who garnered an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her role, as a couple falling in and out of love, cutting back and forth between past and present. Rather than view the proceedings in a linear fashion, viewers see moments in the couple’s history, both small and pivotal, from his serenade to her in front of a bridal shop as she tap dances, to later on, when the couple implodes during the Fourth of July.

“The past informs the present, the present informs the past and vice versa,” Cianfrance said.

Similarly, Cianfrance went back and forth to the script, which was written after making his first feature film (Brother Tied, in 1998). Cianfrance said he rewrote the script more than 60 times, at first having been inspired by other films more and then by his own life, as he struggled financially and made TV documentary films and shorts to make ends meet. It shows in the end result, as the film feels lived in and more like a true-life romance story, rather than an idealized one.

“I was thankful that I had to wait,” he said. “I felt like I was cursed for all those 12 years, but now I feel that I was blessed that I had to wait ... to be able to tell the story the way I wanted to.”

Cianfrance said there were several moments he filmed between the actors that didn’t make it into the film that he was able to include on the home video releases, both in deleted scenes and in a “home movie” featurette in which Gosling and Williams (who served as executive producers on the film and are rumored to be dating) were filmed basically living in a house for about a month together.

“The way I shot the film wasn’t in a traditional way where you’re just shooting what’s in the script,” he said. “It was like they were really falling in love.”

In one deleted scene, viewers see the couple’s first kiss — which didn’t make it into the film, but was used as the image on the film’s poster art.

“You see what led to that,” Cianfrance said. “Right when they start to kiss in that moment, the camera rolled out. It’s just amazing to me to go back to watch what got to that moment. It wasn't anything where I was like, ‘you, Ryan, sit here, and you and Michelle make out.’ It became that after about 15 minutes of an experience.”

“I always think there’s a whole life to a film outside of a movie,” he added. “This just gives people more insight into things that happen outside of the movie.”

One thing the discs won’t have is an alternate cut to the film, which was originally given an ‘NC-17’ rating by the MPAA but later changed on appeal to an ‘R.’ The discs also include a commentary with Cianfrance and co-editor Jim Helton.

 

‘Undertow’ Director Creates Sweeping Ghost Story

Javier Fuentes-León didn’t know how his first film as writer and director, Undertow (Contracorriente), would play to a Spanish audience when it opened. He didn’t expect the standing ovation he got — nor did he expect to win an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, or to be submitted as Peru’s official best foreign language Oscar submission.

Wolfe Video releases the film June 1 on DVD ($29.95) and Blu-ray Disc ($29.95). Special features include deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a Spanish-language PSA for GLAAD with Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”).

“It was amazing to get that close [to an Oscar nomination] with my first film,” Fuentes-León said. “It's been a beautiful trip.” 

Javier Fuentes-León

Fuentes-León’s journey into filmmaking began in Peru, where he was born, raised and studied medicine for eight years. He knew he always wanted to do something related to the arts, but that wasn’t something that seemed like an option in Peru.

So he moved to Los Angeles and attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he created the seedling for Undertow in the form of a short called “Mariela’s Kitchen,” based on a play he wrote, in which a fisherman walks into his home to find his wife and his lover, only his lover is a ghost and cannot be seen by his wife. In the play and short, the lover was a female prostitute; it was only later, when Fuentes-León himself came out as gay, that he changed the gender of the lover to male.

In Undertow, the same scene appears and serves as the lynchpin for the story — fisherman Miguel (Cristian Mercado) has been carrying on with painter Santiago (Manolo Cardona) in a small Peruvian fishing town in which Miguel is married to beautiful Mariela (Tatiana Astengo) and is a leader in his community, while Santiago is shunned for being openly gay. Mariela wakes up from a nap to find Miguel pallid as Santiago tells him he has been pulled under the sea by the undertow and has died, leaving him a ghost that only Miguel can see.

“My aim was first of all to make a personal movie,” he said. “It's not my autobiography, In my life there's nothing similar to the main characters, but I also had to struggle with the same dilemmas of coming out and the fear of losing the love of people around you.”

The film then follows as Miguel deals with the rumors that surround him and Santiago, with Mariela’s pregnancy and the birth of their son, and with his own sexual orientation and what it means to be a man. It’s a stunning film, both emotionally and visually, with wide, spectral shots of the Peruvian seaside and the sand blowing in the wind.

“Of course, I wanted a gay audience to be proud of it, to embrace it,” he said. “But at the same time, I didn't want it to just stay there. I wanted it to be seen by people like my parents and their friends, to have them enjoy the story, be moved by it and hopefully in the process of watching the movie, humanize this dilemma, people who have a sexual orientation that is different than the one most people have.”

Besides crossing over to a wider audience globally, Fuentes-León hoped it would play well in Latin America.

“Except for in cities like São Paulo and Buenos Aires, you don't go to other cities and see an open gay community — there's not a gay niche like there is in the U.S. or Europe,” he said. “A lot of gay people in Latin America are not out — they're afraid to be seen in a movie theater that evidently has a movie with a gay relationship.”

He said that while he finds the comparison “lazy and limiting,” he doesn’t mind if people call his film a Latin American Brokeback Mountain, in that it’s a love story between two men that live in a rural area.

“There's a function that all gay love stories are the same, so if a film told it already than another film is just the same,” he said. “But how many ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl’ stories do we see? But at least they are not comparing me to a terrible film.”

The Undertow discs include 24 minutes of deleted scenes with additional explanation and foreshadowing that Fuentes-León cut for pacing, including one scene that deals more in depth with the religious undertones of the film.

“When we wrote it and shot it, it seemed like an important scene, but when we edited it, it seemed like it stopped the story for the writer to talk about religion,” he said. “It worked as a scene but it seemed like it stopped the story.”

Fuentes-León said one man in a Colombian focus group summed up his film best: “I think it is a movie about being faithful to yourself. No matter how big the obstacles may be, being faithful to yourself is worth it.”

 

Terry Gilliam Talks 'Imaginarium,' 3D

Genre: Fantasy
Studio: Sony Pictures
Street date: 4/27
Prebook date: 3/25
Price/Format: $28.95 DVD, $34.95 Blu-ray
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Reserve for purchase (DVD or Blu-ray)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a delirious dream ride, with Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys) at the helm. Gilliam spoke with me and other journalists about, among other things, where he comes up with his ideas ("little elves," he says), how he brings them to life without a mammoth budget and what he thinks about 3D.

“I don’t think technology changes or saves anything,” Gilliam said. “3D is interesting, but you’re going to need more money to make a film. And if you need more money to make your film, you’re going to be limiting what you can say and do because that’s just the way it works. The more money, the more you’re constricted in what you say. You’re not out there to disturb people when you’re playing with $200 million dollars, you’re there to reassure them, stroke them, ‘ahhh, come back to my world, it’s going to be like you’ve seen before.’”

Take that, Avatar!

Read the whole story here.

 

 

DiCaprio, Gorbachev and Others Support ‘Crude’ Director

Some big names have come out against Chevron’s totally crappy effort to have the filmmakers of Crude, a documentary depicting the environmental damage done in Ecuador and the lawsuit between its indigenous people and Chevron, turn over more than 600 hours of footage to Chevron via subpoena.

The Cinema for Peace Foundation (CFPF) and some of its notable participants have come out in support of filmmaker Joe Berlinger and his attempt to overturn the court order to turn over the footage. Those participants include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev; actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Sarandon, Natassja Kinski and Bill Nighy; and filmmakers Woody Allen, Ken Burns and Michael Moore, among others.

In a press release, the CFPF call the subpoena “an attack on documentary filmmaking and investigative journalism, First Amendment rights,” and a threat to “the ability of journalists and filmmakers to guarantee confidentiality of their sources.”

Crude depicts how about 30,000 indigenous people of Ecuador are seeking $27 billion in damages and reparation from Chevron for contamination. The film received the International Green Film Award this year, presented to Berlinger by DiCaprio and Gorbachev.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan May 6 approved a subpoena requiring the filmmakers to present their raw footage and turn it over to Chevron. Berlinger appealed that decision, and June 8 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Berlinger will receive a full appellate hearing July 14.

Cinema for Peace has existed for nine years, asking members of the international film community to highlight films that promote peace and tolerance.

Crude is on DVD from First Run Features. Read Angelique Flores’ review and interview with Berlinger

Moverman’s ‘Messenger’ Hits Home

Oren Moverman doesn’t aim to convince viewers of one particular thing with his film The Messenger (on DVD/Blu-ray May 18 from Oscilloscope Laboratories), which tells the story of two soldiers who notify next of kin that their family member has died in battle.

“I think that people come into the film with certain kinds of biases and maybe walk out with certain biases enhanced and others changed,” Moverman says of the film, which he says has seen support both from left-wing anti-war activists and the U.S. Army itself, which approved the film and allowed a colonel to be a technical advisor on the film, helping gain access to military bases and learning the language of the military.

“It didn’t interfere with the creative process,” Moverman said. “It really kind of saved the day a lot of times.”

The $29.99 DVD and $34.99 Blu-ray Disc contain a short film called “Notification,” a companion piece to the film directed by late filmmaker Joe Kelly, in which real Casualty Notification service members are interviewed.

“When I saw [“Notification”], knowing that it was going to be on the DVD, I almost thought, as emotional as The Messenger is, there’s something about seeing the real people and listening to them … that is, in a way, more emotional than the film itself,” Moverman said.

The DVD and Blu-ray also will include a commentary with Moverman, stars Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson, and producer Lawrence Inglee; behind-the-scenes footage; and a Q&A with the cast and crew. What the releases will not contain are deleted scenes.

“I do have to say the film is the cut that I wanted and the cut we all felt strongest of,” Moverman said of the half an hour or so of scenes that were cut from the film for aesthetic reasons and for time. (The film, as it stands, is nearly two hours.)

Moverman says he has not yet seen The Messenger on Blu-ray but that extensive, subtle sound-work was done on the film that could be greatly enhanced by high-definition.

“The thing that’s exciting to me about [the DVD and Blu-ray release] is there’s a whole new audience exposed to the film, and it if it’s on Blu-ray, this kind of technology is giving them a more enhanced experience,” Moverman said.

Indeed, The Messenger made just more than $1 million at the U.S. box office, but with Oscar nominations both for Moverman (best original screenplay) and Harrelson (best supporting actor), the filmmaker said the film has gotten much more attention that it would have normally. He hopes with the film’s DVD/Blu-ray release, more people will see the film and draw their own conclusions about the film’s message.

“I think what [the film] does is present [its subject] as objectively as possible,” Moverman says. “What that does is open debate.”

“I think a big thing in The Messenger is this question we kept asking ourselves, ‘how do you get through life, knowing there’s grief and hardships, how do you go on living?’ The answer is through the simplest thing — love, friendship, humor and finding things in other people that make their lives better.”