STANLEY KUBRICK VISIONARY FILMMAKER BLURAY BOXSET

When he died in 1999, Stanley Kubrick left behind thirteen feature films. Only twelve are available on DVD, his first, the self-funded war film Fear and Desire was pulled from distribution by Kubrick, who was embarrassed by his low-budget fledging effort. Far from being a prolific filmmaker, he deliberately and methodically poured every aspect of his creative vision into each film, building an oeuvre that has changed modern filmmaking and the way we watch films. Stunningly presented on blu-ray, this box set consists of only half of Kubrick’s films, although they are mainly his most well known (the absence of Spartacus and the masterwork Dr. Strangelove are duly noted).

Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut are included plus there’s a bonus disc featuring O Lucky Malcolm! a documentary on Malcolm McDowell’s career as well as the brilliant and exhaustive Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, which is a doco worth purchasing on its own. Sadly Barry Lyndon and Lolita (both new to blu-ray) are devoid of extras, no doubt the impending 50th Anniversary of Lolita will mean yet another blu-ray release, with extras. Despite this small criticism, this is an essential clutch of Kubrick’s greatest hits, an opportunity to view these films in the best possible format. Lolita looks as great as it ever has, as does the exquisitely photographed Barry Lyndon but it’s 2001:A Space Odyssey’s amazing HD transfer that is without doubt one of the best examples of just how great blu-ray can look. Other than Barry Lyndon and Lolita, all other discs come with substantial extras (The Shining features a cracking doco shot by Kubrick’s daughter Vivian during filming), actor and biographer commentaries as well as retrospective documentaries. It’s a pity Jon Ronson’s intriguing doco Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes didn’t make it into the mix but this collection still ranks as one of the best available in terms of value for cash and those all-important geek-tastic extras.

JARROD WALKER

ASIF KAPADIA INTERVIEW

After making a handful of documentaries, in 2001 British filmmaker Asif Kapadia set out to make his first feature, The Warrior, shooting in Rajasthan and the Himalayas. With a small crew and a cast of mainly non-actors, Kapadia crafted a stunningly epic debut that was part Sergio Leone western, part spiritual quest. He followed it up recently with something of a companion piece, the equally epic Far North, which starred Sean Bean and was arduously filmed against the landscape of the Arctic Circle. His latest film Senna takes him back to his documentary roots, telling the story of Ayrton Senna, widely regarded as the greatest Formula One driver.

In past films, Kapadia has employed a highly cinematic style, using long takes with very little dialogue, most notably for The Warrior and Far North. Given the overt spirituality and existential brooding inherent in his style, it seems an odd fit to make the leap to a Formula One documentary but Kapadia says he was moved to accept the job because of the kind of man Ayrton Senna was: “Some people want to see the pure racing driver and his story works on that level, you’ve got the rivalry, the corruption and then you’ve got what he meant to Brazil – you could make a movie just about what he meant to Brazil. They were just coming out of a dictatorship and were in such a bad way…but Senna would be the one to make them feel proud. All these levels are why you can make a movie about him, he wasn’t just a great sportsman, he transcended the sport in so many ways”.

A enigmatic individual; Senna was headstrong and impulsive yet calculating and methodical, a devout Christian deeply involved in charitable causes, who spoke of the near spiritual ecstasy he’d experience while racing, once risked his life stopping his car mid-race and crossing the track to check on an crashed colleague yet would think nothing of risking his life and that of a fellow driver, in order to win a race. For Kapadia, Senna’s spiritual journey mirrors the themes he’s explored elsewhere in his films: “Senna has got a lot in common with The Warrior…for me there are so many similarities character-wise; in terms of a person who is an outsider, a good guy in a bad world, going on a journey, in The Warrior, it was the western genre, dealing with feudal India. Here, you’ve got a guy in the very contemporary, ultra-technological Formula One world but there are themes that I felt were very similar running through the two films…his spirituality was absolutely something that made me interested (in doing it).” Departing from the usual structure for a feature documentary, there are no ‘talking head’ interviews in the film, Kapadia tells the story only through archival footage using Senna’s own voice, mixed with voiceover narration from family and colleagues: “My feature films tend to have very little dialogue so the idea of making a typical documentary with talking heads is something I can’t do…we had so much footage, Senna lived his life on camera and tragically died on camera. Quite early on, I had an instinct that if you cut away from the real footage, the drama gets broken…what I wanted to show was the footage of the time, when the rivals hated one another because the conflict was real.” After some lengthy negotiations, Kapadia and his producers were allowed access to Formula One’s archives: “We were the first outsiders to ever go into the archive, no one gets in there, we were able to go back to every race and recut it from the dailies. I’m pretty sure we were some of the first people to go in there and actually look at the footage from that weekend (when Senna died). It was really Bernie Ecclestone who owns the archives, without him there’s no movie”. This wealth of archival material was key to the development of the film’s structure and style, there was an astonishing amount of footage to sift through: “we had a seven hour cut at one point… but we were budgeted for a 90 minute film so we had to cut it, we managed to get it to 100 minutes. There was 40 minutes of archives in the budget and the rest of the film was going to be talking heads but I just cut a film made entirely of archive, so for two years we struggled because we were way over budget but the proof was in the pudding, we convinced everyone involved that this was the way to make the film so we had to go back to Bernie Ecclestone and re-negotiate the archival footage…by the time we were cutting Senna’s crash, I could cut to aerial shots, on board cameras, wide shots, whatever I wanted – as a filmmaker, that technology is another layer of the narrative: were it not for Senna’s stardom, we couldn’t have made a film like this.”

JARROD WALKER

TT3D: CLOSER TO THE EDGE

Directed By Richard De Aragues
Stars: Guy Martin, John McGuinness, Ian Hutchinson

The affable Guy Martin is a champion road racer (and recently a television presenter), ready with a smart-arse remark or blunt opinion, he’s very much his own man, refusing to be boxed or labelled but is tagged as a ‘maverick’ regardless. This film follows Guy (as well as his two rival riders, Ian Hutchinson and John McGuinness) as they train and prepare for the Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy), a competition that’s developed over more than a 100 years due the remote Isle’s once informal speed limit enforcement on its roads. Nowadays it’s a fully recognised racing competition for highly experienced riders only and for which the roads are closed but it’s bloomed into a festival that grips the whole of The Isle of Man with racing fever; a yearly test of fortitude and skill as bikes are hammered around the island at speeds in excess of 200 mph. Riders die every year, as the picturesque rural roads with their tight bends, rock walls and tiny roundabouts become deadly obstacle courses for these speed-addicted madmen. There are some catastrophic accidents depicted in the film, one rider’s bereaved wife talks of her acceptance that the risk of being killed was something that made her life with her husband that much more exhilarating. It’s moving stuff and it’s exemplary of the kind of devil-may-care attitude that the nerve-wracked wives contend with throughout the weeklong competition. The risk is high and you’ll be shaking your head in disbelief at the craziness of it all. Despite the apparent insanity of such high risk versus little reward (the prize money isn’t substantial, the race is run largely for the prestige of winning it) there’s something profoundly life-affirming and breathlessly uplifting about watching these obsessives in their chosen sport, risking their lives in pursuit of their passion. Absolutely top-notch stuff.

JARROD WALKER

X

Directed by Jon Hewitt
Written by Jon Hewitt & Belinda McClory
Stars: Viva Bianca, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Stephen Phillips

Holly Rowe (Viva Bianca) is a successful call-girl, she plans to get out of the game for good and start a new life in Paris. The night before she’s due to depart for Europe, she decides to take one more job, a threesome at a Sydney Hotel but needs another girl. She approaches young and inexperienced hooker Shay (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence) and offers her a wad of cash to come along for the trick. Shay agrees and the pair soon wind up hiding in a luxury hotel bathroom as a deal goes south and their client is gunned-down by the psychopathic Bennett (Stephen Phillips) who spends the rest of the night tracking the pair in order to tie up any loose ends. From the opening scene, where Holly has luridly protracted sex with a male prostitute in front of a group of wealthy champagne-sipping menopausal housewives, the film seems to declare itself to be unreserved exploitation. No problem there then but writer/director Jon Hewitt places these characters within a believable and recognisable landscape, Sydney’s Kings Cross. The camera feels Shay’s humiliation as she’s initiated into prostitution but then leers on naked flesh like the camera operator is only using one hand. Viva Bianca’s Holly is believable but the performance is stilted and underwritten, Mangan-Lawrence is convincing but she’s chopped off at the knees by dodgy scripting. The character of Bennett is so full-throttle misogynistic and sadistically cartoony, he belongs in a different film. It’s hard to see Hewitt’s motivations in telling this story in the first place as there are elements of a cautionary tale, erotic thriller and exploitation but it doesn’t really commit on either front. It fails to draw the audience in and simply revels in the grotesque carnality of it all, leaving the characters to flop about pointlessly, ciphers pulling us through a sea of sleaze.

JARROD WALKER