One of the first things we learned about shooting movies was the importance of keeping things fluid. Being able to adapt to situations and react to unexpected surprises are key factors in successful production. If it snows, shovel. If the camera can’t pick up anything in the parking garage, move the scene. If you lose all your audio because it was too windy, rebuild it in the studio. If a key player doesn’t show up because he was too hung over, recast him.
If you weekend plan to shoot a short falls through, know that you will get to it soon.
Also, if you plan to watch Sin Nombre and don’t quite get around to it, don’t stress too much because at least you might have watched an unofficial Australian double-header in The Road and Daybreakers instead. Speaking of which, I watched The Road and Daybreakers last night.
We started with The Road and I’m glad because it was an extremely visceral and engulfing movie, one filled with equal parts dread and hopelessness that would have stayed with me long into the night if I hadn’t scrubbed some of it away before gong to bed. The film was extremely impressive; the story of The Man and The Boy (the evermore dependable Viggo Mortensen and relative newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee) and the lengths they must go to in order to find food, shelter, water, and warmth (not to mention hope and catharsis) as they struggle to reach The Shore through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. While beautifully filmed in a drab pallet of browns and greys, it is a difficult movie to watch, building a steady sense of defeat as the characters wander through an existing that rarely surpasses futility, but one that is almost reaffirming in the end. Garrett Dillahunt turns in a solid performance early on and a nearly unrecognizable Robert Duvall and Guy Perce show up later as well.
On a small side note, Guy Pearce has always impressed me as an actor, but his choice to play a small role in this (probably through his existing relationship with director John Hillcoat, who also directed Pearce’s much more substantial role in the equally visceral The Proposition) and an equally brief part in The Hurt Locker really shows that he is more interested in good stories and roles than good publicity and pay cheques.
Daybreakers is a whole different experience. Written, directed, produced, and special effected by Australia’s Spierig Brothers, it is a fairly unique turn on the classic vampire story featuring decent performances by Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill. With some solid action pieces, decent, if somewhat campy performances, and a unique do-it-yourself approach, the film tells the story about a society in the not-too-distant future where vampires have moved to the top of the food chain and humans have become an endangered species. Naturally this presents some problems and the Spierig’s spin an entertaining yarn that is just different enough from its predecessors to feel fresh. Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen their previous feature Undead, the self-funded zombie/alien invasion hybrid that first put the Spierigs on the map.
So I learned this weekend that shooting a film and watching a film require similar levels of fluidity and improvisation. I also learned that The Road and Daybreakers are both worth your time for very different reasons, as are The Proposition (written by Nick Cave) and Undead.
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