Matt's Blog

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 08 August 2013

Red Obsession is a terrific Australian-made documentary that looks at China's sudden fixation with French red wine and how, with soaring prices, wine has almost become too expensive to drink!  You can read my full review here.  I recently caught up with one of the film’s directors, Warwick Ross, to find out more…

Matt:  We don’t see too many Australian-made documentaries on the big screen in this country.  How easy was it getting a cinematic release?

Warwick:  It’s always a struggle for a documentary for a documentary to get up on the big screen.  The advantage that we might have had is that with the story we’re telling has global implications – it’s about the rise of China but through the prism of Bordeaux wines.

We decided early on that we’d shoot this with the best possible gear and so it has a “big screen look” to it including helicopter shots over Bordeaux and the same through China.  But yeah, it was the subject matter that got us the release in cinemas.

Matt:  I’m not a wine drinker myself but I find the subject matter very intriguing.  When did you decide this was something worthy of a feature documentary?

Warwick:  It was a couple of years ago.  I was on a plane to London and I bumped into a chap named Andrew Caillard who is a Master of Wine which is about the highest level you can get in terms of wine education.  He was telling me about these events that were taking place in France’s Bordeaux region where the wines had increased in value by 1000% in just a few years.

I thought this was extraordinary because it was coming out of the global financial crisis where stocks had crashed, real estate had crashed and yet, these wines had gone up by this incredible amount.  It turned out that it was the Chinese who were pushing these prices.  We delved into it a little bit more and realised this was a story about the economic powers shift from the West to the East and that was fascinating enough for us to dive in and do the film.

Matt:  We don’t see this too often but there are two directors on this film – yourself and David Roach.  How did that relationship work?  Did you split up the responsibilities or are you working together hand-in-hand?

Warwick:  It’s a little bit of both actually.  David and I go back to the film Young Einstein which we did together many, many years ago.  We’ve made 3 or 4 films since then.  We tend to work hand-in-glove.  It’s a relationship where if I’m not available on set because I’m setting up the next interview then David will be on set and vice-versa.  It helped lessen the load on each of us for a film that was pretty big – we were in Bordeaux 5 times and then in China 5 times including trips right out to the borders with Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.

Matt:  The film covers a breadth of material – the history of Bordeaux, the cultural revolution in China, soaring wine prices, the significance of brand name recognition, the role of critics – and yet it clocks in at under 80 minutes.  Was there consideration to making a longer film?

Warwick:  We actually shot something like 100 hours of material and we interviewed 89 people from the UK, France, the United States, China and Australia.  When you tell a story like this, you look for the narrative.  You have a pretty good idea where you want to go with it but the events that unfold as you’re filming really dictate the final story.  We ended up with a lot of people who didn’t make the cut but I would love to use them in some sort of extended 3 or 4 part TV version.

Matt:  Were there people you wanted to speak with but couldn’t get the chance to?

Warwick:  It happened like that in the beginning.  We had some difficulty getting through to a number of the top directors and owners of the chateaus in Bordeaux and also the incredibly wealthy Chinese wine collectors.

In Bordeaux, it was because they were a little “gun shy” as there’d been a couple of other documentaries that had not presented Bordeaux in the right kind of light and while documentaries always try to tell the truth, they felt some in the past had actually distorted things.  Andrew being so well connected in Bordeaux ultimately managed to persuade people that we were making something worthwhile.

In China, it was more about relationships.  The more people we got to know in the wine industry, the great access we had to those in the top echelon of wine collectors.

Matt:  You’ve got a couple of celebrities with Michael Parkinson and Francis Ford Coppola that talk about their love of wine.  Were they easy to get?

Warwick:  Michael Parkinson, yes.  He’s a great wine lover and we had a pretty good connection through to him.  He was delighted to speak with us and we actually spoke to him from his pub.  It’s called The Royal Oak and it’s about 80kms out of London.  He was very relaxed and we spent about 2-3 hours with him there chatting and filming and drinking.

Francis Ford Coppola was a different matter.  He was in Hong Kong and we happened to be there at the same time for a wine convention.  He’s a wine maker himself and we’d knocked on his door a few times and found it difficult to get a hold of him.  Ultimately, with enough perseverance, we finally got through and had a terrific interview with him.

Matt:  You could have narrated this yourself but instead you’ve gone with the star power of Academy Award winner Russell Crowe.  What’s the reason behind getting someone like Russell on board?

Warwick:  For me, it’s always a creative decision.  Russell’s voice is superb and we all remember Gladiator.  In the back of my mind when I was doing this film, the voice that kept coming to me was that of Maximus.  I always had Russell on the top of the list and luckily, he was a very good friend of a friend of mine.

Then it was a question of showing him a little bit of the footage from the film which he loved.  It also helped that he’s a big wine buff himself.  Russell agreed to do it immediately but the problem was he was finishing up being Superman’s father on Man Of Steel and he was being Noah for Noah’s Arc and he was also finishing off Les Miserables.

He had an incredibly hectic schedule and the only time he could do this for us between 2am and 4am in New York because Hurricane Sandy had come through and forced the filming on Noah to shut down for a day or two.  It gave him a little bit of time for him to be able to do this for us.

Matt:  So he did it all inside of two hours?

Warwick:  Yep, two hours.  That’s the kind of professional he is.  He did the voiceover via a link that we’d set up between Melbourne and New York, he uploaded the files and then we downloaded them in Melbourne so that the film could be completed.

Matt:  The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and then I heard it got a great response from Robert DeNiro at the Tribeca Film Festival.  Did you actually get to talk to Robert De Niro?

Warwick:  We did get to meet him but there wasn’t a lot of time for talking.  There were probably 300 people in the room that were all trying to schmooze with Robert DeNiro.  We were really pleased that he nominated Red Obsession as one of his two favourite films of the Tribeca Film Festival and we’re heading back to the States soon for its limited release on September 6 in New York City.  I think he’ll be attending that screening as well which is fantastic.

Matt:  It’s great to see the film getting a release overseas.  Have you had a chance to show the film to vineyard owners in Bordeaux or to the influential wine connoisseurs in China?

Warwick:  Yes, we did, particularly in Bordeaux.  My heart was in my mouth because we’re not entirely complimentary about Bordeaux and the people that run the chateaus. The film follows an almost Shakespearean like arc of greed and hubris that they certainly had at the beginning of 2010 when they were pushing their prices into the stratosphere.  The feeling was that the road to China was paved with gold and so they could set the price at whatever they wanted and the Chinese would pay.  That ultimately backfired on them and we show that in the film.

When we screened the film, we were kind of toey but after the screening, we had a small party and there was a stream of the Bordeaux chateau owners coming up and saying “well look, we thought the film was absolutely beautiful and although we didn’t like everything you said about it, it was the absolute truth.”  I felt good that at least they acknowledged that.

Matt:  There’s an interesting epilogue that brings us up to speed about the bursting of the wine bubble in 2011 and 2012.  Did you have any idea that would happen so quickly when you started making the film?

Warwick:  No, not at all.  We were very lucky.  When you set out making a documentary, you have a rough idea where you want to go but you’re never sure how the events are going to unfold during the period of filming which for us, was about 14 months.

It was 8 or 9 months into filming when all of a sudden, everything backfired on the Bordeaux vineyards.  The prices in China crashed by the largest amount since the global financial crisis.  The Chinese were simply turning their backs on these wines. 

One of the main reasons this happened was the level of fakery in China.  As we all know, the likes of Nike and Louis Vuitton are faked in large quantities in China.  The same thing is now happening with the wines.  The most famous chateau is called Chateau Lafite Rothschild and when the crash in prices happened, we were told that at that stage, 9 out of 10 bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild in China were fake.  That figure was as high as 99 out of 100 according to some anecdotal evidence.  That also helped the spiral of prices downwards.

Bottles of wine are often given as gifts.  After all the fakes flooded the market, that brand really wasn’t trusted any more in China and so if you handed a bottle of Lafite to someone, you were basically saying there’s a 99% chance that this is a dud. 

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 26 July 2013

Edgar Wright knows how to make a great comedy and I’ll site Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World as examples.  While he was recently in Australia, I had a chat with Edgar about his new film, The World’s End. You can download the full audio by clicking here.

Matt:  The first time I heard the names Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost was back in 2004 with Shaun Of The Dead.  It was very well received by critics and has developed a cult-like status since.  Did you always think that film was going to be the one that helped break you all into the industry?

Edgar:  We had no perceptions of how it would turn out.  We were actually just feeling lucky and fortunate to be able to make a film.  There was no grand plan with that movie beyond hoping that people liked it.

Matt:  Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and now The World’s End – I’ve heard you’ve dubbed these three films ‘the Cornetto Trilogy’.  Where exactly does that reference come from?

Edgar:  It’s a very silly linking device and in fact, it wasn’t intended to be trilogy initially.  In Shaun Of The Dead, Nick Frost’s character asks for a Cornetto first thing on a Sunday morning as a hangover cure.  We brought it back as a running gag in Hot Fuzz and then a journalist asked us if this was going to be a trilogy based on different flavours of Cornettos and we said yes, it’s going to be like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy.  It was a joke that stuck.

Weirdly, once we’d done Hot Fuzz, we felt there was a way to make this a “thematic” trilogy.  We never wanted to do sequels to the other movies but we did want to continue the tone.  The three films are linked by similar themes and the idea of sharing contemporary Britain under siege from dark forces.  There are other recurring themes like the individual versus the collective and the idea of perpetual adolescence.

Matt:  Now you clearly have a great working relationship with Simon Pegg who co-wrote all three of these films alongside you.  Take us through the writing process.  Are you sitting in an office?  Are you sharing a few beers?  How do you come up with the ideas for these films?

Edgar:  We definitely don’t get drunk whilst writing.  If I did that, I’d have to have a mid-afternoon nap.  It’s usually powered by coffee and water.  We actually sit opposite each other and treat it like a proper office job working 9am to 6pm.  We hammer out the story and then start working on the script.  With this movie, we shared a lot of memories from our own youth which were incorporated into the story. 

Matt:  And while your films often cover a few genres, most come with a pretty strong dose of comedy.  Did you have favourite films or TV shows growing up that helped shape the sense of humour that you have today?

Edgar:  Oh yeah.  I used to love Woody Allen films and still do.  There’s also Monty Python and The Young Ones.

Matt:  I find comedies such a divisive genre because everyone does have a different sense of humour.  How do you know what you’ve got here is funny?  Are you bouncing jokes off friends?  Are you doing a lot of improvisation on the set?

Edgar:  We don’t really improvise during the movie because the films we make are plot heavy.  We write the script, we rehearse it with the actors and then we come up with a shooting script.  In terms of the comedy, we try to write what we think is funny.  It’s about making each other laugh really.

Matt:  You had the world premiere for the film recently in London.  I’m guessing you received a pretty good reaction but what’s it like sitting in the audience with a packed cinema for the first time?  Do you find people laughing at moments you didn’t expect and vice-versa?

Edgar:  Usually you’ve seen it a couple of times with people before the premiere.  At the London premiere, we were watching it on a very big screen with a really big crowd.  I remember thinking to myself “that got the best laugh it’s ever got”.  It’s really nice watching it with a big audience.

Matt:  This film does come with a darker layer in the sense that our protagonist, played by Simon Pegg, is battling an alcohol problem.  What made you do with that more serious sub-plot as opposed to just making a straight-out zany, crazy comedy?

Edgar:  We want to make comedies that stick with people and hopefully that’s one of the reasons why Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz have stuck with people because there are things to think about afterwards.  It’s taken us 6 years to make this one and if we’d have made something that was light and fluffy, it’d hardly be worth bothering.

While there’s a lot of action, mayhem, craziness and funny gags in The World’s End, it’s the connections with the characters that you’ll remember.  The response to the film so far is that it’s made people think about their youth and their old friends.  I think that stuff is important.

Matt:  I’ve been to Great Britain a few times and one thing I love are the names of all the pubs.  In this film you’ve got The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Two Headed Dog.  I have to ask – where did you come up with these names?

Edgar:  They’re all real pub names!  We wrote the story and we fitted the pub names to the scenes.  All the pub names are like tarot cards – they all tell you something that is going to happen in the next scene.  Some of them are obvious but some of them are more subtle.  But they’re all real names – even The Famous Cock.

Matt:  There’s another film out in Australian cinemas at the moment called This Is The End – directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.  I’ve found it amusing that these two films are out at the same time with very similar titles.  Were you aware of that film while it was being made?

Edgar:  Yeah.  Simon and Seth have the same agent so absolutely, we were.  We also knew their film was about a biblical rapture/apocalypse.  As ours is more of a sci-fi invasion film, we knew it was a very different movie.  Also, our actors aren’t playing themselves so that’s different too. (laughs)  I’ve now seen This Is The End and it’s quite funny that ours couldn’t be more British and theirs couldn’t be more American.

Matt:  So where to from here?  Now that you’ve wrapped up this trilogy, will you keep collaborating with Simon Pegg on similar projects or do you want to branch off onto something a lot different?

Edgar:  I don’t know and we haven’t really talked about it yet.  We only finished this film about 3 weeks ago.  We’d like to work together again but what that is, we’re not sure yet.  As we’ve wrapped up most of the themes in this movie, if we do something in future, it could be wildly different.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 23 July 2013

I’ve officially made it as a film critic – I’ve been plagiarised!

A few days ago, I heard about a US critic known as Lianne Spiderbaby who had been busted for plagiarising film reviews on the FEARnet website.  You can read more here.  Adding an extra layer of layer of surprise is the fact she’s the girlfriend of acclaimed writer-director Quentin Tarantino.

The scandal was first reported by Mike White (see here) and in its aftermath, Lianne MacDougall (her real name) offered a quick apology and then deleted her Twitter account.  The reviews have now been removed from the FEARnet site.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I realised that one of my own reviews had been plagiarised!  A fellow blogger provided me with the details.

It’s not something I’m going to lose any sleep over.  She’s been busted and that’s the end of it.  I guess I should wear it as a badge of honour – that one of my reviews was actually good enough to be plagiarised. :) 

The film itself was Life Of Pi (one of my favourite of the year) and here’s a look at how similar the reviews were…


My review – “Pi transports us back to 1970s India where his younger self is living with his family in Pondicherry, India.  His father is a zookeeper and the inquisitive Pi has spent a large chunk of his life surrounded by an assortment of animals from around the globe.  Due to the increasing political unrest within India, the family has decided to sell the animals and move to a more stable life in North America.”

Her review – “Pi transports us back to 1970s India where his younger self is living with his family in Pondicherry, India.  His father is a zookeeper and the inquisitive Pi has spent a large chunk of his life surrounded by an assortment of animals from around the globe.  Due to the increasing political unrest within India, the family has decided to sell the animals and move to a more stable life in North America.”


My review – “Sadly, the freighter ship on which they are travelling encounters a freak storm and sinks in the middle of the night.  It all happens in a flash.  After slipping off the deck and being knocked unconscious, Pi wakes up on a lifeboat drifting aimlessly across the ocean.”

Her review – “Sadly, the freighter ship on which they are travelling encounters a freak storm and sinks in the middle of the night.  It all happens in a flash and Pi wakes up on a lifeboat drifting aimlessly across the ocean.


My review – “He’s the only person on board… but Pi quickly realises that he’s not alone.  Hidden beneath the lifeboat’s tarpaulin are a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. ”

Her review – “He’s the only person on board… but Pi is not alone.  Hidden beneath the lifeboat’s tarpaulin are a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. ”


My review – “Suffice to say that this isn’t a situation that can remain stable for very long.”

Her review – “Suffice to say that this isn’t a situation that can remain stable for very long.”


My review – “We know that Pi survives, evidenced by the fact that he is still alive to tell the story, but how did he pull it off?  What does one do when stuck on a tiny boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean with next-to-no food while in the company of a Bengal tiger?”

Her review – “We know that Pi survives, evidenced by the fact that he is still alive to tell the story, but how did he pull it off?  What does one do when stuck on a tiny boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean with next-to-no food while in the company of a tiger?”


My review – “Things become less and less plausible with each passing scene and it will certainly put audiences to the test.”

Her review – “Things become less and less plausible with each passing scene and you will be put to the test”


Her full review is no longer accessible (since it has been pulled from the website) but you can check out a screen grab below and compare with my full review here.

So what’s the lesson out of this?  Don't plagiarise my reviews.  For starters, there are writers much better than me out there!  Also, someone will eventually bust you and when this does happen, I’ll get an inflated sense of self-esteem.  Best not to do it in the future.


 

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 16 July 2013

>
Would you pay $50 to see a movie?  That could be a reality as cinemas look at new ways of attracting filmgoers.  A friend linked me to this article a few weeks ago that talks about how Paramount tried to lure the public to advance screenings of World War Z with the heftier price tag.

The reality is that until now, cinema has beaten off much of the competition and continued to grow.  We had the arrival of television followed by the huge rise (and subsequent decline) of VHS and DVD.  Despite all of these new mediums, the international box-office has continued to increase and the public have been prepared to part with their dollars to see a movie in a darkened cinema.

However, with the simplicity with which movies can now be downloaded, has cinema finally met its match?  I’ve made reference to the fact before that the number of cinematic releases is on the decline in Brisbane.  Back in 2006, a total of 238 movies could be seen in our cinemas.  Last year, that number had fallen to 183.

The funny thing is that it’s easier than ever to show movies in a theatre because it’s all done digitally.  You don’t have to worry about joining film reels and paying projectionists.  Yet, we are seeing most cinemas in Brisbane scale back the number of different movies they are screening.  The main reason is obvious – money.

Boutique cinemas (e.g. Palace, Dendy) used to screen a lot more of the smaller stuff – American indies, foreign language flicks, Australian films.  They would pop up at film festivals around the globe, small distributors would buy the rights and then they’d try to find a window to release them a few months down the track in Australia.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t work anymore.  Because these movies are so easily available online (legally and illegally), people aren’t prepared to wait.  They’ll just watch it in the comfort of their own homes.  By the time the film does reach Australian cinemas, many will have already seen it and hence the box-office is down.  It’s therefore no surprise that the likes of Palace and Dendy now screen a lot more of the bigger product (e.g. Man Of Steel, Pacific Rim, The Heat) because these films have a simultaneous release date around the world (so it’s not available online) and they know it will put bums of seats.

The cinema industry has tried to reinvigorate itself with the likes of 3D but one must ask how long this fad will last.  I know many people who prefer to see the 2D version of films and avoid the extra $3 surcharge.  Cinemas are also now screenings ballets, operas and plays from around the globe.  We’re also seeing an ever-growing number of film festivals that come complete with big opening/closing night parties and events.  These are all designed to give the public an experience they can’t get at home.

In response to the $50 mega ticket idea, both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have weighed in with their own thoughts (see the full article here) and they’re not impressed.  They believe the film industry is set to implode.  If you keep pushing prices up, more and more people are going to stay home.  I put the question out to some friends on my Facebook page and got similar responses.  The other worrying aspect is that only big blockbusters are going to be guaranteed a release.  Smaller stuff may no longer have a place in cinemas and instead, people will access it online.  Perhaps I’m old fashioned but I don’t think it offers the same experience as watching a movie in a packed theatre.

As to how it will all play out… I can only respond by saying to watch this space.  I don’t have a crystal ball but I have a strong hunch that the industry will change significantly over the next 10 years.