[393] The Social Network (Score) - Trent Reznor + Atticus Ross

So my review of The Social Network for Den of Geek inevitably spun out of control, developing into more of an essayistic musing on the film’s subtextual content, especially as a film for ‘our times’, documenting ‘The Facebook Generation’, and the common adoption of digital lives. Maybe I’ve been losing my mind, but between that and the Let Me In piece (which is a long exploration of adaptation, style and genre), I’m earning my stripes as the oddball Geek reviewer.

In the process, I sacrificed most parts of the review. My notes ran for pages, and my rants at other people - generally inspired by the simple question ‘Was it any good?’ - often drifted into cosmic ravings. Shamanistic prattle. Exultation and pumped-up nonsense. I trimmed that stuff back, mostly, leaving some stuff unformed. I said nothing about the film’s score, for example.

Wow, the score. It’s by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, by the way. One guy you probably know - he’s the man who mashed up meticulous industrial metal production and Depeche Mode pop songwriting for the 90s alternative crowd. The other is his close collaborator, who formed a crucial studio-based cornerstone of the (currently) final phase of Nine Inch Nails’ now-dormant career, and has followed Reznor’s lead in his creative projects since.

Even though I’m a fan, I was surprised. Director David Fincher created the video for Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Only’ single back in 2005, but that was a streamlined bid for MTV airplay - featuring an insistent groove, a shout-along chorus, and clean CGI-aided Pin Art from Digital Domain. It didn’t hint at the textured explorations Reznor and co. would pursue as they drifted back into the musical periphery. Furthermore, it seemed odd.

This is a film about Facebook after all, a saga set in the recent past, and they were choosing to be relatively light on the radio hits and other tunes, and instead to rely heavily on what turns out to be a moving mixture of organic tones and electronic sounds. The links with the EP project Ghosts - which Reznor released back in 2008 in a highly profitable, and innovative, online distribution strategy - are immediately apparent. It is overcast ambience, tender at times, but brittle, brooding and mournful at others. Check out score opener ‘Hand Covers Bruise’.





It recalls Eno, in his dark ambient, On Land guise, and there’s a hint of Vangelis in there, as the score mirrors those composers’ ability to suggest emotional current within their cavernous productions - human blips within musical negative space. These sonic landscapes are punctured by harsh synths, drum machines and distorted noise, adding tension and twisted trauma. In a stroke of genius, the score actually gives the film a moody counterpoint to Sorkin’s zingy dialogue, providing a beat, yet highlighting the darkness to his character drama. Take the second cut, ‘In Motion’, which accompanies an early sequence where Zuckerberg, recently dumped by his girlfriend, swigs beer, bitches on his Livejournal, and hacks the assorted Harvard dorms' ‘facebook’ services, in order to create the Facemash site - where users rate mugshots of female students against each other.





The film cuts back and forth between Zuckerberg’s twisted, unwitting creativity (the popularity and compelling nature of the site both anticipates and spurs on the invention of Facebook), and a sleazy depiction of a drunken sex romp held in another fraternity. The track, a minimal subversion of four-on-the-floor club electronica, builds with swirling sequencers and abrasive dissonance - conjuring up technomages, cyberpunks and hyper-cool computer virtuosos. But instead, it’s just a wounded, pathetic young man, indulging in mild misogyny and dreaming of recognition. As Reznor and Ross lay down this bed of unsettling underscore, it allows Sorkin’s writing to really fly, with Fincher’s sumptuous, nuanced, but relatively neutral direction to bridge the two. It gives the film a superb breadth of tone and feeling.

But when Fincher let’s go, so do the composers. In one stand-out sequence - which, for all narrative-thematic intents and purposes, is effectively digressive - the tilt-shift photographed gaze swoops down over a miniature reproduction of rolling English landscape, depicting the Henley Royal Regatta. Zuckerberg’s twin nemeses, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, future Olympian rowers, are both participating. What ensues is a breathless, pacy sequence that captures the strength required and tension inspired by the sport. It’s a beautiful scene. And the score? Oh, just a little rearrangement of Edvard Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, recorded in the style of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach album. It is, quite frankly, brilliant: regal, operatic, and powerful - yet utterly playful, and over before you know it.





It’s an astounding work, overall. I’m glad to see Reznor achieve a potential he’s exhibited since he recorded ‘Something I Can Never Have’ back in 1989 (which itself was reappropriated on the soundtrack for Natural Born Killers, which he supervised). While he has always been pigeon-holed (not entirely incorrectly) as a raging angst-monger, it is in his intricately textured production that his more impressive talents lie. Across all his albums, there have been the down moments, the instrumental passages that hinted at compositional ambitions outside of leftfield pop. And after his provisional score for Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo was rejected (and eventually recorded in part on the Still live album), you could have been led to worry that he’d only ever craft such pieces for his own daydreams and concept albums. Thankfully, he’s been given a shot here, and the result is a work of sublime richness.

You can download a 5 track sampler of the Social Network score for free, and purchase the full album in a variety of formats, over at nullco.com.

[392] WAW+P Radio #4: Twee Dancing With Tom Humberstone

One week later than expected, but here's the latest episode of We Are Words + Pictures Radio, hosted by London Fields Radio, and recorded in Wilton's Way Cafe - which was drenched in Sunday afternoon warmth as I chatted with Solipsistic Pop editor Tom Humberstone. This was also my first time manning the decks. However, against all odds, we averted sunstroke and crammed in plenty of comics discussion and moody music.

Check out the show at London Fields Radio here. Or download it at this link.

Again, I feel like the show is developing and progressing with each episode. The last one, with Philippa Rice, was punchy and fun. This one is a little more discussion-based, and is a bit longer and beard-strokingly thought-provoking. In my write-up over at the WAW+P blog I put the following:

Keywords for this show, as scrawled into an A5 writing pad, include: Animation, America, TCAF, David Mamet, Three Act Structure, The Narrative of Sports Fandom, Ellipsis, Wong Kar-Wai, Mogwai, Post-Rock’s Similarities To Comics.

We cover a lot. We even talk about James Sturm's Market Day and Jason's Werewolves of Montpellier. And Tom chose a nice selection of tunes. So much that I had to cut back on my own, which I'm fully prepared to do if the guest just has to throw in a 6 minute Arab Strap song.

Here's the playlist:

1. James Murphy – Dear You
2. Arab Strap – Hey! Fever
3. Sufjan Stevens – The 50 States Song
4. Allo Darlin’ – Silver Dollars
5. Jeffrey Lewis – Anxiety Attack
6. Mogwai – Friend Of The Night
7. Those Dancing Days – Spaceherosuites
8. Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London

As always, any feedback would be appreciated. And, if you like it, tell your friends!

[391] 25 films to see at the London Film Festival

I have been quiet recently. Why? Well, mainly because the London Film Festival press previews have started, and this year I'm fully accredited. Exciting, yes, but every day for the last week and a half has been spent in the BFI Southbank, catching up on various movies. Some are brilliant, and I'll be writing about them a bit further down the line, once the festival starts.

In the meantime, I wrote up this big preview for Den of Geek, highlighting 25 films from the programme that are worth checking out. Since writing this, a handful of new and impressive films have been added to the bill, including Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, and the new Michael Winterbottom feature The Trip. Consider those as late additions.

For film buffs residing in or around the UK's capital, the back end of October means one thing: the London Film Festival. As always, this year boasts a supreme selection of big films from the world over, even if 2010's line-up is a bit lacking in international premieres.

Anyway, chances are you haven't had a recent holiday to Toronto or the French Riviera, so we've combed through the consistently astounding programme to bring up 25 films that, if you can get your hands on tickets (no mean feat), you should check out.


Read the full article here.

[390] Made In Dagenham (2010) Review

Made In Dagenham is the sort of mollified, feel-good movie that makes me despair about the British film industry. Maybe I was a little harsh on it, but sometimes you need to face political hedging with something more determined.

The British film industry really does like charming, nostalgic period pieces, doesn't it? In the last year we've had The Boat That Rocked, Cemetery Junction and An Education, all which, to a certain extent, package up comedy and drama with a knowing representation of the 1960s and 1970s, an era where, if you believe the hype, everything changed. Made In Dagenham, the latest from Calendar Girls director Nigel Cole, is no different.

Here's the hook. It's 1968, and the female machinists at the Dagenham Ford motor car plant aren't happy. A recent pay restructure has classed them as unskilled, guaranteeing them wages well below the rates of their male colleagues. This is clearly unsuitable. So they strike.

Initially uncertain, the women are led by young worker Rita O'Grady (Sally Hawkins), whose resilience in the face of resistance from the employers, fellow workers, and even husbands, help them to eventually make their mark on British culture, and pave the way for the Equal Pay Act two years later.

There's a hint of a fairy tale in how Made In Dagenham condenses history, compositing characters and situations, and wrapping it up in a pleasant package. It uses iconography and nostalgia to paint with broad strokes, while squirreling away any real ambiguity, conflict or complications behind picturesque cinematography and charming performances.


Read the full article here.

[389] Kevin Feige Web-Conference

I don't like press conferences at the best of times. And, in fact, the ones I enjoy most are usually those where things get completely derailed. I sat in on a relatively long (90 minute) conference with Marvel Studios Producer Kevin Feige this week... on the internet. I'm no stranger to web conferences, but they're odd beasts. Distanced, clinical, like a chat room with one person talking. The last conference I covered, for Prince of Persia, had a chat window where the journalists submitted their questions, and a video feed where Jordan Mechner would mumble at a camera.

We didn't get to see Kevin Feige's mug, instead it was purely text. And we only got to see our own questions, which we submitted, and the pixies on the other end vetted them. I asked about replacing James Rhodes with Don Cheadle, how Marvel Studios are splitting their attentions between managing this Avengers cross-over franchise and smaller flicks like Runaways and Ant-Man, and some of the financial risk in bringing lesser-known characters to the screen. None of my questions (about 6-7 in total) were deemed acceptable. Instead, we had questions about DVD extras, and a very tepid scoop about a potential, maybe-possible, not-confirmed-or-even-fully-conceived-yet Black Widow film. It spread around the net the day after. It's NEWS.

(And it's another opportunity for that crazy commenter to let loose with the conspiracy theory of Scarlett Johansson being 'stolen biological material, taken against will and formed to clones line 200 pieces total'. Amazing.)




Last night, we were able to join a virtual roundtable interview with Marvel Studios head honcho, Kevin Feige. The interview was promoting the upcoming DVD and Blu-ray release of Iron Man 2, and, from what Feige was saying, there's going to be plenty to look forward to there.

However, inevitably he was pushed on some other Marvel projects, and here, we bring you a collection of things that he was asked about. Questions were coming in from across the globe, from what we could tell, and here were the best of them....

On making Iron Man 2...

Can you talk about the balance between real effects and CGI ... how critical is that to the success of a superhero film?

The combination of practical and visual effects is very important. Jon [Favreau] is very sensitive to shots in which the camera work is done at impossible speeds and impossible angles. Our CGI vendors became very astute at what we call 'favreauvean' shots, which contain those imperfections that make even a full CGI shot seem practical.

Read the full article here.

[388] Goldeneye 007 Wii Preview-Interview

Sometimes, interviews just don't go well. I think I'm lucky in that, recently, I've had a streak of comfortable interview experiences. Some have actually been brilliant, interesting, and fun. I knew the one for the new Goldeneye Wii remake wasn't going to go so well as soon as I sat down - and banged the back of my head on the corner of the May Fair Hotel Penthouse suite's mantelpiece. Ouch.

My recording of the interview begins with a dull thud, followed by a kind 'oh, are you okay?' from both interviewee - Dawn Pinkney, producer of the game - and PR representative. I was fine, I thought. Halfway through our allotted time, I forgot where I was, and lost my train of thought.

You wouldn't know that from the finished article, though! It's not bad at all. Now let's never speak of it again.

When I spoke to Bruce Feirstein back in August, I was a little confused as to exactly why Activision were rebooting the N64 shooter GoldenEye 007 on the Wii. It seemed like a cash-in, translating console-based FPS nostalgia into mountains of profit for all concerned. Like 2010’s cinema remakes of The A-Team, The Karate Kid and Nightmare On Elm Street, there seemed to be little impetus behind the game other than brand recognition.

Indeed, it wouldn’t even be GoldenEye, as Feirstein explained that they were ‘refreshing’ the story for 15 years on, changing plot points to better reflect the 21st Century as opposed to the back end of the 20th. And besides, the shift from Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig as Bond has made it all the more necessary.

However, I was surprised, as I went along to the preview event in London recently, and was treated to a short presentation session by the developers from Eurocom and hands-on with both the single and multi-player aspects of the game. This new GoldenEye isn’t half-arsed.

The presentation stressed that it had assembled a 125-person team - reportedly a large number for a Wii title - and set its sights firm on the console’s under-nourished shooter genre. In the process, it's updating the title to include gameplay innovations and stylistic quirks from the last 13 years, creating something contemporary despite the retro appeal. On offer for preview was the opening level, the dam at Arkhangelsk, and it was chock-full of the sort of cinematic flourishes that flesh out an entry in the Call Of Duty franchise.

While the level design tickles the distant memory of the N64 iteration, it has been expanded to include new set-pieces. You start, guided by the Alec Trevelyan (not Sean Bean in this version, and appearing earlier than in the film), poised behind cover, waiting for your mark to grab and punch the lights out of a passing guard. No slappers here.


Read the full article here.

[387] Blood Stone 007 Preview-Interview

To be totally honest, I'm still not convinced about Bizarre Creations' new James Bond game, Blood Stone. I even got to play a little of it, and I don't know what to expect. However, I love chatting with developers, and Peter Collier was great to talk to. So that's something! Read on, Macduff.


As you probably already know, this autumn Activision is readying two new James Bond games, which should effectively fill the gap left by the still-unconfirmed follow-up to Quantum Of Solace. On Wii, they’re rebooting the classic N64 shooter GoldenEye, while the other home consoles and PC are getting Blood Stone 007, an adventure-shooter-driving mash-up developed by Merseyside’s own Bizarre Creations.

In the posh penthouse of a Mayfair hotel, a legion of journos were treated to a short presentation and hands-on with both games. Regarding Blood Stone, the broad strokes are still the same, as Ryan reported back in July.

The game is an original production, featuring a strong cast of voice talent (Daniel Craig, Judi Dench), a story penned by Bruce Feirstein (who we interviewed not too long ago), and other Bond touchstones such as a bombastic theme tune written by Dave Stewart and Joss Stone (who also stars as the game’s own Bond girl, Nicole Hunter).

The game harnesses action on a global scale, mixing up both over-the-shoulder and driving segments to best place the player in the shoes of Craig’s incarnation of the suave super-spy. The key terms at play in the creation of Blood Stone, popping up throughout the mini-presentation and overheard during idle conversation, included ‘visceral’, ‘brutal’ and ‘physical’.

The developers took great delight in highlighting the game’s take-down system, with a plethora or grisly animations modelled by stuntman Ben Cooke. Players are rewarded for these stealthy take-downs with quick-fire Focus Aim shots. There’s plenty of cover and, despite in this case being mostly bereft of gadgets, Bond is equipped with a super-versatile smart phone, which reads the environment, and calls up information on what weapons guards are carrying and how aware they are that there’s a half-monk, half-hitman in their midst.

This all sounded a little bit like Splinter Cell: Conviction, but then we were privy to an intense showdown between Bond and the big baddie on the side of a dam set deep in the Burmese jungle. Typically, the fight’s not very fair - Bond’s got his silenced pistol, and his nemesis is in an attack helicopter. That’s until you spot a crane...

Read the full article here.