The Mane Attraction [Review: War Horse]

As actors and other film talent jockey for position in the final sprint to the Oscars, spur a thought for Joey the Horse. There’s still no category at either the BAFTAs or the Oscars for animals, so despite an inspiring performance, the team of fourteen horses that played Joey have neigh chance even of a photo finish. These Hay-class celebrities deserve at least a nomination – personally I wouldn’t saddle for anything less.

Joey seems to accept his fate stoically one minute, but pull off yet another ingenious escape the next: so War Horse both is and is not science fiction. War Horse also echoes many previous Spielberg films – it’s E.T. with horses! No, it’s Saving Private Ryan with horses! Indiana Jones with horses! I could be imagining this but the whole film has kind of a horsey feel to it.

However, there is some greatness in this film, including the war scenes which bring home many of the horrific realities of the First World War. It's really a series of short war films, linked together by Joey’s journey. Some are tragic, like the German soldiers, still boys really, who run away with Joey and hide in a windmill but are caught by their superiors, while others are surreal and funny, such as the Christmas Truce-like scene in which English and German soldiers follow Joey into No-Man’s Land. Sometimes there’s too much reliance on sentimentality or serendipity but rather than dominating the whole film, they are balanced out by the tragedies and the realism at other times.

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Can't Stop Now

The stop motion experiments continue - I'm enjoying the chance to try out angles, shot types, compositions, depth of field shenanigans and so on, all on a miniature scale. I'm also really impressed with the performance of my 550D on it's close-up settings. However Stop Motion Lesson #2 is: ten minutes spent ensuring your camera is stable saves hours and hours of tedious frame adjustment in post.

I'm also preparing to screen the music video for Tenderstar's song "2007" at the Rotoreliefs film night, tomorrow 30th January at Rich Mix. I'll be joining in a Q&A session after the screening, along with other filmmakers. Full details of the event are here. I'm very much looking forward to this event, and the line-up for the night looks great, including a chance to see Anton Short's comedy "Suicide Tuesday" which I've mentioned before.

Stop Commotion

I've started work on my second ever stop motion project. The first, an adaptation of the Day Of The Triffids, was made at the age of about 10 with some good friends, a VHS camcorder the size of a bungalow or small house, and seven or eight houseplants. I have no idea what happened to the VHS cassette afterwards, although a recent BBC production did seem strangely familiar...*

This new project does not feature either houseplants or VHS. As usual I'm learning as I go: many of the difficulties of live action filmmaking apply to stop motion too. On the other hand, if you're struggling to find that perfect camera angle on a confined set, you can always demolish a wall. For some reason this is frowned upon on location in the real world.

*this comment flagged for irony moderation.

"Last Zombie Standing" Screening: Kino London / London Short Film Festival

"Last Zombie Standing" will be screened tonight 12th January at Kino London's open mic event at Vibe Live, starting from 7.30. This is a last minute change to the running order. It's good to be back at Kino again, and this event also forms part of the London Short Film Festival.

Limerick Page

My limericks, online, now race
Far apart across time, Net and space
To keep them together
I've done something clever
You can now read them all in one place!

Roland Limmerich II

Roland Emmerich's last film was Anonymous,
'Bout the man with whom theatre is synonymous
You can learn such a lot
From the well researched plot:
Who knew Shakespeare blew up the White House?