‘I was asked if I could submit a slasher segment’
that idea of campfire stories but mixing it up by putting in digital glitches and haywire effects that represent the killer. A lot of that idea came from wanting to show what the killer did but not what the killer looks like; I thought it might be more interesting to leave the actual silhouette of the killer up to the mind of the audience.’ It’s easy to accuse the found footage subgenre of becoming the laziest in horror but V/H/S uses this set-up incredibly effectively, immersing the viewer further into the action for one of the most creepy and entertaining horrors of recent years. The stripped-down format also helped capture some amazingly naturalistic performances from the actors involved. ‘Initially I went out with a script and a small crew, we recorded a load of footage but I didn’t really like how it turned out – it looked very staged and not very authentic at all. So I scrapped it all and went back out with the actors and gave them the videocamera and redid everything in a really loose and improvised way. I just gave them the camera and they fecked off for two hours, and I didn’t even look at that footage until I was in the edit room. It was a really cool way to work, normally everything I do is storyboarded so it was pretty liberating.’
V/H/S (Momentum) ●●●●● is available from Mon 28 Jan.
REVIEWS DVDs, TV and podcasts to enjoy from the comfort of your sofa
TV NASHVILLE More4, Thu 7 Feb, 10pm ●●●●● DVD FEAR AND DESIRE (Eureka) ●●●●●
STAYING IN Stanley Kubrick’s little seen 1953 debut feature, Fear and Desire, which was funded by
In the world of country, you might be implored to stand by your man no matter what, but if another woman gets in your way, those cowboy boots suddenly become made for kicking. So, in Nashville, Hayden Heroes Panettiere and Connie Friday Night Lights Britton prepare to go at it hammer and songs as bitter rivals on the Grand Ole Opry scene.
Britton plays Rayna Jaymes, a country legend whose appeal is on the wane, while Panettiere is Juliette Barnes, a popular young star trying to usurp the iconic gal’s fame. Little love is lost between them, but fate may be drawing them closer as Jaymes’ record company needs her to support the upstart on tour in order to garner a new audience.
his family and friends, finally gets a DVD and Blu-ray release. It’s an unconventional but compelling film as four soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines during an unspecified war. There’s a strange sterile atmosphere with esoteric, disassociated dialogue and voiceovers offering monologues on the nature of self and duty giving it all a vaguely disconnected sci-fi feel. It is slightly pretentious, particularly for a first film, but it’s still incredibly interesting to see this snapshot of Kubrick’s development to become one of the most respected directors of all time – you can already see his very deliberate editing style coupled with very precise use of tight close ups.
Thankfully, there’s more going on offstage Even if this wasn’t Kubrick it’s still a
with Barnes trying to fend off her smack- addled mother while Jaymes’ conniving father (Powers Boothe in suitably snake-oil form) is backing her failed businessman husband to run for mayor, for reasons that are totally unclear as yet. As an opening episode, it’s perfectly fine fare and chucks in more ingredients than a southern fried barbecue grill to keep things ticking over. (Brian Donaldson) fascinating film while Eureka have put together another wonderful ‘Masters of Cinema’ bundle bulking out the feature (which runs at just over an hour): a trio of early Kubrick documentaries (Day of the Fight, Flying Padre and The Seafarers) sits alongside a new introduction from film critic Bill Krohn, plus new essays on Kubrick’s early work by James Naremore. (Henry Northmore)
DVD BOXSET THE FEAR (BBC Worldwide) ●●●●● PODCAST HOUSE TO ASTONISH (housetoastonish.com) ●●●●●
Tony Soprano might well have ruined it for all TV gangsters. Now, rather than being an unreconstructed bad guy whose only problem was running
out of asses to pop a cap into, they all have to have some health issues. So, in The Fear, Peter Mullan’s Brighton-based ‘entrepreneur’ isn’t seeing a shrink, instead he’s visiting an old medic pal in the shape of Richard E Grant to discuss the possibility that he is plunging into a fog of fully-blown Alzheimer’s. There’s a terrific performance from Mullan at the heart of this tale (like The Sopranos, crime plays second fiddle to a story of family, loyalty and the end of an era) as he steadily deteriorates, causing untold trouble with an emerging Albanian crew, falling out with his ex- wife and sons while he tries to piece together the memory of a horrific deed from his past.
This four-part drama could easily have shorn an episode (there’s far too many shots of Mullan looking craggy and lost) while his screen offspring are rather flimsy characters. But as a portrait of a man disappearing into his own head, it’s captivating and moving. (Brian Donaldson)
With a name redolent of the Golden Age of pulpy superheroics from the 1960s, House to Astonish is a comics and comics-related podcast with no sense of deference to the non-geek or the comic book movie part-timer. That’s probably not the market they’re trying to attract, but Paul O’Brien and Al Kennedy’s chat is very much of the sort that comic lovers – the kind who know what a longbox is and the difference between NM and VFN – throw at each other in the pub with a ‘one of us’ glint in their eye.
For their target audience, then, it’s a very well-created, knowledgeable and informative hour or so. O’Brien and Kennedy’s banter is engaging, the former with a lighter and more radio-friendly tone than Kennedy’s ‘visiting expert’ willingness to go into detail, and their news, reviews and features are timely and broad-ranging. ‘The Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe’ is also an inspired closing feature for fanboys (and girls) of a certain age. (David Pollock)
24 Jan–21 Feb 2013 THE LIST 29