The Story of Life as Told by the Movies

This great little mash-up pieces clips from a whole bunch of movies together to tell the story of life through its various stages, from birth to death etc. See if you can spot where the clips are from...

Fight for 35mm

Here's another boring post/moan about the death of celluloid which everyone should sit up and take notice of, of course. Especially when you have high profile film critics like Roger Ebert writing heartfelt eulogies to 35mm, and Julia Marchese of New Beverly Cinema, a revival theatre in L.A. which Tarantino saved not too long ago, starting a petition to fight for the film's survival. The end is truly nigh. So if you still love seeing living, breathing, beautiful film projected in theatres, as opposed to the ALL-DIGITAL ROUTE things are eventually heading in, read this, and then go sign Marchese's petition to show you care (see also: Death of the Film Camera).

Death Delivers: A Quick Spoiler-Free Word on Final Destination 5

Caught a screening of Final Destination 5 last night, and to put it simply, it delivered. After the cruddy, lazy fourth one, this entry felt very much like a reinvigoration of the franchise, an attempt to put things right and round off the series in a way that would satisfy both fans and newcomers. Much credit must be given to director Steven Quale*, whose staging of the film's gruesome, Grand Guignol set-pieces - the series' raison d'etre - is spectacularly well-executed, especially the jaw-dropping opener, which is just as good if not better than FD2's. I tend to switch off if too much CGI is used in horror splatter and there's still a bit of that here, but the CGI is also subtly, almost invisibly applied in this opening sequence without losing the scale of the devastation. Of course, the 3D bits are gimmicky as usual, though strangely I didn't mind it as much as FD4, perhaps 'cos everything about this movie is just better overall. It's the funnest horror film I've seen in a theatre in a while - and I wouldn't even count myself a FD fan. Opens this Thursday, go see it!

(*Quale hasn't done much by way of feature directing, but he's served as second unit director for James Cameron on Titanic and Avatar, so it's not inconceivable that he's picked up some of Cameron's chops for staging spatially coherent spectacle. Keen to see what he does next.)

Roadshow's screening invite

The Carradine Conspiracy?

It was pretty shocking and saddening to hear of David Carradine's death last Thursday - the details of how it happened even more so. Auto-erotic asphyxiation? Found in a closet? In a Bangkok hotel? Predictably, the media are going to town with it. There's some chatter about a conspiracy (apparently he was looking into "secret societies"). Was it an accident, or was he murdered? Some reports are indicating that his hands were tied behind his back. There's also something about a footprint on the bed. Hmm. Here's a CelebTV report:



Meanwhile, Carradine's family are upset and disturbed that the photos of his body were published in a Thai newspaper, and have asked the FBI to investigate his death.