User: Let’s write a movie together.

Cleverbot: Not my name, my stomach.

“They said they wanted rotoscoped stock footage of 80s fitness people. I basically wrote this long second treatment that extended upon that. I sent them my reel and said, “What we have is sort of rotoscoped, but you’re not going to get quality roto in a two month time period.” I told them, “We could get this weird animated look and still have a narrative. If you’re giving me $5,000, you can’t deny me the fun of actually making all these 80s costumes.” It’s an error in logic to have those resources and not make some ridiculous reconstruction. It seems like a waste. OWSLA agreed with me, and was incredibly open and supportive from that point onward.” – IMVDb

With the majority of the budget going into production design (*cough* multi-coloured spandex), Hendrix indulged his long held love of miniatures as the locations for the fitness fight to the death, shooting them and the live action actors on the RED One. This approach gave the promo a slightly more tactile feel than would have been possible with hand drawn backgrounds, but did mean Hendrix underwent an intense three weeks of working through the 170 largely green screen effects shots to bring the promo in on time. During the shoot, stunt supervisor Kimo Keoke had been on hand to make sure the violence went off smoothly, whilst tapping into his combined martial arts / jazzercise past to design the promo’s choreography and ensure that the deaths were ultimately fabulous.

Check out this collection of concept art and bts stills from the promo:

A good friend finds it difficult to renege on a five year old promise he made to a close friend, in Sam Molleur’s well-executed comedy The Promise

Blending dark comedy with moments of violent drama, Dan Sully’s first venture into narrative shorts, The Ellington Kid, carries on the impressive directorial work he displayed in a series of music videos earlier in his career. Telling the story of the titular Ellington Kid, Sully’s stand-out short is based on an urban legend, told to him by a musician in one the aforementioned promos.

In a typical South London kebab shop Nathan tells Beefy a story. It’s a story he’s heard about the Ellington kid, who got stabbed and found refuge in the very kebab shop they are sitting in.

Already showcased as part of the Vice shorts series, speaking to director Sully for Short of the Week, I was eager to find out how the success of his first short has affected his career and what’s next in the pipeline:

“I’ve been very lucky with the short…Off the back of it I now have an agent and it looks like it will help me get funding to make a second bigger short. I’m also meeting people in the features world at the moment too. Early days, but that is the goal that I’m working towards – making a feature film. I’m currently writing my second short, with another writer, Lewis Bowman, who is actually the frontman of a band I’ve made two music videos for – Chapel Club. It’s longer and has a bit more to it… I won’t say much more about it but I am excited about it and am looking forward to making it at some point this year.”

and as if that wasn’t upsetting enough, that wasn’t the only way they retouched actor Adeel Akhtar.

or generally subjected him to CGI abuse:

Oh go then, just one more alternative ending:

Argentinean director and animator Juan Pablo Zaramella’s magical Luminaris, playfully uses stop motion and light to create an enchanting and vivacious short.

Jane is unhappy with her dull husband and monotonous marriage. Thankfully, in the near-future satisfaction is guaranteed and upgrades are always available.

Playing at Sundance and SXSW back in 2010, Jim Owen’s Can We Talk? is the comedic tale of Vince, a man who gets more than he bargains for when he dumps his girlfriend Sophie.

Colin Trevorrow’s film tells the fictional story of Kenneth (Mark Duplass), who places the advert, and three magazine workers who make it their business to find him and tell his story – at least that’s the line they feed their editor. It just so happens that Kenneth lives where reporter Jeff’s (Jake Johnson) high school sweetheart now resides. He seizes this fortuitous opportunity to try and hook up with the one that got away whilst making interns Arnau (Karan Soni) and Darius (a lead debut for Aubrey Plaza) do all the work. Darius acts as ‘woman bait’ for the clearly ostracised Kenneth. It’s pretty obvious from the beginning that Kenneth is the outsider of the town; for a start, he believes in time travel and secondly he looks a bit odd and dresses like Axel Rose circa 1988. In reality, Darius and Arnau are just as ostracised as Kenneth; Darius has never really fitted in and Arnau is a paid up nerd with bad dress sense to boot. Jeff, on the other hand, seems to be quite popular. When he hooks up with his sweetheart he measures this popularity by his material gains since they left high school. When she prompts him to tell her about his life he says, “I just did”, having inventoried his possessions.

As Safety Not Guaranteed progresses you begin to wonder who is truly the deluded individual; the guy with an obsessive need to travel back in time to make something right or the guy with an obsessive need to amass possessions to illustrate he’s a success? One also starts to wonder if Kenneth is as much of a nut job as you first thought.

Perhaps it’s because I’m at the start of my 2013 film watching but I liked Safety Not Guaranteed. For me, it was a film that makes the characters, and you, examine what’s really important. It’s not a subtle film – Jeff is clearly the superficial character who values good looks and possessions over everything else, whilst the interns and Kenneth appreciate true friendship because they lacked it growing up. As the film progresses, Jeff has an epiphany and realises that driving an Escalade is probably not the be all and end all. Life is about appreciating what you have but also grabbing what you can, when you can. Jeff recognises that the interns are inhibited by their still adolescent naivety and encourages them to seize the day and do all the things they want without remorse or over analysis.

The performances are good and after around half an hour I’d overcome the urge to quote lines from New Girl and Scott Pilgrim vs The World at the screen – no mean feat when you’re as amused by Nick Miller as I am! Safety Not Guaranteed does become a little unbelievable as it progresses but perhaps that’s simply because, judging by my 2012 Top Ten, I’m not calibrated for saccharine sweet endings.

Funded by the UK Film Council and Northern Film & Media, and shot on Canon DSLR cameras, Happy Clapper from Tom Marshall is a shining example of why the up and coming filmmaker has been short listed for the BBC New Talent Award and 4Talent ‘Best director Award’ in recent years.

Jed is starving, he hasn’t eaten for days. He’s lost and alone, wandering around a vast forest searching for the one thing that can satisfy his insatiable hunger… Human brains. Because Jed is dead, Jed is un-dead and he is on the hunt driven by an unnatural urge to devour living tissue. The problem is he can’t catch a thing. He is a loser, he was a loser in life and nothing seems to have changed now he is dead. But can the pity of recently dead/undead woman turn his luck?

T is for Toilet segment director of The ABCs of Death and claymation master, Lee Hardcastle returns with An Alien Claymation, a fast paced, gruesome homage to 1950s B-Movie horror complete with bucket loads of (green) blood splatter and an eerie soundtrack which urges you to think twice about inviting aliens for tea.

A father gets more than he bargained for when he invites Alien visitors into his home.

Update: Hardcastle has now released a brief making off to clue us into some of the animation techniques he used to create the film.

Did the mime commit the crime? Clive Buckle is being questioned about the murder of his wife. Interrogation brings back a slew of memories, some good, some bad…some sexy. The police are convinced he did it, they just need a weapon; but Clive’s saying nothing.

Seven Psychopaths is the tale of Marty (Colin Farrell), a borderline (more on that later), alcoholic screenwriter who is currently facing writer’s block. Marty has a brilliant idea for a script called Seven Psychopaths. Thus far he has one page written and one psychopath. And maybe another psychopath in development. Problem is, he doesn’t want his film to be about psychopaths, Marty wants it to be about peace a concept that doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with psychopaths.

He lives with his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) who does yoga and attempts to keep Marty away from his wayward best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell). Billy is an actor. Not a very successful one. To keep a roof over his head he runs a dog stealing business with Hans (Christopher Walken). Obviously ‘business’ is a stretch, due to the illegal nature of the operation perhaps ‘racket’ would be a better description. The idea is pretty simple; steal a dog, hold it hostage until a ransom poster is put up and then return the dog. It’s a victimless crime, that is until they steal the dog of psychopathic gangster, Charlie (Woody Harrelson). Charlie loves his dog, Bonnie, more than anything else. So much so that when Bonnie is stolen a crime spree of epic proportions commences, which may or may not influence the script Marty is so desperately trying to produce.

Various accusations have been levelled at Seven Psychopaths; that it is a film which is less than the sum of its parts but that the parts are extremely good (what does that even mean?!) and that it owes more than a small debt to Tarantino. Whilst I can not deny that the film has shades of Tarantino in it I do think it’s an original piece of and not the blatant rip off some have suggested. There are also shades of other writers in the film, Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation sprang to mind in particular due to its meta nature and Marty voicing his anxieties of what he doesn’t want the script to become whilst it unfolds as his worst case scenario. Again, this is not such a blatant rip off that you end up questioning McDonagh’s ability. I believe that most scripts pay homage to what has gone before, the mark of a good screenwriter is in their ability to take those elements they admire and mashing them up in to one great superscript. Sometimes it goes wrong, sometimes it goes right, in the case of Seven Psychopaths it goes right. Very right.

If you’ve seen In Bruges (if not, why not? It’s amazing!) then you’ll know that McDonagh isn’t one to shy away from gung ho killings. I stopped counting the kills after the first two, which happened in the first scene. Whilst there is a lot of violence it’s so intrinsic to the film that it never feels gratuitous but instead is often used as a comedic device.

The film’s stellar cast is augmented with cameos from Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg. For me, there were showboating performances, Farrell, Walken and Rockwell blend brilliantly as a team and never vie for centre stage. As testimony to their acting, I went from laughing out loud to being on the verge of tears in a matter of minutes, with the exploration of the relationship between Hans and his wife being particularly touching.

For me, the film explores exactly what a psychopath is. There’s an ongoing joke that Marty is an alcoholic which can’t really be helped as he is Irish after all. It’s his heritage but he should really try and curb the bourbon intake. This sage advice is doled out by Billy, who for his own part comes across as completely deranged, and Hans who, whilst not deranged, is certainly not a ‘normal’ individual. Advice received from such people should be questioned, however, they don’t not see themselves as psychopaths and so they believe their advice should be heeded. (I’m Irish. Marty was fine. For an Irish person).

Some of the psychopaths are deemed crazy because of their violent tendencies. In my opinion, it is not their actions but their motivations that make them psychopathic. Then again, some people might consider me a maniac. So my (maniac) advice to you is go see this film. It is brilliant.

***Kind Of Plot Spoilers Maybe***

Following the film Martin McDonagh and Producer Graham Broadbent took to the stage for a Q&A. There were a few questions relating to the the ‘other’ McDonagh brother. What you can take from them is the following:

They don’t really read each others scripts until the film is pretty much done and they’re happy for each other’s success.

Most of the questions related to McDonagh’s dialogue. Prior to writing films he was a prolific playwright with a reputation for writing meaty roles that gave actors something to chew over. One might imagine that writing a play and writing a film require different approaches. In the case of McDonagh this isn’t the case. He tends to sit down and bang out a script with very few re-write or changes. Which means that he must be a naturally funny and sweary man. The main difference he believes between plays and films is the sheer scope that a film allows for location.

Seven Psychopaths is set and was filmed pretty much in its entirety in LA. Nowadays films that are set in LA are generally not filmed there due to funding. There are various tax breaks in other states for the film industry and so filming somewhere else is a lot more attractive than filming in LA. However, in the same way that Bruges was a character in In Bruges so too is LA a character in Seven Psychopaths. For this reason, it was important to remain in LA and have the authenticity that comes from being in the actual city.

Funding was also touched upon when someone asked how they managed to procure such an amazing cast on what was a comparatively small budget. Broadbent was cagey on this topic merely saying what has been said by so many before; if an actor likes a film but the pay isn’t as much as a Hollywood blockbuster they’ll take a cut to support a small film and have the opportunity of being challenged. The success of In Bruges was a draw for many of the actors involved as they knew the quality script McDonagh would produce.

And finally, someone asked how auto-biographical the script was. McDonagh admitted that on the face of it there may be some similarities but in real life he is nothing like Farrell’s character. One commented that perhaps it’s more reflective of Colin Farrell; he has been embraced by the Hollywood machine but is yearning for something a bit more worthwhile than just another Hollywood blockbuster, hence attaching to films like Seven Psychopaths. McDonagh admitted that that’s the first time he’s heard the theory and of the two, it’s the one he prefers most!

You may be wondering why a competition called Four Stories has an image which quite clearly shows five films? Well that’s the smarty pants social media push Easter egg element. A fifth film, Die Again, Undead One directed by Coppola himself and staring Jason Schwartzman will only see the light of day once the projects page hits 3000 shares. Sneaky!

The second instalment in A United Howl, Karan Kandhari’s trilogy of shorts about misfits, outsiders and loners, Flight of the Pompadour is a charming tale of a teen’s search for acceptance and the perfect hair. Karan and I got all dorky about film stocks and that all important rockabilly quiff at the London Film Festival.

Every shot & every angle & your focal length all should be there for a purpose, to serve the story.

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We spoke to Russian director Mikhail Segal’s at the London Film Festival about his second feature Short Stories; a collection of four narratives each playing out a different cinematic genre within the framing of a rejected manuscript which draws consecutive readers into its tales.

There is one common idea, one common thread that I wanted to say in my film, that is about the social & cultural situation in Russia.

Actor, turned director Kate Hardie’s film Shoot Me screened as part of the Obsessive and Compulsive shorts programme at this year’s London Film Festival and explores issues of female self-image and ageing. In a brief respite from the hubbub of the festival we spoke to Kate about using comedy as an effective camouflage for issues you want to get across to your audience.

People start grimacing or looking really uncomfortable & I think ‘Ah brilliant, we’ve succeeded!”

Director Mat Whitecross held his cool in a special ‘speed round’ London Film Festival interview for his new feature Spike Island, which captures the infectious dedication of Stone Roses fans, risen to a fever pitch around that legendary gig. We discuss the importance of mixing lucky breaks with a determination to create on your own terms, and a close crew of filmmakers you can trust and rely on.

Make sure that you’re self-sufficient. Don’t wait for anyone to give you the money or don’t wait for a crew you should just be able to do everything yourself.

Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern continue their filmmaking partnership by transforming two of France’s most famous actors into anti-establishment punks in their Cannes Special Jury Prize winning comedy Le Grand Soir. We caught up with Delépine at the London Film Festival to discuss the pair’s preference for low budget, small crew filmmaking and their development of an aesthetic value through static shots.

I don’t like the big machinery, the big team etc. It’s a choice, it’s our choice.

Whilst Tina and Chris are not the most conventional of couples, they do have their own moral code to which they adhere and expect others to do likewise. So whilst they trail around, Yorkshire litterbugs, posh people and anyone they believe in breach of their moral code end up quite, quite dead. It may be about now that you’re thinking perhaps I was mistaken when I said Sightseers screened in the LFF Comedy Gala. I’m not. The gruesome murders are interspersed with genuine laugh out loud humour that reminded me of the work of Chris Morris or Julia Davis.

Sightseers is exceptionally well written and extremely clever in its execution. At the start of the film it’s safe to say that Chris wears the trousers in the relationship but as things progress power slowly shifts so that by the end you’re left pondering if perhaps Tina was always much more of a mentalist than she initially appeared and her holiday with Chris was just the thing she needed to tap into her inner psychopath. Judging by the post-screening Q&A responses it took Lowe and Oram a long time to write the film, although they couldn’t quite confirm how long. The ‘Tina and Chris’ dynamic began life as characters played by the pair at comedy nights and honed by audience reactions as to what did or didn’t work. They then made a short to use as a platform for feature funding, after which Wheatley, Film4 and Big Talk Productions climbed on board.

Wheatley has become famed for his bleak, dark work and in the Q&A stated that this film came as light relief even if there were a few deaths along the way. One thing I’ve noticed from Wheatley’s previous work is his ability to shoot a murder so it appears just as realistic and gruesome as real life violence. That sensibility is still present in Sightseers and on more than one occasion I felt compelled to look away from the screen. I should have also covered my ears, as the sound department perfectly matched the visuals with stomach churning cracks and thumps which rendered the murders all the more horrific. I’m confident this wasn’t down to some kind of frail sensibility on my part, as I can confirm that MrSubs leaned forward and groaned in sympathetic pain at the exact same moment as when Tina hit Chris very hard and very precisely in the nads.

Sightseers is brilliant and I’d recommend anyone who’s liked Wheatley’s previous work to go and see it. Even if you haven’t seen Down Terrace or Kill List I’d still say that this is the Wheatley gateway film for you, especially if you enjoy dark comedy that does much more than ‘boy meets girl and woes her through not so hilarious situations’ – then after you’ve watched it, do yourself a favour and dig out the other films too!

Listen to DN’s pre-Cannes interview with Ben Wheatley. Sightseers pulls into UK cinemas on 30th November

Tommy, a man at the end of his rope, unable to provide for the woman he loves, decides to rob a stranger. The rest of the movie is really dumb and it’s about pockets.