Episode 12 Film 2013

Hello and welcome to Film 2013. We're live and if you want to get in

touch, the details are on the screen now. Coming up on tonight's show:

Practically perfect in every way - Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks are

Saving Mr Banks. Mary Poppins, never ever just Mary.

There will be blood - Julianne Moore and Chloe Moretz star in the remake

of Carrie. The other kids think I'm weird. I want to be normal. If I

concentrate hard enough, I can make things move.

And the young and the beautiful - Francois Ozon brings us Jeune et

Jolie. Danny is here and we're joined by

guest critic, Peter Bradshaw. First up, Saving Mr Banks, which

tells the story of the backstage battle for creative control between

Walt Disney and Mary Poppins' author, PL Travers, during the

adaptation of her novel to the big screen. Winds in the east, mist

coming in, like something is brewing about to begin. Ladies and

gentlemen, we are beginning our descent into Los Angeles. I was

astonished to discover that the journey of Mary Poppins to the

screen had been not only so long, but so fraught. Well, you can't

imagine how excited I am to meet you. My name is Mrs Travers.

She thought he was a money-making mogul. She was! She was, in fact. 20

years ago, I made a promise that I would make your Mary Poppins fly off

the pages of your books. I promised them. I know what he is going to do

to her. She will be cavorting. You can't make the film unless you grant

him the rights. # Root beer for everyone... #

No, no, that is not a word! We made it up. Well, unmake it up.

She enjoyed the feeling of having this very powerful man at her feet

and yet she also rejected everything about him. Stop! Mary Poppins is not

for sale. I want have her turned into one of your silly cartoons. You

think Mary Poppins has come to save the children? Oh dear. It is about

the two weeks that she was in Los Angeles and it brings up memories of

her childhood in 1906 Australia. Mary Poppins and the Banks family,

they are a family to me. I play Robert Goff Travers. It was a

chapter that she closed. I think it was too painful for her. New job,

new town, new life. Come on, my little ducklings. He encourages her

skill and her talent and he is an alcoholic and she felt a form of

abandonment. That is probably in her mind before she ended up meeting

Disney. She has never really dealt with the truth and Walt Disney pulls

that out of her throughout the course of the movie. It is not the

children that she comes to save, it is their father. It is your father.

You don't know what she means to me. I won't disappoint you. Don't you

want to finish the story? I sobbed at the film. Watching that,

I could go again! Danny? This is a big, broad, family kind of movie. It

is made with this industrial ladle-full of sugar. You won't find

a scene where Uncle Walt is there. For what it is, as a family movie,

it works. Totally. You? I love Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. I love

their huge turns that they do, the massive acting face-off. I love it.

It is like Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee! My goodness, when ever there is

a cutback to the Australian scene, I thought it dies a death. It was very

boring, that whole backstory was dull. Colin Farrell was awful in it.

His voice is awful. Is that because the '60s, I loved it when they were

in the room... Exactly. That was so good. In the lot, in the rehearsal

room, I love it. This mini Disney movie they have created, which is

suspect in all sorts of ways, it is fantastically inert and very

unrewarding. As a Disney movie about Disney movies, it is revealing. Yes.

PL Travers is a tyrant - so is Disney in this movie. He is a man

who is determined to make the world feel better, whether they want to

feel better or not. Actually, if you want the kind of dark strange

undercurrents, you look at them and they are there because the Disney

headquarters is this place where the writers exist in this weird,

infantile paradise where they are force fed with jelly beans and

trifle. I wanted to live there! Why don't we all do that? It would be

much better if they had more of Walt Disney as a genius. He invented the

theme park. He was this extraordinary man. If anything, what

was great and undemanding about Tom Hanks' performance is he looks like

Ronald Reagan with his presidential suite and it would be great to see

him and Emma play Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - that would be

fantastic. It is identifies the real drama and the real excitement

happens a year before anyone shouts, "Action!" Yes. I think I will speak

up for the script. The script, which is written by a British writer,

called Kelly Marcel, is very good. I love Gravity. Gravity is not a film

where anyone will say, "My favourite thing about Gravity is the script."

Yes. It is easy to forget what high-quality script writing can

achieve. It is very well carpented. I'm not sure how - it is not

shallow, the film, but it is undemanding in a good way. There is

a gunge tank of sentimentality... You don't get the gunge on your

head! I hate happy people. I like Saving Mr Banks. OK. Yes, highly

recommended. If you go, stay for the end of the credits. It is a joy.

Next, Julianne Moore and Chloe Grace Moretz team up to give the classic

Stephen King/Brian De Palma horror movie Carrie a modern makeover. I'll

pick you up after school. What's wrong? The other kids think I'm

weird. I want to be normal. Wipe that smile off your face. I have to

be a normal person, before it is too late.

It is a story about being an outcast and what that's like and then being

given supernatural powers. If I concentrate hard enough, I can make

things move. The role of Carrie is a very

emotional role. It is the most vulnerable I have ever been as an

actor. No, get off me!

Margaret is trying to be the best parent and she doesn't know how to

be. She is so paranoid and so terrified of what might happen to

her daughter, she wants to keep her in the house, keep her safe, keep

her a child. You pray for forgiveness. There is this

heightened reality of the mother and daughter struggle that you have as a

young adult. I wasn't sure why you might or might not remake this

movie. I got a hold of the book and read it. I was captivated. I saw

there was a chance to do it differently.

Carrie White! Favourite movie. Bloodsport! LAUGHTER If you don't

have a date already, maybe you want to go with me? Momm a, I have been

asked to prom. They are all going to laugh at you. Stop it. Her powers

come out in times of excess emotion. And you have Carrie going to the

prom and we are all watching thinking, "Don't go to the prom."

She goes against her attackers and there is a phenomenal climax to the

movie. Your King and Queen are... Carrie! Peter? Well, yes, it is like

the first film, but not as good. That is the kind of - that is the

twist they have put on it. Surprise! It's quite efficient. It is not a

disaster. It is technically interesting. My problem is that

Chloe Grace Moretz looks too tough, she looks like Miley Cyrus. She

shouldn't be playing Carrie because she doesn't look delicate enough. I

thought she was vulnerable. To mention the fact that there was the

brilliant original. I think if you are a gang of 15 or 16-year-old

girls, or boys, you would be fine with this, you won't have seen the

original? That is true. It is interesting to watch the story

again. I have always been interested in Carrie because it is unique in

that it shows a woman doing the scary stuff, which is so unusual it

almost means it doesn't qualify as a horror film at all. I know what you

mean. I just think - I wonder if 15-year-olds, if you showed them the

original, they might not have a nervous breakdown... I don't know. I

think they would be baffled and confused and think it was terribly

slow. Once you start... That is true. No, I don't think this is a

film made for people of a certain age. I think it can't help but

suffer by comparison with the original. It's not just the presence

of Chloe Grace Moretz, it is the lack of Sissy Spacek. Sissy Spacek

was Carrie. Yes. She had that other quality that meant she was an

outcast at school and she had these incredibly destructive powers. Chloe

Grace Moretz - it becomes a different film. For her to play an

outcast, you are right, she might as well be playing Gandhi. To remake

that Carrie with her is like remaking Jaws with a sea lion! It

doesn't work. That I would watch! LAUGHTER Boom! I'll give you 100

grand! It's something else, it deserves the adjectives which don't

end up on posters, which is sturdy and respectable and that's what it

is. It's a much more streamlined kind of modern teen horror movie.

That is the problem. It is ill at ease with its own modernity. What

they thought is, if we are making a modern Carrie, Carrie has to be

videoed by the bullies with their mobile phones and they have to be

uploaded to the web. Then they lose interest in that storyline entirely.

Think what's happened to this video. Has it gone viral? Is there a

Japanese Ring-style horror thing? That's it, we have now modernised

it, let's imitate the first one. There is quite a lot of which is

botched about that as well. This film was much more about a girl and

that is the impetus for the story. You have these weird moments like in

the average high school where she goes, the library is well stocked

with books and... Yes. She gets ten copies... There are these weird,

nervous moments where you can - the videoing makes perfect sense. You

are right, they lose interest. And what is interesting about the first

film is that it predicts our modern world of cyberbullying, and that is

all there in embryo form in the first movie, but for the second

movie to somehow not notice it or half notice it and lose interest in

it, is a shame. It has a funny relationship with the original. It

isn't quite so reliant on the big set pieces. There are two scenes in

particular with Carrie that we all particularly think of, and doesn't

just ate those. When you think of that scene in Carrie, it is handled

differently. There are brave decisions they have made, but I'm

not sure... It was brave to leave intact what was good about the first

film. We have to stop speaking, otherwise

I will get into trouble. Nicolas Winding Refn is one of cinema's most

unique talent. More recently, he has directed Only God Forgives, which

divided audiences this summer. Danny went to meet him.

Thank you for joining us today. When did you fall in love with film? I

think it was the other way around. I think films fell in love with me.

Only God Forgives was an insanely striking film visually. Had that

always been your plan, to make a film that jumped out of the screen?

I loved the process, the painting aspect of filming. I tried to

capture authenticity when I was younger, and I realised that you

can't. But I can make heightened reality, which is so much more fun.

And I can't paint because I'm colour blind, so I had to find another

mechanism, and the digital revolution has made that possible.

I want to talk a little bit about your first film, Pusher. What are

your memories of making it? The stories suggest that the set was a

little wild times. When you make your first movie, you

have to make it with a little bit of arrogance mixed with stupidity. I

guess I wanted to capture authenticity. All of the drugs had

to be real, and if they could shoot each other, that would also be

great. But at least they had to fight for real. All the stupidity

that you see when you are younger, you try to catch to that moment.

Your career in a relatively short time has been something of a

roller-coaster. There have been astonishing up is, and lows as well.

I was very lucky to experience extreme failure early on. It failed

miserably at the box office, and I ended up owing my bank $1 million.

So I had no money, and Miss Marple called, and I said, yes, please. I

didn't even read the script. I had never seen Miss Marple, or read an

Agatha Christie book. I remember being in the studio outside of

London, really depressed, doing a lot of soul-searching. That was when

I decided I had to do something different. And I did Bronson. It was

like going into therapy for me. Tell me about working with Tom Hardy on

that. I didn't want him. My original idea was Jason states. But I do

think that he is probably the greatest actor to come out of

England since Michael O'Kane. Right, that's enough! You are very much

associated with Ryan Gosling. Was it love at first sight for you? Yes, it

was. Ryan and I met at his restaurant. I had gotten ill coming

in, and they gave me all these American flu drugs, and they made me

high as a kite. I had to ask him to take me home. He said, what? It was

like a blind date gone wrong. We just wanted to get away from each

other. So we get in the car, and we're sitting there in silence, and

he turns on the radio, just to do anything, and it is soft rock.

Because I am Sohaib I start to sing to this song, I can't fight this

feeling any more. And then I start to cry. And I turned to him for the

first time, and I looked at him, and he is a beautiful man, and he was

lit very well with the light from the freeway. And I said, I got it!

We are going to make a movie about a man who drives around in his car at

night listening to pop music. And he thought for a second, and he said, I

mean. Drive was on many levels romantic

movie, but how tricky is it to marry Romance and some really hard-core

violence? You just have to read Grimm, fairy tales. I said it had to

be like that. So the ideal fairy tale, but also the metaphor. I want

to ask you about your relationship with female characters, because you

are someone who makes films for men about men, and yet you have this

drive to make films about women. Tell me about that. I always set out

to make films about women, and I always make them about violent men,

and I have to break that chain. So what is next? That is a good

question. It is important when you create that you do the opposite of

what you did before, otherwise where is the fun?

Now, Jeune et Jolie, an intimate study of a 17-year-old girl who

becomes a prostitute. Literally the most beautiful

creature, I think, on Earth. She is like a young Joanna Lumley, and I

can't go higher than that, I think. It is impeccably made and

beautifully composed, but as a film about the realities of being a

teenage girl, I would rather go with Carrie, and as a film about having

sex with men for money, I would go with pretty much anything else. The

film doesn't have anything to say about any of those things. It is

like one giant, ravishing, listless shrug. You are waiting for the

teenager to come out and explain herself, but there is no reason.

This is just an off form 50 old director. I'm not sure he is off

form. I think this is well did well directed, but it is very ridiculous.

It is pure David Hamilton soft-core. It could have been made in 1978. It

is from that era. It sort of looks like it was made for middle-aged

male perves. I think the people playing her ma'am and her stepdad,

they are giving performances of real warmth and tenderness. I quite like

the mystery in it. I think there is something interesting in the fact

that the reasons why she becomes a prostitute left quite unexplained.

He doesn't know. Or he just wanted to shoot her in her bra. There is an

awful lot of Irving. -- perving. I watched it for the interiors, they

are amazing. That is the sort of level to watch it on! We all know

that prostitution is about vulnerable people being abused and

assaulted, not about Vogue standard 17-year-old model is having a moment

of sexual flowering in some luxury 5-star hotel room. It is ridiculous.

But as long as you understand that it is ridiculous, you can see that

it is exquisitely made, but shallow. It is an exquisitely made Hoddle,

but that doesn't mean it has no depth to it. It does. What is your

pick of the week? Unexpectedly, Saving Mr Banks. Yes, I have to go

with Disney. It is a joy. That is all from us. We are back next week

on Tuesday at 11.35, when we review Kill Your Darlings, the remake of

old boy, Nebraska and home front. Thank you very much for watching.

Good night. You have tested positive for HIV.

Have you any we estimate you have 30 days left. There isn't anything out

there can kill me in 30 days. There is stuff in Mexico that you can't

get in the United States. Importing illegal drugs for sale is a very

serious offence. They are not illegal. They are merely unapproved.

I have been looking for you. You are treating these people? They are

treating themselves. I'm not selling drugs. I'm selling membership.

Welcome to the Dallas Buyers Club. Why are we here? A nice restaurant,

a beautiful woman. It is where I feel human again. You look great.

You are nothing more than a common drug dealer. People are dying.