Dark Knight has already had near universal praise (Denby of the New Yorker one of the few who missed the point) and is approaching the $400m mark, so it hardly needs me to add to it, but there’s been a strange note emerging consistently in the British broadsheet reviews which goes something like ‘good though it is, we wish Nolan would do something more important with his talent’.

That tragically misguided sentiment needs speaking to.
In TDK, Chris Nolan and his brother and co-writer Jonathan take one of modern culture’s greatest myths, and with the help of seven of our finest actors (now sadly, six) and an army of collaborators, re-invent it as a parable for our sad and troubled times.

Telling unvarnished and difficult truths about what America has become in its war against terror, and the corrosive consequences for all of us to have the dream of our superpower so tarnished, The Dark Knight has succeeded where a dozen more ‘worthy’ attempts have failed. In what Randy Pausch would call a ‘head fake’ it wraps a hard moral and political message about Iraq, Terror and our wars in a mythical wrapper and takes that message to a mass audience who are, in astonishing numbers, embracing it: because - not despite - of this layering, this mixing of the mythical and the specifically urgent, TDK is on the way to becoming the biggest movie of all time.

If there is more important work than this for a story teller to do, I don’t know what it is. The Nolans make me proud to be a filmmaker.

Oh how I love this man

Is the depressing marketing tag on the UK posters of CASSANDRAS DREAM, the current Woody Allen movie.

It then goes on to clarify, that this is of course, ‘a Woody Allen Movie’. The depressing thing is that it needed clarification, and that clarification wasn’t:’From the Director of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Deconstructing Harry, Bullets over Broadway, and about 40 other movies, of which at least 10 are works of genius and classics of cinema (and which number would NOT include Match Point), but instead ‘From the Director of Match Point’ - a mediocre thriller with average performances and a completely bullshit understanding of London and England’s social milieu.

Now just to be clear this isn’t a rant about Woody Allen. In my book the man’s allowed the odd off decade. He’s  73 for christ sake and has already given us so much (and early reviews suggest that VICKI CHRISTINA BARCELONA is a return to form) my problem is with a movie marketing industry so craven, and a film audience so ignorant and woefully short on memory, that ‘From the Director of Match Point’ is a considered, no doubt on some good evidence, a better marketing tag line than ‘From Woody Allen’.

I’m reminded of a comment I overheard in the cinema at a screening of ‘MEET THE FOCKERS’ - a young woman, probably in her early 20s asked her boyfriend - who’s that actor, you know the one playing the father with the fake breasts. I paused, captivated and horrified to hear what his answer would be: ‘You know him’  came the quick rejoinder in a tone of disbelief (phew at least the boyfriend knows who Robert De Niro is, I breathed to myself), ‘He’s that funny guy from ANALYZE THAT’

Or so those of us who work in this industry, but who maintain a sense of social responsibility, would like to believe. We would like to count ourselves in Margaret Mead’s small group of committed citizens. But are we? Can movies really change the world? This months TIME magazine looks at some data on the subject and is worth a read, article HERE

Hello all… I feel a little bit like an interloper but whilst Arvind is busy talking figures and staring at ridiculously long Excel spreadsheets I thought I could commandeer the soapbox for a few moments…

Slingshot is excited to have teamed up with the UK Film Council to act as a production partner for their latest 25 Words Or Less scheme.

We will develop and produce a microbudget feature inspired by the brief: ‘Teen Hitchcock’. Writers need to submit a 25 word pitch to the Film Council by 13 July 2007.

Slingshot is looking for a story that reimagines the thriller genre for a teen audience. Teen Hitchcock draws on the language of Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema, from the thematic concerns of suspense and voyeurism, to filmic techniques such as the Hitchcock zoom, whilst maintaining a clear teen sensibility. The ‘25 Words or Less’ pitch for Teen Hitchcock should encapsulate the essence of the master filmmaker whilst situating the story in a believable teen world. Comparable films include BRICK, CRUEL INTENTIONS and DISTURBIA.

Guidelines, application form and further details are here
There is also an article in May’s issue of ScriptWriter magazine which goes into a little more details about the genre which I have also posted as a comment below….

Happy pitching people!

Uzma Xx