Film Review - Inherent Vice (2015)

Movies Scored by Famous Musicians (Her Feature)

Often, a movie’s score goes unnoticed by an audience, but it can have major effects on the mood and setting of a film by subtly changing a viewer’s perception. If the score is not chosen wisely, it can hinder a film, or even worse, clash with the fundamental themes underlying it. In order to achieve the correct mood, it has become a recent trend for Hollywood film makers to collaborate with famous musicians. For Her, director Spike Jonze worked closely with Arcade Fire to create a sublime score that sweeps and swoons in alignment with Theodore’s (Joaquin Phoenix) emotions. In honour of Her’s February release, we’re taking a look at some of the best collaborations between famous musicians and film makers in recent memory.

Grizzly Bear/ Blue Valentine (2010)

Usually scores are inspired by the films they are created for, but in the case of Blue Valentine, the opposite is true. Director Derek Cianfrance worked for over 7 years to perfect his Blue Valentine script, but it wasn’t until he found the Grizzly Bear band that he hit his writing stride. As he wrote, he often listened to their music, fusing their melodic rhythm into the pacing of his writing. In 2007, he reached out to the band and asked if they would score his film. They obliged, and together with Cianfrance, were able to create two separate moods—one of romanticism for flashbacks and another highlighting tension for present day scenes—that defined the pacing of the film.

Alex Turner/ Submarine (2010)

The lead singer for the Arctic Monkeys took a brief hiatus in 2010 to work alone for the soundtrack of Submarine. In order to highlight this coming of age story, Turner put down his usual habitual rock style, and created six different acoustic songs. His soundtrack was critically acclaimed, and Turner used the experience to expand the sound of the Arctic Monkeys.

Trent Reznor/ The Social Network (2010)

While it’s hard to imagine The Social Network without its award winning soundtrack, Trent Reznor’s score almost didn’t happen. When David Fincher Initially offered Reznor the gig, he turned it down to take a break from music. Thankfully for the film however, Reznor changed his mind at the last minute, and joined forces with Atticus Ross to create a score that Roger Ebert called an “urgent composition that drove the film's headlong momentum.” After the credits finished, Reznor’s score kept on driving, taking the film to the academy awards where it was nominated for eight Oscars and won three including best original score.

Daft Punk/ Tron: Legacy (2010)

Before winning the Grammy for best album of the Year, the French duo took on the Disney remake of Tron in 2010. Their electric-pop vibe was a natural selection for the digital world, and the soundtrack for the film was a huge success, moving all the way to No. 4 on the Billboard top 200 list.

Karen O/ Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

To bring this beloved work of Maurice Sendak to life, Spike Jonze enlisted the help of Karen O, lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and at the time, his current girlfriend. She lent her voice for several songs, including the Grammy nominated song All is Love, and helped to write the score, which was nominated for best original score at the Golden Globe awards.

John Greenwood/ There Will Be Blood (2007)

For There Will Be Blood, Radiohead’s guitarist John Greenwood accented Daniel Day Lewis’ performance with orchestral sounds to give the film a sinister, unsettling tone. Although his score was ultimately snubbed by the academy awards because of its use of previously recorded material, it was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media".

Arcade Fire/ Karen O/ Her (2014)

For Her, Spike Jones collaborated with Arcade Fire to produce the score, and once again Karen O to sing an original song. Arcade Fire’s score has been nominated for best score by the academy awards, and Karen O’s “The Moon Song” has been nominated for Best Original Song. The film is also in the running for three more Oscars, including Best Picture.

HER IS RELEASED IN UK CINEMAS ON 14 FEBRUARY 2014

The Master DVD Review

So accomplished is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s catalogue of work, that every new film he presents is met with a degree of excitement and expectation reserved for only the most celebrated and enduring of filmmakers. Despite a relatively short career (one comprising less than two decades), Anderson has already hit the high notes with an excellent portfolio of work that includes, amongst others, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. Anderson has never really produced a poor film, and the notion of seeing him reunited with long-term accomplice, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, to cast their creative eyes over the thorny subject of a pseudo-religious cult, is a prospect certainly worth relishing.

Ultimately, The Master is a film which provokes an immense sense of awe, chiefly through the performances of its double-act of leading men; but it’s one which also instils a lingering sense of doubt and, dare I say it, disappointment.

As the Second World War draws to a close, US seaman Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is little more than a drunken, sex-obsessed husk. As his comrades frolic on Pacific island beaches, Freddie is quietly mixing drinks, cavorting with women made of sand and draining and drinking the fuel from his ship’s torpedoes. It is abundantly clear that Freddie is struggling with post-traumatic stress, his efforts to maintain a steady job post-war end in disaster, violence, and soaked in home-made booze.

Ultimately Freddie’s penchant for hooch leads to the accidental poisoning of an elderly co-worker forcing him to flee his job for his own safety. Tired, desperate and inebriated, Freddie stows away on a passing boat unaware that it currently plays host to an eccentric cabal known as The Cause, led by their enigmatic and beguiling leader Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), known to his acolytes as “Master”.

Freddie is welcomed into the fold and joins the ensemble in spreading Dodd’s good news, learning the ins-and-outs of the exercise known as “processing”, while simultaneously battling those outside influences who would seek to derail The Cause.

Hoffman’s Master is of course a thinly-veiled reference to author and founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard; and his performance as the mesmeric leader of The Cause is a thing to behold, as Hoffman imbues the leader with a tangible sense of self-assurance and thoughtfulness. Watching the commanding Dodd deliver his sermons to an adoring congregation, with their bizarre lectures on quasi-psychology and spirituality is as tempting as it is baffling. As a study of the cult of personality, it’s genuinely unnerving. Whilst every reasonable bone inside you should reject the nonsense on offer, it’s all too easy to see how Freddie and the rest of the herd become so affected and entranced by the Master’s teachings, so powerful and believable is Hoffman’s delivery.

As a counterpart to Dodd’s measured sermonising, Freddie’s alcohol-soaked, rotten futility is excellent too. Joaquin Phoenix brings a demoralising physicality to a role that under normal circumstances would elevate itself above the rest. The fact that it’s a performance that plays second fiddle says more about Hoffman’s presence in the piece than it does about Phoenix’s.

Together the performances are, save for the odd mumble of Phoenix’s, as damn-near pitch perfect as is possible. The setting in which these two performances are to be found is a beautiful, studiously reconstructed image of post-war USA. It’s a USA in which the iron curtain of atomic-age paranoia has most definitely descended; and yet the vestiges of hopefulness, of dewy-eyed belief in the American dream, still remain.

If Paul Thomas Anderson is guilty of anything, it’s that his stories can have a tendency to find themselves coughing and spluttering towards a resolution. There Will Be Blood’s grind towards the finishing line was expertly aided by its visual and aural magnificence; there was little room for dissent as you were being so firmly and skilfully grasped by the balls. Boogie Nights took a descent into a drug-fuelled hell which contrasted with its upbeat and romping (albeit sleazy) opening salvos, but maintained some sense of urgency; in the case of The Master ,the culmination of nearly two-and-a-half hours of soul-searching appears to be less assured.

A final act which appears to tread much of the same water trod in the film’s middle third feels like Anderson is searching for an ending which never comes. Freddie’s vision, experienced towards the end of the film, is one which exists as a symptom of his general lack of growth both spiritually and practically. For all the processing and sermonising, he’s never really moved on. A sobering thought, but it’s one which belies the fact that, as an audience, neither have we. Despite the mesmeric performances of Hoffman and Phoenix, you are left with a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction at a film which very much feels like it has a beginning, and a middle.

Chris Banks(@Chris_in_2D)

★★★★☆

Rating:15
BD/DVD Release Date:11 March 2013 (UK)
Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix , Amy Adams,
Buy The Master on:Blu-ray / DVD

Joaquin Phoenix Drowns For Peta

Joaquin Phoenix is drowning. In a rare appearance outside his award-winning films, the Oscar nominee is featured in a brand-new PETA UK video that shows him underwater, struggling to breathe and panicking. As the text explains, “In water, humans drown just as fish suffocate on land. It’s slow and painful and frightening. … Put yourself in their place. Try to relate. Go vegan”.

Capitalizing on the buzz surrounding Phoenix’s critically acclaimed performance in The Master, PETA US moved to place the ad during the Academy Awards, but US television network ABC deemed the video to be too political and controversial to run during the broadcast.

“I was 3 years old – to this day it is a vivid memory“, Phoenix says of the moment he connected human and animal suffering. “My family and I were on a boat, catching fish. As one fish was caught, he was writhing, then he was thrown against the side of the boat. You couldn’t disguise what it was. This was what we did to animals to eat them. The animal went from a living, vibrant creature fighting for life to a violent death. I recognised it, as did my brothers and sisters.”

Biologists have found that fish develop relationships with each other and even grieve when their companions die. Some fish are capable of using tools, while others gather information by eavesdropping. These intelligent, sensitive animals are so good-natured that Dr Sylvia Earle, the world’s leading marine biologist, said, “I wouldn’t deliberately eat a grouper any more than I’d eat a cocker spaniel“.

In addition to garnering an Academy Award nomination, Phoenix’s work in The Master landed him a BAFTA nomination as well as an award from the Venice Film Festival.

The Master Review

Come one come all and lend your ears to Paul Thomas Anderson for the master has arrived and he demands your attention. More than any of this years releases, the director’s follow-up to 2007’s There Will Be Blood has had critics and fans alike flocking to the alter of ‘The Cause’ and laying worship at the feet of it’s creator. Again it sees Anderson go right to the heart of Americana, holding aloft a post-war America that saw the birth of a great number of newly established religions sparked by a national spiritual yearning.

    Early whispers promised a brave and unflinching look at the mysterious world of Scientology amid reports of celebrity storm-outs at screenings and uneasy tensions with friend and Anderson collaborator Tom Cruise. Those rumours can largely be laid to rest, for while Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd is unquestionably a thinly veiled riff on L. Ron Hubbard, the ambiguity of cult…sorry religion, definitely not cult, on show can be traced to a number of ideals formed on the early basis of Dianetics. That established we are free to focus on what is on show in this markedly heavyweight, award-baiting film.

    Joaquin Phoenix - last seen drinking, sniffing and rapping his bearded way through the uncomfortable mock-doc I’m Still Here - turns up shaved, but no less addled as Freddie Quell – a sailor alone and adrift following the end of WWII. He drifts, via fleeting fumbles with females and an abundance of homemade moonshine, into the path of Lancaster Dodd entertaining a boat full of his congregation all following the mysterious path of ‘the cause’. The two instantly embark on a kinship, Quell taken by the charismatic and charming intellectual showing him time of day while Dodd sees in Freddie something that inspires him greatly, taking him under his wing and doting on him to a near romantic degree.

    The stormy relationship between the two carries much of the film, through Dodd’s attempted ‘curing’ of his violent protégé and the staunch defence by Freddie of all comers daring to challenge the legitimacy of ‘the master’s call to arms. It is this compelling tête-à-tête and not the religious overtones that propel The Master into greatness with two central performances that cast a shadow over all others vying for end of year accolades.

    Anderson has a noted quality for getting the very best out of his actors; it was he who gambled on Mark Whalberg’s ability to hold a lead while still suffering from his Marky Mark moniker, he who gave his returning star Seymour Hoffman his big break and he who so memorably oversaw the larger than life Daniel Day-Lewis shout something about milkshake to terrifying effect, not to mention produce wholly unrecognisable and likeable turns from Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler. However it is that he goads these performances from his leads he’s extremely successful at it and he’s repeated the trick here, toning down the near-panto levels of oil slicker Daniel Plainview to draw career-topping turns from both Phoenix and Hoffman. Their sparring characters couldn’t be further apart but the pair are an equally enthralling on screen presence, understandably sharing the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival. Phoenix excels as the tightly wound raging bull slipping from sexual deviant and alcoholic to believer and campaigner and back again all the while maintaining an air of a man lost and on the edge but offset by a very real tenderness. His hands-on-small-of-back stance alone somehow portrays his curiousness and childlike mindset. At the other end of the acting scale is the controlled Hoffman, channelling every powerful speaker and business leader possible to deliver us Dodd, a man adept at holding a crowd but alone suffers the nagging doubt and fears of us all. He possesses Dodd completely, every glance, voice change and public address is done with utter conviction and realism while his song and dance number I’ll Go No More A-roving is nothing short of show stopping.

    So the importance and greatness of spectacle of The Master are without question, apparent to all who gaze upon the opening shot and are taken in for the ensuing two hours. It does however leave you with a lost feeling of your own, quite different to that of its protagonist Freddie but a sense that at some point something loses its way, the master less masterful, the yearning without the spiritual element sets in. Hard to pinpoint or criticise specifically, just an acknowledgement that, much like ‘the cause’, The Master cannot alone answer all of our needs at once.

Matthew Walsh

★★★★☆

Rating: 15
Release Date: 16 November 2012 (UK)
Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix , Amy Adams

I'M STILL HERE -Get's a UK Release

Optimum Releasing today sent me the UK Trailer for Casey Affleck documentary film based on his brother in law, everyones favourite mad man Joaquin Phoenix.
The movie is based on the 'lost year' of the troubled stars life where he basically gave everything up to persue a career as a rapstar under the wing of P-Diddy aka Sean Combs. The question you ask is this really a mockamentary? Or is it the downward spiral of a troubled actor who has mentally as well as pyshically let go of reality?
Whatever the movie is trying to be you'll laugh,cry, cringe and even you'll ask why?!
The movie will be out a week on Friday (10th) USA released by Magnolia Pictures but for UK its Optimum Releasing and will be out probably limited release on September 17th.

Trailer after the break...

The directorial debut of Oscar-nominated actor Casey Affleck, I'M STILL HERE is a striking portrayal of a tumultuous year in the life of internationally acclaimed actor Joaquin Phoenix. With remarkable access, I'M STILL HERE follows the Oscar-nominee as he announces his retirement from a successful film career in the fall of 2008 and sets off to reinvent himself as a hip hop musician. Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, and always riveting, the film is a portrait of an artist at a crossroads. Defying expectations, it deftly explores notions of courage and creative reinvention, as well as the ramifications of a life spent in the public eye.

I’m Still Here is released in cinemas on September 17.

Is Joaquin Phoenix really still here, check out the trailer for I'M STILL HERE and find out

source THEPEOPLESMOVIES
So is he still here, yes he is but was he ever lost? good question as Magnolia Pictures release the Csey Affleck directed I’M STILL HERE the documentary on the ‘lost year’ of Joaquin Phoenix.
The question is this year really a documentary of a mockamentary as a sucessfull a-list actor at a cross roads of his life drops out of the movies to become a rap star under the management of P-Diddy aka sean Combs. Is this Phoenix giving the movie world the finger or is it a glorified arthouse film showning us the breakdown of a talented but troubled actor whose let himself goe mentally as well as pyshically?

I’m Still Here will shock you, rivet you, make you cringe as well as make you laugh, is there anyway back for Phoenix? The documentary will be released stateside September 10th, but no word if the movie will see the light of day in UK & Ireland but im sure if its successfull it will.

Trailer After the break....