Heat 10 Rocks - 48 hours 2010

Up front I must confess we had an entry in Heat 10 of the Auckland competition of 48 Hours. I'm not going to include it in this review. It was cool. I helped write it. Enough said.

The "V 48 Hours" film making competition has become something of an institution in NZ film circles, with all sorts from professionals to school children having a go. This is the sixth year I've been involved. My involvement mostly involves late night Friday night trying to write a script that makes sense, conforms to the limitations of our resources, and includes all the required elements - up to 7 minutes long, a line, a character with a certain characteristic, a prop and a genre. There's also a required shot, but I leave that to the actual filmies - I haven't a clue what a dolly shot is.

This year Heat 10 (our usual heat) seemed better than usual. I liked all the movies. The couple I didn't really "get" were technically accomplished. Some of the usual teams were not present (in another heat?) - including some teams I recall being caught in a stylistic/theme rut. A risk of entering year after year - under pressure the same ideas tend to be rehashed.

One team had a character dressed as a steak - another danger of 48 hours - "we have a really cool costume and we're going to use it whatever!". In this case it kind of enhanced the skewed world of the film. One team had a major technical problem - their whimsical little tale of ghosts haunting a park was still cute and entertaining. Major technical problems are a major problem in 48 hours - the only thing worse is a major team walk out - there are many tales of those as well.

Standouts for me were the two movies made by teenagers. The first, from team "Non Chalant", was a mock reality doco about teen romance where three young people were interviewed about their relationships and then the film crew caught their delusions on tape. For me one of the best performances of the night was Maddie Peters as the third teen who was more seriously deluded than the rest. The second teenage movie was "Another Bloody Romance Movie", made by a team from Diocesan College, who cashed in on their notoriety by crediting themselves as "those bloody Dio girls". They made a classic rom com, complete with final scene at a wedding chapel - with BLOOD. The opening scene was one of the most impressive gore fests I've ever seen on screen.

All in all a good night. Can't wait for the finals.

Film making is like wine making

One New Zealand novel I love is The Vintner's Luck, published about 10 years ago now. I love it I think because it is so rich in language and theme. It's like fruit cake studded with sultanas and cherries and laced with brandy. A lot of kiwi literature is like gruel.

The Vintner's Luck has a patchwork structure, starting episodically with the annual meetings of the vintner and the angel and gradually expanding into a beautiful poetic evocation of things foreign and in the past. It has very weird theology. The angel is a fallen angel and Satan himself makes an appearance. There's also some very dodgy stuff about the angel being a dry run for Jesus. The gay stuff is not so bothersome. It's certainly not terribly explicit and seems kind of superfluous, especially as the vintner in question also has a wife and a female mistress. I have no particular trouble reading novels with fantasy elements, being quite willing to suspend disbelief or take them to be symbolic in some form.

So when I heard Niki Caro (of Whale Rider fame, a New Zealand movie I love) was making a movie of The Vintner's Luck, I looked forward to it with some excitement, but when it was panned I decided not to see it. I couldn't bear to ruin the book. However, the book's author was so publically outraged by the treatment of her book a few of us (who love the book and hadn't seen the movie) got together to make a send up of the movie (not the book, which we love). The result is The Vintner's Duck (see link below) based on an interview Caro gave defending her movie at the height of the uproar.

For those not in the know the specific points about the movie were - the vintner was played by a Belgian actor, the wife was played by a teenager who was not aged well, the movie was not gay enough for the author, and the director famously compared film making and wine making.

Enjoy!