Graham Chapman, DEAD, In 3D

I had no idea until recently that Graham Chapman is in fact dead” said Terry Jones placidly “I thought he was just being lazy. However, I am now delighted to find myself working with him again on this exciting project!”

Tucked away in an unassuming warehouse, a large group of animators are listening intently to David Sherlock, the wife of Brian, giving a heartfelt speech about the enigma that was Graham Chapman. Gorilla Film Magazine is perched at the back, desperately trying to balance on a rickety bench, that could fall and smash our legs to sawdust at any moment. This uncertainty adds to the excitement, as Justin Weyers, the co-founder of MV studios, which is heavily involved in the upcoming Monty Python film, talks the animators through the script, occasionally gesturing to a slideshow depicting various animations in the early stages of development. Thirteen groups of animators are coming together to portray the sometimes true story of Graham Chapman’s life.

“That is an interesting story to tell” declares Justin happily “and we are going to do it with the other members of Monty Python, 15 animation companies, a couple of composers, guest stars and also a few monkeys. Not only this but we are also jumping on the bandwagon to create it in stunning stereoscopic 3D, so Graham will really be face to face with you.”

But wait… isn’t he dead?

“Well, technically yes, but Graham Chapman wrote a book called The Liar’s Autobiography, published in 1980, and then in 1981 he recorded himself reading it in a single night, in Harry Nilsson’s studio, at a time when audiobook recordings were not yet commonplace. These tapes have been pulled apart and put back together with re-recordings to turn this book into a colourful feature film. This was done by the three main directors Bill Jones, Ben Timlett and Jeff Simpson, who have been hard at work writing and re-writing the script for 4 months.”

Meet the team: the animator’s who will help tell Graham Chapman’s story.

Justin Weyers and Alex Tovey founded Made Visual Studios, they were tasked with the difficult job of bringing an animated Graham Chapman back from the dead (although not really, of course). The idea is that the 15 animation companies will each do a section of the film, and learn how to bring their work kicking and screaming into the modern world with Stereoscopic 3D. It’s Justin’s job to manage them.

“Stereoscopic 3D has been taking over in the last couple of years, and going to the cinema and seeing something without glasses feels weird to me at the moment. The only way to start any project is research followed by research, so after going back to Avatar and then watching every 3D film that has been coming out from Pixar’s Up to the story of the choreographer Pina Bausch titled Pina, which was amazing stereo work, and even Justin Biber’s Never Say Never, which was a couple of hours I have lost forever.”

An important part of 3D is wearing silly glasses and smoking a pipe.

For more detailed information visit the Gorilla Film Magazine website, and you should also check out the Project Chapman 3D blog.

“We’ve been working closely with the Chapman estate and the Pythons to make sure we get this exactly right” said co-director Jeff Simpson “Graham would be delighted that his work is being re-imagined in glorious 3D. He always did like wearing silly glasses.”

Journey

I know I keep saying this, but downloadable video games are proving to be the gaming equivalent of low-budget films, providing a platform for developers who wouldn’t normally get a chance to share their vision. Well, Thatgamecompany (good name) is an indie video game developer founded by Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen, who basically made their first game in their last year of University. Since then they’ve proved that games can truly inspire deep emotional responses in players, with Flow and Flower, both simple but beautiful downloadable games.

In Flow, you play as a multi-segmented aquatic worm.

The intention of these rather lovely games is to create a feeling, a mood, in the player, it’s almost like meditation and provides an experience that is unique to the game medium. The fact that so many games are now really exploring the potential of the artform, rather than trying to copy movies (like so many of the bigger, more expensive titles), is really encouraging, and proves that the video game industry is finally getting to grips with it’s identity.

In Flower, you play the wind, as it blows flower petals through the air. 

Thatgamecompany’s latest downloadable title is Journey, and although it doesn’t have a release date, it is expected to be available this year (but only for the PlayStation network). Journey is looking to be a very ambitious title, it takes place in a vast desert, with no map or instructions. A huge mountain glimmers in the distance, and the players only objective is to reach it, traversing the landscape on a lonely pilgrimage in a strange land. The game welcomes online play, so you can make the journey with others, but there are no names, nothing to distinguish the other players and no way to communicate. It is possible to help one another, or ignore each other completely, regardless it is a far cry from most multiplayer experiences, which generally involve shooting each other with loud guns. The objective of Journey is to create a shared experience which isn’t about violence, it’s shifting the perception of what a game can be and that’s a really exciting idea.

Journey will be released some time this year and will be available on the PlayStationNetwork.

Flow and Flower are both available on the PlayStationNetwork.

Pixar’s Brave

Nobody seems particularly excited by the idea of a sequel to Cars, which many people believe to be Pixar’s weakest film. Personally I like Cars, or at least I like the philosophy behind Cars, despite the fact that cars themselves, that is to say the big metal things people drive around in, bore me rigid. The Buddhist-for-kids message of the film struck a chord with me, and I personally found the ending rather satisfying. However I, like so many, have no interest in Cars 2, primarily because the first one seemed to have a very definite ending, and the film certainly doesn’t have the franchise potential of Toy Story.

Julie Walters plays a Wise Woman in Brave.

So why exactly is there a Cars 2? Well the sequel actually seems inevitable when you remember that Disney made over five billion dollars off of the Cars merchandise, far more than the DVD sales of the film. As a matter of fact Up, the story of a grumpy old man’s coming of age, caused Pixar’s stock to go down before it’s release, as investors didn’t understand the point of a children’s film that didn’t have an abundance of marketable merchandise.

All is not lost however, sure Pixar have plans for a couple more sequels, not least Monsters University, but that’s not to say they aren’t still making highly imaginative and original children’s films. Brave is scheduled for a June release in 2012 and looks to be as wonderfully refreshing as Up was.

The synopsis of the film goes like this:

Brave is set in the mystical Scottish Highlands, where Merida is the princess of a kingdom ruled by King Fergus and Queen Elinor. An unruly daughter and an accomplished archer, Merida one day defies a sacred custom of the land and inadvertently brings turmoil to the kingdom. In an attempt to set things right, Merida seeks out an eccentric old Wise Woman and is granted an ill-fated wish. Also figuring into Merida’s quest — and serving as comic relief — are the kingdom’s three lords: the enormous Lord MacGuffin, the surly Lord Macintosh, and the disagreeable Lord Dingwall.

The role of Merida will be played by the wonderful Kelly Macdonald, while other characters will be played by the likes of Billy Conolly, Julia Walters, Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane, so a very fine cast indeed.

Brave is the first Pixar film to be based on fairy tale lore, and it certainly seems to be embracing that identity wholeheartedly. It’s also the first Pixar film to have a female in the lead role, and promises to be a bit darker, and more intense, than previous titles the animation studio has produced. Given that Pixar has managed to be very dark indeed, the end of Toy Story 3, for example, started to resemble the work of Hieronymus Bosch, I’m very much looking forward to Brave, and wonder if the title of this movie doesn’t represent the studio’s ethos when it comes to making children’s films.

It’s always been my belief that Pixar have generally continued the tradition of classic children’s stories that treat children with respect, and encourage them to keep up, unlike more reductive films that think that children are stupid. Pixar has rarely stumbled, and when they do I think they have to be forgiven, considering the sheer volume of beautiful and inspiring work they’ve made, which continues to push the boundaries of children’s animation.

Papo & Yo and the integrity of the Video Game artform

Everyone is aware of the ongoing debate about video games legitimacy as an artform, and it’s not hard to see both sides of the argument. That said, we are certainly seeing a lot of really adventurous and provocative titles in the gaming industry right now, as developers continue to push the boundaries of what is acceptable/profitable. For me, there have certainly been stand out moments of artistic integrity in the gaming world, the Oddworld series in the late nineties invited players into a vast, beautiful landscape that was as thought provoking and emotional as it was playful and humorous.

One of many beautiful landscapes in Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus.

2005′s Psychonauts was a gaming experience that allowed players to infiltrate character’s minds, battle their demons and attempt to weave their sanity back together. Each level was a different mind, and the visual style changed dramatically depending on the personality of the host. For example at one point you enter the mind of a mutated fish monster, and become a Godzilla-sized behemoth, as you make your where through a city inhabited by terrified fish civilians. Later in the game your own mind becomes mixed with that of your host, so that the environment becomes a bizarre circus inhabited by horrific butchered animals.

 A suburb gets twisted into a surrealist nightmare in Psychonauts.

In Shadow of the Colossus, which also came out in 2005, there was a total of sixteen enemies throughout the entire game, but they were so big you had to scale their bodies to defeat them. A portion of the game was taken up with the player travelling through this vast, lonely world, on horseback, armed only with a sword and a bow. As you explored this environment, the only suggestion of other life, aside from the birds and lizards, was the immense architecture of some forgotten civilisation. The Colossi felt very real, everything from the way they moved to the detail on their huge bodies, they looked ancient, as if they had risen from part of the landscape, and when defeated would return to the earth. There was an incredible grace, beauty and even melancholy to the creatures, and you felt genuinely guilty for destroying them.

One of the smaller creatures in Shadow of the Colossus. 

It is wonderfully easy to have empathetic connections with characters in games, because we actively make decisions that affect them. The interaction of the player is the most important attribute of a game, and separates it from other mediums. The very fact that we must intervene in order to ensure a happy ending, gives the game weight, it creates tension and motivates the player. Humans can form emotional attachments to anything, from animals to inanimate objects, so it’s not such a great leap to care about the characters the player interacts with throughout the narrative of a video game. Recently, games have been more and more daring with how they tell their stories, most notably Heavy Rain, which attempted to create a mature game for lovers of narrative.

Taking your son to school is just one of many adventures in Heavy Rain.

Personally I don’t think Heavy Rain is a step in the right direction for the future of games, because it seemed to emulate the narrative structure of a film, when it should be celebrating the attributes of a game that makes it a unique medium. Naturally, game developers still have a long way to go before the medium can be properly defined, because at the moment it’s still a bit up in the air as to what a video game actually is. However, games are evolving at a much faster rate than any other artform, so there’s certainly a possibility the video game medium will finally find it’s identity in our lifetime.

A welcome new branch of gaming can be found in the downloadable titles, which are very much the equivalent of the short film movement. Downloadable games are much cheaper to make, and so are afforded the luxury of experimentation, while the blockbuster titles such as Modern Warfare have to remain as diluted and bland as possible, in order to appeal to a wider market.

One such downloadable title is Papo & Yo, scheduled for a 2012 release for the PlayStation 3. Papo & Yo is an adventure game, and the debut release of a studio called Minority, financially supported by Sony’s Pub Fund. The game was conceived by Vander Caballero, the Creative Director at Minority, and tells the story of a young boy called Quico who lives in the Favelas in South America. His best friend and protector is ‘Monster’ a large pink beast that loves Quico but is unfortunately addicted to frogs, and when he eats them he transforms into an evil creature, full of fury, that attempts to destroy everything in his path, including Quico. If you’re thinking this story sounds oddly metaphorical, then you’re quite right, because Papo & Yo is really the story of  Vander Caballero and the relationship he had with his alcoholic father.

Your best friend is also your worst enemy in Papo & Yo.

The idea is quite powerful, but only because of the unique interactive quality of a video game. Players will have the opportunity to experience, on some small level, Caballero’s life with his father, as they enjoy his friendly, placid nature up until the point he turns into an evil beast. And when that happens, there is an instinctive desire to cure Monster, to save him from his illness. There are indeed fruits that you can give the beast, to sober him and return him to his placid state, at least until he finds another frog. The relief the player feels when Monster is subdued is supposed to emulate that same feeling Caballero himself would have when his father was no longer in his monstrous alcohol fueled rage.

The point of Papo & Yo is to attempt what so many good children’s stories (and recently, Pixar films) have achieved, by telling a dark, but necessary fable that is accessible to a family audience. The theme may be dark, but the game doesn’t need to be, indeed the whimsical environment the game is set in is itself a world created by Quico as a way to deal with the darkness in his life.

Although it will be a while before Papo & Yo is available to play, it’s existence certainly bodes well for the gaming community, whether or not the gameplay will live up to the concept, it is certainly a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the video games that make the most profit are usually the soulless, generic blockbuster titles, as is the case with the movie industry. However that is not to say that all games should be measured by these few, as indeed Transformers is not representative of the medium of film.

Jim Henson: The Storyteller

Nostalgic humans will doubtlessly feel a mixture of excitement and apprehension at the news of a new Muppet movie, scheduled for release in November this year. The film will star Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper and, obviously, the Muppets.

The Muppets were a powerful force in the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s, created by Jim Henson, a wonderful, shiny individual who had enough darkness in him to give the Muppets that edge that made them so popular.

Dark and groovy.  

With an outstanding television series and some really, quite excellent, films such as A Muppet Christmas Carol and A Muppet Treasure Island, the Muppets didn’t compromise, they were rough around the edges, and constantly parodied everyone and everything with gusto.

And then, in 2004, the Walt Disney Company acquired the franchise, and then this happened.

And everything was ruined.

However, it would not be utterly foolish to feel optimistic about the upcoming Muppets film, for one thing it is directed by James Bobin, who has worked as a writer/director on Da Ali G Show, and co-created Flight of the Conchords (incidentally Bret Mckenzie has written the songs). Also, the filmmakers are promising- promising- to make the film old school, harking back to The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan.

Although the Muppets are undoubtably Jim Henson’s most memorable creation, it must not be forgotten than he tried his hand at creating numerous other worlds, the beautiful/terrifying world of the Dark Crystal, the wonderfully absurd world of Labyrinth, and the charming little fables of The Storyteller, which consisted of a single season of European folk tales aimed at a family audience.

The Storyteller and his talking dog/only friend.

The Storyteller was a perfect outlet for Jim Henson’s groovy peace-loving ideals and imaginative special effects. The actual teller of stories was played by John Hurt, while his dog (a puppet performed and voiced by Brian Henson) acted as the viewers voice. John Hurt and his puppet/dog would sit before a warm fire, in a comfortable looking armchair, and played a prominent part in each episode. Hurt would tell some story, sometimes taken from German, or Russian folklore, and we would flit back and fourth, from the story to the storyteller, as he weaves his narrative.

Many of the characters, particularly the obligatory monsters, were puppets, some small and grotesque, some huge and refreshingly beastly, such as the wonderful Griffin in The Luck Child.

This Griffin is extremely high maintenance. 

The series didn’t last long, although an attempt was made to revive it with a second series (this time featuring Michael Gambon and  focusing on Greek Myths) only four more episodes were made. For me, Jim Henson’s puppets were best suited to fantasy, and my favourite Muppet movies were the period pieces like Christmas Carol and Treasure Island, which looked visually rich and dirty, unlike later films that were a bit too clean and sterile. If the new Muppets film is a success, there’s talk of bringing the series back to television, which I think would be a very good idea, particularly as it would give the Muppets a chance to go crazy again, in their natural environment (which has always been television) and by crazy I mean crazy. In italics.

Oh and just in case you’d forgotten, The Storyteller had a few familiar faces, for example in The Solider and Death, we see a young Bob Peck, best known for his role in Jurrasic Park as Robert Muldoon, the chap who says ‘clever girl’. Here’s a clip of the great man in action.

To watch the trailer for the new Muppet Movie (titled: The Muppets) click on this link. 

The Rise of Hollywood, presented by Paul Merton

The phenomenon of Hollywood had an outstanding effect on cinema, changing it forever and helping to change the world along with it. Despite the undertones of darkness, villainy, backstabbing, decadence, drugs and sex, Hollywood was a powerful force of good, liberating the formally conservative West and encouraging Babylonian-like glamour, which has helped shape a more liberal society. Probably. Paul Merton is a comedian, best known for his sketch shows and his regular slot on Have I Got News For You. He also has a deep love of early cinema.

Also; hats.

And if you weren’t aware of Merton’s love of film, then shame on you, he’s been making documentaries about them for a while now, for the BBC. Merton had previously brought to attention the work of Alfred Hitchcock prior to his venture to America, the early British silent films were very much a template for what would later become Hitchcock’s more recognised work. That particular program,was titled Paul Merton Looks at Alfred Hitchcock.

Shown here.

It showed Merton’s understanding of the visual language of film, and is worth seeking out. His latest show, Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood, studies the rise of Hollywood in a tongue and cheek manner, full of interesting facts and wonderful clips from early Hollywood movies. You can watch the show right now, and I highly recommend you do, it’s playful and light-hearted, portraying a flippancy very much in keeping with Merton’s particular favourite films; the works of Chaplin, Keaton and Roscoe Arbuckle. There’s also a good look at the dark side of Hollywood, from a fair study of D. W. Griffith to the underhand way in which Hollywood will look for a scapegoat and, most hated of all, those damn Conservatives that want to ban everything in the name of decency!

Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood is available to watch on iplayer.

If you can’t watch iplayer, or if it’s no longer available, I’m sure it’ll be on YouTube in a month or so.