Screenhead

Continuing in our look back on the last decade, Screenhead examines the major movie events of the year 2007. For previous years, click to visit the article: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006.

2007: No Country for Blockbusters

The dispute between entertainment and art has waged on for decades, and this one was no different. But the largest rift between these factions was arguably in 2007. It was Hollywood’s first $4 billion summer, with huge hits such as Spiderman 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers, and even some surprises such as The Simpsons and The Bourne Ultimatum thrashing analyst expectations. But, the majority of these films (excluding Bourne 3) were slated by critics. Nothing new there, but fanboys and many of those with broader tastes also seemed to react to these films negatively. IMDB, the ultimate fanboy gauge, saw poor ratings for the threequels such as Spidey 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and while these films topped the box office, they interestingly failed to surpass their predecessors (even disappointing expectations if you take inflation into account).

And it was to no surprise that the Oscars in early 2008 failed to nominate any of these films besides the occasional technical award. Instead the nominated and winning films were some of the lowest earning Oscar movies of all time. The main winner was the excellent Coen Brothers adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country for Old Men. It was a powerful film about the chaos of violence but its ambiguous ending left many disregarding it as an “arthouse” movie. The other nominees such as Michael Clayton, Atonement, and There Will Be Blood, were mid-level earners, the only exception being the surprise indie hit Juno, which made $143 million. It was no wonder that the ratings for the Oscar ceremony were lagging in recent years. Whereas previous years had seen critical and financial successes such as Return of the King and Titanic win awards, it now seemed that Hollywood was somewhat out of tune with audiences, marketing huge, loud, explosive films that most audiences saw as dumb but a way of spending Friday night. No one with the right amount of money had the balls enough to completely reinvent the blockbuster, fearing a change from the norm would alienate audiences rather than refresh their enthusiasm for movies. Fortunately, that all changed in 2008.

Pirates of the Web

While Pirates of the Caribbean was making hundreds of millions of dollars in the summer of 2007, it was another type of pirating that was rocking the movie industry that year. Pirating of movies was nothing new. Ever since VHS became popular, you could find cheap bootlegs, either a copy of an official tape or the recording made by some guy filming at the cinema screen. Once the digitising of films, by compressing the sound and video into manageable sizes, came about at the end of the 90’s, pirating became a whole lot easier.

First came the torrent programmes such as Kazaa (remember that?) and Limewire. Files were broken down into segments and “shared” with other users. After Limewire came the many Torrent programmes which essentially did the same thing. Pirate Bay was one of the best tracking sites for torrent files, and also indicated how many people were sharing, or “seeding”, the file (the problem with this was rarer films that were shared by only a few users were subject to slow downloading or even being stopped entirely). And finally date repository sites like Megaupload enabled users to download compacted .rar files bit by bit, and then rebuild them into movies.

The significance of 2007 is that it was the first year to see a pirate film in HD-quality. Joss Whedon’s Serenity was available in its HDDVD format for anyone who wanted to enjoy every minute detail and crisp sound-effect for free. One of the benefits of the HD formats for studios was their massive data-size, making them difficult to pirate online. But how wrong they were in judging the bandwidths of the world, which in 2007 were expanding on a monthly basis. Hollywood (as well as major music labels) went on the warpath from then on, putting pressure on government and internet providers to prosecute downloaders and uploaders (the owners of Pirate Bay are currently appealing a case in which they owe Sweden’s Phonographic Industry $13 million), block torrent sites, and hold on to their cash intake. Of course, it’s a losing battle. For every prosecution and shut-down site they achieve, a dozen more methods of illegally obtaining movies are made available. But does Hollywood have that much to fear, with each year bringing in more and more, as people still use a trip to the cinema as a major social event?

The Sopranos ends?

While not exactly a movie (well… not at all), The Sopranos was undoubtedly one of the best TV shows of the last decade, getting inside the immoral lives of New Jersey gangsters, particular the Soprano family. In 2007 the show, which premiered in 1999, finally saw an end. The final series was excellent, full of surprises that didn’t feel overly-contrived. Instead they came as either a poignant moment or a horrific scene of downright nastiness (I’ll save on the spoilers for those few poor souls who haven’t watched the show). Perhaps the crowning glory of the show was the final episode, in which it ended on such an ambiguous note (the scene of Tony and his family eating in a diner seemed to build and build to something significant) that many people thought there was a technical error with the broadcast when it cut to black. Of course, the intention was to suggest that Tony Soprano’s life was doomed to constant suspicion and anxiety. No wonder he had a shrink.

As soon as the series ended, there was talk of what to do with Tony and co. Many expected a The Sopranos movie (at the time a Sex in the City, also a HBO production, movie was in the works) to emerge. Series creator David Chase seemed interested in the possibility, but there were rumours that lead actor James Gandolfini was tired of the role (and the weight!). But every few months more was added to the rumour mill. Owners of the show’s location were supposedly told not to change anything in lieu of the film. Cast members claimed that Chase was working on a script, and trying to justify why Tony Soprano could work on the big screen. And this year Gandolfini’s reluctance was dismissed by co-star Lorraine Bracco. An official announcement about a Sopranos film would be bittersweet. While many of us fans would love to enter that world one more time, the last moments of the series were so brilliantly executed that it seems as if a follow-up would feel pointless, or like Godfather Pt 3.

Power to the People, War for the Writers

Many of us just naturally assume that directors and cast are the backbone of any movie or TV show. But the writers of the US proved just how essential they were in November of 2007, when they voted to strike, which continued into February of 2008. The reasons behind their strike were just: residual payments over home viewing (DVD, video, etc) dated back to the early days of VHS when it was expensive to produce for studios. The dawn of cheaper DVDs meant that studios and production companies were earning more, but writers weren’t. Also, residuals over online streaming and digital downloads were shady to say the least. Studios resisted these issues, so the strike continued, grinding US TV and film production to a halt. This was probably a great time for foreign film-makers looking for US distribution, not the mention producers of reality-TV shows. Nevertheless, US TV schedules were full of repeats going into the new year.

Positive negotiations started in February, and eventually a deal was made ensuring a raise for all writers, and the strike was swiftly over. Many say that 2008 and 2009 suffered in quality due to the dent made by the strike (not to mention the $1.5 billion immediate impact), but it did prove that corporate greed would not be allowed. Indeed, in 2008 both the Directors’ Guild and Actors’ Guild of America both entered negotiations and reached suitable arrangements before striking, proving that the studios saw how bad things could get.

The Fantasy is Over

Hollywood execs can be forgiven by being blinded by the box-office brilliance of the Lord of the Rings films and the Harry Potter series. Anyone would think that audiences were hot on fantasy films. But 2007 proved them wrong, with a spate of failures. Films like the hyped Stardust underperformed, and others, such as The Last Mimzy and The Seeker (the latter was the first in a series of movies that never emerged) were absolute bombs. Everyone was trying to find the next Lord of the Rings, but audiences only wanted the classics. Even Prince Caspian, the follow up to the successful The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, failed to earn even nearly as much as the first Narnia pic.

The most disappointing, however, was The Golden Compass. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy were possibly the greatest fantasy novels ever written. Yes, better than Harry Potter, better than Lord of the Rings. The novels incorporated elements of quantum physics, critiques on religious institutions, daring takes on heaven and death, and all the while remaining a thoroughly entertaining tale. A film adaptation of the trilogy sounded like a great idea. Sadly, the film was given to director Chris Weitz (American Pie??? Down to Earth???) who rewrote Tom Stoppard’s script (although Stoppard’s version was actually rejected by New Line in the first place). Initial trailers showed promise, both with the locations and the cast (Nicole Kidman is perfect as the ice-queen Mrs Coulter). But the film was considered a failure, only earning $70 million in the US (its budget was $180 million excluding marketing costs). It did however manage to earn $300 million in the rest of the world but that wasn’t enough, killing production on the sequels. Anyone who as read the sequels will know what a shame this is, as the series got even better as the plot progressed. Some say the Catholic opposition killed the film’s chances, but that didn’t work with The Da Vinci Code. Instead, it was a mixture of poor film-making (the adaptation was awful, breathlessly introducing character and not knowing what to do with them) and general lack of interest in fantasy, acting as a final nail in the coffin of the high-budget genre. Since then we’ve seen fewer Hollywood fantasy flicks being realised. It was fun while it lasted.

We Said Goodbye to: Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman was hands down one of Europe’s greatest directors. While many of the continent’s greats, such as Tarkovsky and Fellini, were visualists, Bergman adopted his love of theatre to the big screen and managed to make some of cinema’s best dramas.

Born into a religious family, Bergman claimed to have lost his faith at the age of 8. He spent his childhood fascinated by the magic of cinema and theatre, and was constantly writing. He got involved with Swedish cinema in his early 20’s, quickly working up to director to make a number of dramas which were mostly rough around the edges, but possessing some of the director’s thematic obsessions that permeated his later films (death, tense relationships, etc). Bergman was starting to get noticed in the rest of Europe also, with his 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, which is ironically an anomaly in Bergman’s oeuvre, being rather light-hearted. But it was two years later that saw Bergman release two of his greatest masterpieces. Wild Strawberries is a poignant look at an elderly professor’s journey to receive an honorary reward and his thoughts regarding life, death, and regret. The Seventh Seal is perhaps the best introduction to the director’s work, a powerfully told morality tale in which a medieval knight plays chess with Death (famously referenced in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) in order to buy time in his plague-ravaged country and consider the meaning of life. The characters he meets as the travels all display different attitudes towards life and death, and the knight struggles with these philosophical debates while Death inevitably closes in. It’s a magnificently shot and performed movie that expresses all of Bergman’s doubts towards life, morality, and religion.

The following decade was perhaps Bergman’s most fascinating. He made a trilogy of films dealing with faith and religion (Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence), and the possibility of meaning in a world seemingly devoid of god. One of his many masterpieces is Persona, a brilliantly evocative arthouse film that saw Bergman embrace the medium of cinema in ways that left his theatrical origins far behind. In it, a famous actress recovers from an unknown trauma in her summer house with her nurse. The actress’s resentment towards the nurse creates a vicious tension, but the film suggests that they are both the same person, two sides struggling in a psychological crisis. The film has inspired the likes of David Lynch (who uses the method of jolting out of focus in Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr), Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and even in modern pop-psychology films like Fight Club.

Bergman’s later career was a mixed affair, although he still made some wonderful films and mini-series, such as Scenes from a Marriage (with Liv Ullmann delivering perhaps one of the greatest female performances of all time), Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander (a wonderfully magic look at most of Bergman’s themes), and his last film, the 2003 drama Saraband.

Throughout his career, Bergman wasn’t afraid to represent the difficult questions and doubts we unconsciously struggle within our daily lives. His movies tend to contain more close-ups of the human face than any other film, showing how even externally we cannot hide from our doubts. Despite the tensions of his characters, he operated a relaxed set, ensuring his crew and cast could focus on the drama instead of making it. He had long-lasting relationships (both romantically and professionally) with his cast, and arguably introduced the world to some of Scandinavia’s greatest talent: Liv Ullmann, Max Von Sydow, and Bibi Anderson.

Ingmar Bergman deserved far more than his three Oscars for Best Foreign Film, he was one of the most innovative and distinct directors cinema has ever seen, and if only a handful of film-makers let themselves be inspired by his work, then the world of cinema would be a greater place.

Films of the Year

No Country for Old Men
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Persepolis
The Mist
Zodiac

Future Years: 2008, 2009

By Eoin O’Faolain

Anything you think we’ve missed? Anything you disagree with? Let us know on the comments below!

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