A Piece of History

As Borderlines Film Festival 2015 rolled into The Courtyard, the technical department decided to go for a bit of nostalgia and set up one of our Victoria 5 35mm film projectors for all to see in the foyer for the duration of the festival.

The Victoria 5 was first introduced to the world of film in 1975, built by Cinnemeccanica based in Milan. Developed as a low cost 35mm machine for use in multiplex cinemas, the Victoria 5 would become the firm’s most installed unit accounting for 95 percent of sales of 35mm equipment worldwide.

Here at The Courtyard we still have the capability to project 35mm film and a fully functional Victoria 5 projector is still used within our studio space, although with the coming of the digital age, the distribution of 35mm film prints is becoming more infrequent with most films arriving on a hard disk as a Digital Cinema Package.

But with some of Hollywood’s biggest studios still shooting on 35mm film every year, there will always be a place, certainly in my generation, for this wonderful medium to continue allowing films to be seen as the director intended when they shot it.

Below are a few photographs of the Victoria 5 in the foyer here at The Courtyard, taken by our resident Production Manager, Carl Hulme. More of Carl’s photography work can be found at carlhulmephotography.com.

Lens housing of the Victoria 5

L to R: Simon Nicholls, Chief Projectionist, Martyn Eatkins, Deputy Chief Projectionist

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Simon making adjustments to the lens housing

Martyn checking the film has been laced up correctly

 Dave Beever
Chief Technician
The Courtyard, Hereford

Foxcatcher is based on a true story too. I watched it two months ago at Worcester’s Vue cinema. In one scene we’re shown a field where 3,000 soldiers were killed during the American Civil War. I was sitting one hundred metres from a site, the old City Gate, where 3,000 Royalists were slaughtered during our Civil War. I didn’t know anything about the Team Foxcatcher story. I had been waiting to see Steve Carell in a drama. I have enjoyed his work since The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and far preferred his portrayal of the line manager in The Office. He exploits the humanity in his characters – The 40-Year Old Virgin, Little Miss Sunshine, Date Night – because it gave these comedies more scope. I cared what happened to them. So, as far I was concerned, Carell was already well-versed in dramatic roles. It became apparent, very early on, that Foxcatcher was going to be a sad film.

The Academy Award for Best Actor is a sprint finish in a cycle race. The team does everything that needs to be done for the one man launched towards the finishing line. It’s difficult to identify what’s wrong with Foxcatcher. Everything is top of the range. The period detail, late 1980s, is immaculate (but not too intrusive). The cinematography is evocative. The acting is never less than spot on. Steve Carell creates a believable John du Pont, the multi-millionaire who took it upon himself to provide the USA with a wrestling team that can win Olympic gold. You will believe that Mark Ruffalo is a better wrestler than his brother, played by Channing Tatum, who’d surely tear him apart. Vanessa Redgrave raises the standard in every scene, as John’s mother, without leaving her chair. Sienna Miller has a role that could have done by a hundred others, except that hiring a newcomer may have distracted the audience. The women never meet. It’s all about some men; uncommunicative, aggressive, self-obsessed men.

Ruffalo, giving a family man version of his character in The Kids Are All Right, plays David Schulz as a Saint. Ruffalo was in The Zodiac Killer too. Every time a lifer dies his agent gets an offer. There was one word delivered, off screen, in the voice Carell uses for ‘Gru’, his character in Despicable Me. After their initial success Du Pont continues to give the wrestlers everything they need but they just sit around. For a moment the movie appears to be saying something. It goes back to the story.

Why isn’t Foxcatcher better? It isn’t possible to do it any better. I think it is the story. It makes an eye-catching magazine article but there wasn’t much to it. Two taciturn men, who prefer bizarre behaviour to words, and the poor guy stuck in the middle trying to work them out. Will he crack the code in time? There were a lot of films made in the late 1960s and early 1970s with sudden, jarring endings. Even in real life it’s a cheap way of resolving the plot.

Whiplash - the good is the enemy of the great?

…or is it the other way round?   I can see what all the fuss is about.  Whiplash (shot in an incredible 19 days) is a mesmerising film about what it takes to be truly great, rather than merely brilliant.   We’re talking Mozart and Charlie Parker rather than Vaughan Williams or Jamie Cullum.   Miles Teller as the young drummer is extraordinary.  You can fake a guitar solo or use camera tricks with the piano, but there appears to be little trickery here, just blood, sweat, tears and a lot of drum solos.   Teller comes from a musical family and owns a drum kit.  He’s probably a ‘good’ drummer, and of course through the magic of cinema we believe him to be a great one.

The real core of the film is the performance of J K Simmons as the scariest teacher on the planet.  A friend of mine studied the Japanese flute under a Japanese master, and each time he made a mistake was beaten with a stick.  A Mary Poppins compared with Simmons who uses anger, violence and humiliation to push his students to (and sometimes over) the edge.  As he says, the two worst words in America are ‘good job’.  Ironically, Simmons was something of a Mary Poppins on set.   Actors eh!

Simmons’ methods reminded me so much of my old grammar school headmaster, who didn’t actually throw things but was a master of fear and humiliation.  I suppose I’m grateful in a way that he gave me a valuable lesson in how not to teach.  My own efforts in education didn’t create a Charlie Parker, but did produce lots of people capable of a doing a ‘good job’.  And unlike Charlie Parker they didn’t die of a heroin overdose at 34.

So, film A +,  teaching methods C -.  And as Confucius said ‘Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without’.