CATFISH - "The REAL Facebook movie"

Nev Schulman meets Megan Faccio on the internet. She writes him songs, he sends her compliments. They seem to "connect". Pretty soon the texting turns to sexting. Nev starts to talk about what it would mean to make a relationship work with someone who lives out of state. The infatuation goes beyond Megan. Nev is friends with her family and her friends. He thinks they're all pretty awesome. But somehow, while he speaks to them on the phone, they never get to meet. And then the scales fall away. It looks like those songs she wrote were taken from Youtube. When he drives out to Megan's house, it's unoccupied. And when he shows out at Megan's mum Angela's house, it's clear that the poor woman has been running a ring of fake IDs on Facebook and conducting a fake cyber-love affair with Nev out of sheer frustration and loneliness. Far from being a cute twentysomething, Angela is a middle-aged mother with two severely handicapped children and a life of limited possibilities. Her fantasies are understandable, but Nev is a real person with real feelings who was led on. Or was he? After all, he is a documentary film-maker. He chose to share the most intimate details of his relationship with the camera even when he apparently thought it was real. And when he realised it was fake, he carried on filming. He and his friends created a sting, and sure, they were gentle with Angela, but not so gentle as to let her off the hook completely, because then there would be no film.

So, this film raises questions about identity and personal boundaries beyond those that the film-makers think they are posing. Most simply it poses the question about how we can trust personae that we meet on line. I think that's not particularly original. But it does show how quickly a person can cross the line from selective editing of a Facebook profile (not posting those pictures where we don't look our best) to wholesale fabrication. Second, CATFISH poses a question about how unboundaried we have all become. From the girl who posted so many pictures on line that Angela could easily steal her identity, to Nev, who thought nothing about letting a girl into his emotions that he'd never met, to the film-makers, Nev and Angela, who presumably feel comfortable exposing all this material for the sake of making a film. In other words, what I'm saying here is that while I think Angela has problems, she's just a case in extremis of what all of us who use Facebook and Twitter and Blog experience - that erosion of personal boundaries and personal privacy that we trade for a wider group of virtual friends.

CATFISH is, then, a provocative documentary and for all its questionable morality - entrapping a woman who clearly needs help - and pimping out one's own emotional life for the sake of a movie - let alone the (I think scurrilous charges) that the entire thing (as opposed to maybe certain scenes) were set up - it remains an important piece of work. It's not a great film in terms of its shooting style or structure - there were definitely passages where I got bored waiting for the inevitable unmasking - but it prompted so much discussion that it has become, by virtue of its content, a must-see film.

CATFISH played Sundance and London 2010 and opened in the US and Canada in September. It is currently on release in the UK and the Netherlands.

Random DVD Round Up 1 - EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP

One-trick pony mockumentary in which notorious street-artist Banksy sends up the modern art world by showcasing nutty video-voyeuer turned artist Thierry Guetta. Guetta starts out behind the camera, documenting the early days of street art in LA, creating a mammoth collection of unedited tapes. He then morphs into an artist, apparently on Banksy's urging, creating works of suspiciously derivative quality and creating an art-world hoop-la in the process. Presumably this has all been faked, and Banksy is trying to make a point about how credulous the punters will be when faced with the latest fashion. Which is all very plausible, but hardly a radical thought, and certainly not enough to sustain a feature length film.

Additional tags: Banksy, tom fulford, chris king,

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP played Sundance and Berlin 2010. It opened in the UK, US and Russia earlier this year and opens in Germany on October 2010. It is also available on DVD and on iTunes.

Preview - BEYOND THE POLE

Reviews are getting posted a little less promptly now that the locks are off the alcohol cupboard in Bishopsgate (quite literally) and the European fixed income divergence trade is starting to bear fruit. Which brings me to a preview of a movie that one might think a little at odds with the purported aim of this blog - a review site that loves shameless violence and scorns vegetarianism in all its manifestations. Not that I don't have time for the earnest agit-doc, but it always seems to me that they make not one iota of difference: after all, no unrepentant flat-earther is going to shell out his hard-earned cash to see some flick from the Lib-Lab coalition. To my mind, this genre of film is basically preaching to the already converted Guardian readership. This is where BEYOND THE POLE comes in - a new British film touting itself as the first environmental comedy. We sent our correspondent - a man more at home with ultra-violent Korean flicks - to investigate......

"Beyond the Pole sounds ghastly, promoted as a feelgood environmental comedy, which does it a disservice. It's not schmaltzy, doesn't preach, and has no over-the-top scene where everybody cheers. But it is very funny. Filmed documentary-style, Stephen Mangan (GREEN WING) and Rhys Thomas (THE FAST SHOW) work well as the glass-half-full and glass-half-empty buddies who are equally foolhardy. They set off from Lichfield to the North Pole hoping to set some sort of Guinness record. The film charts the obstacles they face, which include polar bears, frostbitten penises and, through their radio, relationship strife back home.

For the most part the film belies its shoestring budget and radio play origins. The Arctic is beautiful even when purpotedly shot on a camcorder. The cast is never hammy, and benefits from the comic timing of Rosie Cavaliero as the long-suffering girlfriend and Mark Benton as the local amateur radio enthusiast. In a stroke of luck for the filmmakers, it also boasts a pre-True Blood Alexander Skarsgård camping it up as a rival trekker.

Moviemaking on ice was never going to be easy. To some extent location filming in three weeks against-the-odds, on a Greenland ice field that was due to melt, has helped the performances. The dialogue comes across as improvised and the tension seems genuine. However, the script's ending needed more development prior to the shoot. We know it's inconceivable that such a pair of losers could make it to the North Pole and back unscathed. Eventually things have to go seriously wrong. This juncture is held off as long as possible to keep the humour flowing, but once the fun is over, the conclusion feels perfunctory. With more pathos, and maybe even a bit of schmaltz, Beyond the Pole would linger in your mind as a charming comic tragedy."

BEYOND THE POLE will be released in the UK in early 2010.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY - meh

BLAIR WITCH, CLOVERFIELD, QUARANTINE....We've seen this shizzle before. Low budget horror, filmed on DV, acted by unknowns, trying to get thrills by feeling "real". BLAIR WITCH was truly spooky - I still remember the scene with the guy standing in the corner of the house, facing the wall, like a kid being punished - but gave me motion sickness. CLOVERFIELD was like Godzilla and hi-fi, but gave me motion sickness. I guess the best thing that can be said about PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is that its mockumentary concept at least features fixed cameras. Katie and Micah are a young couple living in contemporary America. It's the America of STARSUCKERS and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC - a nation of people who believe that if it's not on TV it isn't real. So when Katie tells Micah she's being stalked by a poltergeist, his schmucky reaction is to video-tape everything. So follows footage of a normal couple bickering, interspersed by in-camera special effect horror. Spooky demon footprints in talcum powder etc. I'd love to know how they did it all in frame, but I really wasn't scared by it. And the reason I wasn't scared is because the mockumentary format is a distancing device. We know it's a trick and so we aren't involved. This applies to rom-coms as much as to horror, by the way, as I argue in my review of PAPER HEART. So, don't believe the hype. This film is entertaining enough as a post-modern comment on media-obsessed society, but it doesn't work as horror. And for all its lo-rent indie cred, I notice that the movie is "presented by Steven Spielberg", and that the director hasn't turned down the chance to make a studio-backed sequel to cash-in on this flick's commercial success.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY was released in October in the US and Canada. It opened earlier in November in Greece, Russia, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, and Germany. It opens this weekend in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. It opens next weekend in France, Australia and Denmark. It opens in January in New Zealand and Norway and in Italy in February.

London Film Fest Day 4 - PAPER HEART

PAPER HEART is a new mockumentary from alleged US comedienne Charlyne Yi. It's meant to be about Yi's inability to fall in love and comes complete with interviews with happily married old folk and a staged romance with Michael Cera spoofing himself as the typically awkward lover.

The documentary is interminable largely because Charlyne Yi is intolerable. Her stage/screen persona as this infantile, carefully unwashed meant-to-be cute little sprite just pissed me off. If you think Zooey Deschanel lives at the extreme of Kooky think again. Yi's self-conscious Sundance retard lo-fi film-making is one step beyond. I mean, for crying out loud, she has fake super-six love-montages and things-to-make-and-do puppet scenes!

At a superficial level, PAPER HEART fails as a rom-com because the conceit of actors playing themselves works as a distancing device. At a secondary level, PAPER HEART fails as a spoof of documentary film-making (although the relationship with "Cera" does flounder as the "director" stages love scenes). The spoof fails because Yi's stage persona is already so contrived.

I left the movie dumbfounded at Yi's succes to date. She didn't demonstrate any skill as a decent stand-up. So I wiki'd her in the few moments before the 44 INCH CHEST premiere. I was delighted to discover that, apparently, SNL has already spoofed Yi. So, give it up girl. It's already been done.

PAPER HEART played Sundance and London 2009. It was released in the US and Canada in August. It is currently on release in Singapore and will be released in the UK on November 13th.