Review of 'Targets' (1968)

Targets is a quiet, simple film, its plot basic but dark: an American man (played by Tim O’Kelly) goes on a killing spree, escalating to a massacre at a drive-in cinema. Meanwhile, horror actor Byron Orlock (Boris Karloff) prepares to speak at the drive-in for his last appearance before retirement. While it’s a terrible thought that a sniper is killing off audience members in their cars, the emotional impact of Targets could have been far deeper if (for example) we became familiar with a family of cinema-goers during the daytime before they are killed that night. Instead, Boris Karloff’s story had little bearing other than to provide quirky, self-referential parallels of film-within-film. Targets is less a scary movie and more a comment on the evolution of the horror genre & its changing reception by audiences.

FTV Blog 6: Music & film thoughts

I wonder if anybody has made a feature film inspired solely by a music album. I know music and film have a close relationship, but how direct has it been?

• At one end of the spectrum is the music video; short movie clips
  

Maybe what I'm searching for is a movie that is not only based on the music but goes beyond the music video and presents a whole story and illustrates the imagery inspired by/created within a song.

FTV Blog 5: Human Planet

I just watched an episode of BBC's eight-part documentary Human Planet, which is being aired on ABC at the moment. Each episode looks at a different type of landscape (grasslands, mountains, etc.) and how humans have learnt to live off--and survive in--these unforgiving lands. Tonight's episode was about desert, so they documented different ways local people find water.

When ABC began promoting this series a few weeks back, I was desperate to watch it, hoping for a documentary of staggering scope that delved into the history of civilisation. In the end the show was less historical and more anecdotal. In the globe's obscurest corners, people of exotic tribes apply time-honoured, crucial skills to accomplish mammoth tasks or epic journeys, doing what's necessary to survive.

While watching the desert episode tonight, it became clear that this show presents its content very much like stories rather than research. It's almost like hearing a fable, ancient and beautifully simple. I can't remember the details of this particular story but one chapter of tonight's episode went something like this:

Deep in the Gobi Desert, there is a Mongolian camel herder. Once a year he must travel for days with his camels to find new water. In the desert he must be wary of the wolves, greedy and savage. Each midnight he leaves his tent to check his herd. One night he counts one missing--his prize female, heavily pregnant. Dawn arrives and the Mongolian embarks on his search fearful that the camel has fallen prey to the wolf. He climbs atop a ridge peak to view the land below. It is vast, unceasing, daunting. But he sees the camel, a tiny speck in a sea of dust. He makes his way towards her, seeing she has given birth. The calf is on the ground, not moving. The Mongolian's fear returns briefly, but the calf is breathing. He carries the calf and leads its mother back to his tent. His sons are happy to meet the young offspring.

Review of 'Written on the Wind' (1956)

At first I found Written on the Wind boring, being dropped into the courtship between Lucy and Kyle without knowledge of the characters, so I had no feeling, interest or care for the story. But the film soon developed spectacle as the larger tree of characters was revealed and we had first glimpse of the family dynamics, cleanly illustrated in the bar fight scene between Mary-Lee’s admirer & Kyle. However, Written on the Wind snowballed into absurdity as the melodrama itself came to dominate. The film continued to entertain mildly although my engagement with the story faded under a blanket of traditional but tiresome melodramatic traits--over-the-top music, characters’ over-reactions and their cartoonish personalities.