nick cave Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I usually don't like kids in the movies all that much. Maybe I'm missing that maternal gene, or maybe I'm just not that into the little rugrats. But suffice to say that I sometimes have a pretty dark view of children, and that's why I love The Bad Seed -- and I especially love little Rhoda Penmark. The Bad Seed was based on William March's novel about a murderous little girl who terrorizes her family and friends, and by the time it's all said and done, she comes up with relatively respectable body count. The 1956 film was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Patty McCormack as the pigtailed terror, and in spite of a tacked-on ending to satisfy the Hays code at the time, the film is still considered on of the penultimate 'creepy kid' flicks.

But what set Rhoda apart is that usually when you have murderous kids, the moral caveat is usually that they are outside the 'normal run of things', leaving our heroes to dispatch the bad guy without any hand-wringing about harming children. So most films give you kids like Damian (the Antichrist himself) or those creepy little buggers from Village of The Damned who come from another planet -- but with Rhoda, there is no one to blame but her. Although in both the film and the original book, there is an argument that she is just the victim of her family tree, but that's not exactly the same as the supernatural kids in those other horror films. There is no excuse for why Rhoda is the way she is, and she reminds you that evil can come in all kinds of packages -- and that's why to this day, the sight of her skipping away with her braids swinging remains as one of my most beloved movie villain moments.

After the jump; some of Rhoda's creepier moments and a tribute to her lasting inspiration to the macabre everywhere...

The best movie scores don't just add extra depth to a movie, but they take on lives on their own; they sneak into your subconscious so that the next time you hear Nino Rota you feel like downing some espressos and dancing in the Trevi Fountain.

Post-punk/death rocker turned mustachioed Southern Gothic philosopher Nick Cave and his fellow Bad Seed bandmate Warren Ellis* have become standout film composers in the past few years, beginning with their collaboration on The Proposition, a Western from the land Down Under directed by The Road's John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave. They also created the soundscape for the sadly underseen and somewhat overlong The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Their most recent collaboration on the score for The Road is worthy of an Oscar nomination -- subtle, appropriately dark but not overbearing, and elegant.

However, the two have also written scores for other, lesser-known movies like the documentary The Girls of Phnom Penh, about young Cambodian sex workers, and The English Surgeon, a doc about a brain doc who regularly travels to the Ukraine to perform surgery on the poor, sick, and often desperate.

White Lunar is an upcoming 2-disc compilation of these scores, along with a few extra bits from the vaults:

Now that The Road is making its way to audiences -- with a solid review from our Eugene Novikov -- word of future features is starting to pour in, and man, the news is sweet. Variety starts off their post-Road piece with the news that screenwriter Joe Penhall is gearing up to remake the Gallic heist film La Bonne Annee, and wants Daniel Craig to star in it. But the better news follows that. While Road director John Hillcoat always works with Nick Cave (who scored the Viggo Mortensen-starring drama), he is now gearing up for another Cave-penned piece.

This is a fresh breath of cinematic air to anyone who has seen The Proposition -- the film Cave penned in less than a month, and one that single-handedly made me rethink my distaste of westerns. Unfortunately, this is a mixed blessing: The gig in question will be an adaptation of Cave's novel The Death of Bunny Munro, but there's no word on who will adapt this. Considering the achievements Cave made with Proposition, we can only hope that it's him. But just to bring things around full-circle to the first bit of news, Hillcoat is also talking to Daniel Craig for the project. (Not to mention another project between the writer and filmmaker -- a big screen adaptation of Penhall's play, "Landscape with Weapons.")

I have the deep suspicion that despite being picked up round the Internet, this Nick Cave "synopsis" will end up being some kind of hoax. If it does, the story someone has concocted for Gladiator 2 is so brilliantly crazy that it's worth reading.

Gone Elsewhere has the rundown for you. This script meets up with Maximus seconds after he comes to in the afterlife. Our deceased gladiator isn't met by his family, but by a mysterious figure named Moredecai. He introduces him to the Roman pantheon who mock him, and offer a deal to kill their brother Hephaestos. If he can, they'll reunite him with his wife and son. Once out of immortal earshot, Moredecai tells Maximus these are lies and that his wife, Maria, sacrified her place in Elyisium to allow their son, Marius, to cheat death. He's now back in Rome living a mortal life. Disbelieving this, our undead hero marches to find Hephaestos who is trying to usher in an age of a "one, true God" and sends him hurtling back to mortal Rome. There Maximus encounters the adult Lucius who is pretty busy slaughtering Christians for the Emperor, a situation that Maximus finds himself embroiled in ... and not surprisingly, one that reunites him with his adult son. There's the cue to unleash hell.

Needless to say, it's a unique read. Cave really took the "What we do in life, echoes in eternity" tagline literally. (You'll know what I mean when you get to the end.) It's so easy to let your mind get carried away imagining scenes like Lucius passing a bust of Maximus and realizing he just saw him in a mob that I'd like to see this filmed, albeit not as a Gladiator sequel, but as pure Roman fantasy. Read it, and see if you agree.

[via IMDB]

All hail the now-defunct Dallas institute of weird and wooly media, Forbidden Books and Video. It was in a scuzzy neighborhood down by the fair grounds, which was perfect for a place where bored high school kids could rent Romper Stomper, Nekromantik, El Topo, or similarly mind-warping movies. They sold obscure CDs from England, serial killers T-shirts, and really effed-up books back before Hot Topic or Amazon or any of those joints.

In college, a friend introduced me to Nick Cave, specifically The Birthday Party but also his Bad Seeds stuff. I didn't get it. It was over my head. First he's screaming, now he's moaning, now he's releasing bats. What the hell? I wanted to get it, but I just didn't... yet.

And then one summer when I was back home, I hit up Forbidden Video and came home with Wings of Desire. It was hard to stick with the German poetry and the thoughts of strangers in the library and the street, but soon it all clicked. Oh, Columbo and his cup of coffee and cigarettes. Bruno Ganz as the angel Damiel watching his object of desire Marion swing on her trapeze, alone in her trailer. And the very best parts, my favorite parts, when the solemn black and white film flashes to color -- when Damiel sees what it would be like, or could be like, to be human. Two of these scenes are when he follows Marion to a club where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are playing. She thinks she's alone in the crowd, but she's not. (An interesting sidenote -- fellow Aussies and Bad Seed compatriots Crime and the City Solution also played in the movie. Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard were in both bands.)

Normally when I find out that a feature film is being made from one of my favorite novels, I immediately prepare myself for disappointment. But, when it comes to The Road, I don't know what to tell you -- for once I'm convinced everything is going to work out just fine. Although that's probably the first time that particular sentence was used in conjunction with anything having to do with Cormac McCarthy's novel. BBC4's arts show Today recently profiled the project, and the highlight of the report was the first audio clip of Nick Cave's original score. It's only a short clip, but from what you can hear it's the perfect musical accompaniment to the tale of a father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) traveling through an apocalyptic wasteland.

So even though most of us probably never pay that much attention to the orchestral score to most of the films we watch, you can't ignore a bad one. For me, one of the most distracting things about a film is a bad score -- some of my more hated examples include The Perfect Storm and The Last Samurai. I know there are plenty of reasons why a film might fail to connect with audiences, and I also know that this film is already going to be a hard sell. But, as a former Goth who wore way too much eyeliner while listening to Mr Cave's Murder Ballads on repeat, I have every faith that if there is anyone that can pick the perfect mood music for a downer, it's him.

The Road has yet to find a solid release date, but will hopefully arrive in theaters this fall.

Everyone and their (his?) mother loves The Proposition, the Nick Cave-penned Australian western starring Danny Huston as a villain who could give Chigurh a run for his money in sheer badassery. It's hard to blame them, since movies that gritty and tough don't come along very often. (As modern westerns go, I think 3:10 to Yuma is better, but it certainly isn't as awesomely brutal.) Two years after that film became a critical darling and a sleeper hit of sorts, director John Hillcoat -- who is currently in production on Cormac McCarthy's The Road -- has signed with Columbia to direct an adaptation of a not-yet-released novel by Matt Bondurant called The Wettest Country in the World. The book is about a trio of gangsters -- the author's grandfather and grand-uncles -- who ran the moonshine trade at the peak of the Prohibition Era, and the writer who tracked them in search of a scoop.

It was back in May of last year that news about the next Nick Cave/John Hillcoat collaboration hit the air -- Death of a Ladies' Man, starring Ray Winstone. But then the air went silent, until now. The actor recently talked with MTV about his future projects, and he says that he's still set to star in the film. If you're a Winstone fan, it might please you to know that beyond this, Beowulf, and the upcoming Indiana Jones movie, he's also looking into a role in The Minutemen (the latest indie from the Nee Brothers), and while he said he won't be part of King's X, he is joining Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tim Roth in 44 Inch Chest -- written by the men behind Sexy Beast.

But back to Death of a Ladies' Man. Yes, it is based on Leonard Cohen's song (Nick Cave is a fan and even performed on Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man), and it's much different than the previous Aussie western. The film focuses on a traveling salesman played by Winstone who is "addicted to sex" and uses "his door-to-door beauty products as a means to meet women." Considering the fact that the song has lines like: "He offered her an orgy in a many-mirrored room," I imagine this'll be a little racy.

Furthermore, this May, an interview with Cave was published in Harp, and he said: "John asked me to come up with another script, something small that he could do quickly. That said, it's now suddenly taking a long time to get going." He goes on to note that it's an English character study, and after a year of struggle, it will get made as soon as Hillcoat finishes a "big American film" -- which I presume is The Road. With Guy Pearce potentially replacing Viggo Mortensen, the film will finally get into production soon, and maybe Guy will follow along to the next. As a huge Proposition fan, I can only hope!

Because both Italian film festivals apparently need all the glitz and glamor they can get, the Venice Fest this year will see the awarding of the first (annual?) Gucci Group Award, created to recognize "personalities outside the movie industry who have made a remarkable artistic contribution to film over the past 18 months." The most prominent among the nominees is Australian singer/songwriter Nick Cave who recently moved into screenwriting; The Proposition, which he scripted, has received world-wide acclaim. In addition to Cave and two others, Helena Christensen (!) is nominated for her acting work in Allegro, as are Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno for their direction of the innovative soccer doc Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.

The winner will be announced on September 8 "during a gala ceremony held in the 14th century Palazzo Ducale on the Piazza San Marco." Ooh la la! Needless to say, all the attendees will be impeccably dressed.

When a film festival has 418 films, you're bound to miss a few you wanted to see. It was a cinematic hydra -- for every film I saw at the Seattle International Film Festival, there were always two more I didn't catch. Here are the seven films I most regret not being able to work into my SIFF-tastic viewing schedule:

• Frostbite - Man, I really wanted to see this film. It had vampires! Really mean ones! In Sweden! Where there's no daylight for part of the year, setting the perfect conditions for a giant vampire party: B.Y.O.B. -- bring your own ... you know.
• Host and Guest - This Korean film, about a cynical intellectual and an evangelist, won the jury prize for Best Director for helmer Dong-Il Sun.  I'll have to keep an eye out at future fests for this one.
• Starfish Hotel -  A Japanese gothic supernatural mystery? Holy geez, how did I miss that one? I overheard someone in the press office talking about how great this film was, but never managed to work it in.
• Beowulf and Grendel - Here I was all set to interview director Sturla Gunnarsson about Beowulf and Grendel, starring Stellan Skarsgärd and Sarah Polley and then I ended up not making the screening due to illess. I'm going to try to track this one down -- maybe it'll be at Toronto in September, and we can review it and do an interview then.
• House of Sand - How did I manage to miss this Brazilian saga about a family of women surviving amid the desolation of the desert -- again? I swear, one day I will see House of Sand, and then I will review it for you. It's on my "things to do before I die list" now, so it's official.
• Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why is Everybody Talking About Him?) - Who is Harry Nilsson? The Beatles knew who the singer-songwriter was -- he was one of their faves.This film wasn't on my list, until I kept hearing people talking about being excited to see it, and, later, raving about what a fantastic film it was. Now I wish I'd had it on my list.
• We Go Way Back - I really wanted to catch this feature by former Fly Filmmaking Challenge director Lynn Shelton, about a woman confronted by a 13-year-old version of herself. Am going to try to track down a screener of this one. It had great buzz.

Below the fold, the seven films I enjoyed most at SIFF.