Profile: Katie Jarvis (The List, Issue 639)

Name
Katie Jarvis

Born
22 June 1991, Dagenham, Essex

Background
You won’t recognise the star of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, but you won’t soon forget her. Cast with no acting experience after being spotted arguing with her boyfriend at Tilbury station, Jarvis gives a performance of subtlety and strength as Mia, a teenager who uses hip hop dancing to escape her lonely council estate existence.

On preparing for the film
‘I didn’t realise it was going to be this big, so I don’t think I really prepared myself. I did dancing for five weeks, but that was really the only preparing we did. I was given the script either the week before, the day before or on the day, so I didn’t actually know what was coming. I couldn’t prepare myself even if I wanted to! I just took as it came, and got on with whatever Andrea wanted me to do.’

On her character in Fish Tank
‘I’m definitely not like Mia, but in some ways I felt like I could relate to her. It’s sad that there are quite a lot of girls like her, because at the same time as being quite a horrible person, she’s got quite a bad background, which is blatantly obvious when you watch the film. The film proves to you that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, because obviously Mia can be horrible, but she can also be nice. And when you’ve watched the whole film you can understand why she does what she does.’

On British films
‘I like a lot of British films, because I think they seem more real. Sometimes films from different countries are more like dreams or something. In terms of acting, I would obviously like to go round the world and do loads of different characters, but with Andrea’s film, it looks so real life – there are a lot of teenagers out there that are like Mia, and like the girls that Mia knows. So I think that sort of thing is what I’d like to carry on with.’

Interesting fact
Jarvis was cast on her 17th birthday, and the film premiered in Edinburgh on her 18th.

Fish Tank is on selected release from Fri 11 Sep. This article originally appeared in The List magazine.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Days of wonder (The List, Issue 638)

He may be a long way from 3rd Rock from the Sun, but as Paul Gallagher finds, actor-director Joseph Gordon-Levitt thrives as a moviemaking anarchist.

‘You have to make it for yourself. You have to figure it out for yourself, and if it’s real love it’s going to be unlike anyone else has ever felt before’. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, star of the new romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, is getting philosophical about matters of the heart. The former teen star could equally be discussing his career so far, which in the last ten years has seen him take a similarly ‘figure it out for yourself’ approach, resulting in his transformation from TV comedy star to one of the more interesting young American actors currently working.

The latest evidence of this can be found in his performance opposite fellow indie hipster Zooey Deschanel in (500 Days) of Summer, a refreshingly honest take on relationships, in which Gordon-Levitt’s Tom attempts to piece together what went wrong in a relationship, and begins to realise that his memories aren’t telling the whole truth.

The film allows Gordon-Levitt to combine the comedic gifts that made his name with his more recently earned actorly cred, a dovetailing he is not unaware of: ‘I think that is a big part of why this movie is so funny because it’s genuine. And it’s not shallow surface level gags, but the humour is emotional, and I wanted to bring the same emotional truth to this movie as I brought to some of the more ‘dramatic’ movies that I’ve made.’

Having begun working in TV as a child, it was Gordon-Levitt’s role in aliens-on-earth comedy 3rd Rock from the Sun that brought him recognition. After he starred in 1999’s Shakespeare update 10 Things I Hate About You it appeared the young Gordon-Levitt would be following the tried-and-tested TV star route to likeable (and bankable) big screen success, but he happily confounded expectations. Opting instead to star in a series of low-budget, critically-acclaimed films, Gordon Levitt’s subtle and affecting performances in Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin and Rian Johnson’s genre-bending cult hit Brick particularly confirmed him as a talent to watch.

As well as increasing in standing as an actor, Gordon-Levitt has become a significant figure in enabling and encouraging new approaches to filmmaking, having founded the online community hitRECord.org, a ‘mass collaborative arts project’ that flies in the face of piracy laws and encourages creatives to re-cut each others’ work to produce new ‘hitRECords’. He has no truck with the current paranoia amongst studios about copyright protection, exclaiming, ‘what is a greater honour than someone wanting to record your movie? There’s no higher honour!’ It’s an attitude that almost got him ejected from the premises when he pulled out a digital video camera at the Sundance premiere of his own short film Sparks, an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story that Gordon-Levitt directed, produced, wrote and scored.

It turns out that the star is no stranger to being thrown out of venues. Discussing (500) Days of Summer’s karaoke scene, in which he gives an impressively passionate rendition of The Pixies’ ‘Here Comes Your Man’, Gordon-Levitt admits his real life karaoke experiences haven’t always ended well, ‘[I] got kicked out because I rocked too hard! They forbade me to unleash the rock.’ Well, that’s the way he remembers it.

(500) Days of Summer is on general release now. This article originally appeared in The List magazine.

The Hurt Locker (futuremovies.co.uk)

In a recent interview, Kathryn Bigelow admitted to being “drawn to individuals who find themselves in dangerous situations”. This is something of an understatement in relation to her new film The Hurt Locker, which follows a tour of duty for a team of bomb-disposal experts in Iraq; these situations are dangerous in the same way that boiling water is hot. For these men, death is an ever-present possibility, and Bigelow doesn’t let us forget it for one second of the film’s two intense hours. The characters are fictional, but writer Mark Boal spent time in Iraq following soldiers who really do this, and the film never feels anything less than authentic.

Bigelow throws conventions - and audience expectations - aside in the first immediately tense minutes of the film, as the biggest star on-screen fails to survive beyond the opening scene. With a heightened awareness that no-one in this movie is going to be safe, we meet Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), a ‘wild man’ bomb defuser who will serve as our constant companion through what follows.

It takes a while to get a handle on where Bigelow is taking us, as for the first half of the film we get one intense life-threatening situation after another, and not much else. It’s gripping and engaging, but there is no sense of it going anywhere in particular. Of course, this is the point, as this is the exact experience of the soldiers on the ground, but an audience could be forgiven for asking “is this all there is to it?” as it hits the halfway point. Slowly, though, the interactions between the men, particularly James and Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), begin to come to the fore, allowing Bigelow to analyse their different approaches to soldiering, and question what is driving them.

The Hurt Locker has earned an ‘action movie’ tag, but while the action in the film is expertly choreographed and recreated, it’s as a character study that it makes a lasting impression. In one of the film’s final scenes James is with his infant son, ostensibly imparting a few life lessons to the baby, but talking just as much to himself. He realises that he only loves one thing – the thrill of the moment, staring death in the face - and we can confirm that to be true from what we’ve seen. The Hurt Locker opens with an onscreen quote telling us, “War is a drug”, and while we may not understand that sentiment, Bigelow shows us through this powerful film just how true it is.

8/10

This review originally appeared on futuremovies.co.uk here.

Broken Embraces

Broken Embraces has everything that an Almodovar fan could hope for. It is a story about filmmaking that celebrates the triumphs and tragedies of storytelling: multi-stranded narratives unfold within other stories; seemingly unrelated characters are slowly revealed to be linked by deep secrets, and all the while Almodovar’s camera prowls with Hitchcockian precision, lapping up the beautifully designed sets and the equally beautiful performances of the cast (Lluis Homar and Penelope Cruz in particular). For all of its pleasures though, Broken Embraces feels too much like Spain’s greatest living director on autopilot. After the career high of Volver, which was so tightly constructed and emotionally resonant, Broken Embraces lacks focus, with perhaps too many storylines spiralling all over the place, and none of them gripping enough to really move an audience.

Make no mistake, a new Almodovar is always going to be essential viewing, and Broken Embraces offers many moments that can sit alongside his best work - a confrontation scene with Cruz mimicking her own image on a screen is stunning. But the overall sensation is as if Almodovar had laid on a delicious spread of sweet desserts, when what I really wanted was the full three courses.

Profile: Jamie Johnson

This is my profile piece on Sounds Like Teen Spirit director Jamie Johnson, from the current issue of The List.

Name Jamie J Johnson

Born 14 September 1976, Hammersmith, London

Background The son of a painter, Johnson initially followed in his father’s footsteps before deciding that moving pictures were more to his liking, and started creating flick books. He caught Channel 4’s attention with a series of zero-budget video ‘fanzines’, on subjects ranging from bad TV to mini golf, and while the films had a definite homemade feel they also established Johnson as a director of undeniable vision. His first film proper was the 2003 BAFTA-nominated short Holiday Around My Bedroom, a fantastical documentary that achieved a balance of warm sentiment and imaginative visuals akin to the work of Michel Gondry.

What’s he up to now? Having discovered Junior Eurovision and its huge cult following in continental Europe, Johnson obtained behind-the-scenes access; the result is his debut feature, Sounds Like Teen Spirit.

On the value of Junior Eurovision ‘It is a very nurturing environment – the kids do genuinely have the best week of their lives, and they go off on all these museum visits and cultural things. Also, there were loads of Eurovision-obsessed journalists there, and one in particular said “I love seeing all Europe come together on one stage after all these years of war”, and that resonated with me. I thought, “It is kitsch and silly, but it’s also got this nice element.”’

On being an objective documentarian ‘I don’t think I did a very good job. When one of the contestants, Marina, was telling me about her absent dad I started crying, and she was like, “Come on Jamie it’s fine, don’t be an idiot.” Which was kind of funny, being comforted by a 14-year-old who was actually living through it.’

Interesting fact Jarvis Cocker was approached to provide narration for the film, but he suggested that it would be more appropriate to have the director’s own voice on such a unique film. The producers agreed, and Johnson’s voiceover made it to the final film.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is on selected released from Fri 8 May. Read my review on The List website.