TORONTO #1

Got into Toronto a few days ago.  I’ve onlyever passed through this city before so getting the chance to have a look round is good.  This seems to happen whether you like it or not since the taxi drivers here seem to be crap.  I haven’t got into any that have actually been able to take me where I want to go without getting lost first.   The festival is in full tilt now and it’s really nice to feel that buzz in the air. Lots of big stars and exciting activity feeding the huge press contingent.

There was a press and industry screening of Kane the day before I arrived so reviews are coming in.  I have been desperately trying to avoid them because long experience has shown me that no matter what they say, I only ever focus on the negative.  There can be a thousand words of positive but its the hundred of negative that dwell.   I’m told there are some good ones but I assume they’re going to range from awful to terrific with the truth being somewhere in between. 

It’s kinda fun trailing around after James as he does all the style magazine photo shoots and things like that.  It’s a world I have never been interested in or touched by.   Anyone who knows me will tell you that fashion and clothes don’t really appear on my agenda.  Still everyone is very friendly and the girls sure are pretty.

I got to the premiere screening of Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut WHIP IT – which is harmless fun but certainly not a film for me and also Tim Blake Nelson’s LEAVES OF GRASS starring Ed Norton.  It’s a terrific little film with some sharp dialogue, smart performance(s) from Norton and the cast and Cohen brothers vibe that really worked for me.

Anyway, so far, it’s been a blast…

OFFICIAL SOLOMON KANE TRAILER – FINALLY ARRIVES….IN ENGLISH!!

Okay folks, it’s been a long time coming with a few false starts and dead ends but… today is the day the official Solomon Kane trailer goes live. It’s being hosted exclusively by the lovely boys and girls at www.IGN.com. You can download, embed it, study it, love it or hate it to your hearts content. Enjoy.

KANE TRAILER DEBUTS…. IN RUSSIAN

This really isn’t how I thought this would happen but it seems the Russian distributors have got there first and put the Russian trailer for SK online. The industries boys at Quiet Earth have got it for your streaming pleasure.
http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2009/09/09/Trailer-premier-for-Michael-J-Bassets-SOLOMON-KANE-In-Russian
I have no clue what the guy is saying but I bet it’s awesome!!

FANTASTIC FEST – DATE CONFIRMED

Not quite coming all the way home but at least in the right state, SOLOMON KANE is going to be one of the opening night films at the awesome genre showcase FANTASTIC FEST in Austin, Texas. We’re screening at 9:45pm on 24th Sept. I’m going to be there in person but sadly James P can’t make it. Hope some of you can find your way there – if there any tickets left. It’s looking to be a pretty popular screening.

DISTRICT 9

Finally got to see this film and I’ve gotta tell you, it’s an absolute marvel of modern genre film making. Best sci-fi in… er I can’t think of anything this good in years and years.  I was thrilled to sit through it and as I watched become increasingly aware that this was something truly special.  There’s anastounding central performance from Sharlto Copley – which I don’t think has been talked about enough - he’s got a beautiful character arc within the terrifically orchestrated action. For a guy who has never acted in a significant role before it’s just dazzling how he holds it together and manages to make the character feel so real and grounded.   I hope this wasn’t a lucky accident and that it really is the arrival of a new and potent performer.  As for Neill Blomkamp -  just give the guy Halo already and stop messing around. Is there really the slightest doubt that he’s going to make our eyeballs bleed with the awesomeness of what he’ll deliver? Of course not.  I just feel puny in comparison.

TORONTO DATES CONFIRMED

The first public showing of Solomon Kane is going to be on 16th September at the Ryerson Theatre at midnight.

There will be another public screening on the afternoon of 17th September at the Scotiabank Theatre 1.  I’m certainly going to be there to say hi for both and am pretty sure young Mr Purefoy will be there too.

After that, I think the next place to see it might be at Harry Knowles’ Fantastis Fest in Austin, Texas in October.  Details still to be sorted out but I really want to show it there and I think it’ll happen.

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL

It’s official. Toronto is on and their page is up…

http://www.tiff.net/filmsandschedules/films/solomonkane

It’s an interesting summary of the film from the TIFF copywriters… I’m not entirely sure that’s what I would have written but it’s fascinating to me to see how people interpret the film and what they take from it.  I love the comparison to ‘The Conqueror Worm’ or ‘Witchfinder General’ as I know it, being a Brit. I always wondered what Michael Reeves would have gone on to do, had he lived.

The date I’ve been told for the midnight showing is 16th September but I’m not sure if that is completely set in stone just yet.  I’ll certainly post info here if it changes.

EDIT:  All being well, I will be there with James Purefoy to say Hi and introduce the film.

Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock is really the reason I love fantasyso I got quite a thrill reading this interview with one of my fantasy writing heroes because my Solomon Kane film was mentioned in this interview with him in the LA Times. http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-caw-sirens-call9-2009aug09,1,3250469.story?page=1

The wonderful fantasy writer Michael Moorcock

http://www.multiverse.org/

I’m not completely sure I agree with his interpretation of Kane as a character but one of the great joys of fiction – and especially fantasy and sci-fi - is that it can be interpreted and used by anyone for any purpose they see fit.  So, if that’s how he views Kane, then he’s right.  There really are no certainties.  People will impose what they want and need onto a character they connect with and surely that’s a wonderful thing.

The books of Corum were the first works of his I knew about.  A school friend described the events in this amazing book he’d read and I thought, ‘ wow, I’ve got to read that.’  So, over my teenage years I collected dozens of his books. I think I had about 75 at one point and I even went to the rather absurd lengths of carefully covering them in protective plastic covers.   And boy, did I love the Rodney Matthews artwork on some of those book covers…  I painted a giant mural on my bedroom wall ripping off most of that artwork. 

http://www.rodneymatthews.com/

Rodney Matthews artwork - I tried to paint this on my bedroom wall 25 years ago

Reading the books back now, I think they have some of the same pulpy yet wildly imaginative quality that Robert Howard had and, of course, I know now that there really is a direct lineage from one writer to the other.  Indeed some of Moorcock’s work seemed to be in direct answer to Howard’s creations.   In truth, I couldn’t get on with Moorcock’s slightly more bizarre and trippy stories but I just adored Elric and the whole Eternal Champion series and loved his idea of a connected universee with heroes constantly being reincarnated, even doomed, to fight. (And Marvel are connecting their fictional universe together now with the proposed Ultimate Avenger movie)  I know this idea has precursors in other writers but Moorock just so nailed it for me in my impressionable teenage mind.   Reading STORMBRINGER and the QUEST FOR TANELORN were seminal moments in the development of my imagination.  I hardly recall any specific details of the events of the books but I can even now summon the emotions they left me with.  It’s quite a legacy to give to your readers.

I can tell you now, if it hadn’t been for Moorcock and Elric, there wouldn’t be a Solomon Kane movie .  At least, not one made by me.

Most of my carefully protected books have been lost over the years.  (NOTE:  Never leave anything of sentimental  value at your parent’s house when you leave home:I lost my Moorcocks and my brother lost all his 2000ADs from issue #1 and his entire collection of Kerrang! magazines (which might not be so tragic).)     I’ve still got a few dozen around and pick them up every so often. The writing doesn’t have the impact it once did but the breathless pacing and flights of imagination within such short books are so welcome.  Fantasy books these days are so damn long and overwritten.

JOHN HUGHES R.I.P.

I just heard that writer and director John Hughes has died of a heart attack.  I am very deeply saddened by this news because though I never met or knew him his films were hugely important to me as a teenager. Ferris Bueller and John Bender were my heroes as a kid.  I always hoped he’d come out of his self-imposed retirement and revisit Ferris in his middle age but, sadly, it is not to be.   I think I shall re-watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Planes, Trains and Automobiles tonight…

That damn trailer…

It was only to be expected. The Comic Con trailer is out there ‘in the wild’. (I love that term.  The internet is an eco system for us all to explore).  I’m unhappy with the trailer being out there because it’s a shitty version of a cool trailer and doesn’t represent the film in the best way it can and also because I wanted to make a few little tweaks to it before using it again.   But there’s an appetite to see it and someone is going to – and indeed has – release it.   I assume that the powers that be are making the necessary requests to pull it down from wherever it’s being hosted, so I guess it will be extinct in the wild soon as well.  We’re working on the music rights deal at the moment so the trailer can be used freely on the net but that’s a few weeks away, if it all goes well.  In my youth I may well have just dumped a version secretly online and thought ‘to Hell with it’  but I’m old and cranky and mature enough to know I shouldn’t and therefore won’t.  Even as my mouse hovers over the ‘upload’ command on the YouTube site…. nope, I can’t do it. Sorry.