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Hidden: No 9 Michael Haneke, 2005Widely regarded as one of the finest films of the last decade, as well as Haneke's masterpiece, Hidden opens with a long, static shot of a house on a quiet Paris street. Credits roll. Very little happens. A closer shot shows a couple leaving the house, and the camera pans after the man. We hear a terse interchange. On screen, the film fast-forwards and suddenly – unnervingly – we realise we have been watching a piece of surveillance on video. The tape has turned up, without explanation, at the house of the couple we saw on screen, and they are watching it with us. They are Georges (Daniel Auteuil), a well-known TV intellectual, and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche), a book publisher. The video is immediately interpreted as a threat. More tapes arrive, along with crayon drawings depicting scenes of bloody violence. The effect of these intrusions is singularly disturbing, and Hidden unfolds with the fearful air of a thriller, but it avoids most of the conventions of the genre. Dramatic music is absent. The one truly shocking moment of violence arrives without a suspenseful build-up, and the victim is who we least expect it to be.One tape leads Georges to the run-down apartment of an Algerian man named Majid, who Georges knew as a child. It transpires that Georges bears responsibility for how this man's life has turned out, and his guilt points to the more widespread malaise in French society concerning the Algerian war. The film interrogates western attitudes towards the Muslim world, exposing how fear is also based on guilt and repressed memories. The political subtext never detracts from the film's chilling dramatic effect and the air of intrigue, which intensifies in the very final scene.CrimeMichael HanekeWorld cinemaKillian Foxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
What's the most outrageous prediction for the future? Sentient computers? Spandex in space? You told us the least convincing Nostradamus moment in a sci-fi flick@thisismetypinganame Blade Runner is only nine years away, and we've barely started exploring the Tannhäuser Gate or the shoulder of Orion. And the current crop of replicants is rubbish too.@Housey Surely Planet of the Apes, although the idea of de-evolution is looking to be very prescient.@newdecade Well 2001 came and went without mankind reaching Jupiter, or ... without any of that ... other ... stuff.@Sokket The eugenics war of 1999 – Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan@c0n0r The three shells of Demolition Man? Although we still have 22 years.@Ragged Ignoring all the mutant/pre-cog stuff, the most unbelievable thing in Minority Report were the vertical motorways that ran, for no reason whatsoever, down the side of skyscrapers.@herebutforfortune Sentient computers like Hal in 2001, whose emotional reaction to being told he was wrong was so human he plotted revenge. My Mac gets passive‑aggressive.@CreepingJesus Fahrenheit 451, where fireman are busy burning books all day – rather than sitting about and playing pool …@philwest Alien. When I showed this to some students recently they were really impressed by it except for the computer Mother. Loads of flashing lights, takes up a whole room, and all the crew type (yes – type) questions on to a monitor that looks like a spectrum.@DJPVC Strange Days. The squid thing you put on your head that allows you to record what you see and feel. Supposed to be in use by New Year's Eve 1999.@DJPVC Sleeper. The orgasmatron.@Gummibarchen The Time Traveller's Wife. People with genetic mutations cannot possibly time-travel, it is a flawed concept. Sorry Audrey Niffenegger, Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, etc.@HolyhosesRob In Blade Runner, they predicted that Pan Am would still be around in the 21st century.@MawaiTrees Almost every prediction made in Demolition Man, including freezing criminals as opposed to just executing them. Minority Report – getting arrested before you've even committed the crime ... oh hang on …Flash Gordon – men wearing spandex in space.@ochongodeo John Boorman's Zardoz. Daft as a brush.@StephanoBentos Britannia Hospital – there's a gigantic brain in a tank quoting Shakespeare in a monotone. And that's the next step in evolution.@YummieMummie Soylent Green ... chimpanzees will take over the earth and we'll be hunted and captured as slaves. Our world will collide with another and we'll send a spaceship with our greatest minds to colonise this new world which, miraculously, will have live vegetation, atmosphere etc. already on it. That we'll all die at 30 and live in a dome.@charliepiper Barbarella enters a room full of louche women getting high on the "essence of man" which they appear to be inhaling from bongs linked to giant Liebig condensers in which various naked Adonis-types are wallowing in bubbling liquids ...@podwilson I hope The Road got it wrong.@NonOxbridgeColumnist We are, as I write, 13 years and 23 days post Skynet-induced nuclear holocaust. So Terminator 2 was a bit off.@RichAlchemy I love how, in Back to The Future Part II, amid all the hoverboards and time travel and other ludicrously futuristic bits, Marty McFly gets fired via a fax machine.Science fiction and fantasyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Dream relocation: The Hobbit's Middle-earth made in middle England If Peter Jackson moves filming of The Hobbit away from New Zealand, he could do worse than our green and pleasant landWith a cast that officially includes the likes of Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Richard Armitage and Sean Slater from EastEnders – and potentially Sylvester McCoy, David Tennant, James Nesbitt and Bill Bailey – The Hobbit is already shaping up to be an especially British pair of films. But there's a chance that this is merely the tip of the British iceberg.Late last week, thanks to ongoing strife with New Zealand Equity over pay and conditions, Peter Jackson claimed that Warner Bros executives were planning to move production to another country. And, better yet, it's been suggested that The Hobbit could be filmed in the old Harry Potter studio near Watford. Fran Walsh has even appeared on a New Zealand radio station to say: "They have had people in the UK taking location photographs."How incredible would that be? The Hobbit, filmed in Britain. Not only would this country provide a Middle-earth more in keeping with the gentle rolling Malvern hills of JRR Tolkien's youth, but the various shooting locations would become an almighty tourist magnet. Look what The Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand: prior to those films it was just bungee jumping and binge drinking, but now the spectacular scenery is its own selling point. Although Britain doesn't have quite the same awe-inspiring range of geographical extremes as New Zealand, that wouldn't stop the tourists from pouring in.And don't forget that Britain is incredible at pretending to be other places in films. If Stanley Kubrick could convince viewers that London's Docklands were really Vietnam, or the makers of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace could convince viewers that Milton Keynes railway station was really the UN headquarters, then there's no reason why Peter Jackson couldn't convince viewers that various parts of the UK are really Middle-earth.But, if The Hobbit does end up coming to Britain, where would some of the key scenes be shot? Luckily I've saved Peter Jackson a bit of time by looking into this problem myself.RivendellA beautiful elf enclave built into a spectacular gorge formed by the river Bruinen, thought to be based on the Swiss municipality of Lauterbrunnen.Suggested location: An easy one. Tolkien also based Rivendell on Watersmeet House in the Lyn Valley, in Devon. So that'll do. Even though it's mainly a National Trust tea room now.EsgarothReferred to by some as Lake-Town, Esgaroth is a wooden community that stretches out across the Long Lake like a magnificent habitable jetty.Suggested location: With a bit of trickery in post-production, this could be the perfect regeneration scheme for Hastings pier.Lonely MountainHome to the mighty dragon Smaug, Lonely Mountain is a central location in The Hobbit. Get it wrong and the whole film will fail. It needs to have a single towering peak, six ridges and a huge diameter covering several miles. Suggested location: The Pennines and the Lake District are probably too far for the Hobbit crew to go, so let's find somewhere nice and close to Watford. Muswell Hill?MirkwoodOtherwise known as the Forest of Great Fear, Mirkwood is a giant, dark, shadowy expanse of dense woodlands filled with menacingly angular trees and inhabited by giant malevolent spiders.Suggested location: Joey's Wood, near where I grew up in Kent. It's identical, except there's a BMX track and an abandoned swimming pool there and, if I remember correctly, all the giant spiders have been replaced with discarded carrier bags full of abandoned porno magazines.The ShireTranquil and pastoral, the Shire is home to the Hobbits, a bizarre race of tiny, shoeless, greedy, pipe-smoking, badly dressed little men and matronly wives.Suggested location: Luton town centre.But where would you shoot The Hobbit? Suggestions below, please.Lord of the RingsPeter JacksonScience fiction and fantasyJRR TolkienStuart Heritageguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Franco and Hathaway land Oscar host gig JAMES Franco and Anne Hathaway will take to the stage to co-host the 83rd Academy Awards next year. news.com.au |