Despite the Trainspottings and Shaun of the Deads (Shauns of the Dead?) of this world, there’s still a belief that Brits ultimately have two choices when creating a new film:

• Period drama with politeness and kings.
• Slightly implausible comedy, written (by law) by Richard Curtis.

To that end, it’s great to see indies continuing to do decidedly un-British movies. Upcoming is Joe Cornish’s sci-fi comedy Attack The Block (Empire, trailer), where aliens rather stupidly decide to invade our planet by way of South London estates.

The trailer looks pretty good (despite its penchant for hateful teal and orange colour-grading), but it could yet fall foul of American stupidity. According to Dark Horizons, US execs are considering subtitling the film, because of those tricky South London accents. As if a good chunk of Americans don’t already have an excuse to not watch the film (it not being American), subtitling it will surely keep people away in droves.

Still, this entire story, while sad, doesn’t shock me. I remember seeing a US backlash to Shaun of the Dead, with people—without irony—complaining about the ‘difficult’ accents, including Simon Pegg’s. Frankly, if you’re from the USA and you can’t decipher Simon Pegg’s accent, you’re pretty much fucked when it comes to watching films and TV shows from the UK. Hell, you’re probably pretty much fucked understanding anyone from outside of your town or immediate family.

Register Hardware reports that Vue has gone totally batshit bonkers and is contemplating banning mobile phones from its cinemas. At present, says the article, Vue “forbids punters from taking ‘sound and video recording equipment’ into the auditorium. Vue reserves the right to search visitors to prevent them from sneaking such kit in”, and may, presumably, smother them with extortionately expensive popcorn if they fail to comply.

Currently, Vue bans video-recorders, but also, somewhat oddly, laptops and tablets like the iPad—which conspicuously lacks a camera of any kind. Worryingly, a bloke from the linked article who recently visited Leeds Vue was told that “staff should have confiscated his iPad and camera too, for the duration of the showing”.

OK, two things. First, there’s no way in hell I’d trust a Vue employee with my iPhone or any other electronic kit, and I suspect Vue’s terms would be such that you’d leave your device(s) with them at your own risk. Similarly, I won’t leave my iPhone in my car, because I’m not fucking stupid. But I also won’t leave it at home, because, you know, having a mobile phone on you when you’re driving about in a tin-can with wheels is handy for when the tin-can suddenly decides it doesn’t want to go any further while you’re surrounded by picturesque fields and a distinct lack of housing and telephone boxes.

Secondly—and this bit is quite important—I really wish cinema chains would shut the hell up regarding people recording films. I recently saw Scott Pilgrim and had to sit through yet another patronising piece of tosh where some actor or other told me that ‘camcordering’ (hrng) films is ILLEGAL and BAD and EVIL and stuff. I know. I just spent an inordinate amount of money on two tickets to see said film. GO AWAY! And the fact remains that the vast majority of bootlegs are from promo/preview discs that subsequently circulate—the days of someone downloading a film recorded by some muppet at the back of a cinema are mostly long gone.

If Vue thinks extending its ban or policing it more thoroughly, removing iPhones and similar kit from punters, will help it in any way or protect the film industry, it’s sadly deluded. If someone is stupid enough to start recording a film on their smartphone, fine, kick them out of the screening; but don’t ban the rest of us from entering the screen in the first place. If you do, you’ll suddenly find quite a lot of people won’t bother visiting the cinema at all; and far from protecting the film industry, a chunk of those tech-aware people might suddenly be more drawn to torrenting preview discs.

The BBC reports that Odeon’s reversed its decision to boycott the upcoming Alice in Wonderland film “following talks with Disney”. If you’ve not followed this story, Odeon got narked after Disney announced it was to ignore the standard ’17 weeks to DVD’, dropping the gap by four weeks. This, argued Odeon, would screw over UK cinema chains by setting a new benchmark that would reduce their potential revenue.

Disney’s stance is that by getting the DVD out sooner, it’ll reduce bootlegging. I have two helpful hints to Disney in this regard:

1. A brilliant way to stop bootlegging is to stop screwing over the international market. If you release all of your films at the same time everywhere, rather than many of them in the US first and six months later everywhere else, people will be more likely to rush out to see them, rather than reading about them in some mag, twiddling thumbs for a few days, reading more online reviews from the US, getting impatient and then torrenting the films. Note: happily, this will also deal with the ‘disappointing international box office returns’ you keep whining about regarding Pixar films that are out on Region 1 DVD by the time they finally arrive in cinemas in the UK and elsewhere.
2. You cannot bootleg a cinema experience. It’s pretty clear that many films—including a lot of those by Disney—are as much about the environment and the big screen these days as the story. To that end, reducing the potential amount of time films stay in cinemas by at least four weeks is stupid.

Last night I finally got round to watching the South Bank show on Pixar. Brad Bird was talking about how Disney during the 1980s and 1990s was petrified of having anything scary or exciting or racy in its animated movies. Over time, the highs and lows were removed, omitting emotive content and, in Bird’s words, ‘flatlining’ the movies.

SFGate now has an article with the headline Maurice Sendak tells parents to go to hell. In it, Sendak, creator of  Where the Wild Things Are, has a to-and-fro with a reporter about the movie adaptation of his 1963 picture book:

Reporter: “What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?”

Sendak: “I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.”

Reporter: “Because kids can handle it?”

Sendak: “If they can’t handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it’s not a question that can be answered.”

If only more people responded in this way. I’m not suggesting kids should be presented with the likes of Saw or Friday the 13th on entering a cinema, but it’s insane how do-gooders constantly try to revert children’s media to something that Mary Whitehouse would have been satisfied with. Surely, creating children’s movies with a full gamut of emotions is better for them and their parents than more grey mush?

I today discovered The Fly is being re-remade. Cronenberg is to return to the property that he worked on in 1986, which was based on the 1958 original. My question is this: what is the point? 1986’s The Fly is still a great film, and even the special effects remain of a very high quality, due to the reliance on puppetry rather than then-embryonic computer graphics.

I therefore don’t understand what a remake would bring to the party. There’s a pretty huge gap between 1958 and 1986 in terms of film-making, but not nearly the same gap between 1986 and today. Also, the story isn’t really strong enough to sustain sequels, and so unless it’s radically altered, The Fly will remain self-contained. And although CGI has moved on in leaps and bounds, it mostly still lacks a feeling of reality—CGI creatures typically lack gravity, a tactile quality, and feel slightly out-of-place.

But this is apparently the season to take advantage of 1980s nostalgia and drop the risk factor significantly. It’s safer to remake Robocop and Flight of the Navigator, The Karate Kid and Short Circuit. But in the cases where the original films remain fine, it all seems terribly pointless and wasteful.