Out Now.
Out Now.
Zawe Ashton can totally identify with her character Vod’s sense of style in Fresh Meat because she has been there and done it herself.
“It’s not even like I have outfits in mind for Vod – I have influences in mind. So after last year instead of listening to so much riot girl punk, Vod is maybe going into a more androgynous place where she is playing with gender and masculinity and at the same time her musical influences are extending to discovering more Bowie or New Romantic post punk music.
“She’s not that self-conscious, she draws so much from her surroundings and is so perceptive that anything that seems vaguely anti-establishment she can really chime with and I can identify with that because that is exactly what happened to me when I was studying in Manchester. Being in a smaller environment with people from so many different backgrounds I changed on a daily basis. One day you’d be having an existentialist conversation with a random in a bar then someone would say ‘do you want to get pissed and dance all night to 80s music’. And I’d be like ‘Yeah’. And because Vod is a yes woman she will say yes to all of that and have all these different influences and experiences. She’ll never miss out. Never regret something she didn’t do…I totally did that at uni after I broke up with my first boyfriend, who of course was a musician. I thought, “Right I am going to have a summer of saying yes to everything.” Which I did.
“This job is such a touch! It is so collaborative but you can also trust every single department to just be on it. If I send June, our costume designer, a picture of Prince and say this is our touchstone for this series – the next thing you know I’m wearing a ruffle shirt, a bolero jacket and my hair’s sticking up and it’s Prince. She runs with it, she is so inventive.”
So how has Vod changed since last term?
Explains Zawe: “This series Vod is exploring the friendships she’s made with these people. What is interesting is having new characters come in and seeing Vod’s reaction – she doesn’t like it at all. She is fiercely protective over the whole group. Vod takes on a hell of a lot more than she lets on and the fact that she has lived with these people and let them in over the course of a term has been a big deal. Seeing her relationship with other characters deepen, especially with JP and Josie, has been really satisfying. Also the episode where she falls in what she thinks is love was really funny because it’s Vod opening up even more to different experiences.
“This season we do see her slightly more vulnerable side but she is also almost like a narrator in a way, she clocks absolutely everything – nothing happens in the house without her knowing about it.
“She’s really caring but at the same time she’s sort of weirdly indestructible. She has such a big heart but is also one of those amazing people who can drink far too much and take too many drugs – like you might say to Iggy Pop ‘you’ve put yourself in some bad situations but you seem to have come through them alright. Still rolling on…’
Also because she is so blunt about things I think she has got a really good grip on what life is. If people die that is just something that happens and you move on. Who knows, maybe aged 40 she’ll have a huge emotional breakdown but for now she’s just a character who has very little subtext, enjoys a good time, has time for people but also insight and will share that. She is her own little thing.”
But Vod also has a few money worries this term and needs to find a job…
“Starting work as a chamber maid is Vod’s idea of hell – that is working for the man. But she is also really good at it. She is massively creative and hard-working but she doesn’t fit into a system and I really identify with that – your work ethic not being that of an institution or a machine. She could probably be great at anything she put her hand to, she’s not limited. But you wouldn’t get out of it what you think… She is definitely born out of her time, she is really modern but at same time there is something sort of old school and punk about her.”
And what are Zawe’s stand-out moments of this series? “I love doing the scenes where we are all together. Those big group scenes are beasts – seriously we are there all day – but they are so satisfying. What is so nice is that you can have reactions off of people, even if you are not saying anything I get an awful lot out of those scenes. The reaction shots are my favourite bits. And exploring the physical proximity of each other – giving this real sense of being in a student house.
Talking of her eclectic mix of fans, Zawe says: “Some people are really drawn in by the hard-living side of Vod and are watching the show thinking ‘that’s someone really good on a night out’. Unfortunately I’m not that person anymore. It is the realisation that I can’t go clubbing all night; I have a job and I’m tired. On the flip side I get lots of lovely mature men and women in their 50s and 60s coming over and saying how nostalgic the whole show feels and how much they like the character because they knew someone like that, so I get both ends of the spectrum. Some lovely fans on twitter made t shirts saying Keep Calm and Trust in the Vod… in that font with a little picture of me. That is definitely the nicest thing that has happened.”
Zawe is currently filming Case Histories for the BBC. She also has another project in the pipeline. “I’ve written a short film for Greg (McHugh). Greg is a superstar, one of the best actors out there working – the characters he creates on screen are superb. I want to direct that. To have a production company and be working out of that writing, directing and acting and hiring teams of people I know will do a good job would be amazing; a dream come true.”
Fresh Meat returns to Channel 4 on Tuesday 9th October at 10pm.
Five years have passed since Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik and Brad Pitt united for the magnificent Western drama The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford; a lyrical, revisionist take on what by all accounts had become an American legend. It was gorgeous, poetic and fell flat on it’s on its face at the box-office. The studio simply had no idea how to go about pitching it and it was left to die, the genius gone unsung. Now Dominik has picked himself up, teamed up with Mr Pitt once again and returned to a far more recent moment of American history; the economic downturn viewed through the prism of organised crime. Whilst not hitting the heights of their previous collaboration they have crafted a stark, powerful take on a genre that we think we know inside out and give it an astonishingly contemporary sheen.
It’s 2008. The economy is crumbling, Obama and McCain are gathering their supporters and two clueless street hoods (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) are roped into a raid on a mob protected card game. It’s run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) who has already escaped punishment from criminal overlords for organising a heist on his own games. The plan is for Markie to take the fall for the raid second time round but due to the duo’s own incompetence they are soon pursued by Jackie Cogan (Pitt), a hitman sent to exact justice and restore order. He has a very specific work ethic; he likes to keep his distance from his targets in order to avoid emotions getting in the way. He refers to this as ‘killing them softly.’ He decides to hire old colleague Mickey Finn (James Gandolfini) to help him adhere to this method, yet this proves to prove more challenging than he can imagine.
Dominik is working from a 1974 novel entitled Cogan’s Trade penned by George V. Higgins. The film retains a stark, minimalist visual tone that recalls the high watermark crime films of the seventies such as The French Connection and Scorpio. It’s a story that takes place in vacant lots, motel rooms and car parks bathed in grey, cold light. It is an environment that feels left behind by the modern world and that we don’t often see in mainstream American cinema. In certain shots, the desolate wasteland resembles something out of a sci-fi apocalyptic vision. Dominik keeps his directorial flourishes to a minimum favouring stationary camera angles and carefully choreographed tracking shots to balletic displays of violence though he does concede to one hauntingly beautiful shootout in the rainfall. Not that any of it is pretty; this is a film where death and violence is an ugly, horrific spectacle. Dominik contrasts such moments perfectly with an uncanny feel for the timing and pitch of each individual scene. His prowess as a writer is the primary one on display though. The action is driven by lengthy, dialogue heavy scenes where in the characters confront the unpleasantness and banal mundanity of their profession. The major factor of the adaptation is the running references to the economic meltdown of the time and the then optimistic promises of the Obama administration. Speeches and news broadcasts that have barely had time to pass into history seep through radio and television broadcasts in the background of crucial scenes. This does come close to becoming repetitive and forceful yet it instils the narrative with a moral backbone that many of its characters lack and forms a crucial part of what elevates the film from being a run of the mill gangster drama to a scathing critique of capitalist greed. The will of the powerful is broken, and it is left for the people on street level to pick up the pieces and clear up the mess.
Gangsters and hitmen tend to be the sort of characters that are romanticized in the majority of crime cinema that we are exposed to so it’s tremendously fresh to see them presented as repellent, incompetent bringers of their own fates. Pitt is a performer who seems to be getting better and better with age and here Dominik has coaxed another career best from him. His Jackie Cogan may appear more suave and charming than his counterparts; he strolls onto screen with slicked back hair, a leather jacket and shades to die for and to the sounds of Johnny Cash yet he is thoroughly amoral and brutal. Scenes where he quietly threatens a local hood at a bar whilst contemplating the hypocrisy of America’s founding fathers positively throb with underlying menace. He is simply an electrifying presence. McNairy and Mendelsohn excel at making two seemingly irredeemable screw-ups sympathetic for the majority of the running time. If there’s one performance that steals the film however, it’s Gandolfini. Shuffling onto screen with a hangdog expression, immovable sunglasses and the weight of the world on his shoulders, the onetime Tony Soprano gives a tour de force presenting a onetime respected New York mobster as a shambling, train wreck of a man drowning in a sea of alcohol and prostitutes. Scenes where he rails against the younger generation whilst exhibiting the excess and degradation that a life of crime has inflicted upon him echo with grim, comic tragedy that relish in the destruction of typically macho, masculine persona. As with past films of Dominik’s there are virtually no female characters to speak of and when they are spoken of it’s in the most deplorable ways imaginable. I don’t think it’s a fault on his part but rather an apt reflection of a thuggishly brutal world were desperate men struggle to climb over one another to stay afloat.
Killing Them Softly may come on quite strong at moments but it ultimately emerges as refreshingly cynical, relevant thriller that sticks to its guns right through to its brutally honest final line. Hopefully on the basis of this, we will not have to wait so long for Dominik’s next effort.
Frost caught up with super talented visionary director/actor/producer Jason Croot. [disclaimer: I play Grace Holloway in this film]
What was the idea behind Meeting Place?
Hello frost readers, We wanted to create something original and after having several ideas we kept it simple [by] not have any back story and filming actors who create there own scenes I love improvisation and Meeting Place is 100% improv.
Tell us about the film.
The film is a montage of conversations edited together a day in a London Cafe the twist is 80% of the conversations are between 2 actors who are the same person which gives the film a certain unique edge
How did you cast?
I like to work with actors I’ve worked with before also new actors fresh out of drama school we have a real mix in the film and some fab acting displays
What was the hardest part of the process?
Dare I say it the now getting people to watch the film I don’t have the funds to market like the big boys since giving my first feature away for free which as notched up 10,000 views in 8 months, I hope people will enjoy Meeting Place it’s a entertaining film
You act, write and direct. What is your least favourite thing to do when making a film? How hard is it to juggle everything?
I love directing and the process of filmmaking it is time consuming but rewarding when you receive good feedback and reviews, the acting is with me and I strive to keep learning and improving
Do you have any favourite characters in it?
I was blown away by some of the improvisation and have so many scenes I like I can’t really narrow it down
What did you shoot on?
We shot on a Sony HDV
What was your main inspiration for the film?
Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes we did not try to copy it, but it is a great film and very simple but watchable
Where can people see the film?
I have had a few enquiries of distribution but I’ve decided the best method for this film is stay in control and I stumbled on a few good online mediums we will anounce the sites on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/
What’s next for you?
I have few irons in the fire on acting and the directing front but always looking for new productions to work on
I headed over to the Canon Cinema at Somerset House on Monday to view the Fashion Films playing inside.
Mondays features was an accessories showcase staring Katie Rowlands ‘Ishtar’ S/S13 film. It was a short advert of a tattooed girl running through an old building, body adorned with the collection. The pieces were edgy and sexy with Egyptian style headdresses and armlets added something a little bit different.
Everything in the video I would have worn myself and Katie Rowland is defiantly a great brand for young women looking for some exiting, modern jewellery. However it would have been nice to see more as the film itself was quite short, so a trip to Liberty’s to check out the collection is defiantly in order!
http://www.katie-rowland.com/
Other designers showcasing short films were Zoe Lee, a British shoe designer of whose collection turned out to be cool, fun and funky. Previously tutored by Manolo Blanhik, in January 2012 this year she launched her own collection of luxury woman’s shoes. Zoe Lee clad feet were seen dancing and walking, each shoe having its own name and personality. Really enjoyed watching this video as the brand was portrayed well and each shoe shown clearly. Will be purchasing a pair of Zoe Lee shoes as soon as S/S13 hits the shops!
http://zoelee.co.uk/home/
My favorite short film, which made me laugh was the Mawi “Heiress” video which marks a 10 year landmark for the London based brand.
The film shows a young woman sitting at a dinner table, dressed up as if for a party. Her butler brings over her first dish and she begins to eat.
The camera zooms in on what is thought to be a just a plate of soup, but it turns out a pair of earring is floating inside. Dish after dish is brought out, necklaces in the main course, bracelets in the jelly. The woman goes on the eat each piece of the collection ignoring the food entirely.
The Jewellery itself is luxurious but would be perfect for a younger woman as they were not too over the top or extravagant. Each piece is modern and elegant and would be perfect for a dinner party or event.
Check out the past collections bellow
http://www.mawi.co.uk/
Although I much prefer a good old catwalk show, the Canon Cinema is a good place for small brands to get across their brand aesthetic and portray a mood or feel. It was also nice to sit in the dark away from the hustle and bustle of Somerset House and kick back and relax.
Much fuss was made over The Expendables – a balls-out, high-octane, no-nonsense shoot ‘em up that Sylvester Stallone nurtured to the big screen. It was a lot of fun, and pulled together three Goliath’s of the action world (Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis) along with a handful of other action giants, both past and present. Its success meant that The Expendables 2 was inevitable.
Along with the original ‘Expendables’ (Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture and Terry Crews) Stallone has more hired guns in the mix for the second outing. Liam Hemsworth joins the Expendables crew, Jean-Claude Van Damme is on villain duty, and a seventy-something Chuck Norris is thrown in for good measure.
Unfortunately, it would seem less can indeed sometimes be more. Whilst the first film seemed like a genuine hark back to something lost; an old-skool actioner with some old-skool actioniers, The Expendables 2 reeks of ‘for-the-hell-of-it’ laziness. The first treated the teaming up of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis as a momentous occasion and played it cool. Their fleeting on-screen trio – the first EVER – was played with a serious hand (as serious as one can expect) with only a slight nod to the audience. Action took the front seat in that film (action and ultra violence, which fans of the 2008 Rambo will attest to).
For this reviewer however, The Expendables 2 has lost its trump card and gone for the cobbled-together, self reverential name dropping road and left all the good, old-skool action behind. Don’t get me wrong, there is action. The opening 20 minutes is as good as it gets. But with only a few more exceptions the action is not only not as plentiful as I would have liked but also not as brutal and ridiculously OTT as the first. Jet Li (an undeniable legend) gives a bunch of goons a cooking lesson they won’t forget, but quickly disappears off-screen for the remainder of the film! Statham, it cannot be denied, is a remarkable martial artist and his action sequences are crisp, violent and precise. In fact Statham is also by far the best actor among the Expendable crowd and were it not for him they would be left following Stallone who unfortunately just looks waaaaaaay to old for this sh*t. Schwarzenegger and Willis (the latter of which can also act, but seems to have forgotten) is laughable (not in a good way) and at points cringe worthy. Every scene with them oozes self parody, with trademark lines being cheapened, hung, drawn and quartered like never before. Oh, and Chuck Norris pops up for no apparent reason and shoots a load of nameless henchmen. Then does the same again later. Fortunately his beard covers the fact that he is also, unfortunately too old for this sh*t. There is also a Chinese woman who is involved in some way, but her acting is so unforgivably bad at times that I wondered if she may have been on work experience. I can’t actually remember what she did in the film except that she was somehow ‘important’ to the story, my brain must have attempted to eradicate her memory from my head.
This leaves us with Van Damme. It may come as a surprise to some – although not those who witnessed his performance in JCVD (2008) – but the muscles from Brussels can act. His performance is – along with ‘The Stath’s’ – the best in the film by a country mile. He delivers his lines with natural menace and adds a real villain to an otherwise empty shell of a film. It is thanks to him and Jason Statham that the film is watchable beyond the first 20 minutes. Sure he breaks out the spin-kicks in the show-down but c’mon, there would be uproar were he not to.
The Director Simon West (most notable for Con Air in 1997) does his best with the poor script and ludicrous amount of characters to crowbar into the 100+ minutes run time, but it ends up feeling like words, scenes and characters have been shoved into the Lotto’s Lancealot Machine with set of balls number 2 and given a good going over, only to be poured onto the screen like the contents of an un-drained washing machine.
Word on the street (the internet street) has it that number 3 has been given a greenlight, with additional names like Harrison Ford and Nicholas Cage being bandied around by publicity types. Whether this will add more gravitas (try not to laugh) to The Expendables 3 or whether or not they are simply yet more names to try to cram inside a 90 minute window with integrity-destroying consequences is yet to be seen. Thank God the true, un-paralleled master Bruce Lee isn’t alive to be dragged dragon-kicking and screaming into what unfortunately seems to this reviewer to be a sad misfire of an action film-wannabe.
P.S – Jackie Chan, please don’t take any calls from Stallone’s agent. I beg you.
Remake? Reboot? Re-Imagining? Whatever the adjective, this Colin Farrell lead ‘re-doing’ of a Philip K. Dick short story (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, first published in 1966) has been done before in 1990 with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead and Paul Verhoeven lensing. That film acclaimed cult status. And for good reason.
In this Len Wiseman (Die Hard 4.0, Underworld) outing Colin Farrell plays the lead character Douglas Quaid who discovers he may or may not be something other than an ordinary, working class Joe in a late 21st century, post chemical-warfare world of multi-stacked urban levels, Minority-Report-esque (also a Dick adaptation) mag-cars and plush, ‘United Federation of Britain’ megalopolises. No expense spared on the visuals, that’s for sure.
However. Yes, there was bound to be a however, and for this reviewer it was a big one. The story of Total Recall, We Can Remember It For You….whatever version you are ingesting into your brain-box from whichever medium, benefits from the unknown. The trump card is that you never quite know what is real and what isn’t. At its core the story is about the nature of self. What makes us, us. Our memories? Well what if our memories can be cooked up in a lab, or on a computer with software (or, as the Matrix (1999) showed us, with hard wiring into the brain in a sticky amniotic sack filled with pink lube – more on The Matrix later). Would falsified memories make us still us, or would we be someone else? Unfortunately, if you have seen Paul Verhoeven’s film, you may well know most of these answers already. And that is a real shame. Every ounce of suspense, every scene that hinges on the is-he, isn’t-he dynamic, is redundant. We’ve been here before, and quite frankly the gritty charm of Verhoeven’s outing was far more seductive for this reviewer. Everything seems way too familiar…only, not. I heard tell during hype-time that this outing was ‘closer to the source material’. Not a remake, but another go at the short story. Where I heard that I cannot say and whether it was from ‘official’ sources I do not know. Fact is, it isn’t. It’s Arnie’s story all over again with some superficial and aesthetic changes to give the impression (to the impressionable) that this is something new and shiny. There’s no Mars. No mutants. And if I’m painfully honest, no heart. Even the bits that weren’t in the 1990 film were obvious in their outcome from the get-go.
What Arnie lacks in acting ability he makes up for in brawn, screen presence and raw charisma. Farrell might not have the brawn (though an action man he can still be) but he has the acting chops. Unfortunately he left them at home for this one. The phrase ‘a phoned-in performance’ doesn’t quite cut it. I think he emailed this one direct to Wiseman. Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale give it their all. This reviewer got the distinct impression that whilst they were doing their best in a BIG, big-screen performance, Farrell – who let’s be honest is an established, A-List actor at the top of his game – didn’t have much investment in the character and was probably paid a bottomless pit of cold, hard cash for the role.
The familiarity with this film didn’t stop at the story either. There were scenes which far too closely resembled Blade Runner, Minority Report (both possibly forgiven as the source material for both was also Philip K. Dick) Star Wars: Episode 2, Escape From New York, The Matrix….to name a few. Even the (few) scenes exploring the philosophy of self which came so effortlessly to Verhoeven’s 1990 film seemed lifted straight from Morpheus’ mouth from The Matrix.
It was a spectacle for sure, but that’s a given in this day and age. Worth a watch? Perhaps. It’s difficult not to draw parallels to the original film, I wish it were. I had hoped this would be a fresh take on the story which stood alone as a worthy interpretation of Dick’s 1966 short. The visuals certainly gave that impression, but that really is where the differences end. Similarities must be drawn, because quite frankly it seemed to be a rehash of the same story. Which begs the question, why make it at all?? (Oh yeah, vast box office takings……silly me).

Netflix rolled out the red carpet for an evening of Bollywood Style and Movies in central London this week – celebrating the great range of Bollywood movies available on the service, and Frost Magazine went along to have some fun. Indian actress Preeya Kalidas and rising UK film star Adam Deacon were amongst the guests to enjoy cocktails and watch preview clips from upcoming Bollywood movies.
We had delicious cocktails and I got a make up lesson from legendary make up artist Ruby Hammer. My favourite cocktail was the Ginger Dahling.
Netflix is the world’s leading internet subscription service for enjoying movies and TV shows and features everything from blockbusters, classic movies to TV series and children’s programming. It also features a range of great world cinema, including a great selection of of Bollywood movies to instantly watch on the service, including the below titles:
The night was hosted by Nihal who also entertained the crowd of Bollywood gliterratti,
the fashion pack and media with a DJ set of Bollywood fusion music. Beauty and style press were also treated to a make up master class from Ruby Hammer – showcasing some of the most iconic looks from Bollywood’s history whilst food and drink drawing inspiration from Bollywood was served throughout the evening. Konnie Huq and Asian music producer Rishi Rich were also on hand to enjoy the style sessions and to sip Chai Collins and Ginger Dahling cocktails at the exposure Gallery, W1.