Three Eyes Open
Started as an offshoot of the media group Third Eye Communications, Third Eye Films is a relatively new production company making a name for itself around town. Founders Jeff Carr and Mark Jackson, who started Third Eye Communications "with $5 and an idea," as Carr recalls with a laugh, have built a small but growing entrepreneurship that includes The Third Eye newspaper. The two former TSU communications majors formed Third Eye Films, in keeping with their other projects, to promote positive images of African-Americans in film.
Thus far, the producer/director team has to its credit Christian rapper Mike E.'s video "Pass It On," which has topped Christian video playlists across the country. Third Eye Films recently completed shooting for Mike E.'s new video, "Back in the Day," which stars pro football player Reggie White. In addition, Carr and Jackson have begun working on a rap video show, House of Hip, scheduled to air on Viacom Channel 43 in May.
"We're not where we want to be, but we're miles ahead of where we were," says Carr, who, as TSU's student body president, led a widely publicized and successful sit-in five years ago to protest conditions on campus. Now, with The Third Eye and several radio talk shows to his credit, including WFSK's popular "Habari Gani?" ("What's the News?"), Carr wants to branch out first into music videos before tackling independent film. "There's a lot more going on here than country," Carr notes, "and we want to establish a market for rap, R&B and `the other music' that isn't publicized as much."
Part of Carr and Jackson's plan involves the Onyx Film Circle, a creative group for aspiring African-American filmmakers. Led by Carr, Jackson and screenwriter Alicia Benjamin, the Onyx Film Circle provides a biweekly forum every other Thursday night for discussing scripts and planning upcoming projects. It also gives young African-Americans interested in the film process a chance to network with professionals. Soon, Carr hopes to include movie screenings and critiques in the meetings. "We're trying to develop thinkers as well as filmmakers," he says, "and we're also trying to establish a comfort zone with each other, so we can give and receive positive criticism."
Anyone interested in the Onyx Film Circle or Third Eye Films' other projects can contact Carr or Alicia Benjamin at 327-1735.
Bruce Beresford, the director of the Sharon Stone/Rob Morrow drama Last Dance shooting this month in Nashville, will be honored at a reception Thursday, March 16, at the home of Donald and Ruthie Cowan. Long considered a major talent, Beresford emerged from the same 1970s Australian film scene that produced such fine directors as Fred Schepisi, Philip Noyce and George Miller; after directing such acclaimed Australian films as and Don's Party, Beresford came to America and made a string of remarkable movies, including Crimes of the Heart, the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy and Tender Mercies.
The reception, which also honors producer Steven Haft and new Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commissioner Marsha Blackburn, costs $60 per person, with proceeds benefiting the new Film Studies program at the Watkins Institute College of Art and Design. Co-presenting the reception with the Watkins Institute is the Nashville Film/Video Association. For more information, contact 242-1851.
Perhaps inspired by the success of last year's surprise independent success Spanking the Monkey, young writer-director is currently filming a feature-length low-budget black comedy concerning such "taboo" subjects as incest and homosexuality. Set in San Francisco, where Cox spent last week shooting location shots, Relatively Speaking stars Knoxville actor Bobby Serrell and Murfreesboro actress Priscilla Grim as cousins forced by circumstance to become college roommates; the film is being shot in 16mm, with plans for film festival screenings and a 1996 release.
Although Cox, currently a Vanderbilt theater major, and his cast have financed the movie themselves thus far, they are looking for outside investors to help complete the project. If you've ever harbored ambitions of becoming a movie producer, call Cox at 421-6328 or send a fax to 226-1275.
The summer of 1995 has been the summer of the CGI—the computer-generated image. Whether you’re watching Batman ForeverJudge DreddWaterworld, or even A Walk in the Clouds, it seems there’s always another digitally altered backdrop, another giant sun, another burst of animated lava.
Blame it on Jurassic Park, which turned our moviehouses into profit-generating techno-zoos a few years back, or blame it on Forrest Gump, which reimagined what a simple seriocomedy could look like. Mostly, blame it on the relative inexpense of computer graphics compared to lavish sets and fragile models. Whatever the reason, filmmakers have gone CGI-loopy, finding every opportunity to tweak reality and distract the audience with gimmicks.
The latest and most extreme entry in the binary carnival is Mortal Kombat, based on the once popular video game of the same name. From its elaborate, digitally enhanced battlegrounds, which are lit by torches and flanked by skulls and stone gargoyles, to its morph-happy characters who shift from human form to skeletal demon warriors, Mortal Kombat is essentially one big effect—and an often impressive one. In the flood of CGI-loaded movies that have washed through this summer, Mortal Kombat alone embraces its absolute artificiality; indeed, it seems to have been almost entirely created after the filming stopped.
Unlike other video game-based movies (or even other recent effects-laden movies), Mortal Kombat makes no pretension of having a story, let alone characters who demonstrate any kind of interior life. What it offers instead is a concept: Good warriors battle evil warriors on a mysterious island to decide the fate of the world. On the side of the good are Johnny Cage, a hotshot actor with something to prove; Sonya, a paranoid policewoman with something to prove; and Liu Kang, a reluctant hero with...well, you get the idea. On the dark side are Scorpion, a masked ninja with a snake creature that lives in his right hand; SubZero, a masked ninja with the power to freeze his enemies; and the four-armed, red-skinned Prince Goro.
The various rounds of their martial-arts tournament are genuinely engaging, staged by director Paul Anderson with a slowly circling camera that captures the thrilling kinetic showmanship of the martial artists. Toss in snappy editing, thumping music, and colorful combat staging areas, and Mortal Kombat develops the pulse-racing energy of good rock ’n’ roll. The film promises little more than some exciting fights, and it delivers on that promise in spectacular fashion.
It is, however, merely spectacle. For all its literal kicks, Mortal Kombat is not much of a movie: It has no lasting value, no lingering pleasure. When the characters aren’t killing each other, the film shrivels. Every time a character spouts a line of inane dialogue or tries to build up the action with pointless exposition, the audience members sink into their seats, hoping that someone will attack. Luckily, someone always does. With its regular succession of crowd-pleasing battles, Mortal Kombat has the rhythm of an X-rated movie—call it pugilography. Still, although preteen boys may line up repeatedly to see the cool effects and high-flying kicks and punches, there’s nothing to sustain their interest once they’ve memorized all the moves.
For better or worse, Mortal Kombat represents the future of major-studio filmmaking, at least for awhile. Like the prior advents of dazzling Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope and stereophonic sound, the era of computer manipulation will be initially dominated by technology for technology’s sake.
Expect more movies, therefore, that forge ahead with a sketchy scenario in hopes of making magic in post-production—whether by generating remarkable new worlds, or simply by using the technology as high-tech white-out to cover mistakes. Unfortunately, the more studios move away from the hard physical labor of creating illusions toward turning out cheap novelty, the more the grand art of movie storytelling gives way to fleeting sensation.—Noel Murray
Beneath the Underpig
It says something about the state of the American film industry that one of the most thoughtful movies this year is a story about a talking pig—and it’s not even the talking-pig movie that was made in America. In any year, however, regardless of the competition, Chris Noonan’s Babe, the Gallant Pig would come as a treasure. An irresistible fable about perseverance and the value of virtue, Babe tells a deceptively simple story with technical and emotional sophistication.
Based on a book by Dick King-Smith, Babe, the Gallant Pig concerns an orphaned piglet, Babe, who comes to live at the farmhouse of an Australian sheep farmer and his wife. At the Hoggetts’ farm, every animal—dog, cow, cat, duck—has an established order in the barnyard hierarchy except Babe, who finds himself regarded as stupid by supposedly higher creatures. As Christmas nears, the brave, sensitive little pig must prove his worth, lest he wind up on a plate surrounded by parsley.
Babe so remarkable—and occasionally disturbing—is its unsentimental depiction of the class structure on the Hoggetts’ farm: The animals may kid themselves that they enjoy rank among each other, but the threat of a leash, a shotgun or a platter always reminds them of their tenuous position—and often arbitrarily so. (Just ask the canard l’orange.) The movie strikes a balance somewhere between the gentle insights of Charlotte’s Web and the carnivorous satire of Animal Farm; only the charm of the animal protagonists and the frolicsome humor in the script (by Noonan and coproducer George Miller) soften Babe’s tough-minded take on the pets-or-meat role of animals in a world dominated by humans.
If that sounds like a lot of baggage for a little pig to carry, rest assured that Babe sustains a sense of wonder from its opening storybook credits. Director Noonan employs the dynamic virtuosity that Miller brought to his Mad Max movies: Tilted angles and a constantly roaming camera evoke Babe’s pig’s-eye view of the world. Noonan bungles only one scene outright: When Farmer Hoggett tries to cheer up the despondent Babe by dancing an impromptu jig, the director inexplicably keeps cutting him off at the waist—a real crime, since James Cromwell’s lanky Hoggett obviously has the crazy-legs routine of a lifetime corked up in him.
In all other respects, though—from Andrew Lesnie’s ravishing photography of the Australian countryside, suffused with a golden glow, to the understated technical wizardry that gives animals not only voices but expressions and inflections—Babe, the Gallant Pig is easily among the year’s best movies, and it would remain so even if this weren’t one of the worst years for movies since the Lumières blew their first projector bulb. Much of the credit goes to Babe himself, a radiant little porker who embodies innocence at its most appealing and noble. As Charlotte the spider once said of an equally worthy porcine protagonist, that’s some pig.—Jim Ridley
