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B previews Danny Boyle's MILLIONS
Hey folks, Harry here with an early preview screening of Danny Boyle's kid flick entitled MILLIONS... yes, you read that right. What's up with cool people making kid movies? Shouldn't that be left to Disney treadmill monkey workers? Not if we want free thinking individuals that would rather watch Zombie movies! Whew. Here ya go...
Harry,
This is a first time submission for me, so forgive me if it's awkwardly written. I went to a screening of Fox Searchlight's MILLIONS by Danny Boyle last night - from a hand-out invitation I picked up over the weekend.
The organization conducting the screening said it was early in the process (IMDB shows it releasing in the UK in November, so this seems about right). There were some specific questions on the form regarding the score (which, though Danny Elfman-lite, didn't seem like a temp track - but this is my first screening of this sort) and everything seemed pretty much in it's place, so I don't know how much tweaking they have left to do.
The story concerns two recently-motherless young British boys (about seven and ten) whose lives are drastically changed when the youngest has a bag of soon-to-be worthless English pounds "drop from heaven" just days before the UK is to convert to the euro. The boy, obsessed with Christian saints and martyrs (many of which appear to him throughout the film, drolly giving advice), feels obligated by God to hand money out to the poor. His brother, aware that the money is a stray bag from the heist of an enormous load of incinerator-bound cash, is determined to successfully spend the money while they've still got the chance.
Being directed by the man who gave us the somewhat similarly-themed SHALLOW GRAVE, I was not prepared for the boy's-eye-view fantasy that MILLIONS delivered. The aforementioned apparitions of the saints, plus a couple of huge stretches of logic and reality, made this seem closer to Tim Burton's BIG FISH than I had expected. It wasn't as cloying (or crappy) as LOVE, ACTUALLY and it did do a terrific job on representing the cookie-cutter developments of the modern UK (without going overly Spielbergian with the metaphor), but it was a little too precious at times. And for a Christmas movie, where in the f*ck was all the snow? I'm not sure where in the UK it is set (it was shot in Liverpool and Manchester) but I always thought it at least got a bit cold there by December.
The acting was quite strong. Both boys were very good - though at times hard to understand (a problem they asked about a lot in the questionnaire), but the younger (IMDB is of no help here) carried the wight of the narrative with great ease. James Nesbitt (BLOODY SUNDAY) as the widower-dad had some really nice moments, especially with his sons. But the villain, looking for his missing bag of loot, was sadly a pretty toothless creation. There were a couple of moments where it looked like the possibility of a threat might develop, but someone wanted to keep this picture very child-friendly, so no hope there.
This isn't an over-produced mess like THE BEACH, but there is something very unexpectedly slick about MILLIONS. If Boyle (or screenwriter Frank Cottrel Boyce) wanted to shoot for the fantastical, something more along the lines of THE BUTCHER BOY would have given the audience something to sink their teeth into. Sadly, what was onscreen skewed directly towards the "like titles" the screening organization was flashing on clip boards while we were in line: CALENDAR GIRLS, NOTTING HILL, CHOCOLAT, THE PRINCESS DIARIES and ABOUT A BOY. Watching it unfold, you know the thing is rolling toward a happy ending, but the make-believe level of happiness it arrives at ended up leaving a "Huh?" with much of the audience around me. Mike Leigh (or even the Danny Boyle I was hoping for) would have ended this thing with the fantasy veneer of sanctimony/self-actualization ripped away, revealing two desperately abused, impoverished boys who are trying to make believe their cardboard-box haven will keep them from freezing to death through the Christmas holiday. And I'd have to say that I would have preferred that to what I got.
If this is something you can use, call me whatever you'd like.
Take it easy.
b
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+ Expand All
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This is the closest to first I've ever come!
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OK. I'm still close! I love Lindsey Lohan by the way.
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I actually have a thought here: I think 'Shallow Grave' is in Boyle's Top 2, most likely behind 'Trainspotting.'
I remember buying it for like $2.99 on VHS when I was at IU and loving it. Check it out if you haven't ever seen it. But watch out for the full-frontal, not a pretty site! -
I actually like this movie. It was pretty interesting, especially before Leo went all Apocolypse Now. I was glad when the dope growers killed Carrot Top.
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I hate Cameron Diaz. She ruined Gangs of New York for me. She sucks. and she has bad acne.
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Beach was cool ... show it some respect. Just because you are jealous of Leo.
What's Walmanr? I don't have one of those around me. -
Or lack thereof. No snow is normal around Christmas time in the UK. Idiot.
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May 14, 2004 12:05:41 PM CDT
It hasn't snowed in the UK at Christmas since, the 1970's
by palmer eldritch
...and that was a one time freak ocurrance. Don't believe everything you see in Richard Curtis Movies.
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"Mike Leigh (or even the Danny Boyle I was hoping for) would have ended this thing with the fantasy veneer of sanctimony/self-actualization ripped away, revealing two desperately abused, impoverished boys who are trying to make believe their cardboard-box haven will keep them from freezing to death through the Christmas holiday. And I'd have to say that I would have preferred that to what I got."
Yeah, we wouldn't want to see anyone make a British film that showed the British working class in a positive light getting what they want occassionally, would we? We wouldn't want to see them as normal people doing normal things. NO, what we want is another sermon from Saint Mike who is so intimately acquainted with the suffering of the working class - remind me again was he the one who went to RADA or the one who studied at Oxford. All I can say is thank Christ that someone in the UK is looking to make positive, cheerful and even uplifting films instead of wallowing in their own pathetic, two-decades-out-of-date intellectual marxism and self-pity. Why the hell should the kids be revealed as "abused and impoverished" why can't they come out one up. Mike Leigh (and for that matter, the equally wrongheaded Ken Loach) make miserable, small-minded films for the miserable, small-minded middle classes. I'm delighted someone is doing something different. -
I hope to hell that we never have to deal with that funny money in the UK. Fuck Europe up it's stupid ass!
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nah mate it hardly ever snows where this film was set, and then it only settles for about half a day, but it f**ks up the roads and trains for about a week and half! work that out?!?
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I can't remember the last time we had a white Christmas where I live in Canada.
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It snows *around* Christmastime, and sometimes there's snow on the ground, but White Christmases are decidedly rare.
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I saw this screening too. So, Fatman, you don't like the downer endings of Mike Leigh and Ken Roach. I guess a big-minded upper class wanker such as yourself lives for the smiling-faced blight on cinema delivered by the likes of Richard Curtis and Nigel Cole. But (SPOILER WARNING)when the happy new family of MILLIONS dives into a magical cardboard box and flies to a ridiculously beachy-looking Ethiopia to bring fresh water, love and whiteness to a time-trapped African tribe fresh out of an 80's-era Bennetton ad, you'll wish someone would have thrown in a little intellectual Marxism in for good measure as well. You may now return to Tony Blair's c*ck.
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Christ!
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"I guess a big-minded upper class wanker such as yourself lives for the smiling-faced blight on cinema delivered by the likes of Richard Curtis and Nigel Cole."
I was born and grew up on a council estate, and if you heard my accent you wouldn't call me upper class. I'm a socialist - but I'm an onptimistic one - one who believes in the power of the working class to improve themselves, and whose experience of growing up and continuing to live in working class communities is positive - people have problems but, mostly, they don't wallow in them they get on with their lives and they make the best of it and they have a laugh. I hate Loach and Leigh because they portray the working class as hopeless and miserable and stupid and entirely dependent on help from outside. It is a typical condescending middle-class attitude hiding behind 60s intellectualism. So, you know, screw you NeroDog.
And Bridget Jones, Four Weddings and a Funeral (I'll stop your f**king clocks) , Calender Girls are all shit too - but for entirely different reasons - not being funny being chief amongst them. -
Oh I am guilty of that (three degrees and counting) and my cock is huge too.
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Working class people don't watch them. If they did, they'd find them patronising and shitty.
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absolutely fantastic movie.
"They've replaced me with a machine!" -
where'd all those cold-hearted British badasses from SNATCH and LOCK STOCK come from then?
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May 14, 2004 10:13:54 PM CDT
rude sticky fingered british children geeze up and forget about
by nick beam
causing the neglected baby to starve to death. then they cockneyly go to a beach and fight off some militants and proceed to not make any sense. finally, they kill their friend and dismember him but not before smashing his teeth out with a hammer. and all along the money was underneath the floorboards and ewan mgregor recovers from the stab wound.
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May 15, 2004 6:17:42 AM CDT
Whats up with cool directors doing kid movies...answer is right
by jon e cin
MONEY!
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Danny was slated to direct this one next? If he didn't get it, where did it go? Did it get shelved? did it get shelved? I want to see this movie get made! If not in this version, then the one that M. Mann was working on! DAMNIT!
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