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Post by anaterra on Mar 28, 2008 19:22:13 GMT -5
I´ve just finished watching it and WOW!!! Gotta say that, from all Kevin´s movies I´ve seen so far, this is the one that most moved me emotionally. Kevin´s perfomance is just spetacular!!! The way his face changes as Frankie evolves from his violent past to redemption and then try not to go back to it. No wonder why all the reviews I read raved about his performance. The photography, the Edinburgh scenery, the slow camera movements are all so beautiful and poetic, as is the soundtrack. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep". I never read Robert Frost´s poetry, but I came across these verses when I was a teenage and for some reason they got stuck in my head. I even remember writing them in a piece of paper and pinning it to a board I had in my room, where it stayed for many years. So imagine my surprise hearing Kevin´s deep and beautiful voice saying them as the movie ended! Off to watch the behind the scenes and director´s commentary.
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Post by Leanne on Mar 29, 2008 1:06:01 GMT -5
OH OH OH - Behind the scenes ;D ...wow OK Anaterra if KMK appears in any of those please please screencaps or ....clips
I will do some screencaps of the movie during the week.....and put it up under the pics thread......
I have to agree with you its a stunning movie and if you go to our media page on the webpage K has managed to put up a few mp3's its stunning as one fan said switch the lights off put on the earphones and listen to his voice.....Highly recomended..
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Post by anaterra on Mar 29, 2008 21:43:59 GMT -5
Unfortunately I couldn´t watch the Behind the Scenes featurette because my disk came with problems (the image freezes when I click on it). I´ll be contacting Caiman (the online store) by e-mail to see if I can get another disk or swap this one, but that should take sometime. Anyway, here´s some trivia I picked from Richard Jobson´s (the director) commentary. BTW, he sounds a bit like Martin Scorsese, first because he talks really fast and second because his accent is not Scottish at all and sounds rather American. The movie had a very low budget and a tight schedule (only 4 weeks), so they had to get most of the shots with only one take. I think this makes Kevin´s work even more impressive! The scene in which Frankie makes his speech during the AA meeting (the most emotional scene, IMO) was shot in only one take. Jobson himself praises Kevin alot on how he always hit his marks with the first take and could pull off all the complexity and depth of the character. To quote his own words, he thinks that Kevin got the technical skills but also the brains and is a brilliant actor. Jobson thought of casting him as Frankie since the beginning, but his casting director back then thought it wouldn´t work because Kevin was a father and too much of a gentle figure. Later they met for the first time during a script workshop for first time writers, where some actors were brought up to read the scripts. Kevin was one of them and read the scene I mentioned above, leaving Jobson stunned. They went out for a coffee and parted separately, only to meet later at the same tube plataform. So that´s when they found out they´re neighbors, and became good friends. I loved the idea of Kevin taking the tube just like any regular person (and lucky londoners who could meet him so easily - I´d love to take the tube after work and, just by chance, sit side by side to Kevin McKidd ... ), but I wonder if he´s still able to do these kind of things nowadays ... Anyway, I guess this is why he´s missing public transportation so much in LA. On a side funny note: It was not Jobson´s idea, but the actors´ themselves, to have Frankie and Mary hugging naked in a scene. They were shooting in Jobson´s apartament and suddenly both Kevin and Suzan Lynch started taking off their clothes, and Jobson was "ooooooops" and decided to close the set (which is what they usually do while shooting this kind of scene - only the director, the director of photography, the camera operator and a few other technical crew remain in the set).
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Post by Leanne on Mar 31, 2008 17:26:04 GMT -5
Oh thanks for that ....hope you get a replacement copy soon....dying to see the extras.
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Post by TeamMcKidd on Apr 10, 2008 15:40:23 GMT -5
The extras are definitely worth it. This is my all-time favorite Kevin film! I'm so glad you liked it anaterra--definitely worth returning and getting a copy with proper bonus features!
We have some screencaps from the film and the bonus segments in the Gallery section as well. People are always welcome to use any of these screencaps for FanArt, too.
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Post by TeamMcKidd on May 24, 2008 14:47:22 GMT -5
From DCfilmsociety.org:
Edinburgh: Location, Location, Location By Jim McCaskill
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND. Walked out my flat one Sunday on way to Quaker Meeting to discover klieg lights, sound trucks and catering crews. My cobble stoned street had been transformed into a film set.
The elegant mix of Edinburgh's 18th Century Georgian architecture in New Town, newly rediscovered charm of medieval Old Town, robust seafront of Leith and starkly modern financial district combine to make a filmmaker's dream. In the past decade films as diverse as Jude, Trainspotting, The Little Vampire, Women Talking Dirty and House of Mirth have shot scenes here.
The set I walked into was the film adaptation of director Richard Jobson's performance poem, Sixteen Years of Alcohol. "Edinburgh's always been my adopted city ever since the days of the Skids. We were based in Fife but we used to have a flat here. I always thought of Edinburgh as my magical home," Jobson told the Evening Standard.
Jobson insists that despite the film title it is a love story not a sixteen year drinking binge. Auld Reekie, an affectionate appellation based on Edinburgh's smokey past, is an ideal setting for this gritty tale of one man's inner journey of self discovery of his identity forged in violence and betrayal. While a work of fiction, there are elements from Jobson's life in it. And he has had more lives than Shirley MacLaine. Lead vocalist for Scottish punk group, The Skids; film critic; film producer (Just Another Day in London, Tube Tales, and Heartlands). Film critic turned director is not new in Europe as Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut and Wim Winders previously blazed that trail.
Auld Reekie refers not just to the coal smoke that blackened the buildings but the wonderful mix of aromas. On a give day the smell of malt from the whisky distillers smelling like malt tea cakes just the other side of pleasant commingled with Cameron's peppermint pandrops. Pandrops are rememebered fondly by no longer young children as a church sweetie. Used primarily to keep kiddies quiet during sermons which were recalled as one to six pandrops in length.
Edinburgh's architecture and bars build the atmosphere crucial to this remembrance of life by a dying man. With a title like Sixteen Years of Alcohol, bars would be important, particularly workingmen's bars. For those wanting to follow the Sixteen Years locations you will need to live it up in Rutherford Bar at the end of my street, Central, Thompson's and Milne's Bars. Each of these retain their laborer heritage where a workingman can sit with a pint and block time present with dreams of time past. Jobson missed my favorite Damon Runyon-esque drinking establishment, Port O'Leith, better known as Mary's. If it exists on this planet it was walked, crawled or slithered through the doors Mary's atmosphere rich bar.
Sixteen Years has an outstanding cast of young actors. Kevin McKidd (Trainspotting, Acid House, Dog Soldiers), Laura Fraser (A Knight's Tale, Vanilla Sky) is Helen and Susan Lynch (From Hell, Nora) plays Mary, the two major love interests. Ewen Bremner (Julien Donkey-boy) has a cameo role as Jake, an art student. McKidd and Fraser worked together on the Scottish classic Small Faces. McKidd and Bremner teamed up in Trainspotting. Current plans are to take Sixteen Years to Sundance and aim for 2003 release.
Other Edinburgh locations used in this film are: Victoria Terrace, Caledonian Brewery (Slateford), Bistro Square, and Edinburgh Art College.
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Post by anaterra on May 24, 2008 21:22:41 GMT -5
Thanx for the article, Kat! I´ve never been to the city, but I can tell it comes out amazingly beautiful in the movie. Actually, I think the city is like a character in itself in the film, which I guess was Jobson´s original intention. Anyway, I´m a totally sucker for historical locations.
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ruralstar
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Post by ruralstar on Oct 2, 2008 14:49:50 GMT -5
I finally got to see this movie today. I was absolutely blown away. Kevin is extraordinary. Frankie's Journey was filled with such raw and relatable emotion that I could barely look away. I was going to ask if Kevin had done the AA meeting scene in one take as that is how it appears in the film. Wonderfully done. I don't think I've seen anything quite like this for a very long time, if ever. I love how the film was blocked: one of the best uses being the conversation between Helen and Frankie outside of the art gallery. The railing representing an absolutely solid and insurmountable wall between them. Love the mosaic of characters seeming to slide into and over one another. The frozen moments and the music overplaying some of the most violent scenes.
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect as I had read very little about the film. If not for wanting to see more of Kevin's work I would have missed this film completely. I was struck at the transformation of a man who can use a hammer on a former 'friend' and go on to coaching 'football' years later. That old version of Frankie always lurks. You can see him fighting it in front of the kids on the field. You see him fighting it when Mary tries to talk to him about why he can't feel/express love. Isn't it the truth about our pasts? You can't quite walk away from everything no matter how sordid. Always there is a ghost. The trick is to channel the energy into something positive. You can see that Frankie might have managed that if he had survived the beating.
I know you've all seen this film before but for me it was a sensory experience as vivid as Rome but in a very different way. I am more impressed than ever with Kevin's range and talent. Well done.
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Post by anaterra on Oct 4, 2008 2:28:38 GMT -5
Ruralstar, again, great review, and I´m glad to find someone who enjoys this film as much as I do (Ok, to be fair, I know Kat loves it too ). I liked the movie so much that I tried to follow Richard Jobson´s career - I thought, hey, here´s an interesting filmmaker! - but I was very disapointed. "The Purifiers" is a total waste of time, and the only few good scenes are the ones in which Kevin is in. The other day I caught, just by chance, another of his movies on TV - it´s called "The Winter Woman", and, again, another waste of time, in this case so pretentious and boring that I couldn´t watch it to the end. It´s funny, cause he still shows good aesthetic sense (no wonder why, he has worked as a movie critic) and sometimes GREAT framing (as you´ve noticed so well in the example of the chat outside the museum), but he totally lacks the capacity of developing a story, and sometimes movies do need this - they can´t be made only of cinematography and framing ... From his commentaries I got that he´s a great fan of American cinema, but I don´t think he took the lesson about what Hollywood can do best - to tell a story - to his own movies. Anyway, totally agree that the AA meeting scene is certainly the greatest "tour de force" that I´ve seen from an actor in a long time. I even said (or better, wrote! ) in one of our past chats that, had the movie not be a small, independent Scottish film with no lobbying power, Kevin could easily have been nominated for an Oscar, and based only on that scene.
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ruralstar
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Post by ruralstar on Oct 4, 2008 19:32:58 GMT -5
Anaterra,
Yes, absolutely blown away. I've watched it twice without the commentary and once with. I do think Kevin would have been nominated for an Oscar had this been made in Hollywood. However, I'm not so sure Hollywood could really make a picture like this nowadays. There was something magical (not the right word but I am at a loss for another) about the story and its execution. Perhaps in part because it was based on Richard Jobson's own experiences. Someone recommneded "The Wiinter Woman" to me. I'm disappointed to read your take on it. Not sure if I will be able to get a copy anyway as I'm region 1 and I was very surprised to find 16 Years available as it was such a low budget vehicle. So glad though.
Thanks for reading. I hope I can say a few things as I discover Kevin's work that will give all of you old hands a fresh take. Not that any of us needs encouragement to appreciate Kevin's work
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Post by Leanne on Oct 5, 2008 1:34:44 GMT -5
This is one of our fav's (K and I) - Kat actually found Jobson's website www.richardjobson.co.uk/ and apparently he does writing courses which she was keen on....but found his website a bit confusing LOL....of course Jobson is in 16yrs I have a clip of him singing up on Zoopy...... I personally found that you have to watch this dvd a few times to appreciate it fully ....... learning something new each time I have to agree the Purifiers was no where near as good but nice to see Kevin taking on such a role..... Jobson seems to like to extend the boundaries of this movies making them anything but the norm so for some they will prove difficult to watch for others who see it as a form of Art its pure joy (I'm normally of the former - but every now and again I get one of these Art movies) some nice additional reading... www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/jobsonwww.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A2872604www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/jul/27/1and the official site www.16yearsofalcohol.com/
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ruralstar
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Post by ruralstar on Oct 5, 2008 15:39:35 GMT -5
Thanks Leanne. I actually found Jobson's website as well. It was confusing It has not been updated since January either if I am not mistaken. I've listened to the movie commentary and I noted where he actually sang during the bar scene towards the end of the movie. Interesting that he's been asked many times if he cast Kevin due to their resemblance. The answer is no but there is quite a resemblance
I'm not usually a big fan of 'artsy' as I often find that kind of material pretentious. This is not the case with 16 Years.
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Post by anaterra on Oct 8, 2008 15:08:15 GMT -5
Leanne, sorry for the omission, I didn´t know you liked 16 Years so much! I caught "The Winter Woman" in HBO/Brazil, but since their programming is quite international I think it must be available for you, guys, if you´re a subscriber. Maybe my judgment was a bit harsh, but I did fall asleep while watching it ... But then again I also tried to watch a movie from Jobson´s main inspirer, Wong Kar-Wai (spelled correctly?) and I was bored to death, so I guess my taste for "artsy" movies has its limitations ...
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Post by bubba89 on Apr 29, 2009 0:27:17 GMT -5
I've recently seen this movie and I thought it was amazing. It is very emotional and I got so caught up in it. It didn't get to see any bonus features or commentaries though but that would be amazing. Maybe someday.
By seeing this film and few of Kevin's other films now I think it is amazing how every project he does is so different. I mean bedrooms & hallways, rome, dog soldiers, this, etc. He has such range and is terrific at whatever genre he is doing.
Oh and one other thing, I have to say that I thought that he looked very good with the buzz cut that he had at the beginning of the movie. I normally don't like hair that short on guys but I found it very attractive. ;D (not saying that I don't also think that he is extremely yummy as dr. owen hunt)
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Post by kaz on Apr 29, 2009 0:40:33 GMT -5
I've recently seen this movie and I thought it was amazing. It is very emotional and I got so caught up in it. It didn't get to see any bonus features or commentaries though but that would be amazing. Maybe someday. By seeing this film and few of Kevin's other films now I think it is amazing how every project he does is so different. I mean bedrooms & hallways, rome, dog soldiers, this, etc. He has such range and is terrific at whatever genre he is doing. Oh and one other thing, I have to say that I thought that he looked very good with the buzz cut that he had at the beginning of the movie. I normally don't like hair that short on guys but I found it very attractive. ;D (not saying that I don't also think that he is extremely yummy as dr. owen hunt) It's definitely hard to believe that's it the same person playing all of these different characters. Kevin just has this ability to really let the character inhabit him. 16 Years of Alcohol is one of my favourite movies of Kevin's.
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Post by singer201 on May 8, 2009 15:24:04 GMT -5
Just finished watching 16 Years of Alcohol yesterday, and was really bummed that it's such a sad film (though Kevin is OUTSTANDING). I had my suspicions in the first few minutes that it wasn't going to turn out well for the main character, but I had hopes. Very moving and heart-touching for me; I think Kevin's narration had the most effect on my emotions. I wondered if Frankie's parents knew what impact their actions had on their son. Makes me think of the black/Hispanic kids in this country that turn to gangs and violence as a way to cope with a rotten life.
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Post by kaz on May 9, 2009 2:29:04 GMT -5
I agree that Kevin's narration has a really powerful effect.
As with most independent movies, it doesn't have that Hollywood happy ending and you're left feeling as though the wind has been taken out of your sails. But it gives you so much to think about and that's why I adore it. I will definitely be rewatching and posting some more thoughts.
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Post by cl3me on May 19, 2009 12:26:17 GMT -5
I have finally found a copy of this movie locally! Going to go pickup tomorrow night....
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Geniusmentis
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Post by Geniusmentis on May 19, 2009 14:19:24 GMT -5
I love this movie and I strongly think that at the end Frankie (how handsome is Kev here!!!) doesn't die and his hope of a better life doesn't die. According to me, the end of the movie is the beginning of his new life with Mary. Frankie is a very interesting character and Kevin is, as always, wonderful! A poem about a good person who tries to drown his childish, adolescent and adult sentimental problems in many years of alcohol. A poem about a good person who manages to control his anger, feeded by years of rancour, resentment and absence of trust in faithful love, although everything is against his hope and desire of change what is destined to be repeated. A poem about a big hope threatened by a big fear deep-rooted in Frankie's soul.
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Post by duchovlet on May 19, 2009 20:24:23 GMT -5
I love this movie and I strongly think that at the end Frankie (how handsome is Kev here!!!) doesn't die and his hope of a better life doesn't die. According to me, the end of the movie is the beginning of his new life with Mary. Frankie is a very interesting character and Kevin is, as always, wonderful! A poem about a good person who tries to drown his childish, adolescent and adult sentimental problems in many years of alcohol. A poem about a good person who manages to control his anger, feeded by years of rancour, resentment and absence of trust in faithful love, although everything is against his hope and desire of change what is destined to be repeated. A poem about a big hope threatened by a big fear deep-rooted in Frankie's soul. Hate to spoil it for you Genius but the writer/director (Richard Jobsen) basically says in his DVD commentary of 16 Years that Frankie gets beaten to death at the end. I know d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-n-g but kudos for a non-Hollywood ending. I'd still like to play nursemaid to Frankie ...
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