Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 27 August

Giselle (Fraser, 2013)

I haven’t mentioned it here before but for a while in 2013 I was editor of Aotearoa’s screen industry magazine OnFilm. I haven’t mentioned it because it was a pretty unhappy experience.

The magazine was getting a reboot from new owners after a few years out of print. I was stoked to be selected as editor and we made one really good first issue that focused on Dana Rotberg’s White Lies (recommended here back in July) and the restoration process for Geoff Murphy’s Utu, with some flashbacks to the original release of that film thanks to the OnFilm archives.

We finished a second issue before I realised that the whole endeavour was just a big publishing Ponzi scheme (with advertising from one magazine used to pay the bills of another) and that I wasn’t going to get paid. I ended up being owed more than $8000 and one of the owners went to jail for a year.

The second issue that we published centred around Toa Fraser’s filmed version of the Royal New Zealand Ballet production of Giselle. I got to interview Fraser and cinematographer Leon Narbey and it was one of the great pleasures of my career.

I’ve just had a hunt through my digital archives to see if I still have anything from those days but I suspect it was too raw at the time for me to bother with preservation. We never got as far as relaunching an OnFilm website. I do have a few copies of the magazines though, so maybe I’ll scan those one day.

I don’t know where all those leather-bound editions of nearly 40 years of the magazine have gone.

I do have my Funerals & Snakes review of the film from this very day in 2013 though:

Theatre, ballet and opera have become a staple in our art-houses over the last few years as high culture has found a home where live sport and rock concerts (the “alternative content” that was predicted to dominate the new digital environment) have failed. While the Met Opera and National Theatre have established international brands and reputations to lead them, Toa Fraser’s Giselle has something else – it works as cinema. Beautifully shot by ace Leon Narbey and his team of dedicated cinematographers – like Scorsese’s Rolling Stones film Shine a Light, Narbey insisted that every camera operator be a first-rate shooter in his own right – Giselle showcases the sublime performances of principals Gillian Murphy and Qi Huan as well as Kendall Smith’s beautiful lighting.

Fraser leaves the auditorium occasionally – to New York, Shanghai and the Wellington rehearsal room – gently hinting at the connections between performer and character that are usually the prerogative of our imaginations.

Also in that column: Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in Elysium, Director Park’s Stoker, future Ted Lasso Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston in We’re the Millers, Sandra Bullock teaming up with Melissa McCarthy in The Heat, WWI story Private Peaceful featuring baby-George Mackay and baby-Jack O’Connell, Matteo Garrone’s modern fable Reality, and puzzle-thriller Now You See Me.