Update: Sergio Leone - Once Upon a Time in Europe 
A short update to my Sergio-Leone-book , in the Bertz + Fischer Verlag appears: the final corrections have been implemented and this morning are the proofs sent to the printer. In about three weeks my book will finally be available in the bookstore of your trust!
At 400 pages and illustrated with 363 photos illustrate the analysis of all related work as director Leone, biographical information, to date most complete filmography Leone and detailed essays on visual storytelling Leone, his influence on contemporary filmmakers and film music Ennio Morricone.
Happy reading!
Who can kill a child? - CASE 39 
Case 39 - USA 2009 - Director: Christian Alvart - book: Ray Wright - Camera: Hagen Bogdanski - Producers: Steve Golin, Kevin Misher - Music: Michl Britsch - Editing: Mark Goldblatt - Starring: Renée Zellweger, Jodelle Ferland, Ian McShane, Kerry O'Malley, Callum Keith Rennie, Bradley Cooper, Crystal Lowe and Others
the American horror film, the Ideas considered. The list of open and hidden remakes, the sequels and prequels, relaunches and updates of known substances in recent years is endless. From the mass of the culture industry as a relatively original copies variety stab at best often referred to as "torture porn" were tried out variants that Hostel movies by Eli Roth and the Saw series around. In the search for new material added Hollywood to Asian and European genre innovators like Ryuhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train , 2008) and Alexandre Aja (Mirrors , 2008) used. Christian Alvart could now also another German director of the Paramount try on a horror movie, which has refrained from Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th remake in recent years vorzuweisen hardly genre productions. The result is
here only a potpourri of known motifs and more or less successful reminiscences as a new impetus to the genre, the name succeeded to date in France. As in The Omen (The Omen, 1976) there is a small child to look sweet, but deadly for his caregivers, the theme of demonic possession is including The Exorcist (The Exorcist, 1973), Ringu ( Ring, 1998) and its American remakes been treated. The investigators figure of Ian McShane (the great Al Swearengen in the HBO series Deadwood !) Motifs are introduced the police film, the murders themselves are as set-pieces with echoes of the Final Destination series staged . And when the camera Hagen Bogdanskis who has photographed include The Lives of Others (2006) and to Go (2000), the house explores a lower class family, then appear the interiors, as in any x-arbitrary Backwood horror film weathered, with the obligatory corroded surfaces, matte patina, all kinds of unhealthy mold and suspicious bruises. The result ultimately, a patchwork that is held together by the aesthetic use of cold, blue-gray tones, which through the excessive use of color filters and the set design almost all cinematic spaces. Sleeping pills are blue, paper cups printed in a mental hospital with a blue design and peas as blue-green as in Scorsese's The Aviator (2004). Sometimes people act like pale fish in an oversized aquarium. When the heroine, played by Renée Zellweger puts her house on fire, then it saves, what else, dear their goldfish as their new, diabolical adopted child.
Alvart has used the film magazine X-Tro edited and directed by his debut film Curiosity & the Cat (1999) with antibodies (2005) a German serial killer thriller. Without question he is familiar with the history of the genre. But as in antibodies here is much too obvious, too transparent, created too much on for effect. antibodies promised a Dostoyevsky quote at the beginning of the authentic rural scenery and good acting performances existentially profound, ultimately to as half-baked variation of The Silence of the Lambs ; disappoint (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991). Also Case 39 told in the core has a really unusual for the genre material. The history of the social worker Emily (Zellweger), which is unexpected for the single mother when she the little Lilith (Jodelle Ferland) receives is, in one of teenage angst dominated genre as an allegory for the excessive demands of a single mother is not necessarily an everyday material. developed fast, the little girl to the veritable domestic tyrant - Nomen est omen: a fatal enfant - and friends and family die in mysterious circumstances. Alvart metaphorically tells of how the involuntary break away nut all social contacts, life only more rushes past her, quite literally in the scenes in the office, in which he used time-lapse. Soon, each appears in the annoying sing-song please put forward as extortion, is called for expressions of love are answered with feigned white lies, at the end, separation, domestic violence and paranoia. But if Alvart then directly addressed this meta-level by telling the story in flashback from the Emily's unhappy childhood, he is taking no change for the psychological horror. It remains only a half-hearted attempt and a hint, hint for particularly obtuse audience. Which would have the bad version of Rosemary's Baby (1968) and blurred vision history can be - and the director plays several times - projecting itself to the serious beer demons horror. But Alvart is, however, from Sam Raimi's insane about of touch that even the PG-13 horror movie Drag Me to Hell (2009) gave another unique appeal. Once your system has distorted the visage of the demon, the child's face, then the substance is finally driven out the ambivalence. How much creepier because it was Narciso Ibáñez Serrador ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? (one child to kill ..., 1976), in which we are nice, smiling neighborhood children, met the old one and just kill him then aufzurren to him armed with a sickle as a Piñata to use. But the wild 70's are long over.
What is lacking in the action in depth, try the sound design with riots and constant spraying to gloss over. Again and again, unexpected noises are used as acoustic shock moments: a dog that barks a surprise, a hand that suddenly knocks on a window, a clock, the losrasselt. One, two, maybe even a third time this works, but to use again and again the same effect that causes addiction and ultimately boredom. Once, the surround-sound design used effectively: in a successful scene, probably a reminiscence of Candyman (1992) and The Believers (1987), when angry hornets buzzing noise across the screening room and contribute strongly to the intensity of terror on the screen. Basically, but striking, flamboyant as the soundtrack is, strums almost continuously, murmurs or rumbles it. How much would be threatened because at least once an unexpected absence of noise, music and atmosphere was rather run up a second time against a demonic power door locks or have zerdreschen that there are only so rumbles and rattles. Stylistically, the film is reminiscent of a moderate version of what David Bordwell as a style of "intensified continuity" has described: not really a departure from classic, causal and narrative style in Hollywood, but a striking dominance of large images (in this case as a telephoto settings of the volunteers before blurred background), and seemingly unmotivated crane shots and regulators. Or as Mike Figgis puts it: "If somebody goes for a piss [...] these days it's usually a crane shot."
is given away completely not Case 39. Bogdanskis camera work has its own charm, and ultimately the film is quite entertaining. Just something new you do not get offered. But perhaps one does Alvart also wrong, for some abrupt moments can be a not completely happy production history of this film suggests, the filming was started in 2006. Let's wait on, because with Pandorum Alvart has already completed his next project.
This criticism was first published in: Splatting Image, No. 79, September 2009 (before the start of Pandorum ) 
