24 Movie Script Locked & Loaded

Kiefer Sutherland had an exclusive Q&A conversation with Johnathon Birch at BAFTA last Friday where he announced that the script for a "24" film has been completed.

The production "24" is a show that has been blessed with the longevity of 8 seasons, which is only now coming to an end. With its clever real-time spin on a regular TV series, it has been a hit in both the US and the UK.

According to Kiefer, the screen writer Billy Ray finished the script a few weeks ago and he is planning to read it when he returns to the US.

Though Kiefer has claimed the film will not be geographically constrained and Jack Bauer (his character in 24) will be able to travel from Eastern Europe to England I remain sceptical.

I am interested to see how they are going to take a show that usually consists of 24 episodes and then condense it down to roughly two hours (which is around 9% of a regular series).

Although he gave no indication as to when the film would start production, Kiefer has a free working calender, so it is likely we are going to hear news of production starting sooner rather than later.

He also indicated that it may not be focusing on a terrorist bombing threat like those we've become used to in the last few series.

The show might be stripping down to its birthday suit and going back basics, where the focal point of the disaster is internal, such as between Jack's own family in season one.

Soft Review

Recently, I watched a short movie as part of my journalism studies - a class that focused on reviwing that week, interestingly enough. Unfortunately I couldn't just hand in one of my previous pieces of work, and so this review came about.

Soft is a short film, a medium that is surprisingly underrepresented when it comes to reviews. I haven't seen a lot of short films myself, true, but the few I have seen (such as Paths of Hate, or The Facts in the Case of Mr Hollow) tend to be finely made, with a certain visual flair to leave a lasting impression. Few such movies are over 15 minutes long, and so tend to be far more focused on grabbing the audiences attention. For many directors, a short film is their chance to garner attention and potential backing from financers for a ful length feature.

Soft is fairly typical in this respect - it is an urban drama exploring the issues of bullying and violence in youth. Some reviewers, like Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian Film Blog favourably compare it to A Clockwork Orange. The plot revolves around a father, his son, and the gang of teenagers who harass them. The course of events is almost entirely predictable, starting off with the son being assaulted and fleeing home, before the gang intimidates the father and then besieges the pair of them in their house. That's about it really - it's readily available on Youtube so feel free to check it out for yourselves.

There is a nice variety when it comes to techniques in this movie - camera phone footage is used in key sections, particularily when the gang is dealing out violence, whilst the rest of the film is presented in a typical fashion. To put it simply, there is nothing new or groundbreaking in this film, but it is a well crafted story told in a minimalistic way, and does a LOT with very little.

Made by Simon Ellis, this short movie has won the International Short Filmmaking Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008. Like many short movies, it's readily available on the internet, so do check it out.