It's Just Movies

— by ADAM POYNTER —

Francis Ford Coppola is getting ready to release his first horror film since 1992’s “Dracula” and he decided the first look at his new film “Twixt” would be at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. This was his first appearance at Comic-Con in the past few decades and having been at this panel, let me say that he did not disappoint. Let me first give you a basic breakdown of the film, then I’ll can talk about his vision of how to change the way movies are seen.

“Twixt” is the story about a struggling writer, Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), who has an increasingly declining career.When the success of a series of books he wrote about witches has become all he can write about, he is on a last-ditch book tour to reinvigorate his career. When he arrives in a small town he is approached by Sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern), who tells him about a series of murders involving kids that had taken place in the town and maybe that would be a good idea for a new book.

That night Hall, has a dream in which he sees one of the murder victims, named V (Elle Fanning), and he also encounters the ghost of the Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin). Hall soon discovers a series of events that are all connected to the murders and that V, Poe and a strange youngster only known as Flamingo (Alden Ehrenreich) all hold the keys to unlocking the biggest secrets of this town. The closer Hall is to uncovering the truth, the more he realizes that this story is connected to his own life as well.

Francis Ford Coppola is undoubtedly a director of vision and innovation. Along with star Val Kilmer, Coppola spoke to the crowd at Comic-Con about how the medium of film is still young and there are always new ways to innovate it and make it thrilling again. Coppola says that there is a certain electric energy at the opening night of a film and he hopes to use this new film “Twixt” to revitalize and stimulate the senses like live plays used to.

The idea for “Twixt” came directly from dreams that Coppola had and he has taken this unique story and done things to it that really make it stand out. For instance, only specific scenes that will benefit from the process will be shown in 3D. Coppola talked about how when he went to see “Avatar” he was in utter amazement at the effects and immersion of the 3D factor, but also admitted that his eyes got strained during the film and he had to remove the 3D glasses for short periods throughout the movie. So he choose to film certain scenes that truly needed to be in 3D and the rest of the film will be in 2D.

“Twixt” — which will be opening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival — also will have a short “live tour” in which the film-maker will travel with live music and adjust the film according to the audiences reactions. They will be editing the film on computers as the movie is playing, so punch-up the jokes here if the audience isn’t laughing, or to take out a scene if the audience is bored and so on. This concept — although not fully figured out yet — was demonstrated at the panel and although there were some technical difficulties during these “live edits,” I did get the idea as he showed the same clips but in different order and lengths.

Now, if they can work all of the kinks out of the process this could be an incredibly cool thing to do. You could go see a movie multiple times and see different scenes of various cuts of scenes that could change your outlook on the movie. What do you think of Francis Ford Coppola’s idea of doing a tour where he edits the film live and changes it around? Would that be something that interests you?

Here we have the first released trailer for “Twixt” and although it is shorter than the one shown at Comic-Con, it still holds a level of intrigue to me and I am definitely planning on catching it whenever it finally hits theaters. I see little bits of Stephen King in the story and a bit of director David Lynch’s influence in it as well.

. . .

Follow Adam Poynter on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CCWGGuy.

And don’t forget to “Like” It’s Just Movies on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/itsjustmovies.