FRESH OFF THE TOAST
Dragonetti: The Ruthless Contract Killer is a hard hitting ultra violent action movie by Swedish auteur director Jonas Wolcher. Filmed with a combination of the uncompromising violence of Reservoir Dogs, the dread of Wolf Creek, and the inescapable circle of vengeance that you get from The Departed, this is not one for the faint of heart! There is a supernatural element in the anti hero character of Dragonetti which combined with his unmerciful personality makes you root for him, not unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. From this seamless blend of science fiction, crime drama, action, and ultra violence comes this not to be missed thriller sure to become an underground classic! A NEW VERSION In 2012 Dragonetti got a retouch by sound design, editing and quality. Dino Publishing went back to the original and cut the movie from 108 min to 98 min. The character of Dragonetti got a complete new dialogue and voice over. Sound designer Alex Kassberg and Fredrik Lundvall Kindsäter did a terrific job. It was premiered in Rome 2012 at a horror film festival. 2017 SRS released a 2 disc DVD box containing Dragonetti, Root of Darkness and Die Zombiejäger. In 2019 the same edition got a new cover and was renamed to Swedish Trash Vol 1. The independent spirit is a freedom. You feel this freedom when watching Dragonetti. The film is not perfect. I don't imagine most people would assume that a homegrown independent film could be perfect. Yet Dragonetti is permeated with ambition. This ambitious spirit can be seen in all of the people both on screen and off. Everyone involved had to believe they were doing something special and because of, not despite, the fact that money was not a factor, they felt the freedom to give input and put their hearts into the filmmaking process. You get the sense of that in Dragonetti. The flaws are easier to overlook, the scenes that aren't quite seamless, the CGI thats not quite “there” yet. But there is something else, something even more outstanding and worthy in Dragonetti... Dragonetti had a total budget of twelve thousand USD. The idea that this movie could even exist or be made at all for that kind of money is impossible, yet here it is. James Cameron put out Avatar in 2009, a major studio film, successful, ambitious, a technical milestone. The operating budget (not marketing, packaging, etc) was 237 million USD. That is an astonishing 19750 times the budget of Dragonetti! It also had its imperfections. Is it a better movie? Maybe, and even if you say “clearly, definitely, there is no comparison!” I would ask, is it 19750 times better? Can you even measure a film that way? The whole point of watching movies is for entertainment. The overall entertainment value of Dragonetti and Avatar is relatively similar. Why are indie films like Dragonetti relevant? Because while Avatar and similar films are beautiful to watch, and some are even quite compelling and entertaining, I virtually guarantee that if you watch 19750 low budget ambitious free spirited independent films like Dragonetti, that you will spend a good part of your life highly entertained. See, no amount of money, merchandizing, hype, or star power can make up for entertainment value. Hollywood knows this. We, as an audience, as film fans, know this. As long as people with ambitions and dreams get together and make movies this independent spirit will live on. So sit back and enjoy Dragonetti, warts and all, and feel that connection with something real, something you can almost touch. Know that there is something Dragonetti has that no one can buy at any price, and that is the freedom to make your vision come to life. The filmmakers of Dragonetti are everyday people who did something extraordinary. This is what defines independence. Independent films are films that people make because they want to share their visions with others. They are entertainers and artists, cashiers and truck drivers, they are relevant, they are independent filmmakers! A case for Dragonetti; Why independent films are still relevant. 3 December 2013, 21:05:02 Written by Brian Bell The term “independent film has been bastardized. Major studios built smaller studios and funded them so that they could claim to be making “indie” films. But make no mistake, these are relatively high budget, studio supported endeavors. They are green lighted by the very same people who are green lighting “major” motion pictures. Their goal is to make money, and they use the same markets to sell their so called independent films as they use to sell their studio films. But who cares? The point is more specifically that the term of what makes a film independent is in question. At first I thought this was an authorship issue. If the original filmmakers visions were not altered and the films were produced as intended, without outside influence, then surely this must be the definition of independent no matter who funded it, or where it was made? Yet I can't imagine Steven Spielberg compromises too much on his visions when making a major studio film either. It can't be financial, because if someone with a rich uncle wants to put out a film and they have millions on tap to do it, it doesn't somehow make the film any less independent. The current definition is also flawed to failure by the impossible task of determining which studios are not independent, which studios are, and all the grey area in-between. Are studio systems outside of Hollywood independent because they are outside of Hollywood? That would make every foreign movie ever made without a specific major Hollywood studio backing it an independent film! This is clearly an absurdity. Then the tangled web really kicks in; which foreign studios are “majors?” Are all the smaller studios both in USA and abroad considered indie? It gets incredibly complicated very quickly. But we have some help, in this little film called Dragonetti! Dragonetti is the actual embodiment of a true independent film. In order to show why Dragonetti is relevant to the real independent spirit we need to explore how it came to be: One of the most famous of all (so called) independent films is Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino). Quentin was given a hundred thousand dollars to develop the screenplay for the film. The filmmakers for Dragonetti did their screenplay for no money. Pulp Fiction's screenplay was then farmed around until a studio decided to fund it. Understand what this implies, that there was a chance that no studio would fund it, and it would not have been made! Dragonetti was not farmed out or dependent on funding. It was made after the filmmakers got together the required people (nearly all unpaid), secured locations, and the equipment together and did the shooting. This may be the first big difference between what a “Hollywood independent” and a real independent is. A real independent film will be made despite it all, while these pseudo studio independent films will only be made if someone is willing to assume they will make some money on the deal. Pulp Fiction was made because someone thought it could make them some money. Dragonetti was made because someone wanted to put their vision on film. At this point someone is going to fear that I am comparing Pulp Fiction and Dragonetti. I am not. I am comparing the independent spirit behind them. Disney (Miramax) had to green light Pulp Fiction before it was made. There is no corporation existing that does this out of some heartfelt filmmaking spirit. It has to be a gamble between what they are willing to put into the movie and what they hope to earn from it. Dragonetti was only made from heartfelt desire, from the spirit to make a film. The independent spirit. Subscribe and keep you updated with the latest news regarding our upcoming projects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |