Montreal's finest return from their holidays with a soundtrack of shadowy anthems. Expect hurdy gurdys and Cameron Diaz.
Sean Michaels
Tuesday May 13, 2008
guardian.co.uk
The first are earnest art-rock musicians, gallivanting round Montreal's Mile End, the second is an idiosyncratic film auteur, busying himself on directing a new Cameron Diaz flick.
After months of touring, Arcade Fire returned to Montreal this spring for some quiet time. They sipped coffees and ate ice-creams, but apart from a few rallies for Barack Obama they waved off concert requests or the suggestion that they begin work on a third album.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, journalists have been pestering director Richard Kelly about a sequel to his 2001 film, Donnie Darko. An unrelated production company has started work on S. Darko, which will follow the story of Donnie's younger sister Samantha. It's to be helmed by low-budget horror director Chris Fisher, and everyone is chasing Kelly's opinion.
Kelly doesn't want to talk about S. Darko. "I have absolutely no involvement with this production, nor will I ever be involved," he wrote on his MySpace blog . Instead, Kelly wants to talk about his new movie, Box, and of the intriguing musical collaboration involved.
The first clue was on Kelly's blog: "We're starting to work with a very famous band honouring us with being the first film-makers they've ever scored a film with," he wrote. But disclosed nothing more.
Producer Markus Dravs was not so tight-lipped however. On a page uncovered by Pitchfork News, the recording guru gave a succinct update on his current project. "Having finished Coldplay's forthcoming album," he wrote, "[I'm] now off to Canada to work with Arcade Fire on a soundtrack for the forthcoming Richard Kelly film."
And there it is. While Arcade Fire pretend to take a holiday they have in fact set to work on their first film project. It's not a tale of snowstorms or revolution, or a Wes Anderson excursion into the wilds of rural Quebec. Instead it's the adaptation of a 1970 Richard Matheson short story (and Twilight Zone episode) about a couple who find a box with a magic button. Every time they push the button, they receive a load of money - and someone, somewhere, dies.
Greed, murder and Cameron Diaz seem just the stuff for Arcade Fire's shadowy anthems. We'll hope for harp and hurdy gurdy in the scary bits, hollers and mandolin in the pretty bits. And the next time Arcade Fire claim to be taking some time off, we'll not believe them for a second.
