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He also earned Sands what he calls the best review I've had

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He also earned Sands what he calls "the best review I've had. At the wrap party the girlfriend of one of the cameramen came up to me and said, 'Did you have a brother who came to LA about six years ago?' She'd seen me play Quentin the character and recognised the guy she'd met at a party six years ago!"Trying to describing the unorthodox way in which Timecode took shape, Figgis and Sands keep falling back on musical terminology. Sands talks of the actors "jamming", the director "conducting", and describes how Figgis mapped out the whole film on sheet music, to visualise what each actor should be doing at any one time."Mike's musicality," he says, "is a huge factor in his directing." Before Figgis made films, he was an accomplished jazz trumpeter and composer, and he still scores his own films, as integral a part of the process for him as writing or directing. Director-composers are a rare breed (there's Satyajit Ray and John Carpenter, and Charlie Chaplin occasionally had a go), but the combination of talents puts them in a unique position to mould the total audio-visual experience.Now digital video has given Figgis another string to his bow. For a man into his fifties, when many Oscar-nominated directors would be resting on their laurels, he is infectiously enthused by its radical possibilities - he has a dream of how digital technology will put film production and distribution back in the hands of film-makers. As if in illustration of the point, the back room of his office just north of Soho is lined from floor to ceiling with the latest digital equipment, from computer editing systems to synthesisers. Everything, in other words, he requires to put a film together all by himself - barring, of course, those 93 minutes following the actors around with a video camera.'Timecode' is released on 18 August, 'Miss Julie' on 1 September.

The Big Picture The Big Picture Should you be in the dark as to what the US military code known as "rules of engagement" actually means, don't worry - according to the courtroom-combat drama Rules of Engagement, the US military doesn't seem to have much of a clue either. Upon this confusion hinges a potentially fascinating movie that involves tough questions about the use of force in a military-civilian conflict, and about the way a culture values human life in relative terms. The key word there is "potentially": this year, in Three Kings, we've already seen an American movie bravely, if not always coherently, take issue with the behaviour of American troops on foreign soil. Would it be unrealistic to expect another?If the director William Friedkin is way past his prime - his best work, The French Connection and The Exorcist, dates from the early Seventies - then at least the film goes in to bat with two solid leads.

Samuel L Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones have the right bearing and gravitas for career soldiers, and in the latter at least there's always a humanising undercurrent of regret to soften the clipped formality.Jones plays Marine Colonel Hays Hodges, about to retire after a wound in Vietnam 30 years back invalided him back home to a legal desk job; divorce, drink and a dose of the Nam flashbacks have plagued him along the way.There to award him his retirement present and a manly bear-hug is his old friend Col Terry Childers (Jackson), whose career has taken him on a rather different path; tours of duty in Vietnam and the Gulf have earned him a reputation as "the warrior's warrior", a title shortly to be tested in the volatile climes of the Middle East.Childers has been deputed to lead a "babysitting" mission into Yemen, where the US embassy is reportedly undergoing some local difficulties. As the helicopter gunships descend overhead, the true scale of the problem becomes apparent: the embassy building is besieged by a large mob of angry demonstrators, while snipers on the roof opposite take potshots. The nature of their grievance isn't clear, and Childers hasn't the time to find out, in any case. It's roiling chaos in there, and some quick decisions have to be made. The film's background volume is turned so high during these scenes that it's well-nigh impossible to hear anybody whose voice is pitched below a shriek.With the cool-headed command he's famous for, Childers sorts out his priorities immediately; first, he helps the US ambassador (Ben Kingsley), his wife and their terrified kid into a waiting chopper, then he sprints to the top of the building and, under heavy gunfire, rescues the American flag - raise those cheers - which he deposits in the hands of the departing dignitary. Thus do the stars earn their stripes.What follows, however, rather undermines this noble work.

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