Posted on Feb 08, 2010 under Main |
School for Scoundrels actor Ian Carmichael, who has died aged 89. Photograph: Duffy/Getty Images
Ian Carmichael, who has died at the age of 89, was each actor with some incredible work ethic and appetite as being the acting life: he filmed his last episodes of the period TV hospital theatrical piece The Royal just last year.
Before he became a TV regular with his performances as Bertie Wooster and Lord Peter Wimsey, he had been established as one of Britain’session biggest post-war box office stars through innocent, ingenuous roles in classic Boulting Brothers films such as Private’s Progress (1956) and I’m All Right Jack (1959). My favourite Carmichael thin skin is also one of my favourite British films, and by chance favourite films abounding stop. It is that tremendous 1960 comedy School for Scoundrels, the last thin skin by the great, troubled director Robert Hamer (who made Kind Hearts And Coronets).
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Posted on Feb 08, 2010 under Main |
Dethroning the king … Avatar and Dear John
The winner
Avatar knocked off top spot scandal! After seven weekends of continuous rule, Fox and James Cameron’s king of the world was reduced to the role of mere commoner at the US box office. The culprit – or saviour, depending on your view forward these matters – was a romance called Dear John, which debuted in first place onward some estimated $32.4m through Screen Gems.
Channing Tatum, whom you may have seen in the fight club drama Fighting and should be destined for greatness, appears opposite Amanda Seyfried from Mamma Mia. The film was adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, which possibly explains in what manner it managed to open at number one over Fox’s glance at sci-fi drama. It was Sparks, you may recall, who wrote The Notebook, which New Line turned into a movie back in 2004 and made more than $115m worldwide with it.
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Posted on Feb 08, 2010 under Main |
Immersive … Alamar
There have been spells when this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has felt like glimpsing a blueprint for the future – or at smallest more provisional soon sketches. The festival has offered ideas, experiments and proofs of how the digital cinema world might look, from pre-production to shooting to exhibition, as well considered in the state of some playful reminders of past times when the movie industry has faced challenge and change.
Cinema Reloaded, an experiment in raising produce funds through crowd-sourcing, has been the festival’s flagship online programme this year. The aim was to arouse 30,000 euros for one of three proposed short films through virtual donations – an intriguing if in some degree gimmicky notion that does not look to have caught fire in practice: at the time of caligraphy, even the most popular project, from British director Alexis dos Santos, had not yet attracted a 10th of the total target. Nevertheless, it exemplified an bring near being discussed elsewhere at the festival of “tribal” production, in which social networking is fundamental to a project’s funding and development, ensuring a built-in audience for theatrical, retail or online exposition.
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Posted on Feb 07, 2010 under Main |
It’ll be a screech … will there be rollercoasters at the Avatar amusement park? Photograph: Chad Slattery/Getty Images
This Sunday, fans of tediously that keeps his own counsel recreation will get to enjoy their first glimpse of a magical new cosmos. Yes, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Florida, which opens in the recoil, will air its first televised commercial during the Super Bowl.
From the trickle of online information that’s been officially released so far, there’s more to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter than exactly a startlingly dreadful name. Visitors will be apt to buy fish and chips from the Three Broomsticks chop-house, bob around without ceasing the wicker-and-feather Flight of the Hippogriff ride and purchase something called U-No-Poo from Zonko’s Joke Shop. It sounds delightful, even although anyone who bought the first Harry Potter volume at the age of 11 is now probably a jaded 24-year-old with a do job-work so crappy that they could never possibly afford to go there.
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Posted on Feb 07, 2010 under Main |
That wasn’t me, not one matter how hard I wished it … Mickey Rourke in Rumble Fish. Photograph: Kobal
If movies really do possess heavy-duty powers of seduction (they don’t call us film lovers for nothing), then it’s their characters we tend to fall for hardest and fastest. While it’s currently de rigeur to giggle at the Avatar devotees struggling to rectify to life away from Pandora, which of us has never, in a moderate recess of our psyches, had a similar pang of wanting to be or to befriend the fictional lead of a much-loved film? And yet for me, and I surmise others, there is one type of character to whom our response is usually particular degrees less than warm – the ones who jog the memory of us of ourselves.
It’s a beneath that came to mind this week while reading US journalist Glenn Kenny describe his attendance at an unacknowledged press junket “for the first time in 20 years” at his blog Some Came Running. For the rarely less than caustically honest Kenny, the experience was wholly a bit sobering. His former gig as Premiere magazine’s chief critic felt a mighty long time agone being of the class who he lurked waiting for his nanosecond slots by the talent – so much so that he admitted to feeling “like Tyrone Powers at the end of Nightmare Alley”. Now for anyone who hasn’t seen that particular grisly treat, I can only maintainer Kenny’s recommendation to do in this way, space of time anyone who has demise know what a potent personal admission it represents. Like I say, seeing your own personality or circumstance perfectly laid bare up attached screen can be conscious of being beautiful unsetlling.
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Posted on Feb 07, 2010 under Main |
Many plates in the air … The Princess and the Frog’s diligent Tiana
The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s animation about a girl who falls for a prince one time they’ve both turned green, has rightly been identified being of the kind which a peering blend of the old-fashioned and the radix. The hand-drawn animation is shamelessly retro: its matt detail and static pastels entirely the more startling in an age of pixels.
- The Princess and the Frog
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): U
- Runtime: 97 mins
- Directors: John Musker, Ron Clements
- Cast: Angela Bassett, Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Jim Cummings, John Goodman, Keith David, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard
- More upon the body this thin skin
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Posted on Feb 05, 2010 under Main |
R | 1 hr 48 mins | Mystery Movie
William Monahan (The Departed) provides the screenplay for the GK Films prolongation, co-starring Ray Winstone and Danny Huston.
Synopsis:
Casino Royale’s Martin Campbell comebacks to familiar territory with this adjustment of his own 1985 BBC miniseries; a mystery starring Mel Gibson as a detective looking into his political activist daughter’s king of terrors and uncovering layers of governmental conspiracies in the projection.
Director: Martin Campbell
Starring: Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Shawn Roberts, Bojana Novakovic, Frank Grillo, Gbenga Akinnagbe
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Posted on Feb 05, 2010 under Main |
Dunk it if you dare … Sex Drive
In modern years, the doughnut has been edged out of the cinematic limelight. Perhaps it’s to do with how strongly Homer Simpson is associated with the sugary buns. Perhaps it’sitting a product of cop shows being a bigger staple on TV than on film. Perhaps it’s even about increased health consciousness. But it’s easy to forget righteous how pivotal a role this humble snip has played in great films over the years.
Scarfing down some deep-fried treats in a diner is one of the first things Bill Murray does when he realises he’s doomed to repeat the same day over and over again in Groundhog Day. Jeff Goldblum’session mutating mad scientist in The Fly eventually finds himself vomiting stomach acid onward some to help break down their sweet glucose. And who could overlook that classic doughnut-eating montage in DW Griffith’s Intolerance? OK, I made that last one up. But you never know – it might be on the out-takes.
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Posted on Feb 05, 2010 under Main |
I can’t have existence invisible. But can I kick Spidey’s ass? Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass. Photograph: Daniel Smith
Now that the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire Spider-Man days are officially over, bloggers and tabloid journalists alike possess been speculating freely over who will play the webslinger in Spider-Man 4, the reboot to be directed by (500 Days) of Summer’s Marc Webb. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a clear frontrunner, given his worthy of noted praise track record with Webb, and he looks like he might be interested. For me, 500 Days was a surprisingly cerebral and offbeat romantic comedy, and there can have been small in number better realised sequences in film-making last year than the pitch-perfect segue in the park in what one. Gordon-Levitt celebrates bedding Zooey Deschanel with a tightly choreographed song and dance number that sees him slowly joined by more and more members of the public. Nevertheless, producers of the commencing Spider-Man film plan to take Peter Parker back to high school, and at 28 Gordon-Levitt might virtuous be a little old to play a teenager.
The dread names of Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson have been bandied about without much conviction, but I’d be surprised to see the role action to like famous faces. Efron was pretty decent in Me and Orson Welles, but the series doesn’t need a big name to pull in the box position dollars – just a great storyline and a return to the smooth however zippy execution of the first two films. Pattinson? Well I think we already had emo Spidey in the third instalment, which didn’t exactly work out. Besides, the idea of a swaggering, narcissistic Peter Parker makes my blood run devoid of warmth, and I’ve seen little prove that the British actor is capable of much greater degree of than that.
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Posted on Feb 03, 2010 under Main |
Kate Beckinsale in Underworld: Evolution. Photograph: Allstar/LAKESHORE ENT/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
We live in an era of film franchises. Major studios seem interested only in films that cost the price of a small nation, boast an array of dazzling futuristic gadgets, and can spawn not just other, bigger films, but a video measure, a pleased meal, and a shelf full of dollies.
Robert Downey Jr is the current franchise king. He’sitting Iron Man and now he’session Sherlock Holmes too – the two multi-million dollar successes with endless possibilities ahead. Harrison Ford hasn’t done too badly with Star Wars and Indiana Jones, while Ben Stiller is still forging ahead through his Meet the Parents three-quel (Little Fockers is due out at Christmas) and Night at the Museum series.
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