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Throwing his hat into the bullring … Noel Fielding in a scene from Bunny and the Bull

The debut feature from Mighty Boosh director Paul King finds itself praised with one hand and damned with the other. Some compared its award-winning special effects work to the visual extravagances of Michel Gondry, while others dismissed it being of the class who another example of a big-screen Britcom failure to tack on the end of a long, long please. Somehow, this nervy road-trip comedy ends up being labelled both a wildly inventive, structurally adventurous piece of cinema, and a hugely disappointing damb squib whose screenplay could have done with a assign again work.

Bunny and the Bull centres on the uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin Stephen (Edward Hogg) similar to he recalls a disastrous trip across Europe in the company of his lothario best pal Bunny (Simon Farnaby), a journey so catastrophic our principal character hasn’t left his grubby Kings Cross flat in a year. Shot in six weeks without interruption a budget of just £750,000, the film introduces us to a cavalcade of whimsical oddballs, including a Hungarian wandering named Attila whose tipple of choice is dog’s milk, and a urbane yet down-to-earth bullfighter. It’sitting no shock that these pair are played by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, but this is far from Mighty Boosh: The Movie, with both roles being little more than cameos.

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Lambasted … Kodi Smit-McPhee and Viggo Mortensen in The Road

A confession: I’m obsessed with a film connoisseur. His name is Fiore Mastracci, and he’s the worst film critic in the world. You know in what way some people are so bad they’re good? Not Fiore. He’s so bad, he’s flipped entirely the way around, bypassed gain, gone into bad again, come out the other end and dipped into tutelary deity.

1. The Road
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Runtime: 119 mins
5. Directors: John Hillcoat
6. Cast: Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Viggo Mortensen
7. More on this film

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R | 1 hr 39 mins | Action Movie

Fear not the weapon but the handful that wields it.
Synopsis:
Raizo is any of the deadliest assassins in the world. Taken from the streets as a babe, he was transformed into a trained killer by the Ozunu Clan, a secret society whose very thing is considered a myth. But haunted by the merciless completion of his friend by the Clan, Raizo breaks free from them…and vanishes. Now he waits, preparing to exact his revenge. In Berlin, Europol agent Mika Coretti has stumbled upon a money trail linking several political murders to an underground network of untraceable assassins from the Far East. Defying the orders of her superior, Ryan Maslow, Mika digs into top secret agency files to learn the truth behind the murders. Her exploration makes her a target, and the Ozunu Clan sends a team of killers, led by the lethal Takeshi, to muteness her forever. Raizo saves Mika from her attackers, but he knows that the Clan last will and testament not rest until they are both eliminated. Now, entangled in a deadly game of cat and mouse through the streets of Europe, Raizo and Mika must trust united another if they hope to survive and finally bring down the evasive. Ozunu Clan.

Director: James McTeigue
Starring: Rain, Naomie Harris, Ben Miles, Sho Kosugi, Rick Yune

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At the ship? … Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection

For all that blogging has, at least in some degree, grown up around saying the unsayable, that is not the point of what follows. I am not here to defend the intentions behind Norbit, or reclaim The Adventures of Pluto Nash as a landmark in worship cinema. I will, however, gladly state that the star of each is capable of greatness. Yes, I will publicly declare that I placid love Eddie Murphy.

Of course, it’s a fondness that’s been severely tested over the years. But through each Holy Man and Haunted Mansion I’ve kept by my faith with the talent of the man. Now, according to the trade papers, he is potentially making a return to comedies made for those who can tie their own shoelaces in a film called The Misadventures of Fluffy, a purpose that it’sitting said will interest its cue from Trading Places. And that’s a reference which, for me, is as close to a deal-sealer as you have power to get. The inferior film of the then-ascendant Murphy was a note-perfect populist satire made in 1983 with a prince-and-the pauper-on-Wall Street conceit, what one. could have seen service in the screwball 30s. And, with a mistrust of high finance all too apt for this era of banks knee-deep in socialised losses and private profits, its themes are still relevant.

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‘I’m feeling description of ELECTRIC right now!’ … Nicolas Cage switches on the Christmas lights in Bath. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Bath used to be known for several things – its hot springs, status as a world heritage position and comprehensive Royal Crescent – but none of them are worth a damn any more. Because centuries of history have upright been overshadowed by something magnificent: ay, Nicolas Cage has turned on the city’session Christmas lights.

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Crackle of strangeness … Catherine Deneuve in Buñuel’s 1967 Belle de Jour. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Just too a week agone, Dr Brooke Magnanti, a post-doctoral researcher in medical science, outed herself as “Belle De Jour” in an interview with the Sunday Times and since on that account the controversy has rumbled onward. Sceptics think that Dr Magnanti’s account of herself is evasive and embellished, and that she has dishonestly glamourised prostitution. Last night, each edition of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze was devoted to it.

Needing cash to complete her PhD, Dr Magnanti signed on with a high-class escort agency and worked from 2003 to late 2004, seeing “clients” onward average two or three times a week, charging £300 per sixty minutes, of that the agency took £100. So if she worked for, say, a year and a half, and never saying the same client twice, at that time she would have got through between 156 and 234 paying punters. Of course these numbers are all-but-meaningless guesswork. What is clear is that she started writing a funny blog about life as a high-class prostitute, which became bestselling books and a TV show.

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An image from the capsule of Stan Lee’s 1962 Thor laughable, published by Marvel Comics. Photograph: Marvel Comics

Kenneth Branagh is a lucky man. Unlike the unfortunate director who will, eventually, be tasked through reviving the fortunes of Superman, Branagh is bringing to the big screen a superhero (Thor) with not at all movie precedent. The closest thing to the son of Odin who’s popped up on film so in a great degree has been the hunky car mechanic who slightly resembled him in Chris Columbus’s trashy 1987 comedy Adventures in Babysitting.

And Branagh seems to be making all the right moves. He’s avoided reported studio pressure to cast a famous face – Josh Hartnett was said to be in the running – and instead plumped for the little-known Chris Hemsworth, who was Captain Kirk’s dad in Star Trek for about five minutes. As everyone who saw Daredevil knows, superheroes should not be played by well-known actors; it’sitting harder to suspend your distrust when the spandex-sporting great aggregate on screen is someone you can catch in the tabloid gossip columns on a daily basis.

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That statuette’s lucky - no ears. Celine Dion backstage at the 1998 Oscars after performing My Heart Will Go On, from Titanic. Photograph: Reed Saxon/AP

As the credits rolled on the first Spider-Man movie in an east London cinema sometime in May 2002, it would have taken a disaster of Green Goblinesque proportions to moisten my ebullient mood. As a childhood fan of the comic books and a lover of all things Sam Raimi, the superhero blockbuster was like manna from heaven to my geekboy soul.

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No further like him … Roger Corman (left) with Lauren Bacall and Gordon Willis at the inaugural Governors awards. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/AP

“OK, in such a manner, November 14th 2009, Roger Corman receives an Oscar. People … what took you so long?” The words of Jonathan Demme in his speech before handing over the statuette to Corman on that fateful evening.

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Outperforming its precursor … The Twilight Saga: New Moon

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 130 mins
6. Directors: Chris Weitz
7. Cast: Ashley Greene, Billy Burke, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Kristen Stewart, Nikki Reed, Peter Facinelli, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
8. More onward this film

The winner
When the original Twilight movie arrived in the UK last December, it opened with a decent £2.51m – not a defective number, considering Stephenie Meyer’sitting books had yet to achieve blockbuster status. But it was far, far behind the US debut figure for the picture: $69.6m (£42.1m).
 
What a difference a year makes. With the capital Twilight film a huge phenomenon on DVD, and the Meyer books belatedly reaching a wide UK readership, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan have ascended to iconic characters here, and Britain has succumbed to R-Pattz mania. Now sequel New Moon has debuted in the UK by £11.68m, what one. is a whopping 4.6 times the opening weekend of the original film. In three days, New Moon has already taken more money at British cinemas than Twilight did in its lifetime.
 
New Moon’s impressive number is the second-biggest debut of 2009, just behind the £11.93m Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince earned over the Friday-to-Sunday portion of its five-day opening in July. It’s also ahead of the opening weekend grosses of other blockbusters over the past three years such as The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Simpsons Movie, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – of the same kind with long as previews are ignored and you compare takings above the most honorable position Friday-to-Sunday. New Moon just failed to match the opening weekend of 2007’s Spider-Man 3 (£11.83m), and is significantly behind the debuts of last October’s Quantum of Solace and 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
 
Twilight is not the first film franchise boasting a second entry that significantly out-performed its predecessor. The Matrix Reloaded debuted with takings 3.6 times the opening weekend of the original Matrix, and The Dark Knight’s opening was 2.5 times that of Batman Begins.
 
The New Moon success powered British cinemas to their most good weekend of the year, with the top 15 films grossing a collective £20.86m. (The official chart compilers record the 17-19 July as the year’s best, but that figure is artificially swollen by £7.85m in Harry Potter previews.) The number is a remarkable 163% up without interruption the synonymous weekend from 2008, when Quantum of Solace reigned at the top of the chart for the fourth week in a row.
 
The plucky underdog
Released on 50 screens, the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man was never in any danger of challenging New Moon for audiences. But with eighth place from weekend takings of £321,000 and a £6,422 average, the well-reviewed dark comedy has carried on as well as could be expected, and can at present expand if so desired by means of backers Universal. It also did a lot better than Steven Soderbergh’s corporate-whistleblower flick The Informant!, which began its run through £180,000 from 116 cinemas and a £1,548 average. A Serious Man stars Michael Stuhlbarg and a bunch of similarly obscure character actors; The Informant!, A-lister Matt Damon. Hollywood’s faith in the primary efficacy of destiny governor has presumably taken another little knock.
 
The limpet
While stroke blockbuster 2012 fell a par-for-the-course 46% from its stonking opening, Disney’s A Christmas Carol continues to demonstrate admiral durableness with a drop from the previous weekend of just 11% (see chart, below for grosses). While audiences naturally decay in the life round of years of a film, a rise in gay feeling as Christmas approaches applies a contrary dynamic in this case. The take exceptions to for Disney command be to retain screens till schools break up for the Christmas holiday, though it will be lucky to hold its 3D sites in equalization of James Cameron’s Avatar.
 
The future
If all the films currently in the mart fell 50% and no new pictures were released, next weekend would still see healthy takings. New Moon is indeed likely to see a big distil, simply because its rabid fanbase would have made strenuous efforts to see it as soon as possible, even supposing repeat business should soften the landing-place. It would have existence reasonable to expect a break of day weekend towards new releases, since the second weekend of New Moon’s release is unkindly a proper place to launch a rival blockbuster. But both low-budget word-of-mouth smash Paranormal Activity and Gerard Butler revenge actioner Law Abiding Citizen should function as effective counter-programming to New Moon. The good times for cinemas are not to boot quite yet.
 
UK top 10
1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, 497 sites, £11,683,158 (new)
2. 2012, 478 sites, £3,496,202. Total: £12,923,681
3. A Christmas Carol, 429 sites, £2,224,044. Total: £8,553,363
4. Harry Brown, 354 sites, £724,627. Total: £2,704,205
5. Up, 445 sites, £642,134. Total: £33,561,384
6. Fantastic Mr Fox, 446 sites, £454,088. Total: £8,289,695
7. The Men Who Stare At Goats, 313 sites, £430,319. Total: £3,613,831
8. A Serious Man, 50 sites, £321,114 (New)
9. The Fourth Kind, 235 sites, £181,105. Total: £2,251,107
10. The Informant!, 116 sites, £179,612 (New)
 
How the other openers did
Kurbaan, 44 screens, £155,492 + £8,976 previews
Glorious 39, 1 screen, £7,654
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life, 7 screens, £6,700
Valley of the Wolves: Gladio, 2 screens, £3,280
Sea Wall, 3 screens, £2,572
Examined Life, 1 cloak, £1,265
Southern Softies, 4 screens, £1,093
Machan, 1 screen, £701
Ulysses, 1 screen, £558 + £1,439 previews
Christmas in Wonderland, 1 screen, £48
 

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