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Berwick Film & Media Festival, 15-19 September
The Berwick Film & Media Festival is the little festival that could. Now taking place over five days in September it will host a whole range of feature and short films, artists’ films and video work, and will include UK premieres and specially commissioned pieces galore. We can’t list all the highlights here (too many!) but we’re particularly keen on The Keystone Cut Ups (a live performance exploring the relationships between early silent comedy
Modesty Blaise is released by Second Sight on September 20
Peter O’Donnell – who created Modesty Blaise in 1963 through a newspaper comic strip and series of novels – has previously commented that his original script for the 1966 film of his creation retained only one line of his original dialogue and subsequently disowned the film. Blaise – former international crime mastermind, turned government aide – was a deadly agent, a kind of female James Bond who, along with side-kick Willie Garvin, got up to all manner
SEPTEMBER 10
Film of the Month:
Winter’s Bone
Director: Debra Granik
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Kevin Breznahan
Director Granik’s remarkable second feature, adapted from the novel by Daniel Woodrell, is a compelling conflation of mystery thriller and dark fairy tale. Jennifer Lawrence in a career-making central performance is seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly. She lives in a dilapidated shack in the Ozarks with her mother and two younger siblings. Her mother is mentally ill and spends all day sitting in silence so it is up to Ree to raise the family. One day the police show up and tell Ree that her father has jumped bail and, as he had set their house as a bond, their home will be taken from them unless he can be located. Ree resolves to find him and her subsequent odyssey takes her through poverty-stricken locales blighted by crystal meth abuse. The outlaw community she encounters fiercely maintain a code of silence and Ree’s persistent questioning puts her in extreme danger. Despite the odd telltale signs of modernity, the picture sports a weird, timeless quality; at times it almost feels like a parable although Granik manages to avoid the portentousness that depictions of the rural US frequently succumb to. The portrayal of the insular Ozark community eschews easy caricature, while photographer Michael McDonough manages to locate a desolate beauty in the debris-strewn and squalid environs. Lawrence is extraordinary as the relentlessly determined Ree and there is excellent support from Hawkes as her menacing uncle, the ominously named Teardrop.
An interview with director Debra Granik and star Jennifer Lawrence will feature online.
Reissue of the Month:
Metropolis
Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Alfred Abel, Gustav Frölich, Brigitte Helm, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Erwin Biswanger, Fritz Rasp
Shortly after the 1927 premiere of Fritz Lang’s now-classic dystopian sci-fi epic, which depicts the subterranean workers of a future city rising up against their elite rulers, the film’s US distributors Paramount excised almost a quarter of the footage of the film, rendering the middle section almost incomprehensible. For over eighty years much of the footage was considered lost. However in 2008 the missing reels were located in an Argentinean museum, and now the picture has been restored to the version that German audiences witnessed eighty-three year ago - the couple of minutes still missing are outlined with title cards. The newfound material is damaged and cloudy, (although the already existing footage, digitally restored in 2001, is wonderfully crisp), but fills in essential story details and even reintroduces a subplot featuring two characters who hitherto only featured in walk on parts: Metropolis ruler Fredersen’s sinister henchman, The Thin Man (the deliciously named Fritz Rasp), and Georgy, the escaped worker who is seduced by the bright lights of the big city. It’s a miraculous restoration of a hugely influential movie. If you haven’t seen this version then you haven’t seen Metropolis.
Dinner for Schmucks
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement, Bruce Greenwoood
This softer-centred adaptation of French comedy ‘Le Dîner de Cons’ from ‘Austin Powers’ director Jay Roach, has its moments but is frustratingly uneven and only intermittently funny. The ever-amiable Rudd is Tim Conrad, an ambitious financial analyst at a private equity firm. His drive and initiative have been noted by boss Lance Fender (Greenwood), but before Tim is promoted proper he must attend a very special monthly dinner at Fender’s mansion, where each employee must bring an idiot as their guest with a prize going to the most ludicrous. Shortly after receiving his invite Tim fortuitously runs into Barry Speck (Carell) a socially inept IRS employee whose hobby is constructing elaborate dioramas featuring stuffed mice. While struggling with his conscience over whether he should subject his new acquaintance to ridicule in exchange for career advancement, Tim also has to deal with his beautiful art gallery manager girlfriend, who seems to be getting way to close to one of her clients, the preposterous visual artist Kieran Vollard (Flight of the Conchords’ Clement). The film sports a loose feel with Roach seemingly content just to wind up each of his cast of international comics (which includes Brits David Walliams and Lucy Punch) and let them go, and while there are some very funny turns, especially Galifianakis as an insurance man who thinks he can control minds, the disparate comic riffing doesn’t congeal into a coherent film, and Carell’s naïve well-meaning child man schtick is getting way too familiar.
Tamara Drewe
Director: Stephen Frears
Stars: Gemma Arterton, Roger Allam, Tamsin Greig, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans, Jessica Barden, Charlotte Christie
Adapted from Posy Simmonds’ popular graphic novel this amusing romp deals with the fallout when Arterton’s titular character, an ugly duckling turned journalist and glamour puss, returns to the little Dorset town of Ewedown in order to do up and sell her late mother’s house. The drama unfurls at two locations: Drewe’s house where she encounters her old flame farmhand Andy (Evans), and begins an affair with a charmless pop star Ben (Cooper), following a gig at a local festival; and at the neighbouring farmhouse, now a ‘writers’ retreat’ where popular crime novelist Nicholas Hardiment (Allam), pompously advises budding writers on his art, while his downtrodden and dutiful wife Beth (Greig) sees to the chickens. Two teenage girls Jody and Casey (the excellent Barden and Christie) serve as a kind of gossip mag-reading Greek chorus. Frears’ film, with its bucolic setting, saucy goings on and wry take on middle class mores plays like Eric Rohmer crossed with Alan Ackybourn. That it feels a little twee and inconsequential is part of the appeal, and Frears elicits excellent performances from his ensemble cast, particularly Allam as the almost heroically self-regarding and selfish philanderer, Hardiment.
Certified Copy
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
Iranian director Kiarostami’s first Europe-set picture is a curious exploration of identity and authenticity. Opera singer and first time film actor William Shimell is James Miller, a British academic visiting Tuscany in order to promote his latest book, a Walter Benjamin-style study on the relationship between original works of art and replicas. In the audience at one of the author’s public appearances is a French gallery owner (Binoche, playing an unnamed character). Following his talk she introduces herself and they end up spending the day together. While sitting down for a coffee the café manageress mistakes them for husband and wife. Strangely they do nothing to disabuse her of this notion and go on to spend the rest of the afternoon behaving and squabbling like a familiar married couple. The reserved and polite Shimmell and fiery, petulant Binoche play off each other well but the dialogue feels a little too mannered - there’s a hint of ‘Last Year in Marienbad’ in having the couple recalling events that may or may not have occurred - and Kiarostami keeps the relationship between the author’s central conceit and his characters’ behaviour frustratingly oblique.
The Hole (3D)
Director:Joe Dante
Stars: Chris Massoglia, Nathan Gamble, Haley Bennett, Teri Polo
Joe Dante attempts to recreate the horror and comedy recipe of the likes of ‘Gremlins’ with underwhelming results in this competent but perfunctory fright flick. Shortly after moving to a new small town with their single mother, grumpy teenager Dane (Massoglia) and his precocious younger brother Lucas (Gamble), along with cute girl next door Julie (Bennett), discover a bolted down hole in the basement which seems to be bottomless and pitch black. Before long weird goings-on and visitations are occurring that, it is revealed, are tied up with the family’s troubled history. Dante harks back to 80s horror romps such as ‘Poltergeist’ (there’s even an evil toy clown) but the film is lacking in any genuine scares and real laughs, while the 3D effects rob the setting of the requisite claustrophobic mood. There are a couple of neat visual flourishes at the conclusion which nod towards German expressionist cinema, but it’s too little too late.
And the rest: A US contractor working in Iraq is buried alive after an attack in ‘Buried’; Julia Roberts’ middle-class woman goes off travelling to find herself and stuff in ‘Eat, Pray, Love’; A thief planning his next job tries attempts to come to terms with his feelings for a bank manager from an earlier heist in the Ben Affleck directed ‘The Town’; Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg’s hapless cops struggle to make their mark in comedy ‘The Other Guys’; ‘The Runaways’ is a biopic of the titular trailblazing girl rockers starring ‘Twilight’s’ Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett; A recently divorced man meets the women of his dreams then her misfit son in ‘Cyrus’; Josh Brolin is a bounty hunter recruited to fight a terrorist in comic adaptation ‘Jonah Hex’.
Reviews of Buried, The Town, and The Runaways will feature online
Avatar: Special Edition
Avatar: Special Edition
Director: James Cameron
Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang
Nine months after its initial release James Cameron’s daft and earnest but undeniably spectacular sci-fi epic, in which Sam Worthington’s ex-marine Jake Sully is despatched to distant planet Pandora and becomes torn between duty and his newfound devotion to native warrior people the Na’vi,
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Stars: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson
The big screen adaptation of the first instalment of Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally successful ‘Millennium Trilogy’, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ managed to improve
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Director: Edgar Wright
Stars: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong. Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh
Following a long gestation period and an exhaustive (and exhausting) bombardment of hype British director Edgar Wright’s third film, an adaptation of Brian Lee O’Malley’s series of graphic novels, falls sadly short of
Salt
Salt
Director: Philip Noyce
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Live Schreiber, Chiwitel, Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski
A silly-as-hell action thriller given a weird prescience due to the whole Anna Chapman affair director Philip ‘Clear and Present Danger’ Noyce’s latest yarn succeeds thanks to brisk pacing and some excellently staged action set pieces. Jolie,
The Last Airbender
The Last Airbender
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Noah Ringer, Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz, Cliff Curtis, Dev Patel
Writer / director M. Night Shyamalan’s stock plunges yet further with this tedious and incoherent adaptation of the Nickelodeon cartoon. The story takes place in the future after mankind has exhausted the earth’s
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie
Dame Maggie Smith gives one of the greatest performances in the history of British cinema in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. AND IT’S JUST BEEN RELEASED ON DVD!
In many ways, I’m not a female teacher in 1930s Edinburgh with unconventional methods, but if I were I would very much like to look and sound exactly like Maggie Smith
SoulBoy
There’s a common misconception that young men only learned to dance when house music, along with ecstasy, hit in the late 80s. This is complete and utter tosh however, as anyone who frequented venues such as The Twisted Wheel in Manchester or The Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent back in the 70s
Toy Story 3 interview: Lee Unkrich
Lee Unkrich, director of Finding Nemo and Monster’s Inc talks about helming the new Toy Story instalment. Warning: this interview contains plot spoilers.
Splice
Splice
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Stars: Sarah, Polley, Adrien Brody, Delphine Chanéac
The latest from Vincenzo Natali, director of such idea driven sci-fi faves as ‘Cube’ and ‘Cypher’, is a flawed but darkly comic conflation of bio-horror a la David Cronenberg and cautionary tale. Brody and Polley are Clive and Elsa, a couple of
Brenda Blethyn Interview
Brenda Blethyn has been gracing the large and small screens for the last three decades but it was her 1996 Oscar-nominated role as the flighty Cynthia in Mike Leigh’s 1996 family drama ‘Secrets and Lies’ that made her a household name. Since Leigh’s film
Inception
Inception
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe
In any year this globetrotting, existential adventure film which deals with, in writer / director Christopher Nolan’s words, ‘the architecture of the mind’, would seem pretty audacious. In one beset by blockbusters which have
Zombie Women of Satan
Zombie Women Of Satan is the Citizen Kane of zombie women of Satan films and was made right here in the north-east. Imagine.
When Pervo the clown, Zeus the flatulent dwarf, burlesque performer Harmony Starr and rock chick Skye Brannigan rock up to a remote farm for a TV interview they soon discover that it’s not going to be Eamon Holmes
Greenberg
Greenberg
Director: Noah Bambauch
Stars: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans
Writer / director Noah Bambauch’s follow up to the almost unwatchably sour family drama ‘Margot at the Wedding’ is a no less caustic but more palatable and ultimately affecting depiction of a middle-aged misfit.
Caligula – The Blu Edition, out now
In the mid-70s, director Tinto Brass was best known for Salon Kitty, a Nazi sexploitation flick concerning the goings on at a brothel for German soldiers. Then he got asked to direct the multi-million pound epic, Caligula, which swiftly fell foul of the censors…
French Films, The Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle, June
The Star & Shadow know what’s what when it comes to throwing a scintillating season together and they’ve got celluloid champagne in June with this programme which is set to feature some real classics. We’re talking Black Orpheus (1959 – an incredible adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and set in the carnival of Rio de Janeiro,
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Director: Mike Newell
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Ronald Pickup, Alfred Molina, Richard Coyle, Toby Kebbell.
Adapted from the popular computer game this sword and sorcery epic from the Jerry Bruckheimer stable is fast-paced,
Eyes Wide Open
Eyes Wide Open
Director: Haim Tabakman
Stars: Zohar Shtrauss, Ran Danker, Tinkerbell, Tinkerbell, Tzahi Grad
Director Haim Tabakman’s excellent drama explores attitudes to homosexuality in the orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem. The excellent Zohar Shtrauss is
Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, Max von Sydow, William Hurt, Danny Huston, Matthew Macfadyen, Oscar Isaac, Scott Grimes, Kevin Durrand.
Ridley Scott’s busy and dramatically inert rendering of the Robin Hood legend plays like an unwieldy conflation of ‘The Return of Martin Guerre’ and a superhero origin film. It starts in France with the semi-unhinged
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Director: Samuel Bayer
Stars: Jackie Earl Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner
Having already defiled horror classics such as ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Friday 13th’, Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company turns its sights to lower tier fare with this scare-free and pointless remake of Wes Craven’s scrappy but enjoyable horror fantasy. Jackie Earl Haley (Rorschach in ‘Watchmen’) dons
BFI National Archive, Discovery Museum, Newcastle
More than 1500 film and TV titles from the BFI National Archive are being made available to visitors at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum.
And you’ll be able to see them at the BFI Mediatheque, which is an ever expanding video jukebox which lets you browse completely free of charge. And thanks to a collaboration with the Northern Region Film
Iron Man 2
Iron Man 2
Director: Jon Favreau
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Garry Shandling
2008’s ‘Iron Man’ was one of the better superhero films of recent years, thanks to Jon Favreau’s brisk direction, a sharp, witty and straightforward script a non-comic
Warwick Thornton Interview
Australian writer / director / photographer Warwick Thornton’s feature debut Samson and Delilah is a deeply humane, audacious and frequently harrowing love story between two marginalised Aboriginal teens,
Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans
Director: Louis Leterrier
Stars: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Alexa Davalos, Mads Mikkelsen
No one could have reasonably expected great things of this film, a big budget rehash of stop motion animation legend Ray Harryhausen’s 1981 film,
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass
Director: Matthew Vaughan
Stars: Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Moretz, Mark Strong
Preview screenings of Matthew Vaughan’s film, an adaptation of the cult comic book written by Mark Millar and illustrated by John Romita Jr. have already wowed the nerds at such conventions as Comic-Con and the
Tim Burton Interview
How do you make a story out of source material which is essentially nonsense?
Well, previously faithful films have just been like Alice wandering around with a bunch of weirdoes, you know, and all those versions seemed to suffer from that. What I liked about Linda [Woolverton]’s script was that she was taking the world of Lewis Carroll and setting it in a context, and using those characters to explore the issues Alice has to deal with in real life. That’s what I think was
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland
Director: Tim Burton
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Alan Rickman
The dwindling band of Tim Burton hardcore faithful were doubtless cheered when it was announced that the director was tackling the Lewis Carroll classics ‘Alice’s
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is out now from BFI
“Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not” That’s Arthur Seaton, anti-hero of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning which is out now on DVD.
And of course, that famous quote was purloined by The Arctic Monkeys for the title of their debut album and is just one of many memorable bits of dialogue from the film. Naturally, most of these lines were lifted from Alan Sillitoe’s original
Jean-Pierre Jeunet Interview
Since his arrival on the international scene with 1991’s ‘Delicatessen’ Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France’s answer to Terry Gilliam, has been honing his charming and meticulously-detailed whimsy with films such as ‘City of Lost Children’, ‘Amelie’ and ‘A Very Long Engagement’. A brief excursion to Hollywood to helm the under-rated ‘Alien Resurrection’ allowed the director to give his more macabre
Micmacs
Micmacs
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stars: Dany Boon, Andre Dussollier, Yolande Moreau, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Dominique Pignon
Jeunet, director of winning fantasies such ‘Amelie’ and ‘Delicatessen’, turns the whimsy up to eleven with wearying results in this comic confection set in
The Wolfman
The Wolfman
Director: Joe Johnston
Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving
Having already explored his inner canine with an early role as Duke, the Dog-Faced Boy in ‘Big Top Pee-Wee’, actor Del Toro goes ‘full Lycanthrope’ in this underwhelming remake of the 1941 Universal horror classic. He is Lawrence Talbot, an English-born, US-dwelling actor, who was sent away from
I Think We’re Alone Now, released in March 2010
Stalkers are real people too. Who’d have thought it? When
they’re depicted in the media they’re usually cast as lank-haired losers clad
in a grey TG Hughes “sports” jacket in some lurid ITV drama. This documentary –
shot with an unflinching eye - lets us into the lives of two people who have
officially been classed as stalkers.
The Princess and the Frog
The Princess and the Frog
Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker
Featured voices: Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Jennifer Cody, Michael-Leon Wooley, Jim Cummings
The latest from Disney marks not only a return to 2D hand-drawn animation but to a more
Jacques Audiard Interview
French director Jacques Audiard will already be very familiar to fans of international cinema and crime genre aficionados alike thanks to such excellent fare as the Vincent Cassel-starring thriller ‘Read My Lips’ and the excellent 2006 crossover hit ‘The Beat That My
Top Ten Films & Television: 2009
Films:
1. The Class
Featuring a cast of non-professionals, French director Lauren Cantet’s
film, which centred on a class in a multi-cultural Parisienne high
school, delivered more genuine drama than all the
Warhol is released on DVD, Jan 18th
His own celebrity as a photographer
probably played a big part in giving David Bailey access to legendary
pop-artist, and schmoozer, Andy Warhol, in order to make this documentary in
the early 1970s. This being Andy Warhol, the legendary stone-waller however, we
were never going to be given a wigs-and-all examination; but he did manage to
glean enough juicy information about his sexuality,
Animex, Teesside University, Feb 8-12
Animation can refer to anything as humble as a flick book through to a 100 million dollar film. And then there are computer games which have witnessed exponential growth in the number of animated polygons
Avatar
Director: James Cameron
Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang
Devised over a decade ago, years in the making and costing well over $300million, James Cameron’s follow-up to Titanic is a bloated, spectacular, cheesy sci-fi parable that inspires gasps and groans in equal measure – typical Cameron then...
Top Ten Films & Television: 2000's
Films:
1. Far
From Heaven
US indie
director Todd Haynes’ take on 1950s melodrama (a la Douglas Sirk) produced
quite sublime results.
2. Uzak
Nuri
Bilge Ceylan wrote and directed this Turkish film which detailed the life of
Mahmut, a 40-year-old independent photographer whose life is utterly changed
when his wife leaves him.
3. 4
Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Set in
Ceausescu-era Romania, this nightmarish thriller, in which a young woman helps
a college friend secure a backstreet abortion, grips like a vice throughout.
4.
Hidden
A married
couple in France are terrorised by a series of videotapes planted on their
front porch in this Hitchcockian slow-burner from Michael Haneke.
5.
Dogville
Lars Von
Trier’s audacious film (no sets, minimum props) starred Nicole Kidman, a woman
on the run from the mob in Colorado during the 1930s. The premise seemed
ridiculous, the results were astonishing.
6. The
Incredibles
In a
decade of near solid gold hits for the Pixar studio, this tale of a family of
superheroes coming out of retirement was not only one of the funniest films of
the decade, but also the most thrilling.
7.
Together
Swedish
director Lukas Moodyson’s Mike Leigh-style study of the disparity between 70s
hippie idealism and its practical application was incisive and heart-warming.
8.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
This
magical martial art-house epic from Ang Lee was astonishing in its scope and
contained fight scenes that were genuinely balletic.
9. The
Death of Mr Lazarescu
Hospital
hopping high-jinx as the increasingly ill Mr Lazarescu is carted from pillow to
post in this Romanian classic from Cristi Puiu.
10. The
Beat That My Heart Skipped
A
compulsively watchable, thrillingly accomplished film from Jacques Audiard
concerning the activities of a shady estate broker who rekindles a long
abandoned passion for piano playing.
Television:
1. The Sopranos
Consistently brilliant throughout its run the mobster drama was the American Dream refracted through eyes of all human (low) life.
2. The Wire
From the street-corner drug dealers to the mayor’s office, this superlative drama was a Dickensian morality tale for the 21st century.
3. Doctor Who
Russell T. Davies’ re-boot of the long-running series cast the whole of time and space as a huge adventure playground and let the good Doctor romp purposely around in it.
4. Peep Show
A modern day take on The Likely Lads, Armstrong and Bain’s comedy (shot from the point of view of each character) was the funniest thing on TV over the last decade.
5. The Trap
Adam Curtis’ fantastic follow-up to the Power of Nightmares (also essential) examined how governments pay lip service to freedom, while curtailing the way that we live our lives. It was dizzying in its intellectual rigour.
6. Deadwood
Set in Deadwood, South Dakota, circa the 1870s, David Milch’s fantastically florid series could almost be said to be Shakespearian – yes, Shakespearian – in tone.
7. Mad Men
Advertising doesn’t reveal, it masks; a truth usefully employed in this superb existential drama which took us beneath the sheen of advertising executives on Madison Avenue in the 1960s
8. The Office
This is us cheating slightly as we’re including both the brilliant UK series and the even better US remake. (Yep, even better).
9. Planet Earth
Unbelievable photography in this beautiful BBC series which saw David Attenborough describing what snow leopards get up to when they think that no one is looking.
10. Life On Mars
Great original BBC drama that successfully managed to combine sci-fi elements, with cop drama and comedy.
Where the Wild Things Are
Where the Wild Things Are
Director: Spike Jonez
Stars: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose
Running at just a few pages and with minimal text, Maurice Sendak’s highly popular 1963 picture book, ‘Where the Wild
Abba In Japan DVD
I don’t think that it’s actually possible to like Abba in an
ironic way anymore. Sure, people still say that they “hate” them (usually
people who think that the Stereophonics are about as good as it gets when it
comes to music) but most would surely now have them down as true geniuses: from
those who just own the Abba Gold CD, through to Mama Mia The Musical loving,
seen-it-50-times nutters,
Bunny and the Bull
Bunny and the Bull
Director: Paul King
Stars: Edward Hogg, Simon Farnaby, Verónica Echegui, Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding
Mighty Boosh director Paul King’s debut feature, an odd couple comedy meets road movie, features
Paranormal Activity
Paranormal Activity
Director: Oren Pelli
Stars: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Writer / director Oren Peli’s effective low-budget horror has been billed as the new ‘Blair
Jane Campion & Ben Whishaw Interview
‘Bright Star’, New
Zealand director Jane Campion’s new picture - easily her best since 1993’s ‘The
Piano’ - is an exquisitely-mounted and
Jennifer’s Body
Jennifer’s Body
Director: Karyn Kusama
Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Megan Fox, Adam Brody, J.K. Simmons
Blogger / journalist / ex-stripper turned screenwriter Diablo Cody’s second feature fails spectacularly to live up to the promise of her debut, the teen pregnancy comedy drama ‘Juno’. While ‘Juno’, with its relentlessly smart and savvy dialogue and twee indiecentric mise en scene
Pete Docter Interview
The latest picture from undisputed CGI animation kings, Pixar, is a characteristically imaginative and heartfelt tale of a grouchy seventy-eight-year-old widower Carl Fredricksen (voiced by veteran actor Ed Asner) who, through an unlikely friendship
The Prisoner, released by Network DVD
The 1967 TV series “The Prisoner” was a real eye-opener when it was first broadcast; although this colourful piece of pop-art was initially dismissed by many as an indulgent flight of fancy undertaken by its star and creator, Patrick McGoohan. In time however, the 17 episodes that made up the series have become regarded as classics, with
British Horror Films, Star & Shadow, Newcastle, October
There’s been a bit of a resurgence on the British horror front of late with the likes of Eden Lake and Mum & Dad winning plenty of plaudits, but for their season of films the Star & Shadow have really dipped into the vaults for some truly seminal shockers. Things kick off in fine style with the Hammer classic, Dracula
Viva, released on DVD by Nouveaux Pictures
Viva is the first full-length feature film by LA-based artist and filmmaker, Anna Biller, and is a loving parody of those early 70s sexploitation flicks.
It is often said that porn drives technological advancement. The rise of cine cameras, home video
Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Brad Pitt, Christophe Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Daniel Brühl
There was excitement and relief when it was announced that Quentin Tarantino was finally
Quentin Tarantino Interview
The idea for ‘Inglourious Basterds’ has been kicking around for some time and was mooted as a novel and a mini-series. Was there a eureka moment in the writing when you realised it was ready to go as a film?
Up until the time I decided to set the third act in the theatre I was
Vincent Cassel Interview
French actor Vincent Cassel talks to David Willoughby about his role in the two-part biopic of the French criminal Jacques Mesrine.
Career criminal Jacques Mesrine was, and remains, a divisive and wildly controversial figure in his native France. Born to a solid middle class family Mesrine went on to serve in the French army during the Algerian War. In 1959 he returned to France where he began an audacious two
Bill Nighy Interview
Bill Nighy takes time off from battling secret agent guinea pigs in action spoof ‘G Force’ to talk to David Willoughby.
In G-Force you play a power mad Australian with an appetite for monopolies. Did you base the character on anyone, a former editor or associate perhaps?
No, nothing of the kind. And there was no reason for doing the accent except to
Antichrist
Antichrist
Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Arriving in a hail of controversy Danish director Lars von Trier’s film is a handsomely-mounted and atmospheric horror picture that throws up some interesting ideas but cops out royally in the gratuitously gory last reel. At the already notorious Cannes debut screening the abrupt shift in gear inspired boos,
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Director: David Yates
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent
This, the sixth and dullest to date instalment of the popular series, finds Harry and co. with their broomsticks stuck in a holding pattern. Helmed by David Yates, who also directed previous instalment, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, begins promisingly enough with a scary sequence
Brüno
Brüno
Director: Larry Charles
Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten, Cliff Banagle
Comedian and provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen reunites with ‘Borat’ director Larry Charles and turns the outrage up to 11 for a second mockumentary based around a character from Cohen’s ‘Da Ali G Show’, this time it's the turn of gay Austrian celebrity / fashion reporter and uberbitch, Brüno. It begins with Brüno being fired from his fashion celebrity show ‘Funkyzeit’ after
Public Enemies
Public Enemies
Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup
Following his good-looking but ultimately hollow and occasionally baffling ‘Miami Vice’ director Michael Mann switches to the other side of the law for this rich and surprisingly prescient picture, which chronicles fourteen months in the life of gangster John Dillinger. The story begins in depression-era 1933
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Director: Michael Bay
Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro
Few expected great things of the first ‘Transformers’, a picture that was, after all, based on a collection of robot action figures, and which was helmed by the subtlety-phobic director, Michael Bay. But it should have at least been dumb fun. What it was, was a headache-inducing
Looking for Eric
Looking for Eric
Director: Ken Loach
Stars: Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, Stephanie Bishop, John Henshaw, Lucy-Jo Hudson
Ironic that here we are in the Last Days of Politics As We Know It with naughty unfettered capitalism getting its knuckles rapped, and committed left-wing film director Loach releases his most apolitical
Terminator Salvation
Terminator Salvation
Director: McG
Stars: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, Helena Bonham Carter, Anton Yelchin
This, the fourth instalment of the Terminator series, directed by the preposterously-named McG - who helmed ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and ‘Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle’ - borrows heavily from ‘Mad Max’, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Transformers’, but fails to bring anything new or particularly entertaining to the table. It begins with a present day (or thereabouts) prologue in which Marcus Wright (Worthington),
Angels and Demons
Angels and Demons
Director: Ron Howard
Stars: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Armin Mueller-Stahl
Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s book is even more overblown and exposition-heavy than his version of Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Tom Hanks returns as the affable Harvard symbologist, Professor Robert Langdon, who is summoned to the Vatican following the death of the Pope, a liberal and progressive figure we are told. Despite his troubled history with the church (although ‘Angels’ was published before ‘Da Vinci Code’
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Director: Gavin Hood
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Danny Huston, Live Schreiber, Lynn Collins
For the non-comic fan, Logan, aka Wolverine, was probably the most amenable of the X-Men mutant heroes. Whenever the plotting was becoming too baroque or the drama too angsty Jackman’s character could deflate any pomposity with a quick swish of his metallic claw, normally followed by a pithy bon mot. But in focusing on the X-Men’s most conventional action hero and upping the violence
Star Trek
Director: J.J. Abrams
Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, John Cho
When the dreary original series prequel ‘Enterprise’ ground to a halt in 2005, it seemed like the ‘Star Trek’ franchise was set to remain in dry dock for some time. So it must have seemed an inspired choice for Paramount to hand the responsibility of a re-launch over to writer / producer / director J.J. Abrams, whose inspired viral internet promotional campaign for monster movie ‘Cloverfield’ resulted in a huge hit, and whose highly popular sci-fi series ‘Lost'
Paris is Burning
After some seven years in the making, Second Sight release a documentary about the iconic New York club culture of the 1980s, where flamboyant drag acts became catwalk queens at the legendary vogue balls. Directed by Jennie Livingston, Paris Is Burning
State of Play film review
State of Play
Director: Kevin McDonald
Stars: Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Jason Bateman
Alarm bells rang when it was announced that Hollywood had got its well-manicured paws on ‘State of Play’, Paul Abbott’s multi-award winning BBC thriller, which explored the compromised relationship between journalism, politics and corporate power. Condensing six hours of TV into a two-hour movie while retaining the nuances of Abbott’s beautifully crafted plot was always going to be
The Damned United Film Review
The Damned United
Director: Tom Hooper
Stars: Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent, Colm Meaney, Stephen Graham
Having chronicled such horrors as rape, murder, police brutality and sweaty cheese sandwiches in his ‘Red Riding Quartet’, and the bitter class conflict of the Miner’s Strike in ‘GB84’, author David Peace, with ‘The Damned United’, tackled subject matter no less grizzly, that of Football managing legend Brian Clough’s disastrous
Watchmen film review
Watchmen
Director: Zack Snyder
Stars: Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Carla Guigno, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson
After a protracted gestation period the big screen version of Alan Moore’s ground-breaking 1986-1987 comic turned graphic novel, in which a band of retired superheroes are reunited when one of their
Film Noir Collection, released by Glass Key
Asked to reel off a list of film noir classics and most film fans will throw around names such as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet. Those wishing to display their knowledge of the subject may venture a Gun Crazy
BFI Printstore
I’ve recently finished reading the Hollywood memoir, Me Cheeta, purportedly the autobiography of Cheeta, the oldest chimpanzee in the world and star of all those old Tarzan films. In it, the salacious simian sticks the boot into many a Tinsletown legend. Charlie Chaplin is a ‘utopian dolt, cradlesnatcher, self-mythologizer and
interview: Steve McQueen, Hunger
Given that British artist Steve McQueen studied film at NYU, and that his Turner Prize-winning short ‘Deadpan’ paid homage to silent comic Buster Keaton, it’s no surprise that he should graduate to a fully-fledged feature. For his first picture McQueen has selected the potentially contentious theme of the 1981 Hunger Strike, which occurred at the notorious Maze Prison,
Takeshi Kitano Collection
From the gleefully stupid to the deliriously violent, Takeshi Kitano’s films run the full gamut and a new DVD box-set contains six of his best.
Gleefully stupid? That’ll be ‘Getting Any?’ one man’s attempt to get laid. Deliriously violent?
The Tyneside Cinema, Pilgrim St., Newcastle
It’s true that sequels can be better than the original. We’re thinking Godfather 2, Toy Story 2 and The Empire Strikes Back. Now, get ready for the return of the Tyneside Cinema.
Auteur, Auteur
2007 was a pretty drab year for film featuring as it did the usual glut of bloated blockbusters, an excess of quirky US indie fare and not much inspiration (nor a breakthrough hit) from the foreign language arthouse sector. Two striking films, hailing from either side of the US border, promise better things for 2008.
David Willoughby talks to their creators.
Carlos Reygadas
Mexican director Carlos Reygadas strange debut feature ‘Japon’ depicted a suicidal man from Mexico City decamping to the remote countryside where he becomes sexually involved with an much older woman. His second film the extremely controversial and provocative ‘Battle in Heaven’ featured a repulsive Mexican chauffeur who worked for an army general conducting a perverse sexual relationship with his employer’s beautiful, spoilt and occasional call girl daughter.
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