four of them, this weekend. That’s really rather a lot for me, though. Recently, as in the last couple of days, I’ve cut off the cable to my house. When you spend your time with the television on, but not watching it, you know there’s a problem. I got to quite like Two and a [...]...
If the James Bond of the Ian Fleming novels and the James Bond of the EON production films ever met, in some glamorous bar in St Moritz or some seedy dive in the back streets of Belgrade, would they recognise each other?Would the impossibly ripped Bond of the upcoming Quantum of Solace movie, which enjoyed its royal premiere in London last night, recognise as his progenitor the hard-drinking, 60-a-day-smoking cold war hero into whom Ian Fleming breathed life in 1953?Both men live in utterly different worlds. With the exception of his womanising, Ian Fleming’s Bond is still a clubland hero of the Richard Hannay or Bulldog Drummond stripe, one of our chaps whose upper lips stiffen at the sound of Elgar on the Third Program. But the James Bond of the world’s most successful movie...
I caught this in the States on the night before we left. I’d been intrigued by the plot in that it all seems to snowball from the discovery of a data disc with confidential data on it. Two hapless eejits played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt try to blackmail John Malkovich’s character and in doing so set off a bizarre series of events. Pitt and Clooney get the best parts but there isn’t one actor miscast in the entire film. I’d recommend seeing it here when it comes out in a week or......
What made Paul Newman a great actor was not what made him a star. It is often thus. Jazzmen loved Sinatra for his phrasing; the masses wanted to hear him eat it up and spit it out. So it is with Newman.Today’s obituaries speak of transcendent performances in Hud or Sweet Bird of Youth, but who watches those movies, really? They’re the definition of classics in that they are movies that are respected but never watched. Very few people say I put Hud on the DVD there last night again; God, you never get tired of it.This does not mean that Paul Newman wasn’t a great actor. He was, and a very great actor. Just how great is expertly outlined by William Goldman in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. In reminiscing on his time as the scriptwriter on Harper, Goldman remarks on...
Don LaFontaine, the voice behind a shedload of trailers and the man responsible for the catchphrase ‘In a world…’ died on Monday. He’ll be missed....
I like Guillermo Del Toro. He seems to be the sort of guy who does things that are visually dynamic, and like, totally creative. You know. Like if you go to see Hellboy II or Pan’s Labyrinth, you are certainly going to see something you’ve never seen before. Possibly it has more eyes than it [...]...
Since I first heard about Oliver Stone's project about George W. Bush, I have eagerly anticipating a trailer...and here it is, the official teaser for W! It's every bit as satirical and ironic as I'd hope. poll by twiigs.com...
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SPOILERS ahoy. You have been warned.No cultural event in the West this year will have as much impact as The Dark Knight, this summer’s blockbuster Batman movie. And what An Spailpín Fánach is pondering this morning is whether or not that’s a good or a bad thing.The Dark Knight is certainly the most enjoyable movie of the summer, if not the year. It is unlikely to win any Oscars, but then the best movies seldom do. What it does guarantee is over two hours of high-octane incandescent thrills, the kind of thrills you can only get at the movies. When the final credits roll it’s hard not to feel worn out by the movie, by the kinetic energy of the thing, and by the weight of its different storylines. Everything you read about Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker is true too. It’s...
Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moon light?
If there’s one line from Tim Burton’s Batman that has stuck with me over the years then it’s that. Uttered by the Jack Nicholson’s Joker it epitomised the character in one line. Fast forward to 2008. After Christopher Nolan’s first foray into Gotham City with Batman Begins, the sequel has been anticipated like no other this year (bar Indiana Jones). The PR job has been fantastic and the film opened last week in the States with a record breaking 3 day tally.
So what did I make of it? As I mentioned last week, I took the time to catch up with Begins and I’m glad I did. The universe that Nolan has shaped is so expansive that you multiple viewings reveal details that would slip past you normally....
New Line has commissioned scribe John Waters to write a sequel to the summer 2007 hit movie musical. Perhaps MAMMA MIA! planted the seed in New Line's cinematic head. Or perhaps the stage musical and DVD sales have left America wanting BaltiMORE? Though none of the cast is confirmed for the sequel, but director-choreographer Adam Shankman is on board, as well as Tony Award-winning songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who will write new songs for the film. Release date would ideally be summer 2010. poll by twiigs.com...
Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper will no longer be taking up a weekly thirty-minute slot with their At the Movies show. I may be the only person under forty who actually tunes in to this show, but what can I say, I will always be a film geek (go USC!) Are we sad that we're losing a part of Americana? Or were these two destined to take their thumbs down for good? poll by twiigs.com...
I haven’t talked about this on the blog yet but I won tickets to ‘The Dark Knight‘ premiere on Tuesday night. Myself, Darren and Darragh had all been dieing to get tickets and, unfortunately, Darren didn’t get his own set so he’s taking my spare one. I know another mate of mine who would probably bite my hand off to go but Darren put me on to movies.ie in the first place so the ticket is his.
As prep for Tuesday I bought ‘Batman Begins‘ on DVD last week. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t got it in my collection already but it came in a 2 DVD pack with ‘Batman - Gotham Knight’. I only saw Begins the once when it was in the cinema so it was nice to refresh my memory. I was paying so much attention that I even spotted Risteard...
Last night, courtesy of the good people at Movies.ie (sign up now, there’s free stuff and they’re sound), I saw Wall-E. Anybody who’s a regular reader here (all two of you) know that I was really keen to see this. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve loved every movie that Pixar have produced and have them all on DVD. You may think that that has coloured my review of Wall-E but, as excited as I was to get tickets, I tried to be as objective as possible.
The film opens on an earth strewn with rubbish. Wall-E has been tasked with cleaning it up (along with hundreds of other such models) but alas he is the only one left of his kind. There is precious little “dialogue” in the first twenty minutes as Wall-E explores the rubbish piles and picks out...
Went to see this last night courtesy of Movies.ie. Ze plot:
After meeting at a nightclub in a Mediterranean resort, seven young adults decide to continue partying aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of the ocean. But when one of them dies in a freak accident the others argue about what to do, leading to a ruthless fight for survival.
This film was brutal, in terms of violence that is. The tension when things start to go wrong is palpable. There’s a real sense of manic decision making for the characters as they lose confidence in each other. I won’t go into too much detail but I’d recommend this one. If your in the mood for a thriller, this is a great. The trailer is attached below:...
Went to see Sex and the City, with the girlfriend. I'll admit the story was better than I expected. The movie itself was watchable, better than the last chic flick I had to see, 27 Dresses, but afterwards I felt a little exploited, like I'd spent 20 quid to buy a book and found every second page had an advert on it.I know part of the Sex and the City thing is the clothes and I was willing to put up with that but I dont think there was a single scene that did not have product placement, clothes, bags, books, magazines, phones and so on. That movie must have broken even just on sponsorship deals. They should have paid me to go see it.At least now herself has to sit through Star Trek when it comes out...
I went to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull recently. I'd been looking forward to this for ages but had a little worry in the back of my mind ever since the on set photos started to be released. It all looked like Indiana Jones but it to lack the Indiana Jones sparkle. These worries were increased when I saw the trailer. CGI tastic with scenes that looked like they were pulled straight from The Mummy Returns. Still I was looking forward to the movie, after all it was Indiana Jones and that had to count for something.Unfortunately it counted for very little. From the moment Indiana Jones stoops down to pick up his hat the whole movie feels more like a series of cut scenes from a state of the art computer game than a major cinema release. Maybe it was the screen I watched the movie on...
Nearly a year ago, a photograph of Harrison Ford in his iconic Indiana Jones costume surfaced on the internet. It was the first shot of the standard marketing campaign of major studio movies in the 21st century, the whetting of the fanboy appetite through online media. What the fans did not know until this weekend though, when the movie went on general release all around the world, is that the picture of the aged icon was about as a good as it was going to get.As William Goldman reminds the world in his book Which Lie Did I Tell?, no-one sets out to make a bad movie. But that is exactly what Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is. People writing that the movie isn’t that bad are either being kind or else are so devoted to the original trilogy that they’re blinded by the...
Wow, I don’t know what I was expecting from this film but it really suprised me. Lars is a socially awkward young man who lives in his brother’s garage. He doesn’t enjoy spending time with people and has a real problem with being touched. Lars finds out about real dolls and orders Bianca. I won’t go through the whole story but this film is by turns suprising, heartbreaking and very funny. Ryan Gosling is a really gifted actor and makes you understand how Lars has come to this point in his life. I’d recommend this film wholeheartedly. It’s not the usual fare but I really enjoyed it....
Want:
Wall-E Spotted in LA! from Blink on......
Anyone who has been reading this blog for any amount of time knows that I’m a big Pixar fan. Their latest film, Wall-E, has been in production for quite a while now and is due out on the 18th July. The latest featurette, embedded above, has Andrew Stanton explaining some of the storyline. Standout scenes shown were the “tada” moment and him tapping the seat for Eve to sit beside him. I’ve yet to see Pixar hit a mis-step and they look solidly on course with this one. Roll on......
The late Charlton Heston, who died last night at his home in California after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, remarks in his autobiography In the Arena that his single greatest asset was his face.Some people’s faces fit, some don’t. One of the reasons put forward for the decline of the Western is that so few actors today would look well on a horse. It’s hard to imagine Tom Cruise, for instance, holding Fort Apache with Henry Fonda and John Wayne. Some people’s faces are of their time – Stephen Spielberg has remarked, for instance, that the biggest challenge in casting Saving Private Ryan was finding actors who faces looked like 1940s faces. Tom Sizemore’s role as the Sergeant tells how well they succeeded in that endeavour.None of that applied to Heston. Heston’s biggest...
Empire reports today that a new Short Circuit film is in the works. This both excites and scares me at the same time. I saw this film when I was 7 and while robots like Johnny 5 fascinated and intrigued me, they also convinced me the end of humanity was imminent (in a “they’ve got lasers and we don’t” kind of way). Steve Guttenburg went a long way to allaying those fears though so, if there’s any justice in the world, he’ll be back as the ‘cool scientist guy who scores the chick whose life is disrupted by this crazy robot’. Apparently the film will also “factor in advances in technology”. Does that mean he’ll have a Facebook profile, updating his mates through Twitter and storing circuit related photos on......
We've enjoyed Pat Shortt and Jon Kenny in their parts as anarchic comedy duo, D'Unbelievables. We've enjoyed Shortt's multi-tasking in the television comedy, Killinaskully. We've enjoyed the bitter-sweet Adam & Paul, from director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Mark O’Halloran. So putting Shortt, Abrahamson and O'Halloran together on a project should have resulted in high entertainment. Certainly, given the accolades so prominently reproduced on the DVD box of Garage one expected a great couple of hours viewing. The movie is set in a rural backwater town where Josie (Pat Shortt) runs a ramshackle petrol station for an unsympathetic local businessman. Josie is obviously a sandwich short (no pun intended) of a picnic. He is variously ridiculed, exploited, even dispised by other...
An Spailpín notes with interest that RTÉ, in their wisdom, have decided to show Into the West as their St Patrick’s Day feature. Your faithful cineaste never knew quite what to make of Into the West, as overdoses of whimsy gives me the itch. Ellen Barkin makes for a rather glamorous travelling lady, although Gabriel Byrne is mistaken if he thinks the coveted title of King of the Travellers is won as easily as rubbing one’s face with ashes. The face of the regent generally suffers a greater buffeting for that signal honour.During An Spailpín’s urchinhood, of course, the Irish movie was de riguer on TV for the National Holiday. It seems strange now to be without them, not least as Irish movies are now like midges on the mountain, whereas back in the 1970s and 80s they were much...
Iron Man via Johnny K February 29th, 2008 at 14:57
At first glance I didn’t give a shit about Iron Man. After seeing this extended trailer (MySpaceTV) I now do....
With the lights dimming in the Savoy Screen 1 this afternoon a packed auditorium awaited the surprise film at the DIFF. I had no idea what it would be, nor was I particularly pushed in guessing. The production titles revealed the title: ‘The Escapist’. Disappointment at it not being Indiana Jones faded and the film proper began. Frank Perry (played by Brian Cox) is a lifer: in prison for the rest of his natural-born days. And he’s been perfectly willing to accept his fate until a letter arrives, his first in 14 years.
What unfolds in the following 99 minutes is a fresh take on the standard prison movie. I don’t wanna say too much about the actual way it works but Brian Cox is excellent in the titular role. I was surprised to see Joseph Fiennes as the muscles...
I went to see the Diving Bell and the Butterfly today. I also performed a selfless act. I spread the gift of the Wire. At last count, I think about 9 or 10 people have started watching the Wire due to my direct cajoling, begging, whining, incessant talk about it, and generally being an annoying [...]...
I really meant to write something serious here yesterday. It was to do with sentencing policy and drugs and stuff. But I didn't. I did write some previews of DVDs that arrived in here yesterday so I'll post them instead.Don't look back (classic DA Pennebaker Bob doc)Into great silence (god botherers being quiet for once - most popular film in the IFI last year)20 to life: the life and times of John Sinclair (doc on life of MC5 manager and White Panthers chairman who got 20 years for two joints)Gram Parsons Fallen Angel (biopic of dilletante heir and musician whose sweethearts of the rodeo, Burrito deluxe, grievous angel etc. are the palimpset for ALL country rock)South (Shackleton, antartic, in glorious white and white)Life and debt (mandatory viewing apparently)Sicko (Moore)Early cinema...
Went to this tonight with Dar and what a great thriller it is. The story revolves around a woman (Laura) who, after being a former orphan, decides to take care of a number of children in her own home. The children will join her adopted son Simón in the house but it all turns a bit Shining when Simón disappears. The cinematography is top notch and the skill with which the tense moments are dealt with is astonishing. I’d thoroughly recommend seeing this when it gets a release where you......
Empire has it. I really, really wanna see this film now. The idea of an animated film without dialogue for much of the running time intrigues me no......