I have been watching the news coverage of the current mess in Gaza with a slightly detached air. Not because it isn’t shocking (I work with a Palestinian and so get better, personal coverage from him). But more with an eye on the ticking clock of news. Its been going on for ten days now after all, and soon the relentless banality of a conflict with no end in sight will start dropping down the news agenda. Today the interest rate cut will probably unsettle it though Lebanese rockets may change that). If it is still on going (which I hope not) I imagine it will not even pop up on the news by the time Obama’s inaugeration comes around.
This is the problem inherent with rolling news, and with the constantly voracious news agenda. It could be that Israel’s micro-management of the conflict will keep the news organisations more involved, waiting to see who they can get in to Gaza to report. … read on …
I wrote and posted this last June not thinking Stuck would get a release int he UK. Well it has. One screen (like New York and Chicago) and its well worth seeing. Or watching on DVD when it comes out in two weeks time. So I thought I would repost it.
Stuck may not get a theatrical release in the UK, bearing in mind that it only popped up in one screen in New York and Chicago. Which would be a pity: not because its the best film ever, but it at least tries to do something different. A ripped from the tabloids, based on a true story tale of a hit and run gone wrong (for which read WRONGER), Stuck is most interesting when you consider the genre it exists in. It is in many ways a survival horror film, with the gender and power roles reversed.
Mena Suvari plays a pleasant enough carehome nurse promised a new promotion. So she goes out and celebrates, and has a few too many drinks and drives home. Unfortunately she hits down on his luck homeless guy Stephen Rea. But she doesn’t stop. So far, so hit and run. She can’t believe her bad luck, she refuses to believe the reality of the situation. Which is Rea is stuck in her windscreen, glass spearing internal organs but as she discovers later, still very much alive. What follows is clearly not a portrait of ultimate evil, Suvari does a whole load of bad things but as she is the lone female we are compelled by the RULES OF THE CINEMA to slightly sympathize with her. … read on …
In the old days on FT, when we had a regular science column, we mostly used to post links to the BBC News website and be snarky about their rubbish sicence reporting. WHY DID WE EVER STOP?
Look at the following paragraph regarding the growth of the planet Jupiter taken from the BBC News Science and Environment page (it is bad enough science has to share with environment and is hived off from Technology but…) “The planet Jupiter must have gained mass fast during its infancy, according to astronomers.”
(I know, to me that’s a sentence but on the Beeb website its a paragraph. In bold.) Anyway that sentence is the justification for the following headline for the article:
The most obvious film to compare Trouble The Water, the Hurricane Katrina disaster documentary with is Spike Lee’s epic When The Levees Broke. Being considerably shorter by two and a half hours, you may be forgiven in thinking that Trouble The Waters is a lighter, easier digested, dumbed down version. It is not: rather it is a terrific personal journey through the New Orleans disaster through the eyes of a remarkably optimistic couple (really, how they manage to stay positive and not be annoying or mentally ill is amazing). You get something a bit different from the Spike Lee film that this (though both are worth seeing). A much more interesting comparator to Trouble The Water is another film from last year, camcorder alien stomps on New York movie Cloverfield. … read on …
One of the knock on effects of the downturn, nee the credit crunch SOON TO BE PROPER ACTUAL RECESSION EVEN UNDER OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS is there is less frivolous money banging around in industry. Cutbacks come in more profligate and somewhat unproven areas. HELLO advertising, an industry puffed up with its own importance but a general lack of all that much in the way of concrete evidence that its work really improves sales. The Cadbury’s drumming ape after all did more to drive up sales of Phil Collins Greatest Hits that it did Cabdury’s*.
I saw this ad this morning and it told me where all the ad pounds are going.
Singing food stuff in a DEFRA advert for not importing food from outside the EU. … read on …
The Reader is not a biopic of folk singer and Fairground Attraction frontwoman Eddi Reader. Which is just as well as I do not believe Ms Reader’s life has involved being a concentration camp guard and toyboy taunting sexual predator. In Kate Winslett’s hands (and as ever over-exposed tits) the role becomes a tour de force: I WILL GET THAT OSCAR seems to be Kate’s mantra this year and she has a good chance. Serious themes, heavy emotional toil and excessive ageing are all on hand to attract the academy. That said, to get said Oscar she will need to overcome the following problems with The Reader.
-Her tits. Let’s be fair, the only film I can think of with Winslett in where you don’t see her saucer sized areolas is the Peter Pan one, Finding Neverland. … read on …
Frank Miller’s film of the Spirit has been beaten to death by the press, which befits a film where ultra-violent beatings are the order of the day. Watching it out of curiosity it is interesting to see how much of this beating is due to
a) Frank Miller
b) Superhero fatigue
c) Violence fatigue
d) Blue-screen movie boredom
There is no doubt that all of the above contribute to the Spirits’ awfulness, but at the same time the film has a gusto and energy missing from many movies, something which could be down to the writer directors singular vision of the titular character. Which unfortunately boils down to “What if Miller’s Batman moved into Sin City?”. So we get endless voice-overs of how “The city” is The Spirit’s wife and life - which is somewhat ironic as the choice of filming technique leaves us with little image of the city itself except as a black silhouette and a few bricks. … read on …
There. I just wanted to say that before anyone else on the interwebs (and I probably haven’t).
OK, of all the accusations that could be thrown at Russell T.Davies, closet prog-rock fan seemed, before tonight, unlikely. He has had ample opportunity to invent a race of armadillo tank monsters in the last few years after all called Tarkus. And whilst he has dallied with the Tudor period in the series, we have never seen The Six Wives Of Henry The Eighth On Ice. So it came as a touch of a shock to realise that all the flim-flammery about David Morrisey’s “Doctor” (that no-one believed going in let alone past the first two minutes) was really a slight of hand for a visual gag which would go over the head of much of its target audience. This truly was one for the dads. Or the grandads these days (King Crimson’s debut being in 1970 I believe). Of course having one of the Cybermen gurn and have massive nostrils would have also helped. Spoilers follow. … read on …
Inkheart is a fun little kids movie which has a couple of contradictions at its inky heart that it can never really shy away from. Oddly its the most British of the recent batch of fantasy films, despite being set in Europe and starring Brendan Fraser. Fraser’s Americaness is never really explained away despite being Helen Mirren’s nephew and having raised a daughter on his own who also has a cut glass English accent. But then this just goes to show how superfluous Fraser’s character Mortimer is (MORTIMER – that’s a nice American name). … read on …
Ah, the influence brigade are back in town. But for once they have put down their videogame controllers and have turned their gaze from violent horror movie to the insidious harm done to us by ROMANTIC COMEDIES! As this study suggests (in no way conclusively in my mind but it is on-going research) romantic comedies put forward an unrealistic view of relationships and thus promote lack of communication. Which if you have ever seen the relative match between the attractiveness of the man and the woman in most rom-coms the word unrealistic does not even come close. That said does it really mean women in the seventies all harbour secret desires for Woody Allen.
“As part of the project, 100 student volunteers were asked to watch the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity, while a further 100 watched a David Lynch drama.” … read on …
I wrote and posted this last June not thinking Stuck would get a release int he UK. Well it has. One screen (like New York and Chicago) and its well worth seeing. Or watching on DVD when it comes out in two weeks time. So I thought I would repost it.
In the old days on FT, when we had a regular science column, we mostly used to post links to the BBC News website and be snarky about their rubbish sicence reporting. WHY DID WE EVER STOP? 
The most obvious film to compare Trouble The Water, the Hurricane Katrina disaster documentary with is Spike Lee’s epic When The Levees Broke. Being considerably shorter by two and a half hours, you may be forgiven in thinking that Trouble The Waters is a lighter, easier digested, dumbed down version. It is not: rather it is a terrific personal journey through the New Orleans disaster through the eyes of a remarkably optimistic couple (really, how they manage to stay positive and not be annoying or mentally ill is amazing). You get something a bit different from the Spike Lee film that this (though both are worth seeing). A much more interesting comparator to Trouble The Water is another film from last year, camcorder alien stomps on New York movie Cloverfield. 
The Reader is not a biopic of folk singer and Fairground Attraction frontwoman Eddi Reader. Which is just as well as I do not believe Ms Reader’s life has involved being a concentration camp guard and toyboy taunting sexual predator. In Kate Winslett’s hands (and as ever over-exposed tits) the role becomes a tour de force: I WILL GET THAT OSCAR seems to be Kate’s mantra this year and she has a good chance. Serious themes, heavy emotional toil and excessive ageing are all on hand to attract the academy. That said, to get said Oscar she will need to overcome the following problems with The Reader.
Frank Miller’s film of the Spirit has been beaten to death by the press, which befits a film where ultra-violent beatings are the order of the day. Watching it out of curiosity it is interesting to see how much of this beating is due to
Inkheart is a fun little kids movie which has a couple of contradictions at its inky heart that it can never really shy away from. Oddly its the most British of the recent batch of fantasy films, despite being set in Europe and starring Brendan Fraser. Fraser’s Americaness is never really explained away despite being Helen Mirren’s nephew and having raised a daughter on his own who also has a cut glass English accent. But then this just goes to show how superfluous Fraser’s character Mortimer is (MORTIMER – that’s a nice American name). 
Ah, the influence brigade are back in town. But for once they have put down their videogame controllers and have turned their gaze from violent horror movie to the insidious harm done to us by ROMANTIC COMEDIES! As this study suggests (in no way conclusively in my mind but it is on-going research) 
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