Jeremy Paxman looked awfully smug last night. Not that he never doesn’t look smug, smug is his metier, but there was a combination of factors. Firstly he’d had a good Newsnight, with a few zingers and the odd “come-off it”. Se[…]

Ok, I have not had the time to talk about films here for a while. This is because I have either been
a) Working
b) Watching films
c) Drinking.
Not in that order. Nevertheless like everyone else here I had a mini-essay about Control ready to go, which[…]

“Across The Universe” is described like this: “At once gritty, whimsical and highly theatrical, Revolution Studios’ Across the Universe is an original movie musical springing from the imagination of The Beatles, acclaimed dire[…]

One of the rounds of last night’s Mock the Week (itself recycled from old bits of Have I Got News For You, Whose Line Is It Anyway and leftover Radio 4 panel quizzes) asked the comedians to suggest “Letters That Would Never Get Read Out o[…]

This is the subtext of this weekends British films. Both are “not all that funny” comedies, and both feature commitment shy London men realising the errors of their ways. In Someone Else this manifests in a realistically shit but mature b[…]

I’m not a pet person. Perhaps it sounds clinically rigorous but I’ve never seen the point in them. Unfortunately after watching Year Of The Dog not only do I still not see the point of pets, but I’m not sure of the point of Year Of The Dog eith[…]

Its really really lazy to compare two films from completely different traditions, different funding and different production histories just because they have come out in the UK at the same time and because they vaguely have something in common. It wo[…]

I saw two films on Saturday afternoon. One was the terrific, ruthlessly efficient machine that was The Bourne Ultimatum. There is little to say about it except THE 43 BUS DOES NOT GO PAST WATERLOO STATION. Except for that two second wrench out of an […]

Can you call a film Transylvania and not have it about vampires? Well, Tony Gatlif has, and just about got away with the wrath of a blood sucking audience by
a) exhibiting in arthouse joints
b) having it about gypsies instead.
Actually Transylvania i[…]

The Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up And Sing is so named after a lyric in a recent song, itself derived from a death threat the band got. The Chicks, the biggest selling girl group in US history had pissed off the largely Republican country audience[…]