All posts by Thom Willis

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About Thom Willis

Thom is the curator of #microwrites - microwrites.wordpress.com - and writes his own stories for thomwillis.uk. He lives in London because, given the choice, who wouldn't?

The Back Page – April 13 2012

Links

It’s Friday! The thirteenth!

Howard Keel
Howard Keel would have been 93 today; here's a picture of him all casual like, just readin' the papers like he's not Wild Bill Hickok. WHICH HE TOTALLY IS.

I’m not jazzed by the release schedule this week (except A Night to Remember), but, uh, let’s see, The Cabin in the Woods is finally out, so let’s all have a look at the trailer:

Oh, right, OK, so it’s a sci-fi slasher film. Cube crossed with Friday 13th – which is apt, given the date. Wait, though, doesn’t that make it Jason X? Yeah, in your boiled egg face, Whedon!

I couldn’t let you go without giving you a link to this blog post on movie titles. Your life will be enriched by the creator of The Idiotmaker’s Gravity Tour, I promise you.

Or you could read a MostlyFilm post. Not as many as usual this week:

Personal Jesuses, a somewhat blasphemous group piece on unusual Jesus figures

Planks vs Zombies, a slaughter of the Walking Dead innocents/numskulls.

Hair Apparent, a run-through of some jarring hair and makeup in period films.

Join us next week for the end of days for the Titanic and the telly, plus the Terracotta film festival and our review of Breathing.

Happy Birthday to us

Announcements, History

by MrMoth (and the people of MostlyFilm)

How did we get here? It really starts on the 25th of February 2011, when the Guardian pulled the plug on its talkboards, plunging without warning its userbase into the chilly waters of the internet at large. Several lifebelts were thrown; many users ended up aboard the good ship NotTheTalk, but a backup board created by a member of the film talkboard (who is now worshipped as a god, with sacrifices and everything) ensured the survival of the film community. Like shell-shocked post-apocalypse survivors, we needed to keep moving. Keep surviving.

A blog was proposed as a way of attracting new posters. It would reflect our diversity of interest, be written by us and would be the board (described in its Guardian days as ‘The most intelligent film community on the web’, oh yes) in blog form. This became a focus of action, and the group came together beautifully to pitch in. Just a few weeks later, on April 4th 2011, MostlyFilm launched.

A year on I thought that it would be good to go back to the board and ask them what their favourite post was from our first year as Europe’s Best Website.

Continue reading Happy Birthday to us →

The Back Page – March 30 2012

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It's Warren Beatty's 75th Birthday! Here he is on the set of Bonnie and Clyde, doing some excellent pointing.

Now, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!  Arrived in cinemas on Wednesday, but I’m damned if I’m not having this trailer in the post this week.

Oh, that’s good stuff. There’s a longer version on the official site if you want to see some actual jokes (‘Some of you are just fish I’ve put a hat on’), but for me the sea shanty version wins. I’m actually a bit excited about seeing it.

If you’re looking for something to read, why not give this Vanity Fair article a look, it’s all about The Sopranos, from those who made it.

Or you could read a MostlyFilm post. Choose from this week’s gems:

Boys Don’t Cry, on the charms of Nicholas Sparks.

Nuking From Orbit, on the Alien/Prometheus marketing machine.

Rearranging the Furniture, on Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture and Girls.

35 Nation Army, on weird and wonderful covers of Seven Nation Army.

Next up on MostlyFilm – More obscure gems! La Grande Illusion! OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY! And sexy, sexy Jesus.

The Back Page – March 23 2012

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It would be Joan Crawford's 107th birthday today. Here she is with Clark Gable (111), who is wearing what I sincerely hope is his costume from Mutiny on the Bounty and not just casualwear. She, of course, is cosplaying as Popeye.

Big release this week is obviously The Hunger Games, which I assume, following the lead of Battleship, is a big-budget Hungry Hungry Hippos adaptation. But sod it – we’ve been quite excited about Spike off of Press Gang’s Wild Bill since last year’s London Film Festival so…

IN YOUR HUNGRY FACE, HUNGER GAMES! Boom!

Not that we want you to leave us, but here’s a nice article about film criticism in the 60s/70s.

Or you could stick around and read a MostlyFilm article from this week. All crackers:

There’s Always Two Lawyers, Kenneth Lonergan talking about screenwriting.

Sweeney Todd, our review of the new stage production.

The Ever-Expanding White Cube, on the art gallery chain.

Black Coal Heart, on the somewhat overlooked genre of British noir.

Join us next week for smooches, aliens, tiny furniture and a load of slap.

The Back Page – March 16 2012

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Welcome to our new-look Friday column!

Jerry Lewis and Alfred Hitchcock
It's Jerry Lewis's 86th birthday. Here he is with Alfred Hitchcock on the set of To Catch a Thief.

Big release this week? Well, probably We Bought a Zoo, but fuck me, look at the trailer:

Man quits job in dramatic fashion! Tousle-haired moppet jumps up and down and goes ‘Yay!’ Hoppípolla! ScarJo in a Christmas jumper! Matt Damon had better be playing an amnesiac assassin who accidentally buys a zoo, that’s all I’m saying.

In lieu of a MostlyFilm post, why not read this excellent treatise on the correct order in which to watch the Star Wars Films? No reason, I just happen to agree.

Or you could read a MostlyFilm post. There were four this week:

Yesterday’s Men, on Hugo and the Artist.

If My Calculations Are Correct pt IV, the culmination of an epic sci fi viewing project.

Mostly Pop, the month in popular music.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, our review of the film.

Join us next week for screenwriting, man-pies, art and British Noir.

Mostly Pop March 2012

Mostly Pop, Music

by MrMoth and anise

MIA

This is a sort of ‘behind the curtain’ version of Mostly Pop this month; every time I’m called upon to write this column, I sit down a few days before with YouTube, a laptop and a sparring partner – my wife. Over the course of the next few hours we watch, with increasing horror, the videos for the latest pop releases (or not that latest, thanks to the On Air, On Sale policy which totally screws with my timetables). The following is not a transcript (because I am usually struck dumb during these sessions and can only communicate through eye gestures and screams – that doesn’t make good reading), but it is sort of how the process goes.

Continue reading Mostly Pop March 2012 →

Mostly Pop – February 2012

Mostly Pop, Music

by Mr Moth

I last wrote Mostly Pop back in September 2011. It’s 2012 now – how things have changed! We have jetpacks and robot servants, I’m writing this while tucking into a bowl of food in pill form (mmm… roast chicken and yorkshire pudding pills!), the NHS is finally going to be destroyed (at last, eh?) and the pop scene has moved on to an unrecog… oh, wait, it’s One Direction again.

One Direction – One Thing

So, the band with the biggest hair in the world, what do you have for us? A video packed with studied wackiness. Marvel!  As we follow the boys around in their open-top bus for some impromptu, heavily-rehearsed, zany goofing around. Look at them jump! Bounce bounce bounce! They’re such fun! They do that walk like the Monkees do! Wow, they must be as fun as the Monkees*! Look at how they’re dressed! Well, ok, I guess it’s an improvement on their former look. I can imagine the meeting with the stylist now: ‘You! You’re dressing like Doctor Who! You! You’re dressing like one of those blokes from that Richmond sausages advert! You! You’re also Doctor Who, but the other one! You! You’re… you… I… er, DOCTOR WHO!’.

Continue reading Mostly Pop – February 2012 →

MostlyChristmas: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas Number One

Music

by MrMoth

What’s your favourite Christmas Number One? Regular viewers of BBC4’s excellent comedy drama Top of the Pops 1976 will soon be treated to a Christmas Number One very dear to my heart – Johnny Mathis’s When a Child Is Born. Dear to my heart in that it was number one when I, much like Jesus, was born.

Although that is sentimentally valuable, I do think my actual favourite might be Mistletoe & Wine, because no matter what you think of Cliff, that is a fucking tune. A complete one-off, it sounds like Christmas: a carol caught in pop’s prism, both devotional and lightweight. And he almost, so very nearly, pulls off my favourite music video gimmick: doing it in one-take (the cut when he hits the gong is so bloody arbitrary, like it is there just to spite me). He couldn’t repeat the trick on Saviour’s Day, though the country duly put it to number one through a combination of dazed loyalty to Mistletoe & Wine and a general feeling that Cliff in some way should be number one at Christmas[1]. We have some funny ideas about that sort of thing in this country, and I’m unshakeably of the belief that the Christmas Number One is one of our greatest modern traditions.

Continue reading MostlyChristmas: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas Number One →

MostlyFilm’s Best of 2011 – Videogames

Best of 2011, Games

by MrMoth

I am spectacularly under-qualified to write this, but when has that ever stopped me? I did a pop column for six months, despite being quite clearly a man in his mid-thirties. So here I am writing about the best videogames of 2011 having only played about ten in total. I haven’t had a chance to play two I’m looking forward to (Skyrim and Zelda). None of the games I have played were the big, brown franchises – Resistance, Gears, Battlefield, Call of sodding Duty – none were quirky Japanese side-scrollers and absolutely none had any downloadable content installed because I haven’t got a fucking modem, okay?

So for the half-dozen of you still here, let’s get cracking.

Continue reading MostlyFilm’s Best of 2011 – Videogames →