by Mr Moth
DJ Fresh & Dizzee Rascal – The Power
I’m fond of Dizzee Rascal (Bonkers was number one when my daughter was born, plus he’s dressed as a shark in the video), and I can’t say I’m not partial to a bit of DJ Fresh – Gold Dust was one of the best, most summery pieces of pop* in the last few years and even the omnipresent Louder didn’t grate after so many repeats. So this should be the hit of the summer, right? Well, yes and no.
By Viv Wilby
Maybe it would have been different if the band hadn’t been called Arsenal. It’s so jarring to British ears to hear things like, ‘Hey man, I saw Arsenal play in 79.’ Thoughts immediately jump to Alan Smith rather than Aerosmith, to van Persie rather than Van Halen.
Arsenal, in case it’s not clear, is the fictional band in Rock of Ages, the jukebox musical that has made the lightning leap from the LA fringe, to off-Broadway, to on-Broadway, to the West End, to the big screen. Continue reading Rock of Ages
Josephine Grahl reviews Plan B’s iLL Manors. There will be plot spoilers after the jump.
As the bunting is taken down after the Jubilee, and David Cameron looks forward to the Olympics being a “giant advertisement” for Britain, it’s perhaps a good moment to be reminded of last year’s most dramatic London event, the riots which erupted in August. Rapper Plan B’s song iLL Manors was one of the first mainstream cultural responses to the riots, and he’s followed it up with a film of the same title which looks at the lives of a group of young people growing up in the impoverished council estates of Forest Gate in Newham, east London, where he was born and grew up. iLL Manors doesn’t deal with the riots themselves, instead focusing on the day-to-day life of a group of drug dealers and their hangers-on in the fictional Circle Estate.
by Indy Datta
SPOILER WARNING: This piece presupposes that readers are familiar with Alien and I will also be discussing the plot and other details from Prometheus after the jump.
by Paul Duane
I spent four years making Barbaric Genius, my first feature documentary. I’ve been a director for about twenty-five years, but I learned more about every aspect of filmmaking – and more about life – in those four years than in the first twenty put together.
The film is finally getting a cinema release this week, a year after its festival debut, and it felt like it might be a good time to try to figure out how to pass on some of the things I’ve learned, for what they’re worth.
Continue reading Are you sure you want to do this? The making of Barbaric Genius
by The Tramp
When I was little the witches of fairy tales were frightening creatures with warty hooked noses, long straggly grey hair, impractically long, shapeless black dresses who were fond of turning the broomstick into flying vehicles (obviously they had bums of steel – no comfy sofa flights for them). But not so the witches of movies and television. With the exception of the green faced wicked witch of the west (the original www) and the odd Disney moment, witches are alluring, sexy women with men issues. Because even witches, with their magical powers and their broomstick toughened posteriors are really driven by the male sex. Boys, it’s always all about you.
By Ron Swanson
I look at my relationship with my favourite film as being analogous with great, romantic love (starting to get an insight as to why my love life is, um, troubled, while writing this sentence). My childhood sweetheart was Star Wars, my first teenage relationship was Goodfellas, and the first one where romance and feelings mattered was The Apartment. About three years into that relationship, though, I realised that I didn’t believe in CC Baxter and Miss Kubelik’s happy ever after (Billy Wilder’s intention, I believe), and ironically, it didn’t work out for me and The Apartment, either.
Currently I’m in a continental-style group marriage with three films. I hope, at some point to write about why I love David Lean’s Brief Encounter so very much or why Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West takes my breath away with every viewing. However, as this weekend sees the re-release of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, that seems like a perfect excuse to eulogise one of the best and most laudable films ever made.
Continue reading The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
by Gareth Negus
Café de Flore is 85% of a very good film, and it’s a pity that the 15% I wasn’t crazy about comes at the end. Written and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée – who previously directed C.R.A.Z.Y., which I liked a lot a few years ago, and The Young Victoria, which I couldn’t really be bothered to see – it’s a romantic tale set in 2011 Canada and 1969 France.
The 1969 section focuses on single mother Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis), struggling to bring up her young son, Laurent, who has Down’s Syndrome. She is determined to disprove the low expectations society has for her child, both in terms of life expectancy and quality of life, but this determination leads to frustration when the boy starts to develop ambitions of his own. The Montreal storyline revolves around the love life of Antoine (Kevin Parent) a club DJ on the cusp of turning 40. Antoine, the opening voice over tells us, appears to have it all – a great relationship with his partner, two children, a successful career. But it gradually becomes clear that there is a fly in the ointment, and Antoine is not sure he deserves his good fortune.
Continue reading Cafe de Flore
by Indy Datta
The new Jason Statham vehicle, written and directed by Boaz “Remember the Titans” Yakin, starts with not one but two solid premises. In one plot strand, we meet Statham’s character Luke Wright – a NYPD detective turned binman/cagefighter – who angers the boss of a Russian gang by failing to throw a fight. These Russians have a taste for drama, so rather than killing Luke, they kill his wife, and promise him that anyone else he gets close to will get the same treatment, condemning him to a life of itinerant solitude. Meanwhile, somewhere in China, the mathematical genius and eidetic memory of an 11 year old schoolgirl called Mei (newcomer Catherine Chan) catch the eye of New York City’s Chinese gangsters, who put her to work as the ultimate unhackable mob-accounting computer and Johnny-Mnemonic style data courier. In the early stages, as the film cuts restlessly back and forth between the two storylines before bringing them together, you might wonder if all this isn’t a bit overcomplicated for a Jason Statham movie – if it isn’t all going to rather get in the way of the simple business of lining up as many people as possible for The Stathe to kick in the head or shoot in the bollocks.
by Matthew Turner
Warning: This post contains SPOILERS for Marvel Avengers Assemble (or The Avengers, if you live anywhere other than Britain) and is intended to be read after you’ve seen the film.
With the recent release (and what already looks like phenomenal box office success) of Marvel’s The Avengers, it seems only fitting to mark the occasion with a final Comics To Screen post. This will examine how writer-director Joss Whedon, closely supervised by Marvel Studios, has blended the now established movie universe (referred to, annoyingly but conveniently, as the Marvel movie-verse) with the classic comics themselves. Arguably, with the enormous success of the three key movie franchises (Iron Man, Thor and Captain America), it’s no longer really that important to cater to old-school comics fans, but it’s nonetheless interesting to look at just how much of early Avengers history survives into the new movie and to see which elements have been drawn from elsewhere.
MostlyFilm 