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No Reservations
2007-08-30 13:00:00
No Reserva tions stars Catherine Zeta Jones, who plays Kate, a professional culinary master (but without the foul language of Gordon Ramsay). Kate is a control freak. She is the head chef of a classy restaurant, and has an iron grip on all aspects of her kitchen, her employees, the food that goes out of the swinging doors, even the ingredients that go into the food (she gets up at 5.00am to select that day’s fish at the market). She is so impeccable, it’s untrue. (Quite literally untrue, if you have ever worked in a kitchen, you would know you cannot leave a shift in pristine chef whites!) Then her iron grip is rendered utterly useless, as a tragic car accident leaves her as the custodian of her niece, Zoe (Abigail Breslin). Having never married or had children of her own, she finds the unpredictability of Zoe’s bereavement a real challenge against the order of her workplace. When she returns to work, with her emotions in turmoil, she finds her replacement, Nick (Aaron E...
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The Dam Busters
2007-08-29 16:56:00
One of the best-loved of British war movies, The D am Busters has been studied, imitated and even parodied (in a justly renowned Carling Black Label advert); yet while its tone can occasionally seem quaint to modern viewers, its hold on the emotions remains strong. For this,thank a raft of no-nonsense performances, Michael Anderson's unfussy direction, and Eric Coates' stirring, martial score. On the one hand, it's a docudrama detailing the conception of the so-called "bouncing bomb" by British scientist Dr Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave), a loyal if somewhat abstracted boffin, who seemed to spend almost as much time battling the scepticism and disbelief of his superiors at Whitehall, as devising ways to combat the Nazis. Wallis was charged with a mission crucial to the Allied war effort: to destroy the dams of the Ruhr region, which harnessed the energy of the Moehne, Eder and Sorbe rivers – and thereby, to paralyse the German heartland. His solution? A new kind of explo...

UK box-office August 3-5
2007-08-06 19:21:00
After a blockbuster-packed July, August began at a more sedate pace with the launch of Evan Almighty. True, the semi-sequel to Bruce Almighty was always intended as a major movie, and its rumoured $175million is the biggest ever for a comedy, but by the time it had received a gentle mauling in the US, expectations for the UK had deflated. The Steve Carell comedy opened with £1.15million, as against Bruce Almighty’s £7.24million debut back in June 2003. Bruce Almighty went on to gross £24million here, a highly unrealistic target for Evan Almighty. After a rainy July, warm sunshine across much of the country dampened box-office takings. Even subtracting preview figures from the opening weekend of The Simpsons Movie, the animated hit still fell 56% on its second weekend. Transformers was in the same boat, falling 52% from the three-day portion of its opening salvo. Among the top titles, Hairspray  fared best, edging down a not-too-punishing 38% for a total to date of £7.86m...
More About: Office

Brief Encounter
2007-08-03 20:07:00
David Lean's Brief Encounter is one of the great stories of unconsummated love. Released just after the Second World War, when notions of duty were at their height, its tale of two people who teetered on the precipice of a passionate affair struck a chord. Although, as Kevin Maher reminds us in his review in The Times, the superhuman decency of lovestruck pair Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard always had an unreal quality, even at the time of its release. Lean himself remembers watching horrified as an audience of regular folk sniggered with derision. Brief Encounter was the fourth film Lean made from a Noel Coward play, and in this instance the one-act was significantly fleshed out to movie length. While Coward’s play took place in a railway station waiting room, Brief Encounter bursts the platonic liaison into restaurant, cinema, boating lake, country drive and – dangerously – a borrowed apartment. Johnson, then 37, played “middle-aged” suburban wife and mother Laur...

UK box-office July 27-29
2007-07-31 20:50:00
When two big blockbusters open against each other on the same date, there’s usually a casualty – and for that reason, it rarely happens. But both Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount will be pleased with the box office grosses for their latest releases, The Simpsons Movie and Transformers, which went head-to-head this weekend. Buoyed by previews on Wednesday and Thursday, the Simpsons flick debuted on an impressive £13.63 million. Also thanks to healthy previews, Transformers opened on £8.72 million. When you throw in the £2.88 million the latest Harry Potter film pulled in at the weekend, plus Hairspray’s nifty £1.39 million, the UK box office overall is riding high. Box office compiler Nielsen EDI measured the weekend – the top 15 films grossed £28.16 million combined – as the biggest of the last 52. In fact, we’d be very surprised if there has ever been a bigger single weekend at the UK box-office. Trade publication Screen International reports that, stripping...
More About: Office , July

Goldfinger
2007-07-28 16:46:00
This summer has been the season of episode threes. Pirates Of The Caribbean, Spider-Man, Shrek, Ocean’s, Rush Hour and The Bourne Ultimatum: even in these sequel-swamped times, we’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Some of those franchises have used their arrival at trilogy status to herald a degree of narrative closure – Pirates, Spidey, Bourne – which is not to say that the series are done and dusted. But there is something about a trilogy that feels right for beginning, developing and ending a story, and it was the preferred format for sagas such as Star Wars (twice!), The Godfather, The Matrix and Lord Of The Rings. Maybe it’s also that consumer appetites don’t often sustain as far as a fourth helping. On Tuesday, another “episode three” will play in over 130 cinemas nationwide, as part of a series this summer of rereleases of classic British films: 1964’s Goldfinger . The James Bond movies have now reached such a collective mass in the popular p...

Sherrybaby
2007-07-26 14:13:00
I wasn’t hugely familiar with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s work before seeing Sherrybaby . Although I vaguely remember her as Donnie’s sister in Donnie Darko, it’s been a while since I saw that film and I must be one of the few people who didn’t really like it (and I’m not prepared to get into an argument about it. Remember the writer Richard Kelly was also responsible for that gem of a film Domino starring Keira Knightley – so let’s say no more). I’d heard good reports about her 2002 S&M film Secretary, but that is still on my LoveFilm rental list. In Sherrybaby Gyllenhaal plays a 22-year-old heroin addict (Sherry) who has just been released from prison after serving three years for robbery. Free, sober and motivated to do better, Sherry has two goals: to get a job working with children and to regain custody of her young daughter, who has been living with her brother and his wife. However, Sherry soon realises that life is going to be harder than she thought. Getting a...

The Night of the Sunflowers
2007-05-15 19:58:00
Spanish films have been getting lots of international attention lately with successes like Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. In The Night of the Sunflower s a girl is found dead in a field of sunflowers; a cave is discovered and a scientist assesses its scientific value; an elderly man, the last inhabitant of an abandoned hill-top village, defends it against his perceived enemy; an unfaithful husband, in line to take over from his police chief father-in-law, longs to escape the village that holds him captive; and a brutal, attempted rape leads to a desperate and misguided act of vengeance. The Night of the Sunflowers is a gripping thriller, with interlocking plots that spark off a string of events. Within one small village, life is at first constant, although its inhabitants are slowly dwindling in numbers. Invaded by travelling salesmen and city academics, the villagers’ peaceful existence is soon disrupted, and the stability that on...
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UK box office May 11-13
2007-05-14 20:33:00
This weekend horror sequel 28 Weeks Later opened in the UK with a solid £1.58 million, but came nowhere close to dislodging Spider-Man 3 from the top of the charts. The superhero sequel fell 53% from its opening weekend takings, but still managed to gross £5.60 million, for a total of £24.41 million. In just 10 days, the webslinger movie has come close to the total UK box office of Spider-Man 2 (£26.72 million) and is only a week away from matching the total gross of the first film (£29.03 million). Spider-Man 3 is the first of the summer’s big blockbusters, and is reaping the dividends of being the only mega film in the market. 28 Weeks Later’s opening figure is just ahead of 28 Days Later’s debut in November 2002. Given ticket-price inflation and the fact that sequels usually take a disproportionate amount of their total gross on the opening weekend, backers Fox might have expected a bigger number. But this Friday’s big new releases Zodiac, Magicians and Lovewrecked ...
More About: Office

Links for 2007-05-13 [Digg]
2007-05-14 07:00:00
Lecturer Dan Williams discusses the growing interest of western filmmakers Over the last few years, there have been a significant number of films from American and European directors focusing on African politics and recent African history
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Goodbye Bafana
2007-05-10 11:31:00
In Good bye Bafana, Gregory (Joseph Fiennes) is a prison guard who gets a big break in 1968 when he’s assigned to Robben Island with two specific tasks: to read and censor the prisoners’ mail; and to keep a special eye on Nelson Mandela (24 star Dennis Haysbert). Gregory speaks African language Xhosa, having grown up in the countryside with no other white boys around. As the initially ill-informed Gregory has his assumptions challenged by Mandela, and grows to respect and admire his prisoner, he finds himself rejected by his own people. But with international pressure mounting on the South African government, Mandela and his fellow detainees receive progressively better treatment, and Gregory is needed once again to supervise the star prisoner. From that description, you might be ready to dismiss Goodbye Bafana as dated and misguided. And you might also be sceptical about the posh English Fiennes, who is coming off an eight-year post-Shakespeare In Love career slump, playin...

Lecturer Dan Williams discusses the growing interest of western filmmakers
2007-05-10 07:45:00
Over the last few years, there have been a significant number of films from American and European directors focusing on African politics and recent African history.  Some examples are The Last King of Scotland (2006)– about a young Scottish doctor in Amin’s Uganda; Shooting Dogs (2005) and Hotel Rwanda (2004) – dealing with stories set in the context of the Rwandan genocide; Catch a Fire (2006) – about an ANC activist; The Constant Gardener (2006) – about the corruption of western pharmaceutical companies in Africa.  To be released in London, on May 11, Goodbye Bafana contributes to this trend.  Danish film-maker Bille August, who made such works as Pelle the Conqueror (1987) and The Best Intentions (1991) directs an international co-production, which represents the surprising friendship that develops between Nelson Mandela and his warder James Gregory on Robben Island.  The film is based on the autobiographical book which Gregory co-wrote and includes ...
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Conversations with Other Women
2007-05-09 19:23:00
Films touching on unrealized love are not hard to find, but director Hans Canosa offers a unique perspective with his film Conversation s with Other Women .  The film is shot and screened entirely in split screen, which allows the audience to experience the two actors expressions simultaneously and the dialogue in real time.  At first I was apprehensive that the spilt screen filming would distract from the story, but as the film progressed, I realised that it was absolutely necessary to tell the full story of the characters.  For most of Conversations with Other Women the two sides reflect the perspectives of the man and the woman at the centre of the story.  However, at times one side is used to show a flashback or juxtapose the reality of the characters with their desired reality.The film follows the story of a man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helena Bonham Carter), two people, seemingly strangers whose mysterious attraction for each other leads to a night full o...
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Links for 2007-04-13 [Digg]
2007-04-14 07:00:00
Dan Reed talks to us about Straightheads Dan Reed, Writer and Director of Straightheads tells us a bit about his first movie release and why Gillian Anderson was perfect for the role of femme fatale in this dark and terrifying drama.
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