Posted in directors, film on Sep 7th, 2007 1 Comment »
The great David Thomson has said that David Fincher’s Zodiac — released on DVD this month — is his worst yet:
“A terrible disappointment in which an ingenious and deserving all-American serial killer nearly gets lost in the meandering treatment of cops and journalists obsessed with the case. A great deal of Fincher’s energy and most […]
Posted in B-movies, Horror, Industry, directors, film, politics on Jul 11th, 2007 No Comments »
Dispatches from this year’s Hay-on-Wye literature festival, courtesy of MovieMail correspondent Graeme Hobbs, confirm that director Robin Hardy is in fine fettle and still promising to deliver a much awaited ‘re-imagining’ of his cult 1973 film, The Wicker Man. Hardy has published a novel called Cowboys for Christ, which presents a new take on the […]
Posted in Horror, Industry, directors, film, politics on May 23rd, 2007 11 Comments »
If you’re like me, you may have let yourself down by tuning into Celebrity Big Brother earlier this year when you discovered that the incomparable filmmaker Ken Russell was a contestant.
I don’t know what I was expecting from Ken, but he was a disappointment, looking bored and engaging in uninspired conversation with housemates sixty years […]
Posted in B-movies, Horror, Industry, film on May 8th, 2007 2 Comments »
It looks like splitting Tarantino movies in two has gone to Harvey Weinstein’s head – it seems he’s about to do that to the long-awaited Grindhouse before it sees a UK cinema release (if it gets a UK cinema release at all). But the reasons are different from the decision to release Kill Bill as […]
Posted in awards, film, politics on Apr 18th, 2007 2 Comments »
Although The Last King of Scotland, which reaches DVD this month, is another feather in writer Peter Morgan’s cap (topping a remarkably fertile 12 months that has seen him deliver The Queen for the cinema, Frost/Nixon for the West End and Longford for TV), it is far more notable for Forest Whitaker’s performance as Idi […]
Posted in directors, film on Mar 18th, 2007 2 Comments »
“Ritual, ideas, relativity/Only building, no people, prophecy/Time slide, place to hide, nudge reality/Foresight, minds wide, magic imagery.”
Something about the Big Audio Dynamite (BAD) song E=MC2, which evokes the world of director Nicolas Roeg, seems to capture the essence of the man’s work even in the face of some decidedly crass lyrics: “Met a dwarf […]
Posted in B-movies, Horror, directors, film on Feb 19th, 2007 No Comments »
This month sees the DVD release of three films directed by the late, unheralded Sidney Hayers: Assault, Revenge (both 1971) and the remarkable Night of the Eagle (1962).
Hayers was a prolific journeyman working at the lower budget end of British film-making, delivering programmers and second features at a rate of knots, moving from horror to […]
Posted in directors, film on Jan 18th, 2007 1 Comment »
I never think of myself as a particularly devoted fan of anyone. I’m not one to queue up for hours to attend a book signing; I wouldn’t go too far out of my way to see a concert; I wouldn’t even go so far as to collect all the available DVDs of my very favourite […]
Posted in film, politics on Dec 10th, 2006 1 Comment »
With the level of hoo-hah we’ve come to expect from a regenerated Bond, the new Casino Royale is being unveiled at cinemas around the globe as this newsletter lands on your doormat. The public has been whipped up into the usual frenzy about the suitability of the new actor playing 007 (Daniel Craig) and — […]
Posted in Industry, film, politics on Nov 25th, 2006 No Comments »
It takes no great insight to say that, a lot of the time, the motive for making a sequel to a successful (or partially successful) movie is to make more money from the same concept without having to match the creative donkey-work that helped to get it off the ground in the first place. But […]