The Arts Section | the-arts-section.blogspot.com

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:05:00 +0000

WHEN Raiders Of The Lost Ark came out in 1981, the trio of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford were forever etched onto the annals of cinema as an unstoppable force.

In Lucas they had the visionary, in Spielberg the perfect story-teller and with Harrison's rugged good looks and dead-pan charisma, they virtually had a licence to print massive wads of money.

They did. Three fantastic times. And then had the good sense to call it a day before their fedora-wearing golden goose started to lay rotten eggs.

But now the year is 2008 and it begs the question: When did these former box-office heavyweights actually do anything GOOD in the last decade? Or even a little bit DECENT?

Worse still, after the final death of the Star Wars prequel franchise, the thought of Lucas getting his bearded mitts on another childhood treasure seems about as welcome as a vicious snake bite.

So on paper a new Indiana Jones movie seems like forcing a healthy, if elderly, giant out of a dignified retirement and making it do tricks, to the obvious detriment of its health.

Yet that's unfair. Because although the legs on this franchise are a little worn and the exercise does genuinely seem pointless, there is clearly life in this old dog yet.

Not a great big flash, mind. But certainly a glimmer.

Return

Ford returns, good value as ever in the role of Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. Time has moved on, with Indy ready to retire as professor at the height of the commie-fearing 1950s.

The belt is a little looser, the shoes more comfortable, the jowls certainly more grizzled and that famous hatband – and pretty much everywhere else in fact – is now a lot sweatier.

This ‘new' adventure is another portion of the old serials that Spielberg and Lucas triumphantly reintroduced into the popular culture.

And therefore this film basically reads as homage to their homage.

The idea is that Jones, working for US intelligence, discovers a fiendish Russian plot to locate a highly classified but apparently undissected alien corpse.

Here Jones confronts his new foe, a Russian ice queen called Irina, played by eerily sexily by Cate Blanchett, who uses the time-honoured technique of putting a "y" before every vowel.

"You wiyill tyell mye ayall Amyerica's syecryets!"

With a black bob hairpiece, fetchingly tailored military fatigues and sexy boots, this Russkie babe wants to get her kinky claws on a mythic crystal skull perhaps belonging to some alien visitor.

And if reintroduced into its last resting place in the tomb of a legendary pre-Mayan civilisation deep in the South American jungle, it will give the Kremlin mystical power over the west.

Yes, it's one of those films.

Chase

So the chase is on, followed by another, then another, then another and another.

The great man is aided by a new young sidekick called Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), who arrives modelling Marlon Brando's biker look, presumably waiting for Wham! a few years too early.

The annoyingly over-acting and archetypical sulky LaBeouf takes over some of Indy's derring-do responsibilities, but thankfully not all of them by any means.

There is also Jones's unreliable Brit pal Mac, played by Ray Winstone, who has to shout "Jonesy!" in his cockney-tones a lot, while John Hurt plays a befuddled professor called Oxley.

It seems sad though that the legendary Hurt, playing someone so obviously old and senile, appears only in shot to make Ford look youngish in comparison.

A tall order for any actor.

It's good to see Karen Allen back as Indiana's first, and feistiest, love.

When I think of the Indiana Jones movies now, the single glorious moment is that superb visual gag pitting the swordsman against the gunman-the winner being all too obvious.

It was a brilliant joke, and it chimed with Indiana Jones's paradoxical modernity: the gun beats the sword, of course it does, duh!

Despite harking back to a golden age, the Jones franchise was thrillingly modern and new.

We'd never seen such stunts, such action, blended so effortlessly with self-deprecatory humour.

But since then, everyone else has been ripping off the act.

Rip-offs

While Ford has been away, we've had National Treasure, Sahara, The Mummy and The Da Vinci Code all tapping into the archaeologist-come-action hero market.

So when we see lost tombs, great grinding stone walls, sand waterfalls and gigantic underground shrines swivelling into new positions like enormous occult machines-well, the thrill is gone.

Plus the treasures themselves look as if they are going to be on the Antiques Roadshow.

Similarly, the CGI elements in this movie seem absurdly pointless and detract somewhat from the real stunts which made the first three films so utterly beguiling.

A computer generated LaBeouf swinging through the computer generated trees may put a few more female bums on seats, but it's the REAL stunts that get the BIG laughs.

There is one moment of the old Spielberg magic.

Jones finds himself alone on a nuclear test site with just 10 seconds to go before annihilation.

Desperately, he knocks on the door of a house, but finds the only occupants are lifesize mannequins: the whole community is a fake, constructed by the US government to assess the effect of a nuclear blast on civilians.

To see Indiana Jones alone in this chilling ghost town, desperately improvising a shelter from the explosion, is a tremendous moment, satirical and surreal.

As for much of the rest-well, let's hope this really is the Last Crusade.

The Savages

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:05:00 +0000

DYSFUNCTIONAL families are big business in an American film industry ridiculously bent on exploiting the supposed grim realities that exist in relationships.

Concepts of reality in the self-proclaimed ‘dream-factory,' however, get displaced by characters so ‘quirky' and full of ‘foibles,' it's a wonder any of them can get dressed in the morning.

Worse still, they fill these flicks with so much soggy sentiment, you're never exactly sure whether you're drowning in the slap-in-the-face ‘we love each other really' or their pleading for an Oscar.

Cue – in any order you feel – road trips, group hugs, lessons learnt, country soundtrack, arthouse direction and a pallet of primary colours so bright, even Superman would it find them garish.

And Tamara Jenkins' The Savages opens in much the same sugary vain.

Peggy Lee's I Don't Want To Play In Your Yard echoes over cutesy images of retirement life – cheerful seniors, sun-drenched hedges and a geriatric chorus line emerging from pristine homes.

But underneath this glossy-brochure façade, all is not well. Inside Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) and Doris Metzger's bungalow, two dignified lives are approaching their undignified ends.

The Little Miss Sunshine world is instantly dismissed as Lenny, chastised by the home help for "not flushing", smears a rude word on the bathroom wall with said unflushed item.

At least it looked like a rude word on first viewing. It could have very easily been the screenplay for Family Guy: Blue Harvest.

This act of defiance swiftly moves The Savages into an unsparing attack on the selfish half-lies that adults use to forgive themselves and into one of the finest films of the year.

When Doris dies, it becomes evident that Lenny's dementia will not allow him to live alone. His estranged children, back east, will have to come and get him.

The golden glow of Arizona is about to give way to the wintry grey of upstate New York in setting up a crisis for his fortysomething kids, Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Wendy (Laura Linney).

Suddenly they both find themselves obliged to deal with dementia head-on. "Does it smell?" Wendy asks Jon about the care home he's found. "They all smell," he replies.

Linney plays New York temp with playwright aspirations, Wendy Savage. Brittle and insecure, she resists real intimacy to fool around with a distressingly ugly and balding married man.

Hoffman plays her brother Jon, a morose professor of drama in who's trying to finish his study of Brecht ("I know everyone's really itching for a book about Bertolt Brecht this holiday season").

That brother and sister are both romantically unfulfilled and mildly addicted to painkillers tells its own story, and Jon's attempt to palm off responsibility on Wendy raises ghosts of sibling rivalry.

"Your life's more portable than mine," he tells her.

"What do you mean by that – like a toilet?"

Jenkins gets all the little details right, too, such as the titles of each sibling's work-in-progress: Wendy's semi-autobiographical play about her childhood is called 'Wake Me Up When It's Over,' while Jon's Brecht book is entitled 'No Laughing Matter.'

We can safely assume these be appearing in Richard and Judy's book club.

I suspect it all could have been a bit of a trial but for the performances of Linney and Seymour Hoffman, two actors at the very top of their game and criminally robbed of Oscars.

It's not often one sees the complicated relationships between adult siblings explored on film, and Jenkins is utterly blessed with two of the finest character actors of the decade.

But it's the film's searing honestly that pushes it above the dross in it's unavoidable truth: it's a bloody nuisance having to look after an ill parent, specifically one who has not earned their children's love.

The scene in which Jon and Wendy leave their father in the care home the first night and walk out into the car park, in particular, accurately distils what any child might feel on "abandoning" a parent – an internal commotion of guilt, relief and misery.

"We're just horrible people," cries Wendy, uselessly and naturally.

But then that's the point. Everything about this film is so natural and so very very real.

It may lack the comedy of say a Woody Allen classic, but Jenkin's solemn piece has a tenderness about these flawed heroes that is so profoundly touching and very moving.

A rare film which, incredibly, actually has something to say.

Iron Man

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:07:00 +0000

PICTURE the scene: King of the fairies Al Gore wakes up in the middle of the night sweating and screaming carbon neutrally about a terrible nightmare.

He remembers horrifying images of incredibly manly-looking machines run purely on ozone thinning fossil fuels and testosterone.

Turns out it was just Iron Man—the only superhero to watch An Inconvenient Truth and then promptly fireball the cinema to sound of loud electric guitar solos.

Then again, he's probably not alone in that idea.

The first of planned trilogy, Iron Man's an 'origins' story—in the same vein as Batman Begins—in more ways than one.

After all, it's the first true Marvel Studios picture and the first fully financed by those comic-book publishers-turned-entertainment mega house.

With north of $150 million resting on those broad gold and red shoulders, it represents a pretty risky way to kick-start a fledgling business.

Add to the mix a creative team who have never opened a summer blockbuster—despite several Oscar nods—it sounds like the workings of a studio in need of a Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmare-style reality b******ing.

But this BIG gamble in going for talent over big-names has paid off big time, because Iron Man positively roars onto the screen and a new francise is born.

Billionaire-slash-playboy weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is touring Afghanistan in the hope he can convince the US military to buy some of fancy-pants missiles.

Unfortunately for the goateed-Stark, the tour is ambushed and he's captured by a terrorist group who force him to build them the same missile for free.

Not the brightest bunch, these guys, luckily for Stark.

They only realise their 'missile' looks suspiciously like a giant killer robot with flame throwers for arms a few minutes before Stark climbs inside it, boots down the door and toasts them alive.

Still, it's one of those errors anyone could make on their first day of a new job.

On his return to the US, Stark promptly decides to right the wrongs made by the weapons his creates by creating, ahem, another weapon in the form of a more garish and powerful suit.

Did we forget to mention he also has some fatal shrapnel swimming around in his heart waiting to pounce and put an early end to his superhero-ing career?

Don't worry as he's built himself a nice little electromagnetic pacemaker powered by a mini-reactor from the odds and ends one usually finds hanging around a remote cave.

Logic aside, I can't remember too many people shaking their heads in sky-cursing anger when dinosaurs suddenly appeared in Jurassic Park.

Nor did anyone protest too much when Doc Emmett Brown uttered something from the ‘it just does travel in time' school of movie technology in Back To The Future?

And in the same way that both those particular films pushed the barriers of special effects, ILM's incredible photo-real work on Iron Man himself is utterly flawless.

In fact, it even builds on last year's Transformers in terms of getting the weight, power and look of heavy metal hardware just about perfect.

Fortunately for those wanting more than smash-bang-wallop in their popcorn film, the cast have also got it well sussed to create a suprisingly compelling and composed character piece.

Gwyneth Paltrow is perfect in the thankless archetype of the torch-holding and unfortunately-named secretary Pepper Potts, and shows real warmth and zing bantering against Downey Jr.

Jeff Bridges, too, shines as the bullish and hard-edged Obidiah Stane, even if he's the worst-kept secret-movie-bad-guy since Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine.

And in case you haven't guessed, the role of Stark fits Robert Downey Jr perfectly like a titanium-alloy, servo-assisted glove.

The back-from-the-brink actor veers nimbly between both the swaggering and sensitive sides of his character, never mistiming a brutally hilarious wisecrack.

The Comeback Man in more ways than one then.

However, the film is typical of origin stories like Batman Begins and X-Men in that it tragically suffers a serious case of OSS (Origin-Story-Syndrome).

Once Stark has his powers, the film runs out of steam and is unsure where to go. thus leaving the latter-half to quickly summon up and dispense with a token threat to test the hero's mettle.

The action sequences, too, also lack the certain punch of a summer blockbuster and feel a little wanting in their pay-offs, particularly the disappointing final battle.

That aside, the central performances director Jon Favreau pulls from his actors and the desire to see these characters develop in the next films more than makes-up for any short-comings.

Here's hoping Marvel keep their Iron Man on a one-villian-a-movie diet.

And yes, I'm talking to you Spider-Man.

Iron Man is now showing in cinemas worldwide.

Family Guys Presents: Blue Harvest

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:52:00 +0000

A LONG time ago, yet somehow in the future, a couple of Star Wars loving nerds decided to make a cartoon of their favourite film.

Sounds like something worth avoiding as far as the Hoth System, right?

But what if those Lucasfilm-worshipping geeks were the creators of one of the funniest adult animation series on the planet?

And what if Obi-Wan Kenobi was a Luke-obsessed paedophile, Han Solo an overweight slob and megalomaniac Darth Vader a nappy-wearing baby in a helmet?

Excited? Well, don't be. Because while Family Guys Presents: Blue Harvest is certainly a bold concept, it rarely hits the dizzying heights of its regular series.

Central to its failure is that it comes across a weepy-eyed love-in for a writing staff who presumably grew-up desperately wishing they could s**g Princess Leia.

And if they couldn't have her, they would've probably taken the Crown-Prince of nerds, George Lucas himself – at least it seems that way from the amount of Star Wars references normally in Family Guy.

However, because their source material clearly makes FG go weak at the knees, satire is suddenly replaced with homage, bite with kisses and humour with sheer boredom.

Indeed, their reworking of the first film in the original trilogy – shoehorned into the show when there is a blackout in Quahog and Peter decides to tell a story – adds very little in terms of story-telling to the actual motion picture.

Many of the so-called jokes are also incredibly obvious – casting Stewie as Vader, Brian as Chewbacca – and the rest assume an intimate Stars Wars knowledge that too few viewers may have.

The interview with Lucas as a bonus feature, too, suggests anything truly risqué would have already been gathered in the net and removed by a company notorious for being very protective of their brands.

If there is any real plus is that Blue Harvest features some truly fantastic animation that pushes the show's characteristic format, and trades it in for a lush and vibrant cinematic feel.

But some pretty pictures hardly merit the some-what extortionate £19.99 price tag for a single ropey episode and a couple of ordinary extras, including a montage of FG Star Wars references.

In this world, The Simpsons may the most respected and South Park more edgy, but for pure laughs, no show can even compete with Family Guy.

So save your money or buy one of the earlier series, and see why this USUALLY great show was once the most outrageous and hilarious on earth.

If you really need your satirical Star Wars fix then you'll probably have to look a lot further than what has sadly amounted to just another piece of Lucas-endorsed money-racking tat.

Anyone suddenly thinking ‘Jar Jar' Blinks?

Coldplay - Violet Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:44:00 +0000

THEY'VE been described as a incredibly morose group, producing music for students who still wet the bed, and the Dulux equivalent of comatose beige.

Like them or loathe them, Coldplay are back with their new single Violet Hill, and the first track from their fourth album Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends.

And it's pretty damn good.

Except, it probably won't seem the least bit groundbreaking, with the opening atmospheric wash of sound and piano intro seeming like the soft-rockers are on autopilot.

But just stay with it.

Because once the distorted, tense opening guitar chords and stampeding drums arrive on the scene, things suddenly start to get very interesting.

OK, Chris Martin's – AKA Mr Paltrow (the one without the shoes) – voice may sound the same as ever with none of the alleged crazed falsetto, but the band do sound distinctly different.

It's almost like U2's Where The Streets Have No Name, played by Avalon-era Roxy Music.

And that's just dandy with us.

Lyrically too, it's a far more ambitious, ambiguous affair than much of the band's slap-you-round-the-face-sentimentality, usually featured on their bigger tracks.

There's also no traditional chorus per se, just a repeated refrain of "If you love me, won't you let me know…" followed by Secret Machines-esque and chord walloping.

And oddly it's this distinct musical phrase, the simplest in the track, that proves the most effective and moving.

But oddest of all is Johnny Buckland's solo.

Eschewing his paint-by-numbers soaring sustained notes, the centrepiece of this song is a melodic light-hearted (jolly even) glam rock guitar loop.

Which-if nothing else on the track-bears the fingerprints of producer Brian Eno, making this latest effort sound little like the band have ever recorded.

It really leaves you expecting a more ambitious experimental album to follow.

And best of all, the more you hear it, the better it sounds...

Alvin And The Chipmunks

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:27:00 +0000

THE once great Hollywood film industry is officially on its knees.

Creatively spent, full of unhappy striking writers, and now left to rummage through the toy box and exhuming the mothballed cartoons of its troubled youth.

And so with every other feature being created by the Judd Apatow juggernaught this year – and hot off the tail(s) of Scooby Doo and Garfield – comes the return of Alvin And The Chipmunks.

Theoretically at least, then, a live-action/animation version of the singing Chipmunks pretty much stands for everything that right-thinking film fanatics should be fervently fighting against.

But there's a problem. It's actually not that bad.

Not groundbreaking, mind you – not like The Snowman or Toy Story – but director Tim Hill's film is so breezy and utterly daft that it's perfect food for the kind of trash your mind occasionally craves after a long day in a steaming office.

The first surprise is that Jason Lee (of My Name is Earl fame) does a sufficiently decent job as the failing songwriter/boyfriend/general human-being Dave Seville.

He's hardly the most three-dimensional, nor most memorable of characters.

Yet it's to the likeable Lee's credit that he happily steps aside to play patsy to the three CGI rendered Chipmunks, who he enlists to pull him out of the mire into song writing stardom.

The next revelation is just how astonishing alive the computerised Alvin, Simon and Theodore (don't pretend like you'd forgotten their names) appear on screen.

Gone are soulless CGI characters, without a glimmer of life of emotion between their eyes. And yes, we're talking about you Scooby Doo and Beowulf.

These lifelike emoting ‘Monks effortlessly sail just the right side of mawkish, with their sadistic slapstick routines recalling the most vintage Tom And Jerry.

All this means that it probably doesn't matter that the plot is pure chipmunk droppings – as some truly desperate and heavy-handed attempts at pathos attest – because you'll be laughing too hard to care.

But mutter all this very quietly, as the official line from headquarters is that we still have unadulterated contempt for the reclamation of cartoon classics for a quick buck.

But on account of its gleeful, brainless pace and sheer belly-laugh quota, we'll let this VERY guilty pleasure slip through the good-taste net just this once.

Out now on DVD.

QI: The B Series

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:09:00 +0000

TAKE one legendary comedian slash actor, renowned for his magnificent wit and, let's be honest, really Quite Intelligence (Stephen Fry).

Mix said national treasure with yet another part comedian part actor, only this one being more renowned for his less-than-Quiet Ignorance (Alan Davis).

And the resulting concoction? Well, it's Quite Interesting. More specifically, it's QI: The B Series.

Now in its fifth series, it's business as usual for the consistently highbrow comedy fixture in an increasingly lowbrow TV schedule.

It's a schedule run by producers who commission ‘My Family' into series four billion, and still persist with the idea that YouTube clips presented by ‘comedian' Lenny Henry make great TV.

‘Lenny Henry dot TV' doesn't, but QI really does.

Its ace was convincing the ever-excellent and irrepressible Fry to take the quizmaster's chair.

His wealth of knowledge is only marred by the inexplicable revelation in the DVD extras that he sometimes has information piped to him by the producers. This is probably a fact you'll want to instantly dismiss, like the first time you hear that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the idea of good ITV drama on Sundays is just pure fantasy.

But the dynamic of the series wouldn't work, without its permanent contestant, Davies. He's the pupil to Fry's teacher; the show's Paul Merton to Fry's Angus Deayton.

This second series is loosely based on the theme of ‘things beginning with the letter B.' Blue, Bombs, and Big Bountiful Bears are therefore just a few of the diverse subjects put on trial.

Yet, while the complex themes change week-by-week, mercifully the simple format does not.

Davies gets the funny buzzer, states the obvious and gets playfully reprimanded because of it while the bewildered guests look on and occasionally chip in with something meaningful.

Company included in this series range from Jeremy Clarkson, John Sessions, Jimmy Carr and Josie Lawrence; all fill in the gaps when neither Fry or Davies have something to say.

On paper, somehow this show really really shouldn't work.

But by God it does and, as a result, it champions the kind of programming that should be propping up TV channels for years in order to offer a much needed alternative to Robert Lindsay.

Quite Interesting? More like Very Interesting.

QI: The B Series is now available in shops as a double DVD.

The Darjeeling Limited

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:17:00 +0000

WES Anderson walks into a bar clad in a white suit, spills his typically pastel-coloured smoothie on his lap, and leaves the bar without a mark on it.

Not the set-up for a woeful comedic turn, but rather the abnormal phenomena of how this director has managed to avoid virtually any backlash in a usually artistically suspicious critical community.

With more stars than a Michelin chef, it seems languid words such as ‘poignant,' ‘quirky,' and ‘visionary' are now positively akin to films with day-glo fish and ‘Look At Me' eccentricities.

But while The Darjeeling Limited is bursting with Anderson's usual vivid aesthetic, the colours are merely from the stunning Indian milieu in his most restrained film since Rushmore.

It's a gorgeous travelogue as three brothers – Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) – embark on a journey of discovery across the continent after their father's death to reaffirm the long-frayed bonds that once connected them.

Soon it's apparent they're a trio of utter screw-ups, full of tacit grief for obvious reasons, and devoid of direction, both in their journey and in their lives, particularly in Francis' case.

The heavily bandaged Texan, for once playing dad, forgoes the usual dippy schtick and emerges as a much more vivid, human presence than in his previous stoner incarnations.

Similarly, Adrien Brody combines pathos with dignity, a very tricky act to pull off.

Essential to the mix is Hotel Chevalier – the short that plays between the main feature – which sees Schwartzman spending fraught moments with his ex (Natalie Portman).

With so many of Jack's gags in the feature stemming from this 12-minute lovers' tryst, his lugubrious, dark-eyed character seems comparatively underwritten without it.

So basically don't take the 'Watch The Film Alone' option on this DVD release.

But despite the great cast and breathtaking sweeping cinematography from Anderson's long-time cohort Robert Yeoman, the film does lose steam once the boys alight from the train, morphing from a considered ensemble act into a series of overwrought set pieces.

But this is still sad, funny and touching – substance FINALLY winning over style.

Extra-wise, the disc is pretty flimsy, which is disappointing, considering other DVDs from the director have been double-disc affairs with commentaries, outtakes and interviews.

Then again, this is Anderson at his rawest: bumph not included.

The Darjeeling Limited is out now on DVD.

Stardust

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:09:00 +0000

IT seems virtually every movie trailer these days features the same tag line designed to cash in on the void left by the books of the boy wizard: ‘it's up one boy to save the world.'

So it was only a matter of time before someone with half a brain – something the Pirates of the Caribbean writers missed – thought about sending a man to do that pretty difficult job.

And thankfully Matthew Vaughn's delightfully colourful and surreal new film pretty much follows that formula to the letter.

Cos at least Stardust's lead Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox) can buy beer, smoke cigarettes and not look at the opposite sex as if they just caught a particularly bad case of leprosy.

Based on a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, the film is remarkably similar to cult director Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, although altogether lighter, sillier, and more cheerfully pointless.

The story – in as much as any film involving flying pirates, edible hearts and Ricky Gervais can be considered to have a plot – revolves around the young Thorn promising his beloved (an icy Sienna Miller) a fallen star by heading off to a magical land bordering his back yard.

But instead of a chunk of warm meteorite, what he finds is a beautiful woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes) who is being chased by three witches to gain eternal life.

Yet despite the thoughtful nonsense of the screenplay, what follows is a beautiful tale that simply cannot fail to captivate with its innocent charm and humour.

A far cry from those terrible mockney films Vaughn produced with Mrs Madonna in the nineties.

It's well-stocked cupboard of truly fantastic – and surprising – performances, particularly from Michelle Pfeiffer in a self-deprecating role as the witch completely obsessed with her beauty.

Similarly Cox strikes the perfect blend as the lead between smouldering hero and bumbling fool.

And then there's Robert De Niro.

While hardly on Goodfellas form, he manages to steal the show as a pirate, both playing homage to and destroying his hard man image with the gentle flutter of a pink-feathered fan.

The sometimes over-the-top CGI and Claire Danes aside – her voice an octave too low to be classed a sexy siren of the sky – Stardust will be propping up DVD shelves for sometime to come.

And yep, it does it without an annoying child actor in sight.

The Counterfeiters

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:42:00 +0000

KATE WINSLET famously proclaimed in Ricky Gervais' Extras that any film about the Holocaust is virtually guaranteed a gaggle of shiny gongs come awards season.

And yep, The Counterfeiters did in fact gobble up a golden Oscar for best foreign language film at this year's ceremony.

But forget the cynics, cos this brave, gripping and thrilling movie deserves every accolade going – and much more besides.

With a title like The Counterfeiters, you'd think writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky would be serving up a jaunty crime caper, in which a Peter Seller-esk forger races around Europe, always one step ahead of Fritz.

In fact, the opening minutes would suggest that very film.

Location: Monte Carlo. Check.

Briefcase stacked with crisp banknotes. Check.

Protagonist Salomon ‘Sally' Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) hitting the tables and striking gold. Check.

Ending the night with some gorgeous floozy. Check.

Yet something is not right with this picture. For one, the anti-hero is completely silent and distant, sagging where there should be swagger.

Soon the key to his incongruous impassivity is revealed with a set of numbers tattooed on his forearm.

Based on the non-fiction book The Devil's Workshop, the original title certainly paints a more sombre image and, arguably, does chime better with the story.

Told in flashback, it centres on a group of concentration camp inmates spared the gas chamber as long as they forge sterling and dollars for their Nazi oppressors.

In fact, the title could even be mistaken for a horror, which isn't entirely inappropriate.

Yet, despite the setting, Ruzowitzky's movie does play more like an adventure movie.

And it's a move that pays off big time, lifting the film above so many of a similar standing.

Rather than tainting the material with irreverence, his decision gives The Counterfeiters a robust dramatic drive and thrilling pace.

Sally, rendered with a suave charm and stiletto-edged ruthlessness by Markovics, has to balance his own instinct for survival with the moral conundrum of the forgers' situation.

The better their work, the more they help the Nazis; the worse job they do, the more likely they are to see the inside of the gas chamber.

Meanwhile, they all know that their time will run out: once they pull off the big scam-the almighty dollar-they'll be surplus to Nazi requirements.

What Ruzowitzky therefore achieves is remarkable.

A balanced and thoughtful movie that always respects the harsh reality in which it is firmly rooted.

The Counterfeiters is now available on DVD.

Doctor Who - Voyage of the Damned

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:11:00 +0000

CHRISTMAS may be a time for goodwill to all men, but that old saying conveniently avoids 900-year-old Converse plimsoll-wearing Timelords.

Funnily enough, it also leaves out robot angels with killer Frisbee haloes and bright-red midget aliens representing a keen amalgamation between porcupine and cyborg.

But I suppose we can at least be thankful that this goodwill doesn't extend to Kylie Minogue – cos as the cast say when she kicks the bucket, "she's atoms, an echo."

That short Aussie blip aside, The Voyage of the Damned (released alongside the Children in Need special and Doctor Who Confidential) doesn't waste much time getting going.

In the first minute, the TARDIS crashes into the spaceship Titantic, a strange theme-park version of the legendary doomed craft on an interplanetary cruise.

By the end of the second, the Doctor has slipped on board, donned a tuxedo, chatted up Kylie, and managed to draw yet ANOTHER bloomin' sidekick to fall in love with him.

Must get me one of those time-travelling blue boxes!

At first, life on board seems fine, with Davies' script finding room to introduce and give a number of characters a pretty serviceable and often rather touching back story.

But being Doctor Who – and Christmas – the ship gets magnetised and is pelted by asteroids, killing most of the passengers, except a band of misfits led by the Christ-like Doctor.

Add to the mix the killer angels and from there the thrills keep on coming.

Soon we have a proper adventure story, a "homage" to 1970s disaster movies, a tale of doomed love, jokes, and plenty more reminders of the Doctor's fundamental loneliness.

Yet despite the barrage of jokes and references, the cast have to work their socks off to keep the messy plot afloat, as it consists mostly of one hi-tech chase scene after another, eventually descending into noise and bluster.

The script also falls down on by virtue of using the same death scene for virtually all the dying characters – both peripheral and leading – making each seem emotionally void somehow.

Similarly, as on The X Factor and recent music releases, there is something faintly depressing about Kylie these days, who just doesn't look vivacious enough to be worth all the fuss.

But if these gigantic plot holes don't deter you – and why should they, it is Doctor Who after all – The Voyage of the Damned is still a fantastically fun and funny frolic.

Just don't expect The Poseidon Adventure on a TV budget!

Voyage of the Damned is available on DVD now!

Walk the Line

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:26:00 +0000

EVER since Elvis copped it on the crapper, the mix of pop and problems has excited almost as many TV movies as broken homes and bowel cancer.

Musicians, we are constantly reminded, sing songs of three minutes and live their lives almost as quickly.

So it probably seems that James Mangold's new biopic about country pioneer Johnny Cash should be about as welcome as a bout of semolina – or a new reality TV show. Add to the mix Taylor Hackford's rather over glossy Ray released just 11 months ago, and there is a strong element of ‘who really cares anymore' surfacing in my grey cells.

Yet while the similarities between both stories are striking – social and political upheaval in the Deep South, coupled with brotherly guilt – thankfully, the two films couldn't be more different.

Where Ray was overblown and precision-engineered for Oscar glory, Mangold's movie is a more composed affair, studiously focused on a slow-burning romance, instead of squeezing an entire life onto screen.

As such, Walk The Line seems more rounded; it may lack some of Ray's pizzazz – heroin is a better ‘evil' than prescription speed – but it moves more smoothly and arrives at a natural stopping place.

Furthermore, Mangold's ultimate creative gamble – for the untested Phoenix and Witherspoon to provide all the film's vocals – pays off handsomely against Foxx miming along in his film.

But it's not so much their impressive impressions, rather it's that the high-wire thrills tendered by watching true amateurs stretch themselves.

And by doing so, it seems not so far detached from the buzz of a real live performance.

Much like those unstoppable Cash riffs the narrative remains on the rails, ticking off major life events and chalking up star cameos, without ever really bringing the Man In Black into the light.

Then again, perhaps it all depends on how black you like it: as a psychological study of the complex Cash, Walk The Line is perfectly pat; as a celebration of the romance between Cash and Carter, it is perfectly sweet.

While Phoenix gives a solid performance as Cash, the brooding actor is acted off screen in almost every scene starring alongside Witherspoon's June.

She is sugar-rush of screwball energy and cornball Southern sass that's meticulously earthed with notes of sadness, hinting at a stolen childhood and broken marriage taking place off screen.

All in all this film is fairly standard biopic fare in a genre that only knows two cords (trouble/sadness).

But with material this catchy and stars this winning, Mangold's movie will have your feet tapping to the beat and your heart occasionally skipping it.

Just like all good music should.

Nicholas Nickleby, Gielgud Theatre

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:17:00 +0000

NICHOLAS Nickleby is an unmissable treat this festive season and is as buttery and nutty as a mince pie, served with a schooner of sweet sherry.

Although darker than the original 1980 adaptation, you'd have to be Scrooge-like not to feel the tiniest bit tearful at this wonderful display of good olde capitalism booting Thatcherite values.

And with with its disabled orphans and choruses of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, the lively cast clearly know how what they're doing - and they do it with added jingle bells.

This two-part, six-hour staging is a staggering celebration of fine storytelling, kept bowling along by directors Philip Franks and Jonathan Church making the best of a single set of huddled houses.

It is performed with rousing gusto by a cast of 27, clearly having the time of their lives, who slip easily between characters and locations - from London, to Yorkshire and to Portsmouth.

And thankfully there's no Dickens figure reading from a dusty book - as with many Dicken's adaptations - with the actors instead turning narrator themselves to give the play a real firey pace.

Daniel Weyman's bright-eyed Nicholas – firm of chin and purpose, if a little fast with his fists – and his impoverished family throw themselves on the mercy of their money-grubbing uncle (David Yelland).

Nicholas is forced to teach at Dotheboys Hall - a dreadful home for unwanted children in Yorkshire - run by the nasty Wackford Squeers, but he runs away with poor Smike (a touching performance from David Dawson), having caned the headmaster.

The pair soon gets entangled with an acting troupe (a chance to enjoy a Victorian Romeo and Juliet - where nobody dies), eventually landing with the cheerful Cheeryble brothers, who combine money-making with good deeds.

Meanwhile, his sister Kate suffers her own privations, as her uncle's financial wealth and moral bankruptcy expose her to harassment by lecherous toffs, further displaying a woman's precarious position through the changing landscape of 1830s England.

But despite this play being most notably a truly first-rate ensemble production, it is still worth mentioning the few stand-out performances amongst a cast of diamonds.

The most delightful actor is Bob Barrett, his Lord Frederick an endearingly vulnerable fledgling, his Yorkshireman a chap who, as described in the novel, makes one happy just to look at him.

And the breathtaking Zoe Waites plays all three of Nick's various love interests, somehow managing to make each character completely different and distinct from the last in the space of minutes.

It seems extraordinary in this day and age that six hours of endurance theatre with no real adult passion – merely brief, unconvincing whispers of love and sex – can be so engrossing.

But Dickens takes us back to a time when our lives weren't our own, when our most desperate desires were for food, warmth and the confidence we wouldn't be hurt by those in charge.

Teeming with absurdity, sentimentality, cruelty, and generosity, this staging of one of Dickens' greatest novels shows us humanity at its worst, but also at its best.

The Lilia Kopylova Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:12:00 +0000

ARRIVING at the London dance studio to meet Strictly Come Dancing’s Lilia Kopylova, I felt like I'd stepped into a Dickensian nightmare.

Wiry women with ramrod backs and steel abs were screeching at shrinking doe-eyed girls trying to learn the delicate and, some might say, impossible art of balance.

A man in an eye-boggling skin-tight costume was casually standing in the corridor bending his leg over his head – whilst chatting away on a mobile phone.

It was obvious Lilia had ordered the News of the World to send their most athletic scribe to turn into a lean, mean, dancing machine – just like she did with Darren Gough and Matt Dawson.

Both times Lilia and her celebrity partners were underdogs in the dance contest but, after weeks of hard work, they both surprised the judges to cha-cha-cha their way into the finals.

But, as I climbed the two flights of stairs to the studio, with the sweat already pouring off my brow – making a distinctly unattractive sight – I felt anything but in the mood for dancing.

I had attended a regular salsa dance evening in a past life, but I was more interested in the music and mojitos, rather than meringue. I simply enjoyed the lively atmosphere.

And when I eventually hit the dance floor after hitting several pitchers of boogie lubricant, I felt sure Fred Astaire would not have been particularly worried at the moves of this clammy lothario.

Keen and dedicated? Without doubt. But talented? Certainly not.

So when Lilia, cute as a button clad entirely in a pink tracksuit, bounded up to shake my decidedly sweaty paw, I flinched with discomfort at the prospect ahead.

Even in her modest training gear, she looked incredible with brown locks cascading over her minuscule shoulders and, annoyingly, she even walked with poise.

This Christmas Lilia is launching her second fitness DVD: LATINATONE. She says Latin dancing provides a great all-over body workout and is something that can be done easily at home.

Immediately I had my doubts.

“I have never tried this routine with a man before,” she giggled. I checked to see whether I’d stopped sweating.

“Hopefully it’ll go well. It will be a kind of experiment, I guess”

I had my reservations but I thought I'd let her put me through my paces – after all, if it was to be an experiment in public humiliation, then she would succeed without stopping to catch breath.

“First we must warm up,” she instructed in a no-nonsense tone. As we bent our legs and stretched our necks I closed my eyes and attempted to channel my inner Patrick Swayze.

“Now we meringue, as I think it’s the easiest of my routines, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble,” Lilia chirped as the music quadrupled into a frantic beat.

“Just follow my lead and try to keep up,” she bellowed against some really funky music.

Her delicate feet became a pink blur as I stumbled along like a pub drunk in my own special rhythm, my face quickly reddening with my first physical exertion since 1993.

“You’re extremely flexible for a man!” she lied.

She then patiently explained to me the trick to salsa is in the loosening of the hips. And sure enough, in the second half of our lesson, I realised I was slowly getting the knack of it.

After a short and relaxing warm down, Lilia allowed me to finally rest to take water, and I took the opportunity to chat more about Strictly Come Dancing to buy time and catch my breath.

“Strictly takes over your life and it’s on your mind 24 hours a day,” she said, showing neither the stress or tiredness of someone who leaves the house every day at 6.30, and returning very late each evening.

“If not practicing or planning the choreography for the next dance a week later, then you are always doing something else. It’s the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

But unlike me, Lilia’s rise to dance stardom was unwavering.

At the age of nine she was already an accomplished ballet dancer, gymnast and figure-skater in her native Russia with her first dance coach Elena Chekotkin.

She said: “Some people say that I am a very hard person, tough, and that is why. If I wanted something, I knew I had to work hard and fight for everything.

“Ballet was not something I enjoyed and I used to hide under the table. I didn’t like it because everyone had to be the same, had to stand on the toes and I couldn’t show my personality.”

As the Soviet Union began to collapse around her, dancing took away and in 1991, alongside partner Mikail Botoshev, became the first Soviet dance pair of their age to compete abroad.

“My parents have always been extremely supportive and are one of the main reasons why I have achieved what I have achieved. They were quite pushy, but it was for me and what I wanted.”

In 1997 she was introduced to amateur dancer and shoe company sales manager Darren Bennett and five months later, they won the International and British Youth Championships.

The couple married 18 months later and are still Britain's leading Latin American dancing pair, and have taken time from their professional careers to take part in Strictly.

“It wasn’t like love at first sight. But after working with Darren we soon found we had the same interests and the goals. We’re both very similar in character and we really suit each other.”

With my breath finally returning and my brain switched back into forward gear, I quizzed her on her partner this year, Dominic Littlewood, whom she holds in great affection.

Giggling at the very mention of his name, she said: “Ah yes, little Dominic. There is nobody on this planet who is more competitive than Dominic Littlewood. He’s just a total nutter.”

But despite her good nature and laid-back persona, the tiny dancing was still unhappy by the unceremonious way that the pair left this year’s competition, fueled by Littlewood’s comments.

“I think there were certain things he said that shouldn’t have said, so I kind of had the feeling that we going out early. I was not happy by some of his comments, put that it way.”

She added: “The judges are just there to make pantomime. It doesn’t matter what they say. Sometimes they say something that’ll affect your partner, but you just have to take it.”

And with the final next week, how about a tip for this year’s winner?

“I’d like Alesha [Dixon] to win because I think she is really very good dancer.”

With Lilia's sheer enthusiasm for dancing and abundant energy, I was ready more. But just as I was going to demonstrate the funky chicken, I was informed my time was up.

Lilia rolled her eyes at me, and I exited the room with that extra bit of wiggle.

The next morning, having dreamt of my name glowing in fluorescent lights and a career on stage, I swung my legs out of bed and nearly keeled over.

With screaming muscles and a body worked to within an inch of its life, I had to concede that Lilia was right. LATINATONE certainly is a good workout.

Now where did I put my sequinned leotard?

Surf's Up

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:09:00 +0000

SURF'S UP is another animated film about those cute and adorable penguins that we fell in love with during March of the Penguins and Happy Feet.

And this new flick even manages to parody a documentary. What on earth could possibly go wrong?

Well, quite a lot as it happens.

The 'mockumentary' charts the story of Cody, the young penguin surfer dude from Shiverpool, Antarctica, who grows up worshipping the biggest penguin surfer on the planet, Big Zee (Jeff Bridges).

He's then recruited by a Don King-type talent scout to enter the big time in the Pacific, but he soon learns there is much more surfing than winning competitions and trophies.

But the trouble is this lacks the quality, depth and wow factor of similar penguin-related films.

That Jeff Bridges' laidback Big Lebowski-style Big Zee doesn't show up until around halfway through the movie is nothing short of an epic tragedy.

Cos instead, you have to suffer through a painful attempt to mix the Office with Aardman Animations. And by painful, I don't mean Ricky Gervais' hilarious crab-like dance.

The faked newsreel footage acts as a truly second-rate Creature Comforts, with the penguins - which as we know from Nick Park are treacherous, jewel-thieving gits - squirming in front of the camera in a familar format.

It probably would have been a nice idea if we hadn't already been spoilt by the sheer quality and talent of Blighty's own masters of the stop-motion camera.

Plus, this hasn't got that added 'wow' of knowing each individual frame was hand-moulded over hours and hours in plasticine - indeed, the CGI is well below par by today's impressive standards.

All in all, the quality of this script feels as if it could have easily been condensed into around a 20minute short.

But then again, with March of the Penguins and Happy Feet, you've probably got your penguin fix already.

The Simpsons Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:05:00 +0000

THE Simpsons stormed the big screen with a well-written script, filled with fast paced gags, great animation and fantastic set pieces.

Yet for some reason its DVD release somehow manages to lose much of its original cinematic magic.

It's almost enough to make Homer scream, "D'OH!"

When the film was released on the silver screen, there was something almost hallucinatory in seeing the characters at giant size, especially swooping through the landscape for the (modified) opening credits.

And when Lisa's yellow face filled the screen for the first time it felt like some sort of acid trip.

However, that initial shock value - the kind of shock that created smiles the size of Springfield Gorge - is now replaced with an anticlimactic sense that you are now merely watching an extended episode.

But criticism aside, boy what an episode.

The story, too silly to summarise, involves Homer saving Springfield from President Arnold Schwarzenegger who declines to consult any briefing document: "I vos elected to lead, not read."

Yep, on that summary it probably does sound bloomin' dreadful.

Then again, when did The Simpsons ever really rely on stable plots to see them through?

The writing just puts everything else to shame, in the cinema just as on television. Although at eighty-five minutes it is not really long enough to do justice to 17 years of comedy genius.

The film even alludes to Dr Strangelove, Spellbound, and The Truman Show - what other flick could ever hope to keep up with The Simpsons perpetual motion machine of intelligent comedy?

Yet, reconfiguring The Simpsons as a feature film has meant scaling back the ensemble cast, but in general these sacrifices work as it creates more conventional drama within the actual family itself.

That does mean however there isn't much screen time for the likes of Montgomery Burns. Although he almost steals the show with one outstanding line: "So! For once the rich white man is in control!"

Similarly, Police Chief Whiggum is relegated to one line, munching doughnuts off the barrel of his gun, and almost blowing his head off when his mobile phone goes off: "Whew! That was a close one!"

But, probably the most important question: what of the big yellow fella himself?

Well Homer is an absolute comedic dream whenever he's on, especially when he conceives an inappropriate love for a pig, which he ends up asking: "Maybe we should kiss to break the tension ..."

Marge comes back just in time: "What's going on here?" Brilliant.

Furthermore, Homer's character in the movie is given a far greater level of pathos than on TV, which perhaps makes his redemption in front of Springfield an even more rewarding endnote.

So many movies promise what they could never deliver in a million years, but The Simpsons Movie gives you almost everything you could possibly want.

And like Homer with his delicious donuts, I could happily feast on it until the wee hours of the morning.

John Barrowman - Another Side

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:56:00 +0000

ALBUM: JOHN BARROWMAN – Another Side (Sony BMG)

THERE'S not a lot wrong with John Barrowman – the all-singing, all-dancing, American pansexual and saviour of the Universe (AKA TV’s Torchwood) – and his new covers album 'Another Side.'

A fantastic voice, an absolutely cracking track-list and, after two simultaneous listens, I was spinning around lampposts, clicking my heels and thinking I was in a West End musical.

But the trouble is that it's all just a bit too bloomin' perfect.

And yes, it's a strange criticism I grant you.

Barrowman is a successful and accomplished singer and actor in musical theatre and so, as you might expect, his voice is decidedly light, smooth and elegant, without a single crack in it.

Each word is clearly enunciated, something that you probably can't say about most of the artists he is covering, and the album is full of beautiful love songs and power ballads.

But while his voice is pleasant enough to the ears, throughout much of the album his Achilles heel is his trouble touching the listener's heart or provoking an emotional response.

Indeed, the tricky thing about covers is that unless you can add to them or re-interpret them – à la Mark Ronson's Versions, or the Easy Star All Stars' Radiodread – then what's the point?

As such, Barrowman seems to miss that distinctly haunting quality from "Time After Time," or the edgy sarcasm and world-weariness that gave a real kick to "You're So Vain."

Similarly, Bryan Adams' "Heaven," and the pop crooner's standard "All By Myself" are sung competently enough, but without really adding anything to their originals.

Furthermore, there's that inexplicable thing that appeals to us about a lot of great songs: as there's no such thing as the perfect song, they are made great by their flaws.

Here they're re-created flawlessly by a piano and an orchestra that's perfectly in time (but doesn't sound real), produced in a studio that could drive a mission to Mars.

But if you're thinking this is another soulless Lee Mead effort – think again.

It's on Sondheim's "Being Alive," the album's best track, that Barrowman really shoots the album beyond obscurity with soaring vocals on an up-tempo tune on the mostly slower-paced disk.

And then he gives a sultry, assured rendition of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good," along with a Latin cover of The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," kicking in with a full mariachi band for the chorus.

Clearly Barrowman should stick to the full-on and energetic style for his next album, rather than the slower stuff, as it's here where he obviously feels at home; it suits his exuberant personality.

It's this arena where he sounds most turned-on – so to speak – and keyed-in, and shows through in these tracks that he is enjoying himself, rather than just going through the motions.

And when Barrowman's on song, I dare you not to sing along to at least one!

'Another Side' is out now.

Lee Mead - Lead Mead

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:12:00 +0000

ALBUM: LEE MEAD - Lee Mead (Polydor)

This debut album from Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest leading man is a fairly solid start to his recording career - but at times, this first effort is as unimaginative as his album title.

Perhaps that's a little harsh on the 'Any Dream Will Do' winner as he can really belt out a tune.

Indeed he's got a decent voice and the track listing - including a surprisingly good slowed-down version of the Sugababe's 'Stronger' - does manage to showcase his entire range.

But the problem with much of the album is that it acts like a shop window for his next West End role, with some truly average show-style tracks sung in a hum-drum fashion.

And there's that version of David Essex's 'Gonna Make You A Star' to contend with.

An utterly desperate song sung in such a bland way through stage-school tonsils that it will have you wondering whether the artist has finally stumbled across the musical equivalent of 'beige.'

Similarly, Mead's 'Paint It Black' lacks the high-energy of his live and enthusiastic TV performance of the Rolling Stones classic, which went down so well with the voting public earlier this year.

But despite the lack of ambition and somewhat tinny production on this disk, I've no doubt it will certainly tick all the right boxes and really appeal for its intended audience.

And they will lap it up in their thousands.

It's just a shame that this bright young talent didn't dream a little bit further afield.

'Lead Mead' is released on November 19 and 'Gonna Make You A Star' is released on December 3.

Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:30:00 +0000

SINGLE: AMY WINEHOUSE - Love Is A Losing Game (Island/Universal)

This enchanting new single from Amy Winehouse's universally acclaimed album "Back To Black" is quite simply heartbreaking.

It's heartbreaking because the vocals to this slinky ballad, produced by Mark Ronson, demonstrate Winehouse's own particular brand of suffocating heartache, which has provided so much fodder for her music.

Indeed it is executed with an understated and subtle brilliance as she thoughtfully declares, "For you I was the flame / Love is a losing game / Five storey fire as you came / Love is a losing game."

It's heartbreaking because as the drums kick in at the start, she is almost relentlessly philosophical, piling metaphor on metaphor with a somewhat resigned air about her voice.

No longer is the troubled singer crying, "no, no, no."

Instead, she is wistful and defines the feeling of love as being "a losing hand," with more emotion crammed into two and half minutes than the entire back catalogue from any number of X Factor stars.

But most of all, this track is heartbreaking because the real fear is that we may never experience such beautiful tracks from Winehouse again as she continues further and further down the path into self ruin.

And that is the truly heartbreaking thing.

For all those who love her music - and despite the Birmingham booing, that is still a hell of a lot - that love could also be a losing game.

Love Is A Losing Game is released December 10.

Ricky Gervais: Fame

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:15:00 +0000

A FEW months ago critics were gunning for Ricky Gervais, saying that he'd lost it and was no longer funny anymore – were they all having a laugh?

Because not only was his third stand-up tour the fastest selling in history, but this is easily his funniest and most confident routine to date.

And he didn't even need to do 'that dance.'

Gervais has always presented himself as a self-parodying character, possessed of a monstrous ego who constantly refers to his legion of awards and bank-balance.

No surprise then that 'Fame' opens with his name writ large in lights on stage, a giant replica Emmy acting a beer caddie and a ‘Stars in their Eyes' litany of his achievements.

But hang on a minute. Are these meant to be ironic or, as recent Gervais-bashers have waffled, do they indicate the Office star's need to remind us just exactly how good he is?

Well it's probably a bit of both and a reminder to his public of the paradox of fame: that while it shouldn't be taken seriously, it is possible to be human enough to have your head turned just a little.

But iIf this all sounds rather philosophical, fear not.

Gervais explores ‘celebrity' through a mixture of anecdotes about urine stains at the doctors, cottaging, and using the sink for things other than dishes, all brilliantly mixed with jokes about cancer, autism, ME and obesity.

There's even time for a crowd-pleasing mention of internet hero Karl Pilkinton.

And yes this is all familiar territory and it'll probably be the way of the much anticipated Extras Christmas special, but this new DVD release feels markedly different to any of his previous shows.

He is much more relaxed on stage and this clearly trickles down into his audience.

Indeed, there is almost a friendly complicity with those in the stalls, and you can no longer sense that uncomfortable gut-wrenching feeling in wrestling with the PC nature of his gags.

He now that we know he doesn't mean it, and that he's actually a really nice bloke who does a lot for charity. As a result, he no longer needs to justify the character he plays on stage.

There's also less of that sneery-superior persona (despite the flamboyant opening).

Instead it's replaced by a man genuinely having fun on stage and perhaps, for the first time ever, gives us a sense of what Ricky Gervias might really be like as himself.

But at the end of the day, who cares who he is when he can deliver some absolute observational gems.

On the subject of the new government advertising campaign about consensual sex, he says, outraged, 'What kind of society has to remind people not to rape?'

Referring to the rumour that Richard Gere liked to put hamsters up his bottom, Gervais confesses that even he, if he visited Gere's house and saw a pet hamster, would be tempted to sniff it.

Some of his other material might not be the most original of observations, but coupled with Gervais' impeccable timing, it becomes the stuff of comedy gold.

Although the show itself feels a little slight - just over the hour mark - the DVD release more than makes up for it with a bizarre interview from Karl Pilkington and a video diary from Robin Ince on life with Ricky.

And besides, didn't all those critics recently try to remind Ricky that less is better?

Yep, they were having a laugh.

Frankie Boyle, The Arts Theatre

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:20:00 +0000

MOCK THE WEEK star Frankie Boyle does what few other comedians do with big sell-out tours. He tells jokes, brilliant jokes, one after the other and then goes home.

And by stripping away all the gimmicks, all the post-modernism and textured ‘journeys,' we get an hour and half of brutal one-liners from one of the best gag-writers in the business.

Self-indulgent catchphrase comedy this ain't: Hallelujah!

From the second the Glaswegian walks onto the small London stage, he grips the audience by the throat, acting as his own warm up man by interacting with an unlucky front-row.

"You look like somebody's shaved a monkey and kicked it all the way through Topman," he says after spying at a particularly squeaky-voiced 19-year-old and using him as early road kill.

This has the desired effect and offers a neat-way for him to hurl himself into a barrage of brilliantly observed material, with everything from sex, paedophiles and even Osama Bin Laden.

There's even time for a dig at the saintly Jamie Oliver, who Boyle cheekily surveys has "done well for someone with low-level Down's Syndrome."

Without risk of spoiling all his best jokes to prove his ‘funny,' the effect is lost without him shooting each one like a powerful punch and slyly pushing his glasses à la Woody Allen.

Plus he's got hundreds of one-liners, punctuated only by cynical chuckles from the man himself.

However despite the nature of his comedy, you never get the feeling throughout his set – or in his television shows – that Boyle is someone merely courting controversy for the sake of it.

Instead he stands as a bewildered spectator railing acerbically against all the nonsense and cultural dross that surrounds him with eye-popping and alarmingly accuracy.

Indeed, he ushers us similarly bewildered spectators through this world with the sheer brilliancy of his ear for the absurd, and keeps us hooked on the vivid word-pictures he fashions.

A faulty door on a train toilet becomes being "unveiled like a prize on a quiz show" and Bin Laden is bigger than Michael Jackson, "but doesn't really put much effort into his videos, does he?"

He might unapologetically hate the English – in fact he is pretty much unapologetic about most things – but Frankie Boyle delivers fantastically classic stand-up from the old school of comedy.

You will struggle to find more gags for your money.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:51:00 +0000

IN the approaching months, it seems every film will have a digit after the title – a worryingly high digit, in most cases – like the first half of a catastrophic score line in which the second half should read: Entertainment Nil.

We're already suffered Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3 (Oceans 13 still to come). Now comes Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the most depressing and expensive maritime disaster since the sinking of the Lusitania.

Leading up to the film's release, the whole of China had been inundated with billboards bearing the news of P3's imminent arrival, like an announcement of plague.

Its lead actors – Depp, Knightly, Bloom – appear as walking adverts for suntan products, with the products presumably coated in a glaze that repels the daylight of criticism.

This time Will (Bloom) and Elizabeth (Knightley), a couple with as much romantic chemistry as two dead herrings, set off to find Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp), who apparently now dwells in a surrealist Davy Jones' locker.

The fact that Sparrow can return so effortlessly after dying in the last film – "we need to sell more Jack Sparrow figurines" – is clearly a plot device that must have caused the writers a good few seconds of biro chewing.

The first two films barely escaped the Disney writer's convoluted plots by virtue of decent jokes followed by outrageously camp, and genuinely funny action sequences.

This, by contrast, throws those winning elements overboard and replaces them with a dreadfully boring and leaden exposition, with almost every bit of it incomprehensible or unbelievable.

Also gone is the idea that a pirate is a predator, an anti-sociable being, with the audience being encouraged to laughably view them as freedom-loving guys with a delightful anarchic streak.

Indeed, with the moral compass out of the window, Knightley's character in particular demonstrates that becoming a pirate is now, essentially, a fashion choice.

And while her attempt to a deliver a climatic, Henry V-style speech to her pirate fleet was embarrassing enough, her inexplicable wardrobe makes her look like a little girl playing dress-up, with a tea cosy on her head.

Even a late cameo can't save the fact that this film is weightless, thoughtless, and utterly pointless.

But then again, anything I write is also futile.

We all know that this film is critic proof, that it'll be a big hit, and that, sadly, you've probably already seen.

To Change China: Western Advisers In China

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 11:43:00 +0000

JONATHAN D. Spence, a British-born historian and Sterling Professor at Yale, sums up the motives for Westerners coming to China in a single sentence: "Implicit in most of their actions was a more complex motive, a desire not so much to help China as to help themselves."

While To Change China is a book of easy conclusions like this, they fail to detract from an intelligent and non-sensationalist account of more than 300 years of Chinese history.

Spence's main argument is that the 16 advisers he profiles came to China with remarkably similar attitudes of cultural superiority, yet all failed to enact the changes they had originally planned.

Almost all of them possessed a preconceived notion of how and what they wanted to change; yet Chinese realities inevitably altered the effectiveness and, ultimately, the form of change for which they strove.

Many were simply used by the Chinese for their technical skills, and accomplished little else.

Spence concludes that upon realising this, they either threw themselves further into work, or resigned, arguing that the Chinese were "unworthy to receive Western help."

For early Jesuit missionaries, this led to a feeling of ambiguity, as their confidence in Western superiority was challenged by equally strong Chinese beliefs.

Two hundred years later, missionary educators like Edward Hume realised that their goals were increasingly incompatible with rising Chinese nationalism.

Hume, reflecting on his work, criticised his colleagues for a "Western insistence on certain traditions, and a Western judgment on each passing phenomenon."

Spence, an author of 12 books on Chinese history, succeeds here in providing each account with excellent first-person detail.

But, while it is well written, the prose is sometimes sluggish, and the conclusions occasionally narrow.

One also cannot fail to see the irony of a Westerner dissecting the pitfalls of Western advisers in China.

Spider-Man 3

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:21:00 +0000

IT seems that all superheroes have to be ‘dark' these days in order to demonstrate their utter seriousness and counteract ‘geek' tags thrown at them by those who don't regularly inhabit comic book stores.

The formula is now such an exact science that directors now appreciate that a 30-year-old man pretending to be a teenager and wearing skin tight oufits as a career choice is little short of ludicrous.

Therefore in order to walk the line, resisting the darkness inside us all becomes the theme for the third in the extremely profitable Spider-Man movie franchise.

With life finally going well for Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) his world gets turned upside down – yet again – when he somehow bitten – yet again – by an alien parasite from a meteor crash.

Soon, he is getting around in an ominous new Spidey cozzie and, not only that, he has turned into a bit of a meanie.

The new dark costume and everything is represents is sadly the kind of frying-pan subtlety we have come to expect from all the overblown summer blockbusters.

As his alter ego Parker – who wears the kind of unnerving grin that will probably keep Maguire in villain work for years to come – he suddenly starts adopting a kind of floppy fringe.

It also appears that he has started to raid Aunt May's makeup bag on a regular basis and taken to wearing eyeliner.

Too much time listening to the Cure perhaps?

However, while SM3 has its moments – such as some truly stunning Manhattan battle scenes – the writing for this film is sloppy throughout with no satisfying unified story.

This is further muddied by the fact Mary-Jane (Kirsten Dunst) has already learnt the hero's secret identity.

Similarly, there's no clear villain to boo and, by the end, no clear hero to cheer. Instead of one well-developed enemy, such as the tortured genius of Doc Ock, there are two, even three if you count another who pops up right at the end.

But the main problem with the film is that it pretty much abandons the complexity and real world pain that made the first two movies so compelling.

Parker's journey into psychological turmoil is more camp than anything else, which writer-director Sam Reini seems to concede by sending the whole thing up and turning him into a black-clad-finger-snapping-hipster; a one man rat-pack of spite.

After three films and for the sake of credibility perhaps the time has come for someone to produce a rolled-up newspaper the size of a subway train and bring it down on the Spidey franchise with an almighty crash.

It is inevitable though that we shall probably have to wait for the fourth film – even the fifth – before that happens.

Casino Royale

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:43:00 +0000

ON the big screen, Daniel Craig has shown himself capable of taking on a British icon: a man of cool, cruel resolve, mesmerising sex appeal and a deadly destructive way with dames.

But that's enough about his performance as Ted Hughes.

Cos now he has finally taken on the biggest mantle of them all – James Bond: 007.

And the result is a death-defying, female-back-fondling, and cocktail-recipe-specifying triumph that should have all the moaners on the blogosphere hanging their heads in shame.

Quite simply, Craig was inspired casting.

He has effortless presence and lethal danger.

He brings a serious actor's ability to a fundamentally unserious part; he brings out the playfulness and the absurdity, yet never sends it up.

With his unsmiling demeanour and unfashionably, even un-British dirty blond hair, the key to his X-factor is that Craig looks as if he would be equally at home playing a Bond villain.

This is the story of Bond's beginning, transferred forward in time to a post-9/11 present, starting with 007 earning his official double-rating through two extremely violent killings, shot in grainy monochrome.

His spurs earned, he gets to tackle his first super-villain: Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), accountant and financier to international terrorists everywhere, although specific Middle Eastern groups are coyly left unmentioned.

M (Judi Dench) even implies that manipulating airline stock prices was a motivating factor for 9/11 – a sly piece of cynicism that would have amused Fleming himself.

The supremely silly idea is that Bond, an amateur card-player, will relieve Le Chiffre of all his money – and thus, the terrorists of their resources – at a high-rollers' card game.

The Treasury official accompanying Bond and fronting up zillions of pounds of taxpayer's cash is the slinky Miss Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who speaks English in a residual French accent that makes her sound permanently sarcastic.

Craig strikes some very erotic sparks with Green, with some loaded bantering over dinner in a first-class railway compartment, and finally, from him, a dead-straight passionate declaration of love.

Sweetly, Bond doesn't have sex with anyone else in the film.

Vesper is to break his heart, though, and the movie cleverly shows that all Bond's mannerisms and steely reserve grow from this prehistory of doomed romance.

The film thankfully movie also retains one important element from Fleming's 1953 novel: Bond gets tortured – in the nude! – by Le Chiffre, who whips his scrotum with knotted rope after commenting that he has "looked after his body."

However, this is still not a back-to-basics Bond.

The franchise still apparently needs concealed advertising around ever corner, with a very unsubtle glimpse of chief product placer himself, Sir Richard Branson.

But negatives aside, Daniel Craig manages the impossible after the instantly forgettable Die Another Day: to bring off cinema's most preposterous role with insouciant grit.

For the first time in ages, I am actually looking forward to the next James Bond movie.