Film
The Lovely BonesMonday, 15 February 2010![]() The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s 2002 bestseller about a murdered 14-year-old who hovers in metaphysical limbo over her grieving family, was once to have been filmed by the Scottish director Lynne Ramsay. On the evidence of Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and... Read more... |
DVDs Round-Up 4Saturday, 13 February 2010![]() Our February DVD releases are light on stars, heavy on variety. We range from the Amazon rain forest to female wrestling and killer futons (we're not joking) in Japan and clandestine video reportage in Burma; from Pushkin’s Russia to Darwin’s... Read more... |
A Single ManFriday, 12 February 2010![]() Everything has been immaculately planned for the big event of the evening: the prized possessions arrayed like trophies on the desk, the chosen suit laid out ready to wear, the perfectly colour co-ordinated tie alongside it with a note specifying, "... Read more... |
Film has world premieres in Romford, Greenwich, Bethnal Green, Feltham....Thursday, 11 February 2010![]() The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, today announced a new initiative, London Film Day. Sunday 21 March will see 15 simultaneous world premieres at suburban cinemas across the capital from Wood Green and Wandsworth to (stretching the definition of... Read more... |
Letter from an Unknown WomanThursday, 11 February 2010![]() They always used to say that the worst books make the best films, and that the best books don’t prosper so much on screen. But then there are always complicated exceptions. In another life perhaps Stefan Zweig would have made a matchless... Read more... |
The WolfmanWednesday, 10 February 2010![]() It was down to technological error that Spielberg couldn’t show you much shark. The mechanised rubber fish wasn’t working properly on set, but the studio told the director to carry on shooting anyway. Result: a genuinely terrifying film. Filmmakers... Read more... |
Beyond the PoleTuesday, 09 February 2010![]() Do the words “British film comedy” cause your heart to sink as deeply as they do mine? Thought so. I wish I could say Beyond the Pole, which is perhaps the first eco-comedy and was made with the intention of raising awareness about polar melting... Read more... |
PonyoSaturday, 06 February 2010![]() Tucked away down a sleepy residential back alley in suburban Tokyo, Studio Ghibli, the headquarters of Hayao Miyazaki, is designed - by the visionary animator himself - in the shape of a boat. When I visited it five years ago, just before the... Read more... |
An eruption of pop-up cinemasFriday, 05 February 2010![]() Pop-up cinemas, like restaurants, shops and galleries, are, well, popping up all over the place these days, but one of the pioneers has been Secret Cinema. This outfit claims, grandly, to have been "revolutionising the traditional cinematic... Read more... |
Raspberry ripples and Oscar odditiesThursday, 04 February 2010Although the UK Film Council lost no time in firing out the usual self-congratulatory press release, it has been a thin year for British nominees at this year's Oscars. And, as Kim Newman, my colleague from the London Film Critics' Circle, points... Read more... |
InvictusThursday, 04 February 2010![]() There is a problem with Nelson Mandela. He is, it is universally agreed, a remarkable man. His profound humanity is undoubted. He is on first-name terms with saintliness. When eventually he shuffles off his mortal coil, every newspaper on the planet... Read more... |
Youth in RevoltTuesday, 02 February 2010![]() With a wackiness rating of 7.5 and a subject-matter (precocious teens coming of age over one long summer) that scores off the chart for over-familiarity, there seems every likelihood that Youth in Revolt will inspire audience revulsion. Luckily the... Read more... |
