This morning I sat down to watch the Borrowers on TV for what has to be the fifth time. Every time I watch I find myself asking the same question, when is the film suposed to be set?

The cars sugest to me 50's or 60's, but John Goodman is clearly using a mobile phone.

Anyone?

Barton Fink

(Minor spoilers only)

Tagline: “Between Heaven and Hell There's Always Hollywood! “

This Coen Brothers film is a fabulous black comedy with some very dark depths to be plumbed. In 1941, the serious, intellectual playwright Barton Fink, played goofily by John Turturro, has a very successful play in New York with his theatre for the common man, for everybody. He accepts an offer from Hollywood and arrives in Los Angeles to be told that he must write a wrestling movie for Wallace Beery. He sees this as beneath him and gets serious writers block.

An atmosphere of almost surreal strangeness persists from start to end: the opening shot is a slow zoom towards some fading wallpaper. I was reminded strongly of the film Delicatessen by several sequences and the overall ambience of dampness and decay. Barton’s LA hotel is dreadful. The wallpaper literally peels off the walls and when he attempts to put it back in place, he gets slime all over his hands (and this matches well the slimy Hollywood people we meet later). The bedspread is faded, the windows won‘t open and there is a mosquito buzzing round his room.

As with many of his films John Goodman steals it, playing a larger than life insurance salesman. He is in the room next to Barton’s and when they meet, Barton tells him of his writer’s block. Goodman attempts to tell him stories from real life, from a common man. 3 times he tries, but on each occasion Barton talks over him and doesn’t listen. This is one of the themes of the film: Barton thinks he can describe the life of everyday folk just by thinking about it, and he is of course wrong. “The life of the mind” as he puts it, and this phrase comes back terrifyingly from Goodman at the end of the film. But it goes deeper than that: Barton doesn’t really want to know about the common man and doesn’t want to know about the world. He’s not interested in Goodman and all that seethes beneath his surface and he never even opens the approximately head-sized box he is presented with: he is uncurious and that is no way for a writer to be. The tale takes a very dark turn towards the end, with Goodman’s character turning out to be something far worse than a simple insurance salesman.

The cinematography is excellent and the scenes inside the hotel in particular are beautifully done. Brown tones dominate and the whole has a feeling of seediness, rot and dereliction. The camera doesn’t move much, but zooms slowly giving a calm feeling to the proceedings. Every performance is note perfect.

Three types of writers come in for great criticism from this film: playwrights, film writers and authors. Authors are represented by John Mahoney brilliantly playing a constantly soused author and his lover/assistant Judy Davis who actually writes his books for him. As well as writers, Hollywood is ripped to pieces by this film. The bosses he meets are loud, brash, rude and only interested in money. They shout, badger and bully and appear to completely lack sensitivity, and they are played to perfection by those who clearly know the people they are portraying. Michael Lerner in particular is excellent.

The tagline at the top was carefully chosen, but the hellishness should be taken allegorically rather than literally. This film is really about different sorts of hell, including but not limited to these:

Fink’s personal hell inside his own mind where he wrestles with his own “inner demons“.
The hell that is Hollywood
The hell that is the lives of normal people
Nazism
The creative writing process
Socialism
Murder

It isn’t all laid out on a plate for the viewer. There are symbols galore and we can each choose what to make of them.

But this film is flawed. It drags a little in places, the characters are over-stereotyped, and if I’m being completely honest there are too many sub-themes that go nowhere, too many hints about what might be that aren’t explored and could have been left out and as a result it feels laboured. But it is funny, well-acted, surprising and always looks excellent. But if you want a straight, simple story, this is not the film for you.

Cheers, Tom.

Ok, I'm slightly excited over here. I have just heard (and I don't know why nobody has bothered telling me before) that they are making a new Terminator film, called Terminator: Salvation.
Before you say anything, I am not giving in to my 10 year old boy excitement at this prospect just yet. I saw 'Rise of the Machines' and was annoyed by the gimmicks (a Terminatrix), the self-awareness (haha) and Arnie occasionally playing for laughs, which was a bit of a travesty since I always rated Terminator as a serious bit of Sci-Fi along side Alien and Blade Runner. The plot was good, but Arnie looked a bit saggy around the chops and things started to get silly towards the end, with all the Babylon 5 type robots attacking them.
There is reason to rejoice however and that is the very deliberate casting of Christian Bale in the role of John Connor (the tactic so far is working for me). Since what he did with the Batman franchise was near miraculous following the dire 'Batman & Robin' with George Clooney, it is more than possible for Bale to do the same since T3, which in retrospect wasn't that bad, but was bad enough that I apologise on behalf of the fan base whenever introducing the film to a novice. I'm not a fan of Star Wars, but it's a similar dynamic when people who are unfamiliar with the series rent out Episode I.
I only hope they don't make the mistake of re-casting Arnie as a Terminator again. They haven't for 'Salvation', but as the feedback for this latest installment has been so positive, apparently the green-light has been given to make a further two or something ridiculous. Don't cast Arnie. He's too old and saggy now. Terminators are meant to look like the pinacle of human stregnth - intimidating and slightly unrealistic. Arnie, bless him, has passed that stage. And before anyone says it NO CAMEO either, that includes a possible walk on part as a human member of the resistance on which the Terminator was originally based. I can see what they're thinking. No. Terminator is a serious bit of Sci-Fi, not worthy of dumb jokes and nudge nudge wink wink irony. I am sure there are many muscular and squareheaded budding actors who would relish the role of playing a robot and they should give it to them. Besides, from what I gather this is going to be more about two humans than a relationship with a Cybernetic organism. Rutger Hauer? I'd like to see him again. But not Keanu Reeves... it seems to be taking Hollywood an awful long time to realise that the poor man can't act at all. They only keep using him based purely on the success of the Matrix, and after watching the two sequals, one realises that the Wachowski Brothers clearly had no idea what they were doing either - they probably thought Reeves played the part of Neo with the conviction, subtelty and nuance of Jeremy Irons in Brideshead.

Hi to everybody...we've just sat and watched 'Amazing Grace'. It's being shown on Sky Premiere at the moment if you have access to it but, if not, it is well worth viewing by some other means...here's the story...and the main cast and characters, all of who act superbly...I've borrowed the review from Wikipedia because it's a very good one.
The film begins with Wilberforce severely ill and taking a holiday in Bath, Somerset, with his cousin, Henry Thornton. It is here that he is introduced to his future wife, Barbara Spooner. Although he at first resists, she convinces him to tell her about his life. The story flashes back 15 years to 1782, and William recounts the events that led him to where he is now. Beginning as an ambitious and popular Member of Parliament (MP), William was persuaded by his friends William Pitt, Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More and others to take on the dangerous issue of the British slave trade which led him to become highly unpopular in the House of Commons amongst the Members of Parliament representing vested interests of the trade in the cities of London, Bristol, and Liverpool.

Exhausted, and frustrated that he was unable to change anything in the government, William becomes physically ill (the diagnosis in the film is colitis, most commonly known today as Crohn's disease), which brings the story back to the present day. Having virtually given up hope, William considers leaving politics forever. Barbara convinces him to keep fighting because if he does not, no one else is capable of doing so. A few days afterward, William and Barbara marry; and William, with a renewed hope for success, picks up the fight where he had previously left off, aided by Thornton, Clarkson and James Stephen. In time, after many attempts to bring legislation forward over twenty years, he is eventually responsible for a bill being passed through Parliament in 1807, which abolishes the slave trade in the British empire forever.

It should be noted that the film stops short of showing the continued fight for abolition, which did not happen until 1833, only weeks prior to Wilberforce's death.

And here's who is in it...Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce, Romola Garai as Barbara Spooner, who became Wilberforce's wife, Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt the Younger, Albert Finney as John Newton, who wrote the song, Amazing Grace, still sung all round the world, and Michael Gambon as Charles James Fox.

Don't think you'll regret giving this a viewing...it is inspiring...made me wonder why we don't have a William Wilberforce day to honour him because he did change the world, and a remarkable role model for perseverence and a man of honour and peace...

This movie - Rita, Sue and Bob Too! - is an excellent comedy by the British director Alan Clarke (who also directed films like "Scum" and "Made In Britain"). If you have seen those films or know of Clarke, this will give a clue about the setting - it's typically working-class with no sentimentality or condescension. The film itself is essentially a sex comedy, with a man (Bob, surprisingly enough) in a stale marraige conducting an affair with their teenaged babysitters, and the (mis)adventures resulting.

But the film is also an extremely sharp analysis of class and social mores in the mid-1980s, with Bob an example of the successful working-class man in a middle-class environment, Rita and Sue in a school straight out of "Kes", and Sue's shoddy homelife is shown precisely, yet humourously and empathetically. Similarly, the interlude where Sue dates an Asian boy is deft and precise, but still funny (the scene where he invites her to "lie down" is classic, and a lesson for all shy boys out there...).

Although the precision of the setting does date the film, the warmth, satire and social commentary remain, making this a little gem of a film. It's also unusually humourous for an Alan Clarke film or play, which are usually searingly intense, but a little light relief is a good thing, as I'm sure Bob would agree!

All-in-all, Rita, Sue and Bob Too! is one of those films you'll want to watch again and again.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too! - Dance music mash-up

If you've never seen this film before, then here's a little teaser I have found for you - which someone has mixed in with some dance music, which might not be your cup-of-tea - that will give you an idea of what's in store for you when you do see it.

Warning: The following video is NSFW (not safe for work)...

If 'The Matrix' was installed on a PC that was running the 'Microsoft Windows XP' operating system, then the movie they made about it might have gone a little something like this...

Anything with William Shatner in it always raises a cheap laugh and this video showing his reaction to the latest Star Trek movie (which he doesn't appear in, by the way) is no exception. As always, he brings a new layer (or should that be slice) of meaning to the word "hammy".