Review Blood: True Blood Recap 4.10 - "Burning Down the House"

Sean Guard sinks his teeth into the latest episode of the popular U.S. vampire series True Blood - "Burning Down the House"...

Our episode begins with a couple of revelations. Well about two and a half if you really want to be technical. In stopping her new boy-toy, Eric, from introducing her past lover to the true death, she realizes that she still very much loves Bill. As if the rest of us didn’t already know that. Another revelation is that the Antonia half of Marnie/Antonia felt extremely guilty about the killing of many innocent people due to her attack. You can see the doubt as well as regret all over her face. The third is that although Eric now has all of his memories back, he actually stills love Sookie. My only question to this is, although it’s all sorts of sweet of disgustingly romantic, what the hell is going on? Did anyone ever see Eric, a Viking badass, falling in love with a fairy? I know I didn’t. Well I kind of did but was just hoping against hope that it didn’t.

Alcide is shown racing a beaten, broken and very bloody Tommy to the hospital. He explains to the werewolf that his injuries aren’t just from the beat down he received from his pack but do to his shifting into Sam as well. He convinces Alcide to take him to see his brother one last time. Yes, I said one last time as Tommy will not see any more True Blood episodes as he dies holding Sam’s hand. Sam and Alcide then decide to take on his now former pack to avenge the loss of the former’s brother while Debbie wastes no time at all getting rather cozy with the pack leader himself.

Tara and the rest of the Marnie/Antonia followers are still locked away in her shop with no hope of ever leaving. Little do they know that after what happened at the Tolerance Rally, Bill decides to mount an all out offensive on the witch and her crew. He wants to blow up the store and rid himself and the world of Antonia for good. During a moment of alone time between the two, we realize that Antonia is actually the half of them that wants to stop what they are doing. She doesn’t want to cause anymore pain to the innocent. Plus she realizes that freeing the entire Earth of the undead will be a lot more trying than she originally planned. But Marnie wants her to continue. She wants to be used as Antonia’s vessel to do her bidding. Reluctantly Antonia agrees and decides to continue their mission against the vamps.

Jason finds himself feeling awfully guilty after having a very hot session of vampire sex with his best friend’s ex-girl. Jessica tries to convince him that they shouldn’t feel bad about what they had just done but this doesn’t work on Jason. After he, stupidly, asks her to glamour him so he can forget what had just happened, she takes some offense to that and runs off. I guess even vampire chicks get mad if you f**k them and try to kick them to the curb. After this exchange between the two them, Jason finds himself having to bunk with Hoyt after his heart broken friend shows up at his door wanting out of the home where he and Jessica had made a life for themselves.

Sookie enlists the help of Lafayette, Jesus and Jason to try to free Tara and the others after she cannot convince Bill to stop his plan of destroying the witch shop. Jesus manages to break through Marnie/Antonia’s protection spells surrounding the building by utilizing his demon-half powers, I guess that’s what they are called, and earning the trust of Antonia. Once inside, he too discovers that Marnie is willingly allowing Antonia to inhabit her body to destroy the vampires. He tries to warn Sookie and the others but not before Tara tries to make a break for it and everyone is caught.

Having found some of Andy’s “V”, Terry takes his druggie cousin out to their old fort that they used to play at when they were kids. Some quality time, target practice, family wrestling and one long conversation later, Andy agrees to get better. He promises to toss his “V” habits aside for good and get clean. I guess we’ll see just how long this time lasts.

The entire episode comes to a close with Bill, Eric, Pam and Jessica all decked out in some very dangerous looking black get-ups on arriving at the witch shop with some very heavy artillery. Will they succeed in their mission of completely blowing up their nemesis? Especially now that Sookie, the common love of Bill and Eric, is inside without their knowledge. Things continue to get pretty heavy on True Blood. With only two episodes left in the season, can you guess what may happen? If you do, share it with the rest of us. If you need some inspiration in getting ideas, then go forth and do bad things.

Sean Guard
Follow me on Twitter @Sean_Guard

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The Inbetweeners Movie retains the UK box office crown

UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 26th - Sunday 28th August 2011...

After a record-breaking opening last weekend, The Inbetweeners Movie retains the UK box office crown as it adds another £5.69m, giving it a mighty cumulative gross of £25.8m after just two weeks on screens. As a result, One Day has to settle for second place with the Anne Hathaway / Jim Sturgess romantic drama pulling in £2.2m, while Final Destination 5 takes £1.45m to claim fifth and sword and sandals reboot Conan the Barbarian manages just £622k to take eighth place.

Turning to the familiar faces, Rise of the Planet of the Apes adds another £1.66m but slips to third, while The Smurfs holds firm in fourth place and crosses the £10m mark after three weeks on screens. Jon Favreau's latest, Cowboys & Aliens, falls three places to sixth, while Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 pushes its total beyond £70m in its seventh week. Moving down towards the foot of the chart and Spy Kids: All the Time in the World drops three places to ninth in its second weekend, while Mr Popper's Penguins slips two to finish up in tenth position.

Number one this time last year: Grown Ups

Pos.	Film	Weekend Gross	Week	Total UK Gross
1	The Inbetweeners Movie	£5,696,848	2	£25,864,966
2	One Day	£2,208,724	1	£2,208,724
3	Rise of the Planet of the Apes	£1,659,572	3	£15,260,770
4	The Smurfs	£1,478,650	3	£10,961,052
5	Final Destination 5	£1,450,464	1	£1,450,464
6	Cowboys & Aliens	£792,898	2	£3,680,844
7	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2	£765,191	7	£70,620,857
8	Conan the Barbarian	£622,268	1	£622,268
9	Spy Kids: All the Time in the World	£607,051	2	£2,262,829
10	Mr Popper's Penguins	£408,985	4	£6,632,047

Incoming...

Vampire remake Fright Night 3D (cert. 15) will stake a claim for the top of the UK box office when it arrives in cinemas this coming Friday, with Anton Yelchin, David Tennant and Colin Farrell facing competition from 'found footage' sci-fi Apollo 18 (cert. TBC), British horror Kill List (cert. 18) and coming of age tale The Art of Getting By (cert. 12A).

U.K. Box Office Archive

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Twice Around: Anne V. Coates talks about Lawrence of Arabia

Trevor Hogg chats to the Academy Award-winning film editor Anne V. Coates about Lawrence of Arabia...

“I was doing some turning out in England the other day because I’m selling my apartment there,” recalls British film editor Anne V. Coates who made a surprising discovery. “I came across this letter which said, ‘Dear Mr. Spiegel, I don’t think I can cut Lawrence of Arabia [1962] for the money you’re offering.’ I turned down the picture. It’s a two page letter saying all the reasons why I wasn’t going to do it.” Coates explains, “I had already cut Tunes of Glory [1960] and The Horse’s Mouth [1958]. I wasn’t a complete nonentity. They were offering, and they paid me, very little money. Sam Spiegel said to me, ‘If you cut Lawrence then you would be able to ask any money you like afterwards.’ So seven years later when they asked me to go back on to do the recut for television, I asked for a huge amount of money. Sam said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I said, ‘I’m doing what you said.’ and he paid me. I had forgotten I had ever written that letter and to come across it was really weird. I thought, ‘I wonder where I’d be now? Probably, not here in Hollywood.’”

Money was not the only factor to consider. “I was one of the up-and-coming young editors in England at the time,” states Anne V. Coates. “I had a meeting with Stanley Kubrick about doing Lolita [1962] and I liked it; we got on very well. It was a question of going with a new director or what we call in England ‘an old hat director’ like David Lean. My husband said, ‘You can’t even think twice. Don’t even think about Stanley Kubrick. You have to work with David Lean.’ I’ve never had a choice of two such interesting films at the same time.” Reflecting on her decision, Coates admits, “I was very disappointed not to work with him. He never asked again. I saw him occasionally and he rang me about one of my assistants on Lawrence that he wanted to use. I couldn’t part with that one but I gave a very high recommendation to my second first, Ray Lovejoy, whom he took, and he became a top editor. He cut 2001 [1968] for Stanley. I had a chat with Stanley then; that’s probably the last time I spoke to him.”

As to how she got associated with Lawrence of Arabia, Anne V. Coates retells an often told tale. “We lived on top of Harrods, the store in London and we used to go into the juice bar on Saturday mornings. We met a friend of ours Gerry O’Hara, who was a First AD, and I asked Gerry, ‘What are you doing at the moment?’ He said, ‘I’m working with David Lean. We’re doing a week of tests on Albert Finney [The Bourne Ultimatum] for Seven Pillars of Wisdom.’, which was what Lawrence of Arabia was called originally. I asked, ‘You’ve got anybody editing it?’ He said, ‘I don’t think so. I’ll ask the production manager on Monday.’ Monday morning John Palmer rang me up and said, ‘Do you want to come and cut this? We’re only paying 50 pounds a week.’ Before he went on, I said, ‘Yes.’ To work with David Lean, to me, was magic. Some scenes were Finney as an English officer and some were him living with the Arabs. I cut the two sequences. It was the one when he was an English officer that I did first. We were running the dailies in the theatre and David asked, ‘Have you finished cutting that scene yet?’ I was very nervous and I said, ‘Oh, yes. I would like to run it for you tomorrow.’ ‘Oh, no.’ he said. ‘Go fetch it now.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to run it in front of all these people.’ He said, ‘Go and get it Annie.’ I went and got the scene. I was so frightened that I didn’t even see a cut go by; at the end of it he got up and said, ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything cut exactly like I would have done it myself.’ A few days later he asked me to travel up in the Rolls Royce with him and Sam Spiegel, and he offered me the picture.”

“I was very scared when I first started because he had been such a famous editor,” admits Anne V. Coates. “He was a handsome man, and arrogant but not unpleasantly so. He had a lot of distance about him. He didn’t chatter to begin with when shooting. Coming into the cutting room he was a different person; he just loved the cutting room. He became warm and fun.” Coates was reluctant to make suggestions to Lean. “He said, ‘If you have any thoughts tell them to me.’ So sometimes I’d say things to him. He’d say, ‘Oh, Annie I don’t know that seems like a pretty stupid idea.’ But then two or three days later he’d sometimes say to me, ‘You know that idea you had the other day well that didn’t work. But I’ve been thinking about it. If we did this and that, then I think it would.’” The legendary filmmaker installed confidence in the film editor. “What he mostly taught me was to give a shot a bit more measure. I know that I cut some of the scenes, particularly with the camels, a bit short; he extended some of them. He said, ‘It’s a beautiful scene. Imagine it with music and as part of the story. Have the courage of your convictions and keep it the length you think is right.’”

The biggest challenge was the amount of footage. “We had 33 miles of film. That’s a lot of film to go through and make choices on in very little time,” reveals the native of Reigate, England. “The difficulty was working out what you were going to leave out. David said that once. What makes a really good editor is what they leave out of a film.” A much celebrated transition is the one of a lighted match to a sunrise. “It was in the script as a dissolve, but we saw it cut together before we had the optical delivered. We looked at the job and said, ‘My, God it worked fantastic!’ We tried taking a frame off here and there. David said to me in the end, ‘That’s nearly perfect. Take it away and make it perfect.’ I literally took two frames off of the outgoing scene and that’s the way it is today. It wasn’t a momentous thing to us. It was only when somebody rang me at three o’clock in the morning from Australia to ask me what I was thinking about when I did that cut; I said, ‘I didn’t have any idea.’ Several direct cuts like that were originally my idea because David hadn’t seen the La Nouvelle Vague French direct cutting. I got him to see a couple of films. He loved it and did it even better. We didn’t over do it. We had so much footage I could have cut another whole film of Lawrence. That is a challenge because you have to go through it so carefully to make sure you don’t miss any golden moments. We cut out a mirage scene just before we finished the film and I was sad because I’d always liked it. I think if you’re going to sit through three hours and forty minutes you can sit through three hours and forty-two minutes.”

While in a Culver City cutting room, Anne V. Coates was broached about reconstructing Lawrence of Arabia. I asked, ‘Can you find the film?’ Usually they throw film away after five years. Bob Harris said, ‘Yes, we’ve found all of it with your writing and the elastic bands around the cuts.’ I asked, ‘Have you found the goggles?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Great.’” Coates was given the task of calling David Lean and asking for his approval. “I rang David, he was working on Nostromo in Spain and I told him about it; he was terribly excited about putting back all his work that he did not want to take out to begin with. He said to me the same thing, ‘Ah, we’ll be able to put back the goggles!’ It is such a funny shot but it meant so much to the both of us in our own way.” The film editor enjoyed revisiting the project with which she was originally involved for 23 weeks. “It was magical. I had forgotten how good it was to be honest with you because I worked on it for so long.” Coates was at ease collaborating again with David Lean. “I was more confident because I had cut several films since then. He turned to me one day and said, ‘I’d forgotten what fun it was cutting Lawrence with you.’” The two colleagues attempted to shorten the biopic. “David and I tried a couple of times to cut down scenes and then we really hated them. We realized that they were right the way they were. Lawrence had its own kind of rhythms and you had to go with them.” The renewed creative partnership was brief because of the death of Lean. “He asked me to cut Nostromo which he was going to do next but he never did; I only cut Lawrence [for him]. He did originally ask me to cut Dr. Zhivago [1965] but I was pregnant with my daughter so I couldn’t do it.”

“There’s a 50th anniversary coming up next year so I expect I’ll be going to one or two things,” says Anne V. Coates. “Somebody I know vaguely is trying to organize this big premiere in Wadi Rum, where we did the last battle in Morocco, in the open air and to get the king, the princes, Peter O’Toole, Omar [Sharif] and everybody to come.” Contemplating what it was about the editing on Lawrence of Arabia that resulted in her winning an Oscar, Coates observes, “If you don’t start with a good script you very seldom end up with a good picture. You can make it better and in some cases you can make it worse. Lawrence had everything going for it. It had a wonderful script, a great cast, a fabulous director and enough material to make two films at least. If you just happen to be lucky and have a gift for editing, you have all the good things going for you.”

The Most Famous of Edits...


Many thanks to Anne V. Coates for taking the time out of her busy schedule for this interview.

For more from Anne V. Coates on her illustrious career, check out the first part of this interview, Cutting Edge.

For an interview between Walter Murch and Anne V. Coates, head over to FilmSound.org.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

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Page and Screen - One Day (Part Three - In Praise of Jim Sturgess)

Liam Trim discusses the cinematic adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day in the third of a three-part feature (read parts one and two)...

Anne Hathaway’s performance in One Day may be flawed and ultimately a letdown, for cinemagoers and fans of the book alike, but she has one huge advantage over co-star Jim Sturgess; people know who she is. The film needed an enticing lead for audiences in countries where the book is less popular and Hathaway is undoubtedly the star on the billboards. Having seen the film though, it’s Sturgess who is the star lighting up the story. Even if you’ve read One Day or you’re intending to see it, you may well be wondering “Jim who?” and typing his name into Google.

However chances are that anonymity will soon be a thing of the past for Sturgess. One Day’s sprawling fan base will only grow with the release of this month’s adaptation. Legions of existing fans will either love or loathe his portrayal of arrogant but good natured charmer Dexter Mayhew. It’s the sort of role that can transform an actor’s lifestyle as well as their career, catapulting them from regular work in relativity obscurity, to a recognisable and desirable face of the mainstream.

Already Sturgess has appeared in a number of national newspapers, giving interviews to promote the film. In The Telegraph in particular he gives some revealing answers about his origins and his filmmaking philosophy. In 2008 he flirted with Hollywood, appearing in films like 21 and The Other Boleyn Girl, only to draw back for the next few years to make independent films, like 2009’s Heartless, which he truly believed in.

Sturgess came to prominence in Across the Universe, a love story told through the songs of the Beatles. His director for that film, Julie Taymor, is full of praise for him still, hailing his “movie star looks”, “reality” and “strong sense of self”. Taymor’s film provided the perfect breakthrough for Sturgess, harnessing and fusing together interests that until then had competed for attention and focus in his life.

At the age of fifteen, Sturgess formed a band with a group of schoolmates. He had grown up immersed in the musical world, turning to acting only for distraction at school. Then at university in Manchester he fell into making short films whilst trying to become a musician. Deciding to become an actor he moved to London at the beginning of the new millennium, only to accidentally join a band again. Although Sturgess admits to disliking his character Dexter at first in One Day, it’s easy to see where he might have been able to draw inspiration from when playing a character unsure what to do with his life.

After impressing in Across the Universe, Sturgess starred alongside Kevin Spacey in the gambling thriller 21. He played a gifted MIT student who is recruited to a group of bright young things, manipulated by Spacey, that intend to make a fortune in Vegas counting cards. 21 is a slick and enjoyable watch but still our leading man remained under the radar, choosing to take a step back from big budget productions. This is despite an accomplished performance as a big-headed, youthful genius of the sort Jesse Eisenberg would later play in The Social Network to far wider acclaim.

What now for Sturgess, after the game changer that is One Day? Will he step back into the shadows again? As I’ve been writing this article news has broken which suggests that this time he will embrace the mainstream, whilst not abandoning his principles.

According to Total Film Sturgess has joined the ever swelling cast of Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of David Mitchell’s genre blending epic. He’ll star alongside Hollywood A- Listers like Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, as well as fellow promising Brit Ben Whishaw. All the actors will play multiple roles in a film that will tell several stories, interlinked by reincarnation and other themes, across time and space.

In taking on another transformation of a much loved, highly praised and commercially successful novel, Jim Sturgess is once again willingly accepting a heavy load of responsibility and risk. But with Cloud Atlas he is joining an even larger scale project than One Day, with greater creative ambitions too. Even if it really does prove “unfilmable” Cloud Atlas will cement his reputation as both a brave and talented actor, surely destined to continually outshine the likes of Anne Hathaway.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

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Second Opinion - Horrible Bosses (2011)

Horrible Bosses, 2011.

Written and Directed by Seth Gordon.
Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.


SYNOPSIS:

Three friends conspire to murder each of their horrible bosses.


Sometimes a cast can really say it all. You see a comedy with the cast/comedic pedigree of Horrible Bosses and your ticket's often bought before your give the premise any thought whatsoever - Arrested Development, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 30 Rock, SNL to name a few. But fortunately this film has a really simple, but profoundly universal premise; have you had a horrible boss that you perhaps fantasized about murdering? Well maybe not murder, just hurt, cause pain yeah? Just me? Leave me hanging? Jerks.

Anyway back to the review - the trio of leads are Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. Each of these guys has a boss that is making their life hell in one way or another. After a drunken visit to the wrong side of town, where they consult with their fantastic "murder consultant" Jamie Foxx, they decide that they should 'Strangers on a Train' it and kill each other's bosses.

This is a really funny and light film for the subject matter. All of the performances are great - mainly because the two of trio of leads were cast for their established comedic personas/styles. Nick Hendricks - Jason Bateman is in his established 'Michael Bluth' mode and I could watch his continual awkward struggle in any film. He delivers another well timed and subtle reactionary comedic performance. Dale Arbus - Charlie Day brings his 'Always Sunny' game to this role. People unfamiliar with his work will be surprised at his great timing and ability to become the butt of all the great jokes in a comedy where everyone is on their game. This year audiences couldn't wait to get along to The Hangover Part 2 for Zack Galifinakis' Alan - but if you want to see an equally iconic, and great performance - Charlie Day is hilarious.

The shining star of this film for me however is Kurt Buckman - Jason Sudeikis. He is phenomenal as the cocksure ladies man. He has a great cheek and attitude that glues the trio. Unlike say Bradley Cooper's 'Phil' in The Hangover - Sudeikis is much more of an everyman and it makes him vastly more charming. He's also demonstrated unbelievable versatility, cultivated in the improvisational petri dish of SNL / 30 Rock. Watch this space, he's going to be one of the biggest names in American cinematic comedy in a few years.

And its goes without saying that the antagonists of the film have to be fantastic; and this film has great comedic performers in spades.

Kevin Spacey is the manipulative, greedy, apathetic psychotic boss of Jason Bateman's character. For anyone whose seen the great (and vastly more serious) Swimming with Sharks - expect a very similar kind of crazy boss from Spacey here.

Colin Farrell is fantastic as the sleazy, douchebag coke head boss - Bobby Pellitt - of Kurt Buckman. I think that Farrell is a ridiculously underrated actor, and comedic talent. You only have to see the great and dark In Bruges (which he won a Golden Globe for) to see how great his timing is. He delivers here in spades so much that I will say that I would have liked to see a little more off him in the flick (stick around for the credits for some hilarious improv out-takes from Farrell).

Now the revelatory performance from the bosses comes from Jennifer Aniston - Julia Harris - Dale's boss. She is fantastic as the crazy, manipulative nymphomaniac. For those haters of Friends and her other studio comedies - this is a stark contrast to anything I've seen her in, in the past (and no it's not she because you see her in her underpants). Day and Aniston have a great interplay and chemistry and it's a highlight.

Finally Jamie Foxx perfectly embodies their murder consultant. The man is a comedian first, and phenomenal Oscar winning actor second - effortlessly good, and scene stealing.

The script is fun and the direction extracts phenomenal comedic performances from everyone involved. This film was an embarrassment of riches in the casting, premise and calibre of director, Seth Gordon (see King of Kong).

Horrible Bosses is this years The Hangover. It is an absolute cracker. It is not the funniest film I've seen this year; but it is probably the funnest Hollywood comedy this year and I'll definitely be seeing it again at the pictures - with tentative intention to revisit it on DVD.

Blake Howard is a writer/site director/podcaster at the castleco-op.com.

Movie Review Archive

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Page and Screen - One Day (Part Two - Alternatives to Anne Hathaway)

Liam Trim discusses the cinematic adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day in the second of a three part feature (read part one here)...

In Part One I reviewed One Day and compared it to the phenomenally successful book it’s based upon. This is Part Two, in which I suggest alternatives to Anne Hathaway.

I know, I know. There is no alternative to Anne Hathaway, I hear you cry, members of the “I need Anne Hathaway like oxygen” club. She is undoubtedly a very pretty lady. I certainly did not object when she took her clothes off in Love and Other Drugs and she’ll no doubt look superb in leather in The Dark Knight Rises. She is also talented. She’s won deserved critical acclaim for her performances in Rachel Getting Married and The Devil Wears Prada etc, etc. Whatever her limitations in the accent department, Anne is what you’d call a hot Hollywood property, if you were the type to say such things.

However I think there were stronger candidates for the role of bookish Yorkshire lass Emma in One Day. This is categorically NOT because of her dodgy accent. Ok maybe it is a bit. But there was something disappointing about her performance that went beyond her misguided Emmerdale education.

Director Lone Scherfig has said that whilst One Day: The Book was in love with Emma, One Day: The Film is fascinated by Dexter, and whether he’ll pull through as an alright bloke in the end. For much of the film Jim Sturgess is acting like a dick on telly or being staggeringly ignorant of the emotions of his friends and family. Nevertheless it’s his story, his need for redemption from himself, which drives the movie. In the book we feel, or I felt, more anchored to Emma’s cruelly suffocated potential and deflated ambition. We’re waiting for Dexter to get his act together and save her from her own low confidence.

Perhaps the fact that the film is more centred on Dexter is not just down to changes in emphasis, tone and content Nicholls had to make in the script. Maybe Hathaway’s miscasting also had a role to play in that, in my view harmful, shift. Sturgess excelled as Dexter Mayhew despite the weaknesses of the big screen version. Hathaway was not bad as Emma Morley. But these three (coincidentally British) actresses might’ve been better...


1. Carey Mulligan worked with One Day’s director Lone Scherfig on her breakthrough picture, An Education. In my opinion she was perhaps the best Emma on offer. She is usually seen as more middle class characters with prim English voices but she would have nailed the studious, quietly creative and brilliant nature of Emma. You can imagine her hunched over a typewriter or book, looking shy, cute and inexplicably alluring. Basically she could play a convincing bookworm with strong principles. She also has the acting chops to deal with Emma’s heartache and traumas later in life. And when she whips off the glasses and comes out of her shell towards the end, when things start going right, audiences would be plausibly wowed at the blossoming beauty. Hathaway looked like a movie star dressing up as geeky and common.


2. Rebecca Hall starred alongside James McAvoy in Starter for Ten, another David Nicholls book he adapted himself into a movie, with considerably more success. Starter for Ten works well as a whole. It’s predictable but extremely enjoyable stuff. Hall’s character is a constant figure in the background, a determined student activist, who McAvoy’s University Challenge contestant eventually realises he’s meant to be with. She’s adept at being a student and shows an Emma Morley-esque kind nature throughout but the two characters are oceans apart. Could Hall do shy Emma? Her flourishing acting career shows her diversity. My bet is she’d have been as good as Hathaway at least.


3. Gemma Arterton has been a Bond girl, as well as mastering the regional dialect of the West Country to play frank seductress Tamara Drewe. She’s got double the amount of ticks in the accent column thanks to her role as another Dorset heroine; Tess in the BBC’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbevilles. After Tess, Arterton will be no stranger to epic romance but like Hathaway she might be too conventionally pretty to pull off library lover Emma, who got a first in English and History from Edinburgh.


Let’s hope Hathaway makes a better Catwoman...

Continue to part three.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

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365 Days, 100 Films #45 - The Hangover Part II (2011)

The Hangover Part II, 2011.

Directed by Todd Phillips.
Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Jeffrey Tambor, Jamie Chung, Mason Lee, Paul Giamatti, Mike Tyson and Nick Cassavetes.


SYNOPSIS:

You know The Hangover? Yeah, well, it’s that in Thailand.


Not many people dislike The Hangover. We meet in secret once a month. Carol bakes fairy cakes and we all sit and chat. We don’t talk much about The Hangover, nor film in general. We just talk about what we’ve been up to, how we’re getting along. It’s nice to be amongst people who didn’t get it either.

Surely we’re the weirdos, right? We missed a subtlety on that first viewing. Maybe we were in an underwhelmed mood that day. So give Part II a stab. Have a beer before. Go with friends who liked its predecessor. Ease yourself into it.

So the gang go swap Las Vegas for Thailand. They’re all there: Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (nobody cares - he was the missing person last time round). Even the insufferable Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong – great in Community, but just ghastly in both Hangovers) turns up in this other country. This time it’s Stu’s wedding. He’s the sensible dentist who ironically lost a tooth and married a stripper in the first film. Learning from the previous experience, he doesn’t even want a stag party. So all they do is have a few beers on the Thailand beach the night before the wedding. But their drinks are spiked. Again.

They awake with various things wrong – shaved head, tattooed face, monkey drug dealer – in a sweaty apartment in Bangkok. But most importantly, they are missing the bride’s younger brother. Cue a search around Bangkok to find him, with the uncovered sordid details from the night before acting as clues to his whereabouts. It’s exactly the same template as the first and every review, even those who liked the original, have criticised such laziness.

The cast…

Zach Galifianakis is fantastic, but he always seems underused, like Stifler from American Pie. Unfortunately, as is his character, if he were allowed any more of the film’s focus, the fool’s mystique would crumble – just like American Pie 3. However, he did have a Randy Savage poster in his room, and the film came out shortly after the Macho Man’s unfortunate passing. That gets points. Wrestling’s cool.

Ed Helms is great, and his character almost turns dark. As he desperately nears the wedding’s start time without his fiancée’s brother, but with a tribal tattoo etched on his face, Stu acknowledges that he may have a ‘demon within’ him. The dialogue echoes the nihilism of Very Bad Things, where its immoral characters (which are all of them) end up either dead or deformed. SPOILERS: [Unfortunately, the film swerves with a stupidly happy ending. And a cameo. Mike Tyson, playing himself again, just to complete the mirror image of the first. Originally, Mel Gibson was to play the tattoo artist, but the cast objected to his presence on account of a few recent Gibson-gaffs. But Tyson, a once-convicted rapist, gets approval.]

Bradley Cooper - what’s his appeal? He’s too smug to be a leading man, and he is unbearable throughout Part II. It’s obvious he has lady fans, but you’d have to assume they’re the female equivalent of the idiotic guys who love Megan Fox being in films. Passable as the bad guy in Wedding Crashers, but his current popularity is bewildering.

Paul Giamatti is somehow made boring. He isn’t funny here, and it’s all a little awkward.

The best moment of The Hangover was its end credits, which isn’t as much as a smartarse thing to write as you’d think. Beside the names of those who had worked on the film were photos from the forgotten night. They’re genuinely funny, and it makes you yearn for a film that showed the events depicted in them rather than the narrative you were given. The Hangover: Part II suffers from the exact same realisation. The end photos are funnier than anything in the preceding 100 minutes.

Both Hangovers, no matter how many more sequels they release, or how hard they try, will ever, EVER surpass the modern masterpiece on which it is based. Want a real good hangover film? Watch Dude, Where’s My Car?

RATING *

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

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TV Review - Page Eight (2011)

Page Eight, 2011.

Written and Directed by David Hare.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, Felcity Jones, Ewen Bremner, Tom Hughes and Judy Davis.


SYNOPSIS:

An MI5 officer's boss dies, leaving behind a file which threatens the stability of the organisation.


Page Eight, written and directed by David Hare and currently available on BBC iPlayer, demonstrates just how inadequate bite size labels like “spy thriller” can be. In a story that lasts one hour and forty minutes on screen, we are never truly thrilled or excited by events. This is not an all action look at MI5, such as Spooks, but a strangely amusing study of character and bureaucracy.

The whole thing is bookended by cool, retro jazz and Bill Nighy strutting around in a suit. But whilst Nighy’s character Johnny does have an expensive, privileged and high flying lifestyle, and he does look charismatically assured for someone in his early sixties, Page Eight isn’t a tale that glamorises the intelligence community much either. In the opening twenty minutes we meet Johnny’s key work colleagues and observe his solitary home life. He could be working in any public office for a living. But for the shots of Thames House, familiar to Spooks fans and spy buffs, there isn’t a lot to mark him out as an “intelligence analyst”.

The plot basically has two strands. Early on Johnny meets his neighbour from across the hall for the first time. Played by Rachel Weisz she may or may not be interested in him for devious reasons relating to his work. She might just be lonely. Meanwhile at work Johnny’s friend and boss Ben (Michael Gambon) has passed a potentially explosive file around. At the bottom of page eight a casual sentence from an unknown source drops the bombshell that Downing Street knew about information extracted by the Americans through torture, and decided not to share it with the security services. Ben then dies of a heart attack.

Page Eight’s overwhelming quality is intrigue. The two plots grow more complicated and intermingle, as we learn about Johnny’s messy personal life with his daughter and former lovers, all strained by his tendency to suspect everyone and always remain on guard. Nighy is excellent and Gambon delivers his lines with comic relish. A meeting with the Home Secretary about a top secret subject, surely a tense situation, turns out to be a hilarious platform for Nighy and Gambon’s playful chemistry, as well as advancement of the plot. Indeed the entire cast is impressive. James Bond fans can rub their hands together with glee as potential Bond 23 villain Ralph Fiennes pulls off a sinister Prime Minister.

Aside from the drama, Page Eight also has some interesting and thought provoking points to make. Despite its heightened elements of collusion and conspiracy, it feels oddly accurate and close to the world we live in. It simultaneously takes a swipe at the consequences of elitism, the implications of everyone important graduating from the same Oxbridge college, and defends fading ideals of honour espoused by such institutions. Most revealingly of all it highlights the conflict between those who believe in “pure intelligence” delivering facts and the challenges of too much information in the modern world, requiring interpretation, perhaps for political gain, as opposed to searching for impossible truths.

Overall Page Eight is an intelligent and satisfying watch. Somehow Hare wraps everything up in a flash, just as it seems time will run out on the plot. The dialogue is delightful in the hands of veteran performers and refreshingly free of exposition, apart from a few clunky lines for Weisz. Best of all is the characterisation of Johnny that focuses on the real, human results of spying. Just don’t expect stunts, guns, fight scenes or car chases.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

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Movie Review - The Skin I Live In (2011)

The Skin I Live In (Spanish: La piel que habito), 2011.

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
Starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya and Jan Cornet.


SYNOPSIS:

An eminent plastic surgeon becomes obsessed with creating a new type of synthetic skin capable of withstanding any kind of damage.


The Skin I Live In is a masterfully created piece of film making. Part thriller, part revenge story, part romance, the film is a study on psychosexual development, gender changing, sexual identity, and the inner person; i.e. who we are beneath the skin which surrounds us.

The aim of my reviews is not to regurgitate a film’s plot and all of its twist and turns, but to tell you why or why not it is any good. To go into the detail of The Skin I Live In would be to spoil everything the film has in store for you. You should know as little of the plot as possible, but I will tell this much:

The film centres on the relationship between a surgeon (Antonio Banderas) and a woman he has prisoner in his mansion. She wears a skin-suit, practises yoga, and is kept under CCTV surveillance at all times. He is also in love with her. The second and third acts are told mostly in flashback, but by the time this comes you are entirely hooked as to the origins of how this situation came to be.

The result is something I’d not seen the like of before.

The characters are deeply disturbed. The surgeon is on a quest to create a replacement wife through the body of his prisoner, yet the woman wishes to remain in his world and it is her choice that she stays. The film pushes us to think about identity and what makes a person a person. Can one man change another in to someone else, and create a new identity to fill the void of their own lonliness, their own insecurities, their own demons?

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar creates modern Frankenstein with sexual and psychological themes running throughout the film, making it one film which lasts long in the memory for its invention and philosophy as it does for its execution and enjoyment. The colours are vibrant, the frame always filled with detail, the camera movements are precise and patient yet he knows how to increase the tension when those scenes are needs. The wide angles in the hallways and ‘prison room’ give the surgeon’s house a characteristic quality, not just another set for action to take place.

The Skin I Live In is a rare film in which it belongs to no one particular genre yet remains as an excellent film throughout. Most films I see which cross several genres tend to be a disappointment as they fail to succeed in knowing what they are about or the audience they aim to reach. Almodóvar’s film is about so much more than the story or what happens on screen, and deserves repeated viewings if you can stomach the detail. It is a very adult film for adult audiences, and should be seen by people who wnat to get something from a cinema experience they usually wouldn’t expevt to take away. Like the best work of Stanley Kubrick, Almodóvar’s latest offering is multi-layered, challenging, absorbing, and rewarding.

VERDICT: 8.5 / 10 - This is Top 10 of 2011 potential.

Rohan Morbey - follow me on Twitter.

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Page and Screen - One Day (Part One - The Review)

Liam Trim discusses the cinematic adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day in the first of a three part feature...

Novels can be described as “cinematic” for different reasons. The prose might have a lush, vivid attention to detail that would translate into award winning visuals on screen. There might be a twisty, zippy, unpredictable plot on the page probably perfect for a gripping thriller. The author may have managed to conjure a succession of particularly fresh and engrossing action scenes or mastered the art of quick witted dialogue. Just because a book is successful and it earns the description “cinematic” however, does not necessarily mean it will work well as a film.

The adaptation of David Nicholls’ 2009 word of mouth sensation One Day has encountered a great deal of critical hostility with its release this week. Some will muse wisely that such disappointment is inevitable with cinematic renderings of much loved books, especially when so many people have read it. And One Day really has been a sensation, reaching into almost every demographic. In 2010 it was the highest selling British novel and its distinctive orange cover continues to be a permanent and prominent landmark in Waterstones stores everywhere, even without the help of the star studded film.

One star in particular, of course, has stolen the headlines. The moneymen behind One Day will be hoping that there really is no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to the ever swelling chorus denouncing American beauty Anne Hathaway’s erratic Yorkshire accent. Most critics have labelled it “distracting” at best and for those that have read the book, falling head over heels in love with lead character Emma in the process, Hathaway’s looks will be no consolation, as her casting in their view trampled on the beloved protagonist’s origins.

For the few of you that haven’t somehow heard about the book’s premise, One Day follows students Emma and Dexter, or Em and Dex, as they graduate from Edinburgh University in 1988, right up until the late noughties. But the unique selling point is that we only drop in on their lives, together and apart, on the same day each year; July the 15th, St Swithin’s Day. It’s on this day that Emma and Dexter almost “do the deed” after graduation and the date continues to have significance throughout their lives and the friendship that follows.

The reviews and summaries of One Day universally categorise it as a protracted “will they, won’t they” rom com. Fans of the book though will expect more than that from the film because of its qualities on the page. David Nicholls wrote something that was not only immensely readable but perceptive, poignant and powerful too, taking in a panorama of growing up and culture in the late 20th century.

For all its merits, One Day does undeniably share similarities with chick lit or trashy airport fiction. However despite its enticing plot and moving emotion, it almost always feels real and complex. Its dialogue is lifelike and witty, its characters’ feelings convincingly muddled. Heavy themes are softened by wry humour. It’s a book about youth simultaneously slipping away unnoticed and lingering problematically well into adulthood. No matter what happens to your career or shifting ambitions or inspirations, sometimes the people you care about most are the ones that were there from the beginning. Most of all it’s a story about life; every dizzying high and sickening low.

So do I think it works as a film? Twenty minutes in I had written it off. From the start there were bad signs. The actor’s names appeared scrawled across the screen in an atrociously pretentious font, completely at odds with the tone of the source material. Aside from such minor aesthetic quibbles though the inescapable fact was that the concept, dropping in on just the one date every year, did not make a smooth or effective transition from ink to celluloid. I began to form an opinion that didn’t even rate One Day as an average romantic comedy.

Back to that word “cinematic” then. It was the fresh idea of parachuting into the story via the same date annually which many book reviewers had labelled “cinematic”. On the page it did feel filmic, partly due to the pace but mainly because of the added intensity. Emotional punches usually came from nowhere because we’d skipped twelve months of Emma or Dexter’s lives. With the written word we also steadily accumulated information, so that we literally got to know them. But the first few years flash by at the cinema and we don’t care at all.

Why doesn’t the novel’s unique selling point work on film? One reason is simply the economy required by the runtime. Nicholls wrote the screenplay, as he was too reluctant to hand over control of Emma and Dexter to anyone else, but he has had to be ruthless with their experiences. And he did a much better job adapting his own Starter for Ten, which is currently on BBC iPlayer, starring James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall.

We miss out on the heartfelt letters between Em and Dex that both cements their friendship and hints at a stifled romance. Emma goes straight to work at a Mexican restaurant on screen, whereas in the book after graduation she tries to chase a dream working with a theatre company, whilst he, equally unsure about his future, travels in India.

The other key reason the jumps in time don’t work is because we lose the inner voice occasionally provided on the page. Nicholls does not resort to it often, preferring to let events and dialogue suggest meaning and propel the plot along, but now and then we see inside Emma’s head. We’re reminded how caring and clever she is but how confused and scared she is too. And we also glimpse Dexter’s heart now and again; he cares about her beneath the raving, off the rails exterior. I began to understand why some critics had called for a jumbled order to events, as in 500 Days of Summer.

Thankfully for the film it ends strongly. There are enjoyable performances from both Rafe Spall and Romola Garai, as Em and Dex finally grow up too late. The years gradually tick over and we do get to know the characters that seemed alive almost instantly in the book. The dialogue gets less expositional because the background has been established with the disappointing opening. For me the turning point was a moment when Dexter, superbly played by Jim Sturgess, lifts his mother, who is suffering from cancer, up the stairs to bed. It’s the first time in the film that heartstrings are properly pulled and the first convincing scene of character development.

There are a number of scenes in the film where I cried and several more in which I laughed. Like the book, the film is both sad and funny. However as diehards will be quick to point out you do not laugh as much or cry as much, at the film. It also lacks the depth of its literary parent. But by the end the narrative was certainly hitting some strong emotional notes.

One Day the movie ended as an above average, emotionally involving romantic comedy, which ultimately didn’t do the book justice. And I’m not sure those that haven’t read the book will even think it’s above average.

The final word then is, of course, on Anne Hathaway’s accent. She apparently watched Emmerdale to school herself in Yorkshire tones. She would not fit in on Emmerdale. Her accent is off-putting and her overall performance is incomplete. Hathaway is a very fine actress but there’s no doubt she was miscast here.

Keep an eye out for Part 2 of this One Day feature and I’ll explain who might’ve done a better job. And in Part 3 I’ll sing the praises of Jim Sturgess, who overshadows Hathaway throughout.

(In defence of the beautiful Anne, her voice makes no detrimental difference to the film once she stops trying too hard.)

Continue to part two.

Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)

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DVD Giveaway - Andy Lau and Jackie Chan in Shaolin - NOW CLOSED

Historical martial arts epic Shaolin (Chinese: Xin shao lin si) arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on September 12th, and to celebrate Flickering Myth have two copies of the film to give away to our lovely readers courtesy of the fine folk at Cine-Asia.

Read on for the synopsis, trailer and full details of how to enter...

China's last imperial dynasty has fallen and a ruthless warlord (Andy Lau - House of Flying Daggers, Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame) amasses a vast fortune through the violent subjugation of his people. Faced with a brutal betrayal he runs for his life, seeking redemption in the fabled Shaolin Temple. When his enemies discover his location, he must stand with his new brothers and fight his life's greatest battle.

Shaolin also stars Nicholas Tse (New Police Story, Bodyguards and Assassins) and Jackie Chan (Rush Hour, The Karate Kid) with direction from Benny Chan (New Police Story, Robin-B-Hood).


To be in with a chance of winning all you need to do is either like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, then send a quick email with your contact details, the subject heading "SHAOLIN", and an answer to the following question...

Apart from acting, Andy Lau is also famous in Hong Kong for..?

A) Football
B) Pop Music

The competition closes at 5pm on Sunday, September 11th. UK entrants only please.

The Prize Finder - UK Competitions
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By entering this competition you agree to our terms and conditions, which you can read here.

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Movie Review - Beginners (2011)

Beginners, 2011.

Written and Directed by Mike Mills.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent.


SYNOPSIS:

Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is rocked by two announcements from his elderly father Hal (Christopher Plummer): that he has terminal cancer, and that he has a young male lover.


I wanted to start by saying that I was actually privileged to see this film at the close of the Sydney Film Festival. And the reason I wanted to mention that is because I had a phenomenal time watching a raft of amazing pieces of cinema (and small few turkeys - Boxing Gym - guess what, people box in gyms - funny that). So my palette had been well and truly spoiled by the time I arrived at the closing night - and I really, really enjoyed Beginners.

Mike Mills constructs the quirky existence of graphic artist Oliver (Ewan McGregor) and anchors us to his subjective perspective. Oliver is rocked by the death of his mother, and subsequently his father's revelation that he is gay. The title, Beginners, refers to how this revelatory confession vastly changes Oliver's father Hal (Christopher Plummer) but also how Oliver himself had constructed his world around certain assumptions about his upbringing and how he now must revisit his life from a new an different perspective.

There are two really beautiful relationships portrayed concurrently in Beginners - Oliver and Hal - understanding each other through this time of flux and Oliver and French Actress Anna (played by the beautiful and great Melanie Laurent - you've probably seen her in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds).

Ewan McGregor is a charming bugger, and for fans of the 'Long Way Series' or his most iconic and award-worthy performance in Trainspotting - may be more forgiving of some of the not-so-great films that he's been in, in the recent past. I would confidently say that he is nothing short of excellent in Beginners. His character and his performance are in a a world of their own here; he is sweet, authentic, quirky, and emotionally raw in this one.

Christopher Plummer's joyous performance is infectious here. He is really great as the simultaneously wise and naive Hal, discovering his sexuality so late that it totally reinvigorates and amplifies his personality (now infused with his sexual identity). Hal's light shines in Oliver's life - and anyone not so familiar with just how good Plummer is, see The Insider.

Melanie Laurent is the earthy constant in Beginners and drags Oliver back to humanity and the tangible physical and emotional world.

One final special mention goes to Arthur - Hal's dog in the film. Mills makes him the conscience of the film with a fantastic use of subtitles; and at times I laughed hysterically at his choice thoughts springing to life via the subtitles - and equally, there was a moment that his character (that's right he was a character) tore my heart out of my chest and I rolled some tears.

Beginners is a quirkily shot, greatly written/structured and solidly performed film. I highly recommend it -if for nothing else but the best dog in a movie this year (sorry Red Dog).

Blake Howard is a writer/site director/podcaster at the castleco-op.com.

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DVD Review - Ninjas vs. Vampires (2010)

Ninjas vs. Vampires, 2010.

Directed by Justin Timpane.
Starring Jay Saunders, Daniel Ross and Devon Marie Burt.


SYNOPSIS:

After Aaron and Alex are attacked by vampires, Aaron is taken in by a group of ninjas who wage a war against the living dead.


What an age we live in where film titles mostly consist of something versus another thing. We’ve had Aliens vs Predator, we’re set to have Cowboys vs Aliens and for some reason we had Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Is it a torrent of lazy ideas or is it just streamlining every flick into an ultimate battle? Still, if we’re going down that path, could we at least get something completely off the wall like, oh I don’t know, Scarface vs Thelma and Louise? In the meantime, we’ll go for the more predictable mano-a-mano pairings with Ninjas vs Vampires.

I’ll start by saying I did not hold out much hope for this film to rock my world, but it didn’t turn out to be a shambling corpse. It started off with some terrible contemporary nu metal whilst a shaky camera shows a girl being brutually murdered by a vampire. Couple that with some terrible camerawork and poor lighting and I was almost put me off watching anymore. After being reminded what film we’re watching with a supremely awful logo, we’re onto the protagonists. Cute (sort of) couple Aaron and Alex are attacked by vampires, but the real kink in things is that Alex considers Aaron to be nothing more than a friend. Quite frankly, to them the vampires take second place to this relationship issue. After being rescued by a group of strangely Caucasian ninjas, the couple ignore what just happened and continue to bicker about why Aaron didn’t say anything about his feelings. Typical, eh?

Putting aside the awkward sexual tension, Aaron decides to stalk out the vampires and is rescued, again, by the ninjas. This time, they introduce themselves and give Aaron power to become a ninja, instead of training him in a dojo in the traditional sense. Ninjas are trained in dojos, right? Anyway, we’re also shown the leader of the vampires planning to find ultimate power to take over the world yadda yadda yadda. From here on, the plot goes so textbook that even someone in the next room could probably figure out what happens next. And yet I still found myself being entertained. Now even director Justin Timpane realises that there’s no way anyone could take this seriously, so why bother? Instead of keeping deadpan about the whole thing, we’re given what could potentially be the low budget spiritual successor to the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film; tongue in cheek and self aware.

One of the team of ninjas constantly spouts out wisecracks and nerdy reference without shame. The general dialogue is hammed up to the point that I was crying with laughter. There is no way that the script was written with a straight face. Having them delivered in such a hammy way was the mustard on the bacon; utterly delicious. It completely distracts you from the low budget special effects, bad camera work and having no clue what is going on scene changes to night time. With a bigger budget, this film could have been a cult classic. Unfortunately, the film decides to take itself slightly too seriously in the last half hour and it became a bit too formulaic and just generally dull.

Ninjas vs Vampires is a film that should have been pitched to Robert Rodriguez before sitting back and letting him work his tongues firmly into the cheeks. A cheap knock off that isn’t afraid to snigger at its self and would have no problem if everyone pointed and laughed. It’s hard to sink my teeth into the obvious problems as it’s an entertaining experience at very cheap money. Give this one a rent, but strictly watch it after dark.

Will Preston is a freelance writer from Portsmouth. He writes for various blogs (including his own website) and makes short films.

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The Week in Spandex – The Dark Knight Rises makes way for The Avengers and Man of Steel as The Wolverine is delayed again

Presenting our weekly round-up of all the biggest news stories from the world of movie superheroes…

With the Pittsburgh leg of The Dark Knight Rises shoot coming to an end, it would appear that the spies have shifted their attention towards The Avengers and Man of Steel as plenty of juicy, spoilery information leaked from both productions over the past seven days, while The Wolverine seemed to slip further into development hell...

We’ll start things off with Marvel’s superhero team-up The Avengers, with some recent spy videos emerging featuring Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the Thor star having spent the week filming on the Cleveland set alongside Chris Evans’ Captain America, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and a CGI Iron Man (along with veteran character actor Philip Baker Hall). You can check out a pretty good description of a scene featuring Cap and Loki at ComicBookMovie, or head over to Youtube for a video showing the filming of a fight scene between the two. In another potentially interesting bit of Avengers news, SuperHeroHype posted a couple of shots depicting a strange craft / object, with speculation pointing towards alien spacecraft or some kind of Asgardian chariot. If I had to choose, I’d be inclined to go with the latter. Meanwhile BleedingCool got their hands on the image to your right, which depicts the full line-up of the Avengers in comic-book cover form.

Moving on to Man of Steel and after the conveniently obscured first official look at Henry Cavill’s Superman, we finally got confirmation that the movie will follow the DC Comics reboot in dropping the customary red trunks in favour of an all-blue suit. Personally I don’t think it looks too bad, despite the fact that there’s a hell of a lot of blue, but at least they haven’t gone for the new armoured look of the comic book. In other Man of Steel news, the unofficial Superman: Man of Steel Facebook page has done a great job of collecting the recent wave of set photos, which includes a few shots of Superman in his new garb along our first look at Antje Traue as General Zod’s right-hand-woman Faora, who sports a physical costume as opposed to Michael Shannon’s motion-capture suit. Hmm... perhaps they’re mo-capping a beard onto Shannon.

Christopher Nolan and the cast and crew of The Dark Knight Rises must be breathing a sigh of relief now that the production has moved on from Pittsburgh after all of the leaks over the past month, but there was still time for a few spy videos to capture the shooting of a scene between Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon and Marion Cotillard’s Marion Tate, along with some shots of Anne Hathaway riding the Batpod as Catwoman. The Dark Knight Rises is now moving on to Los Angeles and some details have already cropped up online about simulated flood scenes that are to be filmed between now and the 1st of September, so maybe more information will be forthcoming after all.

Last week brought word that The Wolverine would be filming in Vancouver from November, but now Deadline have revealed that Fox have pushed the shoot back until 2012 due to 'weather related considerations', with star Hugh Jackman now expected to complete work on Les Miserables before donning the adamantium claws for a sequel to 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It's certainly been a difficult time for the film, with director James Mangold recently stepping in to replace Darren Aronofsky and the earthquake in Japan raising questions over possible locations for the shoot.

With this latest delay to hit The Wolverine, you have to wonder if the film will ever see the light of day, but at least X-Men fans will soon be able to get their hands on the DVD and Blu-ray release of X-Men: First Class, which features thirteen deleted scenes from this summer’s mutant prequel. InsideMovies debuted an extended scene featuring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender (in drag!) and Zoe Kravitz, and a few more will probably crop up online as we count down to the North American release on September 9th.

Rounding up the best of the rest…

...Andrew Garfield took part in an interview with Hero Complex, discussing his preparation for the role of Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man and thoughts on working with co-star Emma Stone...

…Warner Bros. are hoping to tempt fans burned by this summer’s Green Lantern by offering an extended version of the film that runs at an extra six minutes. Whether that’s going to lure people into a purchase or convince them to stay away remains open to debate…

…More promising perhaps is the upcoming Green Lantern: The Animated Series from DC animation guru Bruce Timm. See what Timm and co-creators Jim Krieg and Giancarlo Volpe had to say about the new CG show over at MTV Geek!…

...While we’re on the subject of Bruce Timm, fellow Batman: The Animated Series producer Paul Dini and long-time voice of the Dark Knight, Kevin Conroy, took part in a video interview with ComicBookResources, during which they discussed the upcoming Batman: Arkham City and the differences between working on animation and video games...

...Fright Night scribe Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has revealed to FEARnet that she'd like to take a crack at scripting a Wonder Woman feature. Could a partnership with Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn be on the horizon..?

...And finally, don't forget to vote in our poll to find your favourite superhero movie of 2011 - it's been virtually neck-and-neck between Captain America: The First Avenger and X-Men: First Class since the poll launched (or it was until this morning!) and with just five days to go, we need a victor!

Gary Collinson

Holy Franchise, Batman! - Coming 2012.

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