Picturenose

Nothing says goodbye like a bullet…

Elliot Gould turned 70 on 29th August, 2008. Seems a perfectly appropriate time for Picturenose to lay its cards on the table in the long-running debate as to whether Robert Altman’s anachronistic adaptation of possibly the finest hard-boiled gumshoe novel ever written lives up to the book, or lays eggs. Well, which way would you go?

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In cold blood

Young Cillian Donnelly, whose 100 Movies To Be Seen Before You Die is, irritatingly enough, our most popular post, returns to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, first released on 28th August, in 1948.

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Having returned after taking a few days off from, well, from everything except eating, drinking and sleeping, I come back to the news that not very much has been going on in Tinseltown or anywhere else for that matter. There are a few stories worth an honourable mention in this news round-up, so I’m going to ease myself back in by summing them up in as few words as possible. This is either an exercise in minimalist journalism, or sheer laziness. It’s your call.

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Learning curve

The clear favourite to take the top prize at Cannes (and it duly lived up to expectations, scooping the Palme D’Or), Laurent Cantet’s seminal study of ‘the blackboard jungle’ (which fully deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Richard’s Brooks 1955 work, Robert Mulligan’s Up the Down Staircase (1967) and James Clavell’s To Sir, With Love (1967)) features former teacher François Bégaudeau (who also wrote the screenplay from his own autobiography) as himself during a school year spent with a class of 14-year-olds, trying to impart lessons in French and life.

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Return to sender…
Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy, for the uninitiated) is Joanna Mills, a successful trucking company rep who takes a business drive from her home in St. Louis to the rural area of Texas where she grew up. A perilously-close-to-scary prologue has already set the scene - something creepy happened to her at a carnival when she was a young girl and, not long after she arrives, shock-horror flashbacks begin to plague her.

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Time, the old enemy…

‘All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper…Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel, have been assigned.’

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Oh yes…
I’d like to say you heard it here first, but it’s all over the bloody internet by now. On the back of her ‘controversial’ three-way sex romp with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in the new Woody Allen potential yawn-fest Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), scarlettjohansson.com has made the official offer of a threesome of your very own with the eponymous young lady.

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Too black and white
Bille August (Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (1997), Les Miserables (1998)) heads up this multi-European country co-production, but his take on the tale of the relationship between a white South African prison guard and Nelson Mandela is flawed from the outset.

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All his own work?

Carl Fogaty: Any last words before I blow your brains out, you miserable prick?
Tom Stall: I should have killed you back in Philly.
Carl Fogaty: Yeah Joey, you should have.
It’s all, ahem, ‘Viggo’ for the mo - but one can but hope that a discussion of what is perhaps the best mainstream thriller since Se7en (1995) will not bring too many complaints…

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A hero’s reign in Spain

In the first Picturenose contribution to our new partnership with Cineuropa.org, James finds much to enjoy in a historical biopic starring Viggo Mortensen.

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