Picturenose

Magic circle

Don’t you just love movies that play games? Joseph L Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972) obviously springs to mind, as does the more recent Memento (2002), directed by the same wunderkind, Christopher Nolan, who here takes us on a playful but dark journey into the disappearances and deception of turn-of-the-20th century magicians.

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Hard on Baz’s Bard
It is with great interest that I learned the Australian soap actor-turned director Baz Luhrmann has a new film coming up this year. It’s called Australia, and the early reports indicate it might be good. That’s a relief, because since Strictly Ballroom (1992), his movies have been - how can I put this - nauseating, over-produced crap.

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Shit and run

It really must have seemed like a great idea at the time. Quentin Tarantino teamed up with Sin City director Robert Rodriguez for a 70s sleaze-fest double bill, Grindhouse, which combines Rodriguez’s zombie-schlock-splatter extravaganza Planet Terror (2007) with Tarantino’s offering, Death Proof, plus several fake 70s-style trailers.

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Sing-along-a-Bond?
Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad? OK. Amy (’Look at me! Look at me!’) Winehouse was reported by the BBC to be involved in the production of the latest Bond outing Quantum of Solace. The good news? A couple of days later, her producer, Mark Ronson, was quoted as saying that Ms Ooh-Aren’t-I-Controversial is “not ready to make music”. Hardly surprising, really. My theory is that she’s either being a bit heavy-handed with the Columbian marching powder, or she simply can’t think of anything that rhymes with ’solace’. Let’s face it, she’s no Sheena Easton, is she?

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Don’t pass this Buck
I have to put up my hand and make a confession. You’re not going to get a concise, objective review of this film because I absolutely love it. If you don’t want to read about how much fun it is, go and read one of our other reviews instead - they’re all good stuff but none is as biased as this is going to be.

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Comic-book history

I took my 10-year-old son to see this last week. He’s a fairly astute and mature boy, so I wasn’t too worried about some of the battle scenes that depict violent death and bloody retribution, but if you’re a parent, you may want to do a little research first. There really isn’t a huge amount of gratuitous violence; this is just a friendly heads-up, just in case. He loved the film and the story is a well-paced and visually exciting romp through days of yore.

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Blues heaven…
It was with a poignant shrug, a sigh and a great deal of whining on my part that I was first dragged bodily toward watching this movie, many years ago. The object of my desire at the time had said: “It looks great - it’s the first in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical films about the playwright Neil Simon.” Imagine my excitement. It didn’t take long, however, for me to be introduced once again to a concept not unfamiliar to me - that of being proven horribly wrong.

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A policeman’s lot is quite a gruesome one
Another slab of in-your-face comic genius from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and many of the usual suspects from Spaced.

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Copper-bottomed comedy
Messrs Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are fast becoming the benchmark for what it means to be funny – comic actor and writer Pegg first paired up with writer/director Wright for the sensational Spaced sit-com, and they have subsequently worked together on the marvellous ‘not with a bang but a belly-laugh’ zombie pastiche, Shaun of the Dead (2004).

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