Screen To Stage: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Posted on Friday July 3, 2009, 10:26 by Helen O'Hara
Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future of fashion, and it looks like people tying halved satellite dishes to their feet, attaching wide, glittery, striped flares around the edges, and then donning half a florists by way of headgear. It's beautiful, it's daring, it's totally impractical and it's probably the real star of the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert musical - never mind Jason Donovan, Tony Sheldon and Oliver Thornton. It may seem a little odd to focus on the costumes - but that's what the characters do, and to an extent what the film did, so bear with me for a moment, because the costumes are just astonishing. Soaring headgear, showgirl feather headdresses that would put Kylie to shame, corsets with both frills and heart-shaped decoupage, baroque funeral duds that happen to be ass-less, animal costumes - this thing has it all. It makes last month's Sister Act look positively austere, and knocks La Cage Aux Fol... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopOutdoor Cinema This Summer
Posted on Monday June 29, 2009, 11:17 by Helen O'Hara
I was woken at 4am by pigeons cooing amorously on my windowsill, and then assaulted by waves of oven heat on the Tube this morning. The chocolate teacakes left thoughtlessly on the table in Cafe Empire on Friday have dissolved into small puddles of brown and white goo (cf. pigeons above) and there's a 90% chance I'll turn lobster pink if I so much as cross the road to buy lunch*. It can all mean only one thing: summer is here, and it's time to book in my outdoor film viewing for this year. I'm a bit devotee of outdoor screenings. The trick is to bring lots of blankets, rugs, possibly cushions, nibbles etc - and then throw some more blankets, rugs and cushions in the bag just when you think you've got enough. Basically, bring as many as you can carry. If you're sitting in Somerset House's stony courtyard, you're going to want as much padding between you and the ground as possible, particularly if you're watching a double-bill and the second film's starting around 11pm. You're also going to start to f... Continue reading... Comment Now (7 comments)
Back To TopMichael Jackson At The Movies
Posted on Friday June 26, 2009, 09:43 by Helen O'Hara
So the news today of Michael Jackson's passing has left me with rather mixed emotions. On the one hand, it's clear that the King of Pop was weird, to say the least, and damaged from a childhood spent under the full glare of the spotlight. On the other hand, it's undeniable that he was a huge musical talent, and I've been rather enjoying listening to his hits without a break all morning so far. But this is a film site, so let's assess his contribution to film history. First of all, there were his starring roles. I remember being very excited about going to see Moonwalker as a kid, what with the trailers showcasing all the swooshy effects and the music and the fact that Michael Jackson was making a film and there was a bit with a giant robot spaceship! One of my best friends was a massive fan, so I'd already been lectured thoroughly about MJ's career and had it explained that this would be the greatest film ever. I went to see it, if memory serves, with high hopes and quite... Continue reading... Comment Now (10 comments)
Back To TopSam's Edinburgh Blog, Part Three: The Final Chapter
Posted on Thursday June 25, 2009, 20:28 by Sam Toy
Scold me for my laziness if you will, but for my last day of EIFF-ing, I took some time away from the big screen to concentrate on some of its living, breathing attractions. I’m still kicking myself somewhat for missing the hastily-developing-“Sex Pistols Manchester 1976”-levels-of-festival-folklore Le Donk & Scorz-ayz-ee party (although I had the best possible reason for not making it), but I did manage to get to the Five Day Features Q&A the following afternoon.
Shane Meadows and producer Mark Herbert were in conversation with festival director Hannah McGill for 90 minutes, recounting their experiences making Le Donk as an example to us all that their idea – to invigorate filmmakers new and old by shooting a feature film in five days - could work. Meadows in particular has an almost militantly can-do attitude (to the point where he refuses to acknowledge the opinion of anyone saying they can’t; and again by his own example, he’s right) a... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To Top10 Oscar Nominees Per Year?
Posted on Thursday June 25, 2009, 09:58 by Chris Hewitt
So, as of next year, the Oscars’ Best Picture race will include ten nominees, rather than the traditional five, the biggest sea change for the ceremony since the minting of the Best Animated Feature Film category (ironically, a category that may be threatened by this new move; more on that later). It’s a decision that has split pundits down the middle. Everyone’s favourite grumpy old man, Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere, has bah-humbugged the whole enterprise – “Why didn't the Academy decide to nominate 15 films for Best Picture?” he asks - while Steven Zeitchik at The Hollywood Reporter thinks it’s a potentially positive move, calling it a “shrewd marketing move” even if it’s also “a questionable policy change.”
Meanwhile, in my initial spur-of-the-moment reaction in our news story, I pooh-poohed the idea, seeing it as a largely cynical move to acknowledge f... Continue reading... Comment Now (29 comments)
Back To TopSam's Greetings From Edinburgh
Posted on Wednesday June 24, 2009, 10:53 by Sam Toy
 Only three nights in, and this year’s festival experience seems to me to have blurred into some self-induced, Apocalypse Now-style odyssey. Where did I start going wrong? The jet lag, the constant liver-bashing, the parties? Costcutter baked goods at 4am? All of the above, I guess. Still, the quality of the films are pulling me through. As promised, I was recently at the press screening for Le Donk & Scorz-Ayz-Ee. Given the pre-existing praise of Nev & Damo, I’ll not waffle on anymore here: suffice to say that I really dug it. A completely unexpected turn from all involved, it’s hilarious for nearly all of its 71 minutes, with Paddy Considine finally getting a chance to unleash his little known, yet mile-wide comedic streak. Le Donk – the long-gestating character, and background star of many a Shane Meadows short – is the actor’s Partridge or Brent. Meadows, meanwhile, gives the five days of improvisation a genuinely moving (yet not overdone) st... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopTransformers: Robots In Denial
Posted on Tuesday June 23, 2009, 13:12 by Chris Hewitt
BEWARE: SPOILERS ABOUND. DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN REVENGE OF THE FALLEN! A few hours ago I became the last Empire-ite to slap my eyes upon Michael Bay’s mega-sequel, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. And, as my interest rapidly waned ‘neath the relentless barrage of robot punching, robot kicking, robot smashing, robot leg humping, robot farting, robot incomprehensible exposition and ROBOT LOUD NOISES, I noticed something that piqued my interest.
In short, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen may be the gayest mainstream movie since Top Gun, with its talk of wingmen and tails and whatnot. Not, as Seinfeld once said, that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, it’s quite audacious and subversive. After all, Transformers is a giant, toy-shifting, popcorn-shovelling buster of blocks, a movie designed for parents to take their kids along to, safe in the knowledge that it won’t turn out to be a paean to the jo... Continue reading... Comment Now (62 comments)
Back To TopPop Idols
Posted on Sunday June 21, 2009, 21:00 by Chris Hewitt
Cinema is filled with lousy dads, real shitheels dedicated to being the biggest bastard they can be. But, on this most artificial of manufactured, card company-created days, I want to give something back to the dads. Dads often get the short end of the stick – it’s the mums we run to when we’re kids and we’ve hurt our hands, it’s the mums who feed us, who clothe us. But it’s the dads who we look up to. It’s the dads we want to play with, whether it’s a game of football or a fruitless session trying to teach them how to use a joypad. It’s the dads, frankly, and not astronauts or doctors or footballers that we want to be when we’re growing up.
And so here, in no particular order, are some of cinema’s most inspirational, moving, and emotional dad moments…
From the moment his child is born, a father’s life is about sacrifice – giving up the little things in life to make his offspring’s life easier ... Continue reading... Comment Now (34 comments)
Back To TopEMPIRE loves Le Donk, Shane Meadows' latest
Posted on Sunday June 21, 2009, 18:53 by Nev Pierce
 One of the most anticipated films of this year’s festival is Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, the third feature-length collaboration between Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine. It does not disappoint.
Pre-screening hubbub focussed on the fact the improvised docu-style feature was shot in a mere five days… which left me worried, frankly – as if the low-budget, micro-schedule might be used to excuse a dip from the pair’s usual quality (Dead Man’s Shoes, A Room For Romeo Brass). The concerns were ill-founded; this is an actor and director at ease but not at rest: Le Donk is very funny and oddly touching and features a brilliant performance from Considine.
He’s an actor perhaps best known for the sense of edge he can give characters – an unpredictable, feral presence – but Le Donk, a roadie and wannabe music manager, is a lighter creation, daft instead of dangerous and vulnerable beneath his bloke-ish bluster.
He’s got ... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopEdinburgh: Damo Loves Humpday
Posted on Sunday June 21, 2009, 14:43 by Damon Wise
 Humpday is a film I had high hopes for, and, thankfully, they were met. It's the kind of comedy we can't seem to make in the UK, even though all it really boils down to is three actors and a camcorder. Made by Lynn Shelton, it's an exquisitely funny film about male intimacy and ego that skirts some very uncomfortable issues without ever losing the audience's sympathy or interest.
Mark Duplass plays Ben, a Seattle guy who has settled down with his wife Anna (Alicia Delmore). Their marital harmony is suddenly and rudely interrupted by the arrival Ben's old friend Andrew (Blair Witch's Joshua Leonard), who turns up at 2am in a warm fuzzy haze of brotherly love. Andrew stays one night before moving on to a college dorm, where he has befriended a sexually adventurous college girl, Monica (Shelton), who lives in a state of semi-permanent orgy. Staying overnight, Monica and her friends/lovers tell the pair about a local amateur porn-movie festival called Humpfest. Stoned, dru... Continue reading... Comment Now
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