Empire States: Seth MacFarlane: Oscar Hero Or Lame Duck?
Posted on Monday February 25, 2013, 05:21 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 “From Whoopi all the way down to Ron Jeremy, it’s an honour that everyone else said no,” grinned a visibly nervy Seth MacFarlane at Oscars zero hour. A few minutes later you could sense people backstage fumbling for Jeremy’s number, hoping that the man could free himself from whatever torrid triste he was engaged in at the time to save the day as the Family Guy guy dropped clunker after clunker on the Oscars.
First there was a sur-le-nez remark about Jean Dujardin’s post-Oscars career lull that was undercut hilariously by the man himself about, what, nine months ago on Funny Or Die. If that seemed a little cheap, the riff on Daniel Day-Lewis’ in-character methods on Lincoln (“If you'd seen Don Cheadle on set, would you have had to free him?”, he asked the perplexed Brit) and a sock puppet version of Flight that culminated in him delibe... Continue reading... Comment Now (28 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: Five Things We Learnt At The London Toy Fair 2013
Posted on Friday January 25, 2013, 15:42 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 Held in the vast Olympia hall in west London, Toy Fair is a giddifying jamboree that brings manufacturers and retailers together amid a vast array of Scalextric, Smurfettes and snoozing Furbys. It’s also – ssshhh! – a secret trove of plot points and spoilers for the big superhero releases of the year ahead. Last January, the nice people at Hasbro gave us a first peek at their new Hulk, revealing Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk clobber a good five months before The Avengers assembled, while LEGO showed off ‘Loki’s Cosmic Cube Escape’, in which a tiny god of mischief and an equally tiny, mind-controlled Hawkeye made off with the tesseract in a 4x4. You know, a bit like in the film.
Needless to say, we were back for Toy Fair 2013 this week, hoping to glean more brick-based hints from LEGO’s Iron Man 3... Continue reading... Comment Now (3 comments)
Back To TopSmall Screen: Empire Visits Fresh Meat Season 2
Posted on Tuesday October 9, 2012, 17:11 by Phil de Semlyen in Small Screen
 University life can be fraught. When you’re not navigating around a mountain of dirty dishes or scratching out an essay under the malign influence of Pot Noodle, there’s a full-blown identity crisis to cope with and no bloody teabags to help you do it. Take Kingsley, Fresh Meat’s resident geology-turned-drama-turned-geology-again student. “He’s gone away for the Christmas holidays and come back as a self-styled ‘jazz man’,” erstwhile Inbetweener Joe Thomas tells Empire. “And he’s definitely overreaching.”
Sure enough, Kingsley’s new look for season two of Channel 4’s award-winning comedy involves some egregious knitwear and a Tony Almeida-style soul patch that quickly sees him dubbed ‘Patch Adams’ by housemates Vod (Zawe Ashton), Howard (Greg McHugh), Josie (Kimberley Nixon), JP (Jack Whitehall) and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie). And, as McHugh explains, he’s not the only ... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopEmpire States: Ten Things I Learnt From The Bond 50 Press Day
Posted on Thursday September 27, 2012, 14:59 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 You may have heard that the James Bond movies – all 22 of them – have arrived in one giant case of pure, Blu-ray 007ness; motored across Britain in the kind of crazed PR stunt that’s worth its weight in valium. The convoy of Bond vehicles stopped at every James Bond location en route to London, from Scotland's Eilean Donan Castle (The World Is Not Enough) to Nene Valley (Octopussy). I was invited along to Day 5, the Stoke Park leg, to celebrate with three Bond girls and a certain toothy villain. Here’s what I learnt along the way.
Stoke Park Has A Surprising “00” Back Story
As any fule kno, Stoke Park appears in Goldfinger and again as a double for a Hamburg ballroom in Tomorrow Never Dies* (*I didn’t actually know this). It’s also a hefty 1-wood from Pinewood Studios, which made it Connery’s course of choice during his Bond years... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopEmpire States: Me And Jaws: Empire Goes Swimming With Sharks
Posted on Tuesday September 4, 2012, 18:49 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 Since I first watched Jaws as a cowering ten year-old, I’ve always had a strange fascination with sharks. I loved Jaws – I still do 15-odd views later – but it’s always seriously coloured my view of the sea. That’s true of a lot of people, but I’ve had it particularly bad. Even on the English shoreline, where you’re unlikely to encounter anything more deadly than a disorientated whiting, I see an ocean teeming with psychotic cacharodon carcharias wanting to do me in the eyeball like old Ben Gardner.
So why am I about to get in the water with a whole bunch of sharks at Chester’s Blue Planet Aquarium? Good question. Because Jaws was coming out in full 1080p glory? Because I’m an eejit? When Psycho comes out on Blu-ray I’m not planning on spending a night in a motel run by a knife-wielding lunatic with mummy issues. I once survived a viperwolf attack on an Avatar soundstage, but that was motion-captured so it doesn’t really co... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopEmpire States: Our Favourite Bob Hoskins Moments
Posted on Thursday August 9, 2012, 12:41 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 The sad news of Bob Hoskins’ retirement got us – and you – casting our minds back over some of the North Londoner’s greatest moments. We asked our twitter followers to list their favourite Hoskins snippets, and we’ve assembled the results here. Read on and pay tribute to Blighty’s finest…
Battering Les Battersby in a skip for Shane Meadows' Twenty Four Seven (1997) - @BustedShoe
Not just a fine actor, Hoskins also has an eye for an up-and-coming director. His Mona Lisa producer Stephen Woolley put him in touch with a young Midlander called Shane Meadows for the director’s first film, Twenty Four Seven. “He was doing a piece of theatre in the West End”, remembers Meadows, “and I went backstage where he met me. I just sat with him getting pissed on this wine in his dressing room. He alw... Continue reading... Comment Now (3 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: Five Reasons Why Jean Gabin Still Rocks
Posted on Wednesday May 23, 2012, 22:13 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 Confession time. I have a serious man-crush on Jean Gabin. Same for Alain Delon. Same for Jean-Paul Belmondo. In fact, any of the great Gallic icons. It’s the cool hats. The hats, and that knack they had for making everyone wish they were French. Even people who’d been to France and knew that being French basically meant a lifetime of shrugging and brushing baguette crumbs off your jumper.
But it's mainly Gabin. He was born a generation before his friend Belmondo and (the French-Swiss) Delon, and blazed a trail as one of the first superstars of French cinema. He died many years ago, but his standing is underlined this month by a BFI season that delves into his immensely classy filmography. I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s five reasons to catch Gabin on the big screen.... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopEmpire States: Five Reasons To Cherish Whit Stillman
Posted on Wednesday April 25, 2012, 11:50 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 As The Guardian’s Michael Newton pointed out in a lovely piece on the filmmaker last weekend, it’s impossible to imagine anyone turning out the kind of film Whit Stillman makes in England. All those upwardly mobile, thesaurus-swallowing Oxbridge types? It'd end up like Bullingdon Club: The Movie or Oxford Blues, but with Rob Lowe replaced by Spencer from Made In Chelsea or a puppy-fat David Cameron. Filmgoers would queue up just to blow raspberries at their local cinema.
That’s not to say that class isn’t polarising on the other side of the Pond too, only perhaps not as polarising. Stillman is one of a realm of American filmmakers who’ve set up their cameras inside the ivy-clad walls of preppiedom without, to the best of our knowledge, a single raspberry blown. Still, it’s instructive that he’s much happier to hear people comparing Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopEmpire States: Empire Reports: Autism-Friendly Cinemas
Posted on Friday April 13, 2012, 18:04 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 Flicking through the paper recently, I came across an ad for the Picturehouse chain’s special autism-friendly screenings. It caught my eye for two reasons: firstly, I have a brother with Asperger syndrome who has an unquenchable love of movies (current favourites: War Horse; anything with titans in it); and secondly, it was adorned with a whopping great picture of Pirate Captain from Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists, which I loved. Needless to say, he’s brandishing a fish slice rather than the traditional cutlass. (Pirate Captain, not brother.)
Pirates! is one of the films currently showing at Picturehouse Cinema’s special screenings around the country. The others - Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked and The Muppets among them – are consciously family-friendly choices designed to give the parents of autistic kids the chance of a trip to the movies without the usual stresses of a lo... Continue reading... Comment Now (7 comments)
Back To TopEmpire States: Five Things We've Learned About Brave
Posted on Thursday April 5, 2012, 11:42 by Phil de Semlyen in Empire States
 I was lucky enough to be invited down to watch sneak-peak footage from Pixar’s next big release, Brave, recently. These screenings are usually held in top-secret locations (or 'London hotels' as they're sometimes known), accompanied by embargoes (not the kind in The Phantom Menace) and biscuits so perfect they make choral noises when you eat them. If there’s a frustration in not to being able to tell anyone about it afterwards, it’s counterbalanced by the sheer joy of discovering something so new, it’s not even finished. And, of course, those singing biscuits.
This one felt a bit different. It’s an understatement to say that bad buzz isn't something Pixar has had to worry about down the years – the studio’s Metacritic average is a steepling 81 – but this is an interesting time for the denizens of Emeryville. Cars 2 was its first true critical failure (even if it did brisk trade at the box office) and parent company Disney is still su... Continue reading... Comment Now (3 comments)
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