Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci Writer/Director: Nora Ephron Price: £19.99 (Amazon price: £12.98) Released: March 8th 2010
Calling all foodies! Slight departure from the normal TMINE fare, I know, but I refuse to be confined to one little box - here's your chance to win a copy of Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as famous US TV chef (ah, see the TMINE link now?) and writer Julia Child and Amy Adams (you know, off Enchanted, Sunshine Cleaning et al) as a blogger who tries to make all the recipes in Childs' magnum opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year.
So I was watching Taken again yesterday. It's a cracking movie – you can always tell when an action film isn't as dumb as the others when it gets described as a 'thriller' or an 'action-thriller'.
In it, Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA agent whose teenage daughter gets abducted while in Paris. He has 96 hours to track her down before she disappears forever. Now, it owes an awful lot to the Bourne movies, from its gritty fights and its European locations to its camerawork and stunt scenes. But it definitely stands by itself as a film intended for grown-ups, and Neeson's fantastic and the director lets him have some great moments to himself.
It also deserves a lot of credit for portraying the world of prostitution and trafficking in women as the horrific, miserable, squalid thing it is, rather than the usual glamourous Pretty Woman-esque view.
But it suddenly got me thinking. When exactly did Liam Neeson become the West's greatest martial arts action star? Okay, he started off in Hollywood doing Dark Man, so it's not like he was a stranger to action films. But over the last decade or so, he's become a real martial arts star who is also a great actor at the same time. That's pretty rare: in fact, he may be the movies' greatest martial arts actor. What do you think?
After the jump, some of Liam's recent fight scenes to prove my point – at least as far as the fighting's concerned.
We caught up on a few movies over the Bank Holiday weekend. Here's a few one line reviews.
The Da Vinci Code: Possibly the longest, silliest film made in human history
The Changeling: Excellent, with that Mad Men-eque quality of "I can't believe sh*t like that really happened"
The Yes Man: Fun, perfectly cast and Zooey Deschanel is as wonderful as always, but the 18-year-age gap between her and Jim Carrey was just so icky
Kate and Leopold: Otherwise known as "Sabretooth and Wolverine: The Early New York years", this was gentle but sweet, well researched for its historical details but daft in modern times
Star Trek: The Motion PIcture (Director's Edition): Lots of Robert Wise/Douglas Trumbull repeating their classic work on The Andromeda Strain et al, but still desperately boring – and there's almost minimal difference between director's edition and regular edition as far as I can see.
I was going to write a review of Star Trek. But then I couldn't be bothered. Lovely wife loves it and wants to see it again in IMAX; I thought it was good, but all that time travel made it feel too geeky and continuity-ridden for my liking. But it's definitely one of the best, if not the best of the Trek movies, and I did love the fact they showed Christopher Pike (who was the captain of the Enterprise in the show's original pilot) as a decent captain, on a par with Kirk, rather than a simple placeholder, waiting for Kirk to come along. Plus Karl Urban as Bones was spooky.
Thing is, it's supposed to be a movie that sheds the Star Trek universe of geekiness and makes it accessible to non-fans. However, while preparing to write said review of Star Trek, I went to its IMDB page to do some research. Turns out the geeks hadn't got the message.
First thing to make me roll my eyes and laugh was the cast list. See if you can see what I mean:
After that, I checked out the goofs page. I did so love this one, not just for being wrong, but because someone cared enough to add it:
Continuity: In the final "Spock on Spock" scene, you can see the obvious height difference between the two. Young Spock should be the same height as old Spock.
I won't even delve into the forums. They're busy complaining about promotion-speed.
Still, if it makes them happy and it's a good film: an enjoyable romp, but not an absolute must-see.
Today's Joanna Page is Ready When You Are Mr McGill, a 2003 remake of Jack Rosenthal's famous 1976 play.
Rosenthal is best known for creating London's Burning and for writing the first ever episode of Coronation Street as well as famous plays such as Play For Today's Bar Mitzvah Boy and P'Tang, Yang, Kipperbang. In Ready When You Are Mr McGill, he turned his attention to television.
The original play, made for Granada, focused on the filming of a single scene of a TV show, in which just about everything can go wrong, does go wrong, and Mr McGill, one of the extras, does everything he can to help out and deliver his all-important line before the end of the day.
ITV, back in 2002/3 when it had a little bit of cash and was using big names to draw in the crowds, decided to remake the play as a one and a half hour movie. Starring Tom Courtenay as Joe McGill, Bill Nighy as the egotistical director, Amanda Holden as herself and Phil Davis as the cameraman, it also featured comedy luminaries including Tamsin Greig, Sally Phillips, Sam Kelly, Stephen Moore and Stephen Mangan.
It more or less followed the original play's plot, but was updated to cope with modern television politics and production - and changing it to the filming of a cop show instead of a spy show. But to pad it out for an extra half hour runtime, there's an additional sub-plot about Babs Carter, an actress who's a bit worried about her nude scene and who does everything she can to get out of it. Playing Babs Carter: Joanna Page.
If you've watched enough movies and TV shows, the idea of the 'ticking bomb' should be familiar to you. You know: there's a bomb, it's got to be defused, usually by snipping either a red wire or a blue wire, and there's only a few minutes or seconds to do it in.
Normally, you'll find this in a single episode of a TV show or maybe in the final act of a film and it'll usually be just a regular cop or soldier doing the disarming, rather than a heroic bomb disposal expert – typically they're running late. Equally rarely will the ticking bomb scenario last the length of the entire movie or TV show or the bomb be any more complex than just that red-blue question.
In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of Danger UXB and occasionally The Unit really focusing on bomb disposal on TV; in the movies, even Speed didn't dwell on disarmament, only evasion, and Quatermass and the Pit didn't have a bomb, only a spaceship everyone thought was a bomb.
Juggernaut (also known as Terror on the Britannic), released in 1974, is perhaps the only instance of a movie that deals exclusively from beginning to end with the defusal of a single bomb and that features a heroic bomb disposal expert at the centre of the action.
Set on board a luxury liner travelling across the Atlantic, the movie sees Richard Harris try to disarm seven identical and highly complicated bombs designed by a man calling himself 'Juggernaut'. The first film to develop the 'red wire/blue wire' dilemma, it's a tense piece directed by Richard 'Superman II' Lester, with dialogue by Alan 'Beiderbecke' Plater, that while featuring an all-star cast is in reality a mesmerising monologue by Harris and a musing on the nature of death. It's a movie you should own.
Here's the very 70s, slightly judgemental trailer narrated by a bored American man.
I don't normally do reviews of current films. There's not much point since I always see them too late. But when I do see a film just as it comes out, invariably my review would be almost identical to Mark Kermode's. Case in point: Quantum of Solace. Here's Mark Kermode's review, which is pretty much word for word what I would have said. Loved the fight scenes though.
¡Madre Mia! I've finally got round to writing it. The reasons you should own Manhunter! Will wonders never cease?
As far as most people are concerned, The Silence of the Lambs was the film that introduced serial killer Hannibal Lecter to the world. Starring (Sir) Anthony Hopkins as the ex-psychiatrist and people-eater, it was one of the first horror movies to do respectably at the Oscars and catapulted both Hopkins and Jodie Foster, who played the FBI agent trying to mine him for information, into the league of A-list stars.
Since then, we've had Hannibal and Red Dragon, both starring Hopkins as Lecter, and young Lecter movie, Hannibal Rising - all to diminishing effect.
What not many people realise is that back in the 80s, Michael Mann, director of Heat, Collateral, The Insider and Last of the Mohicans as well as creator of Miami Vice, had already adapted the original Lecter novel, Red Dragon, as Manhunter.
Way before Millennium, Profiler and CSI made popular forensic science, psychological profiling and the idea of thinking inside a killer's mind to catch him, it featured CSI's William Petersen as Will Graham, the man who caught Lecter by risking his own sanity and daring to think the same thoughts. Equally notably, it also featured Brian Cox as Hannibal - and he's a damn sight better than Anthony Hopkins.
Which is why Manhunter is a movie you should own. Here's the original trailer for Manhunter - forgive it for being made in the 80s.
Today's Joanna Page is Very Annie Mary, a little movie set in Wales that features just about every Welsh actor in existence. It stars Rachel Griffiths, an Australian actress who impressed everyone right up until she joined the cast of Brothers and Sisters, as Annie Mary, the frustrated (in every sense) daughter of Pavarotti-impersonating baker Jonathan Pryce.
She wants to help her best friend, the seriously ill 16-year-old Bethan Bevan, get to Disneyland and singing in a talent contest might be the only way to get the money. And despite being 22 at the time, Joanna Page played that sick teenager.
My favourite film reviewer is Mark Kermode. You can see him on BBC2's Culture Show and listen to him on BBC Radio 5 Live, which helpfully carries a podcast of his weekly reviews for Simon Mayo.
However, there's also a video stream, despite the fact it's a radio show, and Radio 5 also uploads some of the best bits onto YouTube. So here are some classic Kermode reviews for your enjoyment.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3
A mash up of his Iron Man review with the trailer
Jason Isaacs accuses Mark Kermode of being wrong about Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean 3
And lastly, Paris Hilton's The Hottie and the Nottie
About the blog
This is a UK media blog with daily news, views, exclusive reviews and good conversation. There's a bit of a bias towards the latest and greatest US TV, but we also cover British TV ranging from new Doctor Who to old Z Cars, Property Ladder to Big Brother, and BBC4 to S4C – yes, this blog is firmly part of the conspiracy to promote all things Welsh where possible, particularly Caerdydd.
Add in film, theatre, art, books, events and media journalism and you've (hopefully) got one of the best places on the web for media lovers. Oh yes, and there's The Carusometer, the ultimate guide to quality TV.
About me
I'm Rob Buckley, a freelance journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of. I've edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for trade magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and contributed sarcastic articles about television to the blink-and-you-missed-it "web site for urban hedonists" The Tribe. I'm freelance now and have contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly and TV Scoop. Have pity on me.
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci
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