Film

An archive of blog entries about films and film production.

Film

The Gallery: what’s the point?

12 June 2006 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

No, not the Tony Hart montage of paintings by children. The Gallery at the Odeon. What’s the point of it?

For the uninitiated, the Gallery is supposed to be the best cinema-going experience possible. First of all, you get to relax in a kind of lounge-bar before the movie. You can buy alcoholic drinks; alternatively you can have unlimited soft drinks or coffee. In addition, you can have as much popcorn, nachos and Quality Street as you like. Once you’re done in the bar, you get to watch the movie in dedicated Gallery seats, which are wide, comfy, leather chairs with their own little armrests for food and drink. You can also reserve the seats in advance to ensure you get to sit where you want.

All of this costs £18, which is £10.50 more than the price of a standard adult evening ticket.

Now, this was quite a nice idea when UCI filmworks did it and before Odeon took over. It was quite a nice “make a night of it” plan to buy Gallery tickets, spend an hour or so in the Gallery bar chatting, then watch the movie. But there have been changes by Odeon that mean I don’t think it’s worth the cash any more. Let’s weigh things up.

Continue reading “The Gallery: what’s the point?”

No. Surely not. They’re remaking that?!

9 June 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

We’ve already discussed the mostly senseless decision to remake The Wicker Man, which is coming to a cinema near you soon, sans pagans, sans great big wicker man.

Brace yourself though. There’s another remake being planned.

I don’t know how to break it to you, but the writer behind Young Guns and Hidalgo has been commissioned to write a script for a new version of…

…The Seven Samurai.

 

 

 

 

 

<BIG WHITE SPACE TO ALLOW THE SHOCK TO SETTLE IN>

 

 

 

 

 

I’m hoping it’s not true. I’m hoping no one is that insane.

But there are people who are that insane and they’re liable to hire Brett Ratner to direct.

And in case you didn’t think all that was bad enough, word is leaking out as to who they’re planning to cast in it.

First name: Donnie Yen.

Good move. Cracking actor, cracking martial artist. No problems there.

Second name: George Clooney.

WTF?

US TV

24 movie given the greenlight

8 June 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer

After much mulling, musing and moaning, there’s finally going to be a 24 movie, according to Variety. Kiefer hasn’t signed up for it yet, although frankly the producers would be insane not to spend a good part of the budget, if necessary, to get him on board.

A couple of notable facts

  1. It’s not going to real time. Neither is it going to be 24 hours long. Let’s face it, a 24-hour movie wouldn’t be a great attraction. However, it is likely that part of the film will be in real-time, so if you can imagine the first hour being set-up and the second hour being continuous, you’ve got a good idea of how it’s supposed to work
  2. Parts of it could be shot in London. Clearly, that won’t be the real-time part because having Kiefer standing on the Northern line platform for seven minutes, waiting for the train, only to realise he really needs the City branch which means going up to Euston then coming back down again just isn’t that interesting.

It’s going to occur between seasons six and seven (because you just know there’s going to be a season seven). Since they work something like 26 hours a day, nine days a week while they’re filming and rely on the two or three months they get free between seasons to catch up with their sleep, expect a certain degree of tiredness, hallucinations, irritability, sudden mood swings, etc, in the main characters’ performances

The Wicker Man returns in a different guise

7 June 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

There’s a trailer available now for the remake of The Wicker Man. Yes, you read right. They’ve remade The Wicker Man. Did we really need a remake? I don’t think so, but others may disagree.

I have to say though, it doesn’t look a huge amount like the original, particularly since it stars Nicolas Cage and appears to be all about Satan-worshippers rather than pagans. So it’s more like a “re-imagining” in the parlance of Hollywood and not for the better. Oh well. I have little faith it’ll be any good, and what faith I have comes from the fact Neil LaBute is directing it. Let the forces of nature and a giant maypole prove me wrong.

Anyone reckon that Nick Cage is going to be burnt alive in a huge wicker effigy at the end, though? Thought not.

PS Nice references to Edward Woodward in the trailer. That, at least, was a nice touch.

The beauty of early psychology in pulp novels

1 June 2006 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

I’ve been working my way through Ian Fleming’s James Bond books of late. Cos I’m inherently lazy and I’d fall asleep if I were actually reading them (early commute), I’m listening to them on my iPod, mind – what’s even less taxing than reading a James Bond? Listening to a James Bond book.

I’m currently listening to The Man with the Golden Gun, which like almost all the books has virtually nothing to do with the movies and vice versa. It’s slightly amusing anyway since the man reading them tries to do the accents and he’s not the world’s best at that; now imagine a book set on Jamaica, where half the characters appear to be Pakistani…

But then I get to this cracking psychological analysis of Scaramanga, the villain.

“I read recently a profile of Scaramanga in Time magazine. It mentioned something that was barely commented on, but I think is important. It said Scaramanga can’t whistle. Although it may be hearsay, I think there is an element of truth to the suggestion that homosexuals cannot whistle.”

There’s a lot of that kind of rubbish in the Bond books, although you can never be quite sure whether Fleming’s taking the piss – the books get a little more knowing as the series goes on. There’s Pussy Galore in Goldfinger who gets ‘cured’ of her lesbianism by Bond – she was raped when younger and that put her off men, but one night with Bond fixed her. And then there’s From Russia With Love, where the villain has to murder people during the full moon because he’s manic depressive.

But you’ve got to love 1950s psychology, haven’t you? They came up with some outstanding stuff, all cloaked with the authority of science. All the movies and books picked up on it and now we have an entire decade of media that is entirely laughable thanks to their attempt to use science to guide their plotting and characterisation.