Film Fanatics: November 2003
by
News and Reviews
- With numerous multi-million pound sponsorship deals for everything from sportswear and perfume to supermarkets and crisps flying around, we're only too used to hearing that one celeb or another is 'the new face of' a particular product or brand, but here's one I bet you weren't expecting: rumour has it that Michael Douglas is soon to become the new face of.Majorca. Yes, that's right, the Hollywood star will apparently receive more than £3 million over the next four years as payment for starring in a variety of adverts and making a number of public appearances at trade fairs with the aim of boosting tourism to the island. Not quite the kind of starring role his fans are used to seeing him in, eh?
- Poor Colin Firth endured a rather painful bite from a malarial gadfly while filming on location in a lake near Marseilles for smash hit Love Actually. Director Richard Curtis said of the incident, 'Colin's elbow swelled up like an avocado and were he not a saint, he would have sued us for the entire profits of the film.' It appears that the film world isn't always quite as glamorous as certain people would have us believe!
- Friends star Courtney Cox (Monica Bing) has let the cat out of the bag with regard to one of her famous neighbours. She has is said to have revealed that the flexible-featured Jim (Ace Ventura, The Truman Show, The Mask, The Grinch etc) Carrey often drops in to the weekly karaoke sessions that she holds at her home and joins in with great enthusiasm. According to top UK entertainment magazine Heat, Cox says jokingly, 'He always sings American Pie, which is one of the longest songs in the world.'
LOVE ACTUALLY (15)
Richard Curtis, of Four Weddings. and Notting Hill fame, makes his debut as a writer-director with this romantic comedy which follows nine separate stories of 'love, longing and laughs' in London during the five weeks before Christmas. The cast is studded with an impressive array of British stars including Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson, Martine McCutcheon, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Alan Rickman. Despite a slightly mixed reception from the critics the film shot straight to the top of the Box Office charts on its opening weekend.
Heat: "While most of the stories make you laugh and care, Kris Marshall's American odyssey is a piece of cartoon whimsy that, while funny, possibly belongs in a different movie. Some have [also] complained that the stories aren't linked particularly ingeniously. [However], while countless Hollywood hacks struggle clumsily for feel-good uplift, Curtis succeeds because he is the real deal: a true believer in the innate goodness of mankind and the redemptive power of love. That's why the deliriously sappy Love Actually works. That, plus the collective genius of the writer-director and cast. The poster isn't lying: very romantic, very comedy, and also wonderfully warm, tingly and deliciously Christmassy. It's a blast of pure cinema joy."
Daily Mail: "Love Actually may not be perfection, but it is two-and-a-quarter hours of cinematic delight. For its ambition, range and entertainment value, Richard Curtis's first film as writer-director can stand alongside the great romantic comedies - and it's the most heart-warming Christmas movie since It's A Wonderful Life. ...Though Curtis will rightly scoop most of the plaudits, production designer Jim Clay and costume supervisor Joanna Johnston show the same fine eye for modern detail that they did in About A Boy. Nick Moore's editing has the energy that helped make The Full Monty a hit. Michael Coulter's cinematography is gorgeous, one again - as it was in Notting Hill - making London seem the world capital of romance. ...Because of its unfashionable charm, humanity and generosity of spirit, a small but vociferous minority will condemn this film out of hand. Most people, however are going to love it, and.will want to watch it over and over again."
The Times (Culture): "Richard Curtis's directorial debut, Love Actually, is the look of luuurve, the sound of ick and the cheap sob of schmaltz. .Its calculated, button-pressing cynicism is shocking. ...Curtis's idea of Christmas has no connection to reality. Instead of the Queen's speech, family dinner and nervous breakdowns, we get the season to open your heart, drop your trousers and shag whoever you fancy. It's Christmas as an office-party piss-up. As a comedy, Love Actually is like listening to an album of Curtis's greatest hits. They are all here: the swearing, the silly dancing, the social embarrassment, the whole oh-gosh-bugger-blush of middle-class life. [However,] the most disappointing feature is how limited the characterisation is. Just about everybody we meet talks like Hugh Grant. They all cringe, shrug and crack jokes like his... ...Curtis, England's most successful comic screenwriter, has shown that when it comes to Hollywood pap, the English can teach Hollywood a treacly trick or two."
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (12A)
Author Patrick O'Brian's naval hero Captain Jack Aubrey, commander of HMS Surprise during the Napoleonic wars, is brought to life by Russell Crowe in Peter Weir's stirring blockbuster. Critics have been almost unanimous in their praise of the movie, yet a lack of any female characters sadly seems to have put off a percentage of the cinema-going public.
The Times (Culture): "...This is one action movie proudly determined not to pander to lowest-common-denominator thinking. Rather than clinging to a safe formula it proceeds at its own pace through a mixture of stock conventions and curious idiosyncrasies. ...Crowe and Bettany give likeable performances, Crowe quietly showing the kindness beneath Aubrey's hard casing, and Bettany interjecting drily like John Le Mesurier in Dad's Army. Lots of good titbits are provided by Weir's glances at aspects of naval life seldom seen in tales of this sort, and the Galapagos episode uses a welcome break on terra firma to give the film an extra dimension of strangeness and wonder. While honouring the codes of an ancient genre, Weir has made a fresh, distinctive and engaging movie."
The Observer: "...An excellent, strikingly beautiful movie inspired by [Patrick] O'Brian's novels. The movie gets off to a start similar to that of Saving Private Ryan. Before we've been introduced to the officers and men of the Surprise, there's a bloody battle in the South Atlantic fog that goes beyond any previous seafaring movie in its depiction of death, terrible wounds and material destruction. ...Throughout the movie Weir varies the pace and rhythm as the Surprise goes through horrendous storms, is iced over going round the Cape, is stuck in the doldrums without water or rain, until finally there's another magnificently staged battle. Master and Commander has a conviction rare in historical movies. The dialogue is neither fustian nor anachronistic. The faces of the crew look lived in, as if they might have been painted by Hogarth or Rowlandson. Every nail, sail and coil of rope seems in the right place, and the constant tilting of the camera keeps us aware that we are at sea on a pitching, heaving boat. ...Paul Bettany as the inward, intellectual figure in his round, steel-rimmed spectacles and Crowe, the extrovert man of action with his tied-up mane of fair hair, are both excellent."
Daily Mail: "The maritime special effects are stunning. Normally a director saves his best stuff for the final reel, but Weir launches his bloody broadsides almost from the opening. Cannon-fire scythes through timber, rigging and human flesh with a realism that is quite breathtaking and technically unprecedented. It does for the Napoleonic Wars what Saving Private Ryan did for the Second World War. ...With Crowe and the helm and with storm scenes every bit as convincing as the re-creations of naval battle, Master and Commander should sweep all before it. And yet, frankly, it doesn't. The story essentially comes down to one good ship chasing one bad ship for more than two hours, and the action does drag a little. ...Crowe, looking paunchy and hindered by an unbecoming blond rinse, remains a watchable presence, helped by the same deep, dark tones that enabled him to growl his way so masterfully through Gladiator. But it is Bettany who really catches the eye, with a supporting performance that is the model of restraint and all the better for it."
ELF (PG)
Jon Favreau's Christmas comedy stars Will Ferrell as a human who is mistakenly raised among Santa's elves at the North Pole. When he eventually realises the truth, he sets out for New York, determined to find his real father, a rather grouchy James Caan!
Heat: "We wouldn't normally recommend this kind of thing, but Elf isn't your normal caper. Yes, it's sugar-coated and dreadfully sentimental. But it's also surprisingly smart, celebrating Xmas while mocking its trappings and delivering its feelgood message with a sly smirk. Favreau, who makes a cameo appearance as a bogus Santa with a bad temper, directs with a sure hand a keen sense of the absurd, while Zooey Deschanel does her career no harm at all as the cynical shop girl who falls for Buddy's unlikely charms. And Ferrell? He's a comic giant in the making who'll do anything for a laugh."
The Observer: "There are few things scarier than the 'creative trajectory' which has led hip gunslinger Jon Favreau from fronting the terrific indie-hit Swingers to helming the godawful festive romp Elf. Like Schwarzenegger's vomit-inducing Jingle All the Way or Tim Allen's repugnant Santa Clause series, Elf tries its damnedest to hit all the cutesy kids-Crimbo pic buttons while still offering knowing satirical nudges for the poor beleaguered parents."
Daily Mail: "Elf is directed by Jon Favreau, the man behind Swingers, and he strikes just the right tone of schmaltz, adult irony and slapstick comedy. He's helped by a terrifically game performance from the curly-haired Ferrell, whose face remains lovable throughout. With a fabulous, funny Christmas film such as this, his career is clearly in good elf."
Film Quiz
Just how much of a film fanatic are you? Answer these questions, add up your scores and find out!
Easy (one point for each correct answer):
- Which superhero, with an alter ego named Peter Parker, was brought to life on the big screen in 2002 by Tobey Maguire, star of Seabiscuit?
- One of British actress Samantha (In America) Morton's biggest roles to date has been that of the 'Pre-Cog' Agatha in which Hollywood blockbuster?
Less Easy (two points for each correct answer):
- Which former James Bond plays Allan Quatermain, leader of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?
- Emma Thompson, currently appearing in Richard Curtis's Love Actually, won a 'Best Adapted Screenplay' Oscar for her 1995 adaptation of which famous Jane Austen novel?
Difficult (three points for each correct answer):
- Allison Janney, the voice of Finding Nemo's 'Peach', is usually recognised for her portrayal of which member of President Bartlett's staff in hit US TV series The West Wing?
- Which British actor, best known as the hobbit Peregrin 'Pippin' Took, appears as Coxswain Barrett Bonden in naval action epic Master and Commander?
(Answers at bottom of page.)
Film Chart
Since the figures are not always available until after the event, the Box Office chart may occasionally be a couple of weeks behind. Sorry!
UK BOX OFFICE (Weekend 21-23 November)
- Love Actually
- The Matrix: Revolutions
- Finding Nemo
- Seabiscuit
- Kill Bill
- Intolerable Cruelty
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- In America
- Calendar Girls
Quiz Answers:
- Spider-Man
- Minority Report
- Sean Connery
- Sense and Sensibility
- Press Secretary C J Cregg
- Billy Boyd
How did you do?
0-4 points: Who needs film when you can listen to the radio, eh?
5-8 points: You're a fan all right, but you're not a fanatic yet.
9-12 points: Move over Spielberg, there's a new man in town!
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