Tag Archive for '853'

Couch Potato Pickings | Wedding Movies: the good, the bad, and the unexpected

Published
by
Beth
on June 28, 2009
in Couch Potato and Films on TV
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Yesterday, two of my friends tied the knot and held a good old knees-up to mark the occasion. That’s the best sort of celebration in my opinion - simple, yet romantic.

Simplicity, however, is not a characteristic of movie marriages, is it? Getting hitched has to be as complex and dramatic as possible when it’s taking place on the silver screen. Matrimony in the movies is about the good, the bad, or the unexpected.

The Good

The ‘dream come true’ movie wedding has to be Love Actually’s nuptials between Juliet and Peter (Keira Knightley and Chiwetel Ejiofor). Could it be more perfect?

The Bad

If Richard Curtis ever wanted to make an extra few pounds he could easily moonlight as a wedding planner, considering how many movie marriages he’s dreamt up. The fourth wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Charles (Hugh Grant) acknowledges his lack of love for fiancée Henrietta (Anna Chancellor) at the altar surely has to be THE biggest nuptials nightmare on film.

The Unexpected

Sarah Jessica Parker

Carrie Bradshaw gets carried away with planning her dream wedding in Sex and the City, but when she finally does get hitched, it’s nothing like the big day of her fantasies; it’s better.

What do you think? Which movie marriages make you smile, groan or gasp?

There are four wedding movies showing today to help you decide, each with their good moments…

Muriel’s Wedding: Toni Collette

their bad moments…

Katherine Heigl

Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan

…and a few moments that may be a little unexpected.

Drew Barrymore

Love blossoms in the wedding hospitality world in quirky feelgood romcom The Wedding Singer on Comedy Central at 10.50pm.

A gawky Abba-loving misfit yearns for the perfect wedding in Australian black comedy classic Muriel’s Wedding on Watch at 10pm.

Sky Movies Comedy presents chick flick fluff about a serial bridesmaid who dreams about becoming a bride in 27 Dresses at 6pm.

Watchable but unmemorable variation on the My Best Friend’s wedding theme Made of Honour is showing on Sky Movies Prmeiere at 8pm.

Small Screen – this week’s top ten DVDs…

Published
by
Dean & Ellen
on April 15, 2009
in DVD Releases
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  1. Twilight

    2. Pain in the neck… Teenager Bella Swann moves to a small town in Washington and falls for her mysterious classmate, Edward Cullen, who turns out to be a 108-year-old vampire.


    Typical.

  2. Quantum of Solace

    3. Secret service… Bond’s latest mission takes him to Austria, Italy and South America on the trail of a shady environmentalist. It also gives him a chance to show off his running and jumping skills.

  3. Changeling

    4. Child scare… Clint Eastwood’s period thriller stars Angelina Jolie as a mother convinced the boy returned to her is not her missing son.

  4. Mamma Mia!

    5. Dancing Queen… Meryl Streep can dance. Meryl Streep can jive. Meryl Streep is clearly having the time of her life in this money, money, money-making film version of the musical inspired by ABBA songs.

  5. Body of Lies

    6. Undercover operation… Leonardo DiCaprio plays a special agent set on infiltrating a terrorist network.

  6. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    7. Against the odds… An unlikely friendship between the son of a Nazi concentration camp commander and a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has devastating consequences.

  7. The Duchess

    8. Keep your wig on… This story of the scandalous 18th-century aristocrat Georgina Cavendish features Keira Knightley and some sizeable hairpieces.

  8. The Women

    9. Ladies who lunch… A close-knit group of high society women start to question their friendships and relationships. They also do some shopping.

  9. Zack and Miri Make a Porno

    10. Quick buck… Debt-ridden friends, Zack and Miri, shoot a homemade porn film to make some money. The result is hit and miss. Literally.

  10. Saw V

    11. Grisly end… The bloody franchise continues. More people die.


Small Screen – this week’s top ten DVDs…

Published
by
Dean & Ellen
on April 8, 2009
in DVD Releases
. 0 Comments

  1. Quantum of Solace

    2. Secret service… Bond’s latest mission takes him to Austria, Italy and South America on the trail of a shady environmentalist. It also gives him a chance to show off his running and jumping skills.



  2. Changeling

    3. Child scare… Clint Eastwood’s period thriller stars Angelina Jolie as a mother convinced the boy returned to her is not her missing son.

  3. Body of Lies

    4. Undercover operation… Leonardo DiCaprio plays a special agent set on infiltrating a terrorist network.

  4. Mamma Mia!

    5. Dancing Queen… Meryl Streep can dance. Meryl Streep can jive. Meryl Streep is clearly having the time of her life in this money, money, money-making film version of the musical inspired by ABBA songs.

  5. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    6. Against the odds… An unlikely friendship between the son of a Nazi concentration camp commander and a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has devastating consequences.

  6. Zack and Miri Make a Porno

    7. Quick buck… Debt-ridden friends, Zack and Miri, shoot a homemade porn film to make some money. The result is hit and miss. Literally.

  7. The Duchess

    8. Keep your wig on… This story of the scandalous 18th-century aristocrat Georgina Cavendish features Keira Knightley and some sizeable hairpieces.

  8. Saw V

    9. Grisly end… The bloody franchise continues. More people die.

  9. The Women

    10. Ladies who lunch… A close-knit group of high society women start to question their friendships and relationships. They also do some shopping.

  10. Taken

    11. Rescue mission… A former CIA agent uses all his skills in an attempt to recover his daughter who has been abducted by sex-traffickers in France.


Small Screen – this week’s top ten DVDs…

Published
by
Dean & Ellen
on March 25, 2009
in DVD Releases
. 0 Comments

  1. The Duchess

    2. Keep your wig on… This story of the scandalous 18th-century aristocrat Georgina Cavendish features Keira Knightley and some sizeable hairpieces.



  2. Mamma Mia!

    3. Dancing Queen… Meryl Streep can dance. Meryl Streep can jive. Meryl Streep is clearly having the time of her life in this money, money, money-making film version of the musical inspired by ABBA songs.

  3. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    4. Against the odds… An unlikely friendship between the son of a Nazi concentration camp commander and a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has devastating consequences.

  4. The Women

    5. Ladies who lunch… A close-knit group of high society women start to question their friendships and relationships. They also do some shopping.

  5. Eagle Eye

    6. Withheld number… Two strangers are brought together by a mysterious phone call. One of them is Shia LaBeouf.

  6. Saw V

    7. Grisly end… The bloody franchise continues. More people die.

  7. How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

    8. Englishman in New York… Simon Pegg plays a British journalist who goes to the United States and irritates people.

  8. Taken

    9. Rescue mission… A former CIA agent uses all his skills in an attempt to recover his daughter who has been abducted by sex-traffickers in France.

  9. High School Musical 3

    10. Lessons in love… Troy and Gabriella face up to the prospect of being separated after graduating. Plus, they sing and dance.

  10. Ghost Town

    11. Brace yourself… Ricky Gervais plays a dentist who sees dead people – and teeth.


The Best View | The Duchess - Keira shakes off flat-pack image but her film is hobbled by history

Published
by
Jason Best
on March 16, 2009
in DVD Releases and The Best View
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The Duchess - Keira Knightley plays passionate 18th-century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Keira Knightley unfailingly comes in for a drubbing from some quarters whatever she does, but she earned some of the best reviews of her career for her starring role in The Duchess, a sumptuous historical drama based on Amanda Foreman’s bestselling historical biography. Even critic Mark Kermode revised his habitual dismissal of “Ikea” Knightley as “a purveyor of teakily flat-packed performances”, declaring himself impressed by “her sympathetically long-suffering turn” as Georgiana Spencer, the 18th-century aristocrat whose turbulent love life has uncanny parallels with her remote descendant, Princess Diana (her great-great-great-great niece).

The Duchess - Keira Knightley as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, & Ralph Fiennes as her cold fish of a husband, the Duke

Director Saul Dibb and his leading actors strive heroically to make us care for the story’s cast of toffs, with even Ralph Fiennes’ cold fish of a husband coming in for a measure of sympathy. But the film struggles to shape Georgiana’s messy life into the type of graceful narrative arc that makes a popular movie satisfying. It’s a problem that similarly hamstrings the recently released period biopic The Young Victoria, which throws up some fascinating historical nuggets but fails to fashion a compelling narrative out of the monarch’s early life.

The Devil’s Whore - Andrea Riseborough as Angelica Fanshawe and Michael Fassbender as Rainsborough

Here, I think, British cinema could take a leaf from the history book of Channel 4’s four-part costume drama The Devil’s Whore, which is coincidentally also released on DVD today. Instead of playing safe, writer Peter Flannery (of Our Friends in the North fame) invented the fictional character of his story’s young aristocratic protagonist, Andrea Riseborough’s Angelica Fanshawe, and had her rubbing shoulders with real figures from history, such as Dominic West’s Oliver Cromwell and Peter Capaldi’s King Charles I. Flannery’s approach has its drawbacks, but the viewer is far more likely to be hooked by Angelica’s made-up journey through the turmoil of the English Civil War than by The Duchess and The Young Victoria’s hobbled histories. (Released 16th March)

Why does Keira Knightley arouse such loathing? Read more.


To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.

News Muse - The New Wrestler

Published
by
Adele
on March 13, 2009
in News and News Muse
. 0 Comments

It’s hard to quantify how huge last year’s The Wrestler was when it came to restoring the film career and reputation of bad-boy Mickey Rourke.

And this year it’s Nick Nolte’s turn to try and make that shift from drug addicted has-been status to redeemed movie star success. And how, you ask? By starring in what media is already calling ‘this year’s Wrestler’. The film, Warrior, will see Nolte as a Vietnam war veteran (er, again?) who is also a recovering alcoholic (shouldn’t be too much of a stretch then) with excellent mixed martial arts skills that come in handy when he needs to train his son, Bronson star Tom Hardy, for a big cage fighting competition.

Rourke, in the meantime, has already moved on to the next project, which looks set to be Iron Man 2 after all, now that the rumoured dispute of pay has been resolved in favour of Mickey’s bank balance. Rourke is to star as the Russian baddie Ivan aka Whiplash.

Speaking of The Wrestler, I learned this week that none other than Nicholas Cage turned down the role as Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson because he didn’t feel he’d have enough time to bulk up sufficiently to look like a guy on steroids. Well, if you watched Rourke’s interview on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Mickey didn’t deny that he needed some ’supplements’ in order to get as big as he did. Poor guy - suffering for the sake of his art…

Enough testosterone - I’m growing a beard over here!

Jennifer Aniston has admitted that she almost turned down her role in Marley & Me because she didn’t like the book that the movie is based on.


Well, you know what? I couldn’t stand the movie. It was like watching paint dry with your eyes pried open with clothes pegs - yes, it eventually made me tearful, but they were tears of utter frustration.

Another things that has me wound up this week is news that Keira Knightley may be cast as Eliza Doolittle in a remake of My Fair Lady. If you’re a regular reader you will know two things:

1. Keira Knightley is one of my least favourite actors, ever.

2. The word ‘remake‘, especially when combined with the title of any movie/musical classic, gives me high blood pressure.

I’m going home now to watch the bleemin’ original, thank you veri much!

Awards Season | Movie Talk celebrates the good, the bad… and the just plain weird

Published
by
Jason Best
on January 9, 2009
in 2009 Awards
. 0 Comments

Anne Hathaway at the Oscars

Are you ready for the annual orgy of movie world prize-giving? This year’s awards season kicks off on Sunday 11th January with the Golden Globes - the baubles bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that often predict the way the Oscars will go.

Angelina Jolie on the red carpet

Last year’s Golden Globes ceremony was scuppered by the writer’s strike, but Sunday’s event promises to be a return to glitz and glamour. After that, the likes of Kate Winslet, Angelina Jolie, Penélope Cruz and Anne Hathaway (all Globe acting nominees) will probably get a chance to don their frocks again at the Baftas on Sunday 8th February (nominations announced on 15th January) and at the Oscars themselves on Sunday 22nd February (nominations on January 22nd).

Kate Winslet on the red carpetPenélope Cruz on the red carpet

Movie Talk will be following the fortunes of Kate, Angelina, Penélope & co over the coming weeks, but in the meantime here is a selection of alternative awards. As yet unfairly excluded from the consideration of the Oscar and Bafta voters, these are the prizes that we’d like to see.

Best recipe: Bittersweet joy, laughter and tears in Lebanese writer-director-star Nadine Labaki’s Beirut-set chick flick Caramel.

Best magic trick: Heath Ledger’s Joker making a pencil vanish in The Dark Knight was the year’s neatest spot of prestidigitation; a gangster’s henchman was the hapless stooge who got the point but didn’t see the joke.

Best hair: Keira Knightley’s towering topiary of a hairpiece in The Duchess.

Best avoided: M Night Shyamalan tried to make us afraid of the grass in The Happening, but the latest movie from the would-be master of suspense turned out to be a non-event.

Best cover version: A lovesick Hellboy and Abe’s drunken singlaong was one of the highlights of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. What song did they pick for their maudlin duet? Er, Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You”.

Best swearing: Colin Farrell turned the air blue in a wintry Belgium as a scurrilous hitman turned reluctant tourist in Martin McDonogh’s pitch-black comedy thriller In Bruges.

Best oldie: A surprisingly spry Harrison Ford “nuked the fridge” and duked it out with hulking Russkies in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but he couldn’t prevent Spielberg and Lucas’s creaking franchise from showing its age.

Best left undisturbed: Brendan Fraser & co dug up yet another crabby corpse with violent proclivities and megalomaniac ambitions in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Best car chase: The scorching pursuit of James Bond’s Aston Martin DBS V12 along a twisting corniche road was a high spot of Quantum of Solace; shame the rest of the movie soon ran out of gas…

Best dance routine: a heavily disguised star’s gob-smacking bump and grind moves as Tropic Thunder’s fat, balding, hairy movie mogul was bizarre, creepy and a comic scream.

Love Actually

Published
by
Beth
on December 22, 2008
in Couch Potato and Films on TV
. 0 Comments

Couch Potato Pickings

On ITV2 tonight at 10pm

Emma Thompson

Now this is a real Christmas cracker of a film packed with comedy, romance, pathos, and of course celebs. There’s something in it for everyone.

I’m sure everyone has their favourite and least favourite scenarios from this episodic film.

These are my Top 9, starting with my least favouite:

9)  Colin (Kris Marshall) and the American girls

Kris Marshall

8)  Movie sex scene stand-ins John (Martin Freeman)  and Judy (Joanna Page)

7)  Newlyweds Juliet (Keira Knightley) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet’s secret admirer Mark (Andrew Lincoln).

Keira Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor

6)  Work colleagues Sarah (Laura Linney) and Karl (Rodrigo Santoro)

5) Writer Jamie (Colin Firth) and Portuguese housekeeper Aurelia (Lucia Monez).

Colin Firth, Lucia Moniz

4) Widower Daniel (Liam Neeson) and his stepson Sam (Thomas Sangster).

Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster

3) Ageing popstar Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) and his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher)

2)   Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant) and tea girl Natalie (Martine McCutcheon).

Martine McCutcheon, Hugh Grant

1)   Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson).

Emma Thompson,Alan Rickman

Pride & Prejudice

Published
by
Beth
on December 2, 2008
in Couch Potato and Films on TV
. 0 Comments

Couch Potato Pickings

On ITV3 tonight at 9pm

Now here’s a film for which Keira Knightley deserves star billing, unlike yesterday’s movie.

The Hole

Published
by
Beth
on December 1, 2008
in Couch Potato and Films on TV
. 0 Comments

Couch Potato Pickings

On E4 tonight at 11pm

The Hole

Every time this film shows on TV it’s introduced as “The Hole starring Keira Knightley.”

I can’t tell you how much this annoys me. Thora Birch is the star of this chilling thriller and she’s brilliant in it. Keira, on the other hand, plays a shallow slip of a girl who doesn’t do much other than moan, throw up and die quite early on.

Keira Knightley

It’ll be interesting to see if they repeat this insult to Thora on E4 tonight.

Thora Birch, Keira Knightley

Poor Thora. She’s also the star of Ghost World and American Beauty, but according to those annoying TV voiceovers the former is Scarlett Johansson’s movie and the latter film belongs to Mena Suvari.

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