awards
Jasper Rees
In films featuring computer whizzes, there is always a key scene in which, to illustrate the whizziness, a star actor bashes on a keyboard at implausible warp speed. The Social Network is the first major film to respond to the drama inherent in the internet boom. (What’s next? Google in China: the movie? Tehran: the Twitter Revolution?) But it’s one of The Social Network's unremarked attractions that a movie starring computers has no truck with fetishising geekery.As the cast and writer Aaron Sorkin bend over backwards to explain in the DVD extras, this is not a film about Facebook. It Read more ...
Jasper Rees
@Wossy seems to have been cast as second baddie in #PiratesduCaribbean 4This intro is entirely about namechecking the films so they can cut away to the US stars who've jetted in from #TinseltownLame string of Little Fockers jokes.These clips montages always make films look like the complete Shakespeare. Then you go and see them...@Wossy seems to have been cast as second baddie in #PiratesduCaribbean 4This intro is entirely about namechecking the films so they can cut away to the US stars who've jetted in from #TinseltownLame string of Little Fockers jokes.These clips montages always make Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Mark Radcliffe was on good form, saying how he had seen Donovan at the Whitley Bay Ice Rink (and nipped out to the car park to keep warm) and met Donovan’s manager, who when the singer retired asked if Donovan was going to bed. “Donovan doesn’t go to bed – he crashes,” said the manager. Donovan sang one of his hits, “Catch the Wind” – although I always preferred “Mellow Yellow” (can it really have been about how you can smoke banana skins to get high, as the received word in the schoolyard had it?).Chris Wood won both Folk Singer of the Year and Best Original Song with “Hollow Point”, his Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The timely arrival on DVD of Winter’s Bone as it heads for the Oscars ceremony gives a fresh chance to dwell on the film’s unshowy riches. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year-old Ree whose father has disappeared, leaving her to care for an invalid mother and a much younger brother and sister. If she can’t find him, a bail bondsman will repossess the family house in the Missouri backwoods.Her search takes her fearlessly into terrain patrolled by vengeful crystal meth dealers who trade in natural justice. Lawrence deserves every plaudit for a performance which mixes heartstopping vulnerability Read more ...
Graham Fuller
A paean to working-class bellicosity set (and shot) in the rundown industrial town of Lowell, Massachusetts, David O’Russell’s boxing film The Fighter relishes its brawls. In one inspired scene, a character is unceremoniously slammed to the ground and punched repeatedly in the face. Not Queensberry Rules? That’s because the assailant is the eponymous pugilist’s girlfriend and her victim one of his seven sisters, who have arrived on her porch with their mother one morning to wrest him away from the siren’s clutches.It’s the fate of Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg, who nurtured the project and has a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
So many stage shows (musicals, mostly) are these days fashioned from films that the arrival of Rabbit Hole reminds us of the time-honored habit of plundering yesteryear's Broadway hit for this movie season's trophy-minded bait. And so we have Nicole Kidman Oscar-nominated for her turn as the grieving mum in a part that won Cynthia Nixon New York's Tony Award five years ago. Don't be misled, though, by the rather overemphatic talk of this comparatively below-the-radar venture as merely a comeback vehicle for Kidman; the virtues of the movie, modest though they are, extend without question to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We were saddened by the absence of such artsdesk favourites as Spooks and Sherlock from the list of winners of last night's National Television Awards at the O2 Arena, who were all chosen by the public's votes. Of course, we share the national euphoria at the news of Bruce Forsyth's Special Recognition Award for his... er... interminable career. "This would be a good night to announce my retirement but I'm not bloody going to," the Strictly Come Dancing host told disappointed reporters. We would also send our congratulations to Top Entertainment Presenters Ant and Dec if we knew which one was Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Of the other Best Picture Oscar nominees, David O Russell’s The Fighter has seven nominations, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan six apiece, the animated Toy Story 3, directed by Lee Unkrich, has five, and two indies, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and Debra Granik’s Winter's Bone, have four each.The King's Speech's growing momentum was indicated on Saturday when it unexpectedly won the Producers Guild of America’s top award. In the 21 previous years the PGA has awarded the prize, 14 of the winners (including the last three) have gone on to win the Best Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Just to fill in that blank left by the title, how do you know when you’re in love? It’s the question posed by every romantic comedy ever made, satisfactorily answered only by the good ones. James L Brooks, who wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets, has spent a lifetime in film looking at the problem from a variety of Oscar-winning angles. If he doesn’t know how to lead an audience to the promised land, then who the hell does? So it’s good he’s at the helm here, right?Just to fill in that blank left by the title, how do you know when you’re in Read more ...
joe.muggs
Club music has always been hard to keep track of, and never more so than in the current climate of constant genre meltdown and cross-fertilisation. Which is why the DJ's art is more important than ever, particularly in the case of scene figureheads like the indefatigable Gilles Peterson – known for over 20 years as a patron of all things jazzy, but lately proving brilliantly adept at reaching all corners of what he refers to as “left-field dance music”. Shows like his are ideal – necessary, even – for nurturing, contextualising and showcasing new generation genre-agnostic talents like Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Time, and a scruffy beard, can't dim the unshowy magnificence that is Robert Duvall, the actor's actor among American film stars who turned 80 earlier this month. That milestone might represent a cue in some quarters to hang up your cleats or, at least, to coast into old age via a kindly supporting role or two, of the sort Duvall essayed in Crazy Heart. But resting on such comparatively untaxing laurels is no more Duvall's style than it would be that of his latest assignment, Felix Bush, an avowed loner who says little but keeps a shotgun close at hand. Mess with him at your peril, and don't Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Facebook film The Social Network and TV's Glee were the big winners at the Golden Globes last night, though much attention has focused on the best acting awards to Colin Firth for The King's Speech and Natalie Portman for Black Swan. Not to mention Ricky Gervais's British sense of humour as host. Christian Bale was another eminent British actor who won an award, for his supporting role in The Fighter, but Helena Bonham Carter, Judi Dench and Romola Garai missed out despite nominations.The British have traditionally done well at the Globes, which are awarded by film and television Read more ...