Swag
I have a set of promotional photographic prints for The English Patient which I had late Anthony Minghella sign for me. They're perfect for cementing the lie that I'm some kind of high brow cineaste. Though my framed still from Texas Chainsaw signed by Gunnar Hanson and Marilyn Burns tends to dash that…

The BBC's current Robin Hood show is execrable on so many levels. The Eastern European locations they've used (because obviously it would far too sensible to shoot a British TV show in Britain) are cheap and unconvincing. The production values are horrible - I've seen characters wearing off the wrack tops and…

The BBC's current Robin Hood show is execrable on so many levels. The Eastern European locations they've used (because obviously it would far too sensible to shoot a British TV show in Britain) are cheap and unconvincing. The production values are horrible - I've seen characters wearing off the wrack tops and…

There is a late 90's draft of Jackson's King Kong script out there on the interwebs. It's a good deal pulpier and a lot more entertaining. Ann Darrow is an archaeologist in this take and her boyfriend a former WW1 fighter ace. The ending also has an old lady delivering the line about beauty killing the beast. …

I love Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners is cruelly under-rated but my favourite Peter Jackson movie is Forgotten Silver a, um, "Documentary" about obscure Kiwi film pioneer Colin McKenzie. Hysterically funny but also oddly moving. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I used to work in film sales and I've nothing but respect and awe for the folk at companies like New Yorker Films, Tartan and Wellspring. It's easy to turn a buck if you're willing to sell inexpensive cach to undiscerning customers but running an arthouse distributor clearly takes extraordinary dedication. As such…

dan, you should probably steer well clear of The Reader. It's a dreary Oscar baiting contrivance of the worst kind. Laden with self-importance and full of characters whose behaviour never once approximates the way actual human beings might act in similar circumstances.

I think Burrough's stuff is still in copyright, hence the somewhat disguised John Carter in the second volume of League Volume 2. Not that the idea of pillaging the Burroughs' oeuvre would even have occurred to the illiterate eejits who made that League movie.

At one point in the 70's Kubrick consideredf filming EWS, with Dublin doubling for New York and Woody Allen in the lead. If I ever discover a way to travel to parallel universes I'll try and bring a DVD from the alternative Earth where that version happened.

Bastard Son if LXG hadn't been made by morons they could have solved their Invisble Man rights problem and the perceived need for a Yankee League member in one fell swoop by making their Invisible Man American. This character could then have been voiced by someone with Marquee value and a free afternoon.

Corvus the addition of Tom Sawyer was also an absolute insult to anyone who's even vaguely well-read. The League film is, like the comic strip, set in the late 1890s. The Sawyer presented in the film is a fresh faced twenty-something, a neat trick given that that Mark Twain's tome about young master Sawyer is very,…

Corvus the addition of Tom Sawyer was also an absolute insult to anyone who's even vaguely well-read. The League film is, like the comic strip, set in the late 1890s. The Sawyer presented in the film is a fresh faced twenty-something, a neat trick given that that Mark Twain's tome about young master Sawyer is very,…

Corvus the addition of Tom Sawyer was also an absolute insult to anyone who's even vaguely well-read. The League film is, like the comic strip, set in the late 1890s. The Sawyer presented in the film is a fresh faced twenty-something, a neat trick given that that Mark Twain's tome about young master Sawyer is very,…

Otis
My favourite performance of hers, well lately at least, is in Otis a cruelly under-rated horror film from last year and why yes, it did go straight to video. She plays a quirky hausfrau who take the kidnapping of her daughter rather badly. Grisly hilarity ensues.

Pilgrim I think the 2nd part is more ambitiously thematically but fails to deliver. The decision to shot Part 2 in 1:1.85 rather than Scope hurts the film. Sure, I can see why he thought it would seem more intimate and claustrophobic and it does. But it also makes the second part feel cheaper and less cinematic.

Che - the Roadshow
I caught a preview of the full 4 hour iteration of Che at my local arthouse last week.

Well the director's last film had been the very successful teen horror film The Craft, which I'm presuming generated enough box-office to make Dick seem like a rish worth taking.

Hardware has a fantastic soundtrack, now long since deleted. And, though it's hard not to warm to Lemmy's brief cameo my favourite performance is the late William Hootkins' wonderfully creepy turn as our heroine's voyueristic neighbour, Lincoln Weinberg

On Hopper's fantastic in TCM2 - that scene where he silently gets tooled up in the chainsaw shop floors me every time.

No Flesh Will Be Spared…
For my money the worst Christmas present in Cinema history is surely the bag of junk Dylan McDermott gives to his shut-in girlfriend Stacey Travis in Richard Stanley's bonkers sci-fi horror romp Hardware.