Story of love and tomatoes leads Bollywood's global charge

Actors Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif in the Tomatina scene from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

It took more than 16 tonnes of tomatoes to turn the coming-of-age film, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, into the latest international cinema hit from Bollywood. The feelgood road movie's subsequent huge success, both inside and outside India, is being taken as evidence that the country's cinema is ready for global lift-off.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (Won't Get Life Back Again) follows three young friends on a raucous trip through Spain. The film has grossed more than $3.8m internationally, the best figures for an Indian release this year. It has also led the charge in a record-breaking domestic summer at the box-office.

The tomatoes were used by the film's director, Zoya Akhtar, to recreate the chaos of the La Tomatina festival in the small Valencian town of Bunol. Such attention to detail was another sign of a growing confidence that Bollywood could eventually mount a serious challenge to Hollywood for world cinema takings.

London-based Kishore Lulla, executive chairman of the film company Eros International, believes that thanks to India's economic boom, its film business will grow exponentially during the coming decade. "Once that happens, marriage between Hollywood and Bollywood will take place," he said in a recent interview. "Bollywood will be of a size that will matter to the world."

Eros, which purchased and marketed Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, has seen its share price rise by more than 10% in the past month alone. Established by Lulla's father in Mumbai in 1977, the company's initial focus was on distributing Bollywood films abroad. Things began to change after Lulla moved to London and took over control a decade later. Today Eros has an annual turnover of 75 films as a producer, co-producer or buyer, and made a net profit last year of $55m on revenues of $164m.

"Eros began in a very small way, but today we're India's biggest vertically integrated company," said Kamal Jain, the chief financial officer in Mumbai. "We have the largest film library with 1,100 films; we dub films into 27 languages and distribute them in 50 countries; and we have a presence in every segment of the business, from production to satellite TV to new media."

India produces around 1,100 films a year in several languages, with Bollywood a major centre for Hindi film production. Management consultancy KPMG sees tremendous potential for growth for the media and entertainment industry during the next five years, from the current $17bn annually to an estimated $29bn by 2015. Bollywood moguls such as Lulla appear confident that $100bn is possible in 10 years.

Their optimism is based on demography. More than 350 million Indians are now ranked as middle class, most of them young with much more money to spend than their parents had. There is also a diaspora of 50 million South Asians with estimated assets of $1 trillion and a passion for cinema.

Bollywood is changing as India surges ahead. "The film business became more professional during the last decade once the government made bank finance available," said Jehil Thakkar from KPMG . "Professionalism still remains a challenge, but companies such as Eros have brought in a new dynamism."

The old drawbacks in Indian creative industries have also begun to recede. Producers are no longer dependent upon shady financiers, many of them from the criminal underworld. Professionally managed film companies have brought in American-style studio practices.

Though the number of cinema screens is still very low for a country of India's size, multiplexes in glittering new malls charge high ticket prices and are increasingly attracting a well-heeled audience. And diversification has taken away the earlier life-and-death dependence on box-office hits. "Even before a film gets released it brings in 60% of its income," said Jain. "Slicing and dicing is the name of the game. We pre-sell the music, the satellite TV rights, the radio rights, new media such as mobile telephone ringtones – which is seeing enormous growth – inflight entertainment rights, and so on. To top it all, our huge library accounts for 20% of our revenue, providing considerable financial stability."

But even if Bollywood films are better made and better marketed today, they still sing an old tune. As Lulla said, "all Indian films are love stories – we Indians are very emotional people. Like Hollywood in the 30s, it's escapism cinema."

Zoya Akhtar believes that the huge impact of satellite TV is changing audience tastes in India, but the content of Bollywood films limits their appeal internationally. "In India, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara made more money than Harry Potter, which is crazy," she said. "But for a non-South Asian audience, I would make the film differently, I would change the idiom."

View the original article here

Best and worst of Britain's subsidised film-makers revealed

In the balance ... the majority of subsidised films in the UK (James Marsh's Man on Wire excepted) haven't repaid their debts. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

Who is Britain's most commercially successful film-maker of the past five years – at least among those backed by lottery money from the UK Film Council? Take a bow, James Marsh. His Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire repaid 100% of its UKFC investment, and his chimpanzee documentary Project Nim is set to follow suit.

According to figures published quietly in Hansard last week by culture minister Ed Vaizey, only two other films since 2006 – St Trinian's and The King's Speech – have so far returned their lottery cash in full. Streetdance 3D is also expected to do so.

And who must own up to being the least successful of Britain's lottery-subsidised film-makers? According to the figures, that unwanted honour goes to Stephen Frears. Two of his recent films have received some ?1.7m in funding from the UK Film Council – ?1m for Cheri and ?780,000 for Tamara Drewe – but have yet to pay back a single penny.

The information has come to light after Conservative MP Penny Mordaunt asked Vaizey to provide details on returns from all films backed by the UKFC, and he duly obliged in a written answer. Vaizey identified 33 films which recouped some or all of the lottery funding they were awarded between April 2006 and March this year, when the UKFC closed and its duties passed to the British Film Institute.

But this answer failed to mention all those movies that have paid back nothing. A trawl through the data on the UKFC website reveals a further 25 films in the same time period – between 2006 and 2009 – which received at least ?300,000 but have paid back precisely zero. (For the sake of fairness, our research excluded films from 2010 that haven't had time to earn anything, as well as experimental projects awarded less than ?300,000).

By 31 March 2011, the date of its shutdown, the UKFC had, from its investment of ?41.1m into these 58 films, earned a grand total of ?8.1m. That 20% rate of return may seem modest, but many films – particularly those from 2009 – still have a lot of earning ahead of them.

There are some obvious quirks on the list. The King's Speech has officially recouped 95% because the UKFC gave the producers a 5% share – and is likely to single-handedly double the average recoupment figures when its profits start to flow back to the BFI over the next few years.

Marsh's Project Nim is currently showing a zero return, but that will change dramatically when its recent American sale to HBO is banked. Even Tamara Drewe is expected to save some of Frears's blushes by paying 20-30%, although the expensive Cheri, with its ?23m budget, is almost certainly a lost cause.

There are some unexpected success stories, however. Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy has paid back a surprisingly robust 87% of its ?1.2m award, despite only grossing ?5m worldwide. Jane Campion's Bright Star managed an 81% payback from just ?8m in receipts. Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham has already returned 80% from a ?9m box office take. All earned their money from strong foreign sales.

By contrast, Oliver Parker's Dorian Gray grossed ?15m worldwide, but has reportedly repaid nothing, a victim of its sizable budget and an underlying deal structure which left the UKFC at the back of the queue for repayment.

Other losers include expensive flops Brideshead Revisited and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which have both returned a mere 1% of the ?1.4m they each received. The Michael Caine vigilante film Harry Brown was a notable UK box office hit in 2009, but has repaid only 2% of the ?1m it was given from lottery funds.

Films not mentioned by Vaizey, and therefore drawing a complete blank, include Stephen Poliakoff's 1939, which received ?970,000, Armando Iannucci's In the Loop (?515,000), Michael Winterbottom's Genova (?500,000), Anand Tucker's When Did You Last See Your Father? (?570,000), Gillian Armstrong's Death Defying Acts (?800,000), and Gabor Csupo's The Secret of Moonacre (?1.23m).

By international standards, any project that pays back more than half its public subsidy is doing well. Outside the UK, it's increasingly rare for any subsidised film to recoup 100%. But the UKFC always took a more aggressive approach to getting its money back than other national film agencies. In fact, its insistence on doing so was arguably one reason for its downfall. Producers complained that the UKFC used its recoupment to pay its own overheads at the expense of film-makers.

That's why the UKFC changed its terms in its final year to share its position with producers and reinvest its recoupment into production. But by then it was too late. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt decided the UKFC was paying its staff too much, and required elimination.

But there was a reason why the UKFC execs were paid so well. Getting money back from tricksy distributors isn't a job for amateurs. Without the sleuthing skills of the UKFC's debt collectors, perhaps only half of that ?8m would have been found.

There are already whispers that the BFI isn't quite so hot on the trail. But it needs to be. The acid test will be how much of the King's Speech income it can claw back from the Weinstein Company. It's unlikely to be a mission for the fainthearted.

• Read the full figures regarding recoupment of UK Film Council awards between April 1 2006 and March 31 2011

View the original article here

Whisky Galore – review

High spirits: Basil Radford in Whisky Galore. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

The year 1949 was a pretty miserable time in Britain. Postwar austerity was at its height. Many city centres were still largely bomb sites. The cold war was getting chillier. The British film industry was in crisis after the Labour government had imposed a punitive tax on American films, which led to Hollywood studios withholding their product. Then suddenly, in the early summer, three pictures opened on consecutive weeks that together defined what we now know as "the Ealing comedy". The films got darker and Ealing Studios' reputation greater as the month wore on.

Whisky GaloreProduction year: 1949Country: UKCert (UK): URuntime: 81 minsDirectors: Alexander MackendrickCast: Basil Radford, Joan GreenwoodMore on this film

In the first, Passport to Pimlico, a London borough, supported by a recently discovered medieval document, declares itself to be part of ancient Burgundy and thus an independent state. In the second, Whisky Galore, the thirsty inhabitants of a remote Scottish village hijack the cargo of a whisky-laden merchantman wrecked on their shores during the second world war and defy the authorities to repossess it. The third film, Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets, has as its hero a bitterly aggrieved Victorian outcast from an aristocratic family who avenges his mother's death by killing all the relatives between himself and a seat in the Lords.

The populist politics of discontent were later to be identified as Poujadism, a term attached to a short-lived revolt of the petite bourgeoisie against the stifling bureaucracy of France's Fourth Republic, and led by shopkeeper Pierre Poujade in 1953. These Ealing films were skilfully scripted, visually observant and performed by what we now see as a rep company of stars and character actors, and a collegial team working behind the camera.

The comedies were part of their times and yet transcend them – they live on to comment on later eras. Whisky Galore, for instance, based on a novel by the early Scottish nationalist Compton Mackenzie, is a colourful contribution to the current debate on the future of Scotland.

View the original article here

Cross of Iron

James Coburn as the 'undemonstratively courageous' Sgt Steiner in Cross of Iron. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

In this Anglo-German film of Willi Heinrich's 1956 novel, life is very noisy on the Eastern Front in 1943 as ex-US Marine Sam Peckinpah turns a savage but compassionate eye upon a demoralised German unit fighting a rearguard action against the Russians by the Black Sea. In particular, he examines the conflict between an ambitious, cowardly Prussian aristocrat, Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell), and the undemonstratively courageous Sergeant Steiner (James Coburn). James Mason as the commanding officer and David Warner as his adjutant are both first rate, as are Coburn and Schell. This was Peckinpah's last important work and his only war movie. Robert Aldrich, whose war movies include Attack and The Dirty Dozen, was greatly admired by Peckinpah. Aldrich had wanted to film Heinrich's novel ever since it was published and except for Peckinpah's characteristic use of slow motion, this classic movie (only available on Blu-ray) is fairly close to the way he'd have made it.

View the original article here

A Better Life – review

Jose Julian and Demian Bichir in Chris Weitz's tense A Better Life.

Chris Weitz is nothing if not eclectic. Having worked alone or in collaboration with his brother, Paul, on the envelope-pushing American Pie, screen versions of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and Nick Hornby's About a Boy and one of the overwrought Twilight teen-vampire films, he's now made what is in effect a transposition to California of the 1948 neorealist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, the work of another highly eclectic moviemaker, Vittorio De Sica.

A Better LifeProduction year: 2011Country: USACert (UK): 12ARuntime: 97 minsDirectors: Chris WeitzCast: Bobby Soto, Chelsea Rendon, Demian Bichir, Josie JulianMore on this film

The oppressed hero is now an illegal immigrant from Mexico (played by leading Mexican actor Demian Bichir) and the bike has become a pick-up truck, an essential tool for his job as a gardener in Los Angeles. The thief is again a pathetic figure in as desperate a position as the hero. The son, however, is no longer an adoring little boy but a surly teenager estranged from his father. In many ways, the protagonist's situation is worse here than in the Italian original, because any false move could put him in the hands of the immigration department, with the almost certain prospect of deportation. It's a small, convincing, tightly constructed movie about an urgent, seemingly insoluble problem.

View the original article here

This much I know: Samuel L Jackson

"The best advice I've been given is: when the camera passes you, look like there's something on your mind": Samuel L Jackson Photograph: James Cheadle/James Cheadle /eyevine

I would have saved myself a lot of grief if I'd learned to play golf when I was younger. It's my peace of mind for the day: when I'm off work I'm at the golf course by 6.30 in the morning.

I've heard I have a temper. I can get annoyed. I try not to, because I always look at film sets as a place of joy – we're coming to work to make believe.

All my theatre training has served me well in terms of preparation – my agent tells me my greatest flaw is that when I go to work on a movie set I expect everyone to be as prepared as I am.

I'm surrounded by myself in my office. When I look around I see lots of little "me"s – it's kinda fun.

Being famous is something I enjoy. I'm not going to deny it, because it allows me access to a lot of things. It's good to be famous and liked, not famous and disliked, put it that way. People like me.

The best advice I've ever been given is: whenever the camera passes you, always look like there's something on your mind.

It amazes people to see me walking around by myself. I guess they get used to famous people having bodyguards. I walk the streets of London all the time. People say: "Do you know who you look like?" and I go: "No, who?"

Lots of people quote my lines at me. That's how I met Marlon Brando. I was at a benefit when this voice appeared behind me doing Ezekiel 25:17 [Jackson's speech from Pulp Fiction] and it was Marlon. I was just like: "Get outta here." He gave me his phone number and I gave him mine. From time to time I'd get a message saying Mr Brando wants you to call him, and every time I called it would say it was a Chinese restaurant.

I go and see my own films all the time. I'm not one of those actors who claims they can't stand to watch themselves. I'm like: well, if I can't stand to watch me, why would I expect you to go pay to watch me?

I'm most proud of the fact that my daughter is a well-rounded individual who has never been arrested and never been in a tabloid.

I read way too much to have a favourite book – I'm always looking for new stuff to read. At the moment I'm reading a history of the word "motherfucker". I'm actually in it as one of the great purveyors of the word.

There's a distinct correlation between me being successful and me being clean. Rehab gave me a chance to find out that I could get outside myself and be OK with who I am without a substance. Since I became successful I've been offered more cocaine than I could ever possibly use, but I don't feel the need to do it.

I enjoy every day above ground that I get to have. Getting older is just one of those things that happens – if you keep getting up every day, you're going to get older. I'm amazed when I look in the mirror sometimes. I go: wow, do you know how old you are?

Samuel L Jackson is hosting the Fitflop Shooting Stars Benefit 2011, raising vital funds for Make-A-Wish Foundation UK (make-a-wish.org.uk)

View the original article here

Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roché – review

Jeanne Moreau in Francois Truffaut's 1962 film version of Jules et Jim. Photograph: The Ronald Grant Archive

A shadowy figure amid the 20th-century beau monde – friend to Picasso and Gertrude Stein, and buyer for the American art collector John Quinn – Henri-Pierre Roche waited until his 70s to publish his teasingly semi-autobiographical debut novel, which became one of the 20th century's most famous depictions of a menage-a-trois.

Jules and Jim are best friends – perhaps soulmates – who together pursue a charmed life of bohemian indulgence in turn-of-the-century Paris. Drifting from liaison to liaison they share their women as easily as wine, without jealousy or regret – and then they meet Kate. With her "archaic" smile and lips made for "milk – and blood", Kate is obedient only to the diktat: "He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword." Marrying first Jules and then Jim, Kate draws all three into an ecstatic cycle of intimacy and betrayal, unleashing a seemingly limitless capacity for tenderness, forgiveness and revenge until their passions eventually burn out.

Roche's guileless prose lends the quality of a parable to his story, which is startling in its erotic candour and its visionary pursuit of love. Kate owes much – perhaps too much – to the figure of the eternal feminine: cruel, beautiful and volatile, she is more archetype than actuality. But that is not really Roche's concern – instead he probes the "essential quality of our intimate emotions", laying bare the complex and paradoxical dynamics of desire.

Today the novel is eclipsed by Francois Truffaut's celebrated nouvelle vague film starring Jeanne Moreau, and Truffaut contributes a valuable afterword to this edition. Reflecting on the film in 2000, Moreau described it as "the dreamed image of amorous life"; in its exuberant rejection of conventional morality, Roche's novel describes an emotional logic that is both inscrutable and compelling.

View the original article here

All aboard the Floating Cinema

Ship shape ... The Floating Cinema. Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian

It is possibly the only cinema in the UK equipped with life jackets and buoyancy aids – and it is in the vanguard of the cultural events that will surround the Olympics. Two years ago the Cole was a tattered narrowboat with no roof, plumbing or electrics: now it has been transformed into a 12-seat floating cinema that for the next two months will be navigating the waterways of east London.

The Floating Cinema is funded by the Arts Council and commissioned by the Olympic Delivery Authority and it is the brainchild of curator Emma Underhill. "The waterways are the arteries that run through the Olympic parks," she said, "so when we were invited to put forward a proposal for a project that would engage the communities that live in the host boroughs it seemed natural to explore the waterways."

On a traditional British summer evening with the weather veering wildly from lashing rain to bright sunshine, the Floating Cinema hosted a talk from screen historian Ian Christie. As the narrowboat set off from Old Ford Lock in east London, assistant curator Laura wound the windlass to allow water in the lock to reach a high enough level for the boat to move through.

Christie gave a PowerPoint lecture about films shot in the area. He pointed to gas holders near Mare Street Bridge featured in David Cronenberg's Spider and indicated locations used in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies and Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things.

As the boat cruised through the green water of the canal, talk was occasionally punctuated by cries of "Oh my God! A floating cinema!" from bemused drunken young people staggering along the footpaths that line the canal. The cinema's programme has been created by Hackney-based arts group Somewhere, which comprises Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope.

"The films we are showing are mostly documentaries," said Pope, "and they are all relevant to the canal or this part of London."

So no chance of a narrowboat screening of Titanic or The Poseidon Adventure? "I'm afraid not." As well as talks, the Floating Cinema will also present larger outdoor screenings for canal-side audiences – with the films projected from the boat – and informal drop-ins on Thursdays that don't require pre-booking, and where visitors can meet the crew and watch a selection of short films. There are also guided tours, including some to the Olympic site.

"The only way the public can ordinarily go to the site is on a bus tour," said Pope, "but we are taking tours right into the Olympic park on a part of the river that has only recently been dredged. It will give people the chance to see the stadium, the Anish Kapoor orbital and the Zaha Hadid aquatic park."

The rain had cleared and the sun was out by the time the Cole moored up at the Waterhouse Restaurant in Shoreditch. Those who had booked tickets for the film tour disembarked and a lively queue had already formed for the evening's film screening. At the front of the queue was a small group of Germans. "I am with some friends from Berlin," said Nicholas, "and this seems a nice way to show them London and have a beer."

"I like this is alternative way to see London," said Charlene, "and I think its cool there is renewed interested in the city ahead of the Olympics." The Floating Cinema is due to end in September but its creators say if they can find more funding they hope to revive it next year when the Olympics finally reaches London.

View the original article here

Captain America: The First Avenger 3D – review

Chris Evans as comic superhero Captain America: 'deadly dull'.

"Unhappy the land that has no heroes," says someone in Brecht's Life of Galileo, to which Galileo replies: "No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes!" Make that superheroes and I'd say: "Hear, hear." Hollywood, working with Marvel Comics, is currently giving us a surfeit of these caped crusaders with camp costumes and special powers, the latest being the deadly dull Captain America, originally created as a comic book figure in 1941.

Captain America: The First AvengerProduction year: 2011Country: USACert (UK): 12ARuntime: 124 minsDirectors: Joe JohnstonCast: Chris Evans, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Natalie Dormer, Richard Armitage, Sebastian Stan, Stanley Tucci, Tommy Lee JonesMore on this film

He's a 90lb weakling turned into a powerful democratic protagonist by a German emigre scientist (Stanley Tucci) as the US enters the second world war. He has an opposite number in Hitler's Nazi superhero, Red Skull, a Teutonic villain with a strong physical resemblance to Harry Potter's nemesis, Voldemort. There are borrowings from the superior Raiders of the Lost Ark (for which Captain America's director won a visual effects Oscar) and it's altogether inferior to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. It ends, depressingly, with a trailer for a sequel due next May.

View the original article here

This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Dressing up in a silly costume and fighting crime is only heroic in the movies and comics. In real life, it's more likely to be the result of a mental breakdown than a quest for truth, justice and the American way.

It's the real-world approach that Super takes and pursues relentlessly. Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the US The Office) plays a delusional cook whose life collapses when his ex-junkie wife, Liv Tyler, leaves him for local criminal Kevin Bacon. He snaps and becomes The Crimson Bolt, wielding a monkey wrench while delivering his goofy catchphrase, "Shut up, crime!" He teams up with a far too enthusiastic sidekick, Boltie (a very game Ellen Page), and sets out to right wrongs, hospitalising drug dealers and muggers with wrench blows to the head. He also doles out the same punishment for relatively minor infractions like butting into cinema queues. Director James Gunn did his training in the zero-budget exploitation of Troma films before writing the Dawn Of The Dead remake and directing enjoyable monster satire Slither. He's a director who doesn't pull punches, which is what this story needs to work. It's darkly funny, with a message that is far more complex than The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, etc. Plus, with no stupid rocket jetpack to shatter the mood, it kicks Kick-Ass's ass.

DVD & Blu-ray, G2 Pictures

Bittersweet coming of age comedy, directed with bags of style and a sure hand by first-timer Richard Ayoade.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

The Rock stars in a surprisingly merciless and effective revenge thriller. Score by Clint Mansell.

DVD & Blu-ray, Sony

Average Joe becomes a brainiac thanks to an untested pill with sinister origins. Bradley Cooper stars with Robert De Niro in this limited but entertaining thriller.

DVD & Blu-ray, Momentum

Impeccably written, acted and directed classic Ealing comedy. Essential.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

Parisian TV crime thrillers don't come much grittier than this.

DVD, 2 Entertain

View the original article here

Marcel Lucont: what we French think about your British cinema

As I say in my wonderful book, What We French Think Of You British … And Where You Are Going Wrong, it is a myth that the French hate the British. Most of the time we choose simply to ignore you. And, of course, the same can be said of British cinema.

When I see what is on offer at most British movie theatres, it is difficult not to recall Truffaut's belief that the words "British" and "cinema" seem to be at odds when placed together in a sentence. Often you seem proud of your productions only when handed statuettes by the USA, like only being proud of a child for winning an eating contest, while we insist on a certain quota of French films being shown in our cinemas (for which the cinemas, in fact, pay less tax).

The French are keenly aware that cinema is so much more than an accompaniment to popcorn, and here are just some of the myriad ways in which we do it so much better …

Gritty drama Of course Trainspotting elicited pathos here in France: heroin addiction aside, we felt for the Scottish for not even having a body of water to separate them from the English. But for those who require more plausibility than the lead junkie walking off into the sunset, choose monochrome miserablism, choose French, choose La Haine.

Nudity In France, our women are proud enough of their bodies to get naked without the aid of a Chinese gay man. This is reflected in our films, so with French cinema you certainly get more loins for your coins.

Comedy While the French were being amused by the subtle quirks of Tati's Monsieur Hulot, the English were clutching their sides at large-breasted women losing their bikinis, and men saying "phwoooar" or "oooh" a lot. English, you are welcome to the phrase "double-entendre," we have little cause to use it.

Heroes and heroines Our film icons are often more rounded, sometimes in every sense of the word. In a wooing contest, Gerard Depardieu beats Hugh Grant every time, by more than a nose. Audrey Tautou you wish to take home and cuddle. Beatrice Dalle you wish to take home and do things I am told The Guide will not print. Keira Knightley you wish to take home and feed.

Taking our time Like the enjoyment of a fine wine versus a beery binge, French cinema knows how to pace itself. Often I feel a British audience has barely the patience to sit through the trailers, let alone the unfolding Nouvelle Vague masterpieces of Rivette or Rohmer.

Et voila. It is clear that, barring a Leigh or a Loach, British cinema has some way to go before surpassing a Bresson or a Besson. This debate, of course, could go on and on. It is therefore best to admit that I am right and to move on. See you in Cannes.

Marcel Lucont Etc: A Chat Show is at Underbelly Cowgate, 4-28 Aug

View the original article here

The Light Thief – review

The Light Thief: 'a touching, pawkily amusing example of satirical tragedy'.

In the godforsaken, physically awesome Kyrgyzstan, left struggling after the break-up of the Soviet Union, an electrician tries to help his impoverished rural neighbours by providing them with illicit free electricity. He falls foul of the bureaucrats for his Robin Hood altruism but is then taken up by exploitative entrepreneurs, who want to use his skills to produce wind-generated power. However, he rebels against their venality, immorality and general corruption and pays a terrible price for his decency and probity.

The Light Thief (Svet-Ake)Production year: 2010Country: Rest of the worldRuntime: 80 minsDirectors: Aktan Arym KubatCast: Aktan Arym Kubat, Asan Amanov, Askat Sulaimanov, Stanbek Toichubaev, Taalaikan AbazovaMore on this film

Written and directed by its star, this is a touching, pawkily amusing example of that fairly rare genre, the satirical tragedy.

View the original article here

The incidental director

Gianni Di Gregorio in a scene from The Salt of Life.

Gianni Di Gregorio became successful, suddenly, at 60. But what if he hadn't? How might his life have been? "Allora!" He shakes his head, gummy eyes a-twinkle. "Terribile! Dead under a bridge. Alcoholic, at least." He laughs, sips his wine and rolls a fag, and isn't kidding.

The Salt of LifeProduction year: 2011Country: ItalyRuntime: 90 minsDirectors: Gianni di GregorioCast: Alfonso Santagata, Gianni di Gregorio, Valeria Cavalli, Valeria de FranciscisMore on this film

What changed everything was Mid-August Lunch, which Di Gregorio wrote, directed, starred in and shot at his own flat. A gentle comedy about a man caring for his imperious 93-year-old mother, who then has three extra ageing mammas dumped on him by friends, it won the debut director prize at the Venice film festival in 2008 and hoovered up many other awards. It took ?7m round the world from a budget of ?400,000: a rare Italian arthouse hit, and one that relied on neither melodrama nor glamour (the average cast age nudged 80).

After a career backstage, first in theatre, then assistant directing and writing for film (most fruitfully on Gomorrah), Di Gregorio was thrust into the spotlight. "It was disorientating. But I see it almost as an act of providence. To be able to express yourself like that comes as a positive after years of forced enclosure within one's self. Perhaps I'm not being very rational today, but I feel it to be a natural compensation."

Good for the soul, then, as well as the wallet and, presumably, the personal life. After all, at the time he made Mid-August Lunch, Di Gregorio noticed an unwelcome development: women no longer noticed him. And when they did, it was paternally, not romantically. Nothing like new-found fame to change that, right?

"That's what I thought! Instead it became much more evident that the underlying problem – my age – remained the same. Younger women were out of bounds; not that they'd see me anyway. And older women also would consider me too old. That combination completely threw me. I didn't know what to do.

"It was at that point I began to develop this film as a therapy. Rather than despairing, like my friends, I would try to make light of it, to exorcise my fears." He flashes a sweet, fanged grin. "But as a therapy, it's been absolutely ineffective. Nothing has  changed!"

function HTMLVideoFallback(e) { if(!e.success) { generateHTMLVideo(); } } function generateHTMLVideo() { videoID = '#video-371773344'; video = jQ(''); video.css('position', 'relative'); video.attr({ 'src': 'http://cdn.theguardian.tv/bc/281851582/281851582_791201402001_110215Gianni1-16x9.mp4', 'width': '460', 'height': '370', 'controls': 'controls' }) if(autoPlay == 'true') { video.attr('autoplay', 'autoplay'); } video.attr('poster', 'http://cdn.theguardian.tv/bc/281851582/281851582_791201403001_110215Gianni1-4363883.jpg?pubId=281851582'); video.appendTo(jQ(videoID)); } if (true) { var flashVars = 'playerID=26396137001&@videoPlayer=791192477001&domain=embed&autoStart=' + autoPlay + '&adServerURL=http%3A%2F%2Foas.guardian.co.uk%2F2%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Ffilm%2F2011%2Fjul%2F28%2Fgianni-di-gregorio-salt-of-life%2Foas.html%2F1' + OAS_rns + '%40' + OAS_listpos + '%2Cx40%21x40%3Fk%3Ddrama%26k%3Dfilm%26k%3Dculture%26k%3Dcomedy%26k%3Dberlinfilmfestival%26cf%3Dcomedy%26pid%3D%26ct%3Dvideo%26pt%3Dvideo%26videoId%3D791192477001' }var autoPlay = 'true';var guVideoSettingCookie = jQ.cookie('GU_VIDEO_SETTINGS');if (guVideoSettingCookie == 'false' || 'ARTICLE' != 'VIDEO') {autoPlay = 'false';}if(supports_local_storage() && preferHTMLMedia() && !false) { generateHTMLVideo(); } else {swfobject.embedSWF("http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/26396137001?isVid=1&isUI=1&publisherID=281851582", "video-371773344","460","370","9.0.0","",null,{base: "http://admin.brightcove.com",movie: "http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/26396137001?isVid=1&isUI=1&publisherID=281851582",flashVars: 'playerID=26396137001&@videoPlayer=791192477001&domain=embed&autoStart=' + autoPlay + '&adServerURL=http%3A%2F%2Foas.guardian.co.uk%2F2%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Ffilm%2F2011%2Fjul%2F28%2Fgianni-di-gregorio-salt-of-life%2Foas.html%2F1' + OAS_rns + '%40' + OAS_listpos + '%2Cx40%21x40%3Fk%3Ddrama%26k%3Dfilm%26k%3Dculture%26k%3Dcomedy%26k%3Dberlinfilmfestival%26cf%3Dcomedy%26pid%3D%26ct%3Dvideo%26pt%3Dvideo%26videoId%3D791192477001',seamlesstabbing: false,allowFullScreen: true,swLiveConnect: true,allowScriptAccess: "always",wmode: "transparent"},null,HTMLVideoFallback);} Gianni di Gregorio tells Andrew Pulver about sex, The Salt of Life and ageing in Berlusconi's Italy Link to this video

The Salt of Life has Gianni back in a flat with a wife who hasn't shared his bed in years, a student daughter (his real-life daughter), a dog (his own) and no employment other than running errands for them. And for his mother, now in her own villa, living it up with lavish lunches, cared for by an attractive blonde – one of the women Gianni pursues after a pal urges him not to resign himself to a romance-free future. The others include a flirtatious neighbour whose St Bernard he dutifully walks round Rome, an operatic family friend, some identical twins, and an old flame who blames their split on his mother.

It's a view close to Di Gregorio's heart. "I think that mothers in Italy quite deeply affect the romantic and sexual lives of their sons, wherever you are on the social spectrum. Today even more so, because young men are held back by other forces. It's much harder to afford your own home."

Di Gregorio, an only child, was raised by fairly elderly parents under what he describes as formal conditions. His mother, whom he nursed for 10 years before her death, was, he says, "very kind, very lovely. But I was totally enslaved to her. She would say things in the nicest possible way, but it created a relationship that was absolutely impossible to move out of."

And for all The Salt of Life's sunny charm, the domestic servitude set-up feels frightening. Di Gregorio smiles. "Perhaps all those things like food and wine and sun and pleasure are another form of compensation for what is the underlying reality. If you reduce things to a skeleton, then life is terrifying.

"I didn't realise it at the time but it's a film about solitude. These themes of loneliness and melancholy I wanted to keep in the background, but somehow they were pervasive."

For a comedy, it seems steeped in dismay – isolation, even. What does Di Gregorio fear about ageing? "Mental immobility," he says, after a pause. And then: "The passing of that hope of love, of that idea that something still could happen. I think we should have those feelings for ever, until we're 100. But you have to take account of reality: one's own age; that of a potential partner. But that little flame must remain alive."

It's a moving answer: for its frankness and piquancy. And it turns out Di Gregorio is still married. It's clearly a complicated situation – The Salt of Life, he says, is 99% autobiographical. Does he feel it's inevitable that long-term relationships cool?

"You must not pretend a marriage won't have its up and downs, or that you'll have the same raging sex life after 30 years. The most important thing is respect. Not to hurl abuse. All it takes is one word to unhinge the whole edifice. But there are very personal things that happen to you that you can't begin to share with your partner. You can't go to your wife and say: women just don't see me any more. I have done it – my wife just laughed."

This gender difference is crucial, and it's something Di Gregorio is especially alive to. While Gianni's mother and her cronies in both films enjoy a blissful existence, thriving on Krug and the poker channel, the men are discontented. Are women simply not as persistently interested in sex?

He sees it less crudely. "In the end, we're all slaves of our desires and lusts. But women are better able to cope with the passage of time, while men are less accepting of change. They're in denial and they say an awful lot of bullshit – stories about romantic episodes that are completely untrue to big themselves up a bit. Men are much less mature, less able to regard themselves with irony."

Save Di Gregorio himself, perhaps. For its his combination of personal candour and slightly reckless benevolence that makes him such an unusual film-maker – maybe the most incisive male director to tackle domestic life since Bergman. But in the flesh, the person he reminds you of is Larry David: they share the same loose-limbed cheer, the same passivity in the face of female force, the same basic frustration, despite material ease. What separates them is confidence: Di Gregorio may be appreciative of attention – at a Q&A the night before, he seems to bloom – but he has miles less of it than you'd imagine.

Though the success of Mid-August Lunch may have saved him from a boozy end beneath a bridge, it appears to have only vaguely aided his sense of self-worth. "I'm not sure I have taken the acclaim onboard, or understand it myself properly. But people around me, my daughter especially, experience it with great joy. And my pleasure is in their pleasure; it's easier to access it like that. In reality, I don't give myself a lot in life apart from film – I'm always rather surprised and confused when someone gives me a present. It's almost as though I didn't exist."

It's a startling statement: when asked to unpack it, he gets smilingly tangled. The translator – who's known him some years – steps in to offer, with his assent, her analysis: "As a personality, Gianni has such a degree of self-abrogation he doesn't know how to feel those things directly. He's reserved, and that's why he has a sense he doesn't exist. But the pleasure he has in telling stories and making other people proud of him is easier to process."

It's sounds a dignified way to live, I say. Does he feel others veer too far the other way? "Yes. You shouldn't force yourself to be aggressively the protagonist."

How curious that someone who's finally found fame by making himself the hero should be so self-effacing. He nods: it is a strange space to inhabit. "It's not dignified to force yourself to be the centre of attention, but neither is it to suppress who you are. There is virtue in the right balance. It's just I'm incapable of finding it!"

The Salt of Life is released on 12 August.

View the original article here

Our pick of the week: The story, the stat, the quote, the tweet

Stormtrooper wars. Photograph: Paul Kane/Getty Images AsiaPac

Blue-sky thinking

Steve Hilton's bizarre plans to boost the economy caught many unawares this week. The Financial Times revealed that David Cameron's shaven-headed strategist had some "blue-sky ideas" for the economy. The story could have come straight from an Armando Iannucci script, with the guru suggesting that the government should ignore European labour regulations by scrapping maternity leave and bin all consumer rights for nine months. Malcolm Tucker would no doubt have some choice (four-letter) words for Hilton's suggestions. Coalition HQ has plenty to mull over after the disappointing GDP figures, but they're probably not desperate enough to take any of Hilton's proposals too seriously – yet.

66...

… confirmed wolf attacks have taken place on livestock in France so far this year. The rise of Canis lupus has caused controversy with pro- and anti-groups fighting over what should be done about them. Wolf expert Jean-Marc Moriceau said they could reach the forests just south of Paris within 10 to 15 years, but fear not, there is no threat of a British invasion.

Andrew Ainsworth

"If there is a Force, then it has been with me," proclaimed the Star Wars prop designer, who this week won a legal battle with Star Wars creator George Lucas over the right to sell replica Stormtrooper helmets in the UK.

@tweetbox360

Tasteless tweeting came to the fore again this week after the death of Amy Winehouse. The Microsoft account was attacked after it urged fans of the star to "Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking Back to Black over at Zune". An apology followed after fans bombarded the Twitter address with outraged messages criticising the opportunistic move.

View the original article here

How Harry Potter's Hermione suffered a very Hollywood fate | Sarah Jane Stratford

In Deathly Hallows, Hermione (played by Emma Watson) wears 'jeans so tight you’d think her legs would break if she tried to run'. Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk

"I can't."

What? Did Hermione Granger really say "I can't" during the climactic battle in the final chapter of the Harry Potter film saga? Presented with her chance to destroy one of the horcruxes she had put her life on the line to hunt, she backs away and needs her almost-boyfriend Ron to insist that of course she can. Sorry, filmmakers, that quavering girly-girl is not Hermione.

Maybe it was a fluke, a contrivance to make Ron the more capable one for a change, showing that Hermione was no longer a bossy know-it-all. Maybe. Except that in Deathly Hallows: Part One, when the snatcher Scabior pauses at the edge of the hidden encampment and sniffs, Hermione wobbles to Harry and Ron that he could smell her perfume. Perfume?! That's just riddikulus. We've known since Goblet of Fire that when the occasion arises, Hermione can dress up and be a glamour queen. But on the run, living rough, hunting horcruxes, and facing the possibility of death at any moment, Hermione is not even going to pack perfume in her magical bag, let alone wear it.

There's almost a direct correlation with actress Emma Watson's growing prettiness through the course of the films and Hermione's decreased bookishness and pragmatism. Screenwriter Steve Kloves may have liked Hermione best when he was first given the job of adapting the books but as she became an adolescent, something shifted. It's one thing for a girl to be the brains of an operation when everyone is prepubescent. But an adult woman who is brainy and takes charge is "domineering". A very scary witch indeed. Presumably Kloves didn't want any young male filmgoers sneering (or crossing their legs nervously) when Hermione was on screen.

Which misses the point that millions of young males and females already considered her an old friend long before the first owl hit the screen. While cinema demands streamlined plots and arcs – and, of course, the stories are about Harry – diminishing Hermione's overt scholarliness and complex thinking under high pressure is more peculiar than a Blibbering Humdinger.

It's also discouraging. Hermione is a great role model who doesn't care if her bookishness or activism (absent in the films) are laughed at. She knows the power of books.

It can't help Hermione that, although the productions are British, the series is owned by the very Hollywood studio Warner Bros. Warner's president, Jeff Robinov, was alleged to have said in 2007 (when Half-Blood Prince had begun filming) that the studio was "no longer doing movies with women in the lead". Such sexist policy would no doubt affect supporting characters, turning famously multilayered females into more standard Hollywood fare.

Hermione steadily became blonder and sexier in Deathly Hallows, wearing jeans so tight you'd think her legs would break if she tried to run. When it comes to film, something about a smart, fearless woman who doesn't care about her looks makes Hollywood leery; even if, in this instance, she commands a loyal and loving built-in audience before the film begins.

Why is it so difficult for proudly brainy, bookish, outspoken girls of any age to see themselves on screen, especially in major studio films? Where are the girls who don't make an effort to fit the "feminine" stereotype and are still admired and even loved anyway?

And where will girls learn and be validated in their belief that they don't have to compromise fundamental aspects of their personalities to prosper? That there is never any reason to say "I can't"? Books, for a start.

View the original article here

Mark Kermode's DVD round-up

Oliver (Craig Roberts) and Jordana (Yasmin Paige) in Submarine: 'Paige hits just the right balance between threat and friendship.'

Having achieved cult status via such TV shows as Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The IT Crowd, writer/director Richard Ayoade scores a deadpan hit with his feature debut, Submarine (2010, Optimum, 15), an awkward black comedy about the traumas of coming of age that feels like Gregory's Girl's twisted sister.

Craig Roberts stars as Oliver Tate, the nasally narrating self-absorbed teenager who imagines his life as a movie packed with tracking zooms, helicopter shots and elaborately choreographed slo-mo, but also featuring the kind of "transcendent moments" that warrant the use of critical phrases such as "a monumental achievement" – apparently.

Having met his match in Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige), whose dark countenance is offset by the red coat she wears like the diminutive murderer of Don't Look Now, Oliver embarks on a relationship based on existential nihilism and casual pyromania. Yet his miserable happiness is threatened by the impending collapse of his parents' marriage, as his frustrated mum (Sally Hawkins) is tempted by a horrendous old flame (Paddy Considine), a terrifying vision of bad hair and even worse trousers who flogs cod mysticism from the back of a van that doubles as a seedy hand-job hideaway.

Dextrously adapted from Joe Dunthorne's novel, Submarine offers a rewardingly crooked vision of young love and death, its brittle humour remaining deliciously deadpan from start to finish. The cast are excellent, with particular plaudits going to Paige, who hits just the right balance between threat and friendship, and Hawkins who continues to prove herself one of our most versatile actresses. Great, too, to see Considine letting rip as the "mental health and wellbeing" guru who appears to have escaped from a Blake's 7 cast reunion party. Extensive extras include commentary track, test shoots, featurettes, Easter eggs and a "message" from executive producer Ben Stiller, whose name may or may not help the movie find an audience across the pond. Heaven only knows what our American friends will make of it.

The smartest thing about Neil Burger's Limitless (2011, Momentum, 15), a sci-fi-inflected thriller adapted from Alan Glynn's novel The Dark Fields, is the way it plays to Bradley Cooper's creepy charms. He is perfectly cast as the loser who develops superhuman mental skills after being slipped an experimental pill, thereby achieving overnight success in a world where sharp thinking and soft morals are the key to the express elevator.

Adopted by Robert De Niro's ruthless businessman, Cooper's antihero achieves great riches, but at what cost? It's fairly flimsy fare, but blessed with a palatable undercurrent of paranoia and executed with a slick flair that perfectly suits the narrative. De Niro may share top billing, but his appearances are fundamentally fleeting, with Cooper carrying the movie high on his beefcakey shoulders, his trademark slappable grin teetering enticingly on the brink of madness.

The main problem with Super (2010, G2, 18) is that it is condemned to lurk in the shadow of Kick-Ass, a stylishly superior offering that asks the same essentially anarchic question: "Why don't more people decide to dress up as superheroes?" This time, it's dorky Rainn Wilson who dons the avenging tights, having lost his wife to the kind of slimeball whom Kevin Bacon essays with such self-deprecating aplomb. While Kick-Ass's sole "superpower" was being ever-so-slightly impervious to pain, Wilson's "Crimson Bolt" is blessed with nothing more than a monkey wrench with which (he discovers) he can stove in evildoers' heads with ease. Things get complicated when Ellen Page's comic-store assistant demands entry to the wacko club as frenetic sidekick "Boltie" with inappropriately hellraising consequences.

Slither director James Gunn ladles on the gore, juggling knockabout comedy and violence to (deliberately?) uneven effect. There are times when it all comes together in surprising ways, but ultimately Super remains the poor cousin of Matthew Vaughn's serio-comic classic.

There's plenty of quasi-comedic bloodshed and offal on offer, too, in Hobo With a Shotgun (2011, Momentum, 18) the latest byproduct of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's disappointing Grindhouse project. Like Machete, Jason Eisener's throwback genre-homage/pastiche began life as a faux trailer that then spawned a real feature, a process that is rarely creatively rewarding. Despite the nostalgic pleasures of watching Rutger Hauer chew up the scenery, the jack-ass jokes soon wear as thin as the one-line plot. Like those Troma stable movies (Surf Nazis Must Die, Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell etc), which were so much more fun to talk about than to watch, Hobo isn't anything like as disreputably entertaining as its title and poster suggest. Isn't it time we all put our adolescent slasher memories behind us and just moved on?

The selling-point conceit of Uruguayan chiller The Silent House (2010, Optimum, 15) is that it is filmed in "real time" in one continuous take, although, like Hitchcock's Rope, there are several evident edit points throughout the unfolding action. The question of whether such discreet cuts distract from one's enjoyment or admiration of Gustavo Hernandez's film depends on the degree to which you are engrossed in the creepy action, which allegedly takes its inspiration from actual events in the 1940s. I have to say that I wasn't, although there's no doubt that this ambitious low-budget shocker puts such comparative US drivel as the inexplicably successful Paranormal Activity 2 in the shade. It makes no sense at all, but that only really matters if you haven't been in the least bit scared by this stripped-down frightfest.

View the original article here

Grant Morrison: my Supergods from the age of the superhero

Grant Morrison. Photograph: Allan Amato Photograph: Vinmag Archive/DC Comics

This was the first ever superhero comic. Not only did it start everything off, the first image of the story is incredible. It's Superman – who was an unknown character at that time – leaping through the air with a tied-up blonde under his arm, with absolutely no explanation of how he got there, or why. What I like about it is that, as a piece of storytelling, it's very modernistic, and having always thought about it in terms of nostalgia, when I was researching it for the book it was great to go back and see it for what it was. From the first panel on, it sets up everything for the next 70 years.

Photograph: DC Comics

This was from the time of pop art comics in the 1960s when DC Comics had go-go chicks, and almost Bridget Riley-style op-art across the top. It's a great cover that shows the head and shoulders of The Flash, holding up his hand to the reader. He's yelling out, "STOP! DON'T PASS UP THIS ISSUE – MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!" A supervillain sets up a machine whereby everyone forgets that The Flash ever existed, and his body begins to attenuate into this red mist; there's a very odd, paranoid feel to the story. In the end he's only saved because there's this little girl sitting by the side of the docks who still believes in him.

Photograph: DC Comics

This was from the height of the "relevance" period – the tail-end of Vietnam and Nixon, when comics began to confront headline issues in a way they'd never done before. The Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic was at the vanguard of this: they'd already looked at Malthusian over-population, drugs and Manson-style cults. This was the last issue of the series, about a Christlike environmental activist called Isaac who is fighting against an aerospace company. The way he does this, at the end of the story, is to crucify himself on the tail of a 747. God knows how a man manages to crucify himself, but the image is incredible: it's Christ in the middle, with Green Arrow and Green Lantern also chained up to two 747s, so it recapitulates the Golgotha but with planes. Green Lantern has been portrayed all the way through as a representative of the regressive forces of the law, and Green Arrow has been played as the hippy idealist; suddenly Green Lantern snaps and he destroys the aircraft with a green beam. The head of the aerospace company is shouting at him: "WHAT'S THE IDEA? THAT WAS A NINE MILLION DOLLAR AIRCRAFT!" Green Lantern just says, "SEND ME A BILL." The whole arc of that story ended with the reactionary cop becoming a revolutionary – a very powerful moment, especially when you're 11.

Photograph: DC Comics

Jack Kirby was the William Blake of comics and New Gods was his masterpiece, an epic cosmic war between evil gods and good gods. The story opens with the cosmic seeker Metron, an amoral science god, who travels about the universe in a Mobius chair, which is like a comfy version of the Tardis. He's able to go anywhere he likes just by sitting, so he's very much the god of couch potatoes, and in this one Metron is travelling to the very edge of the universe. There are three pages of giants who are miles across – very reminiscent of Blake – with suffering Gnostic presences chained to gigantic rocks. Kirby's descriptions are really great: he talks about one man whose heart takes a billion years to beat once. It was the first time that comics came with a cosmic dimension. They actually started to feel biblical in scale; that was a breakthrough for the type of stories they were able to tell.

Photograph: Marvel Comics

Jim Starlin was very influenced by Kirby. Starlin was a navy photographer who'd come back from Vietnam; he was one of the first of a new generation of hippy, counter-cultural creators. He did this amazing story which I first read when I was 14 about Captain Marvel (who was previously a space warrior) finding himself up against a cosmic tribunal of floating potato-headed creatures who judge him. Captain Marvel is on this world and must fight his own inner demons, which are portrayed as these mad-eyed, cackling statues. There's an incredible fight sequence over 15 pages, which is basically Captain Marvel kicking the shit out of his own inner demons. At the end he gets the gift of cosmic awareness, so suddenly his face clouds over in a kind of starry sky and that's him in full acid consciousness. At 14, it was a real thrill to see comics that could deal with interior stuff.

Photograph: Marvel Comics

Writer Don McGregor was very popular in the mid-70s. He had an obsession with morality and relationships that comics had never had before. There's a fight scene in this issue with the Black Panther, who's obviously a black superhero, up against a Marvel version of the Ku Klux Klan – the Brothers Of The Dragon. There's a scene in a supermarket with the Panther doing his thing – kicking arse and beating up the bad guys – and then he turns round and an old white woman picks up a tin of cat food and splits his head open with it. It's such an amazing moment in a superhero comic where we're so used to men throwing each other through walls or tossing planets around. This horrible old white woman suddenly realises there's a black man in her supermarket … It's an intensely powerful moment that brought home what was going on in America.

Photograph: Marvel Comics

This was when the X-Men was really Marvel's biggest book. They'd revitalised the concept and it became very much the favoured book of punks and rebels. This was the climax of a story with the Phoenix character, Jean Grey, whose powers increase to the point where she's almost a god and she starts to take matters into her own hands. Everyone else has to take her out. She's killed an entire planet, she's been judged for it, and we know she's going to die: no one that big had ever died in comics before that. The shock of seeing a beloved character that had been around since the 1960s actually killed was amazing. There's a moment where she and her boyfriend Scott Summers – Cyclops – run out, both knowing they're going to die. They hold hands in a perfect Bonnie and Clyde moment, rushing to face death … A heart-wrenching depth of emotion was compressed into those panels.

Photograph: Marvel Comics

This was Alan Moore's signature work, for me. Seeing someone approach superheroes with hard science fiction, it was like a BBC Play For Today. Miracle Man started as a Thatcher-era intrusion of the fantastic – the idea was that some time in the 1950s a spaceship had been discovered in Dorset, and from the technology that was salvaged they'd been able to create superhuman beings. By the end of the story the characters find out that they've been lied to all their lives, and they emerge into the real world. There are beautiful sequences where the superheroes are escorting Thatcher out of No 10 and she's sobbing helplessly: suddenly there's this new power that bombs can't stop, weapons can't stop. The whole last issue is this fabulous liberal fantasy of what the good guys would do if they got in charge and got rid of all the bastards! I like it much more than Watchmen; it was a real triumph for lefties everywhere!

Photograph: DC Comics

It's a very short book, only 48 pages long, but one of the best superhero comics ever, and one of the first examples of multicultural superhero comics. It's about a Hindu superhero, a blue-skinned karmanaut who comes from the future to enlighten a really stupid boy from south London. It's got elements of Martin Amis and Joyce – very indicative of the type of grown-up psychedelic comics we started to produce in the 1980s in Britain after the comic-book boom created by Watchmen, Maus and Dark Knight. You can see the Stone Roses and the Smiths reflected in the book. [Peter] Milligan's probably the best literary writer to have ever done superhero stuff, and [Brendan] McCarthy is a hidden gem, our Salvador Dali. It's 48 pages with a completely new use of computer colouring, collage, beautiful drawing, complete breakdowns of traditional comic structures, and pages that were like poems or songs.

Photograph: DC Comics

This "widescreen comic" paved the way for the superheroes of the last ten years, which have been very politically aware. The leader was a girl called Jenny Sparks, who was drawn to look like Kate Moss. In the final issue they kill God: it follows on from the Moore stuff – what would happen if we had superheroes and they were lefties and they were on our side? We believed in them as working-class readers; they existed to fight the bastards who were threatening us. In the story, God returns to earth after six billion years, is horrified to find that it's overrun by a virus called humanity and decides to clean it off. They work their way through God's capillaries and veins, get to his brain and then fry it, leaving God orbiting the sun as a divine vegetable. It raised anti-authoritarian cheers around the world!

Supergods: Our World In The Age Of The Superhero by Grant Morrison is out now, Jonathan Cape

View the original article here

Zookeeper is a strange animal - a kids' movie for none of the family

I wonder what animals might find to say about Zookeeper if, like their captive peers in that movie, they could actually voice their own opinions. Unhappily for titular lead Kevin James and his fellow cast members, I suspect the highest and lowest beasts on the food chain would review the very hindquarters off it, in a wild and vengeful feeding frenzy, fiercely brandishing every last claw, tusk, talon and tooth.

Even as the happy and highly evolved possessor of functional opposable thumbs, I tend to see their point. Zookeeper is one of those kids' movies – sorry, family movies – where the wrong part of the family is being served, and ill-served at that.

It's been a decade or so since Hollywood learned that you should throw in a little PG-juice on kiddie-flavoured product as relief for all the adults forced to chaperone their kids to movies they'd never otherwise submit to. This reached an unintended-consequences kind of culmination with all the knowing pop-culture references and spoofs of Shrek 3, which likely bemused plenty of six-year-olds who were just in it for more Donkey action. It's happened again with Zookeeper, though, which has a lock on jokes about wolf piss and monkeys flinging shit. Said monkey, naturally, is voiced by co-producer Adam Sandler.

And right there is the weird part. This movie comes from the Sandler-Apatow comedy axis, with voice work and cameos from many in their orbit, including, inter alia, Ken Jeong, (Knocked Up), Maya Rudolph (Bridesmaids), Jon Favreau (I Love You, Man) and even Apatow himself voicing an excitable elephant – alongside real animals like Sly Stallone (lion), Nick Nolte (gorilla) and Cher (lioness). Brightening up as I saw the cast and gradually figured out the voice artists, I was swiftly disappointed at hearing so few echoes of Apatow's other work, and far too many shrill reminders of Sandler's. And could someone please write the underexploited Kevin James a decent script, because he had to co-write this one himself.

"Oh, give it a break," you say, "it's not aimed at you!" Really? It certainly seems to be, judging by the casting. Yet it failed to hit the spot, any spot. The poop flew right over my shoulder. And the only children to leave happy were the ones who piped up their low opinions of the movie to their relieved parents five minutes in and were led back out into the foyer. Often have I cursed my professional obligation to endure some barking, baying, vomit-eating dog of a movie until the credits roll; seldom have I so envied a six-year-old.

So much for the family movie. The lesson of Rex Harrison's calamitous 1967 musical Doctor Dolittle is lost on modern audiences, thanks mainly to Eddie Murphy's calamitous 1998 Doctor Dolittle, the clear ancestor of Zookeeper. It needs to be relearned: animals should be smelt and not heard.

View the original article here

Maia Kayser: I wish the iPhone had better voice recognition

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
As far as hi-tech gadgetry goes, the iPhone is a very handy and intuitive device. Having a miniature, multi-purpose computer/phone in my pocket has definitely allowed for greater flexibility and convenience in many situations.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
To look up theatre locations and times for [the Woody Allen film] Midnight in Paris.

What additional features would you add if you could?
I would add a much longer battery life and far better reception. I also think it would be great if it had better voice recognition features. I'd love for it to better handle common tasks on verbal command, such as browsing the internet, writing emails and locating destinations.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
Without a doubt. Based on the rate of innovation, I can't imagine this technology not being obsolete in 10 years.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
The minute you walk out of the store with the latest gadget, there is already a newer and better version on the market. It can be difficult and frustrating to keep up with the rapid turn over rate of the latest products. We also tend to become very dependent on technology, which makes it all the more frustrating when it fails at the worst moments.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
My previous old laptop was a cumbersome, 10-pound clunker that was very unreliable and buggy. For some reason I held onto to it, cursing it for way too long before I finally upgraded to a better system.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
Being patient. Waiting a few generations for a gadget to improve and it's technology to stabilise. Usually the price comes down and the developers will have had time to respond to user feedback and clean out all the bugs.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
I consider myself somewhere in between, but judging by the fact that I make a living out of computer animation, I guess I'd be leaning more towards a nerd, although I don't claim to be up to date on all the most current technology.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
Aside from my car, it would have to be my laptop, which is one of the better purchases I've made.

Mac or PC, and why?
I used to be a PC user for years, but since I bought my Mac Book Pro, I prefer Mac. I love the design and interface, it's reliable, intuitive and just plain cool. It's been a very useful and effective tool for my creative projects in addition to being a great communication device.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I usually download, but for certain items I like to buy hard media and have something tangible – especially for things like books and movies. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer having real books as opposed to digital readers.

Robot butlers – a good idea or not?
That's a tricky one. Initially the thought of having droid-like contraptions rolling around, managing the household, speaking in a nice British accent, might be kind of appealing. But then I'm reminded of all the apocalyptic robot films I've seen over the years and I begin to think ... maybe not a good idea.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
Living in a big city, it would be nice to have an autonomous car that not only does all the driving but most importantly, knows where it's going and can find legal parking spaces. Honestly, it'd probably be safer, more fuel efficient and reduce traffic, if cars were autonomous.

• Computer animator Maia Kayser works for Industrial, Light & Magic in California, and was the lead animator on Rango – out on DVD and Blu-ray on 25 July

View the original article here

Who would you cast in phone hacking: the movie?

Separated at birth ...? Hilary Swank and James Murdoch. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters and Rex Features

It's the story that's absorbed the entire country (if you're a Tory backbencher reading this, please feel free to replace "entire country" with "Westminster bubble"). Phone-hacking might have started at the News of the World, but it has spread to take in our most powerful institutions: parliament, police, media and Paul McMullan's Dover B&B. It has, of course, been a story with tragic elements, but one that has all the dramatic twists and turns of a conspiracy thriller. So why not see if we can cast one?

Some of you may have played the game of casting phone hacking: the movie on YouTube, and on social networks such as Twitter and Bebo. But it's unlikely that you'll have played it with the same degree of rigour Casting the News is about to demand of you. For in Casting the News, there are no points for suggesting Hugh Grant should play Hugh Grant. Mainly cos we've got him down to play Nick Davies.

Here are the roles we are looking to fill:

Rebekah Brooks: Flame-haired former News International executive at the heart of the scandal. What did she know? When did she know it? Has she been growing that hair all her life? As the leading lady in our drama, the chosen actor will be required to have a broad range. From frolicking gaily in pyjamas with Sarah Brown, to facing down the fearsome Culture, Media and Sport committee and being on holiday when employees of her newspaper were hacking the voicemail of a murdered child – there's a lot to cover. Basically, we're looking for a young Meryl Streep. And, no, that doesn't mean Anne Hathaway in a ginger wig.

Tom Watson: The doughty and, let's be honest here, doughy MP who pursued the phone-hacking scandal through the Commons when everyone else was turning a blind eye. His manner of questioning, dry and quiet, before delivering a killer punch, is ready-made for our movie and has the added potential for a toy spin-off. (Pull cord on back of doll: "Let me take you back to 2006" ... "Did you have any knowledge of the payments being made" ... "Did it not strike you as unusual" ... "I will come to James Murdoch in a minute" ...) With this assiduous determination to get to the truth, plus a passive-aggressive demeanour and a few pounds more than a man's ideal weight ... Russell Crowe would appear to be a good starting point.

Rupert Murdoch: Compassionate, moral media plutocrat whose big heart is only matched by the size of his pauses when undergoing questioning. As odd as it may seem, it was his company (albeit a very small and insignificant part of it) that conducted industrial hacking of private voice messages. We're looking for a venerable actor who can really do surprise and outrage. If we just wanted someone who looked like Murdoch, though, we'd go for Larry's dad in Curb.

John Yates: The former assistant chief constable of the Metropolitan police, who refused to reopen the original 2006 inquiry into phone hacking back in 2009, despite a number of unkind souls describing it as completely and utterly insufficient. Despite causing more raised eyebrows than a Frankie Howerd convention, Yates valiantly stayed in his job until his boss resigned, at which point he thought it only polite to follow suit. Who could convey the necessary degree of chutzpah and faith in their own abilities necessary for this role? Yes, Jude Law is a good shout. Any others?

Wendi Deng: Her volleyball spike to the head of renowned comedian and activist Johnny Whateverhisname is, was the dramatic highlight of Tuesday's select committee hearings. But there is more, much more, to Wendi Deng. A former executive at Murdoch's Star TV and – according to Rolling Stone – no fan of Fox News, Deng is a woman of many facets. Which means simply casting Lucy Liu won't hack it. If you'll pardon the pun.

James Murdoch: Son of Rupert, James is the modern face of News Corporation. By that we mean he talks in almost impenetrable business speak and has an accent that suggests he lives in a flying city halfway between Los Angeles and Sydney. James has strong opinions, his most famous being that "the only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit". He's believed to have that tattooed on his stomach, like Tupac. In other news, he knew pretty much nothing about what went on at the News of the World and only paid out six-figure settlements to people who had taken the paper to court, because lawyers told him to. Starting bid for an actor to play him in our film? Hilary Swank.

Alan Rusbridger: The editor of the Guardian. He's being played by George Clooney. Sorry, this is not up for negotiation.

So there are some roles for you to fill. But please feel free to cast the net of characters wider. Furthermore, we're looking for a title, a tagline and – hey, why not – a director.

View the original article here

Andy Serkis at Comic-Con: my ape role evolution

Primates ... Andy Serkis as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes

British actor Andy Serkis took to the stage at the annual Comic-Con event in San Diego to explain why he chose to play an intelligent chimpanzee in science fiction reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Rise of the Planet of the ApesProduction year: 2011Country: USADirectors: Rupert WyattCast: Brian Cox, Freida Pinto, James Franco, John LithgowMore on this film

Serkis plays Caesar, an ape who inherits human-like intellect from his mother, a chimpanzee involved in clinical trials aimed at helping find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. It is one of a number of motion-captured roles that the actor has taken during the course of his career: others include Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of the 1933 original.

"Whenever I choose a role people say: 'why are you choosing another ape character?'" said Serkis. "Why are you playing another monkey?

"I'll just chart the development of this character for you. He's a young, innocent soul who is brought into this world. He's brought up by human beings, nurtured, loved and cared for. At a certain point he realises he's not the same as the human beings and he feels like a freak, he's treated like a Frankenstein's monster. He's then taken away from his family and thrown into a hardcore prison for apes. He brings this disparate group of apes together and leads them to revolution. It's an amazing journey."

Rise of the Planet of the Apes stars James Franco as a scientist working with apes, along with John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Freida Pinto and Tom Felton. It arrives in the UK on Thursday, 11 August, and in the US a week earlier. The movie is the seventh film in the long running Planet of the Apes series, which began with the Charlton Heston original in 1968.

View the original article here

Googie Withers obituary

Googie Withers in Dead of Night (1945). Photograph: BFI

Followers of postwar cinema may well recall Googie Withers's striking presence in It Always Rains On Sunday, an unusually intense film for the Ealing Studios of 1947. A bored wife, she gives shelter to an ex-lover, now a murderer on the run, played by John McCallum, soon to be her real-life husband. The lovers were shown as unsympathetically as they might have been in French film noir, and the weather was bad even by British standards.

What Withers, who has died aged 94, brought to that performance was to define her strength in some of her most powerful roles. Too strong a face and too grand a manner prevented her being thought conventionally pretty, but she was imposingly watchable because of an obvious vigour and sexuality. Thus equipped, she acquired great skill at playing wives in various states of dissatisfaction because of the implied sexual shortcomings of their husbands.

She was especially effective as the not entirely unsympathetic wife of a judge in the stage version of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea (1952). "Respectable" but emotionally unsatisfied, she throws herself at a weak and irresponsible ex-RAF wonderboy.

Another Rattigan creation that might have gone to Withers was the part of the wife of the dried-up and professionally despised schoolmaster in the film of The Browning Version (1951). In the event, Jean Kent provided one of the most harrowing moments to that date in British cinema when she tried to destroy her husband's remaining hopes with such vicious hatred that the scene was often booed and hissed in 1950s cinemas. Withers, while making the cause of the wife's frustration just as plainly sexual, might well have conveyed a certain residual warmth and humanity that would have transformed melodrama into drama.

Withers as firm but sensitive prison governor Faye Boswell in the ITV series Within These Walls, 1974-75. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

Withers was a loss to the British stage and screen when she followed her husband to his native Australia in the late 1950s. They had married in 1948, and had two daughters, Joanna and Amanda, and a son, Nicholas. From 1955 onwards, she alternated between productions in the southern and northern hemispheres, including Broadway. But while her touring work focused more on Australia and New Zealand, she still made the first three seasons of a British TV series, Within These Walls (1974-75), as the governor of a women's prison, which provided her biggest national and international audience.

Georgette Lizette Withers was born in Karachi, in pre-partition India, to a British naval captain who hated the thought of his daughter going on the stage and a Dutch mother who quietly encouraged her. The captain, who tried to run a Birmingham foundry after leaving the Royal Navy through poor health, was a high-handed man who clashed with fellow directors whom he openly despised, and lost his job. His daughter inherited his imperious inability to keep his opinions to himself, but in her case it was softened by her feminine humour.

At 12, while a boarder at Fredville Park private school near Dover, she took dancing lessons, initially to straighten bandy legs. At the same age she made her first professional appearance, in the chorus of a children's show at the Victoria Palace, London. She persuaded her parents to send her to the Italia Conti school after she had worked her normal school day at the Convent of the Holy Family in Kensington.

A fall during dancing class permanently weakened an arm and indicated a less arduous form of dancing. She did cabaret in Midnight Follies at the Mayfair hotel and the Kit Kat Club. At 16 she was the youngest member of the chorus of Nice Goings On and was soon appearing in other popular musicals.

From 1935 onwards, she appeared in more than 60 films and television productions, including some of the finest movies of their time: One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), They Came to a City (1944, from the JB Priestley novel); Miranda (1948), in which Glynis Johns played the mermaid and Withers the all-too-normal woman; and Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950), with Richard Widmark.

On the stage she was a beguiling Beatrice in Stratford-upon-Avon's production of Much Ado About Nothing (1958), and though her move to Australia often brought her under the umbrella of her husband's theatre management, she continued to play in adventurous work in Britain, including Ionesco's Exit the King for the Edinburgh Festival and the Royal Court theatre. A production of Somerset Maugham's The Circle at the Chichester Festival theatre in 1976 was so successful that it went to the West End, Canada and on tour in Britain. Withers's Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1979) at Chichester managed to step out of the shadow of Edith Evans's high-camp shadow without losing impact.

In the 1970s, when traditional leading ladies were less in demand, Withers's career became more variable. In 1971 she starred in a film produced and directed by her husband, and featuring her daughter Joanna, called Nickel Queen, otherwise known as Ghost Town Millionairess, an examination of socialites and riff-raff in an Australian town dominated by nickel production. It was not well received, one comment being that it was an appalling bit of Australiana that made Barry Humphries's film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) look like a refreshing can of Foster's.

The role of Faye Boswell in Within These Walls three years later proved to be a sounder vehicle. Giving her formidability a greyer hue, Withers played a prison governor striving to be, as well as a disciplinarian, as sensitive as possible to the problems of the prisoners. The series led to further successes in the 1980s, when on television she appeared in distinguished productions including adaptations of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac and Kingsley Amis's Ending Up.

She continued to be active in the 1990s, appearing in two highly praised films. Country Life (1994), directed by Michael Blakemore, was a version of Uncle Vanya set in Australia in 1919, showing what was on the collective mind of one part of the British Empire as Chekhov had shown what was on the minds of a fading Russian social class.

Shine (1996) was based on the career of the Australian pianist David Helfgott, beset by struggles against family pressures and mental instability. His real-life interpretation of Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto was used in the film and became a controversial attraction in the concert hall. Withers played the writer Katharine Susannah Prichard, who helped Helfgott in his ambition to get away from his possessive father and to London for his higher musical training, but died before she could enjoy his success.

Withers was a great trouper of the old school who, coming back to England in 1967 to play the forceful mayoress in Shaw's Getting Married, found the country "changed and lacking in energy". The woman who was once called "the best bad girl in British films" was always prepared to help make up any deficiency in that respect. At 85 she was still commanding attention on the West End stage, in Lady Windermere's Fan.

In 1980 she was appointed AO, and in 2001 CBE. Her husband died last year, and she is survived by her children.

• Googie (Georgette Lizette) Withers, actor, born 12 March 1917; died 15 July 2011

View the original article here

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back in an action film – but can he cut it at 63?

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to the big screen. Photograph: Bela Szandelszky/AP

He will be back – but will he be any good?

In fulfilment of one of his most famous movie lines, it was confirmed last week that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action movie star-turned-two-term California governor, would be returning to the big screen in his first major role since entering politics. The critics are divided on whether it will be worth his while.

While many actors have moved from films into politics – Ronald Reagan was the most famous – few have ever tried to make the switch twice and go back to their former career. "It is a unique moment in his career and for action cinema in America," said Professor Christopher Sharrett, a film academic at Seton Hall University.

The most obvious challenge facing Schwarzenegger, now 63, is his age. In The Last Stand, a contemporary western, he will play a small-town American lawman who has to capture a criminal drug lord before he escapes across the border. The man who played a barbarian warrior in the Conan films and a robot from the future in the Terminator series is choosing to stick with action roles even though he will soon be a pensioner. He has kept in remarkable physical shape for a man with six decades on the clock, but convincing movie audiences of his credentials as a heroic crime-fighting cop might be difficult.

"He is getting long in the tooth and the movie industry is not very forgiving of that. There is not much tolerance of it. Young men in the audience will see him as an old codger and older people will see him as a star of yesteryear," Sharrett said.

But there is a precedent. Sylvester Stallone is still pumping out action flicks at 65 and, while his films have not been winning him Oscars, they have generally been hits. His last action film, The Expendables, took in $275m at the box office.

Adding to the chances of Schwarzenegger's return to the big screen being a hit is the fact many people will be keen to see the film for its curiosity value. It also features an exciting new director, South Korean Kim Ji-Woon, who is trying to break into Hollywood after cult hits in Asia such as I Saw The Devil and The Good, The Bad, The Weird.

Also in Schwarzenegger's favour is the fact that western-style films have a long tradition of ageing male leads. "He can be made to look good, but it will depend on the quality of the script and the film direction. If that is good, then the film could easily work," said Professor Christine Holmlund, a cinema studies expert at the University of Tennessee.

The Last Stand promises to feature all the staples of a modern-day western: desperate criminal, FBI convoy, hostages, gun-toting henchmen and, of course, a hero.

Kim, who originally envisioned Liam Neeson in the lead role, has called the film "a kind of a combination of Die Hard and High Noon". It is clearly going to guarantee audiences more in the way of high explosives than high art.

There might be another reason for Schwarzenegger to be heading back to Hollywood. Though he left office with an international reputation on environmental issues, he was hit by a scandal over fathering a child with a maid.

"There is no surprise that he is coming back to films," Holmlund said. "This whole love child incident messes up his prospects for much else in the way of politics."

View the original article here

What goes wrong when celebs endorse food

People are conditioned to believe that if a celebrity endorses something, it must be important to them or, they're getting paid loads of money. I understand celebrity chefs endorsing food. That makes sense. And it makes sense to me that a model would put their face on a wrinkle cream or an athlete would promote an energy drink. It even makes sense that Jennifer Aniston would endorse a ubiquitous and universally appealing beverage. Water.

But endorsing is one thing. Having a food item named after you is a different matter. That says: this is me. It's like having personalised fragrance in that it's interactive. You can buy Mariah Carey's perfume, spritz yourself and presume that you're going to smell just like her. Likewise, if you buy Sylvester Stallone's high-protein pudding, you're a tiny bit closer to being like Rocky.

Scores of celebrities have climbed on board. Hulk Hogan has the Hulkster Cheeseburger – a microwaveable cheeseburger and bun all in one. This saves time from having to assemble it separately, I guess. More time to wrestle! Paradoxically, supermodel Heidi Klum has her face on her own line of candy. Heidi Klum's fat-free fruit flirtations. Good luck with those.

Last week, I was in Holland & Barrett buying dried apricots when I spotted the Elizabeth Hurley fruit and oat bars. I knew she'd become a part-time organic farmer, but I'd never seen the bars. There she is on the wrapper wearing a black mini dress, pink wellies with a pineapple on her head. On closer inspection I realised that no, it wasn't a pineapple but a bunch of bananas. Much more appropriate. She's even got her big black sunglasses on. Just in case paparazzi are lurking in the snacks aisle.

Sorry, the GUILT FREE snacks aisle. At under 100 calories they are "perfect for the moments you want something sweet". You know what else they're perfect for? Moments you want to ponder what's wrong with people.

Of course, there are celebrities who have an entire line of food with a genuine purpose and there seems to be more gravitas to it. Terence Stamp, for instance, has a delicious gluten-free line. And the most well known, naturally, is Paul Newman. I find it comforting to see his face peering out from the Fig Newmans cookies.

It does have drawbacks though. I was having a conversation recently with a young person who had never heard of Paul Newman. I was taken aback – even though she was 14, that seemed old enough to have seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. "Oh, wait," she paused. "You mean the salad dressing guy?" The salad dressing guy. Paul Newman! That was disturbing.

I asked a couple of my friends – if they were to have their own food item what it would be. My friend Carla said she'd have her name on a cherry pie that had no calories. No calories at all? She should meet Elizabeth Hurley and the two of them could come up with a taste-free food line. Another friend said her signature food item would be chips that once eaten, made you look younger. I'm not sure what my item would be but it would definitely be something "on the side".

But best of all was my friend, Helena, who said her food item would be called Tru Jerks. "It's jerky made from the hides of men who have let me down or tortured me in my life."

View the original article here

Just Do It – review

Tree's company: a scene from Emily James's film about green protestors, Just Do It. Photograph: Mike RussellJust Do ItProduction year: 2010Country: UKCert (UK): 12ARuntime: 90 minsDirectors: Emily JamesMore on this film

Subtitled "A Tale of Modern Outlaws", James's partisan documentary is an inside account of life among near-fulltime environmental protesters as they prepare and execute their demonstrations in Britain and Denmark. They are an attractive, idealistic bunch, anti-capitalists of an anarchic kind. The film is informative about the way they operate, but a good many questions go unasked.

View the original article here

The Sun dismisses Jude Law's alleged phone-hacking claim as 'mischief'

Jude Law has also taken legal action against News of the World. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

News International says a claim taken against the Sun by Jude Law for alleged phone hacking will be "defended vigorously". The actor is already taking action against the News of the World. The company said of the Sun claim: "We believe this is a deeply cynical and deliberately mischievous attempt to draw the Sun into the phone-hacking issue. The allegations have been carefully investigated by our lawyers and the evidence shows they have no foundation whatsoever."

"In particular, the claimant's solicitors have relied on a reference in documentation that they should be well aware has nothing to do with a case against the Sun.

"Also, another article complained of merely reiterated information which was already in the public domain.The claim will be defended vigorously."

Law's lawyer said: "Accusations of cynicism and mischief-making by News International are ridiculous. Their record speaks for itself."

View the original article here