It may not be lady killing, but it's still criminal

In between messages of support for "the boys" (isn't anyone in the army over 18?) Tom Hanks made a surprising admission during his promotional tour of Cannes. Despite starring in the Coen brothers re-make of The Ladykillers and having great admiration for Alec Guiness he says he has never seen the Ealing original. Whilst his desire to avoid doing a poor imitation of the late Alec is commendable, take note Ewan Macgregor, there is a flaw. Since shooting on the film wrapped a while ago why has he not rented out a copy of the DVD since. Is the re-make so bad he's decided that the original can't be much cop, is his life just too busy or does he want to avoid seeing how terribly hammy his performance is in comparison. Answers on a sun-drenched postcard please.

Someone slay Brad

Whilst Brad Pitt is being a good bunny in Cannes pimping his pretty boy
good looks on behalf of the "boy didn't Gladiator make a lot of money"
fest that is Troy, something is amiss. However many cute quotes about
Jenny liking his skirt from the film and how "Achilies is the kind of
role I became an actor for" he makes there is a sense of unease. With
Pitt's Beckham Pepsi ad makeover in this film and him being forced at
gun point into a decent haircut and quality suit for Oceans Twelve I
think there is a backlash coming on, After trying so hard to bury his
good looks in films like Snatch and Fight Club I'd get £10 on Brad
getting interested in a re-make of the Elephant Man sometime soon.

Historical posts from the website

Thursday 30th August
If you need to cast a foreign bad guy, why not cast a face from British
television, they are far easier to work with anyway. However the casting
team of The Sum Of All Fears clearly weren't thinking about the British
audience when they cast Richard Marner, better known as Colonel von
Strohm from Allo Allo, as the ailing Russian president. Now if only
they'd called one of his assistants Rene it would been a far more
amusing film.

Friday 25th August
Is Heather Graham a tortured and misunderstood soul, trapped, like
Marilyn Monroe before her, in the dumb blonde roles which undermine her
yearning to be taken seriously as an actress and rise above that
god-inflicted photogenic body? Not if the gleeful abandon she shows at
solely taking roles that involve her shedding clothes and then turning
at their premieres virtually shouting "I'm on the pull me" is anything
to go by. Then again such antics have gained her more column inches for
her supporting role in The Guru than the rest of the cast, crew or film
put together, so who is the fool?

Wednesday 22nd August
The trailer for Signs already has me convinced that I am not alone.
Alone in the belief that the publicity for a film needn't give away it's
entire plot to grab the viewers attention that is, not in the belief
that there is alien life out there. So far the films impressive
performance in the US seems to add credence to the less is more theory
of advertising, however I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this
to become a trend.

Tuesday 9th July
I have seen many spectacular things go wrong during a movie screening.
My favourites have included the picture appearing to the right of the
screen, the projector falling over backwards and projecting the film
onto the ceiling and a reel of Nikita appearing in the middle of Speed 2
(a blessed relief it must be said). However none of these can compare to
the screening of Amelie at the Glastonbury Festival where half way
through the credits there was a very loud bang, all the power went out
and the screen collapsed. Now that's the magic of cinema.

Monday 17th June
Some people never learn, after being made a monkey of in Tim Burton's
woeful Planet Of The Apes re-imagining (I always imagined it was a
decent film before) Mark Wahlberg is now lined up as the lead for the
Italian Job re-make. One wonders why anyone thinks that relocating the
film to LA will make any sort of improvement to a caper movie that had
perfect casting and execution and yet still bombed in the US. Maybe
Wahlberg's Calvin Klein advertising days have left him feeling most
comfortable on screen when seen in pants.

Saturday 15th June
Quality trailers seem to be thick on the ground at the moment even if
new releases have been somewhat scarce. Men In Black 2 whets the
appetite for another round of Smith and Jones humour (that's Will and
Tommy Lee, not Mel and Griff Rhys) but the real eye-opener is the new
Mel Gibson film. Signs promises to expose the secret of crop circles,
and since it's director is none other than Sixth Sense man M Night
Shalaman, we can expect yet another overly hyped ending that seems like
a bit of a disappointment, but fortunately a cracking film should
preface it.

Sunday 9th June
The publicity machine for Spiderman threatens to make World Cup football
the second most ubiquitous thing on TV this weekend with it's all
consuming presence. Curiously most of the press interest centres on the
upside down kiss and quotes from all involved about how unsexy it was to
film. Hopefully this shattering the myth tactic will spread to other
major Hollywood films and we can see Schwarznegger and Stallone talking
about how many times it takes them to say words of more than two
syllables.

Friday 7th June
Nice to see the marketing guys behind Unfaithful know where the money
is. From the look of the trailer the film isn't actually a thriller but
just 90 minutes of Diane Lane being half naked while Richard Gere tries
to convince the viewer there'll be some violence at the end. Since the
director is Adrian "it was only an oversight that Jacobs Ladder didn't
look like a porn movie" Lyne this may be a fair reflection of the film.