Review of Due Date

Year: 2010

Writers: Alan R Cohen, Alan Freedland, Adam Sztykiel and Todd Phillips.

Director: Todd Phillips

Plot: High strung father-to-be Peter Highman (Downey Jr) is forced to hitch a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay (Galifanakis) on a road trip in order to make it to the birth of his child on time.






The first thing to note about this movie is that it has a hell of a lot of writers. Perhaps that is why for the full 95 minute running time I kept thinking that this had to be the by-product of a creative writing session for schizophrenics. I also don't feel I am over exaggerating when I say that it is a long 95 minutes!

The truth is I wanted so much to love this movie! I am such a big fan of Robert Downey Jr and will tell anyone who wants to listen that the man is an acting genius of the highest degree, but even his comedy talents and strong jawline, could not make this movie anymore bearable. It was a film that really had strong potential in its two leads and the cameos from people like Juliette Lewis and Danny Mcbride, as well as the storyline. However, this is where it falls down. The problem is that we have seen this story done before and miles better in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and while watching Due Date, I kept thinking how good that movie was and wondering why I was watching this instead. I could have switched off at anytime and I would not have felt  worse off for having not seen the ending.

Zach Galifanakis and Robert Downey Jr seem to have thrown everything they could into this movie, but the problem lies in the fact that their characters just aren't very likeable. Galifanakis is an over the top caricature and seems to struggle to incite any empathy from the audience during emotional scenes, while Downey Jr is a vicious character who at one point spits in a dog's face and punches a child.

The film didn't seem to know what it wanted to be and maybe this is a result of having too many writers. One moment you are witnessing a masturbating Galifanakis and his dog and the next minute he is crying about his dead father while Downey Jr relates a story of how his father walked out on him as a child!

My best advice is stay well clear, because this movie sucks! I'll leave you with the trailer, because the best bits of the movie are in those 2 minutes and 9 seconds.

Have you seen it? What did you think?

Review of The Help

I have been a bit slack with my movie reviews of late, so today you get two for the price of one. The Help which I saw last weekend at the cinema and Due Date which was our Tuesday night movie courtesy of Lovefilm.

The Help - currently in cinemas.

Year: 2011

Writer: Kathryn Stockett (novel), Tate Taylor (screenplay.)

Director: Tate Taylor

Starring:  Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janey

Plot:  Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer. But she turns her friends lives and a Mississippi town upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families.



As I have already posted about the novel on this blog back in September I am not going to go over the plot in detail again or reiterate my love for the original source material. I want to focus more on how faithful the movie is to the novel and also how it plays to those coming to it with fresh eyes.

Having absolutely fallen in love with the novel while reading it for my book group and hearing so much Oscar buzz about this film since July, I came to it with the same apprehension as when I went to see One Day. While I was pleasantly surprised with that film, this movie exceeded my expectations! Top marks go to the casting directors Kerry Barden and Paul Schnee, who managed to find Skeeter's geekiness and empathy in rising star Emma Stone, Minny's sassiness in Octavia Spencer, Hilly Holbrook's prejudice and vengefulness in Bryce Dallas Howard and Aibleen's quiet strength in Viola Davis.

To be honest I could go on, as there is not single female performance in this movie that deserves to go unmentioned. It is great to see a mainstream movie with such a wide range of well developed female characters and I can imagine that every actress in Hollywood was fighting to be a part of this picture. Particular praise has to go to Jessica Chastain as dizzy blonde Celia Foote. She is the spitting image of how I imagined the character to be when reading the novel and her portrayal of Celia as being a naive girl with a big heart avoids the dumb white trash girl route that other actresses may have been tempted to take.

At no point during the movie did I feel anyone in the cinema getting restless and the balance of humour and pathos was just right, tears were shed in sadness and happiness!

If I had to come up with one negative point about the film, it would be that I feel it does shirk away slightly from some of the more controversial plot points or negative aspects of the characters. For example, in the boo  at no point do you feel any sympathy for Elizabeth Leefolt in her neglect of her daughter, while in the movie the character seems more conflicted in her actions. Readers of the novel may also be annoyed by the fact that the whole plot strand involving the reasons for the firing of Skeeter's childhood maid has been completely changed to something much more simplistic and less taboo.

To summarise this is a fantastically scripted and directed movie with some fantastic female performances and I am sure it is bound to come away with many Oscar nominations!

I would love to know if you have seen this film and if so what you thought of it? If you read the book, did it meet your expectations?

Read it Swap it

Being a self confessed book addict often means having a dwindling bank balance and although there is nothing more I love than spending hours in book stores perusing the shelves for exciting new treats to throw on the ever growing 'to read' pile, my aank Account says otherwise. As a big advocate of the importance of libraries in society for young and old, I would suggest that your first port of call for a free read should always be your local library. However, if your library is anything like mine (way too small for the city), then it is good for when you are looking for a spontaneous read, but not if you have a particular book in mind. 

This is where Read it Swap it comes in (http://www.readitswapit.co.uk). I first read about Read it Swap it in India Knight's fantastic 'The Thrift Book' where she comes up with lots of great ideas on 'how to live well and spend less,' definitely worth checking out! 

Read it Swap it is a UK based online book swapping website. It is free to join and once on there you have access to currently 371,272 books from all over the UK. The idea is that on your account, you build up a list of the books you have available to swap. This is really easy to do because you can just input the ISBN number above the barcode on the back of your book and the website immediately pulls up all the information about that book. You just need to describe the current condition of the book and it is important to be honest in this case, because once your swap is completed the recipient of your book will mark you on how honest you were about the description of the book.

You also have a wishlist where you can add all the books you are interested in reading and when another member adds that particular book Read it Swap it will send you an email notification so you can request a swap.

How does the swap work?

Once you have found a book you like the look of, you click to swap with that member. They will then receive an email notification and a link to your collection of books. They can refuse to swap with you if there is nothing they fancy reading , but if they find a book they like, they will confirm the swap and then the user will be able to see your postal address.  Once you have each received each others books, you will confirm on the site and rate your fellow swapper based on the speed of the swap and the condition of the book (was it as described?). 

Swapping tips

• Always try and post your book within two days, if this is not going to be possible for some reason, email your fellow swapper and let them know there will be a delay.

• I have found that most people tend to send books second class, so don't waste your money shipping first class because as long as the books come within a week you are unlikely to receive a bad rating.

• The best way to send your book is to buy brown parcel wrapping paper and then wrap the book in three layers to ensure the book stays undamaged. The Post Office tend to consider this as a large letter so you will probably pay under £1.00 to post it. At first I was using large padded envelopes but it was getting too expensive.

I have completed 22 swaps up to now and am now officially a Read it Swap it addict!! Not only does it mean you can interact with fellow book lovers around the UK and maintain your reading addiction minus the expense, but there is also something old fashioned and exciting about receiving books in the post!!

Let me know if you are already on the site or plan to join and your experiences of it. Apologies if you are not UK based, but I would love to hear if you have something similar in your country.

Is there a Dewey system for films?

Whenever I enter a person's house for the first time I carry out the same process every time. It involves a Sherlock Holmes style investigation of their book and film collection.  Now don't get me wrong this isn't some judgemental process where if their books or films are deemed not to reach a certain standard, then I summon the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who enters, tells them they have chosen poorly and their face melts off!

No this is my attempt to get to know them better. You see I believe that almost everything you need to know about a person can be determined by their film or book collection and it is not just the content, it is also about the way they present it. That is why on Sunday while supervising the construction of our third and final Billy bookcase, I suffered a mild panic attack when I realised that maybe I was just too boring in my choice of organisational system.

One particularly traumatic evening I had the fantastic (or so I thought at the time) idea of organising my film collection according to lead actor/actress (depending on who was more famous) and director (but only if they were considered an auteur). I know, I have no idea why I thought it would work. Not surprisingly, it did not and I ended up chucking all my films back on the shelves in an extremely dull alphabetical order. Followed by DVDs and TV shows bringing up the rear.

Book wise I have attempted to be slightly more inventive. I have non-fiction in alphabetical order to start, followed by children's books, penguin special editions, travel books, history books, psychology and politics, film, TV, autobiographies and old antique looking books.

This all got me wondering what other possible, more interesting ways I could organise my stuff to shake things up a little and display a little more of my personality. So I made a little list:

1. Colour coordination - A friend has all her DVDs colour coordinated. This works in a way, because the design of film posters lends itself to mainly pink or white for Rom coms and Chick Flicks, dark moody blues and blacks for thrillers, and light blues for drama. So there is some logic in this aesthetic choice, but what a nightmare to find anything.
2. Date of publication or of release could work. It would make a very interesting way of charting the history of literature or movie making if you read or watched them in that order over the course of a year.
3. Size- this only really works for books and is suitable for the extremely obsessive compulsive of the population.
4. Genre - pretty self explanatory - although if you base the movie organisation on IMDB classifications then this could be a real headache. Mamma Mia for example comes under Comedy, Romance, Musical ahh!!!! I would need three copies.

Finally if you wanted to completely lose your sanity you could follow John Cusack's lead in High Fidelity and arrange everything based on autobiographical chronology. Now what was the first movie in my collection I   ever saw?? They would find me a week later quietly weeping on a pile of DVDs and muttering about whether 

I saw Goodfellas before Casino, still have no idea!

So plenty of ideas, but for my sanity and the safe keeping of the bookcases, I'll stick with what I have. Let me know how your film and book collections are organised. I would love to know if any of you have some really original ways of displaying them!

Photo sources. bookcases (colourlovers.com) DVDs (Gresswell.co.uk)

Nostalgia for childhood books and movies.

Last weekend marked another birthday and a further step on the way to the big 30! It was my belief that as the years went on I would become a wiser, more cultured individual. Taking countless trips to the opera, listening to classic FM, reading the great philosophers and watching French cinema.

However, to my surprise and initial horror I have found myself immersed in a deep nostalgia for childhood pleasures. Books and films that I discarded at the entrance to my teenage years with some disgust have now become my new obsession. It all started when I was called back to the parents' to clean out my room, which had pretty much been left as it was since I decided to become a Midlander in 2008. I came across all these children's books I had completely forgotten about such as Matilda by Roald Dahl, Horrible Histories, My Friend Walter by Michael Morpugo. Intrigued to see if I still found them as a good a read as back in the day, I took them back home and I was hooked!  

I started remembering all these books I loved as a child and wanted to read again, Secret Seven and Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh etc. Unfortunately it turned out that I had given away most of my books in my haste to become a moody, cynical teenager. So began my trawl through charity shops and second hand bookshops to try and compile the perfect childhood collection of books for pure escapism. This quest did not stop at books, I have also started collecting old childhood Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast and Winnie the Pooh and I forgot how fantastic they were!

So why has this nostalgia come about? Is it just another obsessive rung on the addictive personality ladder to madness or could it be something deeper than that? An article in The Telegraph in September this year asked this exact question of Dr Louise Joy, a Cambridge University academic. Her theory is that adults go back to reading childhood books because they are looking for a world where "self-consciousness is overthrown and relationships are uncomplicated." Put more simply, life is so stressful these days that sometimes we don't want to be reminded of the harsh reality of modern living and would prefer to regress to the fantasy world of talking bears and faraway trees provided by our favourite books from childhood.

It would seem more and more people are discovering that childhood books can be the key to stress relief and happiness. In her book 'The Happiness Project', Gretchen Rubin talks about how her initiative to start a children's literature book group for adults and her discovery that more people than she thought shared her passion for children's books. For Gretchen it was about 'returning to the world of stark good and evil, of talking animals and fulfilled prophecies.'

For me it was all about the nostalgia for a time when I could curl up on the sofa and disappear into a great book or film without nagging thoughts about work, money and other daily stresses circling around my head. So next time you are feeling stressed out with modern life, why not take a trip to the library and pick up a children's book, it maybe just what you were looking for.

Do any of you still read children's books or watch movies from your childhood? Why do you find yourself still drawn to them?


All pictures courtesy of Amazon.co.uk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8783522/Why-do-adults-like-childrens-books-Blame-modern-life.html

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2007/07/are-you-looking.html

When obsession leads to a hidden treasure.

Ever since Gladiator first captivated me eleven years ago and introduced me to the wonderful world of cinema, I have obsessed with seven actors who all fall into the handsome, talented, intense performers category.

My addictive personality ensures that when I develop an interest in an actor, I have to know everything about them and their body of work. I will track down any magazine article, surf the web for interviews and attempt to watch and collect everything in their back catalogue of work.

Recently I realised that these back catalogue collections  have led me to discover some underrated film treasures that would normally have gone unnoticed had it not been for my obsession.

Often it is easy to get stuck in a rut of movie watching. Influenced by cinema listings, movie magazines, sequels, remakes and our favourite genres it is easy to stay within your comfort zone of film viewing. However, the discovery of an actor or actress can lead you to some fascinating little gems.

So over the next few weeks, I plan on delving into these actors' back catalogues and picking out for you, what I believe is their stand out performance and an underrated gem, which I feel you should check out.  My chosen actors are Joaquin Phoenix, Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr, Gary Oldman, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Tom Hardy.

In the meantime, I would love to know which actors/actresses are your favourites and which of their films you believe is a hidden gem.

All photos courtesy of IMDB.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Year: 2011

Writer: John Le Carre (novel.), Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor (screenplay.)

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Starring; Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, Kathy Burke

Plot: In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons.



Ever since I saw the trailer for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at the end of August before One Day, I have been super excited about this movie. Not just because I am a huge fan of the good old fashioned Cold War spy caper. But also because I have always been a massive advocate for the body of work of Gary Oldman. A supremely talented actor who has been considerably underused since the early noughties. Harry Potter and the Batman Franchise have revived his career and I am absolutely convinced that this movie is going to send him up to the top of every Hollywood casting agents wishlist once again.

I actually saw this movie about a week ago, but have been exceptionally lazy in getting this review up and I have to say that despite suffering from a corneal ulcer and sitting next to a fat bastard who spent the entire movie throwing popcorn into his face and slurping on his coca cola, I absolutely adored this movie. It was FANTASTIC!!!  This movie is a real slow burner with occasional bouts of action and brutal violence. There is nothing glamorous about the world of espionage according to John Le Carre. This is not Bourne or Bond.  Tomas Alfredson manages to capture the grim, lonely world of a spy during the Cold War where no one can be trusted and personal lives are destroyed by one's commitment to the Circus. The cinematography is dark and grainy and the tension slowly rises as you find yourself drawn deeper and deeper into the complex world of Smiley and his colleagues. Despite the source material being rather bulky and complex, the screenwriters have done an excellent job of condensing what was originally a 7 hour mini series in it's first screen adaptation into a 2 hour movie.

The ensemble cast is astounding. With so many talented individuals it is difficult to pick out the standout performances. But if I had to narrow it down to three I would say Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy and Mark Strong. Gary Oldman gives an extremely subtle performance as a weary, deep thinking Smiley. Despite not being overly showy he manages to command every scene he is in and allows the viewer to slowly peel away the layers of his character scene by scene. One of his best scenes is when he is describing his one and only face to face meeting with Soviet counterpart Karla to Benedict Cumberbatch's character. Instead of seeing the action in flashback we are treated to him reenacting his dialogue and see his admiration as well as repulsion for the Russian.

Mark Strong is as always excellent at playing the dark mysterious character who has been screwed over by those he once trusted and dumped into the civilian world as a teacher, living alone in a caravan on the school playing fields. Tom Hardy also excels as the handsome but naive foot soldier whose information from his Russian girlfriend assists Smiley in tracking down the mole but is eventually betrayed by those he felt he could trust.

I could talk about this movie for hours, but to summarise, this is an intelligent and thrilling old fashioned movie which demonstrates exactly why Britain has some of the most talented actors working in the film industry today. Please please go and see it!!