I recently sat through the clumsily titled “Version You’ve Never Seen” cut of The Exorcist, only to conclude that it should have remained unseen. Another 10 minutes of footage, including the laughable spider-walk scene and a feeble new ending have done nothing to improve William Friedkin’s horror classic. But, as the DVD market is [...]
There’s no Al Gore-style proselytizing here, just two 30-something Brits who are determined to become the first carbon neutral, vegetarian, organic team to reach the North Pole “unsupported”.
Beyond The Pole
Directed by David L Williams
“Don’t be impotent. Be important!” Tackling climate change might not seem like an obvious subject for a comedy – especially [...]
What really impresses is the way the script, co-written by Ford and David Scearce, sidesteps the maudlin and the pretentious to show us how ridiculous we can be, even in our darkest moments.
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A Single Man
Directed by Tom Ford
With fashion supremo Tom Ford at the helm, the very least you’d expect from this adaptation of Christopher [...]
Hulks, high-flyers and web-slingers – it was a decade dominated by superheroes of all shapes, sizes and hues. And in the unlikely event that Batman, Superman or Iron Man failed to wow you at the box office, there were brooding, muscle-bound guys with cool gadgets (Bourne and Bond); a precocious young wizard (Harry Potter); and [...]
Opening credits: are they witty, colourful, innovative, or just the cinematic equivalent of wallpaper? A barrage of production company logos is all very well, but there’s something about a clever combination of words, images – animated or photographic – and music, all condensed into a few minutes of screen time, that heightens your sense of [...]
Exploding vehicles (and heads), decapitations, a whole lot of nudity and an overexcited Quentin Tarantino are just the starting point for Not Quite Hollywood: the wild, untold story of Ozploitation!, Mark Hartley’s jaw-dropping history of Australian genre cinema. Forget Picnic at Hanging Rock: it’s more a case of let’s blow up Ayers Rock and set [...]
A Single Man
Directed by Tom Ford
With fashion supremo Tom Ford at the helm, the very least you’d expect from this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel is a parade of gorgeous men in well-cut suits. There’s certainly enough Kennedy-era period detail here to satisfy the most ardent fan of Mad Men (along with an uncredited voice [...]
In March 2006 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sprung one of its annual surprises by awarding the best picture Oscar to Crash, rather than Ang Lee’s acclaimed gay cowboy drama, Brokeback Mountain. At the time it looked as though racism and multiple vehicular pile-ups had trumped homosexuality in the battle of the [...]
