"Thirty-eight of New York's finest, versus one guy in a unitard!"

Hello Everyone :-)

In the immortal words of ‘Cabaret’ “money makes the world go around” and it is the supposed‘root of all evil’ that is the main reason ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ exists.

You’re probably wondering ‘what's the point of rebooting a franchise whose first film came out only 10 short years ago?’. The answer boils down to money; not wanting to pay it out but also wanting to make lots of it.
Sony, who own the rights to Spider-man, want to make lots of money from new Spider-man films but they don’t want to pay Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire an increased amount for sequels to the original trilogy. They also don’t want to lose money by giving the character rights back to Marvel (which they'd be contractually forced to do if they didn't make enough Spider-Man movies over a certain time period) and so some executive types got together and decreed that a reboot was on the cards.
Let’s see how this finance driven venture translates to the silver screen.

‘The Amazing Spider-man’ is the story of Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) who lives with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) after the death of his parents in a plane crash. Peter attends Midtown Science High School where he’s a quiet, photography loving, science Geek with a crush on the clever, beautiful Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone). After discovering that his Father had connections at Oscorp and desperate to find out more about his work, Peter sneaks into their headquarters and enters a lab where a "biocable" is being created from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him giving him spider-like superpowers.

I can’t talk about this film without talking about ‘Spider-man’. I just can’t. 10 years is not enough time to forget that film and watch this one without drawing comparisons. That might seem unfair on ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ but actually, I think it compares quite favourably.

For starters I like how this film totally focuses on Peter Parker's High School life. It takes it’s time establishing the character and with the proposed trilogy of films it’ll be nice to watch Parker grow up across them. The film’s focus on Gwen and Peter’s High School romance plays to the Twilight teen-girl market but there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s an audience that has been abandoned by the mainstream save for silly films about sparkly Vampire boys so they deserve something new to watch.

Another thing this film has over its 2002 counterpart is the cast. The cast in ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ is far superior with one exception (which we’ll get to later).

I much prefer Sally Field as Aunt May, she still worries about Peter but there’s a lot more personality and humour to her character than we’ve seen previously. Martin Sheen is the ideal male relative; you want him as your Dad/Uncle/Grandad; after watching this I can’t imagine a better Uncle Ben. Together they portray a couple who live in blissful domesticity.

I adore Andrew Garfield and infinitely prefer him to Tobey Maguire in both the roles of Spider-man and Peter Parker. He’s playing much younger than he is and nails it with a healthy dose of teenage angst. For me Maguire’s performance in‘Spider-man’ is too earnest and he plays Peter Parker as too much of a goofy, goody two shoes. Garfieldplays Peter as an outsider and I prefer that approach. He’s still super clever and a bit of a geek (I squealed when I saw Peter Parker had the same Richard Feynman desktop background as me!) but there’s also isolation to him. Admittedly it was slightly over-egged but generally I liked the moodier angle on the character.
Garfield also differentiates between Spider-man and Peter Parker which Maguire never really did. He transforms when he puts on the red mask, from quiet and isolated to a wise-cracking, smart-aleck that annoys the hell out of his opponents. For me this was much truer to the original source material and put a lot more emphasis on the power of anonymity and how it helps Parker create his alter ego.

The best top-trump card ‘The Amazing Spider-man has is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. Her performance absolutely wipes the floor with Kirsten Dunst’s Mary-Jane Watson. She doesn’t get masses of screen time (a failing on the film’s part) but Gwen is clever, cute, fun, sexy, vulnerable and has a brilliant wit. Ryan Gosling said that Stone “is everything, all the time” and in this she really is. Be you man, woman, gay, straight or bi, if you see this, walk out and you’re not in love with her there is something wrong with you. Stone and Garfield (who are a real life couple) bounce off each other and their on-screen chemistry is a major factor in why I enjoyed this film as much as I did.

One cast member that made me cringe big-style was Rhys Ifans as Dr Curt Connors/The Lizard. It’s not his fault, Rhys Ifans does his best but the character isn’t fleshed out very well and his motivations fall apart when you question them even slightly. It’s such a disappointment because at the beginning you have sympathy with him but his decent into full on cackling baddie just doesn’t hold up; I don’t get the jump from wanting to re-grow your arm to wanting to destroy the world. And the CGI… Oh the CGI! It’s awful, I was sat there and I thought I could draw a better Lizard using Microsoft Paint... THAT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN IN A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE! I read a review that says “he looks like a Goomba from the Super Mario Brothers movie” and yes, that is exactly what he looks like.

However, the main problem with ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ isn’t really one of cast or bad CGI, its main problem is 2002’s ‘Spider-man’. The trouble is that whilst I prefer this version, ‘Spider-man’ did some good things that ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ hasn’t matched up to.

‘The Amazing Spider-man’ treads the same origin story and in places feels like it’s trying to be different for the sake of it. A perfect example is the immortal line from the 2002 film “with great power comes great responsibility”. It’s a great line. The version of that line in this film is “If you can do good things for other people, you have a moral responsibility to do it.” EURGH! WHAT?!?! It just sounds like the writers have said “We need someone thing to rival ‘with great power comes great responsibility’… I know! Let’s get out the Thesaurus and rehash that line without using any of the original words! Genius”. No. Not genius.

It’s hard not to sit there and think what might have been. I think if you got the two films to run at each other really fast and when they collided they merged together you’d have the perfect Spider-man film. Take the cast, characters, high school story line and a pinch of Peter’s moodiness from ‘The Amazing Spider-man and mix it with the fantastic baddies and colourful comic book aesthetic of the Raimi movies and you’d be onto a winner.

It's a good film, I really enjoyed it, it's just a shame that whilst we all dream of an imaginary, perfect Spider-man film we must accept the reality of two imperfect ones.

Finally, Marc Webb… the director of ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ has the surname WEBB… If you know of any other actors or directors with movie appropriate names leave them in the comments, they’ll amuse me no end!

So, after all that web-slinging action let’s have some…

Reason to be Cheerful :-)
1. Its ‘Doctor Who’’s 50th Anniversary next year and to celebrate all-round beacon of talent and loveliness Mark Gatiss (GATE and then HISS but without the H, say it with me… GATE-ISS) is writing a drama to look at how the show came to be. I imagine it’ll be along the same lines as the brilliant ‘Holy Flying Circus’, the Monty Python drama that aired on BBC4 but with Gatiss’s brilliant writing. I for one can’t wait to go on an ‘Adventure in Time and Space’ :-)

2. More ‘Who’ news! We’ve got a trailerfor the 7th series! It looks A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! DINOSAURS…ON A SPACESHIP!!!!!

3. The Great and Powerful Joss Whedon has been confirmed to direct Avengers 2! Everyone that loved ‘The Avengers/Avengers Assemble’ breathes a sigh of relief! I’m so happy about this I can’t begin to tell you. Judging by the new characters (cough…ROCKETRACCOON…cough) it’s going to be an interesting sell but for me Whedon is the man for the job :-)

There you go. Doctor Who and The Avengers. What more do you need to bring a smile to your face?!?!

Goodbye till next time :-)
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"Oh, you don't wanna know what I have to do for twenties."

Hello Everyone :-)

 

Channing Tatum has had an up and down start to his career. ‘Step up’ showcased his dancing talents but not much else, ‘21 Jump Street’ unearthed his comic potential, ‘The Vow’ was soporific and the less said about GI Joe the better...

Quality of his films aside, the man is a bankable name and has a legion of female fans that includes almost all of my female friends. With this in mind imagine the near hysteria that occurred on my Birthday Cinema Trip when we saw the trailer for ‘Magic Mike’…

The titular Mike (Channing Tatum) is what we Brits would call a ‘Jack of all trades’, he works on building sites, runs a car customising business, makes his own furniture; however at night he is part of all male revue ‘Xquisite’. Mike meets Teenage lay-about Adam (Alex Pettyfer) on a building site and he soon gets involved in Mike’s world of “booze, women and a good time”. The story then follows Adam’s decent into this twilight world of hedonism and Mike’s realization that a life style like his has a sell-by date.

‘Magic Mike’ is not the film I though it was going to be. I had fairly low expectations; I’ve never really rated Channing Tatum and whilst I find Alex Pettyfer’s tattooed body aestetically pleasing he’s made no great waves in my cinematic world, but hey, it’s a night out with my girls, I quite like looking at attractive men, I thought ‘what’s the harm?’. It is definitely more serious than I (and the audience in which I sat) expected.

I like the look of the film. The night time scenes were particularly dark, all purples, blues and blacks and the daytime scenes looked to me like when you put the brightness button up to high on your TV, slightly washed out. I liked the way that worked. What I didn’t like was the way a couple of the scenes drag on. Dallas’s House party seemed to go on forever and bored me to tears.

In 'Magic Mike' Tatum gives a really nice performance. He strikes a nice balance between being a party guy, a mentor and having aspirations of a better life (I think I heard the ovaries of every woman in my screening melt when he said all he wanted to do was make furniture from bits of Jetsam he finds on the beach). It’s a nice, multi-layered character the likes of which I haven’t seen from Tatum before.
I found Brooke (Cody Horn) a bit of a moap in the beginning (I mean I can be miserable but wow… that girl is MISERABLE!) but as the film progresses she’s more than justified in her killjoy-ness. I mean, I’d be pretty pissed off if some guy I liked introduced my little brother to a life of stripping and drugs… Her presence brings some well needed perspective to proceedings, especially in the latter half of the film.

The Dance scenes are amazing. The camera follows Tatum with in a way that I didn’t find leery, more hypnotic. Aside from his obvious physical prowess there’s just something about the way he moves; I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

The dialogue could have done with being a little snappier. I liked the conversations between Brooke and Mike when they were bantering but there’s one scene where they talk over each other a bit too much that gave me a bit of a headache.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by this film. By no means a masterpiece but it has depths that aren’t made apparent from the flesh flashing trailer, 'Magic Mike' gets a Thumbs up from me :-)

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. Confirmation of a previous rumour, Phillip Seymour Hoffman will be appearing in the sequel to ‘The Hunger Games’ ‘Catching Fire’ as Head Games Master Plutarch Heavensbee. I’m really pleased with this, not only is Phillip Seymour Hoffman one of my favourite Actors of all time but I’m glad the film makers didn’t cop-out and cast a big name that the target audience would be familiar with, in fact there doesn’t seem to be much tween pandering at all. I mean I know Hoffman isn’t an unknown but it would have been so easy to cast someone from Twilight to create a bit of Twi-hard hype, but thankfully they haven’t. ‘Catching Fire’ will be directed by Francis Lawrence and is due for release on 22^nd November 2013.

2.Here’s something that made me spit my drink out with laughter. It’s AMAZING! If it was me, I’d give her the job!

3. Lots of 'Misfits' series 4 news. Since Antonia Thomas and Iwan Rheon left at the end of series 3 and Lauren Socha was sentenced to a four month stay at her Majesty's pleasure following a racist attack on a taxi driver.  This interview has put me at ease, it's safe in Howard Overman's hands :-)

That's everything for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)
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“Doesn’t anyone just want to work in the bar industry anymore?”

Hello Everyone :-) 

Reader, my dear, lovely reader. I’d like to think we know each other well enough by now to be able to say how we feel without fear of recrimination or judgement. So I’m entirely comfortable with admitting to you that I, Nerdy Rachel May, am a fully fledged fan of Musicals…

I love them. I think it’s a natural progression from a childhood (and adulthood) obsession with Disney but there is something about musicals that puts a smile on my face. Hollywood and Broadway have enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the genre for years and have developed a relationship where successful Films become Stage shows (think ‘The Lion King’, ‘Hairspray’, ‘Mary Poppins’) and vice versa (films like ‘My Fair Lady’, ‘Grease’ and ‘Mamma Mia’ all started life on stage).

Musicals have suffered a bit at the Box Office in recent years, but the current popularity of TV shows like ‘Glee’ has gained the genre some new devotees. So it was with great interest that I went to see the most recent Musical to hit the big screen ‘Rock of Ages’.

‘Rock of Ages’ follows the fortunes of notorious Rock Music venue ‘The Bourbon Room’ on the L.A Strip as well as the people that work and perform there. In 1987 Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) arrives in L.A from Oklahoma with a view to making the big time and almost immediately meets Drew Boley (Diego Boneta) who works at ‘The Bourbon Room’ but dreams of being a rock star. The two fall in love to a soundtrack of 80’s power ballads whilst the Bourbon sets about hosting the final gig of ‘Arsenal’ as lead singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) launches his solo career.

To give this some context, I went to see 'Rock of Ages' with my Mum. I'd spoken to her about it because she'd seen the adverts and she said she liked the look of it so we decided to go and take advantage of Citrus Wednesdays. At no point in our decision making did I mention that it was a Musical, I just assumed she knew. In hindsight this was a mistake because half way through the film she leaned over to me and whispered, "I had NO idea this was what it was going to be like".

I don't think she was alone in that opinion. The feeling I got in the screening we attended was mixed which surprised me because I thought the Trailer was pretty clear in it's mission statement.

If you go and see this on the basis that you enjoyed the stage production, be prepared for a shock. The storyline has been changed dramatically. I’m not going to go through all the changes here because there are LOADS but it seems to me that they’ve changed the plot to better suit a 12A 'Glee-friendly' audience. I'm all for taking works on their own merit but when an adaptation veers so wide of the source material I’m not so sure.

The plot has been changed to such an extent that the core message has been altered; in the stage show the moral seems to be that being famous isn’t what it’s about, it’s finding someone you love and who loves you back that makes you happy whereas the film seems to be preaching that the right kind of famous can make you happy (e.g. being in a rock band as opposed to being in a boy band). I don’t really have an issue with the latter (admittedly vacuous) message but I think the former would have made for a more interesting movie.

It’s 123 minutes and for the last half an hour you feel every second... Its over-long, the fist-pumping power ballad soundtrack does re-invigorate you when the story starts to drag, but only to a certain extent. Alas, a rendition of 'Any way you Want It" (no matter how barn-storming and pole-dancer including it is) does not a movie make.

Speaking of renditions, the musical numbers are great. I’m fairly impressed by the vocals of all the cast, they handle the musical numbers really well but are slightly hit and miss when it comes to some actual acting…

Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta are quite sweet lead characters. He’s beautiful, she’s beautiful but it’s all been done before.

I liked Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand’s double act as Dennis and Lonny, they amused me greatly but as a midlander I’d like to say that Russell Brand’s Brummie/Black Country accent was so bad it was borderline offensive. I’m not entirely sure where he was aiming but somewhere between Junctions 4 and 10 of the M6 it all goes horribly wrong and he winds up back in his native Essex. I expect a formal apology from Mr Brand to the entire midlands any day now...

Weirdly the most excited I got about a member of the cast is when Wrestler-turned-Actor Kevin Nash appeared on screen as one of Stacee Jaxx’s bodyguards. Back in the day I used to be a BIG WCW fan and loved ‘The Big Sexy’! Seeing him was slightly surreal!

The performance people are talking about, however, is that of Tom Cruise. Cruise carries the film for every moment he is on screen. Sporting leather lace-up trousers, a bad wig and some serious guy-liner Cruise looks like he's having a hoot and as a result gets the film's biggest laughs.

Considering my expectations were through the floor, I kind of enjoyed 'Rock of Ages'. It's over long and the story is ridiculous but the two earnest leads are likable, the songs are well chosen, well performed and Tom Cruise is fantastic and hilarious in equal measure. In the grand scheme of things this isn’t anything more than a bit of super-cheesy pop/rock escapism but I found it's over the top silliness quite fun. It's a definite guilty pleasure :-)

Now let's have some...

Reasons to be cheerful :-)

1. You may have noticed in the past 18 months or so of this blog (I know… I can scarcely believe I’ve kept it up for this long either) that I rarely, if ever, talk about anything other than film or TV. This makes it seem like that’s all I do and you’d be right in that assumption, I do spend a ridiculous amount of time in front of the box or silver screen, but I also read. I read a hell of a lot. Not so long ago I read a book that you’ve probably heard of called ‘50 Shades of Grey’. This book, and it’s sequels, have shifted a ri-donk-ulous number of units in recent months mainly because of word of mouth recommendations that snowballed into saucy hype.

Like I said, I’ve read it but I don’t like it. It’s badly written, repetitive, poorly researched, contrived and unrealistic. I considered writing my own blog-post about it but then I found this and it sums up my feelings towards those pages of trash masquerading as a book far better than I could and in a rather amusing way :-)

This is the first post, all of the other ‘50 shades’ related posts begin with the post title ’50…’

2. New pictures for the Hobbit :-) I'm so excited about this; I cannot begin to tell you! It looks lovely and Martin Freeman seems to have been born for this role.

3. The Beeb is currently having a 'Shakespeare Unlocked' Season and it's really rather good. There's been all sorts of lovely bits and bobs on in the past few months but my personal highlight is the series 'The Hollow Crown'. It's 4 episodes of adaptations of Shakespeare's historical plays, 'Richard II', Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2) and Henry V. 'Richard II' is the first episode in the series and that aired on 30th June (all subsequent episodes will air on the following Saturdays) and you can catch up with it between now and 28th July on the IPlayer. They’re full 2 and a half hour jobs but if you keep yourself in tea and biscuits it flies by. The actors are superb. I’m already hooked :-)

4. I am very sad about The Wimbledon Final. I’m a Murray fan and I was gutted for him, however, one good thing to come from his losing is that a bet, put on by a man 9 years ago has come good and may end up benefiting Oxfam. I love news stories like this, give the article a read, it really gave me a happy boost on a grey and rainy Monday afternoon :-)

That’s everything for today!

Goodbye till next time

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"Big things have small beginnings"

Hello Everyone :-)

I’m the first to hold my hands up and admit that I am easily influenced. Call me a ridiculous product of 21^st century consumerism (because that is what I am) but I am easily amused by well thought out marketing strategies, and recently there hasn’t been much bigger than the ad campaign for ‘Prometheus’. Add to that the fact that I’m massive fan of the first two Alien films (to which ‘Prometheus’ is a prequel, albeit a distantly related one) and you won’t be surprised to hear that I was super-excited about seeing it.

‘Prometheus’ follows Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), an archaeologist, who, along with her colleague and boyfriend Doctor Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), discover a series of cave paintings made by several unconnected ancient cultures, the paintings depict a large humanoid presence and the same series of spots in the sky. The two theorise that this is a ‘star map’ leading to the home of what they call the ‘Engineers’ or the creators of life on earth.
With the financial backing of Weyland Corporation the couple, with a number of Weyland employees, go on a two year voyage to moon LV-223, the location their ‘star map’ pointed them to. On arrival the team set out to “meet their maker” and they discover that it isn’t quite the utopia they imagined.

 Oh where to begin…

The first review of ‘Prometheus’ I read was by Mark Harrison whose opinion I trust more than anyone (including his quiff-tastic namesake). My Mad Prophet gave the film a right bashing to the point where I was so upset I considered not going to see it at all and thought I would rather live with my own expectations rather than watch the actual film. I only considered this briefly before I pulled myself together and told myself not to be so ridiculous.

We’ll start with the good.

Michael Fassbender is easily the most reliable man in working in the English-speaking movie industry today. Want a film stealing performance? Then hire him. He’s the best thing in ‘Prometheus’ by a country mile. He makes David fantastically ambiguous in his motives but also a sort of skewed-Pinocchio character, barely able to contain his loathing of his human counterparts yet clearly desperate to be accepted by them, longing to be a ‘Real Boy’.
I really liked Noomi Rapace as Shaw. If you ignore the fact that her accent is clearly ‘English by way of Sweden’ then it’s quite an impressive performance. Shaw goes through the mill in this film, in every way imaginable. Confident and fragile in equal measure, she digs into the same kind of grit that made audiences sit up and watch her in the original Millennium Trilogy films.
A nod should also go to Idris Elba as Captain Janek, the most human and likable member of the crew. Elba does his best with what he’s been given but is criminally underused.

 Aside from David, Shaw and to a certain extent Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron playing Corporate, ice-cold Bitch quite well), the rest of the characterization in the film is virtually non-existent. The other members of the cast are reduced to mere character stereotypes; the fool, the rebel, the brains; I forgot some character’s names. In any film (let alone a film that resides in the same universe as ‘Alien’) that kind of lazy writing is inexcusable.

Considering it was shot using 3D cameras (meaning the 3D should be better quality) I wasn’t massively impressed by it. I’ve been to see a handful of 3D films and am yet to be wow-ed by this extra dimension in my cinematic experience, be it ‘Real-D’, retro-fitted or otherwise. There were large sections of the film where I took the cumbersome glasses off and the image was unaltered, if anything it was improved because I wasn’t looking at it through the dark filter of 3D glasses. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner this fad dies a death the better.

However, even through the filter of that awful eye-wear, ‘Prometheus’ is beautiful. Many have said this before me and I’m sure many will after but no one builds worlds quite like Ridley Scott. The costumes, the landscapes, the cavernous rooms in the LV-223 base, the sterile cleanliness of the ship, you could take any frame and hang it in a gallery; it’s truly a visual work of art.

As you would expect in a film about finding out how we came to be there are ruminations on mortality, faith, morality; you name it it’s in there. It’s one thing to be a film with big ideas but ‘Prometheus’ smacks of writers throwing everything at a wall and seeing what sticks. This existentialism may not have been a problem had the film-makers decided to tie up some of their loose ends but they don’t, there are just too many unanswered questions for the audience to leave the cinema totally satisfied.

I could possibly live with all of that if the film gripped me in any way but it didn’t. There is no tension in ‘Prometheus’, it is completely devoid of a backbone. The film makers have neglected the stuff that made ‘Alien’ so great (the taut storytelling, the claustrophobic atmosphere, etc.) in favour of ostensibly grandiose ideas that fall apart on closer inspection.

Have you ever heard the expression ‘Hot Mess’? If you haven’t, it’s sometimes used to describe something or someone that’s gorgeous but a bit ridiculous. Well ‘Prometheus’ is a ‘Hot Mess’ of a film. It is undeniably attractive but ambitious and ambiguous to a fault, with too many half-baked musings scattered in its wake.
Granted there are some great set pieces, but for every amazing ‘medi-pod’ scene there is a downright ridiculous ‘exploding alien-head’ scene and I’m just not happy with a 50/50 hit to miss ratio in a film with this kind of heritage.
It’s not as big a failure as some would suggest, but having been hyped as much as it has, it’s hard to be anything other than disappointed.

I think I need a bit of cheering up after that so it’s a good job I’ve got some…

 Reasons to be cheerful :-)

1. Four Words. ‘Monster University Teaser Trailer’ :-)

2. OMFG there’s going to be a Fraggle Rock film! EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! It’s not due out till 2015 but I’m excited already :-)

3. Well isn’t this a kid-tastic edition of ‘RTBC’?!?!The teaser trailer for ‘Wreck-it-Ralph’ is out! I wasn't too fussed for this before now but I really like the look of it!

That’s it for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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“She stabbed him with the lefty scissors!”

Hello Everyone :-)

Wes Anderson polarises people: there’s no two ways about it. You either love or hate his films, his brand of twee storytelling can be funny, sweet and just the right amount of quirky and sometimes it can be irksome, naval-gazing twaddle. Me? My outlook on Mr Anderson varies from film to film, overall I’d say I like his style but sometimes it’s a bit too precocious for its own good.

So it was with an open mind that I approached Anderson’s latest Directorial endeavour ‘Moonrise Kingdom’.

Our hero is Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) a 12 year old Khaki Scout from a broken home who meets and falls in love with the equally troubled Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward). The two become pen pals and over the course of a year conspire to run away together. Their disappearance starts an island wide search lead by New Penzance’s Police Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), aided by Suzy’s parents (Bill Murray, Frances McDormand), Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton) and his Scout Troop.

To my mind, this is Anderson’s best work to date. He has co-written as well as directed all of his previous feature films with varying degrees of success. Sometimes both the script and the directorial vision marry together, other times, like in ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ and ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ (both of which are films Anderson co-wrote with Noah Baumbach… just sayin’… ), the end result is a bit hit and miss. ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ has none of that disparity. The script is charming and suitably quirky and fits perfectly with the nostalgic, dream-like visuals.

I love Sam. I love everything about him. I love his hat, his hair, his glasses, his pipe, his speech impediment, I love how he carries Suzy’s bags for her and I love how he’s the coolest geek that has ever lived. Even if you don’t have as big a response to him as I did (and that’s highly likely because I emotionally invest in films more than anyone I know) you can’t help but root for Sam.

Likewise Suzy, in the hands of anyone else I’m sure she would have been totally insufferable but Kara Hayward makes her equal parts rebel, vulnerable and cute, a combination that soon has you on side. Their story is so adorable and the way they interact together isn’t just sweet, it’s believable.
I like how Anderson has chosen to counter Suzy and Sam’s youthful but mature relationship with that of Suzy’s parents who act like children for a great deal of the film. Bill Murray and Frances McDormand are great in their roles and bring a lot of laughs in their admittedly second fiddle performances.
Bruce Willis makes some headway in repenting for his recent bad role choices (Die Hard 4, Surrogates, Cop Out) by being fantastic as the grumpy Captain Sharp. Also Edward Norton as Scout Master Ward and Tilda Swinton as Social Services (yes that’s her character’s actual name!) are sweet and severe respectively.

In all honesty, I’m not surprised I loved this. I’m a hopeless romantic and Sam and Suzy’s relationship is so adorable, it was always going to appeal to my sensibilities. However, what does surprise me is that I love it without any exceptions.

With Anderson’s other films I’ve always been a bit non-committal; I like ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’but I wish it was funnier, or, I like ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ but it loves itself a little too much. However with ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ it’s hard to find fault, I love it just how it is. Highly recommended :-)

So now after all that loveliness let’s have some…

Reasons to be cheerful :-)

1. Finnick Odair casting news! There was a rumour that it was going to be Robert Pattinson and, I won’t lie, that rumour made me blood run cold. The thought that that concave-faced moaper could be playing one of the most pivotal roles in ‘Catching Fire’ was almost too much to bear. Thankfully it’s not going to be him!

Of the list in that article, I’d be happiest with Armie Hammer as the champion Tribute from District Four, he’s pretty much what I envisioned when I was reading the second book, having said that I think the casting people have done a bang up job with the characters so far so I’m sure it’ll be a good fit :-)

2. There’s a Les Mis teaser trailer! As a fan of the stage show I must say I’m pleased with how it’s looking, suitably dark and sad. I am, however, very pleased to see Samantha Barks as Éponine, continuing in the role she played at the 25th Anniversary O2 performance. I'm optimistic :-)

3. Despite earlier indications, Benedict Cumberbatch will not be playing Khan in the new ‘Star Trek’ film says Simon Pegg. So basically… we’re back to square one with that!

That’s everything I have for you today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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