Today sees the announcements of the nominations for the 81st Academy Awards… and continuing the familiar trend for us UK folk, most of the Best Film nominations haven’t been released here yet. Speaking of Best Film, it’s nice to see the Academy haven’t got caught up too much in the (Dark) Knight Fever, giving most of its predictable nominations to its production values, rather than say… story. Though Heath’s Best Supporting Actor nod wasn’t surprising to anyone. Least of all, [...]

We film fans are suckers. We may leave the majority of our cinema visits thinking: “Why do I do this to myself?” and in the case of Indy IV: “How can I delete that from my memory?” – yet we still go back, time and time again, ice-cream / popcorn in hand… …grumbling about paying so much… trying graciously not to scream as the idiot behind you kicks your chair and fails so spectacularly to retrieve their last Malteser from [...]

Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to the (rather great) Batman Begins was released on DVD this week and looks certain to be one of only a few films to claim over $1 BILLION dollars. Not only that, there are many excited individuals whispering that The Dark Knight could be the first ever comic-book film to receive an Oscar. But if we all wipe the hype out of our eyes, isn’t the film just a little, you know… shit? Perhaps what made Batman [...]

When it comes to entertainment, it was, of course, Homer Simpson who put it best when he said: “Barney’s movie had heart, but ‘Football in the Groin’ had a football in the groin”. In his own imitable, jaundiced, 4 fingered way, Homer J. summarised the way in which many of us understand comedy. Even the wittiest, most intelligent, most impeccably timed bon mot often pales in the humour stakes when compared to a man getting knocked unconscious by a pressurised [...]

A few years ago, there was a memorable advertisement for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey; a close-up shot of a pair of earth-ridden, hard-working hands. Shrewdly, the marketing types had used this bucolic image as a representation of Jack’s rich, full, stomach-melting flavour, yet ultimately, it also encapsulated the aesthetic of those good ol’ boys of Southern USA – where men are tough, men are men, and men can be men together… To put an end to this lackadaisical deconstructionism (Take [...]