Category: General

Changes to the sidebar

Post author By Ambrose Heron
Post date 22/03/2007

I’ve made some changes to the sidebar to make the site a little more user friendly.

You can now check out news feeds from Yahoo Movies and Digg, plus you can now see what films are coming at UK cinemas each week.

There is also a list of films I’ve recently enjoyed that are linked to my Flixster account and you can now click through to the latest trailers at Apple.

You can also now translate this site in to German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic and Russian.

Let me know what you think of the changes and if you have any suggestions just use the contact page or leave a comment below.

General Thoughts

Apologies and updates…

Post author By Ambrose Heron
Post date 19/03/2006

Apologies for not posting over the last few days. A hectic work schedule and the oncoming effects of a cold have kept me busy. Just to prove I’ve not been too lazy, since I last wrote I’ve seen the following films:

Tsotsi (excellent)
The Ringer (amusing, if a little slight)
Basic Instinct 2 (more of which soon)
Inside Man (very good, although not the Spike Lee film some might expect)
The Big White (bizarre, despite the good cast)
V for Vendetta (disappointing, despite some interesting ideas)

Plus, I interviewed Brian Cox (who stars in The Ringer) and David Morrissey (who stars in Basic Instinct 2), both of which will air soon on the Mike Mendoza show on TalkSPORT.

Bizarrely, and without wanting to descend into Heat-style celebrity spotting I saw the following people in and around London this week in a non-professional capacity:

Spike Lee buying football shirts in Carnaby Street and asking the guys in the shop why Arsene Wenger would let a “champion” like Patrick Vieira leave Arsenal
Melanie Sykes walking down a Soho street
Louis Walsh – also walking down a Soho street

A bizarre week all-round then.

General Thoughts

Enough of the TV adaptations

Post author By Ambrose Heron
Post date 23/08/2005

The Dukes of Hazzard is just the latest in a long line of lame TV adaptations from the major studios – surely its time for them to look elesewhere for decent ideas.

If you’re a Hollywood exuctive in charge of greenlighting films then the allure of remaking a TV show is fairly simple. There is a built in awareness from the audiences who caught the show first time around (so less marketing costs) and there is the opportunity to build a franchise from the material already laid out in the show’s many episodes. To be fair, some adaptations have been reasonably entertaining. The Fugitive was a solid thriller and Mission: Impossible was pleasingly slick but it is hard to really come up with something truly outstanding that had it’s origins in TV.

General

Oscars 2005 – The Winners

Post author By Ambrose Heron
Post date 28/02/2005

Best Film: Million Dollar Baby

Best Director: Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby

Best Actor: Jamie Foxx – Ray

Best Actress: Hilary Swank – Million Dollar Baby

Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett – The Aviator

Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman – Million Dollar Baby

Best Foreign Language Film: The Sea Inside – Spain

Best Original Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor – Sideways

Best Music (song): Al Otro Lado Del Rio – The Motorcycle Diaries

Best Music (score): Jan A.P. Kaczmarek – Finding Neverland

Best Documentary (Short Subject): Mighty Times: The Children’s March

Sound Editing: The Incredibles

Best Sound Mixing: Ray

Best Cinematography: The Aviator

Best Animated Short Film: Ryan

Best Short Film: Wasp

Best Visual Effects: Spider-Man 2

Best Documentary Feature: Born into Brothels

Film Editing: The Aviator

Best Costume Design: The Aviator

Best Make-up: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Best Animated Feature Film: The Incredibles

Best Art Direction: The Aviator

Lifetime Achievement Award: Sidney Lumet

The full and official list of nominees and winners can be found here.

General

The Oscars – Live

Post author By Ambrose Heron
Post date 28/02/2005

Million Dollar Baby wins Best Picture. All the technical awards for The Aviator didn’t in the end lead to a cleansweep and the lower key drama of Eastwood’s film triumphs. As usual the best film in the five nominated (Sideways) didn’t win, although it has got a lot of valuable and unexpected exposure from the awards season.

As for Million Dollar Baby I think it is a fine piece of work but in a year that saw such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunset and Vera Drake miss out on Best Picture and marginalised to only a few nominations, well, something has to be clearly wrong. Ray and Finding Neverland were good but certainly not Best Picture material in my view.

Well, that’s it for another year. Not a great one to be perfectly honest as the two main contenders were not outstanding. The highlight was probably the two screenwriting awards. Charlie Kaufman winning Best Original Screenplay for the dazzling Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor winning Best Adapted Screenplay for Sideways.

That’s it from me. Good night.