Screenwriter

• Get ready for Shutter Island with Isle of the Dead.

  February 7, 2010 @ 10:43 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Last autumn, when the first of several release dates for Shutter Island loomed, Martin Scorsese unveiled a list of his favourite 11 horror films. It’s an eccentric collection but, oddly, quite a few entries — the British ones for starters — might appear on my own list. Even Peter Medak’s undervalued The Changeling is worth rediscovering. The only real objection I  have is to the inclusion of Psycho. I’m not saying the Hitchcock classic is an unworthy enterprise (perish the thought), but I’m not sure it really counts as a horror movie. Note how all the rest have at least a hint of the supernatural to them.

  

  A rare photo of Marty not talking.

  Anyway, here’s the list…

  1. The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963)

  2. Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945)

  3. The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944)

  4. The Entity (Sidney J. Furie, 1981)

  5. Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1945)

  6. The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980)

  7. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

  8. The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

  9. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

  10. The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)

  11. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

  Among the most interesting inclusions is Isle of the Dead way up at number two. Scorsese has, quite understandably, always been a fan of the superb B-pictures produced by Val Lewton’s unit at RKO during the 1940s. If you arrived late for the programme and missed support features such as Cat People or I Walked with a Zombie then you were a very silly person indeed.

  Isle of the Dead is less well known than those two films, but it is every bit as interesting. Directed by one Mark Robson, who went on to helm big movies such as Peyton Place and Von Ryan’s Express, the picture details the experiences of a disparate group stranded on a plague-ridden island during (bet you didn’t see this coming) the Balkan War of 1913. Boris Karloff is unusually chatty as a ruthless Greek general who, at first, dismisses talk of vampires, but slowly comes to take the ancient superstitions seriously. Like most of Lewton’s pictures, the film subtly rations its shocks. Indeed, nothing properly weird happens until the last reel. The chances that the main feature exhibited anything like the restraint of the accompanying Lewton picture were slim indeed.

  Clearly, Scorsese had Isle of the Dead in his head when he was preparing Shutter Island. Both concern two people who travel to an island and, for differently terrifying reasons, get stranded there for an uncomfortable few days. Indeed, Scorsese is so enamoured of Lewton that he has narrated a documentary on the great man’s work.

  “Oh I would love to see this fine film,” I hear you say. “But I have no DVD player and, anyway, anticipation has been ramped up to such a degree that I want to see it now!”

  Fret not, imaginary nutcase. The entire film is available on YouTube (entirely legally, I’m sure). Here is part one. Enjoy. And remember: there are such things. Shutter Island finally opens (probably) on March 12th.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s5JEUW7s0E&rel=0

  Comments (14)

• The greatest bargain ever.

  February 3, 2010 @ 10:04 pm | by Donald Clarke

  I was in London on Monday — Read Clarke on Tom Ford in Friday’s Soaraway Ticket! — and picked up the greatest DVD bargain of all time. The British Film Institute has just set about reissuing a series of supposedly lost British films from the 1960s and 1970s under the title Flipside. The collection focuses on barmy comedies such as Dick Lester’s The Bed Sitting Room, experimental head-trips such as Don Levy’s Herostratus and quasi-exploitation flicks such as Lindsay Shonteff’s Permissive.

  

  An excellent look, Mr Newman.

  There are (to me at least) few more interesting eras in cinemas than the fag end of the swinging London scene and — more fascinating still — the long period of feet-shuffling that came after. How the hell did any British director get anything made between Performance and Chariots of Fire? Through ingenuity and graft that’s how. Check out the gruesomely “shocking” Permissive for pointers. Better still — moving away from the BFI’s series — have a glance at the imperishable British horror film Blood on Satan’s Claw. It’s available in an excellent Tigon Pictures  set that comes in a coffin. Wooo!

  Where was I? Oh yeah. As a taster for the series, the BFI has put together a DVD featuring an introduction by the unstoppable Kim Newman, one of the great men of contemporary cultural commentary, and a small collection of fantastically bizarre shorts. It’s called Kim Newman’s Guide to the Flipside of British Cinema and — here’s the thing — it only costs £1.99. Okay, it doesn’t seem to have an Irish cert, but you can pick it up from the BFI’s website. While you’re there, you might splash out on Peter Watkins’s Privilege.  As Kim points out, this rock opera thungummy — an early film from the director of The War Game and Culloden — is rare in seeing the repressive consequences of much rock idolatry. Anyway, it’s no classic, but it’s a really fascinating piece of work.

  On a side note, do you recognise the woman on the cover of Kim’s DVD? You know her well.

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• Professor Screenwriter and other geniuses.

  February 2, 2010 @ 11:46 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Comments on the last post offered confirmation — not that any was needed — that readers are sick to the teeth with Oscar chatter. Fair enough. We’ll call a halt for a few weeks, before returning to the subject in the days before the ceremony itself.

  

  Professor Screenwriter celebrates A Serious Man making the final 10.

  There was, however, no way Screenwriter was going to allow today to pass without bragging about his extraordinary success in predicting the Oscar nominations. Of the 25  I called, I got 23 correct. To paraphrase Lionel Hutz, I don’t use the word “genius” very often, but I am the greatest genius in the history of the world.

  Okay, this year’s Oscars did, for the most part, go according to plan. Many sites will have had a similar hit rate and, if I’d included the best supporting acting prizes, my success ratio would have plummeted. Nonetheless, 23 out of 25 ain’t bad. If I’d been working at Lehman Brothers in the early part of this decade the economy would be in a much healthier state right now.

  What were the surprises and how welcome were they? Well, District 9 took the best picture spot that I had reserved for Star Trek. We have no complaints there, though it would have been nice if both had made it in. Invictus continued to fade and was eventually edged out by Blind Side. That Sandra Bullock flick is the only one of the 10 I haven’t seen, so I can’t comment on its quality. But… Well… Are you looking forward to it?

  Everyone expected Julianne Moore to make it in to the final five for her supporting turn in A Single Man — and she deserved to — but that place was taken by Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart. Good for her.

  There was, however, no doubt about the biggest shock of the nominations. (And not just for the Irish.) The Secret of Kells is a fine film, but the team’s achievement in securing a best animated feature nomination is quite staggering. Somebody has been working very, very hard — and cleverly — at ensuring that voters watched Tomm Moore’s beautiful picture. I don’t use the word genius often…

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• Final stab at the Oscar nominations. Is Hurt Locker now favourite?

  January 31, 2010 @ 10:22 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Hello. Billy the Fish here with his final attempt to guess Tuesday’s Oscar nominations. As we seek to anticipate the Academy’s shortlist for best picture, a strange revelation sets in. When, last summer, it was announced that the powers that be were to increase the number of best picture nods from five to 10, Screenwriter was not alone in suggesting that the real nominees would come to be seen as those films whose directors received nods. As things have worked out, the best director nominations appear already to be sewn up. So, if there were still just five best picture places, speculation would already have ended on that race. If you haven’t been following the action, the pictures in question are Avatar, Up in the Air, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker. Only Quentin Tarantino, director of Basterds, need have even the slightest worry about not ending up in the director derby.

  

  L to R: Bigelow, Cameron, Your one out of Titanic who’s now married to Jim.

  With that in mind, expanding the race seems, for pundits at least, to have been a very good idea. At least we have something to talk about. Not much has changed in the bottom region of the list over the past few weeks. As has been the case for a month, there seem to be seven dead certs: the five pictures mentioned above plus Up and An Education. The remaining three places are, in this writer’s estimation, sure to be drawn from the following pool of eight: Star Trek, Invictus, A Serious Man, District 9, Crazy Heart, The Messenger, A Single Man and (no, really) Julie & Julia. That’s right. After figuring in everyone’s list in late October, Nine and The Lovely Bones now shiver on the Oscar equivalent of an undiscovered moon of Pluto. No three from that eight would amaze me, but it would be a disappointment (not least to the mainstream-hungry Academy) if one of the two science fiction pictures didn’t make it in. My heart — though not my head — votes for both Star Trek and District 9.

  What really has changed over the last few days is the race for the best picture Oscar itself. Last night, The Hurt Locker added the Directors Guild prize for best picture to the Producers Guild gong it won earlier in the week. Unlike the stupid Golden Globes, these prizes have a very good record in predicting Oscar success (not least because both electorates are packed with Academy members). So, Avatar is no longer a dead cert. The Hurt Locker has become a very, very strong second favourite. In fact, more than a few pundits now have Hurt Locker back in front.

  This creates several intriguing conflicts. Firstly (and most deliciously) the directors of the two films — Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron — were once married. Secondly, whereas Avatar would (duh!) be the most successful film ever to take the top prize, The Hurt Locker would, by most estimates, be the least financially lucrative ever to win best picture. Indeed, a recent article in the LA Times suggested that it might be the first best-film winner to actually lose money on its theatrical release. And of course there’s the issue of gender. No woman has ever been so close to nabbing the best director Oscar.

  So it’s David (née Mrs Goliath) versus her swaggering giant of an ex. Fun, fun, fun.

  Enjoy our stab at guessing the main nominations below. The lists are arranged in order of likelihood. So you can take each number one as my current pick for the final prize.

  BEST PICTURE 

  1. Avatar

  2. The Hurt Locker

  3. Up in the Air

  4. Precious

  5. Inglourious Basterds

  6. Up

  7. An Education

  8. Star Trek

  9. Invictus

  10. A Serious Man

  BEST DIRECTOR

  1. James Cameron

  2. Kathryn Bigelow

  3. Jason Reitman

  4. Lee Daniels

  5. Quentin Tarantino

  BEST ACTOR

  1. Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

  2. George Clooney (Up in the Air)

  3. Colin Firth (A Single Man)

  4. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

  5. Morgan Freeman (Invictus)

  BEST ACTRESS

  1. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)

  2. Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

  3. Carey Mulligan (An Education)

  4. Helen Mirren (The Last Station)

  5. Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

  Comments (42)

• Ernie Shackleton retreated close to the pole.

  January 29, 2010 @ 11:27 pm | by Donald Clarke

  As it’s the weekend allow me to recommend  a tune to accompany your progress through brunch and advertising supplements. Comic rock is rarely comic and it almost never rocks. The one notable exception is the oeuvre of the imperishable Birkenhead band Half Man Half Biscuit. Older readers may remember superb tunes from the 1980s and 1990s such as Dickie Davis Eyes, The Trumpton Riots and All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit. You should, however, be aware that they have been plugging away ever since and, far from allowing age to wither them, have grown stronger and more amusing with the passing years.

  Here is a slightly ropey live version of their excellent 2008 tune Bad Losers on Yahoo Chess.

  Apologies for the awful picture (and sound).

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzKdtMGBphY&rel=0

  To get the full value from the tune, you may need to consult the lyrics:

  Checkmate!
  Dennis Bell of Torquay
  Too late
  With your Nxe3
  Good game sir
  Do you want another bout?
  Well Dennis ain’t replying
  ‘cos he just signed out
  Bad losers on Yahoo Chess

  Deep Blue
  In ‘97 I voted for you
  As Sports Personality of the Year
  I thought at least
  You’d get the Overseas
  ‘cos when all’s said and done
  You’re not like some of these
  Bad losers on Yahoo Chess

  Cetshwayo got a shock
  When he attacked Rorke’s Drift
  But he didn’t get stroppy
  And he didn’t get miffed
  Ernie Shackleton retreated
  Close to the Pole
  He didn’t want men dying
  To achieve his goal
  But did he get a gob on?
  No he gave a little grin
  Heed this Dennis Bell
  When you next sign in
  Bad Losers On Yahoo Chess

  What makes it so funny? I think, more than anything else, it’s the hint that the Great Nigel Blackwell is not entirely joking. He has certainly pushed the pieces about on Yahoo and I fear Dennis Bell might be a real opponent.

  At any rate, do the decent thing and download the song from iTunes or, better still, buy the entire album CSI Ambleside.

  Comments (7)

• Messrs O’Toole and Boorman ponder the most successful picture of all time.

  January 26, 2010 @ 11:25 pm | by Donald Clarke

  At the time of the 1987 British general election, I was living in London — in Mrs Thatcher’s constituency, in fact — and, like many of my Guardian-reading friends, greatly appreciated a cartoon that appeared in that paper the day after the apocalypse. A man with Guardian glasses and Guardian hair (you know what I mean) looks disconsolately out the window and says to his similarly attired wife: “We must live a very sheltered life. We don’t know anybody who voted for her.”

  

  The Na’vi celebrate all that lolly with, erm, a lolly.

  This gag came to my mind while enjoying a recent article by Fintan O’Toole and letter by distinguished director John Boorman on the subject of Avatar’s seemingly unstoppable advance. As it happened, Mr Boorman’s missive was published on the very day that James Cameron’s modestly diverting fantasy flick surpassed Jim’s own Titanic to become the most lucrative film ever at the world box office. (That’s today if you’ve accessed Screenwriter good and early.)

  I have some minor quibbles with both the letter and the article. I can’t quite buy Fintan’s assertion that  ”It is the case that Hollywood can’t combine technological innovation, good storytelling and human beings.” The recent re-invention of Star Trek managed all those things. So did Coraline. Despite enjoying Pixar’s work, Fintan does not, it seems, feel that the studio’s animations check all three boxes. Yet Carl Fredricksen, hero of Up, is as convincing a “human being” — this appears to be the sticking point — as any character in a typical Restoration comedy or Evelyn Waugh novel.

  In assessing the reasons for Avatar’s financial success, John (understandably) fails to mention one tedious economic consideration: tickets for 3-D movies cost about 15 percent more than those for flat films. Without that extra boost, Avatar would still be an enormously successful film, but it might be a mere Return of the King rather than an awe-inspiring Titanic. I also felt, given that another subject under discussion was The Wizard of Oz, he was too modest in not mentioning his own, extraordinary Zardoz. Of all the many takes on The Wizard of Oz, it could be the most delightfully strange and curiously undervalued.

  Never mind that. We are all three largely in agreement. The technological innovations are unquestionably noteworthy, but the picture is narratively underpowered, desperately short on character and philosophically muddled. I also happen to think that the imagined universe often looks like it’s been vomited up by My Little Pony after scoffing too many licorice all-sorts, but I guess — to mangle Dolly Parton once more — it takes a lot of ingenuity too look this cheap.Meanwhile, visitors to this “blog” have consistently — indeed near-unanimously — declared that Avatar is, well, just about okay.  Indeed, I have received complaints that I was too kind to the thing in my review. We all must live very sheltered lives indeed.

  So, what gives? How has Avatar achieved its success? Titanic appealed to so many demographics — Grandmothers saw it as a period piece, young boys as a disaster movie, teenage girls as a swoony romance — that it was almost guaranteed to vacuum up a spectacular amount of money. Yet Avatar is very much a genre piece. Mashing together the aesthetics of Yes album sleeves with those of 1950s science fiction paperback covers, the picture seems specifically designed to appeal solely to a solitary class of fantasy enthusiast. Well, no film makes $1.8 billion at the box-office by drawing on just one niche market.

  A few things spring to mind. Firstly, don’t forget that, though the film got very guarded reviews on this side of the Atlantic, it received genuine raves in America, often from quite respectable critics. It seems that a belief in the virtues of uncomplicated wonder — something we rather sneer at — still throbs in the hearts of many American pundits. That swell of opinion has pulled in a lot of older viewers.

  Secondly, after looking west, you may want to cast your eyes towards the rising sun. The very fact that the film has such an uncomplicated, oft-repeated central story is positively a boon in the area known to Hollywood as Rest of the World. Cultural and linguistic differences matter less when your film is set on another planet and based on a story that could spring from ancient myth. Keep in mind that, at time of writing, Avatar has some way to go to before it catches Titanic in America and a bit to go before passing out (ahem) Mamma Mia! in the United Kingdom. More interesting still, in Ireland it has, of yet, made only a little over three quarters of what Titanic eventually took. The real powerhouse behind the film’s success is the non-Anglophone market.

  Thirdly, remember that people who like Avatar tend to like it a lot. I am fairly sure that the chap who emailed me saying I should be sacked for only giving it three stars went to see the flick again (and again). Repeat viewings are driven by the  knowledge that, whatever the advances in home entertainment, a 3-D, motion-captured picture is never going to be as visually bludgeoning on telly as it is when projected on a screen the size of a football pitch. If you do want to see it again now’s the time to do so.

  And finally let me reiterate that (boring, but true) the tickets cost that bit more than those for your average flat film. Combine that with inflation and the film’s advance up the charts becomes a little bit more understandable. Meanwhile, with tedious predictability, Gone with the Wind still sits happily atop the inflation-adjusted box-office hit parade. I don’t think that will be beaten in my lifetime. Mind you, in my recent interview with Cameron, I indicated — with weasel words — that I felt the same about Titanic’s record in the unadjusted chart. Oh man. There’s egg on my stupid face.

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• Bullock triumphant! Brangelina in trouble?

  January 24, 2010 @ 11:42 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Events at the Screen Actors Guild this weekend confirmed one of the odder cinematic developments of 2009. Sandra Bullock picked up the SAG best actress award for her performance in The Blind Side — some blubby American foorball thing — and was thus firmly installed, at a sprightly 45, as the actress of the moment. You probably already know this, but, by any measure that matters, Bullock proved to be the most bankable star of last year. She is now, also, favourite to take the Oscar on March 7th.

  

  Is that…? Yes. Good grief. It’s my career.
  

  Sure, many films made more money than The Proposal or The Blind Side, but none of them was flogged as a star vehicle. Think about it. When discussing your trip to Avatar, did your partner say: “Hey, let’s go and see that new Sam Worthington movie.”? Thought not. “Oh look!” he/she didn’t say either. “There’s a new Kristen Stewart film on at the Ritz. Oh, I don’t know. Something about a vampire I think.” The Blind Side is, apparently, the first film ever to pass $200 million at the US box office with a woman’s name above the title.

  I haven’t seen The Blind Side yet. The Proposal was pretty ordinary and — in cinemas now, folks — All About Steve was fairly dreadful. But it’s hard to begrudge Sandy this unexpected boon. She’s an amiable sort and has a decent gift for the delivery of a punchline. In a business where women have, traditionally, been left out with the trash at 30, it’s good to see somebody genuinely middle-aged getting proper romantic leads.

  That said, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that she has secured the title by default. Last year, the power of the movie star proved less significant than at any point in the preceding 20 years. A lot of films made a lot of money. Virtually none of the real smashes owed their success to the presence of a Cruise, an Eastwood, a Roberts, a Jolie, a Pitt or even a Van Damme. Sandy has inherited a ravaged kingdom.

  Speaking of Jolie, how on earth are the supermarket tabloids going to react if — as reported by some slightly more reputable sources — Brad and Angie are, indeed, to split? I imagine one of those fellows who used to wear sandwich boards declaring “The End is Nigh” pointing with indecent delight towards a hurtling asteroid. “See! I’ve been telling you for years! We’re all going to die! Hooray!”

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• Pat the Deity and stuff.

  January 22, 2010 @ 10:26 pm | by Donald Clarke

  When I began this “blog” I never expected to find myself writing about bread commercials, but, after a trip to the Dart station, I find just such an urge coming upon me. Consider the ubiquitous billboard — sadly I can’t find an image on the net — that features a picture of a cornfield beneath a legend asking: “Who makes the sun come up?” Who, indeed? Well, it’s “Pat the Baker” apparently.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOzHoJYKMtM&rel=0

  Now, hang on a moment. I know that manufacturers often make claims about their products’ jokey personifications.  But I don’t remember Kentucky Fried Chicken suggesting that Colonel Saunders was God. And he had a white beard and everything! Similarly, McDonald’s has never argued that Ronald McDonald created the Earth and all that dwell upon it. Fox’s have, to my knowledge, not urged us to bow down before the polar bear stranded on their mint. In fact, the only organisations I can think of that claims such powers for its leader are certain of the more demented dictatorships. Perhaps, rather than thinking of Pat as God, we should think of him as Mao Zedong or Kim Jong Il.

  Anyway…

  Screenwriter is currently reading: Family Britain 1951-1957 by David Kynaston. The second volume of the historian’s absurdly ambitious Tales of a New Jerusalem sequence is every bit as brilliant as its foggy predecessor.

  Screenwriter is currently listening to By the Throat by Ben Frost. Seriously spooky stuff from the Australian ambient master.

  Screenwriter is watching the following telly: Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe on BBC4 (and on YouTube). If you haven’t encountered Charlie yet then… Well, where have you been? A brilliant dissection of the news.

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• Where do I begin…

  January 20, 2010 @ 10:44 pm | by Donald Clarke

  …to make sense of the phenomenon that was Love Story? Erich Segal, who died a few days ago, was a distinguished classics scholar, literary critic and sports commentator. Unfortunately, Eric, a nice, smart bloke by all accounts, will forever be associated with one of the more curious and dubious fads of the early 1970s. Published in 1970, Love Story told the tale of a poor girl who falls in love with a rich bloke and then dies beautifully. The book was a major hit, but the film (released the same year, oddly) was something else altogether. If you’re not old enough to remember the wretched thing’s emergence –  I just about am — you probably think of it as one of many undistinguished movies that exist to remind us that, during the Easy Riders Raging Bulls era, thrilling, dangerous films such as, well, Easy Rider and Raging Bull were very much the exception.

  

  Cough! Cough! It’s all going dark, Ryan.

  But Love Story was not just another film. It’s hard to imagine quite how huge the bloody thing was. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” the key line, became a standard meaningless aphorism of the age. If you’d just smashed your husband on the face with a tire iron, you now, thanks to Hollywood, didn’t even need to offer an apology. The horrible theme song, Where do I Begin?, was covered by every frilly-shirted crooner. Ali MacGraw, already 30 when the film was made, despite playing a student, became a major star for about a year and a half (till people woke up to certain horrible truths, in other words). The picture was nominated for a best picture Oscar and made a bucket of money. In the  all-time inflation-adjusted box-office chart  it sits (at time of writing) at number 34, just one place behind something called Avatar.

  Yet the film is barely talked about now. Could it be that properly bad films are only capable of establishing camp immortality? Love Story is certainly pretty wretched. The failure to give Ali MacGraw’s disease a name — you could  kill whole tribes of Native Americans on film, but saying the word “cancer” was frowned upon — now strikes us as absurd and offensive. Ali and Ryan O’Neal have no more chemistry than you’d encounter between a horseshoe and a jar of mustard. And the dialogue!  “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?” Eugh! Sure enough, just about the only place Love Story is now shown regularly is at Harvard, the picture’s location, where it is endured as an initiation rite. Good grief. Spare me that. Just pummel my backside with a ping-pong bat, why don’t you?

  Even the generation that grew up with it are reluctant to admit ever liking it. Remind you of anything? Fans of Titanic, despite that film being the most successful ever, are now weirdly thin on the ground. The hysteria for the big-boat picture now looks a little like the hysteria following the death of Princess Diana. The blubbers are all just a little embarrassed.

  What will we think of Avatar in 40 years time? Heck, the picture’s still at number one and we’ve already forgotten the ghastly theme song. What’s it called? I’m in You? Here I be? May Contain Nuts?

  Oh, who cares.

  Comments (17)

• It’s the Golden Globe$

  January 19, 2010 @ 11:14 pm | by Donald Clarke

  There were, for those of us who stayed up to watch the stupid Golden Globes, a few pleasures to make up for the depressing intelligence that Avatar has now been installed as the third most popular religion in the United States. Ricky Gervais’s turn as presenter was poorly reviewed in many places, but, in a peculiar way, the silence that greeted his sparkier quips could be seen as a sort of victory. It wasn’t an ordinary silence. It was the feet-shuffling, slightly furious silence you might encounter following a stoning or the dunking of a witch. When, come to think of it, has any line by a presenter on the Golden Globes achieved the sort of resonance accorded his quip about the world’s greatest Australian? “I like a drink as much as the next man, unless the next man is Mel Gibson,” he sniggered. Mel didn’t seem to mind. Good for him. He may be a right-wing religious maniac, but he can certainly take a joke.

  

  It’s Rachel from Friends and that bloke from 300.
  

  Elsewhere one could marvel at some of the worst speeches ever delivered at an awards ceremony. Mo’Nique was gushy and bible bashing. Drew Barrymore shamed herself yet again. Even Meryl Streep, invariably the most dignified figure in the room, made a raving twit of herself.

  Still, who could take an event seriously that so shamelessly tips its hat to the biggest money-makers in the room? If the Globes could have given an award to Warren Buffett (or Richie Rich) they would gladly have done so.

  Our predictions for the Oscars remain unaltered.

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