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• And they talk about Christmas coming earlier ever year.

  October 29, 2009 @ 5:52 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Oscar voters consider the year’s releases.

  Before anybody else says it, let me clarify that I am aware the Oscars are nothing more than a combination of crap shoot and marketing beano. Look through the records and you will struggle to find a single instance in which the Academy awarded the top prize to the best film of the year. Indeed, once or twice — I’m thinking about A Beautiful Mind here — they have actually managed to garland one of the very worst. Despite recent victories by Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men, the Academy still seems to think its job is to recognise the most middle-brow, meretricious releases and the chewiest, most self-regarding performances.

  So why pay any attention? Well, it’s become a sort of sport. As in all sports, success depends on talent, but, here, the talent is less in the fields of acting and directing than in marketing and scheduling. Nothing demonstrates this more effectively than the Oscar success of The Reader last year. The film got pretty ordinary reviews, but, by a characteristic sleight of hand, the brothers Weinstein managed to fool voters into thinking it was a critics’ favourite. They pushed Winslet up a few red carpets and, sure enough, come February the nominations rolled in.

  It is, however, a sport I continue to follow. Thus I find myself being drawn into the debate that has already begun about the potential nominees for best picture. There are a great many sites devoted to the Oscars, but the most obsessive remains an offshoot of the LA Times entitled The Envelope. Here, a gang of philistines, who believe the awards actually mean something, argue endlessly about the intentions of a bunch of geriatrics who wouldn’t know a masterpiece if it bit them in the genitals. At least one of their contributors thinks the notoriously bad Irish film Strength and Honour is a masterpiece for the ages. There’s plenty here to get Oscarologists such as me fuming.

  Anyway, as you will be aware, the Academy is putting forward 10 nominees for best picture next year (up from the usual five). This should allow in a few more commercial pictures, but, with no trippy, dippy Amelies about the place, we will probably not see a foreign language flick in the shortlist. Here is my current nap for the final ten. Let me be very clear: these are not my personal favourites (indeed there’s a few I haven’t seen). These are the films I think the Academy will pick. It all could change if The Lovely Bones gets a kicking or Nine lives down to the standards of director Rob Marshall’s distinctly iffy back-catalogue.

  The likely nominees for best picture in no particular order…

  Nine (Everyone’s in it and Daniel Day Lewis is a statuette magnet.)

  The Lovely Bones (Based on big fat, Judy-and-Richard friendly book. Hello?)

  An Education (For many in the Academy, being British makes a flick an art film.)

  The Hurt Locker(Best-reviewed American film of the year)

  Invictus (Clint Eastwood directs Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Need I say more?)

  Precious (The little indie film that could.)

  Up (Wall-E just missed out on last year’s top five. Our apologies.)

  Up in the Air (We love George! We love George!)

  A Serious Man (May be a bit dark, but it’s just so darn good.)

  The Road (Serious. Important. Again, based on a big book by an important person.)

  Coming up on the rails: Star Trek, Bright Star, District 9, Avatar, Brothers.

  Thoughts?

  Comments (13)

• Trailerspotting pokes the Nerdisphere.

  @ 1:36 am | by Donald Clarke

  Sod Avatar. The film that is really going to get the Nerdisphere agitated over the next eight months is surely Chris Nolan’s Inception. If you are in any doubt as to the reputation Nolan has for blending mainstream entertainment with sub-arthouse flair then take a glance at the cast list of his (so far) puzzling science fiction flick: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine. If you find yourself on the set of that film then I suggest you wear a parka. Do you know why? Because it sounds so cool. That’s why.

  So what is Inception? Well it’s so weird and dangerous they won’t even allow us to embed the video…

  

  See. The main thing we learn from this brief teaser trailer is that it involves a very great deal of tilting. Buildings tilt. Glasses of water tilt. The suggestion is that even whole cities tilt. It’s like the entire world has become a pinball machine played by a drunken hell’s angel. The brief synopsis on Wikipedia just makes things even more confusing. Inception is, apparently, “A contemporary sci-fi action thriller set within the architecture of the mind.” Thanks a bunch.

  At any rate, Nolan has a good record with one word titles — Following, Memento, Insomnia — so the omens seem to be positive. We will, however, have to wait until next summer to see the blasted thing.

  TILT! TILT! TILT!

  Comments (7)

• Do I have an improper mind?

  October 27, 2009 @ 11:49 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Do I have an improper mind or is there something a little, well, off about this poster for Disney’s upcoming animated version of A Christmas Carol? Maybe Scrooge (who never married, remember) is just excited to be clutching his flying pointy-thing. Quite right too. While astride something that thrilling, who would waste time thinking about Tiny Tim ?

  

  Comments (12)

• Marge Simpson on the cover of Playboy? What the…

  October 25, 2009 @ 8:17 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Marjorie. How could you?

  I’ve never got on with Lisa Simpson. I don’t watch cartoons — even sophisticated post-modern ones — to be lectured by some self-righteous, faintly pompous bore about the iniquities of capitalism or the insensitivity of the logging trade. Of course, she’s usually right, but 6.30 on Sky is neither the time nor the place for this stuff.

  Unfortunately, I do have to adopt Lisa’s tree-huggy tone when addressing the issue of Marge Simpson appearing on the cover of this month’s Playboy. What the heck is going on? For two decades we have counted on Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, to provide a genuinely progressive voice amid the chatter and noise that characterises prime-time television. An old-school liberal, who made his name in the alternative press, Groening has always been reliably sound on matters of race, religion and sexual politics.

  Until now.

  Let’s not mince words here. Marge Simpson is appearing on the cover of a w**k mag. (Okay, I am mincing my words, but I think we have to asterisk the w-word in both online and print articles.) The only significant difference between Playboy and Razzle is that the latter magazine never pretends to be anything other than what it is: something to be read with a large box of tissues to hand. If Groening approves of this decision — and I’m not aware of him objecting — then he is implicitly endorsing the crass objectification of women.

  What is it Helen Lovejoy likes to say? “Won’t somebody please think of the children!” For some time now, the Playboy Bunny, often in diamante form, has been appearing on items of clothing aimed at pre-pubescent moppets. I had assumed that Groening would share the general queasiness that such cynicism inspires in sensible parents. It seems not. Perhaps he thinks that young girls should aspire to a job that requires them to dress as a rabbit while serving gin and tonics to leering businessmen. Perhaps he feels bending over a haystack wearing nothing but cowboy boots is a fit way to earn a living. It hardly needs to be said that The Simpsons is not purely a children’s show, but a significant part of the audience is of a tender age and (heaven help me, I sound like Mary Whitehouse) this decision sends out a very dubious message.

  I hear what you’re saying. John Updike, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates and James Baldwin have all written for Playboy. Well, Johnny, if Norman Mailer jumped off a cliff would you do so as well? Much of the generation that came of age before 1970 (or so) has some very peculiar ideas about the meaning of sexual liberation. These writers may have felt that allowing Hugh Hefner — that gin-swilling, silicone-squeezing, bathrobe-wearing old reprobate — a degree of respectability was a fit way of exercising their prestige. I think differently. Whenever I pick up my copy of The Executioner’s Song or American Pastoral I imagine a layer of slime adhering to the cover. The same substance now coats the television when it broadcasts The Simpsons.

  Shame on you, Groening.

  Comments (22)

• What’s the film of the week? (And other questions)

  October 23, 2009 @ 8:15 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I make it up as I go along, you know.

  Film of the week is Wes Anderson’s agreeably strange version of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox. It’s not all that faithful to the book and it’s maybe a little too cool for its own good, but it stays true to Anderson’s hyper-geek sensibility. Heck, the hero is even wearing the director’s favourite corduroy suit.

  The Cove, a documentary about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan, is also worth a glance. Maybe they risk a few too many compromises in their desire to make things exciting, but, rather that than another An Irritating Truth.

  Over there in the stinky slops bucket we have Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant and The Goods: Live hard, Sell Hard. As regards the latter film, we, once again, find ourselves asking: what sort of medication is The Guardian’s Mad Pete Bradshaw taking and can I have some? (I should say that Pete’s a very good writer. But he doesn’t half exhibit some eccentric views.)

  Elsewhere in The Ticket you can check out my interview with Jason Schwartzman and read flesh-and-blood Screenwriter on the tricky matter of spoilers in reviews.

  SCREENWRITER’S TOP FIVE OF THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL SO FAR (with one-word review).

  1. The White Ribbon (Austere)

  2. Tales from The Golden Age (Sardonic)

  3. Up in the Air (Suave)

  4. The Road (Grey)

  5. The Informant! (Zany)

  If you’re wondering, I have yet to (officially) see promising flicks such as A Serious Man and Taking Woodstock.

  Screenwriter has been listening to Testament Paris/London by Keith Jarrett. The greatest improviser of the last 40 years delivers his best solo piano record for over a decade.

  Screenwriter has been reading Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. It’s the “accessible” Tom of Lot 49 and Vineland, but, if you want to follow the plot, you may still need to take notes.

  Screenwriter will be watching the following telly: Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany, tonight on BBC4. There is no movement more fascinating. Rock on Amon Duul!

  Comments (10)

• We’re bleeding idiots.

  October 21, 2009 @ 10:02 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Citizens of the rest of the world contemplate their stupidity.

  The appalling advance of Rest-of-World stupidity goes on and on. For decades, snooty people in good shoes — the sort of folk that read The Irish Times — have buttressed their own self-worth by deriding the knuckle-dragging idiocy of a largely imagined class of stereotypical American. You know what I mean. “Gosh, look at the awful food, the terrible television programmes, the ghastly films and the rubbishy books these baseball-cap wearing oafs consume,” my imaginary friend says. “It’s no wonder they voted for that goon George Bush.”

  For several years now, I have lectured anybody who will listen about the malign influence of Rest-of-World on commercial film production. Put simply, a glance at the box-office figures suggests that non-American cinema-goers have a considerably greater taste for crap than do our pals across the pond. The Americans may be the ones squatting over the bucket and grunting, but its ROW citizens who more often grab a spoon and tuck in.

  Nothing demonstrates this more effectively than the extraordinary success of a rubbishy second sequel to a cartoon that was pretty useless in the first place. If you’re reading this on some mobile device while standing up, I recommend you grab a seat quickly. Last month, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs became the third-highest grossing film ever at the foreign box-office. In other words, when you subtract American takings, only Titanic and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King have taken in more pounds, euros, rubles, donkeys, daughters, chickens and magic beans. The film is only number 100 in the American chart and, with 77 percent of its takings gathered in ROW, it now has the highest ever ratio of (in American terms) foreign to domestic box-office returns. I hope you’re all proud of yourselves.

  If you want to feel even worse about yourself and your friends in ROW then call up Box-Office Mojo’s chart for the all-time top earners and run your finger down the overseas percentages. The two lowest relative ROW earners in the top 25 — with 46 percent and 45 percent respectively — are The Dark Knight and ET: The Extraterrestrial, both gems. The highest takers in ROW are the endless stream of mindlessly boring Harry Potter films and, of course, Dawn of the Dinosaurs which, thanks to us, is now at number 18 in the combined chart. Other big earners in ROW-land include Tom Cruise films and anything to do with Dan Brown. Angels and Demons is written by an American, directed by an American and stars an American, but the good people of Peoria seem quite prepared to give the blasted thing a wide berth. This does not really prove we’re all cretins, but, the next time some ROW film fan gives out about American morons and their awful pop culture, you might like to check if he or she is wearing Levis.

  Comments (14)

• Shutter Island? Shutter Awesome, more like!

  @ 12:21 am | by Donald Clarke

  Today, Trailerwatching has a glance at one of the most controversial promos of the season. When some more sober Martin Scorsese fans caught sight of the trailer for Shutter Island, they dropped their pinze nez in shock, pressed a reversed hand to their brow and, like a maiden aunt confronted with gay porn, swooned dramatically to the floor. Just look at this thing. It looks like a trailer for an Ed Wood film for Pete’s sake. This can’t be the same man who directed The Age of Innocence. Can it? When news came in that the film’s release date had been shifted from Oscar-friendly November to dumping-ground spring, the dowagers felt their point was proved. Have a look…

  

  Now, the nay-sayers are entitled to their view. Here is mine: Shutter Island? Shutter AWESOME, more like. This looks brilliant. If I have to watch a Leonardo DiCaprio film I would rather it were one in which he approaches a mental asylum by boat and, when quizzed about its function, says “For the criminally insane. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!” (I may have imagined the deranged cackling.) It’s get better. There’s a scary bald lady and an inmate who has “evaporated, straight through the walls”. But the most thrilling aspect of this project is that it appears to feature Ben Kingsley as an evil genius in a bow tie. Only Plummer makes with the sinister vowels more effectively.

  What’s not to like? I tend to believe Paramount when the studio says that it is moving the film to pick up the mainstream bucks that 300 and Cloverfield (though not stupid Watchmen) earned in that spring release slot. I haven’t read Dennis Lehane’s source novel and I’m not going to because I don’t want to spoil the most bad-ass movie event of the new year.

  Okay, I will admit that the project could be so broad it will lodge in the average-shaped gullet. The notion of And Then There Were None performed by the collected villains from Scooby Doo is not something that… Oh, blah, blah, blah. Who am I trying to kid? Whatever way you look at this thing it still seems like a riot. Roll on, Shutter Awesome.

  Comments (6)

• Where the heck are my lists? Where?

  October 18, 2009 @ 12:45 am | by Donald Clarke

  

  It’s Franz Liszt. Get it?

  It is beginning to look as if an entire generation has been deprived of a great cultural pursuit by the inconvenient arrival of a new millennium 10 years ago (or nine years ago if you’re just that sort of pipe-smoking pedant). I am referring to the regular gathering together of reminiscences at the end of a decade and the ordering of all films, records, plays, television shows, hats and chocolate bars from that period into a neat series of lists. As you will recall, nobody much bothered doing this at the end of the 1990s because, what with the big one on the way, such an exercise seemed a little trivial. You could hardly work up much enthusiasm for writing a piece on the 10 top hip-hop albums of the 1990s when, elsewhere in the paper, some historian was pondering whether the first or second World War was the top global conflict of the century.

  The hangover from that period still seems to be with us. Post-millennial unease and the fact that nobody ever satisfactorily found a term to describe this decade — “noughties” is almost as ghastly a word as “blog” — have hampered the naval-gazing to a distressing degree. I want my lists. Where are my lists?

  By October 1979 or October 1989, the pundits were already deep into the process of top tens. Yet the fatuous, trivial, utterly essential charts are still depressingly thin on the ground. The sort of thing we want is pieces like Pitchfork Media’s recent Decade in Music. Tell me Kid A is the best album of the decade. Why don’t you?Tell me something. Tell me Paris Hilton is third most vacuum-headed showroom dummy of the noughties. Tell me Gerhard Schröder has the fifth bushiest eyebrows of any European leader. Tell me whatever you like. You can even tell me that — how often will this one be dragged up? — the decade really began with 9/11 and ended with the constitutional canonisation of Barack Obama. There’s a lost generation out there craving chart action.

  Comments (11)

• Film of the week and stuff.

  October 16, 2009 @ 11:40 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  By the time this message manifests itself, you will have long ago digested your soaraway Ticket and pressed the paper (you do buy the print edition, don’t you?) into the base of a grateful budgie’s cage. My apologies. But, as mentioned below, I am currently stomping about the London Film Festival and do not have much opportunity to hammer out gibberish. Today I met Viggo Mortensen, who was very nice and who didn’t chop my head off with a great big sword.

  Anyway, it’s a decent enough week for movies. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a mess, but it’s an interesting mess. Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst, though flawed, really is the best amalgam of Emile Zola and vampire melodrama you will see this month, and Christopher Smith’s Triangle is an impressively peculiar Anglo-Australian-American horror. There is, however, no competition for film of the week. Katalin Varga, a Transylvanian rape-revenge thriller by some bloke from Reading, is one of the year’s most impressive debuts. Alas, it is currently only on at the Irish Film Institute, but, all going well, it may pop up elsewhere.

  Screenwriter is currently listening to: Black Sea by Fennesz. It goes bleep, sqwerk, fizz in very satisfactory fashion.

  Screenwriter is currently reading: London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins. Screenwriter very much likes books about miserable men in boarding houses.

  Screenwriter will be watching the following telly: Synth Britannia on BBC4. You say “Cabaret Voltaire” to young people today and they have no bleeding idea what you’re talking about.

  Comments (1)

• Jennifer Aniston ate my kebab.

  October 15, 2009 @ 3:08 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  A lot of the chat at The London Film Festival concerns the hoaxes carried out against tabloid newspapers in a mischievous documentary by Chris Atkins called Starsuckers. Seeking to demonstrate how gullible celebrity journalists can be (as if!), the film-makers phoned up a number of papers with outrageous stories and watched, faintly astonished, as their most ludicrous fantasies were published as hard fact. It seems Amy Winehouse’s hair went on fire. Sources say Guy Ritchie received a black eye from juggling cutlery. Most hilariously, the Sun and the Mirror accepted that Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding had developed an interest in quantum mechanics. (Annoyingly for its enemies, The Daily Mail was the only tabloid to turn down all the supposed scoops.)

  This is all good fun, but media watchers have known for some time that celebrity journalism has totally lost contact with reality. The most spectacular manifestation of this disengagement is the ongoing coverage of the largely invented soap opera involving Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. As I understand it, the monosyllabically-titled celeb loo-rolls — Closer, Heat, Crap, Stodge, Poo — operate as follows. Somebody looks at the latest pap shot of Aniston, Jolie or Pitt and dreams up a story based on whether the relevant star is smiling, scowling, holding a can of beer, speaking down a telephone or whatever. The most prized photograph is one of Pitt and Jolie looking in different directions. “Ang and Brad to go their separate ways?” Poo shrieks. “Is it all over?” Well, it must be all over. After all, there’s a big simulated tear (as in torn, not as in weeping), separating a slightly grumpy-looking Brad from a characteristically deranged-looking Angie, down the middle of the magazine’s unspeakably busy cover. If they can now find a recent photograph of Jennifer on the phone then they’re really flying. “Jen comforts Brad as he threatens to storm out on Ang,” Balls magazine will shout. We have had celebrity soap operas in the past, but never before has so much newsprint been generated by so few hard facts.

  You know all this. The question is: how on earth do readers fall for it? I may be naive, but I don’t think many of them do. I suspect that most punters view the Ang/Brad/Jen saga the way they might view professional wrestling. They know it’s all fake, but, for the few seconds the stories (or fights) detain them, they allow reason to be overwhelmed by sensation.

  Anyway, as you can see from the image above, Jennifer Aniston ate my kebab. I want a new kebab, Aniston. I want it now!

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• Not yet tired of life, it seems.

  October 13, 2009 @ 9:51 pm | by Donald Clarke

    

  Well,  the blog has only been around a few days, but it is already set to go through a period of mild inactivity. The London Film Festival starts on Wednesday and Screenwriter is about to head off on the first of many jaunts to the event. Among the films I will be covering are The Fantastic Mr Fox, Bright Star, The Road, The Informant!, A Serious Man, Up in the Air and The White Ribbon. In due course, interviews with various directors and stars will appear in different bits of The Irish Times, but, alas, I am hampered from making too many comments about the films as I go along. When you see a preview of such a feature, you will often find yourself being forced to sign a document stating that, should you be caught reviewing the flick before the week of release, you will be dragged into the gutter and beaten to death by rabid publicists. So, let me just say that I have seen some of the films listed above and all of those have lived up to expectations. Is that sufficiently vague? Hang on. Was that a knock at the door? No, no, no, please I didn’t mean it. Arghghghghgh!

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• It’s today’s Trailerspotting slot.

  @ 12:37 am | by Donald Clarke

  Since it was instituted just five minutes ago, readers have eagerly looked forward to the regular Trailerspotting section on the Screenwriter blog. This week we’ll be considering the promo for Gentlemen Broncos by singular Mormon prankster Jared Hess. Here it is in all its unusual glory: Now, Mr Hess does divide people. Napoleon Dynamite, his debut, has a great many fans, but some grumpy old sod-heads felt that it dallied a little too long in the country we call Quirkyland. That film’s even odder follow-up, Nacho Libre, starring Jack Black as a Mexican wrestler, attracted no such controversy; that is to say virtually everybody hated it. Given that I laughed so hard I gave myself an aneurism, I suppose I must regard it as the second-most underrated film of the decade (after, maybe, Strange Wilderness).

  On the evidence of the trailer, Gentlemen Broncos offers no concessions whatsoever to those who think Hess too quirked-out by half. After all, it begins with a long-haired man shouldering a snake and goes on to take in surveillance-does and transsexual space-jockeys.

  There are, however, plenty of reasons to be optimistic. For starters, the film features the mighty mass of funny that is Jennifer Coolidge. I would happily watch anything, even an Oliver Stone film, if it included just the tiniest cameo by Ms C. Also, the trailer takes in In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) by ersatz hippies Zager and Evans and, equally thrillingly, footage of Sam Rockwell in a silly wig. The really intriguing performance here though comes from Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement as a hugely pompous fantasy novelist named Ronald Chevalier. It’s very funny, but I do find my mind wandering towards thoughts of a hugely pompous horror writer named Garth Marenghi. I wonder if Matthew Holness, who played the fictional “dreamweaver” on Channel 4, is fuming in his lair.Hmmm…

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• I’ll tell you what the best horror film ever made is.

  October 11, 2009 @ 7:32 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  God, lists are irritating, aren’t they? Every time you open the stupid paper there’s a “Best This” or a “Worst That” chart taking up space that should be devoted to analysing the decline of the public library or bemoaning the unstable situation in Kyrgyzstan. Once you’ve pondered every entry, drawn up your own list, phoned all your friends to complain, posted the results on your blog, written an angry letter to the paper and boned up on the entries you’ve never heard of, you’ve used up half the bleeding day. Stupid lists.

  Where was this going? Oh, yeah. The RTÉ Guide is currently running a competition to find “the nation’s favourite films“. Last week, Redframewhitelight posted a comment here in which he suggested some glaring omissions from the magazine’s proposed top 100. Fair enough. Where, indeed, are Don’t Look Now, Barry Lyndon, The Appartment and All the President’s Men? (Mind you, Amelie, Redframe. Really? Eugh!) I whined about the, to my mind, unnecessary inclusion of an Irish section and the fact that Adam and Paul — arguably, after Hunger, the second-best domestic film of the decade — was not within that corral. I now also note that Taxi Driver is, apparently, an “action film” All those moans noted, I think that the magazine’s Michael Doherty — a genuinely committed and very well-informed film fanatic — has done a pretty good job here. Okay, we can all bemoan the outrageous lack of foreign-language films, but, remember, this is the RTÉ Guide. A list dominated by Bela Tarr and Carl Theodor Dreyer was never going to play between the recipes and knitting patterns.

  At any rate, here’s is my rapid jog through the categories. Of course, this is a meaningless exercise. It is to film criticism what speed dating is to marriage. But it helped kill a few empty minutes. It hardly needs to be said that, if not confined to the RTÉ list and its eccentric genre rules, I would choose entirely differently. Feel free to contribute your own preferences. We must unite to ensure that Titanic does not triumph.

  COMEDY: Duck Soup (1933)

  DRAMA: All About Eve (1950)

  WAR: The Great Escape (1963)

  ROMANCE: Now Voyager (1942)

  CULT: Freaks (1932)

  HORROR: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

  SCIENCE FICTION: Brazil (1985)

  ACTION: Taxi Driver (1976)

  ANIMATION: Spirited Away (2001)

  MUSICAL: A Star is Born (1954)

  IRELAND: Hunger (2008)

  WESTERN: The Searchers (1956)

  Comments (24)

• Is Brief Encounter a comedy? Well, IS IT?

  October 9, 2009 @ 7:15 pm | by Donald Clarke

  I’m sorry to go on about this. But the tendency to describe any film featuring kissing as a “romantic comedy” is driving me bloody crazy. Our latest exhibit is an execrable new Jennifer Aniston film entitled Love is Nice. No, hang on a moment. That was a parody in The Simpsons. The latest Aniston atrocity is actually called Love Happens. Throughout Mad Pete Bradshaw’s review in The Guardian, the film is repeatedly referred to as a “romcom”. About half the reviews I have dug through elsewhere also describe it thus. Let me repeat an admonition from my own rant in today’s paper. Love Happens is not a comedy! I don’t mean this in snarky way. I’m not saying the film-makers tried to make a comedy and failed. I mean it’s not supposed to be a comedy.

  When did this happen? When did the romantic drama — a genre that takes in peerless pictures such as Now Voyager and The Ghost and Mrs Muir – become so debased that the marketing Johnnies felt compelled to sell every one as a yuckfest? Remember Adam from earlier this year? Remember PS I Love You? Disappointing romcoms, weren’t they? No, no, no! They were disappointing romantic dramas. If Brief Encounter were released today it would be marketed in the same way. Is Brief Encounter a comedy? Well, is it? IS IT?

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• Don’t You Have Anything Better To Do?

  October 7, 2009 @ 9:19 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Hello, hello, hello, hello. Oh, let’s just let Mr Lydon do the intros:What you are looking at is the first pathetic spasms of (to punctuate in the style of The Irish Times letters page) a “blog” by obscure, Irish Times film writer Donald Clarke. As well as writing reviews of movies, interviewing  cinema professionals, spewing up facetious think-pieces and compiling a smart-Alec movie quiz, I also write a fortnightly column in The Ticket, our unmissable entertainment supplement, called — like this “blog” — Screenwriter. In this week’s screed, I pretend to hate (are we’re still doing the letters page gag?) these “trendy” “blog” things and go on to explain that on-line Screenwriter will be every bit as opinionated as the average teenage, sugar-powered rant and as up-itself the typical pretentious grad student-written cineaste hang-out.

  “What’s new?” you probably don’t actually ask. “I can get that from Clarke every Friday in my brilliant soaraway Ticket, where I will also find many excellent articles on ‘pop’ music.” The most obvious difference is that cyber-Screenwriter will permit (maybe even encourage) a degree of interactivity. If you can be bothered to comment on the thoughts included here or in the print version of the paper then by all means fire them at us and, after weeding out the Holocaust deniers, creditors and Watchmen enthusiasts, we will smack them at the bottom of the “blog” (I’ll stop this joke shortly).

  You should also be aware that, whereas the core of robo-Screenwriter remains cinema, the “blog” will also take in any other pop-cultural issue that floats through my brain throughout the day. So, if you don’t want to hear that the last album I bought was Manafon by David Sylvian or that I’m enjoying the new series of Peep Show or that the DVD-issue of The World at War rules, then you had best get ready for frequent hammering of your computer’s scroll key. Don’t fret, though. There’ll still be plenty of whining about Matthew McConaughey, pondering of Hollywood gossip and recommendations of classic movies.

  This format also allows us to ponder the latest trailers and speculate as to what they signify. That means an awful lot of scratching our heads at James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar. Some naughty people say that the trailer makes the film look like the Smurfs remade by the dread Roger Dean.  Then again, many who saw the 3-D preview of 16 minutes (I didn’t) felt the film looked “way awesome” and that it “like rocked to the max”. We’ll leave you with the evidence. Start working on your sarcastic comments now. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

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