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Screenwriter

Donald Clarke

Whingeing about cinema and real life since 2009

Monthly Archives: February 2010

Surprises at JDIFF.

Just back from the surprise film at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. It proved to be a canny choice this year. Five years ago, the mystery film turned out to be Noah Baumbach’s superb snoot-comedy The Squid and the …

If you read one “blog” today, read Screenwriter!!!!

On the previous post, a number of people pointed out a quote on the trailer for the Carney Brothers’ upcoming Zonad from (hem, hem) The Irish Times. Mr Times said the low-budget alien invasion flick was “uproariously funny” or “blood-curdlingly …

Are we too kind to Irish films?

Some of you may have seen Neil Jordan’s interesting comments to the effect that Irish film writers are, perhaps, too kind towards domestic movies (to be fair to Neil, he included himself among the indulged). I have heard the opposite …

Farewell, Lionel Jeffries.
  • Deaths
  • February 22, 2010, 00:59

So Screenwriter’s been a bit quiet of late. I’ve been busy at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. What’s it to you? Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans plays tomorrow (Monday) and I am very excited indeed …

Gore Vidal can’t stand John Updike.

Excuse us another jaunt off-topic, but I have to recommend Mark Lawson’s new radio series on post-war American writers. It’s on BBC Radio 4 and it’s called — you’ve guessed it — Capturing America: Mark Lawson’s History of American Literature. …

Extraordinary Measures does not star Jean Claude Van Damme.

Good news everybody. Next week a Hollywoood movie opens called Extraordinary Measures. Well, you know what to expect with a title like that. We will begin with a mid-grade female star — it used to be Anne Archer in the …

Get ready for Shutter Island with Isle of the Dead.

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 …

The greatest bargain ever.

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 …

Professor Screenwriter and other geniuses.
  • Oscars
  • February 2, 2010, 23:46

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 …