Screenwriter »

• What is Benicio del Toro up to?

  June 4, 2010 @ 5:44 pm | by Donald Clarke

  No, we’re not talking about the dodgy Wolfman movie. The issue is, rather, that deeply strange commercial for Magnum Gold choc-ices. You may have first noticed the campaign in its billboard form. Mr del Toro and his (more anon) co-star wielded the tasty confection above a legend that declaimed “The best chocolate we’ve ever stolen” (or words to that effect). It was a bit puzzling. You don’t tend to see Oscar-winning actors in choc-ice commercials. Okay, you might not be all that surprised to spot Brenda Fricker brandishing a Screwball or Jim Broadbent recommending a Wibbly Wobbly Wonder, but del Toro is still quite a hot, trendy actor. Isn’t he? Famously, American movie stars usually only do these sorts of campaigns in Japan or Korea.

  The subsequent television commercial did nothing to clarify matters.

  

  Jesus. This thing is just so hilariously pleased with itself. Why, it’s as if the guy who made it thinks he’s Bryan Singer or something. What’s that you say? The director is Bryan Singer. Well, it’s not like he’s made a genuinely great film in 15 years. So, I suppose we really shouldn’t be all that surprised.

  The really shocker here is that Benicio del Toro has allowed himself to be cast against an actress who is — let’s be honest — little more than a celebrity double. This really couldn’t be more demeaning. The real del Toro is, apparently, prepared to share equal billing with an Angelina Jolie lookalike. Imagine if the situations were reversed. “Hey Angie. We’ve got you this really good choc-ice commercial,” the agent raves. “Your co-star will either be somebody who looks a little bit like George Clooney or some bloke who — if you close one eye — might easily be mistaken for Jason Statham. Hello? Hello?”

  So the commercial’s a disgrace? Well, yes. But, you know what? Madagascar vanilla encased in a caramel-flavoured coating? Ever since I last saw the advertisement I’ve been longing to try one of these things. They sound really, really nice. Now, I’m not saying  they could ever be the equal of a Frosty, but…

  I’m off to the shop.

• Where are all the Easter films?

  April 2, 2010 @ 4:27 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  A few years back, there was a brilliant story in the papers describing how Somerfield, the British supermarket chain, had expressed weary surprise at how few children understood the true meaning of Easter. The press release went on — oddly for a firm that makes a fortune flogging Rolo Eggs — to bemoan the fact that these cretinous hoodies didn’t even grasp that the festival was a celebration of the the “birth of Christ”. Har, har!

  What morons! Ha! Easter is, of course, really about consuming enormous chocolate rabbits, watching vast amounts of sport and enjoying all the great Easter-themed films that Hollywood has provided down through the years. Like, er, um… Oh, you know.

  If the Churches want to confirm that Easter has not been entirely commercialised they need only observe how few Easter-themed films there are? Following the success of this year’s useless Valentine’s Day, it has been announced that the same team is about to begin work on a flick entitled New Year’s Day. Yet there seems little chance that gang of hooligans will make an Easter Sunday or a Good Friday. Against all the odds and despite the best efforts of Messrs Rowntree and Cadbury, the festival somehow remains focussed on religious mumbo-jumbo.

  There is, of course, the 1948 musical Easter Parade. The picture features a few top-notch Irving Berlin tunes — the title theme and A Couple of Swells in particular — but nobody is likely to prefer this middling Judy Garland piece to, say, Meet Me in Saint Louis or A Star is Born.

  And, of course, there is Mel Gibson’s The Passion. You may not like the underlying (indeed overlying) sense of religious mania, but you do have to admit it’s a very well-made film. It is, however, not really an Easter film in the way that It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmas film. Ask anybody about his or her favourite Christmas movie scene and very few will mention a Nativity sequence from a biopic of J Christ. When we think of a Christmas film we tend to ponder the event as it has been celebrated in recent centuries, not (to use a phrase from superhero lexicon) the festival’s origin myth.

  You could, I suppose, claim The Long Good Friday. It’s one of the very best British gangster movies, but it could have been set at any time of the year. So that doesn’t really cut it either.

  I find myself reduced to considering the best Easter scene. Happily, that offers no great challenge. It has to be the sequence in Annie Hall in which the titular scatterbrain invites her conspicuously Jewish boyfriend to a terrifyingly Caucasian ham dinner at Easter. The significance is not lost on him. Enjoy…