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• “The film the Vatican doesn’t want you to see.”

  March 5, 2012 @ 10:50 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  In the unlikely event that it cares, the Vatican will be happy to hear that I have not yet seen the film that it doesn’t want me to see. I have, however, seen the poster. The Devil Inside is a mid-budget exorcism horror that, to almost everybody’s surprise, became something of a smash in the US at the start of the year. Actually, this is not the first time that an unprepossessing shocker has stormed the US box office in the post-Yuletide period. If you want to make some money with your cheap programmer then sling it out when every other studio is still sleeping off the mince pies.

  Anyway, that poster. This strange artifact carries an extraordinary quote above the title. Attributed to the delightfully named Naibe Reynoso (surely an anagram) from some Mexican-American radio station, the line reads: “The film the Vatican doesn’t want you to see.” Now, I have done some very rigorous research — none of which involved me sitting on my arse while accessing Google — and I have failed to find evidence of the Vatican trying to stop me (or, indeed, anyone else) from seeing this promising entertainment. It’s almost as if they don’t give a toss.

  That’s not the point. What’s interesting about this business is the way distributors now regard (made-up) outrage from the Vatican as a genuine selling point. I suppose it was ever thus. When Father Dougal and Father Ted stood outside the Craggy Island cinema clutching signs reading “Down with this sort of thing!” they only served to generate interest in The Passion of Saint Tibulus. The BBC has created more than a few superstars by banning supposedly lubricious records.

  It remains, however, bizarre that, in a nominally Catholic country, film distributors choose to plaster the walls with posters telling us that the hierarchy forbids attendance at the advertised event. This could spread throughout the publicity industry.

  Nivea, the face cream the Pope tried to ban.

  Over 80 percent of archbishops named Cilit Bang as the degreaser most likely to encourage satanism.

  Cadbury’s Caramel, certified sinfully delicious by the conclave of cardinals.

  And so on. Don’t laugh. It could happen.

• The strange story of the Jack and Jill press show.

  February 6, 2012 @ 10:04 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Here’s an odd one. Every now and then, some distributor will fail to screen a film for the press in this territory. More often than not the movie will be shown to our cousins across the Irish Sea. A good example is the recent Liam Neeson thriller The Grey. It is not unreasonable for readers to assume that the film in question must stink like last week’s socks. They’re usually right. But, quite often, the reason is pure meanness. The Grey, for example, has actually got fairly decent reviews. What a nuisance!

  

  But not for viewers in the UK.

  In over a decade at this job I cannot remember an instance where a mainstream film was screened for the Irish critics, but not for their UK colleagues. Until now. Look about the British papers this week and you will find no notices for Jack and Jill, Adam Sandler’s latest atrocity. Yet the fine people at Sony Ireland (good for you, folks)  unspooled the picture for your current correspondent and his fellow hacks. I really wanted to reward their professionalism by giving Jack and Jill a good review. But, well, it’s a film in which Adam Sandler plays an annoying man and his more annoying sister. It would have been an appalling dereliction of duty to lead you astray.

  What’s up? Well, it is worth noting (and regretting) that Mr Sandler’s pictures do significantly better on the island of Ireland — they particularly love them in Larne and Lisburn, incidentally — than they do in what Peter Robinson calls the mainland. Even though the reviews were bound to be awful, it may have been deemed worth the risk to make sure Irish Sandlerphiles were aware he was doing his awful thing in the nation’s blameless cinemas.

  Different rules apply in different territories. Note, for instance, that studios very often fail to screen horror films for American critics, but show them to Europeans. This surely stems from an interesting distinction between the reviewers on either side of the Atlantic. American pundits have never taken horror seriously. We are — in that regard at least — a bit more open minded.

  Obviously, domestic readers will be furious that they are left unable to peruse fascinating reviews in their soaraway Ticket. But does the lack of screenings have any effect on box-office returns? Not at first. But, as Tara Brady pointed out in a recent Rotten Potatoes column, such films do tend to flag after a few weeks. You watch. Jack and Jill will do much better here than it does in the UK. Oh, hang on. That would have happened anyway. We’re bleeding idiots in that regard.

• Liam Neeson is not becoming a Muslim

  January 29, 2012 @ 10:08 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Well, that’s my guess. There have been few more peculiar examples of the gossip machine working in overdrive than the recent minor furore surrounding Liam Neeson’s imminent conversion to Islam. Here’s what happened. The great man, currently an unlikely action hero, was discussing a recent shoot in Istanbul. The controversial phrase read as follows: “The Call to Prayer happens five times a day and for the first week it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit and it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing. There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.”

  Now, I would regard the phrase “makes me think” as being wildly vague. What would it be like to convert to Islam? Isn’t that an interesting notion? Those sorts of things. Before the ink was dry, however, it had been decided that our Liam was making the plunge. There were front-page headlines in the tabloids, rage on the internet and a column in Irish Central generously allowing that Neeson had “the full right to embrace Islam“.

  Of course, there’s every chance that I could be proved wrong. But, even if that turns out to be the case, the story does demonstrate the hilarious way tiny phrases can generate hilarious amounts of wild speculation. Heck, I’m sure I’ve done it myself from time to time.

  Just think how good Tom Cruise’s skin still looks. Doesn’t John Travolta seem like a nice man? It makes me think of converting to Scientology..

• What’s the worst film of all time?

  April 19, 2011 @ 10:30 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  It’s not the silly season yet, so don’t take the question too seriously. Obviously, it’s always good fun to attach that title to something that people really love. If I want to annoy students, I generally suggest that the worst film of all time is Fight Club. I don’t suppose I really believe that, but the hollow, posturing, knuckle-headed pretensions of that film do really set my teeth on edge. Yes I know that we are not supposed to take Tyler Durden’s sermons entirely seriously, but the film does still — and Chuck Palahniuk confirmed this to me in person — have something to do with a supposed “crisis in masculinity“. Aww, diddums. Are the poor little menny wenny laid low by several millennia of patriarchal dominance? Let’s have a whip round and, while we’re at, let’s raise some money for distressed millionaires and troubled movie stars. I mean, honestly.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. Most everyone has their own favourite worst film, but, if yours falls among the bottom 20 of the IMDb voters’ list then you probably need to get out a little more. Here’s the current sh*t parade…

  1.  Dream Well (2009)

  2.  Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)

  3.  Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

  4.  Daniel – Der Zauberer (2004)

  5.  Monster a-Go Go (1965)

  6.  Night Train to Mundo Fine (1966)

  7.  Ben & Arthur (2002)

  8.  Pocket Ninjas (1997)

  9.  The Skydivers (1963)

  10.  The Starfighters (1964)

  11.  Zombie Nation (2004)

  12.  Pledge This! (2006)

  13.  Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (2007)

  14.  Zaat (1971)

  15.  From Justin to Kelly (2003)

  16.  The Little Fox 2 (2008)

  17.  Too Beautiful (2005)

  18.  Disaster Movie (2008)

  19.  The Final Sacrifice (1990)

  20.  The Hillz (2004)

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining chart to peruse. But, over the years, it has become completely taken over by a kind of anti-canon. A series of admittedly terrible films — Manos: The Hand of Fate, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, From Justin to Kelly — have become installed as the trash establishment and, thus, gained a sort of unwanted critical traction. Naming one of these as the worst ever film is a little like naming Citizen Kane as the best. You might be right (after all, how many films are better than Kane?), but the choice doesn’t say much about your capacity for original thought.

  Having said all that, there is always some movement in the chart. I suspect that, just as those involved with independent flicks that need a boost sometimes devote themselves to hitting the “10 stars” button over and over again, the crew, backers and cast of utterly terrible films strive to get their projects to the top (bottom?) of this list.

  Be honest. You’re really intrigued by Dream Well, the current number one. Actually, it does sound fascinating. Apparently, it is a Hungarian high-school comedy that seems to model itself on the likes of Mean Girls. Oh, come on. Don’t tell me that got there by accident. Director Gábor Forgács and his mates must have been working the keyboard night and day. The trailer — identifying it under the alternate title Dream.Net — suggests that it is no worse than its American equivalents.

  

• Julie Taymor’s catastrophes

  March 20, 2011 @ 9:46 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Has ever a supposed genius (more anon) had such a run of debacles as has Julie Taymor? It’s nearly a decade since Taymor, a director of theatre, film and opera, delivered the perfectly decent Frida. A biopic of Frida Kahlo, moustachioed Mexican painter, the picture was not exactly a critical smash, but it received pretty decent reviews and played well in the sort of arthouse cinemas that have Kahlo paintings on their coffee cups. By that stage, Julie had, among many other things, transformed The Lion King into a hugely successful, mildly avant-garde Broadway show and directed a diverting film of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. In the early 1990s, in recognition of her radical theatre work, Taymor had received a MacArthur Felowship, a tribute sometimes referred to as “the genius grant”. (Actually, if you look at the list, prominent geniuses are fairly few and far between. But never mind.)

  So, a great deal was expected of Taymor. It’s hard to describe quite how awful Across The Universe turned out to be. A musical featuring the songs of The Beatles, the film attempted to talk us through the turmoil of the 1960s. For somebody so bright, Taymor proved to be weirdly fond of the overly literal interpretation. People were constantly coming in through the bathroom window or wanting to hold your hand.

  

  Many people thought that the low point came when Bono appeared as “Dr Robert” (U2 and cinema — an unholy combination),but, for me, the nadir was the scene where, to the strains of She’s So Heavy, the Statue of Liberty is carried through the Vietnam jungle. Get it? The national trauma is, like, so heavy and that. Anyway, the film was bloody awful.

  Last year, Taymor released a version of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren as a female version of Prospero and Russell Brand as a non-acting version of Trinculo. Featuring visuals by the My Little Pony team and performances that veered from the desperate to the laughable, the picture was so awful that, despite getting a brief UK outing, it wasn’t even released on these shores. You don’t need to see it.

  Then, we had the Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark fiasco. Nothing much more needs to be said here about that doomed production. Following several serious catastrophes involving flying actors — thankfully none fatal — the show managed the remarkable feat of receiving the worst reviews in Broadway history without actually opening. That’s right. As I write, the poor thing is still in previews. Last week, Taymor recieved the ultimate rebuff: she was sacked as director. Given how individual Taymor projects are, this is rather like hearing that a writer has been fired from his own novel.

  Is there any way back? Well, Ms Taymor emerged from the theatre and she will, one assumes, always manage to get modestly budgeted productions produced off Broadway. But few seriously regarded arts practitioners have ever delivered such a jolting series of rabid turkeys. Up like a rocket, down like a filthy stick.

• Anne Hathaway is Catwoman. Boycott!

  January 20, 2011 @ 12:05 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I cant beleeve it. Chrstopher Nowlan has cast Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in his follow up to what all cool critics say is the gr8test film of all time. this an outrage . She is three inches shorter than Selina Kyle (if fools like balefan459 dont beleeve it then checkk out the story I, A Feline!, which, as even he knows, was in the Extraordinary Batman issue 353). also, she has the wrong colour eyes, as, in Lo, The Bat Wakes, Kyle says that one eye is blue and the other orange

  she is also not at all good looking. Once again, like when he cast horibble magge gylenhal and stupid katy homes, nolan has shown that he doesnt know a fit woman when he sees one. what is wrong with Megan Fox? she even has “Fox” in her name and  everything.

  i have lost all faith in Nowlan. we put up with these previous outrages because the films were great works of art — better than old “classics” critics go on about like kramer vs kramer or Out of africa. why didnt he just cast Skanky mc skank and have done with it.

  There is only one sane response. Boycott! remember when we boycotted so-called Spider-Man because sam Raimi (sam Fakey more like) had the organic webshooters rather than the proper ones. that showed them. I suppose fools like gothamgirl will say we r being misogeny (whatever that meens). i know the word for her. But i suppose if i used it I would be sensored by the PC nerds that run irish times so-called website.

  Boycott! Boycott! Boycott!

• What on earth is up with Robert De Niro?

  December 26, 2010 @ 10:47 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Over the last few days, you have probably read a few appalling reviews of the latest Meet the Parents film. Take heed. You may think you have some idea how ghastly Little Fockers is. You are, perhaps, holding thoughts of Meet the Fockers in your brain and multiplying by some modestly sized negative integer. Could Little Fockers = MTF x -5 or so? Forget it. To get some some idea of the new film’s wretchedness we need a new class of mathematical notation. A better approximation would be MTF x -G, where G is Graham’s Number.

  

  “I’m a big poopy plop? You’re a big poopy plop!”

  Anyway the point of all this facetious nonsense is to set readers pondering the extraordinary decline in Robert De Niro’s career. Consider the 1970s. In the early days, he made about one film a year and you could be fairly certain that each release would be worth watching. His current activities stand as an exact complement to that strategy. That is to say he makes a great many films and they are all really, really terrible. You probably think you know how bad the recent run has been, but a glance at Bob’s IMDb page provides really depressing intelligence.

  Over the last decade we’ve had Men of Honor, 15 Minutes, City By the Sea, Hide and Seek, Godsend and Showtime. Here’s a question. When was the last time Bob had a starring role in a film you’d cross the road to see? The original Meet the Parents in 2000 was okay, but that’s a one-note comic turn. His role in Jackie Brown is tiny. Cop Land from 1997 was tolerable. A serious case could be made that, despite his promiscuity, De Niro’s last substantial performance in a film of quality was in the peerless Heat. And that’s 15 years ago, for Pete’s sake!

  What do we think is going in that brain? Does he genuinely not know how terrible these films are? Is it a purely cynical strategy to keep himself in ivory backscratchers? To be honest, I would prefer it if  the second supposition were the case. That’s to say I’d rather Bob turned out to be cynical than deluded.

• Golden Globes aftermath and current Oscar standings

  December 19, 2010 @ 9:58 pm | by Donald Clarke

  A few posts ago, using my most facetious tone, I somehow found time to address the Golden Globes nominations. Some mild controversy ensued. Well, in the following days, a greater than usual amount of outraged muttering has burbled around this year’s shortlist. The main issue is the perplexing inclusion of the so-so The Tourist and the downright awful Burlesque among the nominations for Best Comedy or Musical.

  

  What about us? Huh? Huh? Huh?

  An article in today’s (British) Independent addressed the concerns in some detail. Guy Adams expressed himself thus:

  “Disbelief later turned to mild outrage, however, after it emerged that Sony, the studio behind the clunker Burlesque, recently flew Golden Globes judges to Las Vegas for an all-expenses-paid trip which included luxury hotel accommodation, free meals and a private concert performed by the film’s star, Cher.”

  The Independent article neatly summarises worries that have been aired throughout Hollywood since the nominations on Tuesday. The Hollywood Reporter, commenting on the acting nods for Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, stars of The Tourist, found a high horse and climbed right upon it. Here’s that trade paper’s take:

  “To skeptics, the choices appeared to be a particularly blatant play to line the red carpet with celebrities — in this case, two of the world’s biggest — at the Golden Globes ceremony Jan. 16. Additionally, the movie was never marketed as a comedy; it was portrayed as a romantic thriller.”

  The most savage words came, however, from Betsey Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times. Both barrels were discharged in the following manner:

  “The Globe nominations have often been little more than a popularity contest among those who throw the best parties, but with its 2011 nominations, the HFPA has reached a new low.”

  Yikes, alive. There is, of course, every reason to believe that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the body that hands out the Globes, has behaved in an exemplary fashion. After all, wretched films such as A Beautiful Mind and Crash actually won best picture Oscars without anybody (well, anybody apart from me) kicking up any noticeable fuss. But this has, so far, not been a particularly golden year for the Globes.

  It hardly needs to be said that the Globes — never much of a pointer to Oscars, anyway — have had little effect on our predictions for the awards that matter. Indeed, unlike last year, I note no serious changes in wind direction since my first guess at the final 10. For the record — he would say that, wouldn’t he? — my smart-alec inclusion of Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (actually, a 2011 film) denied me the opportunity of placing Winter’s Bone in the list. I would guess that the first five here will also receive nominations for their directors and can, thus, be regarded as the real best-picture front-runners.

  With the usual provisos that these are not necessarily the films I like, here is the predicted list in order of likelihood:

  1. The Social Network

  2. The King’s Speech

  3. Black Swan

  4. True Grit

  5. Inception

  6. 127 Hours

  7.  Toy Story 3

  8. The Kids are All Right

  9. The Fighter

  10. Winter’s Bone

  Actually the more you stare at this the harder it becomes to imagine anything else breaking into the final shortlist. Another Year? Possibly. Blue Valentine? An outside bet. The Town? It could just about make it. At any rate, Oscar-haters (and that’s most of you) will be relieved to hear that I don’t  imagine there will be much reason to debate this issue further before nominations week.

• The Irina Palm d’Or

  November 28, 2010 @ 10:58 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  First a confession. A few years back, I was asked to interview Marianne Faithfull after a screening of Irina Palm, the old trooper’s latest film, at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. I was happy to oblige. Ms Faithfull, though not exactly jolly, was much less fearsome than reports had suggested and the audience asked reasonably sensible questions. It was nice to stand behind an icon and, in honour of her stature, I made no mention of apocryphal (that means made-up, m’lud) stories involving caramel-nougat confectionary.

  Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

  Yes… The problem — and here comes my confession — was to do with the film itself. I may have imagined it, but I felt the audience had, by the time we emerged on stage, fully sunk into the same gape-mouthed horror that, at the interval, struck attendees of Springtime for Hitler. I’ve just managed to dig up my capsule review of the subsequent DVD release. Here it is:

  IRINA PALM

  Directed by Sam Garbarski. Starring Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic, Jenny Agutter 15 cert *

  Stunningly misconceived drama, starring a comatose Faithful as a middle-class woman who begins offering manual relief in a Soho sex shop to help pay for her grandson’s operation. This clumsy Europudding thinks itself dangerous, but it’s really just Calendar Girls with added lubricant.

  Did I say any of this to Ms Faithfull? I did not. I hope that I used one of those nicely ambiguous constructions. You know that sort of thing. “I don’t know how you do it” or “I have never seen anything quite like that before” or “That was a very brave piece of work.”

  At any rate, awful as the wretched thing was, I thought it was sufficiently obscure that it would never be heard of again. Not so. It was on telly the other night and now we learn that the film has inspired a “blog” devoted to notable terrible British films. The site’s nominal award is called… wait for it, wait for it … The  Irina Palm d’Or. You have to hand it to the chaps behind the “blog” — The Independent’s Nicholas Barber is among them — for their sharp-wittedness. Let’s be honest. The site’s main reason for existence is to propagate that rather good joke in the title.

  For what’s it’s worth, my nomination among recent British releases has to be Gurinder Chadha’s breathtakingly awful It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.

  What do you think?

• The worst thing about the economic landslide…

  November 23, 2010 @ 10:23 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Well, the worst thing about the economic landslide is the fact that thousands of people will lose their jobs, fail to make their house payments, feel the need to emigrate and generally experience all kinds of ordinary and extraordinary misery. Let me start again. One aspect of the current catastrophe that bugs me is the inevitable smugness that will spread through significant sections of the Northern Irish Unionist community. Not all of it. Not even most of it. But more than a few men in blazers will be sitting down to a huge plate of told-you-so pie.

  

  A typical southerner yesterday.

  I know whereof I speak. A child of that community, I have, over the last decade or so, encountered more than a few golf club members who, after a small bucket of gin, would delight in telling you that the Republic’s economic boom was sure to end in disaster. The  general explanation for the economic surge was — these folk argued — to be found in the fact that every penny sitting in every Irish bank account came from “the Common Market”. It seems that, each weekend, European officials would travel over from Brussels and drive around the country handing out fivers to every gap-toothed yokel (that’s to say every citizen of the State) in every poorly maintained, rat-invested hovel (that’s to say every house outside the six counties). Being simple folk — children really — the Southerners would then spend the cash on magic beans, pinwheel hats and rosary beads. Eventually, the European money would run out and they (you) would all have to go back to eating rotten potatoes and having too many children.

  You may as well argue against the tide as point out that aspects other than EU largesse were at play: the highly educated population, an outward-looking attitude, a convenient location and, of course, that fabled, controversially low corporation tax. The slack-jawed baboons who lived south of Newry (or in Newry for that matter) could not, in any way, be considered responsible for the supernatural degrees of wealth circulating about the 26 counties.

  It was equally pointless to explain that Northern Ireland is just about the most subsidised corner of western Europe. A report I’ve just made up explains that, as of last December, some 98 percent of the Northern population works for the government in some capacity. No, no, no! It’s pure toil, harsh soap and Presbyterian thriftiness that turned Northern Ireland into the economic powerhouse it plainly isn’t.

  So, where are we now? It would be wrong to suggest that Rosemary and Edwin McCausland were correct in their assertion that the southerners’ inherent uselessness and unstoppable profligacy would bring their nation to a sticky end. Whatever the members of Ballyduckle Golf Club may believe, this is not a nation of village idiots and trained monkeys. Still, the awareness that quite a few Nordies are now laughing over their Scotches does chill the blood slightly.

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