Category Archives: Film

Film

Bafta for the Eagleman Stag

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My friend Ben Please (of Urusen fame) and his brother Michael recently won a BAFTA – which is pretty awesome. I haven’t been able to find the full short animated film online (presumably it’s still doing the circuits at festivals etc) but the trailer follows below. Michael talks about it here.

I think Michael is the mastermind of this rather than Ben, and whilst I’ve not met Michael I’d previously encountered via his work on the Urusen music video, Nosediving – also below. A lovely song.

 

Film, Personal

Speech training with the King

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Amanda and I loved the King’s Speech – a wonderfully executed film. Despite my predisposition for disliking Colin Firth (mainly because every girl I know thinks he’s amazing, including my good lady wife), he’s really very good in it and Geoffrey Rush is pretty spectacular.

Watching the film did bring back memories of doing speech exercises when we were young with my Dad. Mr David Snr had a number of speech training lessons has a 20-something in London and wanted to relay them to us – so we would grow up confident, capable of projecting and never have to deal with confidence issues as adults.

We did some of the things in the clip below, in addition to reading Lincoln’s speeches whilst walking on a treadmill, doing lots of “lalalalalas”, dancing around the living room and singing (badly) to Boney M tracks. We’d whisper and try to project to the back of the room whilst reading speeches, we’d bounce and shout and sing. We didn’t thank him much for it at the time, although it was impossible not to enjoy the Boney M part of it…

At school, I took more of my Dad’s advice – confronting the fear of public speaking by joining the debating society and putting myself into every public speaking context I could find for myself. No more speech exercises required – and today I take and enjoy every opportunity I have for presenting… and possibly rather too many opportunities to make speeches at friends’ birthdays and the like.

Having appreciated the benefits of my Dad’s training and got the perspective of what it brought me as an adult, I’m wondering how Emily will react if and when we expose her to the same sorts of things when she’s little older. Will she, like we did, look slightly incredulously on at Daddy wondering what this is all about?

Probably, but hopefully she’ll have the fun we did too.

Film, Update

Home alone

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Emily and Amanda are off visiting friends and I have the bizarre prospect of the first few days at home alone since we moved here.

Spooky!

Managed to keep busy with a little blogging, life-sorting-outness, and a terrible Disney film (Amanda hates Nicolas Cage, but ever since he uttered the line “Why couldn’t you put the bunny back in the box ,” in Con Air I’ve had a soft spot for him). Despite the fact that seeing a nerd take on magic is clearly a good formula for geeks everywhere, the dramatic climax of the film sees the hero emit the horrible putrescence that was:

“I’m not alone. I brought a little science with me.”

I know it was meant to be a little tongue in cheek but it’s nowhere near the comic mastery of  XKCD and just made me shudder a little. Randall Munroe is legend, Jerry Brucheimer, not quite so much.

Still, there was something about seeing the scene from Fantasia take CGI-tastic form.

Film

French Film on DVD!

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FrenchFilmDVDMy brother and his film company made a movie a couple of years ago which is making it onto DVD in early Feb, just in time for Valentine’s day.

French Film, which I blogged about at the time of its cinematic release, is a funny, sweet love story told via the medium of French cinematographic stereotypes and, erm, Eric Cantona. It’s totally entertaining, very watchable, and only £7.99 on Amazon. Maybe Katie or Claire will even review it sometime? Or Laura might suggest it as a V-day gift?

Trailer follows. Please do go buy it if you’ve any interest in the genre!

If you’ve seen it, please write them a nice review on Amazon!

Film

Infidel on DVD and Blu-Ray from tomorrow!

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Buy it! Buy it! Buy it! Buy it! I promise you won’t make my brother rich, but you will a) be entertaining yourself, and b) helping out a little bit. If you don’t remember, it’s the film Arvind produced that came out to vast amounts of press and warm reception from the critics earlier this year. It tells the tale of a moderate British muslim who one day finds out he is really Jewish, was written by David Baddiel and stars Omid Djalili et al.

Film

More commentary on The Infidel

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Chris Hasting at The Sunday Times writes about The Infidel and another film, weighing up humour against the risk of causing offence to the Jewish and Muslim communities.

Over at the Independent, Arifa Akbar interviews David Baddiel giving him the opportunity to explain some of what he was trying to achieve with the film:

“I wasn’t interested in writing about Muslims and Jews per se, but I am always interested in tackling subjects that aren’t being tackled, just for the sake of newness,” he told The Independent. “Because people have become terrified of giving offence, religion and race are now rather left out of comedy.

“For me, it becomes fertile ground. It’s very much about race and culture and ethnicity, in a very gloves-off way. But it’s not trying to cause offence: I’m very uninterested in that as a writer.”

Sideways News and The Daily Telegraph talks through similar issues, whilst George Pitcher, The paper’s Religion Editor, calls it “…almost the most important film of the year,” in a blog post.

I’m totally excited. For those who haven’t been keeping up, this is my brother’s latest film, starring Omid Djalili and Richard Schiff, written by David Baddiel. It’s out in April and should be awesome. My review, such as it is, lives here.

Film

The Infidel Movie – Baddiel, Djalili, Schiff & co…

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…and not forgetting my brother – The Infidel Movie is is the next film due for release from Slingshot’s slate, and tonight we got invited to the first UK screening of it – for ‘cultural influencers’, and apparently siblings who blog incessantly about soup…

I was honoured, as ever, to be included in the audience which included not a small number of celebrities, luminaries, writers, producers, directors and friends, and delighted and proud to enjoy this wonderfully heartwarming, funny, tightly orchestrated, beautifully soundtracked film.

For those not in the know, it’s the story of MAHMUD NASIR (Djalili), the ‘Homer Simpson’ of Islam, finding out that he has to impress his son’s father-in-law-to-be (a fundamentalist Islamic cleric) within an hour of discovering that he was adopted, and his real/birth parents are actually Jewish. He seeks council from his nemesis, Yank Jewish London Cabbie LENNY (Schiff), and tutelage in what it means to be a good Jew.

As controversial as that might potentially sound, the film manages to handle the tension and controversy without descending into twee-ness; it delivers a happy ending without a Deus Ex Machina, the music and pacing and humour is wonderful, the characterisation is compelling and the story is heartwarming in the extreme. I find myself wanting to go to both a muslim wedding and a bar mitzvah, befriend Richard Schiff and go drinking with Omid (although as a Baha’i he probably doesn’t drink…)…

Anyway, needless to say I recommend it, and I hope you all go and see it in the cinemas when it is released, around April time I think (become a Facebook Fan to get the news as it comes), and buy it on DVD or Blu-Ray when it comes out later in the year.

It is a wonderful movie…

Film

My Avatar mini-review (no spoilers)

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Good: stunning visual effects, amazing 3D, glorious landscape, wonderful chase sequences and choreography, a vivid and well-imagined world.

Bad: mixed metaphors, confusing moral ambitions, lack of subtlety, weakness of dialogue, limited characterisation, general humourlessness, editing (about an hour too much screentime).

Overall: although you may think I’d end up on the negative here, I did enjoy this movie. It’s a landmark film in the development of 3D film and television which I do think represents some really interesting opportunities for entertainment, and I think Mr Cameron has done a remarkable job. I do so wish he had some ability to write dialogue, I can’t help but think that would have made all the difference to my experience of the movie, but I still walked away filled with moderate wonder and awe at the spectacle we’d experienced.

Film

Tormented

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…is the next film from Slingshot, and I didn’t even realise that the website is up! Well, ish, you can register for more info… but expect blood curling trailers to follow…

… for those who don’t know, it’s a teen horror movie featuring zombies aplenty. And apparently an inhaler (I’ve only seen a few outtakes). It stars Alex Pettyfer, the actor from the Stormbreaker film a few years ago.

Clearly Tormented will be awesome (but not for the squeamish)… so there are three films awaiting release from the Slingshot stable to look forward to in the next year or so: Faintheart, French Film and Tormented… and more in development, including movies from comic book legend Mike Carey and comedian David Baddiel.