The British Film Institute is running a season of Stanley Kubrick films to mark the fact that it’s ten years since he died. To my great excitement, I’ve got 2 free tickets to see any film featured in the season, just for YOU. That’s right. You get to go to the lovely BFI building which [...]
Archive for January, 2009
Kubrick tickets, a little treat just for you
Posted in Watching, tagged BFI, BFI Kubrick season, british film institute, free cinema tickets, stanley kubrick on January 29, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Trailer of the week: Watchmen
Posted in Watching, tagged alan moore, heroes and superheroes, trailer of the week, watchmen on January 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I saw the first trailer for this last year and wasn’t particularly excited. But at that point I knew nothing about Watchmen (I know, apologies to all comic-enthusiasts). I think I then filed it away in my brain alongside Night Watch and subsequently came to think of them as one and the same. Oops. Thank [...]
Why the earth would have voted Obama too
Posted in acclimatizing, tagged huffington post, jerry cope, obama climate change on January 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Nice piece in the Huffington Post on why Obama’s explicit reference to climate change in his inauguration speech is so important. In case you missed it (surely not), or alternatively got diverted thinking about how Obama fluffed his lines just a teeny bit and whether it meant he might not actually be President (I know, [...]
Trailer of the week: Gran Torino
Posted in Watching, tagged clint eastwood, clint eastwood and sergio leone, gran torino on January 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
For seven years at the start of his career, Clint Eastwood played a cattle drover in the CBS television series Rawhide. Between 1959 and 1965, he completed a total of 217 episodes, more than any other actor in the entire series. Maybe that record stint is a lesson in patience. Almost half a century later, [...]
So many films, so little time
Posted in Watching, tagged frost/nixon, milk, rachel getting married, trailer of the week on January 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »
On Friday a cluster of films come out that have each been trailers of the week: Milk, Frost/Nixon and Rachel Getting Married. A cause for celebration but simultaneously, a teeny bit frustrating; why did they have to schedule them all at once? Couldn’t the distributors have sprinkled the good stuff more evenly through those arid [...]
A dark day
Posted in acclimatizing, tagged greenpeace, heathrow, heathrow third runway, john mcdonnell on January 15, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Again, again, my faith in democracy has been squashed like a fly on the windshield of a jumbo jet. Two days ago I was (alright, probably naively) excited about the Greenpeace airplot to obstruct the proposed new runway at Heathrow. Today, the government said it was ploughing ahead with the runway despite the massive outcry [...]
George Bush is leaving the building
Posted in Reading, tagged george bush, jacob weisberg, slate, top 25 bushisms on January 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
…on January 20, and Slate has done us all a favour and collected the top 25 Bushisms of all time. My personal favourites: Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000 And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this [...]
Airplot: Greenpeace strikes back
Posted in acclimatizing, tagged airplot, greenpeace, heathrow third runway on January 13, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Got to say, I’m exceptionally pleased with Greenpeace today. Those brainiac-tivists have come up with an ingenius way to obstruct the proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport. Even Gordon Brown conceded the plan showed “breathtaking cunning.”* The climate campaigners have clubbed together and quietly bought the deeds to a football pitch-sized plot of land within the [...]
Trailer of the Week: Revolutionary Road
Posted in Watching, tagged kate winslet and leonardo dicaprio, revolutionary road, richard yates, sam mendes, trailer of the week on January 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »
One of the best trailers I’ve seen in ages. No dialogue for 53 seconds, and then only a sparse two lines. Cat Power’s jangly, mournful Sea of Love getting stuck like an old-fashioned record; signalling breakdown and fracture better than any scripted voiceover. Everything else left to our imagination, unlike almost every other trailer you [...]
