Chris Curtis

A weekend off

Home alone this weekend meaning there's a bit of time to catch up on movies on TV and the cinema.... except there's not much to see.

Sky Box Office hasn't much on that is either any good or that I haven't seen. So, in a blind panic I opted for 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', a film I missed last year when it was released at the cinema.

So what do we have? I vaguely remember bad reviews. Kermode almost certainly hated it. Keanu Reeves is starring. This does not bode well. Turns out that's an understatement. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still contains some mind-numbing monents and, with nothing better to di, I've decided to write them out.

1. That opening sequence in the ice is so badly shot in a studio, you can almost see the crew standing around. Not a good start.

2. The Earth doesn't stand still.... at any point in the film. Not even for an hour. Isn't that kind of strange??

3. John Cleese must win the award for the most badly cast character in a movie for at least that last ten years. As a brilliant and serious scientist? Please.

4. Odd on the relationship between the boy and the mum being resolved before the end of the film? No surprise there then.

5. The ending. Weak? Yes.

Anyway, 90 minutes wasted but a weekend still to go. Must do better this afternoon.

Invention of Lying

Picture Me: the truth about modelling

The Guardian has a write up on a new documentary that exposes the dark side of the fashion industry. It makes for powerful reading.

Way too much spare time on their hands....

Amazing to see special effects like this. It just about beats Transformers itself, which says something for the power of the average home computer.

Public Enemies

A stunning brilliant film that deserves the rave reviews it will get everywhere. Mann doesn't leave any room for sentimentality or Hollywood glitz. It has as much action as a Die Hard movie but is about as different a film as you could imagine. Even the romance between Dillinger and Billie Frechette isn't presented in the way most of big budget films. We see more of their need for each other than their time together. And Dillinger isn't glamorised either, he's a brutal selfish man with a twisted view of himself and the world: he tells one man at a bank robbery not to worry because he's stealing the bank's money, not his.... but that doesn't exactly make sense when you stop and think about it. Some of the action is shot close up and has a brutal reality to it. It's a great film, and Depp is on his best form. The first film of the year that I immediately want to go back and see again.

Memorable quotes from Transformers

From BuzzFeed.

No films..... :(

We're launching the new LCET website this week, and it's been incredibly busy putting everything together. That means a film famine, broken only by the opening of Public Enemies. Oh well, I'll have to catch up next week. Nothing too memorable to miss in any case.

Public Enemies ...more...

Turns out Michael Mann, the Director of 'Public Enemies' which gets released this week, is a control freak perfectionist in every area of crafting a movie..... that's a compliment by the way.

To get the type face of the title just right, Mann commissioned a special font from Neville Brody who says:

"Michael Mann understands the power of a good title sequence and always commissions his own. For Public Enemies, he wanted a font that evoked the Depression era, so I got inspiration from publicity posters for Roosevelt's New Deal initiative, which promoted economic relief after the 1929 Wall Street collapse. They're designed in a very constructivist, Soviet, communist style. My font is very solid, clearly masculine, immovable, and it has some very specifically naive details, like the way the horizontal strokes are all slightly too wide – we've taken out the optical correction. And if you look at the 'B' you'll see that the holes in the middle are a little bit too small – they look like bullet holes – which is very apt."

Typography is a fantastic area of design - for people like me who can't draw, it's one of only areas of design! - and it's great to see thought being given to every last detail of the film. Bodes well for Wednesday.

Public Enemies

Only a few days to go and, in stark contrast to Transformers 2, Michael Mann appears to have a cracker on his hands. 'Public Enemies' is, by all accounts, very very good. Out Wednesday.

Transformers 2

Word on the street is that 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' has managed to plunge new depths. And at nearly two and half hours, it's a long time to be that far down. MovieBuzz has a list of the best.....