How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
4 stars
Synopsis: Sardonic journalist Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) is sick and tired of being shut out of the celebrity party. Unfortunately, his magazine ‘The Post-Modern Review’ is no-budget, non-professional and going nowhere, leaving him to try and blag his way into post-awards bashes by the most ridiculous of means. When, after one particularly disastrous attempt involving a pig, Sidney is offered a job at New York’s ‘Sharps’ magazine, he eagerly accepts, hoping that his big break has arrived. Put on the celebrity gossip section, will he sink or swim? The title gives a hefty clue there, and he soon makes a name for himself as the magazine’s resident “Idiot Savant, without the Savant”.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People takes its basis from Toby Young’s memoir of the same name and transposes it onto the basic Hollywood comedy of errors formula, with the typical “stay true to yourself” moral and predictably happy ending. It’s not a reinvention of the wheel – more a Devil Wears Prada with a British male lead. Kirsten Dunst ticks the obligatory “inevitable love interest totty” box as Sidney’s ‘Sharps’ co-worker Alison Olsen, and Danny Huston is the basic sleazy boss. It’s Pegg who takes his role to a whole new level, taking the part of the classic underdog arsehole from the memoir and adding his own loveable spin to it. By the end of the film you’ll be rooting for him despite yourself.
Innocent until proven guilty?
Annika Henderson talks to Welsh film-director Marc Evans about how he came to writing and directing a film about Mumia’s trial, the uncooperative nature of the police and the astounding corruption that has been uncovered along the way
A quick glance at the cast of In Prison my whole Life and it appears that every American has something to say about the case. One may be surprised to find the likes of philosopher, Noam Chomsky and rap-artist Snoop Dogg in the same film but this simply reaffirms the diverse nature of the debate, which has kept America and arguably the entire world at the edge of their seats for 25-years. Any director willing to make a film about such a delicate and controversial matter would have to have a lot of guts.
Cardiff-born Marc Evans seems an unlikely candidate and admits: “when I started, I didn’t know anything about Abu-Jamal”. It was only after script-writer William Francome, a man who has been obsessed with the Abu-Jamal case after coincidentally being born on the same day he was arrested, showed him a digital movie on the case that he began to form a deeper understanding of the true nature of the American Justice system and got gradually more engrossed by the case. “I was brought up on the American Dream and the civil rights movement” Marc explains “and these were kind of secret histories”.
Are the Guilty REALLY Guilty?
Freedom is something most of us take for granted. However, it is this that differentiates the general public from those in jail. But they deserve it, right?
Since deciding to do his PHD on ‘The Presentation of the British Prison on Television’ 17 years ago, Cardiff University Lecturer Dr Paul Mason has been actively working to combat social inequality and abuses of power within the criminal justice system.
He also runs the Prison Media Monitoring Unit and co-ordinates the School’s Innocence Project, as part of the UK Innocence Network. Paul is a member of the prison abolition group No More Prisons and the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control. He edited [jc2m] Journal for Crime,Conflict and Media Culture 2004-6 and has also taught at KIJAC in Kosovo and is a member of the Addis Research Group in Ethiopia.
Gorgeous George
BBC newsreader George Alagiah discusses immigration. the media and future aspirations
First impressions do count. The criteria on which you are judged will differ according to your company. I am a firm believer in the handshake as a key signifier of the personality department (with firmness equating to strength of character). Many a time have I felt let down when a potentially intriguing candidate has a feeble first greeting. Every so often you will meet someone who knows exactly how to handle the initial meeting scenario. George Alagiah is one such individual. If he was judged solely on his handshake he would pass the personality test with flying colours. But he does not rely on this attribute. His open smile and willingness to make time for people makes him most endearing.
When we meet, he has just completed a book signing at the Hay festival. His queue of fans is particularly substantial and it is easy to see why. The warm reception he has received is reciprocated. Alagiah is a gentleman.
K-Day
Fashion Desk takes on the crowds in Queen Street to battle it out for a piece of the most over-hyped collection of the year
Despite its capital-city status, Cardiff has yet to experience a good, hard fashion-scrum. The Anya Hindmarch ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ wasn’t even delivered to any Cardiff- based Sainsbury’s stores and, let’s face it, no one really gave a toss about the Madonna line for H&M. But with the high level of anticipation surrounding the Kate Moss for Topshop line, surely even the sleepy Cardiff fashion scene would get a little excited about one of the year’s biggest fashion events.
One thing is for sure; the amount of press coverage of the collection has been immense, and clearly cleverly orchestrated to attract a certain level of hype. Since the mini- preview in April’s Vogue, pieces of the collection slowly trickled onto the pages of various fashion mags, designed to get the fashion- savvy moss fans salivating.
The Fall
It’s 10.20pm at the Point and for 15 minutes a video screen mounted behind the stage has been showing repeated slow motion videos of James Brown, moulded into Pavarotti, blended into Sadaam Hussain – or that’s what it looks like to me.
Over the top plays obnoxiously edited audio of shouting, screaming and a general cacophony of noises that wouldn’t be out of place in Abu Ghraib. Next to me stands a middle-aged truck driver nursing a half pint of bitter, he leans over and says, “I’m never quite sure whether or not to let him get away with it”, and every Fall fan knows exactly what he means. Putting up with dock hand come intellectual come seminal rock front man Mark E Smiths own brand of anti-aesthetic bullshit is a constant challenge, but we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Maximo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures Warp
A common theme between tonight’s headliner and support act lies in their frontmen. Both bands are truly led from the front by instrumentless wordsmiths.
Though they’re backed up by bandmates that are clearly more than able, these musicians do not come close to stealing the show. However, there are great differences between the boys Eddie and Paul. Art Brut’s Argos has the crowd eating out of his hand.
Sunshine
Dir: Danny Boyle, Starring: Cillian Murphy, Rose Bryne, Chris Evans
The Sun is dying, and only eight intrepid astronauts can blast it back into life, where a previous mission failed. Sunshine has been billed as a splice between the Alien films and 2001: A Space Odyssey – but retains only the worst features of each.
It certainly lacks the commitment to scientific accuracy of 2001. Despite director Danny Boyle’s claim that the team went to the trouble of trying to get every calculation correct, they seem to have forgotten that the Earth actually moves. Yet perhaps griping about having to drive our Script Bus over the plotholes misses the point: it’s not about the hard science; it’s about the human stories. But they’re disappointing too.
Space
The final frontier for humanity,or a distraction from life on Earth?
For
Caleb Woodbridge
A Little Less Conversation
Women: It’s time to put the volume firmly on ‘mute’...
Tonight, eighteen million people across the planet will be making sex eyes at each other. One can only hope that this will be cumulative rather than collective.
In most aspects, women are (and deserve to be treated as) entirely equal to men. Anything men can do, women can do in a similarly rubbish manner. But, (with the exception of pacemakers) when it comes to matters of the heart, women behave in incomprehensively daft ways. I know this because contrary to popular opinion, I am in fact a woman and have been so for several years. I’ve seen women on the telly, read about them in books AND cohabited with them. I’d consider myself to be somewhat of an authority on women and their ludicrous antics.
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