Gair Rhydd

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

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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.

Sunshine

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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.

Blades of Glory

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The Will Ferrell formula is one that can be broken down into three distinct ingredients. The first of these is that his characters must always be highly successful braggarts with delusions of grandeur.

The second dictates that he will prove an unlikely hit with the ladies, (always) flocking to him in at least one scene.

Life of Si

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Film Si fills you in on whats going on in his film infested mind

So apart from experimenting with rubbing baby oil on my chest to see if I can make myself look like one of the guys from 300, my easter break has involved little more than hidding under my blankets with my laptop immersed in a nerdy world of film gossip and trivia.

Ok, so one of the first things I learnt was why my baby oil attempts failled. Supposedly for the aforementioned homo-erotic, greek epic punch up the entire cast was made to not only spend six months bulking up before shooting even commenced but were forced to spend fifteen minutes working out before every take in order for their muscles to be looking taught and rippling each time they’re on screen.

The Scotsman

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Film Ewen gives us a sneaky insight into his life north of Hadrian’s Wall

There hasn’t been much of a life north of Hadrian’s Wall as the above statement so erroneously states, having been stuck in the fair Welsh capital for the entirety of my Easter holidays (save a lovely trip to the Big Smoke, that Tate Modern is bloody massive).

After a surprise visit from the folks I was relegated to the kitchen floor to sleep at night and make friends from time to time with Mousey, the resident house mouse, as he scurried across the kitchen floor (note: Mousey is a working title until I come up with something more appropriate for him/her).

TMNT

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Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were two young comic book artists who conceived the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1984 as the result of a joke.

A pastiche of violent ninja comics that were in vogue at the time (see Frank Miller’s Ronin), mutant superheroes and the anthropomorphised misanthropy of Cerebus the Aardvark, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exploded into a phenomenon. The precursor to similarly huge multimedia brands such as Pokémon or Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, the Ninja Turtles were an interesting concept that ran out of steam.

Quench Film go to the Oscars (via MSN)

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What do you do when your plans for an OSCAR shindig are scuppered when you discover your host does not actually have Sky Movies in his house? You rely on Film Ry to find a highly illegal downloadable program on the internet that not only allows us to watch the ceremony from the comfort of our own beds, but also now provides us with US cable TV beamed to our laptops…result! Film Ry, his other-half ginger-ninja Sara, TV Ellen and Film Ash combined to watch and provide an alternative commentary to the ceremony in print form over MSN Messenger. This is the outcome of the experiment.

1:56am After a slow start Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly produce a truly legendary OSCAR moment in the form of a show tune about how comedians never get any recognition from the academy – genuinely hysterical!

Where's Everybody Gone?

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Ana Moraes meets first-time feature director Ringan Ledwidge and actress Amelia Warner

Isolated naïve English backpackers, stranded on the tantalizing Australian countryside.

Suspicious over-friendly American comes along. Expecting no more than a fresher Wolf Creek or a cleaner Hostel, I walk out the screening slightly disappointed. This is no usual backpacker’s thriller as I had predicted. The ingredients are all there, though the mix was altered and the result is a nicely presented, refreshing film.

It’s Criminal

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Hollie Clemence chats to Danny Dyer, Nick Love and Sean Bean about their controversial new film Outlaw

After watching 105 minutes of nose breaking, neck cracking and general men-beating-the-crap-out-each-other violence, I’m sitting in the press room of the swanky Soho Hotel, feeling a little apprehensive about meeting the rebellious ‘outlaws’.

Then, Danny Dyer swaggers in with a cheeky grin and I feel more at ease. He sits at the opposite end of the table to director Nick Love but it is clear that they are a close pair, having worked together on The Business, The Football Factory and Goodbye Charlie Bright. Despite their accomplishments they both seem completely unaffected and genuinely passionate about their work.

Riding not so high

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Dir: Mark Johnson. Starring: Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes

Right, hands up who saw the Ghost Rider trailer and thought it looked awful. Po-faced lack of humour? Check. CGI worse than The Reef? Check. Nic Cage’s suspicious hair plugs? Very, very much check. 

But these days, a trailer’s quality bears as much relation to the standard of a movie as the average Times review does; you have to do the opposite of what it says on the tin.