Flix Chick

Clerks is my favourite film of all time. I would never suggest that it is the highest quality film of all times but there is something about Clerks that has always struck a chord with me. Despite being a Rocky Horror fan, it isn’t generally my thing to see a film over and over again but Clerks is one of the few films that I put on and I feel at home. The characters in Clerks speak like my friends at that time spoke, I grew up in the state next to New Jersey and generally know the kind of people that existed in the world in which Clerks took place.

Through Clerks, I became such a Kevin Smith fan girl that on my last journey back over the Atlantic to visit my family in the Philly area, I took three of my UK based friends, who are also Kevin Smith fans, on a pilgrimage to Redbank (yes, we bought Gatorade from the Quick Stop). I have also been fortunate enough to attend two ‘Evenings with” sessions that Kevin Smith has done. One in Boston just before Mallrats came out and another some years later in London when he was over here promote Jersey Girl (which wasn’t AS bad as people say).

When I heard that they were making Clerks 2 I was like a little girl waiting for Christmas morning to finally arrive. It was made even worse by the traditional delay between films coming out in the United States and finally being released in the UK. I wanted to spend more time in the Clerks world and revisit two characters for which I had a great deal of affection. Clerks 2 was finally released in the UK this Friday and I went to see it this afternoon. Frankly, a big part of me wishes I hadn’t gone.

It started out well with Dante showing up to the Quick Stop and finding it on fire. For that brief moment I felt back in the Clerks universe but that sense of comfort was broken not long after when Dante and Randall turned up for their new jobs at Mooby Burgers. Perhaps it was a case of the characters feeling out of place but something just didn’t feel right from that point on. Out of nowhere, Randall lets us know that it is not only Dante’s last day on the job (despite that we haven’t seen him there at all) but that it is also his last day in New Jersey as he is getting married and moving to Florida. At this point I usually try not to say too much so that I don’t give away the ending but in reality there wasn’t really much of a plot so it is hard to really tell what ending I would be giving away.

However, with that said, it is true that the original Clerks didn’t have an overwhelming plot but what it lacked in plot it made up for as a character study and by having some of the best dialogue of a generation. For the majority of Clerks 2 I was trying to figure out what was missing that was keeping me from feeling a connection with the film like I had with the first and I didn’t really figure it out until about the last 10 minutes of the film. In those last ten minutes Kevin Smith finally had Dante and Randall deliver dialogue that was on par with that in Clerks. Not only did it feel like words that the characters I felt I knew so well would say but it took me back to the position they held in the world that had first allowed me - and thousands of others - to see a bit of myself in them. I also noticed that Clerks 2 lacked a good deal of the inside jokes that had been littered throughout the rest of the Jersey Trilogy (yes, I know they aren’t really a trilogy) that helped to created a sense of community amongst those who had seen them all. I came to the cinema to feel that way for a whole movie and instead I got barely enough of it to fit into two music videos.

Perhaps part of the problem is that when Kevin Smith first wrote Dante and Randall he pretty much was Dante and Randall. However, well over a decade later he lives on a different planet than the Dante and Randalls of this world. He deserves every moment of the successful life he now has because he did make the choice to shit or get off the pot. He simply doesn’t know what it is to be approaching his mid 30’s and not being anywhere near success. At one point I heard Kevin Smith say that he was leaving the Jay and Bob world behind because it was time for him to write about the world in which he now lived rather than where he used to live. The reception Jersey Girl had may have knocked him back a bit but I think that is the correct path for Kevin’s future work. I still hold him up as my favourite director and I will always love Clerks. I am just going to pretend that the last ten minutes or so of Clerks 2 was a dvd extra on Clerks X and forget about the rest of the film.

If you live in or near Notting Hill, be warned.

Party girl actress Lindsay Lohan might well be heading your way.

The young Li-Lo is keen to put her roots down in London town and has chosen the chichi area of west London as her probable base.

Perhaps she thinks fellow celebs Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts will be living nearby - if you’ve never seen the film Notting Hill this won’t mean anything to you.

But good old Lindsay isn’t just thinking of herself, she’s planning the move with the new man in her life, Harry Morton.

The inseparable twosome have just spent some time in the capital, with reports claiming that Linds blew thousands in the trendy boutique shops in Notting Hill’s Portobello Road.

“I just love Notting Hill - it has some really cool shops and great restaurants,” the Mean Girls actress said.

“I’ve been looking at some properties while I’ve been over here and we’re hoping to buy something soon. I can see me and Harry really fitting in there.”

Get the bunting out.

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A Scanner Darkly

No doubt I will lose a few geek points for admitting that I didn’t know much about the Philip K. Dick book, A Scanner Darkly. I don’t know why but it just passed me by and that meant that I didn’t really know what to expect when I was taken to see A Scanner Darkly Sometimes though, I think it is actually good to go into a film without knowing too much about it. These days most films have been reviewed so many times before you see them that you almost know too much to make your own unbiased opinion of the film. Anyway, I am glad I was taken to see A Scanner Darkly because I have to say that it may well be the best film I have seen so far this year.

The real star of the film is the style in which it was shot. The rotoscope method of animation used really does bring the film to life in an amazing way. From the first moment of the film I felt as if I had jumped into a graphic novel and that feeling stayed with me until the final frame. The characters felt real as they were moving with the real timing of the actors and in some ways their movements actually felt less stifled than those often provided by an actor in a normal film.

The gist of A Scanner Darkly is that in the not too distant future, the city of Los Angles is in the middle of a battle against a highly addictive drug called “D”. “D” it taking hold of the minds of the population and a drug squad has been set up to try to tackle the problem. Keanu Reeves plays Bob Arctor, a undercover drug officer that has been given an alternative identity where he is known as “Fred” and sent in to spy on a house occupied by drug users. Bob Arctor’s identity is hid from even his employers through the use of a scramble suit that prevents his true image from being seen. While spying on this groups, Arctor has himself become addicted to “D” and the film follows his growing paranoia and the effect it has had on his mind. It is difficult to say much more without giving away too many spoilers.

Oddly, Keanu Reeves is more animated (in more ways than one) in A Scanner Darkly than he has ever been. I thought for a bit about this and figured out that it was because the animimator moved the face muscles that Reeves doesn’t use when he normally acts. It is amazing how just a little bit of facial movement can change an actor’s performance. However, the real stars of the film are Robert Downey, Jr. and Woody Harrelson who both play members of the drug house. Some of the conversations between their two characters are good that they will no doubt be quoted by geeks throughout the world in coming months. It was interesting to watch Robert Downey, Jr. in a film about drug usage because every time I watch him act I curse him for doing so many drugs and not acting enough. He is simply a fantastic actor.

A Scanner Darkly is going to be one of those films that isn’t going to be for everyone. As the end credits started the woman sitting behind me said “I, don’t get it”. I didn’t think it was at all hard to get but I am sure that for everyone that thinks it is a classic there will be two that hated it. I think it is destine to be a cult classic and I am going to be sure to read the book and gain back my geek points.

Interestingly, I see from reading IMDB that George Clooney is one of the executive producers of A Scanner Darkly. Yet another case that is showing that George Clooney is connecting himself to some the most interesting film projects going. I never would have guessed all those years ago when he was in Return of the Killer Tomatoes that he would turn out to be such a visionary.

I just hope that when Oscars time comes around that A Scanner Darkly gets the attention it deserves for special effects and doesn’t end up like Sin City that got snubbed in the nominations last year.

We’d have thought that filming love scenes with your boyfriend would actually be easier than acting them out with a stranger.

We’re talking big buck Hollywood movies here, not the adult variety, before you get any ideas.

According to Scarlett Johansson, getting down to it with her boyf Josh Hartnett on the set of The Black Dhalia was far from easy.

She has said that their love scenes were more like “organised boxing matches”.

She explained: “Obviously it was interesting doing that scene with Josh. But I have to say it wasn’t particularly romantic. Shooting those sorts of scenes always ends up being more funny than anything else.

“You have about ten electricians chewing on sandwiches and staring at you as you writhe around.

“Then you have the director (Brian De Palma) shouting orders at you to ‘move here’ and ‘put your hand there’.

“I’m glad it comes off as sexy because in real life it was more like taking part in an organised boxing match.”

(Source: Annanova)

Whether we like it or not, computers are becoming a very big part of our lives.

Obviously we don’t need to tell you that… you’re using one right now.

But one person who’s been fighting against entering the information age is Orlando Bloom.

The Pirates Of The Caribbean star has revealed that he’s only just bought his first computer. Bless.

He told US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel: “I just never wanted to buy into it… the thought of sitting down in front of a computer at the end of the day and answering a million emails…

“And then it goes wrong… you’ve got your music, your movies, your life on it and… what do you do when you lose it?”

But now Orly has succumbed to the pressure, however, he has a plan to save him from endless emails.

He added: “What I’m going to try and do is limit the number of people that have access to it so that I only have to answer my mom and my sister.”

Surely he’ll be dropping a line to his old chums at Showbiz HQ as well?

(source: Annanova)

LOS ANGELES - Their troubles were tabloid fodder and their relationship seemed to outsiders to be a mismatch. But for 14 years, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown publicly professed their love for one another. The couple’s tumultuous marriage appears to be coming to an end. Houston filed papers in Orange County Superior Court on Friday requesting a legal separation from Brown because of irreconcilable differences.

Houston’s publicist, Nancy Seltzer, said the Grammy-winning singer would have no comment on the action.

“It is a legal separation. It is not a divorce or a divorce petition,” said Phaedra Parks, an entertainment lawyer in Atlanta who represents Brown.

Houston, 43, asked that she be granted custody of the couple’s 13-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and that Brown, 37, be allowed visitation rights. She asked that property rights be determined later.

When the couple wed in 1992, Houston was one of the best-selling singers in history and was a glamorous, pop superstar with a super-clean, princess-like persona. Brown, on the other hand was a sometimes coarse R&B singer with a more street-wise image after rising to fame as a member of the boy band New Edition.

But as the years wore on, it would become hard to determine which one was more troubled. Brown - best known for hits like “My Prerogative” and “Every Little Step” - was arrested numerous times for drugs and alcohol, and once for hitting his wife, while Houston’s own battles with substance abuse sullied her image.

In a 2002 ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, an erratic-sounding and wan-looking Houston, with a profusely sweating Brown by her side, admitted dabbling in drugs but denied using crack, then uttered the now famous phrase: “Crack is wack.”

Houston checked into a drug rehabilitation program in 2004 and again in 2005, announcing the second time that she was also using prayer to help overcome her drug problems. Brown said at the time he was doing what he could to help her.

The couple did separate for a time a few years ago, but their marriage endured, despite rumors and speculation. Their life was put on display last year with Brown’s reality series, “Being Bobby Brown” on Bravo.

But earlier this year, the speculation of a possible split intensified. Brown’s sister made headlines when she alleged in a National Enquirer interview that Houston was addicted to crack.

Recently, Houston has made attempts to clean up her public image. On Tuesday night, she attended a public event with cousin Dionne Warwick and mogul and mentor Clive Davis in Beverly Hills. And she is working on an album of new material; she hasn’t released a record since 2002.

Houston won multiple Grammys in the 1980s and 1990s, including two for the megahit “I Will Always Love You,” from the 1992 film “The Bodyguard,” in which she also starred opposite Kevin Costner.

Her musician husband recently reunited with New Edition for a show at July’s Essence Musical Festival. The show got mixed reviews from the audience when Brown jumped suggestively around the stage and made vulgar remarks about his sex life with Houston.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Even in Hollywood — land of breast implants and botox — natural counts for something. So says People magazine, which on Wednesday said Jennifer Aniston topped its list of best-dressed women of 2006 for her natural fashion sense.

The popular magazine’s annual best- and worst-dressed issue hits newsstands this Friday and features numerous Hollywood stars all given a moniker to describe their taste in couture.

Oscar winner Halle Berry, dubbed “The Classic,” is No. 2 behind Aniston, and No. 3 was “The Newcomer” Jessica Alba, 25, star of movies like last summer’s hit “Fantastic Four.”

Elizabeth Sporkin, People’s executive editor, said for the first time the list was picked by online readers and not the magazine’s editors. She said Aniston, “The Natural,” won by 54 percent.

“She has a fashion sense that is very accessible,” said Sporkin. “She wears jeans and T-shirts and blazers. She dresses like a regular person, and her evening wear, if you were going to an event, you would think you could really dress like her.”

Sporkin said Alba follows more trends and Berry is a master at picking outfits that fit well. In each case, she said the list’s stars were highly identifiable to everyday people.

For the men, singer Justin Timberlake was named “Trendiest,” and English soccer star David Beckham looked best in “jacket and jeans.” George Clooney took the honor of “best monochromatic” look.

“He’s the new Cary Grant,” Sporkin said of Clooney. “All these men are men who really pay attention and care about how they look.”

Of course, there were the worst fashions of the year, too. But instead of a top 10 list, the magazine took issue with style. There was public pajama wearing by the likes of Paris Hilton and Teri Hatcher’s penchant for showing off her underwear. People devoted an entire page to Sharon Stone.

“These are well-dressed people who really messed up,” Sporkin said. “They had a bad day.”

Then again, there are “world’s worst” British pinup models Jordan and Jodie Marsh. Jordan, whose real name is Katie Price, is renowned for her breast augmentations and Jodie has worked as a topless model and a “Page Three Girl” Britain’s The Sun.

They are “famous for their tacky style,” said Sporkin.

SLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan may consider granting permission for the shooting of a film about slain U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, an official said on Thursday.

Police last month detained crew members who were shooting for the movie “A Mighty Heart” near the hotel in the southern city of Karachi from where the Wall Street Journal reporter was abducted in early 2002.

Actress Angelina Jolie will star in the movie based on Mariane Pearl’s book on the ordeal of her husband.

Officials said the Karachi shoot had been stopped because filming permission had not been granted.

“They didn’t apply for permission. They just came in without any permission and started shooting. This is not the way,” the home secretary of the southern province of Sindh, Gholam Mohtaram, told Reuters. Karachi is the capital of Sindh.

“They made ordinary people wear police uniforms and started shooting, which was objectionable.”

Mohtaram said the government would consider permission for shooting if request was made “through proper channels.”

Pearl, 38, was kidnapped in Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story on Islamist militants. He was later killed.

English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, famed for such war-based films as “Welcome to Sarajevo” and “The Road to Guantanamo,” is directing the movie.

Oscar-winning U.S. actress Jolie visited Pakistan as the U.N. refugee agency’s goodwill ambassador last year in an expression of support for the survivors of a devastating earthquake.

by Michel Comte

TORONTO (AFP) - A lack of Western movies at the Toronto film festival this week, with one beautifully shot exception, David Von Ancken’s “Seraphim Falls,” begs the question: where have all the cowboys gone?

Von Ancken’s first feature film, starring Irish-born actors Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan in a tale of revenge and redemption, is the only film in this genre at the Oscar precursor and the last of a sporadic few in recent years.

Some suggest that US President George W. Bush, often described as a cowboy for his foreign policies and whose popularity has waned in his second term, has hurt the burly cowboy image and the Wild West genre.

Others point to a young breed of Hollywood producers who do not identify with the genre, as well as slumping ticket sales, and fears of spiraling production costs for features mostly shot outdoors and vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

“George Bush is a fake cowboy with very little substance,” Von Ancken told AFP. “This film is not about the president clearing brush on his ranch for a photo op, it’s about two men linked by their rage.”

“There is even an anti-war sentiment in this film because the two main characters are trying to work out their feelings about their war-time experiences in a post US-civil war era,” he noted.

“I think there is a reservoir of people interested in the genre who just don’t get to feed in that trough very often,” he insisted.

“But there is a big risk in making them, particularly if it’s an expensive production, because most of the action is filmed outdoors and you risk being washed out by the elements. Most studios will not take that inherent risk,” he said. “We filmed 47 out of 48 days outside with no cover.”

Film festival co-director Noah Cowan said only a handful of Westerns were offered to be shown here, and only one was chosen because audiences are no longer enthralled with cowboys.

The genre is “old-fashioned and young Hollywood doesn’t see its future in the Western,” he said.

“There are still a lot of liberals in the mountains and on the plains and if cowboy films are what they wanted to see, they’d go see them,” Cowan said. “But they’re not, and so producers are not financing them.”

But, “the iconography of being a cowboy remains a very potent symbol in American life regardless of their feelings towards
President Bush,” he added.

A few scenes in a handful of films shown at the festival poke fun at the cowboy stereotype.

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev in a Stetson in the film “Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” tries to greet a homophobic cowboy at a rodeo with a kiss on both cheeks, but is rebuffed.

And, actor Forest Whitaker in “The Last King of Scotland” re-enacts Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s much-publicized lassoing of his ministers at a party.

In Von Ancken’s film, Neeson and Brosnan follow in the footsteps of their gritty hero, actor Clint Eastwood, in “Unforgiven” (1992) which saw men begging instead of dying stoically, and irredeemable characters executing revenge instead of good guys saving the day.

Classic Westerns, such as those by John Ford, relied on simple storytelling: a white hat represents the good guy, a black hat represents the bad guy, and a showdown on a deserted street is likely to resolve their differences.

Since the 1970s, several films have undermined this premise, including Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” (1990) which presented Native Americans as good and the US Cavalry as bad.

Coincidentally, Costner was in Toronto this week to promote Andrew Davis’ film “The Guardian,” not part of the festival, with co-star Ashton Kutcher.

“Seraphim Falls” continues the trend of “inverted Westerns”.

“It is a Western, but not a purist Western,” said Von Ancken. “Pierce is the bad guy, but his character is more layered. It’s a parable about violence begetting violence, but also a chase movie from the snow-covered Rocky Mountains to the desert.”

The hunt begins with Gideon (Brosnan) evading capture by Colonel Morsman Carver (Neeson) while painfully trying to cut gunshot out of his arm. Brosnan’s brilliant performance was felt by Toronto audiences who winced and screamed with him at its world premiere here.

“It was cold. You didn’t have to act cold,” Brosnan said about shooting the scene in minus 36 degrees Celsius weather.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Penelope Cruz channels the ghost of Italian earth mother actress Anna Magnani and Forest Whitaker hunts for the tangled soul of dictator Idi Amin.

Meanwhile, Peter O’Toole plays Peter O’Toole in a movie about an aging actor with an eye for the ladies and a hand for the drinks.

Superlative acting has captured the buzz at the Toronto International Festival, setting the stage for the Oscar campaigns to come.

With the Film Festival set to wind up on Saturday, the talk has centered about blowout performances of a handful of actors — some stars, others respected journeymen who reinvigorate their careers after years of working less and less.

Among names most mentioned are Cruz in “Volver,” Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in “Babel,” O’Toole in “Venus,” Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent in “Away from Her,” Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley in “Little Children,” Whitaker for “Last King of Scotland” and
Sean Penn in “All the King’s Men.”

“‘Volver’ just exploded at Toronto. The critics went wild for it and for Cruz. There is a sudden respect for her as a serious actress,” said Oscars expert Tom O’Neil, an online columnist for The Envelope.Com.

“One critic told me that he had seen her make bad movies in French, Spanish and English and now she was making up for it,” he said, noting that the Spanish-language Pedro Almodovar film could catch an Oscar nomination for best film as well as one for Cruz.

Cruz called the film her most satisfying movie experience yet and said she could not bear to part with the false ass that Almodovar had her wear to make her feel and look like the heroine of a gritty 1950s Italian movie.

BUZZ FOR WHITAKER

Whitaker, who returned to acting two years ago after a five-year gap, is also the talk of the festival. His performance is getting a similar buzz to what Philip Seymour Hoffman received in Toronto last year for “Capote,” a role for which he later won an Oscar.

Whitaker said he searched for Amin’s soul. He did enormous research into the man, talking to many people who knew him, studying documentaries and television films and working with a voice coach who helped lower the register of his own voice. The result, according to many film experts, is movie magic.

The 74-year-old O’Toole, who is tied with Richard Burton for the most Oscar nominations without a victory, seven, is being touted as a certain nominee for his work as an aging English actor who falls for the grandniece of a friend.

The Hollywood Reporter said the film “hands the accomplished actor one of his best roles in years and he masterfully runs with it.”

And when O’Toole canceled a trip to Toronto, many worried if he would turn out to be as ill and frail as he looked in the film. A spokesman said it was only a minor problem.

Veteran New York film critic Rex Reed says he would give the entire cast of “Babel” — professionals and nonprofessionals — Oscar nominations. But since he can’t do that, he would opt for best supporting Oscars nominations for Blanchett and Pitt. “I was shattered by that film,” Reed said.

Other critics are raving about Todd Field’s new film “Little Children,” which stars Winslet as a suburban housewife who has an affair. Haley, a onetime child actor, plays a man who exposes himself to children.

Christie, 65, a legendary actress who appears in few films these days, plays a woman destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease while Pinsent plays her loving husband.

Many have hailed Sean Penn’s portrayal of a Southern demagogue in “All the King’s Men” but the film itself received a mixed reception. A small man physically, Penn bulks up as he plays a character based on the late Louisiana Gov. Huey Long — like all good actors, he transforms himself.