Meryl does Maggie

Queen of Hollywood MERYL STREEP (deserving of capitals) is set to play Britain's only female Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a biopic due out later this year.

The film is entitled The Iron Lady, the nickname Maggie was given for destroying Britain's welfare system and generally being a cold-heart bitch. Her evil is evidenced by a close friendship with US President Ronald Regan, the man responsible for today's dependency on the merry-go-round of stock markets. Can't wait to see how Meryl tackles this one...

Here are few of my favourite Meryl moments.

 

Bloody brilliant mate

Hæven (In a Better World) is a superb recent film by Danish director Sussane Bier which won Best Foreign Language Film at this year Oscars. The film is quintessentially Scandinavian – intelligent, beautiful and emotionally restrained. And it is heavy in the enjoyable sense of the term.

Marty up to some news tricks

I love Martin Scorsese. Many of his films - Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Age of Innocence - are among my favourite and I think his understated storytelling is magical.

Marty's latest creation is a HBO show about prohibition era America, the fascinating decade when the American government banned alcohol. As Boardwalk Empire shows, the illegalisation of liquor had no effect on the amount of it that was drunken (alchol consumption in fact increased during the prohibion years). Rather, a black market for alcohol made a bunch of gangsters rich, and these bootleggers are the protagonists of Scorsese's latest venture.

Although Marty only directed the (world's most expensive ever) pilot episode, he is involved with the show as a producer. The characters teeter on the edge of good and evil in a manner that is trademark Scorsese. Starring hot-as-hell Michael Pitt as a jaded World War I veteran, and the unfailable Steve Bucemi as crooked Atlantic City mayor Nucky Thompson, the show is well-acted, well-conceived and well worth checking out.

A painful Howl

Watched Howl last night, a biopic about Allen Ginsberg, the Beatnik poet who helped fund Jack Kerouac's famous book On the Road. Even though the film features James Franco kissing boys and what not, I really didn't like it. Half the movie is animated recitals of Ginsberg's poems and the plot is sparse - unless you're a massively into poetry, I would say don't even bother.

If only they were real

1. Cher from Clueless.

Cher is the apple of my eye and the voice of a self-assured, self-obsessed, whatever-ing generatation of mall rats who aren't quite as superficial as we seem.


2. Igby from Igby Goes Down.

Igby makes being a brat look oh so much fun. Why not be one, eh, when you're "drowning in assholes" as he aptly puts it.


3. Joan from Mad Men.

   

Joan is one sassy lady: intelligent, rambunctious and delicious. Despite her subordinate social position as a secretary in the 1960s, Joan almost always manages to put the boys in their place.


4. Lester from American Beauty.

In the film's opening scenes, Lester is painfully aware of his own shortcomings and sadly notes that after his morning wank in the shower, "it's all down hill from here". Watching Lester grow some balls through the course of the movie gets me everytime.


5. Romy and Michelle from Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion.

Most loveable friendship ever! Their impromptu dance number is a classic.

Nollywood rising

Unbeknownst to most cinema lovers, there is a film revolution currently going on in Africa.

'Nollywood' is the umbrella term for the explosion of video-films from Nigeria and Ghana over the past fifteen years. Rather than using traditional celluloid film which is infeasibly expensive for African film-makers, Nollywood directors shoot directly onto video. What began with a few experimental videographers making quick, cheap video-films and selling them at markets has become a popular entertainment industry that has reshaped the way Africans watch movies..... Read the rest of my article on 'Nollywood' here.

South African photographer Pieter Hugo shot a series of photographs in 2008-2009 entitled 'Nollywood'. Taken in Nigeria, Hugo's series deals with country's connection to film, the wild passions and supernatural elements which run through their video-film industry, and the history of violence which pollutes much of Africa.

 

The Social Network stinks

The Social Network won the Golden Globe award for best drama film, and it looks set to win the Oscar for best film. The only reason I can think of for the film's unworthy glory is that it was released at a time when Facebook is very relevant and is something people want to investigate more. Sadly though, this film says absolutely nothing interesting about Facebook itself.

His face sums up how I felt about the movie

With all the accolades and hype directed towards The Social Network, I sat down to watch the biopic on Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg with expectations of quality. I found the film so unenjoyable that I wondered if I'd downloaded some pirated version which included all the bad cuts like the film in Broken Embraces. In a single word, I found The Social Network a chore: tedious and slow-paced with one-dimensional characters and uninspiring cinematography. Zuckerbeg is portrayed as a friend and money-hungry villain while Napster creator Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) is an equally cliched character, filling the bad boy mould.

What a disappointment from David Fincher, the mastermind director of Fight Club some moons ago. Fincher's story-telling has no finesse. Rather than investigate the motivations of Zuckerberg's actions, the film constantly flashes forward to a dreary legal battle over who founded Facebook. In fact, the film mostly steers clear of discussing the nature of Facebook and its effect upon society which would have given the film a greater sense of purpose. (For an interesting discussion of Facebook, check out Time magazine's feature on Zuckerberg as their Person of the Year 2011). 

The Social Network stinks, and in my view isn't much that sets it apart from your average Hollywood, rich-kid, college flick. If I could have the two hours back, I would rather spend them on Facebook.

Am I walking upside down?

Andrew Grrfield

Andrew Garfield looks like that little brother of your friend who just grew a foot and got hot, but at the same time he has a European male model look about him and then again something about him has Hollywood written all over. Andrew is also ticking multiple boxes in terms of his career. He is phenomenal in the chilling British film Never Let Me Go, is sole shining light in the extraordinarily overated The Social Network and has just finished playing the title character in the latest Spider-Man. Talk about it boy!

Here is Andrew with model Lily Cole in a cute shoot they did with Annie Leibowitz for Vogue in 2009 reinacting ye olde Hansel and Gretel story. And who better to play the witch than Lady Gaga?

Andrew and Lily quiz each other rather entertainingly in a Dazed Digitial interview here.

Wasted beauty.

A star Hollywood in his own right, Ryan O'Neal is better known as Farrah Fawcett's other half. They were the golden couple of the 1980s, the perfect specimens of male and female beauty. Adultery, alcholism and many poor decisions left them haggard shadows of their former selves, most of which is captured in an absolutely horrific recent reality show tracking Farrah's demise with cancer.

O'Neal is reknowned for acting like an ass. He has four children from three different wives, the oldest of the four being Tatum O'Neal who has stated that her father offered her cocaine at age 12. They had become so estranged that at Farrah's funeral, Ryan mistook Tatum for an attractive stranger and tried to hit on her.

In 2007 Ryan was accused of physically assulting his young, Redmund, the only one of his children he is still in contact with. Redmund, the only child Ryan had with Farrah, has since been sent to jail, allowed to leave only attend his mother's funeral.

I recently watched him in What's Up Doc?, a screwball 1972 comedy co-starring Barbara Streisand, and was blown away by how handsome he was in his youth. It is strange to watch a celebrity on screen look so flawless and know what a mess they will make of themselves in the years to come.

More teen angst

Meet my new friend Gregg Araki.

Gregg is a visionary director who created the cult classic Mysterious Skin as well as lesser known, self-titled 'homo films'. An atmosphere of hostility and sexual depravity pervades his films from the close-up to the background. The shampoo bottle rape scene in Mysterious Skin is burnt into the mind of anyone who has seen the heartbreaking story of a mid-Western hustler...

Araki is no lightweight in getting his message across. His films are heavy, often depicting sadistic gay bashings, but this violence is not simply for shock value. He uses violence to recreate the hostility - real or imagined - which his characters feel from the rest of society due to their deviation from the norm. Totally F**cked Up, The Doomed Generation and Nowhere are Araki's self-titled 'homo films' starring James Duval (best known as the rabbit guy from Donnie Darko). Each installment of the mid '90s triology are about a completely different type of gayness, threaded together by the theme of teenage angst and alienation.

The trilogy features teens sleeping around, high on meth binges, generally acting out and trying to make sense of their lives. These are exactly the type of films that queer youths should watch to understand that there are gay guys and girls out who feel alienated from mainstream society, and sometimes, even from the gay community. The power is cinema lies in the fact that we define ourselves from the films we watch in our formative years, so I hope Araki's films have helped some  homo kids feel less alone.

Cinematic salivation

Okay, this one is going to be good. Black Swan looks like a psychological thriller of impeccable quality as it is directed by the superb Darren Arofonksy, the man responsible for Requiem For a Dream and The Wrestler. Think Single White Female crossed with Fight Club crossed with Centre Stage.

I believe Natalie Portman is the actress of her generation. She intelligently chooses her roles based on both public appeal and artistic merit and there are rumours that Black Swan could bring her some Oscars glory. And Portman is supported by a superb cast - Winona Ryder makes an appearance and Mila Kunis has finally been given a challenging role.

New Years resolution - quit reality TV

Ever since the trail-blazing 1960s, a democratisation of entertainment has occured in which 'high' forms of art and culture no longer dominate our collective imaginary. To put that in less of an arse-to-mouth academic kind of way, we began to believe that things such as pop music and soap operas can be equally as nourishing as, say, a Beethoven symphony or a Jane Austin novel. This trend reached fever-pitch around the year 2000 when the world got bitten by the reality TV bug. The success of shows such as Survivor and Big Brother caused self-righteous individuals across the world to proclaim the death of culture, and the deterioration of entertainment.

Very much a child of my generation, I was swept up in the reality TV buzz. The social aspect of the shows like Survivor is perhaps what is most fascinating about them, they are a bizarre microcosm of life. A large dose of narcissism also fuels the intrigue of reality TV - watching everyday people in extreme situations causes one to picture themselves in the same environment. The high drama of shows such as The X Factor makes the viewer feel as though the contestants are really acheiving something, and that you are fortunate just to be a spectator.

When I think back to the hours I have spent waiting to find out who is in the bottom three of So You Think Can Dance, listening to the Big Brother housemates' drivel, or writing a 100,000 word Survivor fan-fiction story at age fourteen, I feel a little sad, and can't help but wonder if those hours could have been spent more wisely.

Shows such as The Sopranos and Mad Men highlight the fact that television can be an artful medium, but there is no art in reality TV. Just a jack-off formula intended to pull at the heart-strings and test your nerves. The maximum pleasure that can possibly be gained from reality TV is the equivalent of, say, eating a Big Mac meal: a hedonistic thrill that is enjoyable at the time but pretty depressing in hindsight.

Television networks realise that the reality TV is both cheap to produce and easy to market, and are therefore less willing to fund other types of programs. Why would a bottom-dollar network boss want to fund scriptwriters, actors and a director for a drama which could possibly flop when they can stick six disgustingly stereotypical Italian-American 'guidos' in a house for two months and come up with the small-screen goldmine that was Jersey Shore. The show would have cost MTV peanuts to make and was so successful that it has been credited with driving an 8% surge in revenue for MTV's umbrella company Viacom.

No matter how ridiculous the show, it's no great gamble for networks, so there is no reason for reality TV to disappear anytime soon. This worries me because reality TV is fast becoming all that people watch on the box, and I don't think can be a good thing for our collective intelligence. I'm sick of waiting an ad break for some result, I'm sick of commentating voice-overs which insult my intelligence and I'm sick of the dodgy editing which repeats snippets of imagery week after week.

You can sing all you like about entertainment for entertainment's sake, but I've quit reality TV because I deserve better.