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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/sep/03/great-movies-chick-flicks" title="The Runaways proves that films which appeal to a female audience aren\'t always the preserve of the baldly commercialThis time next week the aroma of 1975 will be hanging in the air like a pair of mouldering Converse trainers. Its source will be The Runaw..." target="_blank">Just don\'t call em chick flicks ?</a><br />');
document.write('The Runaways proves that films which appeal to a female audience aren\'t always the preserve of the baldly commercialThis time next week the aroma of 1975 will be hanging in the air like a pair of mouldering Converse trainers. Its source will be The Runaways, a biopic of the historic all-girl punk-pop band led by the then-teenage Joan Jett. A snappy, vivid picture with the sullen mopiness of Kristen Stewart actually making perfect sense in her performance as Jett, it\'s a movie I sincerely enjoyed. And yet many women I know who have seen it have responded with such smitten intensity to its rock\'n\'roll rites of passage theme that I can\'t help feeling I\'m missing something ? maybe, at least in part, because I\'m a man.Perhaps it\'s not so strange ? though I was a teenage misfit, I wasn\'t a teenage girl misfit. The script\'s central motifs ? the bonds between sisters (of all kinds), learning to channel one\'s essential hotness ? aren\'t things of which I have much experience. But the difference in reactions still surprises me. Part of that, I suppose, is hubris ? so it\'s useful to be reminded that none of us are quite so worldly our opinions aren\'t beyond being influenced by our hormones. There\'s also the fact that movies which appeal to one particular sex are usually the preserve of the baldly commercial ? Sex and the City 2 or The Expendables, rather than fuzzy homages to punk-rock folklore.Until it struck me that The Runaways wasn\'t the first movie that left me appreciating its virtues while feeling a little ... excluded. If there\'s one film whose shadow falls long across the story of Jett and troubled Runaways front-girl Cherie Currie, it\'s Sofia Coppola\'s The Virgin Suicides, another movie I happily wandered out of oblivious to the spell its portrait of 70s girlhood would have on many women. And the nub of the confusion was that the onscreen reference points I didn\'t quite get weren\'t the obvious ones ? it wasn\'t period pains that eluded me, it was the significance of charm bracelets and unicorns doodled in diaries and the nameless mood that female friends recognised on sight.Sometimes the answer looks simple. I think about the way I dug Drew Barrymore\'s roller-derby opus Whip It, while being  aware that, on some level, it really wasn\'t made for me. Meanwhile, I never once felt even remotely disoriented by Ridley Scott\'s Thelma and Louise, and conclude it\'s all down to the presence of a woman director. But if that\'s the case, why would Lynne Ramsay\'s Morvern Callar always leave me feeling as if I\'m watching a film made, if not in a different emotional language to my own, then certainly a strong regional dialect ? while Andrea Arnold\'s Fish Tank feels instantly familiar?Maybe what\'s also telling here is that, as a man, I think of so many of my own favourite films as gender-neutral ? when most are probably anything but. Because (with all due apologies for any crass generalisations), I do wonder if a woman looks at, say, The Shining or Brighton Rock or After Hours the same way I do, given the way they deal with female characters. And I don\'t even think of them as being told from a male point of view. I suppose that\'s one of the things about living as a man in a man\'s world ? most of the time, you don\'t even know you\'re doing it.DramaPeriod and historicalWomenDanny Leighguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/sep/03/sean-connery-comeback" title="Now 80, the former Bond star has vowed never to act again. He should reconsider and find one last great role to erase the memory of a decade of dudsIt\'s hard not to feel a bit conned when an actor retires. That might be because acting doesn\'t seem like ..." target="_blank">Connery: you\'re no quitter</a><br />');
document.write('Now 80, the former Bond star has vowed never to act again. He should reconsider and find one last great role to erase the memory of a decade of dudsIt\'s hard not to feel a bit conned when an actor retires. That might be because acting doesn\'t seem like  a real job. Putting on fancy clothes and pretending to be wittier and more athletic than you really are, in exchange for piles of cash and widespread adulation, doesn\'t seem like the sort of thing a normal person could ever grow sick of.I\'m bringing this up because, to mark his 80th birthday last week, Sean Connery reiterated his desire to never act again. Fair enough, you might say ? he\'s been acting since the mid 50s and doesn\'t need the money. If you lived in a house as palatial as his residence in the Bahamas then your desire to work probably wouldn\'t be particularly intense either. He was right to bow out while on top. It\'s better to burn out than to fade away, after all.Except Connery didn\'t manage to bow out while on top. He burned out, but he had faded away long before that. Look at the last few films Connery made. There was Entrapment in 1999, characterised by an unsettling four-decade age chasm with love interest Catherine Zeta-Jones. There was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2003, where he essentially just ran around headbutting people. There was a Michael Bay film. There was even, God help us all, The Avengers.And this is why his determination to never act again is such a shame. Sure, his retirement has ensured he\'s avoided even more stinkers ? he wisely avoided any involvement in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, for example ? but it also means that he\'ll never be able to crown his career with the sort of masterful performance that has already helped to define his peers.Think Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt, Peter O\'Toole in Venus, Paul Newman in Road to Perdition, or about 85% of the roles that Michael Caine has accepted in the past decade. These parts demanded the actors to play men of their own age, stripped of the bravado of their prime years and informed by the vulnerability and sense of loss a younger actor could never hope to replicate.To be fair, this kind of role has never really been Connery\'s style. He\'s always been more of a movie star than an actor, preferring to bludgeon his way through performances than lose himself in a role. There\'s no doubt he\'s capable of poignancy when it\'s most needed ? his spoken-word rendition of In My Life from George Martin\'s otherwise execrable album of Beatles cover versions is almost unbearably tender ? but bullishness was always more his bag. Take 2000\'s Finding Forrester, for example. Most actors would have found something sympathetic in his reclusive author, but Connery chose to imbue the character with a steely aloofness that\'s much more him.That said, I\'m still convinced that Connery has one last great dramatic role in him and, however much fun retirement is, I\'d love nothing more than to yank him out of it and get him back working. The comeback could be a triumph, or it could be a horrible failure, but at least he\'ll have tried. And, if nothing else, it would mean that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wouldn\'t be his final film. That alone has to be worth something.Sean ConneryStuart Heritageguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/03/somewhere-sofia-coppola-venice-film-festival" title="Sofia Coppola returns to the daddy-daughter theme but audiences are likely to be left bemused or exasperatedLike Monet returning to his lilies, though with perhaps diminishing effect, filmmaker Sofia Coppola has returned to the daddy-daughter theme and to..." target="_blank">Somewhere: daddy direst</a><br />');
document.write('Sofia Coppola returns to the daddy-daughter theme but audiences are likely to be left bemused or exasperatedLike Monet returning to his lilies, though with perhaps diminishing effect, filmmaker Sofia Coppola has returned to the daddy-daughter theme and to the world of flat, blank, affectless movie actors in flat, blank, affectless hotel rooms.Weirdly, the movie looks like an acidly satirical comedy about LA celebrity but with all the acidly satirical comedy removed, so that all that is left is a skeleton outline, a series of scenes and locations ? hotel rooms, lobbies, swimming pools, luxury automobile interiors ? in which essentially gentle, forgiving dialogue takes place.In her tremendously funny breakthrough movie Lost in Translation (2003), Bill Murray played an ageing, lonely actor on a trip to Tokyo, who finds fleeting companionship and even a kind of redemption in the friendship he strikes up with young and vulnerable Scarlett Johansson; their relationship morphs from platonic flirt to a touchingly paternal care.Here, Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a pampered movie actor, holed up in the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles ? a self-absorbed guy who is fawned upon by assistants, producers and especially beautiful women.He is vaguely troubled by a suspicion that his life is going nowhere ? a fact ironically signalled by the title and by the opening, pedantic sequence showing Johnny driving his Ferrari round and round in circles.Yet he is more borderline asshole than anything else, and never does anything really bad. Then his troubled ex-wife shows up, announces that she needs time for herself and leaves him to look after their 11-year-old daughter Cleo, played by Elle Fanning.In another type of movie, this girl would be a sharp-tongued, feisty, wise-beyond-her-years cutester who would cheerfully wreck Johnny\'s selfish adventures in boozing and womanising, and after a few screaming matches, force him to find the real spiritual values of fatherhood. But this never happens. Adorable Cleo just smiles sweetly at him and goes along with everything ? more or less like everyone else in his life; there is only the blandest and most lenient recrimination right at the end.Occasionally, Johnny gets angry texts from women he has bedded and forgotten about, and there\'s even a confrontation, but this is smoothed over without any fuss.He goes along to Cleo\'s skating lessons and beamingly applauds in much the way he applauds the two strippers who poledance for him in his suite. Yet his louche lifestyle never contaminates his relationship with his daughter. Cleo actually shares a bed with Johnny, but there is never the smallest suggestion of anything unwholesome or inappropriate in the arrangement.Somewhere is a movie which just floats through its running time without any sort of crisis, other than the subtle, insidious crisis of identity creeping up on Johnny.The movie is, arguably, far truer to life than a more obviously scripted account, and there are some nice touches ? for his \"old man\" makeup, Johnny has to endure a plaster mould slathered all over his head with breathing holes left for his nostrils. Like some monster or Egyptian mummy, we see him stifling with loneliness. Cocooned in celebrity, he can make contact with no one.Coppola is arguably very indulgent to both daddy and daughter, and to the rich and famous generally, and audiences may be bemused or exasperated, according to taste.For all the similarities, this does not have the brilliant seriocomic moments of Lost in Translation. If that was her hit single, then this is its B-side.Rating: 2/5Venice film festivalFestivalsDramaPeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/sep/03/judging-venice-film-festival" title="The Italian press is giving Quentin Tarantino a hard time with \'conflict-of-interest\' questions and the Lido looks like a construction site, but nothing can dampen the festival spiritThis year\'s Venice film festival has begun on rather a disconcerting ..." target="_blank">Who\'s judging whom in Venice?</a><br />');
document.write('The Italian press is giving Quentin Tarantino a hard time with \'conflict-of-interest\' questions and the Lido looks like a construction site, but nothing can dampen the festival spiritThis year\'s Venice film festival has begun on rather a disconcerting note: the colossal construction project on the Lido, building a new addition to the Palazzo Del Cinema, is far from complete ? to the dismay of festivalgoers who hoped that it might be ready in time for the beginning of this year\'s event. No such luck. So the red carpet premieres are happening next door to a huge, unsightly, screened-off building site, with everything but \"No hard hat, no work\" signs and men with jeans sliding down their buttocks asking for a cup of tea.And what makes it even more piquant is that more building work is taking place just up the road. The Hotel Des Bains, famously the location for Visconti\'s Death in Venice ? and from whose elegant precincts Dirk Bogarde would totter forth to gaze upon young male loveliness on the hotel\'s private beach ? is to close. It will be reinvented as luxury apartments, reportedly part of the city\'s plan to reinvent the Lido as a glitzy resort to compete with the French Riviera, a plan that can only work if the standard of retail therapy is seriously improved. At the moment, it\'s notable for tobacconists, supermarkets and cafes ? which is why, incidentally, the Lido is so much liked by people who come to Venice and appreciate its laid-back charm. Every day , I walk to the festival centre from my hotel along the Via Lepanto, and every day I am struck by its quiet beauty and the fact that it looks like a real place where real people live and work.Jury president, Quentin Tarantino, has been greeted mischievously by the Italian press with \"conflict-of-interest\" questions about his links to directors whose work is showing at the Venice film festival.Robert Rodriguez is presenting his outrageous cod B-movie schlocker Machete, which grew out of a mock trailer appearing in the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse double bill. The film is, in fact, scheduled out of competition, and so Tarantino is not in a position to award it any prizes, but Sofia Coppola, whom the papers have not hesitated to announce as his ex-girlfriend (they dated briefly), has a film in competition: Somewhere, starring Stephen Dorff.Tarantino remarked: \"I hope that my integrity speaks for itself. There are many directors that I know well. The fear, however, is that the friendship will get in the way and they will not come to be appreciated for their real value. I do not have these qualms. It doesn\'t matter who made a film.\"The festival certainly made a sexy start with Darren Aronofsky\'s madly over-the-top psychosexual thriller Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman as a troubled ballerina, and Tran Anh Hung\'s Norwegian Wood, based on the Haruki Murakami novel, has been much admired.The consensus so far is that this is a lively festival with, on paper, a strong competition list. A prominent voice in the coverage, incidentally, is industry bible Variety, which provides a daily festival paper. It is widely read here, and in Jordan Mintzer\'s review of Bertrand Blier\'s movie The Clink of Ice, this journal displayed its legendary, if somewhat eccentric propensity for snappy links, wacky wordplay and using the movie\'s theme metaphorically to discuss its commercial prospects. The Clink of Ice is a black comedy about a man suffering from terminal cancer, which Mintzer summarised: \"Wide-scale French rollout should metastasize into good overseas biz following the pic\'s international bow in Venice.\"Hmm. Let\'s hope any second opinions about the subject matter don\'t put the box office numbers into remission, and that the chemotherapy of indifference doesn\'t shrink the tumour of profit.Venice film festivalFestivalsQuentin TarantinoItalyDarren AronofskyPeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/sep/03/the-last-exorcism" title="Taking its lead from The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Daniel Stamm\'s creepy Bible-belt horror casts out the genre\'s demons, says Xan BrooksXan BrooksHenry Barnes..." target="_blank">The Last Exorcism: \'Makes an old trick feel fresh and vital\'</a><br />');
document.write('Taking its lead from The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, Daniel Stamm\'s creepy Bible-belt horror casts out the genre\'s demons, says Xan BrooksXan BrooksHenry Barnes');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/02/ray-winstone-decca-aitkenhead-actor" title="Ray Winstone plays troubled hardmen with such conviction, it\'s easy to believe he\'s not acting. He talks about his violent past, happy-go-lucky nature and love of westernsAccording to an old Fleet Street adage, it is a bad idea to interview your heroes...." target="_blank">\'I used to be a raving lunatic\'</a><br />');
document.write('Ray Winstone plays troubled hardmen with such conviction, it\'s easy to believe he\'s not acting. He talks about his violent past, happy-go-lucky nature and love of westernsAccording to an old Fleet Street adage, it is a bad idea to interview your heroes. As I don\'t have very many, however, the situation seldom arises. But the warning began to make sense while I was getting ready to meet Ray Winstone, for it\'s hard not to be at least a bit in love with him. So if he turned out to be a twit, I worried, it would be disproportionately upsetting.Winstone is the East End\'s answer to George Clooney ? the opposite of a luvvie, unaffected and occasionally ungovernable, the kind of man with whom men want to get drunk, and women want to sleep. Haunting performances as a wife-beater in Nil by Mouth, and a retired robber in Sexy Beast, elevated him to the attention of Hollywood, yet despite starring in films by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg he has stayed in Essex, where he lives with his wife of 30 years. He turned down the part of McNulty in The Wire just because he didn\'t want to uproot his youngest daughter to the US, and everyone who works with him says how lovely he is ? great fun, down to earth, an authentic diamond geezer.So I arrive at an exclusive private members\' club in east London feeling mildly uneasy. The feeling lasts for less than a second, replaced by the disorientating sensation of having already met him, so exactly is Winstone as you\'d hope him to be. He only chose the swanky venue, he explains, because you can smoke on the terrace, and \"I was here in 30 minutes ? straight dahn the M11, Old Ford Road and I\'m \'ere.\" He likes being able to get to see West Ham easily, he adds ? \"keep in touch with my roots\" ? but is having a crisis of faith in football, after England\'s World Cup performance.\"I don\'t think I can go to football any more. It\'s doing my head in. The lack of passion, it was embarrassing, really embarrassing. Any other profession in the world, if you performed like that, well, you wouldn\'t get a job. You\'d be sacked. And I\'m, I\'m kind of tired of watching people roll about on the floor ? the cheating side of it. I think it\'s about time they started acting like men, I really do.\"Masculinity, it would be fair to say, means a great deal to Winstone. He has that solid, low centre of gravity you find in men who are unusually at ease in their own skin, and a twinkly air of old-fashioned amazement at the silliness of modern metropolitan ideas. Was that, I ask, why he has agreed to promote a western season on the cable channel TCM?\"I just love westerns. One of my favourite actors is John Wayne, probably one of the most underrated actors there\'s ever been. He\'s quite an incredible actor. He had this way of being a big man, a big tough man, but he can almost show a sadness on his face ? very much in the way James Stewart was, and Henry Fonda, you know? But because they were known as classical actors they got the recognition, didn\'t they?\"It sounds as if he might identify with this description. \"Yeah, I think so,\" he agrees. \"I remember watching The Long Good Friday [starring Bob Hoskins] one evening, and all the swearwords were bleeped out. Then the following week there was a film on with Laurence Olivier, Sir Laurence Olivier? Set in Italy, I think it was. And he swears in it ? but he\'s allowed to swear. Because he\'s a classical actor. And poor old Bob comes from Luton. And I remember thinking to myself, why on earth is Sir Laurence allowed to say fuck? Does it sound better or something? And Bob from Luton ain\'t. What, is it less offensive?\"Kathy Burke, Winstone\'s great friend and co-star in Nil by Mouth, has complained in the past that critics \"forget that we\'re actors. Just because we tend to appear in things with our own accents, saying dialogue that comes naturally to us, people think we\'re just being ourselves.\" When I ask Winstone if he agrees, for a moment he hesitates, as if wary of sounding like a whinger.\"Well ? well, yeah. You kind of think ? well, to me it\'s about believing in the character you\'re watching on screen. And I\'ve worked with directors who want to know you\'re acting. But I don\'t want to see the acting thing in it. Gary [Oldman] used to say, \'I can see you acting, Raymond.\' And I\'d go right, OK, let\'s do it again.\" His dramatic realism, he says, is more appreciated in the US. \"They kind of get it. But here, I see things here that say, well that\'s just Ray, innit? Well, OK, but no, it\'s not. I don\'t beat my wife, and I don\'t rape my kids, and I don\'t snort cocaine and go out and beat people. What, that\'s me? Well, what is Robert De Niro? What\'s Al Pacino? I don\'t count myself in that class, but you know, you\'ve got to be believable. You either believe in what you\'re doing or you don\'t, and I kind of believe in what I\'m doing so I just do it that way.\"When Winstone first appeared in the 1977 BBC television play Scum, he was so believable as a violent borstal inmate that the programme was banned, but re-made for cinema two years later. Winstone had just returned from his honeymoon and was completely unprepared for the mayhem that greeted the film\'s Leicester Square premiere. \"It was quite mad,\" he chuckles. \"My wife probably thought, \'Ooh, I\'ve had a right result here.\'\"If so, she was in for a disappointment, as her husband\'s early promise soon began to unravel into bit parts, punch-ups, too much resting and raucous partying. Born in Hackney in 1957, the son of a fruit-and-veg market stall trader, Winstone had been a schoolboy boxing champion but got just a single CSE in drama, and was expelled from drama school for vandalising the head\'s car. His performance in Scum began to look like one of those rare, mercurial moments of unrepeatable inspiration ? and he admits that, in truth, \"technically and all that, I wasn\'t good enough\".Living in a two-bedroom London council flat with his wife and two young daughters, he wound up bankrupt. \"I just didn\'t know how to handle money. It was my fault. I wasn\'t earning a lot of money, I got 1,800 quid for Scum, and when I worked we was just spending it. It was just like a laugh, you know?\"Wasn\'t he worried? \"No, I\'ve never really worried about anything, you know. Well, that\'s my trouble, I don\'t get stressed. No, if I did I\'d have probably not got into the situation in the first place. I remember being indoors one day and we got a cheque through the post for Robin of Sherwood. And instead of paying the tax we went on holiday. \'Come on, let\'s go on holiday, you only live once and all that. We\'ll worry about the rest tomorrow.\'\"But after a while I thought I was probably wasting my time, and I should go out and get a proper job. I couldn\'t really see myself as an actor. I don\'t know, I just thought it\'s not really for me, this.\" He doesn\'t know what else he\'d have done ? \"Haven\'t got a clue, babes\" ? but maintains he\'d still have been happy. \"Well, knowing the mentality of me I probably would have been. Yeah, I\'m sure I would have been.\"I don\'t think he can have been quite as happy as he says, though, because he was forever getting into fights ? though in fairness even this memory doesn\'t seem to trouble him. \"I mean, I was punching people and everything,\" he recalls with a wolfish grin. \"They deserved it, don\'t worry. A couple of things happened on set where I thought people were rude and that, and they got a clump. I remember years ago I was an extra, just an extra, and instead of asking me to move ? he was a big fella ? the director just picked me up and moved me. And I headbutted him. You know, he shouldn\'t have done that, but I shouldn\'t have done that either. I just done it.\"What did you think afterwards? \"Well, he deserved it. Then another director, he was so rude all the time ? he was molestering [sic] people, I thought ? and I was with my little girl, and he started digging me up at a party. And I give it \'im an\' all, he got it.\" He grins, then shrugs philosophically. \"But it\'s all part of growing up I guess.\" I wonder what his wife said. \"Well, Elaine was with me. She said, have you finished now? She said we\'d best go now. And she drove us home.\" She sounds remarkably sanguine, I laugh. \"Well, yeah, I guess she\'s seen a bit.\" He chuckles fondly. \"Not any more, thank God.\" So she wouldn\'t have said, Ray, we\'ve got to pay the rent ? sort yourself out? \"No,\" he smiles with undisguised pride. \"She\'d usually join in.\"It was Burke who came to the rescue, casting Winstone in a play called Mr Thomas in 1986 that reminded him why he wanted to act. More parts came his way ? One Foot in the Grave, Kavanagh QC, The Bill ? but he was still basically a jobbing actor until 1997, when Nil by Mouth produced a performance so devastatingly ugly and bathetic, it was impossible to imagine any other actor in the role. Winstone\'s instinct for the humanity buried inside the most brutalised masculinity was astonishing to witness. He knew himself, even as they were filming, that something radically different was happening.\"Yeah, I thought so. There was a magic about it. It was tough to make, but I knew enough to be much more technically minded, more disciplined. It was the first time I could really stand up on me own feet and be in control of how you was going to go about this, and not be frightened of pushing it to the limit.\"The family moved to a big house in Essex, bigger parts came rolling in, and after Sexy Beast in 2000, Hollywood began calling, with starring roles alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie and Mel Gibson. It must feel strange for the fantasy future he\'d hoped for more than 30 years ago to finally arrive ? and now that it has, I wonder if he can still feel like the same person. \"You\'d like to think you were the same person,\" he ponders thoughtfully. \"But I\'m much more chilled out. I think I used to be  a bit of a raving lunatic.\"Life in the Winstone household sounds almost like a caricature of a working-class boy done good. There\'s his inhouse bar ? Raymondo\'s ? and his Sunday roasts, and a photograph of the one time Winstone ever picked up a vacuum cleaner. \"Elaine caught me once doing the Hoovering, and took a picture. I do a bit of ironing. But nah, I\'m quite old-fashioned.\" Elaine is a traditional housewife and their eldest two daughters, Lois and Jaime, are now grown-up and both actors, but the youngest goes to the local primary school. \"I was all right with nappies, but I had to wear a mask. I can see blood all day long, no bother. But poo? Urggh, no. We don\'t have nannies and all that, we look after our own kids. It\'s just what you do. If you want a big family that\'s just what you do, isn\'t it?\"When I ask how he\'s managed to stay married for 30 years, he offers mildly: \"I don\'t know. I suppose being a bit old-fashioned, really. Nowadays it\'s so easy to have a row and walk away, but I\'m pretty old-fashioned, you work at it.\" Some people claim it\'s impossible for an actor to remain faithful ? but at this, Winstone rolls his eyes and lets rip: \"Oh, it\'s just bullshit. It\'s fucking hard for anyone. It is, \'cos you\'re always going to have your rows, and you\'re always going to have temptations. Always. I kind of look at it and go, \'Why would a 28-year-old want to look at a 53-year-old fat boy?\' I don\'t understand when you look at the paper and see all these people getting caught out,\" and he pretends to read: \"\'Sixty-two-year-old so-and-so caught with an 18-year-old so-and-so.\' You go, mate, what did you actually think she wanted? Is it hard to work out?\" He shakes his head and laughs. \"You\'re going to lose everything, your kids, your wife, your home, everything. Down to some old bird? Nah, I don\'t think so.\"The only time he ever looks vaguely uncomfortable is when I ask why he fronts the frankly tacky TV ads for Bet365, a gambling website. \"Cos it\'s great,\" he says slightly defensively. \"I don\'t do bank ads or insurance commercials, but with betting, people have a choice. And Bet365 actually helps me to be able to afford to do a film like Fathers of Girls for no money.\"I\'d been dreading the moment when Fathers of Girls would come up. The forthcoming low-budget film, in which he plays a small-town solicitor whose daughter dies of a drug overdose, is so mawkishly awful, you\'d need to be Winstone\'s own mother (or possibly his daughter Lois, who appears alongside him) not to cringe, or to wonder what Winstone was thinking. His high opinion of the film seems unaccountable - but his explanation turns out to be irreproachable.\"Karl [Howman, the director] is my mate. I read the script and I said it\'s great, Karl, do you want me to do it? He said: \'What?\' I said: \'Do you want me to do it? I\'ll do it.\' He said: \'What, really, would you do it?\' \'Of course I\'ll fucking do it. You\'re my mate. We\'ve known each other 37 years.\' So then we went and done it.\"Knowing everything he knows now, if Winstone could go back to back to Scum and 1977, I wonder what would he do differently. He doesn\'t even pause to think about his answer.\"Nothing. There\'s no way I\'d change anything. Nah, I \'ad a result.\"Ray Winstone launches TCM\'s Western Week, which starts on Monday, Sky Channel 317. Father of Girls is released in October.Ray WinstoneTelevisionDecca Aitkenheadguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/02/wrestling-movies" title="Wrestling stars are muscling their way into cinema multiplexes ? but can WWE really beat Hollywood on its own mat?Brace yourself, adjust the volume controls and get ready, in a very real sense, to rumble ? because the wrestlers are coming. The good news, ..." target="_blank">How wrestling is taking over the movies</a><br />');
document.write('Wrestling stars are muscling their way into cinema multiplexes ? but can WWE really beat Hollywood on its own mat?Brace yourself, adjust the volume controls and get ready, in a very real sense, to rumble ? because the wrestlers are coming. The good news, at least, is that they\'re not here to grapple or drop-kick, but instead to emote, frown, wisecrack and demonstrate the full range of the emotional register.This summer, the drip-drip of US wrestling\'s incursions into mainstream cinema under the aegis of World Wrestling Entertainment\'s in-house movie production arm, WWE Studios, has shown its first real signs of becoming a surge. In August, former WWE wrestler Dwayne \"The Rock\" Johnson\'s ascent into legitimate crossover status resumed with the US release of The Other Guys, a Will Ferrell comedy in which Johnson co-stars. And, this month, current ace face John Cena\'s new film, the WWE-produced Legendary, is also released. As Cena says: \"WWE studios has got five movies in the can right now and every one of them has come out ahead of expectations. We have all the channels in place and I think it\'s going to be a good time for us.\" At a time when many studios are facing financial pruning, a new and aggressively resourced presence is stalking the multiplex, rippling its perma-tanned pectorals. Wrestling wants &nbsp;in.WWE has stealthily pursued its move into cinema ever since the foundation of its Los Angeles-based production arm in 2002. \"We saw this as a broadening and a natural extension of the entertainment business we\'re already in,\" says Andrew Whittaker, WWE executive vice-president. \"It is natural for WWE superstars who are already well known in 149 countries to extend their brand status around the world. Nine films planned for release gives you as clear an indication as you need of our ambition.\"Ambition ? and opportunity ? aside, what&nbsp;wrestling can really boast is its production line of camera-ready, six-packed, violently extroverted talent. Its hottest product at the moment is Cena (pronounced see-nah), a 33-year-old nine-time WWE champion described by Whittaker as \"the top world star in the current era\". Cena\'s big break as an actor came with 2006\'s The Marine, a critically panned Iraq war drama but a commercial success, making $30m in its first 12 weeks on DVD. The Marine was followed by 2009\'s 12&nbsp;Rounds, a cop revenge yarn that is, above all, extremely loud. Legendary, the new film, is an entry in the strangely undersaturated small-town high-school wrestling family action-drama genre. \"It was a bit of a change to what I was used to,\" Cena says. \"But I was really attracted to the storyline and by the chance to play somebody\'s brother. When I read the script, I realised it was a great chance to show I can do more than just dodge bullets. I knew it wouldn\'t be too far out of my range.\"In fact, Cena is a convincingly weighty presence in Legendary. Within the first 10 minutes he appears broodingly stripped to the waist. He pouts, he flexes, he fights in bars. And throughout he does indeed have something of the glacially square-jawed leading man about him, coming on a bit like Matt Damon\'s harder, perennially cross bad-boy cousin. Legendary follows the story of a nerdy schoolboy, played by Devon Graye, who takes up wrestling to follow in the footsteps of his estranged brother, a troubled, bull-necked ex-champ (played by Cena) ? a decision that causes his&nbsp;mother to slam down her dinner plate:\"I know wrestling ? It will take you away from everything else.\"\"But ? Dad wrestled.\"\"And it ate him up.\"Actually, Legendary isn\'t all that bad, and Cena is easily the best thing in it. A college-educated native of Massachusetts, he trod a familiar pre-WWE path through minor athletic success, a subsequent excursion into bodybuilding and a stint as a chauffeur. His wrestling career took off overnight when he adopted a Vanilla Ice-style white-rapper persona that proved hugely popular with fans. Even before taking to acting, Cena already had a diverse portfolio of entertainment credits: his rap album You Can\'t See Me entered the Billboard chart at No 15.Versatility is everything with WWE: even Legendary, with its chirpy sentimentality and family-orientated plotlines, is an embodiment of Whittaker\'s dictum that \"we wanted to do things differently to what you might expect ? not just action films, but all genres: comedy, drama.\" It is a theme Cena warms to: \"Anybody who sees me automatically assumes I\'m just the big, strong, beat-\'em-up kind of guy. This movie, I\'m so happy with the way it came out. I don\'t want to say it\'s going to shut anybody up, but it\'s certainly going to open a few people\'s eyes.\" Is he genuinely interested in expanding against type into other genres? Into comedy? Period drama? \"Yeah, absolutely. Not only myself but the other WWE superstars. We\'ve got a ton of talent in that locker room, and any time we get the chance, we\'ll show what we\'re all about.\"Perhaps where things go from here for Cena will depend on whether mainstream audiences can absorb another likable slice of wrestling beef when they already have Johnson, now a bona fide self-employed movie star. WWE\'s four break-out co-productions ? The Scorpion King (2002), The Rundown (2003), Walking Tall (2004) and Behind Enemy Lines (2009) ? all had Johnson in the starring role. His ascent has been mirrored by his gradual shedding of the cloak of his WWE title: from \"The Rock\" in his early film credits, to Dwayne \"The Rock\" Johnson, and now simply Dwayne Johnson. He had conquered the wrestling world so absolutely by 2001 that there were no fresh peaks left; so he began acting that same year. He made his debut with a brief appearance in The Mummy Returns, in which he so uncannily nailed the role of taciturn, muscular bad guy that he landed his own spin-off vehicle, The Scorpion King; its dizzying $5.5m fee is still the highest salary for an actor in his first starring role. Johnson has since appeared in The Rundown, Be Cool, Walking Tall, Gridiron Gang, The Game Plan, Get Smart, Race to Witch Mountain, Planet 51, Tooth Fairy, Doom, and Why Did I Get Married Too? You might not have seen them all, but Johnson has now undeniably broken through the Lycra ceiling into that other place where wrestling becomes merely his&nbsp;backstory.That is no mean achievement. Wrestling has had a long and at times difficult relationship with the movies. WWE first dipped its toe in the waters as long ago as 1989, with the Hulk Hogan vehicle No Holds Barred. Hogan had previously played Thunderlips in Rocky III, a high-water mark in a short-lived period of semi-ironic muscle-hunk superstardom, which would eventually map out a familiar trajectory: from wrestling vehicle to action vehicle to zany family comedy. (Hogan\'s career would reach tipping point with Mr Nanny in 1993.) Around the same time, Jesse Ventura appeared in 1987\'s Predator, followed by bits and bobs in The Running Man, Demolition Man and Batman & Robin. Heading back into wrestling\'s mistier past, Tor Johnson, \"The Super Swedish Angel\", starred in some well-known B-movies, most notably as police inspector-turned-zombie Dan Clay in 1959\'s Plan 9 from Outer Space, an oddity still cherished by the movie-kitsch&nbsp;crowd.In more recent times, the likes of Johnson and Cena have arrived not as tentative pioneers, but with a mob-handed back-up crew. Triple H appeared as a vampire heavy in Blade: Trinity. Kevin Nash wrestled under the excellent alias \"Big Sexy\" before taking a role in the 2004 action film The Punisher. There isn\'t that much of a stretch in all this, from one form of rehearsed and character-driven punch-up to the world of big-screen action filler. As Cena says: \"It\'s really an extension of what we do. It\'s just in a different form. There\'s a ton of similarities.\"And maybe this is simply wrestling\'s time for other reasons. WWE may be a venerable behemoth, tracing its lineage back to the formation of the Capitol Wrestling Corporation in the 1950s, and coming of age in the 1980s with the syndication of its high-adrenaline, high-drama, high-camp version of the grapple game; but it is decidedly cutting-edge in its intimate global reach. There is a sense that the real masterplan here may be the chance to use WWE\'s well-grooved pre-existing multimedia channels to outflank the traditional studio distribution methods. \"We co-produced our first four movies,\" Whittaker says. \"It was a learning experience to work with top-notch studios. Post that experience, we saw efficiencies in going on our own, with our distribution paths in DVD, digital and pay-per-view. We&nbsp;knew we were going to be able to expand into non-traditional release space.\"Wrestling isn\'t just rattling the door handle ? it\'s brushing the chalk from its hands and preparing to vault the elasticated ropes. It has the distribution, the personnel, and above all a spirit of energetic can-do, a bicep-flexing assertiveness. \"The worst thing we could do would be to come out with a really crappy movie,\" Cena says. \"Other studios make so many movies they can get away with making one that fails. We will be watched by so many people, under such a microscope, that we just have to put out good movie after good movie.\"Legendary is released on 10 September, and on DVD on 27 September.Action and adventureComedyFamilyScience fiction and fantasyFilm industryBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/04/metropolis-re-release-silent-films" title="As Al Jolson jazz-handed in the new age of talkies, Metropolis proved that silent films were still valid. John Patterson enjoys some quiet timeThe silent cinema that died in 1927 on the introduction of sound with The Jazz Singer always reminds me of the s..." target="_blank">Re-release of Metropolis proves that silents are still golden</a><br />');
document.write('As Al Jolson jazz-handed in the new age of talkies, Metropolis proved that silent films were still valid. John Patterson enjoys some quiet timeThe silent cinema that died in 1927 on the introduction of sound with The Jazz Singer always reminds me of the sunken city of Atlantis. Each was glorious, sophisticated, inventive, and each had reached the apogee of its greatness ? until everything was pulled under by the deluge and an entire culture, a highly developed civilisation coherent unto itself, was lost forever in a single night.When I say the apogee of its greatness, the proof is in the names of the myriad masterpieces released just at the moment when silence stopped being golden: Fritz Lang\'s Metropolis, the most expensive movie yet made, and GW Pabst\'s Pandora\'s Box, from Germany\'s gigantic UFA Studios; FW Murnau\'s Sunrise, considered by many the poetic peak of silent cinema; Victor Seastrom\'s The Wind, and King Vidor\'s The Crowd (both 1928) from Hollywood; The Frenchman, Abel Gance\'s almost recklessly ambitious Napoleon; and, from Moscow, Eisenstein\'s October: Ten Days That Shook The World, the last in an unbroken string of successes for the director, whose years of political troubles started around this time with official criticism of his formalist tendencies.The death-knell for this magical vanished realm came in Al Jolson\'s words, \"You ain\'t seen nothin\' yet!\" But we\'d certainly heard the last of silence: imagine if modernism had died on the last day of 1922, leaving the masterworks of that annus mirabilis still standing, but with no further development of their potential permitted.The studios fumbled their way towards various cumbersomely functional recording technologies; a new style of acting had haltingly to be confected, one distinct from the wide eyes and waving arms of the Theda Bara Tendency; and in the uncertain interregnum, which necessitated much harnessing of the hitherto freely wandering camera, the art of the medium did shrink a little, if only for a while.Still, after all this time, we occasionally still pick up weak signals from the silent depths, so it\'s encouraging that Metropolis has been seriously renovated, with 20 minutes of Lang\'s unseen original footage restored. I remember the mid-80s revival, with Giorgio Moroder\'s horrible soundtrack ? a Flock Of Seagulls wig glued on to a Dürer nude. I\'m interested to learn whether the new footage makes the film comprehensible, so that I can better understand why Goebbels and Hitler loved it so much (Lang blamed his scenarist wife Thea von Harbou, later a Nazi sympathiser). Or will it still be, as I always thought of it, a masterpiece of production design with an incoherent core, the Blade Runner of the silent age?At any rate, it\'s one more treasure brought up from Atlantis. All praise to the divers and archaeologists.John Pattersonguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/04/this-weeks-new-dvd-blu-ray" title="Kick-AssDVD & Blu-Ray, UniversalMark Millar and John Romita Jr\'s comic book series Kick-Ass didn\'t so much rewrite the masked crimefighter genre as it did just plain revel in the joy of it. Like the comic, Matthew Vaughn\'s movie version is full of fun ..." target="_blank">This week\'s new DVD & Blu-ray</a><br />');
document.write('Kick-AssDVD & Blu-Ray, UniversalMark Millar and John Romita Jr\'s comic book series Kick-Ass didn\'t so much rewrite the masked crimefighter genre as it did just plain revel in the joy of it. Like the comic, Matthew Vaughn\'s movie version is full of fun and colour ? the \"no black costumes\" ethos of the source is fully exploited on the screen with green, yellow, red and purple being the chosen colour scheme for this year\'s superfolk (apart from Nic Cage\'s more old-school Big Daddy, who dresses like Batman and even channels Adam West for his voice). Brit Aaron Johnson plays a regular, geeky American guy who loves his comic books and can\'t help but see the need for real heroes in today\'s violent world. His first attempt at crimefighting results in a severe beating, leaving him with nerve endings that feel no pain and his bones reinforced with metal. So second time out he\'s better prepared and soon becomes both a hero and an internet sensation. He\'s not the only one in the game: Big Daddy and his foul-mouthed, pre-teen killing machine of a daughter, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), are also out fighting the good fight. But rather than have the criminal fraternity cowering in fear, they just inspire them to raise their game. It did OK at the box office, hardly setting any records, but was a smash in the US home market when the DVD and Blu-Ray hit. It should do the same here, with great, extras-packed versions containing hours of behind the scenes materials and artwork. It\'s pretty kick-ass, Kick-Ass.The Phil Silvers ShowThe first season of Sgt Bilko\'s hilarious army scams. Excellent stuff.DVD, ParamountCasanova \'70 Marcello Mastroianni\'s saucy romp.DVD, Mr BongoBlack LightningRussian spin on teen superheroes.DVD & Blu-Ray, UniversalExit Through The Gift Shop Banksy art prank doc.DVD & Blu-Ray, RevolverScrubs Series 1-8 Every episode of Zach Braff\'s wacky hospital sitcom.DVD, Walt DisneyTaking WoodstockAng Lee\'s low-key hippy drama with Demetri Martin.DVD, UniversalEntourage Season 6 Vince keeps chasing his Hollywood dreams.DVD & Blu-Ray, WarnerDVD and video reviewsPhelim O\'Neillguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/04/this-weeks-film-events" title="Franti?ek Vlácil, Edinburgh, Glasgow & LondonWhile the likes of Milos Forman and Jirí Menzel benefited from attention focused on Czech cinema in the late-60s and early-70s, Franti?ek Vlácil wasn\'t so lucky. He\'s been mentioned in the same breath as Well..." target="_blank">This week\'s cinema events</a><br />');
document.write('Franti?ek Vlácil, Edinburgh, Glasgow & LondonWhile the likes of Milos Forman and Jirí Menzel benefited from attention focused on Czech cinema in the late-60s and early-70s, Franti?ek Vlácil wasn\'t so lucky. He\'s been mentioned in the same breath as Welles, Tarkovsky and even Kurosawa; and on home turf, his 1967 historical drama Marketa Lazarová is considered a masterpiece. Yet few of Vlácil\'s films have ever been shown in the UK. Vlácil, who died in 1999, kept working up to the late-80s, and this selection gives a good indication of his range, incorporating Marketa Lazarová alongside lesser-known works such as The Little Shepherd Boy From The Valley and Shadows Of A Hot Summer.BFI Southbank, SE1, to 30 Sep; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, to 3 Oct; Glasgow Film Theatre, Tue to 28 SepRay Harryhausen, LondonIn the year of his 90th birthday, Ray Harryhausen can\'t say he feels too overlooked these days, especially after a star-studded bash during the summer that saw Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and James Cameron paying homage to his pioneering stop motion special effects work. This on stage discussion ? chaired by his biographer, Tony Dalton ? promises to be a more intimate, low-key affair, with Harryhausen discussing a life in movies that began with a boyhood fascination with the movie magic on show in the 1933 version of King Kong. It shouldn\'t be overstated that Harryhausen\'s public appearances won\'t exactly be legion after tonight, so don\'t be blase about missing out on a evening of reminiscences from one of Hollywood\'s most humble and influential behind-the-scenes greats.Cinema Musuem, SE11, SatScreening Surrealism, EdinburghSurrealism in cinema these days mostly means the films of David Lynch, but in the early-20th century, film-makers were much more open to testing the limits of meaning. This season offers a chance to see celluloid experiments from 1928-1960, including Jean Epstein\'s The Fall Of The House Of Usher; the daddy of all surrealist cinema, Luis Buñuel\'s Un Chien Andalou; Jean Cocteau\'s Orphée and Le Testament D\'Orphée; and shorts by Man Ray and Maya Deren, whose Meshes Of The Afternoon from 1943 remains a fascinating anomaly.Filmhouse, Tue to 2 NovSilent Cinema, LondonSilent raves have taken off lately, with mute flashmobs descending on London stations to infuriate commuters, so why not the silent cinema? This season of films invites headset-wearing viewers to lose themselves in a unique public-private screening experience, which will take place in a specially redesigned viewing area with chairs handmade from recycled wooden pallets and cushions stitched together by the harshly named Crafty Bitches.  The films on offer are a mix of recent cult classics, from such acerbic comedies as Heathers and Withnail  & I, to chillers (28 Days Later, An American Werewolf In London, Shaun Of The Dead), and 80s nostalgia fests (Ferris Bueller\'s Day Off, The Breakfast Club). With fresh food on hand at the in-house cafe, Silent Cinema offers all the comfort of home, with less tidying up to do afterwards.The Deptford Project, SE8, Thu to 25 SepDamon Wiseguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/04/this-weeks-new-films" title="The Last Exorcism (15) (Daniel Stamm, 2010, US) Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell. 87 minsThere\'s an epic, gothic Dennis Wheatley-style horror struggling to get out of this curiously lightweight mockumentary, in which a jaded Louisiana evangelical priest (Fabi..." target="_blank">This week\'s new films</a><br />');
document.write('The Last Exorcism (15) (Daniel Stamm, 2010, US) Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell. 87 minsThere\'s an epic, gothic Dennis Wheatley-style horror struggling to get out of this curiously lightweight mockumentary, in which a jaded Louisiana evangelical priest (Fabian) takes on a local case of possession to prove that demons only exist in the mind. Stamm orchestrates some good old-fashioned in-camera shocks, but the handheld format is limiting, and what ought to be a truly horrific climax ends in a tired Blair Witch fizzle rather than a bang.Certified Copy (12A) (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010, Fr/It/UK) Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, 107 minsSlightly wooden but deceptively memorable meta romance, in which a woman (Binoche) meets a man (Shimell) who may or may not be her husband.Dinner For Schmucks (12A) (Jay Roach, 2010, US) Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis. 114 minsRudd is an aspiring exec who takes Carell to his boss\'s who-can-bring-the-biggest-nerd dinner party. The result is an odd-duck buddy confection that stops just short of making you vomit.The Switch (12A) (Josh Gordon, Will Speck, 2010, US) Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman. 102 minsAnodyne romcom, with Jennifer Aniston as a single mum who find out her best friend is actually her child\'s father after switching semen samples some seven years before. Yes, really.22 Bullets (18) (Richard Berry, 2010, Fr) Jean Reno, Kad Merad. 117 minsThe Godfather meets RoboCop in a rote gangster revenge flick, which finds hitman Reno after the punks who tried to assassinate him.Jonah Hex  (15) (Jimmy Hayward, 2010, US) Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender. 81 minsSimply wretched, borderline-nonsensical comic-book fantasy, with Brolin as a disfigured drifter with strange psychic powers who is drafted by the White House to foil a terror attack on 19th-century America.Bonded By Blood (18) (Sacha Bennett, 2010, UK) Dave Legeno, Tamer Hassan. 96 minsEver wondered what really happened in the Essex Range Rover Murders of 1995? If yes, this sweary, by-the-numbers gangster movie has your name on it.No Impact Man (15) (Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein, 2010, US) 92 minsSurprisingly entertaining green-issues doc, in which a suburban eco warrior tries to wean his family off its environment-threatening habits, toilet paper included.SoulBoy (15) (Shimmy Marcus, 2010, UK) Martin Compston, Nichola Burley, Felicity Jones. 84 minsAll Britflick cliches observed in this smalltown rites-of-passage, but Compston is irresistible as the loner who does the splits at the Wigan Casino to woo his dream girl.Splintered (18) (Simeon Halligan, 2008, UK) Holly Weston, Stephen Walters. 85 minsBritish psychological horror, with a creature roaming the Welsh countryside.Cherry Tree Lane (18) (Paul Andrew Williams, 2010, UK) Tom Butcher, Rachel Blake. 77 minsIt\'s short and divisive but Williams\'s hoodie home invasion bears comparison to Straw Dogs as it poses the awkward question: well, what would you do?Out next weekCyrus Mumblecore goes mainstream with the Duplass brothers\' first studio movie.Alamar Semi doc about a Mayan father bonding with his estranged son.Dabangg Hindi corrupt-cop action flick.Going The Distance  Drew Barrymore and Justin Long in a trans-American romcom.Metropolis Fritz Lang\'s silent 1927 classic ? more restored than ever.My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? True-crime story, told by Werner Herzog.Resident Evil: Afterlife Milla Jovovich returns.The RunawaysBiopic of the seminal all-girl LA band.Tamara Drewe Live-action take on Posy Simmonds\'s cartoon strip.Coming soonIn two weeks... Will Ferrell hangs out with The Other Guys ? Jennifer Lawrence stars in Ozarks drama Winter\'s Bone ?In three weeks... Gaspar Noé invites you to Enter The Void ? Ben Affleck directs and stars in The Town ? Robin Williams is World\'s Greatest Dad ?In a month...  Ryan Reynolds finds himself Buried ... Sally Hawkins fights for equality in  Made In Dagenham ...The guideguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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document.write('<li class="rss_item"><a class="rss_item" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/04/sean-connery-biography-christopher-bray" title="This biography of Sean Connery by an adoring fan just misses the mark, says Simon CallowRegardless of what you may think of his acting, Sean Connery has been a highly prominent figure in the celluloid landscape of the past 40 years in two particular manif..." target="_blank">Sean Connery by Christopher Bray</a><br />');
document.write('This biography of Sean Connery by an adoring fan just misses the mark, says Simon CallowRegardless of what you may think of his acting, Sean Connery has been a highly prominent figure in the celluloid landscape of the past 40 years in two particular manifestations. First, and most potently, as James Bond; second, as the embodiment of a certain kind of grizzled wisdom, of which perhaps the most notable is Indiana Jones\'s father. To have created two universally recognised archetypes in the course of a career is no mean feat, and one well worth investigating. Christopher Bray\'s book is just such an investigation, but it comes from an unexpected angle: that of unabashed adulation. Not, as Bray is at pains to point out, for the man Sean Connery, but for what his image as an actor embodies.\"I like watching Sean Connery. I like watching him move through a room. I like watching him sit down and cross his legs . . . I like the idea of a big, big man being so light on his feet.\" He acknowledges that this is partly because he wishes the same could be said of him ? \"average height, clumsy and heavy-footed\" ? and that this feeling is \"I think, not very different from love.\" Bray is an eloquent and an inventive writer, and many are the ways in which he expresses his love: Connery is \"a dead ringer for Michelangelo\'s David or Leonardo\'s Vitruvian man\", he is possessed of an \"angle-jawed beauty\", is \"an Adonis\", his silky mobility \"stretching upwards from the balls of his feet to peer out of a window like a dancer at full height, dipping gracefully down to his knees like a dying swan to booby-trap a wardrobe door\".Like all lovers, he believes that everyone sees his beloved as he does. \"You can\'t be a child of the mid-60s . . . and not have given over several moments of your life to regretting the fact that you are not Sean Connery.\" No doubt there is something wrong with me, but, despite belonging to the designated target group, I do not feel this way about the greatest living Scot. The whole Bond phenomenon rather passed me by, in fact, which might also be thought to disqualify me from enjoyment of a book that sees its subject as quintessentially defined by the role with which he is most closely identified, and obsessively looks for possible allusions to that role in Connery\'s later work. Surprisingly, this proves not to be the case. Despite some egregious piffle about actors and acting ? \"they have to love themselves more than anyone else . . . they don\'t just want to be loved, they want to be loved by everybody, unconditionally, unconsciously\" ? Bray has written a compelling study of stardom and what it signifies, both to the star and to his followers. Such is the level of his engagement with Connery the on-screen phenomenon that at times it seems as if Bray is simply writing autobiography, but this is unavoidable given his conception of the intensely personal relationship between viewer and star.He carefully charts the evolution of Tam Connery, working-class lad, Edinburgh scion of a family of Irish tinkers, sometime milkman, sailor, French-polisher, body-builder, underwear model, footballer, chorus boy, into the archetype of devil-may-care throwaway masculinity that has been such a lodestar in Bray\'s life. He notes the early theatre and TV work, the first clumsy steps in movies, the slow advance in technique and ease, rightly identifying the unremarkable comedy On the Fiddle as the first full-fledged manifestation of Connery\'s particular charisma. He records the actor\'s admirably diligent work on himself, eradicating the accent so strong that Millicent Martin at first took it to be Polish, reading Proust, Ibsen, Stanislavsky\'s My Life in Art.In a piece of careful research, Bray demonstrates the influence on Connery of the great acting teacher, Yat Malmgren, who focused the Scotsman\'s natural physical freedom into the gracile ease and expressiveness so characteristic of his Bond. Bray is especially good on the physical aspects of Connery\'s art. He observes that \"few actors have commanded the space around them as well as Connery . . . fewer have moved around confined areas as well as he . . . fewer still have his genius for grounding the fantastical with such nonchalant realism.\"Bray\'s fascination with the physical existence of his hero extends to how much of his baldness Connery is prepared to reveal at any one time and the fluctuations of his waistline from film to film: he pores over these details like Louis XIV\'s courtiers examining the royal stools. This is because Connery matters a great deal to him: he is his surrogate, an emblematic figure whose physical and emotional evolutions pierce him in the way that a father\'s ageing shakes a son, as intimations of mortality. At one point, describing Connery\'s death in the little-known Family Business (1989), he cries \"Which of us can quite conceive of a world without Sean Connery in it?\" He&nbsp;faces up to it squarely: \"Sean Connery will one day die. And, for a while at least, the world will make a little less&nbsp;sense.\"Surprisingly, and despite his own rapturous descriptions of Connery\'s physical self ? the number of times he describes him as the world\'s sexiest older man exceeded by the number of times he describes him as the world\'s sexiest middle-aged man, which is itself only exceeded by the number of times he describes him as the world\'s sexiest man ? Bray is oddly disinclined to see any complexity in Connery\'s sexual persona, though it seems to have been present even from the early underwear modelling days (as a young actor, the walls of his flat were covered with photographs of himself posing). Bray writes of Connery\'s encounters with the anti-psychiatrist RD Laing (they dropped acid together), and of his later experiences with exponents of Reich\'s theory that all neuroses were products of blocked libido. Bray is briskly dismissive of Reich, although he tells us that Connery\'s work with Reichians continued to influence him for many years; he neglects, alas, to tells us in what way.He notes the latent violence of Connery\'s Bond, particularly towards women, and also Diane Cilento\'s claims that during their marriage he hit her; Connery\'s refusal in more than one interview to condemn male violence towards women is acknowledged, though given no weight. Perhaps it is all part of the charm for Bray: in one of his many put-downs of Roger Moore as James Bond, he remarks how nostalgic Bond fans have been for Connery\'s \"gloriously unreconstructed chauvinist manner\", barking commands at a woman he has just had sex with.Bray ? a witty, elegant writer, with a penchant for mixing allusions to abstruse critical constructs (Kantian noumenon, Baudrillardian simulacra)  with laddish phraseology which speaks of salaries somewhat \"north of a million pounds\" and Albert Finney\'s \"dick-swinging\" performance in Tom Jones ? is keenly aware that the Bond films have contributed to what he calls \"the infantilisation of cinema\", but he cannot deny their centrality, and Connery\'s, to his own sense of self. \"We are all in search of . . . completeness,\" he says, \"and at least occasionally and momentarily we find it gazing at certain movie stars [who] body forth . . . a vision of a unified self on to which can be projected a million and one atomised fantasies.\" His book amounts to an exceptionally vivid and searching account of what it is to be a fan.Simon Callow\'s My Life in Pieces: An Alternative Autobiography is published by Nick Hern.Sean ConnerySimon Callowguardian.co.uk &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds');
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