Archive for the ‘The Talkies’ Category
What a crock!
There has been some pretty exciting news this week for The Cult from the world of stage and screen.
First we hear that the long-awaited final instalment of the Three Men and A… movie trilogy has, at last, been announced and mamma mia! are we excited. Three Men and A Bride will follow not-so-little Mary as she tries to make it up the aisle with her three dads in tow. As Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have repeatedly displayed with Indiana Jones and Star Wars, trilogy doesn’t always mean three so personally the cult is hoping that this movie will lead to more tales of everyone’s favourite yuppies-turned-co-parents, Jack, Peter and Micheal. Suggested sequel title from The Cult: Three Men and a Baby Shower: three hapless 60 something year old men try to throw the perfect tea party for pregnant but still sassy Mary. Or maybe a prequel about the night Jack and Sylvia met, Three Men and a Drunk Little Lady. See! There is so much good stuff still in this classic comedy franchise to continue well into the 21st century. Critics be silenced.
A second piece of pretty exciting news came straight after this, discovered by a chance encounter with the poster on the tube this morning. The much-anticipated musical adaptation of Sister Act is to hit London’s West End in May 2009. This is big news for all theatre lovers; whispers around theatre-land (and The Cult) that superior sequel Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit The Musical will follow in 2010 with original cast members Lauryn Hill and Jennifer Love Hewitt attached are, as yet, unconfirmed.
Spending Christmas in the sun? Oh grow up.
Four Christmases is currently riding high at the UK box office, despite unanimously awful reviews. It is lovable tinsel-bobbins with Reece’N’Vince (oh come on they don’t need surnames) as reluctant responsibility-phobe yuppies forced into spending the Haaaalidays with their four sets of whacky parents when plans to escape to Fiji are scuppered. Cue vomiting babies, wrestling brothers, horny grandmas and some set “comedy” involving a satellite dish. Plus a bit of actual funny stuff that is 100% reliant on Vince’s trump card, the “sounds improvised but is clearly scripted you’re money baby” comedy rants, and a bit of “this is my sad face” from Reece when she, like, totally realises that she, like, totally wants a family not just holidays in Fiji.
As a movie, it is mind-numbingly lovable. The best way to approach it as less of a film and more of a little socially-acceptable Valium that you can take in public without worrying that you will try and take a nap against a lamp post or accidentally wee in the corner of Marks and Spencers. Four Christmases is festive relief for those of us who have no Valium. As a film it is weirdly relaxing and very popular despite the fact that it is such a clunker. Why? Because negotiating where you are going to spend Christmas as a couple is something of an albatross around the neck for most, even for couples without families from hell. Everyone has to do it and sharing your Christmas is, in my mind, evidence of a proper Grown Up Relationship (which possibly explains why I have never done it). The festive compromise you reach as a couple says a lot about your relationship and each version has it’s own set of pitfalls. Bring your other half home for Christmas, risk exposing them (and yourself) to childhood revelations from your evil sisters or spending the whole day worrying that someone from either side is making a tit of themselves in a fit of post-turkey over-familiarity. Go to their house and risk exposing yourself to whole new social order of Family Traditions that are, frankly, a minefield of dos and don’ts (“oh I see, you all get into bed together to open presents…”)
As a decision it is a delicate negotiation and Reece’N’Vince’s solution to lie to their family and take tropical holidays every Christmas is, of course, not the handy solution to having to sleep on a sofa bed at your future in-laws that they would first have us believe. Oh no no no. If you are in a couple, especially a fledgling serious couple (like one that goes on dates to the movies on a Friday night, see where I am going there?), then sorting out the logistics of Christmas Day involves asking questions of your relationship like, “are we ready to spend Christmas together?” or worse “where is this relationship going?”, which is exactly where Reece’N’Vince end up after about 75 minutes of general festive comedy japes. To sack both sets of family Christmases (and step-families and father’s new girlfriends and sibling’s bloody in-laws blah blah) altogether for a Pina Colada Christmas Day, is simply avoiding asking those pesky questions and in effect, avoiding dealing with commitment issues and not being a grown up whilst getting a tan. And that is fine by me.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
Sydney Young (Simon Pegg) has just landed the job of his dreams, upgrading from editing the witty but thankless Postmodern Review in London to staff writer at swanky New York magazine Sharps, working for editor-in-chief Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). He is already a bête noire of inner celeb circles in Britain, we have seen him kicked out of the BAFTAs in a rain of pig shit (yes, honestly) and he is now trying his unique charm on the New York magazine elite. He thinks he is there to shake things up a bit but Harding clearly hired him on a moment’s nostalgia for his own satirical youth and regrets it from the moment Sydney struts into his hallowed office wearing a t-shirt that says “Young, Dumb and full of Come”. Sydney catogorically does not fit in to the elegant world of Armani suits and glamazon women. From a rocky start with Harding, things go from bad to worse as time goes by. The sum total of Sydney’s contribution to the magazine are some transsexual strippers and a dead Chihuahua in the office. Defiantly, Sydney just can’t help himself from, well, being himself. He can’t help taking cocaine at a 4th July party and singing football songs to a deadpan Hamptons crowd, or playing ball with a tiny dog in a skyscraper with an open window. He is always just “trying to make friends” or “trying to be funny” though, as it says on the tin, he is losing friends and alienating people left, right and centre, mostly because the pretentious botox–faced millionaires can’t take a joke. But also because he behaves like a total cretin. Luckily, he is played by Simon Pegg, who could re-enact Enoch Powell’s River of Blood speech and still make me giggle and coo all at once, so you want him to win. Even more so when a blossoming love interest in the form of an office lovely, aspiring novelist Alison (Kirsten Dunst), ends in her running off with the boss and Sydney’s arch nemesis, Lawrence Maddox.
Just when it all looks hopeless for our limey anti-hero, he realises the benefits of getting in bed with the devil (in this case it comes in the form of giving uber publicist Gillian Anderson copy approval on the features he writes on her clients) and before you know it, he is at the equivalent of the Golden Globe awards with a starlet on his arm. A combination of humiliation and generally realising he has not made his mum proud results in a lightening bolt moment as he finally figures out that success has come at too large a cost and, actually, he needs to go get Alison (who conveniently has dumped Maddox declaring she is in love with Young). And hurrah! The films ends on a very sweet note. Sydney has stayed true to himself, a ridiculous, obnoxious, hilarious goon with bad clothes and has got the girl. Not just any girl, the prettiest, loveliest girl going.
“How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” is a fun ride. It has several laugh out loud moments, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” comedy king Robert Weide has made it his own with next big thing screenwriter Peter Straughan’s strong script. It feels like a Prada-wearing Devil has stumbled onto a Judd Apatow colony in Notting Hill and like all of it’s ancestors, has a message so simple you could write it on a cocktail napkin. In love and life, just be yourself and all will be ok. Hang on. I have heard that somewhere before. Oh that’s right, every single time I have ever gone on a date, embarked on an ill-fated relationship or wondered why a boy hasn’t called, someone says to me, or I say to them or I say to myself “just be yourself”. Really…myself, eh? Without make up, high heels and a nice dress…in pyjamas at midday on a Wednesday eating toast, not laughing at a joke unless I think it is funny, sulking because I’ve lost my sock? If I am entirely honest, that is my true self and I am not sure that would get me my man. For this reason, I am a little bored of comedies about absolute loser’s getting the gorgeous girl. How to Lose Friends, Knocked Up, There is Something About Mary…the list is endless. It is like a warm and fuzzy Trojan horse smuggling in a pretty aggressive message under this touchy-feely nice guy winning stuff. What these movies say to the world is “Ladies. Listen up. Good men are in short supply, we have to take what we can. Yeah, so, he doesn’t have a job/any social skills/all his hair/a clean smell. He is a nice guy who won’t cheat on you. Grab him!” This is especially offensive as it is nearly always a man at the megaphone. This sort of scare-mongering is the kind that leaves supermarket shelves empty of water, batteries and tinned goods at the mere hint of a hurricane and I do not like it being shoved onto my single life. Honestly, if Kirsten Dunst, Katherine Heigl, Cameron Diaz et al can’t get a tall handsome man who is charming and funny and sweet that what on earth hope is there for the rest of us? And it does always make me wonder, where are all these alpha men with their shiny hair and winning charm and who exactly are they dating? Each other, probably.
“Easy Virtue” trailer
Starring Jessica Biel, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ben Barnes. Released Nov 7th. Go and see it, it’s terribly good.
Hurry up and wait: A day in the life of a Victorian prostitute
The cult likes nothing more than an occasion on which to dress up, which is why I jumped at the chance of a day as an extra on the London set of Brit costume movie Dorian Gray, starring Ben Barnes and Colin Firth. Even though I had to get up at 6am, the role of Gin Palace Customer 2 was far too exciting to turn down. So here is the diary of the day the cult went on location with Dorian Gray and made it in the talkies…
0630: I feel nauseous. Waking up this early when you are not catching a plane somewhere is a bit annoying, though I do quite like my off-duty actress apparel of messy hair, ballet pumps and a man’s cardigan. I already feel very glamorous.
0700: I arrive at a shabby disused car park off Edgware Road filled with trailers and people. With military precision it is being referred to as Unit Base. Immediately someone very nice with a clipboard spots me, ticks my name off a list and tells me to help myself to the breakfast buffet before they take me to costume.
One minute I am hanging out by the cereal thinking, “gosh it is far too early to eat”, next minute I hear myself ordering a full English breakfast. Not because I am hungry, but because the person in front of me did and it is there and it is free. Please god let me fit into the costume that was designed for me last week at Angels…
I spot Ben Barnes (playing Dorian Gray) being shuffled between two massive trailers. He has very nice shiny hair.
0830: Have been stitched into my massive costume and squeezed into my corset. Already feeling very suggestive as I have very little actual material covering my boobs from the outside world and pretty high heels. I am also wearing rather massive bloomers. Someone has told me that I am a Victorian Bridget Jones. Ha bloody Ha.
0845: There appears to have been some mistake. Although they asked me specificaly to not wear any make up, they have only put a tiny amount on my face. My cheeks are mottled with rouge. “Oh I love lots of blemishes” the make up artist gleefully tells me as she chucks some on. “I don’t”, I whisper quietly so she can’t really hear me. I don’t look very pretty. I look hungover with the ruddy tint of an alcoholic. At least the hair has to look pretty…I am envisaging ringlets.
0900: I have a very jolly Scottish man playing with my hair, telling me a dirty joke and eating a bacon sandwich all at once. While I am laughing uproariously I don’t notice he has just put my fringe in curlers exposing my unplucked eyebrows for the first time since 2003. Next thing I know, I have my hair piled on my head and teeny tiny feather hat on top. Everyone else has flowing ringlets framing their prettily made up faces. I look like a cross between Queen Victoria and Amy Winehouse. With a curled fringe.
0920: Someone has just painted a bruise on my collar. Obviously my character gets a bit riled up when she is on the gin.
0921: They have now painted fake bright pink nipples on me, poking out of my corset. I can’t even talk I am so shocked.
0925: When we are lined up for the costume designer to check us over, I am quietly praying to myself that she will notice Nipplegate and clean them off. Nothing.
0945: I don’t want to admit to anyone that I am so shallow that I don’t want to do it unless I look pretty. Still waiting to go on set. Still have bright pink nipple beacons. Trying to get over it, I make small talk with another extra. He spends the whole time staring at my fake nipples.
1000: On set. We have been held in a back room of the rather spectacular Crocker’s Folly, an old pub in Maida Vale that has been transformed into a gin palace. I hear two other extras talking about “back story” which gets me thinking about mine. Although in name I am merely Gin Palace Customer 2, in my head I have a rather complicated back story involving being lured into the dark alleys of gin-soaked London, forced to turn tricks for gin, ravaged by my need for the juniper stuff. Getting into character I repeat to myself….what is my motivation? Gin. What is my obstacle? Money. How do I overcome this? Well…we all know what a girl will do to get some gin. I am Nettie, gin addict. This is why, regardless of what the director tells me to do, I will be leering suggestively at Ben Barnes.
1045: On set. Doing the crossword. Talking to a couple of other extras, two gentlemen. One is a friend of the director, the other is a member of the crew’s dad. I am secretly relieved that they too are amateurs (sort of). Another person with a clipboard takes two of our group, leading them off to the room with the cameras. Another one gets taken away while I am not looking. Leaving me, two prostitutes and the two gentleman. My desire to be centre stage has overtaken my vanity. Why haven’t they taken me?
1115: Seriously, why haven’t they taken me?
1130: Oh I see, the others have been chosen for this set up and we will be in the reverse shot. Of course. Silly me. When’s lunch?
1230 The crowd AD tells us to get lunch because we will have a busy afternoon. Hurrah! If lunch is anything like breakfast, I am terribly excited.
1300: The scriptwriter sits at our table over lunch on the bus. We get talking and it comes up that I am “sort of a writer”. He asks me what sort of writing I want to do, I open my mouth to answer but he interrupts with “the kind of writing that pays”. I am just trying to figure out whether that is the best or worst advice ever when one of the professional extras behind me, appropos nothing, tells us that she is a pirate expert. Cool.
1315: Ate too much. Corset hurts. So do my feet.
1316: Is that pudding?
1430: Just at the moment I was about to throw the shawl in and go home, I have been chosen! I am paired up with a man who calls himself both Tubbs and Roy (he is a professional extra). We are in the back of shot and just as I am commiserating with my new friend that indeed it is rubbish not being in the front, a man with a walkie talkie tells me not to turn to the camera because they want to use me in the front of the next shot. Sorry Tubbs, I am going to the top! I get a proper look around whilst lurking about with my back to the camera. It is so convincing as a gin palace I already feel a bit gin-soaked and unsteady on my feet (this might be the combination of corset and high heels). I am Nettie. Gin Whore.
1530: Cut! Whilst on a break I have the conversational equivalent of a nap with another extra. There is tea, cake and sandwiches on the go. I see Tubbs is having an actual nap in the corner.
1630: My two prostitute friends, the two gentlemen and I are taken back into the main room where the action happens. We are carefully positioned. I have to drape myself over Dougie Henshall as he feels up one of the prostitutes sitting on the table, whilst I look suggestive to the other gentleman/punter over his shoulder. Wouldn’t be too stressful if the punter behind me wasn’t the gentleman I spoke to earlier whose son is on set. How much is too much in a situation like this? It is my moment, I want to shine. But I don’t want to be innappropriate in front of someone’s dad. Crumbs. To make matters worse, someone tells me that even though my face may not be in shot, my boobs and fake nipple/beacon definitely will be.
1645: Colin Firth, Ben Barnes and Ben Chaplin are in front of me. God it is hot in here. I can see why movie stars always bemoan that movie-making isn’t that glamorous. They are standing about like the rest of us. Though unlike the rest of us, they have someone to fan them. Ben Barnes hair really is extraordinarily shiny.
I feel all internally stressed. I am terrified that I am going to ruin the whole film (which admittedly would be rather impressive). The actual actors seem so relaxed and witty banter flies back and forth. Actors are just like normal people…only they are funnier, better-looking and more charming.
1700: Every time I leer forward to pout at a 70 year old, I can feel the camera zooming into my fake nipple. It is awkward but you know, the show must go on.
1715: The director comes over to give the prostitute direction in the appropriate response to getting felt up by Dougie Henshall. NB she is not a real prostitute, she is a very nice woman called Sophie. I ask the director how I am doing (expecting some effusive praise) and he looks at me blankly and says “what?” I mumble “nothing”.
1716: It is incredibly hard to be sexy when you look like Queen Victoria. Fact.
1720: Action. We are all talking in manner of gin palace regulars, full of slurred “cor blimeys” and winks. My new friend the producer’s dad says to us all…”well this is a bit embarassing, isn’t it?” It is such the perfect way to describe the situation we all fall about laughing on camera (even Dougie Henshall). Oh well, we can be happy gin addicts. I am Nettie, cheery gin whore.
1745: Final take. This is a big shot of the bar, capturing the bawdy scenes of a Victorian Gin Palace which will be used to maximum effect when the audience is lured in for the first time. I finally get to leer in the direction of Colin Firth and Ben Barnes. We give it one final push, saying things like “he looks like a right go-er”, “ooh ‘ello ‘andsome” and something about double-stuffing that I can’t repeat. There is a hurdy gurdy player and some of the vagabonds are doing a cheery jig. Everyone is laughing. In the true spirit of Nettie, I forget that I am tired and sore and not looking very pretty and find myself giddy with the fun of the party…because I am a gin whore and that is what gin whores do.
1820: It’s a wrap! I don’t want to leave.
1825: Actually I do. My feet hurt and I think I have done permanant bladder damage with the corset.
1900: Slowly everyone begins to disperse. I say goodbye to the people I recognise in their normal clothes. My Scottish hairdressing friend is shamed (by me) into sorting my stupid curly fringe out because my two new prostitute friends and I are going to the pub. The only trace of Nettie left behind is deep beneath my t shirt…my two bright pink painted nipples remain. Now that I am the only person who knows they are there, I have grown rather fond of them.
Tough week for Tom…bad buzz, no mates and he still hasn’t grown!
It has just been one thing after another for our plucky little foot soldier, Tom Cruise, this week.
It got off to a bad start for Tom when he showed up to the premiere of his new film Tropic Thunder to find some angry disabled people with placards saying “Ban The Word. Ban The Movie”. What is their problem? Oh the film uses the word Retard a lot. Ooops. Unfazed, Tom and Katie walked along the red carpet smiling like idiots and secetly hoping that no one mentioned the S-word to the already-angry disabled mob. Because you should not talk about Scientology when disabled people are around…it doesn’t go down very well. Even more insulting than seeing a movie with the word Retard in, is seeing someone whose “church” tells you that it is your fault you are in a wheelchair in that movie. That could’ve been awkward and Tom is a sensitive chap. At least his cameo as a studio fat cat in Tropic Thunder is getting good buzz.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Cruise’s next vehicle, Valkyrie. The trailer looks a bit lacklustre and what a surprise! It is about one man saving the world! Yawn. And the release date has been moved back repeatedly. On Wednesday it was pushed from October to December 2008. This is never a good sign.
To add to Tom’s Worst Week Ever, it was announced yesterday that his long-time producing partner and former agent Paula Wagner is set to leave United Artists, the MGM-financed studio they took over after they fell out with Paramount in 2006. I say they, I mean Tom. It is a tough blow for Tom whose future at UA is now uncertain and especially as they still have Valkyrie hanging around their neck and Tom is now goin’ it alone to the investors. Come on Tom! Remember how much you love goin’ it alone? Harden up.
On top of this, Cruise’s friend and fellow Scientologist, music legend Isaac Hayes died this week (or gone to Xenu which is how I think they say it) and Tom still hasn’t grown any taller.
I hope he doesn’t get depressed like Brooke Shields. In his time of need when it is too easy to kick the little guy when he’s down, we must remember that all he is trying to do is “clean this place up”.
Vive le Cult 