Friday, September 14 2007, 17:30

Good Morning Baltimooooooooore!

John, Adam, and I went to see Hairspray last night. What a feast! Undoubtedly the best film I've been to see in ages. A really talented cast with well known faces like Michelle Pfeiffer and John Travolta (with the latter reprising his musical past as you've never seen him before). The score includes a bunch of classic rock'n'roll tunes as well as some more motowny things for the stars of Corny Collins' Negro Day (compered by Queen Latifah). So we knew Travolta and Queen Latifah could sing, but Christopher Walken and Michelle Pfeiffer - who knew? Obviously the star of the show, Nikki Blonsky, as Tracy Turnblad has a great set of lungs, perfectly suited to all these Fifties tracks.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the film; at one point I got Adam's attention so I could point out John, who was staring at the screen with a face of undisguisable joy, mouth hanging open in childlike delight, bless 'im. I don't know about the others, but I've had the tunes to Good Morning Baltimore, I Can Hear The Bells, and It's Hairspray running through my head all day.

So if you're in the mood for a feel-good film, or you want a fix of beehives and slicked back hair, or want your feet tapping to songs that could have been in Dirty Dancing, go and see it. I'm so jealous that I can't get tickets for the stage musical in London!

Wednesday, September 19 2007, 18:04

Fantastic cinema!

The Lord of the Rings was a turning point for readers - until JRR Tolkien put pen to paper, the kind of epic fantasy saga that we're now familiar with didn't really exist in the corpus of English literature beyond children's fairy tales. These days, there's a surfeit of fantasy writing (not all of it worth the description 'literature'), and finally, special effects on the silver screen have advanced sufficiently to be able to transform these tales into films. It's only right that Tolkien, who blazed the fantasy trail on paper, should have his masterpiece brought to life so stunningly first, but since then Hollywood has been flicking through what used to be just the preserve of nerds and Dungeons & Dragons players in Waterstones. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, by Tolkien's buddy, CS Lewis, got a decent treatment in 2005, and the sequel, Prince Caspian, will hit our screens next year. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman (author of American Gods and co-author of Good Omens with comedy fantasist Terry Pratchett) is out this week, and might have been named for the galaxy of celebrities in the cast - Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Ian McKellen, Sienna Miller, Peter O'Toole, Rupert Everett, David Walliams, Robert de Niro, Ricky Gervais... etc.

It's not all good though; also this year, Walden Media's rendition of Susan Cooper's gripping The Dark Is Rising arrives under the name The Seeker. After Walden did such a great job on CS Lewis, I was quite excited by the prospect of one of my favourite childhood books coming to the screen, but the trailer is frightful. For some reason, they've changed the hero of the book from a quiet, introspective 11 year old Buckinghamshire lad to some horrific American brat who thinks he's Superman Junior, with cringeworthy lines like, "how am I supposed to save the world? I can't even talk to a girl?!" [VOMIT]. I am going to see this film, but expect vitriol in your inbox when I get back from the cinema.

So thank goodness for Christmas! The Golden Compass comes to Australia on Boxing Day, and is the screen adaptation of Philip Pullman's award-winning The Northern Lights, a tale of thwarted dark authority, champions of truth, and small furry sidekicks in a parallel universe! The trailer's out there now, and it looks smashing. That's all I'm going to say about it, since I gushingly reviewed the books when I read them last year. Roll on Christmas!

Wednesday, October 10 2007, 12:37

Invasion of the monster moths

If I were the sort of person to indulge in idle chit-chat around the water cooler, I might be talking about moths at the moment. Sydney is awash (aflutter?) with them. Everywhere you go, you'll find the big, brown things flapping noisily around, batting into things and leaving little dust headprints against whatever surfaces they've hurled themselves. Just last night, one of them hurled itself at John, who leapt, shrieking, from the bed and demanded in a most unvegetarian-like fashion that I execute the poor blighter (who did the cunning thing and hid quietly until lights were out).

Some of John's family arrived in Australia last weekend - they're here for three weeks; today we're flying out to Tasmania for four days which I'm quite excited about - it's another part of Australia I've not yet been to. That just leaves Canberra on my list of must-see places. The weather in Hobart over the next few days is set to be wet and cold (max of 15), and I've already been told to expect England-like scenery, so maybe it's going to be like stepping off a plane in London. We'll see. Either way, it'll be a complete change from our Sleaze Ball weekend at the beginning of the month - several thousand homos partying in a big sweaty crowd dressed in various costumes on the theme of Zirkus (kind of circus meets burlesque), followed by "sweat box, laser beam, flashin lights, wild cards, men from Mars dressed in stars and stripes, eclectic electric"... You get the picture ;)