Image by lisby1 via FlickrMatt Smith an immediate hit......
Sunday, April 4, 2010
The New Dr Who......
Image by lisby1 via FlickrMatt Smith an immediate hit......
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Tesco Movies
Tesco sets up film studio to adapt hit novels
Chain will base movies on books by authors including Jackie Collins, Philip Pullman and Dick Francis
There is an unlikely new player in the British film industry with ambitions to change the world of entertainment. Tesco, the supermarket giant, has moved into movie mogul territory this weekend with the launch of a multi-million-pound production arm poised to make films of books by a slew of bestselling authors.
The first release from the Tesco studio will be Paris Connections, a tweaked Jackie Collins tale being shot on location in Paris early next month. Set in the glamorous world of fashion shows and rival couturiers, it tells of investigative journalist Madison Castelli's efforts to uncover the truth behind a series of murders of Size Zero models.
Directed by Harley Cokliss and starring Anthony Delon, it will go straight to DVD after a number of cinema preview screenings. The film will then be sold exclusively in Tesco stores and has been specially adapted by Collins for the chain from her 1999 bestselling murder mystery LA Connections.
"Jackie has rewritten the book for us, which is fantastic, because we thought Paris would be the most glamorous location to film in. But all the other stories we are adapting are closely based on existing books," said Ileen Maisel, of Amber Entertainment, the production company making the films in collaboration with Tesco. Next in line for production are titles by Dick Francis, Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman and Judy Blume.
"We are able to involve the writers at every stage, even with the casting decisions. And Tesco sells an enormous amount of books, of course; so for an author to have his DVDs on the shelf alongside his books and to sell them simultaneously sounds like a very good thing," said Maisel.
The American-born producer, formerly a top executive at New Line Cinema, has produced a number of big-budget films, including the screen adaptation of Pullman's novel Northern Lights. She is now in Paris with her colleague Lawrence Elman, choosing locations that already include the Paris Opera and a pleasure cruiser on the Seine.
"Ileen has been working with high-profile authors for a long time," said Elman, a former television producer. "Normally when an author works with a film-maker, they just sign on the dotted line and then shake hands, before they are told, 'Thank you very much. See you at the premiere.' Instead, we have offered them a partnership and it is very enticing for them."
For Tesco, the appeal of the deal was the roster of big-name writers that Amber could deliver. "We liked Amber's idea because it brings us authors who are ideal for this," said Rob Salter, Tesco's entertainment director. "It had to be a project that needed no explanation. When you say 'Jackie Collins', it doesn't need any explanation. The fact they had a number of people they could sign up who are among the best-known authors out there was obviously a big thing."
Tesco describe the multi-million-pound deal with Amber as one that "makes the most of what each company does best", with the film company in charge of production and Tesco running the marketing.
The shift into film production is part of Tesco's effort to make the most of its growing influence as a retailer of mainstream books and home entertainment.
Salter explains that the deal with Amber is part of a project to make Tesco's entertainment brand more potent: "A deal such as this means we can work on projects much earlier and have involvement while the film is being made. An exclusive title is a great driver to bring people to our stores anyway, but if we are involved in the film from the start we can involve our customers much earlier. We can run a competition to take people out to the set in Paris, for example, and we can set up blogs about the shooting process and run interviews with the stars and with Jackie Collins."
Editorially, Salter assures fans of the work of Francis, Pullman and Collins et al that there is no direction from the supermarket chain about the content of the screenplay. "Apart from telling the film-makers what I don't want to see in Tesco, then there is no interference in the subject matter. Of course, I don't want anything too risqué. Nothing that would be 18-rated and that would not sit well on our shelves.
"Other than that, though, there is no editorial involvement from us. We have been sent a script of the first film, so we know the story. That's it."
Tesco has already dipped its toe into the film industry in a deal struck with the Miramax production company over the 2009 Zac Efron film, Me and Orson Welles, which gave Tesco exclusive DVD sales rights, and in another Christmas deal with Dreamworks, giving it sole rights to sell the animated short film Merry Madagascar.
"The Madagascar Christmas DVD, promoted in the way we did, sold four times as many copies as it would have done if it was on the shelf with all the other DVDs we sell at Christmas. Our choice of the books for these new films is based on what we feel our customers would find most interesting," said Salter.
The volume of books sold is not dented by rival DVD sales on the opposite aisle, according to research carried out by Amber Entertainment. "In fact, the opposite is true," said Maisel. "People buy books when they have seen the film. When the public saw a film of the children's book Inkheart, which did not do as well in the cinema as had been hoped, the book still went into the children's bestsellers list after the film came out."
The Jacqueline Wilson title The Worry Website will be filmed in Britain, as will the selected Dick Francis thriller. A screenplay of the revered American children's author Judy Blume's 1981 novel, Tiger Eyes, is also in development, as is one of the novels from Pullman's Sally Lockhart children's adventure series.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Avatar - the movie
"Avatar" to Become Second Highest Grossing Film, After "Titanic"
Posted: January 7th, 2010 byWorstPreviews.com Staff
"Avatar" is still knocking films off the biggest worldwide earners list. It is now in third place with $1.1 billion (through Tuesday), surpassing "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which took in $1.07 billion in 2006.
The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic is also quickly gaining on the second top grosser "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the
If "Avatar" overtakes "Lord of the Rings," that means that the only film that will stand in its way is Cameron's other monster hit "Titanic." But it's very unlikely that "Avatar" would be able to break $1.84 billion.
Read more:http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=16328&count=0#ixzz0bvYA6VG8
Friday, January 1, 2010
Best programme over Xmas????????????????????????????
The Triffids are back.....not as good as the book
The Day of the Triffids
More asbo cacti than killer plants, these new triffids were not remotely scary, says Sam Wollaston
The triffids were weedy, but not as wooden as Joely Richardson Photograph: BBC/Power/BBC / Power
In the land of the blind, Gordon Brown should be king. But he doesn't even seem to be prime minister any more; he is nowhere to be seen, Downing Street has been deserted and Eddie Izzard has taken over. That could make for a refreshing change. Should we worry for the economy?
Eddie was snoozing on a 747 with an eye mask on when the Big Flash happened, so he got to keep his sight; then he survived the plane crash by locking himself in the loo with a load of inflated life jackets (would that even work?). Now, inspired by Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament Square, he's gone power crazy. There are a few other lucky ones, including Joely Richardson, who kept her sight but appears to have lost the ability to act, and Dougray Scott, who's still going to fall for her – as well as trying to save the world. Otherwise, it's just the blind . . . well, you know who they're leading. Plus the killer plants, of course, whose day this is.
We met them – the killer plants – early in part one of The Day of the Triffids (BBC1) on Monday night, after which it became very hard to take any of it very seriously. No screen adaptation of John Wyndham's classic post-apocalyptic novel can ever really compete with the book: when it comes to creating menacing flora, special effects and computer graphics still lag a long way behind the human imagination. These triffids are laughable. They seem to be based on quite a common species of cactus (I don't know the name, but I've definitely seen them in the plant section of Homebase). Then, rising from the centre of the plant, is a kind of red hoodie – possibly playing, like a Daily Mail editorial, to our fear of modern feral youths. The Day of the Asbo Cacti. Pah! They don't frighten me: they're cute, I want one, for my conservatory. Well, I call it a conservatory . . .
The triffids' collective performance is still better, and less wooden, than Joely's. In last night's second and concluding part, her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, attempted to restore some dignity to the family's reputation with a spirited performance as the mother superior of a rural convent. Dougray has ended up there, injured and in need of help if he's to save mankind, though Vanessa turns out not to be the saint she appears to be. (Was anyone else concerned about the wound by Dougray's right eye, I wonder, and the way it seemed to appear and disappear? Maybe that's just symptomatic of a triffid sting).
Anyway, the convent is a beautiful place, filmed – I think – at the Hospital of St Cross in Hampshire, with St Catherine's Hill covered in snow (and waving triffids) behind. I enjoyed all the locations, and trying to identify them – the views over London, the Gherkin in the City, the Ark at Hammersmith, the A4, Cobstone Windmill (possibly) in the Chilterns. This was a big-name, all-singing, all-dancing, big-budget production and, hoodie triffids aside, it looked fabulous.
It was also pretty faithful to the novel, in terms of character and plot. So they modernised it a bit, gave it a new eco makeover, with the triffids being grown as a source of renewable, clean energy, instead of something to do with the Soviet Union. And it's a loony plant-rights activist who liberates the triffids in the first place – for which he pays, as he should do, with his life.
Under these bodywork modifications though, the chassis is basically the same. I'm glad they kept the ending, too – the Isle of Wight and an uncertain future for mankind – instead of the happy discovery that seawater works as a triffidicide, which is what one screen adaptation had.
But – and it's a big but – what it doesn't do is anything the book doesn't. In fact, it does a lot less – there is none of that feeling of foreboding or doom. Maybe it's because I was (much) younger when I read it, but I remember a certain darkness. I'd like to have tried it out on some children, but unfortunately there weren't any to hand. I've been more scared watching Doctor Who. I don't think I'm even going to have a problem going to the plant section of Homebase.
The Day of the Triffids - New TV show in UK
What rubbish has been served up this Xmas & New Year on TV in the UK! Poor repeats, old films, ineffectual interviews, extraordinarily bad music and programmes destined to be on the rubbish heap within minutes of being shown. "The day of the Triffids" was one of these - poorly scripted with acting beyond creditable belief. What a show to serve up at prime time. Wake up all you programmers. We are an intelligent audience!
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