| Vaughn's gay joke trailer pulled A TRAILER for Vince Vaughn's latest movie has been pulled after gay celebrities slammed a joke. news.com.au |
Despicable Me – review This amiable animated comedy about a put-upon supervillain doesn't quite justify the American hype, says Peter BradshawHere is an amiable animated comedy that has had a wildly enthusiastic response in the US. This baffles me a little. It is a perfectly agreeable family entertainment, but not exactly original and nowhere near Pixar's great creations. Despicable Me is co-directed by Chris Renaud – who created the bug-eyed squirrel Scrat in the Ice Age movies – and the French-born animator Pierre Coffin. Steve Carell voices the character of Gru, a career super-villain who presides over a secret lair populated by hundreds of little yellow creatures who do his bidding. Times are hard in the super-villain world, and Gru finds it tough to get funding from the banks (there's a nice wisecrack about Lehman Brothers) for his various megalomaniac wheezes. And there's a thrusting new super-villain in town called Vector, voiced by Jason Segel, who is flavour of the month with the venture-capital community. Gru hits on the plan of adopting three orphans who will insinuate themselves into Vector's house by selling him girl-scout cookies and pinch his new gadget. But then, inevitably, he finds himself becoming entranced by his little kids, and wonders whether fatherhood is more his style after all. Decent stuff, but Gru is nowhere near as interesting as, say, Syndrome from The Incredibles, or Jim Carrey's Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. PBRating: 3/5AnimationSteve CarellScience fiction and fantasyPeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Packed to the Rafters stars engaged PACKED To The Rafters stars Jessica Marais and James Stewart confirmed they are engaged. news.com.au |
The Wicker Man: No 4 best horror film of all time Robin Hardy, 1973Robin Hardy's slow-burning chiller, from a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer (author of Sleuth, and brother of Peter), was once hailed by the magazine Cinefantastique as "the Citizen Kane of horror movies".It was originally released as a supporting feature to Don't Look Now, but had a troubled distribution history, which delayed its elevation to cult status until the 1980s. Ailing production company British Lion was bought by EMI midway through shooting, and Hardy was obliged to make cuts (but resisted demands by studio executives that he change the ending); a further 13 minutes were cut for the American release. It wasn't until nearly 30 years later that a restored version became available on DVD. (In 2006 Neil LaBute wrote and directed a risible remake, transposed to a matriarchal community on an island off the coast of America's Pacific north-west region and starring Nicolas Cage.) Christopher Lee, who was proud of his performance as Lord Summerisle, never lost faith in the film's quality and reportedly even offered to pay for critics' cinema seats. Edward Woodward (up until that point best known for the TV series Callan) plays Sergeant Howie, an uptight Calvinist policeman who travels to Summerisle, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, to investigate reports of a local girl's disappearance. Once there, he finds his solid Christian beliefs confronted by a community dabbling in all manner of dubious pagan practices (including sun worship, fertility rituals and Britt Ekland, or her body double, dancing naked), and begins to suspect the islanders of knowing more about what happened to the missing girl than they're letting on.The Wicker Man is influential not just on subsequent horror cinema, but on the thriller genre in general in the way it sets an artfully composed series of traps for its unwitting protagonist, expertly wrong-footing both him and the audience until the devastating ending, set to the world's most disturbing rendition of the folksong Summer is Icumen In, which makes it clear that Sergeant Howie was correct in assuming there was an island-wide conspiracy – but horribly wrong about its precise nature.HorrorChristopher LeeAnne Billsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Tiger's mistress blames Elin for his affairs THE first of Tiger Woods' mistresses to write a tell-all book has blamed the golfer's wife for his serial cheating. news.com.au |