TOP 100 ACTOR SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Trio face eviction from 'Celebrity Big Brother' house Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, Ronnie Wood's ex-girlfriend Katia Ivanova and British rapper Lady Sovereign are the first celebrities to face eviction from the 'Celebrity Big Brother' house, it was announced today. breakingnews.ie |
Isabel conquers the mountain THE Transformers star has trudged through a Tanzanian blizzard with Jessica Biel and Emile Hirsch. news.com.au |
Golden moment for Ricky Gervais THE Office star set to make history as he hosts the first ever Golden Globes to be screened live. news.com.au |
Serge Gainsbourg's Life Story to Be Told in Biopic He's been dead for nearly 20 years, but until now, no French director has dared to make a biopic about the beloved -- and controversial -- singer Serge Gainsbourg feedproxy.google.com |
Will Tesco films be Finest or Value? Tesco's decision to make a Jackie Collins novel into its first movie makes me wonder what cinematic joys we can expect - from this and other major retailersThinking logically, it was only a matter of time before Tesco got into the movie production business. After all, you can already buy Tesco food, wear Tesco clothes, read Tesco magazines, talk on the Tesco phone network, heat your home with Tesco gas and electricity, bank with Tesco and go on a Tesco holiday, so the film industry does seem to be the only pie that the supermarket hasn't already jabbed some sort of appendage into.And now it's happened: this week Tesco announced it was going to start making its own films. Admittedly, not any films you'd actually want to watch – they'll all be straight-to-DVD affairs, and the first release will be an adaptation of a Jackie Collins book – but it's an interesting decision nonetheless. A company with the undeniable clout of Tesco would be able to market the titles to kingdom come and, given its success rate in other ventures, there's a good chance these DVDs will make everyone a lot of money regardless of their quality.But what next? Since this is Tesco we're talking about, it goes without saying that producing one version of each movie won't be enough. Surely it'd be more in keeping with the company's ethos to release several – a Tesco Finest version starring Ralph Fiennes and Helen Mirren, a regular version with Mark Addy and Fay Ripley, and then a dirt-cheap Tesco Value effort featuring Kerry Katona and the bloke from the Go Compare adverts gooning around in an abandoned pub car park while an unsteady bystander tries to record it on their mobile phone.That's not to mention the gratuitous product placement we should all expect from these films. Philip Pullman is apparently one of the authors discussing the possibility of letting Tesco adapt his books into films, but how much money would it take for him to agree to alter The Amber Spyglass so that it ends with Metatron being bonked on the head with a 400g tin of Tesco cream of mushroom soup or decapitated with a Tesco thin-and-crispy ham-and-pineapple pizza, a snip at the low, low price of £1.50?But worst of all, should these Tesco movies turn out to be a profitable venture, it goes without saying that all the other supermarkets will fall over themselves to get in on the act, too. And that hardly bears thinking about. During every trip to Waitrose you'd be bombarded with adverts for whatever dreary old Merchant Ivory-style period snoozefest it was about to release. Asda would quickly corner the market in garish lowest-common-denominator rom-coms. Lidl would fill its stores with badly dubbed versions of forgotten communist-era eastern European propaganda films. And, yes, every movie Sainsbury's released would be rendered unwatchable because of its contractual obligation to cast Jamie Oliver in the lead.Of course, you have the power to stop any of this from happening. All you need to do is somehow avoid buying Tesco's first Jackie Collins adaptation on DVD. It's asking a lot of you, I know – but if you dig deep I'm sure you can do it.TescoSupermarketsPhilip PullmanStuart Heritageguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |