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| Aussie fashion label on brink of collapse THE bad-boy Aussie fashion brand ksubi is teetering on the edge of financial collapse. news.com.au |
The view: Will Red Riding be welcomed home in the US? What American cinemagoers make of the acclaimed adaptations of David Peace's Ellroy-meets-70s-Yorkshire noir novels will be intriguing to seeIt's a long journey from the bleakest corners of West Yorkshire to the sleepless glitz of Manhattan. But that's the route being taken by the Red Riding trilogy, the film adaptations of three of David Peace's four northern noir crime novels that aired on Channel 4 last year β they're now set to enjoy a theatrical release in the US, kicking off next month in New York. It's certainly an intriguing meeting of cultures; what even the most anglophile American audience will make of stories so steeped in the murkiest stuff of late 20th-century British history remains to be seen. There again, it's never been a fruitful pastime predicting which British movies might find favour in the States. Those with long memories will recall the unlikely box-office success of curios such as pot-growing farce Saving Grace and Mike Hodges's elegant Croupier, films that drew large US crowds with a far lower initial profile than Red Riding. More recently there was The Bank Job, the knockabout 70s heist romp written by TV veterans Clement and La Frenais that attracted large numbers of Americans to a story involving Princess Margaret and a denouement at Paddington station (and which, together with the now-cancelled US version of Life on Mars may have helped nudge the door open for Peace's altogether more hellish vision of the same era). Meanwhile, Bronson, of all things β the would-be-Brechtian portrait of "Britain's most violent prisoner" β mopped up all manner of critical acclaim when it crossed the Atlantic late last year.So the tea leaves can't be trusted, but crime is universal. Which may be why in the US, the last thing on anyone's mind about Red Riding looks to be its nationality. Rather, the marketing suggests a highbrow genre piece seasoned with a touch of horror, complete with a poster that could have seen service as an Omen sequel, and buzz in the trade press framing the films not as insights into the brutalised soul of the north of England but spiritual heirs to The Silence of the Lambs, boiled down to their narrative bare bones as tales about bogeymen and missing kids. No one is suggesting there's a grand conspiracy at work here to strip British films of their Britishness (sad as it was to see Salon remark this week that the magnificent Fish Tank will likely prove "too implacably British" to grab an American audience). Culturally though, it's an interesting process to observe β because for me, the genius of Red Riding never lay in its plot. Taut as the novels' storytelling is, what made the work hum on the page and occasionally on screen was the raw, near-palpable evocation of Yorkshire, Peter Sutcliffe, police culture, insatiable property development, the alien but eerily familiar England of the 70s and early 80s. The themes of misogyny and moral rot came through so clearly because of the mass of fine-grained details of time and place β whereas the films risk being dressed up as mere generic crime yarns.All of which goes double for the studio remake currently working its way down the pipeline. Now in my dotage I try to remember there are better things to be outraged by than dodgy sounding remakes, but this does seem an especially rum proposition β directed by the declining Ridley Scott and, odder still, relocated to Pennsylvania. That, on the face of it, is the kind of idea solely designed to set off a conniption. But then, who knows, maybe Scott will abruptly rediscover his mojo, by some miracle connecting with the spirit of the original novels not just as a Hollywood fixture, but a son, however long ago, of South Shields and West Hartlepool. And after all, despite its thick Leeds accent, the original Red Riding quartet was in fact itself an exotic hybrid, created across borders and time zones. Peace uncannily conjured up 70s Yorkshire β but through novels that took as their stylistic inspiration James Ellroy's staccato portraits of postwar Los Angeles, pieced together not in dingy flats in Beeston but Peace's home at the time in Tokyo, all that hypnotically authentic context created after the fact and thousands of miles away. So perhaps it's not so strange to find Peace's version of noir now making its way back over the ocean. Like a lot of what we think of as definitively British, beneath the surface it's a little more complex than that.Red RidingDanny Leighguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Hollywood stars offer aid to quake-stricken Haiti Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are among stars who have pledged money and time to Haiti relief effortsHollywood stars are lining up to offer financial aid for victims of the catastrophic earthquake which hit Haiti a week ago. Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are all said to have contributed $1m each in aid, while others are expected to make public appeals or appear at fundraising events.Variety reports that Clooney will host the Hope for Haiti telethon on Friday, which will be broadcast on multiple networks in the US. Justin Timberlake is among those expected to perform, with proceeds split evenly among Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, Unicef and Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation, all of which have a strong presence in Haiti. Jean has this week been forced to defend himself against accusations that past donations were mismanaged.In addition, Susan Sarandon and Ben Stiller are among 30 performers set to deliver calls to action on a two-hour special edition of CNN's Larry King Live show on Monday, titled Haiti: How You Can Help. Meanwhile, the University of Kentucky raised $1m in a 4Β½-hour Hoops for Haiti telethon with the help of graduate Ashley Judd. Meryl Streep, Josh Brolin and Gerald Butler were said to be auctioning off their Golden Globe outfits in aid of Artists for Peace and Justice's Haiti appeal. In New York, Gabriel Byrne is among the organisers for a Rebuild Haiti fundraiser on Thursday night to benefit Concern Worldwide and the Edeyo Foundation.Avatar director James Cameron said after the Globes on Sunday that an international force was needed to ensure that similar disasters were met with a rapid response in the future."I would pose the question: why can we put a special ops force on the ground with such great effectiveness to go after military objectives, and [it] somehow eludes us to have a single ready-to-go force that can get in and set up a temporary structure to help out in this type of situation?" he said. "That needs to be developed. Not just on a national level, on an international level. We need that. We don't have it, and we need it. It's stupid not to have it."HaitiSandra BullockGeorge ClooneyBrad PittAngelina JolieMeryl StreepJosh BrolinJames CameronBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Miley Cyrus 'ready for marriage' The 17-year-old star Miley Cyrus - who recently denied she is engaged to actor Liam Hemsworth after she was pictured wearing a ring on her engagement finger - has been joking to pals about the possibility of changing her name to match her 18-year-old boyfriend's. breakingnews.ie |
Boyle finds intruder in house Singer Susan Boyle returned home to find an intruder inside her house, police said today. breakingnews.ie |