Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa

Clearly I am showing my age - I find it difficult to believe that Steve Coogan's character, Alan Partridge, first came to life over 20 years ago.

Nevertheless, Mr Partridge clearly retains his popularity, evidenced by the cinema having more people sat in it than for most films I have been to see this year. 

The comedy in this film is pure Partridge, with a touch more drama thrown in compared to when the ageing and irreverent DJ last appeared on our small screens. 

The plot is reasonably interesting, the screenplay not overly ambitious and at 90 minutes the length is about right.

I am not convinced as to the overseas appeal of this film, but I do wish it well. It should do well in it's home market - just don't go to see it if you anticipate having the meaning of life explained to you.

Red 2

Having not seen the original, I had no idea what to expect from this film.

Views on Red 2 differ enormously - My view is that it is a reasonably OK action film, with a fine cast and some good acting. 

Watch out for the toe curling action from Dame Helen Mirren and (for me) the best acting performance I've seen this year, by Sir Anthony Hopkins. 

Having been brought up in Cold War Germany, there was much in Red 2 to interest me. It is on occasion geographically testing, but that doesn't matter. The film is after all a fiction, and a good thing too. 

This film is not a waste of time - the movie business is an entertainment business and not everyone is entertained by the same things. Please bear that in mind. I would suggest that you go to see this film - just sit back and be entertained.

Parker

It's Jason Statham. What do you expect? A fairy tale.

It's a 15 certificate for a reason. Lots of wincing in the cinema. Plenty of blood on screen.....

Jennifer Lopez does the totty well.

There's a reasonable story line. Worth a couple of hours of your time.

Jack Reacher

I first went to see Tom Cruise in a film over 25 years ago. It was Top Gun and it was in one of the smaller screens at a cinema in Leicester Square. I guess the film must have been out a short while by then.

Over a quarter of a century later and I think Mr Cruise has weathered a little better than me. I suppose the money and the lifestyle probably helps a bit in that regard.

Anyhow, a few weeks ago Mr Cruise was doing the chat show circuit plugging his latest film, Jack Reacher. I didn't pay a huge amount of attention, but with a spare evening on my hands last week, I decided to give the film a go.

I am pleased that I did. It was on a very large screen (always good for action movies) and actually has a plot with a proper storyline and some semblance of believability.

I don't tend to read high brow books or go to see arty films. I like John Grisham, Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy. Mock me if you like, that's fine.

Anyhow, this is an action thriller that I enjoyed going to see. Yes Mr Cruise is good (he does all his own car stunts in the film) and the supporting cast are all OK. There are some funny scenes. There is some tension, but not to much as to want to hide behind the sofa.

Go to see this film if you like action adventures with a reasonable plot. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Pitch Perfect

I am not sure why I chose to go and see this film. Actually, I do know  - the train times were broadly convenient.

From my perspective, convenient train times were one of the better point about the evening.

Pitch Perfect is a 'feel good' film about an A Capella singing competition at  a US university. There is an interesting mix of characters, a predictable ending and plenty of humour along the way.

The film was released in the UK on 21st December 2012 and appears to be doing reasonably well at the box office. I didn't recognise any of the cast and, to be honest, am struggling to bubble in a particularly positive manner about the film.

Many wll disagree, but the dissenters will probably be a generation or two younger than me. Nothing to write home about.

Les Misérables

Well, think this is the film to receive all the hyperbole this month. Well, it is no exaggeration to say that aficionados of drama should go to see Les Misérables.

Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried and Anne Hathaway are the obvious stars. However the reality is that almost everything about the film is good.

From the opening chord of music, you get the feeling the the film is going to fly. And fly it does.

I have never been to see the stage production but it was quite evident, as the story progressed, that much of the music and many of the songs have become subconsciously embedded in my mind over time.

While snippets of the singing might be considered a little suspect, the overall musicality of Les Misérables really does take your breath away.

I had no idea of the storyline before I visited the cinema, but that did not matter because the screenplay and characters just sucked me in.

The cinematography is excellent (I thought the lighting was superb) and the pace never really slowed from beginning to end. A very quick 157 minutes.

I suspect that there may be an award or two on the way.

BAFTA Film Awards 2013 - The 2013 Nominations are out

The British Academy of Film & Television Arts have today announced the shortlist of nominations for the 2013 Bafta Film Awards,

The awards ceremony will this year take place on Sunday 10th February 2013 at the Royal Opera House in London.

Some of the films on the shortlist have so far been on only very limited release at the cinema,Many have to all intent and purposes 'been & gone'. I have seen some, I haven't seen most.

The full list of nominations is summarised as.

BEST FILM

•     Argo
•     Les Miserables
•     Life Of Pi
•     Lincoln
•     Zero Dark Thirty

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

•     Anna Karenina
•     The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
•     Les Miserables
•     Seven Psycopaths
•     Skyfall

LEADING ACTOR

•     Ben Affleck - Argo
•     Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
•     Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln
•     Hugh Jackman - Les Miserables
•     Joaquin Phoenix - The Master

LEADING ACTRESS

•     Emanuelle Riva - Amour
•     Dame Helen Mirren - Hitchcock
•     Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook
•     Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty
•     Marion Cotillard - Rust and Bone

SUPPORTING ACTOR

•     Alan Arkin - Argo
•     Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained
•     Javier Bardem - Skyfall
•     Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master
•     Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

•     Amy Adams - The Master
•     Anne Hathaway - Les Miserables
•     Helen Hunt - The Sessions
•     Dame Judo Dence - Skyfall
•     Sally Field - Lincoln

DIRECTOR

•     Michael Haneke - Amour
•     Ben Affleck - Argo
•     Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained
•     Ang Lee - Life Of Pi
•     Kathryn Bigelow - Zero Dark Thirty

RISING STAR (public vote)

•     Juno Temple
•     Andrea Riseborough
•     Elizabeth Olsen
•     Alicia Vikander
•     Suraj Sharma

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER

•     Bart Layton (director) and Dmitri Doganis (producer) - The Imposter
•     David Morris (director) and Jaqui Morris (director / producer) - McCullin
•     Dexter Fletcher (director / writer) and Danny King (writer) - Wild Bill
•     James Bobin (director) - The Muppets
•     Tina Gharavi (director / writer) - I Am Nasrine

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

•     Amour
•     Headhunters
•     The Hunt
•     Rust and Bone
•     Untouchable

DOCUMENTARY

•     The Imposter
•     Marley
•     McCullin
•     Searching For Sugarman
•     West Of Memphis

ANIMATED FILM

•     Brave
•     Frankenweenie
•     Paranorman

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

•     Amour - Michael Haneke
•     Djanjo Unchained - Quentin Tarantino
•     The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson
•     Moonrise Kingdon - Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
•     Zero Dark Thirty - Mark Boal

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

•     Argo - Chris Terrio
•     Beasts of the Southern Wild - Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin
•     Life of Pi - David Magee
•     Lincoln - Tony Kushner
•     Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell

ORIGINAL MUSIC

•     Anna Karenina
•     Argo
•     Life Of Pi
•     Lincoln
•     Skyfall

CINEMATOGRAPHY

•     Anna Karenina
•     Les Miserables
•     Life Of Pi
•     Lincoln
•     Skyfall

EDITING

•     Argo
•     Django Unchained
•     Life Of Pi
•     Skyfall
•     Zero Dark Thirty

PRODUCTION DESIGN

•     Anna Karenina
•     Les Miserables
•     Life Of Pi
•     Lincoln
•     Skyfall

COSTUME DESIGN

•     Anna Karenina
•     Great Expectations
•     Les Miserables
•     Lincoln
•     Snow White and the Huntsman

MAKE UP AND HAIR

•     Anna Karenina
•     Hitchcock
•     The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
•     Les Miserables
•     Lincoln

The Impossible

Boxing Day 2004.

Due to an overflowing family home, I had been spending Christmas as a neighbour's house guest. I was woken to be told that there had been a large tidal wave in the Indian Ocean. It appeared to be a calamity for the area.

"Oh, OK", I seem to recall was my immediate reaction. Of coursse I had not realised that the Boxing Day Tsunami, caused by an under sea earthquake just before 1.00 am London Time, was to be one of the largest natural disasters to have struck our planet in recent recorded history.

I do recall that the disaster became the focus of world attention for the following weeks, with hundreds of thousands of people having lost their lives cross South East Asia.

Eight years later and the New Year Blockbuster (in the UK) appears to be 'The Impossible', a dramatisation of the real life story of a family on holiday in Thailand, who were split up by the phenomenal tidal wave that engulfed vast swathes of coastal areas in that country and many of its neighbours.

Unlike the other films that I have seen this year, the cinema was almost full. The audience was also incredibly quiet, gripped by the powerful drama unfolding in front of us. How they filmed some of the sequences I shall never know. Certainly though, the drama and cinematography may be considered epic.

The headline star is Ewan McGregor, but really, Naomi Watts and Tom Holland steal the show. Having said that, the entire cast and the production quality are incredible.

I have said something similar before, but unless you have a massive television set with a cinematic suurround sound system, do go and see this film while it is on at the cinema. It will enthrall you.

At the end, I left the cinema exhausted - so well does it portray what must be such a small part of what was such an enormous disaster.

Quartet

My fear before going to see 'Quartet' was that I would have to confess to having been to see a 'Sing-a-long-a-Sound-of-Music' type film. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is unlikely that a film directed by Dustin Hoffman, and with a cast including the likes of Dame Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and many other big names wold be rubbish. It isn't.

Filmed on location at Hedsor House, near Taplow in Buckinghamshire, Quartet is a quintessentially English Film. It's got British humour, pathos, some clever cinematography and a fair bit of music (but not too much).

I wondered whether a film set in a retirement home would be a trifle dull, but it isn't. I wondered whether I would be recommending it to my parents as a 'Must See' - I won't. Not because I didn't enjoy it, because I did. Rather however because there is a little bad language and also perhaps because of the ever present reminders of the often worrying inevitability of growing old. Maybe a little close to home.

Funded partly by the BBC, the film is typically short for a British Film (just 98 minutes), and enjoyable. It has the capacity to make you think. There was one thing that I did not like, but to say what it is would perhaps be classed as a spoiler, so I won't.

Quartet possibly won't appeal to the masses, so go and see it soon, because I suspect it won't be on general release for long. Otherwise I suspect it will be coming to a TV screen near you in the next 12 - 15 months.

Skyfall

Always one to follow the crowd, tonight I went to see the latest James Bond film. Me and five other people were all that were there.

Actually, considering it wasn't an Ian Fleming story, I thought it was a pretty good continuation of the genre. An excellent game of Word Association, a young Q (Ben Whishaw from 'The Hour'), all the expected action and characters and a dramatic ending.

Naturally there is a requirement to suspend belief - it is a work of fiction, but nonetheless realistic enough. London's geography (and the underground network) gets a bit screwed up, geographically speaking, but everything is recognisable.

Daniel Craig is as good as ever and Dame Judi Dench is always good on screen. And of course there is Moneypenny. Rather nice.

If you haven't yet been to see the film on the big screen, I recommend that you do. It won't be so good on the rectangle in the corner of your living room.

There seem to be a few interesting films doing the rounds at present, so I may have to tie up a few more evenings in the near future.