Paul Rudd’s severed dog head is staring into your very soul

Sunday July 31st 2011

This is why I love the Internet

Saturday July 30th 2011

All you have to do is complain about shit and ask for romantic comedy suggestions and you get couriered a bottle of whiskey and three amazing Hugh Grant films. Bless you, Jameson.

(You all love it when I show off, right?)

ADDENDUM: By the way, they haven’t got out of the film game. In the next year they’re sponsoring Empire Big Screen, Scala Forever, Jameson Cult Film Club (now also in Birmingham), the London Film Festival and the Empire Awards.

The Devil’s Double: nowhere near as exciting as its poster

Friday July 29th 2011

Surely I can’t have been alone in assuming from the picture above that The Devil’s Double was some kind of Danny Dyer East End Scarface Romp? When the press screening finally rolled around I went fully expecting to see Dominic Cooper flexing his cockney-barra-boy, ows-ya-fartha routine.

Sadly that’s not the role expected of him this time, but neither is he reprising his well-worn lothario schtick. Instead, he’s jumping in at the deep end of the antagonist pool and playing psychopathic son of Saddam, Uday Hussein. I for one didn’t see it coming: of all the parts I’ve ever envisaged Dominic Cooper in (your mum’s parts for example — schwing!), Uday Hussein wasn’t even in the Top 5. (He was at number six.)

The big selling point here is that D-Coops plays not only Uday but also his body double Latif Yahia, who was required to fulfil duties that the heir apparent considered himself too good for. It’s really no wonder Cooper got the part: he’s been doing the same thing for James McAvoy since 2008.

Both roles are clearly designed to launch Dominic Cooper as a Serious Actor, leaving behind his post-Mamma Mia typecasting once and for all. And there’s no denying that he’s invested a decent amount of time in developing the performances. But while his Uday is feverish, volatile and genuinely menacing (despite having the voice of the anthropomorphic meerkat from the Compare the Market ads), Latif is a markedly hollow protagonist, devoid of anything in the way of personal conflict. You’d be forgiven for assuming that at some point in the middle of the film he starts to buy into the luxury and power of Uday’s lifestyle and becomes the very thing that he hates the most. I mean, you couldn’t ask for a much more literal application of the whole ‘fame is a mask that eats into the face’ thing. But no, Latif keeps on being the blameless victim of circumstance and the audience keep on not giving a shit.

Because this is a ‘politically aware’ thriller, Latif’s non-struggle is backed by plenty of news footage of the Gulf War soundtracked by incongruous rock music to remind us of the perversity of war etc etc etc, not to mention shots of Uday burning money or wiping his bum with jewels or whatever, just in case you’ve managed to forget that he’s a bad, bad man.

This continues on for the best part of two hours with the closest thing to a dramatic arc being Latif’s affair with one of Uday’s girlfriends (brilliantly foreshadowed by at least 7 or 8 scenes early on in the movie in which people tell him that THE ONLY THING HE CAN’T DO IS SLEEP WITH UDAY’S GIRLFRIEND. THAT IS THE ONLY ONE THING. ANYTHING ELSE IS FINE BUT DO NOT DO THAT PARTICULAR THING).

If this is all sounding a little familiar, that’s because The Last King of Scotland already did it, and with considerably more success. All the key narrative elements of that film are present and correct here (the psychotic tyrant, the naive but ethical protagonist, the occasional splashes of extreme gore) but gone are the sharp script and taut direction that tied it all together, leaving us with nothing more than a tedious exercise in obsessively black and white storytelling.

My heart goes out to Dominic Cooper: McAvoy’s had the last laugh again.

Dear Jameson Irish Whiskey,

Thursday July 28th 2011

We’ve been friends for a long time now, ever since that fateful evening in 2008 when I was first handed one of your cocktail offspring at a trendy London Film Festival after party. Since then, you’ve sponsored 90-95% of my admittedly bare social calendar: everything from premieres to awards shows to screenings in Soho car parks.

Your presence in my life is so pervasive (particularly in the Autumn months) that I often convince myself in hindsight that you were responsible for events you had no part in whatsoever. Which is great for you but less exciting news for VW and Grey Goose.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the Film4 Summer Screen launch party last night to find that you’d been displaced as the main drinks sponsor by Estrella beer. Bloody Catalans… coming over here, taking our jobs (and the jobs of single distillery Irish whiskeys).

Is this the first step in a plot to abandon your borderline-OCD sponsorship of EVERY film-related event in the UK, and instead buddy up with music, or even fashion? The whores. Please tell me it’s not. Please tell me I’m being paranoid. I don’t think I could bear to lose you.

Yours,
Ultra Culture

Blogommendation: The Lawrence & Julie & Julia Project

Wednesday July 27th 2011

Don’t ask why, but since last November, Northwestern University student Lawrence Dai has been watching the 2009 comedy-drama Julie & Julia – which I hee-lariously described as ‘unbearable shit’ on this blog last March – once a day, every day. He’s aiming to complete a full year of this unimaginable torture and, 239 days in, has yet to resort to self-harm.

You can keep up to date with Lawrence’s Herculean task at his fantastic blog, which over the course of nine months has already seen his opinion of the film shift from ‘simply delightful!’ to ‘not very good’. And as well as documenting this increase in Lawrence’s critical faculties, the blog also looks at elements of the film as diverse as product placement, the role of rigging gaffer Francis Buddy McBride and a spurious connection with Rain Man. Lawrence has even been invited to Julie & Julia parties by fans of the blog, which sadly almost never happens to me with EuroTrip.

This is one for your bookmarks.