film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Alton Williams

  • Quick News Blast 2

    Avatar Pandorum poster mashup.

    Tom Hanks grabs Summer Hours.

    Criterion have posted Chris Darke’s essay on Steve McQueen’s Hunger.

    Jeffrey Dean Morgan digs into The Fields.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Made In Pakistan/Frost


    The recent UK release of Made In Pakistan was covered by the Al Jazeera television show Frost Over The World on February 12th, 2010.

    Sir David Frost introduced the documentary as “A remarkable film showing a different side to Pakistan” and interviewed the documentary’s producers, Adil Sher and Hiba Sher.

    Inspired by the Newsweek article proclaiming Pakistan as “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth”, the documentary examines the lives of four Pakistani individuals from diverse backgrounds and attempts to show aspects of Pakistan seldom revealed. “We felt that the Taliban and the fundamentalists do not represent all of Pakistan, it’s just a very slight minority, yet they’re the ones who are the face of Pakistan to the outside world,” says director Nasir Ali Khan. “Pakistani youth have realized that their future lies in making this nation work.”

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Brendon Connelly Is Awesome


    Brendon Connelly is an awesome man, and an awesome film blogger.

    He has left a message on his film ick blog recently.

    “I’m somewhat bemused that it’s a group of people who think taste in films comes down to just that – taste and nothing more – that seem to be the angriest when I express an opinion on cinema that they don’t like. If you think my dislike of Scorsese’s movies is just taste, then why should you care? Different strokes and so on, eh?

    But I don’t personally believe it’s just a matter of taste. Indeed, I think there are a good number of objective criteria for the discussion of a piece of film craft. I’m looking forward to a future where evidence based objectivity is applied to film discussion at least as much as it is to music by musicologists. In fact, I think a scientific discussion of film craft is long over due….”

    Please, read the rest of this post and comment.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Quick News Blast 1

    A new film school will hopefully produce the next generation of renowned Irish filmmakers.

    Quentin Tarantino talks to BAFTA.

    Scream Of The Bikini trailer.

    A new film starring Naama Kates from Cookies & Cream!

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Mic Macs


    This coming Sunday, I’m hoping to see Mic Macs.

    Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mic Macs (Mic Macs a Tire-Larigot, original language fans) stars French comedian Dany Boon as Bazil, whose father is killed by a landmine as a young boy. Decades later, Bazil is working in a video shop when a stray bullet lodges itself in his brain; the doctors decide not to operate, but when he leaves hospital he finds himself both homeless and jobless.

    While wandering the streets, Bazil falls in with old-timer Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who introduces him to a makeshift family of scrap-collecting misfits, including human cannonball Buster (Dominique Pinon), maths whizz Calculator (Marie-Julie Baup), homily-spouting Remington (Omar Sy), matronly Mama Chow (Yolande Moreau) and a contortionist with a resistance to cold (Julie Ferrier). One day, Bazil discovers the offices of two rival weapons manufacturers (Andre Dussollier and Nicolas Marie) and, realising that one made the bullet in his brain and the other made the landmine that killed his father, decides to take them both down, with a little help from his new friends.

    See the trailer here.

    Mic Macs was in the London Film Festival and this how they introduced it –

    Cinematic fantasy, topical subject matter, edge-of-the-seat pacing and witty wordplay combine in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest outing.

    Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain, even if it means you might drop dead at any time? Or would you rather have the bullet taken out and live the rest of your life as a vegetable? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is scrap metal worth more than landmines? Can you get drunk by eating waffles? Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? What’s the human cannonball record? All these questions and more are answered in Mic Macs, the latest dazzlingly cinematic outing from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a satire on the arms trade which grounds this director’s cinema of fantasy firmly in reality. Dany Boon leads a terrific cast including André Dussolier, Dominique Pinon and the matchless Yolande Moreau in a thrilling comedy about one man’s plan to destroy two big weapons manufacturers, with a little help from his friends. Few directors are more imaginative and inventive at creating their own distinctive on-screen worlds (Delicatessen, Amélie), and the aesthetic sensibility at play in Mic Macs is breathtaking. Better yet, it works in tandem with pacy, edge-of-the-seat storytelling and no end of visual gags and witty wordplay.

    Review will be up on Sunday, hopefully….

    © BRWC 2010.