Posts tagged films

Posted 4 months ago
by katiekhan

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Birdsong comes to the BBC

Fourteen years ago, Working Title acquired the rights to Sebastian Faulks’ novel Birdsong. Since then Tim Bevan and crew have reportedly spent in the region of £3 million on different treatments in development, but failed to bring the book to the big screen. Sebastian Faulks’ own website lists the directors at any time attached to the project:

  • Justin Chadwick
  • Joe Wright 
  • Paul Greengrass
  • Iain Softley
  • Sam Mendes
  • Peter Weir

For years Ralph Fiennes was touted as the frontrunner to play Stephen Wraysford - but let’s actually consider that for a moment. Voldemort? Surely one reconstructive nose job away from his pensioner bus pass: He Who Shall Not Be Fienned is no fit with the young Wraysford, who in his early twenties undertakes an illicit affair with Isabelle Azaire.

Production of a Birdsong film has, for some reason or other, floundered for over a decade. But just as my hopes had finally faded into a forgotten indifference, still vaguely aware that Birdsong is one of my top ten favourite books, into the fray steps the BBC. 

Written by screenwriter Abi Morgan (Shame, The Iron Lady), and starring Eddie Redmayne (My Week With Marilyn) and Cleménce Poesy (Fleur in Harry Potter), with a supporting cast including Thomas Turgoose (This Is England), Birdsong will air as 2 x 90 minute episodes on the BBC.

In 1997 I sat on a coach tour of the Northern France and Belgium battlefields, reading Birdsong. I have never been so profoundly moved as I was by reading fiction in the very place it was set, surrounded by the memories and echoes of a very real war. The battlefields are a place that will never shake the horrors they held. It’s ghostly. Live shells litter the roads; the names of fallen soldiers line the graveyards and war memorials that stand in salute across the country. Faulks’ story may have been a fiction but it captured an era so vividly that I had a hard time separating truth from nostalgia.

This small screen adaptation by the BBC, in association with Working Title, has all the early signs of being spot on. Eddie Redmayne exudes exactly the right combination of male stoicism and vulnerability we’d expect from Wraysford, while Cleménce Poesy, in all her beauty, is perfectly cold, aloof - exactly how I imagine Isabelle. The only potential problem could be the made-for-TV budget in the staging of the trenches; however, bearing in mind the BBC spent a reported £1 million per hour on the Christmas adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations, we might just be alright.

Birdsong will air on the BBC in January 2012

Find out more on IMDB.com 

Buy Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong on Amazon

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Philip Pullman on writing - “I wrote the first chapter of Northern Lights sixteen times before I added the daemons”

Posted 5 months ago
by katiekhan

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The rise of geek chic

It’s always a little strange when the Vogue crowd adopts a look which, a few years back, was deeply uncool. Way back when, me and my orchestra-playing friends - yeah, we were that crew - wore specs and brogues, played Mozart and Nintendo, and felt a little plonky. (You know! Plonk, plonk, the sound of sturdy soles on pavements, the onomatopeia of an unladylike gait. It’s probably where the term ‘plonker’ comes from.) In 2011, it’s now a case of spotting which girls in Topshop aren’t wearing tan brogues, and laughing when you spot an actual sad case like yourself wearing the sensible ones from Clarks.

But why do the fashionable lot want to look like we all did a few years ago? What’s with this eponymous “Geek Chic”? Case in point: EVERY-BLOODY-ONE.Why? Let’s start in the cinema. In an interview with the Guardian, Simon Pegg charted a movement in film which, I think, can also be applied more widely to fashion:

“I have a theory about the rise of the loser,” Pegg says. “The genesis of it was the death of the 80s superman; you know, the death of the Terminator, which was the ultimate expression of masculinity at that time in action movies. The man had become so ridiculously masculine that he was metal. Then came John McClane, with Bruce Willis, an action hero who was a little bit flawed, who allowed us to see masculinity as imperfect, and that ultimately led to me and Nick [Frost] being the lead in films. Or Seth Rogen.”

So they are the new anti-action heroes? “No,” says Pegg, “but men don’t have to be inhuman testosterone…Michael Cera, Steve Carell, classic examples. You can chart the social, sexual growth of masculinity in films to the point where, like in reality TV, the ordinary person has taken over. It’s loving the nerds.”

What’s interesting about the fashpack takeover of boyish brogues / NHS glasses / band or computer game t-shirts / farmer jackets is that this trend is one of the first times women have embraced the geek. In Hollywood, the ideal leading lady is still, in essence, pouty aloofness and womanly curves on a stick. Against our better judgement, it’s Megan Fox or Angelina Jolie. The move towards geek chic in fashion has directly correlated with the rise in popularity of part-time kooky actresses such as Zooey Deschanel and Chloe Sevigny, and the graduation of full-blown nerdy leading ladies like Ellen Page, and to some extent Tina Fey. 

Tiny Fey is a relevant tangent, for while Fey is not a ‘loser’ or ‘geek’, she is funny. And the sudden splurge of ‘funny women’ in films links directly back to this relegation of traditional beauty. We’ve learnt to dress like the school nerd and embrace geeky actresses, and now we’re learning to love funny leads. ‘At last! Bridesmaids proves that women can be funny’, read the headlines. (‘!?&@!’, went Twitter.) Kristen Wiig seemed to explode onto our screens in a breakthrough role, welcomed heartily by the mainstream; in reality, Wiig has been slogging away on tiny, unknown titles - ahem - such as Saturday Night Live, Whip It, Knocked Up and Paul. 

What’s next, then? Where will fashion and film take us next? I for one predict the end of the Makeover Turning Point on screen, as Ugly Betty will be allowed by producers to stay [relatively] ugly; Tai in Clueless will declare the other bimbos, err, clueless; and girly coming-of-age dramas will be called She’s All That [In Her Glasses And Dungarees And Angry Arty Stuff Like At The Beginning Of The Sodding Movie]. Likewise, fashion will move to the even-darker depths of nerd: it’s only a matter of time before train-track teeth braces, shell suits and those weird palladium shoes with rubber toes adorn the pages of Vogue.

So what else are the super-pwnsome g33k kids currently wearing on the streets of that London?

A cut-out-and-keep fashion digest

The essentials

What, still? Yes, still. Differentiate yourself from the 14-year old girls wearing shiny new H&M band t-shirts by dousing your 1989 Fleetwood Mac tour tee (which you slept in through uni) in 22-year old beer. Extra brownie points for vintage vomit.

Nirvana t-shirt, £7.99, H&M 

See top. Get the ugly ones from Clarks for actual “I-had-those-before-they-were” hipster authenticity.



Yesterday I tried on a padded Barbour jacket. I looked like a farmer’s fat mum.

Quilted coat, £230, Barbour




Me: visions of glamorous French spy.
My mum: “you look like an overgrown evacuee.” 
Geek chic achieved! 

Snaffle hat, £18, M&S

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What does Autumn/Winter 2011-12 hold for us in the woolly fashion stakes?

Posted 7 months ago
by katiekhan

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Three Things You Can Do With The New Bond Logo

Nice, huh? Distressed font. Sexy and distressed; like Daniel Craig after a brawl. They call it ‘grunge’ in the design world, I believe. (Not Daniel Craig in a brawl! The font.) But is this logo useful to you?

Yes.

You can:

1. Reuse the S, A, L, L, and Y and make a (sympathy?) e-card for a friend called…
2. Stick it on your blog to improve your traffic
3. Photocopy it 400% larger and use as corporate signage for an impending apocalypse 


Follow Bond on Twitter! twitter.com/007

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Would You Go Gay For Gosling?
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Posted 8 months ago
by katiekhan

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Would You Go Gay For Gosling?

Five Facts So Sexy And Amazing, You Just Might

1. Ryan Gosling lived with Justin Timberlake for two years.
Sorry, was that the sound of my ovaries swooning? The pair were both Mouseketeers for the Haus of Maus, so Gozzers bunked in with Timberlake’s family while they filmed the show. One can only imagine what went down during sleepovers with Britney and Christina…

2. Ryan Gosling turned down a place in the Backstreet Boys. 
His friend AJ “Backstreet’s back ALRIGHT” McLean asked him to audition for his new boyband. Gozzers said no, because he’s all jazzy and moody and into moody jazz and stuff. He’s a nimble jazz guitarist, frequently heard wailin’ the blues round open mic nights in Hollywood, each minor cadence punctuated by the sound of girls fainting. 

3. Ryan Gosling had a strict Mormon upbringing.
…Although presumably not strict enough to stop him parading around on telly in the Mickey Mouse Club. Good job, Mama Gosling. Mrs G also took him out of school because, like the best of us, Ryan was bullied relentlessly at high school. (They probably called him ‘Gozzers’.) Underdog made good? If this was facebook we’d like this. 

4. Ryan Gosling bumped uglies with Sandra Bullock.
Back in 2002, Gozzers tried out the Mrs Robinson schtick with Miss Congeniality. (Sounds like a cross-genre epic tipped for greatness…) He was 22, she was 38. Let’s face it: Bullock taught him everything he knows. Oh hi! 

5. Ryan Gosling stars in three excellent films in 2011.
- Drive (excellent) 
- Crazy Stupid Love (excellent) 
- The Ides of March (probably excellent, starring Gozzers and George Clooney - Clooners? - in a political drama so sexy it makes proportional representation and first-past-the-post sound interesting, and not just as a euphemism. Eh? Eh?)

Go on, admit it: you would. 


Drive and Crazy, Stupid, Love are both in cinemas now

Need more Gosling? Check out Best For Film’s Cheat Sheet. 

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5 Things You Can Do To Make Watching Captain America More Interesting
What The Reviewers Won’t Tell You About Bridesmaids
How To Write Tron in 5 Easy Steps 

Posted 9 months ago
by katiekhan

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On the Bank Holiday weekend my boyfriend had to spend 45 minutes untangling my hair. By god, I wish this were some kinky euphemism -

What it actually means is I retrogressed into a stroppy 9-year-old, on holiday in Tuscany; my mum painfully detangling my massive barnet meshed by bombing the swimming-pool - for nigh on three hours. I’m not sure why this happens: I just can’t seem to drag a brush through my bedhead, and require a parent/spouse to do so.

”Let’s go and see Super 8!” I trilled (after my boyfriend had painstakingly cleared all knots), making weak amends for crying and punching him in the belly when he pulled a chunk of my hair from the root with a comb. Fast forward one hour and I was hanging on to the poor boy’s fingers for dear life, shaking with fear at the paranormal activity unfolding in JJ Abrams’ and Spielberg’s small town thriller.

People DIE! Nobody died in The Goonies! Times have CHANGED. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto…

Super 8 is rated 12A, meaning children younger than 12 can see it with an adult - a scenario, I suspect, all too familiar to my boyfriend, who led me out of the cinema, post-credits, sporting a face full of scared wonderment.

And tears.

The closer I get to thirty, the more I’m turning into an infant.

Wah!