With nothing more than a laptop, some fava beans and The Force, Virgin Media's news-ravenous blogger dissects the week in movies
Ritchie and the wife
Being married to Madonna, Guy Ritchie must be getting used to constantly being upstaged. And he fell victim again last night at the premiere of his new gangster (Guy Ritchie’s made a gangster movie – what a surprise!) thriller RocknRolla.
Guy turned up in Leicester Sq really early and was actually very pleasant, happily signing autographs and talking to the press about anything and everything. And to be fair, most of his cast were in good form too; Gerry Butler was up for a laugh and lapped up the attention of the screaming crowd, Tom Wilkinson seemed to be enjoying his 'cool' status in front of his teenage daughters, Idris Elba was showing off a particularly bling Barack Obama t-shirt and Tom Hardy was making all the women go weak at the knees with talk of missing his five month old son, who was tucked up at home. For the lads, Thandie Newton looked stunning in rather odd white 'dress' (I think it was a dress but I'm not exactly sure) although she did manage to avoid talking to most of the news crews. Meanwhile hotshot Hollywood producer Joel Silver marched up and down the carpet in his eye-catching purple trailers, happily talking about the possibility of a RocknRolla trilogy (Guy did admit that he’s already written part two and ‘sketched out’ number three so I reckon chances of them getting made are fairly good).
But it was the (fashionably) late arrival of Mrs. Guy Ritchie that sent the crowd into overload. She joined her hubby to march down the carpet, waving at a few fans along the way before posing with Guy and the rest of the cast inside the cinema. Bit of a relief that she didn't give us a song...
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The Dark Knight
So what do you think has been the biggest movie of the year so far? I think you might just be surprised...
I bet most people would answer ‘The Dark Knight’ when faced with the question above but they’d be wrong. True, The Dark Knight has earned a shed load of cash since it opened but it’s not the top movie of 2008. Nor is Indy IV, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Iron Man or Sex And The City. Nope, the biggest movie out there this year (to date) is....wait for it.... Mamma Mia!. The Abba musical has bought in more than £50million at UK cinemas (that’s almost £7million more than The Dark Knight) and is currently sitting second in the UK box office Top 10, some seven weeks after release (The Dark Knight is down in fourth after five weeks ).
So what is behind the success of Mamma Mia!? Well, thanks to large groups of girlfriends going en masse to showings to escape the footy, a lack of summer sun and a wave of sing-a-long screenings popping up around the country (I genuinely can’t imagine anything worse – the cinema isn’t a place for bad karaoke ) Mamma Mia!-mania has swept the country and even our American cousins have been caught up too. The movie opened there in mid-July and it’s already earned around $125 million. In fact Mamma Mia! has racked up around $330 million quid around the globe – not bad considering it cost just over $50 million to make.
I bet Benny and Bjorn (and Universal Pictures) can’t believe their luck!
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Step Brothers
Two junkets in two days and they couldn’t have been more different! First up was a chance to sit down with Will Ferell and John C. Reilly to talk about their new comedy Step Brothers – and boy was it a battle to get a word in edgeways. Normally you’ll get around five minutes with ‘the talent’ to talk about their movie and, more often than not, that’s just about enough. But, when you’ve got a couple of comedians together, messing around and chatting between themselves, it gets a lot more difficult to get a straight answer. I think I managed to get about three questions in before my time was up with Will and John but I can honestly say it was the most fun five minutes I’ve had in a long time as they tried out their best British accents on me and made sure that I knew they were 'chuffed to be in good ol’ Blighty. And the good news is that Will is keen to get Anchorman 2 up and running... sweet!
Twenty four hours later and I was off to another swish hotel for a chat with the deliriously beautiful Keira Knightley, who was out and about to promote yet another period piece, The Duchess. Now I’m not the world’s biggest KK fan but I have to say she’s pretty good in what is a better than expected movie and she seemed relaxed and chatty despite a pretty gruelling schedule – the waiting room was packed with people lining up to interview her. And if she thought the hard work was over, she might want to think again – Keira's lined up to press the flesh at the movie’s premiere in Leicester Square on Sept 3rd!
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Bernie Mac
It’s a strange business this – some weeks you have more junkets / screenings / premieres to get to than you can manage while other weeks are like the Mary Celeste of the movie world. Guess which week this is? That’s right, until Will Ferell and John C. Reilly come into town to promote Step Brothers there’s really very little going on other than author Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk doing a few interviews to talk about new movie Choke – and that’s not out until November. So I wanted to take this opportunity to tip my hat to a couple of proper Hollywood stars in Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes, both of whom passed away over the weekend.
Bernie may not have exactly been a household name over here but anyone who’s seen his stand-up routine will know how genuinely funny he was. Bits of his razor wit were allowed to poke through in movies such as Friday and Bad Santa but he’ll be remembered as one of George Clooney’s cohorts in the Ocean’s Eleven series... which is a shame ‘cos he was a damn sight funnier than that. Do yourself a favour and go rent 2001’s The Original Kings of Comedy.
And what can I say about Isaac ‘Shaft’ Hayes? The an was even cooler than Samuel L. Jackson (which is no mean feat) and his Oscar-winning music will live on for years, as will our memories of role in blaxpolitation flick Truck Turner and his career renaissance as Chef in South Park. Chocolate Salty Balls anyone?
Ironically Mac and Hayes will be seen together on screen in Soul Man, which is due to be released later in the year. Let’s hope it’s a fitting tribute...
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David Duchovny
The X- Files are back – but the only mystery to me is why David Duchovny is such a miserable git? The man is riding high with his new TV show Californication and his return as Agent Fox Mulder in the second X-Files movie. But while he was in London recently to promote I Want To Believe he behaved like he’d rather be abducted by little green men. It all started at the London junket where the journalists coming out of his room were either raving or moaning about him. I obviously caught him at the wrong moment ‘cos this Fox hid down his hole for most of our chat, rarely making eye contact during our five minutes together.
Moving on to the premiere and DD was, once again, acting like someone had nicked the jam out of his doughnut. He was being economical with his answers while talking to the press and, although he seemed to sign a lot of autographs, he didn’t want to take pictures with the fans or get too involved. Compare this to a very pregnant Gillian Anderson who battled through bravely and show creators Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz who gave everyone as much time as they possibly could and must have signed until their wrists were sore.
The X-Files is massive with its fans and it was largely down to them that this second movie got made so maybe Duchovny should play the game a bit and allow us to believe, believe that he enjoys being involved.
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Christian Bale
Well that's not something that happens every day. Usually when you arrive at a hotel to do junket interviews, you check in, get a rough idea of your schedule and go wait in another room to be called. But never in all my years have I arrived at a hotel only to be told that the actor I'm there to interview is unavailable... due to having been arrested. But this is what I was confronted with when I turned up at The Dorchester on Tuesday to talk to Christian Bale about The Dark Knight.
But while it may have been annoying to miss Bale, it did cause no end of humour in the green room as the assembled journalists tried to predict the following day's headlines - my favourite was 'Christian Bail-ed' - and speculated as to why Bale had been banged up. So while the Caped Crusader himself was helping the Police with their enquires, we still got to chat with Aaron Eckhart, Christopher Nolan, and Maggie Gyllenhaal - who for some reason had what looked like sticky tape on her feet!
Fortunately we did get to talk to Bale at the movie's premiere on Monday night and its good to see he's dropped his weird mid-Atlantic drawl (he spoke in an American accent the entire time while promoting Batman Begins) in favour of an East End geezer tone that Ray Winstone would be proud of. Maybe genuine Cockney Michael Caine, who plays Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred in the movie, has been giving him lessons.
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Watch trailers, clips and our exclusive Guy Ritchie interview for his new movie, RocknRolla.
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