Wrong!
No cinema visits this week, but there should have been, oh yes. Unexpected strong language.
the devil wears prada (2006)
What is this chick lit thing and where did it come from? When did men stop buying books, leaving it all up to the women who very clearly now form the majority of book purchasers in this country? One glance at the paperbacks charts in a major chain will tell you that there’s going to be a limited amount of male interest in yet another book about victimhood in which somebody’s bastard parent spent years beating them with a stick with a bunch of nails hammered into it and they lived to tell the tale, hurrah, but they’re now a professional victim unable to progress in their lives, boo. (Watch me mock someone’s deeply felt touchy feely pain.) Back in the 1980s, chick lit was your bonkbuster, they were known as S&F (or Shopping & Fucking for those who don’t know) and they were all written by Jackie Collins, or by a Jackie Collins clone, so you knew where you were with them, and it wasn’t a whole shelf in bookshops like it is now. Interestingly, the film of Lauren Weisberger’s book is more softhearted and more chick lit than the original book, which is nastier and has more swearing and perhaps less obsession with the clothes, the cataloguing of which is the prime constituent of the filmmakers’ audio commentary. And Emily Blunt rules.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
Before there was Chanel No. 5, there was Patrick Süskind’s unfilmable novel about a nasal-centred 18th Century serial killer obsessed with capturing the essence of virgins. This kind of film is often referred to as the Euro pudding, in which great swathes of money are available from Luxembourg only if Luxembourg’s finest character actor is given a principal part in the film, regardless of their suitability for the role. A lot of Euro puddings are indigestible for this very reason (you may care to look up how many countries put up money to fund Dancer in the Dark (2000) and be amazed that anything resembling a real film was produced at the other end). Freed from any reliance on Hollywood financing, the filmmakers were able to bring their vision to the screen uncompromised by twats in suits in Burbank focus grouping any originality to death, and the film undergoes a sea change into something rich and strange.
Superman Returns (2006)
Apparently, fat nerds in comicbook stores lurking on internet chatrooms obsessed with character continuity could have done a better job with the new Superman film than a professional film director with acclaimed previous success in the field. Right. They would have added more, I dunno, plane crashes and shit. Back in 1978 the tagline of the Superman movie was “You’ll believe a man can fly,” but it really helped if you were only eleven at the time. These days, all I really cared about was how great John Ottman’s orchestration of John Williams’ original themes were (as well as what Ottman himself brought to the music) and how fantastic they sounded over a big cinema sound system. That music and a guy in a cape doing stuff is all I needed from a Superman movie, and this film delivers in spades. This and Batman Begins (2005) gave one hope that someone at Warners knew what they were doing. The challenge for Warner Bros is to stop these franchises turning into shit with the third film in the series, which didn’t happen first time around. Superman III (1983) or Batman Forver (1995), anyone? Thought not.
The Incredibles (2004)
Steve Jobs bought Pixar in 1986. It is the smartest thing he has ever done.