Dir & Writ: John Carney

• Glen Hansard - Guy
• Markéta Irglová - Girl

A busker and a Bis Issue seller meet on the streets of Dublin. He also repairs hoovers, which is handy, as she has a problem with hers.^[1] He fixes it. She asks him to sing. They talk and chat and sing and write songs. Eventually they even record a song.

Not much of a storyline it it?

But this is still a very charming, if slight film. And if you are a fan of Glen Hansard’s music then I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Personally, I like a lot of The Frames stuff, but I don’t love any of it, and often think that Hansard gets a bit too whiney at times. I couldn’t listen to him all day long. Still I did enjoy the music in this film, and that is important because there is a lot of it.

I’ve tagged this film a romance, but it isn’t really. It is more of a film about people getting on in life. A moment in time. All that sort of thing. It is a small film but an enjoyable one.

IMDb | Once the Movie | Comfessions of a Film Critic | The House Next Door | Betty the Sheep | UnaRocks

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• Nathan Lane - Max Bialystock
• Matthew Broderick - Leo Bloom
• Uma Thurman - Ulla
• Will Ferrell - Franz Liebkind

If you go see this film looking for nothing more than simple entertainment then you should come out entirely satisfied. It made me laugh, although the songs, with the exception of Springtime for Hitler, didn’t really do anything for me, little boring and watching it you’d wish they had left a few out.

The plot, for those that don’t know, concerns Max Bialystock, a theatre producer who can be counted on to give audiences the worst plays possible. But when an accountant (Leo Bloom) suggests that through creative accounting, a dishonest producer could make more with a flop than a hit, Bialystock sees an oppertunity.

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dir. Joel Schumacher
Writ: Andrew Lloyd Webber & Joel Schumacher, based on book by Gaston Leroux
Starring:

* Gerard Butler - The Phantom
* Emmy Rossum - Christine
* Patrick Wilson - Raoul

I had expected to enjoy this. But no, it was over long, over crap, and just plain boring.

There isn’t really a lot more to say, but I suppose you bothered to click on a link to take you here so I’d better type something for you to read.

There are two main flaws with this film.
First off it should have chopped some songs out. Seems as thought there was no editing at all, and everything is faithful to the stage show. (Maybe fans of that will enjoy this)
Second of all, the characters. Christine has none. She does nothing but react, and not even a lot of that.

So, all in all, give it a miss. It does pick up the pace a little towards the end, but by that stage no one really cares. Thank god for popcorn to keep you entertained is all I can say.

Total and utter BLEUCH!

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Dir: Slyvain Chomet

* Betty Bonifassi - Triplets (voice)
* Lina Boudreault - Triplets (voice)
* Mari-Lou Gauthier - Triplets (voice)
* Michèle Caucheteux - (voice)
* Jean-Claude Donda - (voice)

This is film that got quite a lot of attention when it came out, but I will admit to being a little put of by the trailer, and as it didn’ stay in my local cinema for very long I never got around to seeing it. As it was part funded by the Beeb they must have gotten first dibs on the TV rights, coz they showed it today, don’t think it has been released on video/dvd yet although I may be wrong.

The film itself is an animated french tale of a boy and his grandmother, and the boy’s dog Bruno, basically the first part centre’s around the grandmother’s attempts to find out what the boy wants. I’m not spoiling anything by telling you that it’s a bike, and soon we skip forward a couple of years to see the grandson almost all grown up and taking part in the “Circuit de France�?, a version of the Tour de France I presume. While in the middle of a stage he is kidnapped and taken to the US, where his grandmother and Bruno must follow in order to rescue him.

I must confess that my favourite part of this film is the dog, and I think they did a great job of caprtuing much of the essence of what makes a dog. The head slumped on the table trying to get a rub, the little barks and grunts that every dog-owner will understand.

Overall this is a highly enjoyable film, but prolly not to everyone’s taste. There is very little dialogue throughout. A couple of lines, two of which are in English the rest in French with no subtitles. What they say isn’t important however, as the animation manages to get more than enough regarding personality across. Another one to watch out for is the waiter. I thought he was sort of a cross between Basil Fawlty and the Monty Python waiter in The Meaning of Life who urges that after dinner mint on his customer “it’s wafer thin�? And I think that was John Cleese again??

Wonderfully wierd

Official Site(flash, quicktime) | IMDb |

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