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New Indy Trailer

Quite a bit more action, some music, some plot, some effects, and Harrison Ford in a hat. It looks great. Check it out here.

British Museum declares Indiana Jones "a work of fiction"

As you might have noticed, this month marks the release of Indy IV, and while it's hard to have any faith that George Lucas won't have pulled a Phantom Menace on us all, anticipation is still running high. And the publicity machine is doing what it can to keep those fires burning.

And here's the latest: an interview with the British Museum that gets to grips with the myths and truths of those strange Aztec artefacts, crystal skulls. Questions are posed like "What is it?", "Why was it produced?" and "Do they have special powers?"

So if you were one of those people who said "Indiana Jones and the What?" (only to be hit again by the Quantum of Solace pratfall), this is for you....

The skull on display British Museum is life-size and carved from a block of rock crystal (a variety of quartz), and was acquired in 1897. At time of purchase the skull was said to have been brought from Mexico by a Spanish officer before the French occupation of 1863, and it was on display at the Museum of Mankind for many years.

Unfortunately, however, it's a fake. The Museum tells us: "scientific research has established that the skull was most likely produced in the 19th century in Europe". They go on to add that there is one other crystal skull on display in the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, and a few others in private collections but "it seems highly unlikely that any are genuine Aztec objects".

In fact, in answer to the question, "Are there any genuine Aztec crystal skulls", the Museum says no. "No quartz crystal skull has ever been found on any of the many well-documented official archaeological excavations of ancient sites." It seems the mythology of crystal skulls was instead constructed by European art dealers in the 19th century when popular interest in all things Aztec was high. So the Museum concludes:

"As entertainment the movie will surely appeal to the public, but it is very much a work of fiction. We hope, however, that it will encourage visitors to see the skull at the British Museum and to learn more about Aztec culture."

Which, don't forget, crystal skulls are not.

(The British Museum's page about this.)

X-Files Movie Title Announced

Just a quick note for fans of dour expressions and long fawn trenchcoats: mid-90s paranoia is back this summer and, despite the odds that it'll seem pretty irrelevant now that the millenium's long gone, we've all got the chance to relieve the jangly electronic chords and spooky lighting of the X-Files with the release of a new film in August.

The news of the film has been around for a while but the title was only released today. Fans will remember the subheading from a poster in super-credulous FBI agent Fox Mulder's basement office: The X-Files: I Want To Believe.

Series creator Chris Carter assures us that this isn't a sequel and it doesn't tie into the show's long-running mythology: it's meant to be open and accessible to all. That said, the idea that it'll tie up and stand on its own seems pretty unlikely...

Iron Man on the Onion

Iron Man is featured on the Onion at the moment in a particularly fine video article, entitled "Iron Man trailer to be turned into full length film." As with most Onion stories, it's a great joke spun out to a neat two minutes. Take a look here.

Why film editors need strong stomachs

I don't like horror.

Actually, that's not quite right. I like some horror. But I don't like gore, I don't like suffering and I really don't like torture. Ghosts and curses are okay. I liked The Ring. But the more modern breed of "here's something nasty I can do with a coat-hanger" - I don't like that at all.

Which makes being a film editor pretty difficult. If things are looking thin on the musicOMH.com trailers page, that's because the last four or five I've been sent I don't want to post. I don't want to watch them. I didn't really want to read the plot synopses, to be honest, but I didn't know that until I'd got to the bad point.

But at least amidst all the grim unpleasantness it's still possible to laugh. I got such a smile reading the plot synopsis for indie-teen-sexual-awakening-horror Teeth, which if you can't
what's it about I leave you to find out for yourselves. You won't see the trailer on musicOMH.com, but that's because the PR company pulled it after an hour after releasing it. Perhaps they realised that the premise, which would like to be the most shocking thing you've ever encountered, actually came across as pretty silly. A set of teeth? Every rose has its thorns? Oh, come on. It's a spoof, right?

[Sadly the other eight torture trailers (and the one which, more unhappily, has an "interactive online game" to go with) raise less of a smile. The same goes for the trailer for Meet the Spartans, a comedy from the makers of Scary Movie, who believe that naming a film in another film is as funny as actually, I don't know, making a joke about it as well. At least its plot synopsis was honest, describing it neatly as a "spoof comedy". Phew. I thought it was meant to be a real one.]

Will this current fad of straight-to-cinema video-nasties never cease?

In praise of the ICA

Quite apart from the cosy gig venue tucked away at the back, where I've seen everyone from Luke Haines to Fuck Buttons perform, London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (the ICA to its friends) is in so many other ways a league apart.

I've been coming here to see gigs for years, but there's so much else to the place.

For instance, in which other gig venue can you get married? They have a reception area, probably upstairs amongst a selection of art galleries. Where else on the gig circuit offers free and reliable WiFi internet access? This lovely detail is the reason I'm writing this post - because I can. Where else can you get food as well as drink before a gig? Where else is located on The Mall? In fact, where else can you also see films and browse paintings and sculptures, and even see the latter being made?

The line-ups are pretty impressive too. It's Yeasayer tonight; MGMT played here last week. These gigs were all sold out well in advance.

I know there's a subsidy set-up here that's not available elsewhere. But when a venue demonstrably makes so much good use of its subsidy, it's a positive argument for more of its kind. Hurrah for the ICA.

Check out their website for details of what's going on at www.ica.org.uk.

La Vie En Rose

Following its success throughout the awards season, the French biopic of Edith Piaf La Vie en Rose has been re-released today in cinemas across the UK. The film stars Marion Cotillard as the singer in a performance that won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA and has also received a nod from the Oscars.

Read musicOMH.com's review.

Indiana Jones trailer now online!

The first trailer for the new Indiana Jones film is now online.

At least half is footage from the older films, but there's some definite whip-cracking, a few temples, some angry natives and Cate Blanchett. Check it out for yourself at www.indianajones.com

(Doesn't he look old?)

Massive Attack To Curate Meltdown 2008

Portishead are back in our midst with a new album this year, and as if by coincidence, Massive Attack have emerged from the woodwork too.

In quick succession Robert Del Naja and co have announced a new album due for release in September, a Glastonbury Other Stage headlining slot, and now that they'll become the first group to curate the South Bank Centre's Meltdown festival. It's the 15th such shindig, and runs from 14th to 22nd June.

Massive Attack haven't been away as long as Ms Gibbons and Messrs Barrow and Utley, mind, but it's looking like a Bristol renaissance of sorts all the same. All we need now is Tricky.

The trip-hoppers of course follow in the footsteps of Jarvis, Nick Cave, Morrissey, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Lee 'Scratch' Perry', Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and the late John Peel as curators of the event.

So who's playing? We don't know yet, but I reckon I can hazard a guess at three of the acts they'll be booking already. Want a clue? Two I'm thinking of are solo female singers. One's been around for decades and the other recently released her debut album. A third is, like Del Naja, a sometime pretty boy front man who's getting on a bit, but still definitely has what it takes, in various guises...

Whoever gets booked, the final word has to go to Michael Lynch, the SBC's excitable CEO: “Meltdown 2008 will be Massive!”

Film Features: Michael Clayton, Jumper

Two features up on the musicOMH.com site today: firstly a review of the DVD release of Michael Clayton, which is out to buy on Monday, fresh from its win at the BAFTAs and looking likely to scoop another prize at the Oscars... if they happen.

Secondly we have a competition to win Jumper goodies, though sadly we can't offer an instantaneous holiday in Egypt or even a nice jumper: you'll have to settle for hoodies and copies of the book. Entries for that need to be in by the 20th of February, so get thinking!

BAFTA Awards

Tune in to BBC1 at 9pm tonight for all the posh frocks, dazzling smiles and tearful speeches from the BAFTA awards.

With writers still feeling militant over the pond, it's likely that the BAFTAs will take on more significance than usual this year. The Golden Globes were a mere news conference, and it's not yet clear what form this year's Oscars will take.

Not only that, but there are British entries in all the main categories, with Atonement amongst the favourites.

A full list of nominations can be found at the BAFTAs website.

UPDATE, 21:30 GMT:

Atonement was named as best film, Daniel Day-Lewis as best actor for There Will Be Blood and Tilda Swinton as Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton. But Julie Christie missed out.

Full list of winners:

BAFTAs website

Cloverfield

Cloverfield is out this week: producer J J Abrams large-scale lofi mash-up monster movie filmed on a home video camera. If you've seen any of the footage or the five minute clips you'll know it looks stunning, if a little "jiggly" - but more than one critic has complained of severe motion-sickness while watching it. I know horror films pride themselves on making people feel ill, but when I saw a preview myself I spent a lot with my eyes closed enjoying the excellent sound-editing and thinking about horizons. Luckily, our reviewer was made of sterner stuff.

http://www.musicomh.com/films/cloverfield_0108.htm

So what do you think? A thriving genre of film-making or a cheap attempt for meta-cinematics? Does it have anything to say about 9/11 or is it just "borrowing" from it? Is seven years on really long enough? And are we getting a bit sick of films about how hard it is to be American right now?

New Bond Title announced

The title of the next James Bond film was announced today, and on hearing it I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April the First. Having exhausted every one of Ian Fleming's novel titles, short-story titles, family mottos and even the name of his house, it's no wonder that the producers are finding themselves a little stuck. But what they've come up with is perhaps one of the most bizarre things I've even seen attached to a mainstream entertainment picture.

Yes, the next Bond film will be called

Quantum of Solace

It's like a game of Scrabble gone bad. Maybe it's an anagram of a real title. At any rate, it seems that 2008 is the year of silly titles. Starting with Cloverfield which didn't even seem to have a title until about three weeks before its release (and the one it ended up with is the name of a street outside the production company's window, and doesn't appear in the movie), we can also look forward to the absurd Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull appearing a little before Quantum of Solace shuffles on the big screen with all the same of a kid wearing a bad homemade crocodile costume.

Will there really be an emotional high-note where the love interest looks deep into James startling blue eyes and declares, "Will there be even a quantum of solace for you, James?" Or will it just have a silly plot centred round the particle accelerator at Cern?

The World is Not Enough, please come back. All is forgiven.

Heath Ledger Remembered

Well, we certainly didn't see that one coming.

When news filtered through at about 10pm last night that the Australian actor Heath Ledger had died at the obscenely early age of 28, it was with a numbing sense of shock. While the world's media continue on their crusade to chronicle Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse's spiralling decline into an early grave, Ledger wasn't known as a party animal. Instead, those who knew him described him as a quiet, introspective man, uncomfortable with the trappings of fame and happy to completely immerse himself in a character.

When Ledger first burst onto the screen with a witty, charismatic performance in the superior teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You, he could easily have taken the heart-throb role to success. Instead, he began carving out a career similar to that of Johnny Depp - one of character actor, unafraid to take roles that less brave figures in Hollywood would run screaming from.

Impressive work in films like Monster's Ball, Ned Kelly and The Brothers Grimm followed, before the film that was to secure his reputation - Brokeback Mountain. It seems ridiculous that two straight actors playing gay characters could cause such a controversy in the apparently liberal and accepting 21st century, but Ang Lee's epic was one of the most talked about films of the year for that very reason. That, and the sheer excellence of the film itself, of course.

Jake Gyllenhaal may have had the more showy role, but Ledger had the more difficult work, playing the repressed, initially reluctant Ennis Del Mar. It was one of those rare performances where years of hurt and regret could be conveyed just by Ledger's eyes and was justly rewarded by the Academy with his first, and as it turned out, only Oscar nomination.

Ledger's premature death is all the more sorrowful as 2008 would have no doubt seen his stock skyrocket. His perfomance as The Joker in the forthcoming Batman film The Dark Knight has astonished those who have seen preview clips. It takes quite an actor to reclaim Jack Nicholson's iconic image and make the character his own, but that's exactly what Ledger appears to have done. Christopher Nolan's film is due for release this July, but it will be impossible to watch without a very real sense of poignancy. What happens to Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which Ledger had just begun filming at the time of his death, is anybody's guess.

Given the nature of Ledger's death, there are already whisperings and speculation about whether the actor was suicidal or battling a drugs habit. Yet this isn't the place for such gossip and tittle-tattle - instead let us remember an extremely talented actor who has died long before his star could really shine.

Golden Globes scrapped - Oscars next?

The 2008 Golden Globes are to be scrapped.

Jorge Camara, president of the Golden Globe organisers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, said: "We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place this year and that millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favourite stars."

Does anyone feel deprived? I was more amused than annoyed by all this.

Would anyone even care if the Oscars met the same fate this year?

Films of the Year

We've posted our round-up of 2007's films here. Agree or disagree? Let us know below.

http://www.musicomh.com/films/features/roundup2007_1207.htm

Cloverfield

For those looking forward to Lost creator JJ Abrams' new film, here's a 5-minute preview to enjoy:

http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/475a0f5f7f2007c8/47620930a9d00f1

Blair Witch with a budget, anybody? The first-person shaky camera is a nice idea but is likely to get pretty annoying after a while, but no doubt Abrams has a few tricks up his sleeve to keep things interesting. Cloverfield is released in the UK on 25th of January.

Best albums of 2007: the list

Our pick of this year's best albums:

http://www.musicomh.com/music/features/albums_review-2007_1207.htm

We'll still be sporadically publishing features and reviews in the music and film sections over the break, with normal service resumed on Wednesday 2nd January.

Meantime, thanks for reading in 2007, happy Christmas and all the best for your 2008.

Fanciful kisses,

Michael and all at musicOMH.com

Russell Brand goes to St Trinians

Russell Brand now tops the UK book charts with his Booky Wook – beating Nigella Express and Hamster Hammond by a hefty margin this week.

On Wednesday he pays homage to Jack Kerouac on BBC4’s Russell Brand On The Road. On 21st December the new St Trinians movie is out – and he’s in that too (with Stephen Fry, Rupert Everett, Lily Cole (!) and Girls Aloud (!!!!!)).

Big Brother was only watchable during Big Brother’s Big Mouth when Brand hosted it. His articles in the Guardian are never less than articulate. And his appearances on chat shows and panel game shows (such as I’ve seen) have been memorable. Then we have his 6Music and Radio 2 DJ tenures...

Yet there seems to be, for some, a niggling feeling, something akin to guilty pleasure, about liking him.

Is Russell Brand a good or a bad thing - an irritatant or a genius?

two nuggets about Harrison Ford

It's worth noting that:

a) Indy 4 has a title (actually, it's had one for years but this was the first I heard of it). It's longer, and odder, than any of the previous: no "Raiding", "Doom" or "Last"; "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" sounds more like a Harry Potter title (or a computer game) than any of the 80's classics. Still, it's very much in keeping with its pulp-novella roots. Principal filming has now finished and the release date is the 22nd May. Let's hope they move it sooner...

b) Ridley Scott's new cut of Blade Runner, mentioned a good two times already on this blog, has a limited release as of next week, and will be available in Picture House cinemas only. Worth catching on the big screen both for its magnificence, and also to save you the £50 and back-problems that would arise from buying the somewhat bloated new DVD set.

The Jungle Book

Remastering is all the rage, and the latest classic to be redone is Disney's The Jungle Book, which is released onto DVD on the 5th. No theatrical release for this one, unfortunately; Disney wouldn't want to out compete with their own new release, Enchanted, which features their first hand-drawn animation in several years.

The band's visit

Call myself a film editor: on Monday, I attended my first ever screening at the London Film Festival.

The first thing to mention was the buzz. The venue was the one-screen independent the Phoenix in East Finchley (an excellent little place, that runs interesting screens all day every day and stays open, I think, by the skin of its teeth... well worth a look). It was packed - the foyer thick with people, and with a few more on the sides peering desperately into the crowd to find the people they were meant to be meeting. Having not planned my trip very carefully, I very nearly didn't get a seat - except the Phoenix has a wooden bench at the back for latecomers. (If you needed proof that they're great, then there it is).

The second thing to talk about is the film. A French-Israeli co-production entitled The Band's Visit, it was a bittersweet comedy about an Egyptian police orchestra that ends up in a nowhere's-ville town in Israel due to a pronunciation error. Arab-Jewish conflict provides a little background tension but it's never developed: instead, this is a film all about pride, and how difficult it is to be proud when you're wearing a spangly uniform and you're quite clearly lost. Forced to spend the night with locals, the orchestra find themselves on the awkward end of a host of lonely oddballs. The result was an expressive comedy that crossed language barriers without difficultly. Whereas a lot of comedy is firmly rooted in a cultural context, that of misfortune and pride seems to be universal.

The crowd, needless to say, loved it, and perhaps that's the point of the film festival. Pay your money, go in, and celebrate great, unusual, different films. Then come out and talk about them.

Only next time, I'm going to be early and book ahead...

Die Hard 4.0

When this came out over summer, we liked it, and it marked a definite upswing for the Die Hard franchise, for director Len Wiseman (of Underworld notoriety), and for summer action films in general. Now it's coming out on DVD, which is worth a mention. In addition, three fun-if-slightly-crass viral videos have been creating specially. You'll get the idea pretty fast.

http://www.clipfresh.com/van.wvx

http://www.clipfresh.com/car.wvx

http://www.clipfresh.com/roof.wvx

Enjoy. And be slightly appalled ... just like watching Die Hard, really.

The British Independent Filmmaker Awards

The nomination for the tenth annual British Independent Film Awards have been announced. It's been a good year for British cinema - in fact, musicOMH.com would go so far as to say it's been an excellent year, and the proof is just in looking at the list below.

Anton Corbijin’s Control leads with a BIFA first: a remarkable ten nominations. And When Did You Last See Your Father? receives seven nominations, Hallam Foe follows with six, followed by Eastern Promises (five nominations), Notes on a Scandal (four) and Garbage Warrior (three).  Other films to receive multiple nominations include Brick Lane, Black Gold, It’s A Free World, Sunshine, Exhibit A and 28 Weeks Later.

First time BIFA actor nominees include Anne Hathaway, Sam Riley, Kierston Wareing, Sophia Myles, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Imogen Poots, Matthew Beard, Bradley Cole, Armin Muehler Stahl and 2004 jury member Cate Blanchett. This year sees repeat nominations for actors Jamie Bell, Samantha Morton, Cillian Murphy and Toby Kebbell. Receiving nominations which must almost be habitual by now are Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent.

For more information and a full nominations list, visit the BIFA homepage.

 

hitman

Now that Resident Evil has achieved trilogy-DVD-boxset status, despite being rubbish from start to finish, a new video-game franchise is stepping up to try out its concept. Sadly, it's not Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which is still stuck in development hell. This gem is Hitman, based on the game Hitman, which is about a hitman.

In case this concept is too much for you, however, a short intro to the story is being produced. In graphic format it tells how this hitman came to become a hitman. Boggle your brain with it here.

eli roth

I might think he's a gratuitous talentless child of a director, obsessed by the most trivial of splattery visuals but there are plenty of people who liked Hostel and it's sequel, the terribly-inventively-titled Hostel II. Still, there can't be that many people, because otherwise Roth wouldn't be offering to sign copies of the DVD release himself.

So those of you who'd like to meet him (he's probably quite short and a little spotty), you can do, at Virgin Megastores, Oxford Street on Monday 22 October, 1pm. Perhaps you'd like to ask him about the morality of revelling in images of torture while Western governments commit similar acts on non-Western people. But he'll probably tell you he's doing something terribly important.

film festival

The London Film Festival starts in two days, so it's getting to crunch time for deciding which tickets to book. Things are, unsurprisingly, already selling out, including Wes Anderson's new film, The Darjeeling Limited (don't panic though, it's on general release late in November). To help you decide, Neil Dowden has written a preview for musicOMH.com, and there's also the festival's excellent website, www.lff.org.uk.

And if you can't find anything that isn't sold out, don't forget the free showings. I'll certainly be down in Trafalgar Square on Thursday evening for the open-air screening of Hitchcock's early classic, Blackmail.

one for the arthouse crowd

Some say his work is profound, beautiful, capturing deep ripples of meaning and understanding in the very fabric of the celluloid. Others say it's incoherent rambling trash. Nouvelle Vague director Jean-Luc Godard is not everyone's cup of soufflé. He has been doing what he does for 50 years now, though, and that's an achievement in itself: either he's been brilliant for half a century, or he's gotten away with it for just as long.

In recognition of all this, the European Film Academy have announced he's to be awarded their Lifetime Achievement Award. Quite what he's achieved, I'd rather not be asked; when I saw "A Bout De Souffle" ("Breathless", and the source of the dreadful pun above) it left me yawning, and the dreadful cod-polemics of "In Praise of Love" (in which The United States of America is lambasted for a good twelve minutes for not having a proper name as a country, America being a continent you see), I was put off for life.

But your view may differ...

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."

Word just in for fans of the classic, never-quite-done-yet science fiction noir-thriller Blade Runner is that Ridley Scott's latest - and, he assures us, last cut - will be released as part of a so-big-it'll-hurt-your-letterbox DVD set on the 3rd of December, just in time for you to buy it as a Christmas present for someone so obsessed they'll already have bought it for themselves.

But for those of you who think fifty quid for four near-identical copies of a film you already own three cuts of, don't despair - a theatrical release has also been announced. On the 23rd of November, Blade Runner: The Final Cut will be shown in cinemas. Now, whether that's nationwide or just in key cities (er, London) remains to be seen. But we are promised, along with digitally remastered sound and visuals, several new and previously unseen scenes. Whether it will - or even could - improve on the seminal Director's Cut version is an open question, but at least we'll be able to see the answers without giving up a serious section of shelving just for the privilege.

Ridley Scott says: "The Final Cut is the product of a process that began in early 2000 and continued off and on through seven years of intense research and meticulous restoration, technical challenges, amazing discoveries and new possibilities. I can now wholeheartedly say that Blade Runner: The Final Cut is my definitive director’s cut of the film."

Joy Division

With five star reviews almost across the board, the Ian Curtis biopic Control is even being talked about in certain circles as film of the year.

It arrives on our screens amid a plethora of Joy Division product releases. A BBC4 documentary charted the rise and fall of Factory Records, the band's label headed by the late Tony Wilson.

The three seminal Joy Division albums, Closer, Unknown Pleasures and Still, are being given the rerelease treatment as "collectors' editions" from Warner, each with a bonus CD of a Joy Division concert and comprehensive booklets.

And Anton Corbijn's biopic, with Sam Riley playing the late Curtis, looks set to bring the band's music to a whole new audience.

Joy Division are often, rightly, dubbed one of the most influential bands of all time. The career retrospective pieces these releases precipitate shed light on why, for those of us too young to have been swept up in it all first time round.