Rob Keeling
Rob Keeling is a freelance writer and film fanatic in Manchester. He completed his Masters degree in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester and since then has rambled continuously at anyone who will listen on all things cinematic. Loves Casablanca, Goodfellas, This is Spinal Tap and High Fidelity and something cool, foreign and arty that he can't place right now.
“Buon giorno, Principessa!” The gleeful exuberance of Roberto Benigni’s Guido knows no bounds for the first half of this Oscar winning movie. Guido, much like Benigni himself, is a charming, funny and loveable chap who falls for a local girl and vows to make her his own. Part hopeless romantic and part Chaplin-esque slapstick clown, Guido is an unlikely movie hero, keeping his humour to the last, even in the face of unrelenting misery.
It’s the sequel many of us never thought we would see. Several years ago, in their infinite wisdom, Paramount studios decided they didn’t think an Anchorman sequel would attract a large enough audience and so the dream looked dead and buried.
The execs clearly overlooked the fact that, for people aged between 21-30, it’s one of the most loved comedies in recent times. If you were a student between the years of 2004-2006 it was basically compulsory viewing. How did they ever come to that conclusion in the first place? The mind boggles.
As the internet community continues picking up the pieces from the proverbial bombshell that was ‘Alien Turtle…gate’ (we’ll work on the name later), Michael Bay has continued to hype up his planned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to anyone who will listen. This time he confirmed that the movie would simply be called ‘Ninja Turtles’:
After his incredibly powerful portrayal of a man on the brink of sanity in last year’s tremendous Take Shelter, there’s no doubting that Michael Shannon can do ‘intense’. Therefore he seems perfect for the role of Richard Kuklinski, a real life mob hitman for the Gambino family in New York who is reported to have killed (or ‘whacked’ as they say in the trade) around 250 people.
Despite the extensive marketing campaign and the generally favourable reviews, David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, unfortunately, did not prove as successful as co-financier MGM had hoped. DVD and Blu-Ray sales are yet to be taken into account but, at present, the movie actually lost money overall.
