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sean "puffy" combs

Review: Get Him to the Greek, The Last Station and Amreeka

By Cinema, Reviews

Get Him to the Greek posterForgetting Sarah Marshall was one of the sur­prise pleas­ures of 2008. An Apatow com­edy that was rel­at­ively mod­est about it’s ambi­tions it fea­tured a break-out per­form­ance from English comedi­an Russell Brand, play­ing a ver­sion of his own louche stage persona.

As it so often goes with sur­prise hits, a spinoff was rushed into pro­duc­tion and we now get to see wheth­er Mr Brand’s brand of humour can carry an entire film. Get Him to the Greek sees Brand’s English rock star Aldous Snow on the comeback trail after a failed sev­en year attempt at sobri­ety. Unlikely LA A&R man Jonah Hill (Knocked Up, Funny People) sells his record label boss, Sean “P Diddy” Combs, on a 10th anniversary con­cert fea­tur­ing Snow and his band Infant Sorrow at the Greek Theatre of the title.

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Review: Winter’s Bone, Red, Made in Dagenham, Paranormal Activity 2, Resident Evil- Afterlife and I’m Still Here

By Cinema, Reviews

Winter's Bone posterHalf way through Winter’s Bone I found myself think­ing, “So, this is what the Western has become?” The best Westerns are about find­ing or sus­tain­ing a mor­al path though a law­less fron­ti­er and the fron­ti­er in Winter’s Bone is the hid­den world of the rur­al poor and the path is a strange and ter­ri­fy­ing one.

In the rough and remote Ozark Mountains, teen­age Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is single-handedly bring­ing up her two young sib­lings while caring for her emo­tion­ally dam­aged moth­er. One cold morn­ing the Sheriff turns up with the news that her fath­er, Jessup, used their house as his bail bond and unless Ree can find him and per­suade him to turn up for Court, the fam­ily will lose everything.

Jessup is (or maybe was) what we would call a ‘P’ deal­er – the only eco­nomy in the area show­ing any kind of growth. But the com­pany he was keep­ing were the mean­est of the mean and to find her fath­er Ree must ven­ture into dan­ger­ous territory.

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Review: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, The Unknown Woman, The Unborn, The Women and Notorious

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest, Reviews

Underword: Rise of the Lycans posterA friend of mine audi­tioned for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (pro­duced in Auckland in 2006) and did­n’t get a part. I was pleased to report to him yes­ter­day that he had dodged a (sil­ver) bul­let there as this non­sensic­al pre­quel to the Kate Beckinsale leather-fetishists fantasy series was not going to do any­one’s career any good.

The usu­ally great Bill Nighy plays Viktor, lead­er of a bunch of aris­to­crat­ic (but strangely demo­crat­ic) vam­pires in middle ages middle Europe. They earn their keep by squeez­ing pro­tec­tion money out of the loc­al humans – sup­posedly keep­ing the were­wolves out of their hair – but evol­u­tion is not on their side and the wolves are in the ascendant.

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