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lynn freeman

“At the Movies”

By Asides, Audio and Cinema

Lynn Freeman’s Arts on Sunday show returned from the Summer break yes­ter­day but film cor­res­pond­ent Simon Morris was giv­en an extra week off (some­thing to with Matinée Idle I suspect).

Because of that, I was asked to fill in and spent a pleas­ant half an hour chat­ting with Lynn about what’s been hap­pen­ing over the last couple of months (plus at the end anoth­er little ride on my anti-film; pro-digital hobbyhorse):

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/art/art-20110130–1306-Dan_Slevin_reviews_summer_movies-048.mp3]

Review: Eat Pray Love, Buried and The Town

By Cinema and Reviews

Eat Pray Love posterEat Pray Love is what they used to call, in the old days, a “women’s pic­ture” and the advert­isers who have paid good money to annoy audi­ences before the film make sure you know it: fem­in­ine hygiene products. A chro­mo­somal anom­aly on my part means that I’m not in the tar­get mar­ket for this film (or the best­selling book that inspired it) but I’ll give it a go. Manfully.

Julia Roberts plays Liz, a phe­nom­en­ally bad play­wright and (sup­posedly) suc­cess­ful author who has a crisis and ends her (sup­posedly) unsat­is­fact­ory mar­riage to bewildered and hurt Billy Crudup. Never hav­ing lived without a man in her life she goes straight into a rela­tion­ship with hand­some and spir­itu­al young act­or James Franco.

Still unhappy, and a source of enorm­ous frus­tra­tion to her eth­nic­ally diverse best friend Viola Davis (Doubt), she uses her share of the Crudup divorce to take a year off and find her­self – Italy for the food, India for the guru and Bali for Javier Bardem.

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More wireless

By Audio, Cinema and Radio

I’m filling for Graeme Tuckett on Nine to Noon for the next few weeks. This morn­ing Lynn Freeman and I dis­cussed Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Despicable Me (and 3D gen­er­ally) plus Tom Reilly’s Gordonia. That was a lot to squeeze in to just over 10 minutes so it got a little breathless.

Listen here or down­load from the link below:

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20100923–1149-Film_Review-048.mp3]

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As an added bonus, here’s my review of the nov­el Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett from last Thursday’s show:

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20100923–1149-Film_Review-048.mp3]

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Decade in Review

By Cinema and Radio

Not by me.

Christ, I’m too busy with being on hol­i­day and pre­par­ing for my forth­com­ing return to the Wellington stage to think about sum­ming up a dec­ade in cinema (par­tic­u­larly as I was­n’t watch­ing much film for the first half of it).

Luckily, Ant Timpson has done the work for me. Check out his two lists (Best of the Decade and Best Horror Films of the Decade) and keep them in mind when you are next at the video shop.

Meanwhile, you can listen to myself and Auckland’s Dominic Corry talk to Arts on Sunday’s Lynn Freeman about the 2009 year at the movies (which was broad­cast about ten days ago) and wait a day or two for me to post my Capital Times picks of the year right here.

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/art/art-20091220–1310-Movie_Panel_-_Dan_Slevin_and_Dominic_Corry-048.mp3]

Movie Panel – Dan Slevin and Dominic Corry

The Celluloid Circus

By Cinema, Literature and Reviews
The Celluloid Circus cover   They say to nev­er judge a book by its cover.

In addi­tion to filling for Graeme Tuckett on Nine to Noon whenev­er he gets a bet­ter offer, I’ve been review­ing some books. Last Friday I had the great pleas­ure of talk­ing to Lynn Freeman about the won­der­ful his­tory of New Zealand cinema exhib­i­tion, “The Celluloid Circus” by Wayne Brittenden.

The RNZ down­loads tend to dis­ap­pear after a week so I’ve taken the liberty of archiv­ing it here. Courtesy of Radio New Zealand:

Celluloid Circus Review – Nine to Noon 14 Nov 2008

It really is a lovely book and I can thor­oughly recom­mend it to any­one with an interest in New Zealand social his­tory (or sit­ting in rows in the dark).