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nine to noon

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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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Daniel Craig has a gap in his schedule

By Asides and Cinema

While filling in for Graeme Tuckett on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon film slot last Thursday, I cas­u­ally men­tioned that Daniel Craig had been cast as journ­al­ist Mikael Blomkvist in David Fincher’s forth­com­ing remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. With the col­lapse of Sam Mendes’ new Bond pic­ture, Mr Craig has a franchise-sized gap in his sched­ule and I think he’s ideal cast­ing to play the craggy cru­sader (ori­gin­ated by Michael Nyqvist in the Swedish films and a six part tele­vi­sion series).

Thanks to @hybridmovies, I can dir­ect you to the Financial Times art­icle that tells the whole sorry story of the deteri­or­a­tion of MGM and the mis­man­age­ment that has pushed it to the brink:

Harry Sloan, a media entre­pren­eur who once made $200m when a Scandinavian broad­cast­ing busi­ness he was man­aging was taken pub­lic, was brought in as chair­man of the stu­dio. Sloan set about the sub­stance of his work with enthu­si­asm, but he was also noted for his quirky habits. He arranged his office in the MGM build­ing accord­ing to feng-shui prin­ciples and kept a selec­tion of crys­tals in the screen­ing room to improve energy flows – he even had his office tele­phone num­ber changed, repla­cing all the fours with eights, a lucky num­ber in China.

You can listen to me chat­ting with Kathryn Ryan about Inception and The Girl Who Played with Fire here or down­load from the link below:

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20100729–1150-Film_Review_with_Dan_Slevin-048.mp3]

Dan Slevin reviews Inception and The Girl Who Played with Fire. (dur­a­tion: 9m 37s) – Radio New Zealand

Review: Julie & Julia, Food, Inc., Saw VI, Surrogates, Tyson, Monty Python- Almost the Truth and The Crimson Wing

By Cinema and Reviews

Back before the days of “Iron Chef”, “Masterchef” and “Hell’s Kitchen”, television’s top food expert was a very tall, slightly ungainly, woman who soun­ded a little drunk. She was Julia Child and in the 60s she taught America how to cook. In an era where tv din­ners, pre-prepared sauces and easy cake mixes were top of a busy housewife’s shop­ping list, Child pro­duced the almighty tome Mastering the Art of French Cooking which went on to sell mil­lions of cop­ies and make her a legend.

A little later on, 2002 in fact, New Yorker Julie Powell star­ted an online pro­ject to repro­duce every recipe in the fam­ous cook­book (over 500 of them) in a single year. Nora Ephron’s new film Julie & Julia skil­fully merges the two stor­ies, freely not­ing the par­al­lels between them, and man­aging to pro­duce a warm and witty film that hon­ours the remark­able Child.

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Nine to Noon again

By Asides

I just got back from review­ing a couple of films for RNZ National’s Nine to Noon show: (500) Days of Summer and An Education. You can listen to the item here, but I also recom­mend sub­scrib­ing to the pod­cast so you can cherry-pick the best of each day’s broadcast.

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20091014–1151-Film_review-048.mp3]

Dan Slevin reviews ‘500 Days of Summer’, and British drama ‘An Education’ by Nick Hornsby. (duration:9m15s)

FilmSoc: Another year of great value film watching

By Cinema and Wellington

Film Society logo eyeThose of us that try and take cinema ser­i­ously have very few for­ums where we can truly express our pas­sion and the Monday even­ing screen­ings at the Wellington Film Society are the alter at which we worship.

For over 60 years Wellingtonians have been gath­er­ing to watch flick­er­ing images from all over the world. In the days before the words nerd or geek we were called buffs (and were proud of it) and we still gath­er in our hun­dreds at the Paramount pic­ture theatre to bathe in the glory of a rect­an­gu­lar image on a sil­ver screen – shad­ows cast by films from exot­ic places (and some from less far afield).

This year’s Feb-Nov pro­gramme kicks-off on Monday with a real treat – Garden of Earthly Delights is the first screen­ing in a series of films by acclaimed Polish film­maker Lech Majewski and it’s a prime example of the kind of screen­ing that only the Film Society can provide. It’s an award-winning art movie about love, loss, mor­bid­ity and cre­ation and the dir­ect­or will be present at the screen­ing to take questions.

Other high­lights in this year’s broadly cur­ated pro­gramme include a couple of early films by Gus Van Sant (Milk), recent doc­u­ment­ar­ies Manufactured Landscapes and Darwin’s Nightmare and rare 35mm present­a­tions of fest­iv­al favour­ites La Sentinelle (1992), Diva (1981) and Paradzhanov’s mas­ter­piece The Colour of Pomegranates (1979).

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 4 March, 2009.

While filling in for Graeme Tuckett on Nine to Noon this morn­ing I gave the Film Society a bit of a deserved plug. It really is a treas­ure. You can listen here (or down­load):

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20090304–1148-Film-048.mp3]

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).