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the full monty

Review: 127 Hours, Gnomeo & Juliet, No Strings Attached and Fair Game

By Cinema and Reviews

127 Hours posterDanny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire was my film of the year for 2009 – a potent and punchy roller-coaster ride of a film that made everything for months after­wards seem quaintly old-fashioned. His new film, 127 Hours, doesn’t break the mould to quite the same degree but does fea­ture sim­il­ar styl­ist­ic effects: mess­ing with time and struc­ture, split-screens, dom­in­eer­ing soundtrack, etc.

The new film is also an adapt­a­tion of pre­vi­ously exist­ing mater­i­al, Aron Ralston’s mem­oir “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”, and once again Boyle has col­lab­or­ated with screen­writer Simon Beaufoy (notori­ous in New Zealand for The Full Monty). Ralston (played by James Franco) was an engin­eer by trade but an out­doors­man by inclin­a­tion and he loved to roam the Utah canyons on bike and on foot. In 2003 he fall into a nar­row rav­ine and his right arm was trapped by a boulder. He was there for five days before real­ising that the only way he was going to walk out was if he left the arm behind.

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Some Frank Langella trivia

By Asides, Humour, NZ and Theatre

Here’s a New York Times pro­file of Frost/Nixon star, and great char­ac­ter act­or, Frank Langella. Langella once bought the Broadway rights to the hit kiwi “com­edy” Ladies’ Night and author Anthony McCarten told me once of sit­ting in Langella’s trail­er in Hollywood col­lab­or­at­ing on the American-ization of the play that may or may not have even­tu­ally become The Full Monty. Periodically, Langella would have to excuse him­self and vis­it the set: “Excuse me, I have to go and make love to Ellen Barkin.”