Black Tuesday. The scale of this scam is staggering to behold. Amidst all this "horror" (as it was repeatedly called on Prime Time tonight), this picture started doing the rounds. Some (rare) light relief on a dark day in the history of this state.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Nama-geddon
Black Tuesday. The scale of this scam is staggering to behold. Amidst all this "horror" (as it was repeatedly called on Prime Time tonight), this picture started doing the rounds. Some (rare) light relief on a dark day in the history of this state.
Tara is back - with 75% more gay
United States of Tara is back for its second season - and it's funnier, sharper and, more importantly, gayer than ever before. Toni Collette is as good as ever, while young actor Keir Gilchrist's Marshall (criminally robbed of an Emmy nomination last year) remains the best gay character on American television.
Salon has a good intro to and analysis of the show here.
Let the Right One Win
Aw. Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson pose with the Empire Award for Best Horror movie for Let The Right One In. Kinda weird to see them as healthy, normal kids in contrast to their characters in the movie
Monday, March 29, 2010
Oreagan
Obama's newfound confidence on the back of HCR is marking him out as the "liberal Reagan", according to the Daily Beast
Sassy Gay Friend
I love this series of skits.
If Othello's Desdemona had a sassy gay friend...
And Ophelia...
And Juliet...
If Othello's Desdemona had a sassy gay friend...
And Ophelia...
And Juliet...
Picture of the day
Well, it's kinda picture of the day last week but it's a good'un. Hillary congrats the O.Bam over healthcare reform.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Kicking Back
My interview with Aaron Johnson, star of Kick-Ass, in Day and Night in today's Independent...
It has been hard to miss British actor Aaron Johnson in the massive ad campaigns for Kick-Ass, a darkly funny, ultra-violent, deliriously entertaining anti-hero superhero flick. There he is on the sides of buses and plastered on billboards, pictured in a deliberately underwhelming green and yellow costume, alongside sorta-Batman 'Big Daddy' (Nicholas Cage), Christopher 'McLovin' Mintz-Plasse's emo-haired Red Mist, and breakout teen star Chloe Moretz's pintsized, foul-mouthed, purple-coiffed assassin Hit Girl.
The only thing is, Johnson's face is hidden by a mask, with the effect of rendering him largely unrecognisable. "I'm actuallyvery happy about that," the 19-year-old tells Day & Night as he settles on a sofa in Dublin's Merrion Hotel. "I like doing those kinds of roles. That's the point of acting: it gives you the freedom to be everything but you."
Continue here.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
219 votes
Health care reform is passed, extending insurance to 31 million Americans. A good day.
Move coverage from The Daily Beast
Time asks if Republicans can win by running against HCR?
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Super Sunday!
In the run-up to tomorrow's historic - and, if passed, momentous - vote on healthcare reform in the US, why not whet your appetite with two classic episodes of The West Wing, namely 'Five Votes Down' from season 1 and 'A Good Day' from season 6.
Pope grants...erm, I mean, asks for forgiveness
An oldie from The Onion relevant to Ireland and the world today's following Pope Benedictator's miserable pastoral letter to Irish Catholics regarding the sexual abuse and torture of children by religious orders.
The Emergency also has its take on the matter...
Appetite for life
Interview with Jean-Christophe Novelli in today's Irish Examiner.
Jean-Christophe Novelli has a habit of running into Irish people in toilets around London. Pat Kenny, for instance, who asked him to be a guest on the Late Late Show as they shared space around the hand dryer. Then, of course, there was footballer Robbie Keane.
“It was in the restroom of a bar in London, and I recognised Robbie,” the soccer-mad celeb chef says in what is still an extremely thick Gallic accent. “I couldn’t shake his hand obviously, but I said to him, ‘Robbie, I’m so excited to meet you’. And Robbie replied, ‘I can tell you are because you just peed on your shoes’.”
This is just one of many anecdotes and tangential asides in which the 49-year-old indulges as Weekend chats with him in the L’atelier des Chefs in London’s West End. It’s St Patrick’s morning, and Jean-Christophe is reveling in his Irish-related memories, ranging from being invited by Bono to see U2 play in Croke Park last summer to his brief period in 2006 as chef de patron at Louis Murray’s La Stampa restaurant in Dublin’s Dawson Street.
That was a particularly strange time for the chef, who was criticised harshly in certain circles for the limited role he played in La Stampa’s kitchen. “There was some confusion over that,” he explains. “I told Louis I couldn’t be there every day, and he understood that. But the press didn’t take it that way. They thought I’d be in the kitchen every day. Things got out of control. But I loved the challenge.”
Jean-Christophe’s newest challenge comes from a collaboration with Flora’s ‘Heart Age’ campaign, where he has conjured up recipes (and will take part in a summer reality-cooking show on TV3) centred around the idea of substituting Flora for regular fatty butter in everyday cooking.
These days, this type of project suits him perfectly, as it involves teaching others and passing on his wisdom in a manner not too dissimilar to how he first developed his own understanding of and passion for food. “My mother gave me that passion, that sense of vocation for cooking,” he says. “I learned at her knee. I was always eating, always watching and tasting what she put in the pan.”
Indeed, Jean Christophe started off in the business at a very young age. Born and raised in Arras, northern France (Charles DeGaulle was a one-time neighbour), Jean-Christophe decided at age 14 that he wanted to be a baker and started work in a local kitchen. “I loved it so much,” he recalls. “I was bad at school. No teacher wanted me in their classes because I was so disruptive. They told me I had learning difficulties. When I started working, I did everything I could to make sure I wouldn’t have to go back to that.”
At age 20, he became private head chef to Parisian banker Elie de Rothschild, before moving to the UK in 1983 to serve as head chef in the late Keith Floyd’s pub, The Maltsters. From there, he moved to Le Provence (earning his first of four Michelin stars), followed by London’s Four Seasons, and branched out with his own restaurant, Maison Novelli.
As one point in the 90s, he was running seven restaurants between London, France and South Africa, However, having run up huge debts, Jean-Christophe lost his empire and declared bankruptcy at the turn of the millennium. With the help of pal Marco Pierre White, he delved back into the restaurant business again, and in 2005 became a TV sensation on Hell’s Kitchen.
Today, Jean-Christophe operates two British gastropubs (with plans to open more) and runs a cooking school from his farmhouse near Luton airport, where he lives with his fiancée Michelle Kennedy (33) and their 18-month-old son Jean (Jean-Christophe has a 21-year-old daughter from his previous marriage).
“About six years ago I decided I wanted out of the restaurant world,” Jean-Christophe admits. “I had done my time in the kitchen. I knew that I wanted to teach instead.
“I spent some time in LA last year filming my series Chef Academy, and I’m due to go back again in the next few weeks, and I love that. My little boy was born there – he’s an American. But I wouldn’t want to live there though. I love where I am. I’m situated near the airport so I can travel easily. I have a nice countryside kitchen. I can’t work against the clock now. It’s not me anymore.”
By his own admission, fatherhood this second time round has mellowed him profoundly. He certainly seems a far cry from the man once voted the world’s sexiest chef, and who entertained a string of celebrity girlfriends, Patsy Kensit amongst them.
“Michelle and my son have given me another life,” he admits. “I’ve been very fortunate, and I would do things exactly the same way, but I think I’m better now that I was before. I was out of control, perhaps too hard on myself. God knows how I did what I did. Time has mellowed me. I’m more creative, more versatile and thoughtful.
“Michelle is my best friend, and my partner in every way. We have everything in common, there are no secrets, and there’s nothing she doesn’t know about me. As for my son, I don’t want to miss out on anything with him. This is the most important thing in my life now – certainly more important than any Michelin star.”
*See www.floraheartage.com
JT, A1 and me
My interview with Justin Timberlake in today's Weekend magazine in the Irish Independent
Justin Timberlake is having what can only be described as an Entourage moment. Weekend magazine is at the International Motor Show in Geneva, where Justin has flown in to launch the new A1 model for Audi, and he's buzzing around like a child who has just mixed Skittles and Coca-Cola.
Shortly before we spoke, the 29-year-old pop prince had driven the new car out on stage at the Audi stand to a throng of onlookers, expo staff and rubbernecking fans, who included Yves Leterme, the prime minister of Belgium.
Continue here
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
I just got my Ass Kicked!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Need for speed
My column on speed dating in today's Day and Night in the Irish Independent.
Hands up whoever has gone to a speed-dating night. Anyone? (A tumbleweed blows by.) Wait, is that a hand up at the back ... oh right, you're pointing and laughing at me. I can understand why many of you might be reluctant to admit it. More than one friend -- though that title is under review -- openly scoffed at my recent plans to go to a speed-dating event, but I persevered regardless.
Continue here.
See also romeoromeojulietjuliet.com
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Enter the Dragon
My interview with Niels Arden Oplev, director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in today's Irish Examiner.
It’s been dubbed a Swedish Zodiac meets The Silence of the Lambs, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo needs little introduction to millions of readers across the world. Based on the first book in the late Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millenium’ trilogy – which have sold some 30m copies in 35 countries – Dragon Tattoo arrives on these shores having defied the pre-release grumbles and fears of its many fans to become the most successful movie in Swedish box office history, even sparking talk of an ominous Hollywood remake.
However, the movie’s director Niels Arden Oplev says he didn’t find signing onto the project at all intimidating - for one simple reason. “I’d never heard of the book before,” chuckles the genial 49-year-old Dane over the phone from New York.
“I was in Scandinavia absorbed in the making of a movie about Jehovah’s Witnesses. Then the three producers asked me about doing this thriller up in Sweden. My previous movies had all been dramas, and I wasn’t looking for thriller material, so I said no.
“They then came back with a new production schedule that suited me. I went home that night in Copenhagen, and mentioned it to my neighbour. She ran into another room like something was wrong, and came out with the book, saying she’d just read it and loved it. I took that as a good omen.”
Having started out making police-crime dramas for Danish TV (and winning two International Emmy awards for his efforts), Oplev had some background experience to tackle Larsson’s convoluted tale of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) who is hired by the head of an uber-wealthy family to investigate the still-unsolved 40-year mystery of his niece’s disappearance. Along the way, he finds himself teaming up with Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a deliquent, anti-social, punk hacker with her own dark secrets to hide.
By now, Oplev is intimately acquainted with the work of Larsson (who died suddenly in 2004), and is well placed to suggest what it is about the books that has so captured the public imagination. “I think Larsson is a very entertaining writer, but he also has this passion, particularly in highlighting society’s violence against women,” he says.
“What’s more, Dragon Tattoo has an Agatha Christie-type plot so it’s a compelling mystery to boot. But I think the real success of the story is down to the character of Lisbeth.”
Indeed, 30-year-old Noomi Rapace’s performance as Lisbeth is electrifying (and in a just world would earn an Oscar nomination next year). It’s a role that has already drawn comparisons to Jodie Foster’s dogged-but-vulnerable agent in Silence of the Lambs, though Rapace infuses Lisbeth with a 21st century kick-ass sensibility.
“I think a better comparison is La Femme Nikita,” says Oplev. “Lisbeth is a female Charles Bronson. She’ll take the law into her own hands if she needs to. She has this remarkable thing in her that no matter how much she’s abused, she never becomes a victim. She always fights back.”
Oplev adds that casting the part was crucial to the success of the movie. “I had seen footage of Noomi and thought she was a strong actress but too goddamn beautiful,” he explains. “That was a worry because Lisbeth is not beautiful in the book, and I didn’t want to do the Hollywood thing of hiring a good-looking actress for such a beloved role.
“But when she came in to read the part, she must have known this would be a problem, because she looked as worn out as possible. Noomi changed her physical appearance totally, re-opening old piercings, adopting a more boyish look, and studying martial arts. In the end, I really fell for her strong, dark energy, and her unpredictability.”
As fans will know, Lisbeth is a character that goes to some very dark places, and the movie doesn’t shy away from the book’s at-times gruesome violence, in particular a harrowing rape scene that has become a major talking point of the movie’s release.
Oplev says that that to show the scene in an uncompromising way would have been “to betray women”. “Those scenes had to be horrific because a crime that serious should never be seen as entertainment,” he continues. “I don’t think it’s exploitative. With that scene it’s the preparation for the attack that takes up the most time, and that makes it scarier. There’s nothing sexual about it - just the pure horror. It’s important in regards to understanding Lisbeth’s character and what she does later in the story, and it also honours Larsson’s reasons for writing the book in the first place.”
Another controversy overshadowing the movie – and the entire Larsson empire – is a long-running and bitter dispute between Larsson’s surviving (unwed) partner and his family over the legal right to his now e22m fortune.
“That whole feud is a tragedy, but I think the media hasn’t helped,” Oplev states. “I mean, my God, the Swedish press has sold so many papers over the last few years on this story. It has a life of its own. Luckily I was able to just go in to make a film that was in the spirit of Larsson and one he’d be proud of that would travel outside Sweden. The rest of the mess I’d certainly prefer to avoid.”
*The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is released in selected cinemas tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Monday, March 08, 2010
Bullock retrospective
Time to go through the back catalogue of this year's phenomenally popular Best Actress winner.
I'm starting with this - a Working Girl spinoff from 1990!!
Her short onscreen collaboration with Best Actor Jeff Bridges in The Vanishing.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Friday, March 05, 2010
Sheen/Spall
My review of Neil Jordan's new movie Ondine from today's Day and Night...
My interview with Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall, two of the stars of Alice in Wonderland
Like his latest character of the White Rabbit in Tim Burton’s new interpretation of Alice in Wonderland, Michael Sheen is a man in a terrible hurry. The 41-year-old Welsh man has 20 minutes to chat with Day and Night in Dublin’s Gresham Hotel, along with his Alice co-star and friend Timothy Spall, before he has to dash off to catch a flight to London and onwards to Los Angeles.
Happily, Sheen isn’t as flustered as the iconic McTwisp and there’s ne’er a hint of fretful pocket-watch checking. Instead, he and Spall are relaxed and chatty, cracking jokes and exchanging stories about the best places to live and socialise in LA.
Both men were in town as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which held the Irish premiere of this much-anticipated updating of Lewis Carroll’s classic fairytale. In typical Tim Burton fashion, this version of Alice is a visually sumptuous event, shot in 3D, and starring Aussie newcomer Mia Wasikowska as a now grown-up Alice, alongside Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway, all of whom seem to be having a ball as the Mad Hatter, the divinely evil Red Queen and the dementedly saintly White Queen respectively.
Elsewhere, half of the card-carrying members of Equity provide voices for animal characters, including Sheen and Spall (as bloodhound Bayard), as well Stephen Fry, Barbara Windsor, Alan Rickman and Christopher Lee.
It’s an extraordinary cast by anyone’s standard, but the slightly less glamorous reality of making the movie for Sheen and 53-year-old Londoner Spall consisted of sitting in a recording studio laying down the voices for their characters.
“I met Johnny Depp for the first time on the red carpet,” laughs Sheen. “The first time all of us got together was at the premiere, so I didn’t get the ‘full’ Tim Burton experience. What was nice though is that when I did my work it was just the two of us, so in a way there was more time for chit-chat and small talk. So I did feel like I got to know him a little bit. We’re talking about hopefully doing something together again.
“What’s amazing is that Tim had to keep this whole movie in his head. I remember after doing my last voice session asking him, ‘So, how’s the film looking? How’s it going?’ And he replied, ‘ I have absolutely no idea. I haven’t seen a single frame of it yet’. You really have to trust his vision.”
“Tim is incredibly inclusive,” adds Spall, who previously worked with both Burton and Depp on Sweeney Todd. “He makes you feel like you’re involved in his dream. He doesn’t dictate to you, and you feel like a complete equal to him. He has the enthusiasm and energy to get a movie right.”
Acting against – and reacting to – blue-screens and sticks representing other characters was a refreshing change of tack for these two character actors. “It’s just like acting when you’re a kid,” says Sheen. “We don’t call it acting then – we call it pretending. You could be playing as a pirate or a soldier, and you don’t need a set or a script for that. It’s just the power of belief. So in a way it goes back to an earlier, purer form of acting.”
Adds Spall: “Acting in a film is always a leap of faith anyway. To be honest, I got so lost in the visuals that I forgot I was in it. I was watching it thinking, ‘God, that dog sounds a lot like me’.”
Both men signed up for the project without seeing the finished script. “I’d only do that with Tim and Mike Leigh,” says Spall. Sheen reveals that this is one of three movies he agreed to before reading the final draft. “The others were New Moon because my daughter loves Twilight so much, and Tron Legacy [out later this year] because I was a huge fan of the original as a kid. My agents hate me doing that. The whole point is to go, ‘Hmm I’m not sure, it all depends on how much money you give me’, whereas in all those cases I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely, I’ll do it!’”
Acting is in the blood for both of these actors. Spall’s own son Rafe is an established actor in his own right, starring in movies like Shaun of the Dead and Green Street. It turns out his dad had mixed feelings about him going into the business.
“When Rafe told me he wanted to be an actor at age 15, I was both flattered and horrified in equal measure because a) he wanted to do what his old dad does, and b) I knew he was going to get some stinking rotten knocks,” explains Spall. “Everyone gets kicked in the balls no matter how successful they are. But he’s doing really well, and he’s his own man. I still do deals with God though. I say, ‘Let Rafe get that part he wants; in exchange I don’t need this part.”
Sheen, meanwhile, has an 11-year-old daughter, Lily with his ex-partner Kate Beckinsale, and both mother and daughter can be currently be seen in the movie Everybody’s Fine (Lily plays her mum as a child). “Yes, Lily was acting with Robert de Niro, no less,” Sheen says proudly. “It gave her a taste for the business, frighteningly. But I don’t think she’ll want to carry on doing it. Ultimately, the one thing you want for your kid is for them to do something they love.”
As it turns out, Sheen’s own dad is somewhat of an actor too, and is a famed Jack Nicholson impersonator at home in Newport. “There’s a strange symmetry to it, because it was after Tim Burton made the first Batman that, overnight, people started coming up to my dad saying he looked like Jack Nicholson. All of the first jobs he did were as the Joker.
“Dad loves it. He was a frustrated actor: he loves performing but he’s not a very good actor so this was the perfect thing for him. He lives vicariously through me now!”
Oddly enough, both actors will soon be seen on screen playing British prime ministers: Spall as Churchill in The King’s Speech, while Sheen reprises his role as Tony Blair (opposite Dennis Quaid’s Bill Clinton) in The Special Relationship. “The last film I’ve ever going to make about Blair,” Sheen says with a smile.
Has he ever met the man himself? “I met him last year actually,” Sheen replies, pausing momentarily, face set in neutral. “He was very charming. Perfectly lovely.”
Key roles:
Timothy Spall:
*Auf Wiedersehen Pet: Spall played electrician Barry Taylor for four years in this classic TV show.
*Secrets and Lies: Spall is heartbreaking as Brenda Blethyn’s gentle brother in one of his four collaborations with Mike Leigh.
*All or Nothing: Another Leigh classic in which Spall plays a troubled London taxi driver.
Michael Sheen:
*The Queen: Sheen’s breakout role as a bright-eyed Tony Blair opposite Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth II.
*Frost/Nixon: Getting under the skin of legendary TV presenter David Frost in this 70s-based drama.
*The Damned United: Arguably Sheen’s finest screen performance to date as doomed Leeds manager Brian Clough.
**Alice in Wonderland is out today.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Paying for the sins of the fathers
The peerless Mary Raftery once again nails the latest astonishing manoeuvres by the Catholic Church in its "response" to the child sex abuse criminal conspiracy within its ranks. This latest development is brazen and insulting even by the Church's standards.
For your consideration...
...in the home stretch now: ballots are now in and being counted. AwardsDaily has a selection of FYC trade ads
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