Rob Keeling
Rob Keeling is a freelance writer and film fanatic in Manchester. He completed his Masters degree in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester and since then has rambled continuously at anyone who will listen on all things cinematic. Loves Casablanca, Goodfellas, This is Spinal Tap and High Fidelity and something cool, foreign and arty that he can't place right now.
Producer Andrew Kosove spoke to The Playlist this week about the warily anticipated remakes/reboots of both Blade Runner and Point Break.
Guy Ritchie returns again to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s finest literary creation and much like with his 2009 original, the end product is an entertaining Victorian boys own adventure romp. It’s loud, brash and about as faithful to Conan Doyle’s original Holmes stories as Braveheart was to Scottish history. Luckily though, this doesn’t matter one jot and while the movie is breaking no new ground and isn’t going to trouble anybody’s 2011 ‘best of’ list, it’s an enjoyable piece of escapist cinema.
When Shrek Forever After finished its immensely successful theatrical run, there must have been a mild panic amongst Dreamworks executives. The incredibly successful franchise was a golden goose (of which more later) for the studio and with it drawing to a close they were in need or a fresh franchise to fill the gap. Enter Puss in Boots, the feline vigilante who stole the show in Shrek 2 and became arguably the most popular character for the rest of the Shrek series. It was a no-brainer therefore to give Puss his own spin-off movie in the hope it would prove equally as lucrative.
A family friendly fantasy film shot in 3D certainly doesn’t sound like your typical Scorsese movie and sure enough there isn’t a curse word or even a ‘mook’ to be heard. Instead the legendary director has delivered a captivating and visually stunning tale which is at its heart an ode to the wonder of cinema itself.
Based on the novel The Adventures of Hugo Cabaret by Brian Selznick, the movie is set in 1920’s Paris and focuses on a young orphan called Hugo (Asa Butterfield) who lives in the walls of a Parisian train terminal maintaining the station’s grand old clocks. Hugo is forced spend most of his time hiding from the station’s guard (Sacha Baron Cohen), the villain of the piece who is determined to send the boy to an orphanage. When he was alive, Hugo’s late father was an expert watchmaker who handed his passion for fixing things on to his son. He also left a half-fixed mechanical automaton which Hugo is desperately trying to make work, using all the technical know-how his father passed down to him.
Part two of our wondrous journey through the pantheon of Disney animated movies sees us take in two bona fide classics and one obscure Latin American mish-mash of a film. After the great success of Snow White, Disney was on a high, but then came the financial losses of both Pinocchio and Fantasia. Coupled with the escalating war in Europe curbing its overseas markets, the Studio needed to recoup some money and fast. Walt’s answer was to turn to a little known children’s story written by Helen Aberson about a baby Elephant with oversized ears who is born into a life in the circus.
