My new regular Saturday feature has already been shunted out of the way because this weekend I'm spending unhealthy amounts of time surrounded by like-minded geeks in obscure movie-referencing t-shirts at London's BFI, wherein Empire magazine's third annual Movie-Con is being held. If you're unaware of the intricacies of the event, imagine 500 nerds in a room watching random bits of footage of unfinished films. Sounds tremendous doesn't it?
Oh and the Con in Movie-Con is short for "confiscated", as in "your phone will be, to prevent you from posting wobbly footage of trailers that are already online or will be in a matter of days".
Day 1 started yesterday evening with Empire's Chris Hewitt carpet bombing us with excruciating jokes until we couldn't take any more and the first bit of footage was shown: an exclusive trailer for Danny Boyle's new movie and this year's London Film Festival closer, 127 Hours, starring James Franco.
127 Hours is a true story about a man who literally gets stuck between a rock and a hard place (for about 127 hours, I'm guessing) and has to resort to desperate measures to extricate himself. The trailer doesn't tell you much more than that and I'm not about to start describing trailers because that's been proven to be the least exciting thing anyone can do on the internet.
Danny Boyle turned up for a quick Q&A, was very funny, relaxed and charming, spoiled the end of his film and expressed a desire to do a musical or animated film next. SCOOP.
Following that the rather excellent director-producer team of Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith showed up to promote a film they had nothing to do with, utterly mentile Belgian animation A Town Called Panic. They showed some clips and a trailer that have already been on YouTube for months, and which were projected at the wrong aspect ratio so we couldn't read the subtitles. Fortunately they won us over with a clip of Adam Buxton pretending to be a belligerent Belgian animator, so we forgave them.
Next was the LFF's opening film Never Let Me Go's trailer, which everyone has also seen already. There was another quick Q&A with two of its producers, Andrew Macdonald and some other bloke, which was a bit dull until Macdonald started talking about his next project, Judge Dredd, at which point the audience woke up and got excited when he announced that it would be (surprise) a gritty, R-rated version of the comic, and that Dredd - played by Karl Urban - would keep his helmet on this time. Everyone was very happy about that, except Karl Urban presumably.
The main event was a screening of The Expendables, during which everybody clapped and cheered whenever anyone got shot (which was quite frequently), and then there was a party but by that time I was on a tube home surrounded by Australians in togas.
Imagine walking into your bathroom and finding a load of toenail clippings in the sink. Pretty grim, right? But imagine if the sink was the interweb, and the toenails were actually little nuggets of noteworthy movie news. Now you’ve turned a revolting imaginary scenario into one that’s almost worth blogging about. Hooray for you! Well, hooray for me actually, I wrote the thing. All you do is sit there and read it while shovelling chocolate digestives into your face.
Here are the toenails I found in my sink today which I thought share-worthy:
Nicolas Cage won’t star in Green Hornet! While it’s hardly news to say that somebody isn’t going to be in something, unless it’s “Shia LaBeouf will not star in anything ever again,” it’s always good to know Mr Cage and his wig of the week won’t be in a movie.
I’ve been alternately interested by and apathetic about Green Hornetsince it was announced. My thought process went something like this: Michel Gondry's making a Green Hornet movie: That sounds good. Seth Rogen’s in it: Oh. Not so interested. Stephen Chow will play Kato: Groovy. Stephen Chow was ace in Kung Fu Hustle. Stephen Chow won’t play Kato: Oh for heaven’s sake. Cameron Diaz will be in it: Well that’s slightly better. Nicolas Cage might be in it: That’s it, I’ve had it with all these Green Hornet shenanigans. Nicolas Cage won’t be in it: Right, good, but just make the film and stop announcing who isn’t in it! This is becoming tedious.
Alex Garland is writing a new Judge Dredd movie! I thought I was excited about this but then I realised I was just mildly curious about a new Judge Dredd film. After all a poo in a teacup would be better than the 1995 Sylvester Stallone version. I mean, hello, he takes his helmet off! Wrong, just wrong.
Alex Garland has only actually written half a good movie, The Beach. The rest have been a bit rubbish, so this particular toenail goes in the ‘Wait And See’ cupboard.
The A-Team movie has found its BA Baracus! Liam Neeson is Hannibal. Bradley Cooper is Face. And now it appears the ludicrously named (although I probably wouldn’t say it to his face) Quinton Ramone “Rampage” Jackson is BA Baracus. I’m still looking forward to the film but I can’t help feeling like the best BA would have been Blighty’s own Matt Lucas:
And the big toenail in the sink is… The announcement of the programme for the 2009 London Film Festival, on which I am duty-bound to report now that I run an award-winning blog*. There are about 20 films I want to see so it looks like I’ll have to resign from my job for the last fortnight in October. I’m sure they’ll cope without me, all I do is use their facilities to write my blog. Ssshh!
While it’s hardly news to say that somebody isn’t going to be in something, unless it’s “Shia LaBeouf will not star in anything ever again,” it’s always good to know Mr Cage and his wig of the week won’t be in a movie.
I thought I was excited about this but then I realised I was just mildly curious about a new Judge Dredd film. After all a poo in a teacup would be better than the 1995 Sylvester Stallone version. I mean, hello, he takes his helmet off! Wrong, just wrong.
Liam Neeson is Hannibal. Bradley Cooper is Face. And now it appears the ludicrously named (although I probably wouldn’t say it to his face) Quinton Ramone “Rampage” Jackson is BA Baracus. I’m still looking forward to the film but I can’t help feeling like the best BA would have been Blighty’s own Matt Lucas: