Cannes Video Diaries!

Right, hopefully this should work: a link to all ten - yes, TEN! - of my Cannes video diaries. Enjoy!

Click here to open a Cannes of worms!

9:39 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Back from Cannes...

As Al Pacino says in the great Carlito's Way... "tired, baby... tired". Got back from Cannes yesterday, was in the office today, but really should have taken a day off. Eyes closing... head drooping... shattered.

Still, Cannes was decent fun. Hope you guys have headed over to the main site to check out not only my video blogs - complete with cameos from the likes of Edgar Wright and Eli Roth, and interviews with GDT, QT, RR and some people who aren't just known by their initials - but Damon Wise's old-fashioned blog, which uses an archaic notion known as words, typed on something that I believe we used to call a keyboard, that you then read on a screen. So out-moded... it's a wonder people ever used to do it that way.

The 10th and final Cannes blog will be up on the site tomorrow. I know, three days late... but editing it and uploading it took longer than we reckoned. Then you'll be able to sit down and watch all ten in a row. We produced over 70 minutes of content in just over a week... not to mention all the unused takes, bloopers and general horsing around that will pop up on a gag reel before too long.

So, a quick rundown of the highlights and lowlights of my Cannes film festival:

Highlights:

* Seeing No Country For Old Men - due to a busy schedule, I saw only three movies at the Festival, and one of those was a Friday night showing of Rio Bravo (with introduction from QT, which was pretty special). In a way I topped and tailed the Festival with a classic Western, although No Country... is the kind of brutal modern movie that Howard Hawks, you sense, would have struggled to comprehend. Where the bad guys don't necessarily get their comeuppance, and the white hats are more often than not drenched in their own blood come movie's end. It's an extraordinary spare, sparse, and unforgiving film, astonishing on a technical level, brilliantly acted by Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones and somehow manages to simultaneously be unlike anything the Coens have ever done, and yet be very much of a piece with their back catalogue, notably Fargo and Blood Simple.

There are suspense sequences in this movie that are the equal of anything Alfred Hitchcock produced, in my opinion. And praise doesn't come much higher, or hyperbolic (!), than that.

* Having my nipple tweaked by Guillermo del Toro: the pain still haunts me. But it's something to tell the kids.

* Convincing Edgar Wright to cameo as 'Joe Wright', and endure a barrage of (albeit comedic) insults about his own talents and career. Great guy, great sport.

* Meeting Jerry Seinfeld: even if it was across a crowded table in a busy beach marquee, when I could hardly hear what he was saying (and vice versa)

Lowlights:

* Telling a joke to Seinfeld, only for it to die on its arse. Memo to self: never try to out-comedy a comedian. It's like going to Anfield and running onto the pitch with a ball and trying to dribble round Stevie Gerrard.

* finding that, six days on, I still have a bruise on my nipple. thanks, GDT!

* Babbling like an idiot in front of Quentin Tarantino.

* Finding, two days after the Death Proof party, that Damon Wise had a spare VIP section ticket in his pocket.

* Watching Liverpool lose in the Champions League final.

* Seeing hardly any films... particularly gutted to have missed out on Death Proof and the Palme D'Or winner, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Meant to be depressing as hell, but brilliant nonetheless.

* Arranging an interview time with Jean-Claude Van Damme... only for him to pull a no-show.

Otherwise, though, Cannes is every bit as mad and mashed and marvellous as always, a drain on your time, your energy and your resources, but a truly welcome one. There's always a pattern to Cannes: you go there, you endure long, long working days (even longer this year, thanks to the blog, with less downtime than ever before), you're 30 seconds' walk from a beach without getting the benefit of actually walking on it, and you come home absolutely knackered. You say to yourself, 'never again'. And yet every year, around March, you start to look forward to it. And if you don't go, you actually miss it.

So... see you on the Croisette next year!

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30 Years Of Star Wars!

Well, as you can see from the incredibly garish background to our homepage (nothing to do with me, I'm just the words jockey), we've gone Star Wars crazy at Empire this month.

Yep, George Lucas' space opera - or at least, the first part of it, 1977's A New Hope - is now thirty years old. And to celebrate, we've put together what will absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, be our last major feature on the Star Wars saga... at least until the next one.

So, what have we done? Well, it's simplicity itself. 30 years. 30 covers (32, actually, but we'll get to that in a second). Each one featuring one of the series' greatest characters, from Han and Luke (like, duh!) to more eclectic selections, such as Admiral Ackbar and Count Dooku. No room, sadly, for my personal faves, Kit Fisto and Nien Nunb, but you can't have everything. The debate over which characters to feature raged longer and harder than the Clone Wars, but we're pretty happy with the outcome... 30 of the finest covers in Empire history.

Now, of course, we're not suggesting that you buy them all... but if you do want to buy multiple copies, we've made it easy for you by collating the characters into various colour-coded sets, from Original Trilogy Heroes to Sith (boo! Hiss!) to Bounty Hunters, while R2 and Threepio make up the only two-cover set: droids.

Inside, there's 30 pages on the saga, with Empire's finest writers tackling each character and investigating what makes he/she/it so great. We also have a genuinely never-before-seen interview with George Lucas, culled from the Lucasfilm archives (and recorded before filming had even started on A New Hope).

But if you're not a Star Wars fan, and we appreciate that many of you aren't, there's plenty here to keep you happy, from Matt Groening talking up The Simpsons Movie, Bruce Willis on Die Hard 4.0, Jessica Alba toasting Dan Jolin's donut (steady!), and a great, in-depth interview with the notoriously press-shy Mike Myers. As well as the usual great reviews, new pics and news.

Right, that's enough shilling from me. I've still got work to do in Cannes. But do try to pick up the mag if you can. Oh, and the other two covers? Well, subscribers get a special cover featuring Han, Luke, Leia and Chewie, so good luck to them. And Jar Jar Binks has a cover! Yes, the saga's most controversial character has found his fishy fizzog on just TEN, yes, TEN covers... and if you're lucky enough to find one of them, you can win an astounding, mind-boggling prize (it says here).

Good luck - and enjoy. May the wotsit be with you!

11:36 AM - 10 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Cannes Cannes Cannes

Hey all,

So I've been in Cannes for the past two weeks, shooting a daily video diary. I'm trying to get them uploaded here too, but they're quite large - bigger than the 100mb limit - and my brain is so tired that I can't figure out how to do it. But hopefully they'll be up here soon.

Meantime... it's been a fun (and alternately knackering) fortnight, including encounters with the likes of Eli Roth, Brett Ratner, the Entourage guys, Edgar Wright, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro and more. I managed to babble like an idiot when confronted with QT on the Death Proof red carpet at about 2.45am (I was still working, believe it or not). I'm pretty sure I managed to offend him with a question about the similarities between the influences on Death Proof and Eli Roth's Hostel Part II (both guys were heavily inspired by Italian giallo, specially movies like Torso and To Be Twenty). It was intended as a kind of 'hey, isn't it funny? Did you two guys laugh about being inspired by the same movies' kinda thing, but I think Quentin thought I was accusing him of ripping Eli off. Sigh... nice one, Hewitt.

Let's see. There's a beach about 30 seconds' walk from the Empire flat here in Cannes, and today - for the first time, and on the last day - I was able to go down there this morning. Even then, though, as I stood in the surf, I was working - getting the closing shot of the video diaries. So that should give you an idea of the blog slog. Anyway, this has got nothing to do with films per se, but I couldn't help but be slightly disgusted and nauseated by the state of the beaches - every wash of a wave brought in new detritus... specifically cigarette butts. Now, when I'm President of the Universe, I intend to make it illegal for people to smoke on a beach... I want to walk on beautiful fine sand, one of the natural wonders of the world, not tread in your soggy death sticks.

Rant over. More later. Film at 11.

Cheers,

Chris

11:25 AM - 7 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

So... how about those Oscars, eh?
Category: Blogging

I know, I know, I should have written this yesterday, approximately 10 minutes after the nominations were announced. It's not fresh, I know, I know, the internet moves fast, everything is instant etc. etc.

But, in my defence, I was very busy. Amongst other things, I put a call into one Doug Jones, the star of Pan's Labyrinth, who was absolutely delighted that his little Spanish movie had been nominated for six Oscars. He'd been trying to get through to Guillermo del Toro all morning to congratulate him, but his voicemail was full - I had much the same experience with an email I sent to Guillermo, one of many thousands he received, I expect. But still, kudos to the man and the movie - wonderful film, delighted to see it nominated.

Apart from that, it's hard for me to get hugely worked up over this year's Oscar nominations, given that my favourite films of the year rarely coincide with the Academy's. I mean, where was the love for Crank? (kidding!) But what did you lot think of them? Did the Academy get things right? Should Dreamgirls have been nominated for Best Picture - were you surprised that it wasn't?

But, before I sound too much like a bad phone-in host on a radio show, let me go through the main categories and give you a pencil sketch reaction. Remember - this is my opinion and does not necessarily reflect Empire's blah blah blah...

BEST PICTURE
Babel. The Queen. Little Miss Sunshine. The Departed. Letters From Iwo Jima. All good films, but I'd argue that none of them are truly great - but since when does Oscar always go to a truly great film? Out of the two, I'd like to see The Departed or Little Miss Sunshine get the gold, because they're the least traditionally Oscar-friendly. The Academy doesn't usually go for violent crime flicks (hence LA Confidential's shameful snub), but maybe, just maybe, The Departed's pedigree might propel it into the top spot.

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Greengrass. Stephen Frears. Martin Scorsese. Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu. Clint Eastwood. While I'm gutted that the very deserving Guillermo didn't get a nod, this is a fine line-up with some very heavy hitters. I'd love to see Paul Greengrass get it, because he did a fantastic job with United 93, but it's hard to escape the feeling that Scorsese might finally bag an Oscar. But people said that about both The Aviator and Gangs Of New York, and look what happened.

BEST ACTOR
Ryan Gosling. Leonardo DiCaprio. Peter O'Toole. Forest Whitaker. Will Smith.
Personally, I'm relieved to see Will Smith in the line-up because my Pursuit Of Happyness review babbled on for ages about his performance being Oscar-friendly. Thank God - my reputation is only just slowly recovering after AttackoftheClonesGate, I didn't need another big dent right now. Still, I don't think he'll win in this category - nor will DiCaprio (wrong film - he's better in The Departed, although I don't think either performance was necessarily deserving of a gong), or Ryan Gosling, who's good in a mediocre film.

No, this is a two-horse race between Forest Whitaker for The Last King Of Scotland and Peter O'Toole for Venus. An Oscar for O'Toole would seem like a bit of a carriage clock consolation prize - well done for not being dead yet - if it wasn't for the fact that his performance in Venus is so astonishing, spry and vulnerable, witty and delicate. Hope he wins.

BEST ACTRESS
Meryl Streep. Dame Judi Dench. Dame Helen Mirren. Kate Winslet. Penelope Cruz.

Five actresses, all excellent. Only one of whom have I called up James Dyer and pretended to be, though (not saying who), panicking him into conducting an interview for a few seconds until I burst out laughing and ruined it. And if you're wondering how I could pull that off, you'd be amazed at how convincing my comedy Spanish accent can be... damn, that may have given it away.

Anyway, Helen Mirren's had this in the bag for so long that she's probably already cleared the space on her mantelpiece. I can't see anyone else taking it away from her, for her astonishing performance in The Queen. But me? I'd give it to Kate Winslet, mainly because Dench and Mirren are Dames and she's not. They're being plain greedy, if you ask me.

The rest of the categories? Another time... but do let me know your thoughts.

Cheers
Chris

10:52 AM - 10 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Return Of The Blog

OK... now this is tricky. Where have we been? We've been to London, to see the Queen. And Hot Fuzz. And a whole bunch of other movies.

That doesn't explain the lack of posts over the last 3-4 months, though, does it? Well, never mind that. Here we are, back again. I can't guarantee daily posts here. Heck, I can't even guarantee weekly posts. But I'll post here when I can, and this will have to do until the day that Empire Online gets its own blogging capabilities. We're still looking good for sometime in 2012.

In my absence, I notice that a lot of enterprising types have hijacked our Comments section to advertise wares and whatnot. I'll be doing my utmost to remove all that, and shall reiterate - while this page is about film fans, and a love of movies, and while we're more than happy to plug movies we like and give young film-makers a hand, we will not tolerate chancers and freeloaders. That is all.

So... how has your film 2007 been so far?

Cheers
Chris

8:56 AM - 7 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Empire meets Garth Marenghi!

"This is the most significant event in television since Quantum Leap, and I don't say that lightly." DEAN LEARNER

The Empire screening room has been packed at lunchtimes in recent weeks. Admittedly it's a tiny room and we're only talking about 3 or 4 people, but it's evidence of the Garth Marenghi cult that continues to grow both inside and outside the office.

For those not yet in the know, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is one of the funniest British comedies in a long, long time. The concept is that a lost TV show from the 1980s, a hospital-set horror serial created by novelist Marenghi, has finally been unearthed. But, as quickly becomes clear, the pompous Marenghi and his cast .. including publisher/producer Dean Learner, exploitation star Todd Rivers and token blonde Madeleine Wool .. have created the worst show in history. Complete with dodgy dubbing, rotten special effects and acting that would disgrace a porno, it's riotously funny, especially when the stars deludedly comment on their work in 'retrospective' interviews. Says Dean: "Garth is the most significant artist that I've worked with. And I've worked with Lulu and four other people, so we're talking crème de la crème."

So excitement levels were high (for 3 or 4 of us, anyway) when we found out that Garth and Dean (aka Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade) had agreed to an interview in character. I headed down to Soho with John, who was taking photos, where we found the two masters of horror in their office near a peep show. The resulting interview .. in which Garth reveals just how George Lucas ripped him off, and Dean talks about the time he purchased scouring pads at a bargain price .. was one of the funniest things we've ever experienced and will appear on the main site very soon.

Until then, we urge you to go out and buy the brand-new DVD for yourself. If only so we can get to see a second season...

(Below: Nick, Dean, Garth and John)

7:57 AM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Don't Forget The Bond-a-thon!

I'm sure you won't forget, you crazy MySpacers, but Nick De Semlyen, Sam Toy and myself are embarking on the Empire Bond Marathon Challenge (snappy title, huh?) tomorrow and we want as many of you as possible to join us, even if only for one or two films. We've currently got all the technical gear sorted and we're just about to head out on a food run. May the Force be with us... oh hang on, that's not Bond, is it?

Anyway, if you want to join in as we watch, then all efforts will be co-ordinated and logged from here. The more the merrier!

8:55 AM - 6 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Where Have I Been?

So... I've been busy this week writing a feature for the new issue (can't say what about, obviously), and doing sundry other things. Saw Simon Pegg's new film, Big Nothing, last night and it's good fun, if a little Coen-lite with about three twists too many. (And Simon, complete with American accent, is very good) I'll try to blog more about that next week.

What else? Oh yeah, Mark Dinning, our new Editor, finally arrived after Colin Kennedy moved onto pastures new and digital. Feels weird to not have Colin around in a way - he was the guy who hired me five years ago (so you can blame him) and he's been the driving force behind Empire's unstoppable rise over the last few years. And now he's gone... but Mark is going to be a fine replacement (toady toady lick lick). I'm not just saying that based on his record at our Terrifying Foes, but from his previous time on Empire. Yep, when I first joined the mag as Junior Writer in 2001, Mark was News Editor and became something of a mentor to me. He's sharp, funny and his sensibilities are very much attuned to 'classic' Empire, so it should be an interesting time ahead. I wonder if he'll make time for trips to the arcade to play pool, as we used to do during 'news meetings'.

Also, the new issue of Empire is out today. When I talked a couple of weeks ago about my mysterious absence from MySpace being down to my working on a top-secret and time-consuming project... well, now you can all see it. It's a 30-page superhero extravaganza, which I oversaw (and for which I wrote almost every word), bringing you the latest info on the most exciting superhero films coming our way over the next few years, from Spider-Man 3 to The Dark Knight to Hellboy 2, and throwing in the likes of Ant-Man, Captain America, Wonder Woman and Thor for good measure. The cover art is by ace artist Bryan Hitch, and it's all - IMO, of course - quite cracking.

One small drawback... Robert Downey Jr. was announced as Tony Stark/Iron Man today, too late for our deadline, so when you read the Iron Man article, please try to ignore our casting choices: Timothy Olyphant, John Cusack and Johnny Depp. It's pretty unfortunate timing, really - I interviewed Jon Favreau for the piece and he hinted that an announcement was imminent, but he couldn't say anything concrete, sadly. Deadlines and timings and whatnot... it's all very complicated. So I hope you'll forgive us that one little snafu and enjoy the rest of a cracking feature and, indeed, a cracking issue. Now available in all good newsagents for just £3.70...

Cheers
Chris

8:36 AM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Are You Ready For The Empire Bondathon?

Hello all... we're embarking on something very ambitious this weekend on the main Empire site, and I want to invite y'all to join in. Here's the official blurb.

Vaguely hot on the heels of 2005's Star Wars saga-thon, we've decided to do it again with a twist. In the lead up to Casino Royale and a new Bond age (tee hee) and in the spirit of foolish behaviour for your amusement, three brave Empire writers Chris Hewitt, Sam Toy and Nick De Semlyen will be attempting to get through every 'official' Bond film consecutively. And this time, were giving you lot the chance to join us not physically, you understand, theres only so much room on the sofa. But were hoping that there are Empire readers out there who will be willing to endure the Bond marathon at exactly the same time as us, starting from noon on Saturday, and keep in touch with us via the medium of our wonderful forums.

The rules are simple. We kick off at noon with Dr. No and finish, God willing, on Monday morning around 6.40am. Were allowing five minute gaps between each film, while every five films brings a 20-minute break. No sleeping is allowed, and the only drugs permitted are caffeine and Pro Plus. Empire readers can either choose to try to stay with us for the duration, or dip in and out for their favourite movies.

The schedule is below. For this to really work, we want you to sync up the movies with us, so if we start, for example, Diamonds Are Forever at twenty minutes past midnight on Sunday October 1, then so should you, goddammit! Feeling brave? Or just want to laugh at three foolhardy souls who will probably fail in their attempt or die trying (probably of food poisoning from too many snacks)? Then log onto the our forums Movie Musings, to be specific on Saturday from 11am (the big kick-off is at 12) and join us for your favourite film, a best bit, or if you're feeling really brave, the full 007 experience. We'll be expecting you

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 30

12.00 Dr. No

13.50 From Russia With Love

15.45 Goldfinger

17.35 Thunderball

19.45 You Only Live Twice

22.00 On Her Majesty's Secret Service

SUNDAY OCTOBER 1

00.20 Diamonds Are Forever

02.20 Live & Let Die

04.25 The Man With The Golden Gun

06.30 The Spy Who Loved Me

08.50 Moonraker

10.55 For Your Eyes Only

13.05 Octopussy

15.15 A View To A Kill

17.25 The Living Daylights

19.55 Licence To Kill

22.10 Goldeneye

MONDAY OCTOBER 2

00.20 Tomorrow Never Dies

02.20 The World Is Not Enough

04.30 Die Another Day (ends 06.37 approx.)

To join in the debate about this wild, crazy, foolish scheme, go here

2:13 AM - 11 Comments - 11 Kudos - Add Comment