Humour is a very personal thing, as I was reminded when I enjoyed such despised comedies as Mr Magoo and A Little Bit of Soul. Bad jokes? Maybe, but even Chaplin and the Marx Brothers had their critics. Dags, the latest feature from independent producer-writer-director Murray Fahey, received so little support in its development that [...]
18 Sep 1998 When Kurt Cobain died in 1994, at age 27, he joined the long parade of rock stars who departed at their peak, leaving history with a distorted view of their talent. Maverick British documentary maker Nick Broomfield admits that he considers Cobain “a great artist”. He is not alone. Nevermind, by Cobain’s [...]
Deep Impact was inevitable this year. It’s about the end of the world, a big event like no other. Hollywood is going through another cycle of “big” movies, mainly about disasters. Moreover, 1999 (a historically favoured year for Armageddon) is just a few months away. Therefore, the making of Deep Impact was as unstoppable as [...]
16 June 1998 Were it not for the more serious moments, vague spiritual allusions and occasional flashes of wit, Going All the Way would be little more than a stylised version of the teenage sex comedies of the eighties. Our heroes, on a constant pursuit of sex, tend to meet women who are both alarmingly [...]
20 Feb 1998 The number of movies about rock bands over the years – while ridiculous – is not really surprising. ‘Making it’ in rock music is one of the great dreams of western youth. Strangely, if the movies are any indication, the ‘dream’ includes ultimate failure. Forget about being as big as the Beatles [...]
27 Jan 1998 The ‘director’s cut’ has been one of the most self-indulgent trends in cinema this decade – re-releases of classic films, complete with the excess footage and other new ‘touches’. In most cases, it seems that footage was removed not because the producers were a pack of Philistines, but because it added nothing [...]
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