Leonardo DiCaprio

One of my favourite actors is Leonardo DiCaprio. He grew up in Los Angeles and his mother Irmelin worked as a legal secretary and his father George was a famous underground artist during the 60 and the 70s. Just like most actors Dicaprio started with doing commercials and TV-shows. His breakthrough came in 1993 when he starred in the film “what’s eating Gilbert Grape”. His performance as the mental handicapped brother to Johnny Depp earned him both academy award and Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actor. 1995 was an eventful year for DiCaprio, that year he starred in four movies; The quick and the dead, Total eclipse, Dons Plum and The Basketball diaries.

Gilbert Grape

The Quick and the dead was directed by Sam Raimi ( Spiderman, Evil dead) starred by Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone and a unknown Australian actor named…Russell Crowe.

The attention Dicaprio gained after this film was nothing compared to the one he got after Titanic. His popularity at that time was named “Leo-mania”and his sudden fame was compared to the Beatles in the 1960s. This fame was summed up in an interview with Times back in 2000. The actor said: “I have no connection with me during that whole Titanic Phenomenon and what my face became around the world,” DiCaprio commented, adding, “I’ll never reach that state of popularity again, and I don’t expect to. It’s not something I’m going to try to achieve either.” Today he is one of the best actors in Hollywood, nonetheless because of his collaboration with Martin Scorsese.

The two found each other in the award winning film Gangs of New York and by time they had already done four movies together.

Great werewolf films movies

There are many were wolf movies playing right now. The wolf man with Benicio Del Toro recently premiered. Compared to vampires we haven’t seen much of our hairy friends.  But trust me there is a lot of good were wolf films out there, here are some of them.

The Wolf man (1941)

This is the film the original wolf man film. Lon Chaney J plays a young man who is bitten and gets cursed. It’s produced by the film company Universal during their horror period that gave us Dracula with Bela Lugosi and Frankenstein with Boris Karloff.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

This film was written and directed by John Landis. It won the 1981 Saturn award for best horror film and an academy award. 1981 wasn’t a bad year for ware wolf films, and I think this film is one of the best ever made! There is a lot of comedy in the film so it’s not so scary.

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Dog soldiers is a British horror film and it’s written and directed by Neil Marshall, who produced the incredible film, The Descent (2005). It’s about a squad of British soldiers that are surrounded by very a group of hungry ware wolf’s. It is a well made and funny film and the actors are great.

Popcorns vs. granola bars

This week the CEO of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, urged cinemas to offer healthier snacks to their customers. To help fight obesity and give the audience a broader variety of food. He promoted the idea at the ShoWest convention of cinema owners in Las Vegas.

He said that a survey made by the studio at 26 theatres nationwide found out that two-thirds of moviegoers would prefer healthier snacks if it was available. The healthy food that was suggested by those surveyed was vegetables with dip, fruit cups, yogurt, granola bars; air popped popcorn and baked chips.

Don’t forget that the survey was taken in only 26 theatres and the problem with surveys is that there’s often a gap between what people say and do in reality.

For most people eating bad food is a part of the whole cinema experience. It’s not like Lyndon wants to banish nachos and pop corns from the auditorium instead he only wants to add healthier options. In the US, cinema popcorn yields profits of 90 cent on the dollar. So one might think they would like to add healthy foods on their menus. But this does in deed change many aspects of the cinema experience.

So what do you think? Would you buy healthy snacks to eat in the cinema?

For me personally half the fun with going to the cinema is the bad food.

http://www.slate.com/id/2133612/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100315/ap_en_mo/us_film_healthy_snacks

The golden rules of surviving a horror movie

I have a thing for horror movies! In Wes Cravens 1996 film Scream the character Randy (Jamie Kennedy) tells his friends about the golden rules of surviving a horror movie. Stu (Matthew Lillard) makes fun of him by saying he’ll be right back when he goes to get more beers. I must have seen this scene a million times,  but its still as funny as when i saw it the first time 🙂

Johnny Depp on David Letterman show

Speaking about the devil I just came across a clip where one of the world’s biggest movie stars, Johnny Deep is on the Letterman show. Apparently he doesn’t watch his own films – why? Watch the clip folks!

Why dont we go and see British ?

This past Sunday the bafta took place at the Royal opera house. The leading actors of the British film industry walked the red carpet some received awards while some didn’t.

Last year was considered to be a good year for British films but not many have turned up to see them. The movies that are considered to be one of the best that our industry has to offer haven’t performed as well as one might think. Instead none of them has been a hit.

A year ago Slumdog Millionaire was a hit here and throughout the world. Would British film benefit from this momentum? Was a question many that many had on their mind at the time.

This recurring motif that goes all the way back to four weddings and a funeral, trough The Full Monty, Billy Elliot, right up to Mamma Mia! and Slumdog. Once every few years a British film becomes a global hit. And the people that normally are skeptical to British films starts speculating that there is a new dawn for the British film industry. But it never seems to happen and nothing changed after Slumdog.

Instead the industry went back to being boom and bust. Even though British films have had problems with reaching audiences the public is hearing otherwise. The UK Film Council never gets tired of telling us how well our films and actors are performing. You always hear about a British actor getting nominated for an Oscar. Some even argue that the UKFC is giving out happy propaganda and doesn’t really perform any valuable functions. So can it be that the British public just doesn’t like British films?

Valentines Day a highly marketed and advertised British Hollywood film had a massive number of screens. While Fish Tank had less success and had 47 screenings while Valentines Day had 432. When David Gritten wrote about this in the Saturday telegraph column.

A reader commented that “here friends not aware of this type of (British) film, whereas they know all about American releases”. Popcorn movies, she added, could be seen “anywhere, at all times, but anything else is restricted viewing as far as my two local cinemas are concerned”. It’s not like there where lines around the block in those few cinemas that screen British films.

So even if films like Fish tank where screened in more cinemas its not likely it would get a bigger audience. So can you say that the British public simply doesn’t like its own films? It depends of who you’re talking about. The audiences have become younger and the tastes have changed. And it seems as Hollywood simply caters to its audience.

The cinema chains in this country are partly responsible. Since they are excluding its domestic own films and screening so many Hollywood films. While so many other European countries like France, Germany, Sweden and Italy does the opposite by screening their domestic films in their cinemas. So what the people at the BAFTA need to think about is how they are going to change this. And ask themselves why their films aren’t appealing to the film going public. It seems as if the British films industry is simply talking to itself.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/7271033/British-films-why-dont-we-go-to-see-them.html

Welcome

This blog will be will give my view on all kinds of  movies, old, new, good and bad. And about pressing issues and events in the filmworld today. Enjoy!