Sometimes you worry that sitting in a dark room all day watching films is bad for your brain. But I'm a firm believer that you can learn AND watch movies at the same time. Fortunately, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson agrees with me, as you can see by his use of the word "emasculating" in the middle of the Journey 2 The Mysterious Island trailer.
What does emasculating mean? How do you use it in a sentence? The Rock reveals the range of his vocabulary...
Word: Emasculating
Definition: "To make (a person, idea, or piece of legislation) weaker or less effective."
As spoken by: Dwayne Johnson
In: Journey 2 The Mysterious Island
Journey 2 The Mysterious Island is out on Friday 3rd February. Read on for some pretty new character banners - including one featuring Michael Caine riding a giant bumblebee. Yes, really.
The Moonrise Kingdom trailer is mighty cute. But, of course, that's what you'd expect from Wes Anderson.
His blend of whimsy, wit and Bill Murray applies itself to what looks like an adorable tale of pubescent romance. Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward are Sam and Suzy, two kids who fall in love and head off for an adventure. Only for mummy Frances MacDormand and daddy Bill Murray to go into panic mode and call up the local cop - played by Bruce Willis.
Yes, a sentence that I never thought I'd say: Bruce Willis is in a Wes Anderson film. You'll also find Tilda Swinton and Ed Norton hopping on board. But before you think that's awesome, get a load of Jason Schwartzman.
Moonrise Kingdom is out in America in May - hopefully the UK will have it by the end of the year. Until then, read on for the trailer.
We've all seen that Shame UK trailer. You know, the one with Carey Mulligan singing New York New York. Without a doubt, it was the best trailer of 2011.
It's so beautiful that there's only one way in which could be improved...
If you've look at the Orange BAFTA rising star nominations for 2012, you'll have noticed something pretty obvious: they're all men.
Manly male men with man-beards or mannishly clean-shaven male faces. Men. Menny men men.
It's an amazing achievement for Adam Deacon, Chris Hemsworth, Chris O'Dowd, Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston. Not just because the Rising Star award is a really nice award - newcomer gongs are a great way to encourage talent - but because they've managed to somehow stop Jessica Chastain getting a nomination.
As we all know after Jessica Chastain's triple-headed win at the New York Film Critics Circle awards (and many others), the King Ghidorah of superb acting is a difficult beast to slay.
It wasn't as if she was on her own, either. Chastain Monster had evolved for BAFTA's Rising Star award, acquiring the heads of Jennifer Lawrence and Felicity Jones to help bite the legs off unsuspecting villagers voters. But the five-headed creature of manhood still managed to triumph.
So how did they do it?
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Marsan, Niels Arestrup, Peter Mullan
Certificate: 12A
Let’s face it. You don’t go into War Horse without knowing exactly what to expect. It’s a film by Steven Spielberg. About a horse. You’ll either leave the cinema bawling your eyes out or puking into the nearest potted plant. Spielberg being Spielberg, he manages a messy mix of both. Either way, bodily fluids will run. The only question is in what order.
Albert (an excellent Jeremy Irvine) has been brought up well by his parents. He’s a lovely boy, even if his dad (Mullan) is a wounded alcoholic and his mum a waste of talented actress Emily Watson. Between his pa's gimpy leg and their farm’s poor harvest, how can the family survive financial hardship and avoid being repossessed by the nasty local landlord?
Inevitably, the answer is: a horse.
I was so busy pretending to speak like a chimp on Monday that I completely forgot to mention this brilliant part of the behind the scenes documentary.
It's a rare treat to find a 30 minute making of special feature as engrossing - and moving - as a DVD's main release, especially when it includes a chimp sign language chart.
So here it is, in case you need another reason to buy the awesome Project Nim on DVD:
If you're still not convinced (and you should be - it's one of the best documentaries of the year), read our Project Nim DVD review.
You may recall last summer, when we took film journalism to new lows heights with some exclusive on-set photos for The Dark Knight Rises. Or the beginning of 2011, when our never-before-seen Sherlock Holmes 2 on-location photos from Hampton Court Palace shocked literally tens of internet users. Now, we've managed it again with some amazing, and very revealing, pictures from the Bond 23 shoot in London - taken during a walk home from work last Friday, when I stumbled across the secretive Skyfall crew in Trinity Square.
If you're a movie fanatic, you've no doubt seen on-location images from upcoming blockbusters before, with blurry unofficial snaps of actors and props prompting wild speculation over plot details. None of that here. Oh yes, these Skyfall photos are so spoilerific and brilliant that I've even had to break out the SUPER MEGA EXCLUSIVE headline again. Here we go, folks. We're about to attempt re-entry.
Read on for the Skyfall on-set photos...
Director: James Marsh
Cast: Bob Angelini, Bern Cohen, Reagan Leonard
Certificate: 12
Release Date: Monday 9th January
RRP: £15.99
Chimp is born. Chimp called Nim. Man take Nim. Man teach Nim sign. Nim learn words: Orange. Play. Hug. Steve. Nim make sentence: "Give orange Nim." "Nim eat orange." "Hug me Nim."
Nim wear jumper. Jumper is red. Nim look cute. Ivan say "Awww..."
As the Woody Allen BFI season continues this month, it seems apt to start this second look back at the director’s back catalogue with the letter B: Bananas, Broadway Danny Rose and Bullets Over Broadway.
Regarded as “one of his early, funny ones”, Bananas begins with a crowd stampeding a government office after El Presidente is assassinated. Amid the hordes of protestors, an American news reporter fights his way through the crowd with a wired microphone in hand.
It’s a chaotic opening scene and that confusion never lets up over a haphazard 80 minutes, but Bananas establishes a plot structure that Allen has returned to over the years: an unwitting, neurotic male chases after a female, only to get involved with a bunch of shady individuals – in this case, a group of rebels in the fictional dictatorship of San Marcos.
The BAFTA longlist has been put to shame by BIFA this year.
As it stands at the moment, Shame is one of my favourites from the current crop of British films, with Tyrannosaur, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Submarine, Weekend, The Guard, My Week with Marilyn, Attack the Block, Coriolanus and others all joining the ranks. Guess how many of them will be competing at the BAFTAs for Best Film?
At the moment, potentially two. My Week with Marilyn and Tinker Tailor have been singled out by the BAFTA longlist in their main category, alongside others such as The Iron Lady, We Need to Talk About Kevin and Senna. The rest are the likes of Moneyball, The Descendants, The Artist, Drive and War Horse.
That's not to say these others are bad films, just that the overlooked British ones are equally good. Should BAFTA be supporting its homegrown talent more? In a year when Kill List caused as many waves as Senna (I liked the latter, was frustrated by the former), surely British cinema should be heavily populating that central best-of list? As present, a lot of it is confined to the separate Outstanding British Film of the Year prize.
I haven't got around to working on my next BlogalongaBond piece looking at Bond scores, but word this week that Thomas Newman could be picking up David Arnold's baton to provide the soundtrack to Bond 23, aka Skyfall, got my mind racing.
Thomas Newman? A Bond score? Thomas-American-Beauty-Newman? The guy most widely known for Any Other Name, a piece that showcases both his tinkling piano melodies and die-hard love of the vibraphone?
It's a pretty clear indicator that Sam Mendes is making himself at home in the director's chair - after five Bond films on the trot, it takes a lot to remove David Arnold from scoring duties.
Newman, presuming he does get the job (likely, given his previous collaborations on all of Mendes' work, except for Away We Go), would be the *counts quickly on fingers* ninth person to compose Bond music. John Barry, of course, led the way, arranging Monty Norman's guitar-twanging theme for Dr. No and defining the franchise's sound. George Martin, Marvin Hamlisch and Bill Conti all tried to fill his shoes with varying pop-tinged, electro-scores that never quite fitted the bill. (The opening of For Your Eyes Only is enough to make your ears cringe like a young woman being kissed by Roger Moore.) Michael Kamen warmed down from Die Hard with some typically excellent work, while Eric Serra's Goldeneye soundtrack... erm, yeah. That also exists.
So is Newman better suited to the task? A quick listen to one of his tunes from American Beauty (Dead Already) doesn't raise hopes:
But one quick change to that riff and things are starting to sound like they're on the right track...
If you haven't seen The Artist yet (admittedly it is only on in one UK cinema until this Friday), you've definitely heard about it. Rapturous praise has been thrown at everything in Michel Hazanavicius' flawless production, from Jean Dujardin's charismatic lead to Ludovic Bource's wonderful score.
Of course, the highest praise has been reserved for Uggie the dog. He even has a Twitter account.
But while the dog is amazing and Hazanavicius' construction of the 1920s is incredibly immersive, everyone's overlooked the most amazing thing about The Artist: the eyebrows.
Specifically, Jean Dujardin's eyebrows. They can do anything. They can convey emotion at the briefest glance. Enchant you with the slightest tweak. They could probably open a can of Baked Beans if you wanted them to.
Surely there can be no greater claim to a Best Actor Oscar than being able to replicate the function of a complex kitchen utensil with your eyebrows? Not even Roger Moore's James Bond could perform such a feat.
Just look at them. All hairy and above his eyes like two perfect daggers of truth. Daggers made of eyebrows. God, I love them.
So to restore the balance in the film's critical adoration, let's take a look at the sheer range of messages that Jean Dujardin (and his co-stars) manage to communicate with those gorgeous tufts of facial hair.
This is eyebrow acting 101. Now listen carefully, 007.