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MARTIN SCORSESE Sacrilege? Probably. But for all Marty’s cinematic pedigree, it’s been a long time since he pulled up trees with The Departed back in 2006. And please don’t try to sell us on the dubious merits of the ludicrous, splashy Joel Schumacher-lite mind-farce of Shutter Island, or his workaday Rolling Stones concert film, or the stodgy George Harrison biog, because we’re simply not buying. The trailer for the upcoming Hugo looks positively embarrassing, and while his proposed ‘Jesuits in Japan’ epic starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Benicio Del Toro sounds intriguing, it also summons uncomfortable memories of sitting through Kundun. We don’t want gangsters and gunplay every time, Marty, but maybe a trip back to the old neighbourhood wouldn’t be such a bad idea every now and then… IRANIAN CINEMA The A-bomb of the conversationally competitive cineaste’s armoury, Iranian film looks like being a whole lot quieter in the near future after the authorities arrested six filmmakers in September of this year. They included directors Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Nasser Saffarian, Hadi Afariden and Shahnama Bazdar, producer Katayoun Shahabi and documentary filmmaker Mohsen Shahmazdas. Iranian state TV has identified them only by their initials, as if to name the six might somehow spread their artistic martyrdom into the homes of decent, right-thinking citizens. ACTUALLY GOING TO THE CINEMA How much?! You seem to have mistaken my request for a pair of seats at the next screening for a box at The Royal Opera House to watch Verdi himself conduct Maria Callas in Aida while I scoff panda carpaccio and white truffle off plates made from gold-plated moon-rock. The price of a date movie during the Great Depression was a cheeky smile and a ha’penny bit; today it’s north of £25, which, when you think of the purpose of the exercise, could actually be better spent on a cheap hotel. THE DOCUMENTARY BOOM Once, the idea of watching a feature-length documentary in a darkened room with a bunch
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of strangers seemed exciting and new. But docs have spread like knotweed through the cinematic biosphere, proliferating and splintering to address ever more minute issues. So now we get Hollywood thespians battling the Janjaweed militia on behalf of the people of Darfur or Morgan Spurlock – director of Fast Food Makes You Fat and Bears Shit in Woods – homing in on the Earth-shattering revelation that moviemaking is a capitalist business intent on making money with The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. We’ve gone from the roof of the world to a segment of The One Show in less than a decade. ’80S REMAKES With nebulous reimaginifications (read: speculative, idea-neutral slate-fillers) of RoboCop and Beetlejuice in the works, a similarly uninspiring retread of Red Dawn in the can, and Arthur, Friday the 13th and Footloose having already arrived DOA, isn’t it time we threw a spanner into Tinseltown’s dangerously overcranked ’80s remake Wurlitzer? Fans of the originals don’t want their prized shit messed with, and da kidz – judging by the recent no-shows for Conan and Fright Night – just don’t care (or even know) about the dubious legacy of superannuated VHS guff that was actually pretty shonky the first time round.
JOHNNY DEPP Not Johnny! We all love Johnny! Well, yes, we do, but just cast your mind back to the last of his films that you would even remotely consider watching again. The Tourist? Nor us. Rango? It really should have worked, but… Public Enemies? Meh. Alice in Wonderland? Sweeny Todd? Secret Window? Not so easy, is it? You’d surely have to go all the way back to 2003 and the first Pirates film for a true, copperbottomed success. Something of a crossroads now approaches with his role in Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s long-shelved semi-autobiographical novel The Rum Diary promising a possible return to form, while yet another reductive turn as a whey-faced-gothicoddball-in-a-funny-hat for Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows suggests we can’t be entirely sure of getting Our Johnny back any time soon
NURSE,THE CODEINE!
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