The spat between Gérard Depardieu and Juliette Binoche recalls the great Hollywood rivalries – and also the lowliest gossip ragsAt a film festival last December, Christophe Lambert gave me and a couple of other reporters his take on French cinema. "It's like a tree," he announced, with that Gallic mix of philosophy and indignation. "Catherine Deneuve is like a tree. She will never disappear until she's dead! 'We have to take her in this movie!' Why? If she's not right for the part, why do we have to take her? In America, it's constantly moving. In Europe, it's constantly ground-based and not moving. Sometimes you go, 'Oh God, I've seen Gérard Depardieu five times this year. Don't they have somebody else?'"Lately, of course, we've learned that Depardieu shares Lambert's concerns –...

In Stephen Frears's hands, Posy Simmonds's country comic-book tale of ego, lust and revenge makes effective, forthright entertainment, says Peter BradshawThe unpicturesque malice and boredom of the middle-class English countryside are cheerfully recounted in this broad Day-Glo comedy with brutal moments of violence; Stephen Frears directs from a screenplay by Moira Buffini, based on the Posy Simmonds comic-book series. It's set in a world where people stick their noses into other people's business, or turn them up or otherwise get them put out of joint – and so, fittingly, a nose is here something to be surgically fixed or broken with a single, vicious punch. It's like a particularly salacious episode of The Archers, or a Midsomer Murders with the violence left to the end and...

• Mike Leigh, Colin Firth and Anton Corbijn to present films• Danny Boyle and Keira Knightley works already confirmed• David Jason and Rupert Friend to present directorial debuts• No world premieres among gala screenings • Tell us what you think of the programmeWarring ballet divas, a reluctant king of England, and an aged Thai gent who can recall his past lives will be among the heroes and heroines of this year's London film festival, the full lineup for which was announced earlier today.Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro starring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield, and Danny Boyle's latest venture, mountain climbing drama 127 Hours, have already been announced as the films that will open and close the festival. The...

The story: A disillusioned actress (Marlene Dietrich) and a booze-soaked foreign legionnaire (Gary Cooper) meet in Morocco – is theirs a romance that’s destined to be, or would the actress be better off with a rich suitor who can offer her a comfortable life?Better than both Shanghai Express and The Scarlet Empress, Morocco combines Josef von Sternberg’s flair for evoking locations with Marlene Dietrich’s soulful, restrained central performance to devastating effect.As at the start of Shanghai Express, Dietrich appears behind a veil, but her character and the world we are entering are much deadlier and deeper propositions, the latter of which subverts the norms even from a modern perspective. In Morocco, your choices are unimportant to anyone but yourself. Audiences...

The story: Three disgraced academics (Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd) become professional ghost hunters in Manhattan , and the first case they take could turn out to be their biggest.The Screen On The Green really went for it at the Ghostbusters open air showing. Not only was the car from the film present – Ecto-1, in all its glory – but the U.K. Ghostbusters were hired to strut about wearing their proton packs, all flashing lights and convincing construction.Such were the entertainments during the (long) wait for 'optimal screen conditions' as the sun set in London's Dulwich Park. Every so often, the Ghostbusters logo would appear on screen to remind us why we were waiting – it's such a strong, clean image that easily stands in for the title. A very nifty example...

Alternative media and innovative multi-platform storytelling are set to challenge a complacent film industryAnd so the four-day Labor Day holiday is over and summer comes to an end in Hollywoodland. As the shadows stretch across the manicured lawns of the studio grounds, there will be plenty to think about. The blockbuster season that started in May with the enjoyable hit Iron Man 2 will most likely creep past summer 2009 for a new record. But even if the predictions of Hollywood.com and similar box office analysts are correct and the combined revenues reach $4.4bn (£2.9bn) or thereabouts – beating summer 2009 by around 2.4% – the victory, for that is what it is to the numerically selective advocates of theatrical distribution, will be a hollow one.Summer blockbusters: a decline in...

The inaugural Peckham and Nunhead Film Festival is running all this week. Among the films showing are The Blues Brothers and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, but it is their first go, so they're...

As I'm Still Here premieres at the Venice film festival, its star and director keep audiences guessing as to whether it is a stunt or a faithful documentaryIs it an authentic, warts-and-all documentary about a tortured artist who has fallen out of love with his chosen profession? Or is it a shameless stunt, perpetrated by a pair of Hollywood playboys with too much time and money on their hands? Last night the crowds thronged the Venice red carpet to catch the world premiere of I'm Still Here, a film that features the Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix and is directed by his brother-in-law, Casey Affleck. It's safe to say they went home none the wiser.Shot over a 12-month period, I'm Still Here documents Phoenix's spectacular fall from grace as he attempts to reinvent himself as a...

Lindsay Lohan's success in Machete is great timing for the troubled actor. But if she wants her professional star to keep rising she must pick future roles carefullyIf you look at the US box office this morning, you might think Machete's successes have been modest – it opened at No 3 behind George Clooney's The American and the week-old The Takers, grossing roughly a tenth of what Toy Story 3 took in its opening weekend – but for Lindsay Lohan, it is a massive victory.Commercially, Machete is Lohan's biggest film since Herbie: Fully Loaded five years ago. Nothing she's done since – not Just My Luck or A Prairie Home Companion or Bobby or Georgia Rule or I Know Who Killed Me or Chapter 27 or the direct-to-cable comedy Labour Pains – has come close to matching Machete's $11,300,000...

Kelly Reichardt and Pablo Larraín were the two stand-out directors at a surprisingly stimulating and enjoyable festivalMy time at the Venice film festival has now come to an end – I hand over to Xan Brooks – and I'm leaving with a sense that this festival is actually much better than it had been cracked up to be, with an interesting, lively competition list and if not masterpieces exactly, then some real and pleasurable surprises.Two films stand out, in particular. Meek's Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt was an eerie and disturbing film, a western, of sorts, and a bleak one. It's a film which has something of The Searchers in its DNA, and could also be compared to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, and there are even sense-memories of the children's pioneer classic Little House on...

Catherine Deneuve leads a blue-chip cast in a François Ozon screwball comedy which is arch, knowing and self-awareVenice is this year becoming a festival notable for high drama and high camp, and so it proves again with this enjoyable, farcical French picture from the prolific master craftsman François Ozon, based on a 1980 stage play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy.It's a wacky 70s-period screwball comedy with a blue-chip cast and a tone which is arch, knowing and self-aware but also somehow affectionate and even, I suspect, deeply serious about the indomitable spirit of France itself, in the queenly person of Catherine Deneuve. It is a veritable palimpsest of irony levels; perhaps only a French audience can fully respond to its nods and winks.The British film industry might...

The Italian press is giving Quentin Tarantino a hard time with 'conflict-of-interest' questions and the Lido looks like a construction site, but nothing can dampen the festival spiritThis year's Venice film festival has begun on rather a disconcerting note: the colossal construction project on the Lido, building a new addition to the Palazzo Del Cinema, is far from complete – to the dismay of festivalgoers who hoped that it might be ready in time for the beginning of this year's event. No such luck. So the red carpet premieres are happening next door to a huge, unsightly, screened-off building site, with everything but "No hard hat, no work" signs and men with jeans sliding down their buttocks asking for a cup of tea.And what makes it even more piquant is that more building work is...

The story: In a world where plague has transformed much of humanity into vampires, the remainder are hunted for blood – but stocks are running low, and anarchy brews among the immortals. Human sympathising scientist Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is trying to synthesise a blood replacement, but is overtaken by events… The fun thing about Daybreakers is that it starts after vampires have taken over the world – unlike Blade this isn’t about the struggle to prevent, but to reverse – and the results are interesting. A whole world is filled with people stuck at a certain age, be it child, middle or elderly, an entire planet in arrested development. Ethan Hawke’s haematologist never wanted to become a vampire, but his gung-ho brother (now an army man) backed him into it. He’s...

Director talks of 'responsibility' to tell story of Middle East conflict in film Miral, told through eyes of two Palestinian womenThe American artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel said he felt a "responsibility" as a Jew to tell the story of Palestine when he opened his new movie at the Venice film festival.Schnabel's film Miral, competing with 22 others for the Golden Lion award, brought a note of seriousness to an event that sometimes veers towards the frothier side of culture.Miral is told mainly through the eyes of two Palestinian women, covering 40 years of history from the birth of the state of Israel in 1948 to the failed Oslo peace accord of 1993. Its message is that education is the only hope to bringing any kind of resolution to the conflict.Yesterday Schnabel said he felt a...

A sequel to the superhero hit has been greenlit, according to the writer of the original comic book. But doubts have been raised over the film's production scheduleKick-Ass was always rather nicely set up for a sequel, what with that open-ended denouement, so it's hardly surprising that Mark Millar, who wrote the original comic book, has been talking up a second film. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Millar said the film's success on DVD in the US, where it sold 1.4m units in its first week, meant the project was finally greenlit."The estimate is that Kick-Ass will do 100 to 150m on DVD based on the American sales, so it'll end up making a $250m (£160m) on a $28m investment," said Millar. "So it should be OK. The sequel's greenlit, we can go ahead and do the follow-up now. The first made so...

Video: Juliette Binoche on the importance of originality and the fallout from her Cannes acceptance speechCatherine ShoardHenry Barnes...

Billy Liar, a story of smalltown frustration, captivated a generation, pre-empted the 60s – and even inspired Oasis. As the stage play returns, Laura Barton asks Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie why it endures'I don't think about Billy Liar very often." Tom Courtenay's voice hovers on the line. We have been discussing his upcoming holiday to the north-east coast, splashing about in the warm shallows of the present-day; at this detour into the past, he pauses, and retreats a little. "If I read it now, it would make me laugh," he concludes lightly, distantly. "But I honestly don't know why it's lasted. Who can say why some things are successful?"It is now 50 years since Keith Waterhouse's novel transferred to the stage, casting in its title role first Albert Finney and later,...

Miaow!

The story: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a corporate thief who specialises in stealing secrets from people’s dreams. Then he’s offered a deal to do the supposedly impossible – place an idea instead of taking on – in exchange for a chance to see his family.Inception feels like a lot of movies – The Matrix, Shutter Island, a seriously dark Ocean’s Eleven – but it's unfair to imply that it's a hodgepodge when it succeeds so completely in being itself.The central idea about dreams is thoroughly well thought through, to the extent that the director can balance four parallel storylines running in different dream levels (not to mention ‘reality’, whatever that is) without making the film difficult to follow. That this works at all is a massive achievement, even moreso...

The story: An American embassy worker (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in Paris is after his big chance to break into espionage – and gets it when maverick agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta) blows into town.Is From Paris With Love a joke? It feels like it at times, but probably not. If you’ve seen Taken, Pierre Morel’s previous actioner, this is similar, except the other way around. Taken started out good and ended up terrible – From Paris With Love starts out awful, and ends up OK.Part of the problem is Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ accent which, whether it’s accurate or not, is whiny and irritating. Once the explosions kick into high gear it’s not so noticeable, but you still have his ridiculous moustache to look at. When John Travolta turns up, he fills some of the movie’s empy space. He...

Production costing $30m to be filmed in Israel and Palestinian Territories with all-Indian cast of mainly childrenMonty Python was condemned for irreverence, Mel Gibson was castigated for violence and Martin Scorsese got into trouble over the sex scenes. But the pitfalls of portraying Jesus have not deterred Bollywood from an ambitious and expensive project to recreate the life of Christ in its own unique way.A $30m (£20m) production involving an all-Indian cast of mainly children will begin shooting on location in the Holy Land in October and is scheduled for release next year. As yet untitled and unscripted, the film will cover Jesus's life from birth to crucifixion. Its star, alongside the amateur child actors, will be Pawan Kalyan, introduced at a press conference in Jerusalem today...

The issue of local TV has cropped up again recently. A couple of weeks back Will Perrin put some thoughts down, responding to government plans to encourage the development of up to twenty new local TV stations by 2015. The general gist of his post (although I’d encourage you to read it) was that there’s no need, it won’t work and, besides, the web would do the job better. Nick Booth has built on this and claims that Birmingham’s informal, fledgling network of local, mainly volunteer-led news websites shows that people are already delivering the kind of activity Jeremy Hunt says he wants to encourage using TV stations (see Nick’s post for details). My generally unconsidered view on this is that establishing a local TV station wouldn’t necessarily be a...

The story: Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) is a courtesan who lives on her wits, and must make a choice when the train she is travelling on is stopped by Chinese rebels. Will the other passengers see past the veneer of loose morals to the woman beyond? And will they like what they see?One of several fabulous looking, drifty and essentially quite similar collaborations between Dietich and the director Josef von Sternberg, this pre-code picture starts out with some wicked observations. When the train is delayed by cattle, one of the passengers remarks to the other: 'you're in China, sir, where time and life have no value'. It's a world slightly outside our own, unexpected and ancient, one which has more than its photography in common with the style in which Russia is presented in The...

The story: In the third of five Twilight movies, Bella (Kristen Stewart) must choose between Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and Edward (Robert Pattinson), while the threat of a newborn vampire army pushes the werewolves and Cullens into an uneasy alliance.In the Harry Potter movies, much is made of a change in directors, certainly after Alfonso Cuaron (Children Of Men) took the reins for The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Yet you don’t see such a shift in the Twilight movies. They get better, but not significantly different. They also paint on a smaller canvas, which may best explain the lack of change (no-one is going to remodel Forks high school in the way that they do for Hogwarts, for instance), that and the fact that the press coverage of the Potter movies makes the differences seem bigger...

The story: A single mother (Joan Crawford) tries to give her daughter (Ann Blyth) everything by becoming a big success, but ends up spoiling her - with deadly consequences. As in The Damned Don't Cry!, an Oscar-winning Joan Crawford is a single woman doing it on her own and, ultimately, undone by doing it with the right man. Yet Mildred Pierce is more emotionally complex than that suggests, with wave after brutalising wave shaping and stretching Crawford's Mildred to breaking point. Pierce aspires that her daughter should never want for anything, and spoils her in the process - that she earns her daughter's keep through owning restaurants, selling cheap food to the great unwashed, provides a great deal of the friction. The gloriously poisonous daughter looks down...

The story: A city girl rents a cabin in the country to work on her new novel, but is menaced by the local rednecks.Anticipation is such a huge part of horror films - that, and the occasional controversy is all part of the theatre that pulls a horror audience together. It's much more of a shared experience than your average trip to the cineplex, binding audiences in similar fashion to expectation of the first Sex And The City movie, or the fourth Indiana Jones. The movie is more than what's on screen, and the joint experience of cringing disbelief at creative blood-letting is part of that.At the Frightfest premiere, it was claimed that this remake still lacked an 'R' rating in the US - that, two days later at least, this is untrue. (It went back to the censors many times, which is...

Before the European premiere of the remade I Spit On Your Grave, Human Centipede director Tom Six bounded onto the Frightfest stage, to reveal more about his grisly follow-up. Sporting a fetching hat, Six explained that the first movie had been all about getting the audience 'used to' the concept of the centipede - three people, lots of surgery, one alimentary canal - and that the second movie would be 'full force'. Where the first was medically accurate, the second would be '100 per cent medically inaccurate', and so on.The news was received with whoops of delight by the assembled horror fans, and Six was keen to stoke it, ampimg that the second movie will make the first look like 'my little pony'. He also revelled in his internet notoriety, recalling commenters who deride him...

Something odd was in the hot dogs at Frightfest - or perhaps it was the content of the films the London horror festival, as the queue for the boys' cubicles at the Empire Leicester Square was longer than at any time in recorded memory. For the girls, it was straight in, straight out, perhaps with a quip that the queuing men should 'see how they like it for a change'. (You might say there are just more boys than girls at Frightfest, which may well be a valid...

As gritty as its predecessor, this second Stieg Larsson adaptation takes us deeper into the dark heart of SwedenThe mammoth popularity of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, an epic exposé of Scandinavian corruption, is not the sudden, unexpected event it appears to be. The fuse was lit long ago. In 1961, Kathleen Nott, the British novelist, public intellectual and frequent contributor to the Observer, wrote an influential book on Sweden called A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, representing the country as a colourless, complacent, over-organised state run on rational lines that had robbed people of personal identity. Her view was as widely shared as it was wide of the mark. Because beneath the orderly surface that had been created since the Social Democrats came to power in the early 30s,...

London film festival decides not to show heavily cut version demanded by BBFC and Westminster council insisting that 'a film of this nature should be shown in its entirety'A controversial film that pivots around a scene of self-styled "newborn porn" has been pulled from the schedule of London's FrightFest film festival after Westminster council ruled it could not be shown in its uncut version. Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic, A Serbian Film had been due to screen at the Empire cinema in Leicester Square on Sunday.A Serbian Film tells the tale of a former porn star who is lured out of retirement and contains a scene that depicts the rape of a newborn baby. According to its director, the scene is entirely justified. "This is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government," says...

The Great Belfast Art Hunt takes place on Saturday 28. Starting at the entrance to Belfast City Hall at 12.30pm, solving the clues will take participants around ten galleries, meeting artists and curators, concluding with a party at 4pm. The Belfast Welcome Centre is selling advance tickets online and at their 47 Donegall Place for £5, or you can pay £6 on the day. No need to being a magnifying glass or a deerstalker.The Belfast Mela runs between noon and 6pm in Botanic Gardens on Sunday 29. With nearly everything covered by free admission and with over 30 countries represented, experience music, dance, circus acts in the bandstand, a sound garden in the Palm House, food, arts and craft stalls, henna and face painting, and more food.If zombies are your thing, then head across to the...

When I was 17, a considerable time ago, I wrote a short story which I was very proud of and equally pleased with. It consisted of just a handful of sentences/paragraphs, but “artistically” it was personally satisfying. I have always remembered this story in great detail, and in many ways consider it as the most authentic thing I have ever created Paul Busst, thanks to some friendly coercion via Facebook, is now planning to make that story into a short film. The 43RPM Productions blog is: A record of making a short film with no previous experience © chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2010. | Add a comment | Support CiB - £75 per year gets you loads in...

French star expresses incredulity that Binoche, an actor with more than 50 films behind her, has achieved such acclaimTo most people, she is one of the foremost French actors of her generation: a popular and versatile performer with almost 50 films in her repertoire and an array of international awards on her mantelpiece.But Gerard Depardieu is not most people. To him, quite simply, Juliette Binoche is "nothing".In a no-holds-barred interview proving once again the rambunctious star's lack of social graces, Depardieu expressed incredulity that Binoche had met with such acclaim.He asked: "Please can you explain to me what the secret of this actress is meant to be?"I would really like to know why she has been so esteemed for so many years. She has nothing. Absolutely nothing!"Binoche, who...

Michael Cera is the star of the graphic novel series in Edgar Wright's witty and stylish big-screen transfer. By Peter BradshawEdgar Wright takes the ache out of "achingly cool" with his entertaining, hyperactive gamer-geek comedy Scott Pilgrim V the World, set in freezing cold Toronto and based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Despite riffing on some apparently emotional themes – male romantic status-anxiety is brought interestingly into parallel with Canada's cultural cringe to the United States – Wright insists on nothing more than comedy and the spectacle of pastiche, an entertainment of Seinfeldian inconsequence. The movie has been attacked in some quarters for lack of heart, and for an alleged lack of box office nous in pitching to a demographic that...

This week Jason meets Swedish director Daniel Alfredson, the man who took on the task of transferring Stieg Larsson's hugely successful Millennium crime trilogy to the big screen. Ahead of Friday's release of The Girl Who Played With Fire, Alfredson discusses the dark side of Swedish culture that feeds both the novels and his films and tells us what his brother Tomas is up to after directing vampire smash Let The Right One In.We also have an extract from Jason's In The Director's Chair interview with the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright, in which he discusses his Xbox aesthetics and love of arthouse.Xan Brooks pops in to review some of this week's releases including Adam Sandler and Chris Rock in Grown Ups, and edgy crime drama Dog Pound.All this, plus the chance...

Ditching is a locally written film produced by the Factotum arts cooperative (who also publish The Vacuum).It’s set in post-apocalyptic Northern Ireland were walking is once again the only mode of transport. There’s no mains electricity. Food is used as currency. It’s a feudal society, with military brigades dotted around the countryside. Derelict buildings lie in ruinous disrepair. Animals are scarce.The film follows Maeve (Mary Lindsay) and John (Lalor Roddy) as they slowly journey across the landscape, pushing a trolley containing their few possessions and supplies. The man’s health is failing. Along the way they pick up a troubled mapmaker and a soldier.“You’re looking for medicine? It would be a shame to die looking for it.”In many ways it’s like time has rolled back...

The story: Estranged from his family, a miserable, haggard father of two (Matthew Perry) makes a wish... and transforms back into his cool, 17-year-old self (Zac Efron). Can he put right what once went wrong? And will his daughter hit on him? If it’s nothing else, 17 Again is a hymn to how Zac Efron is actually pretty darn good. As an actor, Efron still has at least one foot in the world of teen movies, partly because he looks like he should be in one. In this twist on the generation bodyswap movies of the 1980s – it plays a bit like Big – Efron gets to prove he can act like an adult, channelling bitter Matthew Perry through pristine Zac Efron. He gets to show off his emotional and comic timing, and manages to make the scenes in which he is romancing his estranged wife not seem...

People are already talking about Toy Story 3 for an Oscar win, either in the Best Picture (for which it is now eligible) or Best Animated Feature categories. To News Hour the latter seems more likely but, to return to our point in the review, TS3 does not have the most original plot in the world – a by-product of it being a sequel. It may have developed emotionally from the previous instalment, but the mechanics of the story hasn’t moved on too much. It’s just that type of movie.So no Best Picture win, would be our obvious prediction. As to Best Animated Feature? Wait and see what comes out later in the year, but it looks like ‘a lock’ for now.There was a similar split situation last year with Avatar which, while technically brilliant, lagged in the story stakes – that ended...

Is Airplane! the funniest film ever? John Patterson talks to the three nobodies from Milwaukee whose movie sparked a comedy revolutionWhen David Zucker was a schoolkid in Milwaukee in the 1960s, one of his teachers made a prediction. "She said to me once, when I was fooling around in class, 'Zucker, I know one day I'll be paying good money to see you make me laugh, but right now, get your ass back in that chair and crack that book!'"She was right. This badly behaved schoolkid would go on to reinvent US screen comedy with a movie called Airplane!, which he co-directed and co-wrote. Today, speaking in Manhattan, David is feeling a little rough. He was out the night before, it turns out, celebrating the film's 30th anniversary with the movie's co-creators, his younger brother Jerry and their...

The story: A fast-talking, sassy reporter (Robert Williams) finds himself pulled into the high society world of an alluring aristocrat (Jean Harlow).The big revelation about Platinum Blonde is Robert Williams, especially as his name is nowhere to be seen on the DVD packaging. This was his first big lead role, but the thrice-married 34-year-old died just four days after the movie’s premiere, of a ruptured appendix.At least he didn’t die before it, but Williams's presumed career is a great loss. Watching him now, he’s part Sean Penn, part Johnny Depp – Penn in the looks and the movement, Depp in the speech – but he’s all his own man. The delivery he gives to each line is always a surprise, and he outshines everyone, including Harlow, in a cast packed with colourful side...