If you've watched enough movies and TV shows, the idea of the 'ticking bomb' should be familiar to you. You know: there's a bomb, it's got to be defused, usually by snipping either a red wire or a blue wire, and there's only a few minutes or seconds to do it in.

Normally, you'll find this in a single episode of a TV show or maybe in the final act of a film and it'll usually be just a regular cop or soldier doing the disarming, rather than a heroic bomb disposal expert – typically they're running late. Equally rarely will the ticking bomb scenario last the length of the entire movie or TV show or the bomb be any more complex than just that red-blue question.

In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of Danger UXB and occasionally The Unit really focusing on bomb disposal on TV; in the movies, even Speed didn't dwell on disarmament, only evasion, and Quatermass and the Pit didn't have a bomb, only a spaceship everyone thought was a bomb.

Juggernaut (also known as Terror on the Britannic), released in 1974, is perhaps the only instance of a movie that deals exclusively from beginning to end with the defusal of a single bomb and that features a heroic bomb disposal expert at the centre of the action.

Set on board a luxury liner travelling across the Atlantic, the movie sees Richard Harris try to disarm seven identical and highly complicated bombs designed by a man calling himself 'Juggernaut'. The first film to develop the 'red wire/blue wire' dilemma, it's a tense piece directed by Richard 'Superman II' Lester, with dialogue by Alan 'Beiderbecke' Plater, that while featuring an all-star cast is in reality a mesmerising monologue by Harris and a musing on the nature of death. It's a movie you should own.

Here's the very 70s, slightly judgemental trailer narrated by a bored American man.

Continue reading "Movies you should own: Juggernaut (Terror on the Britannic)"

I don't normally do reviews of current films. There's not much point since I always see them too late. But when I do see a film just as it comes out, invariably my review would be almost identical to Mark Kermode's. Case in point: Quantum of Solace. Here's Mark Kermode's review, which is pretty much word for word what I would have said. Loved the fight scenes though.

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¡Madre Mia! I've finally got round to writing it. The reasons you should own Manhunter! Will wonders never cease?

As far as most people are concerned, The Silence of the Lambs was the film that introduced serial killer Hannibal Lecter to the world. Starring (Sir) Anthony Hopkins as the ex-psychiatrist and people-eater, it was one of the first horror movies to do respectably at the Oscars and catapulted both Hopkins and Jodie Foster, who played the FBI agent trying to mine him for information, into the league of A-list stars.

Since then, we've had Hannibal and Red Dragon, both starring Hopkins as Lecter, and young Lecter movie, Hannibal Rising - all to diminishing effect.

What not many people realise is that back in the 80s, Michael Mann, director of Heat, Collateral, The Insider and Last of the Mohicans as well as creator of Miami Vice, had already adapted the original Lecter novel, Red Dragon, as Manhunter.

Way before Millennium, Profiler and CSI made popular forensic science, psychological profiling and the idea of thinking inside a killer's mind to catch him, it featured CSI's William Petersen as Will Graham, the man who caught Lecter by risking his own sanity and daring to think the same thoughts. Equally notably, it also featured Brian Cox as Hannibal - and he's a damn sight better than Anthony Hopkins.

Which is why Manhunter is a movie you should own. Here's the original trailer for Manhunter - forgive it for being made in the 80s.

Continue reading "Movies you should own: Manhunter"

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Today's Joanna Page is Very Annie Mary, a little movie set in Wales that features just about every Welsh actor in existence. It stars Rachel Griffiths, an Australian actress who impressed everyone right up until she joined the cast of Brothers and Sisters, as Annie Mary, the frustrated (in every sense) daughter of Pavarotti-impersonating baker Jonathan Pryce. 

She wants to help her best friend, the seriously ill 16-year-old Bethan Bevan, get to Disneyland and singing in a talent contest might be the only way to get the money. And despite being 22 at the time, Joanna Page played that sick teenager.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Very Annie Mary"

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey

My favourite film reviewer is Mark Kermode. You can see him on BBC2's Culture Show and listen to him on BBC Radio 5 Live, which helpfully carries a podcast of his weekly reviews for Simon Mayo.

However, there's also a video stream, despite the fact it's a radio show, and Radio 5 also uploads some of the best bits onto YouTube. So here are some classic Kermode reviews for your enjoyment.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

A mash up of his Iron Man review with the trailer

Jason Isaacs accuses Mark Kermode of being wrong about Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean 3

And lastly, Paris Hilton's The Hottie and the Nottie

Today's Joanna Page is Bye Bye Harry, a British road movie released in 2006, of which she was the star, and that you will never have seen. Ever. Until now.

We've been jumping all over the place chronologically, here, so let's recap the inexorable career rise of Ms Joanna Page. After leaving RADA in 1999, she went straight to the National Theatre for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She continued to do well in the theatre, with roles in a series of medieval mystery plays, The Mysteries, As You Like It, What the Butler Saw, Aladdin, Doomsday, Camera Obscura, and Billy Liar (with Ralph Little), among others.

The world of film beckoned, too, with bit parts in Miss Julie and This Year's Love, and larger parts in From Hell, Very Annie Mary, Love Actually, and Gideon's Daughter.

And on tele, there were important roles in David Copperfield, The Cazalets, The Lost World, Ready When You Are Mr McGill, Making Waves, Mine All Mine and To The Ends of the Earth. She even found time to fit in a few radio plays and a music video in all that, too.

So by 2005/6, a starring role in a movie looked inevitable. Indeed, in his review of The Mysteries for The Independent, right at the start of her career, Robert Butler prophetically wrote, "As Eve, Joanna Page looks as if (now she's eaten that apple) she will be the love-interest in a movie very soon."

And then it arrived: No Snow which soon became Bye Bye Harry. She's the female lead – arguably the lead. It's a British road movie, a 'dark' rom-com by experienced comedy writer Graham Alborough . It's got noted director Robert Young at its helm. It's got two of the country's biggest rock stars in supporting roles. And when it was released, it featured at the country's leading film festival. 

So why haven't you heard of it until now? And why had you probably not heard of Joanna Page until Gavin & Stacey?

Problem is, I've been linguistically tricky. See, although I said it was a British road movie – and indeed it is, according to the British Council – I pulled a fast one. The bulk of the financing came from Germany and Slovakia. When I said "the country", the country I actually meant was Germany, the rock stars I mentioned were Bela B Felsenheimer and Til Schweiger (very big in Germany), and the film festival I mentioned was the Berlin film festival. 

And it's never been released anywhere else. Not France, not Belgium, not the Netherlands. It's certainly never been shown in Britain. And although you could get a version dubbed into German on rental in Germany, you couldn't get the original English language version until two weeks ago – on import from Amazon.de. 

So without fear of contradiction, may I present for your delight the very first, most comprehensive, most definitive and probably very last English language review of Bye Bye Harry aka Liebling, wir graben Harry aus.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Bye Bye Harry"

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey, Jason Bourne

Today's Joanna Page is Richard Curtis's Love Actually.

Curtis has dominated British comedy, whether it's been on television or in the cinemas, for nearly three decades now. Following an early stint writing for Not the Nine O'Clock News in the 70s, he started to bestride us like a laughing, Islington-loving colossus the following decade with The Black Adder, its three sequel series and a couple of one-off spin-offs. Within a few years, he became the moving force behind Comic Relief and managed to notch up a couple of movies, including The Tall Guy, starring Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson.

In the 90s, he stormed through again, first unleashing Mr Bean on us all, before choosing to take over the world and introduce Hugh Grant to us all with Four Weddings and a Funeral. He went on to write Notting Hill and the screenplay for Bridget Jones's Diary. He also spent 13 years laughing at country folk for the mysteriously successful The Vicar of Dibley.

Love Actually, released in 2003, was his first attempt at directing a movie. It's kind of a composite rom com version of Crash (or a sicklier version of This Year's Love, which also featured Jo Page) in which just about every possible facet of love is explored through the inter-connected lives of various people around the world. With an incredible cast of stars, it is occasionally touching, sometimes funny, and usually irritating. But it has Joanna Page in it - provided you don't buy the censored DVD - so we'll forgive it.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Love Actually"

Read other posts about: 24, Gavin and Stacey, Mad Men

It's here. It's here! After all that waiting, it's finally here.

Much like the January sales, there are strategies to be used when you're going to watch something as anticipated as Sex and the City: the movie. Either you wait all night camped outside and then be the first in before everyone else, or you wait until everyone has been crushed under foot and enter at your leisure afterwards.

Which is why I'm sauntering in with a review of Sex and the City over a week after it opened.

What do you mean I shouldn't be watching this cos I'm a bloke? Watching movies about women is 'so gay'? Do you want to have a think about that?

Continue reading "Review: Sex and the City"

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Today's Joanna Page is From Hell, an impressively unpleasant and bad film, which is odd*, given that it was based on a graphic novel by the lovely Alan Moore, stars the equally lovely Johnny Depp and features the very lovely indeed Joanna Page. She plays a former prostitute trying to turn good for the sake of her baby. Which is... nice? Sigh. Where's Andrea Dworkin when you need her?

* Okay, it's about Jack the Ripper, so that should have been a clue. What's the fascination there, by the way? We're talking about a bloke who was really nasty to women. I'm not really sure he's worth dwelling on unless you're a criminal psychologist or a historian...

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey

There's a certain amount of false advertising in the trailers for Leatherheads, the new George Clooney/Renée Zellweger movie set in the early days of professional American football. The trailers suggest it's a rom-com. Yet there's not much romance and there's not much comedy.

It has its moments, don't get me wrong, but ultimately this is a drama, with a touch of comedy and a touch of romance. And it's a reasonably worthwhile drama, because even if the subject matter isn't all that interesting, especially for a UK audience, the style of the film and its 'homage-matter' will appeal to anyone who's ever watched an old black and white movie.

Continue reading "Review: Leatherheads"