Father Geek here with another of our weekly Euro-AICN columns... this one's loaded with good stuff soooo I'm going to let you get right to the meat of it...

Hi people, Robert here in Rome. Sometimes, I wonder why a movie which I consider very disappointing can be so acclaimed. I’m referring to David Cronenberg’s Spider, which I saw latest week. I found it incredibly banal from one of my favorite directors ever, even if his latest pics (Crash, eXistenZ) are not worth of his extraordinary career. Unfortunately, even the acting is very poor, with the great exception of Miranda Richardson (I know, many critics were delighted by Ralph Fiennes, but this seems to me the classical performance for the Academy, absolutely unbearable). And to say that the ending is predictable, would be a big understatement. Anyway, I’m delighted that we have to expect only two weeks to see The Two Towers (I’ll have to go in France to see it, considering that in Italy will be out just in mid january, but it is worth it).

So, we start this column with a pair of TTT related news, to continue with the reports by Grozilla (with a name to remember, Marina DeVan), a new movie called The Swedish Job in production (starring Freddie Prinze jr, Billy Bob Thornton, Harvey Keitel) and three great reviews by our James Bartlett. Enjoy!

A Wormtongue pic

Our reader Pungolo-mi sent me this pic, taken from the book The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy by Brian Sibley. You can see it here (Spoilers!!!): Just Click

I'm not sure it wasn't published elsewhere, but it seems to me people don't talk about it as it deserves. It depicts Wormtongue with a dagger in his hand and a very furious look. Does it represents Grima a few seconds before killing Saruman, like occurs in the Tolkien books? This would mean that Saruman won't die impaled on the spiked wheel as some pictures suggested (unless Saruman falls on the spiked wheel to avoid fighting Grima, who knows?).

Images from the Middle Earth

I would like to point out to your attention this great exhibition, called ""Images from the Middle Earth", which will occur in Rome since january, 2003, after having been presented last summer in Riccione. This is the press release of the event:

"Under the sponsorship of the Government's Premiership and the Ministry of Communications, Arteventi, society for the creation of cultural events, and the Italian Tolkienian Society will bring to Italy the best international show concerning fantasy never carried out in the last decades. The event includes more than 120 original items by Angus Mcbride (SA), Ted Nasmith(CA), Roger Garland (UK), Brothers Hildebrandt (USA), Alan Lee (UK), Lode Claes (BE), Rob Alexander (USA), Luca Michelucci (IT), Anton Spazzapan (SLO), Angelo Montanini (IT), Pascal Yung (FR), Tony Galuidi (UK), Capucine Mazille (FR), Mikel Janin (SP), Patrick Gely (FR), Ivan Cavini (IT), Anke K. Eissmann (GE), April Lee (USA), Stephen Walsh (UK), Randy Asplund (USA), David Wyatt (UK), Roger Thomasson (SW), Carrel Douglas (USA), Danny Staten (USA), Timoleon Kouimtzoglou (GR), Maura Boldi (IT), Ed Beard Jr.(USA), Maria Distefano (IT), Diego Iaconfcic (KR), Michael Rudin (SW), Giovanni Giurco (IT), Peter Gaber (KR)".

Of course, I'll keep you informed about this exhibition when it will be opening in january. Meanwhile, I received a press release of another exhibition, this time entirely dedicated to the acclaimed italian illustrator Maria Di Stefano, who will present 50 of her works in Merano, between 7 and 31 december. You can admire 3 paintings of her clicking at this page: Click Here Now

Grozilla has three great reports from his french offices…

Grozilla here, I recently interviewed Delphine Gleize for the release of her amazing Carnages, kind of Altmanesque choral movie around the death of a corrida bull, whose meat is linking quite a dozen of characters. Asking her about her projects she said that's she's currently dealing with Tennessee Williams estate to direct the only script the author made directly for cinema. what's it about ? On Gleize own words : "it's a so great story about men, there's only one female part : a whore !". The difficulty is that Williams' heirs don't want that even a single word of this script could be changed...

Grozilla here again... .. read the asia-aicn report of the week. To complete the news about a live Captain Harlock's, I've learned very recently that Jean-Pierre Dionnet, the french producer who initiated the idea has also another japanimation becoming live project with an adaptation of Boogie Pop Phantom, a weird serie from Takashi Watanabe and Kohei Kadono. As for the Harlock's OST to come, if Hisaishi and Kawai are on discussion, Daft Punk, one of the hippest french techno band is supposed to compose some tracks for it. Those guys have already work with Leiji Matsumoto who directed all the anime videos (as following segments of a story) from their Discovery album released last year.

Grozilla here once more. Just wanted to let you know some about one of the strongest, daring french films to be seen this year.

Maybe some of you euro-fellas have already heard of Marina DeVan. She has co-wrote some flicks for François Ozon (Sous le sable, 8 femmes, Regarde la mer, Sitcom) and acted in some. She also has directed some short films, which I didn’t like at the time, just feeling there were some gratuitous provocative stuff. Anyway it was easy to recognize De Van wasn’t some middle of the road filmaker : one of her short films was about a girl learning how to do a blow job in front of her parents, one other about constipation. She has recently directed her first long feature. With a very dark story...

Dans ma peau is about a young woman accidentaly hurt at a party. Then she begins to have strange feelings towards her body leading her to self-mutilation and at last eating her own flesh.

Wait with all the yelling « hurray » you, gorefans. This ain’t what you think it is. As last year’s Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day wasn’t a film on cannibalism, but about female desire, Dans ma peauisn’t some splatter stuff. Of course there’s blood and sickly moments, but this can’t be categorized as an horror movie. Unless you classified Cronenberg’s Crash or Todd Haynes’ Safe on this shelf too.

Dans ma peau is part of these very rare films, dealing maturely with the last taboo in film : representation of the body. As it deals with some social purpose : this is about the place of everyone in society, what you have to show, to be, in work in the universe as in relationship and what you really are « inside ».

Dans ma peau follows the path of a woman who’s sinking into madness because of despair and loneliness, having some kind of literally devouring romance with herself. Well the least to say is that this movie leaves its viewers with profound uneaseness. If they can stand till the end : at the two press screenings where I saw it, each time, five to ten people left the room, feeling sick or very uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, Dans ma peau isn’t unbearable to watch, it just shows what’s necessary to be shown for this tale of ordinary madness to be understood. And it’s told in a brilliant sense of direction, DeVan even using a brand new meaning in split-screening some parts of her film leading to the final shot, one of the most heartbreakingly painful I’ve ever seen . The most daring and disturbing stuff being maybe that she acts the main character with a mood between sensuality and self-loathing.

Dans ma peau will be relased here on december 4th. I guess there will be very fast some big buzz around it, mainly because, if you didn’t know yet, since some new right-wing government is on place in France, there’s big debate on the cultural state. Some kind of moral order has risen from the grave here : a few months ago, some ultra-right movements asked pornographic films to be banished from cable TV and videomarket. Last week some report asked by ministry of culture explained in a very very exagerated way that violence was everywhere on TV and asked some very dumb laws projects to be voted. In this context of censorship the very subversive Dans ma peau will be for sure talked about as some shame film. On the opposite, I assert this is one of the most important french films of the year, by its deep subject treated in a very mature way.

Provocative but so intelligent, this is a must see.

I don’t know if this horror-arthouse film will be released outside France, mainly in festival I guess, but this for sure reveals one great gifted female filmaker.

Til’ the next new surprise from french film

Grozilla

Jesper has interesting stuff about this movie. A gangster movie with Freddie Prinze jr.? My god...

Hello.

Maybe you´ve already received news of this, but I´ll tell you anyway. According to all the major newspapers here in Sweden, "The Swedish Job" will begin shooting this April at locations in Florida, Germany and Stockholm.

Apparently, it is a gangster movie starring Freddie Prinze JR, Billy Bob Thornton, Harvey Keitel, Brad Renfro, Julie Christie and a number of swedish actors.

In short, the story revolves around a mob family in Miami, as one of its members runs off to Sweden with his girlfriend and a large quantity of family money. The head of the family promptly sends some people to Sweden to retrieve the stolen cash.

Shooting is expected to take about 2 months, 3 weeks of which is to take place in Stockholm. James Merendino, the director and Janet Yang, the producer are coming here in january to prepare the filming. This is the original article (in swedish): Just Click Here To See It

Last but not least, the reviews by James Bartlett. I know that Americans have already seen these movies, but in many european countries They haven't been released yet.

Beware, some spoilers lurk below…

Donnie Darko

d. Richard Kelly Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Swayze, Jena Malone

It's 1988 and Donnie Darko is a pretty messed-up teenager at High School. Already in therapy and on medication after an arson attack some years ago, he is now starting to sleepwalk at night and follow the orders of "Frank," a razor-teethed evil rabbit; think of a scary, Satanic Harvey.

Franks tells Donnie that in just over 28 days his world will end - yet it is one of the nights when Donnie is out somnambulating that a stray jet engine lands on his house, trashing his bedroom. If Frank hadn't called him away, he would be dead. Perhaps, Donnie reasons, there is something in what Frank says.

As Donnie follows out Frank's increasingly violent orders, he finds out that the local madwoman "Grandma Death" was a teacher at his school before she went mad and wrote a book about time travel - a book that begins to make more and more sense to Donnie.

Donnie decides he must speak to her, as Frank now appears to him in what seems like a wormhole - a portal in the fabric of space and time. Perhaps Donnie can do something to avoid the end of the world, as the clock is ticking.

Donnie's girlfriend Gretchen (Jena Malone) is sympathetic, but when Donnie ends up burning down the house of local motivation expert Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze) - and the Police find a huge stash of kiddie porn - we know that Day 28 is going to take Donnie into one of the two worlds he seems to be living in and change everything, just like Frank says.

Gyllenhaal is amazing as Donnie - his hunched, domed look and trance-horrors are effective and garner our sympathy - and his parents (unusually for a film like this) are happy and have a normal marriage; so where's all this Frank stuff come from?

Richard Kellys' debut film sounds like Wierdarama and it is; Donnie is clearly a very disturbed kid, but as we see what he sees and work with his logic, his madness becomes as scarily plausible to us as it is to him - and that makes for a film that is gripping and highly unusual.

Shot for only a few million dollars and with Drew Barrymore's help as producer, Donnie Darko is an innovative and startling debut film; there's nifty effects and camerawork too.

Die Another Day

d. Lee Tamahori Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stevens, Rosamund Pike, Rick Yune, Will Yun Lee

Bond is Back and looking none the worse for his 40 year career - hard to believe in many ways that this is the 20th Outing for 007, played here again by Pierce Brosnan.

Die Another Day starts in North Korea where, after surfing a monster wave onto the shore, Bond takes a diamond dealers' helicopter and goes instead to make the deal with Moon (Will Yun Lee), a North Korean Colonel.

The diamonds are South African - trade in them is banned - and Bond has planted explosive in the suitcase of diamonds to stop Moon getting even more financing for his undoubted plans to re-invade South Korea.

But Bond is unmasked and thrown to the torture cells - but not before he offs Moon and the suitcase explodes, scarring Moon's henchman Zao (Rick Yune) in an expensive, sparkling way.

14 months pass before Bond is released in exchange for Zao, who took a holiday in the West and had a very murderous trip. Unimpressed by Bond's desire to get revenge on Zao, MI5 revokes his licence and it seems that 007's days are over; he's out of the loop.

No chance though of course; Bond escapes from hospital and sets about chasing Zao, first going to Cuba, where a gene surgery centre gives people new faces. He finds Zao but he escapes again - and Bond meets Jinx (Halle Berry), an NSA agent working for the US on the same gig. I think we can see where that is going.

Then we're on to London, where he engages in a classic sword fight with new super-business men (and dodgy diamond dealer) Gustav Graves (Toby Stevens), who invites Bond to his ice palace, where he is going to reveal his new gift to the world - his super laser thingamajig "Icarus", that can harness the power of the sun and bring light where there is darkness.

Of course, Graves has an assistant, the ice-cold bitchy Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) who is totally resistant to Bond's charms. I think we can see where that is going.

Anyway, after the shennigins, there is a car chase across the ice as the palace crumbles and we now know what Icarus really is for - for clearing the miles of landmined ground that separate North and South Koreas (the Demilitarised Zone) and therefore allowing a fresh invasion by North Korea. But what is the connection between Zao and Graves? James Bond is on a mission to find out.

Die Another Day serves up all we have come to expect from Bond (and, judging by it's opening box office business, it served up what a lot of people have come to expect from Bond as well), but the fact of the matter is that it's not a very good movie - and not a very good Bond either.

Firstly, the two villains idea never really works and ends up unfocused, making Graves into just a sneering pantomime villain. The locations never really work either - using The Eden project was a great idea, but what purpose does it serve? None that I could see. And as for some of the CGI, compare and contrast with xXx - woeful.

Worst of all, the story with Icarus was pretty laughable - what ever happened to holding the world to ransom, or for world domination? Even Mr. Burns in The Simpsons, when he revealed a similar machine, had bigger plans than that.

That said, there are some great sequences and plenty of nods and bows to past Bonds - witness the scenes with Q in the underground station as he gets his latest car - an Aston Martin that can go invisible - cool.

Halle Berry does well, injecting some pizzazz into her thankless role and Miranda Frost was great; why couldn't she have failed to fall for Bond? - it would have been so much better.

Overall, I think that Die Another Day suffered from some late and judicious editing, so it comes out as a lifeless mess.

Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

d. Chris Columbus Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh, Christian Coulson, Jason Isaacs

Potter is back for Christmas and this time we get the second book in the series - can it really be that seven films are planned, even though JK Rowling is only on the fifth book? Amazing stuff.

Anyway, with the first Harry Potter film one of the biggest grossing films of all time, the second episode in the life of the young bespectacled lad has been highly anticipated by adults and children alike.

In The Chamber of Secrets, we begin during the Summer Holidays - Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is back home with his nasty aunt and uncle Dursley and desperate to get back to school at Hogwarts. But then a wee goblin elf-type thing called Dobby turns up and tells Harry that he mustn't return - something bad will happen.

The unsure Harry finally makes it to Hogwart's with Ron (Rupert Grint) in a flying Ford Anglia, but, sure enough, Dobby's predications start to come true; Harry begins to hears eerie voices in the brickwork and, most scarily, people start to be petrified like statues - and suspicion falls on Harry.

Eventually we find out that, in a repeat of events that happened 50 years ago to a lad like Harry called Tom Riddle (Christian Coulson,) the Chamber of Secrets has been opened again. It contains a huge snake that former Slitherin members like Draco's father Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) felt could make Hogwart's the best wizard school there is by petrifying - and killing - anyone who was a mugblood (i.e. born of humans, not people with magical powers).

Harry's friend Hermione (Emma Watson) is one of the mugbloods and soon she is petrified as well, paralysed forever, unless Harry can get to the Chamber of Secrets and find out who is behind all this madness and mayhem. Celebrity Professor of Magic Arts Gilderoy Lockhart (a great comic turn by Kenneth Branagh) is no help, so Harry and Ron must go on alone and face the horror in the sewers.

Chamber of Secrets is a much darker, more frightening film than the first one. The characters are well-established now (good luck if you didn't see the first film or haven't read the book) and the screen is full of magical moments, characters and sequences - it's all there; Quidditch, huge spiders, a Phoenix, a huge snake that lives in the sewers and so on.

Top class entertainment all the way and another floor up from the first film, but beware - younger ones many find it a bit scary and it is quite hard to follow.

James Bartlett

That’s all for today See you next week

Robert Bernocchi

My Cool Day Job