The Sydney Morning Herald – 31 October 2012 At the London Screenwriters Festival last week, director David Yates was talking about superstar writers. He knows about them, having translated J.K. Rowling’s last three Harry Potter novels to the big screen. But previously he did television, including the 2003 BBC thriller State of Play, working from [...]
At last I can reveal why I never made it big in the corporate world. You might have thought that, like most sane people, I just wasn’t interested in all that stuff. But the truth is: I’m a lousy golfer. Playing golf with the boss, as part of my cunning plan to climb the corporate [...]
The more I hear about the tough life of movie stars, the more I wonder why so many people dream of having that job. I’ve never done it myself, but as someone who writes about the movies, I’ve met a few people who’ve had this job and said that they loved it (including Heath Ledger, [...]
When can you start looking at the bright side of a major tragedy without seeming insensitive, or people muttering “Too soon”? Hurricane Sandy in October caused widespread damage and killed 253 people, but I read soon afterwards that it was good for at least someone: namely, ski resort operators in the west of the U.S. [...]
For those who haven’t noticed, Australians are all over Hollywood, infiltrating the population with their ability to drink café lattes and their passable-to-uncanny American accents. Shocking, really. This, of course, leads to the obvious question: “Who is the greatest-ever Australian film actor?” I think I’ve figured it out, and it’s not Russell Crowe or Cate [...]
As a kid, I only ever went to one comic book convention, because they didn’t have many in Australia. At this convention, I perused hundreds of comics on sale, and met with famous comic book artists. In fact, even though they were big shots, I casually chatted with them, handing them comics to sign without [...]
AMONG comic book geeks, Stan Lee is an icon. He’s the former publisher and public face of Marvel Comics, the writer, editor and co-creator of one superstar after another — the Hulk, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men — and his upcoming Australian visit is causing excitement for local fans. See [...]
As I write this, the Tribeca Film Festival in New York is winding down for another year. I’ve spent much of the past 10 days at this festival (which helps explain why I didn’t blog last week). A couple of weeks before each festival, I go through the list of films to work out which [...]
It was high time I returned to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s home town. The last time I visited was in 1997, and we’ve all changed a lot since then (apart from Shakespeare himself, who was already dead). At the time, it was part of one of those bus trips that are so handy when you don’t have [...]
OK, it’s that time of year again. Just as people start buying newspapers again, thinking “You know, they’re actually rather useful,” they are suddenly filled with dopey speculation about who will win the Oscars. For years, comedians joked about how often the weatherman gets it wrong. Then it became clear that these guys were wizards [...]
FROM MY MENTAL FLOSS BLOG