Bruno - THE INTERVIEW

So I had a 'phone chat with Bruno the other day, as the DVD's now out. And seriously, it was Bruno NOT Sacha Baron-Cohen. He never broke character once.

The interview has had a bit of play on Radio 1 but, frankly, most of it is too out there for daytime radio. So I've decided to transcribe a bit and put it up here instead. Suffice to say, to any lawyers reading, IT'S ALL A JOKE, HE'S NOT SERIOUS, HE'S BEING DELIBERATELY PROVOCATIVE etc etc etc. With Bruno, NOTHING is sacred - which I kinda like...

JK: Hello to my favourite Viennese schnitzel, it's Bruno!

B: Wassup James!

JK: So 2009's been a big year for you. How are you looking back on it?

B: It's been really amazing, James. Really ausgezeichnet. My movie Bruno was a huge success, despite it having more naked guys in it than any Austrian film since the home video of Arnold Schwarzeneggar's stag night. I don't know if you've seen that but it's on You Tube. I'm the little blonde boy in the corner wearing just a jockey's hat.

JK: Christmas is coming up, Bruno. What's it like in your house?

B: Y'know, ich have a traditional Austrian christmas. The whole family are gathered together, mit the young children in their dungeon. We exchange gifts und if ich am lucky I may get from my boyfriend a pet. From my parents maybe some money - some geld. And from my grandparents maybe some stolen Jewish art. And then we have a big meal about 2 o'clock in the afternoon and afterwards the others go for a long walk to burn it off. That's not a problem for me - ich tend to just to the bathroom and... eeeeeuuurgh.

JK: It sounds very festive. You're a fashionista Bruno, what's going to be hot next year?

B: For me fashion's all about going green next year. You've got to go grun. We can all make little sacrifices to help save the planet. It doesn't take much effort to wear new clothes twice before throwing them away.

JK: Back to your film. It was very revealing, Bruno. How do you feel about so many viewers seeing you at your most raw?

B: Well, they haven't seen me at my most raw. My most raw was in Ibiza last year at Simon Cowell's 'scheisser' party. It looked like someone had sledgehammered a watermelon back there. That's also online.

JK: What's been your favourite film of the year?

B: Jesus! Stop it! Stop flirting with me! You're so naughty, you English...

JK: It's the accent, what can I say? What's been you favourite film of the year, Bruno?

B: It's been a great year for gay movies. Bruno, of course, and Milk, und best of all that movie Fast & Furious. Have you seen that? How sexy is the Vin Diesel in that movie? Ich watched it with 500 guys in a theatre in Salzburg. The title Fast & Furious was the perfect metaphor for what was going on in the screening. As was the massive explosion at the end of the film.

Hmmm, I'll leave it there for the moment...

Brothers - THE REVIEW

Another 'War On Terror' issues movie, anyone? You want it starring Peter Parker, Donnie Darko and Queen Amidala? And based on an award-winning 2004 Danish film (who doesn't)?

Well, Brothers it is then.

Here's what you need to know:

1. The casting's pretty clever. Tobe and Jake have long been muddled in the public eye, thanks to nookie with Kirsten Dunst and both being up for the role of Spiderman. That kinda gossip may not have gone through the director's mind, but it certainly adds an extra sparkle to their chalk-and-cheese characters.

2. Tobey's really going for it. When he comes back home to his family after being tortured in Afghanistan, he's understandably tormented. There's a bit where he trashes the new kitchen that his brother has installed for him - man, it sends shivers down the spine. He just can't handle being domestic again.

3. There are lots of unanswered questions. It's all deliberate, of course - post traumatic stress disorder tends not to have easy solutions. But it makes for a frustrating watch. Brothers is a film that's better on raising the issues rather than dealing with them.

4. So ultimately, despite the good turn from TM (Jake and Natalie are on autopilot), Brothers is just a bit frustrating. Actually, a bit dull. Director Jim Sheridan (The Boxer, In The Name Of The Father) still has the passion, but his heart-on-sleeve directing still leaves me feeling preached at rather than entertained. It's no surprise that there's a U2 track over the end credits. Yawn.

Brothers is out 22nd January.

Paranormal Activity - THE REVIEW

Horror nuts may have heard about Paranormal Activity years ago (it was made in '06) but it's only now gone mainstream, thanks to the determination of writer/director Oren Peli and his producers. With Paramount's millions behind them, the American multiplexes can't get enough of these lo-fi scares, told via Blair Witch/Cloverfield-style 'found video tapes'. Here's what you need to now:

1. Everything about PA is minimal. It's set completely in one house (Peli's own pad, actually) and it's simply home footage of a couple (Micah & Katie) investigating a possible poltergeist. They record everything, including sticking their camera on a tripod in their bedroom at night, then watch back looking for weird stuff.

2. Weird stuff is DEFINITELY found but the pic keeps everything believable. The grainy camera footage helps, so does the down-to-earth acting (from two unknowns). Mainly though, it's the pace. At first, Katie and Micah only notice tiny things; a door closes a little bit at 3am, their car keys move from the worktop to the floor. They're freaked out... yet not massively. But the grip of whatever is in their house tightens and tensions become unbearable.

3. Crucial to this is the repetition of one shot - the static camera in their bedroom, recording night after night. The couple sleep, their door enticingly open. Night-time noises are heard. Was it just the pipes? And are those footsteps on the staircase? A shadow on the wall? You can never be sure. We see this same shot umpteen times over umpteen nights, each time something a little more odd happens. It's a shot I began to dread. A lot of the things it records are banal - Katie getting up at 2am and staring at her boyfriend for an hour and a half (thankfully, we see that on fast forward) but it's precisely that banality that frazzles your nerve endings. Minimalism has never been so unsettling.

4. The horror gets bigger but the pic remains a masterpiece of eliciting thrills from what you don't see rather than what you do. Events seem at a distance. Sounds are heard a long way off. You feel like a helpless voyeur as the initial bubbliness of the film descends into pure, ice-cold terror. Watching someone's personal recording makes you feel privileged to be so close to the action and yet you're not entirely sure what you see. If only you could get closer... and yet you don't want to be too close. As a viewer you never get comfortable.

5. In other words, it scared the living crap out of me. Seriously. It hooks you in and try as you might to not buy into it, the whole thing just feels so NORMAL. Such a style may have come from necessary budget restrictions rather than some great theory of film directing but whatever, it delivers. Small-time movie, big-time screams.

It's out 27th November.

Nowhere Boy - THE REVIEW

Interpreting icons for the big screen isn't always a great idea. I'm still recovering from the moment in Cadillac Records where 5 scruffy herberts with plentiful hair rock up to the studio and announce in jarring Mockney tones: "'Ullo... we're the bleedin' Rowling Stownes ain't we" (or something like that.) We're so used to seeing/hearing the real famous people that we feel like we know them already. Movie adaptations are only likely to disappoint.

Posh British artist Sam Taylor-Wood's now had a go at 50s-era John Lennon in Nowhere Boy, with the help of the fella who wrote Control (about Joy Division's Ian Curtis). Here's what you need to know:

1. Even though Sam Taylor-Wood is a 'modern artist' (**the sound of Daily Mail readers getting irate**) this is actually a very mainstream film. Straightforward, clear and classy. It's specifically focused on Lennon aged 15/16, chronicling his relationship with his prissy Auntie Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas), who raised him, and his troubled mum Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) who gave him up when he was 5. Basically, both women want to mother him. He just wants to have fun.

Oh... he also meets some bloke called... now what was it... Paul... Paul... Paul Something-Or-Other.

2. The acting is SUPERB. Aaron Johnson as is astounding as JL, full of energy, dreams and laughs. So many laughs. His teen life may have been hard but his gallows humour kept spirits high. Johnson really does create someone unique, someone like you've never seen before. If that's not credit to Lennon, then I dunno what it. Anne-Marie Duff and Kristin Scott-Thomas are also perfect as chalk-and-cheese sisters. Only KS-T can make the eating of soup look so threatening in one lunch scene.

3. It avoids cheesiness. The first meeting with McCartney (oh yeah, that was his name) is sweet, rather than obviously monumental. Thomas Brodie Sangster as Macca is also nicely restrained. And the re-naming of their band from The Quarrymen to The Beatles is so subtle that the latter are never even mentioned.

4. So it's defo worth seeing. A real celebration of the vibrancy of youth, the power of new and exciting music and how both have helped teenagers throughout the years cope with difficult times. If it is a little TV-movie looking in parts, the acting takes it way beyond, well into awards territory.

Nowhere Boy is out 26th December.

A Christmas Carol - THE REVIEW

Some things to know about Jim Carrey and the new animated version of A Christmas Carol.

1.) It's out this week (ie. early November). I'm all for whacking on Jonah Lewie's 'Stop The Cavalry' asap, but even I struggle to get festive this early.

2.) It's no longer Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's now Disney's A Christmas Carol. Normally this would inspire me to write something about how evil corporations are taking over our culture with no thought for our heritage etc etc but point 3) stopped me.

3.) You see, Disney's A Christmas Carol is rather good. Director Robert Zemeckis earnt his seasonal stripes with The Polar Express but this is even more yule-tastic. It's full-on festive Victoriana - snowy streets, candle-lit rooms, roaring fires and street urchins singing carols whilst holding lanterns. Feelgood is not in short supply.

4.) But what adds another level of interest is that it's also true to its literary roots as a ghost story. The spirits that visit Scrooge (Jim Carrey) are really quite haunting, if not scary (esp. The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come). Scrooge's apparition of his own death takes things to very bleak, hugely surreal, places and it was then that some kiddywinks in the audience started to freak out and head for the door. I loved it. Also true to the original text, the dialogue is flowery and old-fashioned. It was another thing that bemused a few littl'uns but for me, a surprisingly daring touch for a 2009 blockbuster.

5.) The animation, done by performance capture, is impressive generally although 'humans' still look a little odd, a touch lifeless. Carrey's Scrooge overcomes this by being beautifully sinewy and slithery but supporting roles such as Colin Firth's Fred (Scrooge's nephew) is stodgy. It looks like Colin Firth but if Colin Firth had been drawn by one of those ropey portrait sketchers you get in London's Leicester Sq. Luckily the glorious flow of the movie, all creepy angles and aerial shots, makes up for this.

6.) The result? It looks good, it feels good and it scares the crap outta you. There's a quote for the poster. The Christmas cheer is infectious but the haunting undertones are what really hit your heart hard.