Drew! Ellen! Rollerblades!

Drew Barrymore is one of my favourite actors from my 'youth' (Never Been Kissed = her greatest performance). Ellen Page is one of my favourite current stars. Put them together and you have Whip It, Drew's directing debut and Ellen's chance to show off her rollerblading skills.

10 things to know about The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus

1. It's very much in director Terry Gilliam's signature style i.e hugely overblown flights of fancy at the expense of anything approaching rigorous storytelling.

2. It's about an ancient guru (Christopher Plummer) who tours contemporary London with his travelling show - and the secrets he is hiding. Heath Ledger co-stars as a disgraced ex-charity worker who latches on to Dr P.

3. Heath died before filming was completed, so the not-entirely-unknown trio of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stood in for his character in three fantasy sequences (the fantasy bit allows them to look different to Heath).

4. The three fantasy sequences are, to be honest, a little bit pointless. Admittedly the film couldn't have got finished without them - but having some massive names in fairly brief, CGI-heavy scenes seems a little bit of a waste.

5. Heath Ledger's character is a bit 'unfocused' (ie. not really much of anything).

6. The best thing in the movie is actually Lily Cole, the model/actress who stars as Plummer's daughter. Her cherubic face and red locks give her an other worldly look that perfectly complements the pic's antique feel, whilst she's also pretty good at playing it appealingly naive. She's the emotional heart.

7. The film is REALLY hard to follow.

8. It's out in October.

9. You can't help but admire the movie for the awesome way it looks (especially the non-CGI stuff of Dr P's ramshackle coach and horses that trots through night-time London) - but its computerized dream sequences look a bit Spy Kids. There'll be a flurry of interest in this one because of the Heath factor but it's little more than a colourful curio.

10. It's not a sequel to Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium.

JKM poll results - Best Posh British Actress!

1. Helena Bonham-Carter
2. Kate Winslet
3. Keira 'Twice' Knightley
4. Emma Watson

Bellatrix Lestrange beating Hermione Granger is surely not good for world order, but there you go. THE PUBLIC HAS SPOKEN.

An insomniac's review of The Bodyguard

I don't sleep much. Frankly, there are too many films on ITV2 that I've recorded that I want to watch (normally Total Recall or Love, Actually) for me to sleep.

This week it was The Bodyguard.

Now, this is not a film that I know well. I do know, however, that 'back in the day' it was absolutely blimmin' massive (we're talking 1992). The soundtrack, depending on which report you read, is often said to be the biggest ever.

So my 3am viewing was ripe for surprises. And surprises I got.

1. Whitney Houston, playing a bitchy but hugely successful singer in need of a bodyguard, is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. I mean really gutsy. It's she who seduces Kevin Costner and she who plays him. She's a real broad.

2. Kevin Costner - who let's not forget, was the biggest male star in Hollywood back then - is astoundingly bad. I've seen more animation in a kitchen table. Yes, he's meant to be a tough, regimented military man but he is also THE MOST TEDIOUS MAN IN THE WORLD. There's zero chemistry between him and Whitney. In fact, they just look like they want to stab each other.

3. There's really not that much snoggage. Despite everyone knowing the weepy track 'I Will Always Love You', that's only right at the end in a shortened form and it feels stuck in. The two leads never really have much of a relationship. It's actually more of a crime drama (psycho fan stalking a celeb). It's also so overstyled in a 90s erotic thriller way (shadows, mansions, outfits etc) that it's hard for any warm romance to filter through.

4. Summary - it's really genuinely odd. The kind of film that now would have critics laughing hysterically in the aisles as it's so cheesy. But this film was HUGE. It had them blubbing in the aisles. I'm lost, readers, I really am. The Bodyguard now feels like a curiously heartless slice of 'B' movie cheese.

That said, I'm now off to download the soundtrack.

A bit of Nine awesomeness...

Over here at 'JKM' we're a little bit excited by the film Nine (as opposed to the film 9, the upcoming post-apocalyptic animation, that also looks good but is less of 'my thing').

Nine stars Daniel Day-Lewis and here's a still from the film that's up on MTV Movies. The film is a musical - woo, and indeed, hoo - that's somehow based on the old Fellini film 8 1/2 (which is rather good, should you have a couple of hours to spare one night).

The trailer is amazing and is here in case you missed it last time it was posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_5_lzags3I&feature=fvst

I'm just pleased that in this pic, DD-L appears to be...wait for it...enjoying himself. I've no doubt that the movie will have its moments of intensity since it's about a film director losing his marbles but still, to watch The World's Greatest Actor (TM) in lighter mode is a really mouth-watering prospect.

Director Rob 'Chicago' Marshall has also laid on the glam big time, which won't do anything to stop the 'haters' hating musicals but for us...er...'lovers' it delivers exactly what we want. Fantasy.

Nine is out in November. Rob Marshall's then off, for some reason, to direct Pirates Of The Caribbean 4.

'Bulimia's soooo '87...'

Heathers is an 80s movie full of all kinds of awesomeness. Watch it now and there are the obvious titters at dodgy outfits and lack of 'cell' phones but its dialogue was, is and always will be spikily hilarious (see title quote).

No high school pic has been so darkly humourous since. Clueless had the lingo but was joyously fluffy. Napoleon Dynamite was a similarly cult hit but lacked the '18' certificate. Juno, its closest contemporary, probed where other teen pics dare not go but it still wasn't a comedy about SUICIDE.

Now that's dark.

So quite what the new TV version of the show that Fox are prepping will be like, who knows? It's got a Sex & The City scribe polishing it up as we speak but will US teen telly dare get as blissfully bleak as Heathers needs to be? (apologies for the Daily Mail-style rhetorical questioning).

But with the actually-quite-edgy Gossip Girl hitting big and Juno writer Diablo Cody about to release her second pic (Jennifer's Body - described by many, but not me, as 'the new Heathers'), the time is defo RIPE.

And how about that poster, readers?! Aaaaah, the days when Winona wasn't just a future light-fingered has-been and people actually thought that Christian Slater was the new Jack Nicholson.

I know, I know. The crazy 80s...

POLL RESULT! Your favourite 90s starlet with 3 names...

1. SMG

2. MJH

3. RLC

4. JLH

Or, in old money...

1. Sarah Michelle Gellar

2. Melissa Joan Hart

3. Rachel Leigh Cook

4. Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Good news for fans of Buffy. Bad news for fans of Can't Hardly Wait (ie. me).