Philhelm Scream

Source A few weeks ago Charlotte surprised me with a birthday trip to Berlin for three days.  As he wasn't touring to Manchester, and seeing as flying to Berlin would cost the same as a train to London, the idea was to catch a Joshua Radin gig while we were there.  We have friends living in Berlin that were kind enough to put us up, and we had a brilliant break away from the norm.   Charlotte’s blog covers the break we had in all its foody glory , but there were a few bits where we went that had a certain filmy flavour too. If you’re not aware of Joshua Radin, you have probably heard some of his acoustic folk over the top of that sad bit at the end of every Scrubs episode .   I’ve been a big fan for years now, but it was a weird experience seeing him in another country.  The venue looked like a converted theatre or cinema, and that added to the chilled atmosphere.  The day after we went to Berlin’s Film Museum in Potsdamer Platz .  If you have ne...

Source In a recent his recent YouTube video , Mark Kermode focused on the unusual pairing of writing and editing partnership of Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump. Unusual not for the process or the material they focus on (although that has so varied!), but in how they view the promotion of their films. Wheatley is very much in the public eye, while Jump actively avoids the limelight (I’ll admit that I had only heard of the former before watching Kermode’s video). Wheatley is very active on social media, doing interview and actively promoting the finished film, while Amy Jump feels that this is unnecessary and that the finished product should speak for itself. Despite their contrasting approach to handling a finished film, there’s no denying that they would work well together in creating it in the first place. The two have worked on multiple projects now – Kill List knocked the wind out of me and is one of my favourite horrors , although I found High Rise hard work and left me in ne...

Source Ghost in the Shell was a Masamune Shirow manga series that spawned Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime film of the same name.   As it now a popular trend, that animation has been remade as a live action (English language) feature.   Set in a future where human’s are able to upgrade body parts with cyborg versions, Scarlett Johansson plays the first woman to have her brain planted in a completely cyborg body after hers was destroyed.  This comes at a cost though.   She has very little (if any memory) of her past, and with her advanced body is used as a perfect soldier. Source I haven’t seen the original(s), and had actually disregarded the trailer of this new take as a poor Matrix rip-off at best (and nothing more than an excuse to get Scarlett Johansson in a skin tight body suit at worst).  It wasn’t until later that I read that this is the wrong way around, and that actually it’s the Wachowski’s Matrix films were heavily inspired by the Anime Ghost i...