After a lovely two-hour drive from Prague, here we are in Karlovy Vary for the film festival that kicks off tonight. This is the view from my hotel window. I think I might like it here.
Canadians and those who wish they were flocked to London’s Trafalgar Square in hot sunshine today to celebrate Canada Day, drink Moosehead beer, eat Canada Bison Burgers, and watch a game of street hockey.
Here’s a little tribute on YouTube
Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth are among the cast of ‘Mamma Mia!’
By Ray Bennett
LONDON — No matter how many blockbusters there are, Universal Pictures’ screen version of the global hit stage musical “Mamma Mia!” is the most fun to be had at the movies this or any other recent summer.
Teenage boys may be glued to the latest action adventure, but the rest of the family will be having a rollicking good time and dancing in the aisles to Swedish pop group ABBA’s irresistible songs.
It’s a delightful piece of filmmaking with a marvelous cast topped by Meryl Streep (left) in one of her smartest and most entertaining performances ever.
After its world premiere in London on Monday, the film opens in the U.K. on July 4 and in North America on July 18. It will surely follow the stage show around the world in pleasing audiences and coining what one of the infectious songs celebrates: “Money, Money, Money.”
Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter and more about the film
A human Maple Leaf flag made in New Brunswick to honor Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan
The Canada Rocks concert in Trafalgar Square on Monday is sold out but that still leaves plenty to do there on Canada Day Tuesday with events all day and through the evening. This is besides the annual booze-up at the Maple Leaf pub on Maiden Lane near Covent Garden, which attracts hundreds of Canadians and other ex-pats for a good-natured celebration.
I am, for my sins, an Englishman although I’ve picked up a little Tennessee and California along the way. I am also, proudly, a Canadian citizen. It was with no little glee, therefore, that I came upon an article in Canada’s national newsweekly Macleans Magazine that has some fun at the expense of its American neighbors in explaining why being Canadian is not such a bad thing despite the way we are so often mocked in America. Macleans examined lots of data comparing the two countries and came up with some startling results. Here’s an excerpt:
After digging through the data, here’s what we found: the staid, underpaid Canadian is dead. Believe it or not, we now have more wealth than Americans, even though we work shorter hours. We drink more often, but we live longer and have fewer diseases.
We have more sex, more sex partners and we’re more adventurous in bed, but we have fewer teen pregnancies and fewer sexually transmitted diseases. We spend more time with family and friends, and more time exploring the world.
Even in crime we come out ahead: we’re just as prone to break the law, but when we do it, we don’t get shot. Most of the time, we don’t even go to jail.
The data shows that it’s the Canadians who are living it up, while Americans toil away, working longer hours to pay their mounting bills.
Read the full article in Macleans and here’s more about Canada Day
Steve Evets and Robert Carlyle recall better days in Kenny Glenaan’s ‘Summer’
By Ray Bennett
EDINBURGH — Robert Carlyle and Steve Evets make a credible pair of survivors at the nasty end of life’s social stick as an ill-tempered dyslectic looking after his quadriplegic buddy in Kenny Glenaan’s uneven slice-of-life drama “Summer.”
Their story is told at three different ages with two sets of youngsters playing them as kids and teenagers. The summer of the title is the only time that Shaun (Carlyle) recalls with pleasure when his younger self (Sean Kelly) was in love with a bright young woman named Katy (Joanna Tulej). The film cuts back and forth between the three periods although not always seamlessly.
Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter
David O’Doherty, Dylan Moran, Jersey the dog, and Mark Doherty in ‘A Film With Me In It’
By Ray Bennett
EDINBURGH — The bodies keep piling up and so do the laughs in Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon’s clever and very funny black farce “A Film With Me In It.” With an attitude towards sudden death as droll as in the best Ealing Studios comedies, the film lampoons the fevered imagination of screenwriters in its tale of two would-be filmmakers who must deal with one calamity after another in the confines of a basement apartment.
Featuring standout comic performances by Mark Doherty, who wrote the script, and Dylan Moran, the picture’s bracingly dark sense of humor and adherence to its own perverse logic will please audiences that enjoyed such comedies as “Withnail and I” and “A Fish Called Wanda.”
Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter
By Ray Bennett
EDINBURGH — The “14 Kilometers” in Gerardo Olivares’ ambitious tale of African refugees seeking a better life in Europe is the stretch of water that separates the northern tip of Africa from Spain.
To reach it, the central characters of two brothers from Niger and a young woman from Mail must traverse the enormous and pitiless Tenere Desert, often at the mercy of people interested only in their money.
Their desperate plight is often at odds with and not informed by the gorgeous desert scenery, which is photographed in all its contoured glory.
Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter
My great mate Ron Base, whose novel “Magic Man,” published by St. Martin’s Press, is a terrific read about old Hollywood, is publishing his new novel, “The Brilliant Mrs. Cheveley” online. Set in Paris, London and Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, his story concerns one Mrs. Laura Cheveley, whom he describes as “a remarkable woman of rare mystery and beauty who specializes in ‘providing the confidence that allows one to believe.’” Here’s how “The Brilliant Mrs. Cheveley” begins:
I hurried across the Place de La Concorde and up the Champs Elysées, moving beneath the naked branches of the Rond Point chestnuts, past elderly gentlemen in their three-sou chairs, ignoring the darkening skies and rising wind to observe through a descending fog the ceaseless parade of landaus, victorias, buggies, fiacres, and coupes, the uncertain light reflecting off coachmen’s whips and the polished rumps of shimmering hackney ponies.
The high clear blast of a hunting horn broke the air, an outriding piqueur’s warning of a tally-ho stage’s rumbling passage – the fanfare for the joy of living in Paris, I used to think – a florid-faced gentleman driving smart clubmen and fashionable ladies holding tight to the brims of immense hats. And every so often, the chug chug of an approaching automobile, a Panhard perhaps, or a Dion or maybe a Mercedes, the harsh gasoline smell obliterating momentarily the odor of horse manure that clung to even the most stately boulevards.
Read on here
No visit to Edinburgh is complete without stopping in at the Halfway House pub on Fleshmarket Close in Old Town between Cockburn Street and Market Street. It is one of the best real ale pubs in Britain and the food is great too. Yesterday, it was a plate of beef and venison casserole followed by a rhubarb fool. A pint or two of An teallach ale and all is right with the world. Here’s the pub’s website.
I saw George Carlin perform live in Detroit and Los Angeles and he always put me on the floor. One of his most observant and funniest routines was simply about “stuff”: my stuff, your stuff, the stuff we collect and all the stuff we put up with. The New York Times has his obituary and links to several stories, and comic Jerry Seinfeld also has written a piece. Here’s how it starts:
The honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”
Read the full article and more about Carlin in The New York Times
