iPad Round-Up 1 - THE BIG YEAR

THE BIG YEAR is a charming, gentle comedy about the importance of family and following your dreams.  Jack Black stars as a guy in a dead-end job who has a passion for bird-watching, and defies his father's incredulity to do "the big year" - a challenge in which US birdwatchers compete to see the most species.  He's competing against Steve Martin's successful executive, who's about to retire and spend time with his loving family.  And both the Steve Martin and Jack Black character strike up a friendship in opposition to their common enemy - Owen Wilson's slick, hyper-competitive, incumbent title-holder - a man who has sacrificed his marriage to his obsession.

There are no big revelations in terms of the performance.  Jack Black plays his typical loveable loser character.  Steve Martin plays his typical loveable cool dad character.  Owen Wilson plays his typical loveable rogue.  The direction (David Frankel - MARLEY & ME) is workmanlike and the script (Howard Franklin - ANTITRUST) is efficient.  But the movie had a genuinely warm tone to it, it successfully conveyed the madness and the beauty of birdwatching, against all odds, and I had a good time with it.

THE BIG YEAR was released in Canada, the US, Ireland and the UK in 2011 and earlier this year in Malta, Australia, Portugal, Lithuania and Romania. It opens in Germany on June 14th and in France on September 19th. It is available to rent and own. 

HOW DO YOU KNOW

HOW DO YOU KNOW is a truly execrable relationship drama that was, for some reason, marketed as a light-hearted romantic comedy. Reese Witherspoon plays a pro soft-ball player cut from the national team as she turns thirty - a move that sends her into a life crisis.  She simply doesn't know whether she wants to be a normal girl with a boyfriend and eventually a baby, let alone who she wants to be with. The choices are Owen Wilson's wealthy but promiscuous pro sportsman and Paul Rudd's earnest but hapless failed businessmen. Hardly a great set of options.  Cue lots of sex with the pro sportsmen, lots of wannabe quirky-cute conversations with the failed businessmen, and a lot of really really boring scenes in which unlikeable narcissists ruminate on how shitty their lives are, all the time in perfectly designed rooms with perfectly quaffed hair.  Witherspoon is mawkish; Rudd is mawkish; and Wilson plays that charming rogue character he always plays.  But no-one is more ill-used than Jack Nicholson.  Where's the emotional insight and wry wit of James L Brooks' AS GOOD AS IT GETS?  Where's the real heart of James L Brooks' THE SIMPSONS.  Poor, poor, poor.

HOW DO YOU KNOW is on release in the US, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Egypt, France, Ireland, Spain and the UK. It opens in February in Estonia, Australia, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, Bulgaria, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Iceland and Lithuania. It opens in March in Belgium, Kuwait, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, the Philippines, Poland and Norway. It opens on April 29th in Brazil.

Wes Anderson's THE FANTASTIC MR FOX to open London 2009

After the genius of BOTTLE ROCKET and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and the self-indulgent fiascos of THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and THE DARJEELING LIMITED, all eyes are on Wes Anderson's next project, an animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, THE FANTASTIC MR FOX. Set for release in the UK on October 23rd and in the US on November 13th, the movie will open the London Film Festival this year. Let's hope it can break the hoo-doo of recent open films which have all been picked on commercial rather than critical grounds - mediocre, solid but that's all. I give you films such as THE CONSTANT GARDENER, FROST/NIXON and oh, that awful biopic, SYLVIA. So far, things look good. We have a voice cast stuffed with Anderson regulars - Owen Wilson, Angelica Huston - but we also have top notch British characters - Michael Gambon, Helen McCrory - not to mention genuine Hollywood A-list in Meryl Streep (stepping in for Cate Blanchett as Mrs Fox). I also love that Anderson has gone back to old school stop motion animation. Sounds, if not fantastic, given his recent record, at least intriguing....