It was like capturing a picture of the Yeti or the end of a rainbow. But in the middle of a lecture at Columbia university in March 2009, one student with a camera-phone finally snapped it: James Franco asleep. Head hung back on his shoulders. Jaw gently unlatched. Hands folded over his notebook.
So this dynamo actor/student/artist/writer/model/ joker was human, after all. But Franco wasn’t sleeping. He was busy. Busy answering the question, the same question he would keep asking Danny Boyle. Read the rest of this entry »
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Which places on Earth would still love to visit?
Two things before we start on Terrence Malick’s philosophical, spiritual, experimental, transcendent, cosmic odyssey. One: it’s shorter than Transformers 3. Two: it has dinosaurs in it. But really, where on earth do we start? Not on Earth. Not at the start. Further back. In The Beginning… 
Love has taken a battering lately. Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole and The Kids Are All Right have all shown it busting up, breaking down and dying hard. Love’s had it tough. Love’s had Twilight, for pity’s sake. But things weren’t always like this. 
Life-eating obsession. Dizzying detail. Surgical precision. This two-disc Director’s Cut DVD slams home the point: this gripping true-life procedural is as much as about David Fincher’s hunt for the Zodiac killer as it is about the story of the men who burned up two decades of their lives looking for him. 
1. Steve Martin
On paper, it really couldn’t look much better. A romantic thriller from The Lives Of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. A script inked by him, Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park). A first ever on-screen pairing of Hollywood super-idols Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Oscar-winners, every one of them. 
There’s a story that Billy Wilder (legendary Oscar-winning filmmaker) once told Billy Bob Thornton (impoverished LA waiter) that he didn’t look pretty enough to make it as an actor. Thornton didn’t care. Firstly, he didn’t really want to be an actor anyway. Secondly, he looked interesting. And interesting beat pretty any day of the week. The first Billy would live just long enough to watch the second Billy (actor, writer, director) win an Oscar and marry the hottest woman on the planet. 
The scowl. The muscles. The senseless acts of violence. Jason Statham IS The Transporter! No, hang on – The Mechanic! Oh, who are we kidding? By now Statham is essentially his own subgenre and Con Air director Simon West’s first film in three years wastes no time in serving up some full-frontal Stath-porn. 
Crashing in as a 10-tonne metaphor, Michael Bay’s deafening mega-blockbuster sees humanity attacked by a destructive new super-technology. Well, quite. Yawping a stunning new age for digital animation, Hasbro’s 60ft alien robots transform from helicopters and hi-fis in a seamless spectacle of hydraulic crank and whir, as the evil Decepticons battle the heroic Autobots for mankind’s future. Cue the in-built irony: in Bay’s world, moving parts aren’t for the actors. 
