. . . WINTER FILM SPECIAL

GANGS OF NEW YORK 15 February, 2002

Martin Scorsese may have returned to the mean streets of New York With his last film Bringing Out The Dead. but he wasn't at his best in ER medical care territory. With Gangs Marty returns to what he knows best: mobster mentality. This time the setting is mid-19th century NYC with an Irish gang. led by Daniel Day Lewis. giving incoming Italian immigrants a tough time. Caught up in the midst of this is little Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. Apparently, Scorsese originally wanted to score the film with a Clash soundtrack.

‘Imagine if the Coen brothers made a film that was weirder, cleverer and cooler than anything they’d come up with yet’

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCEROR'S STONE

16 November, 2001

Warner Bros changed the title (Philosopher 's wasn‘t it’2i and got a Yank to direct it. so the big screen version of JK. Rov-xling's first kids adults fantasy tale must be crap. right? Doesn't look that way. Though Warners are keeping the special effects sequences under wraps. the extravagant. atmospheric sets look suitably impressive. Casting-wise the stop marked ‘Classic. Character And Comic ActOrs of Britain Circa Late-20th Centuiy has been pulled out: Richard Harris. John Hurt. Maggie Smith. Alan Rickman. Fiona Shaw. Robbie Coltrane. Rik Mayall . . .

THE MAN WHO MULHOLLAND DRIVE WASN’T THERE Early 2002

26 October, 2001 _ . They (they get everywhere) said that DaVid

Lynch had gone soft with The Straight Story because it wasn't very violent and extremely frightening and utterly weird. ‘They' were wrong. Nevertheless 'they' will be happy with Lynch's latest in which he dissects the

Imagine if the Coen brothers made a film that was weirder, cleverer and cooler than anything they'd come up with yet. Imagine if. as they've done many times before. they took a well-

14 THE LIST r: 1a ()2: with

known genre. say film noir. paid homage to it and then went one step further and grafted onto it some heavyweight philosophising. And imagine getting flummoxed at a load of existential meditation and then realising Joel and Ethan were haVing a good laugh With it. Imagine Billy Bob Thornton's small town barber wondering where dead hair goes when he's cut it off. Imagine his wife Frances McDormand cheating on him and

wl iat he does to get revenge on her lover James Gandolfini.

Hollywood dream fact0ry. as it's often called. using nothing more than violence. sex. a great soundtrack and a plot that defies summation. And ini nearly never got to see Mil/hO/Iand Drive: originally commissioned by ABC as a television pilot. the station balked when they saw what the man affectionately known as ‘James Stewart from

Mars' had done. Bailed

out by the French, Lynch

iunked half the pilot. shot

new stuff and upgraded

the whole thing to a state

of Cinematic terrific-ness.