Pulling a rabbit out of the hat: The Illusionist review

Fabulous movies don't have to be plot-filled. And great scripts can be stuck in development hell for fifty years.

Jacques Tati wrote the screenplay for The Illusionist back in 1956 as a way of trying to re-establish a relationship with his estranged late daughter, Sophie (see also Edinbourg rendez-vous? Yes, please)

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The Tati Estate has been very cautious about anyone producing the story, so Sylvain Chomet (the maker of the classic Belleville Rendez-Vous) needed the tact of a fox to convince the family to let him loose on the crown jewels as a feature-length animation.

And to persuade them to let him reset the movie largely in Edinburgh and the Highlands of Scotland.

Big on atmosphere, father-daughter relationships and the disappointment of fading dreams, The Illusionist is a period costume piece without nostalgia. It's a rites of passage story about growing up and growing old, sad without being tragic and with a strange nobility invested in the central character: Tati himself as the illusionist.

Almost a silent film, the movie has a great chance of an Oscar next year as Best Foreign Picture. Go see it for yourselves.


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Overnet stardom

The mechanisms of making a name for oneself are changing. Wither music went, comedy follows. Bo Burnham has gone from gigging in his bedroom to the Edinburgh Fringe, with a stratospheric fan base shift from 1 (his Mum) to 59 million.

What's next? Playwrights: front room to Royal Court? Actors showreels: no need for auditions? Television presenters/hosts: cut out the expensive Stage School fees?

But in this wired world of celebrity meteors, will fame burn brightly but fade quickly? It would be interesting to learn current hit stats for Susan Boyle YouTube videos and websites.


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The Katy Perry Brand

Is she or is she not married? Slips of the tongue on The Graham Norton Show suggests Katy Perry may well have already tied the knot with Russell Brand. No matter, they'll be hitched soon in any case.

But how do married pop stars fare? Will she be a Louise Redknapp, formerly of Eternal, who retired gracefully from the scene when she married Jamie? Or will she be a Madonna, carrying on regardless of who she's seeing?

The brand may have to change, though, as reality will change adolescent fantasy. Perhaps she'll corner the Easy Listening market or release albums direct to a supermarket or elevator near you? Or follow Tiffany and tour the malls.


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Budget: blue is the colour

When even the Queen is subject to a pay freeze as the Government applies the budget tourniquet, what could possibly be the antidote to the fiscal gloom?

What can provide relief from job worries, benefit blows, tax torment and service cuts? And World Cup torment to boot?

Football bloopers ...


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Alan Bennett and the ice-cream robbery scam

Alan Bennett, the famous diarist, playwright and Beyond the Fringe veteran, has fallen victim to a con in central London where two women splattered his raincoat with ice-cream and offered to clean it up, while stealing £1500 he had just withdrawn from his bank.

The probability of being robbed in the street does not vary whether someone is well known or not, but the silver lining for Mr Bennett is that he can write about it in his diaries. The episode might even be the kernel of a new play.

This would be an interesting form of revenge, turning adversity into profit while highlighting the scam to warn off repeat offences and copycat pickpockets.


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Events, dear boy, events

The Thick of It picked up three BAFTAs this evening. On receiving his screenwriting award, Armando Iannucci, complained that Nick Clegg had ruined the next series.

Politics, it seems, can move swifter than writing schedules ... and YouTube satire.


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Lempik Öpik and the talking shoe

Nuff said (see Lempik Öpik: definition of a midlife crisis).

Maybe Mr Öpik was ticking off a childhood dream. He may now have to try the next item on his wishlist.


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Lembit Öpik: definition of a mid-life crisis

So what does a recently deposed MP do with their unexpected spare time after an election? Write their memoirs? Get stuck back into local politics? Return to their previous career?

No, Lembit Öpik, the former LibDem MP for Montgomeryshire is tonight trying his hand out as a stand-up comedian. Obviously.

This is either a stroke of genius or a recipe for mid-life shaped disaster.

On the plus side, Mr Öpik has plenty of material to draw on: engagement to a Cheeky girl (check); earlier engagement to a weathergirl (check); obsession with Earth-bound asteroids (check). And, to be honest, to keep relationships going with younger women, he must have more of a sense of humour than he displayed on a recent episode of Have I Got News for You (although appearing of the show within 24 hours of his ousting hinted of an ability to absorb humiliation and tout his CV on primetime television).

On the minus side, it might be a case of history repeating itself as farce. To get rejected from a safe-seat constituency might be unfortunate; to be booted off a comedy stage of your choosing within three weeks of the first pasting may look like carelessness.

My guess is that the reviewers will not be kind ... unless Mr Öpik turns out to show hitherto hidden brilliance at the one-liners as well as the harmonica. Politicians' appearances on panel shows tend to reflect their sense of hubris and ego rather than their innate sense of comic timing.


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BP: for their next trick ...

BP is the oil-industry's equivalent of Tommy Cooper: except that the failed conjuring tricks they have been performing on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico not only don't work, they aren't funny.

So far BP has tried the 'top kill' approach to stopping the oil flow. This consists of trying to plug the gap with all shades of rubbish and capping the pipe: they have tried drilling fluids, mud, tyres, golf balls and cement. BP has also tried closing safety valves.

Now they are going for the grand finale: cutting the pipe in half further down its length to get a clean break,  and then trying the capping procedure all over again.

The tension is palpable. A good outcome, and Hollywood producers will be primed with chequebooks for an action movie starring Tom Cruise, Hugh Jackman and Angelina Jolie (Deepwater Horizon, anyone? No pitch required, ho ho); fail, and BP will be writing the cheques to the US Government and reading said writing on the wall. The directors may even be reading it on the wall of a prison cell if recent applications of the Anglo-American extradition 'treaty' are applied (e.g. Gary McKinnon, austistic hacker extraordinaire; the Enron bankers from NatWest).

If the above scenarios may be fantasy (for now), one thing is for sure: either way, BP will be picking up the tab. Barack Obama needs someone to blame, even if the disaster wasn't strictly his fault. Laissez-faire policies with respect to big oil are ingrained on the American psyche: the Bush presidencies of father and son need particular highlighting.

And Michael Moore won't be far behind with his particular brand of TV Nation reportage: Obama and Me; Fahrenheit 494.6 (the temperature at which gasoline burns); or perhaps even Slicker Uprising. All bets are off.


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The mutt pack

As Andrew O'Hagan launches his novel The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and his Friend Marilyn Munroe, George Clooney is already touting for the role of Frank Sinatra even though film rights have yet to be discussed.

Should this positioning of actors for choice roles based on historic be given its own syndrome?

Freud and Jung would have a field day.


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So what's next, Graham Norton

Graham Norton is following in the footsteps of Jonathan Ross, if reports are to be believed. It's likely that he will take over Wossy's Saturday morning radio slot and, maybe, he'll get the Friday night gig, too.

It's a changing of the guard that won't frighten the horses. Mr Norton is a very talented broadcaster.


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It's now or never

Elvis meets Gordon, I kid you not. The King glad-handing Mr Bean.

Classic election serendipity, perhaps. Or maybe pre-arranged.

A good luck charm, or will it be a little less conversation after the election.


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The short arm of the law

Mark Thomas, the comedian and activist, has been awarded £1200 compensation and an apology for being searched unlawfully by the Metropolitan Police. Why?

Because having an 'over-confident attitude' after delivering a speech does not constitute sufficient reason to be manhandled.

Expect this incident to feature strongly in Mr Thomas's next tour; already he is saying the Met have sponsored the shows.


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What Jonathan did next ...

A conundrum is answered: Jonathan Ross is back in the news with his next project (see also Friday night without Jonathan Ross).

The talkshow/comedy host is writing a comic-book miniseries called Turf, with illustrator Tommy Lee Edwards, perhaps already optioned by director Matthew Vaughn to follow up his cut hit Kick-Ass.

Mr Ross confesses to the Guardian his need to be a creative for once, rather than riffing off guests or documentary subjects. Perhaps he'll follow in his wife's footsteps and be a scriptwriter for a while, using his television schtick to fund his vanity projects?

There are precedents ... Russell Brand, Mr Ross' evil twin, is forging a career as an actor in Hollywood; and Kevin Spacey acts in Hollywood movies in part to support his work as artistic director at the Old Vic.


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Wanted: a better class of heckler for an internet age

Day 3 of the general election campaign, and the quality of political heckler has reached a new low.

Ben Butterworth harangued Gordon Brown about the lack of a school place for his 4-year-old daughter. He later wrote on his blog that George Osborne was a 'slimeball'. Although there is no recorded comment about the LibDems, Mr Butterworth seems despairing of all politicians.

The parties need to take care in an internet age of claiming disaffected voters are actually supportive of their policies. We live in a fragmented world of opinion.

The most effective hecklers may turn out to be online poster hackers. Why not go the whole hog and Photoshop original, funny images that can be circulated virally? Or topical Youtube sketches? Or create irresistible Facebook petitions masquerading as humorous rants (see the effect of the Virgin flyer who complained about the airline's food)? This might even negate the effect of expensive election advertising campaigns devised by the likes of the Saatchi brothers.


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Olaf Pirlo makes a killing

Hot on the heels of their April Fool story about Labour's campaign making a virtue out of Gordon Brown's pugilism, the Guardian is flogging the T-shirts.

Perhaps this is a sophisticated polling ploy to find out if this approach might actually work? Would this be a poster that wouldn't get defaced on the internet?

Humour might be the best way of making voters take notice of a message. Get the people laughing with you rather than at you.


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Pulped fiction

Someone in the Motherhood movie marketing team, Metrodome, is going to be calling a taxi on their career any moment now.

The new Uma Thurman vehicle launched in one UK cinema to garner an exclusivity buzz tanked under an invisibilty cloak: it took £88.00 at the UK box office on its opening weekend. This amounts to twelve paying customers.

It's no wonder Hollywood seems reluctant to shell out megabucks for stars these days.

Motherhood may be heading for DVD rather sooner than first planned, unless the reverse pychology of wanting to see a failed movie kicks in.

Odd title Diagram Prize winner

The votes are in and the winner of the Diagram Prize for the unintentionally oddest book title of the year is ...

Crocheting adventures with hyperbolic planes by Daina Taimina (see also earlier post, 'The importance of being odd', 11 March 2010)

Apparently it's the best fusion of crochet and mathematics known to humankind. Long may it prosper in the Billboard Geek 100 bestseller chart.

The British character ...

It's worth giving a wider airing to comedian Rufus Hound's dance routine for Sport Relief, reliving Cheryl Cole's moves for her single Fight for this Love. It's a microcosm of the British character.

What more could you ask? The British excel at poking fun at ourselves, blokes in frocks, raising money for charity, being rubbish at sports we invented, pricking pomposity, and putting full-on heart and soul into being incredibly silly.

Rufus Hound's routine ticks all the boxes.

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The importance of being odd

The Bookseller has released the shortlist for this year's Diagram Prize for oddest unintentional book title of the year. The candidates for this celebrated yet dubious honour are:

• Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A Yannes;
• Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by D W T Crompton;
• Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots by Ronald C Arkin;
• The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Marla Dubinsky;
• Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina; and
• What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua? by Tara Jansen-Meyer.

I have always thought this prize interesting yet somehow snarky: laughing behind hands at the implied silliness of the titles. How much more fascinating it would be to know the sales figures and the Amazon ranking of odd titles. Profitable oddity would be a cause really worth celebrating.