Movie Review:The Ides of March – Clooney provides us with a flick that sizzles, satisfy’s & tantalises our political taste buds!

This one is George Clooney’s 4^th outing as a Director and I really did enjoy pretty much every minute of it. There are some lovely twists and with a truly stellar cast it packs a wonderful political punch.

In this film we don’t dwell on the big speeches and the public announcements too much, what we are provided with here is more of the behind the scenes look into the campaign. What all the guys and girls running round like headless chickens are up to on the senators behalf, with the small seedy hotel rooms, the back street bars & empty office rooms, where 'the real decisions are made' I found it pretty riveting stuff.

Our story follows Steven Myers (Ryan Gosling) an idealistic campaign spokesman for Presidential hopeful Mike Morris (George Clooney) and working alongside chain smoking Campaign Manager Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) as they fight, squabble & debate their way through the day to day offerings of the campaign.

Morris is the perfect candidate, cool, charming & quick lipped, with a near shoe in for the Presidency. Myers appears to be a political boy genius with Paul Zara forever slowly slapping him back down to earth, and when Myers gets a call from the opposition spokesperson Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) to come over to their side the story really kicks in with Myers finding himself fanning fires from several directions, including an affair he gets tangled up in with an Intern on the campaign (the lovely Evan Rachel Wood).

Gosling I'm convinced has it written into his contract this simple statement: 'Must end up in bed with really hot chick or will not do movie'.

Anyway! You aren’t bored here with political mumbo jumbo, the story flows well and the focus is much more around the characters (especially Myers) journey & interaction with each other which keeps this film very engaging.

I’ve also decided that I’m a little starved of good films of late I must admit. So this was a welcomed addition to the year. It certainly doesn’t break any boundaries in this particular genre. 

But it floated my northern boat none the less.

7 Northern Thumbs Out of 10.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1103731737/

Movie Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - a rather brilliant, but slightly confusing piece of espionage!

I’d been massively looking forward to this re-make from a 1970’s classic TV series starring Alec Guinness. With its rather stellar British cast and with the wonderful glimpse into the cold war period, spies, espionage and all that. It had to be pretty juicy stuff! 

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson (Vampire film ‘Let the Right One In’) we are catapulted back to a time of extreme uncertainty, paranoia & ‘it’s time to pick a side’ mentality.

Our film mainly follows semi retired M16 agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) in his quest to track down a Soviet sympathiser (the correct term being a ‘mole’) in the ranks.

The whole M16 operation is called ‘the Circus’ and when Control (John Hurt) narrows down their suspects to five likely lads within the organisation, George sets about digging into the world with which they have all been a part in an attempt to smoke the bugger out!

Mr Oldman is sensational, subtle, and cool; he crafts this role into a performance that will most certainly have him up for an Oscar. His supporting cast, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Cathy Burke, Tom Hardy & Colin Firth all play wonderful parts in making this an intriguing wonderfully told piece of filmmaking.

Tom Hardy is also worth mentioning as such a bloody great actor. He plays a more rogue agent who goes AWOL, but once tracked down by Oldman gives some vital clues to who the mole could be, they almost have a bit of an ‘act off’ together at one point which is totally captivating stuff!

The plot twists and turns throughout this picture (which at times) makes us work rather hard as an audience. You will (or at the very least I did anyway!) get a little lost at certain points. There is a great deal to follow here and I came out thinking I will almost certainly need to see this again, at the very least just to pick up on a view areas I wasn't 100% clear on.

The era is captured really well, from the smoky corridors of M16 to the grim and grotty back streets of London & Istanbul. You are taken on a journey here that takes it’s time, explores it’s characters and depicts our time and place with a beautiful accuracy that I’m sure any boring historian would blow his load over.

Go the Brits, The Circus and the Swedes.

8 Northern Thumbs out of 10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco15ScXCwA

OutPost – The world’s graffiti community gets together to put on a show. Cockatoo island style!

I could think of worse ways to spend my sunny Saturdays. And even worse ways to head to the newly opened Graffiti exhibit on Cockatoo Island via ferry.

Last time I headed to the island of Cockatoo, I went to the Biennale exhibition which had loads of awesome installations, mind blowing some of them actually! That was certainly going to be a hard one to beat.

This time around though the artistry is only part of what the island has to offer - with DJ’s, entertainment, badge making?! (not sure about that one), skateboarding and a couple of snazzy bars with the Sydney backdrop at your feet - you do feel rather at home pretty quickly.

You can camp over night here which is also pretty cool - on the boat over I nearly had my head taken off a few times, or my footing misplaced for fear of some little bastard kid carrying around camping gear for his mother and father. I'm all for dog collars and leads on these little people. 

The cool kids are here too sipping on sparkling wine with the odd Corona staring out towards the harbour from what they’ve decided to call the island bar.

Back to the art though - it’s nothing special. Don’t get me wrong, there really is some impressive work here! But once you’ve been into one area and the next, you tend to get the picture people.

Art though is a subjective little thing and I’m sure you could end up perusing the various warehouses full of work for hours, not I though thank you.

Some Banksy work is also here though. Handed over by a collector for the duration of the show, which is always nice to look at. In comparison to all the other works you can certainly see why the man is as popular as he is!

Overall though, nice atmosphere, a few pretty pictures & on a nice day you can smash a few beers on the grass while the barman persistently switched tracks on the sound system because he can’t make his mind up whether he wants Marvin Gaye or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on. 

 

 http://outpost.cockatooisland.gov.au/