In this week's virtual mail bag of blog replies, the question of mammon and the movies has opened up a mine of conjecture regarding the budget versus creativity dynamic, and at your request I offer up my own candidate for the greatest ever multimillion dollar blockbuster. Feel free to volunteer your own...
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In the week that brilliant musician Jamie Foxx plays a genius cellist abandoned by society in The Soloist, why is it that for me actors portraying musicians on film always strikes a bum note?
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Having disgorged my own views about food on film I'm delighted to see that some of you have lapped them up and served me a plateful of your own, in response to which I'll begin by saying that yes indeed I have considered the ethical dimensions of eating live cephalopods for entertainment purposes....
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Whether you're watching the latest bazillion dollar epic or a tuppence ha'penny George Romero tribute flick, is it the money that makes a movie money?
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My Friday afternoon movie sparring partner Simon Mayo is leaving his 5 live slot for Radio 2 where he takes over from Chris Evans. But what of him and me, us, of you and wittertainment? Well, we have an announcement on that too...
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More great stuff from you including some of your most aposite movie venues, and a quick update on the Bride Wars challenge: it's genuine alright, but I do believe some of you need a quick reminder of the working parameters.
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5 live's resident movie critic Dr Mark Kermode reviews Adventureland, the latest film from 'Superbad' Director, Greg Mottola.
Go to Mark on
5 Live for more reviews and film debate.
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Watching other people chow down may be fun for chefs and doting mothers but on the big screen it can sometimes turn a critic's tummy. And in cinema's kitchen none have tweaked the emetics so deliberately as these, my Top Ten Eat to the Beat movie moments.
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Sometimes it takes another couple of viewings to recognise just how great a quiet original can be. Written and directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawler, Helen is the mesmerising tale of an orphan girl who probes her own identity when she is used as a stand-in during a police reconstruction of a murder, and it is nothing less than one of the best films of the year.
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About this time of year I like to
watch favourite films of mine such as The Devils and Local Hero and Of Time and
the City at the farthest, most Northern point of the British Isles that I can reach. And this year
I'll be doing so in a bus
shelter...
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If there are ten films released in 2009 that are worse than Bride Wars, I said, rather boldly, in January this year, then I will give it all up. No more screening rooms for me. Not if so many of them are to be polluted with films of that quality. And looking at how many terrifyingly bad candidates we've already been subjected to this year, frankly I'm beginning to get a bit concerned about my future.
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