Cannon Films Logo

Blimey. This brings back memories. Cannon was a film production company that was bought by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus in 1979. During the 80's the company was responsible for some of the best "worst" films ever made. Check out this list of notable efforts....

Death Wish 1 to... whatever
Masters Of The Universe
King Solomon's Mines
Cobra
Lifeforce
Over The Top
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Bolero
The Delta Force

And.... I kid you not, Puss In Boots, a 1988 musical version of the story starring Christopher Walken as "Puss" and Jason Connery. However, the logo resonates with me because there was a 3 screen Cannon Cinema near where I grew up, and they'd play it before the start of each film.

Happy days.

I also remember that (for what seemed like an age) they only ever played the same 5 or 6 adverts before each film.

"If you're drinking Bacardi".

You had to be there.

Oh..... and for a while they would slip in the video for the Kate Bush song "Sensual World".

Cinema in the 80's was awesome.

P.S. BLOODY HELL!! Found this on youtube! This was the add that seemed to run in the cinema forever. All those happy memories of seeing both good and (really) bad films at the Cannon Cinema Tunbridge Wells come flooding back.

John Barry (3 November 1933 – 30 January 2011)

Composer John Barry, famous for his work on the James Bond films, Born Free and Out of Africa has died aged 77 of a heart attack.

One of the most celebrated film composers of his generation, Barry scored more than 90 movies over the course of his career.

But it is for his work on a dozen Bond films that Barry will be widely remembered. One of his best-known theme songs was Goldfinger, belted out by Shirley Bassey in 1964.

His Oscars were from other films: Born Free, which earned him two statuettes, The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves.

He was honoured with an OBE in 1999 for his services to music, and was awarded a Bafta Fellowship in 2005.

Cinema childhood

John Barry Prendergast was born in York in 1933. His father ran a chain of cinemas and his mother was a pianist.

In a Guardian interview in 1999, Barry described how he fell in love with film as a toddler.

"My father had eight theatres in the north of England. I remember him picking me up, age three and a half, and taking me through these swing doors to the back of the stalls and holding me up over the barrier at the back. And I remember seeing this mouse, this big black and white mouse."

Barry trained as a classical pianist but turned his attention to jazz. He played the trumpet in the army, and in the late 1950s formed jazz-rock group the John Barry Seven.

"I didn't love [pop] music, I wasn't passionate about it. But I did want to be a professional musician," said Barry in a 1994 interview.

"So we literally listened to all that was coming out of America at that time, whether it was Bill Haley or Freddy Bell and the Bellboys, and the first concerts we did, we just copied all their stuff and did it."

The group teamed up with singer Adam Faith, and had hits in the UK with What Do You Want? and Poor Me.

Barry worked on television series and commercials, and broke into movie work in 1960's Beat Girl.

His work brought him to the attention of producers of the first Bond movie Dr No.

"The James Bond movies came because we were successful in the pop music world, with a couple of big instrumental hits. They thought I knew how to write instrumental hit music," Barry said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1991.

His arrangement of Monty Norman's James Bond theme led to him composing scores for 11 films in the series, among them Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.

Barry's work on the Bond theme led to a court case in the late 1990s when Norman successfully asserted his authorship of the tune.

But Barry's Bond scores showcased his diverse range: big bands, guitar riffs, sweeping strings and jazz and Latin beats.

He worked with Duran Duran and A-ha during the 1980s, on Bond themes for A View To A Kill and The Living Daylights.

He also made innovative use of a synthesiser in music for On Her Majesty's Secret Service and his theme for TV's The Persuaders.


His first Oscars came in 1967 for his Born Free score and its iconic title theme.

More Academy Awards followed for the soundtracks he wrote for The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves.

Barry also won four Grammys, a Bafta for The Lion in Winter and a Golden Globe for Out of Africa.

His many other film scores included Walkabout, The Deep, Somewhere in Time, Body Heat, Jagged Edge, Peggy Sue Got Married, Chaplin and Cry, the Beloved Country. His most recent film score featured in the 2001 war thriller Enigma.

In 2002, Barry was named an Honorary Freeman of the City of York, an honour he received at a venue in the city where he once used to play trumpet in the 1950s.

Barry was divorced three times - his second wife was the actress Jane Birkin. He is survived by his wife Laurie, his four children and five grandchildren.

He once recalled, surveying his vast body of work: "When I look back on it, I think, how the hell did I do all this?"

CLASSIC JOHN BARRY SCORES

From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Zulu
Born Free
You Only Live Twice
The Lion in Winter
Midnight Cowboy
Diamonds are Forever
Out of Africa
Dances with Wolves
Chaplin

R.I.P Leslie Nielsen.

The Hole 3D

This is the "Den Of Geek" review of "The Hole." I'm presenting it here because having just seen it, I pretty much agree with the reviewer.

Joe Dante

The Hole review

Luke Savage

Director Joe Dante returns with a new feature, The Hole, which returns to the family horror themes of his 80s classic, Gremlins. But does it have that film’s bite? Luke finds out...

Published on Sep 20, 2010

For anyone who a) grew up in the 80s, b) watched movies, and c) liked watching great movies, The Hole in 3D is more than just a film. Seven years after his last cinematic outing, 2003's Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Joe Dante is back. To some, that may not mean much. In the last two decades, only three other films, Small Soldiers (1998), Matinee(1993) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), can lay claim to bearing Dante's cinematic fingerprints. Hardly a prolific output.

But in the 80s, Dante was king. He made Gremlins (I could end it there, really, but I won't), sent River Phoenix into space (Explorers), put a miniature Dennis Quaid inside Martin Short (Innerspace), and had Tom Hanks, before he went all serious, star in what may be the most hard-to-categorise film of his career (The 'burbs). That's not even mentioning The Howling, which seems to have lost a bit of its shine with the near endless stream of inferior sequels it's since spawned.

All of which might be lost on the target audience of The Hole, which flicks between feeling like a stretched out episode of Eerie Indiana (no bad thing) and Flatliners for kids (ditto). Although Disturbia may be a closer match in terms of plot.

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith takes that film's structure of three kids bored in the suburbs and simply replaces the serial killer living opposite with a really big hole. So, instead of asking themselves if David Morse really is a bad guy, The Hole's young trio must investigate what lies beneath their garage.

It's familiar territory for Dante, who's always enjoyed exploring the darkness and quirkiness that lies beneath the facade of banal suburbia. Here, it's simply writ large and a little less subversive. Instead of suspected cannibalism or rampaging homeowners, we get killer clowns and hobbling ghosts wreaking havoc amidst the picket fences.

But this being, you know, for kids, it's never that scary. Save for a terrifically creepy bathroom scene, it's horror wrapped in cotton wool. Even the kids don't feel that worried by their plight. "You've got a gateway to Hell under your house," one says, "and that is really cool". Gone are the terrified inhabitants of Gremlins' snow-lined streets. In their place we have blasé, precocious teens who oscillate between curious and nonchalant.

In that sense, it lacks the Dante bite of old. Where Small Soldiers was a kids movie for adults, The Hole is just a kids movie. But it's a pretty good one, at that. If it misses the madcap energy of Gremlins, it makes up for that with enough reminders of Dante's eye for a great set piece. A hermit's den of hanging lights dazzles, literally, a swimming pool scene feels like a childhood nightmare come to life, and the climax recalls the off-kilter excess of his segment in The Twilight Zone: The Movie.

They're made even better by 3D too. The Hole was shot in 3D, making it a cut above the glut of recent pretenders who've tried to cash in on the craze after the fact. As with most films, it takes a few minutes for the eyes to adjust (a pizza eating scene in the opening few minutes was so vivid I thought I'd walked into an advert for a well known pizza establishment by mistake), but when they do the film's low key charms shine a little brighter.

And, of course, it's always good to see Dick Miller, even if he does now look like Eli Wallach in The Holiday. He doesn't get a line, but he still nabs the film's biggest laugh, narrowly beating an Eric Cartman talking doll.

That's the biggest appeal of The Hole. It may be Dante-lite, but it's still Dante. And it's great to have him back.

I liked it. An entertaining, if flawed, throwback to the family "horror" films of the 80's. It's also just good to see Joe Dante's name on the screen again. Let's hope we don't have to wait an age for his next film.

Tron Legacy.

The young Jeff Bridges looks naff, hopefully they're going to be working on it right up to the release date so it doesn't look so....... funky.

Still, I can't help but feel excited by this!

The Social Network

Finally saw this last night. It took a bit of persuading to get my wife to come as the subject matter held no interest for her. However, the twin pull of David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, Panic Room ect) and Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, Studio 60, Charlie Wilson's War) was enough to get her into the cinema.

It was a blissful mix of Fincher's energetic visual flare and ability to extract amazing performances from his actors and Sorkin's witty, snappy dialogue.

As for the truth of the story, I assume like most films of this nature that the broad strokes are probably as near to the mark as they can get, but the smaller details are poetic licence. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is also excellent and will be finding it's way into my ever expanding collection.

Well worth a look.

And I still think that Fincher's Alien 3 is a lost masterpiece.

Currys & PC World Megastores TV Ad Director's Cut

Squeeee!!!

Cashback

Cashback
Uploaded by momog. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

One more thing....

One more thing before I go. I stumbled on the trailer for what looks like the most INSANE film ever.

I doubt I'll see it in the cinema (along with most people I suspect) but one evening I'll get the drinks in, load up on pizza and enjoy what will no doubt be an appalling bit of hokum!

Ghost Busters (1954) Trailer

A good mate just sent me this.
It's a work of genius!

SOEXCITEDSOEXCITEDSOEXCITED!!!!

Once

It was a slow morning at work so I decided to bung my copy of "Once" into my laptop and leave it playing in the background.

I ended up watching it all the way through. I love this film.

I saw it for the first time last year. My sister-in-law had given it to me as a present and, I have to say, at the time I was a little disappointed (don't tell her that!). However, she's got excellent taste and I'd heard some great reviews, but I'd also heard the negative ones so approached it with caution.

It's a Marmite film. You will either love it or hate it.

It's, and I shudder to use the word, sweet. Really, really sweet. Not in a vomit inducing way, but a warm, fuzzy, sad, funny, uplifting kind of way. A really touching tale of two ships that pass in the night. It got labeled as a musical on it's release, it's not. The music is integral but it's not a musical in the "Chicago" sense.

The plot focuses on a busker with dreams of making it as a successful musician, he's also dealing with the breakup of a long term relationship. He meets a young Czech immigrant and together they realise that they share a love of music and are both in similar emotional situations. The actors wrote and performed the songs in the film and are so talented it makes me ill.

Give it a chance. Go on.

New songs......

I've added 3 new songs to the "Tunes I Like Right Now..." section.

In The Name Of Love by The Thompson Twins

Magic by Mick Smiley

Savin' The Day by Alessi

As you may have guessed these are all from the "Ghostbusters" soundtrack and are therefore brilliant. I'm getting all excited because the Blu Ray is out this month!



Who you gonna call?

Oh bother...

Oscar-winning special effects expert Stan Winston, who created the creatures in films including Aliens and Jurassic Park, has died at the age of 62.
Winston, who also made the robots in Terminator, died at home in California surrounded by family on Sunday.

The film veteran had been battling multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer, for seven years, a representative of the Stan Winston Studio said.

He had worked with Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Tim Burton.
During his 40-year career, he became a pioneer of merging real-world effects with computer imaging.

California governor and former Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger said: "The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my best friends.
Stan's work and four Oscars speak for themselves and will live on forever."

"What will live forever in my heart is the way that Stan loved everyone and treated each of his friends like they were family."

Winston won Oscars for his work on Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park.


He also received Oscar nominations for Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, AI, Predator and Heartbeeps.

Winston had recently worked on director Jon Favreau's box office success Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Favreau said: "He was experienced and helped guide me while never losing his childlike enthusiasm.
"He was the king of integrating practical effects with CGI, never losing his relevance in an ever-changing industry."
The director added that he was proud to have worked with Winston and had been looking forward to future collaborations.
"I knew that he was struggling, but I had no idea that he would be gone so soon. Hollywood has lost a shining star."


Winston's most recent film projects included Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, GI Joe, Shutter Island and the futuristic Avatar, for which he reunited with Aliens director James Cameron.

Cameron paid tribute, saying: "He ran at full throttle, in both work and play, and was a man of kindness, wisdom and great humour.

"He was a kid that never grew up, whose dreams were writ large on the screens of the world. I am proud to have been his friend, and I will miss him very deeply."

Winston grew up in Virginia, where he enjoyed classic horror films, drawing and puppetry.

He graduated from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in 1968 and tried his hand as an actor before gravitating towards working behind the scenes.

He completed a three-year make-up apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios in 1972.

Winston is survived by his wife Karen, a son, daughter, brother and four grandchildren.

One more post before bed! I was looking through some of my dvd's tonight and came across the above. I can't make the point strongly enough about how great this movie is. It has a very strong cult following but I always felt that it deserved more recognition. It's easily the best thing Kurt Russell has ever done (faint praise I know) and has some of the most quotable lines ever committed to film.

Kung-fu, romance, monsters & magic! What more does a film need?