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Wednesday 11 August 2010
Burlesque: Stripping the light fantastic with Cher

Flick teaser: Christina Aguilera is just a small-town gal trying to make it as an unclad dancer. Can Stanley Tucci help? Stuart Heritage analyses the trailer
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Posted by Stuart Heritage 16.06 BST
Tuesday 10 August 2010
Toy Story 3 seizes UK animation crown back from DreamWorks

Box-office love story ... Toy Story 3 becomes biggest-grossing animated film of all time in the UK. Photograph: c.BuenaVista/Everett/Rex Features

Charles Gant: Pixar's latest film overtakes Shrek 2 to become biggest-ever animated film in UK and continues climb up all-time UK box office pantheon Continue reading...

Posted by Charles Gant 12.11 BST
There's no reason for Emma Thompson to go lightly on Audrey Hepburn

Fashionista creation ... Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's

Peter Bradshaw: In promoting the remake of My Fair Lady, Emma Thompson laid into a screen icon, calling Hepburn twee. She has a point Continue reading...

Posted by Peter Bradshaw 10.21 BST
Monday 9 August 2010
Patricia Neal: a beauty that cut like a knife

Cut like a knife … Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper in 1950. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER

In 1981, The Patricia Neal Story, with Glenda Jackson as Neal and Dirk Bogarde as her husband, Roald Dahl, was more than good by the standards of TV biopics. It was co-directed by Anthony Harvey and Anthony Page, and done with taste and intelligence. The TV movie dramatised Neal's struggle with several strokes and came close to showing what a strange and rather nasty man Dahl was. But Jackson wasn't Neal. Continue reading...

Posted by David Thomson 14.09 BST
Resurgent Will Ferrell to lead The Other Guys against The Expendables

Bouncing back ... Will Ferrell with Steve Coogan and Mark Wahlberg in The Other Guys. Photograph: Macall Polay/AP

Jeremy Kay: Ferrell recovers his form in harness with Adam McKay as Hollywood braces for monster box office face-off Continue reading...

Posted by Jeremy Kay 12.28 BST
Patricia Neal: a career in clips

Sly eyes and pickaxe cheekbones ... Patricia Neal Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection/Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext Collection

The Oscar-winning actor Patricia Neal has died aged 84. We look back over her career in clips
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Posted by Catherine Shoard 12.06 BST
Friday 6 August 2010
Was Bette Midler right to turn down Sister Act, Misery and Chicago?

'My fans don’t want to see me in a wimple' ... Turning down Sister Act is just one of the disastrous career choices made by Bette Midler. Photograph: Stephan Savoia/AP

Stuart Heritage: She passed up potentially Oscar-winning roles and is now in a film about a talking cat. Should life have been different for Bette Midler? Continue reading...

Posted by Stuart Heritage 13.27 BST
Natasha Lyonne, the original queen of the career capsize, comes up for air

Natasha Lyonne, pictured here after her 2001 arrest for drink driving, has made a cautious return to screen and stage after a troubled phase in her life. Photograph: AP

Danny Leigh: The American Pie actor's return after a Lindsay Lohan-like journey from childhood stardom to dizzying freefall is cause for delight
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Posted by Danny Leigh 11.19 BST
Thursday 5 August 2010
Isolation: a soldier's tale

'Army attitudes have to change' ... Stuart Griffiths now works as a photographer. Photograph: Stuart Griffiths

Phil Hoad: It's about time conflict cinema turned towards home, says Stuart Griffiths, the ex-para at the centre of a new documentary on homelessness and the armed forces
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Posted by Phil Hoad 16.54 BST
Scott Pilgrim vs the adults

Watch the trailer for Scott Pilgrim Vs the World Link to this video
Scott Pilgrim vs the World is opening on the same day as Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables in the US, which is a little ironic. Both films have been at the centre of the geek universe since their conception, and both seem custom-made to appeal to the sensibilities of fans. The difference is that where Stallone's action extravaganza took the easy route by signing up a platoon of faded but much-loved beefcakes to win over audiences, Pilgrim's Edgar Wright has opted for a far tougher path to victory. Continue reading...

Posted by Ben Child 14.50 BST
The Expendables: 'See it with the rowdiest crowd possible'

Oh, it's that movie again … Stallone and Rourke in The Expendables

Sylvester Stallone's action epic may draw on a hackneyed plotline, but a film stuffed with heavyweight stars has goodwill and charm in abundance
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Posted by Phelim O'Neill 13.10 BST
Clip joint: the slow walk

On fire ... Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) keeps his cool as he walks away from an explosion of his own creation in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

You're a big-screen bad ass, but can you walk the slow-motion walk as an explosion goes off behind you? Limara Salt falls casually at the feet of the coolest, smooth-walking action heroes
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Posted by Limara Salt 12.50 BST
Wednesday 4 August 2010
Yogi Bear: Smarter than the average fare?

As painful for you as for Yogi? ... Trailer for Yogi Bear, featuring Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake.
Hollywood's plan to destroy your childhood by turning everything you've ever loved into a crassly opportunistic and cheaply animated movie hasn't quite worked. Despite Garfield and Transformers and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, there are still fragments of your childhood that you can cling onto, like specific Christmases or that time you found a plastic bag full of porn in the woods. And that'll never do.

So Hollywood has decided to go all out to massacre your entire childhood forever, in the form of a trailer for a new Yogi Bear movie. Over the course of the trailer, it becomes brutally apparent that Hollywood won't be satisfied until the happiest days of your life have been reduced to a pile of smoldering ashes. Let's pick through the trailer for evidence ...
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Posted by Stuart Heritage 15.38 BST
Clip joint: (re)rebirth

Born again … a detail from a poster of It's a Wonderful Life. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

At home or hospitalised? With drugs or without? At the movies, there are as many types of rebirth as there are regular birth. There's the fundamental lifestyle shift, where a finely-balanced existence is toppled by tumultuous events. There's a swing to the opposite end of the character spectrum triggered by a grand moment of catharsis. And there's that exhilarating moment when a slate is wiped clean and life can begin anew.
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Posted by Jan Jarventaus 15.04 BST
Could playing the anti-Bond be the best career move Daniel Craig's ever made?

What would Lisbeth Sander do to someone like James Bond? ... Daniel Craig flanked by the laydees in Casino Royale. Photograph: c.Sony Pics/Everett / Rex Featur

It is hard to imagine fictional characters further apart than Mikael Blomkvist, the central protagonist of Stieg Larsson's hugely successful novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and James Bond. And yet Daniel Craig, the current 007, last week reportedly signed on to star in a trilogy based on the Swedish book and its two sequels. Continue reading...

Posted by Ben Child 12.46 BST