Saoirse Ronan

Stephanie Meyer adaptation The Host gets under way

OH JUST GIVE UP

Cheat Sheet: Rachel Weisz

Hugely talented, enviably beautiful and married to Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz is the thinking man’s crumpet and the thinking woman’s object of bitter, bitter envy. But what does she get up to when she’s not fighting mummies and winning Oscars? It’s a Tuesday; this must be the Cheat Sheet…

Arrietty UK trailer released

And it’s lovely. SO LOVELY.

Arrietty

Studio Ghibli has done it again. Arrietty, inspired by the Borrowers novels of Mary Norton, is an incomparably beautiful story which effortlessly draws the viewer into a rarified world where a bay leaf makes a decent raincoat and cockroaches are the size of (shiny, aggressive and antennaed) Shetland ponies. Delicate, thoughtful and visually unmatched by almost anything we can think of, this is a very special film indeed.

Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan to star in Byzantium

Ssh, nobody mention how much better Saoirse is!

Andrew Niccol confirmed as director of The Host

No vampires or werewolves, but girl-on-girl fighting and lots of angst. Guess who?

Soundtrack Revolution

When you think of film soundtracks what sort of names do you come up with? John Williams? Danny Elfman? Ennio Morricone, maybe? Well get with the times, guys! It’s all about the pop-star built soundtrack these days. Directors seem to be head hunting big name musicians – ever looking to fill their time in between throwing TV’s out of windows and stealing your girlfriends – to take over the musical reins of their films. They’re doing pretty well too.

Hanna

An eclectic amalgam of Cold War thriller, girl’s-own coming-of-age yarn and superhero origin story, Hanna could have easily wound up resembling a cinematic patchwork of half-baked genre constituents. It’s a great relief, then, that Hanna is much more than the sum of its (many) parts.

Saoirse Ronan to star in The Host

First R-Patz, now this. Dammit, Stephenie Meyer, leave our actors alone!

The Way Back

For his first film since Master and Commander, Peter Weir has taken on the challenge of a road movie unlike any other – the protagonists travel 4,000 miles on foot and offroad, with not nearly enough food and far too many creaking Russian accents. There are dozens of things waiting to go wrong with just such a film, but most of them don’t.