Martin Cuff Consulting

I knew someone once who was a prolific and inventive liar. When he came to South Africa to visit, he was so busy dishing out the whoppers about his relationship with a certain Royal that the whole story ran away with itself for a while. I didn’t follow the fall out – I’d drifted away in embarrassment by then – but all I can say is that I didn’t find being press-ganged as an enabler of someone else’s fantasy life very amusing at all. I added no exclamation mark whatsoever to that experience….

All this is probably why I found The Informant! so troubling. Matt Damon plays chubby Mark Whittacre, a bumbling, haphazard, self-destructive senior manager at a food production plant who seems to lie for the hell of it. He becomes a snitch about the company’s humungous price fixing tactics, but at the same time he’s ditching dirt to the FBI, he’s simultaneously defrauding the business of millions of dollars on his own count. All very uncomfortable.

The movie shot in Decatur, Illinois – the actual location of the true-life drama. It also filmed at Whitacre’s own family “compound” just outside the village of nearby Moweaqua (pop. 1923).

It pains me to say it, but Killers, starring Katherine Heigl and a buff Ashton Kutcher, feels like Mr. & Mrs. Smith Lite. It’s about a spy whose past catches up to him, much to the chagrin of his nerdy wife and her omnipresent parents. The Hollywood Reporter was withering, calling it “an action comedy that nearly renders the term an oxymoron.” That’s perhaps a tad harsh. But whilst it’s fun enough, the action scenes are good enough, the dialogue is sparkling enough, Catherine O’Hara is scene-stealing enough, it still feels like something’s missing. I fell asleep in the middle, which should perhaps be a clue.

Location-wise, the opening scenes take place in Nice in the south of France – a beautiful and underrated city that was once the site of my very own Blonde Ambition World Tour. (I shall not kiss and tell about this, so don’t ask.) Nice is still high on my “emigration planning” shortlist and it appears in movies nowhere near often enough. The rest is shot in that Southern movie debutante now well and truly established in society, Georgia. The town of Douglasville – allegedly “where Atlanta keeps its charm” – served for exteriors. And here’s a little known factoid; the same Douglasville was originally known as Skint Chestnut. Gotta love the naming habits of the semi-literate – though few can compete with SA’s very own desert town, Hotazel.

For a while I thought Roller Derby was a made-up sport, like Dodgeball, or Extreme Ping-Pong. Turns out there really is a competition where girls in short-shorts pummel the hell out of each while skooting round an indoor bike track on rollerskates. Who knew?! And the girls take on such rockin’ names too -  my favourite: Smashley Simpson. All this – the rules, the myths, the bruises – is marvellously evoked in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut “Whip It!”

“Whip It” (so named after a killer move that’ll get the protagonist four valuable points on the scoreboard) stars the can-do-no-wrong Ellen Page as Bliss, a grunge-leaning teenager unhappily stuck in Bodeen, Texas, with a part-time job in the say-no-more Oink Joint, a postal mom (literally) who’s obsessed with beauty pageants and deportment, and a sweet-n-savvy best friend who’ll be on the first bus out after graduation. One fortuitous day Bliss stumbles upon Roller Derby and her life’s turned upside down. Sweet, funny and laden with friendship, it’s like a coming of age movie, but on wheels.

In spite of the strong Texas location, the production actually filmed in Detroit, no doubt taking advantage of Michigan tax breaks and the fact that warehouse space can be bought for a dollar an acre now there’s a recession.  To support the all-star cast of grrrrl-power, (Kirsten Wiig, Zoe Bell, Eve – awesome!), real roller girls were selected from local Michigan teams such as The Detroit Derby Girls, and The Grand Raggidy Roller Girls.

Here’s a Paramount Pictures map from 1927 showing which Californian filming locations could double for elsewhere? Can anyone say “Runaway Production?”

Just a week to go until we open the doors at the V&A Waterfront World Media & Legacy Centre.

For broadcasters, bloggers, photographers and writers, the V&A Waterfront World Media & Legacy Centre offers a range of turn-key solutions including hot desks with high speed internet access, editing facilities, camera, lighting and equipment hire, libraries of rights-cleared music, photography and HD video footage, production services from live studio broadcasts to roving news teams to single photo-journalists, studio space and camera positions through the Waterfront and beyond. We are also able to offer events and press conference facilities accommodating from 20 to 1500 guests. We’re also the place you’ll need to come to if you want permits to film or shoot anywhere within the 300 hectare Waterfront zone.

The V&A Waterfront World Media & Legacy Centre doesn’t just offer service, it also offers content. We have own Content Website, where you can find Stock Photography, Stock Video Library and accompanying editorial. And we’ll also be posting and updating great local stories on everything from South African soccer history and local culture to a daily diary of events – in short, offering a great pool of unique leads and angles for you to develop.

In Prince of Persia, Jake Gyllenhaal pulls off the tremendous feat of becoming at once both more butch and more femme. Shot in Morocco, the plot revolves around a regicidal Royal who – eschewing more time-tested methods of removing his royal rivals (eg poison, gutting, beheading etc.) – devises a really outraegously convoluted plot whereby he’ll declare war on an innocent country, steal a magical dagger from a princess, and turn back time to a pivotal moment when (boo hoo!) he should have been the future king. Jake sets out to stop him.

So: Ben Kingsley, as the baddie, eats the furniture, and Ms. Fields once again revives her recurring role as an undercover English princess – though quite how she ends up in that desert beneath that duvet is beyond me. But it’s Prince-Charmingly-haired Jake who’s the most perplexing: doe eyed and recently buffed, very early on in the film, those Deliverance words sprang unbidden into my mind: “He got a real purdy mouth ain’t he?”

After that, I couldn’t really concentrate.

Now for something completely different. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the hopeless fiasco caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico? All sorts of Bubbas and Forests stand to loose their meagre livelihoods in the Waterworld because the British Petrolium giant clearly had no contingency plan whatsoever to deal with the possibility that one of their oilrigs might sink. They’ve been about as efficient at covering the leak as a fourteen-year old fumbling over his first condom. Watching their pathetic effort – coupled with the irritation of BP spokespeople insisting it’s all going quite well thankyou – has had all the pathos of a housecat nursing sick and blind puppies.

And so, given the laughable efforts to date, it may surprise you to hear who BP have turned to next……

According to Slash Film:

While he was working on that film (Waterworld), Costner paid scientists millions of dollars to develop a device that could do what his fictional character’s invention could do in the film: purify ocean water. Working prototypes of the device actually exist, which Costner has dubbed “Ocean Therapy.” Now, with the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, British Petroleum has given the go-ahead for Costner to test six of his devices to help clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf.

Oh God. It really all is stranger than fiction. Now all we need is Sarah “Drill Baby Drill” Palin to reveal she has gills….

Locations – or at least places – play a big part in Zombieland. Not least the fact that the characters are named after their all-American home towns, now lost to the Zombie apocalypse. The movie’s mostly a cross-country jaunt by a group of mis-matched travel companions, riding out the disaster and heading for Playland amusement park in Los Angeles where the youngest traveller had once had happier times.

I was interested to read though that the movie didn’t ever get as far as California; Playland actually filmed at the Valdosta, Georgia Wild Adventures Water & Theme Park. I also chuckled at the idea that the movie star mansion that features so grandly in the film, is not only NOT a Hollywood home – it’s an Atlanta mcMansion – it’s also for sale. Go ahead, gawk.

As for the movie – and taking into account my generally low-brow tastes when it comes to Zombie horror – I thought it rocked. Emma Stone exhibits a notable combination of beauty, vulnerability and grit, Woody Harrelson works his 501s quite nicely thank-you-very-much, and Jesse Eisenberg carries the film’s core role like a geeky super-hero. The plot is handled with aplomb and, on reflection, there’s an interesting subtext of loss that you don’t normally see in this kind of film. Especially a film this fun. Superior.

The immaculately-attired Members of an Egyptian Police Band find themselves stranded overnight in a lonely desert town in Israel. In spite of mutual suspicions, they are nevertheless taken in by a generous divorcee and the clientele of her drab little cafe.

With such a set up, virtually anything could have been made of this culture clash – I mean, it’s virtually Priscilla Queen of the Desert, only with less wigs and no ping-pong balls. Instead, The Band’s Visit is a slow, tender, almost melancholic unwrapping of heartache and humanity that doesn’t really go anywhere. To be honest, it doesn’t really need to. It’s sort of like a pause, a cinematic moment in which the gentle, fragile, still hopeful characters can take a deep intake of breath and reassess for a bit, before going on again with their unexceptional lives.

The Band’s Visit filmed in the town of Yeruham in the Negev Desert – although there’s very little effort made to create establishing shots or define location. It’s the back of beyond and that’s about that.

Iron Man 2. Hm. Where to start? Wasn’t it Dorothy Parker who said: “If you’ve nothing good to say about anyone, come sit by me…”

So in light of the above: considering IM1 was such a blast, IM2 felt strangely like an altogether smaller film. The wealthy playboy’s mega-birthday bash for instance seemed to involve about twenty extras and a dj playing tunes from an ipod under the stairs. Sam Rockwell’s still got fake tan on his hands. Samuel L Jackson phones in his performance. Mickey Rourke (below) is seriously scary in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. Terence Howard is missed missed missed. Need I go on?  Oh, and that waster Robert Downey Junior is so far back on my Naughty List, it’s gonna be coal for him for Christmas.

Oh, I guess I should come down off that fence and tell you what I really thought of it, right? It’s crap. And I mean that in a nice way.

The stand-out location is Monte Carlo, during the Monaco Grand Prix. That’s exciting enough. There’s some nice behind-the-scenes footage here.a