You may have noticed that the big movie for this Christmas period is The Golden Compass, a $90 million adaptation of the first volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
It's got talking bears, witches on broomsticks and Nicole Kidman, as the film's villain, Mrs Coulter. It's the best performance in a film that has many surprisingly smart casting choices (Tom Courtenay, Daniel Craig, Jim Carter, Derek Jacobi), despite its rather hamfisted handling of the source material.
The stories, of course, are pretty familiar by now. In 1974, tensions within the Faces were, as they say, running high, Rod Stewart’s increasing solo success causing much friction apparently. The situation doubtless exacerbated by the band’s predilection for “relentless, boozy madness”, as Ronnie Wood described it in UNCUT last year.
Anyway, so what does Ronnie do? He gathers together some of his famous pals, records his own album and goes out on tour as The First Barbarians.
Here's Stephen Dalton's final report from this year's Vienna Film Festival...
Ah, Vienna. Welcome to Uncut’s final dispatch from this year’s extended Viennale, which finally closed on Friday with Vic Chesnutt howling grainy, ragged, alt-folk Americana to a packed house in the Austrian capital’s deluxe Gartenbau cinema. A splendidly soulful finale to Europe’s most elegant film festival.
Because you can never attend enough international film festivals, here's STEPHEN DALTON's report from this year's VIENNA FILM FESTIVAL.
Tanks and armoured cars rumble ominously through the centre of Vienna. The streets are eerily empty, as all civilian traffic has been removed from the city’s main inner ring road. It looks like a military coup is underway.
Nick Hasted's been out and about at this year's London Film Festival. Here's his first report.
The London Film Festival has just reached its half-way point. As ever, it’s an opportunity chance to see brilliant films from every genre in just 13 days – the cinematic equivalent of the rock festivals I’ve spent the summer attending. Minus the mud, and with slightly less alcohol.
"Never create anything," says, uh, "Bob Dylan". "It'll just be misinterpreted."
Just as Dylan himself has been open to an awful lot of misinterpretation over the years, it seems highly likely the same fate could befall Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, which I saw this morning, ahead of its first public screening next Saturday (Oct 27), at the London Film Festival.
UNCUT's Stephen Dalton reports from the Athens Film Festival...
The closing weekend of the Athens Film Festival and your Uncut reporter is still working hard on your behalf. On Friday night I do a live interview with Theo Ioannou on Athens International Radio. He grills me about pop, politics, the music business and Uncut’s editorial policy. I bluff and waffle for over an hour, but Theo is polite enough not to laugh in my face.
Stephen Dalton is currently at the Athens Film Festival, where he's serving on the jury. Here's his first report...
Greetings from the strangely wonderful parallel universe of the Athens Film Festival, where your Uncut reporter is serving on the jury of the Music & Film section. A very bizarre experience, being on the other side of the fence for once, doing press conferences and interviews instead of asking the questions.
