moviexpress   CLASS ACTS   |   GOOFS & GAFFES   |   MEDIA WATCH   |   TELEVISION   |   FILM  REVIEWS   |   EDITORIAL they said it: "The internet is the most democratic of all media; that's both its strength and its weakness.  Just about anybody with any thoughts about movies can put them on the internet.  It's amateur hour out there."  So states Jack Garner, "chief film reviewer" for Gannet News Service.  Well I have news for Jack.  Many movie websites are run by dedicated, knowledgeable enthusiasts who are often way ahead of the "professionals" who work in print, TV or radio.  And, perhaps unsurprisingly, many of those self-appointed experts produce work which is full of often hilarious bloopers and inaccuracies - as opposed to accidental typos.  It has always puzzled me why this stuff is accepted without question in the film and TV industries when it would be laughed at - or sneered at - in the fields of music, art, food or sport, where the perpetrators of such gaffes would be given short shrift. Check out these howlers (all attributed) from the last couple of years [Comments ] •   When TVNZ screened the terrific 2003 TV version of The Other Boelyn Girl recently (one of the few offerings worthy of the Sunday night drama slot) local TV critics, like Frances Grant and Deborah Hill Cone, and plenty of amateurs on the IMDB bulletin board, were quick to point out that the the two sisters' (Anne and Mary) striking "confessions-to-camera" were obviously a reference to the reality TV technique where the inarticulate participants reveal their "thoughts" to the eager audience.  Hmmm, it seems that all those media courses are not doing too well in their history of theatre, film & TV departments, where it could be assumed they studied German dramatist Bertolt Brecht's "alienation effect" where characters periodically speak directly to the audience. Like many other theatrical devices it was co-opted by film and TV over the years, long before "Reality TV" (shudder) became omnipresent.  (One of the most famous examples of this effect is in the TV drama House of Cards, with Ian Richardson.) •   Barney McDonald in his Sunday Star-Times review of Andrea Arnold's chilling, ambiguous Red Road, inexplicably spends a lot of time telling us about co-producer Lars von Trier's ancient blueprint for filmmaking: the Dogme manifesto, which imposed rigid limits on the the director.  Von Trier himself ditched the idea years ago, and I was puzzled by McDonald's claim that Red Road "largely" adopted the Dogme95 approach. Actually not one of the "rules" applies.  The framing story is shot in brilliantly sharp Hi-def video and in widescreen, all the better to differentiate between the fuzzy surveillance camera images.  Indeed the film is as contrived and manipulative (in the best sense) as the seminal surveillance film from the 70s, The Conversation.  The moral: Ignore the promotional blurb, and trust what appears on screen. •   "France still churns out about 200 films a year, more than any other country in Europe. But most French films are amiable, low-budget trifles for the domestic market. American films account for nearly half the tickets sold in French cinemas." writes Don Morrison in Time magazine's cover story, The Death of French Culture. There have been plenty of ripostes to the sweeping generalisations in this piece, and many have mentioned Morrison's confusing "culture" with "entertainment"; you could start with this response from Bernard Henri-Levy.  But as for the comment on French films, the "low budget trifles" are unfortunately the ones which are usually given an international release, with a particular eye on the US market.  (I don't know why they bother since the Americans remake them anyway.)  But the best, like this year's L'Ivresse du pouvoir (A Comedy of Power) from the sardonic veteran Claude Chabrol, Andre Techine's Les temoins (The Witnesses), Joachim Lafosse's Nue propriete (Private Property) and Santiago Amigorena's pacy espionage thriller Quelques jours en Septembre (A Few Days in September) appear - if you're lucky - at specialised festivals, never to return! •   Juliet Lapidos, a junior staffer at Slate magazine, was given the task of debunking the auteur theory (yet again, yawn...) in an annotated slide show titled The Man Who Did it All , a reference to Alfred Hitchcock. A new exhibition at Northwestern University's Block Museum in Evanston, Illinois “suggests that Hitchcock was a deeply collaborative artist,” states Lapidos, as though this was a revelation, and the man himself never claimed that he "did it all."  There were many responses to Slate pointing out poor Juliet's misunderstanding of the meaning of auteur and the importance of his many famous collaborators (like writers Raymond Chandler, John Michael Hayes & Ernest Lehman, production designer Robert Boyle, cinematographer Robert Burks, composer Bernard Herrmann, visual effects artist Albert Whitlock and title designer Saul Bass, not to mention the roster of actors which made his films so memorable). Of course all of this is well-known to anyone who's done elementary research on Hitchcock, and I'm surprised Lapidos fell into the trap so easily.  She even describes the children's game in The Birds as "blind man's bluff" (sic). •   New Zealander Andrew Adamson will not be directing the third film in the Nania franchise according to Belinda Henley in her piece Back to Nania, in the (NZ) Herald on Sunday. "That task has fallen to Michael Apted, a British director best known for his Bond film The World is Not Enough and, more recently, Amazing Grace," writes Henley.  Actually, I think the veteran director would prefer to be known for more interesting projects than those two:  He began his famous TV documentary series featuring a group of English kids with 14 Up in 1970, which became so popular subsequent episodes - at 7-year intervals  - were screened in cinemas.  Then came the features The Triple Echo (72) with Glenda Jackson, Agatha (79) with Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie, Sissy Spacek's Oscar-winning Coal Miner's Daughter (80), the Russian-located thriller Gorky Park (83), Gorillas in the Mist (88), with Sigourney Weaver as Dian Fossey, Jodie Foster in Nell (94), the science doco Me and Isaac Newton (99) and he even managed to fit in a couple of episodes of the recent big-budget TV series, Rome (05-6).  Still on British directors, Marty Duda, also in the Herald on Sunday, in a one-paragraph review of This is England demonstrates once again that his encyclopaedic musical knowledge does not extend to film.  "This British film made by an unknown director...", he begins.  Really?  Shane Meadows, the director in question, has been working for 10 years, with small but widely-distributed (even in New Zealand) films like 24/7 : Twenty Four Seven (97), A Room For Romeo Brass (99), Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (02) and Dead Man's Shoes (04).  And still more on New Zealand reviewers: If the NZ Herald's TV writer, Frances Grant wants to use Variety-speak in her columns, she could at least get it right.  She writes about "the Glenn Close-helmed legal thriller...Damages on TV One."  Close has the starring role in "Damages", she's not the director, as indicated by Grant's misuse of the term "helmed" (directed). •   Helen Barlow has just discovered French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg judging from her piece for the NZ Herald, "Charlotte's Web."  OK, she's not alone there, you'd be hard pressed to find any American critics enthusing over Gainsbourg's star turns (as a youngster) in L'Effrontée / The Impudent Girl (1985) and La Petite voleuse / The Little Thief (1988), and there are some who inexplicably pronounce her name "Gainsborough".  I'll let that pass, but not however, Barlow's blunder when discussing Gainsbourg's family: Her mother, actress/singer Jane Birkin was first married to English musician John Barry, who is not the composer of the famous James Bond theme as Barlow states.  Poor Monty Norman (the actual composer) has been fighting for recognition (it was even a lawsuit) since the theme was first used in Dr No (scored by Barry) in 1962.  Time for everyone to catch up. •   Sydney Morning Herald correspondent Stephanie Bunbury was given a junket to the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, even though all media seem to be providing skimpier festival coverage (but more photos) with every passing year.  There's still room for the inevitable blunders, however. Bunbury writes in her mid-festival despatch: "...there are plenty of other English-language films that are highly anticipated because they are, more or less, known quantities: a new political pot-stirrer with George Clooney, a remake of Harold Pinter's two-hander Sleuth with Michael Caine.."  Eh?  Had Steph looked at the fine print she would have discovered that Anthony Schaffer wrote the original play and the 1972 film. And for those who've never seen either, calling it a "two-hander" is a spoiler. •   Regular "entertainment correspondent" for The NZ Herald, Aussie Michele Manelis interviewed Matt Damon (in Australia) while the star was promoting the 3rd film in the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Ultimatum.  Here's an extract from her piece, Bourne to Run: "...before Bourne, director Paul Greengrass had done only little-seen indie fare such as The Murder of Stephen Lawrence and Food, Trucks and Rock and Roll.  'Matt was filming The Brothers Grimm in Prague and I flew over there to meet him to offer him the part of Jason Bourne,' Greengrass says. 'We had dinner and I was really worried he'd order the veal because I didn't have enough money to pay for it.' "  I don't know where Manelis picked up her info, but it must have come as a surprise to both Damon and Greengrass. Damon had already played Jason Bourne in the first installment, The Bourne Identity  in 2002, under the expert hand of Doug Liman, who was not interested in directing a sequel, but still retained control over the franchise, as executive producer. Englishman Greengrass got the nod to take over The Bourne Supremacy (2004), pretty much on the strength of his brilliant 2002 TV movie, Bloody Sunday. (What Manelis would call "little-seen indie fare.") The cast was already locked-in by this time.  Greengrass went on to direct the admirably non-sensational United 93, which deservedly earned him an Oscar nomination.  At least Manelis got that part right. •   One of the NZ International Film Festival's sidebar events was a selection of American films from the '70s, including The Last Picture Show (1971).  Among the accompanying selection of reviews was one (unattributed) from the industry bible, Variety.  It included this astonishing extract:  “Peter Bogdanovich elected to shoot the film in black-and-white, artistically appropriate for the dust-blown, tired little community, but Robert Surtees (who's a master with color) doesn't bring off the tones of gray.”  Having just seen a flawless print for the first time since its Sydney preview screening in 1972, I was stunned by this silly comment. Surtees was not a "master with color", but a master of cinematography, period.  He won an Academy Award for his B&W photography of The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), for God sake. Bogdanovich chose Surtees on the recommendation of Mike Nichols after their successful collaboration on The Graduate.  What may have thrown the Variety guys was the slight variation in grading whenever an optical occurred.  This was something that the lab could not correct, as Bogdanovich explained at the post-screening seminar in Sydney. Note: The offending paragraph quoted above does not appear in the abridged review in Variety's online archive (maybe they had second thoughts) but it's there (in back-and-white) in my hard copy volume. •   I suppose it had to happen.  In her review of The Banquet in the NZ Herald's Time Out mag, Francesca Rudkin gets the Chinese names about half right.  She correctly identifies the director as (Xiaogang) FENG, but falls into the Ziyi ZHANG trap (she's Ms Zhang, not Ms Ziyi, and even reversed her names to avoid this very problem).  Near the end of her review Rudkin refers to Ang LEE and ZHANG Yi-mou, but unfortunately she calls them Lee and Yimou, rather than Lee and Zhang.  I did warn about this here. •   The TV series Medium, back on TV3, is pretty weak, and I know it's unfair, but it reminds me of the old gag: "You know why they call TV a medium?  Because it's neither rare nor well-done."  In the NZ Herald's Time Out interview (from the UK Independent) with Medium's star, Patricia Arquette, Liz Hoggard discusses the famous acting family: "(Patricia) Arquette understands film history.  Her grandfather Cliff was an actor and comedian. Her father Lewis was J D Pickett in The Waltons.  Her sister Rosanna inspired the Toto hit song.  Her brothers..."  Wait a minute.  This would be the Rosanna, whose string of quirky, idiosyncratic roles in The Executioner's Song, Desperately Seeking Susan, Silverado, Scorsese's After Hours and Life Lessons (from New York Stories) and Mike Hodges' Black Rainbow gave us such a buzz in the '80s?  The very same.  How quickly she's been forgotten; even her appearance in a few Eps of  TV's dismal The L Word seems to have escaped Hoggard. NZ TV viewers can catch her in the series What About Brian? this week (July 5). Note: It's awful.  Maybe it's not so surprising that a local entertainment scribe gave similar short shrift to Patricia not so long ago. I checked Hoggard's original piece on The Independent's website, in case some info had been edited, but no, there was only a reference to actor Kelsey Grammar (sic). •   Also from local scribes: Auckland's Citymix magazine had a "Movie Special" issue for June, including the feature "Who is the world's sexiest actress?"  Included in the unbylined, cut-and-paste piece is actress Penelope Cruz.  No argument there, but who attributed her first film Jamon, Jamon to Pedro Almodovar?  His collaboration with Cruz was some time later.  The prolific Spanish director Bigas Luna, unfairly overshadowed by his flamboyant fellow countryman, gave Cruz her plum debut role. •   Former TV3 entertainment journalist Belinda Henley will have to try harder if she wants to cover the international scene.  Like getting to know other, long-established colleagues.  In Cannes to interview Michael Moore, director of Sicko, (for the Herald on Sunday), she refers (twice) to "Australian TV presenter David Strattor".  Actually, David Stratton is a 40-year veteran film critic (for Variety, among other journals), one-time Sydney Film Festival director and movie commentator.    •   The vivacious host of Aljazeera TV's  Fabulous Picture Show, Aussie ex-pat Amanda Palmer, is a pretty smart cookie, so I put down the misspelling of NZ writer Oscar Kightley's name in an interview with him & Sione's Wedding director Chris Matthews as a slip of the fingers on the keyboard.  Less forgiveable, in an interview in Cannes with director Martin Scorsese, was captioning an excerpt of one of the films he cited, Satyajit Ray's classic first film Pather Panchali (1955), as "Panther Panchali". And in Empire magazine's Tarantino special on Death Proof, June 2007 issue, a sidebar: "5 Flicks That Influenced Death Proof" is listed, in bold type, the alarming 1973 title Macon County Linen.(sic) •   Hard on the heels of the BBC's Nicola Christie, host of the World Service radio programme On Screen, confusing "Bollywood" with "Indian" in her piece on Mira Nair's The Namesake, guest Nigel Floyd from Time Out (London) in a good piece on ever-increasing movie running times, inadvertently attributed Blade Runner to veteran editor Walter Murch (he was probably thinking of Apocalypse, Now).  Both films have been re-issued in longer "director's cuts". •   The name game: Alexander Bisley in his Sunday Star-Times review of Curse of the Golden Flower gets into a tangle with those pesky Chinese names.  The director is Zhang Yimou and the stars are Gong Li and Chow Yun-fat. (All surname first)  So when Bisley surmises "Li is the Thurman to Yimou's Tarantino", the correct form would be "Gong is the Thurman to Zhang's Tarantino."  And "Yimou trades his muse Ziyi for...Gong Li" should read "Zhang trades his muse Zhang Ziyi...for Gong Li."  Let's hope everyone gets their act together for the forthcoming, The Banquet. •   Many TV writers have picked up on the line from Helen Mirren in the series Prime Suspect: The Last Act, where she chides a colleague: "Don't call me Ma'am, I'm not the bloody Queen."  It was of course, a reprise of dialogue in Series One (you can pick this up from Mirren's weary delivery) as I pointed out months ago here - although after all those years I'd slightly misquoted it.  Here's the original context: DCI Jane Tennison: So what do you think? DI Frank Burkin:  About what, sir? DCI Jane Tennison: My voice suddenly got lower, has it? Maybe my knickers are too tight. Listen, I like to be called Governor or The Boss. I don't like Ma'am - I'm not the bloody Queen.  So take your pick. DI Frank Burkin: Yes Ma'am. It was not, as the NZ Herald's anonymous Time Out writer claimed, somewhat hilariously,  "Don't call me mum" (Which completely undermines the gag.) Still, we all seem to agree that Mirren's performance in what was really a standard police procedural, is one of the highlights of the (pretty lacklustre) year so far. •   Last month on ABC Radio National experienced broadcaster Julie Copeland interviewed Clair Hughes, author of Dressed in Fiction which explores “clothes as language and code in popular 19th century novels” in the programme Exhibit A - Dressed in Fiction.  Copeland recalled Henry James' complaint that George Eliot's Romola contained “so much drawing, so little composition” and applies it to some recent films.  So far so good, but a shame that she attributed Marie Antoinette to "Sophie Scorsese" and Age of Innocence to "her father Martin Scorsese". •   Veteran movie historian and critic F X Feeney, in his newly-released book, Orson Welles, one of the superbly-illustrated Taschen series on film directors, perpetuates a common error which incorrectly identifies cinematographer Gregg Toland atop the camera crane next to Welles in the famous production still from Citizen Kane.(right).  Welles is behind the camera but his colleague here (seated) is actually the camera operator Bert Shipman.  Another pic,       a few pages later, shows Toland under the       camera with Welles and Shipman behind it. •   There's never any shortage of misattributed firsts.  A Reuters report from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival discussed Slipstream, directed by Anthony Hopkins.  "It is," stated the anonymous writer, "the veteran actor's debut as a filmmaker."  From Variety's Robert Koehler: "Apparently needing to release some private thoughts, musings and images to the world, Anthony Hopkins takes a leap into stunning self-indulgence with his directorial debut, Slipstream.''  That's if you don't count his 1996 August, a version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, with Leslie Phillips, Kate Burton and the man himself.  Then there's his TV biography of Dylan Thomas.  A piece in the NZ Herald's Time Out, this time from AAP, on the director of Shortbus, John Cameron Mitchell, claimed that his first film was the controversial documentary Tarnation. Wrong again. This one was directed by its subject, Jonathan Caouette.  Mitchell was one of five Executive Producers. And on the TV One programme Pasifika, in a piece on Polynesians on film, the presenter cited Robert Flaherty's Moana (1926) which the British filmmaker Robert Grierson described as "the first documentary."  There are plenty of other contenders for this honour, depending on the criteria used, but how about Flaherty's earlier (1922) Nanook of the North? •   In a feature article, Poor little it girl, from Andrew Wilson in The Independent, on Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, the writer discusses the pair's relationship.  The piece coincided with the release of a new film, Factory Girl, in which Sienna Miller plays Sedgwick.  "(Sedgwick) featured in 12 short films directed by Warhol; experimental works such as Vinyl, Space, Restaurant, Kitchen, Chelsea Girls and Outer and Inner Space" all made in the 1960s. Warhol's films may have been experimental, but they weren't all shorts. Vinyl and Space were both over an hour long, and Chelsea Girls was over 3 hours long, projected on two adjacent screens simultaneously. •   Many of the Robert Altman obits were superficial and riddled with errors, perpetuating myths as various outlets plundered, mixed and matched the various wire service reports.  None was as bad as the one by Geoffrey McNab appearing in the NZ Herald on Nov 22.  Compiled from material in The Independent and AP, this one stated (twice) that Altman "made 86 movies in his 55-year career."  Actually he made 36 features, plus a part of the portmanteau feature Aria.  He did make dozens of shorts and TV episodes which is probably where the writer became confused - the IMDB has 86 separate entries for Altman as director. Then under the embarrassingly clumsy subhead: Five of the Best - The auteur's finest top movies, were listed 5 titles few would argue with, but the writer seemed unfamiliar with the cinema-tographer who contributed the striking images for McCabe and Mrs Miller, listed as Vilmos Szigmond (sic).  Dan Glaister (Guardian News & Media) in The Sydney Morning Herald states in his overview of Altman's career that, "The year after M*A*S*H, Altman recast the western with the elegiac McCabe and Mrs Miller."  Actually, he made Brewster McCloud after M*A*S*H.  It was equally iconoclastic, technically dazzling, but a box-office disaster. (It ran one week in Sydney, where I saw it, and has been undeservedly forgotten now - as Glaister's piece demonstrates).  Inexplicably, the promotional leaflet for A Prairie Home Companion claims that the film depicts a fictional radio show.  The story of the probable last broadcast may be fiction, but Garrison Keillor's famous long-running programme is definitely not.  About the only good thing to come from Altman's demise, was the NZ cinema release of the film on Feb 1. •   Most reviewers (and several critics) were quick to point out that the new Casino Royale was a remake of the pretty feeble 1967 version.  The NZ Herald's Time Out guide even grabbed the director, NZ'er Martin Campbell to select his "Top 5" Bond movies.  I'm sure it was a transcription error which led to him describing the actor playing Bond's nemesis in From Russia With Love as Rob Shore rather than Robert Shaw.  And Kerry Harvey in TV Guide Extra suggests Daniel Craig's emerging from the sea in scanty swim trunks is "reminiscent of the famous Ursula Andress scene in the 1967 version of Casino Royale"   The scene appears of course, in Dr. No (1962). •   In his UK Sunday Times profile of the French "celebrity philosopher" Bernard-Henri Levy, Jasper Gerard writes: "He is married to a (not so young) starlet, Arielle Dombasle, and behaves like one himself..."  "Starlet" is a word used very rarely these days, and when it is, it's always in the pejorative sense.  The dictionary definition is "a young and inexperienced actress who is projected as a potential star."  Indeed, last time I heard the term used in public was from a dopey American showbiz reporter who'd inexplicably been given a junket to the 1997 Berlin Film Festival.  He was reviewing a controversial film, Le jour et la nuit, from an unknown French director, Bernard-Henri Levy. Starring in the film, and giving it articulate and spirited promotion to the assembled press was US-born Arielle Dombasle.  However, this cut no ice with our novice journalist who described her as a "French starlet."  Just why this talented, experienced actor (over 100 films), singer and film director in her own right should attract such demeaning comment says more about the journalists concerned than anything else. •   Perils of celebrity interviews:  "Philip McCarthy talks to Meryl Streep", according to the NZ Sunday Star-Times. Read this piece however, and it quickly becomes evident that McCarthy, The Sydney Morning Herald's New York correspondent, merely attended the NY press conference for Streep's film, The Devil Wears Prada. It wasn't a one-on-one at all. So the two(!) quotes from Streep were the same generic answers she's given to all media outlets, including her earlier interview with Dave Letterman and the inescapable "Making Of..." promo. My suspicion led me to the original, unedited SMH report, where poor Philip manages to get in one grovelling question as La Streep was being ushered out of the conference. "She smiled and nodded,"  writes Philip.  If it had been a real interview I'd have expected a sharp interviewer to sneak in a few questions about Streep's simultaneously released A Prairie Home Companion, from veteran Robert Altman - a film I suspect will never get a general release in this territory, after its Brisbane Film Festival premiere. •   The book The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood, by James Mottram, may be terrible, but so is Paul Little's ill-informed review (in the NZ Sunday Star-Times).  Mottram discusses the "Sundance" film directors and writers Paul Thomas Anderson & Wes Anderson, David O Russell, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, Stephen Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, Richard Rodriguez and Bryan Singer.  Little disputes Mottram's thesis that these guys were "outlaws embraced by the mainstream," and that "the studios were willing to build relationships with maverick directors."  None of this is new, suggests Little, "...these filmmakers (unlike their predecessors) were gagging to get into bed with the studios from the start. One thing they all have in common is hollow ambition - a desire to make movies not to express a vision or create art, like the previous generation, but to make movies so they can be 'movie makers'."  This sweeping generalisation is bollocks, and Little does not appear to have seen many of the films Mottram discusses, yet he chides the writer for having seen so many.  He avoids tackling the basic Sundance flaw.  Which is: The festival has evolved into another "studio" showcase.  Sure, the films may be quirky, edgy, low-budget, and all the other Sundance adjectives, but most of all the winners must appeal to Harvey Weinstein and other studios executives who will then buy them at bargain basement rates but do not have to take the initial risk in backing them. Of the hundreds of Sundance films, few have been widely distributed theatrically.  Quickly now, how many did you see last year?  The filmmakers Mottram deals with have largely been true to themselves.  Their debut films, like Russell's Spanking the Monkey, Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape, and Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs were all made despite the studios, rather than with their backing, and the filmmakers' subsequent studio films from Three Kings to Lost in Translation and Traffic  reflect their own concerns - not the studios'. Tarantino even managed to conform Kill Bill - and a sequel, studios love that - as well as a recent TV episode of CSI, to his own obsessions. As for the alleged racism in "Lost in Translation," I wonder if Little has seen the much-praised Australian film, Japanese Story? •   Ryan Gilbey, writing in the UK Observer, has a career survey of actor Helen Mirren, ahead of the general release of her Venice Film Festival triumph, The Queen. I thought it strange that while he lists Mirren's mediocre roles in Savage Messiah, Teaching Mrs Tingle and Calendar Girls, there is no mention of the splash she made in Australia 1969, when as an 18-year-old RSC student, she played a nude model for artist James Mason in Age of Consent, directed by the maverick Englishman Michael Powell. Gilbey also omits a couple of choice anecdotes relating to Mirren's widely admired performance as Queen Elizabeth II.  In the excellent TV film by John Schlesinger, A Question of Attribution, about Anthony Blunt, there is a short scene with an unexpectedly witty and elegant Queen Elizabeth II, expertly played by Prunella Scales, yes - Sybill Fawlty herself.  And in Mirren's greatest TV role, as Inspector Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, she lays down some ground rules to her male underlings.  "Call me Guv, not Ma'am.  I'm not the bloody Queen."  Well, not in that series anyway, we had to wait for yet another brilliant (better?) performance in the recent Elizabeth I. •   More movie publicity quotes taken out of context:  "Echoes the theme of Hitchcock's Rear Window...SUPERB"- Hollywood Reporter. This ran in newspaper advertisements in NZ newspapers for one of my favourite films of last year, Michael Haneke's Hidden (Cache). Since it's nothing like the Hitchcock film (one of my favourites of all time) I decided to discover how this quote came to be (mis)used.  Kirk Honeycutt's full review discusses the process of filmmaking, including the voyeuristic aspect: "The film was apparently shot on videotape, which causes us often to wonder whether it's the movie observing Georges' behavior or the tape made by his mysterious stalker. In this way, Haneke echoes the theme of Hitchcock's "Rear Window": Moviemaking is basically an act of voyeurism. We secretly examine people's lives in every movie. But in this one, there is a hidden camera, a movie within the movie as it were, forcing us to observe a character along side a mysterious stranger." Actually, after the brilliant opening, which borrows a motif from Haneke's earlier films Benny's Video and Funny Games, it's pretty clear when it is the movie or surveil- lance tape we're watching, which does not mean there is not an unsettling ambiguity; it's a film which requires several viewings. If you do want to compare it with another film, how about David Lynch's Lost Highway? Yes, it's another favourite of mine and has a similar, disturbing opening. •   In the Australian edition of Empire magazine, Luke Goodsell reviews Thomas Vinterberg's film Dear Wendy: "The Danish oaf (Lars von Trier) wrote the script for this, director Vinterberg's exploration of gun culture set in a fictional (i.e. completely fake) American mining town.  The script's depiction of America is as facile and simplistic as its Dogme origins are contrived.  Vinterberg's direction is fine..."  Goodsell awards "Dear Wendy" one star. Phew!  Goodsell, in his eagerness to denigrate von Trier, seems thoroughly confused about both Dogme and film direction. Because the film is shot in Denmark and not a real American mining town immediately disqualifies it from Dogme contention (which demands real locations and no artificial intervention) - but the filmmakers never claimed this anyway.  And surely it's the film which is a "facile and simplistic" depiction of America rather than the script since apparently, in Goodsell's view, the director has not been able to transcend what he sees as the film's major fault.  Yet, he absolves Vinterberg from blame, describing his direction as "fine."  However, the good news is that the troublesome Dogme manifesto has been misinterpreted by many others before Goodsell.  These days I think of von Trier as the Road Runner leaving a bevy of Wile E Coyotes (movie critics) - and the Dogme experiment, which he leaves to others - far behind.   •   But wait - there's more.  Goodsell, in his Empire review of Memoirs of a Geisha claims "its cultural faults may be obvious," but he seems unaware of his own cultural blunder, assuming actress Zhang Ziyi's surname is Ziyi.  Haven't we been through this before?  Unfortunately even the US mag. Premiere has not caught up. In Premiere's article The 24 Finest Perfromances of 2005, there are pieces on Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li.  Although Glenn Kenny uses the correct form in his contribution, calling his subject Zhang throughout, why does he discuss the Chinese directors Kar Wai and Yimou?  He means, of course: Wong and Zhang (another one). And Stephen Saito is blissfully unaware he is writing about someone who's surname is Gong, not Li.  Not to be outdone, the (UK) Independent's Clifford Coonan, reports on Taiwanese director Ang Lee's appointment as arts and culture consultant for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in 2008. Lee joins fellow directors Zhang Yimou and Steven Spielberg - a powerful creative team. Shame that Coonan writes about "Lee, Yimou and Spielberg" throughout the article.  You would expect a Beijing-based correspondent to get the Chinese names right. •   Also in Empire (May 06), is the feature The Top Ten Most Underrated Actors.  Making the list is John Wayne. OK, fair enough, but in his filmography the (unnamed) writer includes "Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande, Howard Hawks' (sic) cavalry trilogy." Do you think he means John Ford?  I would rather Empire spent more time checking details like this than making up all those "funny" captions for the photos. •   Speaking of Howard Hawks, in a piece in the UK Guardian on Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal, She's the Boss, business writer Jane Martinson claims: "She was saved by the late Dawn Steel, the first woman to run a leading US movie studio, who brought Pascal to Columbia (now Sony Pictures) in 1988."  Woah there, pardner!  Actress Sherry Lansing (see her in Hawks' Rio Lobo) was there first.  She was appointed President of 20th Century Fox in 1980.  Perhaps Martinson can be forgiven - she covers business, not entertainment -  but it seems an elementary blunder. •   The American author Kathy Reichs is profiled in the UK Guardian (reprinted in the NZ Herald) by Liz Hoggard.  Reichs "inspired the hit TV series Bones starring the magnetic Emily Deschenal (sic) who plays the heroine Temperance Brennan," writes Hoggard.  I didn't watch "Bones" but I know of the actress Emily Deschanel, sister of actress Zooey, daughter of actress Mary Jo and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. Hoggard's error was repeated throughout her article both in print and on the Guardian's website. •   One of those irritating V.O.promos which TV One specialise in urged us to watch their flagship current affairs programme Sunday, earlier this year, where "George Clooney talks about his glamorous lifestyle and his directorial day-boo..." They were referring to Clooney's movie, Goodnight and Good Luck, which is of course his second film as director, after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. (I always preferred the French title: Confessions d'un homme dangereux). OK, so what would TVNZ know?  But the BBC World Service (radio) programme On Screen is no better.  They decided, in a piece about actor John Turturro, that his 2005 film, Romance and Cigarettes is his first as director.  It's actually his third, following Mac (1992 ) and Illuminata (1998).  Not to be outdone, Peter Calder, in his NZ Herald Time Out review of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada decided that it is "the second of three films in this year's (2006 NZ International) Film Festival in which well-known actors make their directing debuts."  The others (he suggests) are Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim and Richard E Grant's Wah-Wah. Call me picky, but only Grant is the novice director here.  "Three Burials" director Tommy Lee Jones made a fine TV western, The Good Old Boys in 1995. Graeme Tuckett on National Radio pointed this out in his review slot, but immediately blotted his copybook when remarking on Tommy Lee's daughter, January, (she plays Barry Pepper's bored wife) admitting that he didn't know "if she's ever acted before, but she has appeared in Playboy magazine." (I hope he read the articles...) Check out her extensive movie and TV credits here. As a director Buscemi already has the excellent Trees Lounge (in which he also appears), the prison drama Animal Factory and a couple of superb Sopranos episodes (like the recent Mr and Mrs John Sacrimoni Request) under his belt.   •   Regular "they said it" contributor Helen Barlow, interviewed  (in Sydney) MI-3 director J J Abrams, a syndicated piece I guess, published in The NZ Herald''s Time Out section.  So far so good, but in the closing paragraph Barlow delivers this clunker: "Abrams has produced the pilot for a new TV series, "Six Degrees", where he looks set to resusitate the careers of (actors) Campbell Scott and Hope Davis..."  Again, I don't know where Barlow's been hiding, but Campbell Scott is doing very nicely thank you, with Marie and Bruce, The Dying Gaul, Loverboy, Duma and The Exorcism of Emily Rose as well as directing Off the Map with Joan Allen and Sam Elliot, screened at Cannes and Sundance last year to considerable popular acclaim.  The wonderful Hope Davis (she appeared in my Class Acts page - now archived - years ago) has been seen in three terrific performances this year alone!  See her in Proof, The Weatherman, The Matador and (with her Secret Lives of Dentists co-star Scott) Duma, from last year. •   Reviewers of Shane Black's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a stylish comedy take on L A Confidential, have fallen over themselves to let us know that the title comes from a collection of the late Pauline Kael's film criticism (published in 1968).  Well yes, but if they'd bothered to read "A Note on the Title" on the book's flyleaf, they would have discovered that Kael saw these words on "an Italian movie poster."  Indeed she did - most likely the poster for the 1967 Italian film Kiss Kiss...Bang Bang, directed by Duccio Tessari. •   Anthony Hopkins was not giving anything away during his promotional interviews for The World's Fastest Indian.  The wily veteran told fawning interviewers that he grabbed the chance to play New Zealander Burt Munro, who broke the world motorcycle speed record in Utah in 1967. "[Munro] is a real winner of a guy.  I've had a good career playing psychopaths or uptight people and I'm fed up with those," claims Sir Anthony.  OK, but how about Across the Lake where he played, very convincingly, Donald Campbell, the English water speed record holder?  Maybe Munro was not so much of a stretch, unless Hopkins considers Campbell (who like Munro was obsessive and driven, with a history of heart problems) a "weird guy"?  Then there's Geena Davis playing the first female US President in Commander-in-Chief, the eagerly awaited TV series.  You won't hear about this on E T's The Insider, but she's not the first actress to play the role. Polly Bergen beat her to it in the 1965 Kisses for my President .  Sure, it was a comedy, but a plausible one, backed up by very convincing White House sets and Washington locations. •   You don't see too many pieces on cinematographers in non-specialist newspapers and magazines, and those that do appear take the (cringe) celebrity approach. Recent interviews with Aussie trendsetter Christopher Doyle and New Zealander Michael Seresin fell into this category.  Gaby Wood, for the (UK) Observer, was "granted an interview," with Doyle "at the Soho Grand Hotel," in London.  She decided he is "the world's most famous living cinematographer," who is "better known than many of the directors he works with."  Anyone with a genuine interest in movies would take issue with both of these assertions.  I would suggest that eminent veterans Haskell Wexler (United States), Robby Muller (Netherlands), Sven Nykvist (Sweden) and Vittorio Storaro (Italy) would be contenders, and the directors Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kaige, Phil Noyce and Gus Van Sant are easily as well-known as Doyle.  The Seresin article, by Veronica Schmidt, appeared in the (NZ) Sunday Star-Times magazine, Sunday.  Given that the mag is aimed at women readers, Seresin's distinguished career is dealt with very superficially, but I learned more than I wanted to know about his previous and current "relationships" and (again) all about his local boutique vineyard.  Schmidt did reveal that Seresin "did not suffer fools gladly,"  leaving me wondering what he thought of this tosh. •   An unbylined piece for AAP profiles Wes Craven, director of the current Red Eye.  The article dubs Craven the "King of Horror" and he certainly made his name with low budget hits like The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream.  However when the writer suggests that Red Eye is a departure from Craven's chosen genre he comes unstuck.  What about Music of the Heart, with an Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep?  OK, so it does get a mention as a rare exception for Craven, but it's described as a "musical."  Oops, guess who hasn't seen it, or even checked its details? •   Still on those who breathlessly document celebrity lives, Lesley Thomas of the (UK) Telegraph Group profiles "supermodel" Linda Evangelista.  We should point out here that it was one of Evangelista's fellow countrymen, a Canadian journalist, who originally coined the term "supermodel" to describe the frantic life of top model Carol Alt in the late '70s.  But back to Linda, who Thomas points out got her big break when photographer "Peter Lindenberg (sic) persuaded her to cut off her long, wavy hair."  Those of us who keep track of photographers know that it was Peter Lindbergh who kick-started Linda's career, and the movie she appeared in "playing herself," is the documentary Unzipped, not Catwalk, which featured Christy Turlington. •   Never underestimate the power of a Hollywood PR blitz.  Virtually every movie media outlet in the world dutifully promoted the Sydney Pollack/Nicole Kidman move The Interpreter as "the first feature film given permission to film inside the United Nations headquarters in New York."  Most added that "even Alfred Hitchcock," was knocked back when he wanted to shoot scenes there for his 1959 thriller North by Northwest.  Nobody thought to find out why Hitchcock was refused permission.  The reason: The producers of the 1953 movie The Glass Wall had beaten him to it, shooting scenes in the eponymous 39-storey Secretariat tower building, and for political or practical reasons the then Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold subsequently banned non-documentary filming in the UN complex.  However, full marks to veteran film critic Jim Hoberman for pointing this out in his review of The Interpreter in the New York Village Voice. •   Alasdair Palmer, writing about the controversial German film about Adolph Hitler, Downfall, in the (UK) Sunday Telegraph describes the film's director/screenwriter thus: "Oliver Hirschbiegel is a television director whose main claim to fame before Downfall was a small-screen cop show."  Only if you ignore the director's internationally acclaimed movie Das Experiment (The Experiment) from a couple of years ago, and yes, it was one of the few German films screened theatrically in New Zealand. •   Rebecca Barry, writing a pre-Oscar Awards piece in the NZ Herald, wants to increase NZ's already respectable Academy Awards tally.  She claims the movie Shrek won local-boy-made-good Andrew Adamson an Oscar for Best Animated Film.  Not so.  Shrek won the award for its producer, Adamson was co-director.  He is in the running for an award for Shrek 2, where he is a producer (and director) this time. •   Richard Roeper, the comical sidekick of veteran Chicago Sun-Times film reviewer Roger Ebert was plugging his latest book, Schlock Value: Hollywood at its Worst, on Fox (breakfast) news the other day.    "What about Woody Allen?" chortled Roeper to Fox's braying trio of hosts, "As he gets older, his female co-stars get younger.  I mean you'd never see Mariel Hemingway in one of his movies now!"  Nothing like letting the facts get in the way of Roeper's "revelation."  A quick check confirmed that of the recent films Allen has starred in from 2000, Small Time Crooks had him married to middle-aged Tracey Ullman and later he teams up with the even older Elaine May; Helen Hunt sparred with him in Curse of the Jade Scorpion (hot on the heels of her romantic involvement with 60-something Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets); Tea Leoni played his ex-wife in Hollywood Ending and Christina Ricci is romantically involved with Jason Biggs (not Allen) in Anything Else, with a rather older Stockard Channing in there somewhere too.  Allen does what he always does, gets top talent for his collaborators and even has younger men (Kenneth Brannagh, Sean Penn) play "his part" when he feels it's better for the film. •   First line on the glossy promo leaflet for Kinsey from Fox Searchlight Pictures: From the Director of "CHICAGO". C'mon guys, Chicago was directed by Rob Marshall, but written by Kinsey's director, Bill Condon. They get it right on the back of the leaflet, where Condon is correctly attributed as writer-director of the cult hit Gods and Monsters.  Photo caption for Marty Duda's review in the Herald on Sunday of the terrific Open Water, says the film "concentrates on what happens when a couple is left on the Barrier Reef."  The movie was based on that (Australian) incident, but was set in the Carribean. •   Oliver Stone, genial as ever, has been busily promoting Alexander in the face of much muttering about historical inaccuracy, bisexuality and haircuts!  There he was on the BBC World's Talking Movies with stars Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie.  After the actors had dutifully given the interviewer Tom Brook their take on the movie and their characters, Brook introduced Stone by asking him to comment on his film.  "Well," grinned Stone, "It's violence, sex, emotion, love, hate, action..."  His mischievous response went right over Brook's head; it's a sly reworking of legendary director Sam Fuller's quip about movies in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou where the director played himself: "The film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death...in one word emotion."  But let's not be too hard on Tom Brook, who's no Barry Norman (his predecessor), but at least not as dire as his American colleagues on Talking Movies, Laura Metzger and Manoush Zomorodi who with their strident voices and irritating delivery appear to be auditioning for the now unwatchable Entertainment Tonight. •   With so many Chinese films doing the rounds you would think those writing about them would take the trouble to get the filmmakers and actors' names right.  This does not only apply to local journalists persisting in assuming the director Zhang Yi-mou and actor Chow Yun-fat are Mr Yi-mou and Mr Yun-fat respectively.  Their surnames are ZHANG and CHOW.  Others are director CHEN Kaige and actress GONG Li. The actress/director Joan CHEN was born CHEN Chong. Yes, it's confusing when others use the Anglicised form: Jackie CHAN, Maggie CHEUNG, Jet LI and  Ang LEE for example.  Astonishingly, in a syndicated interview with rising star ZHANG Ziyi, the Guardian's Sanjiv Bhattacharya (conforming to the convention of discussing film personnel using their surname) calls his subject "Ziyi" throughout.  And why, in an otherwise accurate piece on Chinese cinema in the N.Y. Times does Manohla Dargis suddenly break the convention and write about Mr Kaige - rather than Mr Chen?  I can never figure out why journalists interviewing foreigners (in any field) do not extend the courtesy of asking their subjects their correct form of address, which they could then pass on to readers.  [Update: US print ads for Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers have taken to listing, among the actors' credits, Zhang Ziyi as Ziyi ZHANG.  Well it's one way of pointing Anglos in the right direction, if it doesn't add to the confusion.] •   Unfortunately, Aussie journalist Helen Barlow is still confused, if her syndicated piece on House of Flying Daggers in the NZ Herald's Time Out section is anything to go by.  After carefully explaining Zhang Ziyi's reverting to Anglo convention by reversing the order of her names, (Barlow calls it Americanised and a re-christening, which it isn't) she then blithely continues to refer to Zhang as "Ziyi", as well as referring to Taiwanese director Ang LEE as "Ang".  Much better to do what Russell Baillie does in his review of the movie in (NZ Herald) Time Out mag and use the full name which neatly eliminates any confusion, especially when you're dealing with two Zhangs (director and actor). •   I took more than a passing interest in the new Herald on Sunday's View magazine.  Its main claim to fame appears the the 7-day TV guide for all free-to-air & pay channels.  It does include Triangle TV listings which is more than the NZ Herald's e.g. mag manages.  However it doesn't fare so well in the editorial pages.  Film columnist Marty Duda is well-known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of music, and he has an interview with singer/actor Marianne Faithfull.  He comes unstuck when recounting the events surrounding her near-fatal OD in Sydney in 1969.  Duda claims it occured on the set of Performance.  Not so.  Performance was shot in London and Marianne Faithfull wasn't in it.  She was in Australia to shoot the Tony Richardson-directed Ned Kelly with Mick Jagger - who was in Performance.  Her role was subsequently taken by Aussie actress Diane Craig. (Marty is another journo who could do with a crash course in Chinese names; see above). •   Back at the Sunday Star-Times  (the Herald on Sunday's main competition) the glossy colour magazine Sunday appears to be directed at women only, but there is one page, "Intelligencer", which has a column, "The Classic", which highlights a book, movie or CD by outlining the main reasons for its classic status. I have no quibble with the selections, but give them low marks for accuracy.  The column's compiler (not always attributed) has (a) awarded the movie Roman Holiday 10 Academy Awards. (It scored 2) ; (b) claimed Breakfast at Tiffany's is B&W (it's one of the great examples of Technicolor); (c) misquoted the famous line from F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby as "There are no second acts in American life." The correct quote, which opens Clint Eastwood's biopic of legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, Bird, is "There are no second acts in American lives." •   In a more recent cover story on actress Samantha Morton (shooting in New Zealand) Sunday ran a piece from the (U.K.) Sunday Telegraph Magazine. "Morton has been seen in two films recently released in New Zealand: Enduring Love and Code 46," we are informed.  Oops. Actually, neither of these films have screened here yet, demonstrating the hazard of reprinting international material without checking closely details like this. •   None of the U.S critics seem to have picked the inspiration for Meryl Streep's performance as the dominant Mom in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate.  The herd went along with one website's assertion that it was (Senator) Hillary Clinton. Another suggested Republican heavyweight Karen Hughes.  Not even close.  Judging from the few clips I've seen and Streep's own comments:  "I think I'm doing a dead-on impersonation, but nobody's picked it yet," I'm sticking my neck out and going for Elizabeth Dole. The hairstyle alone is a giveaway, and in any case I think it was wise not to merely ape Angela Lansbury in the original.  (John Powers, the LA Weekly's brilliant political writer, who reviewed the movie for the paper has an each-way bet, describing Streep as "an infinitely more cutthroat Liddy Dole or Hillary Clinton...")  He also calls her "an extraordinary, witty actress who can deliver a good line like a stiletto through the ribs."  I'll go along with that. •   However, here at home, the Herald on Sunday's cover story on Streep perpetuates the now ancient myth in its months-old interview by Audrey Smythe-Jones.  Streep points out yet again, that the politics of her character, Senator Eleanor Shaw, "couldn't be further from Hillary Clinton."  Not only that, none of the View magazine's staff appear to have actually seen the new Manchurian Candidate.  Three times it's stated that Streep's role is the wife of a powerful US senator.  No guys, that was the 1962 version.  In the remake the character is a senator herself, described by director Jonathan Demme as "always the smartest person in the room."   •   Still on Meryl Streep, veteran Hollywood reporter Ivor Davis in a syndicated piece in the Sunday Star-Times "Escape" section, writes about her forthcoming TV mini-series Angels in America.  Streep, he claims, has appeared in "over  60 films."  That sounded a bit high to me, and sure enough a quick check revealed she's had major roles in about 35, with another 10 or so bit parts and voice-over characters.  She does have a very busy period coming up where she's slated for 6 films over the next two years, but maybe Ivor's fingers slipped on the keyboard this time. •   Why did so many reviewers find Patrice Leconte's L'Homme du train (Man on a train) so confusing?  I lost track of the number of reviews which talked about the "confusing climax."  There was nothing confusing about the climax, which intercut the respective fates of the two protagonists: one robbing a bank, one undergoing heart surgery.  What was ambiguous was the denoument or coda which depicts a "what-might-have-been scenario", but it's still a very satisfying movie.  For the last word on denoument check out the Nic Cage character (the annoying one - he plays twin brothers - who's the acolyte of screenwriting guru Robert McKee) in Adaptation. •   Among the barrage of articles accompanying the release last year of The Matrix Reloaded, The Guardian's Anne Thompson attempted to give a potted history of the work done by Hollywood's special effects pioneers in a piece entitled Can the Hulk cut it? Has Lara had her day?  "Visual effects have morphed from Roy Harryhausen's rickety stop-motion skeletons in 1958's Seventh Voyage of Sinbad..." she explains.  As any movie geek - even the ones Anne Thompson's age - will tell you, it's Ray Harryhausen and the famous "rickety skeletons" appear in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).  Sure, there's always the chance of  typos but when the same mistake appears several times in one article... •   Memo to film reviewers: always trust what you see on screen, rather than any accompanying blurb. In his review of Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, Russell Baillie in the NZ Herald assured us that the film was made within the guidelines of the "lo-fi Dogma 95 aesthetic."  In fact, it violates 9 out of 10 of the Dogme 95 rules; the wily Danish director obviously got bored with such self-imposed limits, and characteristically didn't bother telling anybody - especially critics.  The result: many reviewers solemnly assumed that despite all the evidence to the contrary - it's a widescreen, melodramatic musical set in a foreign country, heavy with trend-setting video and audio post-production techniques coupled with Bjork's extraordinary performance - the film was the latest off the Dogma 95 production line. And far from being an "am-cam" shoot, von Trier was well-served by the great Robby Muller, the Dutch cinematographer always eager to experiment.  As for the 100-camera sequence - don't try this at home! •   More recently, Australian journalist Helen Barlow, in an interview with Lars von Trier about his new release Dogville, fell into the same trap when she described Beaking the Waves, The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark as von Trier's "Golden Heart Dogme trilogy."  Well, one out of three ain't bad I suppose, but only The Idiots is a Dogme production.  In a previous piece on her fellow countryman, director Phil Noyce, published, like the von Trier interview, in the NZ Herald,  Barlow erroneously includes Aussie actor Judy Davis in the cast of Noyce's first feature, Newsfront. (Actually she appeared in Noyce's Heatwave.) •   One the same topic, the glossy brochure which accompanied the NZ Film Festival screenings of Italian for Beginners includes a piece from Indiewire correspondent G Allen Johnson who chides the Dogme filmmakers for not sticking to the rules.  Unfortunately Johnson got into a tangle himself:  "Shot in digital video, which is now typical of Dogme films (even though item nine of the original Dogme manifesto dictates the film be shot on 35mm film - but who's keeping score...)," he writes.  Not so. Dogme films are always shot in digital video, and  Item 9 states that the film (ie the 35mm release print made from the video original) be screened in Academy (full) frame - which closely approximates the video aspect ratio.  Confused?  The projectionist at my screening was; he calmly showed the film in widescreen, ignoring the filmmakers' instruction, even cutting off the bottom row of subtitles for the first few minutes. •   Peter Calder, writing in the NZ Herald about the controversial French film Irreversible, describes its inclusion in "a festival of bad taste, B-grade and beyond."  Wrong.  The Beck's Incredible Film Festival has for the last four years (as long as I have been involved in it) been a showcase for top class foreign and independent American movies, most of which would not have screened here (New Zealand) were it not for the enterprising organisers, Ant and Matt Timpson.  Calder is not alone; most NZ mainstream journalists still regard the festival as the fringe event it used to be despite all evidence to the contrary.  Some titles from the past four festivals: Hypnosis (Masayuki Ochiai, Japan), Wadd: The Life & Times of John C Holmes (Cass Paley, US), Anatomie (Stefan Ruzowitsky, Germany), Audition  (Takashi Miike, Japan), Nowhere to Hide (Lee Myung-Se, Sth Korea), Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenabar, Spain), Bully & Ken Park (Larry Clark, US), The Experiment (Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany), The Isle (Kim Ki-duk, Sth Korea), Read My Lips (Jacques Audiard, France), Warriors ( Spain). Not a bad line-up for any festival, whatever umbrella title it takes.