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COMEDY ROMANCE CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC
(PG) 104min 0
Meet Rebecca Bloorrmood ilsia FlShC‘l), an aspiring (Ournalist who runs up a hefty sevenrfigure credit card bill while purSuing her dream in New York With the pesky IRS on her trail, she tries to kick her plastic habit Without losmg the respect of hei publisher (John Lithgowl, homely parents (Joan Cusack and John Goodman) and industry doyen Alette Naylor (Kristin Scott Thomas).
Burdened by forced slapstick scenes involvuig Bebecca being mistaken for a waitress. borderline raCist portrayals of comedy foreigners and Hugh Dancy's bland romantic foil. this adaptation of Sophie Kinsella's bestselling book directed by PJ Hogan (Muriel '5 Wedding, My Best Friend's Wedding) qurckly collapses into the clueless consumer-porn of Bride Wars rather than the savvy industry know-how of The Devr/ Wears Prada.
Endlessly fawning over deSigner labels and product placements. Hogan's film finally signs off With a wrongheaded finale. which mindlessly celebrates the greed culture that it was supposedly critICiSing; any
HUNK OF HORROR Henry Northmore catches up with the legend that is Bruce Campbell
éEEéEZSfiBéii i; {ii}; unrepentant «raga the 3.. lie burst onto the world of underground cinema with the ultimate video nasty, The Evil Dead, its two sequels,
INTERVIEW
want ten executives sitting twiddling their thumbs and looking over my shoulder at the shots.’
It was 1981’s Evil Dead that made Campbell a cult hero. It’s a gut shot of gore. adrenalised directing and the fearless mugging of its star, Ashley J Williams (as played by Campbell), directed by good friend Sam
genuine contrition in Kinsella's story has been transformed into a vacuously glossy vehicle to flog merchandise via lucrative commercial lie—ins. (Eddie Harrison)
I Genera/ release from Fri 20 Feb.
and a string of unacknowledged classics such as Maniac Cop, Crimewave, Man With the Screaming Brain and Bubba Ho-tep. ‘I don’t apologise for 8- movies anymore,’ explains Campbell, ‘because all the A-movies are B-movies. Spider-Man is the ultimate B-movie - a guy gets bitten by a radioactive spider, that’s a 19505 B-movie,’ he laughs.
Now he’s back and revelling in his Bruce-ness with My Name is Bruce, playing a warped version of himself, a washed-up actor making direct to video horror and sci-fl movies only to be kidnapped by his biggest fan in an attempt to save a town from a vicious Chinese ghost. It’s a postmodern, self- referential farce. ‘lt’s like The Changeling but more serious,’ he laughs. Not only does it star Bruce Campbell as Bruce Campbell, he also took on the directing reins, revelling in the autonomy smaller independent filmmaking offers. ‘It was shot on my property. It was all about creative freedom, I don’t
Raimi, who is now more famous for directing the aforementioned Spider-Man films (which all feature a cameo from a certain Mr Campbell). But surely the question on every fan’s lips is: will there be an Evil Dead 4? ‘We have a lot of affection for those films but Army of Darkness was 18 years ago now, so you’d have thought that if we were going to do it we’d have done it by now. Our biggest concern is that it’ll disappoint. I mean, how many people really wanted Indiana Jones 4? That movie was forced down people’s throats. It’s not like Evil Dead was designed as some George Lucas-style 18-part huge story that unfolds over 15 years. We were never supposed to do the second one. Ash is dead at the end of the first one, but our second movie bombed so we thought, “We want to do another movie, let’s do another Evil Dead, we’ll figure out a way to bring him back”.’
I My Name is Bruce (Anchor Bay) is available on DVD from Mon 2 Mar.
WAR/BIOPIC CHE: PART TWO (15) 127min 0...
Che Guevara’s final fatal campaign in Bolivia gets bold and bleak treatment in the second part of Steven Soderbergh's extraordinary bio-historical epic about the ultimate revolutionary.
It‘s 1967 and Guevara (Benecio Del Toro) enters BoliVia disguised as a Uruguayan businessman. Before long he has made contact With the native Bolivian communists at their training base camp in the remote Nancahuazu region. His plan to force another people's revolution usmg a small guerrilla army soon falls apart in the face of US military intervention. dryided support from the local communist party and faulty equipment.
Eschewing the giddy Jigsaw puzzle Structure and collectivist optimism of the first film (With its delightfully sly nods to Robert Aldrich and Sam Peckinpahi for something more forensic and fatalistic. Soderbergh (as both director and cinematographer) drains away the warm colour palette of the first film and shots on super 16 with no dollies or cranes (just handheld and tripod shotsl. Che: Part Two is a rigorous day-to-day account of a guerilla campaign. Taking his lead from Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of A/giers. Roberto Rossellini‘s The Rise of LOU/S X/l/ and Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped, Soderbergh creates a portrait of a man that is at once objective and invested with ideological perspective.
With these two films (which are best seen together) Soderbergh has created a remarkable cinematic diptych that is at once mesmerismg and immerswe. It's actually a trance from which you emerge saddened. hopeful and wrth a hunger to learn more about the hirsute Argentine Marxist revolutionary who tried to change the world. for the collective good. (Paul Dale)
I General release from Fri 20 Feb.
‘i’; Feb—'3 Mar 2009 TI'IE LIST 41