Happy Valentine's Day?

Romantic comedy: two words which will either make you recoil in horror or jump for joy at the thought of an inevitable happy ending, cute couples and an escape from reality.

I'm probably more in the former category, the thought of watching yet another anodyne "romp" in upper Manhattan of no real interest, but when word of an upcoming rom-com called Valentine's Day (I know, we've barely got over Christmas Day) reached me it was more the calibre of the cast than the concept that caught my attention...deep breathe then:

Jessica Alba ("Fantastic Four"), Jessica Biel ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"), Bradley Cooper ("The Hangover"), Eric Dane (TV’s "Grey’s Anatomy"), Patrick Dempsey, (“Enchanted”), Hector Elizondo (the Princess Diaries" films), Jamie Foxx ("Ray"), Jennifer Garner ("Juno"), Topher Grace ("Spider-Man 3"), Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married"), Carter Jenkins ("Aliens in the Attic") Ashton Kutcher ("What Happens In Vegas"), Queen Latifah ("Chicago"), George Lopex ("Beverly Hills Chihuahua"), Shirley MacLaine ("Terms Of Endearment"), Emma Roberts ("Hotel for Dogs"), and Julia Roberts ("Erin Brockovich").

They might not all be my cup of tea, but put them together with director Garry Marshall ("Pretty Woman") and this tale following "the intertwining storylines of a group of Los Angelinos as they find their way through romance over the course of one Valentine's Day", has some promise.

Here's the trailer:



Valentine's Day arrives in UK cinemas on 12 February 2010 - leave your thoughts on the trailer below.

Christmas gift guide

In Friday's Reel Time column I mentioned some of the film-related gifts I'd suggest buying this Christmas, including a variety of new and classic DVD releases, novels of forthcoming film adaptations and cinema memberships which will keep on giving for the next twelve months.

The list in full looks something like this:

• Star Trek
• Transformers II
• Terminator: Salvation
• In the Loop
• The Hangover
• The Complete Dr Mabuse Fritz Lang
• The Complete Lone Wolf and Cub
• North by Northwest
• Let the Right One In
• The Road
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Lovely Bones

Those are only my views and I'd welcome any suggestions for DVDs, books or anything else I've missed - feel free to leave your comments below, or send me your thoughts via Twitter.

Enjoy festive season with that Christmas classic - Die Hard

We might have been indoctrinated to believe that White Christmas, A Christmas Carol and The Wizard of Oz are the perfect movies to watch as the 25th approaches, but I'd like to give a shout out to five other festive films which often get ignored at this time of year.

First up is 1989's Die Hard, perhaps my favourite action filck. There are no carol singers and little mistletoe in evidence and the only real concession to Christmas is a dead terrorist dressed as Santa and end credits sung to the tune of Let it Snow by Bing Crosby, but it's still a classic. Die Hard 2 was also set at Christmas but has little of the charm of the original.

Next is The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), a film which no doubt had Dickens spinning in his grave as Gonzo and Rizzo narrated the well-worn tale to a new generation. Surprisingly affecting throughout – Michael Caine was an inspired choice to play Ebenezer Scrooge – there's also space for talking vegetables, skating penguins and Stadler and Waldorf as ghosts. What's not to like?

Macaulay Culkin's career may have vanished faster than a snowman in a heatwave in the year's following it's release, but I have a soft spot for the original Home Alone (1990) film. Culkin stars as Kevin, a boy left behind by his parents at Christmas and forced to protect his home from burglars. It might not the best festive movie ever made but it's still good fun, Joe Pesci on good form as one of the crooks.

From comedy to horror (albeit one with a strong vein of humour running through it) with Gremlins (1984), Joe Dante's hugely enjoyable adventure centring on Billy's (Zach Gilligan) attempt to look after a Mogwai while events conspire to cause the “birth” of dozens of nasty Gremlins in small town USA. Despite some dated effects, this stands up as a great film and deserves a spot on every Christmas viewing schedule.

Finally, I'll return to Charles Dickens for 1988's Scrooged, Bill Murray's gloriously OTT performance as a TV exec tasked with staging a live version of A Christmas Carol. Murray's trademark sarcasm is present and correct and while we all know there's bound to be a happy Hollywood ending, getting there is a lot of fun.

Have I missed anything obvious?

Bring back shorts

Pixar fans love them. Some of our best known directors started their careers making them. They were once common in our cinemas before adverts took over. So where have all the short films gone?

Back when the world was in black and white, a trip to the cinema often meant a series of documentaries, newsreels, adventure serials and cartoons being strung together to provide a varied, and cost effective, night out.

As the fascinating new book The British ‘B’ Movie (BFI/Palgrave MacMillan) notes, from the 1930s through to the early 1960s low budget films of around an hour or so, known as ‘quota quickies’ or ‘B’ films, were produced to accompany the main ‘A’ features, often convincing punters to part with their cash.

By the 1970s the short film was all but dead thanks to the growth of adverts and the dominance of the blockbuster, though I remember cartoons before films when I was taken to the old ABC on Lothian Road in the (very) late 1970s as a boy.

Though short films still exist on late night television and on the Internet, their side-lining isn't something we should be happy about.

If you went to see the recent science fiction film District 9 you might not know that it started life as a short film, directors such as Ridley Scott and Shane Meadows also learning their trade by making shorts such as Boy and Bicycle and Where's the Money Ronnie!

When I wrote a few weeks back about my trip to the Inverness Film Festival, one thing I didn't mention were the series of short films such as Smith, Pollphail and Steel Homes preceding the new feature films. All of them are unique and British and you've probably never heard of them.

On the other hand, go and see the latest Pixar epic Up and you'll find a lovely little short film called Partly Cloudy before it, the adults and children in the audience clearly lapping it up.

So are short films dead in mainstream cinema? For the most part it would seem so, though I'd love to see the Cineworld's and Odeon's of this world giving over 5 or 10 minutes to a new short which complements the main film, bringing back some variety to our evenings out.

Until then keep an eye out for short film seasons at your local cinema and you might be pleasantly surprised with what you find.

A shortlist of short films

Writing in today's Evening News, I mentioned that like to see our cinemas bring back short films before the main features, harking back to a time when an evening's entertainment comprised a series of short films strung together from newsreels, cartoons and documentaries.

Would losing five minutes of adverts to give up-and-coming filmmakers a chance to shine in front of the latest Hollywood blockbuster really be such a bad thing? After all, that's how Ridley Scott, Shane Meadows and other directors got noticed.

Until that happens here are a few short films I've seen over the last year or so that you might find interesting - the first three started out life as shorts but were expanded into full movies after being spotted by eager executives.

First up is director Neill Blomkamp's Alive in Joberg, the 2005 film which inspired this year's sci-fi blockbuster District 9:



Next up is Shane Acker's 9, another short film which ended up becoming a feature film, also called 9 and starring Elijah Woods:



My final sci-fi themed short is called Panic Attack and has a similar vibe to it as Joberg/District 9. Director Fede Alvarez took this to Hollywood and was immediately signed-up to make it into a multi-million dollar action film:



Finally, here's Shane Meadows' The Stairwell, a short film made entirely on a mobile phone for zero budget, proving it doesn't take much to make something interesting:



Feel free to add your own links to your favourite short films in the comments section below.

Stage on Screen with NT Live

Unless you live in or near London or happen to have a substantial entertainment budget, heading down to the National Theatre to see their latest productions is always going to be tricky.

Luckily help is at hand with a new initiative called NT Live which started in June this year with the beaming of Helen Mirren's new play Phèdre to cinemas around the UK for one day only. For just £10, audiences could watch one of Britain's finest actresses in action from the comfort of their local cinema and not worry about having to get the Tube to the South Bank.

If you missed the 2009 screenings, NT Live returns in January 2010 to Edinburgh's Cameo with an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Nation and on 22 April with Richard Griffiths in The Habit of Art.

Well done to the National for taking a chance on these performances, here's hoping they lead to similar experiments in the future.

Here's a look at the trailer for NT Live: