A Week In Hollywood

EISENBERG MEETS ZUCKERBERG
If it feels like Jesse Eisenberg hasn’t really got the comic timing required to guest host Saturday Night Live, wait until you see Mark Zuckerberg fall flat on his eager little face at 2:40. Apparently making $7 billion by the time you’re 26 is easier than telling a joke about the Facebook ‘poke’ function, especially if you’re trying to do so without looking like a performing seal who’s just shat itself for the entertainment of a crowd of jeering onlookers.

IN CINEMAS: THE FIGHTER
Notorious shouty man David O. Russell has finally been let back into the cinemas after loitering out by the fire escape ever since he presented the world with the gross I ♥ Huckabees back in ’04. Seems he’s decided that whole auteur thing he had going on was overrated, and has reverted to casting the character Christian Bale played in The Machinist as the crack-addicted elder brother of a white Audley Harrison in a remake of The Wrestler set in a boxing ring. Mark Wahlberg puts in a decent shift as White Audley and the boxing scenes are OK (dey is shot on video lyk we is wotchin dem on da telly) but all in all, it’s a forgettable experience.

IN CINEMAS: A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN
When you’re making a movie, it’s wise to give yourself as wide an audience as possible. A raunchy college sex vom-edy will bring in the teen market, but is it really going to snare your average Bridges of Madison County fan? Kate Hudson’s new film about cancer doesn’t want anyone to miss out on the uplifting joy of wasting disease, so dutifully offers its ass up to as many demographics as possible. Were you shallow enough to identify with the part Judd “Big Bear” Apatow wrote for Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up? This too has a “sassy” career woman who likes sex and knows how to get it. Do you like The Smiths? This film is even more rife with wildly unlikely romantic scenarios and idiosyncratic neurotics than (500) Days of Summer. Or maybe you liked The Bucket List? This has a hang-gliding scene too.

SUPERMAN IS FROM JERSEY
When Superman’s tired corpse is exhumed again for yet another big-screen reboot, certified BRO Zack Snyder will be the man directing it. ‘But who will play Superman?’ the blogosphere wonders. Turns out that guy Henry Cavill who was in that show The Tudors some people pretend to have watched is the man who’s been chosen to fly around trying not to bang Lois Lane. He’s from Jersey, which now means that Spider-Man, Batman and Superman are all played by British people. WE BE RUNNING THAT SHIT.

IN CINEMAS: BRIGHTON ROCK
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! This is not a remake of the film Dickie Attenborough made in 1947 – rather it’s a ‘re-adaptation’ of Graham Greene’s classic novel, which is an important definition to make because the new version swaps the complexity and style of its predecessor for Sam Riley, the man who’s been so typecast already in his young career that he’s basically Danny Dyer with ’emotional problems’ and an overcoat. Andrea Riseborough pulls off her role as Riley’s endlessly persecuted girlfriend Rose passably enough, and there are supporting roles for Andy Serkis, John Hurt and Helen Mirren, just in case you weren’t already 100% aware that THIS IS A BRITISH MOVIE.

LIFE IN A DAY IS SO HOT RIGHT NOW
There’s something a little bit too G2 about the phrase “YouTube documentary” for my liking, but ultimately I’m as excited as everybody else is about Life In A Day, the new project from Ridley Scott and Touching the Void director Kevin MacDonald. The whole thing’s built from 80,000 clips uploaded to YouTube on July 24th last year, so it’s gonna have to work hard not to crop up in the wet dream of some T-Mobile marketing exec. If you missed the premieres (shown in tandem at Sundance and online last week – how very “2011”) you’ll have to wait for the cinema release. Not that anyone goes to the cinema any more – all the good stuff’s on YouTube.

IN CINEMAS: SANCTUM 3D
If there are three things James Cameron can’t get enough of, they’re diving, 3D and that big nosed Welsh guy from Hornblower. The Holy Trinity is united as one in Sanctum, an Australian action-thriller about some men – and one woman, of course – who get stuck in a big cave and then try to get out of it. To do so they have to hold their breath and entertain ways in which the cave may metaphorically resonate with their experience of The Human Condition. The trailer describes the cave as “the Mother of all caves”. I did not know that caves had mothers.

CHARLIE LYNE