I attended the screening for this on Tuesday but I can’t tell you what I thought until nearer the release date, Momentum/Paramount will send their Ninja Monkey’s to take me out if I do. (Believe me, they have Ninja Monkey’s that can fly and run up walls). Check out the trailer in the mean time!

Fall in love with Channing Tatum (Step-Up, GI Joe) in this year’s most romantic tear jerker Dear John. It’s love at first sight for John (Tatum) and college student Savannah (Mamma Mia’s Amanda Seyfried) when they meet by chance on the beach during a summer holiday. But their romance is threatened as the holiday ends, Savannah has to go back to college and John must return to life in the army and all that his duty entails. Brought together by love, will fate tear them apart?

Above is the new Iron Man 2 Poster (which should be obvious), it’s not that great, floating head posters are one of my pet hates, they just look like a quick photo-shop job, I don’t understand why the studio’s keep going with them, no Sam Rockwell either. In conclusion the poster is sh*t, but the film looks ace!

Robert Downey Jr. returns as Tony Stark, the wealthy playboy whose exploits as Iron Man are now public knowledge after his admission at the close of the first film. In the follow-up, Stark is pitted against his Russian arch nemesis, Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), and corporate rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). Also making their Marvel debuts are Scarlett Johansson as the sexy Russian spy Black Widow, and Don Cheadle, who takes over the role of Colonel James Rhodes from Terrence Howard

Last Sunday London welcomed Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon for Invictus’s European Press Conference. Below is  half of what took place, I will be getting up the second half in time for Invictus’s UK release on Friday. Check it out!

Clint Eastwood your at an age where most of us would be taking it a bit easier, yet you continue making challenging movies one after an other, you make some of the best movies we will see in any year, what is the driving force behind you? Why do you continue to work so much and so well?

Clint Eastwood: I sort of planned not working at this particular time in life, but nobody can plan on what they’re gonna do at my age of 49 (laughs). I just feel like I’m enjoying my work more now than I ever have, or just as much certainly. I’m at an age that I can take up more challenges than I have in the past because I know more and of course at this age you can forget more, but I’m trying to avoid that. I just enjoy it, I enjoy the process, being behind the camera, I enjoy that equally as much as being in front of the camera. I’ve been lucky enough to work in a profession that I’ve really liked, so I figured I’ll continue until someone hits me over the head and says get out (Laughs).

Matt you’ve always looked pretty handy when your fighting in your other films, how does that compare to Rugby?

Matt Damon: Any time your making a movie, it’s all choreography, except for this game, it’s a lot tougher to choreograph, it’s a lot more uncontrolled. A lot of the stuff we shot was what we called free play, just letting these guys go and nail each other and capture that. There was a whole physical challenge to get ready for the roll because I was playing a very famous man who everybody knows. It’s like any job though, it’s like a magic trick, ultimately your only job in a film is for the audience to believe, if they don’t for even a second you’ve failed because your taking them out of the story. You have to troubleshoot a year for the movie and think what will get me in trouble here and what do I have to solve, so Clint helped me out, Francois is a BIG guy and I’m an average sized guy, I thought people know what I look like and people know what he looked like how are we gonna get around this. Clint said maybe we can’t make you look 6′4 but we could make you look taller than 5′10, maybe we can make people not ask the question, so we used little tricks with the camera to make me look larger, shooting me higher, an insole in my shoe to give me an extra inch or so in height. Little things like that, then obviously a lot of work in the gym and working on the accent to make it believable.

From a filmakers point of view what were the challenges of filming a Rugby match compared to a dramatic scene?

Clint Eastwood: I didn’t grow up with Rugby, but I went and saw a lot matches, talked to a lot of people who have played, I talked to the coach at the Univercity Of California, a Rugby player by the name of Jack Clarke who gave a whole run down of the game, then I watched his practises and everything he did there. Then when we got to South Africa we got Chester, Francois and various people who had been in the game to go over it, so after talking to people I started to get a feel of the game and we hired Rugby players to play the parts, with the exception of Matt and one or two others, but they all came up to the game real fast so we just had them play. Chester was our coach, he would just tell the players to go out there and play Rugby, so they would be hitting real hard, our biggest challenge was to stay out of the way (laughs). So we did, our camera crew are used to working on the fly and that’s the way we approached it.

You’ve said Gran Torino will be your last time in front of the camera, do you still feel that way?

Clint Eastwood: I said that when we made Million Dollar Baby as well, the film was a success so I thought this will be a good time to quit on top, unlike most people who sort of drift down to the end, or like a prize fighter who fights one two many fights. But then Gran Torino came along, it was an interesting part, it was a man my age, I figured I wasn’t stretching that much so I decided on giving it another shot, I still say that, I might do ten roles, if ten great roles come up, but I don’t know how many great roles there are for a man of my age, 38 (laughs). You just don’t know, I had always planned when I starting directing in 1970 that after a few years I’d get tired of looking at myself on the screen but I continued on, every so often something pops up, I’m not saying it will never happen again, but the odds get less as you get older, when you set yourself in roles that fit your age group.

Has Nelson Mandela seen the film and what was his reaction? Also did you consult with him while creating the film?

Morgan Freeman: Yeah he’s seen it, he smiled a lot and nodded (laughs). When I first came onn screen he leaned over to me and said I know this fellow (laughs). I got the impression he wasn’t embarrassed. I didn’t consult with him before, I just consulted tapes, films on him, things like that. I didn’t go to him and say what do you feel about this or that because he’s 90 years old.

What was the most challenging thing about playing Mandela?

Morgan Freeman: The most challenging was the voice, the accent if you will. Everything else was easy, I’ve been watching him for years. Once I got the notion that one of these days I’d be playing him on screen it just became a thing of paying attention to him every chance I got. Whenever I was in his company, or when I saw him on screen I just watched him like one of these days I’m gonna have to do that

Invictus is in cinemas Febuary 5th

Colin Firth is one of Britain’s most recognisable actors, he’s know to my Mum and pretty much every woman over 40 as Mr Darcy. He hasn’t stopped there though, he’s also starred in The English Patient, Fever Pitch, Shakespeare In Love, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Girl With A Pearl Earring, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, When Did You Last See Your Father?, St Trinian’s and Mamma Mia! A Single Man for me is his best performance, I expect to see some Oscar love. A Single Man is based on the story by Christopher Isherwood. Set in the US in 1962, Firth plays English college professor George Falconer, a man struggling to come to terms with the death of his long term lover Jim (Matthew Goode). Distracted momentarily by old friend Charley (Julianne Moore) and curious student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), he cannot ignore the profound sense of less he feels and so resolves to do something about it.

Fear is a big theme in the film.

Colin Firth: Yes, there’s that theme of fear running through it which George talks to his students about. I think it’s very much alive today, it’s a marketing tool and a political tool. I think it’s how governments get things done. That’s what Naomi Klein talks about in The Shock Doctrine. If you frighten people enough to can get any legislation through, you can make them put with the Patriot Act, or Guantanamo or the invasion of a country that should be left alone. Or indeed giving up your civil liberties, or putting up CCTV cameras everywhere. People are prepared to accept all that if they’re frightened.

Could Isherwood’s story have been updated and put in a contemporary setting?

Colin Firth: That’s a very difficult one to answer. I don’t think LA’s changed that much, really. This character happens to be gay, but although George is struggling with a lot he’s certainly not struggling with his sexuality. Isherwood’s characters don’t seem to. So I don’t know what it would have done to the film if you’d have set it in the present. You take the Cuban Missile Crisis out and put something else there, like the fear of terrorism, it’s actually rather an interesting question. I think there’s something about the characters of George and Charley that just feels right in 1962, there’s something about their whole cultural reference points that feel of that generation. But I think you could have updated it quite easily frankly. I just wouldn’t have looked as good.

Tom Ford with his fashion experience at Gucci, makes the film look great, but also delivers strong characters within the story, doesn’t he?

Colin Firth: He used all the skills that I think he’d developed as a designer. As he’ll tell you in his other job he has to have a vision and he has to be able to communicate that , he has to be able to marshal people and inspire them to share it and do what you want them to do. Those are very much the skills that are required to direct a film too. He also he has an extraordinary instinct for picking the right people to do the jobs he wants, whether it’s a designer or a make-up person or his cast. If you have a look at him for a moment you realise it would be silly to bet against him on something like this. But I do think there was an emotional cost to him with this, he’s not just proving that he can do it. I feel there’s a lot of him in the story.

How did he relate to his actors on set?

Colin Firth: He didn’t give me any verbal instructions really, ever, it was just very clear what was required once we were up and running. When I read the script there was a lot of space to be filled in, there was a lot of stuff without words, but once we were doing it it seemed terribly clear what each moment should be about really. Tom didn’t really need to fling instructions around. I could tell by the room that we were filming in what the mood was, I could see what was on the page. I could tell something by what I was wearing. People comment on the visual beauty of it, I didn’t really notice it as beautiful particularly , it just seemed to be an inevitable part of this world really.

So things like the production design were quite organically arrived at, were they?

Colin Firth: Yes, like that beautiful house is something that Tom looked very, very hard for. He wanted it to be the place that George had chosen, because he wanted it to be cosy. But if the scene is me sitting there alone, listening to a phone ringing with a cup of coffee in front of me and the camera outside the window looking in at this lonely man – you don’t need a director to say ‘okay, this is about loneliness,’. I just think that’s brilliant directing.

Did Tom tell you of the cinematographic style he was after, with the screen warming up in moments of happiness?

Colin Firth: He might have mentioned it but it certainly wasn’t something he troubled us with. I believe he always intended to do that but some of those decisions he came to afterwards. I like the effect, if you’re talking about the interior life of a human being I think that does help narrate the thing, as does the music.

Given Tom’s reputation as a fashion stylist did you make a special effort for your first meeting with him?

Colin Firth: Do you know, you can’t get close. You can’t match him at his own game, and also I don’t think he wants to see a world of Tom Ford clones running around. I know he likes elegance rather than shabbiness. He doesn’t like things out of place. People are a bit self conscious around him, and he does have a way of making people think they’re scruffy. But you know, you can feel scruffy in your best suit and tie standing next to him, he’s so perfect. I came straight from a film set anyway, I was a bit tired, I was a bit unshaven, and in some really rough looking clothes. And I got the part.

Were you aware of his reputation going in to the film?

Colin Firth: Only very distantly. I’m not connected to that world, so I didn’t know that much about him. I knew the name, I’d met him a couple of times, I think I knew he ran a bit fashion house but I probably would have struggled to have told you which one. I knew he did glasses, but that was it. And I also knew there was supposed to be something rather extraordinary about him, that he had this ability to succeed at everything.

A SINGLE MAN will be released at cinemas across the UK on Friday 12th February 2010.

I’ve been looking forward to this for well over a year now, I almost gave up hope after the release date kept getting moved around, it was originally scheduled to be released all the way back in November 2008. Talk of re-shoots, the change of composer and the change of directors put a downer on this for me. The latest trailer and a couple clips brought back my faith though, I always enjoy Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins as well. After all this Twilight crap we need a good Wherewolf/monster film! I’ve got my fingers crossed I’m still not fully convinced though.

Inspired by the classic Universal film that launched a legacy of horror, THE WOLFMAN brings the myth of a cursed man back to its iconic origins.  Oscar® winner Benicio Del Toro stars as Lawrence Talbot, a haunted nobleman lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes.  Reunited with his estranged father (Oscar® winner Anthony Hopkins), Talbot sets out to find his brother…and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself.

Lawrence Talbot’s childhood ended the night his mother died.  After he left the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor, he spent decades recovering and trying to forget.  But when his brother’s fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns home to join the search.  He learns that something with brute strength and insatiable bloodlust has been killing the villagers, and that a suspicious Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline (Hugo Weaving) has come to investigate.

As he pieces together the gory puzzle, he hears of an ancient curse that turns the afflicted into werewolves when the moon is full.  Now, if he has any chance at ending the slaughter and protecting the woman he has grown to love, Talbot must destroy the vicious creature in the woods surrounding Blackmoor.  But as he hunts for the nightmarish beast, a simple man with a tortured past will uncover a primal side to himself…one he never imagined existed.

Avatar is raking it in, last Saturday it sealed it’s place in the record books as the highest grossing film of all time at the international box office with a grand total of $1.288bn (Titanic’s International Box Office receipt is $1.242), it has now grossed more than $100m for the sixth consecutive weekend internationally. It is also creeping up on Titanic’s domestic (US) Box Office record of $600.8m with $552.8m. I don’t think anyone expected it to make this much money, I thought it would be a huge success but damn, that is a lot of 0’s and $’s. Check out my interview with James Cameron, Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver here

Last week this was just a rumour, now the ink has dried. Marc Webb has signed up for 3 Spiderman movies. To be honest this reboot doesn’t interest me at all, I’m not that big on Spiderman as a character in general, I have to say though I really like the choice of Marc Webb, I really enjoyed (500) Days Of Summer – a HUGE achievement considering my devout hatred of romantic comedies. The only problem I can see with Marc Webb directing is how much creative control he will hold. Having only made one 1 small budget film doesn’t give him a huge amount of clout with Columbia. So much has been said about the studios interference with Spiderman 3 and the direction of the now dead and buried Spiderman 4, hopefully this new reboot doesn’t follow the same path.

Webb said, “This is a dream come true and I couldn’t be more aware of the challenge, responsibility, or opportunity. Sam Raimi’s virtuoso rendering of  Spider-Man is a humbling precedent to follow and build upon.  The first three films are beloved for good reason.  But I think the Spider-Man mythology transcends not only generations but directors as well.  I am signing on not to ‘take over’ from Sam.  That would be impossible.  Not to mention arrogant.  I’m here because there’s an opportunity for ideas, stories, and histories that will add a new dimension, canvas, and creative voice to Spider-Man.”

Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man, added, “I’m excited that Sony has chosen a director with a real penchant and understanding for the character.  This is a brave, bold direction for the franchise, and I can’t wait to see what Marc comes up with next.”

A trailers true purpose is to get people excited about an upcoming film, I think they missed the point with this one, I haven’t seen a trailer that could have made a film look worse off than it did than the one below. I used to love the Tekken games, Jin was always the character I played as as well. The only reason I would be interested to see this, is to find out if it will be worse than the Street Fighter movie, which until today I never believed could happen.

Tekken is directed by Dwight H. Little of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Marked for Death, and Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. It’s based on Namco’s popular series of fighting games, which first debuted in 1994. The story will follow Jin, who enters the “King of Iron First” tournament in order to avenge the death of his mother that he blames upon Tekken’s powerful and controlling chairman, Heihachi Mishima. The screenplay was written by Alan B. McElroy of Spawn, The Marine, and the Wrong Turn trilogy previously.

I’ve made it no secret how much I loved A Prophet. It is hands down one of my favourite films of the last few years. The film fully deserves all the praise it’s been getting. Check out a Q & A with the acclaimed Director of A Prophet Jacques Audiard. A Prophet is released in cinemas January 22^nd go check it out, it’s worth it!

At the Cannes press conference you spoke a little about the irony in the title of A PROPHET.

Because this dimension is real but apparently it isn’t evident. The film could be called LITTLE BIG MAN for example. The title acts as a sort of injunction, obliging someone to understand something which isn’t necessarily developed in the film, namely, that we’re dealing with a little prophet, a new prototype of guy. Originally I wanted to find a French equivalent of “You Gotta Serve Somebody” a Bob Dylan song that says that we are always in the service of someone. I liked the fatalism and the moral dimension of this title but I simply never found a satisfying translation, so it stayed A PROPHET.

How did you come to tell the story?

What interested both myself and my co-writer Thomas Bidegain was to ask how we could begin with the subject by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit and create a pertinent cinematic story. We had to find a manner to make A Prophet resonate in a contemporary way. We wanted to create heroes from people that we didn’t know, that didn’t already have an iconic representation in cinema, like the Arabs for example. In France the tendency in cinema is to put them in representations that are naturalistic or sociological. So we wanted to do a pure genre film, a little in the manner of a western that spotlights people we don’t know and transforms them into heroes.

Through the character of Malik, the film conveys the idea that the knowledge and know how give access to power.

Yes, and it’s this that I find the most interesting. This type of person breaks the mould, he’s not your usual hooligan. Following Malik, we see his mind at work, a mind that shows phenomenal adaptability, that this character will use for any opportunistic possibility, at first to save his skin, then to survive and improve his lot, and finally to reach another level of power.

Malik seems to have a detached and opportunist rapport with his identity.

The Corsicans consider him an Arab and the Arabs as a Corsican. He is permanently between the two camps. However he will naturally lean towards his community. It’s here that he will discover something he has been ignoring. The same as he’s a particular kind of hooligan he’s also a particular kind of believer.

Can you talk to us about the ghost that accompanies Malik and that inspires his mystical visions?

The film does have fantastical moments but it’s not because of an intention to be mystical. Reyeb’s ghost comes from the scriptwriters as a way of helping us into the possibilities, a way of to passing into a level of imagination that helps us free what has already been told. It’s also thanks to him that we also invoke the ideas of Sufism and the Dervishes and allows the screenplay to take on another dimension.

There is a trend in current cinema for darker, more damaged heroes.  In A Prophet you take someone who is damaged yet lead them toward a kind of redemption.

And with tools that wouldn’t be recommendable. There is always a default way of making anti-heroes. This doesn’t interest me so much. Me, I like my heroes to learn something, to put it to use. I find that Cinema has that function: it looks at the real to teach us how to use it. Perhaps the lesson which strikes Malik is paradoxical, but it’s this which interests me.

In any case it says that you have to learn…

To learn, to be attentive, to not open one’s mouth all the time, to be reserved and most of all to not make the same mistake twice because the third time you’ll be dead.

Is A Prophet, according to you, a moral film ?

Yes, what would have been immoral would have been to create a character without conscience.  However he is conscious of both good and evil precisely because evil has been done to him.

How do you explain Malikʼs mysterious smile at the moment of the shooting?

Malik suddenly has the feeling of being in a film and has the feeling of invulnerability, like a fictional character whereas the others are reaching a stalemate in the events which are unfolding. Malik is a person who, instead of getting heavier under the weight of things he lives through, he gets lighter, and will free himself, little by little.

Is the prison a metaphor ?

Evidently, genre films always present themselves as metaphor. The character was incarcerated for a long sentence. The intention was that he would understand within himself that which would serve him later, on the outside, therefore arriving at a parallel between the two universes.

The ending of the film suggests there could be a sequel.

Indeed. It does induce us to question Malik’s destiny with this woman, this child and his life stretched out before him. Especially since Malik is a hooligan that hates hooligans, finding them unreliable, stupid and dangerous. He is someone with a very critical viewpoint. He wouldn’t tolerate bling or outward signs of hooliganism.

If there was a sequel, what would it be about ?

I would like to see Malik continue to develop his skills and watch him learn. A little like in The Beat That My Heart Skipped. That through trying to become a concert pianist the hero becomes really competent. He’s like Malik, we leave everything just formed and we sense that he has an interesting future…

Were you conscious while making A Prophet that you were making a film that was anchored in popular culture?

This is what I wanted to do. For as much, we wanted to make an anti SCARFACE. For me neurotics are pure cretins and simply cant be objects for identification. The rise to power of an absolute crazy person doest interest me at all. On the other hand a film like LA HAINE by Matthieu Kassovitz touches on something that I’m sensitive to. It’s no co-incidence that A Prophet occasionally inhabits the same terrain. These two films a looking to denounce that there is something missing in cinema.