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Frances Ha

Unbelievably great film, go and see it in a cinema while it’s still on in case you haven’t seen it yet. It emulates the aesthetic of Woody Allen’s Manhattan and it’s a modern homage to living in New York. Like Manhattan it's best to watch it on a big screen.

It’s so brilliantly fast paced that you’re almost breathless when you watch it for the first time. The self-deprecating humour is brilliant. It’s also realistic in that so many of our struggles today focus on finding and paying for a roof over our heads.

The film has a real sweetness about it because it gives friendship the attention that our second strongest bonds in life deserve. Friendships are after all not that different from love relationships in that growing emotional distance between you and your best friend is painful when you really hoped that the silliness of it would go on and on.

It’s also a film about finding your own way and trying again and again and not giving up and finally succeeding.

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Flemish swear

Starting with a few Flemish swear words, Anne Billson attempts to pick up another tongue from her adventures in foreign cinema

Felix Van Groeningen's film The Broken Circle Breakdown 

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Haley Joel Osment Set For Kevin Smith's Tusk

Haley Joel Osment Set For Kevin Smith's Tusk
He's also in Me Him Her

If it seems like Haley Joel Osment has been off the radar for a while recently, that’s because he has: he took a break from acting to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He’s planning to get back into performing with two new films –kelvin. Well, we say getting back, but he’s already back, as Landis wrapped up work on Me Him Herrecently. Though the Twitter troublemaker is keeping most of the details under a convenient hat, we do know that it boils down to three young people going through a quarter-life crisis, confronting love, sex and friendship in the midst of a sexual identity dilemma. You know, the usual. Osment will appear alongside leads Dustin Milligan, Luke Bracey and Emily Meade. As for Tusk, Smith cooked up the idea after spotting a Gumtree ad for a man requesting a roommate willing to dress up and act as a walrus. Spinning the idea further on his Smodcast podcast, what began as a joke became a script that now has Justin Long playing a podcaster who answers a similar ad. He ends up trapped in a nightmare with a lunatic (played by Red State’s Michael Parks). Osment will be Teddy, Long’s friend and co-host, who joins forces with his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) to try to find him. Kevin will be getting the cameras cranking next month in North Carolina, once more delayed his planned retirement from moviemaking. As for Osment, he’s also got Amazon comedy series Alpha House and IFC miniseries The Spoils Of Babylon to keep him in the public eye.

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