The Sigla Blog

Apart from the mind-numbing source material (boring plot, badly written, one-dimensional characters, dodgy nepotistic references to Westlife being the main character’s favourite band), the woeful Irish accents, the schmaltzy representation of grief, the fact that they had to get a Scottish actor to play the Irish guy, there’s another reason to not bother catching […]

When it comes to film publicity, nothing equals The Da Vinci Code for such a long lead-in PR campaign. Even a year ago, Sony were trotting out almost daily publicity stories of dubious news merit (”Tom Hanks has ham sandwich every day of shooting!”, “Audrey Tautou delighted to ditch that Amelie hairdo for flowing Da […]

Grizzly Man
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In Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, a tousled blonde eccentric (Klaus Kinski) sets off into the heart of darkness on what becomes a journey of self-exploration. His quest to build an opera house in the South American jungle marks him as an idealist who is ridiculed and misunderstood. This equally applies to the subject of […]

Munich ****
The last time Steven Spielberg examined a key aspect of Jewish history, he was universally applauded and scooped the Best Director Oscar so long denied him. With Munich, he has irked everyone from Palestinians and Black September survivors to George Jonas, the man whose book ‘Vengeance’ the film is based on. The opening credits […]

When it comes to admirers, Woody Allen appears to have no grey areas. People love him or hate him, but a new film of his always inspires a certain amount of curiosity. What might tempt many back to see Match Point after the disappointing trio of The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Celebrity and Anything […]

This week the BBC are showing all three predecessors to George Romero’s latest Zombie instalment, Land of the Dead, which opened last week on the same day as Ireland’s contribution to the Zombie canon, Boy Eats Girl. Last night, watching Dawn of the Dead, I was reminded of the fact that it was re-released […]

Well I don’t want to give too much away about Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, but it’s pretty damn good. I was so disappointed by The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones was only alright. This time however, George Lucas has redeemed himself with episode three. The opening sequence is amazing, […]

Sinéad Gleeson finds Michael Winterbottom’s controversial new film an exercise in pointlessness.

John Lydon of The Sex Pistols once said that love is “two minutes and 52 seconds of squelching noises”. In his new film ‘9 Songs’, Michael Winterbottom has taken Lydon’s metaphor of sexual brevity and padded it out to about 35 minutes of sex, […]

Walter Salles goes behind the face that launched a thousand t-shirts and examines a deep friendship and how one crazy summer on the road can change your life forever.

It’s hard to forget that it is 37 years since the death of Ernesto Che Guevara when Alberto Korda’s iconic portrait still dominates T-shirts the world over. […]

If it’s not enough that the American right loathes you, Michael Moore is even losing favour with the left. The filmmaker many love to hate has been dogged by controversy well ahead of the release of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ in Ireland. The company originally responsible for distribution pulled out after it “got calls from Republican friends” […]

Drag queens, drug addiction and homosexuality are not high on the average filmmaker’s agenda, let alone when they’re all in the same movie. But then Pedro Almodovar is not exactly James Cameron is he? Sinead Gleeson looks at his career after seeing his new work ‘Bad Education’.
Like his compatriot Picasso, you only have to mention […]