Scoop, a film by Woody Allen, with Scarlett Johansen, Hugh Jackman

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Scoop, a film by Woody Allen, with Scarlett Johansen, Hugh Jackman

16 May 2007

Scoop is the latest Woody Allen production, and combines elements of his earlier work including Manhatten Murder Mystery, and the more recent Match Point, plus of course Scarlett Johansen. The result is a quirky, yet fun, murder whodunit set in London and the neighbouring Home Counties.

Allen plays a touring magician — who’s often surprised when a trick seems to work — who meets Sondra (Johansen), when she takes part in one of his shows. Together they find themselves trying to solve a murder, working only with scant clues supplied by a recently deceased journalist (Ian McShane), who has managed to return from the afterlife.

Fans of Allen’s trademark neurotic banter will not be disappointed.

Originally published Wednesday 16 May 2007.

The Prestige, a film by Christopher Nolan, with Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale

30 November 2006

First an aside, I wonder if The Prestige was the team behind 2005’s Batman Begins deciding to apply their collective acting and producing talents to a completely different story? We have Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and director Christopher Nolan, all from Batman Begins, present here.

The Prestige traces the unhealthy obsession (is any obsession healthy though?) friends turned rivals, Alfred Borden (Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), have with each other’s magic acts, and the ends one will go to, so as to out do the other.

Caught up in this rivalry is Scarlett Johansson as stage assistant, Olivia, who becomes romantically involved with both men during the course of proceedings. And though I knew David Bowie was also in the movie, I didn’t recognise him as Tesla, an American inventor competing with Thomas Edison.

Originally published Thursday 30 November 2006.