Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro Directed by: Michael Bay Here is something you might never have thought possible with a Michael Bay movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is very, very boring. With so much impenetrable (often inaudible) dialogue between bouts of sporadic, confusing action, about the only thing left to keep your attention is a healthy dose of humour. Yet most of this is bizarre at best. There are two bickering Autobots, Mudlfap and Skids (both voiced by Tom Kenny), who exchange insults in a spectacularly dated ‘hip speak’ manner that would be racist if it wasn’t so ignorant. This is an uncomfortable watch, particularly as Revenge…

This quite brilliant video is available exclusively on the Hardy Amies website. It discusses the famous designer’s (he was once Royal outfitter to Queen Elizabeth II) involvement creating costumes for Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). SEE THE VIDEO HERE We could go into details, though frankly you would be better off just watching the video for yourself. It is around 16 minutes long and worth every second. Look out for some very interesting titbits concerning the famous Pan-Am ‘grip shoes’, where Amies gathered inspiration and how scary but talented milliner Freddie Fox (also The Queen’s outfitter) created those wonderful egg-shaped helmets. Incidentally, an exhibition of Hardy Amies’…

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston Directed By: Nicolas Winding Refn On the surface, Drive is effortlessly stylish, old-school filmmaking that luxuriates in its retro fashion. Yet, as Simon Kinnear reveals, underneath the hood, lurks a troubling character study. It has become something of a cliché to acknowledge the debt owed by the Movie Brats of the 1970s to the European auteurs of the 1950s and 1960s. Woody Allen idolised Ingmar Bergman, Paul Schrader wrote a book about Bresson and Dreyer, both Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola ripped-off Antonioni’s Blow-Up, and Scorsese littered his films with allusions to Godard and Visconti. Yet arguably the most blatant steal…

File under ‘seriously intriguing’, mainly because it is in part a period piece, here is our first decent, non grainy scanned look at Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. Captain America: The First Avenger is directed by Joe Johnston, adapted/written by Joss Whedon and most tantalising of all for this particular site, costumed by Jeffery Kurland (Inception) and Anna B. Sheppard (Inglourious Basterds). Quite how this panned out in practical terms, i.e. did Sheppard handle the period costumes and Kurland modern day, is something we will close in on nearer the release date. Judging by the early official images that turned up before Christmas,…

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway Directed By: Tom Hooper Lingering death scenes, honourable gentlemen with puffed out chests, a little girl in rags sweeping the floor; to say Les Misérables takes itself very, very seriously is an understatement. Victor Hugo’s original novel is not known for its slapstick either (the clue is in the title), yet director Tom Hooper’s adaptation is so earnest as to verge on parody. This is Carol Reed’s Oliver! only with a good deal more rain and tears, and a lot less Oom-Pah-Pah. To Hooper’s credit, Les Misérables never strives to be something it is not. Dramatic musical theatre on a grand scale should…

Ghost Town (2008) is one of the finest romantic comedies ever made. It’s a grown up film about grown up problems (regret, companionship, second chances – they’re all themes); it’s not a sickly sweet teen romance. Even though the situation is fantasy, the characters themselves are totally believable in their world. Moreover the screenplay by David Koepp and John Kamps is written with absolute economy and constructed without an ounce of fat. Not one scene in the movie is wasted, each being packed with character and story revelations – some subtle, some part of the main plot, but all driving the narrative towards a deeply satisfying and moving conclusion. One…

More straightforward clip than teaser trailer, but worth checking out anyway – surely you must be curious to know if Meryl Streep has nailed the accent? She certainly looks the part. It is appropriate that our first ‘action’ glimpse of Streep’s Margaret Thatcher shows her wearing blue, albeit light which she tended to favour less, as this colour represents the Conservative party (i.e. her political allegiance). Costume designer for The Iron Lady is Consolata Boyle, who was Oscar nominated for her work on The Queen (2006). While costume design is not historical re-enactment, there will obviously need to be a certain level of real life authenticity in place here, as…

Clothes from films set during 1920s A fortnight ago to the day, Clothes on Film creator and editor Christopher Laverty joined fashion historian Amber Jane Butchart to give one of two talks and a Q&A chat at The British Library in London. The subjects under discussion were, respectively, the unexpectedly colourful clothing of Prohibition era gangsters as portrayed in the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire, and the influence of movies and movie star style on fashion during The Jazz Age. After Christopher and Amber finished their talks to a delighted audience (they clapped), everyone reconvened to the elegant backdrop of the main library grounds to swig cocktails and dance the…

SPOILERS Despite all the hoo-ha over films such as Blue Jasmine and Stoker contemporary is still pretty much overlooked as a form of costume design. If it’s invisible, well, nobody notices it, and if it’s designer it becomes all about ‘the fashion’ (OMG TOTES WANT THOSE SHOES). We are currently in an age when costume design means period and sci-fi. It comes to the extent that if a costumer wants to tell a story through contemporary attire, he/she needs either a director with a key grasp of semiotics, or one that doesn’t care less about semiotics and offers a degree of autonomy. Watching About Time we presume that Richard Curtis…

David Lynch has premiered his twelve minute commercial for Lady Dior and it is every bit as ‘Lynch’ as you might expect.