Film critics

Last night I was divided at 9.00 pm between the Sky Arts series The Directors  and Mark  Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema.

I decided to record the first and watch the latter.

I admire Mark Kermode but find his personality too obtrusive. He was examining the genre of Super Heroes which does not hold much appeal to me.

However he missed an important point.

A one-off blockbuster has a marketing budget of $100m and these days the big star is on a percentage of the box office. However in a franchise like Batman, Spiderman or Superman your audience is established by the first successful film. Film making is about finance. One year the whole of Sony’s executive film board was out for 4 films that failed at the Box Office but with a franchise the merchandising revenue increases as the marketing budget decreases.

The other point about Kermode and his ilk is I cannot think of one who became a film director.

This is unlike Cashiers du Cinema, the French film magazine of the 1950s that spawned a whole generation from its critics of brilliant French film makers like Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer.

Finally I watched some of Paddington, a movie I had recorded sometime ago for the grand kids.

What a cast: Ben Whishaw, Nicole Kidman, Julie Walters , Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Jim Broadbent, Michael Gambon, Matt Lucas, Tim Downie and Peter Capaldi.

It’s a lovely, warm story of a cute bear who is totally mystified when he comes to London.

Like many a children’s movie it’s scary as  the sinister Millicent (Nicole Kidman) is tracking Paddington with a view to stuffing him.

It also has an underlying message of kindness and tolerance as the Brown family are initially only willing to take in Paddington for one night, a night in which he wreaks havoc on their house, grow to love him as he does them.

Maybe I’m a child at heart.