Sarah Jessica Parker's unkosher drinking game

Published by The Jewish Chronicle on September 15th 2011. Link here.

Sarah Jessica Parker with the Sex and the City cast

Jewish actress Sarah Jessica Parker has suggested a not-so-kosher drinking game for her new film I Don't Know How She Does It.

In an interview with gossip website PopSugar she suggested that every time viewers saw her character's husband (played by Greg Kinnear) eat bacon, they should drink.

The film, released in the UK on Friday, stars the Sex and the City actress as a working mother, conflicted by her dual roles of successful business woman and loving wife and mother.

Consumption of non-kosher food on a film set caused trouble last year when Drew Barrymore and Justin Long were filming Going the Distance in the home of an Orthodox family in New York.

Mr Long's character had to eat a burger, and the non-kosher meat was prepared on the family's grill.

The studio replaced the grill and utensils when filming ended.

Review: The Change Up

Published by Itchy City on Friday 9th September 2011. Link here.

  

David Dobkin, who gave the world ‘Wedding Crashers’, is back with another American slapstick cum rom-com bromance. Just to change things up, this one’s called… ‘The Change Up’.

The film opens on high powered lawyer and father of three Dave, up at 3am to do the nappy change (yes, there’s poo involved), whilst his infant son bangs his head violently and repeatedly against the bars of his cot. Frankly, I don’t blame the kid: the concept of this film inspires kamikaze in even the tiniest of minds.

So we’ve got Dave (aka Jason Bateman, the dude from ‘Arrested Development’), who’s bored by his great job, frustrated by his hot wife and irritated by his charming children. Ungrateful b*****. His best mate is Mitch, a stoned, out-of-work actor who shags fit girls and does fun stuff all day, but whose life essentially sucks. Possibly not the most stretching role for Ryan Reynolds, aka the actor who just divorced Scarlett Johansson.

Anyway, guess what? They want each other’s lives. It’s like someone’s prayer has been answered, and ‘Freaky Friday’ was never made. Twice. Or ‘13 going on 30’. This concept has been made into a film so many times, actress Leslie Mann, who plays Dave’s hot wife has already been in one: Zac Ephron’s soppy ‘17 again’. If ‘The Change Up’ is taking the piss out of the genre, they were being pretty darn subtle about it, because they stuck to the formula like… well like something sticky. Here’s how it went:

So they wish they were each other, something magicky happens: a lightning strike, a drunk fairy, this time peeing in a fountain, and next morning they look in the mirror, shock, horror, lah-dee-dah, it’s come true. They live each other’s lives, it’s ‘surprisingly’ difficult being the other person, and hilarity ensues. They live, they love, they learn about themselves. There’s a romantic subplot, in this case the feisty Olivia Wilde, Thirteen from ‘House’, and there is at least one schmaltzy montage. So far, so painfully obvious.

Thirteen from 'House', aka Olivia Wilde, aka the hot girl in the film. Smokin'.

But somewhere along the way, this film delivers. Specifically, on the ‘hilarity ensues’ step. Damn is it funny. The physical humour is scatological but solid (insert constipation joke here), and involves babies and blenders, always a winning combo, but the joy is in the one liners. Mid fight: ‘get my hands of you!’, mid conversation: ‘you know, the cancer list. The first three women you’d shag if your wife dropped dead of cancer’. Itchy are compiling one already.

Captain America Review

Published by Itchy City on Tuesday 26th July 2011. Link here .

Another Marvel adaptation for 2011's comic fans, this time with extra-bad baddies.

America is at war, governments are falling, and Marvel Studios has another movie out. Craftily concealed in this hilarious analogy between the WWII setting of Captain America and today is a serious point: we get that the story of the struggle between good and evil has 'universal, timeless relevance'. But you know what, we've heard it before.

Let's start with the goodies. Captain America is Chris Evans, AKA the guy with cream and glacé cherries on his nipples in Not Another Teen Movie. He plays weedy New Yorker Steve Rogers, who implausibly is desperate to sign up for the US army. Cue eccentric German scientist, an experiment gone right, and lo, a superhero. Evans, to his credit, does all that is asked of him in the role: shooting baddies, falling in love, and looking great in a tight t-shirt. The romantic female lead (Hayley Atwell), astonishingly for a Marvel, isn't at all irritating. In fact, she kinda kicks arse, and all in a standard issue army pencil skirt.

As for the baddies, no one can deny Nazis make the baddest baddies, and this bunch, led by the ever-scary Hugo Weaving, are even worser than the Nazis. They are super-nasty to a wicked orchestral soundtrack, and everyone does everything in sexy-as-hell 1940s outfits. Loads of long, black leather studded creations for the ones we hate, nipped in waists for the pretty girls, and a totally ridiculous superhero costume. The attempts at humour from both sides are not just successful, but also rather sweet, it's gripping, it's fun, and lots of things go bang. So far, so super.

Until we get on to the superbly crap. Weaving's accent sucks. Was he going for German? For the sake of German-Australian relations, we hope not. The CGI boys didn't do a great job on 'pre-op' skinny Evans: his proportions are all wrong, and creepily he has the same deep big-dude voice throughout. 3D was done post-production, and it shows. The plot had a few embarrassing holes, for example the baddies' motivation, and the ending is boring. Minor points, but unimpressive on a big budget.

But most disappointing was the lack of originality. 'You don't give up, do you?' says Red Skull (Weaving) to Captain America. And that's how Itchy feels about samey superhero movies. Red Skull looks like Voldemort, the Captain has an amazing Enchanted (Disney princess film) moment, and the plot is almost indistinguishable from Iron Man. It is a good Marvel comic adaption, a classic good v. bad yarn, with lots of explosions, and as long as that's definitely what you're looking for, you'll have a great time.