Group snap from this year’s Oscar luncheon

…Declan likes this. LOL.

My TV feature on The Simpsons in ‘Weekend’ magazine in today’s Irish Independent

It might have long ago hit its creative peak and lost a lot of its shine in the eyes of hardcore fans, but The Simpsons will next month reach a huge milestone when it marks its 500^th episode after 23 years on the air.

It’s a remarkable achievement for any TV show, but this upcoming landmark can’t gloss over the most pressing question when it comes to this animated series: does anyone still care?

And, furthermore, should The Simpsons now be quietly snuffed out so as to preserve its place in the pantheon of all-time great television series?

That doesn’t look like it will be happening just yet if the numbers are anything to go by. In the US, where it broadcasts on the largely uncompetitive Sunday night, The Simpsons can still draw in between 10-12m viewers every week. That’s a bigger audience than those of critically adored but low-rated recent hits like Mad Men and 30 Rock combined.

Last year reports suggested that The Simpsons might be cancelled, owing to the high production costs, but a new deal was hammered out extending the show for at least two more series, with the main voice cast accepting a 30pc reduction in pay in return for a share of merchandising and syndication profits.

Keep in mind that a 30pc pay-cut doesn’t exactly mean the same thing to actors Dan Castellaneta (Homer, Grampa et al), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (Lisa) and Harry Shearer (Moe, Mr Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner and more) as it does to you and me.

Continue here.

My interview with Daniel Radcliffe in ‘Day & Night’ in today’s Irish Independent

Here are some things that you probably don’t know about Daniel Radcliffe. He’s on Twitter. He’s an alcoholic. He has a girlfriend. And he’s gay.

That’s according to Google’s top search results for his name anyway, but alas, as Radcliffe informs ‘Day & Night’ over a Coke in a London hotel, only one of the above statements is true (the girlfriend one, just to be clear. Radcliffe, you might have heard, doesn’t drink anymore either).

Said lady friend is Rosanne (Rosie) Coker, a film production assistant whom Radcliffe has been dating for a year now. “I Google myself sometimes to see what comes up, because I find it very amusing,” the 22-year-old says.

“What I love is that within 48 hours of me and Rosanne getting photographed for the first time together, if you typed ‘R-O-S-A’ into Google, she was the top search result between Rosacea and Rosa Parks.”

What about that ‘gay’ suggestion that pops up with his name? “That comes up for every person I type into Google – it doesn’t matter if it’s me or Florence Welsh,” he laughs. “If you’re not being called gay, you don’t have a career.”

And what a career this young man has had. Having spent almost half of his life playing Harry Potter in the most successful film franchise in history, and amassing a personal fortune of some e57m (£48m), Radcliffe is finally free to move on to other things.

The question is: what does the man who will forever be known as ‘the Boy Who Lived’ do next?

Having taken a year out to hoof (impressively) on a Broadway stage in the musical How To Succeed in Advertising Without Really Trying, Radcliffe is making his transition to his first post-Potter role in a screen adaptation of the popular ghost story and stage play The Woman in Black.

Directed by James Watkins (Eden Lake), and scripted by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass), The Woman in Black is an intensely creepy Victorian-era haunted house story about Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), a young widowed father and solicitor, who accepts an assignment in a remote English village that he quickly discovers is being terrorised by a ghostly, vengeful woman in a black bonnet and cape.

For Radcliffe, the attraction to the role lay in how counter-intuitive it would be for him to play such a subdued character.

“My energy level is very high, so the analogy that [the director] James used is, ‘We want to take the fizz out of this can of Diet Coke’. It was about quashing that energy and deadening myself because Arthur is somebody who has just been so devastated by the death of his wife that he’s become totally detached from the world, and society, and his son. That was a real challenge for me.”

Radcliffe is indeed an almost unnervingly enthusiastic and peppy interviewee, a 5’5” bundle of energy wrapped in the garments typical of any guy his age: a chunky knit over a striped T-shirt, dark green jeans, and black boots.

Has he always been this hyper? “Yes, absolutely,” he replies, smiling. “The reason my parents don’t have any more children is because I didn’t sleep a full night until I was eight.

“I’ve always had this energy, and I feel really lucky to have found an industry that encourages this hyperactivity because anywhere else I’d have been a fucking nuisance.”

The Woman in Black is all about characters that are detrimentally shackled to their pasts, and Radcliffe is well aware that he has his work cut out for him if he’s to re-cast himself in the popular imagination.

“I was never under any illusions that this would be the one film I do where everyone goes, ‘Oh, okay, he’s no longer Harry Potter’,” he says. “But I certainly think it will start that. I think I look very different in this film, and it’s a different kind of performance.”

He is also conscious that there will be – perhaps always – a certain element that are just waiting for him to fall flat on his face.

“That goes with the territory for every famous person, particularly in Britain,” he says. “We are very good at building people up and then tearing them down. I think the way you can supersede that is by working harder than anyone expects you to, and constantly surprising people.”

Not that Radcliffe isn’t his own biggest critic. The actor admits that he still struggles to watch himself on screen. “I hate it less than I used to,” he explains. “Being self-critical is good; being self-hating is destructive.”

Indeed, Radcliffe’s acting abilities came in for an awful kicking during the first three or four movies, though he demonstrably improved as he and the character got older. Can he watch those early films now without cringing?

“I don’t watch them. I haven’t watched them since the premieres,” he says. “It’s like passing around baby photos; it’s just embarrassing. Even the best actors in the world would be mortified if their acting exercises from drama school were filmed and broadcast, which is essentially what happened with us [along with Emma Watson and Rupert Grint].”

Does Radcliffe ever think about what his life would be like in an alternate universe? Would he have found his way to acting eventually anyway?

“No, I think I would have ended up on the other side of the camera,” he says. “Both my parents were in the industry: my mum was a casting director, and my dad a literary agent.

“I probably would have started out as a runner or PA. I really don’t know what would have become of me because I was shit at school. My schooling got better when I got on set because I was tutored one-to-one, but I dropped out of school when I was 17 so I could do Equus on stage.”

It was actually his parents who suggested that Radcliffe drop out in order to concentrate on his job, but, as he puts it: “That was cool, but then the trade-off was that I had to get my cock out on stage at 17.”

Any discussion of, or conversation with Radcliffe will inevitably come around to money. It must be hard for him to trust people – be they new friends or potential girlfriends – when his vast personal wealth is so well-known?

It’s the only time in our interview that Radcliffe appears flustered. “The thing is you don’t really think about it,” he starts. “It’s…When people meet me I think they realise I’m not…”

He pauses to gather his thoughts. “It’s not something I think about a lot. It’s probably because I have it.” Another pause.

“I’m pretty weird, and pretty odd in conversation when people first meet me. The kind of people who would want to be around me, or be attracted to me because I’m rich are generally not very subtle people, so it’s easy to pick them when you see them. And to be honest it’s very rare because most people think about the Harry Potter thing first rather than the money, and I’m glad it’s that way round.”

Starting right about now, Radcliffe has some time off until early March, which is, he admits, the first break longer than a week that he’s had in four years.

“When I say I haven’t had time off, that’s not a bad thing,” he laughs. “I’m at my happiest when I’m working.”

Still, he’s going to spend time in Devon and Kent visiting relatives of girlfriend Rosie. Radcliffe says that he treasures that type of relaxed break where he can go about his business with a fair degree of anonymity, kind of like the ones he used to take in Ireland.

“Two of my ex-girlfriends are Irish,” he says. “I went out with a girl named Amy from Dublin for a while, and my last girlfriend Laura [O’Toole] and I went out for three years. She had family in Dublin, Cork and Clare, so I spent time around there. The West of Ireland is the best. People were like, ‘Who is he?’ Nobody gives a shit. It’s great.”

PANEL:

As the famous and heavily romanticised story goes, Radcliffe was “discovered” by Harry Potter casting agents while in the audience of a London production of Irish writer Marie Jones’ Stones In His Pocket.

Funnily enough though, Radcliffe has never met the woman who played that inadvertently fateful role in his career trajectory. “I should say something to her, certainly,” he laughs.

Maybe he could play one of the roles in a new stage production of the play? “That’s a great idea,” he says. “It would be a lot of fucking work. Those actors were working their nuts off.”

Brilliant. See more here.

My ‘Reel Life’ cinema column from today’s ‘Day & Night’ in the Irish Independent

*As telegraphed in a previous column, Reel Life attended a press junket last week with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy to promote The Muppets Movie, which opens next Friday.
In true – and expected – diva style, Miss Piggy arrived late, though her green amphibious partner let slip that her tardiness was a result of staying too long in the hotel bar.
At a later point in the interview, Miss Piggy didn’t take too kindly to Reel Life’s critique that her performance in the movie was “hammy”.
At that, Kermit sank his face in his hands, and not just because of the lame pun. He knew what was coming.
“Are you a critic?” Her Nibs asked curtly.
“Of sorts,” Reel Life replied nervously.
Piggy fixed me in her death stare. “Critics never appreciate moi,” she huffed. “I don’t like critics. And I don’t like you.”
Definitely a career highlight, that one.

*Speaking of The Muppets, Reel Life hopes that the resurgence of all things felt and puppety will prompt somebody to release the documentary Being Elmo on this side of the world.
It’s a film about a man named Kevin Clash, who turned a childhood obsession with Sesame Street into a lifelong career as a self-taught puppeteer.
All Clash’s hard work paid off in 1984 when Jim Henson hired him to be a regular performer on Sesame Street, becoming the show’s first African-American puppeteer, and eventually getting his mitts on the role of Elmo, transforming the character into a multi-million dollar merchandising phenomenon.

*Favourite ‘Movie Star Letting Her Hair Down’ anecdote of the week: Keira Knightley was spotted dancing in the aisles in London’s Hackney Picturehouse during the finale of a screening of the Chemical Brothers’ concert movie, Don’t Think.

*For trivia nerds, ‘Reel Life’ presents its favourite stats and ephemera from this year’s Oscar nominations. Belfast-born nominee Kenneth Branagh has now been nominated in five different categories throughout his career: Best Actor and Best Director (for Henry V in 1989), Best Live Action Short (for Swan Song in 1992), Best Adapted Screenplay (for Hamlet, 1996), and now Best Supporting Actor for My Week With Marilyn.
Similarly, George Clooney has clocked up seven Oscar nods in as many years: Best Supporting Actor for Syriana, Best Director and Screenwriter for Good Night, and Good Luck, Best Actor for Michael Clayton, Up in the Air, and The Descendents, and Best Screenplay for The Ides of March.
Rather alarmingly, Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s co-writing nomination for Bridesmaids is the first time in 28 years that a female writing team has been shortlisted for the Original Screenplay prize. The last pair was Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen for the Meryl Streep-Cher drama Silkwood (1983).

*On that depressing note, a report last week showed that only 5pc of 2011’s highest-grossing movies were directed by women, a miserable figure that is actually down from 7pc in 2010, and 9pc in 1998.
Furthermore, of the 250 highest-grossing films last year, only 18pc had female executive producers, while women comprised 14pc of the writers for the films, 20pc of the editors, 25pc of the producers, and 4pc of the cinematographers.
To cap off those damning figures, 38pc of the movies employed zero or one woman in any of those roles. Bad form Hollywood, bad form.

Courtesy of freestyleinteractive

*Viola Davis: Brought the house to its feet when her name was announced, and subsequently brought the house down with her speech. “Dream big, dream fierce”. 10 years after Halle Berry won the Best Actress Oscar, Viola will repeat the triumph next month. Sorry Meryl, I love you, but this race is over.

*Jean Dujardin: Who saw that one coming? The Best Actor race suddenly got competitive.

*The Help won Best Ensemble. While not technically a Best Film nod, it indicates wide support amongst the acting voting block. Maybe The Artist isn’t such a lock.

*The Supporting races are done and dusted. Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer will rule.