Time Bandits Tagged Articles at Cinematical

You know how it is on Valentine's Day, if you're not involved with (or married to) anyone. You try to avoid those annoying radio and TV commercials about how the men need to show their love by buying the women in their lives all kinds of fancy things. You attempt to make plans with friends, but they're all hoping for something romantic or planning to mope about their lack of romance. Maybe you join the Anti-Valentine's League, maybe you just try to ignore it all until the hype is over.

But there you are on Valentine's Day night with no plans, and naturally you gravitate toward the time-tested entertainment method of sitting in front of the TV with a good movie. Pizza and/or ice cream might also be part of the viewing process. For years, I liked to curl up with a thin-crust pizza from the local pizza joint, a pint of that Ben and Jerry's ice cream with the chunks of brownies in it, some Dr. Pepper (to be tres Agnes Gooch about it) and my favorite Valentine's movie, Some Like It Hot. After all, it is set around the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, so it's a delightfully sideways hat tip to the holiday. Plus, that glorious last line. But maybe you're in a different mindset on February 14. Here's a list of movies to cover whatever kind of mood might strike you that night, as you ponder which movie you want to spend St. Valentine's Day with.

If there's something Martin Scorsese knows about almost as much as movies, it's music from the '60s. Apparently. Why else would he be on such a roll these days with music documentaries on iconic acts from that time? First there was the wonderful Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home; now he's about to release a Rolling Stones doc titled Shine a Light; and he's just announced another doc he's going to make about George Harrison. According to Variety, the film will be more of a comprehensive biography, covering Harrison's time in The Beatles, as a solo artist, his Eastern religious/philosophical interests and even his stint a movie producer (his Handmade Films gave us Monty Python's Life of Brian and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits). Scorsese is producing with Olivia Harrison (George's widow) and his No Direction Home producer Nigel Sinclair, and filming will begin with some interviews later this year. It will take awhile to finish, of course. The untitled pic will again be edited by David Tedeschi, who also cut the other two Scorsese music docs.

Maybe if time permits, Scorsese can do more '60s icons after he's done with Harrison. Neil Young may not be worth another film, and The Doors doc would probably be better suited to Oliver Stone, but surely we could use a Scorsese-directed film about Eric Clapton or any of the girl groups (The Shirelles, The Ronettes, The Marvellettes, The Crystals, The Shangri-Las) he likes to use for his soundtracks. Hey, he could just do a doc on girl groups. It's so good to see Scorsese getting back to music docs so long after working as an assistant director on Woodstock, and later as director of The Last Waltz, and I can't wait to see what else he's got planned. Anyway, there's no use thinking so far ahead. I'm still simply waiting for Shine a Light, which doesn't come out until April, and I'm definitely looking forward to the Harrison film, which will feature a ton of archival footage provided by his family and is expected to feature surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

For anyone who is as big a Terry Gilliam fan as I, the following might need to be read while sitting down. According to Variety, Handmade Films, the production company co-created by George Harrison, is set to remake Time Bandits, which Gilliam made for the company twenty-five years ago. Possibly my first introduction to the fantastic film maker and also to many of the Monty Python cast, the film is very dear to me as both a Gilliam fan and as a child of the '80s. It tells of a young boy who travels through time and space with a group of little people who have stolen a special map from "the Supreme Being" in order to guide them on a tour of events throughout history, robbing from characters as diverse as Agamemnon, Robin Hood and Napoleon along the way.

Without Gilliam's cooperation and without the cast, which originally included Sean Connery, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Ian Holm and the finest bunch of diminutive actors ever, I just can't imagine how good a Time Bandits redo could be, though I will say that if Handmade reuse Gilliam and Palin's script, it won't be too terrible. I'm not that excited about whatever kind of computer effects they might employ, however.

Handmade, now headed by Patrick Meehan with a production arm led by former Nelson Entertainment exec Anthony Rufus-Isaacs, is supposedly looking to remake more of its older films and in addition to Time Bandits is also working on an update of The Long Good Friday, which originally starred Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren, and a new version of Mona Lisa, which also starred Hoskins, to be directed by Larry Clark.

[via Cinema Blend]

We have always had a love affair with gadgets, whether a Dick Tracy decoder ring or a watch that can shoot out a grappling hook. If it's cool and useful, chances are everyone wants one. Who didn't want to be the first kid on the block with an iPod, the coolest new cell phone or a Segway? Okay, scratch that last one, but you catch our drift. Who hasn't seen a gadget in the movies at one time or another and thought, "Wow, I want one of those!"

While we still don't have robots that clean the house and the flying cars that the 1950s promised us by this time, our lives have become pretty overtaken by gadgets. You're reading this right now on a computer (or even a cell phone), which used to be a room-sized device. You probably have an iPod or some other type of music player that holds hundreds of songs, and you might be zapping your next meal in a microwave. If you travelled back in time to the 50s (or even the 1970s), with all that stuff, you'd be a human sci-fi movie.

These are some movie gadgets that would make life a bit easier, or at least a lot more enjoyable. James Bond could have monopolized this list, because gadgets really are his "thing," but we tried to spead the love around. It was tough to keep things that were magical off the list, like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak (honestly, who wouldn't want anything from the Harry Potter universe?) or the lamp from Aladdin, but we tried to keep them fairly practical as well.

Check out our ideas after the jump.

With the release of Little Man, I was shocked to find no protests from little people. Is this movie not the worst representation of dwarfs in decades? Though I'm not sure if the actors playing Marlon Wayans' body are actual little people, it must be insulting that a real little person isn't playing the "vertically-challenged" character. Wasn't it bad enough that The Lord of the Rings trilogy didn't use dwarfs as hobbits? Basically Little Man backtracks the portrayal of little people and makes them out to be freaks once again.

So, I'd like to take this opportunity to salute the little people in movies. They are in fact all over the big screen, mostly as stand-ins and stunt-doubles for children, but once in awhile they are really celebrated with prominent roles. These roles have decreased, though, since CGI replaced many creature characters so we have fewer little people dressed as Ewoks, robots and other sci-fi/fantasy inventions. I chose seven films I think are quite significant in the showcasing of individual little people. I've deliberately left out Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on account it obviously doesn't use actual little people, and I've also omitted The Wizard of Oz since there are no real standouts, only a lot of dressed-up extras.