Wednesday 3 February 2010

Dictionary opening update

We have secured an exciting guest to open the dictionary for us on this months Words Fail Me podcast... BBC 5live's film critic, and BBC2 Culture Show presenter Mark Kermode!

Despite being a film critic Mark is no stranger to opening books, so hopefully he will pick a great page for us to discuss later this month, and in fact his very own book It's Only A Movie is out in paperback tomorrow.

More about Mark Kermode, his book and book tour below, thanks to everyone who downloaded episode one of the podcast, and please email your feedback to wordsfailmepodcast@gmail.com.

kermode

Mark Kermode has been named by The Screen Directory (alongside Barry Norman, Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert) as one of the 'Top Ten Film Critics of All Time' and continues to attract dedicated followers across the UK.

In It’s Only A Movie, (published to tie in with the 2010 Oscars and Bafta season) Kermode takes us on a whirlwind journey through his life in film – an irreverent and insightful guide to a mind obsessed with cinema.

What happens when you spend most of your childhood in acinema?

Can you really
learn about the world by watching triple-bills ofConquest of the Planet of the Apes, Slade in Flame and Krakatoa: East of Java?

Or does it mean that
movies become more real than 'real life'?

In
It's Only a Movie the UK's leading film critic Mark Kermode considers all of these questions, drawing on scenes from his life that he remembers with cinematic clarity - getting shot at while interviewing Werner Herzog in the Hollywood Hills, being handbagged by Helen Mirren at the Bafta Awards ceremony, and being thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival for heckling in very bad French.

Whether reflecting on why he was punched for writing a bad review of
Blue Velvet or rueing the day he spent travelling through Russia in a broken-down Lada on the trail of the low-budget horror movie Dark Waters, Mark Kermode has written a hilarious account of a life obsessed with film that will appeal to anyone who's ever wondered 'Who would play me in the film of my life?'

Also catch Mark on his tour of the UK starting in Southampton on the 6th of February and visiting many Picturehouse and Independent cinemas around the country until he concludes at the Bath Literacy Festival on the 2nd March.

1 comment:

  1. ...Oh and you can read an extract of the book on the Observer site - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/17/mark-kermode-only-movie-extract

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