Jonathan Crocker

1. Jamie Lee Curtis

Arise, your Majesty. Graced with a killer combo of legs and lungs, Curtis ran screaming through the genre. Debuting in Halloween, she survived six slashers in five years (including The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train). Tender yet tough, Curtis redefined horror heroines forever. Her mother must have been proud… Read the rest of this entry »

1. Steve Martin

Clever comedy smackdowns are three-time Oscar host Steve Martin’s special move. He’s taken down everyone from Michael Moore (“It was so sweet backstage, the teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo”) to Meryl Streep (Anyone who has ever worked with Meryl Streep says the exact same thing. ‘Can that woman act?’ and ‘What’s up with all the Hitler memorabilia?'”). But his finest moment is this. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Hadrian’s Wall National Trail

WHERE: Cumbria, Northumberland and Tyneside

AS SEEN IN: The tree at Sycamore Gap in Hadrian’s Wall is the one that Kevin Costner walloped Norman soldiers under in the film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.

BEST FOOTAGE: Costner was supposed to be rambling from Dover to Nottingham, so quite how he ended up at Hadrian’s Wall is anyone’s guess. Read the rest of this entry »

When asked to speak at a convention of cinema-owners in Las Vegas, the star of Big Daddy and Little Nicky addressed the crowd with the following words: “My name is Adam Sandler. I’m not particularly talented. I’m not particularly good-looking. And yet I’m a multi-millionaire.” Everyone laughed. Read the rest of this entry »

1. The Party At Kitty And Stud’s

“I’d been bounced out of my apartment and had slept four nights in a row at the Port Authority bus terminal, trying to avoid the cops. I owned two shirts, three pairs of underwear, a pair of pants and a jacket – all of which I had on at the same time since I had no place to put them. I mean, I was desperate. I read in a trade paper about this film that was paying $100 a day – for a $100 a day I would wreak havoc. So I showed up and found myself literally standing in the valley of the skanks. There was no real sex involved, just bad imitations and the close proximity of skankalicious skin. Read the rest of this entry »

1. The Legend Of The Drunken Master

Masterpiece. Playing a man who’s unstoppable when he’s had a skinful of booze (you know the feeling), Jackie Chan wallops home an amazing one-two combo of comedy and kung fu. The climactic eight-minute sequence is one of the most thrilling, inventive and outrageous pieces of fight choreography ever filmed. Once you’ve watched Chan crawling through a bed of hot-coals for a few seconds of slapstick fun, you realise why his physical abilities burnt out so fast. Right here, he’s on fire. Read the rest of this entry »

Bobbing helplessly like a tiny cork, a 12-year-old boy drifts alone in the middle of the freezing Atlantic Ocean. With every minute, he’s dragged further and further away from his father, who’s also been caught in the rip current that’s left them treading water far out to sea.

Darkness falls. By now, the father can barely see the boy. He’s scared. His son has autism. Jellyfish begin to sting them both.

The man calls into the night: “To infinity…” Read the rest of this entry »

You might have heard about it already, but there’s some sort of international football tournament being played in South Africa this month. To celebrate England’s impending victory in the World Cup, we could have given you a list of the greatest football movies ever. But we’re better than that. So here, lacing up their boots in dreamland, are the movie characters who’d make our starting eleven. Read the rest of this entry »

1. The real… Rocky Balboa

It ain’t how hard you can hit… Sly Stallone based Rocky Balboa on no-hope heavyweight slugger Chuck Wepner after seeing him battle invincible world champion Muhammad Ali in an extraordinary fight in 1975. No one expected Wepner to last three rounds. But he took everything Ali could throw – then floored the champ with a bodyshot in the ninth. “Hey, I knocked him down!” grinned Wepner as he went back to his corner. “Well done,” replied his trainer. “But he looks really pissed off now…” Read the rest of this entry »

“I’ve seen the movie. It’s fantastic,” says Prince Of Persia’s star Jake Gyllenhaal. His director Mike Newell is even more pleased with it. “It’s colossal,” he nods. Their producer Jerry Bruckheimer backs them both up. “I thought it was brilliant,” he declares. “I loved it. It was just amazing.”

Typical. Hollywood types giving themselves a big pat on the back. Actually, no. They’re not talking about Prince Of Persia. They’re talking about the movie that everyone’s (still) talking about. Read the rest of this entry »