It's well known I wasn't the biggest fan of Rob Marshall's film of CHICAGO - too flashy, over-edited, missing the sheer theatrical fun of the piece.

In the race to make Broadway shows into films Marshall has picked a not-so-obvious candidate, Maury Yeston's NINE, a musical based on Fellini's "8 1/2".

It's not a well-known show but it has a score of intriguing solo numbers, a big star role for an actor and a plethora of roles for all the women in his life.

Although the trailer suggests Marshall has utilised a lot of his CHICAGO flashy shtick, I am suitably intrigued by the cast of Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren and Judi Dench to look forward to the film's release at the end of the year.
On the subject of movies, I went with Owen to see X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE on Saturday.

Now you know Constant Reader that I'm not the world's biggest Summer movies fan but I enjoyed the previous X-MEN films due to the fine playing and the whole 'mutant' outsider vibe.

Here Hugh Jackman reprises his star role as Wolverine giving him a stonking star vehicle to show off his oddly shaped shoulders and to show how his character came to be. It had been covered vaguely in the second X-MEN film but here we had the added seasoning of sibling hatred as it reveals he has a nemesis in his evil step-brother.

Wolverine is Logan who has been a soldier down the ages from the American civil war but finally decides to settle on a Clint Eastwood 1971 look circa "The Beguiled". He fights through the years with his more psycho brother Victor until they are recruited by General Styker (smirk) to join his band of merceneries which also features Dominic Monaghan as a guy who can control electricity mentally and Will.I.Am as the token black badass who can vanish at will. Logan grows sick of the violence and leaves to return to his Canada homeland with his robotic schoolteacher wife. Until Stryker and Victor come back in his life.

The film moves along at a rare old clip - not dwelling on anything - so it ultimately feels like a very long trailer and as such I was never bored as it never wanted me to be. Among the crashing metal and bone-crunching a couple of performances peep through to catch the eye: Liev Schreiber has great fun with the evil Victor aka Sabretooth - a mocking, wry villain who steals the film from the dull Jackman; Danny Huston makes a good hissable villainous General Styker and Will.I.Am made the most of his scenes with an unhurried cool.
The trouble is, when you have a character whose USP is that he can recover from anything and is immortal - where is the tension? The glorification of Jackman involves all his lines being growelled to the screen in close-up in a "I'll be back" sort of way, while the lead actress has one expression - like the director smacked her in the gob with a wet fish before the cameras turned - but of course it's a totally thankless role and again, the same old problem I have with all these films, the over-reliance on cgi means I totally disengage with any of the action sequences.

With all these films now they aim to make you go "wow how did they do that" but the trouble is... you know how they did it. Someone pushed some buttons.