Hippies, vampires and the spirit of David Lynch loom large

Writer-director Peter Strickland cites a viewing of David Lynch's nightmarish Eraserhead ("this strange, beautiful piece of atmosphere"), followed by years of triple bills at the King's Cross Scala ("New York underground, sleazy European art porn, creepy Italian horror"), as his cinematic inspiration. It's easy to imagine the creator of Katalin Varga (2009, Artificial Eye, 15) gorging himself on such exotica. From the brooding, amorphous guilt of Lynch's industrial noisescapes to the emotive violence of so much "exploitation" fare, Strickland clearly appreciates the strange mysteries of cinema's most dark and troubling dreams.

His eye-opening first feature is a gothic-inflected Romanian tragedy in which the vampiric spectre of Transylvania's prince of darkness is replaced by an altogether more human monster. Hilda Péter is mesmerising as the innocent outcast, banished from her village when her husband discovers that he is not the father of her son. With horse, cart and nine-year-old in tow, Katalin sets off across the haunting vistas of the Carpathians, hellbent on revenge, the landscape almost singing to her as she goes – an eerie murder ballad. But when she finds the beast who brutally scarred her years ago, will she be able to plunge a stake into his heart? Does revenge or redemption cast the longer shadow? Brooding, sensual and brilliantly unsettling, Strickland's film moves seamlessly between horror and wonderment, a visually enrapturing modern myth with its head in the darkening clouds and its feet firmly planted in the soil of a spine-tingling soundtrack.

While it may be hard to imagine a "good Megan Fox movie", Jennifer's Body (2009, 20th Century Fox, 15) comes close to being just that. Admittedly, Fox herself is the least of this satirical high-school slasher's virtues, its main strength being a spunkily genre-literate script from Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody. Likable Amanda Seyfried takes centre stage as "Needy", the allegedly dowdy teen (clearly Cody's cipher) whose best/worst friend turns out to be a man-eater, in every sense.

Like all the best teen-terror romps (from Carrie to Ginger Snaps), the supernatural elements are based upon down-to-earth adolescent anxieties. There's real recognisable bite in the spectre of Jennifer's dawning vampirism ("she's evil… and I don't just mean high school evil"), and the best moments combine sarky humour and creeping horror with post-Mean Girls aplomb. Sadly, it doesn't quite sustain the initial promise as prom night looms and subtextual meat gives way to more formulaic softcore scares. Yet there's plenty here to entertain young-at-heart horror fans (both male and female), who will appreciate Cody's evident love of the genre and hopefully respond with appropriate good cheer.

The cover for the mirthless dirge-fest The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009, Pathé, 15) cites a review which proclaims that this is "as funny as any Will Ferrell or Judd Apatow film". Talk about damning with faint praise. What scant laughs are on offer here are in fact duly stolen by co-producer Ferrell, who drops in for a supportive cameo involving skydiving, Abe Lincoln and dildos (readers are invited to insert their own cheap knob gag here). Elsewhere it's a chuckle-free zone as Jeremy Piven and co attempt to do for cowboy car salesmanship what Blades of Glory did for figure skating: make it seem funny, ballsy, quirky, comic but ultimately (and not entirely ironically) uplifting. Sadly, it is none of these things, at least not on the evidence of The Goods.

It's hard to know what exactly attracted Ang Lee to the hippy-dippy comedy of Taking Woodstock (2009, Universal, 15), a tale of peace, love and understanding which is somewhat hobbled by being quite so benign. Everyone involved seems absolutely lovely – from the quaint Catskills townsfolk whose rural idyll is overrun by vagrant longhairs, to the cops, the TV squares, the bread-head promoters, the security guards (Liev Schreiber in scene-stealing drag) and, of course, the sauntering druggy peaceniks themselves, who are peculiarly polite and well-behaved throughout. OK, so Imelda Staunton's marauding mum starts out screechy and shrieky, but even she mellows under the tide of niceness and a large plate of hash brownies. In knowing counterpoint to Mike Wadleigh's Woodstock, we never actually get to see the festival itself, Lee's focus being on the crowd which seems to exist in a bubble of Brigadoon-like bliss. Only a heavy-handed closing reference to the impending catastrophe of Altamont (which gave birth to the Maysles's terrifying Gimme Shelter) strikes a note of doom – otherwise it's nostalgic sunshine and light all the way.

With Julien Temple's wonderfully gritty Oil City Confidential playing in cinemas and duly raising the bar of the contemporary "rock doc", it's tempting to be snotty and scornful about Michael Jackson's This is It (2009, Sony, PG), a hagiographic montage of rehearsal footage from Jacko's unfulfilled final tour. Yet despite never being intended for public viewing, the resultant patchwork is a peculiarly charming and occasionally poignant affair. Jackson was clearly pacing himself and rarely hits his moonwalking stride, gesturing towards dance steps rather than throwing himself into them, and occasionally talking rather than actually singing the songs. Yet anyone who felt a morbid tingle at the posthumous release of Elvis's "Twelfth of Never" rehearsal tapes will be similarly intrigued by the apparent intimacy of these "non-performances". Of course the real showman here is Kenny Ortega, heroic helmsman of the High School Musical series and the guiding hand behind this ambitious enterprise which somehow weaves a silk purse out of a potential sow's arse. Go Kenny!

• DVD and video reviews

Mark Kermode
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As Disney rebrands Rapunzel as Tangled, we imagine what other children's stories and fairy tales could be made more appealing to boys

Disney is taking no chances. Book publishers have long since realised that anything that sounds too obviously girly is a complete no-no for the unfairer sex – hence JK Rowling's books weren't published under the name of Joanne Rowling. Hollywood has taken rather longer to make the connection. But after less-than-spectacular US box-office receipts for The Princess and the Frog, the studio has decided to rebrand its forthcoming cartoon in an effort to win the little chaps back. So Rapunzel has become Tangled – complete with an all-action male swashbuckling hero. It's worth a go, I suppose. Here are some other titles boys might like to see.

Malice in Wonderland

Freddy Krueger has a day out in Alton Towers and picks off a coachload of schoolchildren one-by-one in a gore schlock-horror fest before a grinning Cheshire cartoon cat and his trusty dormouse lieutenant come to the rescue.

Red Riding in Da Hood

A young Che Guevara pimps his BMX bike and heads off to the Bronx to take out a gang of neo-fascist hyenas who have been terrorising the local community of multicultural zebras.

You Beauty and the Beast

It's the last minute of extra time in the World Cup final, the score is 0-0 and the game is heading for penalties, when Wayne Rooney starts his run in his own half. He beats one German Hofmeister bear, then another, and another, before curling the ball into the left-hand corner.

GI Snow and the Seven Dwarfs

Matt Damon flies south to Colombia where he rounds up his cute band of seven undercover chihuahuas – Sneezy, Dopey, Edgy, Wired, Wasted, Psychotic and Sleepless â€“ and destroys the world's largest cocaine factory.

• Walt Disney Company
• Animation
• Fairytales
• Film adaptations

John Crace
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Stop in and catch all of the exciting full-length episodes of the popular shows you recently missed.

News Corporation Europe and Asia chief calls for tough line on piracy, adding: 'They're not crazy kids. No. Punish them'

James Murdoch today called on governments to get tough on illegal downloading, which he said was no different from "going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag".

Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation's European and Asian operations, was joined in calling for tougher piracy measures at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit today by other media executives including Ari Emanuel, co-chief executive of William Morris Endeavor, the biggest Hollywood talent agency.

But Murdoch, who stressed that future growth would come from original content production, took the toughest line on piracy.

"We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball … There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff. It's a basic condition for investment and economic growth and there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie," he said.

"The idea that there's a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly when they're stealing stuff. No. There should be the same level of sanctity as there is around property. Content is no different. They're not crazy kids. No. Punish them."

The outburst from the man widely tipped to take over when his father, Rupert Murdoch, steps down as News Corporation chairman and chief executive, attracted a round of applause from media executives at the Abu Dhabi summit.

Only Maurice Levy, chief executive of French advertising group Publicis, sounded an alternative note when he said: "My grandchild doesn't believe he's stealing."

Murdoch also reiterated previous threats by his father Rupert that News Corp may take legal action against content aggregators such as Google to protect its copyright.

"We're being very careful legally to protect our rights," he said. "If there's money getting stuck it's getting stuck in an inefficient distribution layer … where Google and Yahoo are suddenly indexing copyright material and then selling bits of it and making money from it. You may have to withdraw access to those things. You may not."

Murdoch also asked for lighter touch regulation for a business that is the largest shareholder in UK pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB and owns the News International stable of national newspapers including the Sun and the Times.

In an earlier point about investment opportunities, Murdoch said: "When we look at different marketplaces ... it's really a question for us about how free a hand we're going to have to operate."

He was echoing comments made by his father, Rupert, at yesterday's keynote speech in Abu Dhabi about the need for less regulation, particularly in the Gulf states.

Emanuel, the brother of US presidential adviser Rahm, said the industry was talking to the US government in a bid to introduce a "three strikes and you're out" law to govern illegal downloading.

"We are in the midst of talking to the president and some attorney generals and [we are] trying to implement a three strikes and you're out rule," he added.

He suggested that there would be a "fight with ISPs" (internet service providers) over the subject. France last year introduced a similar rule which allowed legal action once internet users had downloaded illegally three times.

Earlier today at the Abu Dhabi conference, Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt made an impassioned presentation on the search company's "mobile first" strategy.

But he was perhaps less forthcoming about the flood of questions about Google's dominance and control over its use of our data.

"Would you prefer another government to hold the information that we have?" he said, adding that the company had enough checks and balances to stop information being misused, and it would also not want to lose people's trust.

Schmidt also suggested that location-based social networking services such as Foursquare and Gowalla could become the next Twitter.

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• James Murdoch
• Digital media
• News Corporation
• Aggregators
• File sharing
• Piracy
• Piracy

Jane Martinson
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The red carpet has been rolled up, the trophies stashed safely in cupboards. But we're still partying: Becky Carroll selects her top film clips celebrating the Oscars

Sick of watching replays of Sandra Bullock's sobby Oscar speech? Bored to the back teeth of Kathryn Bigelow's shout-out to the troops? One thing about those Academy Awards acceptance speeches is that they tend, for all the professionalism of those involved, to be a little, well, unscripted. There's no better place to turn, then, to the movies themselves, and Hollywood's presentation of its own big backslap. If you should always write about what you know, films themselves must be the best place to find believable depictions of the tears, egos and tantrums of the night of a thousand stars.

Looking through these clips, it's the 1940s and 50s - an age of relative innocence in terms of celebrity - which seem to be the high point as far as Oscar dramas go, to be replaced by more comedic takes in recent years. Does this say good things for Hollywood's sense of humour? Or is it just another example of the film business eating itself?

Here are my top five clips celebrating awards. Please post your nomination envelopes in the comments below.

1) Judy Garland picks up a gong in A Star is Born. We see her on TV at the side of the screen, emphasising the global shame she's about to experience as her drunken husband (James Mason) does a Kayne West.

2) Anne Baxter at the end of All About Eve, about to discover her very own fan club asleep in a chair. It's not actually about the Oscars, but its snooty dismissal of Hollywood is clearly a real insider's take.

3) "I think that might be the envelope with the bomb in it". The Oscars need tight security, and who better to provide than Lt Frank Drebin, here stealing the show in Naked Gun 33 1/3.

4) The flip side of glory: Catherine O'Hara deals with the shock of not being nominated in dignified style in For Your Consideration. Mariah Carey put in an arch homage for her recent Palm Springs film festival appearance.

5) But for everyone suffering real Academy Awards withdrawal symptoms, there's only one place to turn: a film called The Oscar, featuring a strange, boozy Tony Bennett cameo hitting the star with a waste-paper bin.

Last week on Clip Joint, pinkos ushered us through the best film clips showcasing cinemagoing. Here are his picks from your suggestions.

1) Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina star in Agnès Varda's short film Les Fiancés Du Pont Macdonald; a telling little film, snuck into the full-length feature Cléo de 5 à 7.

2) The Third Man is the quicklime in the chemical reaction which lights the fires of madness in Pauline Parker in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (start about 1:30 in).

3) Sam Neill sees his life projected from within The Mouth of Madness.

4) You don't need to be cattle-prodded to see why Red River is The Last Picture Show.

5) This week's winner is windupbirdchronicles with Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is My Romeo?, a prototypical, much-strimmed version of Shirin where Kiarostami shows that even a Zefferelli is no match for the images that play in our heads.

Thanks to Steenbeck, Swanstep and twittwit for the rest of the week's picks.

Fancy writing Clip joint? Email Catherine Shoard for more details; apologies to those awaiting a response - post-Oscars backlog will be cleared by the end of the week …

• Oscars

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"Shrek Forever After," Elliot Spitzer doc and "Virtual" program are all part of the Tribeca Film Festival's 2010 lineup.

Ralph Fiennes, the versatile English actor, begins a new adventure on 17 March, 2010 by directing his first film, an adaptation of the Shakespearen tragedy Coriolanus starring Gerard Butler, Brian Cox and Vanessa Redgrave alongside Ralph Fiennes himself.

The film chronicles the struggles of the eponymous character, a skilled general who has won an important war for Rome but remains at odds with a restive public. Prompted by his mother, he reluctantly decides to run for the Senate but when rejected, Coriolanus' rage prompts riots that are used as an excuse to exile him. He allies himself with his former enemy, the leader of the enemy city he defeated, and schemes to take his revenge on Rome.

Adapted by Academy Award-nominee John Logan, the picture mixes the classical and contemporary by retaining Shakespeare's language but moving the setting to a contemporary period.

The film's crew is formidable and includes names like Gabrielle Tana, Julia Taylor-Stanley as producers and the recent oscar-winners Barry Ackroyd and Ray Beckett for cinematography and sound mixing.

Will Fiennes be able to mix old and new in this adaptation? Do you expect the film to be on the lines of Loncraine's Richard III? Let us know what you think...

Zain Chaudhry

>> Real the whole article | on Screenrush - Wednesday 10 March 2010

The director reveals that he has a fantastic new story for both Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne in the works.

After doing the rounds of the Oscars parties, Katie Price is in talks over her biopic to be based on all four of her autobiographies. But who would take that coveted lead role?

Sunday's Oscars were full of improbable moments – like Meryl Streep's botched attempt at a hug as Sandra Bullock's name was announced, and the spectrum of disinterest that played across George Clooney's face for the duration of the ceremony – but one sight was bewildering enough to put them all to shame. Somehow, Katie Price was there.

Admittedly she wasn't at the show itself, but she was everywhere else – single-handedly unravelling the evening's sense of demure understatement with every last desperate wriggle and pout on the after-party circuit. But what was Price doing anywhere near the Oscars? Surely, it's a night to showcase the biggest stars in the world, not failed Eurovision applicants who have their own ITV2 reality shows. Jedward didn't attend, so why on Earth was Jordan there?

The upsetting and inevitable truth is that Price was in Los Angeles discussing her biopic. Price told reporters that she'd found a producer, given him all four of her autobiographies and that her life would make "a mad film". Of course it would – read in order, Jordan's autobiographies tell the story of a woman who falls in love with a man, then falls a bit more in love with him, then falls a bit more in love with him and then suddenly splits up with him and devotes the rest of her natural life to badmouthing him in a flat, robot monotone wherever possible. It's practically Shakespeare.

So the story's there, but what about the cast? At the moment, Price is keeping quiet about who she wants to play her – possibly so that the actress in question doesn't have the chance to lock herself away in a nuclear bunker until the threat passes – but that doesn't mean that we can't help out. Now is the perfect opportunity for all of us to cast the Katie Price biopic – this way we end up with a film that we want to see, and Katie has more time to drone on about herself as if she was the actual centre of the universe. So who plays who?

We'll start with Price herself. We need someone who can accurately portray the sadder moments of Jordan's life with the right amount of gravitas, while still remembering to be as sexy, flirty and maternal as Price is. It goes without saying that the first choice should be Joan Crawford.

Then there are the loves of Katie's lives. Superficially at least, Peter Andre should be played by someone pretty but bland, like Twilight's Taylor Lautner or – since Andre appears to be deliberately morphing into him anyway – Cliff Richard. Alex Reid spent the entirety of Celebrity Big Brother doing a haphazard amateur James Bond audition, so his role would go to Daniel Craig. Or, failing that, Roger Moore.

And then there are the peripheral characters to take care of. For instance, Don Cheadle would love to have a go at mauling Dwight Yorke's accent, and Helen Mirren was born to play Katie's fellow I'm A Celebrity contestant John Lydon. Finally, there's Piers Morgan – who could probably quite easily be played by a flood-damaged Jurassic Park animatronic. And that's it.

Have I missed anyone? Have I got it spectacularly wrong? Leave your casting suggestions below.

• Oscars
• Film industry
• Katie Price
• Celebrity
• Meryl Streep
• Sandra Bullock
• George Clooney

Stuart Heritage
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The actor was found in his mother's apartment early Wednesday morning.

Jacob, Edward, and Bella reunite for this ten-second preview of the upcoming trailer.