once upon a time, the magnificent Empire magazine was the be all and end all of film news. it was brilliant and an essential purchase. whereas from what i have seen of recent editions it still is, but the dawn of the interwebnet thingie means that it isn't the first source of new movie news and images anymore.
i think one of their crowning glories was "assisting" their readership with ways and means of getting their hands on a copy of the magnificent Reservoir Dogs, a film whish was subject to a bewildering ban in the UK. that was in a more innocent time, of course - director Quentin Tarantino celebrated them as being "cool" for doing this in the days before, apparently, piracy threatened the whole industry.
anyway, it's clearly not just me that remembers the magazine fondly, as a great many people have participated in a 20th anniversary photo shoot to celebrate and indeed show they are still going strong.
if you click on the link in the title in this post you can see the full gallery, in the mean time here's three of my favourites. and, trust me, it was tricky to get it down to three!!
first up, two of the leads from easily one of the best films in the 20 year history of the magazine, and one certainly in the top three....
made in 1992 but only seen by most of the world in 1993, Unforgiven is a masterpiece of cinema. how easy it is to forget that at the time a number of critics speculated that this film could well have been Eastwood's swansong. as it turned out he, and indeed the pictured Morgan Freeman, went on from this to deliver film after film that are considered to be the finest of their careers.
next up is a very welcome smile....
there have been all sorts of rumours and questions about the state of King Jack's health, in particular as he was a no-show at the 2009 Oscar ceremony. it says much about his stature was there was more talk of him not being there than there was of anyone who actually did attend, i guess!
now then, the best film of the 20 years Empire has been going? that's a rather tough question. off the top of my head, the contenders would feature Reservoir Dogs, Unforgiven, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Jurassic Park, Fight Club, The Departed, Se7en and The Descent for a start, plus one or two that have undoubtedly slipped my mind.
a tough choice it would be, but if i had to make a choice, it would be the one glaring omission from the list above, recreated here for Empire's photoshoot....
to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, it's not that there's anything wrong with the other films, it just remains the case that the silence of the lambs stands as a magnificent, awe inspiring, shocking, genius work of cinema. it's just as bold and brilliant now as it was when released; don't pretend just this rather innocent, face-mask free image of the two leads doesn't give you a bit of a chill.....
do go and check out the rest of the images, there are some fantastic images!!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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