An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Dir: Jason Reitman.
Cast: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman
Description: High school student Juno MacGuff is dismayed when her third pregnancy test comes back positive; the result of a moment of madness with social misfit Paulie. Sharing the news with her shocked pal Leah, Juno nervously tells her parents Mac and Bren that they will soon be grandparents, then adds a second emotional blow by revealing that she intends to give up the baby to a childless couple, Mark and Vanessa, who she found through an advertisement in the local newspaper.
Country: US. 2007. 96mins
Dream teen: Ellen Page, right, as Juno, with Jennifer Garner as the adoptive mother of her baby
There's a moment in Juno which rings my alarm bells. Our pregnant teen heroine is sitting in the abortion clinic when she is casually handed a fruit-flavoured condom.
Appalled by such a lapse of taste, she rushes out announcing that she's going to have the baby and will put it up for adoption.
The A-word is never mentioned again. No wonder pro-lifers have cheered Juno. It's been compared to the awful, reactionary Knocked Up. Juno is a far more intelligent film - but it is creepy.
Where I lose patience is with the adoring portrait it draws of the child-woman. Let's call it the Amélie factor.
The camera may linger over Juno in the opening scenes of the film as she discards her underwear - and even hint at an X-rated affair - but it can never let her do anything as risky as have a termination.
The child-woman in cinema bears little resemblance to real life. She's cute, adorable, so pert it hurts. And crucially she never does anything grubby.
That perfect body can never be sullied. Think of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (in fact Holly was a hooker in the original Truman Capote story) or Winona Ryder in Girl Interrupted, pretending to be bipolar-in a series of designer frocks. Or Audrey Tautou in anything.
In fact, in her new film Priceless (out later this year) Tautou actually plays a golddiggerwho sleeps her way around the Med.
But - surprise, surprise - she's so funny and adorable and wears such great couture clothes, no one could possibly be offended.
Juno has notched up four Oscar nominations and taken more than £100 million at the box office. It's put Ellen Page (a fantastic 20-year-old actress playing 16) on the map.
However, if I was a teenage girl I'd want to shoot myself after seeing it. Juno is beautiful, whipcrack-smart, universally adored by every boy in the school. Even the adoptive father of her baby falls for her.
Does she look like any teenage girl you know?
Where are the tears and the bad hair and the messy body fluids? The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw calls Juno "pure cinematic Prozac". There's much to enjoy about the film. But it's totally unrealistic.
So who is to blame? Stand up screenwriter Diablo Cody, 29, who originally made her living from stripping, peep shows and phone sex - candidly chronicled on her Pussy Ranch blog and in her 2006 memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in The Life of an Unlikely Stripper.
For all the stylised teenspeak ("wizard", "frickin"), Juno is Cody's love letter to herself. "It was incredibly natural," she says, of writing the script. "It was like breathing. I saw Juno as an extension of myself. My friends and I were like Juno and her friend. We talked about sex all the time."
Am I the only one who thinks there's something inherently creepy about a 29-year-old woman wanting to be the hippest teen on the block?
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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