Films seen so far this year: 241
Films seen in the last week: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Treacle Jr, Just Do It, Tyrannosaur, Honey (Bal) , Hobo With A Shotgun, The Help, The Skin I Live In, A Lonely Place to Die, Horrible Bosses

FILM OF THE WEEK: Bobby Fischer Against The World

Hurst: The First Twitter Movie
Back in April, my friend Kristi Barnett asked me to be her casting assistant for Hurst, an exciting-sounding project she described as “the first Twitter movie”, though it might more accurately be described as “Blair Witch meets social networking”. The film centres on a character called Karen Barley (played by actress Gemma Giddings, who, pleasingly, was one of the actresses I read lines with), whose boss asks her to take part in a project in Croham Hurst, a place shrouded in druid myth and legend.

When Karen's boyfriend Darren (played by Benjamin O'Mahoney) starts messing around at Croham Hurst too, he starts behaving weirdly and Karen becomes convinced he's trying to frighten her, but she doesn't suspect that something much darker is going on. So far, so Blair Witch, but the twist is that the entire film unfolds via video clips, filmed by the in-character actors themselves and released via @KarenBarley's Twitter feed, where she also interacts with her followers, the idea being that her Twitter followers are the only people who believe her.

Here is the pre-project trailer, which I found particularly amusing, because it uses excerpts from the two main scenes I was involved in during the casting process. Sadly Kristi wasn't quite impressed enough with my acting skills to cast me as Darren. Ah well. Another dream shattered, etc. Thrillingly, the story was picked up by BBC News (I arrived at a mutual friend's birthday the other week and they were all buzzing because they'd just seen Kristi on the news) but I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been more press coverage, because it's a genuinely exciting idea that has a lot of potential for future film distribution. So catch up now to be part of the story as it reaches its thrilling conclusion this weekend – the tweets are archived here.

Trailerwatch - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
I'd heard from a few people that the trailer for the Sherlock Holmes sequel was underwhelming, but I have to admit, it worked for me. It's fair to say that there are no laugh-out-loud moments the way there were in the first trailer and that could be a bad sign in terms of the dialogue overall, but I think there's enough here to get excited about.

First and foremost amongst those things is the fact that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo's Noomi Rapace is playing The Mysterious Lady this time round (the imdb lists her only as “Sim”), though I confess, I didn't immediately twig that it was her. Secondly, I'm delighted to see that Jared Harris is playing Professor Moriarty – I hope he has a proper role in the film rather than just staying on the sidelines (the first film apparently added in the Moriarty scenes after shooting was completed).
Thirdly, it has a bit on a train and no film with a bit on a train can ever be all bad.

In fact, speaking about the bit on the train, I retract what I said about no laugh-out-loud moments, because I did laugh at Holmes saying “I agree it's not my best disguise but I had to make do ...”, cheap joke though it was. Also, looking more closely at the imdb list, the trailer becomes more interesting for what it's NOT showing – for example, no sign of Stephen Fry as Holmes' brother Mycroft and no sign of Rachel McAdams, who's apparently back as Adler. That said, if Rapace is the female lead this time round, McAdams may just be reduced to a pre-credits sequence or something.

I hope we at least get to see more of Kelly Reilly as Mrs Watson this time round (I assume from the line “I am on my honeymoon!” that the briefly-glimpsed wedding goes ahead), but somehow I suspect she'll be as underused as she was last time round, which is a shame, because she's one of my favourite British actresses. The film's not out until 16th December (when it goes up against ... um ... Alvin and the Chipmunks 3), so hopefully we'll get another couple of trailers before then.