A Page Torn From The Nanny Diaries

Seventeen have an exclusive clip from The Nanny Diaries. And very good it is too.

Stick around after the clip for some brain-rotting drivel about runway fashion and make-up.

Edward Norton Blah Blah Hulk Blah Blah Reboot Blah Blah Blah

In case you're one of my family or close friends who live under a rock and haven't looked at any other entertainment website at all today, Edward Norton has been cast as Bruce Banner in the next Hulk film.

The new Hulk film is inevitably going to be better than the previous one, but I wouldn't expect much from it at the box office.

Ang Lee's monster mess was an insult to the very language of comics. He made these vague pretensions towards incorporating what he saw as comic book grammar into the film by featuring split screen effects, but of course, this removed the basic language of film even further from the language of comicbook storytelling. Simply put: comic panels aren't simultaneous; the passage from one to the next is an indication of the passage of time. Just like the flow of normal, single-screened shots in a normal film. The split screen goofery smacked of intense arrogance and ignorance on Lee's part.

For a good taste of how the language of comics would appear on screen if filmed, the opening sequence of American Splendor offers up some clear possibilities. Of course, the languages are different enough that moving images can never truly match still ones.

X Marks The Spot - Again - In The Nanny Diaries

Big Screen Little Screen (weren't they a pair of regulars on Playschool?) have posted a UK-friendly iFilm version of The Nanny Diaries trailer. Sadly, it's in the wrong aspect ratio.

Take a look at the furnishings and decoration of the appartment in which Scarlett is nannying. You'll see a far higher concentration of X shapes than in The Departed even. This time, however, it strikes me as a much more appropriate and sensible application of the motif, not to mention worthwhile and effective.

For one thing - and not the main thing, let me stress - the appartment belongs to Mr and Mrs X. That's the name given to the employers of our Nanny Diarist, both on the page and here in the adapatation. Secondly, and much more importantly, the design is used to create a very opressively ordered, choking style in the production design. The wallpaper, the chairs, everything - they look heavy, tied-down, that bit more claustrophobically enclosing than if the X structures had not been woven into them.

A very good job by directors Springer and Berman, and particularly Mark Ricker, the film's production designer.