Method acting is a technique used by many leading Hollywood actors. Everybody from De Niro to Hoffman uses it. One of the leading teachers of method acting working today is Arnold Bloomberg of the Bloomberg Academy of Drama in New York. Dr Andrew Cousins, went to learn more.

AC: What is your fundamental approach to acting?

AB: For me acting isn't just about pretending to be somebody else. It's about becoming a physical and mental actualisation of a character. Acting is in many ways like a triangle with no corners.

AC: Does method acting make for better acting?

AB: Let me put it like this. My job is to take an actor on a journey. That journey is from the place known as ‘bad acting' to the place known as ‘good acting'. The place known as ‘bad acting' is where people like Lou Diamond Phillips hang out and it's a very scary place.

 ‘How often is the sky mauve?’  I wondered, some steps from freedom.

Prayer. Child. Wife. Tea.

I sit in my favourite café. There is coffee, tobacco, the newspaper. This is some quiet time spent before a work appointment. A bright, chill November afternoon of easy pace, inside and out. The news tells of two states at war after so long – an artillery attack this time, on a neighbourhood at dawn, a neighbourhood with sleep in its eye. Many people have died. Many wives and many children. The café is warm, alive with chatter and joy. Here Peace: There War. Here as There People Trying to Live.

Ave, et cetera, I haven't time for a preamble because various financial institutions are bidding furiously for my genitalia.

"You see he didn't start out as a robot. He was a policeman who was gunned down so naturally they transplant his head onto a robot body to keep him alive and turn him into Cybocop. But the thing they forgot was his balls, isn't it? He thought with his balls. They controlled his instincts. "Do I shoot the criminals? What are my balls telling me?" That was how he operated. Without them he's just a big toaster with a gun, isn't he?"

Paul Verhervervint is Holland's biggest export since the tulip. His brash and trashy style of filmmaking, not to mention the often violent or otherwise controversial subject matter has made his films incredibly popular with moviegoers worldwide. Films such as ‘Crude Instinct', ‘Lapdancers', ‘Cybocop' and others have all been extremely successful at the box office - if not always with the critics.

"Is a very powerful love story. There is man. There is woman. Man falls over. Woman falls in love. Man wears funny hat. Oh no! Is woman dying of disease? Yes. Then man fall over some more. She get better. They get married. The end."

Roberto Benitio is best know as the Italian comedian and film maker who directed ‘Wasn’t World War Two Fun?’ which swept the board at the Oscars two years ago. He charmed the American public with his exhuberance during numerous television interviews and with his hilarious antics during the ceremony itself. Who can forget the sight of him mooning Jack Nicholson? Or pushing a custard pie into Steven Spielberg’s face? In another instalment from the vault, and newly illustrated by Eric Dubois, Dr Andrew went to talk to him.

"The Love Bug features a car that comes to life. Is it powered by the love of Jesus Christ? We aren't offered any evidence that this is the case so we must, unfortunately, assume that it is in fact animated purely by the power of the Lord of Darkness. I still feel an urge to pray whenever I see a Volkswagen Beetle."

Watching4Jesus.com is a website run by the Divine Church of Holy Intervention in Alabama, Texas. It aims to provide a method whereby films are rated and classified from a Fundamentalist Christian perspective.

As Netribution begins to republish treats from the Carnal Cinema archive, newly accompanied with cartoons from Eric Dubois, we're proud to reprint Dr Andrew's 2002 'interview' with the outfit's spokesman, the Reverend Aloysius Tork.

"Fear is such a charlatan... it hammers on your door like a bailiff with piles"

It's been some time, but then I say that a lot these days.

For lunch my father walked me, with now obvious zeal, to a reastaurant he knew of near Marylebone. I remember its layout so clearly I imagine that I am still digesting my meal and even in memory that place functions as MY dining bar would function, in the future, or in another life, if only there were someone hanging around to perceive it.

You find me in a basement in Camden town. There is a smell of decay, of sweat, of many things unwashed of the grease of hopelessness. And there is an atmosphere so sour you could squeeze enough out to pickle a hundred weight of gherkins a day.

Just a moment ago it was six pm (by the sun's arc) and I was lying on a beach watching the waves leap and tussle in play. Only a moment ago.... 

´Hello. How was school?´
´I don´t know. I haven´t been to school for a month.´
´Oh... ´

I have just finished reading about the DVD release of the films of Ben Hopkins. I even tried to write a comment on the site but failed somehow. I interviewed Mr Hopkins in another life, perhaps you remember? I was late for some typical reason. Then it rained and he made tea. We talked for some time in a flat that was higher than the ground floor and I enjoyed it because he was well-mannered and intelligent. But these things are of course disputable. Never managed to see ´Simon Magus´, but ´9 Lives of Tomas Katz´ (Thomas? Tomas? could be either I suppose) was both brilliant and very funny. I wonder if he has read Bulgakov´s ´The Master and Margarita´ I´m sure he has for that book does not escape people like him. 

"Fact 1.
I am smoking a hand-rolled cigarette

Fact 2.
I will leave England on Friday 14th July 2006

Fact 3.
Between now and then I intend to earn my living as a male prostitute."

Ave,

  It all began in January but it was still a little hard to accept as something that was truly going to happen, what with the date being so very far in the future. People don´t believe statements like that, especially not from me. My record with such declarations could be compared to that of a rising politician. But then at some point one has to stick to something, even if that thing involves walking away for good.

Ave Brittani et cetera,  

I had hoped to be sitting on the terrasse of my favourite cafe by now, reading the decadent tomes of that silly little fascist Gabriele DÁnnunzio. I would be relaxed, chatting now and then to Mohammed in Spanglarabic and feeling the warm glow of creative satisfaction. But no... I have just finished writing this:

To whom it may apply,

On 04.07.06 I received a 50UKP fine for driving in a bus lane.

Four and a half years on  from Netribution's Big Sleep  and a good six years since we quit Tony Grisoni's screenwriting class at  Westminster to run Netribution full time, Tom Fogg, one of the three co-founders of this site, with myself and Wendy Bevan-Mogg (the Sarah Radcliffe of the operation) has finally made a post. And as the world's longest film festival gets into its second week (I will post soon!) - it marks a good point to stop and say hello. It's been a long time. We started work on Netribution: The Return (sometimes they come back) early this year, and it's been close to six moonths of slow building and redevelopment. Editorial guidelines have been evened out. Some mistakes have undoubtedly been made, to which i apologise to any so affected by tech gremlins or my own fumbling as getting to grips with this all.

But the point is it's up, and tho it's gone better, cost less money (ie none) and been more popular than I could have imagined (44,000 people visited us last month - looking at 500,000 pages; more than screendaily by a long shot), it hasn't quite felt right. I haven't quite felt ready to go, the confidence I suppose to be myself, in this whole thing. Netribution was a personal odyssey for me and Tom as we lived in each others pockets through the best and worst times in our lives, in film and in our love lives. And the great beast spat us out the other side like idealistic fools to live in the angry marching world of London after the brief mirage of giddy Silicon Valley investment that had appeared over the city was burst. And so starting this thing without him just seemed a little wrong. Of course the same was true when Wendy left, it shifted in a way that I probably didn't acknowledge at the time. Before then we idolised Martha Lane Fox and planned to have full staff icecream eating days for making decisions.But it was his encouragement last year that really set me off again after three years of talking about it. During long talks last autumn  we started to picture it as a kind of online Granta, publishing four issues a year, if that - the very antitheses of the webs instant 24 hour news on the second style. There would be guest editors, who each would collect content for a period of time, before collating it together into some kind of narrative.

So maybe now he's back, writing something in some form at least, then perhaps it is worth publishing issue 1. We'll see how the week pans out.  But for now, enough of me, over to Tom.

Many apologies to my beautiful readers for not having answered any of your emails for so long - and to Netribution for not following my first column yet - but please rest assuredly that I have not been stroking my thumbs. I have been hard at work on my latest book, Delivery Device for Mr Meme: Cinema's Dark Con of Man, which should be ready at some point before 2012. I would like to offer the reader now a small slice of one of the chapters I have been most recently working on, in the humble hope that you, good soul, may forgive me for my silence, and perhaps even find sollace in the inadequate and clumsy words this foolish scholar does pen.

This week Michael Whiner pays a visit to The Mucky Duck, the multi-award winning restaurant owned and run by Heston Charltonthal. The menu leans towards the exotic, with snail soup, frog's legs in eggs and deep-fried swan among the house specialities. Heston's unusual approach to cuisine has lead to him being the first chef in history to win 200 Michelin stars and acres of positive restaurant column inches.

However, much of that will be lost on Michael, who has film piracy and the death of the British film industry on his mind. As usual, he is already in full flow...

It has often been said that men age and women mature. However women, like wine, tend to mature in one of two ways. They either ripen into something full-flavoured, with lots of body and a myriad of intriguing flavours or they turn onto an unpleasant, acidic vinegar.

It's further said that there are no good parts in Hollywood for the older woman. Well, one person would take issue with that. She's about to enter her seventy-fourth year and shows no sign of slowing down. In her time she's worked with James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Kirk Douglas. She once called Cary Grant, "a worse kisser then my dog". I went to Beverly Hills to meet the one and only Ms. Margaux Shapiro.

Michael Whiner, semi-retired film maker, part-time restaurant critic, full time loud-mouth and the enfant-terrible of the British film industry; chews over the week's events.

This week Michael pays a visit to Ah Bistro, the small eatery owned by award-winning chef Marian Farian. The food is a fusion of classic and modern haute cuisine. The ambiance at Ah Bistro is always intimate and relaxed.

However, much of that will be lost on Michael, who as usual, is already in full flow…

The low budget digital film making revolution is sweeping the industry like a big brush. But in this case the brush is made of pixels, ones and zeros as opposed to the usual brush construction of celluloid, photosensitive dyes and developing chemicals.

One of the leading exponents of this 'Cinema Electronique' is Dutch auteur Hans Von Looz. His films such as, 'Breaking My Patience', 'The Nutters' and 'Oddville' are all made according to a strict set of rules laid down by Von Looz. Dogma 3000, as these rules are known, is intended to be the blueprint by which the next generation of low budget cinema is made. I met with Hans to ask him about film making in the 21st Century and beyond.

This year has seen something of a resurgence of interest in the political movie with 'Good Night. And Good Luck' and 'Syriana' both doing well both critically and financially. In contrast, the British Film Industry hasn't produced a political film since the late eighties. One man aims to change all that. Tobias Blennerhassett has produced some of the most successful films ever produced in this country including, 'Strippers on the Dole' and 'The Short, Fat Thursday'.

I went to speak to him find out more about his plans for what he hopes will be the greatest British political film ever made - Lib Dems: The Movie.

Caine, Hopkins, Connery, Finney, Attenborough, Guinness, Mills, Gielguid, Olivier. Names that epitomise the very best in British acting talent. But one name towers above them all; Sir Wilberforce Reddington.

He made his first screen appearance as Willy Reddington playing Third Cockney Urchin in 'It's a Right Bloomin' Caper Alright' in1937. From then on his face became a familiar fixture on British cinema screens. The list of his screen roles runs to several pages and reads like a roll call of classic film greats.

Now celebrating his 95^th birthday, I went to talk to him and look back over a lifetime in cinema.