The Last Song, starring Mylie Cyrus and Greg Kinnear, is a drama centered on a rebellious girl who is sent to a Southern beach town for the summer to stay with her father. Through their mutual love of music, the estranged duo learn to reconnect.

As it's Friday, we're treating you to an exclusive deleted scene from the film. Enjoy!  

The Last Song is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 6 September.

The latest man to play the world’s favourite detective tells Review about growing up like Jeremy Brett and how Guy Ritchie frightened him...

Had you read the books before signing up? Were you a fan?
Yes, very much. They are so good, and gripping and entertaining with really well-thought-out, well-drawn characters. What we’re doing isn’t a straight adaptation, so you have to bring what is unique about Sherlock into a modern context. To do that you have to understand the original character. Especially since we’re doing A Study In Pink, which is a version of A Study In Scarlet. After 70 or so film versions of Sherlock Holmes, I think this is the first time that Holmes and Watson meeting has been dramatised.

Did you look at any of the other Holmes adaptations?
I did see quite a few of them when I was growing up. Jeremy Brett was a big... well, I thought he was wonderful. I was going to say he was a big influence on my childhood but that would sound a bit disturbing! He was someone I very much remember watching playing Holmes. Since then I’ve seen Basil Rathbone, and recently the film as well with Robert Downey Jr. To be honest, though, it probably wouldn’t have appealed to me as much to play an original Holmes because in so many ways it’s been done superlatively well by Rathbone in black and white and Brett in colour.

So what did you think of the Guy Ritchie movie?
I went to watch it with Martin Freeman and Mark Gatiss and I was quite frightened. I thought, “What if I watch this and I’m genuinely blown away by it?” But again, it belongs to its period, it’s a different time in their relationship – they’re older – and I just sat there enjoying a romp that wasn’t particularly to do with what I had in my mind as the original Holmes and Watson.

Were any other screen detectives an influence?
No, not really. Sherlock’s an original. All other detectives owe something to Holmes, but he is the original. The world’s favourite detective.

Sherlock is released on DVD and Blu-ray today.

Review spent a very pleasant weekend recently at the Nag’s Head in High Wycombe – easily the best music venue in that area.

With two full days of bands playing in a mini rock festival, we’d like to see a couple of them gracing a film soundtrack soon:
Mister Mañana – playing the kind of four guitar rock that would fill a stadium, let alone blow away an upstairs music venue.
Izzi Stone – Local boys mixing wicked guitar riffs with classic vocals to give an ’80s feel.

However, it was this Family Guy image in the main bar downstairs which had us seething with poster envy...

If you’re going to make a film about a subject as incendiary (ahem) as terrorism, you better know what you’re talking about. Controversy-magnet Chris Morris may have caused a hoo-ha with his comic take on suicide bombers in Four Lions but the Brass Eye and The Day Today creator can’t be accused of not being thorough in his research.

“I figured if I didn’t know something then I’d better go and find out the answer first-hand,” Morris tells Review. “As a result, I built up a network of friends and contacts with different specialties and they helped introduce me to ex-fighters and the secret services, so we ended up with a network of absolutely essential guides. The most indefatigable of them became permanent members of crew – and worked as producers – helping out with every aspect of production.”

Three years of research later and Morris finally thought he was ready enough to put pen to paper, along with The Thick Of It and Peep Show writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, after the revelation that many suicide bombers were, well, a bit daft.

“The unfathomable world of extremism seemed to contain elements of farce,” Morris says. “People go to training camps in the wrong clothes, forget how to make bombs. They talk about who’s cooler – bin Laden or Johnny Depp. The more I looked, the more reality played against type, then the penny dropped. A cell of terrorists is a bunch of blokes, a small group of fired-up lads planning cosmic war from a bedsit: not a bad pressure cooker for jokes.”

At the centre of the gang of fools are Shifty’s Riz Ahmed and Fonejacker himself Kayvan Novak, who play members of the wannabe terrorist cell from Sheffield that targets the London Marathon. We’re betting financial backers for a comedy about suicide bombers weren’t exactly forthcoming...

“The people who ended up funding the film were those who could spot the difference between what we were doing and the desire to cause trouble,” Morris explains. “They could see the film was not racist, was not attacking a culture, but may just be suggesting that killing people is not a good idea. So we made no concessions.”

In tackling such a serious issue with laughter, Morris makes clear that the focus is firmly on the ironies and contradictions – never on the beliefs or culture – in showing us the funny side of fundamentalism. As he points out: “You don’t have to mock Islamic beliefs to make a joke out of someone who wants to run the world under Sharia law but can’t apply it in his own home because his wife won’t let him.”

Four Lions is released on DVD & Blu-ray on 30 August.

Is it a natural transition to go from being a hopeless romantic in Youth In Revolt to an action hero in Scott Pilgrim?
It doesn't feel like a transition. It just feels like a sort of different thing but we had a lot of training on that movie and a lot of time to get to hangout with each other and prepare for it. So it felt like a pretty smooth transition.

Edgar Wright’s style can be pretty wild. How do you adapt to something like that?
There's not much of an adjustment. You just sort of jump in and do it. There were things that you'd have a shot for that was just for one line and so it wasn't like you'd run a whole scene some of the time. That was kind of different, but for the most part you just have to let go and go with it.
 
You sword fight in that movie. Did you have to learn any other cool fighting styles?
Yeah. Well, there's an amazing fight between Mae Whitman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead where they're using these weapons and it's really amazingly done. There are some other things, there are like battles with music in it and the sword fighting.

How does the battle with music work?
Like a battle involving music. I don't know how to describe that.
 
Where did Paper Heart fit in between the projects?
I just shot my stuff in that movie for like a week or two weeks in LA. I think it was right before Youth In Revolt. It felt like a really small shoot. It was a really small crew and just a really kind of small intimate movie with friends. It felt almost like a student film with a bigger budget.

Do you have plans to do more of that with your circle of friends?
I don't have any plans right now but if something came up it'd be fun to do.

Will Scott Pilgrim turn into a franchise?
I don't know about that. That's hard to say because the movie encompasses the whole graphic novel series. He's writing the last one. There's going to be six and the sixth one is out now.
 
So they didn’t sign you for a trilogy just in case?
I don't think so, no.

Scott Pilgrim is released in UK cinemas tomorrow. Go see it, it's funny.

Best known as wizardy scallywag Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter uber-franchise, Rupert Grint gets a bit more serious for Cherrybomb, where mastering magic gives way to the more difficult task of mastering a Northern Irish accent. “I felt out of my comfort zone,” Grint tells Review. “It was an accent I hadn’t really heard before.”

Grint had to wrap his tongue around the province’s twang for his role as teen Malachy, in a film about a love triangle that spirals out of control, as two friends dare each other on to more dangerous feats involving drugs, drink and nicking stuff to win the affections of a young lady. “It’s usually quite hard to fit films in between the Potter movies,” Grint says, “but this came just after the sixth one. It all happened so quickly, really, I just loved the script.”

The contrasts with Potter didn’t end there with Cherrybomb, which was shot on location in Belfast in just three short weeks. “The last Harry Potter film took a year and a half, so it was completely different,” Grint says. “It was quite hard to adjust to that and it was quite nervewracking as well...”

The future looks bright for Grint; expect to see him much more of him in the movies, even if he is reluctant to watch himself on DVD ... “I’ve grown up on camera, so the Harry Potter films are like an expensive home video,” he says. “I do catch them on occasion but I haven’t watched many of them since the premieres. It’s not because I’m embarrassed, it just feels quite weird!”

Cherrybomb is released today on DVD.

It’s a little-known, but unsurprising, fact that Sir Terry Pratchett is single-handedly responsible for three per cent of the total book trade in the UK, with more than 2.5 million of his novels sold a year in this country. What is more surprising is how long it has taken to adapt his Discworld works into live-action productions for the screen, which didn’t start until 2006’s Hogfather – although Pratchett’s just pleased they’re being made.

“I absolutely get a kick out of it,” he tells Review. “I love it when I go on set and can hang around with people – the tech guys, especially.”

The author has made a cameo appearance in every adaptation so far, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

“They actually now insist on it,” Pratchett says. “‘Oh, at the end you have to put on a cameo,’ they tell me. It took six takes for me to just walk across the room. On the other hand, I don’t know if Charles Dance can write as well as me.”

The author says he leaves the production team to get on with interpreting his novels their way, but admits to being thrilled so much care and attention to detail is lavished on his work.

“They took off my wire-ring spectacles because they weren’t proper wire-ring spectacles,” Pratchett reveals with a grin. “They are going down to that level – it’s not as if anyone is going to care. I suppose it’s for those people who ring up the BBC and say that the table they were playing on in Pride And Prejudice wasn’t actually invented until three months after the date. I’d think of just telling them to piss off...”

Going Postal is released on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow.

Londoners have to put up with crowded tubes, meandering tourists, crazy house prices and Boris Johnson. But there's no denying that they get a hefty chunk of culture for their trouble. Here's a taster of what's in store for August and September, including a petrol station moonlighting as a cinema, a stroll around Alfred Hitchcock’s film locations, the return of Avatar, a Brazillian Film Festival and a screening of Mario Bava classic Danger Diabolik.

Click the Read More link to get the full details...

The volume of feature films being produced worldwide dropped by 1.8 per cent in 2009. This marks a third consecutive annual decline, and continues the trend of 100 fewer feature films being produced year on year.

However, when compared with the number of films being produced more than a decade ago, it's still a healthy figure.

“While the number of feature films being produced globally has fallen, in historical terms a record number is still being made," said Charlotte Jones, senior analyst for cinema at Screen Digest.

"Approximately 5,360 feature films were produced last year in comparison with 3,372 in 1998, underlining the strength of world film production in the past decade” 

With The Expendables exploding onto the big screen today, Review checks the credentials of the muscle-bound cast...

Sylvester Stallone – Everyone knows the action megastar for his iconic characters Rocky and Rambo, but have you seen his turn as Jack Carter in the Get Carter remake? (We bet you haven't...) Also worth a look is his 1996 tunnel rescue movie Daylight, featuring Lord Of The Rings’ Viggo Mortensen.

Jason Statham – Britain’s top action star has succeeded with the Crank and Transporter films but check out his ropey outing in John Carpenter’s Ghosts Of Mars. Thankfully Cellular came along, in which he kidnaps Kim Basinger.

Jet Li – Best known for martial-arts epics like Hero and The Warlords, Jet Li has also used his considerable skills in action movies Kiss Of The Dragon with Bridget Fonda and Unleashed with Blighty’s very own Bob Hoskins.

Dolph Lundgren – Long before Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson came along, the Rocky IV villain donned the skull T-shirt as Marvel’s vigilante hero The Punisher, while also joining forces with the late Brandon Lee to smash a drugs cartel in Showdown In Little Tokyo.

Randy Couture – “The Natural” found fame as a mixed martial-arts fighter and he still competes at the highest level. Previous action roles include Redbelt and The Scorpion King: Rise Of A Warrior.

Steve Austin – Known as “Stone Cold” to millions of wrestling fans, Austin has shown action star potential in The Condemned opposite Vinnie Jones and in his cage fighting movie Damage.

Terry Crews – Crews is the fans choice for the upcoming Marvel movie Luke Cage but it looks like he’s lost out on that role. The Everybody Hates Chris Dad has a proven comedy track record thanks to films like Balls Of Fury but his screen presence and physique signal bags of action potential.

Mickey Rourke – The comeback fuelled by Sin City and The Wrestler continues but the Hollywood Bad Boy did make some half decent action films in the time that nobody cared enough to notice. Check out Walter Hill’s Johnny Handsome featuring Morgan Freeman and Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man with Don Johnson.

Bruce Willis – Everyone’s favourite wisecracking cop from the Die Hard films misfired as a thief in Hudson Hawk back in 1991 but scored a touchdown opposite Damon Wayans’ American Football player in The Last Boy Scout in the same year.

Arnold Schwarzenegger – Big Arnie mostly sticks to politics these days but catch the former Mr Universe in his prime alongside Sly Stallone’s ex Brigitte Nielsen in 1985’s Red Sonja and as a contestant in the win or die game show movie The Running Man.

Eric Roberts – Julia’s brother is a less obvious action hero next to the other guys here, but he captained a USA Karate team in Best Of The Best and was a fencing maestro in By The Sword.

David Zayas – Best known for TV roles in prison drama OZ and serial killer thriller Dexter, the Puerto-Rican/American actor gets an outing as a General in The Expendables.

Gary Daniels – The British former Kick Boxing champion has appeared in a long list of action movies, most notably Submerged opposite Expendables absentee Steven Seagal and Manga adaptation Fist Of The North Star. 

WORDS: RICKY WARD

With Spooks and Ashes To Ashes under her belt, Keeley Hawes is fast becoming the doyenne of the British small screen. Yet the well-connected actor prefers her viewing from across the pond... “I would rather watch American drama because inevitably you are going to know someone in a British programme and think, ‘Oh, that’s so and so,’” Hawes laughs. “It’s much easier to get lost in an American drama than in a British one with all your mates in it. The last film I saw was Robin Hood and, even then, my husband [Matthew Macfadyen] was in it!”

Having just finished up on ’80s sci-fi cop show Ashes To Ashes, Hawes sticks with the old bill for identity-theft drama Identity. And before you start thinking it’s all credit card fraud, think again… “That would be the most boring programme ever made,“ Hawes tells us. “When people think about identity theft they probably think about their card being copied, but this is identity theft on a much more dramatic scale. These are people who change their actual identity, like Saddam Hussein’s double who had plastic surgery to look like him.”

Hawes plays the detective who heads up the unit, Martha Lawson. This isn’t your average cop show; it has more in common with the world of espionage and spies. “It has a sexier and edgy, more-American feel,” Hawes says. And despite the prevalence of identity theft today, the unit Hawes works for is fictional. “Incredibly, it doesn’t exist,” she reveals. “Which is good because it means you’re talking about things and dealing with issues about which people can’t say, ‘That’s wrong’!”

Identity was released this week on DVD boxset by ITV DVD.

Power, wealth, sex, treason and revenge – author Jean Van Hamme stirs the gravy to bring his novel and comic-book hero Largo Winch to the movies...

Largo Winch began life as a series of novels. How easy was it to translate them to the comic-book format?
An adaptation to a different medium is always difficult. The novels are 25 years older than the comic books so I have had to adapt the stories to the present day.

How difficult was it to take what people would assume was a typically dry subject such as the corporate world and make it exciting?
The corporate world is Shakespearian: a fight for power and wealth, with sex, treason and revenge. Who said it was not exciting? I just added a few murders to complete the gravy.

Click the Read More link below to access the full interview...

Largo Winch – Deadly Revenge is released on DVD on 23 August.

Born in the small Ukrainian town of Berdyansk, Olga Kurylenko has had an interesting path to movie stardom. Spotted by a talent scout for a model agency on her first trip to Moscow (aged 14!), she made her screen debut in the 2005 French film L’Annulaire and has since found fame as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace.

The 31-year-old plays an invincible Pict warrior in Roman Britain in Centurion and she tells Review that we are so soft-skinned these days and how being an only child helped her survive...

Centurion was released on Blu-ray and DVD this week by Pathe Productions Ltd.

Blonde beauty Kristen Bell is hidden away from the cameras for one of her roles, as she voices the inner thoughts of Gossip Girl. Here she tells DVD & Blu-ray Review how she’s connecting to the world through social networking and that everyone should visit Bora Bora.

Click the Read More link below to access the full Kristen Bell interview... 

Gossip Girl Season 3 and a Seasons 1-3 boxset collection are released today by Warner Home Video.