Icecapade Frozen Treats

42/46

He died during post-production

Tale

A lonely boy who lives with his parents' nursing home explores obsession with the afterlife through his friendship with an aging magician. Elizabeth Spriggs’ (Prudence) last film. Some people think that the father’s mustache at the party is a continuity error because he shaved it off that morning. It’s a fancy dress party though and Dad is obviously wearing a fake mustache with his suit.

Just sleeping” Clarence: Huh

Edward: [Reads tombstone] “Samuel Peet. Not dead. He gets angry when he wakes up. Introducing Siskel & Ebert & movies: 17 Again/State of Play/Grey Gardens/Is Anyone There?/Earth (2009).

Instead of believing in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, Edward is genuinely infatuated with the afterlife

The Strange World of Arthur C Clarke Written by Alan Hawkshaw Published by ITV Productions / EMI Music Publishing Ltd Courtesy of ITV Productions Ltd The magician is a curious fellow; he spends his days and nights incessantly going over his tricks and illusions, making sure every wrinkle and seam is hidden from view so he can dispel reality, if only for a moment. For those on the other side of the fence, a magician can be seen either as a craftsman devoted to his art or as some kind of ray of light that hints at something else; something more than dirt on the ground and worms on our feet. For all the glimmers of hope and magic the illusionist creates after his act, however, there is always a looming cloud of certainty that haunts his own reality – standing behind the curtain, the magician is aware of the wires, trapdoors and gutters set to make the mundane seem a little more fantastical; for the man with the rabbit in the hat, the world is a playground where one can momentarily create an imaginary world inhabited by magic, but unlike his con, magic never lives in reality when the curtain falls. Somewhere in the audience is a young, bright-eyed boy – his name is Edward (Bill Milner) and he lives in an old folk home with his mother (Anne-Marie Duff) and father (David Morrissey), where death is as common as a hot meal.

He makes sure he never misses an episode of Arthur C

Clarke’s ghost hunting show on terrestrial television instead of playing with LEGO. that is, until one day a new resident takes a seat next to him and changes the channel. The new guy is a man full of remorse and brazen anger, his name is Clarence (Michael Caine), a former professional—you guessed it—magician. What inevitably begins as a hate-hate relationship between young paranormal enthusiast Edward and old Clarence, embittered by the ghosts of the past and left in the rain, soon blossoms into something a little more reflective and entwined than either of them would.

The resulting story is something we’ve all seen or heard before, but perhaps with enough dark undertones to make it something more artful and uplifting than most of these stories

There’s really no denying that Is Anybody There doesn’t really do anything new in terms of story, purely on the surface, but through the development of these two characters (and others), brought to life wonderfully by the cast, the feature overcomes a rather lackluster and pedestrian plot to deliver some subtle but enjoyable character drama . Of course, there are problems throughout the feature that undermine all the good it does (most prominently in the final act, which makes one plotline via a banal, contrived resolution that directly contradicts the central story, which ends on a much more sophisticated note), but many of them are in the background, easy to overlook in favor of the film’s far more engaging and charming elements.