I went to the Malibu Film Festival (ironically held in Santa Monica mkay) to 
see Elijah Wood and Charlie Hunan in HOOLIGANS.  

The film follows a journalism student, Matt (Elijah Wood) who is wrongly kicked 
out of Harvard right before he graduates and goes to visit with his sister 
(Claire Forlani) in London.  There he meets her husbands brother Paul (Hunan) who 
is the leader of a firm for West Ham Football Club. (Firms are basically like 
gangs, each football club in England has one, they basically fight with other 
clubs and defend their teams and turf in a pretty violent fashion).   Matt gets 
involved with the firm and things escalate from there. I don't want to give 
away too much of the plot in case you want to see it - and trust me - you DO!  

It is a really, really good film.  Some people compare it to Fight Club, but 
not having seen that (again Ed Norton, bleuck!) I couldn't say.  The story is 
kind of a West Side Story if you will with two major firms squaring off 
against each other, which is the centerpiece of a lot of the action.  This film 
really does have it all, there are some great moments of humour, I think there is 
a character in there for everyone to identify with, it explores themes of 
family, loyalty, living each day to the fullest, and much more.

The acting was outstanding, Elijah has a great story arc from being kind of a 
wussy character to really becoming his own man.  Charlie Hunan just blew me 
away.  Besides being not half bad to look at (ok I needed a drool cup!) he was 
just so intense and mature way beyond his age.  Leo Gregory who is a kind of 
unknown Brit actor plays this character that has so much range, I really hated 
him in the film, in a good way.  I hated his character but he is a really good 
actor and such a great guy. I told him this later and he was really happy. 

The music really added to the film and was really well chosen. One of the 
most beautiful songs was sung by one of the actors Terence Jay, 
over the last fight scene in the film which is just breathtaking.  

Sure there is violence in this film, lots of it.  But unlike my feeling on 
the violence in "Kingdom of Heaven" this violence was really part of the plot 
and was necessary to the story.  The Director, Lexi, utilized a lot of Handheld 
cameras during the fight scenes which did make one feel like they were part of 
the chaos.  

The film does not yet have a US distributor, sigh, thank you studio system, 
but has been getting all kinds of awards at film fests, it will next play at 
Tribecca in NY and hopefully they will have a distributor soon. So go see it, 
it is for sure worth your $8.

Anyway that is all the news for now!

Suzanne

Suz attended the Q&A following the film.

Suzanne's pics. 
Who's Who in her pics. 

"Lexi Aleander the director is the girl in the photo, Leo Gregory is the blonde guy 

and Terence Jay is the guy with the dark hair."   

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