Jody Raynsford ran across the blistering Sahara desert in aid of rare kidney disease research

Indescribable. It’s the only word that does justice to the challenge of running the Marathon des Sables (MdS), the 150-mile foot race across one small corner of the Sahara desert to which I was drawn in my quest to raise money for the rare kidney disease campaign Action for Alport’s.

After months of preparation, long drawn-out endurance runs across the South Downs and far too much money and time invested in kit, it hardly felt real to be standing on the start line in southern Morocco at the beginning of April. The sound of AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell” echoed in my ears as I lined up next to competitors from all over the world, united in our desire to conquer the Sahara for a good cause.

The jovial, almost euphoric atmosphere of the first day dissipated any feeling of anxiety about tackling the 150 miles that lay between us and the finish line. Over the course of the week in the desert, sleeping in rustic Berber tents and hauling all your food, water and kit along with you, the challenge did not simply lie in the distance.

The Sahara seemed intent on throwing just about everything it had at us, from a sandstorm at the beginning of the second day that had us covering ourselves to stop the savage sand whipping at our still-pale, unblemished skin, to temperatures that averaged around 40C (one journalist logged the temperature on day four as high as 57C). For their part, the organisers work with almost sadistic gusto to ensure we are sufficiently challenged. My very first taste of desert running coincided with the ominous-sounding Dune Day.

The embodiment of Sisyphean toil, I found myself struggling up ever-increasingly difficult mountains of rolling sand, into which I sank as soon as I set foot on them – not helped by the weight of a full backpack. Later, it was the turn of steep jebels (hills), endless, dusty dried lake beds and ankle-breaking rocky plains that threatened my wellbeing, not to mention my sanity.

Out there, amid the sand and heat, your focus becomes very narrow – drink some water, check your direction and concentrate intently on reaching the next checkpoint. Occasionally, however, you take the opportunity to lift your head and breathe in those moments that stay with you long after the grind has ended. Like when I found myself at the top of a jebel looking onto the vast expanse before me with a trail of tiny runners peeling off into the distance, or plunging into lush groves to be greeted (and laughed) at by local women lounging under the shade of the palms.

I even look back fondly on the rascally antics of the Berber children moving the glow sticks that marked the route through the dunes at night (thank goodness for my compass). My thoughts were less warm at the time.

Running the MdS, you find yourself in a paradox. There is a sense that you are traversing a landscape barren, rugged and unused to human survival – let alone to people running across it – yet so awesome and beautiful that the pain and discomfort becomes almost bearable. This is symbolised on the final evening by the competitors – parched, fatigued and sand-blasted from a week in the Sahara – being treated to a concert by the Paris Opera, shipped out and set up in all their pomp for one night at our camp.

Ultimately, I found that it is the competitors who make the event. The camaraderie among the runners, particularly the 250-odd British competitors, was superb, each doing it for our own reasons yet united in facing the challenge.

You see it most clearly in the makeshift camp, set up at the end of each day, awash with the colours of flags on display and the charitable causes that have motivated so many to put themselves through the ordeal. When a competitor drops out for any reason, it is a sad moment for all, knowing what it took to get as far as the start. Indeed, I met many runners who were making a second attempt to conquer the race after some unfortunate incident – usually bowel-related – rendered their first effort unsuccessful. Its lure is evident.

The final day of the race – the relatively short 10-mile sprint to the little town of Tazzarine – has become dedicated to charity. This year, for the first time, race director Patrick Bauer allowed the event’s sponsors the chance to run the final leg of the race , offering a small flavour of the MdS in exchange for their efforts to raise a significant amount of corporate donations. While the more purist runners may have grumbled a little at these corporate interlopers, it was an opportunity that yielded €100,000 towards helping various Moroccan charities.

Oddly enough, despite the long association between charity and sponsored running events, this wasn’t always the case with the MdS, an event in the running calendar previously reserved for the elite. Bauer reminded us during the last day’s briefing that it was the British competitors who began running the MdS for charitable causes, opening up the event to the fundraising opportunities it now affords.

For the charity I was running for, Action for Alport’s, this was just the beginning.

The completion of the MdS was the first stage of the journey to reach the target of £50,000 that will launch the research into the rare genetic kidney disease Alport’s Syndrome. For a campaign that only launched in February this year, there has already been support from a dedicated band of individuals competing in events to raise money and awareness. This varies from runners in the Brighton and Shakespeare marathons to walkers tackling the South Downs Way, and one person completing the Caledonian Challenge (54 miles in 24 hours).

While the £50,000 target stands, I will, naturally, be joining the throng of runners pinning further fundraising efforts to yet another challenge. So it is that I find myself asking, after being home only a few months, what’s next?

Jody Raynsford ran the Marathon des Sables for Action For Alport’s and is still gratefully receiving sponsorship at www.kidneyresearchukevents.org/jodyrunsthesahara. For more information about Action For Alport’s or to help raise money for the cause, please visit www.action foralportscampaign.org

Amadeus
Salieri’s in big f**king trouble now that Wolfgang’s packing a couple of M16A2s with M203 grenade launchers as Statham brings disharmony to classical music in the remake of Milos Forman’s tale of the genius composer. As Stath says to his rival before dispatching him, “Stick that in your Magic Flute and smoke it…”

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Ever wondered what would have happened had the patients overthrown Nurse Ratched? Statham’s take on Jack Nicholson’s McMurphy is an altogether more violent affair in a crackpots and gunshots battle that sees him taking over the asylum. No giant silent American Indians needed.

Bicycle Thieves
When his bicycle is pinched and his job is threatened, Statham’s poster boy Tony Ricci doesn’t get the police, he gets even, kicking off a one-man war against petty crime on the streets of post-war Rome in the action remake of Vittoria de Sica’s 1948 Oscar winner. “Tutto bene? I don’t think so…”

The Mechanic is out in cinemas now and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on 6 June 2011.

At a location kept secret until the last minute and with the promise of a Hollywood star in tow,Review grabbed a ticket to the inauguralJameson Cult Film Club event at the Dublin International Film Festival… The screening was dedicated to our fave suspense-thriller /The Usual Suspects/ and as well as being treated to a re-run of Bryan Singer’s modern classic in a warehouse in Dublin’s Docklands district (complete with the least alcoholic cocktails known to man), we were also joined by Kevin Spacey “limping onto stage in character” for a Q&A after the movie.

Spacey regaled the audience with his experiences of the 26-day shoot in LA, including how they managed to eventually cast all the members of the team. Benicio Del Toro’s audition and the voice he famously affected for the movie apparently had the cast in stitches during the line-up scene, much to director Singer’s disgust.

“We kept cracking up every time he did the voice,” Spacey explains. “So when we broke for lunch, Bryan had us all in his trailer and start screaming at us “Stop fucking laughing, are you trying to ruin my fucking movie?! Just stop fucking doing it, ok?!’ Of course, when we returned from lunch it was worse. Eventually in editing, Bryan thought to himself, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ and used what we had. In a sense it was better, because it created this sense of camaraderie among the suspects.”

Spacey also talked through his time working with David Fincher on Se7en and Sam Mendes on American Beauty, and Mendes’ total re-shoot of the first day’s word - the scene in the burger restaurant “because he hated everything about it.”

“I asked Sam what he thought of the dailies and he said, “Shit’,” Spacey reveals. “I laughed and said, “Really?’ but he was serious. I asked him what he hated about it and he said the only good thing was the script. He hated the lighting, the way it was shot, he hated my acting!”

Eventually, Mendes persuaded the studio to allow him to re-shoot that first day, with it eventually being shot as a drive-through scene, Spacey explains.

Spacey’s time on stage wouldn’t have been complete without a rendition of his finest Hollywood impersonations, including Christopher Walken’s audition for Han Solo “The Millenn…ium Fal….con”, Jack Nicholson “Where’s the Jameson when you need it?”, Al Pacino and Bill Clinton “I’m so glad to be here…”.

Review traipsed along to Dublin’s huge Cineworld complex last night and leading the pack at the Dublin International Film Festival were the film’s director David Keating and cast Aiden Gillen, Timothy Spall, Ruth McCabe and newcomer Ella Connolly.

The supernatural horror focuses on the parents of a recently deceased child who are given the chance to bring her back to life for three days using an ancient ritual known only to the Wake Wood community. Shot in County Donegal and Osterlen in Sweden, the bleak landscape provides the backdrop to a horror that has disturbing echoes of The Wicker Man while delivering some serious gore ” and we’re not just talking humans. This is one naughty re-animated little girl…

Afterwards, director Keating revealed he discovered writer Brendan McCarthy’s story while he was assessing a screenwriting MA course.

“I was somewhat concerned about reading this script of a friend of mine,” Keating said. “But when I did I thought it was a film. It was very early in its development and when I told Brendan how much I liked it, he asked me if I would direct it. I gave that really serious consideration for about two seconds and said, “Yes’, and we started to work on it together.”

The film is another horror from the recently re-animated Hammer Films strand, which launched with Let Me In, starring Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-Phee ” a remake of Let The Right One In.

McCarthy explained that he had been planning to make the movie on a lower budget, until he mentioned it to friends in London who suggested he approach Hammer Films, who were looking to start up again.

“Being in this business and being aware there had been many efforts to reboot the Hammer brand, my initial thoughts were, “Yikes, no fucking way’!” McCarthy explains.

“But they came back to us really quickly and said, “This sounds like a great idea’ and I think their expression was, “This has Hammer DNA on it’.”

Ahead of the screening Review had a chance for a more intimate chat with director Keating and actors Spall and McCabe, who discussed what it was like making the movie ” find out more in a future issue.

Wake Wood is released on DVD on 28 March by Momentum Pictures Home Entertainment.

Last year saw the launch of Samsung’s Internet@TV service, as well as the inclusion of internet-enabled apps on Sony’s Bravia range. Combined with a growing number of services offering movie streaming, this may finally usher in a world of “connected TV’, with movie content streamed to our living room at the click of a button.

In the US, Netflix‘s streaming service has proved so popular it reportedly accounts for 20 per cent of all US internet traffic. While the UK ‘s sluggish broadband speeds have proved an obstacle, Lovefilm already has 5,000 movies available to stream and the company has also brought its movie service to the PlayStation 3.

Is this the end of discs as we know it? Well, no. Content is currently very limited and those broadband internet speeds need to improve if we’re going to get anywhere near the hi-def standard we’ve become used to. However, according to research firm Futuresource Consulting, sales of internet-connected TVs and players is set to rapidly increase as speeds improve, pushing internet streaming into the mainstream.

“Despite the initial low level of interest in connected TVs, we are now reaching a point of critical mass,” says Futuresource’s David Watkins.

“I realised there weren’t any – and I mean no disrespect – any badasses out there, who just want to get it on,” Stallone, who was the film’s writer and director as well as its star, explains. “There is a generation of young guys who would like to show their mettle, there’s just not an opportunity. A young man wants to prove himself, it’s just part of it. But there were none around.”

The Expendables sees Stallone leading a gaggle of (ahem) experienced mercenaries on a mission to kill an evil dictator ” and, in completing the throwback to the VHS era, comes buffed-up with shonky dialogue and ultraviolence in between. Surprisingly, though, an all-star actioner wasn’t the original plan.

“At first it was just myself, Jason [Statham] and Jet Li,” Stallone says. “I started getting rid of other characters. At one time I had Ben Kingsley as the bad guy and Forest Whitaker, but I thought, it’s just not going to fly, so let’s go real old-school. So I called Dolph [Lundgren] and he accepted and once he was on, it just kept building and building.”

So instead of Gandhi we get Eric Roberts, plus crowd-pleasing appearances from Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Randy Couture, Steve Austin and the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But wait ” aren’t a couple of chaps missing? No Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme? “They had different ideas about their careers,” Stallone quips, rather cryptically.

A meaty Making Of doc proves that, with so much testosterone on set, our biggunned brutes got somewhat boisterous in showing off their action skills to their fellow thesps…

“You’ll see on the documentary Jason leaping onto baked ground over and over,” Stallone reveals. “He kept wanting to do it and I said, “Stop, stop, stop!’ Then the next fellow rushes to do his stunt, and Jason’s watching and saying, “I’m going to kill this guy!’ It’s crazy! It kept building in competitiveness and that’s why you have such a physical, testosterone-filled movie, because men are just naturally competitive and they want to keep upping the ante. You had to be tough to be on this show.”

Stallone also had to lay down the law directing so many stars, not least Lundgren, with whom he famously battled in the ring in Rocky IV. Although he strangely pandered to one of the giant Swede’s more unusual requests…

“He wanted this Viking funeral where the guys push him out on this boat and it burns,” Stallone explains. “I thought, “Schmuck. Okay, fine.’ So it became this Viking funeral that just kept going and going. I used it in the director’s cut…”

The Expendables is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 13 December.

“It was difficult to do in the early days because we weren’t used to having to film extras,” says Toy Story producer Darla Anderson, on creating the features for the first Pixar DVDs.

“We actually had to recreate meetings and have the guys looking at storyboards and talking about things again as if they were doing it for the first time. People would be laughing but it wouldn’t sound quite right! I actually had to work hard to persuade Lee [Unkrich, director] to let us film his meetings with the team for the extras, as it is a difficult thing to have that done.”

So if you think that’s panic on Unkrich’s face during those storyboarding docs, then you’re probably right…

“Yeah, at first I was like, ‘I don’t know if I like this,’” Unkrich says. “As a director you feel that the whole process is there to be seen, I sort of felt naked in a way. But once we got into it and once I watched them back, they were great and it really was the right thing to do.”

Toy Story 3 is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 22 November.

www.dvdreview.co.uk

The world is in peril. Aliens have landed and although initially they appear to be peace-loving beings, their true plans are far more sinister. No wonder the crew like to have a bit of a laugh on their down time, then.

“Our wardrobe department loves to play gags. They’ll be like, ‘Put this on,’” reveals Lost star Elizabeth Mitchell, who plays FBI agent Erica Evans. “The outfit I wore was not fit for television!”

With 16-hour shoots daily it’s a wonder they aren’t hysterical, but the hard work must be paying off. The show has proved a hit in the US and was the biggest sci-fi TV launch since Heroes on Syfy in the UK – and Mitchell’s co-star Scott Wolf thinks he knows why.

“The audience is more educated than ever so you need to engage them [and also] have this escapist storytelling,” Wolf says. “There are grey areas. It used to be much easier to point out the good guys and the bad guys and the signature of V is that you just don’t know week-to-week who to trust or who to root for.”

Extras rumours suggest we’re in for some out-of-this-world featurettes, a Making Of and hopefully comparisons with the original 1983 miniseries. But with a second season already commissioned fans of the original may already be in for a treat if Mitchell has her way.

“We’ve changed so much, it’s definitely a re-imagining,” she says. “But, at some stage, we’re hoping to have back some of the wonderfully iconic moments that made me freak out as a kid. I’m pushing for the guinea pig-eating scene…” Yum.

V: The Complete First Season is out on DVD and Blu-ray on 18 October.

“A lot of people didn’t see the first one,” Rock says. “I look at it almost like a cover version. I just thought it should be seen by more people.”

The batch of British luvvies is replaced with a Stateside cast, including Tracy Morgan, Zoe Saldana and Peter Dinklage – reprising his role from the original – while Rock stars in the role originally played by Matthew Macfadyen, as a man who sees his father’s funeral go from mourning to madness…

“It’s kind of like a Ben Stiller part, in a way,” Rock says. “I get jokes in there, but I have to play the fact that my dad’s dead and it’s his funeral, so it’s a different type of performance for me. We have some pretty good blooper material on the DVD.”

“Once I did stand-up over here and saw how that went, it relaxed me,” Rock says. “I thought, ‘Okay, we’re going to change words here and there, we’re going to add some humour…’ There’s a lot of jokes in this that aren’t in the original, such as the guy doesn’t have his balls in the other guy’s face. But this movie is as different as me and Matthew Macfayden.”

Death At A Funeral is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 27 September.

“It’s best not to. I’ll only ever remember the bad things!” Norris is starring in a new adaptation of Andrea Newman’s controversial novel Bouquet Of Barbed Wire. Although the story, about a middle-class family torn apart by incest and infidelity, was first adapted in 1976, Norris wanted to approach the series with fresh eyes. “When I heard about it I thought, oh no, a remake’s never great, is it?” she says. “But then I read Guy Andrews’ adaptation. I felt it was really good.”

The original caused a scandal back in the ’70s, something Norris is not expecting to happen this time round. “There are no taboos any more,” she says. “Every line, it seems, has been crossed. I didn’t want this to be sensationalist or gratuitous. It is really harrowing and shocking, but in a deeply affecting way.”

You would think the gravity of the subject matter would prove the major challenge for our thesps, but it’s actually a more mundane problem that threatened to thwart the acting flow. “It is always hard breaking for lunch,” Norris laughs. “Even worse is when they say, ‘Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we’re breaking. See you tomorrow morning,’ and you have to pick it up the next day…”

Bouquet Of Barbed Wire is released on DVD on 20 September