Film Features
The Cannes Film Festival: Stormy WeatherTuesday, 18 May 2010
This slot is always one of the trickiest to fill satisfactorily, though last year’s choice – Pixar’s delightful animation Up – was inspired. Coming on the same day as the film’s release date, alas, Robin’s rain-lashed, Ridley-less premiere felt like a non-event from the get-go, putting the festival on the back foot before it had even begun. Read more... |
Vincere Special 2: Interview with Filippo TimiThursday, 13 May 2010
Filippo Timi plays the young Mussolini of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere as a glowering, virile force of nature. Watching this and his other recent films, it was hard not to think of the Brando of the early 1950s. Timi, too, combines bullish masculine power and delicate sensitivity - he's combustible and magnetic. I was still more... Read more... |
Unorthodox Jews: The Secret Worlds of Holy Rollers and Eyes Wide OpenFriday, 07 May 2010
Jews may or may not have built the pyramids, but we know for certain that they built Hollywood. The names of the men who founded MGM, 20th Century Fox and Paramount speak for themselves: Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B Mayer, Marcus Loew, Joseph Schenck, William Goetz, Adolph Zukor et al. It's no wonder, then, that Hollywood history overflows with Jewish filmmakers, actors and producers. Read more... |
Interview: Barrie Keeffe on Sus, The Long Good Friday and London's Changing East EndWednesday, 21 April 2010
Within the space of a single year - 1979 - Barrie Keeffe wrote two scripts which together summed up the very essence of the East End on the eve of Thatcherism. The first, which barely needs introduction, was the now-classic The Long Good Friday. The other was Sus, an explosive play about a black man detained by two racist police officers on the night of the General Election. Read more... |
Interview: Alex Hogg of Minima on scoring The Cabinet of Dr CaligariThursday, 18 March 2010
Before Shutter Island - long, long before - there was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. First released in 1920, Robert Wiene's hallucinogenic film descends, like that of Martin Scorsese who cites it as a major influence, into the creepy shadowlands between sanity and madness. This spring Caligari goes on national tour (details below) spruced up with a musical accompaniment by Minima, a four-strong rock group which specialises in supplying the sound for silents. The group... Read more... |
London Australian Film Festival: Beyond the Cultural CringeMonday, 15 March 2010
Business is booming for Australia's cinemas. 2008 was a record-breaking year at the box office, and international festivals run annually in the major cities. Yet, despite successes as diverse as Lantana, Wolf Creek, Muriel's Wedding and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, just 33 home-grown films were released last year – fewer even than in 1911. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Newcastle: The AV FestivalSunday, 14 March 2010
At seven o'clock on a Friday night, with the first spring twilight of the year as a backdrop, Newcastle’s Civic Centre reverberated to a new composition for its Carillon bells. Mingling eerily with birdsong, it marked a rather different start to the weekend from the hoards of hen nights getting ready for a night on the Toon. This was the opening night of AV, the biennial international festival of electronic arts. Read more... |
Oscars 2010: A Night at the Academy AwardsMonday, 08 March 2010
It's appropriate, given that the Oscars remain the mother of all awards shows, that Sunday night's ceremony made a point of honouring both a mother from hell (Mo'Nique in Precious) and another from Inspirational Movie heaven (Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side). Read more... |
Sergei Paradjanov: Retrospective for a VisionaryMonday, 01 March 2010
Soviet-era film director Sergei Paradjanov is a figure whose complicated biography has often overshadowed his innovative and distinctive cinematic style. The first full UK retrospective of his work at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, marking the 20th anniversary of the director’s death, gives a chance to reassess the paradoxes of his heritage, and delight in a character whose rebellious passion for life and for artistic beauty brought him through some of the worst trials... Read more... |
theartsdesk Masterclass: Jean-Pierre Jeunet on MicmacsThursday, 25 February 2010
"I like directors whose style you recognise right away: Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Emir Kusturica, David Lynch," asserts Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a statement which should surprise none of his followers. Fabled for its attention to minutiae, his work is honed down to the last millimetre, from the immaculately choreographed sight gags to the hyperstylised sets. Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children (both co-directed with Marc Caro), Amelie, A Very Long Engagement... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Berlin: The 60th BerlinaleSunday, 21 February 2010
The Palme d'Or at Cannes makes headlines. The Golden Bear in Berlin tends not to, and few films that win in competition at the German capital's annual film festival, the Berlinale, go on to command global clout, though that's no general reflection on the quality of entries. Read more... |
Simon Gray's A Month in the Country rescuedFriday, 19 February 2010
The late, lamented Simon Gray is best known for penning a string of black comedies for the West End stage such as Butley and Otherwise Engaged, but he also wrote prodigiously for the screen, mainly for the BBC's equally lamented Play for Today slot. Read more... |
Interview: Liz Mermin on HorsesThursday, 28 January 2010
Whoever first made the observation - some say Winston Churchill, others Ronald Reagan - there is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man, and a woman. On stage these noble beasts have inspired some highly successful plays, including Peter Schaffer's Equus, recently revived with Daniel Radcliffe, and War Horse, still living up to its name in the West End after over two years (panto horses probably don't count). In cinema, the legacy is more... Read more... |
theartsdesk Masterclass: Jacques Audiard on A ProphetSaturday, 23 January 2010
Jacques Audiard's A Prophet arrives in Britain laden with plaudits (Best Film at the London Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize in Cannes and a fistful of superlative reviews). Here, in the first of a series of illustrated masterclasses, in which leading directors introduce clips from their work, Audiard reveals the secrets of how he shot two of A Prophet's memorable scenes. Read more... |
Interview: Andy Serkis on playing Ian DuryWednesday, 06 January 2010
The career of Andy Serkis tends to point in one direction: darkness visible. Onstage, more recently on screen, he has inhabited a series of characters for whom violence is second nature. His Bill Sikes was utterly deranged, though a pussycat next to his Ian Brady in Longford (pictured below), whose ghastly charisma he seemed intuitively to understand. Serkis’s performance-captured Gollum gave global audiences the creeps. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Artvin: A Film Festival on WheelsSunday, 20 December 2009
"Where?" you ask. In the extreme north-east of Turkey, wedged in between the Black Sea, the Georgian and Armenian borders and the snow-capped Pontic Mountains, the hardscrabble town of Artvin clings tenaciously to a near-vertical hillside. Population: 25,000. Hotels: a handful, all rustic. Distance from the small coastal airport of Trabzon: three hours up a precipitous road. Nearest cinema: 50 miles. In short, the perfect spot for an international film festival. Read more... |
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