Film Reviews
Black SwanThursday, 20 January 2011
They’re calling Black Swan BS on some of the dance websites, and while they’re right about the dancing, this is a whale of an enjoyable outing to the flicks: lush, Gothic, psycho and flavoursomely OTT. I don’t much care that Natalie Portman can’t dance for toffee - Tobey Maguire probably didn’t satisfy jockeys with his style in Seabiscuit, or Hilary Swank the boxing clubs in Million Dollar Baby. Read more...
|
Get LowThursday, 20 January 2011
Time, and a scruffy beard, can't dim the unshowy magnificence that is Robert Duvall, the actor's actor among American film stars who turned 80 earlier this month. That milestone might represent a cue in some quarters to hang up your cleats or, at least, to coast into old age via a kindly supporting role or two, of the sort Duvall essayed in Crazy Heart. Read more... |
Morning GloryWednesday, 19 January 2011
Read more... |
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn GouldSunday, 16 January 2011
The classical-music industry loves dead icons; witness the endless reissuing and remarketing of recordings by Kathleen Ferrier and Jacqueline du Pré. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould died from a stroke at the age of 50 in 1982 and his seminal Bach discs have never been out of the catalogue since. Françis Giraud told Gould’s story on screen before in his 1993 film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, an imaginative series of vignettes depicting scenes from Gould’s life. Read more... |
The Green HornetWednesday, 12 January 2011
The multiplatform franchise might sound like a modern concept - the film that leads parallel lives as video game, TV spin-off, T-shirt and toy. But no, ‘twas ever thus. Entertainment moguls have always known how to squeeze every last dime out of a popular hit, none more than The Green Hornet. Created in Detroit as a radio drama in 1936, it has buzzed across the decades and the genres, from film to comics to television to fiction and back to comics again. Read more... |
Blue ValentineWednesday, 12 January 2011
The American indie Blue Valentine was heralded in October by a sexy W magazine cover of its stars - Ryan Gosling smooching Michelle Williams’s temple as she parts her becrimsoned lips and gazes provocatively at us - and the restrictive NC-17 rating (the old “X”) granted it for “its shocking, gory depiction of a dying marriage”. Both cover and rating were wholly misleading... Read more... |
ConvictionTuesday, 11 January 2011
The real-life story behind Conviction had a big balloon over its head saying “Hollywood screenplay!!!”, and sure enough here’s director Tony Goldwyn’s big-screen version, with Hilary Swank striding out front carrying the banner for truth, justice and the supernatural properties of sibling devotion. There’s no denying it’s an incredible story. Read more... |
BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, BarbicanMonday, 10 January 2011
Once upon a time, composers ran Hollywood. As conductor John Wilson reminded us last night, 44-time Oscar nominee and movie composer Alfred Newman became so powerful as second in command at MGM that he had two security guards posted at his office door. Any directors attempting to enquire how the score to their movies was getting along were told to clear off. Big, bold orchestral scores were Hollywood's crown jewels. At the Barbican last night we got a rare chance to inspect them close up....
Read more...
|
The Next Three DaysWednesday, 05 January 2011
For a while back there, Russell Crowe was incapable of a false move. LA Confidential, Gladiator and The Insider all flagged up a thrilling talent for pugnacious individualism. Here was an actor with a bit of dog in him, a street-smart upgrade on Mel Gibson. Then he went and inherited Gibson’s gift for naff headlines. Maybe it’s an Aussie He-Man thing. Either way, the pictures got a bit smaller as tales of the incredible expanding ego did the global rounds. Read more... |
The King's SpeechTuesday, 04 January 2011
"Only project!" That's not quite what EM Forster famously wrote, but it serves as the leitmotif of The King's Speech, as ripe a piece of Oscar bait as you are likely to see this year. Neither as visceral as The Fighter nor as resonantly and fully realised as The Social Network, Tom Hooper's film nonetheless fields the necessaries guaranteed to lead this true-life tale of the maladroit stammerer who would be king to many a film awards dais. Read more... |
127 HoursTuesday, 04 January 2011
Made with the same furious energy which has characterised so much of Danny Boyle’s output, 127 Hours goes from the macro to the micro. It opens with a pounding split-screen assault of imagery depicting the frenetic, dehumanising nature of modern life, before closing in on one man’s five-day ordeal in a crack in the earth. Read more... |
Love & Other DrugsTuesday, 28 December 2010
It’s difficult to know how to categorise Love & Other Drugs; is it a rom-com, a biopic, a melodrama, a satire or a hard-hitting attack on the influence that mega pharmaceutical companies have on America’s healthcare system? The film’s makers, meanwhile, tell us in their press notes that it’s an “emotional comedy”. Nope, me neither. Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: Films to Remember and ForgetMonday, 27 December 2010
Avatar or The Hurt Locker? Although the Academy Awards are by no means the only barometer of cinematic trends, at this year’s Oscars the two centrifugal strains in contemporary movie-making went head to head. For Best Picture and Director, James Cameron’s digitally created sci-fi-scape locked horns with Kathryn Bigelow’s visceral visit to Iraq. One demonstrated Hollywood’s ever-increasing capacity to wish away actuality as we know it. Read more... |
The Way BackFriday, 24 December 2010
Whatever else one thinks of Hollywood, one can hardly accuse Tinseltown of overdosing audiences on good cheer this holiday season. Filmgoers States-side can at the moment choose between James Franco hacking at his flesh, Mark Wahlberg landing a blood-spattering punch or two, and a seriously grizzled Jeff Bridges going none too gently into the good night. Read more... |
ChatroomThursday, 23 December 2010
With its finger-on-the-pulse tagline, “Welcome to the anti-social network” and respectable credentials, Chatroom is an intriguing prospect. It’s based on an acclaimed stage play, directed by the visionary Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Dark Water), with a script by Enda Walsh (Hunger) and populated by a cast of bright young things including Aaron Johnson and Imogen Poots. However, this cyber-thriller offers precious few thrills and is hampered cringingly by an... Read more... |
Little FockersTuesday, 21 December 2010
The third instalment of the Meet the Parents franchise, which began in 2000 and was followed by Meet the Fockers in 2004, moves the story on a few years. In Little Fockers Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo) are now married and have twins, Sam and Henry. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Tiffin Youth Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus...
When Vladimir Jurowski planned this typically unorthodox programme, he could not have known that a disaster even greater, long-term, than 9/11 was...
David Lynch: In Dreams (1946-2025)
David Lynch’s final two features mapped a haunted Hollywood of curdled innocence and back-alley eeriness. Mulholland Drive (2001) seemed...
Kyoto, Soho Place Theatre - blistering, darkly witty play ra...
It took a while for journalists to identify the chain-smoking, Machiavellian figure who was a permanent presence at early international gatherings...
A Good House, Royal Court review - provocative, but imperfec...
Most Brits don’t know much about South Africa today, but we do know about house values, so this new comedy by South African playwright and...
Ben Elton, Duke of York's Theatre review - big subjects...
Ben Elton loves a scrap. The Motormouth of yesteryear, who made his name attacking Margaret Thatcher and her policies (and being attacked by the...
Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis & Karine Polw...
It’s been five years since the last studio album by the inestimable Mary Chapin Carpenter, the lyrical and intimate The Dirt and the Stars...
Music Reissues Weekly: The Twilights - Twilights Time The Co...
On 26 September 1966, The Twilights set-off from Australia to Britain. The journey, on the liner the Castel Felice, took six weeks. A day after...
Sun Rings, Sacconi Quartet, Festival Voices, Kings Place rev...
What better way to start a season...
Album: Larkin Poe - Bloom
The Lovell sisters Rebecca and Megan can be heard supporting Ringo Starr on his new album of country songs, while at the same time their seventh...