Film
DVD: The IllusionistMonday, 14 February 2011
Sylvain Chomet’s hand-drawn animation of a previously unproduced Jacques Tati story is a delight in every way, in which the French film-maker pays homage to the great man by making him the illusionist of the title. He is unmistakably Tati - all... Read more... |
PAULSunday, 13 February 2011
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have come a long way from Spaced, the Channel 4 sitcom Pegg created with Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson). When it was canned after two series in 1999 and 2001, Spaced - a very funny and edgy comedy about a group of assorted... Read more... |
The 2011 Baftas, BBC One: The Twitter ReviewSunday, 13 February 2011
@Wossy seems to have been cast as second baddie in #PiratesduCaribbean 4This intro is entirely about namechecking the films so they can cut away to the US stars who've jetted in from #TinseltownLame string of Little Fockers jokes.These clips... Read more... |
Nixon in China, Metropolitan Opera HD LiveSunday, 13 February 2011
Metcentric New Yorkers tend to think an opera hasn’t achieved classic status until it arrives at their vast inner sanctum. Whereas other cities worldwide know that the inimitable Peter Sellars production of grand opera’s last masterpiece (to date)... Read more... |
Never Let Me GoThursday, 10 February 2011
“The problem is that you’ve been told and not told.” While Ishiguro and his discerning fans would never indulge in anything so crass as hype, there have been whisperings in North London wine bars, over the coffee-morning brews of Home Counties... Read more... |
Son of BabylonWednesday, 09 February 2011
We’ve heard a lot about the American experience of Iraq: the internecine politicking in Green Zone, the deadly combat of The Hurt Locker, the tedium of camp life in Jarhead. In the cinematic reproduction of tumult in Iraq, one thing you never see a... Read more... |
True GritTuesday, 08 February 2011
Henry Hathaway's 1969 version of True Grit famously won John Wayne his solitary Oscar for Best Actor. Jeff Bridges, remaking the role of battered, boozing, one-eyed lawman Rooster Cogburn in the Coen brothers' new incarnation, is nominated for the... Read more... |
DVD: Police, AdjectiveMonday, 07 February 2011
Katalin Varga was one of the finest films at the 2009 Berlinale. Directed by British auteur Peter Strickland, it was filmed, beautifully, in Romania: a heartbreaking story about rape, it was all, and really only, about the catastrophically... Read more... |
Opinion: 3D is as revolutionary as the talkieMonday, 07 February 2011
Tainted by its origins and association with the pulp cinema of the 1950s (classics like Bwana Devil, It Came from Outer Space and House of Wax were pioneers of stereoscopic technology), 3D cinema has remained the province of entertainment cinema, a... Read more... |
DVD: Winter's BoneSaturday, 05 February 2011
The timely arrival on DVD of Winter’s Bone as it heads for the Oscars ceremony gives a fresh chance to dwell on the film’s unshowy riches. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year-old Ree whose father has disappeared, leaving her to care for an invalid... Read more... |
NénetteSaturday, 05 February 2011
This is not the first starring role in cinema history for an orang-utan. That honour belongs to King Louie, the banana-clad jungle VIP in Disney’s 1967 version of Kipling’s The Jungle Book. It’s not actually the second either, or even the third.... Read more... |
The FighterSaturday, 05 February 2011
A paean to working-class bellicosity set (and shot) in the rundown industrial town of Lowell, Massachusetts, David O’Russell’s boxing film The Fighter relishes its brawls. In one inspired scene, a character is unceremoniously slammed to the ground... Read more... |
