Film
theartsdesk in Moscow: Russia on British ScreensSaturday, 10 October 2009
Russians are prone to ask the big questions, and among them, resonating periodically and patriotically, from film studio corridors to the Kremlin itself, is, "What is the state of our national film industry?" A partial answer is provided by a fleet... Read more... |
DVDs Round-Up 1Saturday, 10 October 2009
After theartsdesk's round-ups of new music and classical releases on CD, this week we offer our choice of the most interesting new releases on DVD of recent films, and also of box sets and re-issues. Not forgetting this month's stinker. The... Read more... |
Le Donk & Scor-Zay-ZeeMonday, 05 October 2009Woody Allen has made four. Christopher Guest starred in and co-wrote the best one of all time, then directed some damn fine examples of his own. Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais have built their careers and reputations on them. Now the Uttoxeter-... Read more... |
Film: ThirstSaturday, 03 October 2009Just when you thought vampires had lost their bite, along comes Korean director Park Chan-wook with Thirst. It's a loose adaptation of Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin in which the adulterous lovers also happen to be drinkers of blood. They suck, they... Read more... |
Front Row ConfidentialFriday, 02 October 2009
Your friends never learn. No matter how many times you tell them you don't look on going to the cinema as a social activity, they still insist on dragging you along with them. And even though you've told them a hundred times that, after a hard day's... Read more... |
Film: Driving AphroditeThursday, 01 October 2009Staycationers who didn't make it to their favourite Greek isle this summer may constitute a ready-made audience for Driving Aphrodite, the travelogue masquerading as a film that has opened just in time to tap into a collective desire for sun, sand,... Read more... |
The Invention of LyingWednesday, 30 September 2009
The door to a pristine apartment is opened by a rivetingly beautiful young woman. “You're early," she says matter-of-factly. "I was just masturbating.” Has a date, and indeed a romantic comedy, ever started so winningly? Not that it goes so well for... Read more... |
The Hourglass Sanatorium, BarbicanWednesday, 30 September 2009
Philip Roth once perversely suggested that Eastern European novelists whose work was banned under Communism were the lucky ones. They didn’t have to scour their navels for material; it was all there, dumped in their laps. In the second half of the... Read more... |
Daryl HannahSunday, 27 September 2009Daryl Hannah’s played sexy, sassy, funny and dangerous, from the naive mermaid in Splash, to the vicious one eyed assassin in director Quentin Tarantino’s ultra violent Kill Bill films. Her leading men are among the all-time greats: Harrison... Read more... |
Film: FarewellSaturday, 26 September 2009The trailer for Farewell - released in Paris this week - was so dull I nearly didn't bother to go and see the film. The problem with selling Cold War thrillers to the masses is that realistic spy movies have little truck with trailer-friendly stunts... Read more... |
Rage, BFI SouthbankFriday, 25 September 2009Mobile phones aren't usually allowed at film previews. Usually, hard-working hacks trying to earn a crust are relieved of such items at the cinema door lest they record the movie and pirate it on the Internet. But at last night's British premiere of... Read more... |
Football and Film: United or Damned?Wednesday, 23 September 2009
There’s a new British film coming soon called Dead Man Running. It features the rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis “No Relation of the King of Pop” Jackson) as an American loan shark who, suffering in the financial downturn, visits these shores to lean... Read more... |
