Film
The Hunger GamesFriday, 02 March 2012Kids fight to the death live on TV for the entertainment of people. A Roman throwback set in the future but no doubt aimed satirically at the desensitised Generation X Factor. Dir: Gary Ross. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth... Read more... |
MichaelFriday, 02 March 2012
Michael is a work of fiction, but it is also clearly an amalgam of real-life events. For first-time Austrian director Markus Schleinzer (former casting director for Michael Haneke, whose influence you may detect), the subject must have particular... Read more... |
DVD: Polish Cinema ClassicsFriday, 02 March 2012
There’s a phrase in Andrzej Wajda’s 1960 film Innocent Sorcerers, “spirit of our time”, that perfectly captures the atmosphere of the four films on Polish Cinema Classics, originally dating from 1957 to 1960 whose great black and white photography... Read more... |
This Means WarThursday, 01 March 2012
Forget the action movie trappings of the aggressively titled This Means War: the latest film from the enigmatically named McG has a plot that Noel Coward might well have loved. Whether Sir Noel would have approved of the witless dialogue and the... Read more... |
CaranchoWednesday, 29 February 2012
In the UK we call them ambulance-chasers, those personal injury lawyers who prey on the victims of accidents, encouraging them to seek compensation, in return for a tidy fee. The Argentines, as the title of Pablo Trapero’s new film suggests, have... Read more... |
If Not Us, Who?Wednesday, 29 February 2012
The Red Army Faction was Germany's key revolutionary force for a decade from the late 1960s onwards, and its story, especially the characters of Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader, has proved highly attractive to the country's filmmakers. Uli Edel’s... Read more... |
FW Murnau's Faust, Royal Festival HallTuesday, 28 February 2012
Silent movies are currently the rage of Tinseltown, so what better moment to brush up on one of the treasures of the pre-talkie era? Top movie-ologists now contend that FW Murnau's 1926 film of Faust is a neglected all-time great ("one of the most... Read more... |
DVD: TomboyTuesday, 28 February 2012
On the face of it, a low-budget French film featuring the story of a pre-pubescent girl who pretends to be a boy promises little more than an off-centre tale of gender envy. Hardly edge-of-your-seat stuff, but Céline Sciamma’s second feature is... Read more... |
Oscars 2012: Meryl wins election in a landslide for the silent ageMonday, 27 February 2012
Maybe it was host Billy Crystal at far from peak form. Or a surfeit of cringe-making shtick by too many presenters, including the distaff principals of Bridesmaids. Or the desperation that clung to the multiple on-air tributes to an art form whose... Read more... |
Oscars 2012: Who Will, Who Should, Who Won'tSunday, 26 February 2012
Every year before the Academy Awards speeches are tacitly composed, flowing gowns and priceless necklaces booked and no doubt small blameless animals slaughtered in the Roman style for good luck. Before the gladiators enter the ring, we at... Read more... |
Your complete guide to which awards have (some) credibilitySunday, 26 February 2012
First it's Golden Globes, then Oscars, or it's Grammys, then Brits - you can hardly go by a Sunday this time of year without another set of awards. But which ones count? Who are the judges?The experts on theartsdesk (judges, some of them -... Read more... |
Oscars 2012: Meryl and Woody - Gongs and NomsSaturday, 25 February 2012
They have been racking up the Oscar nominations since 1978, and this year they were back. Woody Allen was nominated twice over for Midnight in Paris, his biggest commercial hit ever, and won for Best Original Screenplay, while Meryl Streep was... Read more... |
