Film
Travel films from the dawn of movie timeTuesday, 07 December 2010![]() Some rare restored film of pre-First World War Europe, shot by intrepid travelling cameramen from 1905 to 1926, is being shown tomorrow in an intriguing event at Europe House, the new home of the EU in London. Travelogues were a very popular early... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Tallinn: 23rd European Film AwardsSunday, 05 December 2010![]() Roman Polanski’s The Ghost won five of the seven European Film Awards it was nominated for last night. It was a display of the sort of sentimental herd mentality familiar from the Oscars which the European Film Academy’s voters like to feel they... Read more... |
SecretariatFriday, 03 December 2010![]() Americans apparently revere their great racehorses, especially if they carry their weight in socio-political resonance - or its absence. Thus, the $58 million-grossing Secretariat, about the powerful red chestnut with the inordinately huge heart... Read more... |
John Waters, Shoreditch House Literary SalonThursday, 02 December 2010![]() I've been to a fair few spoken-word events in my time, and as a rule the more upmarket they are, the worse they tend to get. The bigger the celebrity or cult cachet of an author, the more likely they are to attract a crowd that turn up mainly to be... Read more... |
Easier With PracticeWednesday, 01 December 2010![]() Easier with Practice is a film about phone sex based on a short story that appeared in GQ magazine. It’s enough to make any right-thinking filmgoer not in the Will Ferrell/Chuck Palahniuk/American Pie core demographic head for another screen – any... Read more... |
LemmyWednesday, 01 December 2010![]() As Ozzy Osbourne puts it, “He’s just Lemmy. You just take him or you fucking don’t, and he doesn’t give a flying shit whether you do or not.” It’s this irreducible Lemmyness of Lemmy which lies at the core of the gnarled heavy metaller’s mystique.... Read more... |
MiralTuesday, 30 November 2010![]() With a script co-written by the Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, based on her 2004 book of the same title, Miral follows the interconnected lives of four women caught up in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s a sprawling, epic affair, directed by... Read more... |
Of Gods and MenSunday, 28 November 2010![]() It has been one of the most surprising hits this year in French cinemas - a mostly male film which poses deep and pertinent questions about religion or, more specifically, religions. Its ultimate theme is the price of Christian devotion. Of Gods and... Read more... |
Interview: Anton Corbijn on making The AmericanThursday, 25 November 2010![]() Joy Division brought Anton Corbijn to England in 1979 and, nearly 30 years later, made him a cinema director. The sleeve of the band’s album Unknown Pleasures fascinated him so deeply he felt compelled to leave Holland for the country where such... Read more... |
London BoulevardThursday, 25 November 2010![]() They say that crime doesn’t pay, yet the criminal underworld has certainly been good to William Monahan. His slick screenplay for 2006’s Boston-Irish gangster flick The Departed won him an Oscar, and now London Boulevard – a mean-streets-of-south-... Read more... |
MacheteSunday, 21 November 2010![]() It is not uncommon for opportunistic film-makers to put together a flashy promo in the hope it will attract enough investors to turn it into a full-length feature. When Robert Rodriguez made the Machete trailer for 2007 double-bill Grindhouse,... Read more... |
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past LivesFriday, 19 November 2010![]() Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes d’Or-winning fifth film replaces Hollywood’s blaring emphasis with a story of gentle transitions. Supernatural and natural, human and animal and life and death blur as Uncle Boonmee expires in the haunted forests... Read more... |
