Author Archive

  • Bookmarks for Early August

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    • “The film we had imagined”, or: Anna and Jean-Luc Go To the Movies
      An exploration of the trope of fllmgoing within films, centering on the Passion de Jeanne d’Arc quotation in Vivre sa vie. “In this case, Nana’s response to Jeanne’s tears is, of course, tears of her own [...] But this sequence also has other curious and sympathetic qualities. [...] The off-centre, often literally decapitating framing that characterises passages of Dreyer’s film, is also paralleled by Godard’s. This suggests that we can read this sequence as both homage and an act of identification by the director. [...] These are a series of connections and possibilities that deepen if one has an intimate knowledge of Godard’s cinema and Dreyer’s film. So the quotation of this particular mode of framing refers to other moments in Dreyer’s film and, specifically, the points it makes about Jeanne’s existential and spatial – she is separated, out of place, often framed alone – plight.”
    • Put Julia Roberts On Hold: Seven Big-Name Movies That Have Yet to Reach Theaters or DVD
      Plenty of films don’t ever see a theatrical release, but it’s rare in this day and age for something not even get released on home video in the U.S., especially if it stars Julia Roberts or Jim Carrey. With issues both economic and otherwise, there’s a growing collection of films gathering dust
    • The Nic Cage Factor
      Cage’s oddly unhinged energy and cadence made most of his early film appearances in the mid- to late ’80s unforgettable. But instead of sticking to modest or interesting projects, Cage, after winning his Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, embraced an action star future with Con Air, and since then his work has been patchy at best. Here are his 5 best reviewed films, 5 most underrated and 5 worst.
    • Arts and Leisure Preview – ‘Inception’ Criticism Raises Questions for Critics
      A.O. Scott takes a step back and looks at the frenzied reaction and re-reaction to Inception in the days before (!) its release. A bit of a commentary on the insane speed of reactionaryness in internet-culture criticism.
    • Top 10 Movies That Mess with Your Mind
      With Inception out there gnawing away at everyone’s conscious (and possibly subconscious), TIME magazine has put together a list of film that are sometimes tough to wrap your head around. From Last Year at Marienbad to pi, here are ten films that will mess with your head.
    • Interview: Filmmaker Vincenzo Natali | KPBS.org
      The Canadian director of “Splice” talks about the origin of his story, science, what scared him as a kid and his next project, the much anticipated adaptation of William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.”
    • Creepshow 2 is Better than the Original
      A simple case of wrong. But worth a look just to comment with the correct answer.

     

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  • R3view: Inception

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    Director: Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight)
    Writer: Christopher Nolan
    Producers: Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas
    Starring: Leonaro DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Pete Postlewaite, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas
    MPAA Rating: PG-13
    Running time: 148 min


    Synopsis:
    Inception is Ocean’s Eleven taking place in The Matrix with a dash of 007 and a tease of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A convoluted heist film that takes place in dreams within dreams within dreams. The job is to plant an idea into a rich industrialists subconscious (so-called ‘inception’) and get out undetected. The team leader brings his own baggage into the complicated job, and there is danger of the whole operation getting stuck down the rabbit hole as the dig deeper and deeper into the layers of the mind. Made with sharp suits, big guns and practical landscapes and sets, this is the first big budget blockbuster to come along since The New World with a sense of both scale and tactility.

    Read all of our reviews below…

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • Bookmarks for June 10

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  • Bookmarks for May 28-31

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    • Culture Warrior: This is Not a Banksy
      Thought-provoking piece on art, the art documentary, and specifically the Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop.
    • When Is a Musical Not a Musical?
      I think Rosenbaum hits the nail on the head here with Godard – “But Godard’s critical influence on me and many others has stemmed in part from things he hasn’t been able to do as a director. Relative to his own models, he failed to make thrillers out of Breathless and Band of Outsiders, a war film of Les carabiniers, a melodrama of Contempt, science fiction of Alphaville and Anticipation (from the anthology film The Oldest Profession), or even Shakespeare of King Lear. Part of this failure is inadvertent, part deliberate and purposeful: an ability to take things apart and understand how they function isn’t always matched by an ability to put them back together again.” If you can put up with failure for the sake of experimentation (and somewhat solipsistic experimentation at that), you’ll like Godard. If you can’t, you won’t. It is pretty much that simple.
    • Observations on film art : Metropolis unbound
      A great piece from David Bordwell about the Metropolis restoration. He discusses the shifts and additions to the narrative due to the new footage, then looks specifically at Lang’s use of cinematic space to drive both narrative and theme rather than relying on intertitles.
    • The overactors – Mad, bad, and dangerous to the scenery
      “…even such self-aggrandising performances are still usually tuned to the key of supposed psychological realism; no matter how obvious or obnoxious, the actor is resolutely “in character” and therefore, somehow, inherently authentic. It seemingly matters little that Method’s furrowed-brow mumbling is, in its own way, as stylized as a kabuki mask. ”
    • Malick, Coppola could lead strong crop at Venice (or Toronto) for 2010
      Here is hoping for Tree of Life for Tiff, but ather potentials on the fall festival circuit include Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Anton Corbijn’s The American, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary, Robert Rodriguez’s Machete and Julie Taymor’s The Tempest. Screendaily mentions many, many more.
    • 15 Grossly Misleading Movie Posters
      Movies are both an art form and a business, so while it’s the artist’s vision that dictates the direction, it is sadly entirely up to clean shaven men with business degrees to decide how to sell it. And while we understand it’s their job to twist the truth to maximize a movie’s appeal, sometimes they go completely insane and just start making shit up. Occasionally, they hit on a better idea than the movie ever did…

     

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  • Some Very Pleasant In-House Business!

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    You may not have seen Rot posting too much these past few weeks, but he has a healthy new baby boy, Hayden John Sloan to occupy his time from today forward. Just wanted to say congrats in as public a way as possible. We hope you all will too.

    Baby’s first film recommendations are welcome.

  • Bookmarks for May 17-19

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    • Stephen Frears and ‘Tamara Drewe’ eschews English fixation on class system
      Stephen Frears banters and spars with the Cannes International Media: “Well, I’ll defend ambiguity til I die … and if I said I were in favor of telling the truth, I’d be lying.” And so the bantering went back and forth.
    • Ridley Me This: Why Isn’t Sir Scott as Great as You Tell Me He Is?
      “I saw Ridley Scott’s tired Robin Hood this past weekend and I was underwhelmed. It’s not a bad movie. Scott rarely makes bad films, just frequently uninspired ones.”
    • Top 10 Underrated Sci-Fi Stories Before 1864
      “The science fiction genre developed over the latter half of the 19th century with the works of Jules Verne and, subsequently, H.G. Wells. For the sake of a clear cut off date for this list, however, we shall say the cut off date for novels not to be influenced by these fathers of the genre is 1864, the year in which Verne published “A Journey to the Center of the Earth.” These are the classic science fiction novels that preceded the fathers of the genre that are commonly overlooked by modern audiences.”
    • The Secrets of Marienbad
      “Everyone is of course familiar with Alain Resnais’s cult film, written by Alain Robbe-Grillet and made just fifty years ago, L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad). It happened that a young actress named Françoise Spira was on the set during the shooting of the film. She didn’t play the lead role … She didn’t even have one of these real supporting roles that leave you with the memory of a few unforgettable scenes. But in any case, she was there from the beginning of the shoot to the end, with her Super 8 without sound, and she filmed the film, capturing its most magical instants — Resnais’s youthful laughter, Seyrig’s delightful caprices, the somber and childlike charm of Albertazzi. In short, off in her little corner and without shouting from the rooftops, she produced the “making of” of the most formal, glacial and, actually, unerring, unwavering film in the history of contemporary cinema. But Françoise Spira committed suicide. Her ‘making of’ was lost with her.”
    • A Roger Ebert Tribute
      “I guess the biggest criticism I have of Roger is that his reviews are often too easy on films, except for my films of course–he could never be too easy on them–but, the guy loves films so much that it’s almost contagious. He’s open, he’s smart, he’s thoughtful, he’s always very clear, and he’s got a really good heart and–like I said–he’s really funny, which is hard to do as a writer. He manages to make you think critically without making it seem like homework. God knows the world needs more people thinking critically these days about a lot of things. ”
    • Malick, Coppola could lead strong crop at Venice (or Toronto) for 2010
      Here is hoping for Tree of Life for Tiff, but ather potentials on the fall festival circuit include Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Anton Corbijn’s The American, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary, Robert Rodriguez’s Machete and Julie Taymor’s The Tempest. Screendaily mentions many, many more.

     

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  • Bookmarks for May 10-14

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    • The Man Gets Around at 102
      “Ridley Scott, the 72-year-old director of “Robin Hood,” was prevented by his recent knee surgery from making it to the Cannes Film Festival’s festival’s opening night bash Wednesday after the red carpet premiere, but 102-year-old Portuguese director Manoel De Oliveira turned up, circulating among the black-tie first-nighters after just having had an audience with Pope Benedict at the Vatican earlier in the day. ”
    • Minority Report UI designer John Underkoffler talks about the future
      User Interface designer and all around tech god John Underkoffler discusses his work with the UI in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” and how his work on the film fed back into developing a technology that works as well as his experience working with Ang Lee on “Hulk.”
    • Q’orianka Kilcher has rare maturity for a young actress
      “Five years ago, at age 14, Q’orianka Kilcher gave what is regarded as one of the great debut performances ever, playing Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s “The New World,” a film that popped up on more than a few best-of-the-decade lists. So how do you follow that? “
    • Monte Hellman at Cannes
      “If Robert Altman hadn’t had ‘MASH,’ he never would have been able to make all those other movies,” said the journalist and screenwriter Steven Gaydos. “And Monte never had a ‘MASH.’ ”
    • Bunny Dojo – Designs for Replacement DVD Jackets
      Tired of those lame floating heads on your DVD, HD-DVD or BLU-RAY purchases? Bunny Dojo can set you up with some quality replacements to make your collect just a little classier.
    • The Auteurs is now MUBI
      I think they are idiots to give up a classy name like The Auteurs for a Web 2.0 generic name like MUBI, but they are aiming to offer high quality VOD of art films and what not, so I guess I am glad they simply did not cease to exist and only suffered a moniker change.
    • Harmony Korine on his allegorical, sex-with-garbage horror flick
      “When Korine tells stories like this in interviews — presenting the streets of Nashville as a place where elephants float and teenage wastoids drop dead, positioning himself as a kind of frontline reporter on surrealism in action — it’s tempting to call it bullshit. Promoting his last film, the relatively high-budget elegy to celebrity worship Mr. Lonely, Korine claimed he spent part of an eight-year hiatus from directing living with the Malingerers, a South American cult searching for a golden fish”

     

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  • Bookmarks for April 16-20th

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    • Dennis Cozzalio on the Memorable Lee Van Cleef
      “And because of the angularly unique sculpting of his features— an arrow-shaped head complemented by hawk-like nose, a smile that could seem warm and sinister almost simultaneously, and yes, those eyes—Van Cleef seemed destined, from the beginning of his movie career—a small part in Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon– to be typecast, albeit memorably, as a bad guy.”
    • Ray Harryhausen and the State of the Animation
      Horatia Harrod meets Ray Harryhausen at his London home and finds the post-war animation legend none too pleased with the state of modern film-making.
    • Actor Idris Elba, Generating His Own Buzz
      ““In this day and age, actors can’t afford to be pompous,” the 37-year-old Mr. Elba said, discussing a career that first caught fire with “The Wire” and peaked with last year’s popular but critically reviled potboiler “Obsessed.” “You can’t afford to turn your nose up at things. Audiences want to see you a bit more dynamic. We know you can act, Daniel Day-Lewis. That’s fantastic. Show us a bit more. We want to be entertained.””
    • “Video games can never be art” – Roger Ebert
      “…nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say “never,” because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.”
    • Better-Late-Than-Never: Another analysis of Starship Troopers
      “The business of satire is a risky one. When the concept is applied in literature, theatre, film or any other medium there is always a risk that it will be misunderstood. Satire is an ironic and sometimes sarcastic means of making an indirect social or political point, often leaving the author open to attack from those who were simply unable to distinguish their tone. Occasionally the reader/viewer will miss the point entirely or they’ll be convinced that the author believes in what they are satirising. Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film Starship Troopers was not immune from the dangers of the audience misreading the films satirical content.”
    • Matt Brown on Kick-Ass
      “This is also why Kick-Ass is properly fantasy, and damned successful fantasy at that: because in the end of it all, Dave designs, and realizes, a complete revolution of the self. It’s a revolution which could never occur in the real world in the death-and-spraypaint comic book terms expressed here, but it’s a revolution which needs to happen for kids in the real world in some terms expressable somewhere. And baby, revolution’s afoot.”

     

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  • Bookmarks for April 9-13th

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    • Catch Me if You Can 2: The 21st Century Version of Frank Abagnale Jr.
      This one should be a movie. It would totally fit as a follow-up to Spielberg’s Catch Me if you can. In this case, Wired profiles Gerald Blanchard and his Credit Card and Bank ATM scams. And along the way, he cat-burgles the diamond and pearl encrusted Sisi Star from a Viennese castle.
    • The Ghost and the subtle delights of first-person cinema
      “Alfred Hitchcock was another master of first person. We watch Rear Window from the viewpoint of James Stewart, who is watching from the apartment where he’s laid up with a broken leg. In Vertigo and North by Northwest, we tag along with Stewart or Cary Grant, as mystified as they are, until, almost grudgingly, the director cuts to another point of view to explain what’s going on. Part of the shock effect of Psycho, of course, is that our point of view is abruptly yanked away when our heroine takes a shower, forcing viewers to transfer allegiance to the nearest person at hand. Who happens to be Norman Bates.”
    • David Mamet and the battle for Broadway
      “What’s up with New York theatre? And does issue-based drama ever really work? In two exclusive extracts from his new book, David Mamet has some answers” — Many of which can be applied to art-house cinema.
    • An Open Letter to Werner Herzog
      “Dear Werner Herzog: I don’t know if you seen it yet, but I just read this New York Times article about James Cameron—a popular Canadian film director who makes multimillion dollar movie parables for concerned tweens—traveling to the Amazon to advocate on behalf of an indigenous tribe facing devastation from a proposed dam.” — BE SURE TO WATCH THE EMBEDDED linked SLIDE SHOW to get the gag.

     

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  • Bookmarks for April 6-8th

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    • 20th Anniversary of the Death of Laura Palmer – How Twin Peaks Changed TV
      “”Twenty years after the influential cult television show began, David Lynch’s sci-fi, absurdist murder-mystery soap opera continues to scare and befuddle legions of viewers. Without it, there would be no ‘Lost’, ‘The X-Files’ or any of the countless serials habitually labeled “quirky” and/or “weird” since the show’s debut on April 8, 1990.”
    • Some Love for Tina Fey: No More Catty Best Friends
      “She makes me laugh, unexpectedly, sheepishly, loudly, thoroughly and consistently. She is, without question, one of the ten best comedians working today. She’s John Belushi doing Joe Cocker. She’s Richard Pryor killing on the mic. She’s Norm MacDonald cracking jokes about O.J. Simpson, Vince Vaughn standing on a diner table and Johnny Carson direct addressing his audience as K-Mart shoppers. I believe in Tina Fey because she makes me laugh, and that’s why, for the first time in my life, I’m going to see a comedy entirely because of its female star.”
    • Slumming it in the movies
      “The history of American indie film happens to be dominated by lowlifes and inarticulates. This is what happens when the godfathers of independent film are John Cassavetes and Melvin van Peebles, both attracted to working-class sparks. Complaining about intelligent guys wasting their talents on “low-lifes” smacks of snobbery, but it also ignores the fact that American indie film is and always has been primarily oriented towards the marginalized, who aren’t going to make movies about themselves, and certainly aren’t about to be the stars of mainstream films.”
    • My Friend Francis, The Commentator (DVD Commentary as Art?)
      “”What you really need—yeah, there it is—what you really need is a filmmaker commentary situation. Straight art, straight cinema—it’s gonna hit you between the eyes too hard. You need a buffer, someone talking, someone intelligent to talk you through the night and the images. And damn if Francis Ford Coppola is not the man to do it. He is. Yeah. In fact I believe Francis Ford Coppola could single-handedly bring anyone through heartache with his combination of DVD commentaries, wine, and pasta sauces. But let’s focus on the DVD commentaries.”
    • Dennis Hopper Blues: The Mix Tape
      “Doctors are more than likely telling Dennis Hopper to take it easy while he battles prostate cancer. It’s not easy to rest comfortably when he’s in court in a divorce battle and now ordered to pay his estranged wife $12,000 a month. Dennis Hopper, fighting until the bitter end. Let’s create a set of music around his situation, his films, etc.”
    • Chuck Norris is Dead. Werner Herzog Killed Him.
      “The San Francisco Guardian recently reported that the hottest new Twitter trend is the “Werner Herzog vs. Chuck Norris” tag, which modifies a Chuck Norris fact to showcase how film director Werner Herzog is infinitely more awesome. A choice example: “Chuck Norris counted from 0 to infinity. Werner Herzog counted backwards from infinity to 0.”

     

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  • Bookmarks for March 29-31

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    • Georges Melies: The Most Important Filmmaker You’ve (Probably) Never Seen
      “What do the following have in common: magic tricks, science fiction, ghosts, oversized insects, space aliens, vampires, the Devil, fairy tales, color, product placement, historical re-enactments, docu-drama, animation and pornography? The twofold answer is that they are all common elements in contemporary movies—and they were all first rendered in motion pictures by one remarkable man, French magician-turned-filmmaker Georges Melies.”
    • Justice is Messy
      Is the Roman Polanski case nearing its end? A three-sentence [court] order said, without explanation: “This court has determined that proper review in this matter requires examination of the transcript of the conditional examination of Roger Gunson.”
    • Gaspar Noe talks ENTER THE VOID
      “Gaspar Noe was in Hong Kong last week to screen his epic, experimental, head trip ENTER THE VOID as part of the 34th Hong Kong International Film Festival and Twitch spoke to him about the film – its origins, influences, intentions – and that ending!”
    • A Decade with Takashi Miike
      “Incorporating sources as diverse as these—as well as many, many others—Miike’s films suggest a common ground where all moviemaking can converse. Not since Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s has a filmmaker’s approach to cinema been this holistic. But when Godard started making films, the distance between Antonioni and Monogram Pictures (to cite two poles of art and commerce) was not nearly as large as the gulf that today separates Bruckheimer and Costa. To bridge these two in a single film is to risk madness, but such wild combinations also carry the promise of new discoveries, perhaps a new cinema that makes old distinctions irrelevant. “
    • Anime’s female role models
      “If I had a small daughter, I would try to wean her away from Edward Cullen and Miley Cyrus and towards such anime series as the thrilling steampunk saga Nadia: Secret of Blue Water – inspired by Jules Verne, conceived by Miyazaki and featuring a 14-year-old lion tamer/acrobat in 1889 Paris. And I would teach her to read subtitles, so she wouldn’t have to settle for naff dubbed versions.”
    • David Mamet’s 2005 Memo/Manifesto to the writers of THE UNIT
      “There is no magic fairy dust which will make a boring, useless, redundant, or merely informative scene after it leaves your typewriter. *YOU* The writers, are in charge of making sure *EVERY* scene is dramatic.”

     

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  • Bookmarks for March 10-12

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    • Banned from the screening room!
      In the latest scuffle between critics and studios, a New York Press critic Armond White is barred from a Noah Baumbach preview (…but eventually is capitulated to despite the unearthing of some mean spirited words)
    • Roger Ebert’s Thumbs Down for Variety in Letting Go Todd McCarthy in favour of Freelance Reviewing
      “What I’m saying is that Todd McCarthy is not a man Variety should have lightly dismissed. He is the longest-serving and best-known member of the paper’s staff, and if they made such a drastic decision, we are invited to wonder if Variety itself will long survive.”
    • The Cove Team go after Restaurants Serving Illegal Whale-meat
      “In the clash of two Southern California cultures – sushi aficionados and hard-core animal lovers – the animal lovers have thrown a big punch.”
    • Meet the real Shirley Henderson“Her tiny frame and bubble-light voice have made Shirley Henderson a shoo-in for roles such as Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle – but don’t be fooled she’s a tough cookie.”
    • I Am Love: More Alternate One Sheets
      Yes, we love looking at all possible designs for the Posters of this particular film.
    • Godzilla Haiku
      AHaiku about Godzilla. There’s really nothing more to say, except “BRILLIANT.”
    • Eric Skillman Interview
      “You may not know the name, but you’ll know the work. He creates a feeling for an entire film, distilled down to a tiny rectangular image. Eric Skillman has been designing DVD covers for the Criterion Collection for a few years now, and each one is a work of art. Serving as either the primary designer or the art director, Skillman has helped to create some of the most memorable discs to come out in the last few years–including the epic designs for Berlin Alexanderplatz and the upcoming Stagecoach.”
    • Do Most Scorsese Pictures End With The Same Line?
      “Every one seems to be about a man who has realized the dichotomy of his life and making a choice. Once blind, now seeing… for better or worse.”
    • Vincent Cassel and FLAUNT Maganzie
      “In Hollywood there’s politics; young actors have to do big, stupid movies to eventually be a box office figure and have access to great directors, stuff like that. But in France the market is a little different. In a minute, you know everybody, so you stick to what you like because, otherwise, you won’t be able to come back to it.”

     

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