It's the week of the great Oscars comedown, and even the winners must have a bittersweet feeling that they are unlikely to scale such heights again
Well, Oscar weekend has come and gone, and for British film reviewers there can hardly be anything left to say. But this hasn't stopped us all haranguing the Academy for its failings and errors of taste, just as that famous West Cork newspaper fearlessly addressed the tsar of Russia in 1899: "The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you!"
For critics, this is the week of the Oscars comedown: the great post-awards season hangover: a sense of nausea and surfeit and anticlimax. Having in many cases stayed up all night, and then put together our final reports on the night's outcome, reviewers now return to work in the knowledge that all the really strong Hollywood films have been released for the Oscars, and what...
Well, Oscar weekend has come and gone, and for British film reviewers there can hardly be anything left to say. But this hasn't stopped us all haranguing the Academy for its failings and errors of taste, just as that famous West Cork newspaper fearlessly addressed the tsar of Russia in 1899: "The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you!"
For critics, this is the week of the Oscars comedown: the great post-awards season hangover: a sense of nausea and surfeit and anticlimax. Having in many cases stayed up all night, and then put together our final reports on the night's outcome, reviewers now return to work in the knowledge that all the really strong Hollywood films have been released for the Oscars, and what...
- 2/28/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
It's been a vintage year on the Croisette, with superb films and lashings of controversy
Resurgent Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein called it "one of the best festivals in the history of Cannes". Harvey would say that – he nabbed the rights to the best film, in the transplendent form of a silent movie called The Artist.
But in terms of quality, controversy, debate and infinite variety, this has indeed been a vintage Cannes and of all the ones to miss, Lars von Trier picked the wrong one. The Danish director was thrown out of the festival for dim comments made about Hitler at the press conference after his film Melancholia, although the film itself bizarrely remains in with a chance of prizes tonight, with its star Kirsten Dunst having particularly impressed Robert De Niro and his jury, I hear.
Melancholia itself would have been talking point enough without Von Trier's prattling.
Resurgent Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein called it "one of the best festivals in the history of Cannes". Harvey would say that – he nabbed the rights to the best film, in the transplendent form of a silent movie called The Artist.
But in terms of quality, controversy, debate and infinite variety, this has indeed been a vintage Cannes and of all the ones to miss, Lars von Trier picked the wrong one. The Danish director was thrown out of the festival for dim comments made about Hitler at the press conference after his film Melancholia, although the film itself bizarrely remains in with a chance of prizes tonight, with its star Kirsten Dunst having particularly impressed Robert De Niro and his jury, I hear.
Melancholia itself would have been talking point enough without Von Trier's prattling.
- 5/21/2011
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
Updated through 5/17.
"An intriguing tale of an ethical dilemma complicated by academic rivalries and family tensions is told in erratic fashion in Footnote," begins Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. "In his fourth feature, New York-born-and-trained Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar arrestingly tackles what feels like deeply felt personal material, a simmering intellectual and emotional feud between a comparably brilliant father and son, but makes several crucial miscalculations, beginning with the use of one of the most intrusive and overbearing musical scores in memory."
"Eliezer Shkolnik [Shlomo Bar-Aba], a curmudgeonly professor, and his son Uziel [Lior Ashkenazi] are both well-known Talmudic scholars and researchers," explains Barbara Scharres, blogging for the Chicago Sun-Times. "Uziel, however, reaps awards and honors galore, while his jealous father has suffered a career of being overlooked. Uziel wins a major academic award in their mutual field, but through the mistake of an office assistant, Eliezer is informed that he is the winner.
"An intriguing tale of an ethical dilemma complicated by academic rivalries and family tensions is told in erratic fashion in Footnote," begins Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter. "In his fourth feature, New York-born-and-trained Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar arrestingly tackles what feels like deeply felt personal material, a simmering intellectual and emotional feud between a comparably brilliant father and son, but makes several crucial miscalculations, beginning with the use of one of the most intrusive and overbearing musical scores in memory."
"Eliezer Shkolnik [Shlomo Bar-Aba], a curmudgeonly professor, and his son Uziel [Lior Ashkenazi] are both well-known Talmudic scholars and researchers," explains Barbara Scharres, blogging for the Chicago Sun-Times. "Uziel, however, reaps awards and honors galore, while his jealous father has suffered a career of being overlooked. Uziel wins a major academic award in their mutual field, but through the mistake of an office assistant, Eliezer is informed that he is the winner.
- 5/17/2011
- MUBI
Daring and funny, a French love letter to 1920s Hollywood gets a standing ovation from Peter Bradshaw
Until yesterday, a British contender – Lynne Ramsay, with We Need to Talk About Kevin – seemed to be cantering ahead in the race for the Palme d'Or. But now Terrence Malick has shot out of the starting gate with The Tree of Life – and yet another film, in my view, is galloping ahead. Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius's glorious picture The Artist is a formally daring and sublimely funny movie about the end of silent movies in 1920s Hollywood. It is itself silent and in black and white, with inter-titles and a full, continuous orchestral score. Endlessly inventive, packed with clever sight-gags and rich in stunningly achieved detail, The Artist is a pastiche and a passionate love letter to the silent age; it takes the silent movie seriously as a specific form, rather than as obsolete technology,...
Until yesterday, a British contender – Lynne Ramsay, with We Need to Talk About Kevin – seemed to be cantering ahead in the race for the Palme d'Or. But now Terrence Malick has shot out of the starting gate with The Tree of Life – and yet another film, in my view, is galloping ahead. Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius's glorious picture The Artist is a formally daring and sublimely funny movie about the end of silent movies in 1920s Hollywood. It is itself silent and in black and white, with inter-titles and a full, continuous orchestral score. Endlessly inventive, packed with clever sight-gags and rich in stunningly achieved detail, The Artist is a pastiche and a passionate love letter to the silent age; it takes the silent movie seriously as a specific form, rather than as obsolete technology,...
- 5/16/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Sarah Churchwell sees Hemingway through the eyes of his first wife
The 1920s is back in vogue: Baz Luhrmann is remaking The Great Gatsby, a staged reading of Fitzgerald's masterpiece proved a big success off-Broadway last year, and HBO's 1920-set Boardwalk Empire is the flagship programme of the new Sky Atlantic channel. And now comes McLain's The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage, to Hadley Richardson, and their heady days in jazz age Paris. In fact, The Paris Wife also shares in the current fashion for biographical fiction, including Jay Parini's The Passages of Herman Melville, David Lodge's A Man of Parts, about Hg Wells, and David Miller's Today about the death of Joseph Conrad.
The story of The Paris Wife is familiar to anyone who knows A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of "how Paris was in the early days when we were very...
The 1920s is back in vogue: Baz Luhrmann is remaking The Great Gatsby, a staged reading of Fitzgerald's masterpiece proved a big success off-Broadway last year, and HBO's 1920-set Boardwalk Empire is the flagship programme of the new Sky Atlantic channel. And now comes McLain's The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage, to Hadley Richardson, and their heady days in jazz age Paris. In fact, The Paris Wife also shares in the current fashion for biographical fiction, including Jay Parini's The Passages of Herman Melville, David Lodge's A Man of Parts, about Hg Wells, and David Miller's Today about the death of Joseph Conrad.
The story of The Paris Wife is familiar to anyone who knows A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of "how Paris was in the early days when we were very...
- 3/26/2011
- by Sarah Churchwell
- The Guardian - Film News
From Oscar favourite The King's Speech to ex-Booker winner Wolf Hall, art that retells events is now the mainstay of films and books. But the concentration on reality stops writers using the imagination for storytelling
Throughout their history, movies have been talked about in terms of dreaming: studios are "dream factories"; Hollywood is "the land of dreams". But scanning the list of contenders for this year's Oscars, such descriptions feels misplaced. The most striking thing about the leading films of the last 12 months is how many draw their inspiration from fact.
The leading Oscar contenders, The King's Speech and The Social Network, both offer fictionalised portraits of familiar but enigmatic public figures – a monarch and a monumentally successful entrepreneur. But it's also true of other hotly tipped releases such as The Fighter (about boxer Micky Ward) and 127 Hours (about rock climber Aron Ralston), as well as films still to hit...
Throughout their history, movies have been talked about in terms of dreaming: studios are "dream factories"; Hollywood is "the land of dreams". But scanning the list of contenders for this year's Oscars, such descriptions feels misplaced. The most striking thing about the leading films of the last 12 months is how many draw their inspiration from fact.
The leading Oscar contenders, The King's Speech and The Social Network, both offer fictionalised portraits of familiar but enigmatic public figures – a monarch and a monumentally successful entrepreneur. But it's also true of other hotly tipped releases such as The Fighter (about boxer Micky Ward) and 127 Hours (about rock climber Aron Ralston), as well as films still to hit...
- 1/24/2011
- by William Skidelsky
- The Guardian - Film News
Jonathan Franzen's family epic, a new collection from Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin's love letters, a memoir centred on tiny Japanese sculptures ... which books most excited our writers this year?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In Red Dust Road (Picador) Jackie Kay writes lucidly and honestly about being the adopted black daughter of white parents, about searching for her white birth mother and Nigerian birth father, and about the many layers of identity. She has a rare ability to portray sentiment with absolutely no sentimentality. Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns (Random House) is a fresh and wonderful history of African-American migration. Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered (Little, Brown) is a grave, beautiful novel about people who experienced the Korean war and the war's legacy. And David Remnick's The Bridge (Picador) is a thorough and well-written biography of Barack Obama. The many Americans who believe invented biographical details about Obama would do well to read it.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In Red Dust Road (Picador) Jackie Kay writes lucidly and honestly about being the adopted black daughter of white parents, about searching for her white birth mother and Nigerian birth father, and about the many layers of identity. She has a rare ability to portray sentiment with absolutely no sentimentality. Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns (Random House) is a fresh and wonderful history of African-American migration. Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered (Little, Brown) is a grave, beautiful novel about people who experienced the Korean war and the war's legacy. And David Remnick's The Bridge (Picador) is a thorough and well-written biography of Barack Obama. The many Americans who believe invented biographical details about Obama would do well to read it.
- 11/27/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
It's a fading memory for the middle-aged, but gave a start to Phil Collins, Susan George, Michael Crawford and many future stars. And Keith Chegwin. It gave parents a kid-free break, too
The year is 1967. The place is your local ABC cinema. The event – the ABC Minors Children's Matinee, to which thousands of grateful parents have dispatched their offspring. First off is the ABC Minors song, the lyrics of which flash up on screen:
"We are the boys and girls all known as
Minors of the ABC
And every Saturday all line up
To see the films we like and shout aloud with glee
We like to laugh and have our sing-song
Such a happy crowd are we
We're all pals together
We're Minors of the ABC."
After this rousing number, the cinema's manager hosts some obligatory birthday singing and talent shows. Finally comes the moment the budding juvenile delinquents...
The year is 1967. The place is your local ABC cinema. The event – the ABC Minors Children's Matinee, to which thousands of grateful parents have dispatched their offspring. First off is the ABC Minors song, the lyrics of which flash up on screen:
"We are the boys and girls all known as
Minors of the ABC
And every Saturday all line up
To see the films we like and shout aloud with glee
We like to laugh and have our sing-song
Such a happy crowd are we
We're all pals together
We're Minors of the ABC."
After this rousing number, the cinema's manager hosts some obligatory birthday singing and talent shows. Finally comes the moment the budding juvenile delinquents...
- 9/9/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
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