I watched Cabaret again tonight. First thing: it really is a very good film, and if by some chance you haven’t seen it, hurry up and do so.
I was struck by how grown up it seems: it touches on serious subjects (Nazis! homosexuality! abortion!) but does so, mainly, in a stylishly, darkly humorous way. It made [...]
In celebration of this very amusing put-down of President Bush, here’s a bit of the master himself:
I watched In The Mood For Love on DVD yesterday. It’s an absolutely gorgeous movie, set in Hong Kong in the 60s. One of the cover blurbs says it’s ‘like Brief Encounter remade by Kubrick and Scorsese’; I’m not sure about the Kubrick/Scorsese thing, but the comparison to Brief Encounter is very apt. It’s a [...]
A big-budget Hollywood version of Beowulf is obviously going to either be a travesty of the poem or commercial suicide.
When you hear that Angelina Jolie is embarrassed about her nude scenes in the movie, I think it’s pretty clear which one.
I saw this in the cinema the other day when I went to see Helvetica, and I thought it was worth sharing:
I went to see Helvetica today. It is, as the name suggests, a documentary about the typeface, which is 50 years old this year.
I enjoyed it. My usual feeling with factual-type documentaries like this (as opposed to narrative-type documentaries like, say, Spellbound) is that they are very slow; that given the same amount of information [...]
Well, I went to see The Seventh Seal. It was unusually busy for a Tuesday afternoon showing of a 50-year-old Swedish art film; presumably the cinema was full of vultures like myself.
Hel - sweet seal, originally uploaded by ella19.
I was disappointed to discover there were no seals in it, although there was quite a cute [...]
Ingmar Bergman has died. Really, it’s all over the blogs, so it must be true. But here’s the thing: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single Bergman film. Not one. Not even the really famous ones, like umm… you know the one… it has chess in it?
These online videos can’t do justice to dancing, but how cool is this?
That’s the Nicholas Brothers in Down Argentine Way. Not impressed yet? This is them in Stormy Weather:
Once again I review something much too late to be useful. I wasn’t keen to see Casino Royale. Once upon a time, and against my better judgement, I felt a slight twinge of excitement or interest whenever a new Bond movie came out. Having reached the point where even a new Bond didn’t provoke a [...]
I went to see The Last King of Scotland tonight. It’s very good (fine performances all round, a convincing portrayal of the weirdness at the centre of a dictatorship) but it doesn’t exactly send you out with a spring in your step and a cheerful optimism about the human condition. I guess the world isn’t [...]
I went to see The Queen last night, which is about the Queen and Tony Blair in the week after Diana’s death. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting.
I couldn’t help thinking that a film about one of the biggest and most relentlessly commented on news stories of the past ten years was [...]
Princess Mononoke was on TV the other day. Like the other Miyazaki movies I’ve seen, it’s very concerned with the idea of nature spirits. The idea that every tree or rock has spirits associated with it is drawn from Shinto, of course, but it seems to have a particular resonance for Miyazaki.
I find the magical [...]
Sometimes I read something which makes me think someone has been putting hallucinogens in my coffee. I notice the trailer doesn’t actually have of Vinnie Jones speaking; could this be one of the truly disastrous accents of modern cinema?
I watched Shaolin Soccer on DVD the other night. The box is covered in recommendations from the Sun, FHM, Nuts, and similarly blokish publications, which was a bit off-putting, but actually it was the most entertaining film I’ve seen in ages. It uses the classic structure of a ramshackle team of outsiders who finally have [...]
Adult movie posters, via we make money not art, who got it from Camp Heatwole.
edit: more linkworthiness. Dazzle painting, via gravestmor. It’s worth looking at the pictures and clicking on the links in the dazzle article.
further edit: Bangladeshi rickshaw art, via Metafilter.
and still more: Crop Art, also via Camp Heatwole.
When Hollywood makes a film based on another film, it’s called a ‘remake’ and is seen as proof that the industry is creatively bankrupt and incapable of producing original work.
When they make a movie based on a novel, it’s called an ‘adaptation’, and it’s seen as artistic, admirable, and prestigious.
I think the industry might have [...]
Londonist tells me that University of the Arts London is getting the Kubrick archive. Two things about that. I’d never heard of UotAL; apparently the Camberwell, St Martin’s and Chelsea art colleges and the London colleges of Communication and Fashion are all part of the same institution. Who knew? And also the Londonist article pointed [...]
There’s a new film of Tristram Shandy which is showing at the London Film Festival. They’ve given it the title A Cock and Bull Story, from the last lines of the book:
‘L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about? –
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick – and one of the best of [...]
A heartwarming story of… well, just watch the trailer.
(via bookslut)