Film Features
The Glastonbury of the Mind: Hay turns 25Thursday, 31 May 2012
Apart from “I did not have sex with that woman” and maybe “It’s the economy, stupid”, Bill Clinton seems never to have said anything quite as memorable. Indeed, of all the phrases with his name attached, none is quoted quite so tremulously as Clinton's description of an event that takes place annually on the border between England and Wales as May makes way for June. Read more... |
Cannes 2012: A dog's life on the roadSunday, 27 May 2012
Sightseers is the third film by the young British director Ben Wheatley and the first that might be deemed a comedy; that said, as befits the man who made Down Terrace and Kill List, it is a decidedly twisted one. Read more... |
Cannes 2012: Cronenberg's CosmopolisSaturday, 26 May 2012
It’s quite a coincidence when two of the competition films in Cannes take place almost entirely within a stretch limousine. Then again, considering that the movie stars here travel the most ridiculously short distances in such vehicles, it’s entirely appropriate. Read more... |
Cannes 2012: Making a killing on the Côte d'AzurThursday, 24 May 2012
The last time that actor Brad Pitt and New Zealand director Andrew Dominik teamed up it was for the epic and elegiac western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Their new one, in competition in Cannes, couldn’t be more different. Read more... |
Cannes 2012: Festival falls in love with LoveMonday, 21 May 2012
Michael Haneke likes to challenge and provoke us, whether it’s with intellectual puzzles (Hidden), bleak character studies (The Piano Teacher) or a brand of horror that makes us feel uneasily complicit (Funny Games). He’s a brilliant director, and a tough one. Read more... |
Cannes 2012: Sleeper hits and big-name bombsSunday, 20 May 2012
It’s a normal day in Cannes, which means that I’ve just chatted to Mexican heart-throb Gael García Bernal on the beach, while a mini sand storm battered the doors of our marquee. Bernal is in town with his new film, No, about the events leading to the fall of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. But he took a moment to reminisce about his first year here, in 2000, when Amores Perros took Cannes by the scruff of the neck. Read more... |
Cannes 2012: Tim Roth – the Brit in the hot seatFriday, 18 May 2012
It's a real pleasure to see Tim Roth strutting his stuff in Cannes, on screen and off. Roth knows the place well, having been here as an actor in Pulp Fiction, and as the director of The War Zone. This year he’s president of the jury for the un certain regard section of the festival – the second rung of the official selection, but often containing the more adventurous material. The role suits a man whose own career choices have been constantly edgy and surprising... Read more... |
Cannes 2012: French master turns up the temperatureThursday, 17 May 2012
The first full day of Cannes started with a cracker, appropriately by a Frenchman and one of my favourite contemporary directors, Jacques Audiard. Rust and Bone features a love story between a woman who’s had her legs bitten off by a killer whale and a man who makes his living from illegal street fighting. It ought to be preposterous; Audiard, typically, makes it profound. Read more... |
Jean Vigo: Celebrating the father of French New WaveTuesday, 15 May 2012
The release of Jean Vigo’s wonderful L’Atalante on DVD is cause enough to celebrate, but the arrival of everything he committed to film in one place is more than that – it commemorates this special filmmaker’s genius and humanity. Zero de Conduite and L’Atalante are thrilling films, whatever their context and influence on the French New Wave. They need to be seen. Read more... |
Interview: 10 Questions for Clotilde HesmeWednesday, 02 May 2012
Earlier this year Clotilde Hesme won the César, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, for “most promising actress” in the excellent, atypical love story Angel & Tony. One wonders if the voters have some kind of collective myopia, or simply don’t see enough good movies, because Hesme stopped being "promising" a long time ago. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Sundance LondonSunday, 29 April 2012
This weekend Robert Redford and his Sundance Institute are bringing a sort of taster version of the world’s leading showcase for independent (non-studio) English-language films to London. Read more... |
Interview: American Pie Cast ReunionSaturday, 28 April 2012
Who knew back in 1999 that a comedy about a bunch of teenage boys desperate to lose their virginity before they graduated from high school would be so popular? Adam Herz's script for American Pie, filmed by debutant directors Chris and Paul Weitz, was a huge box-office hit, and spawned two sequels; American Pie 2 (2001), American Wedding (2003), and now a third - American Pie: Reunion. There were also four spin-off straight-to-DVD films. Read more... |
Interview: Whit Stillman, Metropolitan FilmmakerWednesday, 25 April 2012
Unlike the New Seekers, Whit Stillman does not want to teach the world to sing. He does, however, want to teach it to dance, specifically to dance the Sambola (or, to give it its full name, Sambola! The New International Dance Craze). Instructions and a demonstration accompany the final credits of his new film, Damsels in Distress. Read more... |
Opinion: Why film stars should never play film starsWednesday, 11 April 2012
News that Nicole Kidman is to play Grace Kelly in a movie called Grace of Monaco convinces me that it is foredoomed. This time Kidman won’t have any prosthetics to help her resemble Grace Kelly, such as the long nose she wore as Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002). Nor would it be possible, as attractive and talented as Kidman is, to replicate Kelly’s ineffable quality and patrician beauty. Read more... |
Vincente Minnelli: Celebrating Mr HollywoodMonday, 02 April 2012
For most film buffs, the name of director Vincente Minnelli immediately recalls the quintessence of the MGM musical of the 1940s and 1950s - a world of fantasy, brilliant colours, stylish décor and costumes in which Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron dance and sing. The name also evokes steamy dramas and civilised comedies such as Some Came Running and Father of the Bride. Read more... |
BFI Southbank Preview: Made in BritainSaturday, 31 March 2012
If you’re game for a galling statistic, here’s one that’s guaranteed to stun: at present, only 14 per cent of British films released in the UK are directed by women. If that seems oddly as well as infuriatingly low, it’s probably because so many of the brightest and boldest British film-makers of recent years, from Lynne Ramsay to Lucy Walker, are women – women who it seems are exceptions as well as being exceptional. Read more... |
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