Once Upon A Time In America [auto-play audio] is the last of a string of films about the past and future of a country [Sergio Leone] knew first and best from the B-movies and yellowing paperbacks America sent abroad. For this 1984 swan song, Leone broke a directing hiatus that stretched back a decade, and turned away from Westerns toward another quintessentially American genre. His fantasia of gangland themes and images barely works by the standards of a gangster film, but succeeds brilliantly by those of epic poetry. -
Keith Phipps [all links may contain spoilers] [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Aug 25, 2012 -
19 comments
Many films are called “classic,” but few qualify as turning points in the evolution of cinematic language, films that opened the way to a more mature art form. Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura is such a work. It divided film history into that which came before and that which was possible after its epochal appearance. It expanded our knowledge of what a film could be and do. It is more than a classic, it’s an historical milestone. ... Antonioni’s great achievement was to put the burden of narration almost entirely on the image itself, that is, on the characters’ actions and on the visual surface of their environment. He uses natural or manmade settings to evoke his characters’ state of mind, their emotions, their life circumstances. We learn more about them by watching what they do than by hearing what they say. We follow the story more by reading images than we do by listening to dialogue. The settings are not symbolic or metaphoric—they are extensions, manifestations, of the characters’ psyches. Physical landscape and mental landscape become one. -
Gene Youngblood
posted by Trurl
on Apr 29, 2012 -
20 comments
"Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?" [Vimeo] During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders set up a static camera in room 666 of the Hotel Martinez and provided selected film directors (inc. Spielberg, Godard, Fassbinder & Herzog) a list of questions to answer concerning the future of cinema. Each director was given one 16 mm reel (approximately 11 minutes) to answer.
posted by urbanwhaleshark
on Mar 25, 2012 -
20 comments
For Roger Ebert,
it's a prayer that made him "more alert to the awe of existence." For Rober Koehler,
it's a kitschy New Age con. For Richard Brody, it perfectly captures the essence of a generation by depicting a character thinking
"back to the musings and fantasies of childhood, which are the product of a wondrous and fantastic view of science formed by popular-science books for children and by the commercial artists whose illustrations adorned them." For Stephanie Zacharek, it's
"a gargantuan work of pretension." For Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, it's
"a creation myth in the guise of a crypto-autobiography" that invents a universe of its own only to destroy it. For J. Hoberman, it's lifeless and dull,
"essentially a religious work and, as such, may please the director's devotees, cultists, and apologists." It spent thirty years in development,
three in editing and, yes,
it contains dinosaurs.
The Tree of Life, written and directed by
famously reclusive Zoolander fan and
"JD Salinger of American movies" Terrence Malick , won the
Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Tomorrow,
it comes out in the United States.
[more inside]
posted by alexoscar
on May 26, 2011 -
64 comments
Lost In The Garden of the World is a documentary shot at the 1975 Cannes film festival. It contains interviews with Paul Bartel, Tobe Hooper, Steven Spielberg, Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese and Dustin Hoffman.
posted by brundlefly
on Nov 17, 2010 -
3 comments
In
30 years of going to Cannes, Roger Ebert has witnessed Francis Ford Coppola suffering from post-Apocolypse insanity and learned Jerry Lewis's secret for preventing riots--but the most interesting character he ever met there was a loudmouthed, fast-talking Texan named Silver Dollar Baxter with an uncanny gift for bluffing...
posted by yankeefog
on May 9, 2005 -
5 comments
Festival de
Cannes update:
The new Michael Moore movie received a 18 minutes long
standing ovation , a couple of days ago, which was already meaningful to him and his film crew.
Tonight Moore also received the prestigious
Palme D'Or prize, making sure the film will receive an adequate distribution in the United States.
His speech was quite powerful, beginning with him visibly stunned, looking at Quentin Tarantino (who was in tears) in disbelief, saying
“What have you done? I’m completely overwhelmed by this. Merci”.
posted by Sijeka
on May 22, 2004 -
69 comments
Michael Moore Hates America is a new documentary looking to discredit filmmaker
Michael Moore. Moore's new film,
Fahrenheit 9/11 is causing quite a stir at the Cannes Film Festival, where it has been met with
rave reviews, and
standing ovations lasting upwards of 20 minutes. With Moore's recent
distribution problems with the film,
a new project seeks to challenge Moore to distribute his film for free via the internet to prove that "the message is more important than the money," and to silence his critics, who contend that with the immense profits his controversial film is sure to garner, he is a "war profiteer" just like Halliburton.
posted by banished
on May 19, 2004 -
70 comments
Boycott France? An American Jewish Congress trade ad placed in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter compares anti-Semitic violence to that experienced during WWII. Some groups are also calling for a boycott of the Cannes Film Festival.
Woody Allen doesn't agree. Can the actions of an idiotic minority really justify a boycott?
posted by laukf
on May 15, 2002 -
45 comments
