By Anthony Killick. Film festivals have always operated as nodes in a network of global power relations. Set within this field of social and economic tensions, they act as spaces in which our view of the world is formed through our interaction with films. The ways in which these spaces […]
Bury The Hatchet (2010)
By Robert Kenneth Dator. Bury The Hatchet? Where is the conflict? The title of this beautifully shot documentary would constitute something of a double entendre if one could find the combatants. There is poetic strife of a sort; factionalism of a sort; mild hostility; competition, but no long-standing feud; no […]
Now You See Me (2013)
June 5, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. Cinema can be seen as an act of illusion. Scenes that filmed separately become a cohesive whole, real footage blends seamlessly with CG, and a story moves at the behest of a surreptitious screenwriter. Naturally, Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me finds an appropriate medium for its […]
Blow Out
By Cleaver Patterson. Director Brian De Palma’s classic 1981 conspiracy thriller Blow Out is not just a marvellously realised exercise in rising paranoia, but also a stylishly twisted example of one of Hollywood’s masters of suspense at the height of his powers. John Travolta stars as Jack Terry, a technician […]
The Continuity Girls: Angela Allen and Pam Mann Francis
June 3, 2013
David A. Ellis talks to two legendary script supervisors. Many people when watching a film don’t give a thought to all the hard work involved in bringing the movie to the screen. One job that rarely attracts attention is continuity. Part of the job of the continuity person, or script […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 12 – Revisiting the Palme d’Or Winner La Vie d’Adèle
May 31, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. In an unprecedented decision, the jury for the official competition of the 66th Festival de Cannes, led by President Steven Spielberg, awarded the French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche and French actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos the Palme d’Or for La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitre 1 & 2 (Blue is the […]
Tribeca 2013 Festival Report
May 30, 2013
By Michael Miller. The Tribeca Film Festival has developed a reputation for its documentary program, which it further burnished in 2013. A few notable titles presented at the festival this year were: Big Shot (directed by Kevin Connolly), part of the festival’s ESPN Sports Film Festival, which winningly profiles John […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 11 – Michael Kohlhaas, Cinema de la Plage and the 2013 Queer Palm Award
May 29, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Michael Kohlhaas Arnaud Des Pallière’s Michael Kohlhaas failed to engage spectators because of the slow pace and tough to chew narrative construction. The dramaturgy forced viewers to wait out the step-by-step construction of the film. For relief, most of Kohlhass is shot in the Cévennes mountains and […]
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
May 28, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. The modern blockbuster has become a strange, new beast before our eyes. In the nascent days of the Star Trek series, the fantasy of galactic travel could only prove as tangible as limited special effects technology allowed. Now, the aesthetics of the science fiction film take on […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 10 – Cannes Luncheon, Manuscripts Don’t Burn and Only Lovers Left Alive
May 28, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Cannes Luncheon Toward the end of the festival, when the press was anxious to leave for home and needed an injection of new sites and hospitality, the mayor of Cannes, Bernard Brochand, took the opportunity to invite over 100 journalists to a luncheon in the old quarters […]