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 […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 9 – La Belle et Le Bête and Opium
May 27, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. The remaining three days of the festival continued an ongoing feast of cinematic treasures. Salle Bunuel screened a double feature on May 24th to honor Jean Cocteau. Fifty years have gone by since his death in 1963 and the festival paid him tribute. Cocteau was a previous […]
Bava x 2: Black Sabbath and Baron Blood
By Cleaver Patterson. There was a time before the advent of CGI, when horror movies had to rely on subtlety to induce fear in the viewer. Indeed older films from the horror genre still work today because they used elements, such as fear of the unknown or being alone, which […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 8 – La Vie d’Adèle and Behind the Candelabra
May 25, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. This is truly the year of important gay themes at the festival with L’Inconnu du Lac (Stranger by the Lake)¹ by Alain Guiraudie in Un Certain Regard, destined for a top award, and now Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Vie d’Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Color) headed for the […]