"Watching the film I want the audience to embrace the journey of being a girl. Everyone in the room has to identify [with] a fifteen-year-old teenage girl. That’s why there are no adults in the movie, nor boys."
That’s screenwriter-director Céline Sciamma, talking about her widely praised first film, Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies. Initially [...]
Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies (2007)
Direction and Screenplay: Céline Sciamma. Cast: Pauline Acquart, Louise Blachère, Adele Haenel, Warren Jacquin, Christelle Baras
Writer-director Céline Sciamma’s Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies is a film about teens beginning to discover who they are. It is also a film that actually stars teens — as opposed to mid-twenty-year-olds [...]
The 1913 melodrama Ma l’amor mio non muore / Love Everlasting, starring super-diva Lyda Borelli, will be screened on Tuesday, May 13 at 7pm at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
Why a silent movie screening at an academy of music, of all places?
Well, perhaps because Lyda Borelli (1884–1959) plays a singer in the [...]
"2001 in 2008: A Cinematic Odyssey" is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ next event dedicated to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (right) and actor Tom Hanks will discuss the making of 2001 at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly [...]
Julie Ege, Miss Norway 1962 and the leading lady in several B movies of the 1970s, has died. Ege, who had been suffering from cancer, was 64.
Born in the Norwegian town of Sandnes on November 12, 1943, Ege made her screen debut in 1967 in a couple of bit parts. After a brief appearance [...]
The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954)
Direction: Frank Launder. Screenplay: Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat, and Val Valentine. Cast: Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, Hermione Baddeley, George Cole, Betty Ann Davies, Renee Houston, Beryl Reid, Irene Handl, Mary Merrall, Joan Sims, Guy Middleton
From the first shot of The Belles of St. Trinian’s — which shows the sign of [...]
German Film Academy Awards - Lola 2007-2008
2007-2008 German Film Academy Award nominations: March 28, 2008.
2007-2008 German Film Academy Award winners: Palais am Funkturm in Berlin on April 25, 2008.
(”*” denotes the winner in each category)
The big winner of the 2008 Lola Awards was writer-director Fatih Akin’s cross-cultural drama Auf der anderen Seite / The [...]
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Direction: Carl Theodor Dreyer. Screenplay: Carl Theodor Dreyer and Joseph Delteil. Cast: Maria Falconetti, Eugene Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz, Antonin Artaud, Michel Simon, Jean d’Yd
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s late silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / The Passion of Joan of Arc [...]
London’s BFI Southbank has been hosting an homage to Robert Donat, who died fifty years ago (on June 9, 1958) of a chronic asthma attack at the age of 53.
In spite of his best actor Oscar (for Goodbye Mr. Chips in 1939) and his starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935), Donat is all [...]
The Story of Esther Costello (1957)
Direction: David Miller. Screenplay: Charles Kaufman; from Nicholas Monsarrat’s novel. Cast: Joan Crawford, Rossano Brazzi, Heather Sears, Lee Patterson, Ron Randell, Fay Compton, John Loder, Denis O’Dea, Sid James, Bessie Love
As Margaret Landi, Joan Crawford gets top billing in The Story of Esther Costello, a maudlin tale of a deaf, [...]
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma / Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Direction: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sergio Citti; inspired by the Marquis de Sade’s book. Cast: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Caterina Boratto, Elsa De Giorgi, Hélène Surgère, Sergio Fascetti, Bruno Musso, Antonio [...]
2008 David di Donatello - Italian Academy Awards
The 2008 David di Donatello: films released between April 27, 2007, and March 7, 2008.
2008 David di Donatello nominations: March 20, 2008.
2008 David di Donatello winners: April 18, 2008.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
best film / miglior film
Caos calmo, produced by Domenico Procacci, directed by Antonello Grimaldi [...]
"There is cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso."
That’s none other than Jean Cocteau, referring to the mammoth 1923 drama (original running time: nearly 8 hours) directed and written by Abel Gance — he of Napoleon.
Gance worked for three years on La Roue / The Wheel, which revolves [...]
Hazel Court, the leading lady of numerous B-horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s, died of a heart attack at her home near Lake Tahoe, California, on April 15. She was 82.
I’m unfamiliar with Hazel Court’s work as an actress, but I’m quite familiar (by way of film stills and clips) with her [...]
Posted in DVD, European Cinema, Film on April 16th, 2008 No Comments »
Idioterne / The Idiots (1998)
Direction and Screenplay: Lars von Trier. Cast: Bodil Jørgensen, Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing, Troels Lyby, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Louise Mieritz, Henrik Prip, Luis Mesonero, Knud Romer Jørgensen
The tenth and final "Vow of Chastity" from the Dogme ‘95 manifesto states that "the director must not be credited." That is because the [...]
World Cinema Clips: Luis Buñuel, exiled from Spain since 1938, returned to his country of birth to make Viridiana, a low-key — but pitch-black — comedy about traditional European (read: Christian) mores that went on to receive the 1961 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.
The film stars Silvia Pinal as a young, idealist nun-to-be whose efforts [...]
Berserk! (1967)
Direction: Jim O’Connolly. Screenplay: Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel. Cast: Joan Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors, Michael Gough, Judy Geeson, Robert Hardy, Geoffrey Keen
A delightfully daffy freak show on the surface, underneath Berserk! could play as a 1940s Woman’s Picture: Hard-as-nails female circus owner stops at nothing to get business for her show. [...]
Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis / Welcome to the Sticks (literally, Welcome to the Land of the Ch’tis), a comedy about French regional stereotypes, has been seen by more than 17.4 million people since its February 27 release. That makes it the most successful French production in history. (According to an Agence France Presse report, the [...]
World Cinema Clips: A bit of Communist propaganda, courtesy of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 classic Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin. Considered by many one of the greatest — if not the greatest — film ever made, Battleship Potemkin is best remembered for the "Odessa Steps" expressionist montage sequence.
The propaganda is so effective that the film was, [...]
World Film Clips: The story of a courtesan turned circus performer, Max Ophüls‘ Lola Montès (1955) — the most expensive (part-)French production to date — was a resounding commercial flop. The film was taken away from Ophüls and drastically recut by the producers. That only made matters worse.
A restored — apparently complete — version [...]
World Cinema Clips: Who is the best silent-film comedian? Most people would answer Charles Chaplin. Or Buster Keaton. Or Harold Lloyd. Or even Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.
My favorite silent-film comedian? Someone who never made a film either in Hollywood or during the silent era. That’s Jacques Tati, who, had he been a Hollywood star, would [...]
Du rififi chez les hommes / Rififi (1955)
Direction: Jules Dassin. Screenplay: Jules Dassin, Auguste Le Breton, René Wheeler; from a novel by Auguste Le Breton. Cast: Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Dominique Maurin, Jules Dassin, Janine Darcey, Pierre Grasset, Robert Hossein, Magali Noël, Marie Sabouret, Claude Sylvain, Marcel Lupovici
The easiest, most obvious point to [...]
Posted in European Cinema, Film on April 5th, 2008 No Comments »
World Cinema Clips: The Norwegian mystical-adventure drama Ofelas / Pathfinder (1987) received a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the best foreign-language film category. (It lost to the equally deserving Babette’s Feast.)
Set in northern Scandinavia during the Middle Ages and spoken in a Sami language*, Pathfinder follows a young man (Mikkel Gaup) who attempts to avenge [...]
A 40th anniversary screening of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, will take place on Friday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
(Photo: Stanley Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott, who worked on the film as an "additional photographer.")
Tom Hanks, who, as [...]
Béla Tarr will not be attending tonight’s screening of The Man from London at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Béla Tarr retrospective, which began earlier this month, comes to a close this evening.
In Screen Daily, Jonathan Romney describes The Man from London as "a tour de force of camerawork, not only [...]
