Film Features
Oscars 2013: Best Actor/Actress/DirectorSaturday, 23 February 2013
Given the quantity of uncertain outcomes, this year's Academy Awards guarantee excitement, and there's nothing better than an Oscars ceremony filled with surprises. Furthermore, the selection of films nominated this year are of a rare vintage. Read more... |
Oscars 2013: Best Picture/Foreign Language Film/Animated FilmFriday, 22 February 2013
Time is drawing nigh to mark those Oscar ballots, but what movie should one vote for as the year's best? While odds-makers have been busily touting one title over another, the less-vaunted fact about this year's shortlist is that relatively few stinkers have made the cut. Read more... |
Oscars 2013: Best Screenplays/Supporting Actor/ActressThursday, 21 February 2013
Frank Capra called the Oscars “the most valuable, but least expensive, item of world-wide public relations ever invented by any industry”. They are, like it or not, the film awards against which all others are judged - even to the point that other countries’ film awards are scheduled in relation to the ceremony. Despite being the accepted mark of excellence, the Oscars are not a meritocracy. Read more... |
Oscars 2013: The Spielberg StoryWednesday, 20 February 2013
Whether Lincoln can pip frontrunner Argo to this year's Best Picture gong is in the hands of the Academy, but its 12 nominations are a notable achievement in director Steven Spielberg's extraordinary career. It's sometimes been easy to dismiss Spielberg as a sentimentalist, an entertainer first and an artist second but his films are pure cinema, and for every work of groundbreaking spectacle he's delivered something equally as thought-provoking. Read more... |
Oscars 2013: Casting a vote for political filmsTuesday, 19 February 2013
An intriguing aspect of this year’s battle for Oscar was the early assurance with which pundits placed Lincoln as their favourite for best film. Steven Spielberg's frontrunner merits recognition; what surprises is that no one has noted the significance if it were actually to win. For despite Hollywood’s long history of fine political films, in over 80 years only one has ever won the prize. Read more... |
Oscars 2013: Daniel Day-LewisMonday, 18 February 2013
A week from now he could be the all-time Oscar king. If Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance in Lincoln wins him a third Best Actor award, it will send him clear of a thoroughbred field of nine past double-winners, Jack Nicholson, Spencer Tracy and Dustin Hoffman among them. Those other nine were all American. Read more... |
BAFTAs 2013: Argo, Skyfall and Day-Lewis trump Les MisMonday, 11 February 2013
Presented a clear fortnight ahead of the Oscars, while the BAFTAs might have little, if any, bearing on the decision making there, they at least provide an opportunity for the Brits to have a go at the glitz and glamour before award fatigue sets in. With treacherous weather an inauspicious portent, how the night would go was anyone's guess - for, as the ceremony began, only Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway were clear favourites in their respective categories. Read more... |
Montgomery Clift: The Right ProfileMonday, 04 February 2013
Both on screen and off, Montgomery Clift was sensitive, hesitant, introspective, self-destructive and often tortured. A personality that expressed itself on film as if afraid of what the camera would reveal. There were at least three faces of Clift. The early public one of the dark, romantic, handsome star of the fan magazines; the face of extraordinary beauty marred after a car accident in 1956, and the private face of drink, drugs and a series of unloving homosexual encounters. Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Pablo LarraínMonday, 04 February 2013
Often it takes a generation or two before a country can address its dark days on films; Hitler didn’t feature in a central role in a German film until Downfall, in 2004. This timorousness was certainly the case in Chile, where in the immediate years following the end of General Pinochet’s dictatorship, in 1990, the local cinema was dominated by sex comedies. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the London Comedy Film Festival 2013Thursday, 31 January 2013
Proving that laughter is the only sure-fire cure for the January blues, this year's London Comedy Film Festival took place over four days from Thursday 24th to Sunday 27th January. Known commonly and affectionately as LOCO, it once again showcased the best of comedy filmmaking from around the world, lined-up alongside a range of imaginative events - a programme seemingly designed to give the most depressing month of the year a well deserved kick up the arse. Read more... |
The Return of Arnold SchwarzeneggerTuesday, 22 January 2013
As promised, he's back. Arnold Schwarzenegger's last major movie appearance was in 2003's Teminator 3: Rise of the Machines, probably the worst of the Terminators but a lucrative one nonetheless. Since then he has popped up in a few cameo roles including an appearance as Prince Hapi in the Jackie Chan/Steve Coogan remake of Around the World in 80 Days, but from 2003-2011, he was mostly preoccupied with being governor of California. Read more... |
Parting Shot: Michael Winner, 1935-2012Monday, 21 January 2013
Michael Winner was always proud to call himself a film director but his filmography is notably short of quality moments. Read more... |
Opinion: How soon is too soon for plot spoilers?Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Last November, for the 25,000th time on the stage, the actor playing Sergeant Trotter in The Mousetrap stepped forward during the curtain call and asked members of the audience not to reveal the play's surprise ending to others. To do so would, by implication, spoil the whodunnit for future audiences. Over the years the odd clever-clogs stand-up has disobeyed the injunction. And whoever wrote the play’s Wikipedia entry also gives the game away. Read more... |
"Forget it, Marlowe - it's Chinatown"Sunday, 13 January 2013
The movie version of the hardboiled, trenchcoated private eye, who, being “being neither tarnished nor afraid,” puts honour before personal gain in California’s 1940s noir cityscapes, was never as enduring as his literary original. Read more... |
10 Films to Get Excited About in 2013Thursday, 03 January 2013
We've pondered and pored over the films of 2012 and, while 2013 might have a lot to live up to, thankfully there's plenty of excitement on the horizon. So here are our picks of the coming months.
Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino) - 18 January Read more... |
Film: The Best of 2012Tuesday, 01 January 2013
With poorly heads and nostalgic hearts it’s time to look back over the year that’s passed. And what a year in film it was! For those who like their movies monolithic or miniscule, epic or slender, noisily spectacular or quietly mesmeric, pea-brained or near-impenetrably intellectual - 2012 delivered. In fact it was the year in which there was a 5-star film for everyone. Read more... |
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