fri 29/03/2024

Film Features

theartsdesk's Christmas Presents Guide

theartsdesk

With the lightning speed of online delivery, there is still masses of time to select the best and most enjoyable presents for Christmas, thanks to the taste and wisdom of theartsdesk's pack of writers.

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theartsdesk in Tallinn: 23rd European Film Awards

Nick Hasted Ghost at the party: Roman Polanski, director of Best Film 'The Ghost', looks on at the European Film Awards

Roman Polanski’s The Ghost won five of the seven European Film Awards it was nominated for last night. It was a display of the sort of sentimental herd mentality familiar from the Oscars which the European Film Academy’s voters like to feel they are better than. Polanski himself loomed from the big screen via Skype, kept from the ceremony in Estonia’s capital by the US arrest warrant which was surely the reason for the Academy’s largesse. The director looked down on the...

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The Seckerson Tapes: Composer Dario Marianelli

Edward Seckerson Composer Dario Marianelli wields his Oscar for his score to the film 'Atonement'

Dario Marianelli won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his score for the movie Atonement, and his return to the theatre after a long absence as composer for the Young Vic's new production of Tennessee Williams's first big Broadway success, The Glass Menagerie, is hotly anticipated. In the rehearsal room he talks about the intricate process that marries music to drama, be it on celluloid or stage. He talks about what fires his imagination and how, for instance, a typewriter...

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theartsdesk at the 2010 London Film Festival

Nick Hasted

Danny Boyle closed 2010’s London Film Festival, as he did 2008’s, and picked up a British Film Institute Fellowship to boot. His 127 Hours had at least one person I know covering her head with her coat during its already infamous auto-amputation-by-penknife scene, though it falls far short of Boyle’s previous triumph with Slumdog Millionaire.

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The Seckerson Tapes: Conductor John Wilson

Edward Seckerson

John Wilson and the orchestra which bears his name created an absolute sensation at the 2009 Proms with their celebration of 75 years of MGM musicals. A total of 3.5 million people watched the broadcast live; countless more all over the world will relive the experience on DVD. Wilson has made a speciality of restoring and recreating great movie scores and presenting them in all their very particular glory in concert halls up and down the UK.

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On Making The First Movie

Mark Cousins 'I had to decide how to capture the kids and the village and the screenings in images'

A documentary film I made recently, The First Movie, won the Prix Italia. Wim Wenders sent an email which said, “I loved it.” When I showed it at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival last month, nearly 1000 people turned up to see it, and many were in tears. How did all this happen? I’m not sure that I know. But, looking back, I can see a chain of decisions...

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Tony Curtis Liked It Hot, 1925-2010

Graham Fuller 'I finessed myself': Tony Curtis as a young man

Tony Curtis, who has died in Las Vegas at the age of 85, made an improbable leap from Bronx street kid - the erstwhile Bernie Schwarz, who was always getting beaten up - to Hollywood icon in the 1950s and early Sixties. That he was able to do so is a testament to his determination to be an actor on the G I Bill, Universal’s willingness to put raw hunks of beef like him and Rock Hudson (a fellow Navy man) under contract, and Bernie’s own belief in his facile charm.

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theartsdesk in Cambridge: 30th Cambridge Film Festival

james Woodall

Cambridge is in pre-term cocktail mood, almost. Its Film Festival slips in after Locarno and Venice, and as Toronto ends, and before Rome (increasingly important) and London (internationally a struggler) start. It tilts in the same direction as the aforementioned, with fully fledged art movies, provocative documentaries and work from a dozen language groups or so, though it's very small and many people might not know it exists.

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Tuscany is Ready for Her Close-Up

Jasper Rees

As befits a film set in Tuscany, Certified Copy is an international affair. It stars Juliette Binoche as a French gallery owner and William Shimell as an English art historian. Its Iranian director is Abbas Kiarostami. The dialogue is in three languages. It’s the latest of la bella Toscana’s many starring roles in what’s been - let's face it - a chequered sort of film career.

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The Leopard: The Original Film for Foodies

Laura Thomas

The Leopard is being re-released by the BFI this week in a new digital restoration. Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s great Sicilian novel was first seen in 1963 and went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Il Gattopardo, to give it its Italian name, charts the decline of the house of Salina, a once mighty clan of Sicilian nobles who watch their power slip away as Garibaldi drags 19th-century Italy toward unity and modernity. But alongside the...

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The Curse of Cruise: When Co-Stars Vanish

Jasper Rees

You’ve heard of the Curse of Frankenstein. You know all about the Curse of Hello! But you may not be aware of the deadliest hex of them all. It goes by the name of the Curse of Cruise and, you just never know, it may be about to strike again. Film-goers have nothing to fear personally, not even if they find themselves watching potent soporifics like Interview with the Vampire or Eyes Wide Shut.

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theartsdesk in Locarno: I'm Watchin' in the Rain

james Woodall

It had to happen. Until now, I've always resisted. But last Thursday, I had, finally, to tear open the plastic container to get to the protection inside. A nice man from Screen International gave me his before leaving - he'd have no use for it. He added that he wouldn't have handed it over had it been stamped with the festival rubric; you know, something that would make it a keepsake.

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theartsdesk in Los Angeles: Dennis Hopper (RIP) On Show

Sarvenaz Sheybany

While most will be familiar with him as an actor, and some will know him also as a photographer and painter, few will be aware of the full extent of the late Dennis Hopper’s artistic practice.

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theartsdesk in Fårö: Bergman's Swedish Dream Island

David Nice

Fifty years ago this April, a city-loving film-maker already internationally famous for such masterpieces as The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries took the ferry from Gotland to the windswept, still snowy island of Fårö (the nearest  we can get in terms of pronounciation might be "Four-er").

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theartsdesk in Los Angeles: Twilight in Tent City

Sarvenaz Sheybany

The Los Angeles Film Festival would seem to have everything going for it. There's the perfect Californian weather, the vast number of stars who live and work in the city, and this year there’s been a glamorous new venue in downtown Los Angeles. The 16th festival has also brought in an ambitious new artistic director, former Newsweek film critic David Ansen, who hopes to unite high and low, screening both crowd-pleasers with major Hollywood talent and small, finely crafted foreign...

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Interview: Martin Amis on 'The Whole Book-To-Film Department'

Jasper Rees

Martin Amis always had his own idea of who should play John Self, the anti-heroic slob narrator of Money. "The only regret I have in the whole book-to-film department,” he told me, “is that Gary Oldman never played John Self. We had a meeting with Gary and he was so unbelievably good, and so instinctively got the character and made me laugh so violently when he did it, that I thought that was a great shame.” Oldman was even prepared to go the extra mile.

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