Of all the film styles in all the world, Steven Soderbergh chose in 2006 to adapt Joseph Kanon’s novel The Good German as a faux- noir, emulating the techniques and styles of Hollywood’s golden age, with no modern concessions. It wasn’t exactly pitched that way to Warner Brothers though. He told Empire, “I said, OK, [...]
“A king has his reign, then he dies. It’s inevitable.” It is undeniable that Prometheus has problems in the script department, that characters behave in odd ways and are sometimes the writers pawns, moved from point A to B to get to the next set piece. Even when one takes into account first draft scripter [...]
J J Abrams registers births, marriages and deaths The most emotionally satisfying and thrilling sequence in J J Abrams’ reboot of Gene Rodenberry’s “wagon train to the stars” must be the pre-title opener. Yet it barely (!) features any of the characters we know and love. What it does do is boldly set out the motivation [...]
Today marks the birthday of one of the giants of 20th Century cinema, Orson Welles. True, he had a hit and miss career, but his influence is far reaching, if only for his masterpiece, Citizen Kane. In 1991, BBC’s Arena strand made this in depth documentary on the film, which you can watch below (source: [...]
Judge Minty, the long in development labour of love fan film which has recently been touring comic festivals, has finally been released on line, and we have it for you below. The film, about an over the hill Judge who takes the long walk into The Cursed Earth, stars artist Greg Staples in a cameo [...]
Has ever a film had more of a 360 degree critical turnaround than Michael Powell’s 1960 psychodrama, Peeping Tom? Possibly Heaven’s Gate, although at least Powell wasn’t blamed for the perceived ruin of a whole studio. Dilys Powell of The Sunday Times described Peeping Tom as “essentially vicious”. It seemed the director was wilfully flaunting a daring approach, horror as complicit voyeurism, [...]
Even after nineteen years, many people think that the dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park films are solely CGI creations, ushering in a new dawn and signalling the death knell of old school movie effects magic. They are wrong, of course. If anything, it is the outstanding animatronic creature performances of practical effects and make-up genius [...]
Author James Jones exploded onto the literary scene in 1951 with From Here to Eternity, a fictionalized account of his experience in Hawaii before and during the attack on Pearl Harbor. A film version came two years later and was instantly deemed a classic as it swept that year’s Academy Awards, winning eight out of [...]
Last Saturday at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh delivered the keynote speech, pulling no punches about studio executives, indie vs blockbuster marketing, and his idea of the difference between cinema and movies. We have the video and full transcript of the speech below. A few months ago I was on [...]
The opening of Apocalypse Now is a phantasmagorical fusion of imagery and sound, a strange glimpse into the mind of its hero Willard (Martin Sheen); as The End by The Doors opens, helicopter rotors swoop slowly, hypnotically in from the corner of the audience’s perception, then behind, over a jungle canopy that bursts into flame, like a deadly flower. [...]
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