Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
After Poetry, it makes sense that Lee Chang-dong would find himself interested in deconstructing another literary genre: the murder mystery. Adapting Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” for the screen, the South Korean master has created something that feels akin to a real page turner, with each cut, the tensions, and the mystery rise as we become desperate to know whatever happened to Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), the young woman who went missing, leaving her childhood friend Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) searching for her. With pulpy characters, including a delicious Steven Yeun as a mysterious Gatsby-like figure, and a dark sense of humor, the film also serves as a study of class and the way in which the...
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
After Poetry, it makes sense that Lee Chang-dong would find himself interested in deconstructing another literary genre: the murder mystery. Adapting Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” for the screen, the South Korean master has created something that feels akin to a real page turner, with each cut, the tensions, and the mystery rise as we become desperate to know whatever happened to Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), the young woman who went missing, leaving her childhood friend Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) searching for her. With pulpy characters, including a delicious Steven Yeun as a mysterious Gatsby-like figure, and a dark sense of humor, the film also serves as a study of class and the way in which the...
- 6/17/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
‘This Picture Kills Fascists’ might be a motto for this bombshell essay documentary. Leo Hurwitz’s film wasn’t made welcome in 1948 and would surely be controversial today, as it’s just too &%#$ truthful and blunt about good old American bigotry and injustice. The passionate, jarring plea for humanist sanity really shakes up viewers, in a constructive way. Hurwitz said that one TV executive compared it to The Sermon on the Mount. It’s still a lightning bolt against fascist ideas flourishing in the Land of the Free.
Strange Victory
Blu-ray
The Milestone Cinematheque
1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 64 min. / available through Milestone Films / Street Date August 14, 2018 / 34.95
Narrators: Alfred Drake, Muriel Smith, Gary Merrill, Saul Levitt, Faith Elliott.
Actors: Virgil Richardson, Sophie Maslow, Cathey McGregor, Jack Henderson, Robert P. Donley.
Cinematography: Peter Glushanok, George Jacobsen
Film Editors: Leo Hurwitz, Faith Elliott (Hubley), Mavis Lyons
Original Music: David Diamond
Written by Saul Levitt,...
Strange Victory
Blu-ray
The Milestone Cinematheque
1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 64 min. / available through Milestone Films / Street Date August 14, 2018 / 34.95
Narrators: Alfred Drake, Muriel Smith, Gary Merrill, Saul Levitt, Faith Elliott.
Actors: Virgil Richardson, Sophie Maslow, Cathey McGregor, Jack Henderson, Robert P. Donley.
Cinematography: Peter Glushanok, George Jacobsen
Film Editors: Leo Hurwitz, Faith Elliott (Hubley), Mavis Lyons
Original Music: David Diamond
Written by Saul Levitt,...
- 7/17/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
War changed everything, destroying whole film industries and heralding a new era of realism, grit and shoots on location
•Read the rest of My favourite film decade
The 1940s sundered the 20th century, dispatching an entire global framework and any number of abiding social orders to the ashcan of history. It offered both pinnacle and nadir of human achievement, along with 60 million dead, Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the iron curtain. Inevitably, they changed cinema for ever, too. By 1939, the major Hollywood studios had perfected studio artifice in films such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and bestrode the cinematic world like a colossus; by 1950, they would face the triple threat of the upstart new medium of television; the arrival of the “red”-phobic House Un-American Activities Committee in Hollywood; and the 1948 supreme court decision ordering the break-up of the studios’ monopoly on production, distribution and exhibition.
In between times,...
•Read the rest of My favourite film decade
The 1940s sundered the 20th century, dispatching an entire global framework and any number of abiding social orders to the ashcan of history. It offered both pinnacle and nadir of human achievement, along with 60 million dead, Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the iron curtain. Inevitably, they changed cinema for ever, too. By 1939, the major Hollywood studios had perfected studio artifice in films such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and bestrode the cinematic world like a colossus; by 1950, they would face the triple threat of the upstart new medium of television; the arrival of the “red”-phobic House Un-American Activities Committee in Hollywood; and the 1948 supreme court decision ordering the break-up of the studios’ monopoly on production, distribution and exhibition.
In between times,...
- 3/28/2018
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Film-maker acclaimed as one of Britain’s finest directors of documentaries
John Krish, who has died aged 92, was one of Britain’s finest documentary film-makers, with a long list of credits that stretched from the 1940s to the 80s and across a staggering variety of subjects. His career began in the Crown Film Unit during the second world war, where he assisted Harry Watt on the propaganda film Target for Tonight (1941) and Humphrey Jennings on Listen to Britain (1941) and Fires Were Started (1943).
After serving in the Royal Artillery, he was posted to the Army Film Unit and was one of the editors on The True Glory (1945), the film of the allied invasion of Europe. Invalided out of the army in 1944, he edited newsreels for the Office of War Information, the Us equivalent of the Ministry of Information.
Continue reading...
John Krish, who has died aged 92, was one of Britain’s finest documentary film-makers, with a long list of credits that stretched from the 1940s to the 80s and across a staggering variety of subjects. His career began in the Crown Film Unit during the second world war, where he assisted Harry Watt on the propaganda film Target for Tonight (1941) and Humphrey Jennings on Listen to Britain (1941) and Fires Were Started (1943).
After serving in the Royal Artillery, he was posted to the Army Film Unit and was one of the editors on The True Glory (1945), the film of the allied invasion of Europe. Invalided out of the army in 1944, he edited newsreels for the Office of War Information, the Us equivalent of the Ministry of Information.
Continue reading...
- 5/23/2016
- by Kevin Brownlow
- The Guardian - Film News
Hitler's Madman, a WWII propaganda film, had a complex origin story: filmed shortly after the real events it depicts (the assassination of senior Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and the subsequent massacre of the Czech town of Lidice in reprisal), the appearance of Fritz Lang's similarly-themed Hangmen Also Die! caused its release to be delayed and it also suffered a title change from the catchier Hitler's Hangman. On the plus side, the tiny independent production, shot in just a week, was acquired by MGM and given a bigger budget for re-shoots to enhance its production values. But Sirk ruefully admitted the new scenes actually weakened the film's Poverty Row sensibility, which gave it a slight documentary flavor which was useful.The Lang film is, I think, superior all round, but the two make interesting companions and Sirk's is tougher, in a way. Lang's movie, originally written by Brecht, attempts to build in a small victory,...
- 12/24/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
The Barnes & Noble sale is in full effect until December 1st, the Black Friday deals have already begun, and we still haven’t seen the lowest of the low prices yet.
Thanks to everyone for supporting our site by buying through our affiliate links.
A note on Amazon deals, for those curious: sometimes third party sellers will suddenly appear as the main purchasing option on a product page, even though Amazon will sell it directly from themselves for the sale price that we have listed. If the sale price doesn’t show up, click on the “new” options, and look for Amazon’s listing.
I’ll keep this list updated throughout the week, as new deals are found, and others expire. If you find something that’s wrong, a broken link or price difference, feel free to tweet at me.
Deals On Amazon
Amazon’s Black Friday Deal Calendar Sign...
Thanks to everyone for supporting our site by buying through our affiliate links.
A note on Amazon deals, for those curious: sometimes third party sellers will suddenly appear as the main purchasing option on a product page, even though Amazon will sell it directly from themselves for the sale price that we have listed. If the sale price doesn’t show up, click on the “new” options, and look for Amazon’s listing.
I’ll keep this list updated throughout the week, as new deals are found, and others expire. If you find something that’s wrong, a broken link or price difference, feel free to tweet at me.
Deals On Amazon
Amazon’s Black Friday Deal Calendar Sign...
- 11/23/2015
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
As reported over at The Dissolve, highly respected British film magazine Sight & Sound is famous for its list of the greatest films off all time released once every decade. Since 1952, Citizen Kane held the number one spot until Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo dethroned it in the 2012 poll. Now for the first time Sight & Sound has released a list of the 50 greatest documentary films of all time. The list was compiled after polling from over 200 critics and curators and 100 filmmakers, including “John Akomfrah, Michael Apted, Clio Barnard, James Benning, Sophie Fiennes, Amos Gitai, Paul Greengrass, Jose Guerin, Isaac Julien, Asif Kapadia, Sergei Loznitsa, Kevin Macdonald, James Marsh, Joshua Oppenheimer, Anand Patwardhan, Pawel Pawlikowski, Nicolas Philibert, Walter Salles, and James Toback”.
The top 10 are:
Man With A Movie Camera, (Dziga Vertov, 1929) Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Sans Soleil, (Chris Marker, 1982) Night And Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1989) Chronicle Of A Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin,...
The top 10 are:
Man With A Movie Camera, (Dziga Vertov, 1929) Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Sans Soleil, (Chris Marker, 1982) Night And Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1989) Chronicle Of A Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin,...
- 8/1/2014
- by Max Molinaro
- SoundOnSight
A long unseen Holocaust documentary, on which Alfred Hitchcock had an advisory role, is being restored with the support of filmmaker Stephen Frears.
The film will be shown in early 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the “liberation” of Europe.
An accompanying feature length documentary, Night Will Fall, telling the extraordinary story behind the making and suppression of the film, is being prepared by London-based production company Spring Films in association with Angel TV and The Imperial War Museum.
Details of the two projects were revealed at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (Idfa) by sales agent Cinephil.
The film, made in 1945 by the British Army, chronicles the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and its aftermath.
Produced by Sidney Bernstein and edited by Stewart McAllister (famous for his work with Humphrey Jennings), the doc’s aim was to make it impossible for Germans to deny that the atrocities in the camps took place.
Hitchcock’s role was in advising how the...
The film will be shown in early 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the “liberation” of Europe.
An accompanying feature length documentary, Night Will Fall, telling the extraordinary story behind the making and suppression of the film, is being prepared by London-based production company Spring Films in association with Angel TV and The Imperial War Museum.
Details of the two projects were revealed at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (Idfa) by sales agent Cinephil.
The film, made in 1945 by the British Army, chronicles the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and its aftermath.
Produced by Sidney Bernstein and edited by Stewart McAllister (famous for his work with Humphrey Jennings), the doc’s aim was to make it impossible for Germans to deny that the atrocities in the camps took place.
Hitchcock’s role was in advising how the...
- 11/26/2013
- by geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk (Geoffrey Macnab)
- ScreenDaily
Fighting, dying, hoping, hating … great sports films are about far more than sport itself. Here Guardian and Observer critics pick their 10 best
• Top 10 superhero movies
• Top 10 westerns
• Top 10 documentaries
• Top 10 movie adaptations
• Top 10 animated movies
• Top 10 silent movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. This Sporting Life
Lindsay Anderson brought to bear on his adaptation of David Storey's first novel, all the poetic-realist instincts he had been honing for the previous decade as a documentarian in the Humphrey Jennings mould. (Anderson had won the 1953 best doc Oscar for Thursday's Children.) Filmed partly in Halifax and Leeds, but mainly in and around Wakefield Trinity Rugby League Club, one of its incidental attractions is its record of a northern, working-class sports culture that would change out of all recognition over the next couple of decades.
The story of Frank Machin, a miner who becomes a star on the rugby field,...
• Top 10 superhero movies
• Top 10 westerns
• Top 10 documentaries
• Top 10 movie adaptations
• Top 10 animated movies
• Top 10 silent movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. This Sporting Life
Lindsay Anderson brought to bear on his adaptation of David Storey's first novel, all the poetic-realist instincts he had been honing for the previous decade as a documentarian in the Humphrey Jennings mould. (Anderson had won the 1953 best doc Oscar for Thursday's Children.) Filmed partly in Halifax and Leeds, but mainly in and around Wakefield Trinity Rugby League Club, one of its incidental attractions is its record of a northern, working-class sports culture that would change out of all recognition over the next couple of decades.
The story of Frank Machin, a miner who becomes a star on the rugby field,...
- 11/25/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Nothing seems more abrasive in cinema than lo-fi maximalism, that unapologetic assault by which a film with comparatively limited resources operates beyond and against established aesthetic principles. Rapid-fire editing, percussive rhythms, irony relayed through the reappropriation of mainstream techniques: think of The Battle of Algiers (1966), think of Guy Maddin.
Think also of Cuban-born Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938-2003), whose short films seem to embody the properties of guerrilla warfare itself—or more precisely, the guerrilla warfare by which Batista’s Cuban dictatorship was overthrown in the 1950s. The six Guillén Landrián shorts programmed by the Viennale this year, all made between 1964 and 1968, were conditioned by and actively responded to the multiple contradictions that characterised working life in Cuba in the decade following its revolution.
Just as history itself progresses in staggered leaps and stuttered bounds, Guillén Landrián’s work continuously and indefatigably frustrates all sense of aesthetic or narrative harmony. It is aggressive.
Think also of Cuban-born Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938-2003), whose short films seem to embody the properties of guerrilla warfare itself—or more precisely, the guerrilla warfare by which Batista’s Cuban dictatorship was overthrown in the 1950s. The six Guillén Landrián shorts programmed by the Viennale this year, all made between 1964 and 1968, were conditioned by and actively responded to the multiple contradictions that characterised working life in Cuba in the decade following its revolution.
Just as history itself progresses in staggered leaps and stuttered bounds, Guillén Landrián’s work continuously and indefatigably frustrates all sense of aesthetic or narrative harmony. It is aggressive.
- 11/1/2013
- by Michael Pattison
- MUBI
For years the essay film has been a neglected form, but now its unorthodox approach to constructing reality is winning over a younger, tech-savvy crowd
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
- 8/3/2013
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
(Humphrey Jennings, 1944-51, BFI, E)
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
- 7/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
(Humphrey Jennings, 1944-51, BFI, E)
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
Jennings was killed filming in Greece in 1950 aged 43, bringing to a premature end the career of one of the major figures in British cultural life of the 1930s and 40s. Poet, painter, designer, surrealist, Blakean social visionary, he brought all his gifts together as a documentary film-maker. He was, according to Lindsay Anderson, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced".
The crucial second volume of his collected works included his wartime masterpieces, Listen to Britain (1942) and Fires Were Started (1943). Volume three rounds out the war with The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944), his odd recounting of how the German soldiers' favourite ballad was taken up by the British squaddies, and A Diary for Timothy (1945), a film about the last year of the war and the prospects for the future, its delicate script written by Em Forster and beautifully read by Michael Redgrave.
- 7/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
In the 1940s and 50s, the Boulting brothers won over filmgoers and critics with a series of classics – from Brighton Rock to Private's Progress. As the BFI begins a retrospective, Michael Newton explores their version of Britain
The history of the Boulting brothers is the history of British cinema in miniature. The brilliance, the comforts and the disappointments are all there. In the 1940s, they take off from documentary realism to reach the heights of noir extravagance, before falling back into a gently unexciting worthiness. At the start of the 1950s they produce two fascinating oddities, characteristic of the oddity of the times. Later that decade, they turn to cosily satirical farce, the products of an exasperated, grump. The 1960s see them trying to get with it and making a middle-aged effort to "swing", but also creating one work that finds a vulnerable, extraordinary beauty in ordinary lives. And after that comes a petering out,...
The history of the Boulting brothers is the history of British cinema in miniature. The brilliance, the comforts and the disappointments are all there. In the 1940s, they take off from documentary realism to reach the heights of noir extravagance, before falling back into a gently unexciting worthiness. At the start of the 1950s they produce two fascinating oddities, characteristic of the oddity of the times. Later that decade, they turn to cosily satirical farce, the products of an exasperated, grump. The 1960s see them trying to get with it and making a middle-aged effort to "swing", but also creating one work that finds a vulnerable, extraordinary beauty in ordinary lives. And after that comes a petering out,...
- 7/26/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
(John Krish, 1959-77; BFI, 15)
John Krish entered the cinema as a teenager early in the second world war, working for the Crown Film Unit (on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain) and the Army Film Unit (as an editor on Carol Reed and Garson Kanin's The True Glory), before joining British Transport Films. It was with the latter group that he made his classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), a beautiful movie about London's last tram journey. It was shown in a much acclaimed quartet of his pictures that travelled the country in 2010, and was included, along with his infinitely moving I Think They Call Him John (1964), in Shadows of Progress, the BFI's four-disc survey of postwar British documentary.
Now, in Krish's 90th year, the BFI help clinch his reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive and distinguished documentarians with a compilation of his work,...
John Krish entered the cinema as a teenager early in the second world war, working for the Crown Film Unit (on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain) and the Army Film Unit (as an editor on Carol Reed and Garson Kanin's The True Glory), before joining British Transport Films. It was with the latter group that he made his classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953), a beautiful movie about London's last tram journey. It was shown in a much acclaimed quartet of his pictures that travelled the country in 2010, and was included, along with his infinitely moving I Think They Call Him John (1964), in Shadows of Progress, the BFI's four-disc survey of postwar British documentary.
Now, in Krish's 90th year, the BFI help clinch his reputation as one of Britain's most distinctive and distinguished documentarians with a compilation of his work,...
- 4/27/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Film-maker whose documentaries allowed the subjects to speak for themselves
The documentary film-maker Michael Grigsby, who has died aged 76, strove to convey the experiences of ordinary people, and those on the margins of society. His subjects ranged from Inuit hunters in northern Canada and North Sea fishermen to Northern Irish farmers, Vietnamese villagers and, most recently, ageing American veterans of the Vietnam war.
He made more than 30 films – many of them for Granada TV's World in Action and Disappearing World – which were marked by the way in which they allowed their subjects to speak for themselves. Taking his films back to the communities he had filmed for their approval became a vital part of Grigsby's process of securing trust. Some – like the Inuit – would subsequently use his films to explain their lives to outsiders.
Grigsby's questions were never heard and he abhorred commentary, preferring brief captions or the overlaid voices...
The documentary film-maker Michael Grigsby, who has died aged 76, strove to convey the experiences of ordinary people, and those on the margins of society. His subjects ranged from Inuit hunters in northern Canada and North Sea fishermen to Northern Irish farmers, Vietnamese villagers and, most recently, ageing American veterans of the Vietnam war.
He made more than 30 films – many of them for Granada TV's World in Action and Disappearing World – which were marked by the way in which they allowed their subjects to speak for themselves. Taking his films back to the communities he had filmed for their approval became a vital part of Grigsby's process of securing trust. Some – like the Inuit – would subsequently use his films to explain their lives to outsiders.
Grigsby's questions were never heard and he abhorred commentary, preferring brief captions or the overlaid voices...
- 3/21/2013
- by Ian Christie
- The Guardian - Film News
Intrigued by the surrealists' idea of changing a city just by altering the way we look at it, Patrick Keiller turned the camera on London (originally published 31 May 1994)
"Do you know that Zola once lived in Crystal Palace, Rimbaud off Tottenham Court Road?" asks Patrick Keiller , assigning parts of London to dead writers, like a cabbie versed in French Literature. Keiller is the writer/director of a beguiling new film on the capital, called, economically enough, London. Not your bacon rolls and Woodbines fare, his film is rather more concerned with tracing the city's cultural past, especially its French Connection. If this makes the film's brow seem forbiddingly high, don't worry: it soon slips.
This is London seen through the eyes of "an arty Dave Spart", in Keiller's words, a certain Robinson, who drifts through Tesco's distracted by thoughts of Baudelaire. According to the conceit which shapes this film -...
"Do you know that Zola once lived in Crystal Palace, Rimbaud off Tottenham Court Road?" asks Patrick Keiller , assigning parts of London to dead writers, like a cabbie versed in French Literature. Keiller is the writer/director of a beguiling new film on the capital, called, economically enough, London. Not your bacon rolls and Woodbines fare, his film is rather more concerned with tracing the city's cultural past, especially its French Connection. If this makes the film's brow seem forbiddingly high, don't worry: it soon slips.
This is London seen through the eyes of "an arty Dave Spart", in Keiller's words, a certain Robinson, who drifts through Tesco's distracted by thoughts of Baudelaire. According to the conceit which shapes this film -...
- 11/30/2012
- by Robert Yates
- The Guardian - Film News
After World War Two, just as the Us was getting hot under the collar about imaginary left-wing plots to seduce the nation via hidden messages in the movies, by a remarkable coincidence British cinema was infiltrated by a genuine socialist conspiracy.
Late in the war, as victory began to seem graspable, people started thinking about what kind of United Kingdom they wanted to live in: Winston Churchill may have led the nation through the conflict, but now something different was required. Sir Michael Balcon, head of Ealing Studios, was part of a group of filmmakers and creative types working behind the scenes to prepare the ground for a Labour government and the introduction of socialist programmes like the National Health Service.
Humphrey Jennings' eloquently understated propaganda short A Diary for Timothy looks at a new-born baby and wonders what kind of world he'll grow up in: as critic Raymond Durgnat observed,...
Late in the war, as victory began to seem graspable, people started thinking about what kind of United Kingdom they wanted to live in: Winston Churchill may have led the nation through the conflict, but now something different was required. Sir Michael Balcon, head of Ealing Studios, was part of a group of filmmakers and creative types working behind the scenes to prepare the ground for a Labour government and the introduction of socialist programmes like the National Health Service.
Humphrey Jennings' eloquently understated propaganda short A Diary for Timothy looks at a new-born baby and wonders what kind of world he'll grow up in: as critic Raymond Durgnat observed,...
- 11/28/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
The book behind the Olympic opening ceremony
Didn't we all love the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics? And didn't we all hate the closing ceremony? There was a reason for this: the opening ceremony was actually more coherent than it seemed, because it was underpinned by intellectual foundations – namely, Pandæmonium. The screenwriter and children's author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who worked with Danny Boyle on the ceremony, gave him a copy of this book early on in the project, and its ideas percolated, with splendid results, into the finished result. (In his excellent foreword, Boyce writes: "When I first held this book in my hand, I swear I could feel it shaking with its own internal energy.")
Something of an obsessive labour of love, Pandæmonium is a compilation of writings from 1660 – specifically, the section in Book I of Paradise Lost in which Milton describes the building of the capital city of Hell – to 1886, describing,...
Didn't we all love the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics? And didn't we all hate the closing ceremony? There was a reason for this: the opening ceremony was actually more coherent than it seemed, because it was underpinned by intellectual foundations – namely, Pandæmonium. The screenwriter and children's author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who worked with Danny Boyle on the ceremony, gave him a copy of this book early on in the project, and its ideas percolated, with splendid results, into the finished result. (In his excellent foreword, Boyce writes: "When I first held this book in my hand, I swear I could feel it shaking with its own internal energy.")
Something of an obsessive labour of love, Pandæmonium is a compilation of writings from 1660 – specifically, the section in Book I of Paradise Lost in which Milton describes the building of the capital city of Hell – to 1886, describing,...
- 11/6/2012
- by Nicholas Lezard
- The Guardian - Film News
Humphrey Jennings's purpose was clear: to present the human history of the industrial revolution
When factory chimneys reared up during the Olympic opening ceremony I thought at once: "Pandaemonium – he must have read it" – then "Oh nonsense, it was published almost 30 years ago and one never sees it around nowadays." But Danny Boyle had, indeed, read it. Humphrey Jennings's great work did inspire an occasion with which nearly everyone in this country was going to fall in love.
Jennings is most often remembered for the documentary films he made about Britain at war. His daughter Marie-Louise, who (with their friend Charles Madge) edited Pandaemonium, prefaces a new edition of it with a brief account of his life that shows how many and how various were his gifts. Erudite scholar, painter, poet, film-maker – before he died in an accident at the age of 43 it must have been hard to...
When factory chimneys reared up during the Olympic opening ceremony I thought at once: "Pandaemonium – he must have read it" – then "Oh nonsense, it was published almost 30 years ago and one never sees it around nowadays." But Danny Boyle had, indeed, read it. Humphrey Jennings's great work did inspire an occasion with which nearly everyone in this country was going to fall in love.
Jennings is most often remembered for the documentary films he made about Britain at war. His daughter Marie-Louise, who (with their friend Charles Madge) edited Pandaemonium, prefaces a new edition of it with a brief account of his life that shows how many and how various were his gifts. Erudite scholar, painter, poet, film-maker – before he died in an accident at the age of 43 it must have been hard to...
- 10/12/2012
- by Diana Athill
- The Guardian - Film News
Player scheduled for end of 2013 with experts and public helping to choose which films will be digitised over next five years
An internet "player", which will give unprecedented access to Britain's film heritage online, whether that's the innovations of the early pioneer Rw Paul or the Mass Observation documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, was announced on Tuesday as part of a five-year plan for British film.
The British Film Institute, which has taken on a lead role for all aspects of film since the abolition of the UK Film Council outlined how it plans to spend over £500m over the next five years.
The organisation's chairman Greg Dyke said that included spending £50m a year of lottery money, which was "not as much as you might think". He promised a less London-centric approach and said the BFI's three priorities would be: education and audiences; film and film-making, and film heritage.
On...
An internet "player", which will give unprecedented access to Britain's film heritage online, whether that's the innovations of the early pioneer Rw Paul or the Mass Observation documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, was announced on Tuesday as part of a five-year plan for British film.
The British Film Institute, which has taken on a lead role for all aspects of film since the abolition of the UK Film Council outlined how it plans to spend over £500m over the next five years.
The organisation's chairman Greg Dyke said that included spending £50m a year of lottery money, which was "not as much as you might think". He promised a less London-centric approach and said the BFI's three priorities would be: education and audiences; film and film-making, and film heritage.
On...
- 10/3/2012
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
An innovative website is offering readers the chance to turn out-of-print titles into free ebooks
In 1771, Matthew Boulton, manufacturer and steam pioneer, promised to pay Dr Darwin of Lichfield £1,000, should he be able to deliver "an Instrument called an organ that is capable of pronouncing the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and Ten Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue". History does not record what Dr Darwin managed, and 240 years later we're still struggling with Siri, but a passion for technological advances remains undimmed.
Many such stories are collected in Humphrey Jennings's classic Pandaemonium: The Coming of the Machine As Seen By Contemporary Observers. Jennings spent a lifetime collecting the material within, and it was to this record that Frank Cottrell Boyce referred Danny Boyle and his team for the first segment of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, inspiring the spectacle of the industrial revolution. Unfortunately, if you go...
In 1771, Matthew Boulton, manufacturer and steam pioneer, promised to pay Dr Darwin of Lichfield £1,000, should he be able to deliver "an Instrument called an organ that is capable of pronouncing the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and Ten Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue". History does not record what Dr Darwin managed, and 240 years later we're still struggling with Siri, but a passion for technological advances remains undimmed.
Many such stories are collected in Humphrey Jennings's classic Pandaemonium: The Coming of the Machine As Seen By Contemporary Observers. Jennings spent a lifetime collecting the material within, and it was to this record that Frank Cottrell Boyce referred Danny Boyle and his team for the first segment of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, inspiring the spectacle of the industrial revolution. Unfortunately, if you go...
- 8/11/2012
- by James Bridle
- The Guardian - Film News
Julien Temple's remarkable, heartwarming, superbly edited documentary combines music, archive footage, clips from old feature films and new interviews to create a vivid portrait of a changing London. Its collage technique, humanism and sympathy for ordinary people has much in common with the vision of Britain created by Danny Boyle's team for the opening of the Olympics, both evoking the spirit of the great Humphrey Jennings. It ranges in time from the last days of Victorian England to the present and takes in the Sidney Street siege, the Battle of Cable Street, the impact of two world wars, the Depression, postwar austerity, coronations, the arrival of new immigrants and the 2011 riots.
It's essentially a hopeful film about a vibrant city forever renewing itself. The imaginatively chosen music takes in the cockney knees-up of The Lambeth Walk, the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK and the genteel romanticism...
It's essentially a hopeful film about a vibrant city forever renewing itself. The imaginatively chosen music takes in the cockney knees-up of The Lambeth Walk, the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK and the genteel romanticism...
- 8/4/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The secret's out - the Olympic opening ceremony was a pyrotechnic act of confession and as its writer, I was elated by the magic we created
It's the morning after the opening ceremony. For two years I've felt constipated with secrets, but last night was a pyrotechnic act of confession, and I feel elated. At last I don't have to talk about "Betty" any more. Betty was the code name for Thomas Heatherwick's beautiful, delicate Olympic cauldron. She was named after the executive producer's dog. And so we were liable to get strange messages about "going to visit Betty" and "what to do if Betty malfunctions" and even "burning Betty". For the last two years I've been going round bragging about being the writer on Danny Boyle's opening ceremony. The usual response is: "Wow!" followed by: "Errrm, what do you mean?" Which is what I asked Danny when he first asked me.
It's the morning after the opening ceremony. For two years I've felt constipated with secrets, but last night was a pyrotechnic act of confession, and I feel elated. At last I don't have to talk about "Betty" any more. Betty was the code name for Thomas Heatherwick's beautiful, delicate Olympic cauldron. She was named after the executive producer's dog. And so we were liable to get strange messages about "going to visit Betty" and "what to do if Betty malfunctions" and even "burning Betty". For the last two years I've been going round bragging about being the writer on Danny Boyle's opening ceremony. The usual response is: "Wow!" followed by: "Errrm, what do you mean?" Which is what I asked Danny when he first asked me.
- 7/30/2012
- by Frank Cottrell Boyce
- The Guardian - Film News
Cannes is now over which means it’s time to move to Britain as the Edinburgh Film Festival kicks off!
We’ve just been sent the full line-up for the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival which is now in it’s 66th year. We have our people (Jamie, Steven and Emma) on the ground at the event right now ready to catch as many films as they possible can throughout the next wee or two as we get to see 121 new features and 19 world premieres.
I’ll let the full press release below do the talking but let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments section below.
World Premieres:
Berberian Sound Studio Borrowed Time Day Of The Flowers Exit Elena Flying Blind Fred Future My Love Guinea Pigs Here, Then Leave It On The Track The Life And Times Of Paul The Psychic Octopus Life Just Is Mnl...
We’ve just been sent the full line-up for the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival which is now in it’s 66th year. We have our people (Jamie, Steven and Emma) on the ground at the event right now ready to catch as many films as they possible can throughout the next wee or two as we get to see 121 new features and 19 world premieres.
I’ll let the full press release below do the talking but let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments section below.
World Premieres:
Berberian Sound Studio Borrowed Time Day Of The Flowers Exit Elena Flying Blind Fred Future My Love Guinea Pigs Here, Then Leave It On The Track The Life And Times Of Paul The Psychic Octopus Life Just Is Mnl...
- 5/30/2012
- by David Sztypuljak
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The full programme for the 66th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff), which runs from 20 June to 1 July, has been officially announced and will feature nineteen World premieres and thirteen International premieres.
The Festival will showcase one hundred and twenty-one new features from fifty-two countries, including eleven European premieres and seventy-six UK premieres in addition to the World and International premieres. Highlights include the World premieres of Richard Ledes’ Fred; Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena and Benjamin Pascoe’s Leave It On The Track and European premieres of Lu Sheng’s Here, There and Yang Jung-ho’s Mirage in the maiden New Perspectives section; and the International premiere of Benicio Del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Gaspar Noé, Juan Carlos Tabio and Laurent Cantet’s 7 Days In Havana and the European premiere of Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America in the Directors’ Showcase. In addition to the new features presented,...
The Festival will showcase one hundred and twenty-one new features from fifty-two countries, including eleven European premieres and seventy-six UK premieres in addition to the World and International premieres. Highlights include the World premieres of Richard Ledes’ Fred; Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena and Benjamin Pascoe’s Leave It On The Track and European premieres of Lu Sheng’s Here, There and Yang Jung-ho’s Mirage in the maiden New Perspectives section; and the International premiere of Benicio Del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Gaspar Noé, Juan Carlos Tabio and Laurent Cantet’s 7 Days In Havana and the European premiere of Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America in the Directors’ Showcase. In addition to the new features presented,...
- 5/30/2012
- by Phil
- Nerdly
(1941-43, BFI, E)
Created in 1930 by John Grierson, the British documentary movement reached its apotheosis during the second world war as the Crown Film Unit. Its dominant figure was Humphrey Jennings, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced", as Lindsay Anderson put it in the influential 1954 Sight & Sound essay reprinted in the excellent booklet accompanying this outstanding second part of the BFI's three-volume collection of Jennings's work.
The war transformed the Cambridge literary scholar and surrealist painter into a great artist, his heart beating with that of the nation in five masterly movies. First came two 10-minute patriotic-propagandistic films: The Heart of Britain (1941) (narrated for its American audience by Ed Murrow) and Words for Battle (1941), where Laurence Oliver reads from Milton, Blake, Browning, Kipling, Churchill and Lincoln. These were followed by the near flawless Listen to Britain (1942), a paean to communal music-making; Fires Were Started (1943), a feature-length...
Created in 1930 by John Grierson, the British documentary movement reached its apotheosis during the second world war as the Crown Film Unit. Its dominant figure was Humphrey Jennings, "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced", as Lindsay Anderson put it in the influential 1954 Sight & Sound essay reprinted in the excellent booklet accompanying this outstanding second part of the BFI's three-volume collection of Jennings's work.
The war transformed the Cambridge literary scholar and surrealist painter into a great artist, his heart beating with that of the nation in five masterly movies. First came two 10-minute patriotic-propagandistic films: The Heart of Britain (1941) (narrated for its American audience by Ed Murrow) and Words for Battle (1941), where Laurence Oliver reads from Milton, Blake, Browning, Kipling, Churchill and Lincoln. These were followed by the near flawless Listen to Britain (1942), a paean to communal music-making; Fires Were Started (1943), a feature-length...
- 5/5/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Ben Rivers' film is about a man who lives in a remote Scottish house. We follow his daily life – but don't know why. Welcome to 'slow cinema'
This could be the least glamorous wrap party in the history of cinema. It is 2am, and we're sitting around a dying fire, sipping tea and whisky in the middle of a pine forest in Aberdeenshire, in the junk-strewn courtyard of an old farmhouse. The house belongs to Jake Williams, wiry, bright-eyed and with an impressive white beard. He's the movie's star; or, rather, he's the only person in it. Opposite him sit the crew: director Ben Rivers and sound recordist Chu-li Shewring. That's it. They have just finished shooting the final scene of Rivers' first feature: a close-up of Williams staring into the fire as it slowly dies. They've shot it twice tonight, adding bits of car tyre (it gives off a nice,...
This could be the least glamorous wrap party in the history of cinema. It is 2am, and we're sitting around a dying fire, sipping tea and whisky in the middle of a pine forest in Aberdeenshire, in the junk-strewn courtyard of an old farmhouse. The house belongs to Jake Williams, wiry, bright-eyed and with an impressive white beard. He's the movie's star; or, rather, he's the only person in it. Opposite him sit the crew: director Ben Rivers and sound recordist Chu-li Shewring. That's it. They have just finished shooting the final scene of Rivers' first feature: a close-up of Williams staring into the fire as it slowly dies. They've shot it twice tonight, adding bits of car tyre (it gives off a nice,...
- 4/26/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★★★ The Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume Two is the second DVD /Blu-ray collection of the British documentary director's work from the 1941-3 period, including two of his most iconic films, Words for Battle (1941) and Listen to Britain (1942). Jennings' work cannot be overvalued for their historical significance and cinematic skill, and this collection provides a series of short documentaries that explore every corner of British life.
Read more »...
Read more »...
- 4/24/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
Ladddddiiiiiessss and gentlemennnnnn. Are you ready for an auteur smackdown? The Cannes 2012 line-up has been announced. Let's. Get. Ready. To rrrrrrrrrrrrr-read about lots of potentially brilliant films from great directors.
Top of a bill rammed with arthouse heavyweights are Jacques "The Warden" Audiard and Michael "Pain for pleasure" Haneke. The big-name brawlers enter the crowded ring with Rust & Bone - Audiard's drama about a killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard) who loses her legs on the job - and Love, Haneke's film about a woman (Isabelle Huppert) who moves back in with her parents after her mother suffers a stroke.
Other fighters looking to make their mark on the canvas include Ken "The Realist" Loach (The Angels' Share), Walter "Highwayman" Salles (On the Road) and "Massive" Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone in Love). They'll be heading into...
The big story
Ladddddiiiiiessss and gentlemennnnnn. Are you ready for an auteur smackdown? The Cannes 2012 line-up has been announced. Let's. Get. Ready. To rrrrrrrrrrrrr-read about lots of potentially brilliant films from great directors.
Top of a bill rammed with arthouse heavyweights are Jacques "The Warden" Audiard and Michael "Pain for pleasure" Haneke. The big-name brawlers enter the crowded ring with Rust & Bone - Audiard's drama about a killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard) who loses her legs on the job - and Love, Haneke's film about a woman (Isabelle Huppert) who moves back in with her parents after her mother suffers a stroke.
Other fighters looking to make their mark on the canvas include Ken "The Realist" Loach (The Angels' Share), Walter "Highwayman" Salles (On the Road) and "Massive" Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone in Love). They'll be heading into...
- 4/19/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
Humphrey Jennings's work for the Crown Film Unit in the 1940s gives us a fascinating insight into Britain during wartime. Here, in a clip from his 1942 short film Listen to Britain, we get a glimpse of his talent for picking out the details in the lives of ordinary people that was acclaimed by the likes of Lindsay Anderson and Kevin Macdonald.
• Volume two of The Complete Humphrey Jennings is out via the BFI on 23 April...
• Volume two of The Complete Humphrey Jennings is out via the BFI on 23 April...
- 4/16/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
Italian film director celebrated for his insightful short films
The film director Vittorio De Seta, who has died aged 88, was best known for his short films. A selection of these, made in Sicily and Sardinia in the 1950s, was presented by Martin Scorsese at the 2005 Tribeca film festival in New York. Scorsese described De Seta's style as that of "an anthropologist who speaks with the voice of a poet". The film historian Goffredo Fofi has hailed De Seta as an Italian director "to be remembered alongside the Rossellinis and De Sicas, the Antonionis and the Fellinis"; he also deserves to be remembered alongside the great poetic documentary makers, such as Robert Flaherty, Humphrey Jennings and Basil Wright.
De Seta was born in Palermo, Sicily, to an aristocratic landowning family from Calabria. He enrolled in the navy during the second world war and, after the armistice in 1943, refused to sign allegiance...
The film director Vittorio De Seta, who has died aged 88, was best known for his short films. A selection of these, made in Sicily and Sardinia in the 1950s, was presented by Martin Scorsese at the 2005 Tribeca film festival in New York. Scorsese described De Seta's style as that of "an anthropologist who speaks with the voice of a poet". The film historian Goffredo Fofi has hailed De Seta as an Italian director "to be remembered alongside the Rossellinis and De Sicas, the Antonionis and the Fellinis"; he also deserves to be remembered alongside the great poetic documentary makers, such as Robert Flaherty, Humphrey Jennings and Basil Wright.
De Seta was born in Palermo, Sicily, to an aristocratic landowning family from Calabria. He enrolled in the navy during the second world war and, after the armistice in 1943, refused to sign allegiance...
- 12/12/2011
- by John Francis Lane
- The Guardian - Film News
Director who found success across film, TV and advertising
Paul Dickson, who has died aged 91, had a long, versatile and award-winning career in film, television and advertising. His critical reputation rests on two remarkable postwar documentaries, The Undefeated (1950) and David (1951, the Welsh contribution to the Festival of Britain). Episodes of The Avengers (1968) and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 1969 were among his best-known television credits.
Dickson first attracted notice with The Undefeated, a film about the difficulties faced by injured wartime combatants who were patients at rehabilitation centres in Roehampton, Stoke Mandeville and elsewhere, as they adjusted to life in the postwar world. A calculated but moving attempt to destigmatise state help for disabled people, the film quickly became a critical success after opening at the Edinburgh film festival. A recruitment drive for the Korean war appeared to curtail its wider circulation, but it was awarded best documentary by the British...
Paul Dickson, who has died aged 91, had a long, versatile and award-winning career in film, television and advertising. His critical reputation rests on two remarkable postwar documentaries, The Undefeated (1950) and David (1951, the Welsh contribution to the Festival of Britain). Episodes of The Avengers (1968) and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 1969 were among his best-known television credits.
Dickson first attracted notice with The Undefeated, a film about the difficulties faced by injured wartime combatants who were patients at rehabilitation centres in Roehampton, Stoke Mandeville and elsewhere, as they adjusted to life in the postwar world. A calculated but moving attempt to destigmatise state help for disabled people, the film quickly became a critical success after opening at the Edinburgh film festival. A recruitment drive for the Korean war appeared to curtail its wider circulation, but it was awarded best documentary by the British...
- 11/9/2011
- by Scott Anthony
- The Guardian - Film News
"For a time in the mid-to-late 1920s," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times, "the art of the cinema meant only one thing to the serious-minded film critics of America and Europe: Soviet-style montage, or the art of cutting shots together in a way that would produce ideas and emotions beyond those expressed in the images themselves…. The montage vogue did not last long…. But the fascination of this road not much taken remains, as reflected in Kino's recent Blu-ray releases of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and his first feature, Strike, and now by a boxed set of eight films from Flicker Alley, Landmarks of Early Soviet Film. Part of the folklore of Soviet montage is that it was invented by the idealistic filmmakers of a newborn nation as a way of converting imported American movies from capitalist pettifoggery into proletarian uplift by rearranging sequences and redefining characters. Alas, none...
- 10/11/2011
- MUBI
(1934-40, E, BFI)
A pupil at Cambridge of the great critic I A Richards, Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a surrealist painter, a poet and a documentary moviemaker. He died in a freak accident while scouting locations in Greece, and in 1954 he was famously called "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced" by his admirer Lindsay Anderson. His great period was the second world war when he directed Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy. This first volume of an invaluable three-volume edition of his work covers his career from joining the Gpo film unit up to his first four wartime movies, culminating in the influential classic on the 1940 blitz, London Can Take It!, co-directed by Harry Watt and narrated by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds. Most of the prewar films are fairly impersonal but all are of interest, most especially perhaps a colour film on his Cambridge contemporary,...
A pupil at Cambridge of the great critic I A Richards, Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) was a surrealist painter, a poet and a documentary moviemaker. He died in a freak accident while scouting locations in Greece, and in 1954 he was famously called "the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced" by his admirer Lindsay Anderson. His great period was the second world war when he directed Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy. This first volume of an invaluable three-volume edition of his work covers his career from joining the Gpo film unit up to his first four wartime movies, culminating in the influential classic on the 1940 blitz, London Can Take It!, co-directed by Harry Watt and narrated by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds. Most of the prewar films are fairly impersonal but all are of interest, most especially perhaps a colour film on his Cambridge contemporary,...
- 10/8/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Retro-action! Volumes 1-3
It's a common occurrence: you buy a box set of a show you fondly yet vaguely remember, then, after you've got the buzz of seeing the title sequence again and reacquainted yourself with the characters, you find that maybe the whole series wasn't as good as your rose-tinted vision had you believe.
That's why these compilation discs are such a great move. All the shows here (one episode of each) are from Itc, a UK production company run by the legendary showbiz impresario Lord Lew Grade and responsible for much of our world-class TV output during the 1960s and 1970s. Itc shot everything on film rather than video (so everything here looks stunning) and made full use of all the writers, directors, actors, craftsmen and technicians the British film industry had to offer. Over three separately available discs you get the pick of such classics as The...
It's a common occurrence: you buy a box set of a show you fondly yet vaguely remember, then, after you've got the buzz of seeing the title sequence again and reacquainted yourself with the characters, you find that maybe the whole series wasn't as good as your rose-tinted vision had you believe.
That's why these compilation discs are such a great move. All the shows here (one episode of each) are from Itc, a UK production company run by the legendary showbiz impresario Lord Lew Grade and responsible for much of our world-class TV output during the 1960s and 1970s. Itc shot everything on film rather than video (so everything here looks stunning) and made full use of all the writers, directors, actors, craftsmen and technicians the British film industry had to offer. Over three separately available discs you get the pick of such classics as The...
- 9/16/2011
- by Phelim O'Neill
- The Guardian - Film News
An art deco oasis with a warm personality in the heart of Letchworth Garden City is the subject of our ninth cinema review
• Check out our Google map and flickr group
• Tell us where to go next
On location: The last building at the end of a high street containing – among other things – a Wilkinsons, Poundstretcher and Pizza Hut. You get to City Kebab and Pizza, and suddenly, towering above you on your left, is the magnificent art deco Broadway Cinema.
It's walkable from the train station, and has plenty of parks and other green areas on hand to demonstrate Letchworth's garden city status. It's only a couple of minutes' walk from the local Morrisons, should you fancy a pre- or post-screening scotch egg.
Crowd scene: A typical daytime weekend queue at the box office will consist of some students, a family of four, two early teens deciding whether or...
• Check out our Google map and flickr group
• Tell us where to go next
On location: The last building at the end of a high street containing – among other things – a Wilkinsons, Poundstretcher and Pizza Hut. You get to City Kebab and Pizza, and suddenly, towering above you on your left, is the magnificent art deco Broadway Cinema.
It's walkable from the train station, and has plenty of parks and other green areas on hand to demonstrate Letchworth's garden city status. It's only a couple of minutes' walk from the local Morrisons, should you fancy a pre- or post-screening scotch egg.
Crowd scene: A typical daytime weekend queue at the box office will consist of some students, a family of four, two early teens deciding whether or...
- 8/16/2011
- by Stuart Goodwin
- The Guardian - Film News
Film director whose work included the wartime masterpiece Western Approaches
The director Pat Jackson, who has died aged 95, was best known for the semi-documentary war film Western Approaches (1944). This neglected classic – a feature-length portrait of the Battle of the Atlantic – was shot under the auspices of the Ministry of Information's Crown Film Unit and predominantly filmed at sea under hazardous conditions. The shoot's logistical nightmares were compounded by the vast size of the Technicolor camera. Jackson himself devised the story of the imminent convergence of a German U-boat and an English ship which is on the way to save a group of comrades in a lifeboat.
Jackson was in his late 20s when he shot Western Approaches with the outstanding cameraman Jack Cardiff and a cast of amateur actors. It was a remarkable achievement that remained unsurpassed throughout the writer-director's lengthy career. The film was well received in Britain and...
The director Pat Jackson, who has died aged 95, was best known for the semi-documentary war film Western Approaches (1944). This neglected classic – a feature-length portrait of the Battle of the Atlantic – was shot under the auspices of the Ministry of Information's Crown Film Unit and predominantly filmed at sea under hazardous conditions. The shoot's logistical nightmares were compounded by the vast size of the Technicolor camera. Jackson himself devised the story of the imminent convergence of a German U-boat and an English ship which is on the way to save a group of comrades in a lifeboat.
Jackson was in his late 20s when he shot Western Approaches with the outstanding cameraman Jack Cardiff and a cast of amateur actors. It was a remarkable achievement that remained unsurpassed throughout the writer-director's lengthy career. The film was well received in Britain and...
- 7/12/2011
- by Brian Baxter
- The Guardian - Film News
Life in a Day is a portrait of the universal (and strangely comforting) banality of every day life around the world, shot on a single day last July; it’s a surprisingly entertaining narrative, created as it from amateurish (many in and of themselves, mundane) submissions made by tens of thousands of people, and is a likely harbinger of things to come in the realm of documentary filmmaking.
Director Kevin Macdonald, a filmmaker who moves gracefully between documentaries and features (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland), was approached by the Scott brothers and their partner YouTube (the perfect medium to promote such a concept) to see if he would be interested in helming a film that was to be created from amateur submissions filmed world wide on a single day (Saturday 24 July, 2010). Macdonald is a fan of British filmmaker and artist Humphrey Jennings and his films born...
Director Kevin Macdonald, a filmmaker who moves gracefully between documentaries and features (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland), was approached by the Scott brothers and their partner YouTube (the perfect medium to promote such a concept) to see if he would be interested in helming a film that was to be created from amateur submissions filmed world wide on a single day (Saturday 24 July, 2010). Macdonald is a fan of British filmmaker and artist Humphrey Jennings and his films born...
- 6/16/2011
- by Ian Gilchrist
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Deep End
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute:
Make film your New Year resolution
BFI Southbank – BFI Distribution – BFI Festivals – BFI IMAX – BFI DVD – BFI Membership BFI Online – BFI Filmstore – BFI Mediatheques – BFI Gallery – Sight & Sound 2011 is set to become a landmark year for the BFI and this will be reflected in the broad and diverse range of film offerings for audiences across the UK. From film and television premieres and seasons at BFI Southbank, the most eclectic range of DVDs and nationwide theatrical releases by the most influential artists of British and world cinema, to a free insight into the BFI Archive via the Mediatheques around the country and online, there is something to entertain, educate and inspire anyone who loves film. BFI Southbank Great Auteurs – seasons include Howard Hawks (Jan/Feb), Francois Truffaut (Feb/March) Nicolas Roeg (March), Terence Rattigan (April...
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the British Film Institute:
Make film your New Year resolution
BFI Southbank – BFI Distribution – BFI Festivals – BFI IMAX – BFI DVD – BFI Membership BFI Online – BFI Filmstore – BFI Mediatheques – BFI Gallery – Sight & Sound 2011 is set to become a landmark year for the BFI and this will be reflected in the broad and diverse range of film offerings for audiences across the UK. From film and television premieres and seasons at BFI Southbank, the most eclectic range of DVDs and nationwide theatrical releases by the most influential artists of British and world cinema, to a free insight into the BFI Archive via the Mediatheques around the country and online, there is something to entertain, educate and inspire anyone who loves film. BFI Southbank Great Auteurs – seasons include Howard Hawks (Jan/Feb), Francois Truffaut (Feb/March) Nicolas Roeg (March), Terence Rattigan (April...
- 12/29/2010
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
The BFI is currently staging a major season at the BFI Southbank of postwar British documentaries, and to accompany it there's an extended run of this compilation of four films by one of our finest documentarists, John Krish, who started out as an editor (he had credits on Harry Watt's Target for Tonight and Humphrey Jennings's Listen to Britain). The first is the classic The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953) a lively, nostalgia-rich record of the last week of the last London tram. The others, each set on a single day in the early 1960s, deal with a seaside outing by Birmingham schoolkids to Weston-super-Mare, an afternoon in a secondary modern school, and an elderly widower spending a day alone in a London high-rise flat. Seeing them is like opening a series of time capsules. The best three are on the four-disc set of 32 films, Shadows of Progress: Documentary...
- 11/14/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Britain is about to become a different country – the loss of the Ark Royal is the least of it
One of my presents for the Christmas of 1956 was a fat little book called All About Ships and Shipping, edited by Ep Harnack and very nicely got up by Faber & Faber with semaphore flags and rolling waves impressed on its blue cloth binding. Its prettiness helps explain its survival in boxes and cupboards for more than half a century, its original tuition (example: how to tell a barque from a brigantine) long forgotten. This week I took it out to look at the Royal Navy's fleet list in that long-ago era. Classes were lined up below their different silhouettes: cruisers, minelayers, destroyers, frigates, monitors, minesweepers, torpedo boats. There was still one battleship in service, the Vanguard, a turreted shape I can just remember seeing through a North Sea mist, but the...
One of my presents for the Christmas of 1956 was a fat little book called All About Ships and Shipping, edited by Ep Harnack and very nicely got up by Faber & Faber with semaphore flags and rolling waves impressed on its blue cloth binding. Its prettiness helps explain its survival in boxes and cupboards for more than half a century, its original tuition (example: how to tell a barque from a brigantine) long forgotten. This week I took it out to look at the Royal Navy's fleet list in that long-ago era. Classes were lined up below their different silhouettes: cruisers, minelayers, destroyers, frigates, monitors, minesweepers, torpedo boats. There was still one battleship in service, the Vanguard, a turreted shape I can just remember seeing through a North Sea mist, but the...
- 10/23/2010
- by Ian Jack
- The Guardian - Film News
When you watch the opening scene of the McHenry brothers debut feature you’ll no doubt be thinking ‘what the hell is this?’ But stick with it because Jackboots On Whitehall is an eccentric and inventive satire which will you grow on you, I promise.
Yes, the puppetry and animation is rather creepy and the lack of expression and movement at odds with the voice work, but the sheer barminess and arduous task of directing something like this shouldn’t be dismissed. Mercilessly toying with stereotypes and referencing everything from George Orwell’s essay The Lion and The Unicorn, the films of Powell and Pressburger, Humphrey Jennings stirring propaganda work and Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, the one liners and situations come thick and fast. It’s an utterly bizarre ‘toy story’ which will certainly be compared to Team America: World Police, but shouldn’t.
The voice cast – Ewan McGregor, Richard E. Grant,...
Yes, the puppetry and animation is rather creepy and the lack of expression and movement at odds with the voice work, but the sheer barminess and arduous task of directing something like this shouldn’t be dismissed. Mercilessly toying with stereotypes and referencing everything from George Orwell’s essay The Lion and The Unicorn, the films of Powell and Pressburger, Humphrey Jennings stirring propaganda work and Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, the one liners and situations come thick and fast. It’s an utterly bizarre ‘toy story’ which will certainly be compared to Team America: World Police, but shouldn’t.
The voice cast – Ewan McGregor, Richard E. Grant,...
- 10/4/2010
- by Martyn Conterio
- FilmShaft.com
Really, what's not to like about reissued rustic village shoot-'em-up, Went The Day Well?
Playing like some stiff-upper-lip, second world war, homefront version of John Milius's Red Dawn, it should delight us that Alberto Cavalcanti's Went The Day Well? is back in circulation once again. In its casting and its subversive storytelling, its 1942 setting offers a parallel universe wherein not only are the Nazis invading Britain and coldly massacring the Home Guard, but postwar TV battleaxes such as Thora Hird and Patricia Hayes are caught in cinematic amber as plucky young Land Girls vigorously sticking it to the filthy Boche (with axes, bayonets, rifles and household pepper). And the goose-stepping enemy are played by quintessentially English postwar actors, including Powell and Pressburger's phallocratic fave David Farrar and perpetual Pow Co James Donald, plus Alexander Korda's very own imperialist hero, Leslie Banks, as the head Nazi collaborator and local squire.
Playing like some stiff-upper-lip, second world war, homefront version of John Milius's Red Dawn, it should delight us that Alberto Cavalcanti's Went The Day Well? is back in circulation once again. In its casting and its subversive storytelling, its 1942 setting offers a parallel universe wherein not only are the Nazis invading Britain and coldly massacring the Home Guard, but postwar TV battleaxes such as Thora Hird and Patricia Hayes are caught in cinematic amber as plucky young Land Girls vigorously sticking it to the filthy Boche (with axes, bayonets, rifles and household pepper). And the goose-stepping enemy are played by quintessentially English postwar actors, including Powell and Pressburger's phallocratic fave David Farrar and perpetual Pow Co James Donald, plus Alexander Korda's very own imperialist hero, Leslie Banks, as the head Nazi collaborator and local squire.
- 7/3/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
He was behind the Ealing films and made a handful of the most polished, imaginative and enjoyable movies of the 1940s. It's time the name of Alberto Cavalcanti was better known, argues Kevin Jackson
'Directed by Cavalcanti" runs the last of the black-and-white title credits. Back in the 1940s, the ordinary chap in the Odeon's ninepenny stalls is baffled, even annoyed. Who on earth is this jumped-up foreigner, thinking he's so bloody famous that he doesn't need a first name? (In fact, Cavalcanti was widely seen as one of the most self-effacing, charming men ever to have worked in film.) And why is a bloody Eyetie in charge of a British film – let alone an Ealing film, the most British productions of all? (In fact, Cavalcanti was Brazilian.) But those in the audience who had noticed the unusual credit once or twice before settled deeper into their red plush seats,...
'Directed by Cavalcanti" runs the last of the black-and-white title credits. Back in the 1940s, the ordinary chap in the Odeon's ninepenny stalls is baffled, even annoyed. Who on earth is this jumped-up foreigner, thinking he's so bloody famous that he doesn't need a first name? (In fact, Cavalcanti was widely seen as one of the most self-effacing, charming men ever to have worked in film.) And why is a bloody Eyetie in charge of a British film – let alone an Ealing film, the most British productions of all? (In fact, Cavalcanti was Brazilian.) But those in the audience who had noticed the unusual credit once or twice before settled deeper into their red plush seats,...
- 7/2/2010
- by Kevin Jackson
- The Guardian - Film News
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Repertory theaters on the coasts are truly offering a window onto the world this spring, with Jia Zhangke and Bong Joon-ho retrospectives, as well as New French Cinema in New York, "Freebie and the Bean," "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" and Jason Reitman's favorite films invade Los Angeles, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin is offering a fond farewell to the video cassette. But consider this a hello to seeing classics, oddities and rarities on the big screen over the next few months.
Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.
Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.
- 2/20/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
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