For over 25 years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival called the Castro Theatre home. With the iconic theater now closed for a year-plus-long renovation, Sfsff has relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, located in a beautiful park created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the north edge of the Presidio. The auditorium, primarily a performance space, seats nearly a thousand and features a spacious foyer where passholders could visit and relax between shows (particularly useful on chilly weekends).
Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.
The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.
Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.
The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.
- 4/20/2024
- by Sean Axmaker
- Slant Magazine
Ingmar Bergman is the Oscar-winning Swedish auteur who helped bring international cinema into the American art houses with his stark, brooding dramas. But how many of his titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 25 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.
Born in 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Bergman started off as a screenwriter before moving into directing. His early hits “Summer with Monika” (1953), “Sawdust and Tinsel” (1953) and “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1955) helped make him a favorite amongst American audiences hungry for world cinema.
He hit his stride in 1957 with a pair of noteworthy titles: “Wild Strawberries” and “The Seventh Seal.” Both films dealt with the absence of God and the inevitability of mortality — the former concerning an aging professor (Victor Sjostrom) coming to terms with his life, the latter focusing on a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) playing a game of chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot...
Born in 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Bergman started off as a screenwriter before moving into directing. His early hits “Summer with Monika” (1953), “Sawdust and Tinsel” (1953) and “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1955) helped make him a favorite amongst American audiences hungry for world cinema.
He hit his stride in 1957 with a pair of noteworthy titles: “Wild Strawberries” and “The Seventh Seal.” Both films dealt with the absence of God and the inevitability of mortality — the former concerning an aging professor (Victor Sjostrom) coming to terms with his life, the latter focusing on a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) playing a game of chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot...
- 7/8/2023
- by Zach Laws and Chris Beachum
- Gold Derby
IFFKAs part of the International Film Festival of Kerala, films from across the world will be screened simultaneously on fourteen screens in Thiruvananthapuram from December 9 to 16.Don PalatharaA still from the Lav Diaz film 'When The Waves are Gone'The International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) is a mammoth event, not only in terms of the number of attendees, but also the number of films screened there each year. Films from across the world will be screened simultaneously on fourteen screens in Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram for six days, excluding the opening and closing days. The 27th edition of the festival, scheduled to be held from December 9 to 16, is special to me for several reasons. Even though I am attending the festival with a professional obligation, many of the films being screened this time are from filmmakers whose works I admire and look up to. By now, I have...
- 12/8/2022
- by LakshmiP
- The News Minute
Stephen King's 1986 novel "It," for its overwhelming length and chronological sprawl, centers on a very simple and basic horror premise: clowns are terrifying. Perhaps there was a time in his planet's history when pale-faced, blue-haired ghouls with painted-on smiles and gin blossom encrusted noses were considered charming and delightful, but anyone who recalls that time died over a century ago. In 2022, many might readily agree that clumsy, "comedic" traditional circus buffoons are now merely greasy, manic, and threatening.
The monster in King's novel was an impossibly ancient shape-shifting Lovecraftian space deity that fed on human fear, with the ability to read human minds and manifest what they were most afraid of. Perhaps instinctually, the universal fear shape that this creature elected to take was that of a clown. It gave itself the name of Pennywise, and would hibernate in the sewers under Derry, Me, awakening every 27 years to frighten and eat children.
The monster in King's novel was an impossibly ancient shape-shifting Lovecraftian space deity that fed on human fear, with the ability to read human minds and manifest what they were most afraid of. Perhaps instinctually, the universal fear shape that this creature elected to take was that of a clown. It gave itself the name of Pennywise, and would hibernate in the sewers under Derry, Me, awakening every 27 years to frighten and eat children.
- 10/28/2022
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
"Terrifier 2" marks the latest cinematic appearance of Art the Clown, one of the newer faces in the ever-growing canon of notable slasher villains. Art made his debut in Damien Leone's 2008 short film "The 9th Circle," followed by the 2011 short "Terrifier," later to be adapted into a 2016 feature film. Leone's 2013 anthology film "All Hallow's Eve" also featured an Art the Clown segment. Currently, "Terrifier 2" is playing in limited release and is gathering a good deal of attention for its extreme gore and scrappy can-do success in a theatrical environment typically only friendly to the biggest of blockbusters.
Art the Clown is a creature that appears on Halloween night to wreak havoc and commit extreme acts of violence. He doesn't speak or even make noises, communicating solely through mime. Even when he laughs or screams, he is silent. At first glance, Art was clearly designed after Paul Beaumont,...
Art the Clown is a creature that appears on Halloween night to wreak havoc and commit extreme acts of violence. He doesn't speak or even make noises, communicating solely through mime. Even when he laughs or screams, he is silent. At first glance, Art was clearly designed after Paul Beaumont,...
- 10/27/2022
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Triangle of Sadness (2022).There was only one film playing at various festivals this year for which audiences were provided with a promotional sick bag. Having already put a roomful of art scene dignitaries off their dinner in his Palme d’Or winner The Square (2017), director Ruben Östlund has been turning stomachs again onscreen and off with his latest examination of the absurdities of human behavior.A satirical adventure on the high seas, Triangle of Sadness (2022) casts its net wide. What begins with some broad swipes at high fashion and influencer culture soon hurls itself into farce, before setting its ambitious sights on the dismantling of capitalist hierarchies. While much of The Square was shot in English, this latest burlesque on the lives of the super-rich goes further still, marking Östlund’s most concerted targeting of international, multiplex appeal. It’s also riotously funny, the outrageously-staged set pieces of its middle...
- 10/26/2022
- MUBI
The Phantom Carriage
If you ask someone to name a Swedish film, there's a high likelihood that Ingmar Bergman and, particularly, the subject of Death and chess may come up but Sweden's cinematic output runs wide and deep. Early pioneering studio Svenska Biografteatern helped the country to get a foothold on the international stage and notable early films include Victor Sjöström's 1921 silent horror The Phantom Carriage. The country proved that it can still make the global headlines earlier this year when Gothenburg Film Festival screened its entire 60-movie programme in a lighthouse for a competition winner - Swedish nurse Lisa Enroth, who was one of 12,000 entrants worldwide.
So this week we're taking a break from themes for our Streaming Spotlight to shine a light on a handful of highlights from Swedish cinema, including some well-known names...
If you ask someone to name a Swedish film, there's a high likelihood that Ingmar Bergman and, particularly, the subject of Death and chess may come up but Sweden's cinematic output runs wide and deep. Early pioneering studio Svenska Biografteatern helped the country to get a foothold on the international stage and notable early films include Victor Sjöström's 1921 silent horror The Phantom Carriage. The country proved that it can still make the global headlines earlier this year when Gothenburg Film Festival screened its entire 60-movie programme in a lighthouse for a competition winner - Swedish nurse Lisa Enroth, who was one of 12,000 entrants worldwide.
So this week we're taking a break from themes for our Streaming Spotlight to shine a light on a handful of highlights from Swedish cinema, including some well-known names...
- 5/28/2021
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Blazing World is trying—really, really trying. It knows a whole bunch of classics and clearly took more than a few notes from them. The starting point is straight out of Ordinary People. The production design is straight from Robert Wiene and Victor Sjöström. The score borders on plagiarizing that of The Shining a few times, and the main character is clearly named after Margaret Cavendish as if naming the film after her 1666 work wasn’t enough. Come to think of it, saying that Carlson Young’s feature debut is really trying is something of an understatement.
But while most bad movies are easy to dismiss, The Blazing World is a bit different. It’s easy to feel bad for how bad it is. Everyone involved here clearly wanted to make something great, to pour themselves onto the screen. Here, Young adapts her 2018 short film of the same name to 99 minutes,...
But while most bad movies are easy to dismiss, The Blazing World is a bit different. It’s easy to feel bad for how bad it is. Everyone involved here clearly wanted to make something great, to pour themselves onto the screen. Here, Young adapts her 2018 short film of the same name to 99 minutes,...
- 2/1/2021
- by Matt Cipolla
- The Film Stage
Two great Swedish directors, Ingmar Bergman and Victor Sjöström, collaborate on the story of an embittered old professor who makes his peace with the present by concentrating on the past. Sjöström plays the crusty physician and a few of Bergman’s stock company are on hand including Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Max Von Sydow. Now widely regarded as one of the great films of all time, the 1957 drama was an enormous influence on Bergman fan Woody Allen.
The post Wild Strawberries appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post Wild Strawberries appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 1/13/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
1st Gangneung International Film Festival, Festival Report by Jean-Marc Thérouanne Gangneung, a Town of Culture, Sports, and Tourism
The 1st edition of the Gangneung International Film Festival (Giff) took place 8 – 14 November 2019, in Gangneung, South Korea. The town itself spreads in the area of the size of Paris with only 220 000 inhabitants.
Gangneung is a seaside town at the Japanese Sea, in the Gangwon Province, and boasts with long beautiful beaches covered in white sand, bordered by pine woods of Jeongdongjin. It is an economic centre of the mountain region of Yeongdong (highest peak 1 563m).
Not far from the seaside, there is a large lake, creating a narrow strip of land with hotels welcoming summer beachgoers and festival-goers of the many cultural events or sports of this dynamic city.
Gangneung Iff, a Film Festival Dedicated to Literary Adaptations
Gangneung is the hometown of literati, such as:
writer Sin Saimdang (1504-1551), neo-Confucianism philosopher...
The 1st edition of the Gangneung International Film Festival (Giff) took place 8 – 14 November 2019, in Gangneung, South Korea. The town itself spreads in the area of the size of Paris with only 220 000 inhabitants.
Gangneung is a seaside town at the Japanese Sea, in the Gangwon Province, and boasts with long beautiful beaches covered in white sand, bordered by pine woods of Jeongdongjin. It is an economic centre of the mountain region of Yeongdong (highest peak 1 563m).
Not far from the seaside, there is a large lake, creating a narrow strip of land with hotels welcoming summer beachgoers and festival-goers of the many cultural events or sports of this dynamic city.
Gangneung Iff, a Film Festival Dedicated to Literary Adaptations
Gangneung is the hometown of literati, such as:
writer Sin Saimdang (1504-1551), neo-Confucianism philosopher...
- 12/9/2019
- by Anomalilly
- AsianMoviePulse
Above: Us one sheet for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Two weeks ago, as the 57th New York Film Festival kicked off, I griped about the uninspiring quality of the posters for the films in the festival’s main slate. 50 years ago it was a very different story. The posters I have found for the 19 films in the 1969 main selection make up a dazzling collection of illustration and forward thinking graphic design, even, or especially, the type-only poster for the only studio film in the festival: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice which was the opening night film on September 16 (notably a Tuesday evening).Of course, many of these posters might have been made months or even a year after the festival, since we’re looking back with half a century of hindsight, and many of this year’s designs will no doubt be updated, but this was also the era in which...
- 10/11/2019
- MUBI
Sf’s logo is one every Scandinavian is familiar with. A film production company, distributor and the owner of a movie theater chain across the Nordic and Baltic countries until recently, it is a cultural landmark not only in its native Sweden, but also across the Nordic countries.
Founded as Svensk Filmindustri in 1919, Sf played an instrumental role in what is known as the golden age of Swedish cinema. Ambitious productions by directors including Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, based on famous Nordic literary works, attracted international attention.
After a lull in the 1930s, Swedish cinema enjoyed a revival in the 1940s, partly thanks to the appointment of Sjöström, who had returned to Sweden after working in Hollywood, as artistic director of Sf. As the producer of most Ingmar Bergman films as well as the Astrid Lindgren adaptations, which remain hugely popular across Scandinavia to this day, Sf was firmly...
Founded as Svensk Filmindustri in 1919, Sf played an instrumental role in what is known as the golden age of Swedish cinema. Ambitious productions by directors including Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, based on famous Nordic literary works, attracted international attention.
After a lull in the 1930s, Swedish cinema enjoyed a revival in the 1940s, partly thanks to the appointment of Sjöström, who had returned to Sweden after working in Hollywood, as artistic director of Sf. As the producer of most Ingmar Bergman films as well as the Astrid Lindgren adaptations, which remain hugely popular across Scandinavia to this day, Sf was firmly...
- 5/9/2019
- by Lise Pedersen
- Variety Film + TV
Seen from the vantage of 2019, the extraordinary actresses who came to prominence in the films of Ingmar Bergman — Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, and the sunny and anguished, incandescent and heartbreaking Bibi Andersson, who died Sunday — enjoyed a relationship with their director that was rooted in a 20th-century male-gaze ethos. Bergman was famously obsessed with these women: with their faces, their personae, the dramatic possibilities they opened up to him. He carried on off-screen romantic relationships with most of them (including Bibi Andersson), and in his movies he placed them on a grand pedestal of extravagant expression. The pedestal was framed not with a medium or long shot but with a starkly penetrating close-up. You could say that Bergman used the camera to probe their very being.
Yet it may be the essence of the partnership between Bergman, the mythical art-house giant, and the actresses he turned into psychodramatic...
Yet it may be the essence of the partnership between Bergman, the mythical art-house giant, and the actresses he turned into psychodramatic...
- 4/15/2019
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Margarethe von Trotta on Olivier Assayas, Stig Björkman and Ingmar Bergman: "They went in 1990 for five days to Stockholm to make a big interview with Bergman for Cahiers du Cinéma ..." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In the second half of my conversation on Searching For Ingmar Bergman with Margarethe von Trotta, we discuss Daniel Bergman and his father, Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage, Winter Light and Ingrid Thulin, Ruben Östlund filming Margarethe, Jean-Claude Carrière, Fanny and Alexander, Cries And Whispers, Marianne & Juliane.
The connections to Olivier Assayas and the supernatural in Personal Shopper (see the impressive Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future exhibition currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York), Stig Björkman, Wild Strawberries and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma appeared.
Liv Ullmann with Margarethe von Trotta in Searching For Ingmar Bergman
Margarethe von Trotta has had a remarkable career working with her longtime cinematographer Franz Rath...
In the second half of my conversation on Searching For Ingmar Bergman with Margarethe von Trotta, we discuss Daniel Bergman and his father, Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage, Winter Light and Ingrid Thulin, Ruben Östlund filming Margarethe, Jean-Claude Carrière, Fanny and Alexander, Cries And Whispers, Marianne & Juliane.
The connections to Olivier Assayas and the supernatural in Personal Shopper (see the impressive Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future exhibition currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York), Stig Björkman, Wild Strawberries and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma appeared.
Liv Ullmann with Margarethe von Trotta in Searching For Ingmar Bergman
Margarethe von Trotta has had a remarkable career working with her longtime cinematographer Franz Rath...
- 10/31/2018
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The ’20s were, for all intents and purposes, the birth of the feature-length horror film. While there had been some dabbling in the genre prior, (The Student of Prague, The Avenging Conscience, The Queen of Spades) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) changed everything. In its wake came Nosferatu, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Unknown, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Phantom of the Opera, among others, irreversibly changing the course of genre history. But of this early wave of horror, two stand movies in particular stand out: the first two Swedish horror films.
Released back to back in 1921, The Phantom Carriage was one of the most audacious films of its day. Based on Selma Lagerlöf’s classic novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, The Phantom Carriage is a supernatural morality play about David Holm (played by director Victor Sjöström), a lonely, miserable drunk spending New Year’s Eve...
Released back to back in 1921, The Phantom Carriage was one of the most audacious films of its day. Based on Selma Lagerlöf’s classic novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, The Phantom Carriage is a supernatural morality play about David Holm (played by director Victor Sjöström), a lonely, miserable drunk spending New Year’s Eve...
- 2/2/2018
- by Perry Ruhland
- DailyDead
On July 14, 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Ingmar Bergman was born, and a quarter-century later, he began to bring his cinematic voice to the world. A century after his brith, with an astounding body of work like few other directors and an influence that reverberates through the past many decades of filmmaking, his filmography is being celebrated like never before.
Starting this February at NYC’s Film Forum and then expanding throughout the nation “the largest jubilee of a single filmmaker” will be underway in a massive, 47-film retrospective. Featuring 35 new restorations, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and many, many more, Janus Films has now debuted a beautiful trailer alongside the full line-up of films.
The Ingmar Bergman retrospective begins on February 7 at NYC’s Film Forum and then will expand to the following cities this spring:
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Wa
Detroit Film Theatre,...
Starting this February at NYC’s Film Forum and then expanding throughout the nation “the largest jubilee of a single filmmaker” will be underway in a massive, 47-film retrospective. Featuring 35 new restorations, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and many, many more, Janus Films has now debuted a beautiful trailer alongside the full line-up of films.
The Ingmar Bergman retrospective begins on February 7 at NYC’s Film Forum and then will expand to the following cities this spring:
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Wa
Detroit Film Theatre,...
- 1/8/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
As is annual tradition, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced this year’s 25 film set to join the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Selected for their “cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance,” the films picked range from such beloved actioners as “Die Hard,” childhood classic “The Goonies,” the seminal “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and the mind-bending “Memento,” with plenty of other genres and styles represented among the list.
The additions span 1905 to 2000, and includes Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, silent movies, animation, shorts, independent, and even home movies. The 2017 selections bring the number of films in the registry to 725.
“The selection of a film to the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to American cinema and the nation’s cultural and historical heritage,” Hayden said in an official statement. “Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and...
The additions span 1905 to 2000, and includes Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, silent movies, animation, shorts, independent, and even home movies. The 2017 selections bring the number of films in the registry to 725.
“The selection of a film to the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to American cinema and the nation’s cultural and historical heritage,” Hayden said in an official statement. “Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and...
- 12/13/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 725 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.
Today they’ve unveiled their 2017 list, which includes such Hollywood classics as Die Hard, Titanic, and Superman along with groundbreaking independent features like Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of Performers, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Also making this list are a pair of Kirk Douglas-led features, Ace in the Hole and Spartacus, as well as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more. Check out the full list below and you can watch some films on the registry for free here.
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Based on the infamous...
Today they’ve unveiled their 2017 list, which includes such Hollywood classics as Die Hard, Titanic, and Superman along with groundbreaking independent features like Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of Performers, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Also making this list are a pair of Kirk Douglas-led features, Ace in the Hole and Spartacus, as well as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more. Check out the full list below and you can watch some films on the registry for free here.
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Based on the infamous...
- 12/13/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Ricardo Cortez in 'Ten Cents a Dance,' with Barbara Stanwyck. No matter how unthankful the role, whether hero or heel – or, not infrequently, a combination of both – Cortez left his bedroom-eyed, mellifluous-voiced imprint in his pre-Production Code talkies. Besides Barbara Stanwyck, during the 1920s and 1930s Cortez made love to and/or life difficult for, a whole array of leading ladies of that era, including Bebe Daniels, Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Betty Bronson, Greta Garbo, Florence Vidor, Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor, Kay Francis, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Joan Blondell, and Loretta Young*. (See previous post: “Ricardo Cortez Q&A: From Latin Lover to Multiethnic Heel.”) Not long after the coming of sound, Ricardo Cortez was mostly relegated to playing subordinate roles to his leading ladies – e.g., Kay Francis, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert – or leads in “bottom half of the double bill” programmers at Warner Bros. or on loan to other studios. Would...
- 7/7/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'The Doll' with Ossi Oswalda and Hermann Thimig: Early Ernst Lubitsch satirical fantasy starring 'the German Mary Pickford' has similar premise to that of the 1925 Buster Keaton comedy 'Seven Chances.' 'The Doll': San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented fast-paced Ernst Lubitsch comedy starring the German Mary Pickford – Ossi Oswalda Directed by Ernst Lubitsch (So This Is Paris, The Wedding March), the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival presentation The Doll / Die Puppe (1919) has one of the most amusing mise-en-scènes ever recorded. The set is created by cut-out figures that gradually come to life; then even more cleverly, they commence the fast-paced action. It all begins when a shy, confirmed bachelor, Lancelot (Hermann Thimig), is ordered by his rich uncle (Max Kronert), the Baron von Chanterelle, to marry for a large sum of money. As to be expected, mayhem ensues. Lancelot is forced to flee from the hordes of eligible maidens, eventually...
- 6/28/2017
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Todd Haynes loves period films, and capturing the look of the eras’ movies, but he doesn’t stop there; he’s obsessed with the visual languages as well. And all of that would be impossible without Haynes’ longtime cinematographer Edward Lachman, who takes a forensic approach: If you want the look, it makes sense to use the tools and production modes that created it.
In “Far From Heaven,” Lachman figured out how to recreate the manufactured studio look of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s Universal melodramas, while shooting on real locations. For “Carol,” he mirrored the color palette and sense of composition of mid-century color photographers like Saul Leiter.
Read More: Cannes Review – With ‘Wonderstruck,’ Todd Haynes Returns With A Profoundly Moving Fable For All Ages
Lachman and Haynes’ latest collaboration on “Wonderstruck” – which just premiered at Cannes to rave reviews and is in the early poll position for the Palme...
In “Far From Heaven,” Lachman figured out how to recreate the manufactured studio look of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s Universal melodramas, while shooting on real locations. For “Carol,” he mirrored the color palette and sense of composition of mid-century color photographers like Saul Leiter.
Read More: Cannes Review – With ‘Wonderstruck,’ Todd Haynes Returns With A Profoundly Moving Fable For All Ages
Lachman and Haynes’ latest collaboration on “Wonderstruck” – which just premiered at Cannes to rave reviews and is in the early poll position for the Palme...
- 5/20/2017
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Like the great Jean-Marie Straub, Scott Barley creates striking images by returning us to the basics of cinema, the natural world, but abstracting it through profilmic means by reducing the landscape to pure, basic forms. The sky at night becomes a grid of uneven white points like a pin board; an abstract, grainy image of trees, green hued, are obscured into strikes of painterly lines; the sunset, seen through clouds, is stained with a natural purple tint that makes the image look as unreal as the skies in John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon; a deep-focus landscape shot slowly becomes obscured by a patch of fog in the foreground. After a few beats, Barley tends to then situate these abstractions within a clearer sense of space and time. Barley, an installation artist and filmmaker from Newport, South Wales, has gained ecstatic admiration for his short films within certain cinephiliac circles,...
- 3/9/2017
- MUBI
Jim Knipfel Sep 5, 2019
With the release of It Chapter Two, we take a look at one of the first creepy clown films.
As a culture, we seriously hate our clowns. A deep-seated and supposedly irrational fear of clowns is so commonplace it’s even been given a scientific name: coulrophobia. It’s hardly a surprise then that angry, axe-wielding or merely creepy clowns would become such a pop cultural mainstay, from The Simpsons and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and more recently from Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight to Stephen King’s It and It Chapter Two. Back in the day, the video store where I used to work carried (I counted) nineteen clown-themed horror movies, from Killer Klowns From Outer Space to Divine’s last film, Out of the Dark.
Evil Clown comics used to be a regular feature in National Lampoon. The 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs...
With the release of It Chapter Two, we take a look at one of the first creepy clown films.
As a culture, we seriously hate our clowns. A deep-seated and supposedly irrational fear of clowns is so commonplace it’s even been given a scientific name: coulrophobia. It’s hardly a surprise then that angry, axe-wielding or merely creepy clowns would become such a pop cultural mainstay, from The Simpsons and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and more recently from Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight to Stephen King’s It and It Chapter Two. Back in the day, the video store where I used to work carried (I counted) nineteen clown-themed horror movies, from Killer Klowns From Outer Space to Divine’s last film, Out of the Dark.
Evil Clown comics used to be a regular feature in National Lampoon. The 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs...
- 10/4/2016
- Den of Geek
My guest for this month is Patrick Gibson, and he’s joined me to discuss the film I chose for him, the 1957 drama film Wild Strawberries. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.
Show notes:
My original review of Wild Strawberries This film was the last role by legendary Swedish actor Victor Sjöström, who directed The Phantom Carriage You can’t fly directly from Stockholm to Lund these days, you have to go to Malmö and drive. It takes about two hours total A flight from Stockholm to Sydney, Australia takes almost 24 hours, so a bit longer Ingmar Bergman was having an affair with his leading lady Bibi Andersson during the making of this film Norwegian Black Metal and Swedish Death Metal are two things that I associate with Scandinavia A Mitzvah is a good dead, and a Mensch is someone who does them Virtually every Bergman film was...
Show notes:
My original review of Wild Strawberries This film was the last role by legendary Swedish actor Victor Sjöström, who directed The Phantom Carriage You can’t fly directly from Stockholm to Lund these days, you have to go to Malmö and drive. It takes about two hours total A flight from Stockholm to Sydney, Australia takes almost 24 hours, so a bit longer Ingmar Bergman was having an affair with his leading lady Bibi Andersson during the making of this film Norwegian Black Metal and Swedish Death Metal are two things that I associate with Scandinavia A Mitzvah is a good dead, and a Mensch is someone who does them Virtually every Bergman film was...
- 4/16/2016
- by Arik Devens
- CriterionCast
In his new film "Louder Than Bombs" Norwegian director Joachim Trier masterfully captures the underlying, aimless desires of very decent people who struggle to be authentic in their own lives. Written by Trier and Eskil Vogt, the film is structured as a collage of episodes that fit together like a perfect puzzle, packed with emotions let loose by the death of the mother and wife of a suburban New York family. The action does not offer anything overtly dramatic, yet the emotional intensity is louder than bombs which the dead woman famously photographed in the war zones around the world. Those still images pulse with explosive emotions; the actual lives of the protagonists are woefully devoid of that raw energy of authentic, harsh life. The players, however, keep searching for what they cannot have and do not possess any more.
Three years on, the father and two sons keep trying to make sense of their lives, left rudderless after the death of the mother and wife. She is played as beautifully as ever by the wonderful Isabelle Huppert. Cinematographer Jakob Ihre gives us a full measure of her expressive face in unforgettable close ups on the scale of Bergman’s famous shots of Victor Sjöström’s face in "Wild Strawberries," or Visconti’s close up of Burt Lancaster in "The Leopard." We see her in flashbacks, edited to perfection by Olivier Bugge Coutté, with her searching eyes that have seen so much outside her suburban domestic routine. She knows that she loves her husband and sons, yet struggles to understand why that knowing of love does not exactly feel like love when she is with them.
For them, her comings and goings to and from the war zones have filled the family life with a measure of second-hand authenticity. Her death pushes them to examine the void that suddenly presents itself as mundane and unsatisfying. They have everything the people she photographed lacked, yet they are the ones left lacking.
Each tries to understand his own circumstances and his place in his own life. Living seems a difficult task, and it’s that difficulty of living in a contemporary western society that is the subject of Trier’s precise, powerful examination. He guides his actors to heights rarely seen these days, with Gabriel Byrne’s father outshining everything he has done before this film, and Jesse Eisenberg as the older son and very confused new father giving a perfectly calibrated, nuanced performance. The emotional center of the film rests with the teenage son, played by the incredibly talented Devin Druid in a career-making turn that might very well net him a handful of awards.
Trier’s work with actors, his writing, and his taut treatment of the difficult subject of contemporary search for our human core in a world that lacks any sense any more is the great sum of "Louder Than Bombs'" emotions. Trier catches us in his carefully plotted net and lets us feel the confused emotions of people living good but ultimately unsatisfying lives, struggling with the realization that it is what it is and not more. This is a film that charts a whole new course, a singular one, with people trying to figure out how to live life after it is no longer possible to just let life play itself. An extra marital affair or a computer game are the devices that provide semblance of a pulsing life, in the same way that any activity outside of daily routine provides anyone living today with a sense of accomplishment. Trier beautifully captures the moment in time of the still comfortable middle class, and displays a great understanding of the human soul - at least the woefully self-centered and self-examining, quietly and politely dissatisfied one that inhabits the body of a Western man and woman.
Three years on, the father and two sons keep trying to make sense of their lives, left rudderless after the death of the mother and wife. She is played as beautifully as ever by the wonderful Isabelle Huppert. Cinematographer Jakob Ihre gives us a full measure of her expressive face in unforgettable close ups on the scale of Bergman’s famous shots of Victor Sjöström’s face in "Wild Strawberries," or Visconti’s close up of Burt Lancaster in "The Leopard." We see her in flashbacks, edited to perfection by Olivier Bugge Coutté, with her searching eyes that have seen so much outside her suburban domestic routine. She knows that she loves her husband and sons, yet struggles to understand why that knowing of love does not exactly feel like love when she is with them.
For them, her comings and goings to and from the war zones have filled the family life with a measure of second-hand authenticity. Her death pushes them to examine the void that suddenly presents itself as mundane and unsatisfying. They have everything the people she photographed lacked, yet they are the ones left lacking.
Each tries to understand his own circumstances and his place in his own life. Living seems a difficult task, and it’s that difficulty of living in a contemporary western society that is the subject of Trier’s precise, powerful examination. He guides his actors to heights rarely seen these days, with Gabriel Byrne’s father outshining everything he has done before this film, and Jesse Eisenberg as the older son and very confused new father giving a perfectly calibrated, nuanced performance. The emotional center of the film rests with the teenage son, played by the incredibly talented Devin Druid in a career-making turn that might very well net him a handful of awards.
Trier’s work with actors, his writing, and his taut treatment of the difficult subject of contemporary search for our human core in a world that lacks any sense any more is the great sum of "Louder Than Bombs'" emotions. Trier catches us in his carefully plotted net and lets us feel the confused emotions of people living good but ultimately unsatisfying lives, struggling with the realization that it is what it is and not more. This is a film that charts a whole new course, a singular one, with people trying to figure out how to live life after it is no longer possible to just let life play itself. An extra marital affair or a computer game are the devices that provide semblance of a pulsing life, in the same way that any activity outside of daily routine provides anyone living today with a sense of accomplishment. Trier beautifully captures the moment in time of the still comfortable middle class, and displays a great understanding of the human soul - at least the woefully self-centered and self-examining, quietly and politely dissatisfied one that inhabits the body of a Western man and woman.
- 4/9/2016
- by Vera Mijojlic
- Sydney's Buzz
Norma Shearer: The Boss' wife was cast in 'The Divorcee.' Norma Shearer movies on TCM: Early talkies and Best Actress Oscar Note: This Norma Shearer article is currently being revised and expanded. Please Check back later. Norma Shearer, one of the top stars in Hollywood history and known as the Queen of MGM back in the 1930s, is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of Nov. 2015. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that even though its parent company, Time Warner, owns most of Shearer's movies, TCM isn't airing any premieres. So, if you were expecting to check out a very young Norma Shearer in The Devil's Circus, Upstage, or After Midnight, you're out of luck. (I've seen all three; they're all worth a look.) It's a crime that, music score or no, restored print or no, TCM/Time Warner don't make available for viewing the...
- 11/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...
- 8/27/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Flicker Alley's release 0f The House of Mystery (La maison du mystère) restores to light a major movie serial almost lost forever, and allows us again to appreciate the talents of the White Russian filmmakers who greatly energized French filmmaking in the 1920s. In particular, star Ivan Mosjoukine and director Alexander Volkoff, who would also collaborate on Kean (1924) and Casanova (1927) are approaching the height of their powers.The plot is pure melodrama: a mill owner is framed for murder, escapes from a penal colony, and spends years trying to clear his name, while the real killer woos his wife. But the ten episodes use their extended cumulative running time to explore nuances of character rather than to pile on implausible escapes and battles (though there are a few extremely impressive examples of those). The result is a tale of injustice that grips and satisfies, while displaying a highly sophisticated cinematic sense.
- 4/30/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Now, out in cinema's theatres, and certainly back in the Cannes Film Festival where the Argentine film Jauja premiered, there is a distinct, complacent absence of adventuresome cinema. After a six year wait for director Lisandro Alonso to follow-up his masterpiece 2008 Liverpool, we finally have a new adventure.A fan of Alonso's work knows that his films are literally adventures, travels that are physical, bodily travails pushing through landscape. Jauja, his 19th century tale of a Danish military engineer who sets off into barren Patagonia to search for his runaway daughter, is more of the same, but still radical.Radical for getting Viggo Mortensen to play that engineer, to speak good Danish and stilted Spanish, and to become a body to press upon Alonso's prehistoric landscapes. Radical for its old fashionedness, shot in curved-edge 1.33 on film with sky and ground in frame, with that frame bisected by the horizon, like John Ford compositions.
- 3/20/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas opens with a series of disguises, image overlays revealing to us Fantomas’ various personas.Often used by silent filmmakers attempting to conjure the supernatural, they conjure the abstract instead:“It’s a visual medium”–John Ford“[Erich von] Stroheim asked me personally to take on the assignment (after the studio removed him from the film), and I did so without any protest on his part…”– Josef von Sternberg***We move from dissolves to hard cuts:Later in The Wedding March:Counterpoints:And beyond:We call for help, mere seconds later our cries our answered: “We’ve got a trial ahead of us.”Time is meaningless: there is no difference between past and present.Impressionism becomes Expressionism:But we keep being reborn:Love exists:Love unites us all, re-engages us with the world:We cease being individuals:And become a collective--We become a crowd:None of us are alone:*** Sources:Fantômas (Louis Feuillade, 1913)India Matri Bhumi (Roberto Rossellini,...
- 3/15/2015
- by Neil Bahadur
- MUBI
It's peak Gish as Moma's tribute series to Mary Lea Bandy — the late, longtime director of the museum's film department — gets to Victor Sjöström's elemental silent classic. Lillian Gish stars as a Virginia belle uprooted to west Texas, where civilization has just barely fastened itself to the flatland. As you'd expect from the title, the wind howls and punishes all who dare live there; as you'd expect from Gish, the hair, once let free, whips and soars, even as her character, fruitlessly married, edges near madness. That wind comes from airplane propellers, hauled out to the Mojave for the shoot, and if it all seems a little much, just remember that this is how it feels to Gish's luckless bride. There's great hardscrabble beauty, and some ...
- 2/4/2015
- Village Voice
Halfway through the Festival de Cannes and there's a distinctly undesperate absence of adventureful cinema. I can count the adventures in less than a line: Sissako, Cronenberg, Wiseman, and now, after a six year wait, the Argentine Lisandro Alonso.
A fan of Alonso's work knows that his cinema are literally adventures, travels that are physical, bodily travails pushing through landscape. Jauja, his 19thcentury tale of a Danish military engineer who sets off into barren Patagonia to search for his runaway daughter, is more of the same, but still radical.
Radical for getting Viggo Mortensen to play that engineer, to speak good Danish and stilted Spanish, and to become a body to press upon Alonso's prehistoric landscapes. Radical for its old fashionedness, shot in curved-edge 1.33 on film with sky and ground in frame, with that frame bisected by the horizon, like John Ford, and indeed one duskset shot gorgeously re-imagines the...
A fan of Alonso's work knows that his cinema are literally adventures, travels that are physical, bodily travails pushing through landscape. Jauja, his 19thcentury tale of a Danish military engineer who sets off into barren Patagonia to search for his runaway daughter, is more of the same, but still radical.
Radical for getting Viggo Mortensen to play that engineer, to speak good Danish and stilted Spanish, and to become a body to press upon Alonso's prehistoric landscapes. Radical for its old fashionedness, shot in curved-edge 1.33 on film with sky and ground in frame, with that frame bisected by the horizon, like John Ford, and indeed one duskset shot gorgeously re-imagines the...
- 5/23/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Day Three of Ebertfest began much like Day Two, with panels at the Illini Union, the first titled “Remembering Roger Ebert” and the second “Film & Cultural Politics”. The former was an hour-long opportunity for the panelists (critics and Far-Flung Correspondents) and the audience to share their memories of and experiences with Ebert and express what he meant to them. Everyone had lovely, very personal stories to tell and the sense of loss, but more importantly love, was palpable in the room.
Krishna Shenoi relayed how he first got to know Ebert, through an out-of-the-blue comment at his blog Shenoi assumed was a prank, and how Ebert’s encouragement prompted his parents to support his decision to enter film school. Matt Zoller Seitz talked about his friendly rivalry with Ebert, as they tried to one-up each other with their discoveries of up and coming bloggers from around the world, Jana Monji...
Krishna Shenoi relayed how he first got to know Ebert, through an out-of-the-blue comment at his blog Shenoi assumed was a prank, and how Ebert’s encouragement prompted his parents to support his decision to enter film school. Matt Zoller Seitz talked about his friendly rivalry with Ebert, as they tried to one-up each other with their discoveries of up and coming bloggers from around the world, Jana Monji...
- 4/26/2014
- by Kate Kulzick
- SoundOnSight
Cinema needs more migrant iconoclasts like Hitchcock, Lang and Murnau
Whenever someone of the Limbaugh tendency berates me about the magnificence of the American Dream in general and the Immigrant Experience in particular, I have a statistic I love to hurl back at them: of all those people who immigrated to the United States between 1780 and 1930, one third of them – one third – returned home.
Hollywood cinema has replenished itself over and again with the talents of immigrants: Chaplin, Von Stroheim, Victor Sjöström, Murnau, Lang, Hitchcock and the Siodmak brothers to name just a few, and all of them made incalculable contributions to the look and feel of Hollywood cinema. And almost all of them went home again, either for good or just for a while. Chaplin was granted a second exile by McCarthyism, Lang returned to Germany in 1960 and made three final features, while Hitchcock came home for Stage Fright...
Whenever someone of the Limbaugh tendency berates me about the magnificence of the American Dream in general and the Immigrant Experience in particular, I have a statistic I love to hurl back at them: of all those people who immigrated to the United States between 1780 and 1930, one third of them – one third – returned home.
Hollywood cinema has replenished itself over and again with the talents of immigrants: Chaplin, Von Stroheim, Victor Sjöström, Murnau, Lang, Hitchcock and the Siodmak brothers to name just a few, and all of them made incalculable contributions to the look and feel of Hollywood cinema. And almost all of them went home again, either for good or just for a while. Chaplin was granted a second exile by McCarthyism, Lang returned to Germany in 1960 and made three final features, while Hitchcock came home for Stage Fright...
- 3/24/2014
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
My first real attempt at understanding the brilliance that was Stanley Kubrick came in my freshman year of college, when I wrote a research paper on 2001: A Space Odyssey for an English class. After all that work, I only received a B and found myself more confused than ever. But there it was – the spark that Stanley Kubrick’s work produces. Kubrick’s best films were experiences; it’s impossible to “half-watch” one of his many masterpieces. And that’s what the movies on this list do. They take you on an odyssey of visual wonder, psychological tremors, and expect you to do as much work as the people involved in the making of the films. Yet, in the end, Kubrick’s films didn’t feel like homework. They felt like vacations to a world where deep thought is a welcome respite.
20. The Thin Red Line (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
What makes it Kubrickian?...
20. The Thin Red Line (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
What makes it Kubrickian?...
- 3/19/2014
- by Joshua Gaul
- SoundOnSight
Think silent films reached a high point with The Artist? The pre-sound era produced some of the most beautiful, arresting films ever made. From City Lights to Metropolis, Guardian and Observer critics pick the 10 best
• Top 10 teen movies
• Top 10 superhero movies
• Top 10 westerns
• Top 10 documentaries
• Top 10 movie adaptations
• Top 10 animated movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. City Lights
City Lights was arguably the biggest risk of Charlie Chaplin's career: The Jazz Singer, released at the end of 1927, had seen sound take cinema by storm, but Chaplin resisted the change-up, preferring to continue in the silent tradition. In retrospect, this isn't so much the precious behaviour of a purist but the smart reaction of an experienced comedian; Chaplin's films rarely used intertitles anyway, and though it is technically "silent", City Lights is very mindful of it own self-composed score and keenly judged sound effects.
At its heart,...
• Top 10 teen movies
• Top 10 superhero movies
• Top 10 westerns
• Top 10 documentaries
• Top 10 movie adaptations
• Top 10 animated movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. City Lights
City Lights was arguably the biggest risk of Charlie Chaplin's career: The Jazz Singer, released at the end of 1927, had seen sound take cinema by storm, but Chaplin resisted the change-up, preferring to continue in the silent tradition. In retrospect, this isn't so much the precious behaviour of a purist but the smart reaction of an experienced comedian; Chaplin's films rarely used intertitles anyway, and though it is technically "silent", City Lights is very mindful of it own self-composed score and keenly judged sound effects.
At its heart,...
- 11/22/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
After 50 years as the Observer's film critic, Philip French is retiring. Here he talks about his life and career and answers questions from readers and film-makers including Mike Leigh and Ken Loach
It says a lot about Philip French that after 50 years as the Observer's film critic – five decades in which he has watched more than 2,500 movies, written six books on the subject and received an OBE for his services to film – he is nervous enough about this interview to have researched his answers in advance.
When I arrive at his house in Tufnell Park, north London, I find French poring over a thick reference book at the kitchen table. A cup of coffee is left to cool as he thumbs through the relevant footnotes, anxious to get the facts absolutely right. He will turn 80 in a couple of weeks and says that he occasionally struggles to remember names of directors or actors.
It says a lot about Philip French that after 50 years as the Observer's film critic – five decades in which he has watched more than 2,500 movies, written six books on the subject and received an OBE for his services to film – he is nervous enough about this interview to have researched his answers in advance.
When I arrive at his house in Tufnell Park, north London, I find French poring over a thick reference book at the kitchen table. A cup of coffee is left to cool as he thumbs through the relevant footnotes, anxious to get the facts absolutely right. He will turn 80 in a couple of weeks and says that he occasionally struggles to remember names of directors or actors.
- 8/24/2013
- by Elizabeth Day
- The Guardian - Film News
Can another silent, black and white film be a smash hit after the Artist? If it packs a surreal Spanish twist, believes the director who recast Snow White as a matador in Blancanieves
In May 2011 the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger was busily prepping his second film, Blancanieves. After an eight-year struggle to raise funding, he was finally about to start shooting a film whose uniqueness he was convinced would surprise and delight audiences the world over. After all, this was the sort of mainstream entertainment that hadn't been seen in decades — a black and white, silent movie, complete with lush orchestration.
But then came the Cannes film festival, and The Artist.
"Nobody knew about The Artist until it appeared in Cannes," he recalls, with a reflex ruefulness. "It was completely out of the blue. I was in my office in Madrid, doing the storyboards for my film, when a producer...
In May 2011 the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger was busily prepping his second film, Blancanieves. After an eight-year struggle to raise funding, he was finally about to start shooting a film whose uniqueness he was convinced would surprise and delight audiences the world over. After all, this was the sort of mainstream entertainment that hadn't been seen in decades — a black and white, silent movie, complete with lush orchestration.
But then came the Cannes film festival, and The Artist.
"Nobody knew about The Artist until it appeared in Cannes," he recalls, with a reflex ruefulness. "It was completely out of the blue. I was in my office in Madrid, doing the storyboards for my film, when a producer...
- 7/11/2013
- by Demetrios Matheou
- The Guardian - Film News
Instituto Cervantes New York hosted a press conference with Pablo Berger, director/screenwriter of Blancanieves, and director/screenwriter Paula Ortiz of Chrysalis aka De tu ventana a la mía, moderated by Richard Peña for the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Spanish Cinema Now. Maribel Verdú, Leticia Dolera and Luisa Gavasa give masterful performances in Ortiz's feature debut as they weave in and out of narratives that could be reflections of Lillian Gish from Victor Sjöström's The Wind or Emmanuelle Riva from Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, Mon Amour.
Paula Ortiz, Richard Peña, Pablo Berger at the Spanish Cinema Now press conference. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In my conversation with Paula Ortiz we spoke about the telling of three women, three destinies and the history of Spain in the 20th century.
Fairy tales are present in her movie, as they are in Blancanieves by Berger, with whom I had a snow white...
Paula Ortiz, Richard Peña, Pablo Berger at the Spanish Cinema Now press conference. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In my conversation with Paula Ortiz we spoke about the telling of three women, three destinies and the history of Spain in the 20th century.
Fairy tales are present in her movie, as they are in Blancanieves by Berger, with whom I had a snow white...
- 7/8/2013
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Chicago – Every month, Criterion mixes in a few HD upgrades for films in their collection to sit alongside new releases for the collection. One of those titles this month is spine #139, Ingmar Bergman’s adored “Wild Strawberries” (1957). It’s not one of my favorite Bergman films as I’ve always found its structure more frustrating than enlightening but “Wild Strawberries” has loyal fans who will be satisfied by this strong HD transfer and interesting special features.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
The highlights of the Criterion blu-ray release of “Wild Strawberries” are the new, restored 2K digital film transfer that perfectly captures the aesthetic of Bergman’s visually strong film without looking overly polished, and a 90-minute documentary on the legendary director called “Ingmar Bergman on Life and Work.” The stellar HD work and the doc alone make for a solid addition to the collection. As I said though, “Strawberries” is a film that...
Rating: 3.5/5.0
The highlights of the Criterion blu-ray release of “Wild Strawberries” are the new, restored 2K digital film transfer that perfectly captures the aesthetic of Bergman’s visually strong film without looking overly polished, and a 90-minute documentary on the legendary director called “Ingmar Bergman on Life and Work.” The stellar HD work and the doc alone make for a solid addition to the collection. As I said though, “Strawberries” is a film that...
- 6/24/2013
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Produced fifty-six years ago, Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries remains a venerable warhorse in the hallowed halls of Arthouse. But unlike this reviewer, who shares a similar vintage, the film shows no loss of vitality or any sign of imminent creakiness. Despite its strengths, Wild Strawberries often gets a bit lost within the contrasty folds of Bergman’s legendary filmography. Sight and Sound’s vaunted list of The Greatest Films of All Time pegs Wild Strawberries at sixty-three; not exactly a diss but way far behind Persona. The film doesn’t even appear on Roger Ebert’s lengthy List of Great Movies, although the late critic partially compensated by including Bergman’s equally underrated Winter Light.
The inherent silliness of film ranking aside, Wild Strawberries is a stunning cinematic experience. Filled with mystical beauty and chewy philosophical constructs in a tidy, perfectly tailored ninety-two minute package, the film is a...
The inherent silliness of film ranking aside, Wild Strawberries is a stunning cinematic experience. Filled with mystical beauty and chewy philosophical constructs in a tidy, perfectly tailored ninety-two minute package, the film is a...
- 6/11/2013
- by David Anderson
- IONCINEMA.com
Emir Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons won the 39th Seattle International Film Festival’s Best New Director grand jury prize on Sunday [9] as top brass handed out jury and audience awards.Scroll down for full list of winners
The Siff 2013 Best Documentary grand jury prize went to Penny Lane’s Our Nixon and Lucy Walker earned a special jury prize for The Crash Reel, while Kyle Patrick Alvarez took the Best New American Cinema grand jury prize for C.O.G.
In the audience awards, Henk Pretorius’ Fanie Fourie’s Lobola won the Best Film Golden Space Needle Award and Morgan Neville’s Twenty Feet From Stardom took the corresponding documentary prize.
The Best Director Golden Space Needle Award went to Nabil Ayouch for Horses Of God, while best actor was awarded to James Cromwell for Still Mine and best actress to Samantha Morton for Decoding Annie Parker.
The Best Short Film Golden Space Needle Award was presented to [link...
The Siff 2013 Best Documentary grand jury prize went to Penny Lane’s Our Nixon and Lucy Walker earned a special jury prize for The Crash Reel, while Kyle Patrick Alvarez took the Best New American Cinema grand jury prize for C.O.G.
In the audience awards, Henk Pretorius’ Fanie Fourie’s Lobola won the Best Film Golden Space Needle Award and Morgan Neville’s Twenty Feet From Stardom took the corresponding documentary prize.
The Best Director Golden Space Needle Award went to Nabil Ayouch for Horses Of God, while best actor was awarded to James Cromwell for Still Mine and best actress to Samantha Morton for Decoding Annie Parker.
The Best Short Film Golden Space Needle Award was presented to [link...
- 6/9/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The Canadian (photo: Thomas Meighan in The Canadian) Thomas Meighan is The Star of William Beaudine’s The Canadian (1926), which screened at the 2012 San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The credits feature his name far above everyone else’s. The basic story of The Canadian, scenario by Arthur Stringer from the 1913 W. Somerset Maugham play The Land of Promise, is similar in theme to Victor Sjöström’s later film The Wind (1928), but without the wind tempest and the murder. Instead, The Canadian concentrates on characterizations. After her rich aunt dies, stuffy, uptight Nora (Mona Palma) travels from London to a wheat farm owned by her brother (Wyndham Standing) in Calgary. She looks down with disdain at the simple, rustic life he lives in the country, with his wife, Gertie (Dale Fuller), and farm hands — especially the independent-minded Frank Taylor (Thomas Meighan). The Canadian starts out as an unpredictable and engaging tale.
- 6/4/2013
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 11, 2013
Price: Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Victor Sjöström and Bibi Andersson travel across the Swedish countryside in Wild Strawberries.
In the 1957 classic film drama Wild Strawberries by the Swedish master Ingmar Bergman (Face to Face), one man embarks on a remarkable voyage of self-discovery–and then some.
Traveling to accept an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg—masterfully played by veteran director Victor Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage)—is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and make peace with the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, the film dramatizes that aforementioned voyage.
A richly humane masterpiece that deserves every bit of praise that’s been heaped onto it over the past half-century, Wild Strawberries is a genuine treasure from the golden age of art-house cinema and one of the films that catapulted Bergman to international acclaim.
Here’s...
Price: Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Victor Sjöström and Bibi Andersson travel across the Swedish countryside in Wild Strawberries.
In the 1957 classic film drama Wild Strawberries by the Swedish master Ingmar Bergman (Face to Face), one man embarks on a remarkable voyage of self-discovery–and then some.
Traveling to accept an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg—masterfully played by veteran director Victor Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage)—is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and make peace with the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, the film dramatizes that aforementioned voyage.
A richly humane masterpiece that deserves every bit of praise that’s been heaped onto it over the past half-century, Wild Strawberries is a genuine treasure from the golden age of art-house cinema and one of the films that catapulted Bergman to international acclaim.
Here’s...
- 3/22/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
1.) Albert Brooks is returning to voice Nemo's father, Marlin, in Finding Nemo 2. Ellen DeGeneres is also expected to return as the forgetful Dory with Andrew Stanton set to direct. At this point there are no plot details, though a 2016 release date is expected. Deadline 2.) Safe House director Daniel Espinosa is attached to direct an adaptation of John Grisham's "The Racketeer" for Fox and New Regency. The book sees a federal judge murdered at a lakeside cabin and the contents of his safe emptied. The only man who knows the whos and whys is a former attorney serving time in federal prison who hopes to parlay that into getting revenge on the people who put him there. THR 3.) More Twilight fan fiction is targeting a big screen adaptation while Universal tries to figure out what they're going to do with Fifty Shades of Grey. Constantin Film has acquired movie...
- 2/13/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Looking back at 2012 on what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2012—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2012 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How would you program some...
All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How would you program some...
- 1/9/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
A very quick holiday post.
Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage is a fine festive movie, based as it is on the idea that whomsoever expires at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, will be doomed to drive the Death Coach for the following year, collecting the spirits of the dead and delivering them to their reward. Cheery stuff!
Sjöström serves up a wintry gloom and plays the lead role himself in grand style: I particularly relish a moment when he laughs in the face of a woman bent on his salvation, not in the silent movie manner of holding his sides and vibrating, but merely by baring his teeth. You can hear that dry chuckle!
In 1939, Julien Duvivier remade the film for sound, with a big budget and the best the French studios had to offer, which matched Hollywood's artifice icicle for icicle:
We track across this huge,...
Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage is a fine festive movie, based as it is on the idea that whomsoever expires at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, will be doomed to drive the Death Coach for the following year, collecting the spirits of the dead and delivering them to their reward. Cheery stuff!
Sjöström serves up a wintry gloom and plays the lead role himself in grand style: I particularly relish a moment when he laughs in the face of a woman bent on his salvation, not in the silent movie manner of holding his sides and vibrating, but merely by baring his teeth. You can hear that dry chuckle!
In 1939, Julien Duvivier remade the film for sound, with a big budget and the best the French studios had to offer, which matched Hollywood's artifice icicle for icicle:
We track across this huge,...
- 12/27/2012
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Above: Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, Ussr, 1925). Poster by the Stenberg brothers.
On November 1st, at Christie’s Auction House in London, a remarkable sale will take place under the banner “Vintage Posters” of 13 original Stenberg brothers film posters from the 1920s and 5 original “maquettes” or mock-up sketches. I have written about the Stenbergs a couple of times before, but although their fame is prodigious (they had a landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1997), original copies of their posters rarely come up for sale, let alone their original sketches.
The jewels in this crown are the posters for Battleship Potemkin and Man with a Movie Camera, which, according to Christie’s, may never have come up for auction before. Their sales estimates are between $96,000 and $128,000, which would put them among the top 20 most expensive movie posters of all time.
Above: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, Ussr,...
On November 1st, at Christie’s Auction House in London, a remarkable sale will take place under the banner “Vintage Posters” of 13 original Stenberg brothers film posters from the 1920s and 5 original “maquettes” or mock-up sketches. I have written about the Stenbergs a couple of times before, but although their fame is prodigious (they had a landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1997), original copies of their posters rarely come up for sale, let alone their original sketches.
The jewels in this crown are the posters for Battleship Potemkin and Man with a Movie Camera, which, according to Christie’s, may never have come up for auction before. Their sales estimates are between $96,000 and $128,000, which would put them among the top 20 most expensive movie posters of all time.
Above: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, Ussr,...
- 10/26/2012
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
This week is no laughing matter as we pick out the best clown cameos – from the weepy to the creepy
This week's Clip joint is by Martyn Conterio. Think you can do better? Email your idea for a future Clip joint to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
The movies have turned the once buffoonish, humble clown into an often monstrous screen entity. If they're not kidnapping victims to eat (à la Killer Klowns From Outer Space) then they're pathetic, mopey sorts "crying on the inside". Coulrophobia, too, goes some way to explain what we can describe as their inherent creepiness and strangeness. After all, aren't these guys supposed to make us laugh with daft antics and pratfalls in the arena of a Big Top?
The clown has appeared in a range of titles: from melodramas to pitch black comedies. The horror film, however, feels the clown's natural home despite giving...
This week's Clip joint is by Martyn Conterio. Think you can do better? Email your idea for a future Clip joint to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
The movies have turned the once buffoonish, humble clown into an often monstrous screen entity. If they're not kidnapping victims to eat (à la Killer Klowns From Outer Space) then they're pathetic, mopey sorts "crying on the inside". Coulrophobia, too, goes some way to explain what we can describe as their inherent creepiness and strangeness. After all, aren't these guys supposed to make us laugh with daft antics and pratfalls in the arena of a Big Top?
The clown has appeared in a range of titles: from melodramas to pitch black comedies. The horror film, however, feels the clown's natural home despite giving...
- 9/5/2012
- by Guardian readers
- The Guardian - Film News
Cinema's best examples of the fine art of chucking a table
This week's Clip joint is by James Rawson, a TV and web producer specialising in film journalism and based in Doha. Follow him on Twitter at @jrawson.
Think you can do better than James? If you've got an idea for a future Clip joint, pop and email over to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
"Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers." So reads Matthew 21:12, offering proof, if proof were needed, that sometimes you just need to grab the edge of a table and send it hurtling across a synagogue. Even Jesus couldn't resist.
Two thousand years and the table-flip phenomenon now boasts its own emoticon (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻) as well as some truly bizarre Japanese video games. However, the most glorious...
This week's Clip joint is by James Rawson, a TV and web producer specialising in film journalism and based in Doha. Follow him on Twitter at @jrawson.
Think you can do better than James? If you've got an idea for a future Clip joint, pop and email over to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk
"Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers." So reads Matthew 21:12, offering proof, if proof were needed, that sometimes you just need to grab the edge of a table and send it hurtling across a synagogue. Even Jesus couldn't resist.
Two thousand years and the table-flip phenomenon now boasts its own emoticon (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻) as well as some truly bizarre Japanese video games. However, the most glorious...
- 6/27/2012
- by Guardian readers
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.