Wednesday, Feb 8th 2012
Part 3 of the 100 Best Films of the Decade. Part 1 and Part 2 have already appeared. Only two to go.
The Life Aquatic…With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson – USA, 2004)
People either love or hate Wes Anderson, though I find I have a foot in either camp. I initially detested The Royal Tennenbaums before [...]
The much anticipated second installment of the 100 films of the decade. Part 1 can be found here.
Man on the Moon (Milos Forman – USA, 2000)
Milos Forman followed up his Larry Flynt biopic with one of another American curio, comedian Andy Kaufman. You don’t have to think Kaufman was an undisputed comic genius [...]
The past decade presented both new challenges and new opportunities to cinema. While on the one hand new technology freed filmmakers from the shackles of financing, a greater homogenisation of taste and lack of adventure among distributors and producers has made it harder to get interesting films seen. The internet has made it possible for [...]
Hari Kunzru | Nowhere to Hide: The Films of Michael Haneke
Hari Kunzru provides an excellent and detailed overview of the films of Michael Haneke, director of Hidden and Funny Games in the context of Austria, it’s history and his politics, and the cultural politics of the films with some interesting stuff on his Brechtian technique. [...]
Director Neil Blomkamp constructs a sci-fi allegory to explore the violence, cruelty and exploitation of South African segregation and poverty, apartheid and after. The result, however, is an awkward
collage of documentary, body-horror, corporate exposé, and action movie.
In 1989, intergalactic refugees arrive at Johannesburg, South Africa, and, much like their earthly counterparts, they are confined to [...]
Media Studies is Shit | Bamako: Doing Politics on Screen
Rabelais of the excellent Media Studies is Shit blog on putting politics into cinema, the problems of representation and the 2006 film Bamako.
Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006) is a film you’ll find filed under ‘world cinema’ at your HMV, although the film’s political ambition means that it [...]
Jane Slaughtor | Fun with Capitalism
Michael Moore’s new film “Capitalism: A Love Story” premiered to a rowdy—and wholly appreciative—labor audience at the AFL-CIO convention. The event, following a noisy march from the convention center to a theater down the street, was organized by the California Nurses Association and the Labor Campaign for Single Payer among [...]
John Greyson’s entirely reasonable decision to protest the Toronto International Film Festival’s City-to-City spotlight on Tel-Aviv (and the supporting letter from a group of activists, artists and intellectuals such as Naomi Klein, Jane Fonda and Slavoj Zizek) has been predictably distorted and misrepresented by Israel’s backers. Greyson cites the war in Gaza (for which both [...]
The recent visit by Ken Loach and Eric Cantona to Dublin for the première of Looking for Eric drew a surprise guest who Loach, at least, was unpleasantly surprised to see. Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern muscled in on the occasion, accompanied by his hapless brother Maurice on the latter’s doomed election campaign. The Aherns presented [...]
Although I am not by any stretch of the imagination an urban sophisticate and I always make a point of spitting after I say the word “cosmopolitan,” it has been impossible for me this summer not to notice the significant cultural trend shiftings, particularly while I have been watching the topless beach volleyball through my [...]
