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Cannes 2013: Only God Forgives – first look review
8 hours ago
Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn re-team for an emotionally breathtaking, aesthetically brilliant and immensely violent thriller set amongst Us expatriates in Bangkok
It may not win the Palme D'Or, but it could win the Walkout D'Or, a gold trophy of a cinema-seat banged up into the upright position. Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives is a glitteringly strange, mesmeric and mad film set among American criminal expatriates in Bangkok.
It is ultraviolent, creepy and scary, an enriched-uranium cake of pulp, with a neon sheen. The first scenes made me think that Wong Kar-wai had made a new film called In the Mood for Fear or In the Mood for Hate.
Ryan Gosling plays Julian, the co-owner of a Muay Thai boxing club with his brother Billy (Tom Burke): an operation which is a front for selling drugs. Both brothers are naturally angry and violent, though in keeping his feelings in check, »
- Peter Bradshaw
Nicolas Winding Refn says he made Only God Forgives 'like a pornographer'
9 hours ago
Drive director confesses to a fetish for violence, and star Kristin Scott Thomas says film became 'more and more despicable'
Two sounds provided the keynote of the first screening of Nicolas Winding Refn's follow-up to Drive: the screams of characters being subjected to grotesque acts of dismemberment and torture, and the slap of seats springing upright as members of the press walked out of the grandest cinema at the Cannes film festival. One American woman exclaimed loudly as she exited: "This is shit."
Even its British co-star, Kristin Scott Thomas, said: "Films where this kind of violence happens I don't enjoy watching at all" and joked that as the film was made "it got more and more despicable". But its director, Nicolas Winding Refn, said that he approached filmmaking "like a pornographer: it's about what arouses me. Certain things turn me on more than other stuff and I can't suppress that. »
- Charlotte Higgins
Cannes film festival diary: day eight
11 hours ago
People are beginning to leave Cannes. Perhaps it's because they don't want to catch germs from Only God Forgives
Inside the Lumière theatre, a spectator is coughing. The coughing on one side sparks a response in the other and before long everyone appears to be at it and the whole place sounds like New Year's Eve at the TB sanatorium. I seem to remember the same thing happening last year; it's like some weird Cannes tradition. By this point of the festival, the delegates are breaking down.
Already the first cardboard boxes have appeared in the marche, the first sign that the sellers are packing up and moving on. The Salle Buñuel at the top of the Palais is more than half-empty for the late morning screening. It gives the place a morbid air. Logic tells me that these absentees can all be accounted for. They are off riding trains, »
- Xan Brooks
Colour footage of London in the 1920s allows us to be tourists in our own past
15 hours ago
The full-colour silent era footage that caused so much excitement online recently is almost like science-fiction
Reading this on mobile? Click here to view the video
London looks itself and other in this footage. For a 21st-century viewer it is like watching a science-fiction film in which almost everything is the same until you notice little differences that betray a completely alien quality. The past is another country, but in Claude Friese-Greene's film of the capital's streets and sights it is a place disguised as our own.
This is because this 1926 footage, which is currently a Twitter talking point, was shot in colour. Friese-Greene and his father William pioneered their own method of shooting in colour, back during the silent era: it is a byway of cinema history, an experiment that never caught on. In fact, it is part of a lost history of rival technologies in which Britain »
- Jonathan Jones
Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight – first look review
15 hours ago
Stephen Frears's lightweight account of Ali's stand over Vietnam does scant justice to its charismatic central protagonist
In 1967, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight title and sentenced to three years incarceration after ruling himself out of the Vietnam war. The appeal process dragged on for three years, through a good portion of his boxing prime, before it reached the supreme court. The fate of the era's most celebrated and contentious African-American was now in the hands of a gang of old, white patricians, few of whom would be likely to look on him kindly.
The fact that Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight elects to ignore Ali in favour of the old, white patricians need not necessarily be cause for concern. There are many ways to skin a cat and various angles into a good story. But the new film from Stephen Frears, which played in a special screening »
- Xan Brooks
Robert Redford: 'Certain things have got lost'
16 hours ago
The writer-director uses Cannes press conference to say that the Us has lost its way since the second world war, and that rampant development must be controlled
Robert Redford today accused the Us of losing its way in the years since the second world war. Speaking at the press conference for his new film All Is Lost at the Cannes film festival.
"Certain things have got lost," said Redford. "Our belief system had holes punched in it by scandals that occurred, whether it was Watergate, the quiz show scandal, or Iran-Contra; it's still going on…Beneath all the propaganda is a big grey area, another America that doesn't get any attention; I decided to make that the subject of my films."
Redford, now 76, also had critical words for the Us's never-ending drive for economic and technological development, which he considers has been a damaging force.
"We are in a dire »
- Andrew Pulver
The Great Gatsby meets Baz Luhrmann
16 hours ago
This might be the best attempt yet to film Fitzgerald's masterpiece. Which is not to say this is a good film
Writing about Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby in relation to F Scott Fitzgerald's prose, is like trying to describe a gorilla playing with a Fabergé egg. There it is, this great hairy, wild-eyed beast, stomping, roaring, thumping its chest. It neither knows nor cares about the delicate beauty it holds in its mattock hands, and has no idea why so many people think it so precious. …
That's not to say, however, that the film bears no relation to the book. In a charitable review, the reliably eloquent Mark Kermode said that it's as if Luhrmann has decided that he's simply going to shout the text at you. So, for instance, if you take the famous scene where Nick first sees Gatsby looking out across the sound to that single »
- Sam Jordison
Luke Skywalker's Star Wars Levi's auctioned
16 hours ago
Stone-coloured trousers worn by Mark Hamill throughout 1977 film have gone under the hammer in a Us online auction
Who knew Levi's had an outlet on Tatooine? The iconic pair of jeans worn by Luke Skywalker throughout most of 1977's Star Wars film have gone under the hammer.
The "cotton-drill" distressed trousers, which measure a slim 29 inches around the waist, with a leg measurement of 37in, and have two 6in slits up the side, were auctioned online by Us Hollywood memorabilia specialists Nate D Sanders. They have a UK origin, having been specially customised by famous London costumier Bermans & Nathans, whose 40 Camden Street address remains on a clothing tag. "Mark Hamill / 10490 Luke / Star Wars" is printed beneath it.
The jeans are described online as: "Screen-worn 'hero' costume pants worn by Mark Hamill in his career-defining role as Luke Skywalker in the 1977 epic film Star Wars, the first in the groundbreaking trilogy. »
- Ben Child
Behind the Candelabra at Cannes: red carpet fashion
17 hours ago
The stars were out in full force at the premiere for the new Liberace biopic. The man himself may not approve of the film, but he'd certainly like the fashion
Matt Damon and Michael Douglas Rosario DawsonSharon Stone
Michael Douglas, Jerry Weintraub, Matt Damon and Richard Lagravanese Jessica ChastainMilla JovovichMatt DamonPetra NemcovaJulia Dietze Jamel Debbouze's shoes Barbara PalvinMichael Douglas
• Behind the Candelabra is released in UK cinemas on 7 June 2013
Cannes 2013Liberace
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All Is Lost – first look review
17 hours ago
Jc Chandor's drama of survival at sea features an impressive – and largely non-speaking – performance from Robert Redford, but is a little too pared-down for its own good
Anyone preparing for a round the world trip on their own yacht ought to
give this survival-at-sea picture a very wide berth. The message seems to
be: if the Somalian pirates don't get you, sheer dumb luck, combined with
hostile wind and rain, will.
Dumb luck actually comes calling via, of all things, a floating container full of children's shoes, which smashes into a boat piloted solo by Robert Redford's grizzled sailor. (In what we can only assume is a metaphorical jab, the container is rather obviously Chinese, holing this aging symbol of all-American manhood right on the waterline.) Initially Redford - whose character's name is never revealed - appears to cope quite well with the crisis: methodically cutting his boat free, »
- Andrew Pulver
My name is cleared at last' - film shows police brutality at Genoa G8 summit
19 hours ago
In January 2005, I met a clearly distressed young British journalist who told me of being beaten up by the Italian police during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.
Four years on, Mark Covell was still suffering from both the physical and psychological effects of that savage attack as he recounted his injuries: eight broken ribs, smashed teeth, a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. He lost consciousness and slipped into a coma.
He found it difficult to talk about what had happened and when he did try, he shook badly and often appeared close to tears. "You've never seen anything like it," he said several times.
Indeed, I had no conception of what had really happened to him and to more than 100 other young journalists and activists who decided to spend the night bedded down in the Armando Diaz school in Genoa on 21 July 2001.
Now, a further eight years on, I »
- Roy Greenslade
YouTube Comedy Week, day 3: Doc Brown, Jamie Oliver – and Adrian Chiles?
19 hours ago
After a muted response to day two of YouTube's comedy-fest, can Doc Brown and Jamie Oliver raise anything more than a smile?
Reading this on mobile? Click here to view
You weren't much taken with Tuesday's crop of comic songs and sketches on YouTube Comedy Week, which included Sarah Silverman's duet with Will.i.am and a fairly broad Mumford and Sons takedown. And I don't expect doubters to be won over by what's appeared on Comedy Week since then. Most of the content is fine if its ambition is to raise a smile among office clockwatchers ("Hi, I'm Grace Helbig and you're watching Comedy Week," runs the trailer; "why aren't you doing your work?"), but I've not spotted anything must-see as yet.
There are plenty of UK-focused videos on day three, including one featuring Ricky Gervais's recent sidekick, the comedy rapper Doc Brown. Brown – Aka Ben Smith »
- Brian Logan
Man of Steel: Michael Shannon puts the fear of Zod into new Superman trailer
19 hours ago
Less camp than Terence Stamp but just as menacing, the new Kryptonian villain looks poised for a box-office bloodbath
Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch trailer
The final trailer for forthcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel has debuted on the web, and this time it's all about Michael Shannon's General Zod. Essayed by Terence Stamp in Richard Donner's original 1978 Superman and its 1980 sequel, the Kryptonian supervillain's 21st-century incarnation is now a little less camp but just as ruthless and megalomaniacal. He turns up on Earth to smack mankind with a startling double-whammy: firstly, aliens exist, and secondly, they're going to blow the planet to smithereens if Superman doesn't come quietly.
Stamp's henchmen Ursa and Non are nowhere to be seen, but German actor Antje Traue plays a sinister character named Faora who has also made the journey to Earth. Comic-book aficionados will be aware that the »
- Ben Child
Clip joint: mind control
22 hours ago
Look into my eyes – and help us find the best examples of mind control in film
This week's Clip joint is by writer Nia Jones; follow her on Twitter here.
We've covered the workings of the mind on clip joint, but how about scenes involving manipulation of the human brain?
1. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
This adaptation of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate is an intense political thriller with wonderful performances by Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra. Director John Frankenheimer taps into multinational conspiracies in a fascinating and enthralling film.
Reading on mobile? Watch the clip on YouTube
2. Village of the Damned (1995)
Based on The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, and a remake of the 1960 film adaptation, Village of the Damned sees hostile extraterrestrial forces send the population of the Midwest American village Midwich to sleep. When they wake up, all the women of child-bearing age are pregnant. The children »
- Guardian readers
Fast & Furious 6: has auto mayhem crashed The Great Gatsby party?
22 hours ago
Baz Luhrmann's high-society adaptation had little chance of surviving a box-office collision with the Fast & Furious franchise
The winner
It's not unusual for film franchises to hit their commercial stride with the second or third installment: Austin Powers and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy are a couple of notable examples. But it's rare for a series to keep on building as it matures into its fourth, fifth and sixth episodes, as Fast & Furious has done. The first three films in the franchise all opened below £3m in the UK, before the fourth picture, confusingly called just Fast & Furious, debuted with a shade under £5m in 2009. Fast & Furious 5 pushed a little further two years later, kicking off with £5.33m, including £1.30m in previews. Now Fast & Furious 6 arrives, screaming out of the starting block with a stunning £8.72m. That's enough to make it already the third-biggest Fast & Furious film at the UK box office, »
- Charles Gant
New York Times accused of treating Latin political leaders differently
23 hours ago
Here's a story that the New York Times has yet to carry. A petition, signed by 23 leading Us academics, authors and film-makers, has been launched which urges the paper's "public editor" to examine the Times's inconsistent coverage of two Latin American countries.
They argue that there are disparities between its largely negative reporting on Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (who died in March) and its less critical reporting on Honduras under its successive leaders, Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo.
Among the petition's signatories are more than a dozen experts on Latin America and the media plus Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, and the film directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. Here's the full script of the petition…
Dear Margaret Sullivan,
In a recent column, you observed:
Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news »
- Roy Greenslade
Peep Show creators came within a week of making Flight of the Conchords
23 hours ago
Sam Bain lifts the lid on 'painful' decision to turn down HBO series, Three Men in a Boat stars enter choppy waters – and Britain's smelliest-looking celebrity
This week's comedy news
Laughing Stock this week brings you news, not of something that's happened in the world of comedy, but something that didn't. According to an interview with Peep Show creator Sam Bain on the Stateside podcast A Bit of a Chat, Bain and his writing partner Jesse Armstrong "were about a week away from flying to La to co-create Flight of the Conchords, and then Peep Show got recommissioned and we couldn't go".
Bain and Armstrong had agreed to make the HBO series with Conchords stars Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement – "[although] we didn't know it was gonna be as good as it was," Bain told interviewer Ken Plume. (It turned out – with the Conchords' eventual co-writer James Bobin – to be very good indeed. »
- Brian Logan
Cannes 2013: Grigris – first look review
22 May 2013 1:26 AM, PDT
A minor work from the emerging master of African cinema, Mahamat Saleh-Haroun, this is elevated by a heightened female perspective and some rousing dance scenes
Mahamat Saleh-Haroun now revisits that theme of father-son bonding which was such an important part of his earlier movies Our Father (2002), Dry Season (2006) and A Screaming Man (2010). But now he progresses away from this template — in the same meandering way that characterises his storytelling — to a closer identification with women. It is a typically calm, lucid drama, presented in the director's unforced, cinematic vernacular and attractively and sympathetically acted. There is also some great music from the Senegalese composer Wasis Diop, brother of the director Djibril Diop Mambety. However, I couldn't help feeling that this was a slight and contrived piece, compared to his earlier work.
Saleh-Haroun's lead is non-professional Souleymane Deme, who plays Grigris, a brilliant dancer despite a leg disability. He earns spare »
- Peter Bradshaw
Cannes film festival diary: day seven
22 May 2013 12:50 AM, PDT
Back at the Hotel du Cap for an audience with Liberace, then home to Cannes for Eurotrash excess from Paulo Sorrentino … and Euro-tensions courtesy of the cabbie
The route from the Hotel du Cap back to Cannes leads from the clifftops past stone-walled mansions and then, via a series of bumpy twists and turns, down into the throng. En-route we drive along quiet, faded promenades, still idling in the 1950s, and past dazzling swatches of sea; the wave-caps all illuminated.
There are four people in the car into Cannes: the driver, an American journalist, an HBO producer and me. We are returning from an audience with the makers of Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh's terrific, bracing biopic of Liberace. But we are in danger of ignoring the splendours at the window.
"Will you look at us?" the American journalist exclaims. "We've got this view but what are we doing? »
- Xan Brooks
Cannes 2013: The Great Beauty - first look review
22 May 2013 12:48 AM, PDT
Paulo Sorrentino's magnificent return to form sees him reteam with Toni Servillo for a lush, classical tale of middle-age hedonism and lost love
Paolo Sorrentino has returned to Cannes with a gorgeous movie, the film equivalent of a magnificent banquet composed of 78 sweet courses. It is in the classic high Italian style of Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Antonioni's La Notte: an aria of romantic ennui among those classes with the sophistication and leisure to appreciate it. The grande bellezza, like the grande tristezza, can mean love, or sex, or art, or death, but most of all it here means Rome, and the movie wants to drown itself in Rome's fathomless depths of history and worldliness.
La Grande Bellezza is a return to Sorrentino's natural form and cinematic language, after his uneasy English-language picture This Must Be The Place, which starred Sean Penn as a swirly-haired rock star. The »
- Peter Bradshaw
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