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5 items from 2012

21 April 2012 4:08 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Three powerful UK film scores get a nod from the Ivor Novellos, while Hitchcock's restored silent movies are given modern musical accompaniment

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Why are the pop-based Ivor Novello awards nominating far more interesting film scores than any other awards body? Their three contenders for best original film score, announced last week, were: The First Grader, by Alex Heffes; We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood; and Life in a Day, by Harry Gregson-Williams and the great Matthew Herbert. These are inventive, creative and powerful modern film scores – far more vital, exciting and reflective of what's going on in film score composition in the UK at the moment than the usual boring nods for, say, Howard Shore and Alexandre Desplat.

Silent Hitch

Trash got a real treat last week, attending the launch of BFI Southbank's forthcoming Hitchcock season. The blockbuster event, designed to coincide with »

- Jason Solomons

18 April 2012 4:06 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

He was that rare thing – a hugely successful director who learned from the avant garde

Further proof of how badly the Academy Awards can get it wrong surely lies in this fact: Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar for best director. Yet he has won an even higher public accolade: he's become synonymous with a style. Ask even the most casual of film-goers to define "Hitchcockian", and you'll hear about the stabbing strings in Psycho; the escalation of panic in The Birds; the icy blondes and the MacGuffins. Hitchcock was that rare thing: a hugely successful director who learned from the avant garde – and so helped set the standards for all subsequent cinema. Born in the last days of Queen Victoria, Hitchcock gained his technical mastery and economy making silent movies – so full marks to the British Film Institute for restoring nine of those early works. The line between his 1926 debut, »

18 April 2012 12:26 PM, PDT | Flickeringmyth | See recent Flickeringmyth news »

The British Film Institute is hosting a celebration of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock this summer. "The Genius of Hitchcock: Celebrating Cinema's Master of Suspense" will include screenings of nine of his newly restored silent movies - the culmination of a three-year project. The BFI's creative director said that they wanted to get out the “big guns” during Olympic year.

The films, with new scores by composers including Nitin Sawhney, Neil Brand, Daniel Patrick Cohen and Soweto Kinch, will be shown during the London 2012 Festival. Hitchcock’s first film The Pleasure Garden will be shown at Wilton's Music Hall, an open-air screening of Blackmail will be staged outside the British Museum, and boxing drama The Ring will be shown at the Hackney Empire.

The three-month long season will see a retrospective of his 58 films, with Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window and The Birds all being screened. Actors Tippi Hedren (The Birds »

- flickeringmyth

17 April 2012 5:05 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Newly restored silent movies included in BFI's biggest ever project, part of London 2012 Festival

Alfred Hitchcock is to be celebrated like never before this summer, with a retrospective of all his surviving films and the premieres of his newly restored silent films – including Blackmail, which will be shown outside the British Museum.

The BFI on Tuesday announced details of its biggest ever project: celebrating the genius of a man who, it said, was as important to modern cinema as Picasso to modern art or Le Corbusier to modern architecture. Heather Stewart, the BFI's creative director, said: "The idea of popular cinema somehow being capable of being great art at the same time as being entertaining is still a problem for some people. Shakespeare is on the national curriculum, Hitchcock is not."

One of the highlights of the season will be the culmination of a three-year project to fully restore nine of the director's silent films. »

- Mark Brown

17 April 2012 12:51 PM, PDT | Huffington Post | See recent Huffington Post news »

At the end of Alfred Hitchcock's long and storied film career he directed a total of 58 films. This summer, London's BFI will feature all of the films, including the premier of nine of his newly restored silent films, the Guardian reports.

From June to October, BFI will show all of Hitchcock's films in "The Genius of Hitchcock: Celebrating Cinema's Master of Suspense."

Hitchcock's horror films are as pervasive in the world of cinema as Shakespeare's plays are to theater. Films like "Psycho" and "Rear Window" were not only a peek inside the psychology of fear, but also that of a innovative and genius filmmaker.

"We would find it very strange if we could not see Shakespeare's early plays performed, or read Dickens's early novels," said Heather Stewart, the BFI's creative director, in an interview with the Guardian. "But we've been quite satisfied as a nation that Hitchcock's early films »

- Amber Genuske

5 items from 2012