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5 items from 2012

30 April 2012 11:40 AM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Iberian rapscallion Alex de la Iglesia returns with As Luck Would Have It, yet another darkly comic exercise in capricious causality. His previous film, The Last Circus, is pretty popular around these parts, although it does have its detractors (namely, me), so I'd be interested in hearing what the community has to say about his this one. It sees Iglesia trading in the literal circus for a figurative one, giving us his warped version of Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole. Luck is the story of a down on his, named Roberto, a former Don Draper in the European advertising game. Due to the timely topicalness of the the current economic climate, he and his family have fallen on hard times. Hard. So he swallows »

27 March 2012 1:44 PM, PDT | The Playlist | See recent The Playlist news »

"I want to thank three persons,” said Michel Hazanavicius, accepting the 2012 Best Picture Oscar for “The Artist.” “I want to thank Billy Wilder, I want to thank Billy Wilder and I want to thank Billy Wilder.” He wasn’t the first director to namecheck Wilder in an acceptance speech. In 1994, Fernando Trueba, accepting the Foreign Language Film Oscar for "Belle Epoque" quipped, "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you Mr. Wilder." Wilder reportedly called the next day "Fernando? It's God."

So just what exactly was it that inspired these men to expend some of the most valuable seconds of speechifying airtime they'll ever know, to tip their hats to Wilder? And can we bottle it?

Born in a region of Austria/Hungary that is now part of Poland, Wilder's story feels like an archetype of »

- Oliver Lyttelton

18 February 2012 3:05 PM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

In his follow up to The Last Circus, As Luck Would Have It (La Chispa de la Vida), Álex De La Iglesia moves out from under the literal big top and sets his sites on the mass media -- probably as close to a modern circus as you can get, save for maybe the U.S. Republican primaries. De la Iglesia reigns in his style this time around and delivers a totally watchable takedown of greed and media obsession that certainly delivers a few madly inspired moments. But while he tips his hat knowingly to films like Network and Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, the end result is curiously toothless, and far less outrageous, intense and angry than either of those media-satire hallmarks. Interestingly, »

11 February 2012 4:04 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Back in October 1988, there was a heartwarming human-interest story that briefly swept more serious events off the world's TV screens. Three California grey whales were trapped under the ice in the Arctic circle near Barrow, Alaska, with only a small hole in the ice to use for a breather. Unless released within three days to head out for the southern breeding ground, they'd die. There followed a rescue mission that involved the media, the oil industry, the politicians, Greenpeace, the Wildlife Management Dept, the National Guard, the small-town inventors of a domestic thawing device and the Ussr in its dying days. But the title of this film is ironic. It wasn't a "big miracle" of international co-operation. Everyone exploited the crisis in the manner of the cynical journalist (Kirk Douglas) in Billy Wilder's classic 1951 movie Ace in the Hole who talked up a potentially disastrous story of a man »

- Philip French

3 February 2012 6:52 AM, PST | WeAreMovieGeeks.com | See recent WeAreMovieGeeks.com news »

Big Miracle is an outstanding new family film. It’s inspired by the true story of an Alaskan shore town where three whales got stuck in a pack of ice in 1988. The story begins with Adam Carlson (John Krasinski), a reporter for an Anchorage TV station who’s spending time in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the U.S. Adam has recently broken up with his Greenpeace activist girlfriend, Rachel Kramer (Drew Barrymore), so he spends much of his time watching satellite news feeds and befriending Nathan (Ahmaogak Sweeney), a young boy from the local Inupiat tribe. While filming a story about Nathan’s ice bike, Adam discovers a family of three gray whales (given the Flinstonian monikers Wilma, Fred, and Bam-Bam) that have become trapped in a small opening in the freezing ice that is preventing them from travelling five more miles to a waterway that they need »

- Tom Stockman

5 items from 2012