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8 items from 2010

29 September 2010 8:38 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Put your best foot forward as Tess Morris trips through the best foot footage on film. Stay in step now

Feet just don't get enough praise in life, let alone in cinema. Nothing says funny, sexy, thrilling or horrific like the naked foot. They're the most versatile prop a film-maker can use – be it for running, jumping, skipping, flirting or roundhouse kicking someone in the face. Indeed, the bare foot in film is so powerful that it can even be massaged offscreen and still steal the show. Let them run free and both feet, one foot, just the toes (or even just the one toe) will put every other body part in the shade. The audience can relate to feet – hey, I've got those! – then imagine their own pair being hobbled. Yep: fetishised or not, elegant, sensual or just down right stinky, the humble foot has certainly secured its place in cinema history. »

16 September 2010 9:45 PM, PDT | CriterionCast | See recent CriterionCast news »

Next week, the film community will take a break from all of these high brow film festivals, to descend upon Austin Texas for the epic genre festival, Fantastic Fest. We’ve previewed several of the films that will be premiering at Fantastic Fest, and they just announced a few more films, from those lovely vikings up in Norway.

Criterion alum, Stellan Skarsgård (Insomnia, The Perfect Murder, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being) plays Ulrik in Hans Petter Moland’s comedy A Somewhat Gentle Man. You’ll also be able to catch Arild Fröhlich’s 2008 film, Fatso, as well as Thomas Cappelen Malling’s Norwegian Ninja. It’s nice to see some of the more comedic Scandinavian films being represented amongst so many darker genre films at the festival.

While there are going to be a number of Asian genre films represented at the festival, it’s clear that Fantastic Fest is a global event. »

- Ryan Gallagher

14 September 2010 5:32 PM, PDT | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

Jack Finney's ('Somewhere in Time') seminal 1955 science fiction-horror novel (serialized a year earlier in Collier's), 'The Body Snatchers' (a.k.a. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'), has been filmed four times, first in 1956, the second in 1978, the third in 1993, and the fourth (and so far, last) in 2007. The1956 adaptation, shot on a limited budget by Don Siegel ('Dirty Harry,' 'The Beguiled') for Allied Artists with Kevin McCarthy in the lead role, is generally acknowledged as a minor genre classic, in part for its anti-conformity, anti-collectivist themes that could be read as a critique of McCarthyism (named after the red-baiting senator from Wisconsin, not the actor), or communism. It was also an effective horror film, building existential dread from the characters' fears and anxieties, that the people they knew and love had been replaced by duplicates, identical in almost every way, but incapable of emotion. »

- Mel Valentin

24 August 2010 3:17 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Oscar-winning French actor Juliette Binoche could have settled for Hollywood stardom. Instead, she is putting the spotlight on human rights injustices in Iran

Actor, poet, painter, dancer: these are all real-life roles that Juliette Binoche has performed with varying degrees of success or, at least, recognition. But this year it is as a human rights campaigner that the 46-year-old Oscar-winning star of The English Patient has drawn perhaps most headlines.

Just recently hers was one of the celebrity names attached to the international appeal to halt the stoning to death of Mohammadi Ashtiani, the 43-year-old Iranian mother found guilty of adultery. Ashtiani had already been lashed 99 times and held in prison for five years, after confessing under torture to having affairs with two men.

Binoche was not the only actor to defend Ashtiani (Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Robert De Niro also put their names to the campaign), but she »

- Andrew Anthony

4 August 2010 6:44 AM, PDT | Flickeringmyth | See recent Flickeringmyth news »

Trevor Hogg profiles the career of three time Academy Award-winning sound designer and film editor Walter Murch in the second of a five part feature... read part one here.

“I try to choose projects that dovetail my own interests,” remarked New York-native Walter Murch. “That’s a significant part of the process – where you are really casting yourself, in much the same way actors cast themselves for a role. In an ideal situation, such as Vanessa Redgrave in Julia, an actor chooses a part that represents an emotional truth to her as an individual, which pushes her somewhere she has not gone before.” Sharing the same name as his painter father, the sound designer established himself as a film editor with the 1977 picture about a young woman (Jane Fonda) who risks her life aiding her childhood friend (Redgrave) help the French Resistance by smuggling money during WWII. Still considered a rookie at the time, »

- flickeringmyth

15 June 2010 9:05 PM, PDT | The Film Stage | See recent The Film Stage news »

HBO has finally given the green light to James Gandolfini’s much-talked-about Ernest Hemingway project Hemingway & Gellhorn, which was meant to be a feature film starring Gandolfini at one point. [Deadline Hollywood]

Now HBO will make it their own, with Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman starring as authors Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, to be directed by Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being). Gellhorn, considered one of the greatest war correspondents of all time, met Hemingway in 1936, and the two traveled to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War shortly after.

Their romance began shortly after that, and the two had an affair, on and off, until 1940, when they were married. The marriage only lasted 5 years and was just as troubled as the affair that preceded it.

The slew of potential Hemingway projects is exciting. He’s a celebrated life with a full life of adventure and tragedy »

- Dan Mecca

27 May 2010 11:59 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Juliette Binoche is French film royalty, famous the world over. But nothing could prepare her for Iran, where she was chased by female fans in burqas

On the beach at Cannes, the pedlars sell knick-knacks and sun hats. They come trudging up the sand, their arms laden with shades and sombreros, beaded necklaces and kiss-me-quick baseball caps. Sometimes they make a sale; more often they don't. "Non, merci," says Juliette Binoche, who is perched at the end table of a seafront bar. "Thank you. No." I don't know what you give the woman who has everything, but I am fairly sure it's not a red sequined sombrero.

In France they call her "La Binoche", as though she is her own brand or self-contained principality. Her latest film refers to her as "She", a label that invites us to regard her as the emblem of womanhood. It is abundantly clear that »

- Xan Brooks

22 March 2010 10:18 AM, PDT | Makingof.com | See recent Makingof.com news »

San Francisco, CA -- The San Francisco Film Society announced today that acclaimed film editor and sound designer Walter Murch will deliver the annual State of Cinema Address at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22 - May 6) at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas Sunday, April 25 at 4:00 pm.

Murch's address, "Three Fathers of Cinema: Beethoven, Flaubert, Edison," will contemplate what would have happened if motion pictures had been invented in 1789. He will present various theories on the evolution of filmmaking, investigating the cultural origins of cinema in the 19th century and the implications for the future of cinema in the 21st century.

"We are thrilled to have Walter Murch deliver our State of Cinema Address at the Festival this year," said Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society. "His extensive contributions to filmmaking and the pioneering steps he has taken in the field provide him with »

8 items from 2010