movie Glossary
Coming and Going Attraction
If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie. GREG BROWN, Chicago
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Smiles of a Summer Night (Unrated) (1955)
Adultery was the great subject of many of Ingmar Bergman's films and much of his life. He was married five times, and not very faithfully, because he also had fairly public relationships with the actresses Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, and was married during all of those affairs. He was far from a libertine, experienced a great deal of guilt during his liaisons, and returned to the subject repeatedly in his films. He wrote "Sunday's Children" (1994), directed by his son Daniel, about how Bergman's clergyman father created a household where public piety was joined with private anguish. "Private Confessions" (1996), his screenplay directed by Liv Ullmann, was about his mother's moral struggles.
Forty-one years and perpetually young at heart, the Rotterdam International Film Festival is a distinguished venue for cinematic discovery. It debuts more first and second films by emerging filmmakers than just about any festival in the world, with its prestigious Tiger Award bestowed upon three up-and-coming talents. With a special emphasis on films from Latin America, Africa and Asia, there's a clear mission to foster a truly global film culture. This year, new ground was broken along gender lines: for the first time all three Tiger Awards went to women directors. More noteworthy is how different the winning films are, each with their own way of telling their respective young heroine's story on screen.
There, that wasn't so painful, was it? After all the hype coming out of Cannes (and especially since Harvey Weinstein got his mitts on it for U.S. distribution/Oscar promotion), I'd been kind of dreading "The Artist." Like "Hugo," it just sounded too "charming and delightful" -- and, to paraphrase Lou Grant, I hate "charming and delightful." (Usually because, for me, that ends up translating into "strained and unctuous.") But "The Artist" turns out to be a fairly benign, occasionally clever little musical/romantic comedy/melodrama. (I would not consider it, strictly speaking, a "silent," since it relies on synchronized Foley effects in some scenes -- to pointedly dramatize the Invasion of the Talkies -- and even a few words of recorded dialog.) Missing Bingham: Alchemy and the moviesCome ona Tree House (of Life) Tinker Tailor, Moneyball: Between the lines (Part 1) Watching (and listening to) Fincher's Girl Desert Island DVDs (Matt's & mine & yours) Moments Out of Time 2012 When I fall in love... Shame, Tree of Life: Ambiguity or bust? My first 2011 "Ten Best" list Idiocracy and the ten-best trolls Hey girl, The Artist, Shame and hype-season backlash A piece of David Cronenberg's mind
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The Opening Shots Project Index
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It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that this year's Academy Awards will amount to a shootout between "Hugo," with 11 nominations, and "The Artist," with 10. Fittingly, they are two movies inspired by love of movie history, the first about the inventor of the cinema, the second about the transition from silent films to talkies.
For me the best news produced by the Florida primary was Newt Gingrich's vow to take his fight all the way to the floor of this year's Republican convention. It has been way too long since a national political convention was more than a coronation stage-managed by public relations experts.
watch the oscar films
by Odie HendersonAfter viewing "The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975," I stumbled out of the theater and into a blinding, mid-afternoon New York City sun, every nerve in my body ablaze. All my neurons seemed to be firing at once, and my brain was so full of thought I sought some way to collect myself. I started to walk, focusing more on reconciling my thoughts than a navigational direction. With no destination in mind, I walked for what seemed an eternity, trying to put my emotional responses together. I was jolted from my mental process by an old woman standing next to me on a Manhattan street corner. I must have looked shell-shocked, because she touched my arm as we waited for a Lower East Side traffic light to change. "Honey, are you alright?" she asked, genuine concern on her face.
by Jeff ShannonThe United States could sure use a guy like Jon Gnarr right about now. Just take a look at the sorry state of our presidential campaigns and then consider what Gnarr achieved in his native Iceland: In January 2010 Gnarr, Iceland's most popular and controversial comedian, began to campaign for the office of Mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland's capital and largest city. What began as a joke snowballed into a seriously funny, but still very serious, protest vote that turned the tide of history.
by Odie HendersonLet's be frank: People watch nature documentaries because they want to see wild animals doing the Wild Thing. This can be shown on regular TV because, as Bea Arthur's Maude famously said, "animals making love is rated G. People making love like animals--that's R " An animal documentary serves to showcase how its subjects survive, hunt, eat, play, and yes, get their freak on. There's a reason the sexiest piece of music Elmer Bernstein ever wrote used to play over footage of animals gettin' bizzy on "National Geographic." A Barry White soundtrack would have been way too hot for TV.
• Wael Khairy in CairoThe Driver is the best at what he does. "You put this kid behind the wheel, there's nothing he can't do." He doesn't rely on luck and spontaneous driving; he knows what he's doing. He studies his environment, analyzes human behavior and acts accordingly.
• Seongyong Cho in South KoreaThere exists a stationary phase in wars unless they end quickly. The soldiers on both sides doubt whether they can survive; they are more exhausted day by day and it seems their hardship will last forever until they are killed in the battlefield. Even so, when the time to battle against the enemy comes again, they have no choice; they always do whatever their survival instinct drives them to do, and there come more scars and pains to be stored in their hurt lockers.
thumbs
Linked here are reviews in recent months for which I wrote either 4 star or 3.5 star reviews. What does Two Thumbs Up mean in this context? It signifies that I believe these films are worth going out of your way to see, or that you might rent them, add them to your Netflix, Blockbuster or TiVo queues, or if they are telecast record them.
Gathered here in one convenient place are my recent reviews that awarded films Zero Stars, One-half Star, One Star, and One-and-a-half Stars. These are, generally speaking to be avoided. Sometimes I hear from readers who confess they are in the mood to watch a really bad movie on some form of video. If you are sincere, be sure to know what you're getting: A really bad movie.
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