M. Night Shyamalan’s mystical “The Last Airbender,” about characters who can manipulate the elements, led all other contenders Saturday with five Razzie awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Screenplay. “Airbender” also took home the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor (Jackson Rathbone, who was also nominated for “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”) and a special [...]
A short video to give readers a feel for one of the world’s largest and oldest film festivals.
The general mood of journalists at the 61st Berlin Film Festival was disappointment: reports generally characterised the selection as dismal. The Independent’s Jonathan Romney explained that the festival tended to ‘test your tolerance for the worthy’, just like every other year. The term ‘worthy’ makes the films sound depressing and dull, but as Romney also [...]
Since he dropped out of Disney’s “Oz, the Great and Powerful,” Robert Downey Jr. is looking to fill the gap in his schedule with a starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s next project, “Inherent Vice.” Anderson had originally started to develop “The Master,” a Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle exploring the inner workings of a fictional [...]
After yesterday’s blog on My Best Enemy, a film set during Germany’s fascist past, today’s blog reviews a film set during the country’s communist period, as well as the present-day. The Prize (Der Preis) is about a young architect, Alexander Beck, who has won a competition: a housing complex based on his design is going [...]
Wolfgang Murnburger’s latest film tells the story of two lifelong friends, Rudi and Victor: when World War II breaks out, Rudi joins the Nazis and betrays Victor, who is Jewish. This is all I knew going into My Best Enemy (Mein bester Feind, 2010): if you, too, would like to enjoy a tense, original, emotional [...]
“Enter the Void” will be loathed by a lot of people. Dismissed as a pretentious stoner flick trying desperately to dazzle. And I won’t completely disagree. But French director Gaspar Noé’s third effort is also hard to ignore. Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) is a young, soft-spoken American drug dealer who moves about almost exclusively in the [...]
Kim Soo-hyun’s distinctive way of looking at the world shines through in bursts of comic dialogue and unexpected visual twists in Ashamed (Chang-Pi-Hae, 2010). For the most part, the film is mildly engaging, rather like a teenage movie you might see on TV, but with some added moments of artistry. The film’s central narrative is a [...]
The Berlin Film Festival is not just about watching films that have already been made: it also invests in the future of cinema by nurturing new talent. The Berlinale Talent Campus, now in its 9th year, is a week-long series of events, taking place in parallel with the festival. It is intended to guide and [...]
In Cave of Forgotten Dreams Herzog couldn’t resist commenting on the cinematic dimensions he perceived in the 32,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings. He noted that some of the animals portrayed had 8 legs, suggesting that even at this early stage in human development, we wanted to represent movement: the cinematic impulse was there. Michel [...]
We’ll always have Casablanca
‘Carnage’ slaughters dialogue with theatrics
Loco: London’s 1st Comedy Film Festival
Orlando: Does Sex Matter?
A soothing demise: Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’ considered
The Power of Limits in The Five Obstructions
Surviving ‘Surviving Life’
‘The Other’ at The 2nd London Iranian Film Festival
‘Leaving’: Made in Prague
A Step Forward: New African Film in Paris
