These are the film notes for tonight's film. For once I have actually seen the film I am writing about rather than having to rely purely on research.
Frost/Nixon
US 2008 (122 minutes)
Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Frank Langella and Martin Sheen
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Director, Actor in a Leading Role (Langella) and Adapted Screenplay (Peter Morgan).
A further 10 wins and 36 nominations
In 1977 former US President Nixon agreed to a series of TV interviews with David Frost which he hoped would rehabilitate his reputation with the American people after the scandal of Watergate. At this point in his career Frost was better known as a chat show host than a serious interviewer, and he realised that in order to sell the interviews to sceptical US television companies he needed Nixon to admit his role in the Watergate scandal rather than merely pad the interviews with endless anecdotes of life in the White House and details of foreign policy successes.
The film is based on the play of the same name by Peter Morgan, which was staged in London and New York with both Langella and Sheen in the same roles. The original interviews that Nixon gave to Frost are available on DVD, and inevitably a number of Nixon’s biographers have identified several inaccuracies in the screenplay: Nixon did not make any late night calls to Frost, Nixon had carefully planned his “confession” about Watergate, and the interviews were in no sense the epochal event in the history of politics that the film suggests.
Sheen has worked with Peter Morgan previously when he played Tony Blair on TV in The Deal (2003) and in cinema in The Queen (2006), and is due to play Blair for the third time in The Special Relationship from another script by Peter Morgan that examines Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton. Initially Peter Morgan was scheduled to direct as well, but has now handed over the this role to Richard Loncraine in order to write the screenplays for Hereafter, a supernatural thriller that Clint Eastwood will direct as well as the next Bond film – Bond 23.
Ron Howard has demonstrated an amazing ability to mix critical and commercially successful pictures in a career as a director which has lasted for more than 30 years: he made his name as a director with commercially successful films such as Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985), but subsequently directed critical successes such as Apollo 13 (1995) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). He followed the critical and commercial success of Frost/Nixon with Angels and Demons (2009), a sequel to his film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), once again with Tom Hanks in the lead.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Let the Right One In / Låt den rätte komma in
These are the film notes from last night's screening. The film was just as good as everything I had read suggested it would be, and I await the American remake already in production with trepidation.
Sweden 2008
Duration 114 minutes
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar
Awards and Nominations
56 wins
11 nominations
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years old Swedish boy who dreams of revenge against the local bullies. He meets and falls in love with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl who can’t stand the sun and in order to come into a room needs to be invited. She gives Oskar the strength to hit back at the bullies, but when he realises that she has to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a difficult question: how much can love forgive.
The first vampire film appeared in 1909 and in the hundred years since then there have been many others. The greatest of the silent versions was F W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story but with the vampire portrayed as the hideous creature from European folklore rather than Bram Stoker’s Byronic creation – and with the coming of sound Bela Lugosi played Dracula in a series of Hollywood films in the 1930s. Hammer Horror resurrected Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee playing the aristocratic vampire in a total of eight films. Since then there have been many stories which have continued the tradition of portraying the vampire as an alluring sex symbol starring actors as diverse as David Bowie, Catherin Deneuve and Tom Cruise. In the most recent manifestation of this tradition Robert Pattinson is playing a vampire who consumes only animal blood in a series of films based on the best-selling Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer.
However Let the Right One In sits firmly within another sub-genre of vampire films that links directly back to Max Shreck’s vampire in Nosferatu, a creature whose sole desire is to feed on the blood of others. Other films within this tradition include Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979) and the more recent 30 Days of Night (2007) in which a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town as it enters a thirty day period without sunshine.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Swedish novelist John Ayvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Lindqvist is a devoted Morrissey fan and the title of his novel refers both to the song Let the Right One Slip In as well as the tradition in vampire lore that prevents a vampire from entering a house unless invited. The film received widespread international critical acclaim on its release and also won numerous awards. As a result of its success at various film festivals the rights to an English language remake were sold before its theatrical release, and it is currently in production with Matt Reeves as director. Alfredson has concerns about the remake saying that “remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong”, while Lindqvist is excited that Reeves will produce his own adaptation of the original novel rather than merely remaking the original film so that the end result could be quite different.
Sweden 2008
Duration 114 minutes
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar
Awards and Nominations
56 wins
11 nominations
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years old Swedish boy who dreams of revenge against the local bullies. He meets and falls in love with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl who can’t stand the sun and in order to come into a room needs to be invited. She gives Oskar the strength to hit back at the bullies, but when he realises that she has to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a difficult question: how much can love forgive.
The first vampire film appeared in 1909 and in the hundred years since then there have been many others. The greatest of the silent versions was F W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story but with the vampire portrayed as the hideous creature from European folklore rather than Bram Stoker’s Byronic creation – and with the coming of sound Bela Lugosi played Dracula in a series of Hollywood films in the 1930s. Hammer Horror resurrected Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee playing the aristocratic vampire in a total of eight films. Since then there have been many stories which have continued the tradition of portraying the vampire as an alluring sex symbol starring actors as diverse as David Bowie, Catherin Deneuve and Tom Cruise. In the most recent manifestation of this tradition Robert Pattinson is playing a vampire who consumes only animal blood in a series of films based on the best-selling Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer.
However Let the Right One In sits firmly within another sub-genre of vampire films that links directly back to Max Shreck’s vampire in Nosferatu, a creature whose sole desire is to feed on the blood of others. Other films within this tradition include Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979) and the more recent 30 Days of Night (2007) in which a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town as it enters a thirty day period without sunshine.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Swedish novelist John Ayvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Lindqvist is a devoted Morrissey fan and the title of his novel refers both to the song Let the Right One Slip In as well as the tradition in vampire lore that prevents a vampire from entering a house unless invited. The film received widespread international critical acclaim on its release and also won numerous awards. As a result of its success at various film festivals the rights to an English language remake were sold before its theatrical release, and it is currently in production with Matt Reeves as director. Alfredson has concerns about the remake saying that “remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong”, while Lindqvist is excited that Reeves will produce his own adaptation of the original novel rather than merely remaking the original film so that the end result could be quite different.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Vicky Christina Barcelona
We are screening Vicky Christina Barcelona on Thursday 8th October. Here are the film notes:
Vicky Christina Barcelona
US/Spain 2008 (96 minutes)
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz
Awards and Nominations
Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Penelope Cruz)
Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
A further 18 wins and 27 nominations
While visiting Barcelona Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a famous artist, and begin a relationship with him, not knowing that his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz), with whom he had a tempestuous relationship, is about to come back into his life.
Allen sets the film up as a worldly-wise study of what remains after passion has dissipated, the type of film that Eric Rohmer has produced so well; but as Phillip French has noted its premise of American girls being bowled over by European culture the film also echoes the core plot of Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). The cast is truly international with British actor Rebecca Hall affecting a perfect American accent and two Spanish actors who are equally at home in Hollywood as well as in Spanish cinema. However it is the Spanish actors who won praise for their performances, with Javier Bardem receiving several nominations as Best Supporting Actor and Penelope Cruz winning several awards, including an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress.
After nearly two decades of producing a string of classic films like Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) in and around in New York Woody Allen moved to Europe, where his films had always been more successful, and began a new phase in his career. In London he produced Match Point (2005) which was well received and whose cast included Scarlett Johansson and followed this with Scoop (2006), which received mixed reviews and which as yet to be released in the UK, and Cassandra’s Dream (2007). From the UK he moved to Spain and Vicky Christina Barcelona marked a return to the form that produced Match Point, although it is unlikely that he will ever return to the form that produced a series of classics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Woody Allen’s next film is Whatever Works (2009), set in France and he is currently working on what IMDB calls his Untitled Woody Allen London Project, which is scheduled for release in 2010.
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