Milk
USA 2008 (129 minutes)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sean Penn)
Won Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black)
Six further Oscar nominations including Best Film and Best Director
A further 32 wins and 39 nominations
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician to hold a major public office in the US. After moving to California he became a campaigner for gay rights and was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1975. Three years later a disaffected fellow Supervisor assassinated both Milk and George Moscone, the Mayor of San Francisco
Dustin Lance Black spent three years researching Milk’s life and interviewing Milk’s associates after seeing the 1984 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk and used this work to produce his screenplay. The screenplay reached Gus Van Sant, who had made an abortive attempt to make his own film on the life of Harvey Milk fifteen years previously, and Van Sant at once decided to film it. The film makers used Milk’s original camera shop as well as San Francisco City Hall as key locations, and several of Milk’s associates portray themselves. Other characters portrayed in the film are still active in US public life and of these the most prominent is Dianne Feinstein, who made the announcement of the assassination of Milk and Moscone to the media. After succeeding Moscone as mayor she was subsequently elected to the US Senate and in 2009 she presided over the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Gus Van Sant had made several small independent films which had been artistically successful before obtaining commercial success with the black comedy To Die For (1995), which gave Nicole Kidman a breakthrough role as a homicidally ambitious weather girl on a cable TV station, and Good Will Hunting (1997), which launched the careers of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. After the commercial failure of a strangely pointless shot for shot colour remake of Psycho (1998) Van Sant returned to series of smaller scale films which continued to win artistic plaudits, culminating in his winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Elephant (2003), a story inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
Critics gave Milk widespread acclaim and Sean Penn, who bears a surprising physical resemblance to the real Harvey Milk, won many awards including a second Oscar, for his performance. The film appeared on many critics’ lists of the best films of 2008.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Milk
These are my notes for Milk which we screened in mid November. Work has been pretty hectic, so I need to catch up on things.
Weird Stuff
One of the joys of my role in the Film club is that I have a valid excuse to search out reviews and other information on the films that we are screening so that I can produce the notes for our members.
Usually this involves a quick trawl through the archives of Philip French and Peter Bradshaw with the odd vist to Wikipedia and IMDB for a killer quote or a list of awards and nominations. However Cinema Paradiso presented me with a challenge as it appeared long before online reviews, although of course it featured regularly in the usual "best of" lists. However conicidentally I had picked up my copy of Have You Seen?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films by David Thomson, which is brilliant for late-night browsing, although I am still only on the letter C. I hadn't looked at it for a while, but after opening the at my bookmark I turned the page to find his article on Cinema Paradiso. Spooky!
Usually this involves a quick trawl through the archives of Philip French and Peter Bradshaw with the odd vist to Wikipedia and IMDB for a killer quote or a list of awards and nominations. However Cinema Paradiso presented me with a challenge as it appeared long before online reviews, although of course it featured regularly in the usual "best of" lists. However conicidentally I had picked up my copy of Have You Seen?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films by David Thomson, which is brilliant for late-night browsing, although I am still only on the letter C. I hadn't looked at it for a while, but after opening the at my bookmark I turned the page to find his article on Cinema Paradiso. Spooky!
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Here are the notes I wrote before seeing the film:
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
UK/USA 2008 (94 minutes)
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewliss and Vera Framiga
Awards and Nominations
Two wins and five nominations including:
* Vera Franiga won the Best Actress Award and Mark Herman was nominated as Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards
* Joint Winner (with Slumdog Millionaire) of the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is living a comfortable life in Berlin during the Second World War but things change for the worse when his family has to move to the country: his father (David Thewliss) is a high ranking Nazi SS officer and his new posting is as commandant of a concentration camp. In his innocence Bruno sees the camp as a “farm”, and after initially wondering why the inhabitants all wear striped pyjamas he makes friends with a young Jewish boy of his own age who lives in the camp.
The film is based on the book of the same name by John Boyne, who described his story as a parable rather than historical fiction. But Boyne’s choice of the Holocaust as background to his novel was bound to provoke strong reactions: one reviewer questioned the overall premise of the story, claiming that there were no nine year old boys in Auschwitz as the Nazis killed all those not old enough to work. But on this specific point Boyne is close to the truth: records from Auschwitz registered that in January 1944 there were 773 male children under the age of 15 living in the camp and some were used as messengers, although it is impossible to forget the enormous numbers of other children who died in the gas chambers every day.
The film produced similarly mixed reactions from its audiences, with a tranche of good reviews praising its fidelity to the source novel and its avoidance of a clichéd ending, but with a dissenting critic who while accepting the power of the film described it as a Hollywood version of the Holocaust, literally a Disneyfication.
Mark Herman first came to prominence as writer and director of films like Brassed Off (1996) and Little Voice (1998). John Boyne is a graduate of the school of Creative Writing at UEA and has written eight other novels, although none has matched the success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which to date has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
Even though I knew the story the film was just as powerful as I had expected it to be, and the audience left in almost complete silence.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
UK/USA 2008 (94 minutes)
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewliss and Vera Framiga
Awards and Nominations
Two wins and five nominations including:
* Vera Franiga won the Best Actress Award and Mark Herman was nominated as Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards
* Joint Winner (with Slumdog Millionaire) of the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is living a comfortable life in Berlin during the Second World War but things change for the worse when his family has to move to the country: his father (David Thewliss) is a high ranking Nazi SS officer and his new posting is as commandant of a concentration camp. In his innocence Bruno sees the camp as a “farm”, and after initially wondering why the inhabitants all wear striped pyjamas he makes friends with a young Jewish boy of his own age who lives in the camp.
The film is based on the book of the same name by John Boyne, who described his story as a parable rather than historical fiction. But Boyne’s choice of the Holocaust as background to his novel was bound to provoke strong reactions: one reviewer questioned the overall premise of the story, claiming that there were no nine year old boys in Auschwitz as the Nazis killed all those not old enough to work. But on this specific point Boyne is close to the truth: records from Auschwitz registered that in January 1944 there were 773 male children under the age of 15 living in the camp and some were used as messengers, although it is impossible to forget the enormous numbers of other children who died in the gas chambers every day.
The film produced similarly mixed reactions from its audiences, with a tranche of good reviews praising its fidelity to the source novel and its avoidance of a clichéd ending, but with a dissenting critic who while accepting the power of the film described it as a Hollywood version of the Holocaust, literally a Disneyfication.
Mark Herman first came to prominence as writer and director of films like Brassed Off (1996) and Little Voice (1998). John Boyne is a graduate of the school of Creative Writing at UEA and has written eight other novels, although none has matched the success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which to date has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
Even though I knew the story the film was just as powerful as I had expected it to be, and the audience left in almost complete silence.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Inherit The Wind
We've just been to see Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic, a dramatisation of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial with Kevin Spacey and David Troughton giving brilliant performaces as the defence and prosection attorneys.
When the play was first performed in the 1950s it was seen as a critique of the anti-communist witch hunts (it appeared at the same time as The Crucible), but following recent news reports about the alleged support for the teaching of creationism in schools, it now comes across as a critique of the idiocies of biblical literalism. Philip Pullman wrote a facinating article showing how both political and religious totalitarianism fears knowledge, and seeing a play like this makes us realise that the battle with superstition will be never-ending.
I've recently been reading Darwin, and his "theory" is substantiated by examples gleaned from years of detailed research and observation. For the record I'm not against the teaching of creationism in schools: just so long as it forms part of a general session on creation myths and no one makes a claim that there is the merest iota of truth in it.
When the play was first performed in the 1950s it was seen as a critique of the anti-communist witch hunts (it appeared at the same time as The Crucible), but following recent news reports about the alleged support for the teaching of creationism in schools, it now comes across as a critique of the idiocies of biblical literalism. Philip Pullman wrote a facinating article showing how both political and religious totalitarianism fears knowledge, and seeing a play like this makes us realise that the battle with superstition will be never-ending.
I've recently been reading Darwin, and his "theory" is substantiated by examples gleaned from years of detailed research and observation. For the record I'm not against the teaching of creationism in schools: just so long as it forms part of a general session on creation myths and no one makes a claim that there is the merest iota of truth in it.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Frost/Nixon
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.
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.
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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