Top Ten Romantic Movies

The Guardian has publishe a list of the top ten romantic movies:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/oct/07/top-10-romantic-movies

Casablanca, A Room with a View and  and Brief Encounter definitely get my vote. 

I'm not so sure about Hannah and her Sisters, but I suppose that not all Woody Allen's best films are romantic...

A Modest Proposal

If any film producers wish to use quotes from this blog to promote their films then I'm happy to agree subject to payment of a nominal fee.

In an extract from his new book on the role of the film critic Marc Kermode has picked up on the novel use of non-professional critics to puff a film:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/29/hatchet-jobs-anonymity-internet-kermode?guni=Keyword:news-grid

In the world of books I think the providers of such puffs are known as "quote whores".  The world of arts journalism is a rough and dangerous place.

Twelve Best Soundtracks

The Guardian has followed up the recent BBC series on soundtracks by nominating 12 of the best soundtracks:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/filmblog/2013/sep/18/twelve-best-film-soundtracks

It's good to see Howard Shore's soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the list, as it is music that I return to on a regular basis. 

However I was disppopinted not see see some of my other favourites on the list, particularly Michael Nyman for his early work with Peter Greenaway and Philip Glass for films such as The Hours and Notes on a Scandal.

Here are a few reminders:

 

Lincoln

This week we are screening a real historical epic: Lincoln.

Here are my notes:

Lincoln

USA 2012                    150 minutes

Director:                      Steven Spielberg

Starring:                        Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levett and James Spader

Awards and Nominations

• Won two Oscars (including Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis) plus 10 nominations (including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Sally Field), Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones) and Best Music (John Williams)
• Won one BAFTA (Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis) plus nine nominations (including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay)
• A further 57 wins and 95 nominations

 “Steven Spielberg has made more obviously entertaining and more emotionally seductive movies than Lincoln, but this is for him the most brave and, for the audience, most demanding picture in the 40 years since his emergence as a major director.  It's a film about statesmanship, politics, the creation of the world's greatest democracy, and it's concerned with what we can learn from the study and contemplation of history.  Spielberg and his eloquent screenwriter, the playwright Tony Kushner, handle these themes with flair, imagination and vitality, and Daniel Day-Lewis embodies them with an indelible intelligence as the 16th president of the United States.”

Philip French

 In January 1865 Abraham Lincoln is fighting to get the Thirteenth Amendment, which will abolish slavery once and for all, through Congress.  It is the final months of the Civil War and the passage of the Amendment will free all slaves, not just those freed under his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

The film is based on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Spielberg had been considering a film about Lincoln since 1999 when Goodwin first told him what she was about to write.  Spielberg commissioned an initial script from John Logan with Liam Neeson (who had worked with Spielberg on Schindler’s List) to be cast in the title role.  However the project was delayed and when work began again in 2010 it was announced that Daniel Day Lewis had replaced Neeson and that Tony Kushner had taken over as screenwriter.

Tony Kushner considered Lincoln "the greatest democratic leader in the world" and found the writing assignment daunting because "I have no idea [what made him great]; I don't understand what he did any more than I understand how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or Mozart wrote Così fan tutte”.  Kushner struggled with his material and after producing an initial 500 page draft which covered four months of Lincoln’s life he finally decided to concentrate on just the two months during which Lincoln was focussed on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

In a typically perceptive essay on History and Cinema Simon Schama speculates about films with historical subjects:

“If movie history is to get produced as box office with a conscience, it must serve one of two purposes: explain the Origins of Us or act as Augury of What Is to Come.  But this kind of history, whether designed as the genealogy of identity politics or a prudential political-investment service, seldom escapes the contemporary world that it claims to transcend.”

The chronology of the release of Lincoln clarifies its purpose.  It received its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on 8^th October 2012: a story of a lawyer who had adopted Illinois as his home state and who was elected president despite his lack of experience at a national level.  On 6^th November 2012 Americans re-elected Barack Obama as President:  another lawyer who had chosen Illinois as his home state, who had been criticised when he first campaigned for his lack of experience at a national level, and who had consciously launched his first presidential campaign at the Old Illinois State Capitol in Springfield where Lincoln had made one of his famous speeches.  

Here is the trailer:

 

 

Song for Marion

It's the opening night of our new season tonight.  Traditionally we have chosen something popular to pull in the punters and persaude them to sign up to the rest of the season and tonight we are screening Song for Marion.

I know the film received good reviews, but it did not appear too high on my "to see" list - unlike Cloud Atlas which I cannot wait to see - but I'm prepared to be open-minded.

Here are my notes:

Song for Marion

UK 2012                      93 minutes

Director:                      Paul Andrew Williams

Starring:                        Vanessa Redgrave, Terence Stamp, Anne Reid, Christopher Ecclestone, Gemma Arterton

Awards and Nominations

• Three nominations at the British Independent Film Awards for Screenplay (Paul Andrew Williams), Best Actor (Stamp) and Best Supporting Actress (Redgrave)
• Winner of Audience Choice Award at the Nashville Film Festival

“This is a sweet-natured, charming, if modestly conceived picture, which is much better than Dustin Hoffman's recent oldie-song drama Quartet – more relaxed, more persuasive, and it actually delivers the all-important musical climax that Hoffman somehow managed to omit.”

Peter Bradshaw

Marion (Vanessa Redgrave) and Arthur (Terence Stamp) are a long-married lower-middle-class couple.  Although she is terminally ill she is an outgoing member of a local choir (“the OAPz”) run by a young music teacher (Gemma Arterton ), while he refuses to join the choir and is alienated from their son (Christopher Ecclestone).

Both Redgrave and Stamp started their film careers in the early 1960s and starred in some of the most iconic films of the era including A Man for All Seasons (1966) Blow-Up (1966) and Camelot (1967) for Redgrave and Billy Budd (1962), The Collector (1965) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) for Stamp although since then it has been Redgrave who has had by far the more illustrious career both in terms of the films she has made and the quantity of nominations and awards she has received. 

 Paul Andrew Williams made his name with London to Brighton (2006) a brutal thriller that Peter Bradshaw regarded as one of the best British films of the last decade and for which he received a BAFTA nomination for the Most Promising Newcomer in 2007.  He followed this by The Cottage (2008) and Cherry Tree Lane (2010), both of which were also thrillers.  Thus Song for Marion reflects quite a change to his work to date, and is the result of a new joint development programme funded by Pathe and BBC Films.

Here's the trailer:

Top Ten Most Pretentious Films

Anne Billson lists her top ten most pretentious films in The Daily Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-blog/10283912/The-Top-10-Most-Pretentious-Films.html

I haven't see any of them, but I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing - although one or two do look quite interesting....

Film Posters

This is a fascinating article in The Daily Telegraph about film posters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-blog/10276992/What-a-film-poster-says-about-you.html

Once upon a time a poster could change the meaning of a quotation by the simple expedient of missing out the word "not" (as in "...not as good as his best films..).  Now the challenge is to identify the author/website/blogpost that offers the glowing review.