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daniel craig

RNZ Widescreen: a week of updates

By Asides

This week at my new Radio New Zealand (sorry, RNZ) gig, we star­ted post­ing some actu­al content.

First up we star­ted our “Best of the web” fea­ture, fea­tur­ing links to inter­est­ing online art­icles about “what ‘cine­mat­ic’ means in rela­tion to TV”, an essay about Spielberg and ‘fath­ers and sons’, and the ori­gins of Del Toro’s Crimson Peak.

Then on Tuesday we pos­ted our first video review: Cary Fukunaga’s new fea­ture (made for Netflix), Beasts of No Nation.

 

It’s worth going to the actu­al page at RNZ because I add some extra links there but the video plays big­ger here (at least until the RNZ redesign arrives).

On Wednesday, we learned of the death of crit­ic Philip French and assembled links to some of the best art­icles about one of the greatest film crit­ics ever.

On Friday, we pos­ted our second video review: Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, star­ring Tom Hanks.

 

Again, there are some links to extras on the page itself.

And this after­noon, I put up our “Best of the week” fea­tur­ing a couple of art­icles about Daniel Craig as Bond, Andrew Todd on Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, just in time for Halloween, and a fas­cin­at­ing art­icle on how to get silent film frame rates right in the digit­al age.

Review: Skyfall, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Compliance

By Cinema and Reviews

Skyfall posterSometimes this job can really suck all the enjoy­ment of the movies right out of you. After an extremely agree­able after­noon watch­ing the new Bond film, Skyfall – and mak­ing plans to see it again quick-smart – I remembered that before the week­end was out I was going to have to pick holes in it for your entertainment.

And to be hon­est, I don’t really feel like it. Partly because it’s an extremely enter­tain­ing block­buster pop­corn movie, also because it walks the fine line between hon­our­ing and rein­vent­ing Bond’s 22 film myth­o­logy, but mainly because it often becomes a really good prop­er film with char­ac­ters and drama and act­ing and that.

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Review: The Descendants, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Young Adult

By Cinema and Reviews

The Descendants posterI really enjoyed Alexander Payne’s The Descendants – at least while I was watch­ing it. Some films will do that to you, though. They push all sorts of groovy but­tons while you are in the room but they dimin­ish as you re-examine them. Connections that you thought were there turn out to be illus­ory, a series of sat­is­fy­ing emo­tion­al moments don’t cohere into some­thing com­plete and you real­ise that you were enjoy­ing it so much you wished it into some­thing profound.

I blame Clooney. He’s such a watch­able pres­ence, always com­bin­ing that Cary Grant movie star-ness with an under­ly­ing emo­tion­al frailty. His char­ac­ters carry that square-jawed aspir­a­tion­al male solid­ity but rarely do they actu­ally know what is going on or what to do. He spe­cial­ises in people who are mak­ing it up as they go along and that has tre­mend­ous appeal – if George Clooney doesn’t know what he’s doing then none of us do.

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Review: Cowboys & Aliens

By Cinema and Reviews

Cowboys & Aliens posterDue to a parade of won­der­ful Film Festival screen­ings your cor­res­pond­ent was only able to get to one of this week’s new releases (and, thanks to the Empire’s fail­ure to open on Sunday morn­ing nearly didn’t make that one) so Glee: the 3D Concert Movie and rom-com Something Borrowed will have to wait until next week’s column. I’m sure you are breath­less with anti­cip­a­tion. But this means that Cowboys & AliensJon Favreau’s third com­ic book adapt­a­tion in a row after Iron Man 1 and 2 – gets the full review treat­ment. Does it deserve it? We shall see.

The scene is fron­ti­er New Mexico between the end of the Civil War and the arrival of the rail­road. A tiny little town, built for a gold rush that nev­er mater­i­al­ised, is only kept alive because of grumpy Harrison Ford’s cattle busi­ness. In the desert out­skirts Daniel Craig wakes up with amne­sia, a strange met­al brace­let and an abil­ity with unarmed com­bat that soon scores him a horse, a gun and a dog.

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Daniel Craig has a gap in his schedule

By Asides and Cinema

While filling in for Graeme Tuckett on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon film slot last Thursday, I cas­u­ally men­tioned that Daniel Craig had been cast as journ­al­ist Mikael Blomkvist in David Fincher’s forth­com­ing remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. With the col­lapse of Sam Mendes’ new Bond pic­ture, Mr Craig has a franchise-sized gap in his sched­ule and I think he’s ideal cast­ing to play the craggy cru­sader (ori­gin­ated by Michael Nyqvist in the Swedish films and a six part tele­vi­sion series).

Thanks to @hybridmovies, I can dir­ect you to the Financial Times art­icle that tells the whole sorry story of the deteri­or­a­tion of MGM and the mis­man­age­ment that has pushed it to the brink:

Harry Sloan, a media entre­pren­eur who once made $200m when a Scandinavian broad­cast­ing busi­ness he was man­aging was taken pub­lic, was brought in as chair­man of the stu­dio. Sloan set about the sub­stance of his work with enthu­si­asm, but he was also noted for his quirky habits. He arranged his office in the MGM build­ing accord­ing to feng-shui prin­ciples and kept a selec­tion of crys­tals in the screen­ing room to improve energy flows – he even had his office tele­phone num­ber changed, repla­cing all the fours with eights, a lucky num­ber in China.

You can listen to me chat­ting with Kathryn Ryan about Inception and The Girl Who Played with Fire here or down­load from the link below:

[audio:http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20100729–1150-Film_Review_with_Dan_Slevin-048.mp3]

Dan Slevin reviews Inception and The Girl Who Played with Fire. (dur­a­tion: 9m 37s) – Radio New Zealand