Skip to main content
search
Tag

roger ebert

Oct 22 2013
Love0
Rush poster

Review: Rush, Blancanieves, Mood Indigo, Metallica Through the Never, Planes, The Smurfs 2, Percy Jackson- Sea of Monsters and One Direction- This is Us

By Cinema, Reviews

Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt in Ron Howard's Rush (2013).

Firstly, I need to apo­lo­gise for the infre­quency of updates. Real world work has inter­vened. The res­ult is that this col­lec­tion of reviews will be even more curs­ory than usual.

Rush posterRon Howard’s Rush is a great show­case for Chris Hemsworth (Thor) to prove that he has some poten­tial bey­ond the com­ic book beef­cake. He plays British play­boy racing driver James Hunt with a per­fect lan­guid English accent and a rock star twinkle just fail­ing to hide his under­stand­able insec­ur­it­ies. Daniel Brühl as his on-track nemes­is Niki Lauda also does a cred­it­able job of mak­ing an unat­tract­ive char­ac­ter appeal­ing. Downsides are that the film is about 20 minutes too long and it’s the first 20 minutes that you could eas­ily lose. Peter Morgan’s script is – unusu­ally for him – very by-the-numbers until the incit­ing incid­ent occurs after the halfway stage, also kick­ing Howard’s dir­ec­tion into gear.

Blancanieves posterBlancanieves was reportedly Roger Ebert’s final favour­ite film, added to his own fest­iv­al earli­er this year after only a hand­ful of screen­ings. As usu­al, Mr. Ebert’s taste did not let him down and the film should win over lov­ers of clas­sic cinema at least. Much closer to a genu­ine silent pic­ture than Oscar-winner The Artist’s pas­tiche, Blancanieves resets the Snow White legend to 1920s Spain with a back­ground of bull­fight­ing and intrigue. It’s lus­cious to look at and as romantic as any of the great vin­tage silents that inspired it, although view­ers with lower tol­er­ance for melo­drama and arch, high intens­ity per­form­ances may struggle to buy in.

Read More

Apr 18 2013
Love0

Preview: Festivals Far and Near

By Cinema

Today, at the Virginia Theater in Urbana Ill., a few thou­sand cinephiles and Ebert-olytes are gath­er­ing for the first day of the 15th Ebertfest, formerly known as Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival. I should be with them – I even bought a pass back in November last year – but a change of job meant no annu­al leave and no money for the flight. Normally, I would just say, “there’ll always be next year” but with Mr. Ebert’s recent passing I don’t know if that will be true.

Instead, we turn our atten­tion to loc­al events and there’s plenty to keep us enter­tained on top of all the new com­mer­cial releases. For a start, the new NZFF Autumn Events ini­ti­at­ive  – repla­cing the much-loved (by me) World Cinema Showcase – gets under way today and the fest­iv­al organ­isa­tion were good enough to slip me a few screen­ers so I could tip you off about some of the less-heralded titles. So, I’m going to pre­sume you are already famil­i­ar with Lawrence of Arabia and will be camp­ing out overnight to see the the only two screen­ings of the – reportedly – mag­ni­fi­cent 4k res­tor­a­tion and instead I’ll take a look at a couple of docos and a couple of oth­er features.

The Deep posterI was a little snarky towards the NZFF on Twitter when they announced that Baltasar Kormákur’s The Deep was going to play. After all, the last film of his that loc­al audi­ences got to see was the woe­ful Contraband star­ring Mark Wahlberg. It turns out that was a Hollywood remake of an already suc­cess­ful Icelandic thrill­er that Mr. Kormákur pro­duced and very likely his director’s fee made The Deep pos­sible. So, snark withdrawn.

Read More

Sep 06 2012
Love0

Telluride Diary part six: The show (part three)

By Cinema, Travel

Firstly, I should add a vital – totally Telluride – detail to yes­ter­day’s post. By choos­ing to watch Rust & Bone and the Marion Cotillard Tribute I missed the first indoor screen­ing of Hyde Park on Hudson and there­fore a rare live appear­ance by Bill Murray at the Q&A. Regret is an emo­tion reserved for those who only look back­wards but – damn!

20120905-225021.jpg

Legend Leonard Maltin wait­ing to gain entry to At Any Cost.

Back to the show. Sunday was always likely to be a very full day and – with my new found con­fid­ence in the “sys­tem” I was determ­ined to take full advant­age. I once begged the New Zealand Film Festival to let me watch a screen­er of Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart, even though they had chosen not to pro­gramme it because I loved the idea so much and because Roger Ebert has been cham­pi­on­ing the tal­en­ted young dir­ect­or for years. In fact, they have only screened one of his three films to date: Goodbye Solo in 2009.

Read More

Oct 10 2010
Love0

“This will carry me twenty-five years.”

By Asides, Cinema

Grouch Marx (inter­viewed by Roger Ebert) tells of a vis­it to W.C. Fields’ house:

“He invited me over to his house, he had his girl­friend there. I think her name was Carlotta Monti. Car-lot-ta MON-ti! That’s the kind of name a girl of Fields would have. He had a lad­der lead­ing up to his attic. Without exag­ger­a­tion, there was fifty thou­sand dol­lars in liquor up there. Crated up like a wharf. I’m stand­ing there and Fields is stand­ing there, and nobody says any­thing. The silence is oppress­ive. Finally, he speaks: This will carry me twenty-five years.”

Quote of the day.

Aug 02 2009
Love0

Looking forward to 2010 NZFF #1

By Cinema

Illness has forced me to miss the final week of this year’s Film Festival, which is some­what dis­ap­point­ing but has­n’t stopped me from think­ing about next year. My wish list for 2010 thus starts here with this clip­ping from a review of Lee Isaac Chung’s Munyurongabo:

The dream of the light­weight cam­era is to be able to go any­where and cap­ture any image. Of all the dreams films and film pro­duc­tion have provided us with, it’s the one we’ve fol­lowed through the least. The trans­ition from the Arriflex to 16mm to Super‑8 to VHS to the MiniDV cam­cord­er and then to HD is for the most part the story of the film­maker trav­el­ing inward. The logic seems to go that, if you have a cam­era that could fit into a piece of carry-on lug­gage, why would you ever leave the house?

[via The Auteur’s Notebook; Munyurongabo is also cham­pioned by Ebert here]
Jul 15 2009
Love0

Preview: 2009 Wellington Film Festival

By Cinema

200907152020.jpgThe Wellington Film Festival (sorry, New Zealand International Film Festival, Wellington Branch) is a huge under­tak­ing for the com­mit­ted cinema-goer. Every year we devour the pro­gramme for weeks in advance, schedul­ing annu­al leave and long “lunch breaks”, try­ing to work out what is essen­tial and what isn’t. After 20 years of this, I’ve only just begun to real­ise that in the search for the essen­tial many oth­er pleas­ures have been passing me by. This year, before I even looked at the pro­gramme, I asked the Festival to choose a stack of DVDs for me, with the emphas­is on the unher­al­ded and the unex­pec­ted. Thus, of the 13 films I’ve been watch­ing over the last three or so weeks, all but one of them were from the back half of the book (and prob­ably would not have been on my per­son­al short­l­ist) but all of them had some­thing spe­cial to offer. So, is my advice for the Festival to not book in advance but instead choose films at ran­dom depend­ing on your own avail­ab­il­ity and prox­im­ity to a ven­ue? Maybe it is.

Read More

Close Menu