In a week when film fans are mourning the passing of the French great Claude Chabrol (80 year old co-pioneer of the French New Wave) it’s pleasing to report that there’s still someone in France making watchable movies. In fact, Jacques Audiard’s last two films have been absolute crackers (Read My Lips, The Beat My …
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Full disclosure: I wrote a play about Michael Jackson once (“Dirty Doris”, BATS 1995) so I’ll confess to always being interested in the real character behind the tabloid and music video façade so the arrival of This is It (what some have described as a cheap cash-in flick) is of more than passing interest to […]
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Oh, what kind of year is 2008 that has two Coen Brothers films within it? In February I was swooning over No Country for Old Men and now, just a few short months later, I’ve been treated to Burn After Reading, a scathing and bitter comedy about modern American ignorance. It’s a vicious, savage, despairing […]
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As recounted by celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks in a recent New Yorker, amnesia is a fascinating condition. In the article he tells the story of classical musician Clive Wearing who, due to enchaphalitis more than 20 years ago, can retain new memories for no longer than a few seconds. The devastation of his case is …
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Dan Slevin is a New Zealand-based writer, broadcaster and consultant. He has reviewed cinema for the Capital Times weekly newspaper since September 2006, seeing and reviewing every film commercially released in Wellington in that time (except, for some reason, Flicka or Beverly Hills Chihuahua).
Dan is a regular contributor to Radio New Zealand National’s Nine to Noon programme and produces and co-hosts the weekly movie podcast, Cinematica.
In addition to being the finest swordsman in all France, he is also the meanest hombre west of the Pecos. He tweets here.
Why Funerals & Snakes? In Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (Le Mépris; 1963), Fritz Lang said of CinemaScope: “It’s only good for funerals and snakes.”